skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"If God was always there, then why can't reality have always been there?"

Not to defend the argument you are responding to, but if by "reality" you mean the universe, the Big Bang says that the universe did have a beginning. In which case it makes sense to suppose that something without a beginning is responsible for the thing with a beginning (the universe).

I believe Stephen Hawking acknowledges this argument, and talked about whether or not the universe does have a "beginning" in a Brief History of Time, leading into a discussion of a bowl shaped space-time or something, at which point he lost me. :)
Well the way you use memory in a game is non deterministic, so "OS having time to free memory" is not a good enough answer. Although you're totally right that the IPhone wasn't designed as a console, so this process is probably good enough for most apps.

Even more interresting than the post in itself (wich is very interresting) is the hack proposed by fishermen21 in the comments - http://gamesfromwithin.com/?p=428#comment-1904 - , wich consist roughly of triggering the low memory handling process at the start of the game while reading a video. Nice workaround if you ask me.

Also , maybe someone around here knows, or my question is stupid, but why isn't a virtual memory mechanism implemented into the iphone OS ?
Top executives remain immune to job-losses
If Last.fm had the rights to let you play that track, you could play it using the big "Play" button in the top right corner. Here's a song that is playable:
http://www.last.fm/music/Mastodon/_/Iron+Tusk

But it's up to the rights-holder to decide whether to license the music to Last.fm. It looks like this band has only a few playable tracks:
http://www.last.fm/music/Mastodon/+charts?rangetype=week&...
I think that is the conventional use of the term "esquire" in the United States, but I can't recall the last time when I saw a lawyer use that title. Most lawyers like best the title "attorney at law," which is the title for the regulated occupation they enjoy once they have passed a state bar examination.
Ocean carbon: A dent in the iron hypothesis
Actually I suspect the real answer is: Because it's not as much fun.

S3stat pays my rent, and it took a weekend to build. It's dead boring, but there's a market for it so people pay money.

Blogabond is still fun to play with 4 years in, was technically hard when I built it, and thousands of people use it and love it. When I tried putting ads on it, it brought in maybe two bucks a day.

So yeah, boring stuff makes you money, even if it's not that difficult.
An Aeron. They aren't cheap, but for something that you sit in 10+ hours/day, you want something that's good for your back.

Exercise, stretching, rowing, etc..
For some unknown reason, our company Websense (crap) filter blocks the site as "Questionable or Illegal"...
For similar "pulling" reasons, make sure your feet reach the ground (or a footrest) - you don't want them dangling in the air.
I used to sit for more than 12 hours continuously. I also used to be the default "mover" for my friends.

i have had back pain for last 5 years and never knew it. Twice a year, I would have lower back pain and I would take rest for couple of days and pain seemed to vanish. Last year, I joined the gymn to do some weight reduction focussing more on cardio, less on weights. At some point(i think i picked more weight than I could munch) my lower back gave off(not literally). There was no pain. Couple of days later, I felt some pain in my left calf, which I passed as musle pain. Then the intensity of pain increased and my butt and thigh started to ache. Hey but no back pain!!

So off I went to meet a doctor-to ellaborate my story- I love US doctors-I explain my emergency and all they had to say is "oh wait, if you have an emergency, you'd better go to the emergency to this hospital i am affliated with, hmmm but I think you'd better take an x-ray first"; I say "doctor- i have no broken bones.no" doctor"i understand, but if i don't go thru procedure, the insurance won't pay me!!!!"
So I bore the pain for a week and took my blood-test/x-ray! and meet the doctor. Obviously nothing to see there. So now he says "Hmmm, why don't we don't I refer you to a specialist- would you prefer a neurosurgeon or a pain specialist" I say "You're the doctor? no?" AND he refers me to the neurosurgeon.

