skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting that the old using-double-quotes-is-slower thing is actually disproven. Actually it's slightly confusing as it should be slower - double-quoted strings are parsed to find inline variables - yet single-quoted strings are a tiny bit slower.

Any reasoning on this?
CouchDB is fantastic, I think it's still too early to see the impact it's going to have down the road... Getting past the RDBMS way of thinking about data really creates opportunity for new applications... I just don't understand the emphasis on offline syncing. Seems like 1999 all over again.
Mathematical trick wiki Terrence Tao blogged about is now live - Tricki
Utilities are public goods, and people pay proportional to the cost they impose on the system. And the economics work out well, not because there is a conscious effort to impose markets on people, but instead because incentives are aligned.
Perhaps, but that's not the question - the question is why the sudden drop-off beyond a certain point? It's not about what is pushing objects out, it's about what is (apparently) pushing them back in. There is a large spike in density centred around 44 - 46 AU which abruptly trails off by 50, the sharpness of the edge implying something holding them in/clearing the zone/having done that in the past. An undiscovered massive object is as reasonable an explanation as any other at this point. Works for Saturn's rings, after all.

This is what I mean by thinking about it backwards. take a bunch of M&M's scatter them on you're desk then push all the ones in the center out, you get a big high density belt and a steep drop off due to that high density.

And I don't think Pluto is large enough to do much "pushing" - the whole reason it was downgraded to sub-planet status was because it had failed to clear its orbit. Neptune, sure, but even that doesn't have much mojo beyond about 48AU.

Pluto got de-ranked for a whole suite of things beyond it's local orbit, the largest reason being nobody wanted to admit that if Pluto counts so does about 100 other things and thats inelegant.

personal bitterness aside it doesn't need to be very big for a resonant orbit to push things around, which Neptune helps set up (disclaimer this is largely a recollection of Mike's work on the Belt from last time I heard him lecture about it)

As Brown himself said, "Could Lykawka's planet be out there and have been missed? Easily."

Okay fair enough, but possibly there and missed isn't anywhere close to necessary to explain physical phenomena
Have you tried Quicksilver? It's a much more efficient way to open folders then using term + open.
Kuiper Belt stuff, yes...ish

Dark Matter, eh we had a lot less direct evidence of it but MOND still made no sense.

The rest? not particularly.
Oh, now I understand. Methods such as reachability analysis require reading lots of memory locations; but for tarsnap, "memory locations" are blocks of data stored remotely, so this gets expensive (and slow) very quickly. With reference counting, the counts can be stored locally and no extraneous data needs to bs transferred to or from the server.
Can't you increase your withholding?
Crowdsourcing & Mass Customization are Changing Ecommerce
there's quite a bit of background missing from this...was she always like this? if not, do you know what caused her to become this way?
Do you refund 100% of the initial fee or do you deduce some processing charges ?

At the moment I refund 100% of any unspent amount. In light of payment processing costs, I might change this to deduct a small processing fee (say, $0.30 + 3%) in the future; but so far the number of people asking for refunds has been sufficiently small that it isn't really necessary.
I'm a little disappointed by the creator of this site. While the idea certainly seems to be beneficial, I don't think it approaches the full potential by neglecting other languages.

While PHP is, effectively, an awful language whose audience rather needs this tool, this should have been made available on a more global scale.
I couldn't find what version of PHP he was testing anywhere on the page. However, the second test ("Using the =&-ref-operator") makes me think he isn't testing PHP 5. This functionality was deprecated and, if error reporting is turned up, will cause an E_STRICT error to be thrown.
It's good to get press, but if your product is in "private beta" like tsumobi then maybe it is time to remove the cloak. Or else how can the free press be effective?
US Looks to Hackers to Protect Cyber Networks
When you're self-employed, there is no withholding. You simply write a check out each year (or each quarter, if you make enough) for your taxes.

This has the effect of making you very aware of just how much money is going to you and how much money is going to the government. With withholding, people never see the money they're losing -- hard to miss what you've never had.

