skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is blatantly false, for reasons I'll explain below.

Also, you're conflating NPR (NPR, Inc.) with member stations. These
are different entities.

The topic is NPR.

The numbers that you cite are not numbers for NPR.

They are not even number for NPR member stations.

They are aggregate numbers for public broadcasting stations ... including those not affiliated with NPR.

Getting the truth out of NPR's reports can be tricky. They haven't filed an annual report in four years, and the financials are split up between NPR, Inc., the NPR foundation, the CPB, and various member stations. You have to read a LOT of documents to figure out some of this stuff.

Let's start with NPR's financial documents.

http://www.npr.org/about/statements/fy2008/fy08nprincreport.pdf

I note $2.5 million in membership dues (individual donations) out of $172 mill total. Thus, individual subscribers and pledges make up 1.45% of NPR's budget.

$68 million comes from station programming fees. What are these? These are fees that local affiliates pay to National Public Radio, Inc. Where do those dollars come from? A typical affiliate gets two thirds or more of its budget from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB is a shell corporation / funnel that connects federal dollars to NPR with a cut-out step. See the CPB financials here:

http://www.cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/budget/

The CPB gets $400 million per year from taxes, takes 10% off the top for operations, and funnels 90% of the money to local affiliates, which then funnel most of the money back to NPR.

The data that you cite about the sources of funding are not for typical NPR affiliate stations: first, it includes many stations that aren't NPR stations, then it excludes many stations that are NPR stations (they mention this in a footnote).

Where else does NPR get its revenue? Grants, contributions, and sponsorships total $52 mill. Let's be generous and say that half of that comes from private sources (in fact, most of these grants are coming from other government funded organizations).

A big contributions to NPR's top line is from the NPR Foundation, which gave 15 mill in 2008. ...but look back at the 2005 numbers, and it was just 1.7 mill. Why the huge (1,000 %) increase in money from the NPR foundation? Read the NPR Foundation's reports and the Consolidated reports

http://www.npr.org/about/statements/fy2008/fy08nprfoundationreport.pdf

http://www.npr.org/about/statements/fy2008/fy08consolidatedreport.pdf

and you can see that they've been investing in highly leveraged hedge funds and interest rate swap contracts these past few years. To put it mildly, this doesn't look like sustainable money.

Putting aside the non-sustainable NPR Foundation money, the federal government makes up $90 mill of NPR's after-removing-the-Foundation revenues of $152 mill.

So, where does NPR get its money?

* federal dollars: 60%

* individual contributions: 1.5%

* advertising, misc: 38.5%
Sftp-Only User Accounts
I agree with the idea that web apps shouldn't "need" help, or a FAQ, or explanation of any kind.

But even the easiest to use apps, such as Google, have both basic help as well as extensive documentation of advanced features.

And I think documentation ranges from good tooltips, to help links in the right places, to a full-blown API wiki. It just depends on the site.

Either way, trying to answer the questions that Help materials tend to answer can be very enlightening.
You should make the group about "Hacker News", not YC.
"No one would design anything like our system if they were doing it from scratch."

I'd like to this so, but the sheer number of people who defend the current system suggests otherwise.
Yes, it was presented as a fact. Prefixing it with, "this sounds cool but I have no idea if it is true," would have made it honest but reduce its directness.

Also, "postscript", something which comes after the main statement. That it changes the basis of the statement itself, could be called a linguistic hack.
Ask HN: How to sync up the experience for large number of users of a web app?
What's a reliable method for making sure that if 1,000 people are all using my web app to participate in the same thing that what they're seeing is always within a second or two of being totally in sync?

I'm looking for kind of a generic solution, but in the simplest scenario: Over the course of a minute I want to show 3 different pictures and when each one changes it should update on every user's screen at the same time regardless of when they loaded the page.
Even someone with average natural talent in everything, can become above average by picking a less competitive niche and learning to excel. For example, there are a lot of average athletes who are good at ultimate Frisbee.

Also, it's not just about being above average or below average, it's also about getting that dopamine hit for performing a task successfully. An average athlete can have fun playing a game as long as he is competitive. An average math student can enjoy math as long as the material is not too difficult and not too boring.
I remember reading about the JS port of Processing last year. It's amazing to see what can be accomplished with the HTML5 canvas. Hopefully, the adoption of HTML5 is faster than most other standards, otherwise, it's almost easier to download a plugin.
I dropped out of school in 8th grade. Shortly after that I got my first modem. My education came mostly from learning what I needed to learn to be able to participate in adult discussions and debates that I found online.

Ideally I would have preferred a (very) small amount of structure, guidance and discipline. But I have no regrets. The actual other option was California public school.
That's true, as Feynman put it, you are never absolutely sure of anything in the physical world, everything is reasonably correct by some probability and it's this kind of thinking that is hard to achieve for a normal person, but absolutely essential for a scientist.

