skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are energy-saving fluorescent bulbs emitting warm light, but none of them allows dimming the lights.

Personally I like halogen lights best.
FundCamp: an open format for holding seed acceleration initiatives
Her article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=87752
Chipmunk Physics... on the iPhone
Chipmunk Physics is a 2D physics engine. It was posted to news.yc yesterday (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=87456)

I was inspired to get it running on the iPhone. It's even integrated with the iPhone's accelerometer so the simulation gravity actually tracks the phone's physical movement.

Here's a few videos, and a binary for those with hacked iPhones:

http://tlrobinson.net/misc/iphone_chipmunk_physics/

Right now it's just running the default Chipmunk demos. I'll post the source code if anyone wants to check it out.
"(the need for () at the end of each method call in Python was killing me)"
--Huh? This doesn't seem as an important point at all.

Plus, Django is not an elegant of a framework at all. The api has been developed as patchwork, and it's forms/views/models are easy if you use them for scafolding, but in real apps you have to do a lot of codding around to customize them.

eg. you can bind a form to a model, but you probably don't want to, or just print the forms (often you need your own look).
So, while on paper django looks good, in practice it can be frustrating.

Python is a great language, but OOP is not it's forte (at least not the kind of OOP you see in .net or java).

Just use something like web.py, on create your own framework. With python is very easy to do.
Commodore 64 fanciers celebrate as PC turns 25
I would like to share this about XEN and Deploying Rails.

Very Interesting.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/69623/RailsConf07-Notes-Xen-And-Th...
The appeal of business networking Web site LinkedIn is blooming
Email hijacking
A lot of sites seems to have users sign up using an email address and password and nothing else. The admirable goal is to minimize the friction in signing up.
But it seems like that can invite a pretty serious issue that I've been callling "email squatting".

The problem is that these sites don't verify that the person who signed up with a particular email address is, in fact, the legitimate user of that email address.

Consider someone signing up with my email address: foo@bar.com. Now I'm not going to be able to use that email address, because it is already taken. Worse, if messages to that account, such as invitations, the attacker can accept them, since they typically see the invitations on the site in addition to it being sent to the email address.

As the legit user, I might see the invites, but won't be able to log in at all. Worse things can happen: once the attacker signs up, they could make this email address secondary and add another, primary address so that they see all of the messages.

Here's a solution:

Rather than asking for an email address and password on the front page, have a "Try It" button and a box for the user to enter an email address. When they click on the box, the system sends email to that address with an "signup" link, signed with an encrypted hash of the email address.

When the (legit) user clicks on the link, they come back to a signup page, the system checks the encrypted hash and we're good to go.

I realize this adds another step, but the hijacking problem is real. For sites dealing with any sort of sensitive information, it needs to be dealt with.

Are there better solutions that have less friction?

Or am I just being overly paranoid?
"I majored in English Literature and minored in Communication Theory."

You call that college?

Get 37 A's in math and science and then we can talk.
Substitute "television" for "internet" and I agree with this argument. There are 3 big differences: choice, proactivity, and interactivity. Otherwise, I don't buy it.
Alternate headline: LinkedIn launches major PR effort to create appearance they remain relevant.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/09/linkedin-api-and-new-ho...

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_7681437

http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9831130-36.html

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3715506

http://venturebeat.com/2007/12/09/linkedin-launches-platform...
Do you have the .PDF?
Complaints I'm Seeing About Java
Lightning Bolts within Cells
Sorry! I've just found it.

http://www.slideshare.net/vishnu/xen-and-the-art-of-rails-de...
Google's Cloud Looms Large
Matthew 6:24 - You cannot serve both God and Money
How active is Hacker News?
Maybe you should do what you're supposed to do (be bored and unhappy) so it'll force you to examine the circumstances that led you to be in boring meetings frequently enough that you post something on the Internet asking about what to do about it.
Limit is definitely easier to solve in a standard ring game. Why would limit be more difficult to solve than no-limit heads up?
Here is my solution for boring meetings, charge money for them. It usually won't be money that gets funneled into your private pocket, it will be added to a team war-chest for fun-days, extra training and offsite activities.

The reason that so many useless meetings exist is that no one has to float the bill. The second some suit in a different department needs to justify the expenses of calling too many people to too many non-productive meetings they diminish drastically.
EpiSurveyor - free software for collecting (e.g., medical) data in 3rd world countries
1, 2, n - How Coding Is About Design Iteration
I was wondering that same exact thing. Thanks.
You should probably mention the tool you are using for this: RRDTool. It's the same tool I use to track the number of items in my email inbox (http://www.jgc.org/blog/2007/06/measuring-my-inbox-depth.htm...) which I publish on my web site.

