skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, if you eat every meal at restaurants, you can spend $1000 a month on food. Even if it's McDonald's. That's why only extremely rich people eat every meal at restaurants.

$1000 isn't $10/meal/person; it's $10/meal.

If a family is concerned about the corn/beans/rice diet, which costs like US$40/month according to my "other end of the spectrum" figures, then maybe they could splurge and add some oatmeal, some greens, some fruit and vegetables, milk, herbs and spices, spaghetti with sauce, peanut butter sandwiches, ramen, the occasional chicken. That could raise the price to US$100/month or even higher. But it isn't going to bring it close to US$1000/month.
infinity

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Its syntax comes from Lisp, but Nu is semantically closer to Ruby than Lisp. http://programming.nu/about

I was just paraphrasing nu's page since i couldn't quite describe it on my own.
F.D.A. Approves Drug Derived From Goat’s Milk
Startups: Start Small, Win Each Point
I just registered tguts.com. The name works well for the trading social network I am building.
Don't worry about it, just get back to work :-)
View source my friend. View source.

Seriously, the old stuff will not interest kids today. For us it's just nostalgia. I guarantee you, if I was a kid today A) I would still be a huge computer geek, and B) I would still figure out how it works (maybe not at as low a level).
I really like Amazon as a company, I know their products, market and believe AWS, Kindle are great growth areas. I really wanted to buy their stock but I dollar cost avg my existing positions instead. AMZN has gone from ~$40 when I was looking to over $60 today. nharman is a sad panda.
If you have a pediatric dental bill that gets a little bit higher than that, it might be worthwhile flying the kid to Argentina to get the work done. The dentists here are, by and large, better than in the US, the culture in general is a lot more tolerant of kids, the prices are a lot lower, and you get to travel to Argentina. And some of the dentists speak English.

I think Costa Rica is a more popular dental tourism destination.
http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

Blank lines separate paragraphs.
A substantial fraction of the variation in dental caries is independent of behavioral risk factors.
Good for him. The idea that trying different techniques in education (i.e. Not giving grades) seems silly. The system will not fall apart. College is not vocational school, although you can hardly tell the difference. Imagine if science had a rule: we'll do things the old way so it doesn't cause problems.
Ask HN: Review my startup, mobify.me
Hey guys,

We're http://mobify.me - a hosted mobile transcoding service for existing websites. Launching our Open Beta today!

Pain: most sites look and work terrible on mobile. Latest devices (iPhone, Android) work OK as emergency web access tools, but don't provide a proper mobile experience (like http://iphone.facebook.com/ does).

Designing for mobile is time-consuming and expensive, so most sites don't bother.

Current solutions: build a separate mobile site (lots of work), mobilize an RSS feed (not good enough for most sites), use an automatic transcoder (poor look & feel).

Painkiller: Mobify.Me lets you, the web designer, quickly design a "mobile projection" of the existing site by picking content blocks off your site in our web interface, styling it with CSS and deploying via a DNS CNAME. Mobify.Me takes care of device recognition, image resizing (sites download 2x to 10x faster), feature detection, template matching and many other mobile problems.

We're bootstrapped and will be introducing several premium tiers this weekend. There is a completely free limited tier as well.

It would be great to get your feedback! Please let us know what you think.

Here's some examples:

http://m.grousemountain.com (powered by a custom CMS, 3 hrs of work)

http://techvibes.mobify.me (powered by a custom CMS, 3 hrs of work)

http://spin.mobify.me (unofficial mobile version of spin.com, Drupal, 4 hrs of work)

http://momo.mobify.me (unofficial mobile version of mobilemonday.net, WordPress, 2 hrs of work)

Thanks!

Team Mobify.Me
Absolutely! That's the basic defense I've had in my head whenever anyone used to trash Jakob Nielsen, for example. Yes he sets out lists of guidelines to follow that you can brainlessly treat like a checklist, but you won't get the full understanding behind why he created the list (and in what context) if you treat the guidelines that way.

Jeff Veen gave an analogy at an Adaptive Path workshop I went to a long time ago. I'm no expert and I don't remember the exact verbiage, it was something along the lines of how in kayaking, there's a few basic rules of safety when it comes to tides and currents, but if you don't understand how those rules came to be, then you're left completely vulnerable to very dangerous edge cases where the rules don't apply, like when paddling under a bridge. If you just stick to a checklist in the situation, you'll get sucked under and die.
I disagree with you on professors having those two tasks personally. Preparing people for the workforce shouldn't even be on a university professors mind. Open students minds, and advance research in their area of expertise should be their two roles.

