skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
John Baez has developed an index for quantitatively judging revolutionary discoveries in physics: http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

Doesn't look like Wolfram scores very high on Baez's index, although Wolfram does get the 50 point item.
Erlang for Python programmers: Part III
No, but jar was involved with T, which had the same reason according to pg.
Started by writing Emacs-lisp stuff, then read more about it and got to learn Scheme and started using it for projects, finally wrote a Scheme compiler, lost interest and switched to Python :)
What every skeptic should know about subliminal persuasion
Yahoo Looking for Widget Developers (interesting)
Redefining the Architecture of Memory - 3D Memory is coming
I'm no expert, but I thought I'd add that The Little Scheme is a most enjoyable way to get into Lisp.

I don't think it's that important that you use DrScheme (I suppose that's what you mean with PLT Scheme). If you do, make sure the 'language' is set to standard Scheme, not some 'safe' subset. In The Little Schemer, you go from absolute zero all the way to using continuation passing style, motivating and deriving the Y Combinator, and writing a metacircular evaluator.
Electric cars have ALWAYS been about the batteries. Good motors and lightweight frames have been around for decades.

You need to have a charge time of less than a few hours and you need to be able to travel more than 200 miles for more people to buy it.

Check out ZAP cars for some good options
http://www.zapworld.com/
Even though this ray tracer code doesn't do anything fancy (no anti-aliasing, soft shadows, caustics, etc), it is amazingly lean. The one I wrote in C++ looks bloated by comparison...
So what are the options?
Right now, for fun, I'm reading Practical Common Lisp, The Little Schemer, and ANSI Common Lisp. I pick up the book nearest me whenever I have the chance :). I would say it's working well enough for a spare time activity.

Practical Common Lisp is available online here:
http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
First I'll tell my story to answer the question, then I'll put resources mentioned in a list at the end.

I've been picking up bits and pieces, and would not call myself anything near an expert. I knew what Lisp was from a Languages class in college, and we actually used lisp to implement a language. Roughly none of it stuck, except for car, cdr, and the idea of using prefix notation and the 'everything is an expression' idea.

Relearning it started with just reading PG's essays and getting curious. Being too lazy to order it online, I looked in every bookstore and library I encountered for ANSI Common Lisp, but never found it. It's rather pricey, too, which is why I was hesitant.

I started with SICP and the video lectures. Something important came up in another part of my life, though, and I basically put Lisp on hold for several months.

When I finally got settled down again, I started playing with with emacs-lisp. I knew emacs would be useful no matter what happened next. I downloaded the manual (which is dense) and scrounged for tips on the internet. The idea was that I'd get familiar thinking in that style and using it for practical things, before moving on to something more serious. Emacs-lisp has some limitations (no closures, for example), so it wasn't too long before I started looking elsewhere.

My next two sources were On Lisp by Paul Graham and Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp by Peter Norvig. Both books include speedy overviews of Lisp, and point you to Guy Steele's Common Lisp The Language (2nd ed) (CTL2), which can be found online, for authoritative reference. Both books are good because they are exciting and fun. Norvig has a fairly gentle introduction, while Graham assumes you're already familiar with many Lisp operators. I don't actually think that's a big problem, and you shouldn't let it scare you away from at least trying to read it. I think it's easier to read the first few chapters of On Lisp first and get excited about looking up the details, than it is to slog through a reference or a mundane introduction beforehand.

I've set aside Lisp again, (though I'm keeping my eye open for opportunities to use it), though I have obtained a copy of ANSI Common Lisp which I also highly recommend. Even if you don't need the introduction, the book includes a large reference section that's a bit more 'user-friendly' than CTL2. The last significant reference I've used is Practical Common Lisp by Peter Siebel, which can be found online.

On Lisp, by Paul Graham http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html

Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence: Case Studies on Common Lisp by Peter Norvig

ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham

The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/elisp.htm...