I've used RRDTool many other places, and it's immensely useful: http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/
The internet is the first medium that doesn't intrinsically favor one narrative form over another. Blogs exist because it's possible to economically "publish" a paragraph. They abound, because thinking up one paragraph articles is easy. It's equally possible to publish a novel or a serial, or some new form. We really can't know yet what the long term literary impact of the internet will be.
Web server performance shoot out - simple pages
Tap while you are bored and keep count of how long each daydream lasts using your tapping!?! That sounds even more boring than the boring meeting! Doodling is waaay better!
If nothing else, the author demonstrated the ability to work hard. Demonstrating to yourself that you can work hard has a lot of value in and of itself, IMO.

Of course, there are other outlets for working hard, but for many Americans, high school and later college present the most obvious and most consistent opportunities to do so. In fact, the author may have even learned how to work hard in college if he didn't already have that ethic.
Or cap the amount of carbon production and allow companies to trade it. Taxes give governments more money when they produce more carbon, which isn't a great thing. We don't have a good way to use that tax money to mitigate the effects of carbon - so it's not effectively internalizing that externality.
Try for, winamp visualizations.
And this is different from a Weeble how, exactly? I'm going to guess it's of uniform density, unlike a Weeble, but the article completely misses that point. Maybe the author was never a child?
It depends even more. If I were looking for a Ruby developer, I'd hire a guy who could write an optimizing compiler for Javascript in C and had never used Ruby than someone who only knew Ruby; even if they knew Ruby pretty well.

If you are going to become a Ruby Language Lawyer, then you'll probably get the best compensation and find the most rewarding work at a limited number of companies; but in the process of learning a language well enough to be called a language lawyer it's almost impossible not to become proficient in other languages as well. I'd argue that if you don't know anything but Ruby, you're most likely not a Ruby expert.
About 1/3 of the worlds population would be happy with 3$ / day. In the US it's reasonable to live on rent + utilities + transportation + 10$/day. However, most tech people pass this so quickly it's not obvious.

Anyway, I am 27 and make twice what I did at my first post collage job and I still spend most of what I make. Back in collage a friend of mine went to school full time made ~10$ /hour and supported his wife and kid on that. I think he was happier then than I am now because he was going to make it to a better place. It's easy to assume you need have some life style to be happy but I think a reason for living is far more important than your income or your wealth.
There are reasonably good ways of spending that money though.

- Reducing taxes elsewhere: a carbon tax is likely to be somewhat regressive, since the poor are the least able to quickly go out and buy a Prius.

- Basic research such as alternate energy.

As far as internalization goes, it does have that effect if you are able to calculate what the costs of the externalities are and thus up the price to that level. That, of course, is the tricky part, but cap and trade also involves determining a level to cap at.
I agree in the sense that the internet conditions us to accept quick, bite-size blurbs of information. This has resulted in a society of instant gratification and petty distractions. Seldom do people have the patience or discipline anymore to read an enriching piece of literature that actually has substance or to embark on a fulfilling journey of mastering a certain craft. This behavioral byproduct of the internet is also similar to what happens when all a person absorbs is television programming and magazines.
The best use for U.S. carbon tax money might be to eliminate the payroll tax. Then companies could redirect their creative energies. The payroll tax motivates creative ways to hire fewer Americans. They could instead expend that creative energy on ways to burn less carbon.

It would certainly be a disruptive change, but I think a good public policy hacker could find ways to offset the regressiveness. What we lack is good political leadership.
Also fun, but 2D: Flash Portal.

http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/
Interesting, my comments about Rails, ERlyweb and WebObjects were deleted, and my title was re-written.
What angels look for in a company: Financials and exit strategy
"It doesn't have a hidden counterweight inside that helps it perform this trick"
Summary of Rails 2.0 Features
Surface as defined by a non-differentiable border, sure. Topological differences could be easy to quantify. Extra points for knots and non-orientable surfaces (e.g. a klein bottle).
Of course there were non-smoking establishments before the law. That there were few indicates how little a restaurant has to gain in making them.

The argument for non-smoking in restaurants has always been a safety at work issue for the waiting staff. That is completely ridiculous as there is a market solution: get another job.

Smoking bans are a perfect example of small people getting some bureaucratic power and testing the wall of their box to see how far they can reach. People aren't complaining, so they just push out more and more.
I have said it before, I will say it again: You can have my lightbulbs when I can have your cars, trucks, ships and airplanes.
This reminds me of a thread I read on nuclearphynance
http://nuclearphynance.com/Show%20Post.aspx?PostIDKey=12757

Wherein a slew of highly paid quantitative finance dudes argue about the optimal amount of money (to quit). I think most settled on about $10m/L5m.
This is a good test, and the results are quite interesting.