Too many people go to university now for the wrong reasons so I can see why you would think it should be about getting a job(because that's what 90% go for) but it really shouldn't be about that at all.
I remember similar silly things like 9/9/99, etc.,

Nothing wrong in observing things like that; there is such a thing as little amusement.
Nuclear weapons smuggler A.Q. Khan is now a free man
It also warns you when you are installing it. So it's not "silent", just rather quiet.

That said, auto update is the only way I've seen to effectively distribute security patches to the masses. I'd prefer an email. I just don't like the whole concept of a service that is constantly sucking CPU and phoning home to check for a patch that comes out every few months. Adobe, Java, Google, Windows, Apple, and just about every "security" product out there- they are all obnoxious software that could at least have the decency to be cron jobs that run once per week.
check out the screenshots in this post. any thoughts, comments?
"The world is full of unreadable websites: sites that have poor contrast such as dark gray text on a light gray background"

Is this for real? You just described this very page.

I wouldn't pay money for this if some "startup" was selling it, but I did take the trouble to create an account so I could post a big WTF in ya face.
By 'the-basics' I was simply trying to say that a purely functional approach for any existing PHP implementation, whether it is a CMS, framework, application, etc. could help restructure the underlying architecture for whatever was originally implemented in straight PHP, somewhat like an API on the go. . .PHP has materialized some marvelous yet convoluted projects whose origin was not to solve a problem, but to do something very particular using HTTP, which at it's core, is what PHP does best.

I dunno, I guess I just think a functional paradigm could offer a faster and easier way for retooling existing PHP applications/frameworks that focus on what the application is supposed to do rather than how it's going to do it. Let PHP's extensive library worry about the system's protocol; this could help leverage your end-product as an API first, rather than opting-out of any further abstraction just to get what you think you want.

I dunno, I could be way off; I just think PHP is so matter of fact that attempting anything as abstract as what a purely functional language is capable of is nearly inexpressible.
OCaml, Batteries Included presentation [pdf]
Your comment indicates you probably lost interest before part 4. Give it a chance. It's better than you describe.
You should have left them a tip for more than $0 but less than $11. Then everyone comes out ahead.
What about an areductionist? Aplatonist? Afreudian? Arepublican?

I'm not saying that atheism doesn't exist. I'm saying that it's not the same as agnosticism. Agnostic isn't defined in terms of being anti-theist. It just doesn't really believe in the validity of the question.

It's like the classical, "Are you still beating your wife?" An agnostic doesn't think that the question is framed in an answerable way.

Atheism as a term seems to be more popular in the (much more religious than the rest of the west) US where it is perhaps a minority defining itself in terms of the majority. In places where being religious is the exception, rather than the rule, it seems less sensical for those who are not religious to define themselves in terms of not holding a belief that the minority hold.

As for the negations, do you believe that atheism would have a meaning if there were no theism? Or that there's any specific substance to the term atheism, other than (usually actively) rejecting the beliefs of theism?
Is it possible to feel strongly about being unsure?
Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones
Reminds me of the time the electric company claimed I owed in excess of $3000 for one month. The meter had rolled over, and they thought it was a 5 digit meter when it was only a 4 digit meter. I finally got them to relent with a little E&M reasoning: If I had used as much electricity as they claimed I had, I would have melted the transmission line into my house!
Why should Universities feel bound to fulfill your second task? Do you also think that Universities are similarly bound to not allow students to major in fields that aren't useful for functioning in the workforce?

It is, of course, the University's (and in particular the deparment's) prerogative to set basic expectations for grading that their professors must follow. But I don't see how the University itself owes anything to employers. Until 1997, UC Santa Cruz didn't give out any letter grades. If students were worried that this would make it harder for them to get employed, they were welcome to enroll elsewhere.
Forced? Or decided that defending one idiot will make their lives easier when they are the "idiot".
That is really weird. People won't lose weight to add another 5-10 years to their lives but they will for a few hundred bucks.
Honestly, though I know you are well meaning, I think you (and hte professor) missed the point. You (and he) could be completely right about grades. But It's not his place to do away with a system simply because he believes it to be ineffective.

In fact, that mentality is nothing short of disasterous.

To give an example, I live about 2 miles from my work. In that 2 miles there are 9 stop lights. They are timed so that you hit each one. This was done on purpose to prevent speeding. I feel that's ineffective (they're timed at 45mph meaning speeders can go 65 mph and get greens).

But I don't run the lights. If he truely feels grades are ineffective he should lobby his industry and get things officially changed.
Wow spin.mobify.me actually loads faster than spin.com on my iphone.

easier to read too
Imagine if science had a rule: we'll do things the old way so it doesn't cause problems.

I'm pretty sure that's called "engineering".
You're honestly saying Universities should feel no obligation to prepare students to function in the workforce? I honestly don't even know how to respond to that.