Practical Common Lisp by Peter Siebel http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

Common Lisp the Language: 2nd Edition by Guy Steele http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/a...

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
We could stage a coup and get a US chairman of the fed that isn't in cahoots with the sociopathic corporations. Good luck with that.

Basically, we're screwed. The Project for a New American Century has completely failed, unless you count the trillion or so dollars that have been stolen from the American people and laundered through Iraq.
So what's your take on consciousness, and how/whether we differ from computers?
HackerID: name the best HackerNews contributors
"... Read HackerNews? Want to know who is really contributing? Who the real Hacker Heroes are? I do. So I came up with a simple idea - gather together a summary of HackerNews contributors and summarise the data into a simple format. ..."

I've written a small hack that some readers might find interesting. As the title suggests it puts a name to the best HackerNews submissions, their scores, comments. Most important it identifies who is contributing, what.

As an added bonus I wacked up a quick demo table with sortable columns.

The particular itch scratched here is I want to have access to "data" so I can quickly view the best stories at any time and then work out who is contributing.. I also proved to myself that having the data as opposed to just a web page allows you to do more interesting things than just read.

- Data http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/hackerid/xml/hacker...

- Dynamic http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/hackerid/

- Colophon http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/hackerid/colophon/

- Photos http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157602126038562/
News.YC #1 for Startup News, #3 for Hacker News
According to the blog, the group chat can span multiple networks (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN etc)
Long way to go... When I see my name, maybe I'll believe it.
Arecibo Observatory in danger of shutting down over lack of funds
Honestly, you don't even really need to have an immediate need to use an implementation to at least start using s-expressions. I put lisp in my C comments and debugging output. //(summary myfunction "the function does this")

It's still readable, and if I ever want to parse out the comments and do anything with it, it'll be easier.
PG, you ought to read Chuang Tzu and then revise
your essay accordingly. Not only was his work
relevant to the topic, but also he started before
Aristotle and affected a greater fraction of
humanity. Until then you better rename your essay
"How to do 3 Greeks + 1 Austrian". Parochial.
Does it? Gorillas were all monkeys too, and they are not equal to us[1].

I agree thinking about evolution can give you an insight on human rights. It's interesting to reason about how moral rules emerge from certain social traits, and why have such traits proven evolutionarily stable.

[1] I don't mean humans intrinsically 'deserve' 'rights' that other living beings don't.
Mozy acquired by EMC for $76MM
Basically, consciousness is nothing special and we don't differ from computer at all in that we're simply a more complex computer than anything we've created thus far.
I am a big PG fan, and I generally prefer the non-startup articles, such as this one. Just wanted to cast my vote here to counter-balance things. :-)
Sorry to hear, Drew (or are such news a good thing?) I absolutely despise Mozy. The single good thing is that the backups are reliable.

For those who aren't familiar with Mozy, you have to install the software and wait a day for it to upload about 1 GB or two. After that, it uploads any changed files.

Here is where the fun begins--when you actually need the backup!

Say you need to recover your files. You must login to your web-based account within 30 days before the backups are deleted if they're not touched, and request a ZIP file of your files. After a few hours, you must login and click download. After you download the huge zip file, you must download the decode utility. After that, you must run the decode utility on the contents and unzip.

Then, if this is the same computer as before, with the same operating system as you had before, you can download Mozy and login to it which will at least remember the folders you had set to synch.

But if you change your operating system, or get a new computer, even if you keep the same username (e.g., Vlad-PC) on both, it will treat it as a new computer. So, instead of simply installing Mozy on a new computer, signing in, and it knows the 10 folders you setup to synch and downloads them since you don't have them (which would make too much sense), you must follow the web-based restore procedure above, and tell it which folders to backup for the future all over again.

Mind you, this isn't a follow-the-wizard type procedure--you must figure this out as you go along and always pray you will 1) have your data back, 2) reconfigure which folders should be backed up in the future all over again and hope you don't forget any, 3) wait for it to slowly reupload all these same files all over again since it thinks you're on a new computer.
The Great Inflation Mystery, Still Unsolved
"... Long way to go... When I see my name, maybe I'll believe it. .."

