skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't have a good resource for you, but I can definitely say that there is a tremendous difference between just sitting idle and meditating.

Meditation is a form of brain training, requiring a lot of discipline and practice. You are essentially teaching yourself how to alter your brain's function.

The difference is like watching TV versus playing a video game. It may look similar at first, but they are two entirely different things.

This is an interesting read if you're into meditation as it relates to science:

http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/News/Meditation_Alters_Brai...
I agree, the primary focus of school should be learning. However, just because somebody is smart and motivated does not mean they'll learn on their own. For somebody like the GP, a college education can provide access to a huge number of resources that you simply can't find anywhere else. There are some people for whom the combination of great professors, literary resources, and a focus on learning for 3.5 months at a time will provide a better and more concentrated education than anywhere else. Outside of college, you have to spend at least some of your energy on acquiring those opportunites, necessarily making it less effective.

That said, I don't think that college is this way for everybody. If you're disengaged in classes and primarily linked in to the social scene, then the value you get out of college is less clear. A degree is socially necessary for some jobs, so it's not entirely wasted time, but the price is steep.

Point being, college is like everything else: you get out what you put in. I wouldn't trade my college experience for anything (especially that $160k). Nothing is a panacea.
In my whole career I've upgraded gcc (on purpose) once.

I rebuild Python and Ruby every other month.
Here is some more information about the accident:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-planecrash30-2009jan...

Very unfortunate, I heard about the crash (live about a mile from SM airport) but didn't know details until now. Best wishes go out to all involved.
joelonsoftware http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
10 Killer Alternates of Nero CD DVD Burner
Nero is the Best and Favourite Software of Everyone to Write CD and DVD. But there are so many free software which helps you to do the same. Here is a list of 10 free burning softwares that you can use in place of Nero.
Running mailing list software is trivial (I'm a qmail person, FWIW).

Running a mailing list that consistently delivers to Gmail and Ymail without landing in spam boxes is a different story.
I don't think it's really reasonable to rule out hardware security simply because jwr from Hacker News isn't capable of assessing it, but I don't blame you for not using it.
I wish it had more depth and some actual references. Especially the diet section is quite lame and inaccurate.
Oh, I see... we're talking about Visual Basic: "Dim X as Variant".

Well then, Paul Graham is right. That is a provincial spelling of "dynamic typing".

Incidentally, I don't think variants in the Hindley-Milner sense of the word get nearly enough love from hackers. And, in fact, they do correspond to dynamic typing.

data Dyn = I Integer | S String | D Double | F Dyn -> Dyn | ...

And now you can use your statically typed language as a dynamically typed one.
We're both right, and you're more right than I am, because I was ignoring the EK, which is "burned in".

But regardless, the EK and attestation schemes are just capabilities of the TPM chip. You can use them or not use them. The problem isn't the TPM --- which we need. The problem is what Microsoft wants to do with the TPM.
DVD Plunge May Force Studios to Write Down Movies
You could get the flash, ram, processor, and most of the peripheral ports integrated into a microcontroller package at well under $3 for the right volume, particularly if they were not component packaged but chips epoxied onto the motherboard. The motherboard and keyboard would probably be the same component (think pocket calculator membrane keys), and if there was a trackpad it might work similarly (otherwise use arrow keys for free).

In this context, government would give Rs 2.5 lakh per institution for 10 Kbps connection and subsidise 25% of costs for private and state government colleges.

10kbps is obviously a tiny amount of bandwidth, especially per institution. This is clearly not enough for doing interactive browsing in a class. For this reason I suspect that the 2GB is actually flash, not DRAM. You couldn't keep a room full of 64k DRAM computers busy with 20-30% of a dialup modem.
If you don't think OS X's effects are useful, provide counterexamples.

I didn't say effects are invalidated. When did I say that? I said that "a pointless feature that adds nothing but strain" is something that should not be marketed, in the quote you took yourself.

The guy who posted about why he liked Compiz made a good argument. He listed features that actually make sense to have. I think zoom should be built-in to an OS. I like the idea of the window-sorter that Compiz apparently has. But as somebody who casually reads Linux articles, the two things I hear are wobbly windows and spinny cube. Those are bad things to announce.

The article is about Compiz. I don't know why you're trying to make this a discussion about effects in general.

I never had the impression that compiz was hailed as the new killer feature of Linux, so I don't understand your enthusiasm for the article.

