skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Pharmaceutical companies already employ ridiculous markup on everything simply because they can. You could argue, they need to recoup R&D, and that's fine. And companies are entitled to profiting from their hard work, but come on. Charging $12,000 for a treatment that costs $500 to create?

Maybe instead of abolishing patents entirely, they should be time-release. I don't know how that would be calculated, but something that allowed companies to exploit their research for a certain period of time, at which point anybody is free to reverse engineer it and do it themselves. Somebody patents de-boning a turkey in 1990; almost 20 years later I am still unable to legally de-bone a turkey for profit! Ridiculous!
Well, actually know he's exactly the kind I suspected. I'm as nonplussed by his work as I am by Rorty. Nevertheless, I stand by my assertion. If I want to read about deconstruction I'll read someone who knows something about it like Derrida. This argument for things like a Water department is pretty lackluster at best.
Alain Durand from Comcast has been participating a lot in the IETF v6ops working group where the IPv6 transition is being argued about. If you want to understand or influence the transition, that's the place to be.
I think this is an extremely poor article, particularly as this largely seems like just a random selection of vague talking points while giving anything concrete. I'm slightly frustrated that people think that this sort of article is worthy of being upvoted when it has little more substance than "Apple! Yay!".

I think the real reasons developers, compared to all other users, are beginning to use Macs is down to 3 reasons:

* Unix tools, software and terminal. Unix, and Unix software, is the bread and butter for a lot of developers, and getting them to work on Windows is pain and even then is regarded as a second-class citizen. People have been crying out for a truly good Unix workstation for years, but Apple are the first ones to gain enough traction to matter and truly create a good out-of-the-box user experience for it.

* Universality. Mac OS X runs notoriously poorly under virtualization, so buying a Mac is the only simple choice if you wish to develop for all current platforms, something that is increasingly common, and run all the software available.

* Fashion, particularly in areas where programming has overlapped design such as web development. People follow each other and their trends, and Mac OS X and the Macbook Pro has become a fashion among a certain type of developer.
This is a fairly bold and well-timed move by Facebook.

Viewing the stream was the last "feature" that was controlled entirely by Facebook, and is one of the primary reasons people come back to visit facebook.com. With this move, Facebook moves away from being a website and towards being a pure infrastructure/platform play; they own the social graph and they are the platform for pushing information through it.

I have always thought that Twitter wouldn't stand a chance if Facebook moved in this direction. Twitter has surprised everyone recently with their growth, but their survival is now hinged primarily on their great publicity rather than any fundamental strategic position. A lot of people still perceive them as a primary force in asymmetric 1-to-many communication, but in fact Facebook is taking this territory with public profiles and pages. Most Facebook pages have at least as many followers as their Twitter counterparts, and these pages can now publish into the stream the same way Twitter can.

Now if only people would build useful stuff on the Facebook platform instead of a bunch of spammy crap.
A few paragraphs down from Eisenhower's warning about the "military-industrial complex", we get this warning about the "scientific-technological elite":

>"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

>Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

Also: I get tired of seeing every vaguely technology-oriented Obama article here. There are plenty of places on the web to discuss them. What's the limit on the number of tech advisors he can appoint?
MySpace has had an Open Activity Streams for awhile now. Facebook is just catching up on the one or two things they were behind on.
Both operating systems are comparable, each with their own pros and cons and neither OS has a killer feature nor a debilitating feature.

Just find what works for you.
Money is the most concrete way to quantify the level of commitment that's being discussed. Anything less would just be a bunch of hand-waving about science being super important and stuff.
Blah, they need to reword "Developers" with "Web Developers".

A systems or applications developer won't switch to OSX for those reasons at all (for other reasons maybe).
I like the Macbook Air except for the glare type display. And im not sure how well it supports linux.

Currently i think about buying one of the sony vgn-z notebooks. Any expriences with these?
Ask HN: Overcoming the GIL in Python
I've been working on a python app that I've been trying to multithread for efficiency. The Global Interpreter Lock is preventing me from using the built in threading module to increase speed.

I've done some searching and discovered the multiprocessing module (formerly processing) which has a similar API to threading except that it spawns multiple interpreter processes to overcome the GIL. I've also read that it is possible to write a C module that can release the GIL and then reacquire it, but I would like to avoid this if possible. I'm working on a simple physics engine for fun, and I think that writing it in C might take the fun right out of it.
The two I am most pleasantly surprised by are Chad Mirkin and Ahmed Zewail.
The primary difference is that Facebook's social network remains closed while Twitter's is open. Twitter's friend system is asymmetric while Facebook's is symmetric; I don't see how Facebook can really compete with Twitter except in friend-to-friend, reciprocal streams.
I'd say that hackers helped win WWII. Jamming radar, breaking codes, etc.
Video 2.0: Tiny Cameras Watching (Over) You
Depending on which field in Academia you're in, this could change.

