skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Alternatively, you can make an app for iPhone and make money the old-fashion way by selling products to people.
Reading and Writing to Excel Spreadsheets in Python
I've never heard anyone call XSLT elegant before.
His blog says he's using 7400 series TTL ICs. Just one step up from transistors.
At one level, this horrifies me.

At another level, I'm always impressed by how PHPers just do it. Whatever it is, you always just seem to get from A to B and have something up and running. You guys are like the weaver ants of the programming world.
Just a thought...

If you are looking for a co-founder, you want someone passionate about your idea and vision, not just code.

So it would help if you told us what your startup's idea is.

Be wary of code maniacs who don't care what the product is.
For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm.

How very neutral! I often forget how pro-unfairness, and pro-harm conservatives are! I think a better way to understand it is that conservatives are political Darwinists, who believe in gradual adaptation to circumstances, undertaken at different rates by different groups. Liberals are political creationists, who hope to dissolve traditions and create a better society. It's a question of means, not ends: conservatives would probably argue that expropriating wealth someone has earned in order to give it to a third party is both unfair and an infliction of harm, whereas letting people keep what they make, and protecting them from criminals, is both fair and anti-harm.
I'm most interested in writing, but I believe touch will allow developers more creativity. For instance, it's easy to tuck a pen into your fingers then use your fingers. Now you can use your fingers to drag the page up and down or zoom in using the iPhone trick of pinching the screen; I find that quick and clever. If you are using the pen to draw diagrams or write out math equations, lets say in something like matlab, it would be more taxing to set the tip on a scroll bar than it would to drop you finger onto the screen to push the page up.

I could be the one missing the point, but I believe having both options will allow enough flexibility for developers to make pen and touch a semi-standard input device.

Just realized I need to make it clear that I see tablet and hybrid laptops as the real use. I don't expect it to take over as a primary input device, just to be a commonly used secondary to keyboard and mouse.
They mention that these cases are just a few "edge groups". That may be the case, but while these "edge groups" are being punished so much, the remaining 99% of the world either doesn't notice the difference between DRM'd content and free content, or they bypass it in two seconds. Heck, they could avoid it all together by illegally downloading an 'unlocked' version of the software.

So where's the gain that justifies the infringement on the rights of 'edge groups'?
How iPhone Game Dissatisfaction Stems From 'Cognitive Dissonance'
Well just build two and you got a 16-bit'er and so on. Bit size it really not much more than linear scaling.
Other things like pipe-lining are behind the complexity of modern cpus.
First of all, as much as I love Tokyo Tyrant and Tokyo Cabinet I have a hard time seeing it as an "alternative" data storage system. It is an incremental improvement over standard hash/b-tree storage libraries like BDB with a standardized network interface.

I think you are going to find it very difficult to create an accurate yardstick with which to measure performance of these various datastores. Once we leave the world of a monolithic RDBM server there are a lot of variables that come into play. If database X is network-bound when distributed across multiple hosts and database Y bottlenecks on disk i/o then you are going to get completely different results for each depending on the hardware and network layout/infrastructure of each test cluster. Each system probably also has a large batch of configuration options that can influence the results depending on how much information about the cluster can be provided to the storage system. Unless you have a dedicated cluster that you intend on running the tests on I would remove this section. A potentially better option would be to just have a table that lists the best-case and worst-case environments for each system. I would much rather know that system X works best when the entirety of the DB fits in RAM and the network link is fast than have some table of psuedo-measurements that do not really provide useful information.
Google Wave: What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today
We have a one year old and my wife interviewed several doctors before finding one that would give the vaccines on an irregular schedules. One of the fears people have isn't that one particular vaccine is the problem; it's that bundling multiple vaccines together and giving them to 12mo or 15mo kids is causing problems. So we found a doctor who gives one shot at visit A and then gives the other shot(s) at visit B a few weeks later. Maybe it's nothing but I feel better.
I think of PUT as PUT == (over)write.

GET == read
PUT == (over)write
DELETE == delete
POST == invoke (custom processing)

The effect of a POST then comes down to the definition of that "custom" processing. This is outside the scope of HTTP; don't conflate the two.
Wow, the Tyranny of Numbers in action in modern times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_numbers
Woo! It has the "do whatever you want with this framework" license, too!

Someone should port it to Linux and OS X, or at least have some instructions for those platforms. I'm sure it will work on those, as WoG is available.

