skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
And yet. And yet Harry Potter says that Voldemort isn't the only evil, that the Ministry...

I almost put this point into my original comment, because I anticipated this response:

Go back and read the first two books. They contain no hints of this sort of thing. It was only after the series became a runaway success that Rowling started to beef up the storyline with such "adult" topics. (And even these themes are fairly bolted-on to a world still fundamentally dominated by Absolute Good and Absolute Evil - or, at least, they started out that way).

My argument is that the introduction of these themes, and the retconning of a fairly simplistic world into something more ambiguous, resemble the rereleasing of the original books with "adult covers". They were an after-the-fact response to the way that a children's story became massively popular in the adult world.

(Which isn't to say that the books aren't engagingly written, or fun to read. And video games are fun to play - I'm with Randall Munroe on people who look down on those having fun just because they are insufficiently highbrow. But I simply disagree with your argument that the popularity of the original Harry Potter books represents the rise of challenging mental stimulation.)
>Really a shame that common strategies... are important in Long Beach

Long Beach is only a short half-hour drive from downtown LA, and I can't imagine that advice is any different anywhere else. Of course, I'm overly sensitive to this because I'm female and young and everyone around me has hammered in that whole rape scenario before...but that is good advice no matter what.

> ...and at "A place where great thinkers and optimists gather."

Well, you'd never encounter these assaults at most conferences...too many people in too tight of a space. But I can see someone mugging for a TED badge for the access it could provide. Or any other conference, outside of wherever the conference is located.

Let me just finish off with the idea that people should be taking off badges as they exit a conference as well, even if it's only for a short lunch or something. Sometimes I get lazy or convinced I'm going to lose it, but I've come across the realization that lots of people around me treat me differently, or could find out more information about me than I care to let know if I leave the badge on, even partially hidden under a jacket.
It's not a pipe dream. There are some folks out there working on this kind of stuff, and I prototyped one for my master's project. However, I didn't go the route of having propositional-level granularity, because I'm aiming for Wikipedia levels of participation, and it's understood in HCI that the more structure you impose on input at the interface level, the lower the adoption.

Some stuff you may want to look up (all but the first are actually online):

MIT's Collaboratorium (should be an article in Sloan)
DebateGraph
TruthMapping
DebateWise
Debatepedia

There are also a bunch of other more commercial attempts whose names I can't recall. ReadWriteWeb or a similar site did a roundup of them last year. But they suck. Even the listed examples have probems insofar as they screw up the interface, interaction design, and/or information architecture. (That is, if the goal is to achieve widespread use.) Within small, interested communities, there may be sufficient motivation to use them. In Collaboratorium's case, they had a class at MIT use it w/r/t climate change.

If you're really interested in tackling this problem, let me know. I'm too busy working on a for-profit venture to keep developing my MS project, but my design doc might give you some ideas, even if you don't go the route I did.
Okay, so as not to be a jackass, I will stipulate:

- You can spend more than US$1000 a month feeding a family of four on 100% Safeway (or Albertsons) steak. I was wrong about that. It looks like your bill could go up to US$2000.

- I definitely don't know how to cook beef. In fact, I'm mostly vegetarian. I didn't move to Argentina for the steak. I'm surprised to learn that chuck steak is inedible without special equipment, except in a stew.

- Enough pre-deboned chicken breasts to feed four people for a meal also costs US$10, which is similarly US$1000 a month, if you eat something that pricey three meals a day.

I still want to know how you spend US$1000 a month on food without factoring in restaurants. Even approximately? I'm sure you're not eating a 100% meat diet, are you?
4.2 is the oldest worth developing for at this point, the vast majority of devices support it. My impression is that most developers currently use 4.5 (because the IDE tools are improved), then go back and compile for previous versions.

The JDE is on its last legs, even internally RIM is switching to the Eclipse plug-ins they make available.

RIM does have the numbers you need, but they're only available to Alliance developer partners, who are under NDA. From what I've heard (which is guaranteed to be somewhat inaccurate) more than 85% of devices are on 4.2 or greater, with the majority being on 4.5, which finally includes facilities for updating the OS over the air.
Steve Ballmer’s Speech to the Democrats
The Computer and the Brain, by John von Neumann

Introduction to Algorithms, by Thomas H. Cormen

The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth [naturally!]

Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines, by Marvin L. Minsky

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
Yes, it's probably useful to know that script kiddies know how screen scrape and that they are moving into "Do you have Prince Albert in the can?" 2.0

And they do us a real service in bringing home that what is fishy in our web experience may be phishy (or at least fishbotty). Do you want to wager whether somewhere in the bowels of a former Soviet state entrepre-criminals are exploring how to monetize such a process (and not intending to offer an opt-out option)?

It may take a little while to see if this pranksterism can turn sout, since we seem to be in the very early stages: there's not yet a wikipedia article on fishbot, and a sole Wired article ( http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/11/fishbot-roundup.html ) is concerned about robots, not webbots.
There are still issues of ubiquity. You can only assume Python 2.4 at best.
They use "design" in the context of applied arts. Similar to the way that "designer clothing" refers to fashion.
The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

Great quote.

Agreed on the essay. But the question I'm left with: Can you debate religion and politics if you have some refined knowledge on the topics? For instance, I took a bunch of religion and political science courses. The former seems much more tractable to me not because I have a religious identity, but because when I look across the scope of religious identities, I see some common, and wide, themes of humanity. In politics I only see the accumulation of power (no doubt a human trait, but one that doesn't do much good all by itself). Of course, organized religious involves politics too, but I'm much more interested in what it means to be religious (or not) in every day lives. There it's less about a particular religious identity than an identification with the religious.
"Code" by Charles Petzold
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=297289

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392889

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315040

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=348019

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=290128

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135185

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45082

http://searchyc.com

http://www.google.com/search?q=sicp
Areca Palm (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens)
. . .
One needs about 4 shoulder high plants/person

Mother-in-law’s Tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata)
. . .
One requires about 6-8 such waist high plants per person in the bedroom

This seems like a large number of plants to fit into a space. Any tips on fitting them in without having them dominate the space?
Don't Reinvent The Wheel, Unless You Plan on Learning More About Wheels
Learning all the time
An asshole's proposal
Gas stations, supermakets
Amazon Kindle 2 pictures and pricing
The headline is wrong.
The article states that one in three broadband subscribers admits to being a pirate. That not only means that the real number of "pirates" is higher (amongst the questioned population anyways) but also that piracy is socially accepted to the point where many people freely admit to it in a random poll.

This is not really news anyways. Similar polls have been consistently returning similar figures from all around the world, for years. The physical media industry is dead, news at 11.
Can anyone explain why the original blogspot post ( http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/02/six-ways-to-experiment-w... ) links only to "invis.gif 1x1 pixels" ? I've been rechecking this url over past 12 hours with this same result.

Is this a hacking of blogspot? or something that happens there when a blogspot blog goes bad. Actually I note that the home blog page (http://adsense.blogspot.com/) also goes only to that .gif - odd, since surely this is a Google-developed blog, isn't it?
http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/01/28/lets-all-grow-up/
One of their most interesting maps was a look at Polish voting patterns (right vs left wing) overlaid with the outline of pre-1945 Germany.

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/348-an-imperial-...

Turns out the Polish areas that were German 100 years ago tend to vote more right wing/centrist than the non-Germanic areas.
Agree'd. It seems like the author either has no customers or very understanding customers. Pushing every commit to production is just non-sense by any metric. What about commits that muck with the data model where bugs might potentially destroying production data? What about complex developments that consist of more than one commit?

This almost reads like a link-bait. I somehow doubt the author really believes what he's writing there.
Duke Entrepreneurship Education Talks
The first talk by Aaron Patzer of mint.com has particularly good advice for startups.

Here's a direct link to the Quicktime video of the talk:
http://stream.fuqua.duke.edu/Content/Groups/EES/2008/Patzer....
Review: Does my presentation give a clear picture of the project?
Hi everyone,
Just got over with a website for our surveillance project we bunch of students are planning to do. I've made a website presenting the idea through a slideshow. Since, we 4 people work on the project, we already have a good idea of what we're doing. I just wished to check if people too do get the right message that we're trying to convey. Just for a reality check, what impression do you get about the project when you look at the presentation ?
have a look - http://spacelock.madetokill.com/

One point someone mentioned is that I never actually described the project in detail on our website... I'm working on that right now. I wonder if I should actually explain every detail of the project, it's meant for a contest - Student2Business, should I disclose the whole working ? the basic architecture is already visible. There are some features which we wish to keep secret too!

Thanks
I often think it would be beneficial if HN had some directory that people could list their skills if they are willing to freelance.

