skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Carbon is not just a little bit better than other elements at forming polymers and complex molecules it is many orders of magnitude better, and it's hugely abundant. Many complex carbon-based molecules are even formed in entirely non-biological processes in significant quantities. Ethanol, ribose, glycine, adenine, and others, for example. The overall nature of life in the Universe may prove to be quite a surprise to us humans but for now the overwhelming scientific consensus is that carbon based chemistry is by far the most likely route for life to develop anywhere.
First of all, congratulations for shipping :)

Looks nice :) .My first question when I opened it - does it warn you when you're nearing your localStorage quota?

On the points you mention in your blog - are you certain other wireframe tools don't have collaboration?

Points 2 and 3 are pretty important (especially point 3). If other services don't have version control, and yours does, it's an important one.

The rest of the points don't seem that important to me, but I've barely used any mockup tools.

Lastly, how do you plan to monetize?

Good luck and congrats :)
yes, helps me to focus on the paragraph i am reading
Only for Kindle Apps, as far as I understand
Does the address book sync work in this version, or is it still broken like in their Hotmail app?
http://www.usbcables.com/assets/images/white-usb-extension-c...

Now you can get your child pron without scratching your laptop :)
The liveness of something like this can be rather useful actually.

I wrote a not-as-fancy "canvas explorer" with a live updating image that you can save snapshots of. [1] Wrote this just yesterday to let me programmatically make images for use elsewhere (I suck at drawing tools.) I'm already enjoying the "liveness" of it and the fact that all images are remembered in localStorage. It's really cool that this is so easy to do with JS.

[1] http://srikumarks.github.com/demos/canvas_explorer/
This brings to mind an old adage about eggs and baskets.

More seriously, adding extra components to a mission means many more man-hours designing, testing and vetting the extra functionality, and also adds a boatload of extra weight, which makes the entire thing massively more risky and expensive (especially with the rover's at-the-time-unproven landing mechanism). There's no real need to send everything at once, especially if a lot of what you're sending could be ruled out as entirely unnecessary depending on the results of other tests you're carrying out.
Bike light that projects the symbol of a bike down onto the road
Phoning an Aircraft Engine in Mid-Flight?  No problem
Regarding your issues, I have issues (well, issue): Travel in South America does not require visas for an American. It is very easy to travel here, we've had no problem for the last 6 months.

Bolivia charges a reciprocity fee upon entry for all Americans. Other than that we haven't paid anywhere else. That said, we've done land border crossings since Colombia. Brazil, Argentina, and Chile WILL charge a fee when you fly into them internationally.

We've also travelled for 5 months through the poorest countries of South American with an iPad, MBA, 2 iPhones, 2 Kindles, and $2,000 in camera gear. This doesn't cause stress, you just don't flaunt these things openly in public.

I however agree with the sentiment of not working while travelling.
Reading, Writing and Playing Games May Help Aging Brains Stay Healthy
Not sure how configurable this is, but would it be possible to have less ridiculous URLs? An idea might be to take the hash (it looks like you're using some sort of hash?) and then encode it base-36 like reddit, or even, (for a bit of individuality and human memorability) take a list of some number of words (preferably large) and encode it in that base where the digits are the words, e.g base-3 with 0 = telescope, 1 = dog, 2 = house, and so 3 = DogTelescope, 5 = (3+2) = DogHouse, 7 = (2*3+1) = HouseDog etc.
Minecraft in Real Life
Indeed. In this context I must post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM
We worked for three years out of college to pay off school loans, get established (and then sell everything), and save 60k for our trip.
Windows Phone 8 applications (C#) get AOT compiled to machine code.

Here's an overview: http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/Windows-Phone-8-Compile...

Some video sessions:

[Deep Dive into the Kernel of .NET on WP8 - (talk about compilation starts around the 22 minute mark)]
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/3-005

[Inside Compiler in the Clound and MDIL]
http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Mani-Ramaswamy-and...
Ya know, I think it might be worth pointing out that the early business ventures of Woz and Jobs (of Apple computer) were in selling phone phreaking equipment.

It certainly seems to me as though IP infringement of movies and music has become the most dangerous white collar crime in existence, even ahead of outright fraud and embezzlement in the multi-million or billion dollar range. To me that seems like a miscarriage of justice which could warp our society in negative ways.
No, I understand it can't be formally understood as a requirement - but that's how it's phrased. Hence my comparison with todays unrealistic "requirements".
Google News Business Model Under Global Siege
I thought the train was going between LA and SF? Seems like an ideal distance (350miles/550km) to build a bullet train, right? It's a lot of money and it'll be completed about the time Japan finishes it's 300mph (500kph) maglev, but considering how long it takes to get things done in the US, I guess people should be happy for now. Someday, SF to LA will be about 1hr.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/20512131
Hi,
Thanks for taking the time to play with it. As for your questions:

1. It does not warn you if you are nearing localStorage quota limits. AFAIK, there is no browser API to check your remaining quota. However, this is a pretty good idea, and I'll check to see if it can be implemented in any way.