It's just a tech demo that I've cooked up for myself vlad, not a product. As for finding your own name submit something that gets above the threshold (2pts). When I see it I'll notify you.

The point I want to make (mainly to myself) is data is much more useful to do your own stuff with code rather than having to digest what others have packaged.
I have heard this evolution versus adaption/assimilation/conformation argument before, from a very religious person. Their idea is that evolution may be happening on a small and limited scale, but no further than that. They don't want to think about the more long-term and general implications of the theory. That is - if small adaptations can occur over a few years, what might happen over millions of years?

Assuming the earth is only 6,000 years old there isn't enough time for animals to evolve. All that can be seen are some minor "adaptations".
If Wolfram is right, our universe would be a mathematical "function" not a mathematical "system". Godel showed that every system of sufficient complexity has facts about it that can't be proven. There is no reason to think though that every function within a complex goes back on itself. x = y, for example, doesn't loop around no matter how far out you go.

For my part however I don't believe it's possible for the universe to be "pure math" (that is, its reality comes from an equation and nothing else besides it) in the sense that we understand "math". Nevertheless, it might be that there is an equation that can predict everything we experience. We may as well search for it.
i'd argue this is good news for drew, if anything
I think I can try to answer your question.

No, you are not wrong, but I believe in software there is always a balance. If I have a problem, and you've said you would fix it, it is reasonable for me to expect some things out of our arrangement: dates, notifications, whatever. It varies by how anal I am and how much I trust you or don't trust you to make my problem go away.

Even if there is no customer-vendor relationship, let's say you are working on your own for your own startup, or you are doing your own thing for Google or somebody. Even then you still have to meet some dates. Once you promise a beta, guess what? Code's gotta happen between now and then. If people ask you what you're doing, it might help to have a powerpoint, email, song, or something to be able to explain what your plan is.

I don't know if you're a prima donna or not, but I do know that early in my programming experience, I thought code was an art form. Later on I realized that they call it software engineering for a reason: you can make solutions happen with some kind of repeatability. That doesn't mean there isn't creativity involved, but it means that sometimes we flatter ourselves with thinking we're being creative when really we're just reinventing the wheel and putting our name on it.

Think of it like writing a piece of music. You can be as creative as you want, but still there is a lot of pre-existing stuff that you must deal with: measures, notation, instruments, schedules, patrons, etc. Yes -- you can throw any and all of that away, but THAT only works if you understand what each part contributes. So there's no free ride: you just can't declare yourself creative and immune to the imposition of the rest of reality. So yes, you can expect somebody to ask for dates, requirements, etc -- that's what outsiders always do. I imagine some places are worse about it than others.

That's just my opinion, for what it's worth.
I've used mozy for about 6 months because I saw a few roundups and all of them named it the best. It's definitely got MUCH room for improvement, but it's not too terrible.

It's certainly a wide open market.
their mac client is (was?) terrible
Number Theory for Programmers, Part 2
3 Free Hosted Tools to Manage your Dev Project
Rails, the 15 minutes is Almost Up. Meet Erlang.
On using Subversion for web projects
It's very cool, but in a way that demands a qualifier. Arrington should have written something like "This isn't hardest app to make, or even close to the most important, but it's a brilliant little idea." He also should have said that it's got low replay value. I see what you're saying, but the tone of the post suggested that Arrington was using "coolest" to mean something pretty profound.
"... When I see my name ..."

