skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm sure that Mercedes puts a lot into making their cars, but consumer reports seem to indicate that the end product is actually worse than low end Asian vehicles. Most of the people I know that have Toyota, Hyundai, and KIA automobiles drive them for a couple hundred thousand miles. The people I know who drive Mercedes, bmws and audis have constant.
problems. I'm not a mechanical expert but my guess is that the extreme standards of precision that high end cars are manufactured to may actually make them less reliable. Maybe it's similar to the way that an AK-47 is the most reliable assault rifle because it is cheaply made, while our m16 jams if you don't clean it constantly because the machining is extremely precise.
I really think that memorization of the foundations and core of a programming language you expect to need, even infrequently, is the key to levelling up as a hacker.

Mind maps and/or spaced repetition techniques should both help tremendously as learning tools for that effort. Restricting what you "have to know" when faced with the need to know multiple programming languages feels like an important part of being successful.

I speculate there is a strong levelling up effect associated with immersive learning experiences, particularly with languages and idiomatic usage.
So how is this different from Flattr (http://flattr.com/), apart from recurring instead of one-time payments?
To my American ears couldn't and less are a double negative. Like here is my level of concern and I can't go below that. OTOH, "could care less", means my level of disregard can approach -∞
Now I see that all icons are lies!

A calculator with four buttons isn't useful.

Why is my letter flying off into the sky.

This minute hand is 20 minutes to the hour but the hour hand is clearly at 10.

Why hasn't this little green Android's arms fallen off?
The subtitle of this article irks me:

> the change to ice occurs at 275 H20s.

That's a zero, not the letter O, in "H20s".
Thanks. It's a slightly customized pre-made theme off of bootswatch[1]

[1]: http://bootswatch.com/spacelab/
Chrome Spell Checker
When I don't know how to spell a word and chrome underlines it, I right click and usually never get any options (because I am a terrible speller). The funny thing is, when I copy and paste the word into a Google search bar, they always know what word I am looking for. Like magic i then copy and paste the word into my document and continue. Why dont they open up the spelling API for chrome so it can get suggestions from Google rather than some dictionary that doesn't work?
Prepared for IE10 Compatibility?
A quality $99 name-brand tablet would impact the eInk device market the most. Why would someone buy a $139 Nook or $179 Kindle when they could get a tablet for less? (Yes, I know how eInk is "better for the eyes" -- but we are talking the general population here, who have not embraced eInk in droves and who probably don't want to read books, either.)
steve jobs would have never allowed this! is this the beginning of apples demise?! etc.... a funny find though, made me chuckle!
http://geekmonkey.org/articles/28-introducing-turbolinks-for...
Google Trends now merged with Google Insights
Fair point. I'll have a demo and some samples up soon.
I should get some with my URL set to tel:27673855# . I'm sure there's a case to be made for NFC, but I'm not totally sold on the value of invisible things that cause phones and other electronics to do things.
Looks like that link has been taken down - the repo replaced by a newly initialized one.
Agreed, I'm sure this course will be as great as his lectures were/are. Stoked to see his name randomly pop up on HN.
Intel backtracks decision, will support Linux on Clover Trail chip
I’d be much more willing to spend $99 on a Google tablet then $99 on another cheap Chinese tablet. I bought a Novo 7 several months ago to test out the accessibility of Android verses iOS as a blind user. Since it was Android somewhat modified by the manufacturer I needed sited help to install a TTS engine as well as install the talkback screen reader. I then had to remove a bunch of crapware, and deal with the fact that the tablet was somewhat underpowered providing me with a substandard experience. I was not very impressed with the tablet’s accessibility, but don’t know how much of that is Google’s fault verses the manufacturer. In comparison with iOS I can take a device out of the box, turn it on, hit the home button three times, and it starts talking. After this experience I won’t be buying no name $99 Chinese tablets, and since I have an iPhone that works fine I can’t justify $199 for another device that would be nothing more than an excuse to test the accessibility of an OS I most likely won’t switch to any time soon. If you reduce the price from $199 to $99 and it’s a stock Android experience with the accessibility software preloaded I can justify $99 to test out the accessibility of an OS I most likely won’t switch to any time soon.
The anecdotal evidence in my personal case which supports the ideas in this blog post is overwhelming. Having started an exercise and diet regimen a few months ago, I have noticed a vast improvement not just in physical health but in mental health.

I feel brighter (not in the intelligence sense but in the photonic sense). That is, I feel like I'm pushing positive energy out into the world instead of negative energy. It has been a fairly subtle shift over the last 3 months, but in my mind it is undeniable.
DARPA is currently working on this now.

http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/Phoenix.aspx

Specifically, they are looking into ways to remotely salvage parts from existing satellite and presumably remove the satellites from orbit.
Paul Graham: ‘Money Is Not Wealth’. Really?
J.K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy' Launches Worldwide
I have never heard that particular phrase before, so the answer is probably not.