I'm surprised at just how much Apache + PHP beat out RoR. However, as the disclaimer in the post says, "it's not a real world test".

I wonder why connecting to a database wasn't included? It confused me initially because the acronym on the graph is "LAMP" - should it not be "LAP"? :)
I would think long and hard about this one. College just ain't the same if you go when you're 30. You've got your whole life to mind your career.
Here in Austria, there are no restaurants and no bars, with the exception of McDonalds, that ban smoking completely. As a consequence, my wife and I go out very rarely - less than we would if Austria, like Italy, had a smoking ban.

What smells funny (ha ha) in terms of market failure to me is that I know that there are plenty of people like ourselves who don't smoke, and prefer not to have to bear the costs of other people's smoking habit (beyond health, if you choose not to believe in that, simply having to wash everything to get the awful smell out). You would think that there might be one or two places that would cater to that segment of the market. But there are none.

Consider a different element: loud music. The market provides a wide range of places to go, from the silent to the dull-roar where you can't hear yourself think. Don't like loud music? Don't go to those bars, then - everything works out just fine with no regulations.

Smoking doesn't work that way, though - perhaps the business of non-smokers might not be enough to keep a few bars alive, or the pressure of smokers in a mixed group of smoker/non smoker friends would keep them from going there, so restaurants/bars are afraid to even try. With a blanket ban, though, everyone is on a level playing field, and the smokers just go outside.

It's sort of like helmet regulations in sports like hockey or cycling: some people wore helmets beforehand, but since they hinder you in certain conditions, they were the exception rather than the rule. By making everyone wear them, they're all safer, and those who care about taking reasonable measures to keep themselves safe aren't at a disadvantage compared to those who are willing to take that risk, and thus the difference is, as it should be, athletic ability.
Yeah, cause bureaucracies are so caring. I notice that I've been modded down... I guess anyone not goosestepping along will not be tolerated.
The ironic thing is, the entity that causes the most pollution (in every country) is that countries government... and the entity causing the most energy waste is generally the government as well.

It never ceases to amaze me how people are so willing to put guns and violence behind their political ideologies. This is probably because they don't realize that is what they are doing-- but every law is backed up by a guy holding a gun and pointing it at someone who breaks it.

ARe you willing to go to someone's house, and take his incandescent light bulbs and shoot him if he resists? You think that's Moral?

Cause that's what this law does, and it is no more moral if you advocate someone else doing it even if you are unwilling to do it yourself.
Why do so many people talk about "negative externalities" when they don't even understand basic economics? Its like some liberal ideological center picked up a phrase, told people some vague idea of what it meant, and then got people to advocate it as a justification for ideas whose economic underpinnings having nothing to do with what they think they do.

The bottom line is, your attempt to internalize externalities is proof that you don't know what you're talking about because externalities by definition cannot be internalized.

All this liberal economics is just like that last wave of liberal economics that resulted in 100 million deaths over the period from 1900-2000, only it isn't united under a common term like "socialism" or "communism" but it amounts to the same-- totalitarianism sold as being "good for you".
OH MY GOD! I am amazed at the level to which liberals talk about science while rejecting the very foundations of science. (Carbon is not bad. The payroll tax doesn't influence employers, it influences employees-- employees are the ones who pay the tax.)

What we lack is people who understand economics, or have any sense of history-- the "progressive" tax system is what is keeping people poor. A flat tax and no social security would have eliminated poverty in the US 50 years ago, and probably we'd have most of our manufacturing jobs still too...though environmentalist inspired regulation and rampant union violence might have been enough alone to drive it overseas.

The amazing thing to me is how much liberals talk about helping the poor (And conservatives talk about "freedom") while advocating policies that do the opposite, and attacking anyone who actually advocates what they claim to support....

I've long wondered if this was simply because these people have been so deluded that they thinkg up is down and left is right... or if they really actually have another agenda and these causes (poverty and freedom) are just excuses to advocate policies that they know make the problems worse.