I'm enthusiastic because I do have that impression. I read about it more than I read about any other Linux thing beyond the flurry of articles about what's-it, Oxygen, when KDE 4 came out. I might have that name wrong. Compiz is what people focus on. And I'm enthusiastic about this article because its point is that it should not be emphasized, and that a core OS feature shouldn't rely on one central guy.
Those aren't stars. Those are dead bugs.
I find apple as a smart company, they make good products and they ensure profitability of every venture. I dont count apple products as a premium products but they are not making commodity products either. Overall apple has managed to strike a balance between innovation, brand and profit (now we have number for this too).

Higher profits means higher share holder value, something every corporate strives for
Seeing and Believing
The Ronald McDonald of Revolution
I'm currently reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I'm not Buddhist but I was looking for a good book on meditation. This book has been great, it's got the wisdom of thousands of years of mediators in a format that is very accessible to Westerners. Its explanation of different techniques for meditation is thorough and practical.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062508342
I completely agree. They claim this is a 'quantitative' analysis, but it's really anecdotally describing a graph. They should have removed seasonal variations, used a larger data set, and tried a couple time series models. Maybe in a couple years, when they actually have more data, it will be more meaningful.
The sad thing is: I was fairly sure the cockpit was a bad rendering, but it turned out to be a photograph.
I heard way more people doing stuff with the Arduino.

Do people know how Teensy and Arduino compare?

I do know that Arduino is 100% Open Source which is why so many cottage electronic outfits provide them premade.
List of algorithms requested on Wikipedia - if you know one, do your share
Your office is moving to the web, get ready
High mass-- irrelevant; gas mileage is higher.

What about the increased tire-wear and decreased handling that I mentioned? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458104

How can one make a car's engine heavier without certeris paribus making those two things worse?

High bulk-- irrelevant; the car is normal sized.

Engineers have to shoehorn engines into engine bays. The larger the engine, the more expensive the shoehorning. Their are myriad examples in the automotive press of automakers running into the engine-bay-size obstacle when trying to fit larger, more-powerful engines into existing car models.

High smog pollution-- not since the introduction of ultra-low sulfur diesel in the US in 2007.

NOx emissions are not affected by fuel sulfur level. Cleaning up the smog emissions of diesels still requires expensive bandaids that gasoline engines (as long as they operate at low-enough temperatures) do not require. If diesel-level NOx emissions were allowed for gasoline engines, then ceteris paribus gasoline engines would be more powerful and efficient and less costly.

Originally (under the EPA's Tier 1 regulation), there was a dual standard (gasoline and diesel) for light-vehicle smog emissions. http://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/ld.php

Now, there is a single standard (Tier 2 regulation). http://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/ld_t2.php

The same emission limits apply to all vehicles regardless of the fuel they use. That is, vehicles fueled by gasoline, diesel, or alternative fuels all must meet the same standards. Since light-duty emission standards are expressed in grams of pollutants per mile, vehicles with large engines (such light trucks or SUVs) have to use more advanced emission control technologies than vehicles with smaller engines in order to meet the standards.
Fun hacking = prototyping.

This is a great way to test ideas on the cheap.
I was sat on the bus this morning thinking of asking this exact question. I have a big list of blogs I read but they're mostly personal, and I need to expand my geeky reading list.

Anyway, as I am looking for geek/code/software blogs I have none of those to share, but think there's quite a few of you here would enjoy Chairman Bill's blog ( http://ttocb.blogspot.com/ ) - strong British humour throughout.
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So we may be saying the same thing, but, he didn't say allocation was N log N --- and allocation/deallocation is really expensive; it's consistently on the top of profiles of programs I work on.
I recently read an interview with Eric Schmidt discussing how companies can't afford to spend money on fundamental research because it doesn't contribute to the bottom line. Since any public companies only responsibility is to produce a profit for shareholders. He seemed to want universities doing R&D with government money. I would prefew the government not get involved with funding research to be used by the private sector (libertarian tendencies?) but I don't see any other way around the lack of R&D.
We have enough examples now where a company open sources its product and still makes money, Redhat, Mysql to name few. You can always open up the base product and charge for additional features (the freemium model).

You have to create an ecosystem around the product it will be profitable. That ecosystem can be additional plugins or services around a free software product. Since free software is based on the concept of sharing the network effect will kick in, for good products.

If the product is good you will make money immaterial of open source or closed source nature. In my opinion free software has more stability and performance but most free softwares are packaged badly (or not packaged at all). When Free software hackers learn the art of packaging a product and start realizing that there are others who are going to use the product too, we can should lot more usable products from open source world.
Aside: Whether or not your site shows a phone number, make sure your contact information and the FAQ/Help areas are usable without Javascript or Flash. Google is sure to find it. So are customers and potential customers with peculiar disabilities. (Asus, I'm looking at you.)
And if possible a semantic summarizer too.