It's more like Hacker, Business Guy ("Hustler" sounds a little pejorative), and Sales Guy. But I'd point out that I consider us a B2B media company that makes clever use of technology, more than a "technology startup." Nailing enterprise sales is crucial to our success, which is probably not the case for consumer internet startups (or for startups that are, uh, not yet trying to make money).
It's worth taking some time to learn how to use FreeMind with just the keyboard, and to learn how to do a mind map (see [1] for an overview). It can be used exclusively from the keyboard, so you can get pretty quick with it.

I've not used FreeMind for (personal) documentation, but I've used it as a specification tool, where I think mind-maps excel as they get you to focus on all the component parts of the project - and drill down to the finest level you can.

This use seems similar to using tiddlywiki[2].

[1] http://www.thinkbuzan.com/uk/articles/view/how-to-create-a-m...
[2] http://tiddlywiki.com/
A general had a problem: mud. Marines have slogged their way through it for generations. Is it possible to get rid of mud? Without having to carry anything heavy? Marines already have enough to carry.

Dr. Felix Hoenikker, an original thinker, found the "outside-the-box" answer; a single crystal of Ice-Nine would crystallize every bit of water it touched.

"...suppose, young man, that one Marine had with him a tiny capsule containing a seed of ice-nine, a new way for the atoms of water to stack and lock, to freeze. If that Marine threw that seed into the nearest puddle...?"

"The puddle would freeze?" I guessed.

"And all the muck around the puddle?"

"It would freeze?"

"And all the puddles in the frozen muck?"

"They would freeze?"

"And the pools and the streams in the frozen muck?"

"They would freeze?"

"You bet they would !" He cried. "And the United States
Marines would rise from the swamp and march on!"
Can you do Laird Hamilton's "The Grant?"
That's irrelevant. I used to work quite happily on a 25MHz ARM machine years ago (Acorn A5000).

The issue is that the environment and model are entirely unsuitable for software development.
Can objects be evil? A review of “Addiction by Design”
Google App Engine Boilerplate (uses Webapp2, HTML5Boilerplate & Bootstrap)
Top 5 free Windows Phone apps - September 2012
No kidding. There really aren't "three major opcode caches" anymore, APC won out years ago and is now tightly integrated with PHP compiles and as a module available in any package manager.
Understanding the Value Cycle: Create, Communicate, Deliver, Capture
Thanks for letting us know. My browser's location bar is a blur.
From my iOS6 4S p:

https://www.google.com?q=referer and then click to www.whatismyreferer.com- no referer as expected.

http://www.google.com?q=referer and then click to www.whatismyreferer.com - a valid referer as expected.

Nothing to see here folks.
People purchase products for all kinds of reasons. Don't be "that guy" that says only smart people "buy X".
suggesting that NSA knew about differential cryptoanalysis way ahead of time and were suggesting ways to protect the public against its eventual discovery

The NSA may also have know who else knew about differential cryptoanalysis, and didn't want it to be weak in ways that others could break it, but left it weak in ways that they could.
Yeah, but imagine the lay user buying a domain and letting their friends know about it. Then everyone else is like, "Wow, you got your own dot com!"... "Me three".

And so Godaddy makes money.
What do you mean by "stature"?

I'm convinced that British people never say "I could care less" when they mean that they don't care, but that some American people do. British people say instead "I couldn't care less", which is a more accurate statement.

How does that differ from "I could care less" being a characteristically American turn of phrase?
When did it become "terrible"? It has some problems that are a result of being brand new and behind Google's years of experience, but I don't think any of this warrants being "terrible."

We saw this criticism of the icon when the beta came out as a "lol, that's mildly entertaining" months ago. It's just an icon. It's not supposed to be used as literal directional advice. Do these people really expect them to put the very slight angle of the on-ramp in an icon?

This is starting to get really painfully ridiculous.
From the article: "She sees this as clearly tied to the publication in the US of the first Harry Potter book. Dozens of words and phrases were changed for the American market, but ginger slipped through, as did snog (meaning 'to kiss amorously') - though that has not proved so popular." I think this is one of the correctly described mechanisms for the spread of British terms into American English. The Harry Potter novels are wildly popular here in the United States, and as I recall the later novels (which were published simultaneously worldwide to prevent pirate editions) were less edited to match United States usage than the earlier United States editions of the novels.

"The use of university, rather than college or school, for example, may well be used by Americans to make sure they are understood outside the country." I definitely consciously use the term "university" (which was the proper name for my undergraduate institution of higher education) when I want to be understood by Canadians, who don't read "college" with the same implication as Americans do

Here in Minnesota, anyone can regularly hear BBC broadcasts by rebroadcasting on Minnesota Public Radio, and there are other parts of the United States where BBC is available over the air, besides much of British broadcasting being available over the Internet.