That's why I am an agnostic, I am not entirely sure of the existence of God, but I am reasonably sure that he/she doesn't exist!
I know this area fairly well and the only thing that I see in the numbers that looks surprising (or rather, wrong) is that the disk cache obviously wasn't being flushed after writes.
what do you recommend for understanding assembly?
A New Chance for Online Gambling in the U.S. 
PARIS — Is online gambling coming in from the cold?

When the U.S. Congress cracked down on Internet betting in 2006, the big, publicly traded European companies that had dominated the business closed up shop in the United States. Growth in the booming industry shifted away from these companies, once the darlings of the stock market, to private operators in offshore locations like Antigua and the Isle of Man.

But now, executives of some of the European companies whisper excitedly that they may soon get a second chance in the United States. Meanwhile, a number of European countries that have long maintained barriers are moving, under pressure from regulators, to legalize, and tax, online gambling.

“There’s still a lot of gambling going on, where there’s no revenue coming in to the governments,” said Gavin Kelleher, an analyst at the research firm H2 Gambling Capital in Ireland. “They realize they could use the revenue.”
Calculator is spoken for, thanks guys.
Yep. I've always hated it when companies did the ole version =* 1.5 trick just to make it sound "better", but in Firefox's case, with a brand new JavaScript engine, built in HTML 5 <video> tag support, GeoLocation, and a few other big new features, I guess it does seem like a lot more than just a .1 increment.
First, you need each instance of your running web app to be synchronized to the same clock, so they can make events occur at the same time.

Second, it would probably be best to upload your images from your server to your 1,000 clients before they need to be displayed. This can be done asynchronously, so you server doesn't struggle to get it all done within a few seconds.

Third, your web app clients could handshake they received the images, ... or you could just allow enough time to pass so you are confident they all have the images, ... and then they could all flip their displays at a pre-arranged time.

Voila. Synchronized image display.
This book is based on Prof. Zomorodian's PhD thesis, which is available at:

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~afra/thesis/twosidedl.pdf
Andrew Lloyd Webber: The last thing this country needs is a pirate raid on the wealthy
This is really well done... some relationships in my life have certainly been affected by, well you get it.
When celebrity programmers attack: Guido on tail calls
A lot of the people who defend the current system are making money from the current system, or are paid (usually via campaign contributions) by people who are making money from the current system.

When asked to assign the national public school system a letter grade, 62% of Americans gave a C or lower. Only 22% gave an A or B. They were more positive about the schools their own children attend, however. (2008, http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kpollpdf.htm)
One Step Closer To A Holodeck: Eon's ICube
Lift Tables
Pentalift designs, engineers, and manufactures material handling equipment, loading dock equipment and scissor lift tables, both custom and standard.
"What is wrong with people having convictions and spending money to find facts that support these convictions?"

That's rationalization instead of rationality. Rationality dictates discovering the facts BEFORE you reach the conclusions.
Summer camp
Ontario Summer Camp, Hidden Bay Leadership Camp, is an overnight leadership camp that offers summer programs for kids 7 to 15 years old. Our summer camp programs were created to recognize and develop campers full potential by helping kids become people of good character and who can make a difference.
I think almost everyone wants the system changed, but they just disagree with how to do it. A lot of people make money from our current system and will not support anything that threatens their income. Even so, I still think it might be possible to design a reform that was close to being a Pareto improvement. But nobody involved in politics has the ability to design it, or to push it through.
"What's that old adage about stats again?"

I think "he uses statistics as a drunk man uses a lightpost, for support rather than illumination" is apropos here.
"First, you need each instance of your running web app to be synchronized to the same clock, so they can make events occur at the same time."

Or you could just preload the delta between your clock and their clock onto the client and trigger a javascript event so the client does all the work.
The fact that our broadband level is lower than other countries' doesn't mean that it is "bad." Here's an alternate theory that explains the difference: Other countries have governments that like spending excess amount of money on things. One of those things is internet access. (This isn't the only reason -- we could use a more competitive marketplace.)

There does exist a level of broadband at which point it's not worth increasing the level of broadband any more. Does anybody make the argument that we are below that level?

What are we going to do with more broadband? Watch movies at higher resolution? What a life-changing experience that will be!

There are definitely more interesting ways in which higher amounts of broadband could change the way we use the Internet, but right now the limiting factor is imagination and distribution channels, not bandwidth.
It says "Survey has been deleted" on the homepage, even though I didn't do anything.
It's be great if you could. I just talked to Yokum this past Friday and he conceded that these docs aren't out there: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/how-to-legally-incorporate-your...
At least in computer science, most of the major conferences are double-blind reviewed. This means that it's more difficult to figure out whose paper one is reviewing.