Also: If you even mildly enjoy casual games, I would highly recommend playing and/or purchasing World of Goo. It has wonderful artwork and a some very nice pop-culture critiques between the lines.
Tesla recalls 345 of its roadsters
Hey, I have a great idea... why don't we most more polarising, political fluff pieces to HN? That way, we might turn it into Reddit.
No doubt, most individual tweets don't rise to the level of copyright protection.

But he hides the strong counterexample until his second-to-last paragraph: established law confirms tiny poems, specifically haiku, are copyrightable.

And he ignores the interesting question about related strings of tweets. Individual letters aren't copyrightable; string enough together and you have everything else that is copyrightable.

He spent all his words on the trivial matters!
I understand that; what I haven't found is the actual difference between the two. Are there any functional differences between Chrome and Chromium (assume Windows version, since I'm not referring to things missing in an incomplete port), or is it only a branding thing so that the projects that fork and extend it don't use something with Google's brand?
If you go through the trouble to hire professional copywriters (even freelance), you could offer addons as well; like $0.0x/word for professional spell/grammar checking (and other services).
FWIW, my friends are working on home automation in this startup http://www.lagotek.com
The programmability of the systems has always been attainable.

Even back in 1995 when I got started in HA there were several choices for relatively cheap/flexible controllers.

The problem has been that the stereotypical homeowner does NOT want to program anything. VCR's blinking "12:00" was the joke of the 90's, and the concept is still true today, even if VCR's don't really exist anymore.

Can you imagine the average person wanting to program an HA system? Telling it when to turn lights on and off, how to factor in shifting sunrise/sunset times, occupancy sensors and the like? It's very very difficult to make a system that is both powerful and simple, unless you break it down to a very very basic function.

Most people would love an automated home experience, but the setup is daunting. Especially when you consider all the edge cases... Turn on the interior lights at 30 minutes before dusk, but not if we're away or out. Shut off the HVAC system or zone if a window is open, unless the door to that room is closed or the humidity is very high (like in a bathroom), and so on.

I have personally found that if you don't carry the system logic far enough, it is just annoying and perceived as "stupid". In order to make the system very intelligent it needs to be rather complex and incorporate a lot of environmental (temperature, humidity, occupancy, seasonal, etc) inputs.

Heave on top of all that there is no one system that covers all the basic sub-functions really well:
- Phone

- Security

- Lighting

- HVAC

- Irrigation

- A/V (multi-room or single room).

- User Interface (remote controls, keypads, input/control panels, etc.).

There are a some systems that do a couple of these well. HAI OmniPro alarm systems do a pretty good job with security, HVAC and lighting. Their audio is passable, but not great, and their irrigation is kind of lacking.

The JDS Stargate is kind of outdated, but does a good job with lighting and basic I/O (relays, TTL inputs, etc.). It has no security, but integrates with Interlogix alarm panels. But, you pretty much have to program both devices independently.

Russound makes great multi-room audio, and they have a robust serial interface, but not much direct plug-and-play capabilities.

All of the various sub-systems seem to almost, but not quite, talk to each other.

I've personally moved to an OSX based system (Indigo) and do apple-scripting to handle a lot of things.

In the past, I had a JDS Stargage, HAI OmniPro, and PC running an application I wrote to handle email, web and IM interfacing to the Internet, plus some PIC-based stuff I build for other one-off sensors and interfaces to things.

My stuff works well, and most people can use and understand it, but this is the result of no small bit of effort and many custom bits...

Not exactly joe-consumer friendly.

As for MS-home, they've been in and out of this space for 10 years. I don't expect much from them, and like most of their solutions, I find the approach too closed.
So people choose their political beliefs based upon their personality. That's old news to me, but a more interesting question might be how many people buck these trends, because that might indicate how many people think critically about politics rather than embracing and trying to rationalize their first intuition.
Ask HN: Feedback on my app - SongTwit, it's TwitPic for music
Hi All,

I've been home on summer break for the past week and just hacked together this Twitter application to keep busy. It's a quick and easy service for sharing music. There are a few similar sites out there but to my knowledge this is the only one that lets you preview songs before tweeting them or upload your own MP3s.

I'd really appreciate it if some fellow hackers could try it out, give suggestions or let me know about any bugs.

http://www.songtwit.com

Thanks!
I may be in the minority, but I think this is exciting. We need more competition in search. I'm not sure if Microsoft is the right company for the job, but I'm glad they finally seem to be taking search seriously.