2. There are some tools that have collaboration (Mockflow is the only one that I can remember right now). Unfortunately they dont have the other features I needed. The main advantage of Mocktails as I see it is that you get all the important stuff in one nice neat package.

3. Glad you agree on publishing and version control. These two have bit me in the ass so many times.

4. Monetizing will be based on number of projects per user for individual accounts and users per organization for enterprise accounts. I haven't worked out much beyond that for now.
The Great Python.org Redesign
I'm suprised to see this story landed on Hacker News :P
"I find it odd that we're actually arguing about whether it's worth making the most basic of changes based on the assumption that those people in question are stupid and their box will probably be ok. Surely a better approach would be to suggest optimisations -guiding them through the process if needs be."

Not unless we're people with excellent reputations that "those people" can recognise, or it is possible to determine that people with these excellent reputations endorse our advice. Otherwise we're just adding to the muddle of information on the Internet, some of which is bad, some of which is good, and it is impossible for non-experts to tell the difference.

My argument is that the distribution is such a reputable source, and that a random article upvoted on HN isn't. If a distribution ships insecure defaults, then you should petition them to fix the defaults rather than publishing "fixes" elsewhere. You'll have to fight your corner, of course, against a bunch of people who might differ from you in your opinion about what is and isn't secure :)
3D Printing “Photo Booths” Popping Up Across The World
Panoramic View From 'Rocknest' Position of Curiosity Mars Rover
Does anybody know if there's a full 3d "look-around" view like:
http://www.360cities.net/image/curiosity-rover-martian-solar...
for this particular image? It's spectacular!
The full resolution of the image is 60mb (a TIF file].
Though there's a 8mb JPEG file (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA16453.jpg)
Google Nexus S helps resurrect webOS on smartphones
"A team known as Phoenix International Communications has come together to produce a port of WebOS which runs over the top of Android on smartphones. Currently it only works on the Samsung made Google Nexus S (...)"
Sorry for the repost of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4836075 but this is HN material and worthy of HN-quality discussion.
Shortcat - Killing mice, one at a time.
I contend it already has.

Locking arts and entertainment -- culture -- up for life plus 70 years (or 95 years for corporations) ensures it cannot be modified or built upon, as it had been for thousands of years prior to the mid-1970s, until it's completely irrelevant to the generations it's most influential upon.
It's a link to a stackexchange post which contains essentially nothing but the link to a post on the Channel 9 forums :( Apart from this niggle, sounds promising.

Actual link here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/MS-working-on-a-...
Ben Goertzel on AGI, Consciousness, Life, the Universe and Everything
I registered way back, and subscribed to two mailing lists to try it out. That exposed a major flaw to me: Conversation views are in reverse time order. Which is kinda okay if you're talking to an actual person and might just want to look up what you previously said, basically an extended version of (goshawful) top-quoting. It does break apart if you're trying to get into a new mailing list conversation where you have to read through 10 posts.

If it had an option of reversing that, it wouldn't actually be that bad. Not as good as gmail, but better than all the desktop-clones like gmx.com or yahoo.
It is safer to be a carbon chauvinist if you accept that ancient Mars was covered with oceans. A silicon-based microbe would be hard pressed to explain its distaste for water to its carbon-based neighbor.
I'd use the term "bullying" in this respect.
Microsoft needs wizards (1984)
This would open lots of possibilities, however teaching all those c#_with_no_c++_background programmers about proper use of destructors and RAII may be hard ;)
This piece works well as a study in the absurdity of Dustin Curtis's thesis. That said, I can't help but observe myself leaning to The Best in some areas and The Worst in others.

For example, our cutlery drawer is full of decent, generic Ikea cutlery - except for a few random pieces that we have accumulated over the years, including an oddball fork and a couple of oddball spoons. I find myself actively avoiding using those oddball pieces because I don't like how they feel in my hand or my mouth. To that extent, I can appreciate just how much hedonic benefit comes from using cutlery that feels "right".

On the other hand, my bicycle is well over 20 years old and looks like a piece of garbage. In fact, it was actually retrieved from the garbage several years ago by a friend, who passed it on to me when he heard that my bike had just died. It's heavy and ugly, but these are features, not bugs: the heaviness means I get a better workout riding it, and the ugliness means it's less likely to be stolen when I park it downtown.

In short, both approaches to choosing consumer durables have their uses, and it's silly to elevate either to the level of a philosophy of living.