Often times I would like to work with someone more skilled in UI and design and would rather work with someone who posted on here regularly. Seems like it would be less risky then say any of the elance/ rent a coder type deals.

I have thought it would be nice if there was a site devoted more to building a business relationship then just low-ball pricing to get projects done. Maybe I should just build one, but getting enough people to make it worthwhile would be the difficult part.
Wikipedia is an amazing resource for computer science stuff, I've found. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorting_algorithm .. you can get lost in there for ages. Just make sure you take notes and try to apply what you learn.

Also: http://delicious.com/popular/compsci

Also: http://academicearth.org/subjects/computer-science (this one is a goldmine)
I look at politics and religion as deeply personal choices. I also think they are somewhat "beyond reason" -- I don't want to use the term irrational because my point is that the rules of rationality don't apply. Perhaps trans-rational? And when I mean religion, I include the atheists here. They're as impervious to reason as any of the others, but mostly can't see it, which makes them a bit humorous to deal with.

The problem is that most folks are 1) very uncomfortable with this situation, and 2) can't find the words to express the "why" of what they are saying (except for the rationalists, who will use reason ad infinitum regardless of which side of the issue they stand)

I think the most honest responses are, like yours, where you say that there's good reasons that you just can't get to. I also respect people who say "beats me" -- the agnostics. I'm more of an agnostic these days when it comes to religion, and for a long time I've realized that politics is completely non-rational.

That's not to say you can't use logic and reason in the discussion: I think they provide tools to meet in the middle and share equally. But logic in these discussions has a completely different purpose than it does in say, a geometric proof. It's a flashlight in a dark, constantly changing room. It's not the light switch. Most people miss that point.

I enjoy seeing people talk about religion and politics (as long as it's civil) because it gives me an idea of how they think. It's neat to watch people struggle with really tough questions. Who knows? There might be something I could learn there. But I can see where it can destroy a forum.
Windows 7 Comes in 6 Flavors | TechJaws
Twitter is now worth like half as much as it was last week
Second The Art of Computer Programming, definitely not Godel, Escher, Bach (though it makes for interesting reading).

I really liked 'Introduction to Algorithms' by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein, MIT press.
Virtualization With Xen On Debian Lenny (AMD64)
Great read; however, I feel Prof. MacKay misses an important point. Employers fuel the problem, demanding this-and-that. People are going to university to meet the criteria for an top paying job, rather than passion for the subject. This is what is causing the grade struggle: student rush, cram, and rote memorise to achieve desired grades; most don't give a damn about interacting with the material. If you said here's an 'A' they'd take it, and not care about not knowing the material.

First, we need to restore university as an institution of learning [instead of a qualification mill]. In fact, I might be inclined to argue that grades should be abolished outright - almost what Prof. MacKay is saying.

[disclaimer: I'm a student at a world renowned British university]
It's pretty different; commandlinefu looks like shell scripting only, while mine is more geared towards python, php, c, etc
Ouch...that hurts. It's not at all funny like the Jonathan Swift one.
What's interesting about the flow (or mix) of coins throughout the Euro zone is that is is an effect caused by individuals. Coins move form place to place in people's pockets and thus has nothing to do with inter-business transactions.

I contributed to the mix myself last summer when i brought lot's of Greek coins back to circulate in SW France.
I've been hit by the [papa,phobic]coho a couple times in recent months. Its pretty lame.
The title is misleading. As the article mentions, this is all speculative, based on information from a forum.

Why not wait until Monday to post official pictures/specs/pricing? Visit Engadget if you want rumors.
Kierkegaard had some interesting views on this very subject, that a belief system such as Christianity requires a greater life involvement than the common 'Sunday Christianity' of 30 years ago. I think now we find a larger number of 'genuine believers' whereas 30 or more years ago people went to Church because that was the thing you do. Now, as people have a greater freedom to NOT go, so the remaining attendees probably become more devoted. A kind of evolutionary process, where the selection method is self-selection of attendance based upon initial belief.

As a rationalist/atheist/whateverlabel of course I'm not sure I'm altogether comfortable with the rapid increase in religious adherence in recent years but that's a different discussion.

Very interesting essay PG!
I'm interested in your design doc and future discussion on this topic.
It looks a lot better than the original Kindle. I tried one and disliked it so much I returned it. The sad thing is I really wanted to like it. I prefer reading on the computer anymore. I didn't like how there wasn't a good way to hold it with out accidentally flipping the pages. This new version seems to have fixed that. I was willing to accept the non-color display, but I didn't like the liquid paper. I wish it was backlit. The navigation was terrible. It looks like they've tried to address the navigation with a joystick, I'm sure it's better than the original.