I'm also glad they went with Bing and not Sift, as we bought BingSEO.com recently. ;)
frivolity is bonus. save X energy in Y time will only convince some people. it also needs bells and whistles to become truly popular/successful. some sort of hook.
The original Thai version of Red Bull can still be found for much cheaper at your local asian grocery store. They will typically carry several off-brand versions as well for even less.
Google translate says:
"Obscene document, drawing, or other objects to distribute, sell, publicly display, or a person who is punishable by a fine or a fine of 102 million yen or imprisonment of up to 15 years. The person who has possession of these items sell for the same."

Doesn't the US have similar statutes? (Which are almost never enforced...?)
If I had a time machine, and the only thing I was allowed to do in the past was buy domain names, 'twitter.com' might not even be in the top 1000 I'd buy.
http://wave.google.com
It is an open protocol: http://www.waveprotocol.org/
In case anyone was wondering what this product is, just like I was. Here is a quote from their site (http://pixelqi.com/products)

"Our first screens will be 10" diagonal screens for netbooks and ebook readers that will sample in mid-2009 and ship in high volume in late 2009. These screens rival the best epaper displays on the market today but in addition have video refresh and fully saturated color. The epaper mode has 3 times the resolution of the fully saturated color mode allowing for a high resolution reading experience without sacrifice to super color fidelity for graphics. In addition these screens can be used in sunlight. Look for them in the market in the second half of 2009."
The hard part would be to convince a business that these skills provide value. It can be a large benefit to a company to effectively leverage its own data, and having someone that can not only extract and interpret, but also put the right visualizations in the hands of the decision-makers would be a great benefit to help a company, it can be hard to get those that hire to buy into the soft benefits. Its usually a major obstacle in any business intelligence project.
What specifically horrifies you about it? There are a lot of utility functions in PHP that aren't built-in to Javascript. I've used it a little by looking at the source for the code and tweaking things here and there.

This isn't really a way to turn Javascript into PHP. PHP simply has a lot of functions that are handy. Some problems that I can think of are that it brings in PHP's namespacing and lack of naming conventions, but these can be fixed if a developer only incorporates one function at a time when he or she needs it.
Answer: No. Unless you are a Muslim cleric in Indonesia. That's quite a link-bait title.
A BIG PICTURE article. Some great pictures.
You can already embed fonts easily without using a service such as this site will provide. The problem is of course the license to do so. There are a lot of fonts out there that are free and allow website embedding, but the majority of fonts from major type foundries are not included. So assuming Typekit gets more of the type foundries onboard that would be useful.

The question is what will make these foundries jump onboard if Typekit isn't introducing a new DRM or other protections? I think this is how it might work:

1.) Check the site referrer to ensure that fonts from Typekit are only delivered to websites that have purchased the font (or are signed up for the free fonts).

Of course since there aren't any drm protections, you can simply take the font file and put it on your own site, which leads to....

2.) They might have custom Typekit versions of well-known fonts, so that if any website is self-hosting a font file that is from Typekit, it's plainly obvious they're doing it illegally. Also, if a type foundry only licensed their font to Typekit for web embedding, then any hosting of their font on a site other than Typekit is forbidden.

This is different than how it would work now, because let's assume that a type foundry licensed fonts for embedding on websites. It becomes very hard for them to search the web finding their embedded fonts and then checking their records to make sure the person who created the site actually purchased a license. This would take a lot of time and effort that these type foundries don't have. However, if the font is only licensed to be hosted by Typekit, then Typekit can do the checking and accept reports of other sites infringing, etc. It just makes the whole effort easier because only one website will have the license to self-host that font.

So to me, the biggest downside is that you have to have your font files hosted on a 3rd party service. Also, they claim you'll embed the fonts via javascript, whereas if you were self-hosting your own fonts there's no need for javascript at all.

I wish the type foundries would just get over the fact that some people may commit copyright infringement on their fonts. Instead they should just provide all of us honest people the ability to purchase a license to embed fonts on our websites instead of constantly trying to find drm'ish ways of fighting it.
The problem is, this is based on science, not political puffery.

The further problem is that you probably say that because it doesn't confirm some belief of your own. As for me, I care about the evidence.
I don't know, to me it looks a lot like ask.com
Notepad-Plus-Plus Plus Erlang: Windows Text Editors
What aspect of the industry are you thinking of getting in to? Security? Lighting? Media distribution? All of the above?