----

See also: http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
If Curiosity founds "formic acid", that is a simple 5 atom molecule, then it is not a proof of life, because there are some non-byological process that create that molecule, so it is distributed everywhere in the universe. (I'm not sure that "formic acid" is the best example, but probably any small organic molecule is a good enough example.)

If Curiosity founds "celulose", that is a very complex ~20000 atom molecules, with the atoms arranged in a very special scheme, then it is almost almost almost sure that it was created by some kind of life, because we don't know any non-biological process that can make it.

The main problem is that there is no distinction between organic and biological molecules, so you can't make a sensor that distinguishes them.

The very simple molecules (formic acid) are expected to be found even in places without life. The intermediate molecules (some sugars, aminoacids, even some nucleotides) are more rare, but not unexpected. The big complex molecules are unexpected, so after discarding everything else, the conclusion would be that in that place there is something living.

A similar problem is "How many grains of rice is a lot of rice?": One is not enough, one million is enough, but there is no a clear border. There is not a clear border between organic and biological molecules; the question is "Is the probability that a molecule like this was created by a life form greater than the probability that a molecule like this was created by an inorganic process?"
Replace "wizard" with "ninja" and this post would fit right in on any tech job board today.
How much less does this cost, in terms of both time and money, compared to setting a password on your access point?

Oh, it costs more.

Brilliant!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi

And he said, in fact, that that was what they found, but that it's still a "perhaps" because they have to check the data very very thoroughly. Read the news, and get your informations right.

Please stop trolling all over the thread, thanks :)
Yeah, we're using the default Mongo IDs but we could probably come up with a better URL scheme. I'll add it to the to-do.
Complex development environment simplified with Vagrant
may have found
Yes, and no: from the PEP8 style guide: (my emphasis)

"Consistency with this style guide is important. Consistency within a project is more important. Consistency within one module or function is most important.
But most importantly: know when to be inconsistent -- sometimes the style guide just doesn't apply."
Brazil requires Americans to have a visa but it's the only country in South America to do so. Others charge a reciprocity fee - Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and possibly others. But you can pay it when you land and they don't always charge it depending on whether you enter in a big city or a small border town.
I really like it. Saved for later use. Well done!
taking another of many possible perspectives, here is a strong case for hoping that we don't find life on Mars: http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
Why is the US suddenly softening its stance in this case, both suggesting and approving such a "slap on the wrists"? They are currently trying to salvage what they can from UKs u-turn on their extradition deal (see the recent Gary Mckinnon stories). They don't want the extradition deal testing in court in the UK at the moment while they negotiate hard with the UK government, i.e. they don't want the UK courts to force the governments hand in any way before it forms its new policy.

It would be nice if they had suddenly mellowed and realised that it wasn't the crime of the century, but alas it's not the case.
Hacking the DNS to make a difference
Has anyone experimented with using it as a media server ?
Are they just urging people to switch, or do they actually move them over without the user having a say in it?
Misleading title. It should read "Microsoft asking for engineer to work on a native compiler for C++ and C#".
I'm surprised his lawyer hasn't picked up on this. The second he hits US soil he's roasted.
Tripomatic 2.0: Faster travel planning with offline maps
He should have said he had "aspergers".

TBH, I'd have been happier to see the McKinnon extradition go ahead than this one.
Damn, I have no time reading his entire article right now, but it looks very interesting.
Don't most modems have a setting where you can turn off broadcasting the WiFi network name? That would stop people stealing it, as they can't even see that it's there in the list of available networks.
Just to clarify.
This guy -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi
in a conference in Rome today said that what they found in Mars was organic molecules. He said it was a "perhaps" because they still have to check the data. He also said that Curiosity can not say if an organic molecule is biological or not, so all they can say is that there are organic molecules. Again, perhaps, until the data checking ends and full data is presented.

All this reported by ANSA.

PD: it was in a conference in La Sapienza, in Rome, hardly a remote and/or obscure university/place.
Like the article. Some excellent advice however, I'd like to add a couple things. First, some background - my wife and I have been on the road for 6 months through South America and splurged on a trip to Antarctica. We're moving to Europe tomorrow.

Organizing Flights: Cheap flights abound and we've travelled almost only by bus once on a continent. Bus is cheap, I can't say that I find it particularly enjoyable. I'd argue against the RTW ticket, it seem superfluous. I just booked tickets 2 days ago from Buenos Aires to Rome for $940, I like the price and flexibility.

Packing: Smaller is better, to a point. My wife and I have 40L packs, I'd recommend 45L or 50L. If you travel with fewer electronics than we do, a 40L pack would be fine. (http://orofino.me/daniels-rtw-packing-list/)

Accommodations: I'd add Airbnb to that list, we're getting higher quality accommodations for the price of dorm beds (2 people) in Europe. Hostels have been great in South America though. Plus you get to stay with a local who can show you good restaurants.