3 weeks have passed- Still I have no back pain-but to put in words, you take a needle and poke it the part where your butt meets the spine. poked? now remove it and run it down the rear thigh, calf and stop near the ankle and then run it along the outer part of the feet and stop at your little finger on the foot - all the while applying pressure. When you reach there, poke once more - just for fun. This is a bit of what I was experiencing.

I could go on and on - but everyone here is busy- I had to go thru the loops of the neurosurgeon too - this time on 1 week on pain killers and another on testing my muscles(i forget the medical term used) and finall after 2 months - an MRI - something that could have been done the first week. MRI showed that I had two ruptured discs on my lower back. I was "threatened" by the doctors for an operation to which I said "f@k you" in a more subtle way.

In the end, accupuncture helped ease the pain. I also tried the Indian style - Ayurveda - something that revealed the spiritual part of life to me.

The funny thing at the end of all this is not posture that caused pain to me in the first case. It was constipation. Once my bowel movements were (made) normal along with medicated oil massages and few other things (include enema of oils)

The treatment/healing made me consider my revaluation of "east" vs "west" in many ways and varied thoughts about modern medicine "industry" considering the threats of operation vs what doctors perceive vs doctors as businessmen etc.

Oh! one more thing - Swimming helps!
I can jog for a few minutes beside the sea, a privilege for me now!
No kidding! I used to have frequent back pain, with aches that wouldn't go away even after an age of stretching.

Six years ago I started on the RCAF's old 5BX program (a quick Google search will lead you to the booklet that describes it -- dead simple) and, in exchange for 11 minutes of exercise a day on an open floor, had the body I've always wanted within a year.

I've since moved on to weights and other gym-like stuff and have not had back pain in years.

It's so stupidly obvious I'm kicking myself for it now: If you have decent muscle to support all those bones and tendons up your back, they won't be straining themselves to the point of pain while supporting your body.
Can you make vim use pcre?
Permission from the property owner isn't enough; you need a permit to post advertisements (except in certain circumstances, IIRC). It is possible that the artists checked for permits before declaring the posters illegal.

There are some people who actively work to get illegal billboards removed:
http://illegalbillboards.org/
http://illegalsigns.ca/
I'd agree that there can be no successful argument for or against an unverifiable opinion, consensus-based or not (taking your first point a bit further).

But my claim is that a consensus of scientists is an authority on matters of fact of the natural world, specifically. In the same way that a consensus of programmers would constitute an authority on programming. So that it's fair for Dawkins, who views the (non)?existence of god as a fact of the natural world, to appeal to scientists as an authority.
Well, out of fairness, The Part-Time Parliament is a story about a fake Greek society, replete with "Greek"-style reinterpreted names for researchers Lamport wanted to name check. Extended metaphor is not the standard academic approach. Not to mention, the math behind the paper is kind of beyond the grasp of most on the first few readings.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/l...
Most of these temporary plywood walls, when they initially go up, are covered in stenciled signs saying "post no bills."

Week or two later, and they're covered in these cheap poster ads.
Well the way you use memory in a game is non deterministic, so "OS having time to free memory" is not a good enough answer.

Once the memory is made available to the foremost application, it will not be reclaimed by the operating system; As a game author you do not need to attempt to introduce determinism across all allocations, but instead ensure that initial allocations are not so rapid as to outpace the low-memory handling.

Also , maybe someone around here knows, or my question is stupid, but why isn't a virtual memory mechanism implemented into the iphone OS?

The OS does have a VM, it simply does not have swap space allocated to support paging to disk (flash). Paging would introduce a considerably less enjoyable user experience than forcing applications to account for the available RAM, and significantly decrease flash lifetime.
Oh well. They lose.
Or if the "flag" button made posts' gravity higher so that they fell to the bottom sooner.
3 reasons why Sun `failed'
I think he meant "...they AREN'T driven by..."
Email Security Tips | TechJaws: Internet Security and SEO
I always assumed they were avoiding the non-trivial impact on lifespan of the internal flash.
If the owners of the temporary plywood walls recieved any money, I would.

