skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As posts upthread have shown, the light output will be comparable to a kerosene lamp, which is what these lights are supposed to replace. It doesn't take a "crazy weight" or "a lot of elevation". And the difference between 50% efficiency and 100% efficiency is only a factor of two; that's well within the range of making reasonable adjustments in the weight and/or height.

As far as voltage/amperage is concerned, I would expect the generator to be low voltage DC, matched to some voltage in the range the LED light could support. AFAIK LED lights are fairly tolerant of a range of low DC voltages, so I don't see this as a major issue.
I heard from a friend who talked with Guido this year, he couldn't let Google add Python to Android and Chrome, this make him disappointed.
He worked with Python on the App Engine team as well.
The UO economy was crazy, for a while I had a 11x14 inside of Luna Walls and was making like 30m a week. Selling to a gold dealer using my friends paypal (I didn't even have a bank account at the time, I was in middle school and said friend was in HS). I was making just shy of a grand a month in 8th grade running a mall in a video game.

I later sold my account and the in-game land for 5k, I regret it to this day :(

What am I doing now you might ask...

Bitcoin :)
I can relate to this during my time at MIT. It isn't that students are unaware that MIT is an immensely talented community and just fail to put their own relative difficulties into perspective. There is a strong desire to feel like you belong among your peers. Yet there is always someone doing something that seems out of your reach, which amplifies those lingering internal questions of whether your actually good enough to be there.
Nexus 4 shipping chaos: buyers waiting for weeks while others get phone in days
Wow, that is an awesome read. Comparing it to the economics in the World of Warcraft is also interesting. I particularly like the discussion of 'drains' vs 'closed circuits' there is a lot of interesting questions about building virtual economies where those are implemented in various ways. In particular comparing them to 'drains' in the physical world like fashion changes or upgrade cycles.
And they also are not sold by Google.
See the numbers upthread; it's comparable to a kerosene lamp.
Google is a public company, with fiduciary duty to its shareholders. It is at least somewhat about the money. If Google can't make Android a profit center, there's nothing stopping Android from being relegated to FeedBurner status or going the way of Wave and Etherpad. I'm in no way whatsoever trying to pass judgement on the wrong or rightness of that, but I don't think it's arguable that Google must find a way to make Android a profitable endeavor for it to see continued active development and promotion.

The Android vs. iOS US/UK growth numbers lately have not been kind to Android and Android's greater number of devices still represent a lower amount of web traffic in North America (and on the decline lately). It's a very premature assumption to claim that Android will be lucrative enough in developed demographics to fund overall development. As long as Google is actually losing money on every Android device sold (due to the patent licensing), simply focusing on the number of devices sold is a very poor metric for the platform's long term success.
After looking into this a bit, I can say that I don't subscribe to positivism or relativism, even if they are trendy in philosophy class these days. Both seem to reject realism and promote groupthink.

"Can we not account for both science's existence and its success in terms of evolution from the community's state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal?" (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 171)

I'll have to check out Larry Laudan, thanks.
Considering the goal is 55k, and that the basic principle is sound and surely can be improved in efficiency, I have to say reading this discussion and the jaded way people just dismiss it wholesale as "hoax", and not give a second thought is kinda shameful indeed.

Kickstarter is overflowing with game projects raking in the millions collectively with unverifiable claims altogether, like "awesome multiplayer experience". But this stuff? "It's a hoax, they're trying to rip the public off for 55k!" You simply cannot make this shit up.
No, it isn't. See the numbers upthread.
If a non-programmer asks you "Why do you guys say int x = 10; float y = 0.2 Why not x is an whole number who value is 10 y is a fraction whose value is one fifth.

Knowing what language we're working in is enough to know that's exactly what that code says. This is not the case in mathematical notation. C × A could be the direct product of two groups, or maybe the tensor product of two graphs, or perhaps the product of two lattices, or it could be one of who knows how many other things. The issue here is not high precision, but the opposite: heavy reliance on convention and context in order to be unambiguous.
I found it amusing.
Looks like the half an hour duration is only good for powering a LED at a small power

Yes, about a tenth of a watt (see the numbers upthread). However, that gives an LED light output that's comparable to a kerosene lamp. So it could be worth it for the target users.
I'm not sure how it's elitism to point out that the specific demographic you mentioned is not one that lends itself to Google's central business. Like I very specifically said, I personally think it's great as a developer who benefits from more WebKit browsers in the world. I also understand that Google isn't in this market to be philanthropic either.
That is the same as Mao.
It's comparable in brightness to a kerosene lamp, which is what it's supposed to replace.
After seeing what Papermaster's doing recently, I'm actually getting enthusiastic on where AMD is going. Call me crazy, but given their CPU & GPU experience I think they just might be able to turn this thing around -- and maybe move faster than Intel:

http://www.amd.com/us/aboutamd/corporate-information/executi...
Kerosene lamps are not bright. It is hard (but possible) to read by one. I'd love to see a calculation that takes this into account. How long would this device set at the brightness of a typical kerosene lamp last?
I think the social media Onion talk (http://youtu.be/CK62I-4cuSY) is the most relevant to HN (and my favourite).

