skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's all kinds of FUD surrounding these devices, and it seems like many with health concerns are engaging in motivated cognition. For example: if the dose is concentrated in the skin, couldn't that be a good thing? Our skin is constantly bombarded with ionizing radiation. UV rays, alpha and beta particles, etc. When it comes to these sorts of insults, the skin is one of the most resilient organs.

But instead of arguments, we can look at the evidence. The FDA is notoriously risk-averse, but it has done studies on the safety of backscatter devices and concluded they're safe: http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationEmitt...

According to the FDA, the dose to the skin is 89,000 times lower than the annual limit. If backscatter scanners caused harm, it would tell us something new about physics, biology, or both.

Are backscatter scanners an invasion of privacy? Yes. Are they a waste of money? Almost certainly. Do I wish airports got rid of them? Yes. But unless our understanding of physics and/or biology is very wrong, they're not dangerous.
Founders, Friends, and Food: 3 Days at Austin Startup Week
It's not that it's different; it's a form of civil disobedience (which isn't even that disobedient) by requiring more time/energy/work on the part of the TSA agents. If enough people opt out, the line slows down, and the machine gets turned off.
ideally you would think they would pay more than the blackmarket rates for the bugs. it's a capitalist economy in the bug markets.
Usually when I see it, it is people complaining that a candidate endorsed different viewpoints than they did during past elections (in other words, they think something different than they did years ago). Kerry and Romney both come to mind (though to be clear, both (or at least Romney) have been accused of the type you are talking about as well). Specifically I have heard some people claim that Romney has flip-flopped because they perceive a difference between his positions as a presidential candidate and as a governor.
MailChimp drag and drop content curation
Thanks, I stand corrected.

I just remember, that there were two versions of Flash - ActiveX for IE and NPAPI for all the others.
There's a world of difference between "gifted" classes, and classes that cover more advanced material. You'll notice that I said I would prefer AP courses over gifted education -- there's real value to allowing all qualified students to take advanced coursework.

The situation gets messy when you try to segregate "gifted" kids into special education from a young age. Of the kids who ended up in AP courses with me high school, way less than half were pre-identified as "gifted" at the elementary and middle-school level. We're just not good at identifying intellectual potential in first graders.
I started learning Django as my first web framework. If I had to do it over I would have spent a month with Flask, and then moved to Django. Django is a big app, and I found it difficult to build a mental model of its workings. Maybe starting with a smaller framework would have made it easier.
I've given the same advice as PG in regards to massive, macroeconomic stats before during Startup Weekend events.

"The food industry is 10 trillion dollars, because everyone needs to eat! If we could carve out even .1% of the industry, that would be 10 billion dollars!"

Judges, investors, audience, whoever is listening to you pitch that will just roll their eyes.
Good to know that Scientific American hasn't changed since the early mid 1990s when I stopped reading it. There was a time that Scientific American had articles on research and experiments (the first 150 years or so of its existence), rather than agenda-based editorial pieces.

EDIT: "has" -> "hasn't" in first line.
מה זה מזון על - סופרפוד? - מזונות על
Crowdfunding startups has always sounded to me like the best way to hide risk from retail investors seeking a quick buck since the invention of the mortgage backed security credit default swap.
Hey, guess what, Jeff Bezos stopped by our office today. I just wanted everyone to know that, so I posted about something platitudinous he said.
How to Minimize Web Application Security Risk
I think if you end up in development as a career, Django is going to be used incredibly more often than Flask.

In the end, you will learn the internals either way. If you start with Flask, you'll still have to learn about Django internals.

Start with Django (and you'll probably never switch to Flask).
The German company 'Metro' is not exactly small.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_AG

It has 66 billion Euro revenue and 250000 employees. It's the fifth largest retailer in the world.

Kind of unlikely that they give up their trademark name or sell it to Microsoft. It's not worth fighting for. Especially since Metro sells Microsoft products.
Call me cynical, but if it didn't affect middle class white people I don't think there would be much outrage. As it is, the outrage is totally disproportionate to things like stop and frisk. Searches in high risk areas like airports seems less offensive to me than searches of people who are just walking around their own neighborhood, but you don't see middle class people complaining about the latter.

Indeed, I wonder how much of the outrage is because the TSA is so ineffective. People seem to be pretty on board with how techniques like stop and frisk have helped bring crime rates in the big cities down dramatically over the last few decades.
And to answer your last question--I'd think assuming fast learner, and you're already competent with python, I'd think a few days and you can have up a basic app (blog, wiki, something like that), and a few weeks and you'll be pretty comfortable with any normal CRUD app.
He's observed that the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved.

