skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Down-mod me if you want, but this kind of thing excites me! If there is magic in the world, then this is the kind I would expect to find in the future and I find it gratifying that we might understand it someday. :)
Much more promising to me than simulating larger regions of the brain is the ability to trace the execution of this region from the brain in detail and try to come up with a clue at how intelligence works.

Evolution may be elegant itself, but it's not known for producing elegant systems. If either a human scientist or an AI is going to have any hope of designing efficient intelligent systems, we'll want something easier to work with than neurons.
Why would shareholders suddenly jump ship if MS came up with a price for Windows that kept them on netbooks? Wouldn't shareholders be more scared of the prospect of seeing netbooks switch away from Windows en masse? And why would setting OEM netbook pricing to a specific value imply a loss on non-netbook pcs? It's not like they'd be dumb enough to set price $y without a contract forbidding the manufacturer from dropping it on anything other than a netbook.
Strangest ad for a database you will ever see
An ad torn from a magazine for a database called Kaleidoscope.
They have an object tag with base64 encoded images.
There's no need to run everything server side. But some potential advantages:

-No opportunity for software piracy

-Automatically "ported" to every platform, if we're really doing a remote desktop type experience.

-Software vendors can sell subscriptions for pre-installed software which is accessible via a "one-click" strategy.

If anyone wants to work on this as a startup, please let me know. mollison@cs.unc.edu.
I found the app as seen in the video to be rather innocuous. Not something I'd buy, but not any more alarming than a good Family Guy episode or a "kick the baby" moment in South Park either.

"Surprised on the one hand it was approved, but also surprising it was then pulled. It'd be better to have specific rules and stick to them, rather than react to media hysteria."

This is what puts me off about the App Store. Not knowing where the bar for approval is and the fact that they can just change their mind if something gets enough attention.
* But in many cases it would affect the social experience (if you cut res life/student activities people), the ability of some students to attend (if you cut financial aid people), and so forth.*

Probably the best way to handle this would be to make student life an optional service. Basically you pay student fees or else you don't get to join the Korean Social Club or visit the $NAME Center for Women.

I expect most students would choose the cheaper, bare-bones college experience (if given the choice).

Most of these services exist for the benefit of employees, not for the students.
The only reason you would need the physical original SIM card is to get the numbers you need to make the SIM clone. (IIRC)

I think that the phone companies have all the keys you need. Of course they don't just give them out to anyone who asks.
It is a 13x13 array with 5 chopped off to make space. That goes down to 164, but there are three special purpose processors added back in to get up to 167.

If you can open a PowerPoint presentation you can read about the chip at http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/vcl/pubs/2008.06.symp.vlsi/vlsi_s...

Also worth noting that although they do an 802.11a receiver in 20-30 cores, they use two big chunks of special purpose silicon for a Viterbi decoder and an FFT. I'd be curious to know how many more cores it takes without the special purpose hardware, if it is even possible.
It looks like they do it by replacing the image tags in the DOM with an object tag pointing to a "data:" uri containing the Base64-encoded image data. Here's two pieces of relevant code, first where they fire off the listeners for the DOM objects, and second where they replace the DOM objects:

http://github.com/digg/stream/blob/66dcce320c73b109cd5836e44...

http://github.com/digg/stream/blob/23a411eb0cc00048bbb090889...
If I was worried about harsh comments, I wouldn't have started a thread, on the internet, looking for feedback. Anyway...

You bring up some interesting features—a few of which I have planned for future releases. I can't do it all in a 1.0 release, though. Someone with a "strong professional background" should be well aware that getting to a 1.0 is the toughest part of the battle.

I obviously plan to add far more functionality going forward, and you can rest assured that I have some amazing stuff up my sleeves.

Whether my customers perceive the application as a "Hello World" audio program (which I strongly disagree with, by the way) is a whole other story.

I don't think they care what's under the hood as long as it meets their needs, and does it better than anything else, and with ease. Many of the customers I've shown Capo to have never even known that time-pitch correction was possible, for instance. I can't fathom a user looking at my software and claiming, "Hey, I can code that in a weekend."

However, looking at any of the other solutions, I'm sure users would be intimidated. I want to bring this mature technology to a user base that isn't really interested in opening up a myriad of plugins and digging through complex UI.

No, these users want to be playing a song in iTunes, realize they should try and learn the song, and drag the song onto the Capo dock icon and start learning right away. That "simple" feature alone cost me about a month of off-and-on experimentation and hacking.

And, I was nice enough to share the solution to that problem on my blog for all to see, so that folks like you can make your "Hello World" solutions that much more quickly.