You are definitely not the only one who's BS detector was going off. I find that TED has about the same number of good talks per year as it used to. And about 10 times more talks per year than it used to. That's not even counting the cesspool that TEDx has become.
I for one think it's nice that this story hasn't been flagged. It's a Friday, and this was welcome news for me. Thank you, @adamwintle, for the post.
the duration and brightness numbers for this don't add up either

They do if you're comparing it to a kerosene lamp; kerosene has certainly not been "replaced" in parts of the world that don't have easy access to batteries or electricity in general. See the numbers elsewhere in the thread. And it apparently does use an LED light.
I took one last month. It's one of the "learning on the loo" variety, mentioned elsewhere.

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/11/17/g/
Google got rid of the free Google Apps today, except for those grandfathered in.
Yes. In reading other people's code, I've had coding style make the difference between taking about a day and taking about half an hour (two programs to do the same thing in essentially the same way).
I've stated a few times.. why can't we make UO in browser by now? Old rules of course.
See the numbers elsewhere in the thread. LED light output comparable to a kerosene lamp for 30 min. is reasonable with the numbers they've given.
What?

I use Google Apps to host 4 email addresses for my personal domain.

Personal email
Online shopping email
Forums/Programming email
Facebook-only email (so people can't search for me)

I use it for me. I wouldn't pay $20/month for such a service, and Google is smart for not taking free away from existing customers.
Feel free to change them in System Preferences to your own liking.
Well, it's inaccurate to start with. The hair brained notion that people are only forced into Android, they don't choose it.

Also, you'd do well to read about why they were so passionate about Android, about putting money into it and having it be open source.

I literally don't know how to respond to this: If Android isn't a successful advertising vector for Google in the long run, I think you have to seriously question how secure its future will be.

Most because I just don't know where to even start. You seem to think that because Google is good at advertising, they have to put ads on Android or something for it to be a worthwhile cause to them?

A product activating a million units a day is going to shut down? Hell, they could lose money on Android and they'd fund it just to fight Apple.
I spend a fair amount if time thinking about this topic. It is something that I do not take lightly. Although I consider myself an atheist at heart, I leave room for the possibility that I could be wrong. Most of my family members are religions. My Mom got cancer of the liver about 5 years ago and so, for a long time she knew that she would pass away.Her and I had long discussions about this topic many times. She was in Hospice care for 2 years before passing. She knows how passionate I am about science and the "prove-ability" of things. So we made a secret pact. We agreed on a secret pass-phrase that only we two know. The deal is.. that as she passed to the other side, if in fact there is another side, then she would get this pass-phrase to me somehow. Now, this pass-phrase is very unique and there is no way anyone could guess it. So, if, somehow, this pass-phrase come before me, either in some sort of email, voice or other medium, I will immediately know that it came from her from the other side. This would be proof of the existence of an after-life. That may not be proof of God, but it would, to me be proof of something in that direction, would it not? So, by now, I am sure you are wondering... have I heard the pass-phrase. Well, it has been 2 years since her passing and no, there has been no hint of the pass-phrase. Sorry, so if you are a believer, fine. If not, also fine. No word yet. I will keep you posted.
When I saw the TEDx guys' caution about a "physics-related speaker [who] has a degree in engineering, not physics", it struck a bit of a nerve for me.

My Ph.D. is in electrical engineering, not physics. I recently got a computational physics paper accepted in a peer-reviewed journal, and I'm hard at work on a second paper. And in a different world, I could speak at a conference and no one would have to worry about my bona fides.

But I think the TEDx caution is well-founded.

Engineers are often accustomed to knowing more about science than the average person. It can be very easy for them, with the best of intentions, to convince themselves and others that they know more than they really do. It's easy to think you've got some great new idea if you don't engage existing experts in the field via peer review and reading papers.

This is not to say electrical engineers can't be authorities on physics topics -- quite the contrary! But I agree with the TEDx guys that it does merit a bit of extra checking, especially in their situation.
No, i believe this was due to a second re-exam request (they denied the first)
Believing in a "higher power" makes it easy for people to accept certain things happening in their lives that they may not like, and it also makes it easier to have hope, when all odds are against you and it's very hard to trust yourself to come out of it.