Several years ago, I was the webmaster for the Hearing Research Center at Boston University. It's a collection of 20 or so labs, each run by a professor, with associated grad students, etc..

The first thing I noticed was that most of the researchers were universally and remarkably happy people. (I had come from a background in Physics, which had more angst.) Then I noticed a huge number of collaborations as I was compiling the professors online CVs, and a huge number of publications. Before a certain date, for the older professors, there were individual authorships, but not after. This was a tantalizing mystery.

The department hosted an annual party for hearing researchers worldwide, and I hung out with the diehards at the end of the night - the old timers - and asked them what the story was. It's fascinating.

Those who are department heads now were all in school together at MIT thirty years ago and they all had the same professor who sat them down and told them that research didn't have to be competitive and backbiting. While these people were grad students, they decided to take control of how science would be practiced in their discipline.

Hearing research doesn't get anything like the same kind of grant money that, for example, vision does. In order to advance the discipline the most efficient way, with limited funds, they COULDN'T afford to duplicate research. They need to share data, yet give researchers the freedom to use the data differently if they have different ideas.

So patiently, these people took over their discipline, and groomed their grad students into the culture where people are rewarded based on sharing and collaboration. Perhaps there's a little less thunder, but people are publishing very frequently and the discipline is advancing much more quickly than it would have otherwise. They took control and set up the reward system differently.

Did I mention that these scientists were some of the happiest people I've ever met?
Doesn't facebook add a twitter worth of users every week?
Actually, the pressure is pretty high for CS PhD students. It is a very competitive field. Nevertheless, in terms of "actually finding a job" the prospects are pretty good for CS PhDs ... I've never heard of any having problems. Honestly, I don't know any masters students having issues with this.
These articles are fascinating - does anyone know of a good book that goes into more depth?
IMO, The real reason "most" developers switched to mac has more to do with hosting websites on Linux/UNIX than anything else. A true UNIX command prompt is a powerful tool for dealing with large numbers of other UNIX computers and computer files.

SSH + vi and suddenly your not just using your system but any computer your connecting to. The classic windows advantage of all those legacy systems stopped being relevant when many developers went back to notepad to update whatever new language they happened to be using today.

PS: The article mentioned Terminal, but it forgot a lot of the other out of the box UNIX tools like SSH / diff.
Facebook can compete by removing the symmetry. They seem to be moving in that direction.
If it can run with less money then it can lower everyone's taxes.
how often are you commuting by bike to a location where the weather is significantly different from where you started?
I am in favor of entrepreneurs keeping control, because I have seen second rate VS's and others damage startups. Putting a group of doctors in control in a recipe for failure. But there are a couple of huge caveats: you must not let your emotional attachment get in the way of your judgement and you must be able to tell when you are in over your head. Advisors who know more than you do are a must.

OTOH if you need bags of money, you may not have any choice. If you are so lucky as to have competing investors, pick the most savvy group, not the one who takes the least equity.
I would agree that most Facebook users are more active nowadays after the stream redesign.

It's funny, because when the redesign went live, about 90% of my friends where bitching about how they 'hated' the new design. Now they're the most active people on my list.
I want glasses[1] with video-cameras unobtrusively embedded in the stems.

1. Such as these: http://www.glassesshop.com/images_p/GSSE4056/index.jpg
I also have an iBook G4, what are my choices to install Leopard for free? Torrents?

I want it for iPhone development so linux is not an option.
I think Twitter is to be blamed for this disease
Yes.

Join the Joel on Software community (http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz) would be my advice.

Don't count on donations is my other advice :-)

Selling consumer software: very tough, but can be done by one individual.

Selling to businesses: very specialized, much easier to make your first $100K, but you can't be a one-man shop.
With NoScript enabled, this happens:

ActionController::InvalidAuthenticityToken in IndexController#index
None of the "advantages" sounded so hot to me except the desktop effects, which I haven't bothered to enable in Ubuntu anyway. I use a Mac regularly, and the interface hasn't stopped irritating me. I hate the stoplight window controls, and I hate using Command instead of Control. I love Apple's hardware design, but the software feels... obtuse. And apathetic. Like it has a hard time paying attention to me and doesn't feel like being helpful anyway. (I bought my Mac for four reasons: to try iPhone development, to run Adobe Lightroom, because I love my iPhone, and because I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.)