Here's why ~ it works by parsing the RSS feed which to my knowledge displays from http://news.ycombinator.com/news So if you are not on the previous url your not going to appear.
Wolfram's a lot smarter than I am, but I believe he also believes the function is discrete and not continuous. In fact, he makes the point in NKS that we may have went off the rails with Newton and the calculus. It may turn out that the universe is discrete and that our understanding of it as continuous is just an artifact of not having the computational power to see how discrete functions can effectively look continuous at a much larger scale (sort of a reverse proof of the integral)

It blows my mind. But if you're a genius, might as well have a hobby, right? I'm just glad he took this up instead of bowling.

Just thought I would add that clarification in there, because I know the word "function" has a lot of meanings to people.
People citing work would indicate that work's quality, but the complaint about "A New Kind Of Science" was weak citations, an indication of poor quality. I don't know much about the details. Nor do I know how much people have sited Wolfram's work since.

I think what upsets a lot of people is the attitude. But a bad attitude can still accompany good work, so I excuse Wolfram for his quirks. That acceptance is essential when dealing with people who know they are much smarter than the average person.

While at NYU, I saw Wolfram speak while on his big book tour. There were a few big brains at the Courant Institute that leveled major criticisms at the book. Unfortunately, there was another talk about nonlinear PDEs that most of the critics elected to attend in place of watching Wolfram. Wolfram started the talk by saying, "well, the important people aren't here to see this, but I suppose I'll continue anyway".

As one of the hoi polloi, I found the remark amazingly conceited, probably correct, and a bit charming at the same time.
Intel releases Mashups for the Masses
Kudos for adding in the Chilton manual. I don't know how you do it, but the detail you add makes these types of observations hilarious because I have seen this set of books in so many houses.
Artists 'draw on air' to create 3D illustrations (haptics)
My brain just got stretch marks.
Split Brain Behavioral Experiments
I don't know; I bet it were the users and the name which were bought, not their "great" technology. Drew needs to get many users asap. Dell has their own service already, for example.
So, how can we make this information work for us?

If Stagflation happens in the US, those who survive and can profit from booming economies elsewhere will mop up the panicked, desperate, and undervalued here.

Here are my hypothesizes:

1) borrow American dollars that you don't need and spend them immediately on building something of value. For example: start a company, hire employees, write software, etc. As the dollar devalues, so does the value of your debt.

2) Build sales and business overseas. Make your business a pump for foreign currency back into the US. Pay for this business with debt described in 1. Use your power and stability to mop up the panicked, desperate, and undervalued here. Think Google during the Tech Bust.

3) Have the power and position to reap the rewards of the next economic upswing.
The problem I see is 'truth' that is not generated by the system the universe is a function within. To then maintain truth is that which corresponds to reality gets hard. Kinda trippy.
Science makes progress by assuming there are not real contradictions.
Or we could get rid of the fed and go back to free market money (gold). http://www.mises.org/story/2623
This isn't a hypothesis that we can discuss, just whining.
Why would that simple experiment with bottles be analogous to our atmosphere?
Ask News.YC: How do you measure website growth?
My hunch is the answer is: "it depends". How do you measure the growth of your site? Is it based on page views, subscribed paying customers, registered customers, ad clicks? I know the obvious question may be revenue growth, but what about before the revenue starts to roll in? What metric is the most important for a certain situation?

I'd love to hear a whole spectrum of thoughts.
I'm lamenting to the fact that our unsustainable debt-laden lifestyle is going to end. American is going to lose a lot of wealth as China unpegs its currency.
But then economic growth revolves around new gold discoveries. It would make much more sense to have a currency directly fixed to oil.
Leave lamentations for the unwise who didn't foresee the storm and the foolish who foresaw it but did not act.

If this is the way things are, how can we make this good for us?
Computer Science: Smart People Have Weird Hangups
Logic 101: just because Exxon might have written a report against AGW it doesn't automatically mean that it's false and can be dismissed without further consideration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
That message has been on Yahoo Mash's module gallery page since it launched. If you haven't played with Mash yet and you want an invite, send me an email (not a reply to this comment). niran@niran.org
Why gold? Why not uranium, or moon rocks, or platinum, or round heavy rocks with markings that resemble the Virgin Mary?
Invest in foreign countries. India, China, and Brazil are good places to start.