Personally, I don't think believing in a higher power is needed, especially since I don't believe there's a superior intelligence watching over us and influencing us in any way. But I think those are the reasons why many people find it so easy to believe in a higher power. They would like the responsibility to belong to someone much more powerful than they are.
They are language designers, not systems engineers. Any place with programmers has problems they can solve, and hopefully open source.
Pure Gold:

"Human NPCs serve an extremely important role within the economy of UO because they are permanent. That is, real players disconnect to go to bed or (heaven forbid) to go to work and are therefore not online the majority of the time"

Other insights:

"An interesting economic phenomenon occurred concerning the fee charged by vendors. When they were first implemented, vendors charged a fee based on the resource price of their inventory regardless of their sales. With this in mind, clever players realized that they could set the price for the goods to be extraordinarily high and thus prevent anyone from buying them. This, it turned out, was a very effective way of creating a safety-deposit box since the vendors can not be robbed. Players started buying vendors for the sole purpose of increasing their hoarding space. This exacerbated hoarding problems and also resulted in a form of suburban sprawl where people built tents and attached vendors consuming valuable land. The designers ultimately fixed these problems with an elegant economic solution: the vendors now charge a fee based on the value of the goods assigned by the player. Thus, players can still set the values too high, but they will be charged rent proportionately thus deterring this practice dramatically."

And another

"...almost all characters are forced to be entrepreneurs of some type, a fact which doesn’t correspond well to these player’s real life. In other words, most people in real life generate their incomes from employment contracts and thus they understand these arrangements. Unfortunately, such employment contracts are not implemented in UO. Therefore, there is naturally disappointment when players are forced into being entrepreneurs and find that this job is not effortless."
A heavier weight might fix the problem, though.

And/or more height. The numbers are comparable to the low end of kerosene lamps as given.
Do note that imgur will delete images if they haven't been viewed in 6 months.

http://imgur.com/faq#long
Or just remove anything from Unity and install Gnome Shell. I do this. My laptop runs a Ubuntu which is, interface-wise, a Debian with faster updates.
Safari / WebKit nightly.
Or internet commentators making stuff up?
That duck thing doesn't explain what system programming is. Even though you may not want to do it, or have it explained to you, I'll take the liberty of defining a few basic principles.
For any language to be considered a system programming language I think it must do whatever assembly language does, obviously with better syntax. Stack manipulation, memory access and transfer, software and hardware interrupts/ports access and obviously logic and arithmetic.

Andrew Tanenbaum taught us that a computer and its software can be defined as one translating layer sitting on top of another. At the basic level you find the electrical circuits inside the chips. Above that you find microcode which defines assembly language. Above that you find the bios. Above that you find the Operating system and finally above that you find application, userland software.

The problem with .Net languages and Java is that they sit in userland, four steps away "from the metal". So another way to define system software is software that's within 3 layers of abstraction/translation "from the metal". When you have defined system software, you have defined system programming.
To summarize: as long as your language can be cleanly translated to basic assembler and can do stack manipulation, ports/interrupt access and memory manipulation, it can be considered a system programming language. Pascal was used in the first implementations of Mac OS and even some versions of BASIC could have that capability like XBASIC (www.xbasic.org) or Freebasic (www.freebasic.net) without loading additional libraries (at least read their manuals before considering the contrary).

One last thing: KILL THAT DUCK. The way you formulate your question borders on trolling.
Math is the most psychedelic thing ever. It's short so you don't have to read a novel for its powerful effects to kick in.
Hey Peter, looking great. You should release your REST API documentation so people could integrate from the server.

Also, I'm already using SendGrid so ideally I would like for you to be able to use my existing email account, or better yet, let me provide a webhook URL so I could do the sending myself.
> ... but the word "lie" is farfetched. Too harsh.

Perhaps. I just get tired of seeing so many casual "misstatements of fact" in advertising copy that can mislead the public and/or cause injury (the latter in the case of tanning beds and other technologies where public health is at risk).

But I agree it's farfetched. It sprang from annoyance and the lack of a better single word.
A bit more back story on UO, ported from my comment in the Nomic thread.

UO was divided into Trammel (safe from PvP) and Felucca (not), and some servers only had Fel. Originally, there was only Fel, and Trammel was made to entice more players who might not want such a cutthroat environment.

In Fel as soon as you left a city you were more or less fair game to die from an extremely hostile environment. PC Gamer (If I recall) described the learning curve of UO as "A frozen wall of acid." Brutal, but very exciting. A wild west MMO.

(In Fel) UO was a rare RPG where anyone could kill anyone, for any reason, but with the repercussion that they would be branded a "Bad person" (visible with a gray or red name instead of blue). Stealing from good people corpses also did this. Anyone can attack and kill bad persons, and if you killed even more people you were a murderer and it took a very long time to return to normal.

This Blue/Gray/Red name system created a sort of cautiousness among travelers. Being near a pack of "blue" people might be safe, since any person that tried to steal or kill would turn gray and they'd immediately kill him.