But, I don't live in a city. If warfangle is right then I guess not.
From my look in the Vim sources, it would be tons of work to truly make it use pcre internally.

But I think it wouldn't be hard to do a plugin that translates a pcre into a Vim regex, allowing you to search or replace using pcres.

My code though is not integrated with Vim, it takes a free floating regex and converts it. I used it to convert all the regexes in Vim syntax files and build a syntax highlighter. It was a silly project, just for fun.
Internet Will Die in 2010
The OS does have a VM, it simply does not have swap space allocated to support paging to disk (flash). Paging would introduce a considerably less enjoyable user experience than forcing applications to account for the available RAM.

Just curious, can swap space be enabled on a jailbroken iphone?
Oh, in theory you're absolutely right. And in the long run, CMSs with long, obtuse, and volatile URLs will (one hopes) fade into obscurity. Practice is just lagging at the moment, giving the more stable shorteners the edge.
There are several categories of application that are useful, even essential but that are very difficult to monetise.

Basic utilities like ls, or jpeg which people expect to come with the platform are difficult to charge for. And then there is grey market software it may be that non-commercial distribution is not subject to the same degree of opposition that a commercial distributor would face.
Seems they're not quite done nailing legs to C++. I suppose it will run faster, but "easily understandable by anyone with half a dozen brains" is my take.

[Confession: I once caused the Bell Labs 'cfront' tape to be ordered, and loaded into unsuspecting Vaxen innocently running BSD Unix, at an otherwise reputable school. I allege, in my defense, that I mostly used it only as "a better C" (back then, C did not have function prototypes); and that, at the time, no other grad students were noticeably (further) deranged by the availability of C++.]
I know this is blasphemy around some parts of the internet, but windows 2000/xp can actually be a decent OS if used correctly.

don't worry, he is a unix geek as well...
http://leapsecond.com/pages/unix/
You should listen to some atonal music. It may sound wrong but it's because of our culture (western music is based on scales, atonal music is not).
A tool I find useful enough to warrant purchasing and running in a VM or Wine is RegexBuddy. It is great for debugging / optimizing regexes and supports several different language flavors. Still waiting for Vim and PHP flavors though. :)
It allows you to generate code snippits in several languages that use the regex you constructed, and will assist you in performing cross-language translations.
As another comment suggests, there are many muscles acting across the pelvis and trunk that might be contributing. A physical therapist will either correctly identify what specific areas you should focus on, or (more likely) make sure that you work them all.

I've had several acute lumbar disc incidents leading to up to 6 months of sustained sciatica. By the end of that time, my hamstrings were indeed extremely tight, from inactivity and sitting.
EBay CEO: $2B Valuation for Skype Is "Low"
I believe he meant to say "they are not". The quarterly profit incentive pushes companies to push products out to early or create unnecessary versions.
I didn't use the right expression.
I wanted to say that with science, there's an objective way to assess the validity of a method.
Don't get sued for libel in the UK ...
The British Chiropractic Association are promoting Chiropractic as treatment for children with (potentially serious) ailments such as asthma and frequent ear infections.

Simon Singh criticised this in a Guardian "comment" piece. In particular, he criticised the BCA for doing this without appropriate clinical evidence.

Quoting the original article as quoted on WikiPedia (and cross-checked for accuracy elsewhere):

"You might think that modern chiropractors restrict
themselves to treating back problems, but in fact
they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The
fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything.
And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas
above their station. The British Chiropractic
Association claims that their members can help treat
children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems,
frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying,
even though there is not a jot of evidence. This
organisation is the respectable face of the
chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes
bogus treatments."

He is now being sued for libel, and the British High Court today in a preliminary hearing has ruled that Singh must prove that the BCA have been deliberately misleading.

You can read more about this by Googling:

http://www.google.co.uk/q=BCA+Simon+Singh+libel

Jack Of Kent's blog is a great place to get informed and accessible commentary.