Glanced through 2-3 pages, seems like a totally dragged story of his brilliance as a kid, then things he ventured into.
There is always room for new startups to do the same thing, but in consumer internet it typically requires a drastically different angle because network effects and switching costs kick in (whereas it does not for a single pizza parlor).

This is why Friendster was forced to focus on China and give up hope in US.

YouTube's competitors had a hard time moving in on mass-consumer video (they were forced to go white label or focus on businesses, monetization, or analytics) due to the push-pull effect of YouTube's entrenched publisher-viewer community (and their network effect of widgets scattered across the web).

Kijiji positioned dramatically different than Craigslist (100% ad supported and much better UI) and it was seeded with a different audience (all the inactive eBay users were spammed giving it overnight critical mass).

SmugMug does a terribly good job and its not clear what angle you would take in entering their market. They have scale (300K paying users) and killer customer support (which is critical for their target customer who typically lacks technical expertise) and can outprice folks looking to replicate their offering with a significant incremental improvement to their service.

What angles to entering the photo-sharing market do you folks see?
Neat. I've had good luck with Olimex stuff, for example http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i... . You need to buy a parallel, usb, or serial programmer as well but that's a one time cost.
Motorola (US) "Latest Phones" offered: 83

Apple iPhones: 1*

(* 2 if you count the vintage iPhone)
I understand that Harvard's Math department is pretty impressive too

Many people think that Harvard's math department is the best in the world.
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Ruby 1.9.1 Released: First Stable Ruby 1.9 Release
The code is free, but the aggregated data might not :) And the knowledge about how to aggregate, and how to transform this data.

For example, approach Starbucks, and ask them where do they plan to open new stores (er... I know SB specifically is closing shops, but the point remains), and then SELL to them data about the area.

Sure, lots of information are already available on the website. What's to stop Starbucks to just enter the website and do their research? That's where intimate knowledge about the data comes in. SB won't ask what the website can answer. They'll expand the questions, and ask you to convert the data to Excel, and etc..

Know what business need! And put a line on the sand: Your people will do a lot of things that are free to consume and use and mashup and all that jazz. But some of them, you will charge, specially the one-time jobs, or for those rich enough to pay...
Can't we just take java out behind the shed, put a few bullets in it, and tell the kids it ran away? All jokes aside, the author has an interesting idea
There is an excellent collection of short videos/talks by Elon Musk at Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner:

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=385&...
Isn't it amazing how software bloats and slows down so that it only fits the latest generation of hardware?

We were doing web browsing of the simple text+pictures kind back in the early 90s. Word processing and spreadsheeting has been done since the late 70s, early 80s (I think).
Not to pooh-pooh, but when I saw him manually enter the squares, I thought "this is embarrassing, the phone has a camera!" And you have to load the photos, you can't take the photo from inside the app. Maybe a real limit of the iPhone, I don't know...but ultimately it's hardly genius.
Mindfulness in Plain English: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

A good place to start.
What sort of virtual goods could they sell in their game?

And how do they prevent people buying virtual goods from feeling as if they're "cheating"? Perhaps it's an old-style complaint, but virtual goods feel against the "purity of the game" -- imagine playing chess online and being able to drop $5 to get an extra move -- sure that "speeds up" time, but it also (to me at least) breaks the game... I'm not sure yet how to design compelling virtual goods that don't kill gameplay but yet remain compelling.

Fortunately, social status remains a powerful motivator, but it seems that for social status to work players have to feel invested in the community, else they won't care what the community thinks (and thus won't buy anything to increase social status).
Sounds interesting. Can you elaborate and provide context?
We hear a lot about the benefits of antioxidants, but I get the sense that people think they're only found in special foods.

Antioxidants are found in high levels in hundreds of different culinary herbs and spices. The point, throughout human history, of adding herbs and spices to foods, besides flavoring those foods, was to preserve.
just because somebody is smart and motivated does not mean they'll learn on their own

How would you demonstrate being smart and motivated without learning on your own? I mean, when I say "hey look at that smart and motivated person!" I'm saying that they're demonstrating learning new things to reach goals -- that they are motivated. Motivation doesn't exist without some kind of action to show for it.

I work with people who have varying degrees, from no college at all to PhDs.

What I find is that once you've spent that $160K, there is a tendency to feel like it was worth it. This is the same thing that happens during hiking: the goal seems completely pointless until you've spent all day (or multiple days) reaching it. At that point, you wouldn't trade anything in the world for it. I see the same thing from people with military experience, and I imagine the same thing happens for people who work in the Peace Corps.