I guess, because the workforce only exists for the furtherence of society. So if a University's stated goal is to improve society than they owe it to society to prepare students for the workforce
whatsay we start banning people who link to "forever geek"
<sarcasm>Like the pro-rape defense</sarcasm>
College Music Service Ruckus.com Shuts Down
Is this really good advice? I assume the OP asked because he wants to learn. You don't learn when you pay someone to do things for you.

Also, not everyone has money to spend at the beginning of their startup.
You most definitely need a physical device to test with--using the simulator is absolutely not good enough.

Just get a used (Intel) Mac Mini for a few hundred bucks. Not a huge investment.
Employee compensation in a startup without funding
I'm working on the software side of a startup that I feel has a lot of potential, but I'm conflicted because those in charge have asked me to sign an NDA that gives away the rights to anything I produce for the company. Normally I'd sign it without much hesitation, but the startup is in an early stage with no funding, and management will not agree to set any terms for current or future compensation (i.e. I am trusting that they will fairly compensate myself and others who are working with me). I think this company is headed in the right direction, so what are my options for making sure that if the startup succeeds I'll actually see a return on my time investment, and making sure the founders can't just use my contributions for their personal gain?
Bacolicio.us
This isn't actually about money, that was the reporters conclusion. The real incentive is the social pressure. It's a challenge to perform better than your mates.
Yes. If you want to be trained for the workforce go to a vocational school. You're stating that the only way for a university to improve society is by providing a workforce. This is A way for a university to improve society but it shouldn't be the way.
You an employment contract which gives you stock, and a shareholder agreement, right? There's your guarantee that you see some benefit from the work you do for the company.

If not, what are you doing there?
Let's keep this for Reddit please.

So far HN has been relatively free of OS flamewars. Hopefully we can steer clear of the other two (politics and religion) as well.
It ssems a little mad to use the New Yorker font, or a font that is so strongly reminiscent of the New Yorker.
Job Losses in U.S. Spreading to Workers With College Degrees
Where data goes when it dies and other musings
You're comparing apples and oranges. In many cases, it really is a bad idea to circumvent the current system. But there are a couple of big differences between traffic lights and school grades.

For one, traffic lights work. When people obey them, they (excepting a faulty light) don't get into wrecks. They may not be efficient, but they get the job done.

School grades don't work. Because people make comparisons between things that aren't really comparable, a lot of people get jobs when perhaps they shouldn't or don't when they should. This is much more like a system where traffic lights are sometimes all green than ones which are timed in an annoying way.

What's the right thing to do when traffic lights are malfunctioning this way? The first thing you should do, obviously, is call the authorities. But what if the authorities don't believe you? You tell them that the lights are all green, but they know their system works perfectly.

This is further complicated in the case of grading, because there isn't one central authority. There are thousands of schools and employers who all work with this system; getting them all to switch is no mean feat. So let's instead imagine that every traffic light is independently owned and operated, and that while the traffic light operators feel like they are all working together, there are some subtle differences between their algorithms which obviously lead to screwups.

Since the people who run the traffic lights aren't responding to you, what should you do? Obviously, for your own safety and the safety of those around you you should stop at every intersection regardless of the light color. And if you have the ability, it would probably be a good idea to climb up and cover up the lights yourself, so that others who come to the broken intersection don't get confused.
OK, one more clarification question then, do you (or anyone else who has this argument) believe the majority of people share your opinion? In other words, when the majority of parents pay their kids tuition do you think they're primary goal is to "open their childs mind" or to "prepare them for a career"?
Well it's a good thing someone can profit from a shit gone awry!
My personal up until recently underused keyword was (surprise!) "rescue".

I'm not sure how this has been escaping me since 07, but I had no idea you can apply it at the end of an expression, i.e. when you're facing nasty functions that insist on trhowing exceptions, instead of

begin

value = function_that_throws

rescue

value = "default"

end

you can just write:

value = function_that_throws rescue "default"
Again though, the whole basis for your argument is that you are unquestionably right. Many people believe grades work just as well as traffic lights. I'd argue the majority of people in academia do (since they haven't been abolished). Employers hire based on grades so many of them do too.

The only way your argument makes sense is if we take your contention that "grades don't work" and treat it like gospel

(For the record, I'm not a believer in the grading system. I agree with much of what you are saying. I simply don't believe my opinion justifies throwing out the rules in and of itself)
Wow! Did I just see an Atheist trying to convert an agnostic to Atheism?
I think the majority of people go to university now a days because they think everyone else is and that they will lose a certain amount of status if they don't. They aren't preparing for a career when most don't have a clue about what they want to do and they aren't opening their minds as most don't care about their education beyond grades.
Ars, the point is that $var = $tom || 'ed'; is much less verbose than the alternatives.