However, once you get to Capo's 1.0 state, I can assure you that you'll be far behind, eating my dust...
Help modify an image for the cover of a physics book
A physics professor wants to distorte/mutilate this clock face image in a really cool way, for the cover of a book. He is soliciting help from CS students at my school, so I figured I'd share it on here.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Zytglogge_clockface_detail.jpg

He's offering to pay $50/hr for the winning submission, but that time includes working with him to make some adjustments if he wants them.

But presumably, you'd get your modified image on the cover of a physics book, which is better than the money.

P.S. The cover is due this week, which is why the prof is desperately seeking student help.

Addendum:

For the record, I did not ask the professor if I could seek submissions from Hacker News, but I would presume it doesn't matter where they come from.

Also, this is not an explicit promise than anybody on here will get paid anything; it's just relying on trust.

If people could just post links to their submissions in the comments, that would be ideal.
The demo is pretty unfair. If you want to package lots of the same image, you just use it and let cache control do its job. If you want to package lots of different images, you should use a big sprite (again, server-side packaging without any js). If you want to make image loading look slow, do what they did in the demo.
thanks, tree style tabs is clearly the way the internet is supposed to be browsed (non linearity is the original innovation of hypertext)
no other details besides "distort/mutilate"?
Craig Larman: Blog on Interesting things
A Cyber-Attack on an American City
the url changed http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/04/tail-recursion-elimi...
the basic protestant outlook is that your (personal) salvation is predetermined

Totally OT, but I wanted to point out that predestination is most closely associated with Calvinism, which only occupies a subset of Protestantism. The Arminian school of theology is also part of Protestantism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Calvinist-Arminian_d...
I guess it meant this one:

http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/04/tail-recursion-elimi...
The only other detail is that it's supposed to look like the clock is actually distorted in real life.
You bastards killed my webhost's MySql instance :-)
I would have thought that Googling "chromatic perl" is easier than throwing more ad hominem ("coward", "shell", "trickery", "[sock] puppet") implications around. Shame on you; your linked posts had much more substance to them (though of course, recommending Python or Ruby over Perl seems disingenuous after praising Perl for getting lexical scoping and first-class functions correct).
i agree in many terms. One of the largest bank in the us, for instance, builds office buildings in the north and south of the city, just to provide office space and a shorter way to work to their employees. Taking this honorable efforts into account - it might make sense to provide them with HOME OFFICE equipment instead?!
There are a bunch of images that can get repeated across pages for a web site that are completely vital to cache. Think rounded corner images or background images or icons.
They can do it dynamically, which is what I would think they would do if they had user experience as their motivation.
Why do you need to make a distinction between self recursive calls and other calls? And why a distinction between method calls and function calls? In Scheme all calls in tail position are tail calls, is there a special Python reason why that's not possible?

I don't think that stack traces are such a big deal. Stack traces only change if some function f calls another function g and immediately returns. The information that f wants to do nothing isn't very useful.

You are already making a trade-off between execution speed/memory cost and debug information. You don't record every function call even though that would be very useful for debugging. The current situation is an arbitrary trade-off, an a bad one in my opinion.
He was probably right, in 1999.
Well, iSuppli did not mention them. The writer brought it up: "Royalty Payments Not Addressed ... One cost iSuppli's teardowns don't address: Any royalties paid to ARM."

He missed the mark - he might have had a point for data formats. I think that licensing costs are borne by the manufacturers (of the final product) for firmware they toss in to decode DVDs, MP3s, etc. Cf. recent TomTom/Microsoft FAT kerfuffle.
I'm curious as to what you think the censorship/free speech issue is?

A corporation can choose not to sell disgusting products without raising free speech issues. Isn't this just a matter of choice?
They don't drive purchases; they drive adaption. A user is less likely to bother downloading a framework if the app they want it for doesn't look that great. They may decide it's not worth it, and not install it. If someone makes a truly "killer app" for one of these competing technologies, it would theoretically lead more people to install whatever framework it was on.
It's a lot easier to implement this on the server side than to try to get compatibility between the various browsers (especially Internet Explorer). A server-side implementation is also compatible with older browsers, which is a concern that would prevent CSS variables from coming into common use for a long time.

It's not just about the effort for browser developers. It's also about the effort of getting all the browsers in use to be more-or-less compatible with the standard.
If It Doesn't Exist on the Internet, It Doesn't Exist (2005)
I don't disagree with DHH but I bet if you totaled the hours spent blogging, redesigning FedEx for fun, giving talks at conferences, fixing Rails bugs, etc. the 37signals crew works about as much as anyone else. I want to know who is calling them a lifestyle business. Did that even happen?
> Fear not. Even if the thing achieves consciousness, writes poetry, falls in love, critiques literature, etc., people will still claim that it's just faking it. "Neat trick, but it still doesn't have a soul, so it can't be conscious!"

Good point. Academics seem to have accepted that consciousness isn't magic for a while now, so building an artificial brain might not be so convincing for the rest of the world.