I think he's spot on, and this has been the basis for my manifesto (http://jamesthornton.com/manifesto) -- I like to think of it as continually refining your perspective.
People's opinions usually have probabilistic nature, i.e. "From what I know I think X is the most probable conclusion". The problem is that they know too little, because people don't have time to study everything in detail.
Ideas are indeed worthless today. But to believe that completely is stupidity.

Internet, as of today, is a gold rush. Anyone worth his programming skill can work on an idea and get funded. But then, with the passing of time, all the low hanging fruits will be gone. Once we reach that point, good ideas will become scarce. Great ideas may not even emerge. VC funding will be gone too. Perhaps, in a decade or so.

Internet based companies are extremely easy to replace today. A chilling fact but true. Compare this with firms like Citibank, British Petroleum, etc. They have been here for decades and will be here. The same cannot be said for companies like Facebook and to a large extent Apple.
Show HN: Freqntr - Upcoming digital loyalty program.
Anyone planning to take MongoDB classes?
I don't think that is true of software at all. I wouldn't trust Fyodor (well, I suppose these days I would. Not in the past though), but I do and always have trusted Nmap.
Yeah, this jarred me as well. Vaguely racist.
Maybe someday lawmakers will regard the Internet the same way its native residents do: as a separate place. The right way to look at this problem from a native netizen's perspective: Coursera offers classes "online", and Minnesota residents travel to "online" (not Minnesota) while taking the class.
well I wouldn't call a few racks in some one elses co-lo a data center.
Economy Wide Return On Invested Capital (1965-2009)
Couple questions:

1) What differentiates steerway from http://android.stackexchange.com/?

2) Why is /collections included in the nav if it's NYI?
Your out of pocket costs may have gone up, but that's an arbitrary distinction. The total cost of cobra is precisely 101% of the cost of health insurance provided to your employer.

Now, it's possible your employer was giving you $Z worth of benefits but making you deduct $Y from your wages for it, and $Z > $Y. All this means is that your comp (and hence the opportunity cost of starting a business) was higher than you realized.
ShoutEm launches new iPad builder 
ShoutEm’s app builder launches iPad support, lets you quickly make apps you’ll actually love using
A decade of people's ire seems to have done very little; unfortunately, there are a large subset of Americans willing to put up with it "to prevent terrorists" at all costs, and even more willing to be a sheep and just go along with it because it's more convenient.

I'm one of the latter, frankly. I feel violated every time I go through airport security, and a little part of me cries inside every time I think about it... but if it means that I get to visit my family in an affordable manner, rather than losing two extra days of travel + vacation, I'll do it. I feel so much shame for admitting that.
Let me get this straight -- my grandma has to get a Dropbox (what's that?), download a templated page, fill it her own images, and then figure out how to publish it?

Also, there are a lot easier ways out there to publish your own content online (Weebly, Tumblr, etc) but that doesn't seem to have stopped Facebook.
No. Wow, that was easy!
I'm curious what you think the exact purpose of clicking on an up or down arrow is supposed to express?

There is nothing in the guidelines or faq to actually say what the purpose is, and I could see an argument for "quality" being the criteria, but there's nothing wrong with using the arrow to express agreement or disagreement, from what I can see.
And he instantly regrets it:

"CNN was a huge mistake, which I will not repeat."
http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/11pka1/violentacrez_on...
I opt out 100% of the time.
I work with someone who spends way too much time (IMO) making sure that he's not wrong. Typically this involves not taking a stand until the results are in and then claiming the position all along. Or simply lying about his position. After witnessing this repeatedly I basically lost all respect for this person and really dread any interaction.

Personally I don't care if someone (including myself) is right or wrong. I often have to make technology recommendations that may turn out to be wrong years down the line and end up costing the organization time and money. So far I've been pretty lucky. I find it helpful to always include caveats in my proposals and explain reasoning behind my recommendations. Of course putting in the time to understand the issue, the market and the history is key.

I don't have a problem taking a stand and be proven wrong or adjusting my position when new information becomes available. However, I wonder if this attitude is hurting my standing with the organization compared with this other guy who never seems to be wrong.
Coursera has a huge amount of data and could create their own algorithms that check for similar code in the database. It wouldn't be perfect but it could do simple string comparison against other work.
They only get lobbied because there is a profit motive. Also lobbing takes money and it only pays if you're making a profit.
The demographic of Reddit that enjoyed what he did (or at least thought is was funny or exercising "free speech") has been consistenly getting smaller and less influential as Reddit has gained more mainstream popularity.

Reddit's employees never really loved the guy (AFAICT) but they tolerated him because he moderated and kept illegal content out of his subreddits and they sure as hell didn't want to touch any of that stuff.