Cash and Electronics: Americans, get a Capital One card, zero international fees. I agree on electronics, don't show them off everywhere and you should be fine. In the poorest of countries in South America we didn't have any issues. We travel with a travel power strip, I recommend it so you only need one travel adapter.

Companions: Travelling with my wife is awesome... most of the time. At the start we argued way more than we did at home. I chalk this up to the stress of new environments and of living something you've been dreaming about for 5 years. After a month, we settled down into a groove and are loving every minute.

Lifestyle: Please, never stay anywhere for less than 3 nights. It helps you get a feel for the city. We occasionally stay for a week or a bit more in places so that we can get a real feel for it.
I'm really beginning to dislike all these "Set up the Raspberry Pi as a X" tutorials. I think they contribute to the idea that there's something weird and peculiar about the Pi, and give the impression that if you want a tutorial to do something on the Pi you need a "For the Pi" tutorial.

Couldn't we instead have a "Install Raspbian" (or whatever) tutorial and then try to push the idea that at the end of that you have basically a low-powered Debian machine and can follow any "Do X on Debian" tutorial? It seems that one of the wonderful benefits of Debian as a "universal OS" is that it doesn't matter whether it's on a Pi or a ten-year-old 386 laptop, it's another computer and almost everything is just an apt-get away.
Thanks! Glad you liked it :)
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This changes nothing. You could already compile to native code if you really wanted. This doesn't affect speed much at all - C++ gets the speed it does from not doing bounding checks on numbers or arrays, and from the way templates work, etc. Plus ability to optimize pointer usage, and managing memory directly so you don't need garbage collection.

It also doesn't help portability at all, since the C# libraries are still all mono/windows dependent. The CLR itself was never OS specific - it's the libraries.

Total non-story. People see 'native' and immediately think that making it 'native' somehow turns C# into C++ and enables QT or something...
I second this. Negative opinion has no place here.

Worrisome facts, yes. Potential problems and helpful strategies, yes. Discouraging opinion with nothing to back it up, no.

Facebook is a huge, ugly blob and we urgently need something to replace it that is not organized from the top down. Yay to buddycloud!
I did something like this in my presentation[1] about Ember.

It uses Ember.js to maintain the state of the code samples and proved to be very stable. I don't have interactive sliders on specific values, but the code is parsed and run after every character the user types. e.g. you can change the size of the squid on this page[2] and see it reflected immediately on the right.

[1]: http://mutewinter.github.com/why_ember/#/slides

[2]: http://mutewinter.github.com/why_ember/#/slides/data-binding
"Nexus 4 just became available" (notificationcanibuyanexus4.info)
C# is probably my favorite language, although to be honest I don't have much experience with Ruby, Python, or Coffeescript. However, coding in C# (especially post v3.5) always feels like easy mode. You've got type safety but you've also got enormous flexibility with lambda expressions, extension methods, and so much other good stuff. And then the IDE becomes a real force multiplier instead of just a crutch to keep you from falling down as it can be with Java and other less savory languages, for example.

It'll be exciting to see how this affects the C# ecosystem.

Although it's even more interesting what this says about Microsoft's plans for the future of the CLR. It seems as though MS might be coming to the conclusion that it was a failed experiment, which is interesting given the success of other VM systems such as the JVM. It'll be interesting to see whether or not this move helps advance C# adoption outside of the windows platform.
This title should include a question mark.
perhaps the reason those are easy is _because_ they weren't cross platform?
Does this also mean that your wifi is bouncing around in your house / Is that even safe?
I am downvoting you because you said 5 times that it's bad, and you have provided 1 single arguable example of why it is so.
This myth needs to die. The moment any client associates with an access point that is not broadcasting its SSID, that SSID becomes visible to anyone nearby with access point monitoring software. By definition, a client must broadcast probe requests in order to continue the association with the AP and those broadcasts are easily received.
Hm. Now that the link's finally loaded I can see that this is exactly the same link I posted a similar comment on on Reddit a few days ago, to which the author didn't take kindly. Hopefully I've made my case slightly better this time! :)
I see your point, but we don't know. A one in a million event happens about once a month (Littlewood's law). It might be that there are many more rocky wet worlds than we now think there are, but we dont know that either. But we do know FTL travel is also time travel. Being able to tug big telescopes and look back and study our own stages of civilization would in itself be pretty amazing.
I posted this because I received email from notification@canibuyanexus4.info regarding the availability of Nexus 4. Although, it's still not available for my country (Malaysia) :(
C++ pitfalls
Urging - regularly. I use a hotmail account for trash signups and they are pushing constantly.
Personal 'learn to code' project: Make every website beautiful