This is impossible for me because I don't have any money, but I think you'd have to be insane to invest a large amount of savings in the US stock market.
Hmm, that's a subscriber only article ?
Since you choose colors in HSB, I'd assume that the math is done in that space as well.

Empirically, the colors seem to make up tiny cubes in HSB space. If they were in RGB I don't think you'd see that kind of coherence.
this is good news :)
50 cents a month for storage (plus 3.95 per machine):

https://mozy.com/pro/pricing

Or I can get a 500 GB external hard drive for 125 dollars. So...someone help me out. Why would I not just get a couple big drives and avoid all the hassle and slowness of online storage? I don't understand the impulse people have to pay for inconvenience.
The first bottle contains the ratio of elements as contained in our atmosphere. The second has an increased ratio of C02 in proportion to the remaining nitrogen, oxygen, and trace elements. The CO2 bottle would have a greater thermal retention coefficient than the bottle with the normal proportion and would exhibit a greater increase in temperature if exposed to sunlight. Greater ratio of Co2, greater ratio of IR energy retention.
"&#26132;&#32773;&#33674;&#21608;&#22818;&#28858;&#32993;
&#34678;&#65292;&#26665;&#26665;&#28982;&#32993;&#34678;
&#20063;&#65292;&#33258;&#21947;&#36969;&#24535;&#33287;
&#65281;&#19981;&#30693;&#21608;&#20063;&#12290;&#20420;
&#28982;&#35258;&#65292;&#21063;&#34343;&#34343;&#28982;
&#21608;&#20063;&#12290;&#19981;&#30693;&#21608;&#20043;
&#22818;&#28858;&#32993;&#34678;&#33287;&#65292;&#32993;
&#34678;&#20043;&#22818;&#28858;&#21608;&#33287;&#65311;
&#21608;&#33287;&#32993;&#34678;&#65292;&#21063;&#24517;
&#26377;&#20998;&#30691;&#12290;&#27492;&#20043;&#35586;
&#29289;&#21270;&#12290;"
Good god. Not that it isn't interesting, but how is understanding capacitor timings supposed to make you a better programmer? Good article, poor title.
I'm making this off the top of my head, but:

What if you borrowed money to start a company and used it to short the American stock market?
Our atmosphere has clouds, aerosols, cosmic rays and solar forcing effects too. Plus the bottle experiment assumes that there will be no scaling problems.
Off site backup with no user input apart from the initial setup.
Here's an interesting list of other World War III close calls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III#Historical_close_...
Acebucks Gets $1.5 Million For Virtual Facebook Currency
It doesn't mean that it can immediately be dismissed, but you can certainly take into account prior or perceived behaviour of a party when making a claim, especially if they have strong economic motive to deceive you.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=691641
On the Recent Rails Backlash in the Blogosphere [PIC] :)
He gets the 30 point question #30 too.
You are correct; that simple experiment does not take into account all of the external effects. With regard to scaling, I am guessing that you refer to feedback effects produced by plant production of oxygen from the CO2. My assumption is that the rate plant growth on the planet will stay constant, or, at the rate we are going, vastly decrease (rainforests, etc) which will worsen the effect. Also, economic growth planet wide can only increase energy consumption, and therefore, CO2 production. I don't think there are any off-base assumptions there, but I am open to the evidence of some.
Everyone beat me to the punch, but my starting list for Common Lisp is:

1. A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/index.html

2. Practical Common Lisp http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

3. ANSI Common Lisp http://www.paulgraham.com/acl.html

4. On Lisp http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html

5. Paradigms of Artifical Intelligence Programming http://norvig.com/paip.html

6. Lisp in Small Pieces http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/d...

SICP is also amazing...and there are at least three sets of videos to go with the book (Abelson/Sussman and HP/MIT, ArsDigita, and UC-Berkeley.)