The 19th century should have taught you all that socialism and communism will not decrease poverty and will ultimately result in the slaughter of millions of people... and yet you can't turn around without hearing some liberal talk about "global warming" and "externalities" without understanding the first bit of economics... and advocating totalitarian laws to bring about their "dictatorship of the proletariat".
The mistake was added by someone else in the foreword. The essay is genuine - I originally saw it in a vintage dead-tree collection.
That's been about my experience too. It's almost exactly what I got (stock-wise; my salary was about half that) when I joined a startup at age 19 as the 13th employee.
Don't go to boring meetings. If people complain, they'll have a reason -- something you might have missed. Make the meeting about that which you missed, and you're fine. If you can't change the meeting to accommodate, chances are the meeting is too big in scope. Refactor.
"small"? The world has been under assault by these "small" (read socialist) people for the last 108 years... they've managed to murder 100 million people at least in that time period.

they are not getting some buro-cratic power-- they have been exercising the scyth arm for over a century.

Nobody complained when the nazis took over germany or publicly under soviet rule, but eventually both of these tyrannies were overthrown.

This is not a reason to support tyranny!
I understand the economics just fine, thanks, and one of the big proponents of the carbon tax is republican economist Greg Mankiw (see Pigou Club link).

If I were to respond in kind, I would say that libertarianism seems to be a willful ignorance of the very concept of a market externality, as understood by mainstream economics. Certainly, reasonable people can agree to disagree on what specific things constitute externalities in which cases, how bad they are, and what measures, if any, should be taken to correct them - and indeed if those corrective measures are worse than the problem they cure.

However, denying the very existence of factors that are not taken into consideration by a free market seems to be letting your beliefs get the better of reason. And comparing any government intervention with communism is a bit beyond the pale, really.
Woa, I just had a year 2000 flashback!
No, you don't understand economics, and you concede this point when you use the phrase "mainstream economics"... this is a common tactic of socialists to try and cover the fact that they are substituting political ideology for economics.

Economics is a science. ITs not uncommon for those who will not make a scientific argument to instead knock down strawmen, as you just have.

Of course, you threw out enough buzzwords that those who don't look too close will believe you made a counter argument.
Totally agree. I averaged a 3.0 in college (with a lot of Cs and Fs mixed in with those As), and it hasn't hurt me yet. Meanwhile, it let me do lots of other things that have arguably helped more, like serve as the tech lead on the largest HP fanfic site on the web, or write a course evaluation website for my college that's still in use 3 years after I graduated, or learn a bunch of exotic programming languages or try out a couple sports I would never have thought I'd try, or meet friends (one of whom is now my startup cofounder).

The only thing I regret about my college experience is too much time spent reading UseNet. Everything else - staying up late with friends, trying new activities, learning programming languages - was well worth the drop in GPA that resulted.
Former 'No Nukes' Protester: Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Power
Because I worked there, and I saw first hand the way that company is run. I've worked for a wide variety of companies, including what is now HP and Microsoft, a number of startups and a number of medium sized companies. I'd rank Amazon as the worst company I've worked for, and even Microsoft was a bit better (there's on startup between the two in the rankings for the suckiest environments).

Amazon is a very employee hostile place- all advancement is due to politics. Unless you have a good manager (and there are a few, mostly engineer who have been there a very long time) you can't advance unless you play really vicious politics-- and I mean, sabotaging others work kind of vicious. The people they bring in as managers (because they claim engineers don't want to be managers) are people who have no management skill.

I may have had one of the worst- his only training was in "criminal justice" and he clearly thought he was a prison guard... he'd regularly chew out the whole team for failing to do things that he didn't even understand weren't our responsibility (or in once case something we had actually done, but some other manager had told him we hadn't and of course he knew absolutely nothing about software so he had no way of knowing whether we'd done it or not.)

Maybe microsoft is that bad now- it was heading in this direction when I worked there...but Amazon was the worst place I ever worked. (And I worked for an educational startup where all of management was gradeschool teachers who also didn't understand technology and treated us like grade schoolers... and this company had trouble making payroll... but being belittled is much better than being verbally abused in my book.)
And of course, no counter arguments.

Just modding down.

The cowardly way of those who know they cant' defend their position.
The bottom line is, what gives you the right to tell people how they have to run their restaurant? And to use violence to enforce it?

You quickly throw out the market, (and claim to understand economics? LOL!) but the reality is- if people preferred it, the restaurants were non-smoking.

Most people, however, don't feel the need to force others to comply with their whims, using violence. Unfortunately, those who do join the government.
Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia - New York Times
Because environmentalists have never cared one whit about science.

The 70s they were predicting eminant ice age, now they're predicting global warming, in another 20 years it will be back to ice age.

Its always been about political ideology and controlling people- bending them to their will- and never about science. Even in the 1970s nuclear power was known to be safe.

Hell, a coal plant spreads more radioactivity than a nuclear plant. (Cause coal contains radioactive substances naturally.)
Do you want to be Rich, or be the King?