For college-educated adults, a great way to pick up interesting bits of British usage in English is reading The Economist, one of my favorite sources for new submissions here to HN. For many young people across the United States, one big source of exposure to (regional) British speech is participation in youth soccer programs, which are often coached by British expatriates.

For all that, we would have to describe the expected future path of English to be further koineization, with more simplification of structure and worldwide spread of useful words and phrases, as an astounding variety of mash-ups of second-language speakers use English as an interlanguage all over the world. In other words, sometimes the American way of speaking will join the pattern of world English, and sometimes the British, and no doubt sometimes Caribbean or African or south Asian or southeast Asian varieties of English will join in as well.
I guess the memorization is why some people recommend code katas - the purpose being to learn the techniques and not the solution.

[1] http://www.butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.TheBowlingGameK...
One reason this looks good to me is that I trust Mozilla more than most organizations.
Mac OS X: launchd is cool
Looks pretty good. You should consider selling this as a stand alone script on something like http://codecanyon.net
True, but water can still clump in a vacuum
Google doodle Googles Google for 14th Birthday
Top entry is the story about the Brazilian Google exec questioned by police after failure to take down a YouTube video criticizing a Brazilian mayoral candidate.
The difference is in whether or not the individual is representing a company.
It's probably both. What there looking for is an optical change which only indirectly relates to if something is 'ice' or not. And I suspect depending on which part's of the lattice are missing and where the light source is would change the optical property's.
If you find this interesting, it will be worth your time to watch the series Vice did on their visit to North Korea. http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-n...
Kotlin Part IV: Adding functionality
Note: the linked article was not originally written by SFGate or the San Francisco Chronicle, but rather republished from Business Insider (the small logo to indicate this seems a bit subtle to me).

I would argue that this is a worthwhile distinction, in that Business Insider is generally regarded as being closer to the inflammatory and attention-grabbing nature of a tabloid than a traditional news publication—though I recognize that they are simply one of many popular outlets using similar tactics.
Corporate governance is kind of like, well, every other kind of government: it has serious flaws no matter how you set it up.

If you decide three is one too many, the new pitfall you have to watch out for is tiebreaking. Suppose there's a fundamental disagreement, like whether to sell out or whether to fire one of the two founders and find someone new. You think you'll always be able to talk things through and come to a consensus, but let's say you're wrong. A naive 2-person setup simply has no way to handle a situation like that -- it's paralyzing. So you need a way to break ties. And now instead of a fair three-way split, you have one founder with more power (and investment) than the other, or you have some outside party (played by Justin Timberlake, presumably) with control over your future if they like the other guy more than you.

So maybe two founders is one too many. Going with one founder shouldn't cause any problems ... right?
You are right about the "he can have partners who will make your life a living hell" part. My judgement might be incorrect, and I can't predict what will happen next as well (e.g. the project got taken over by someone).
I remember that incident as well; it was the next game after the random rook move and Kasparov was already unsettled about the computer's capabilities. By my memory, it went like this:

In a complicated midgame, Kasparov moved a pawn to a square under attack. He intended to sacrifice it for positional gain, opening up his attack lines and compromising the opponent's defensive structure. Kasparov expected that a computational chess engine would seize the calculable material gain and not see the deeper positional subtleties. (Deep Blue 'only' searched ahead about 10 to 15 moves, not nearly as deep as today's computers.) Deep Blue did in fact decline the pawn sacrifice, causing Kasparov to accuse IBM of intervention, that only a human grandmaster would see the response.

This Wikipedia article mentions Kasparov setting a trap that the computer did not fall for, but it doesn't mention the details. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Over:_Kasparov_and_the_Mac...

It happened in game 2 of the 1997 match, the moves of which are recorded here. I haven't got the time at the moment to find the position in the game but perhaps someone can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasparov
> The same thing might be influencing a trend that Yagoda has spotted for Americans to use the day, month, year format for dates - 26/9/12 rather than 9/26/12.

Is this actually happening? I see YY(YY)/MM/DD sometimes (that's what I use, albeit with hyphens), but I've never seen an American use DD/MM/YY in the US.
Top result is the story about the Brazilian Google exec questioned by police after failure to take down a YouTube video criticizing a Brazilian mayoral candidate.
> If you start exercising, your brain recognizes this as a moment of stress. As your heart pressure increases, the brain thinks you are either fighting the enemy or fleeing from it.

That's exaggerated. It's simply a reaction to increased level of effort. It's not always a full-fledged fight-or-flight response, unless it's a quite strenuous type of exercise.

> The first 20 minutes of moving around, if someone has been really sedentary, provide most of the health benefits. You get prolonged life, reduced disease risk — all of those things come in in the first 20 minutes of being active.