In general, though, increasing withholding is exactly what I do when I work as a contract employee. But I rarely do that any more. At some point, your rate just doesn't fit into a W-2 kind of pay scale.

I'm in an interesting spot because my income can be zero, nadda, nil, or it can be upper-middle class. It's all up to me and the market. Most of the tax laws, however, are written with joe sixpack the wage earner in mind. So I end up making a lot one year, owing a bunch of taxes, and then when the bill comes I'm making zero. Then I have to choose between paying taxes and feeding the family. Or the flip-side, you borrow money when you're making zero and then you start up a high-rate job and have to spend the first few months paying back loans instead of getting caught up on back taxes.

But like I said, listening to others I'm sure there must be something wrong with me. Maybe I should find a more "normal" job where I could have deductions taken out instead of being so independent entrepreneurial,and self-employed.
Your argument is basically that universal service is "nice".

Yes, I know you wouldn't phrase it that way, but it is what it boils down to.

The counterargument is the simple fact that as the system is working and structured now, we can't afford it.

An awful lot of the problem with the way we've been responding to this economic crisis is the way that people have been acting as if we can just wish for nice things that we can't afford, and somehow it'll all just work out. Car companies may be losing money by the billions, but it sure would be nice if they made a profit, so let's wish a few more billion at them to lose, rather than making the hard decisions. It sure would be nice if the postal system could make money without making the hard decisions, so let's wish a few more billion at them.

At some point, you have to make the hard decisions. People spit at the word "profit" because of the various (mostly stupid) negative connotations given to it, but remember that no matter how socialist or even communist you may be, SOMETHING has to make a profit! Whether it's a profit in money or a profit in credits or a profit in sweet, sweet love, something has to generate more value than the effort you put into it, or you have no money or credits or love to subsidize your other desires with.

Now, if you make the right hard decisions, we can probably keep universal service. The article has several constructive suggestions. But some hard decisions will have to be made. (And for all the exciting rhetoric from the Obama administration about making hard decisions, I can't hardly name one actually hard decision he's made, rather than wishing more taxpayer money at things that make no money.) Individually, maybe we could afford a postal service that loses billions, but against an economy where everything is having trouble, we probably need to go to a model where the post office at least breaks even... and if that means losing something "nice", well, so be it.
forklift...

I've been an OSX devotee for a long time, and I feel your pain. I use forklift because it's relatively lightweight on the memory and it does what I need to do efficiently. I was thinking of going with PathFinder, but I decided against it because it was a bit too memory heavy for me. PathFinder has more features, but then again, I'm not looking for a command-line replacement...just a more convenient way of navigating through folders, copying things over, finding things...
He's a consultant, so not really. He's liable for quarterly "estimated tax payments", which should be 1/4 of the expected amount you owe to the government for the year. But it's best to pay the minimum required by law, and bank the interest on the rest.

Also, he's wrong saying that the tax rate applies to the whole income. This isn't that hard people.

EVERYBODY pays the same tax rate on the first chunk of money. Then, a higher tax rate on the second chunk. Then a higher rate on the third chunk, and so on. The last chunk-cutoff is at $250k. So you only pay the higher taxes on anything OVER that amount. So you make $255k per year, you're only getting a tax hike on the last $5k, and a tax cut on the rest (Assuming all of Obama's tax rhetoric on lowering taxes for everybody else is true, haven't looked close personally).

That's not to say that that self employed people (running a business w/ employees, or just a contractor) don't get screwed. There is another tax to cover social security. If you work for an employer, it's split half and half between the employee and the employer. But, since you are your own employer in the case of contracting work, you owe both halves. This is what's called the "Self Employment Tax". Although remember that economics says that the business will just respond to this tax by lowering your salary the same amount, making you pay the whole tax anyway....