Theoretically, yes. In practice, anonymizing work is hard to do -- if you're prominent enough in a field to be asked to review papers, you probably have a good idea who is doing what work, and you'll probably be able to recognize authors' individual writing styles.

I've been asked to review "anonymized" papers in the past, but with the exception of one which wasn't really in my field (I wrote back to tell the editor that I didn't think I was qualified to review the paper, and he found other referees) I've always been pretty sure who the authors were.
That was great and well done. You got to love the "what the...?" moment it gives when it does something so unexpected by your brain and the "waaa... nice" at the end. It doesn't say much about the product, something about Honda, but still, it's a great ad imho.

Also, to make my comment more useful; check out this youtube video : http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii
http://www.uh.edu/engines/nycandwires.jpg
Getting my in-laws online, at last
If you can program well in C, everything else seems like both a blessing and a compromise.

While K&R is great, my copy is far less used than Pointers on C by Ken Reek. If you can find a cheap copy I highly recommend it. If you are working through K&R make sure to do each of the sample problems. The text is just the support to let you figure out how to do them.
First Android netbook to cost about $250
Seems more like a "could" than a "to" if an editor wants to change the headline.
Looks like their website is already down and parked. Amazon only has 4 left, better hurry.

Thats a shame, I was planning on by my nephew a robotic toy this summer and Pleo was the only one that he probably wouldn't have broken within a month. I was hoping he'd treat it more like a pet then he would with a humanoid robot.
If all of these co-founders were vesting over years this person could be booted without walking away with an unfair amount of equity.

http://www.payne.org/index.php/Startup_Equity_For_Employees#...
It looks like a Flash overlay. If you scroll down during the video you can keep right clicking until you get html.
Fortune 500 2009 Listed
Importance of article directories
Facebook To Let Others Play In Its Stream
I used a book called "Programming From the Ground Up," which is not comprehensive but it teaches you the basics, which is really all you need for this purpose. It's online somewhere.
>> No one would design anything like our system if they were doing it from scratch.

Why not? If I implemented a system, it would probably involve certain things that I wanted students of different age groups to learn (a curriculum). There would probably be people who were in charge of teaching them (teachers). Along the way, we'd measure how well they learned, or how we taught them (tests).

Why is this so preposterous?
If you've got the time, I highly recommend taking CS107 at Stanford (for free): http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=2d712634-2b....

I became incredibly comfortable with C -- memory management, handling pointers, having a very clear picture of how types are represented in memory -- after taking that course. The lecturer (Jerry Cain) is fantastic as well.

The course changed this year so I don't have any thoughts on the current CS107 offering if you plan on taking it through their online course offerings for pay. The lectures, syllabus, and materials on Stanford Engineering Everywhere (OpenCourseWare at Stanford) are all from the course I took two years ago.
Good for you PieSquared. May I ask how many hours you spend in school and what country you are in? One of the things that I have noticed is that in many countries school hours are getting longer and longer, so there is less time available to get kids to learn independently and grow in their own direction. No matter how good the schooling you receive is, or what its philosophy, it will never cater to you 100% as an individual.

(Upthread: I have read Jean Piaget so I am hoping that ahoyhere will allow me to post)
I agree. So much so that back when I first saw it last year, I sought out Steven Hazel (codepad.org's creator), and successfully convinced him to join my startup as co-founder at Sauce Labs. Codepad's tech is uber-cool. :-)
Computer program to take on 'Jeopardy'
Several things:

1. Why should natural language be codified?

2. Who gets to codify it? That person or group will have tremendous power to shape the way the language's speakers think.

3. How will this standardized language adapt to changing circumstances? There are going to be things which are impossible to say, or which at the very least take too many words to say.

4. If the language is codified shouldn't it be simpler than English? Isn't English's grammar awfully complicated?
That looks amazing, but I'm curious how well it would work with two users. I know it says that it's supported, but one would assume that it would have to make some compromises, since it wouldn't be able to adapt to the positions and orientations of two people as well as it could one.
Incredibly poor writing quality. I'm surprised this isn't some high school kid's blog.
GOP Fought Pandemic Preparations in Stimulus Bill
Sun is cooling down and what that means for us
A typical affiliate gets two thirds or more of its budget from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Can you source this statement? My local affiliate, for example, is 63% funded by individual contributions.