There's nothing wrong with not knowing what you want and having somebody else pick it for you, aka schooling. But in that case, there should still be foundational goals: ability to survive in the modern economy comes at the top of the list. Any formal schooling that doesn't meet those needs fails, in my opinion (tying this back to the topic of the article)
OK then, who is focussing on compiz - the Linux develors and Linux users, or the outsiders who write about Linux. I am guessing it is the latter, which again invalidates the articles point.
I agree with you in some ways. When it comes to online storage/sync, there is a significant element of trust involved. I wonder both about security of the data and whether or not the company itself will be around in several years.
You can charge a download fee for the source or binaries. I'd sure as hell pay $100+ to grab a copy of EveryBlock and host it for my neighbourhood or city.

Also, the neglect to mention the Affero GPL is sad. Check it out http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

Basically if you release your server-side software under that license, you can get others to release the changes they make so your own hosted copy will become better (hopefully):

"The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version."
The data on EveryBlock is very nice because it gives the average consumer access to very useful information like the crime blotter for a ZIP code.

Starbucks' sophisticated demographic analysis most likely far exceeds any data that EveryBlock would ever offer.

"even searching out parking lots with many oil stains because that indicates heavy traffic."

Maybe, they even literally wrote the book on it. Arthur Rubinfeld is the person given credit for managing the expansion of the Starbucks chain from 100 to 4,000 worldwide.
http://www.amazon.com/Built-Growth-Expanding-Business-Around...

http://www.strategy-business.com/press/16635507/08211
Kusula Bishku's podcast is pretty good, too!
Facebook Announces FBJS2
Too many people believe that NASA is fake for this to be funny :-p.
Live Search autosuggestions come to Firefox
You mean like, Rails helpers and "concat"?
Roubini Sees Global Gloom After Davos Vindication
Thanks, will do (the second part anyway :). I'm using jQuery's autocomplete but it's maddeningly broken in those sorts of subtle ways.
Hi there. Sorry I can't provide you with a good online resource, but my suggestion would be to find a good teacher local to you. I found meditation via yoga and it has had a profound effect on my mental state - how I deal with crisis, day-to-day tasks and dealing with people. I'm more focused and calm. I started my first business over 10 years ago and quickly (as I worked near the kitchen) ballooned to look like the Goodyear blimp. It took me a few years to recognise that I needed a healthy diet and my girlfriend introduced me to yoga. It was a revelation and, although I'm in danger of getting all evangelical on you, the combination of yoga, a healthy diet and meditation transformed me so that I can run my business more effectively. I would never try an online resource, book or audio book first though. Its much better to experience it with a good trainer until you can do it yourself. Good luck
As I said earlier: I've got a handful of friends that use Linux, and when we discuss OS Compiz invariably comes up. In college, Linux users always bring up Compiz.

Perhaps it's because my group is skewed way young, but these are my peers, and they're who I get my judgements from.
You need to be moderately technical to answer alot of the questions we were getting. In our case, the people who were good on the phone wanted to do more. They couldn't because of the call/email volume and they ended up leaving.

Again, this isn't the whole story. I'm being a little dramatic here so that the story isn't all that boring, but it's essentially what happened. It's probably a good idea for a lot of people. For me, however, it really took all the fun and all my passion out of my company.
that guy is a crackpot. it's a great image, who cares if its been enhanced. kids probably love it, and they need kids to love NASA.
I try to get this point across to my dad (a physics professor) all the time. He is still hung up on its non-citability for scholarly purposes. But when you just need to look up something about the discrete wavelet transform and don't need to put a footnote anywhere, Wikipedia is just amazing.
I'm shocked this floated to the top. At Poll Everywhere, we have our phone number on our web page and it will remain there until it simply doesn't scale anymore. Like this guy said, it tripled his sales; too bad he didn't just take the phone number off the web page when it became unmanageable.

For Poll Everywhere putting the phone number on our website has been a great experience. When people call us up with questions we can learn more about their needs or where they are confused. When enough confused people call, you know that something isn't right on your website and you go fix it to reduce those calls.

From our point-of-view, putting our phone number has been a great way to close the feedback loop between us and our customers. I strongly recommend signing up for a RingCentral or GrandCentral number and at least try putting it in your website.
Yeah, JS vs Py drives me crazy too. JavaScript is high on my todo list. Just need to find the "canonical" reference for it.

I can't reproduce the login problems? Non-gmail.com acct? Browser/OS matter?
> I'm not sure if it's even physically possible to drink that much coffee in a day.

Comedian/Filmmaker Mark Malkoff attempts to visit 171 Starbucks stores in Manhattan in one day...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwYxuV2dVzw

It's quite motivating and scary at the same time.