Anyway, the tax system really isn't that complicated. There are lots of little details, but the basics of it are fairly well thought through, and are reasonably fair.
I think the intention is to compare methods within the language itself, rather than to other languages.
Thanks. It is amazing how much misinformation there is about this issue.
I do not believe the wisdom of the board is correct. I believe at the discontinuity Bob earns more. This seems in line with both the bracket system of progressive taxation and my experience with preparing taxes.

But if somebody has a real, live explanation from an accountant, I'd love to see that link. Happy to be wrong.

EDIT: Here's the link I was looking for. I stand corrected. http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2008/12/04/how-do-federal-inco...
Bay Area Outage: Police still trying to find the perp responsible, Verizon sues 100 John Does
... You should be putting tax money aside with each check you get, really easy. Open up one of the online savings accounts, and throw money at it. Right now I withhold about 30% of each check to cover all the various taxes I'll owe. Then I pay the minimum for quarterly taxes (to avoid the fine). Then, it's easy to write the check for your chunk of taxes at the end of the year, since you've saved it up.

You should have the discipline to not go raiding your tax bucket.... it's not your money.
You should have the discipline to not go raiding your tax bucket.... it's not your money

See that's where I have a problem. If I sell you an apple, and you give me five bucks, for some reason I have this feeling that the five bucks really belongs to me.

And yes, I understand the theory of how this should work, after all, I am not an idiot. I'm just explaining to you how it actually works. In reality, when you've got $40K in the bank for taxes and the gig is up and there's no money coming in, you're choosing between taxes and living for a year. Maybe you can sleep better at night paying taxes, but I've got to take care of my family first.
It's been in private beta for years at this point:-/
Why parents swear by ineffective treatments for autism
I think Path Finder is probably the only usable alternative, but some of your supposed "missing features" aren't actually missing. Please correct me if I misread you...

> Proper collapsible/expandable tree view
View -> as List: Check it out, tree view.

> Ability to see and create symlinks
Finder has this. Symlinks look like their originals but with a little arrow overlay. Drag and hold Command+Option to create a symlink.

> See file access, create, modify times
Again, Finder already has this (mostly). While in list view, go to View -> Show View Options and check Date Modified and Date Created.

> General single window operation - I shouldn't ever need to open another window to move or copy files
You don't need to. Command+C and Command+V work just fine with files.
Finder and Terminal.
For mounting remote SSH / FTP, I use MacFusion (http://www.macfusionapp.org/), which uses Google's MacFUSE.
In the case of "Counting Loops", PHP is slower because it actually calls the count() function for each iteration.

Conclusion? Use foreach loops instead, which are the fastes. :)
ASP.NET MVC Roundup links
the tax system really isn't that complicated

You can't be serious.

Let's not even get into double-taxation, not being able to deduct health insurance, all of the crazy tax credits and tax deductions out there.

The income tax code in this country is so complex that there is a multi-billion dollar industry simply explaining it to people and helping them do their taxes. It's so complex that the IRS itself routinely gives out bad advice on it's own hotline -- the agents simply don't understand the very law they're supposed to enforce.

Then there's all the deductions and such that nobody really understands because there is no legal precedent, or because the cases conflict. Good luck with those.

But -- most of that is self-employed stuff. Stuff that's not Joe Sixpack wage earner. I'll grant you that much. However -- this is a board started for people talking about startups, not people working at the local Wal-Mart.
Not all of us have paired our androids with our google.com accounts, and some folks simply refused their gift phone.

I wish we had radishes in my offices. Too bad they're not available anymore.
"pretty much every Mobile Device in the world"? I don't think that's true.
There's a difference between being physically strong, having a backbone as you put it, and being a badboy. There are extremely muscular men who are very nice people, and there's also a huge middle ground (into which most men fall) between being a boorish badboy and a spineless pansy.

If a woman has a preference for muscular men, or skinny hipsters, or even fat men, that's fine. We all have our physical preferences. And the fact that women want to date men with enough spine to have meaningful character is a good thing. However, women who are attracted to loud, boorish, and stupid badboys are utter garbage.