Not that I disagree with the overall point - organisations that are publically funded (NPR, BBC, CBC, etc) are more likely to put their IP out there for everybody and to do non-sexy reporting. I see this as an entirely good thing and possibly one of the best uses that my tax money is put to.
Screencast: A CSS Framework that is actually a framework.
John Resig Demos Deep Leap Game at JSConf 2009
Billboard space in our universe is unlimited (in the same sense as ad space on the Internet is unlimited) as well. Not all locations are equal, and hence there will be competition for the best locations.
Recession is killing a lot of cool but unnecessary innovations.
"I think almost everyone wants the system changed"

But the changes that the majority want are really just ways of defending the current system, like adding more AP classes or improving standardized test scores.
amazon booklist I used to teach myself

http://www.amazon.com/Master-C-Programming/lm/9PUKX2J9RNUO
Vietnam Travel Guide Online 24/7 - vietravel247.com - If Ha Long Bay could talk…
This is one outline, but you need to be aware of edge cases because networks partition and clocks drift. You should make sure that you gracefully handle (or at the minimum aware of) the following cases:

1. Some of your clients lose network connectivity, so when they see an image they respond, but their network drops out.

2. Some clients have incredible clock skew. This can happen due to any number of very improbable events like time zone changes or faulty motherboards, but it does happen.

Distributed synchronization really depends on what kind of experience you are trying to provide.

For example, if you are showing slides and you want everyone to be "synchronized" you could have all clients poll for the next image, load it in the background, and then notify you that they have it. Once all clients have notified you they have the image you would then push out a command to the clients to display this next image.

Your synchronization needs may be totally different if you are trying to provide a different experience. There are some rather fundamental limits on distributed coordination. For a starting point, see "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System" by Leslie Lamport available at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/t...
Israel, Iran Conflict -"Fake Fruit" From China
Hour long video behind the submitted link. Some bite-sized info about Compass for those who don't want to watch the whole thing:

With Compass, you write your styles in Sass which is compiled to CSS. This helps with code reuse and general cleanliness, not unlike the tool demo'd in the Reddit keynote at PyCon.

You can use Compass to create CSS styles on top of a framework like BluePrint or YUI, which is why Compass calls itself a meta-framework.

Website: http://compass-style.org/

More Info: http://wiki.github.com/chriseppstein/compass
You are right. I also think the Apollo astronauts probably did use heavy boots for that reason. But you're missing the point of the article.
Ah, I see. I missed that.
I appreciated in particular the fact that they really did it like the ad is showing it, by parking a lot of cars in the desert and turning their lights on and off, as opposed, for example, to the recent ad by Samsung with the sheep in the hills (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iCXvJ-jJzI) that clearly had at least some parts done artificially.

Nowadays, the whole point of that kind of things is to do it for real. Doing it through CGI is just easier and defeats the purpose. It actually reminds me of the Bravia ad from 4-5 years ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOrV-5vh1A&fmt=22) where Sony had tens of thousands of colored balls bouncing in a San Francisco street.

The collaboration with Vimeo with the Flash overlay is also a nice touch.
Do you just leave your five year old on her own, since her life is her own?

Well, unschooling doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. Homeschoolers argue with each other over just these sort of questions.

My opinion, unschooling does not mean "no teaching" and it certainly does not mean "no parental involvement". Most of the unschoolers we know have younger kids, and they have lots of parental involvement. Mom (usually it is Mom) does activities with the kids and comes up with fun ideas and projects to do. They help the kids pursue what they're interested in and introduce new topics the kids might get excited about.

(We are not unschoolers, but we're fairly unschool-y. We have lessons, but we take a good deal of trouble to make lessons fun and interesting. Mostly we succeed.)
Wow, talk about drinking massive hater-ade against Google engineers. I think this is little more than a poorly reasoned diatribe / ad-hominem attack against the perceived Googleplex.

Come on now -- Google has smart engineers who get design. Yes, it's probably a damn hard place to get great design done, but so is Microsoft and every large organization. To attribute the exodus of designers to an aspergian mass of engineers is insulting and does nothing to bring a together a dialogue between engineers and designers.

In my opinion, it's probably the size of the organization and NOT any Google-brainedness. Design is a difficult and massively opinionated thing to undertake. The more cooks in the kitchen, the worse the soup tastes. Everybody knows that.
i've always thought a large compressed liquid 'sack' pressed hard up against some bearings could be controlled via motors etc so that when you walk the sack rotates instead of you moving - imagine a mouse wheel big enough to stand on...
arrgghh the graphics hurt my brain... memo to self: gotta stop reading tufte
Unrelated to the ad, but I must say I am so thrilled with Honda for taking hybrid out of the luxury trim / status category and bringing it down to something that you can do without the huge upfront cost.

I got to see one of these Insight's in person at a recent Honda event, and I knew immediately 'this is my next car'.

For any fans of Honda (or just the curious), I highly recommend all of Honda's videos here: http://dreams.honda.com
IQ is not the same as rationality

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238...

http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog...

nor is it the same thing as wisdom, as James R. Flynn himself says.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Beyond-Flynn-Effect/...
Mike Arauz: Spectrum of Online Friendship