Violentacrez turned on Reddit as soon as he was outed, looking for any scapegoat to take some of the pressure off of himself. All things considered, I'm not suprised that Reddit is not backing him up.
"If you don't complain about everything, you can't complain about anything."
Google TechTalk on System Troubleshooting
You could add your logo so that it would show in the browser tab. Nice design overall.
My wife and I opt out every time. Whenever possible, we just aim toward the line that's using the old metal detectors* (since the new machines are either slow or prone to breaking, this is an option most of the time). But when the only option is the new machines (backscatter or mw), we opt out.

FWIW, we have a friend who sells mw equipment, and he refuses to go through them for safety reasons. So even if I weren't opting out for moral reasons, I wouldn't go through them.

* I'm sure glad no terrorists are smart enough to do this.
Add address validation using google maps api. I will love you.
Overlooked that, thanks!
It doesn't pose a non-trivial health risk, but IIRC there's no decade of air travel where the number of deaths per flight from terrorists was higher than the number these x-rays are expected to cause.
Why I insulted a customer and refunded her 200% of her money.
And all that shuffling costs tax dollars.
Stack Overflow is Q&A. Most people go there to find a solution to a specific problem.

What I'm trying to achieve is to discover tips/tricks for Android development. I want to present it in a way that it's easy to consume. I spend at least an hour a day on Stack Overflow looking for things that might be useful for me but the Q&A format makes it harder to discover.

Collections is still in development. It's a way for people to curate tips.
Seems so:
> Document['.post .title'].html = @post[:title]
Document['.post .body'].html = @post[:body]
Document['.post .comments'].html = comments_html

From https://github.com/opal/opal-rails#readme
First, you're kinda putting words in my mouth. I'm not defending the law, I'm just pointing out that it's not as unjustified as people are making it out to be. The government provides and regulates education for children, it's not entirely unreasonable that they'd have their hand in higher education, too.

Also, it's nice to think that everybody would play nice, but without laws like this there are assholes who would teach people crap. Laws like this don't exist because somebody decided to make an arbitrary law out of nowhere. Apparently it was a big enough problem that the majority of people in Minnesota thought there should be a law...
It's really pretty cool that bootstrap has spawned such a tertiary market for addons. I knew it was the real deal when I actually paid for a theme rather than writing the css myself!
Politics often has a lot to do with it. I don't mean Politics politics, but rather, office politics and social politics. Social signaling plays a huge role in how we act, and in what types of traits we attribute to the actions of others.

In a typical Big Corporate workplace, to be seen as quickly decisive is to be seen as a strong leader. To change one's mind is to project weakness and indecisiveness. Perhaps in complete contradiction to Bezos's opinion, the prevailing opinion among most corporate managers -- even C-level execs -- is that those who can quickly arrive at a conclusion are the smartest, and are most likely to be correct. In reality, we all know where this usually leads. But there's still a prevailing opinion that jumping to conclusions, and doing anything to support them, is the ideal way to act.

Compounding this problem is a well-known and well-documented cognitive bias, present in some extent in all human beings. It's known as the "confirmation bias." Essentially, the way our brain works is to draw up a quick hypothesis about a situation, and then to look for any information that supports the hypothesis. We actually have to train our minds to look for contradictory or challenging evidence, because doing so is not hard-wired into us.

The confirmation bias happens at the subconscious level, and there's actually good evidence that it served as an adaptive, successful trait in human evolution. Back when we lived in the wild, we didn't have a lot of time to analyze threats, weather patterns, or other major situations. So being able to mentally "shorthand" a situation was a benefit. It still is in many instances, but it becomes a hurdle when we need to make longer-term, more complex decisions. In those cases, we need to bring conscious, analytical thought to the table.
Jason, I found a little bio of you that said, "Jason Fried is the fastest white man you'll ever meet. He has curly hair and a sunny disposition. He loves to travel, play hoops, and watch sunsets from his roof deck. He wishes he could break dance." Is that all true?

JF: That was an old bio that someone wrote for me. I guess it's probably all true, except for the break dancing part. I really don't have any desire to do that.

http://www.tompeters.com/printer_friendly.php?print=1&no...
My bet is that small, cheap and really good 7" tablets will all but kill MS in the consumer sphere next year. Fair or not (the Nexus 7 looks great), Apple's going to popularize the form factor, and it's going to change people's expectations. A lot more people can afford a $200 - 300 tablet as a Christmas present than a $500 one. Women will find them more purse-friendly and way more parents can afford them for their kids, which is going to tilt developers even further from Windows.

MS won't be able to change their software or their business model fast enough to compete with ubiquitous $200 computers.
Me too. I make it an ordeal for the TSA agents by applying simple logic to their absurd rules:

"So wait, 3oz of fluid in a 3oz container is okay.. but 3oz in a 5oz container is not? Is it more dangerous for some reason?"