The attraction to badboys is not aesthetic; many badboys are out of shape and ugly. I think the appeal of the badboy is that it provides release from the pressure that is put on women to "marry up". It's not looked down upon for a man to marry a woman less ambitious and intelligent than he is, as long as she's good on her own merits (e.g. if he's a Wall Street quant with a 155 IQ, and she's in a lifestyle career and has a 130 IQ, that's fine, because she's still a smart woman who can hold her own in intelligent conversation). Women, however, are expected to marry men with at least the same level of earning potential and intelligence, because of a lingering concern with gender roles and the expectation that the man will be equal or dominant. This obviously places a lot of pressure on high-power women. The appeal of the badboy is that, although he's virtually never intelligent or ambitious, he's dominant on account of his sheer arrogance and narcissism, but at the same time worthless enough that he can be flippantly discarded. This enables the woman to enter a relationship where she takes a submissive role, but one that has an "off switch"; she can leave without pain, since it's unlikely that she'll form an emotional attachment to such a useless and defective man.

[*Edited for clarity @ 12:26]
Here's how the system works for US Federal income tax:

The tax structure is divided into brackets. As of now (2009), the brackets are 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33%, and 35%. Each bracket has a cap, except for the top one; the caps range from $8,000 for the 10% bracket up to $358,000 for the 33% bracket (for single taxpayers, married taxpayers have different caps). Any income you earn under the cap is taxed at that rate. Any income you earn over the cap spills over into the next bracket, and is taxed at the next rate.

As an example, suppose that last year, you made $100,000, you're single, and you take the standard deduction. The current standard deduction is $5,000, so that reduces your taxable income to $95,000. The first $8,000 dollars that you earn is under the 10% cap, and so it's taxed at a rate of 10%. Since you earned more than that, you spill over into the other brackets; the next $24,000 you earn is taxed at 15%, the next $46,000 after that spills over into the third bracket and is taxed at 25%, and the final $16,000 is taxed at 28%. All together, your taxes are:

$8,000 * 0.10 + $24,000 * 0.15 + $46,000 * 0.25 + $16,000 * 0.28 = $20,380

(The actual figure is $20,578, but I rounded.) Hence, even though the tax rate on the last dollar you earn is 28%, you only pay 20.4% of your total income in taxes.

What Obama wants to do is rearrange the brackets so that, if you earn any income above $250,000, the income that spills over into the top brackets will be taxed at a 3% higher rate. Suppose you made $300,000 last year. $50,000 spills over into the $250,000 bracket, and so you pay 3% of extra tax on $50,000, or $1,500. Which, if you make $300,000 a year, is roughly a day's pay.
Admins would print out the google calendar for the room and tape it up, to be helpful. It's not like the schedule was kept on paper, just printed on it.
This is Aneesh Chopra's bio page from his current post at the state of Virginia:
http://www.technology.virginia.gov/OfficeInfo/chopraBio.cfm
Python Code for the new CRC ML Book -"Machine Learning: An Algorithmic Perspective"
I've seen results of studies wherein some people in the same culture couldn't agree to the mood. So if there is anything to this, it's probably just two axes - sad/happy, and slow/exciting. Maybe a tension meter as well.
Yet Another Data Mining Learning Resource Portal
This is completely wrong, because women who like alpha males have those preferences because they've been taught that sex is degrading, humiliating, and painful, and are therefore attracted to men who are likely to humiliate and damage them. Therefore, the attraction is because of these men being assholes.
Here's where I stopped reading:

[..] some 20 percent of direct-mail advertising volume is comprised of credit card, mortgage and other financial offers. So yes, the USPS has contributed in a subtle yet very real way to our burst economic bubble.

Ludicrous. If that's the level of the author's insight, why bother reading the rest?
IE 6 Update
I assume people are voting up the headline, not the article, since that must be the most incomprehensible piece of text I've read in quite a while.