I'm positively drooling for Apple to release a tablet PC, though. Gimme gimme gimme please.... The multitouch stuff on the iMacs looks extremely cool, and you just know Apple will nail the tablet.
I picked up a 13" Macbook (unibody) at the end of last year because I was looking to do some iPhone/iPod Touch development. I'd always wanted to give OS X a go because of the underlying system and I've become a big fan of the OS.

I'd have to say that the biggest thing holding me back from doing extensive development on the OS, though, is the lack of "Home" and "End" buttons (it's the small things, I guess). I know there's Command+Left/Right but it's just such a weird keystroke and if I want to select a line it's not End, Shift+Home. I have to press Command+Right, Shift+Command+Left and it just feels like a lot of unnecessary keystrokes.

I also don't like the fact there's no built-in solution for mouse acceleration. I want it turned off but from what I've read in my searches there's no way to do it without running a separate program to do it for you.
While they're at it they should introduce a batch-remove-friends button, too. http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/03/a-new-approach-to-facebook.h...
Patents do expire, that's the whole point. The government will protect your idea for you for a period of time, in exchange for making it public. After that time expires, others are free to copy the idea -- that's how generic drugs come to market.

You understate the costs of pharmacutical R&D. Most ideas fail, or do more harm than good. Of those that show some promise, there are extensive animal and then human clinical trials. More ideas wash out here. Laboratories cost money. Researchers cost money. Trials cost money. Defending class action lawsuits costs money.

Comparing the cost of the raw ingredients to the retail price ignores a whole bunch of stuff.
Zing!

I hate TV and see no reason for it to be around, but I think it's dubious they're singling out TV. They could just as well target video games, reading, just relaxing, or other things that aren't particularly productive. It's a little too easy for people these days to see downtime as valueless, I just hope it never gets to the point where people think you are lazy if you aren't working every waking moment of your life.
I find it detestable that the government can just spend 3 percent of the GDP at its fancy. Talk about a runaway system. We've turned our government into a group of thugs and given them free reign.
The funny thing is that the blogger (bobblehead?) wrote a reference to that Onion article and yet still made the blog post. Very odd!
Right now, I only sell my services as a freelancer, but I would love to sell my actual software. I found David Heinemeier Hansson's talk at Startup School 08 (http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-hans...) to be profound in its simplicity.
No mention of Turing and Bletchley park cracking the Enigma code?
San Francisco comes to mind.
You don't necessarily pay more taxes. If a tax break motivates you to do X, and as a result you generate enough additional taxable income to offset the tax break, then the treasury comes out ahead.
I'm thinking in terms of a middleman who can aggregate

* people (and maybe their ISPs) who will pay to avoid adverts; and
* publishers and ad networks which show paid advertising

Having to separately opt-out of seeing adverts on every ad-supported site is too much hassle and the financial overheads would be prohibitive. It needs to be aggregated.

The technical side could be implemented using ad blocking software (with block lists provided by the publishers), but the publishers would be fairly compensated.
You misread the article.

> the president said his goal can only be achieved through a combination of government spending and contributions from the private sector. The U.S. currently spends about 2.6 percent of GDP on research and development, according to the most recent National Science Board figures, placing it second overall among the G7 countries, just behind Japan.

When it says "the U.S. currently spends", the meaning is not, to my knowledge, "the U.S. government currently spends".
I'd like to know the weather in two, four and eight hours also. I can easily see what the weather will be like on my return ride, which is in my opinion, more important.

You can just look outside to see how it is now, but the return ride is always less certain.
Singling out TV is pretty easy because, first, it consumes a significant portion of the majority of American's lives and second, because there is a lot of reliable data measuring that time. There isn't anything that takes up that much time outside of work unless you count sleeping (and god damn what I would give to cut that out of my daily schedule)
I'm trying. I wrote AutoScreen (http://www.16software.com/autoscreen) about a year ago, and I'm getting 2-3 sales a month -- the majority of those sales seem to come from small businesses -- with $0 in advertising (can't afford it, to be honest). I've been kept fairly busy adding new features for my users, but it's time to focus on another app, because 2-3 sales/month is definitely not enough to survive on.

For me, the hard part is coming up with something "worth" taking the time and effort to go through with. I've had some ideas -- but I want to do something unique, that has a chance to really take off. But should I target the everyday user, or should I target businesses (who are less likely to pirate, from what I read)? Should I make something that has the chance to be wildly popular among all computer users, or that is targeted towards a niche audience?

The good thing about knowing how to program, though, is it's essentially all you need (besides a good idea) in order to make a living on your own.