> Personally, the chaos I'm really looking forward to is the legal mess that would arise...

Yeah. I wouldn't even know where to start with figuring out some of those questions. I'm sure someone has written about this already, so if anyone knows who and where this has been written about I'd be interested in reading about it.
Conference for financial services startups
Looks very cool - good to see some innovation here!
People are publicly supporting and identifying with their cause, and they think they've failed because only a small percentage of these people have gone so far as to donate money?
How is it better than the CLR?

!troll, I'm genuinely curious.
Penny SMS
Gah, it's honestly the people who RUN lifestyle businesses who make it such a dirty word. It's not, and you should stop being defensive about it.

People's dreams vary. Some people want to change the world in a big way and gain satisfaction from herculean effort against incredible odds. Other people aspire to a comfortable living and a life that has lots of room for non-work activities. There's no shame in either.
well, i have something for you. just a simple collection of basic distortions. not much time spent on it, lots of errors, none usable for a book cover. more time could be spent if anything is interesting.

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/295909/clock_distortions.zip
C++ does look similar to Java, but it's really not. Preprocessor magic + template magic + linking magic means pain.

I will admit to not having tried devc++ or visualc. I would imagine that visualc might be able to solve the problem, since they can control the build system, and can hook into their compiler directly (last I checked, GCC made this very hard).

I'm also going to go out on a limb and suggest that you may be overestimating the pain points other people experience /not/ using an IDE.
Overpaying for Educational Underachievement
IPhone / Ocarina / Leaf Trombone
These guys really, really – I mean REALLY – like to talk about themselves. We get it, you're cool. Now please help port some more gems for Ruby 1.9.
As much as what? And what are you willing to bet :)?

We certainly don't have a 4-hour work week, but we sure don't keep a 60-hour one either. Yes, there are exceptional weeks here and there were there's a brief spike, but those are just that, exceptions.

On average, we all take time to spend lots of it away from a computer. I think having a healthy hobby and social life outside of computers will only make you a better business person, not to mention a more well-rounded human.

Your 20'ies and 30'ies are your most capable for physical activity. In my mind, you'd do well to spend a fair amount of that potential.

Of course, you're free to do whatever the hell you please. Just don't make excuses like "I have to, that's the only way to be successful". Oh, and stop calling people who do pursue that balance "lifestyle businesses" unless you literally mean that the have both a life, style, and a business ;)
>> "Limiting to a small number has the effect of minimizing the probability of performance problems from running out of memory and thereby improving user experience."

I don't buy that at all. One bad program can still eat all the memory. The number of apps has little real bearing on anything. It just makes ms look like fools.
You are right about piracy, it seems to be primary motivator today for this server/client model.

However there are obviously two schools of thought, one already set in place and working, other on the horizon:

1. Digital Content Delivery platforms:
- Consoles: Sony PSN, Microsoft Xbox Live, Nintendo whateverthenameis for retro games
- iPhone App store, itunes etc.
- Valve Steam

This is a pretty damn fine model, it still needs polish - but I am already using it and I like it. I get the application I wan't, it works, it is native with no overhead, cheap, models for demos and trials etc.. it is the future, for now.

2. Browser as an OS/App host
this seems to be that new trend I don;t understand. We already have the OS. Sure, you can build plugins for different platforms that host the browser and push your code to that plugin - essentially either as a VM bytecode (Flash, JVM, Silverlight) which transcends browser itself and we already have trial of faith on that, or you can push code each to his own plugin. Some companies, like google here, try to make a standard but essentially, to me atleast, I don't see the difference to Flash or Silverlight or JVM - sure, there is the native 3D/driver rasterization... but that will be in those techs too, Shockwave has/had it, I'm sure Flash will too someday. I still don't see the point in browser as OS/App host. I can see browser as an app store though, or a front to many different ones, but installation and run should be done in the end on the host itself.

i think this will all become more clearer once Microsoft and/or Apple implements app store like front which we already have for phones and consoles, but this time for desktops. Funny thing is that we already have that, not in mainstream though - look at linux and other repositories and installers they have (apt with synaptics, yum etc..). Add DRM to it and you are looking at the future. Steam might be the first in mainstream world, Microsoft will follow soon, I'm damn sure about it.
Another bullshit dichotomy. We want to change the world in a big way. We certainly face hard odds (building a multi-million dollar business is very hard regardless of how you go about it). We just want to do all of that and do other things at the same time. So far that has been going pretty well.
In the "long run", yes. In the short run they may be unable to increase production.
Agreed. 37narcisists.com is more like it!
I think a lifestyle business isn't necessarily defined by the amount of hours you work but rather how much you earn. If your business earns X and you are content earning X because it supports your 'lifestyle', then you have a lifestyle business.