How about a link to the proper source?
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/904overview
The Atom Publishing Protocol is a failure
I think there are a lot of men who have the same complex. There are a lot of men who are attracted to vapid and bitchy women-- the popular bubbly/slutty girl. They have a similar mindset: sex is an embarrassing, dissatisfying, and stupid activity in their worldview, and they seek out the sorts of women who are likely to confirm their nightmarish vision.
Obviously Einstein was wrong: http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/innovative_techno...
Hardly a new phenomenon, even in Web 2.0. del.icio.us, to take one example, operated lean like this for years. Think plastic lawn chairs:

http://www.petefreitag.com/images/blog/delicious_office.jpg
True, unless the format is inherently numerical; e.g. if you care about significant digits (something like "%.4f") or padding (something like "%4d"), there's no way to do it without an actual number.
Not what you asking, but fyi command-shift-G does this in Finder (even has tab complete)

This also works in Open/Save dialogs, if you just start typing a "/".
No reason why the machine running the browser can't be a part of "the cloud." (It may be an intermittently connected bandwidth-poor outskirt of it, but a part just the same.)
Consider joining Carrotmob or some other "semi-hippie" environmental group.
Your odds might improve - or at least you're helping to save the world with your talent.
pine is the best and has been so forever. Supports ldap, ssl, imap and nntp and much more. http://www.washington.edu/pine/
Significant new inventions in computing since 1980 (Question from Alan Kay)
a nice one, because it doesn't even suggest any particular alternatives when an update would suffice
I have been on OS X for almost a year now, and the Finder windows are still bugging me. One feature that I really miss is the ability to "cut" a file then "paste" it into another directory. In order to move a file from one directory with the GUI Finder you have to have both directories open in a window and drag/drop between them. Please tell me I'm wrong.
While well-intentioned, this phishing-like technique seems at the very least a disingenuous method of getting people to switch. I think there are other ie-update js floating around that get the point across without having to masquerade.
I had the same feeling. I work on computers that are infested with spyware from silly things like this. Not to suggest that this is a bad thing, but it's misleading, and might lead users to learn a bad habit.
> Don't fall into the trap that some men do and think "ooh, such-and-such a magazine says salsa classes will get me laid"

You might go just to meet people or just because you've always wanted to learn how to dance.

Salsa dancing is a meritocracy. Women want to dance with men who can lead well to the music. Why wouldn't they?

To be honest, if you have the hacker mindset, the danger of taking on Salsa dancing, is it will become a pursuit and a hobby. You might get addicted. I've been for over 2 years. You might go to your first class and flail but then you will see real dancers dance and be sucked in (I want to do that).

The hacker mindset of 'how can I figure this out/what is the hack to dancing' might hook you. Yes, there are tricks to become a better dancer faster (number one - start asking women to dance when the song is more than half-over as a beginner - so you don't run out of moves). The whole idea of going from canned set routines to dancing to the music is a bit of difficult hack that I'm still working on (but making progress). The hack for that I think is understand the structure of the song - (real-time Fourier analysis of a set of eight measures of 8-beats each..with your feet)

It is much harder for guys to learn Salsa dancing because they have to lead (see Salsa hell link below). The look of a woman with the most bored look in her eye because you don't know what you're doing while the music is on is something you will experience many times. Can't simulate social dancing. Classes are good/bad because the woman knows the pattern exactly (simulates being a good lead w/o being one)

At some point, if you get addicted, it will stop being about meeting people and joining a community of people who love music and dancing. A community where you can escape the real world 8 beats at a time. As addictions go, I think it is a pretty good one to have. As the "Magic of Time" article below illustrates, if you stick with it and continue dancing/practicing/going to classes, you will become competent (many guys will quit after several classes or two months but in two years' time, just by continuing trial and error, you start getting better by default).

If you choose to take on Salsa, good luck - it's not about you, it's about her, you, and the music.

"The Unlikely Salsero - Magic of Time: Last One Standing"

http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/2007/08/magic-of-time-last-on...

"Addicted2Salsa - What is salsa hell for guys"
http://addicted2salsa.com/2007/08/12/the-famous-salsa-hell-d...