Of course you need some other skills, such as marketing, but it seems to me, if you've got a program that does something that people think is useful enough to pay for, you're set.

Looking forward to what you guys have to say. For what it's worth, I also posted this topic on reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8f4dk/any_progr...) about a week ago.
Last time I tried to pull ImageMagik from MacPorts it tried to install X. Huh?
Not at all. I think a lot would rather concentrate on building stuff, than trying to get their wifi to work in linux, or managing the latest updates that have broken gcc for some reason.

For most, I think OS X is linux but without the maintenance.
On the other hand, you have to discount the results a bit for the inefficiencies of bureaucracy and democratic decision making.

For example, the billions spent on subsidizing research on the hydrogen power car undoubtedly diverted a lot of effort and commitment towards a technology that was never particularly viable. It was, however, a sexy technology to talk about on the campaign stump.
I make a living running Think (http://www.thinkcomputer.com) and have customers using Exponent, which is a web-based financial management (accounting + payroll + taxes + CRM) program, Whiteboard, our CMS, and Lampshade, our PHP framework.
I've been making a living from selling my shareware app EarthBrowser (http://earthbrowser.com) for over 10 years now. It isn't easy competing with Google Earth, but it's possible to do a one man shop if you work smart.
I have been interested in this issue for a long time, but haven't dug into it enough to be authoritative.

The GIL isn't going to be fixed until someone rewrites the interpreter, a task for a genius with time on his hands. I don't think managing the GIL in C will do what you want. If it were easy, someone would have done it. If I were you, I would go go with a package that implements a good message passing model a la Erlang. It would be a good experience. Alternatively, you could look at Jython or Iron Python which are built on top of vms with native thread support.
they are also a company that was convicted for monopoly abuse, that is currently being investigated for continued violations of antitrust law.

This is a stupid nomination.
No it's not.

With option one businesses choose where they intend to conduct research. With option two the government chooses what research should be funded. It becomes something that can be politicized. But thanks for pointing out the needed general increase in tax.

EDIT: Thank you for disagreeing with me, but I would like to learn why I am wrong. Would someone tell me why my observation is wrong?
Yep, all true. You may want to check out scipy. It provides a good base for numerical integration and other things you are going to need. It is written in C so perhaps you won't have to drop into C for performance reasons.
Bonfire: Twitter timelines/search and RSS/Atom feeds into Campfire rooms for teams.
Yeah maybe medicine shouldn't be "business". Maybe it should be something gasp provided by the government for the common good. ;)

For some reason we seem perfectly content spending billions on armies+tanks, but don't see the need to spend on medicine. Bizarre.
Yes, exactly. And yet people continued to use the unhelpful, oblique prefixes and suffixes they used for global symbols nonetheless.
The thing is, Aunt Tilly is likely to run apps like IE, Outlook, Office, and Firefox, all of which are run by teams that are professional enough to keep their code up to date. It's unlikely that these guys can't have "Windows 7 compatibility".

The horror stories will come from enterprise software, where companies are running Win3.1 binaries even to this day, and where developers are even lazier.

And there's no reason to strip out WinXP compatibility per se from Windows 7 - IMHO the OS needs to keep native back-compat for at least the last couple of generations - but anything older shouldn't be in the code base.
To be fair, all three major allies were essential:

1. The US kept Britain and Russia going with aid throughout the war, including food. Khrushchev's memoirs supposedly credited SPAM (the processed canned pork) with keeping the Soviet army alive in WWII.

2. Russia absorbed most of Germany's military might and destroyed it, at great cost to themselves. Their contribution was not that they suffered more than the others (though they did), but that they killed more Germans than the others (though by the time they turned around and invaded Germany,

3. Britain brought much of the Empire's forces to bear on the western front, kept the northern sea lanes open for American supply convoys, and halted German expansion on the Western front by denying them entry to Britain itself. It's quite remarkable--Russia defended its territory with costly, genocidal scorched earth policies and millions of deaths, while Britain was protected from the first German bootstep by the English Channel, radar, and the Royal Air Force.

Oh, I forgot to mention--Britain also broke Enigma.

Furthermore, Russia and Britain only gave salutary support in the Pacific War, for entirely understandable reasons.

It should also be noted that while all the allies engaged in some degree of war crimes, the Soviets were the worst offenders in that category as well. I am loath to show respect for Red Army pilots who strafed columns of evacuating German civilians, or Red Army soldiers who raped and murdered whatever Germans they could find. Likewise, many of the Soviets' own civilian losses were their own fault (through scorched earth policies).