This is an assault on what science is supposed to be about - reproducable evidence - and I urge you to read at least a little about it.

And whatever you do, don't get sued for libel in the UK.
Is it bi-directional? Is it on the vim.org website somewhere?
I find Vim's escape heavy syntax cumbersome and I frequently wish I could write a quick Perl syntax regex and convert it to Vim.

Of course, Vim is one of the few regex engines to support variable width negative look-behinds, so I guess that counts for something. :)
Duke Nukem Forever was the glue that held us together
Added to get clickable links:

http://www.google.co.uk/q=BCA+Simon+Singh+libel

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/08/chiropractors-try-to...

http://counterknowledge.com/2009/01/simon-singh-discovers-th...
Yes, I agree it is cool for the Dad, and fun for the kids, but, umm, do you think these kids really learned general relativity? They'd have to be real brainiacs, considering their young age. Perhaps later in their education, they may be able to look back on their practical experience tagging along with Dad on his experiment and it may make more sense.

I do agree that the kids may learn. ... not about general relativity in particular, but about doing experiments and the notion that ideas can be "tested" to see if they are really true or false.
Interesting, to circumvent the VFAT patent, they're just disabling the creation of files with long names, which is all the patent apparently covers. I wonder if there's actually a way to avoid the patent without limiting functionality. Unfortunately, I have no idea how different your implementation needs to be to be safe from the patent, though.
CA Free Textbook Initiative
I have 3 squashed discs in my lower back from a skateboarding injury. I've tried everything for back pain. Before I share what works for me, I'll say that if you don't have a structural injury you probably just have very weak "core" muscles and the best thing you can do is get into a general state of good fitness and then add in some core strengthening exercises.

After doing tons of PT, and trying everything from yoga to pilates to accupuncture to cyclobenzeprine, I figured out three main exercises that strengthen the muscles in the lower back:

- "superman": lay on your stomach on the floor. raise your left arm and right leg up at the same time. hold for a count of five. repeat on other side. do this 10 times for each side.

- "planks": this is like a pushup but you're on your elbows and instead of doing a pushup, you just hold in that position. It sounds easy but is very hard if you don't have strong abs. try to work up to 3-5 sets of 60 seconds at a time.

- "bird dog": like the superman but you're on your knees and
hands, doggy style. raise left leg and right arm at the same time, hold for count of 5. alternate. do 10.

Those three things, and being generally in shape have helped my back more than anything else I've tried. You can find videos of them on youtube if you google those exercise names with "core fitness" or similar search strings added in.

Other lifestyle changes are good, too. Don't sit down in a pile for 8 hours at a time. Get up and move around, even if you're just getting out of your chair at least once an hour. Change your position. Sit on an exercise ball for a while, lie down on a couch with a laptop for a while, work standing up for a while. Go for a walk at least an hour a day.

I've found that pilates is much better for back care than yoga. many of the yoga moves are not good for your back if you have slipped discs. in particular, "downward dog" which is the staple move of most yogas is not good if you actually have a back injury like mine. Pilates arose out of rehab so most of the moves are safer for your back. I mention these activities because one of the side effects of back problems (or sometimes the cause of back problems) is very tight hamstrings. You'll need to do some sort of stretching to get the hamstrings back in order and I've found this easier to do in a structured, class context.

I'll be semi controversial and say that you want to have strong abs, but you DON'T want to do situps. do planks instead. Situps strengthen your abs while pulling your back into the same position that makes it hurt. planks strengthen your abs but you're also extended and working all your stabilization muscles at the same time.
Mark Guzdial's Amazon Blog: Being surprised by media computation Permalink
> If you look at truly world-changing, creative "big ideas" ... Microsoft ... Google Search ... GMail ... Linux

I don't consider any of these things "big ideas." Major enterprises, yes, but not ideas. Do you consider the Egyptian Pyramids an "idea"? With the exception of Google's search algorithm (a work originally intended as mathematical, I might add) there is not a single whiff of originality in any of them.