#fuTSA
Ask HN: OAuth, what to use? Fb, Twitter, g+? How does that impact conversion?
Earlier this morning I saw the Social API that supports all three variations (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4669866) but it's not flexible enough for my project (I want to create a fb application and opt users in during registration).

Instead of invading that thread, and potentially derailing any of their efforts (I think it's cool, but wont work for me), I started my own thread.

My question has 2 parts.<p>Has anyone spent a significant time researching/analyzing each of the networks (fb, tw) to weigh the pros and cons of each network. I tried to quickly search HN but was unable to find anything relevant =(

Most startups support one network to start, and then offer multiple oauth networks during registration.<p>I'm trying to locate blog posts, videos, or threads where people discuss pros/cons of registration with each network, the implications of social sharing for each network, and corresponding conversion rates. I suppose there's registration, then social registration (tell/invite your friends), then the actual social sharing of what activities people complete within your application/service. I understand these questions are highly dependent on the type of service(s) and your overall goals/strategy.

Thanks!!
What they should do is cut back on the bezel. Iv'e started to hate the bezel on most of my screens I have. It just feels and looks so unnecessary and old. Cut back on the bezel and make it a 13 inch screen in the same package and you have a clear winner!
Can someone explain to me why you need to make 200k/year or have 1 Million in assets to participate in this when the minimum funding level is only 1k? I want to participate in this, but can't.
Good for them, but I seriously doubt Tyler Cowen would give up his life of leisure for prison.
It's not appropriate for people who want to do cross-country trips, just like a pickup truck isn't appropriate for a single college student with nothing to haul.
Anyone who has lived, worked, or traveled to London in the past 15 years, would probably observe quite a bit of successful immigration impact on the culture and overall health of the Capital. So, I don't know if that implies the headline is insightful or disregarding the reality on the ground (vs the Policy debate). The openess of any society (or firm, or clique, etc) is almost never on Economic grounds per-se. There is, for example, in every new-business hire (a purely economics decision) a great weight placed on 'fit' which is code for 'cultural fit' and more abstracty, 'fit in the hierarchy of power and ambition' that is this firm. Public policy on immigration (while it is a mess in the UK and the US) seems it would be better off to at least table this important consideration as legitmate, rather than otherwise not address it directly. What follows from that, is perhaps another discussion.
IPO first time round, what will it be this time for the Springbot founders?
Sad that both before and after leave out Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin.
"Complaints"? Wha? Did we read the same article? Except for a few asides, he wasn't complaining. He was explaining.
I listened to an interesting podcast (Under the Influence?) a while back about first movers that lost out to their copycats. One famous example? Hydrox cookies. They were the original.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrox
It looks like there already is a standard, and the Model S makes use of it (as well as the Leaf, Volt, et al).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
Require all telcos to provide this service:
After a robocaller hangs up, the complainee dials *555 (or something similar). The switch notes all the details of the previous inbound call to the complainee and the complainee's phone number. This information is sent to an FTC database. When an originating number gets a threshold of complaints, a sample of recent complainees is called by a human to get a quick interview as to what happened.

That's the end of the technical requirements. After that, policies and prosecution.
thanks. is the radius the full range or half the range? i mean - if you want to drive to tahoe, can you get back again? i guess the idea is that you have a charger at your cabin by the lake (or maybe they are villas, i am a little out of my social class here) so you can charge up before you come home?
Fair enough. The notoriety or devotion to the brand and other "soft" benefits also have weight on the utility of a product. The traits like material used and engineering are encompassed within the utility. If an app runs better, it's worth more. If it looks better, it's worth more. So yes, people will value TB for Mac differently. But that doesn't defend the initial sentiment. Those guys did not argue something akin to "I like the Tapbots Guys and the aesthetic of the product has value, so I will pay more." In fact, they argued close to the opposite. Regardless of the value people get (which is going to vary by person), they assert that the product is worth that much to everyone because of the effort that went in to it. They were actually indignant that people did not see $20 worth of value in the app. I don't believe that perception of value is absolute.

In regards to the defense of the price, I don't think the fact that they are resource-constrained changes the endgame: they want to make money. Conceivably, TapBots wants to accrue a large amount of money over the lifetime of TweetBot. This artificial constraint changes their ability to earn money because the number of sales is limited and life of the product is shortened. So, they charge more to compensate for Twitter's absurd policies. That does not change their motives, it just changes their strategy. They're not being coerced by Twitter to sell it for $20. They could sell it for $10 or $15, and could likely make a profit, but it would be substantially less than if they were to sell it for more. It's all in pursuit of money. Like I said, this isn't bad. I admire people who are capable of creating such rabid fans and defenders, and who can get away selling an app at far above the market average.