Unless of course, all those blue-named people were conspiring, and you are the target.

You want to use super awesome powerful gear? None of this sissy MMO stuff. Die and you lose it, and your enemy (or his enemy!) gets the spoils. An insurance system was added later (2005ish?) where you could pay a certain amount per item to not lose it, probably also as an attempt to make the game less harsh.

The problem I have with a lot of MMOs is that the power of your character is simply how much time you sink into the game. Essentially, MMOs are games that reward wasting time.

UO had so much more than that. UO was a game where treachery and sneakiness really paid off, if you wanted them to. Lots of ways to nearly instantly kill or entrap people lead to a lot of very exciting plots where guilds might be laden with spies. Absolutely nothing like the ridiculously limited PvP found in games like WoW.

In a lot of ways it was the Diplomacy (diplomatic back-stabbing board game) of MMOs. And it was great.

--------

For more also see outworlder's excellent comment in the Nomic thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890513

The criticisms of UO wiki page is also a very good read, especially the housing and economy sections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Ultima_Online
> You don't often encounter the kind of gnarly concurrent algorithm stuff where Clojure shines in mobile dev.

Perhaps this is an issue specific to me. I've been working on algorithm development for an Android app, and being tethered to Java has been driving me up the wall.
Very interesting. Some people take this to think MIT students have self-image problems, but I don't see that. To me I see this as most students reasonably confident with their own abilities (although feel they could do a bit better academically, although those are just high standards), but are very humble about themselves relative to their peers.

Compared to most groups in life, this is a very rare breed of "yes I know I'm amazing, but I know the people around me are REALLY amazing". Which I'd argue is shockingly healthy for such a large group of people so smart and under so much pressure.
If you want a technical co-founder, show them you’re serious first.
No moere "'Free energy' and perpetual motion machines, alchemy, time travel" ?

Well... I no longer have any reason to watch ted videos
Still need to beat the pre TGIF rush. Reviewing code after happy hour is a bad idea.
> Conclusion? If you want financial gain from a startup, go for sustainable revenue and building a real profitable business.

As opposed to going for unsustainable revenue and building an unprofitable business?
Don't Be Lazy, Use HTML Labels Correctly
> ... I find your aperger's by proxy article very interesting.

Thanks for reading! Here's another more recent article on the same general topic:

http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology
They Know What You're Shopping For
You're probably right, it just didn't occurred to me. Thanks.
Nice to see NZ on the front page for something other than Kim Dotcom.
I always felt that if math theorems were presented in a programming language, they would be way more understandable ….

Find out empirically! Look at theorems in some formal methods/programming languages papers and their corresponding mechanizations and see which you find more understandable. (Actually, it might be better to start with something like Software Foundations to get a gentler introduction to a programming language used for this sort of thing -- http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/sf/ )
Research to Development for Startup Ideas
It is warranted because the physics doesn't work out
There's a really interesting question about incentivization behind this. Everybody knows that there are too many dogs, and as a result many die in shelters because they aren't adopted. Yet many folks continue to buy dogs from breeders, particularly in America where they actually sell dogs in stores!

So what is the best solution so that exactly the right amount of dogs exist and none are killed. This is innovative, but I suspect training doesn't scale. Perhaps make it illegal to sell dogs until we're out of strays? Maybe a tax deduction for adopting a dog, or a tax penalty on buying a dog? Or an anti-breeding campaign (like the anti-fur one which has been very successful)?

I'd love to hear some cool ideas here.
BlogNomic has been mentioned, but here's a gratuitous plug for Agora Nomic, which is currently suffering from lack of interest (and could use a few more players) but is arguably the oldest still-living true nomic. The game sometimes has "actual gameplay" and sometimes doesn't really, but in practice mainly revolves around the rest of the rules - over 100 of them - including things like multiple privilege levels for rules, a court to decide questions and punish rulebreaking, assets that you can give someone to let them act on behalf of you, a bill of rights, offices, and, of course, proposals, all of which is written in a rather formal and pedantic style that's nevertheless the subject of much debate over interpretation. The whole thing somehow feels like maintaining a computer program written in English, and perhaps for that reason, many players are programmers; as a particular example, one valid way to play is to find bugs in the rules and try to exploit them to force through a proposal granting you a (temporary) dictatorship, which is like nothing so much as computer hacking. It's bizarrely fun.

http://agoranomic.org

The ruleset: http://agora.qoid.us/current_flr.html

An example call for judgement: http://cfj.qoid.us//1892
It's just too goddamned much money for organizations that are small and are not funded startups. $50 per user per year -- if it was $5, they might have a deal, but having to cough up $500 annually for something that was originally free?
Same here. OSX 10.7.4, Chrome 23.0.1271.95.