Makes sense. Exercise a little every day, even if it's some very mild form like walking. Laying down on the couch all day long is bad.
Facebook cracks down on fake accounts and false likes
would you consider having a discounted version for educational accounts? As a grad student I would find this immensely useful, but I couldn't necessarily afford it/justify the extra expense.

e.g. Prezi give 2nd tier accounts to academic email addresses for 1st tier price (free).

obviously, it seems fair to wait until the system has a good revenue stream before adding this kind of discount...
New parents - please PLEASE don't only listen to stories of how amazing parenthood is, or you may get the shock of your life (as I did)

that depends on the way your try to see/address the issues - and I believe also the level of stress parents put in. Of course it hard and has many downsides, but I think as it's shown in the article, depends on the way we see things and think about it can produce better results in our personal lifes as parents.

I'm a new father (my son has ~3m) and I started to educate myself and my wife to the times coming, because there are things we can control (not much, but there are some) in ourselfs because it will impact the children the way we act, and we know there will be different stages that we'll need to discover day after day, and many things we cannot predict, but we can prepare: mentally and logistically.

I believe that the main challenge of educate and learn with our children is rich in the ways the article also describe, but very demanding specially because there are lessons that we know as right ones, but that need to be adapted to the "new reality" due to the generation gap.
Just because games will be distributed via Steam, does not mean that developers will stop depending on CodeWeavers and other WINE bundling techniques to actually create their ports.

I'll bet CodeWeavers couldn't be happier right now.
I think the author doesn't know how ray tracing is implemented.

> raytracing is the process of rendering a 3D scene by tracing the path of a beam of light after it is emitted from a light source, calculating its properties as it bounces off various objects in the world until it finally hits the virtual camera

With my limited knowledge of graphics, I was under the impression ray tracing works exactly the opposite way: one sends 1 ray per pixel (based on the size of the viewport) into the scene, bouncing it off objects (taking into account their material properties) to finally compute the color value for that pixel. It's the exact opposite of the real world (where the sun shines light on the objects and the rays end up hitting our retinas).

Reversing the process has the advantage of being finite: only 1024x768 (or 1920x1200,etc) rays will be sent from the viewport into the scene. In the author's scenario, there would be an infinite number of rays to be traced (light sources generally emit light in all direction and they try to emulate a real light source, which emits an infinite number of rays).

Am I completely wrong here? Is my whole world a lie?
I wish the customers at this part of the world (Malaysia) are sophisticated enough to accept the concept of "time & material". Most of them will refuse to pay if they are not satisfied with the work (in regardless of the completeness); and a partially completed work is of no value to a typical customer (especially non-IT customers).
I'm impressed that you made your own plasma cutting table. That project must be worth a blog post on it's own!

What gauge and quality of metal is that?
Start here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4239247

The update is that I hung out with Flattr's bizdev, @gaiapunk, at #xoxofest, and we had a great time. I love the spirit and vision behind Flattr. IMO their hands are tied because they're a traditional pound-of-flesh business. Gittip is funded on Gittip.
I can not get Persona to work. I go to Mozilla developer network: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ , see the login button and click on it and it redirects me back to the same page. I am using Firefox 15
Google Code-in Contest for High School Students Starts this November
The pattern-recognition engine in the human brain is overcranked.
One of the primary features of NFC is the requirement that you be near (within inches of) the NFC tag in order for it to work. One useful application I've seen for this is a custom NFC tag someone placed in a homemade docking station to activate their phone's dock mode. Another was used in a homemade Gameklip[0]-type device to activate bluetooth and connect with the controller.

[0] http://thegameklip.com/
Great post! As a father of a 2.7 yo and a 1.3 yo, I agree with your points and would add the following (among others):

- Having kids makes you a better communicator generally. It's easy to get frustrated with kids and adults when they don't do what you say. Having kids makes you realize that you need to look at yourself first. Repetition matters. Consistency matters. Being the best example of what you want them to be matters. Having high expectations and then doing your part in helping them get there matters. And so on. The maturity that comes with these realizations make you so much more effective in other ways as a communicator.

- Having kids makes you INCREDIBLY efficient. After I had kids, I decided to be home by 6.30p every day with my mind cleared and ready for my family. Per Parkinson's law ("work expands to fill the time you give it"), I figured any level of success can be had while meeting that constraint, provided you (and your environment--a big factor) prioritize accordingly. So I've become incredibly efficient. Once I made efficiency a priority, I realize that improving my thinking was a necessary step. Among other things, I started meditating as a way to improve mental clarity and the ability to switch efficiently between tasks. It's had a huge impact on my life in ways beyond what I intended. I now do more things than I did before I had kids and wonder what I did with all the time I had before I had kids!