More generally, it's just strange to me that || and && don't operate the same in PHP as they do in every other C-style language. Neither does the ternary if, for that matter.
This has to be a record for single comment upmods. Well deserved though, by a solid community contributor.
Actually I'd love to argue with you - my memory is not perfect, and I'd love to hear other people's perceptions. What point in time were those couple of months?
The power play
There's actually a wonderful insight into human evolutionary psychology here. We've evolved to discount the future. We are finite beings and all of our eggs are in one basket. For a large part of our biological history, performing beneficial tasks such as eating or mating was best performed in the present, because you might not be around next month to do them. There might be a famine, or you might get injured, thus causing your prospective mate to choose a healthier candidate. Courses of action that result in benefits now (or the prevention of an immediate loss) are much more compelling than courses of action that have a benefit in the distant future.

There's a great website about procrastination, http://www.procrastinus.com/, that uses this understanding of future discounting to help one get things done. The idea is that a long project should be broken up into smaller tasks so that, even though meeting the smaller goals results in less absolute reward, they are more compelling because the completion horizon is so close.

Basically, humans are wired so that a jelly donut (or a few hundred bucks) now is perceived as more beneficial than 5 to 10 years of existence tacked on at the end of life. For a very long time, that has been a very sensible proposition.
Agreed.

I feel so strongly that this doesn't belong on HN, I've done something I vary rarely do. Cast a downvote. Not just one either, but I've downvoted every comment here discussing religion, regardless of their stance. I haven't downvoted those discussing the relevance of this thread on HN though.
Or he could his money in a bank, where it would be lent to new business, used to build houses, etc. Or in a new business as stock, or venture capital. Capitalism - what a great idea !

He seems to think government bureaucrats will do a better job investing the money after they take it from him. Which in itself creates an incentive not to earn more money.
I never call myself a hacker, because when I studied ESR's writings I was educated about the fact "that no one is a hacker until another hacker calls him so".

(The antithesis to this attitude is, one word, "lifehacker".)
Unfortunately, no, I don't have one. The founders are holding off on cash and equity compensation until after funding has come in. They seem like honest guys, but of course only they know for sure.
This article reminds of another Canadian university prof named David Noble who doesn't give grades either. He seems to have found a way to do it without getting fired though.

Giving Up the Grade - David Noble

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/MonitorIssues/2007/05/Monit...

Throughout the 30-odd years of my university teaching career I have always found ways around grading, primarily by giving all A’s, thereby eliminating grades de facto, if not de jure. Last year for the first time, after long bemoaning my “anomalous” practice, York University officials formally prevailed upon me henceforth to designate my courses “ungraded “ (a pass/fail option without the fail), thereby taking them off the radar screen and perhaps unintentionally establishing a promising academic precedent.
That's exactly why I don't ride bikes on public roads or understand those who do. Clowns who can't drive can wreck you without getting more than a minor door ding in their SUV (or in this case, bus). I just don't trust strangers with my life.
Was Socrates bound by an obligation to Society to teach Plato a vocation? It appears to me there are a lot of similarities between this situation and that one (ignoring the fact that this guy probably isn't Socrates, and that arresting is slightly different than executing).
I bet it would be easier to design a banner generator that intelligently figures out a design.

It looks like all you need to do is figure out an algorithm for producing a single stream of "bits", then correctly place and synchronize them. I bet it would be quite trivial, really.

(it's interesting that first sentence had the words "intelligent" and "design" in it, when I had no intention of bringing up the evolution vs. intelligent design issue, I only realized what I had said after the fact)
Argh. Here it is: the moment the thread turns into an argument about religion.

When this poll was first posted, I worried it would. Then a bit later I saw the number of comments and knew that it had.

What a tar-baby the topic of religion is. A forum just can't seem to touch it any point without dragging in the whole thing.
Cool, sure, but blind rescues are as the crow flies to bugs: use them wisely, or use them _why-ly.
No offence to Reed, but he can pay more taxes without anyone elses permission.

What he realty wants is for YOU to pay more taxes.

All the people who say "raise my taxes" are saying that.
Opening Up Core Facebook Application Features to Platform
I think you’re evading the question. If people are going to University because everyone else is than they are in turn going to University based on what they think everyone else's reasoning is. So "because everyone else does" can't be their specific purpose.

The purpose of my question was to make this point: Universities exist to serve society. It’s Government, Donors and Tuition payers who keep Universities open and their opinion of the University’s purpose is its purpose (if not than the University is fraudulently taking their money)

So if we assume the majority of tax payers and donors are also those who went to College (and hence paid tuition) than that group determines the University’s purpose. If the majority of those people believe that purpose is to prepare people for a career than that is what the University’s purpose is.
What about for images? Rounded corners, gradients, logos, etc. I would imagine going back and messing with all those later would be a real pain, which is why I think choosing and settling on a color scheme from the start is important.
Sorry, yters. No harm intended.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430118