I don't think a lifestyle business is negative nor am implying that 37Signals is a lifestyle business. Just think you have it mixed up is all...
OEMs are gaining more experience with integrating Linux with their hardware and they'll use this as leverage.

But users aren't gaining experience in using Linux nearly as fast as OEMs are at making machines with Linux running.
what advantage does this have over using something like keep-alive? http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/keepalive.html

Keep alive, to me, seems better as you don't have to modify the frontend architecture. Turn it on at the server and let the server and browser do the hard work.
If it's a choice between destroying the Internet or destroying the music industry, it is in everybody's interest except the music industry's to destroy the music industry. (And by "music industry", I'm even excluding listeners and to a lesser extent, artists.)

Now, I don't think that's actually the choice we face. But if the music industry wants to turn it into that choice, then the choice is rather clear. That is, even if I take your statement at face value, the clear interest of society would still lie with "keep the Internet and let the musicians hang".

Again, I don't think that's the actual choice we face. But even your exaggeration is not sufficient to win the argument.
From wikipedia: "Lifestyle Businesses are businesses that are set up and run by their founders primarily with the aim of sustaining a particular level of income and no more; Lifestyle Businesses typically have limited scalability and potential for growth because such growth would destroy the very lifestyle for which their owner-managers set them up."

And from 37signals blog: "We haven’t found the natural size for 37signals yet, but I can tell you that it’s not a thousand people. It’s highly unlike to be a hundred. Right now it’s 10 and it’s been in that vicinity for quite some time."

You can't really complain you get the 'lifestyle business' tag... As far as I see, it's pretty much the definition of one.
I would not call it a mistake, yet. Just another philosophical position (which I do not agree with, but that's not the point).

Apropos dualism: Did you thought about how artificial intelligence might end the dualism in economic theory: I.e. that one has to account for labour and capital as completely separate factors of production? (I am ignoring land etc here for the sake of simplicity.)
NIST develops powerful method of suppressing errors in many types of quantum computers
"...still have time for taking flying lessons, learning to play the guitar, nurture your garden, go hiking, enjoy cooking, socialize with people outside your tech circle."

One doesn't have to run a 37-signals style business ("do less", no external investment, charge customers immediately) to do this. One doesn't even have to limit themselves to a traditional 35-45 hour work week to do so. This is entirely possible while being a "workaholic", if you aren't wasting your time. I'd say that those who do spend all waking hours on technology (and I used to be one of those) generally do so out of preference, anxiety or combination of those two.

Note: I am also not implying there's anything with either running a 37-signals style business or spending all waking hours working. Depending on what your goals and preference are, all these are legitimate choices.
Ask HN: Who's going to JSConf2009 this weekend?
I'm heading up to DC this weekend for JSConf2009. I'm wondering if anyone else on HN is going. Let's share contact info.

http://twitter.com/geuis
geuis.teses@gmail.com
If you can't find the statistics you want, then just make them up
Well, you're right to feel proud.

It's a fine and refreshingly hype-light product. The only change I'd like to see is a simple application included that takes a common 3d file format (blender, pov or something) and spits out a rendered bitmap.

Instead of waiting for developers to add Caustic support to their 3d apps over the summer, this would allow a 3d artist to start saving time tomorrow, even knowing that that it wasn't optimized. The little app displayed in the video demo would be more than sufficient, it just doesn't seem from the website like it comes with any ready-to-use tools for the non-programmer.
CSS: The Missing Manual was a great starting point for me. I still use it as a reference but I mostly just find things on the web. Smashing Magazine has some good stuff -- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/css/
That's what electric monks are for.
It's a user experience decision

Maybe, but if so it's a bad branding decision.

The problem is not only that the "improved user experience" looks too much like "deliberate crippling". It's also that they use the same name for the crippled version. They will be derided for that, and that bad PR is going to carry over to the entire Windows 7 brand. What are they thinking?

Apple put a Mac OS with a "different user experience" on the iPhone. But they didn't advertise that to anyone but developers. The word "Mac" is not mentioned in connection with the phone. The iPhone has a really different user experience -- it's not just the Mac OS on slow hardware with a one-app-at-once limitation, it's a whole different universe. And it is very deliberately branded, not as a very small, kind of slow portable computer with no keyboard, but as the world's best phone.
I don't think they're replacing any objects.

Every time a Content-Type of image/gif is encountered it appends a new object to #stream with the image data inlined. I was really confused at the object tags at first, so I went ahead and copy pasted one of the object tags with image data into a blank html and loaded it into firefox. The image showed up fine.

This is an extremely clever solution. I know jQuery UI's icons are in one giant image file and background offsets are used to display the correct icon, but this is probably better for a dynamic solution because the amount of CPU it would take to stitch upwards of 100 images together.