I guess I wish I had an something like an iPhone or iPod touch that was around the same size the Kindle, that had a color screen, the touch features of the iPhone and iPod touch would be great, but button and stylus navigation would be alright. Nice looking anti-aliased fonts are essential. A good way to get content. Kindle has a nice tie in to Amazon, but the on the original it was such a bother to get other content on it. The big problem was no pdf support.

I'm excited that the Kindle 2 is much improved, I hope they have a lot of success with it.
To complicate things: What if I have a kid. Then being a father becomes part of my identity. Perhaps I might even think that people should have kids. If someone suggests that all children should be killed, or that debt should be added to the State I live in that presumably my children would have to pay off, I might react to these statements with more than disinterest and perhaps even with anger, since they conflict with my identity as a father.

'Open mindedness' may be a help navigating some problems regarding differing identities, but certainly not all.
I'll share my experience with ebook readers here. As someone who owns over 30 gigs of ebooks and reads academic journals often, I was naturally excited when the whole slew of ebook reading device hit the market.

I've tried 3 different E-book readers: The sony PRS505, the Kindle and the iRex iLiad. In the end, I returned the kindle and gave the 505 to my dad and kept the iRex. The main reason was that the Kindle screen was WAYYY TOO SMALLL to read full sized Pdfs and academic journals.

The sony had the same screen-size problem as the Kindle but its cheaper and it was a good fit for my dad, who mainly reads fiction books. The iRex was the keeper because of its big 8 inch screen.

The new kindle 2 seems to have the same screen size as the previous one, so this is an absolute no-buy for me. However, the upcoming plastic logic reader looks promising with its full A4 sized screen and could be a good fit for me.
Thank you very much for sharing this simple yet (as for your claim) effective way of keeping ourselves healthy.
My comments:

- The presentation gets too text heavy later on. Cut out some of the text and get more straight to the point. It also might be a good idea to make the text stand out more.

- I did enjoy the pictures, but on my 1024x768 resolution (laptop screen) I had to scroll down a bit to see it all. Maybe make them a bit smaller or minimize the header.

- On the last slide, it goes back to the first. I know this isn't done, but make sure you lead into a "GET IT NOW" page or something similar after I've gone through the slides.

I understood what the product is offering. Seems to be software that uses a webcam to create a simple security/monitoring system? Sounds neat, although when you near the completion of your software it might be a good idea to also show some examples of how easy it is to use (screenshots), instead of spending 4-6 slides describing the problem you are solving.

Hope that helps :)
I know. Anatman. I had disagreements between Buddhists in the Mahayana and Theravada schools in mind, though: I don't know of any escalating to violence(!), but the former calling the latter "Hinayana" (which is kind of like "The Inferior Way (to enlightenment)") is pretty petty. Nobody is immune to "my school of thought is better than yours" identity squabbling, unfortunately.

I think that some Buddhist practices are a pretty direct attempt to keep this sort of behavior in check, but still the old habits take a long time to simmer down. I think the central problem is when something in the animal brain mistakes criticism of identity for a physical threat. Meditation helps to see this for what it is and let it go, most of the time.
But you see that is the very thing Duncan thought of in retrospect. It's easy for any of us to say we would have done this or that, but until you are actually placed in a like situation you have no idea what you would actually do.

As always, hindsight is 20/20.
@truebosko: Thanks! I'm clearly able to see some flaws which got ignored now!
I'm planning to put up some more descriptive text after last slide. Yes, it does get text heavy... will reduce that for sure.
I see, the balance in the presentation is kind of one sided... we're still developing the system... once done I'll surely remove some slides and put a few to show how easy it is.

thanks a lot :)
100 cloud computing players
this had a pretty annoying popup the first time I opened it, not sure if that was this window or another one. In case it was apologies, but even so the list makes for interesting reading.
I don't work at the port level much, but understand that there are usual uses for several... so that monitoring those for suspicious activity could be part of an overall security strategy.

Anyone know of widgets or tiny GUI-based apps for Windows/ OSX / Linux that might periodically monitor (and maybe alert) regarding port activity of greatest concern?
Somewhat related. Remember reading about a semi-famous blogger being approached at a soccer game or such and being asked 'how their kids' illnesses were'. She didn't know him. She stopped blogging and/or put up a walled garden.