If you want to understand what I mean by ideas, think of, say, "Green's Theorem." I do not yearn to work on "world-changing products." I am simply looking for a path to actual intellectual freedom.

I understand that my chances are cosmically slim, but it bothers me that most people are entirely unwilling to even acknowledge that the problem exists. It is almost like some psychological defense mechanism is at work. Nobody seems willing to admit that they are a servant - and a Porsche-driving and McMansion-occupying servant is still a servant, in that his time is not his own to dispose of and his livelihood is at the mercy of others.
I have had a chronic pain in my upper back right above my right shoulder blade, below my neck, and a little to the right of my spinal cord (the area is about two square inches in size). I got this injury from (surprise surprise) a marathon coding session (40 hours straight) sitting in an uncomfortable chair without taking enough breaks, and it has been plaguing me for about six years now. It used to be a very sharp shooting pain, but now the area is somewhat numb and mostly gives me sharp pains if I do certain awkward motions (like turning my head too rapidly), lifting heavy objects using that particular part of my back, or coding for long stretches of time.

I have tried just about everything from traditional back exercises to acupuncture to cure this, and up until recently, nothing really worked. I finally went to some doctor in India who gave me a different type of exercise that made a lot of sense. Normally, chiropractors will tell you to do things like rotate your head or stretch your neck by looking up and down for 10 seconds at a time - basically minor motions that put minimal stress on your back in the hopes that it will strengthen the back. The doctor in India said my problem was not that my upper back muscles had grown weak from RSI, but that my particular injury had caused some muscles to start pressing down on a nerve there, which is why I have such a local pain and why that area has started going numb. So, exercises putting more strain on that area were in fact worse for me.

To get to the point, the "exercise" works as follows:
1) Stand up straight and straighten up your neck.
2) Gently press on your forehead with your two hands such that the force is pointing behind you. While doing so, press forward with your head against your two hands so that your neck stays straight (very important that the neck stays straight the entire time).
3) Do this for 30 seconds (I started off with 10 seconds).
4) Repeat steps 1-3, but instead of pressing on your forehead, I press on the right side of your head, the left side of your head, and then the back of your head.
5) Repeat steps 1-4 three times, and then do the whole thing 3-5 times a day.

This has helped tremendously in getting feeling back and reducing pain. Apparently, this part of your back is usually under some minor stress from holding up your head (and this strain is increased when you hunch). So, after my muscles started squeezing down on my nerve in whatever awkward way, this minor stress that is otherwise normal was pressing down on my nerve all the time, causing it to hurt. This exercise will, five times a day, take the pressure off my back and into my hands and let the nerve have some time to slowly get back into place.

Also, I have started using a standing desk for at least some time a day and it has done wonders to keep me from hunching while working (which in turn has also made my back feel much better).
Kim Kardashian Joins FriendFeed, Befriends 35,000 Users, Gets No Love Back
Only Vim -> Perl is fully fleshed out right now. Doing it the other way would be fairly easy though because so much would be reused. Also, with the Vim regexes I had to worry about magicness and so on, the Perl stuff would parse easier.

It's not in Vim.org. I had the code floating around with an MIT license, but it's offline right now. I thought about building a page where you could do the translation (I figured Perl -> Vim is what people would want more) or just use a simple GET request from other code.

Maybe I should do the Perl -> Vim bit and make it available.
The Illiquidity Premium
I understood what he meant...I was saying that not only are they not immune, it's basically a symbiotic relationship.
I'd also like to see a list of the diets and living habits of people in these countries. How is their work/life balance?

When I was in France (granted it was 1995), I saw that a lot of people smoked, which could explain how they stay thin despite a lot of fatty foods.

When I was in Tokyo last year, some people smoked, but their diet is rich in vegetables, fish, and rice.