Are you planning on installing a pre existing product line (eg cresteon, amx, control4) or creating a product like linux mce or misterhouse?
A Comparative Look At Some Ruby Idioms
Scientists develop a new HIV microbicide (and path to mass production in plants)
More probably a font-transliteration issue. J in Wingdings is a smiley. I often see it in Outlook emails received in Thunderbird where the sender typed a smiley, outlook converted it to a Wingdings smiley, then it got converted into plain ASCII.
Even better idea : write a CPU simulator! Just a while loop that reads assembler from a file and interprets it on a virtual CPU. I did this in Java a while ago, I reproduced a few Intel x86 ASM instructions. MOV, CMP and JMP are all you need for Turing completeness, if I recall correctly.

You could make up your own assembly language.

Next easy step : add a memory-mapped bitmap display to your virtual machine. Bochs watch out!

After that, write a compiler for your favourite language towards your assembler and watch it run on your CPU. Then a debugger. Then you would be more awesome than Zed Shaw.
Android in the Laundry Room?
The web is getting really exciting again! I mean, it always has been, but these open protocols, open platforms, and general openness has really got me smiling :)

So many possibilities!
Yes, and that's their right. We can argue that we don't like it, but its no different than me licensing Hanna Montana's likeness for a toothbrush I'm producing (no, I'm not!). I'd have the right to put her pretty face on the toothbrush but not anywhere else. I understand the laws to be well established here. If you don't like it, use Ubuntu. I understand a moral argument, but pragmatic ones are of little use here.
The UI may look great but until customers fingers are on the screen, we won't really know which phone is more usable. From the videos I've seen, it doesn't look as intuitive as the iPhone.

As for games, I can say that I've never played a native OSX game in my 6 years of using Macs. However, I have an entire page of games on my iPhone. They wouldn't be a deal breaker for me but they're pretty nifty to have around and the power of the SDK allows them to be much more sophisticated on the iPhone than the Pre.

I'm also not convinced that the Pre is a business smartphone. It seems heavily designed as a consumer product.

Your comment on the quantity of applications is misguided. Palm OS and Windows Mobile never had the popularity that the App Store does. The App Store changed the mobile app distribution game completely. Your comment on Blackberry and Nokia "outselling" the iPhone is also a bit silly. The Blackberry Curve was the #1 smartphone but they were also selling them as a 2 for 1 deal and on multiple carriers. And if you account for all RIMM models, of course they're going to have a larger share. They have multiple models on every carrier. What the iPhone has done as a single phone on a single carrier has not be duplicated and the Pre certainly won't be the one that matches its success.

Also being a game-changer may not matter in the long-term. However, for a company like Palm that doesn't have a lot of money and is essentially going "all-in" with Web O/S, the short term is much more relevant. This company was essentially done with until the Pre was announced and they needed a substantial investor to come in to finance the launch of the Pre. Also, with cell phones in the U.S., we are used to 2 year gaps between changing devices and carriers. Being a game changer makes people switch. Doing something different but not necessarily better, does not.
I find myself going to the new submissions page quite often. The frequency of technical articles there that are interesting (to me) seems to be higher than the front page, whereas stuff re-submitted from Reddit / linkbait / etc seems to be more prominent on the front page (maybe that's just my personal impression).
Home Improvement Tips
Top 10 Tips to Make Your Home Look Better Than What it is
Would be nice if they were sorted or filtered by interestingness or type.
"What if you end up with a very profitable, modest sized business that you want to just run? That is no longer an option once you raise VC money."

Why hasn't the market produced a VC variant that's content with this, and willing to earn back its investment over the course of long term dividends? My guess is, the numbers just plain don't work out. If VC's are 10% successful, each successful startup has to pay for 9 failures. A VC might be 25% successful choosing successful dividends-bearing companies, but (a) those won't make up for the remaining 65% of failures and (b) the amount of dividends needed would dilute profits, so the founders wouldn't be any better off than if they didn't take the VC money in the first place.
> If both people are online at the same time, a wave acts just like an instant message -- except that you see each character as it is typed, just like in subethaedit.

Ah, back to the good ol' days of

You are a fucking asshole^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmistaken
Actually, the current definitions of liberal and conservative:

Liberals: think it's OK to spend your money on government programs they hope will be useful.

Conservatives: think it's OK to give your money to rich bankers so long as there are no strings attached.

Entrepreneurs: think it's OK if you spend your money with them.
It's actually an interesting (and scientific!) article saddled with a terrible title.
"I want the end-user to have control over what they see."

How, exactly, does this prevent that?

What current user mechanism for control over the web pages will this preempt?

What is the difference between saying "I don't want this page to be in Arial, I want it to be in Tahoma" and "I don't want this page to be ExoticTypeKitFont, I want it to be in Tahoma"?
Parts two, three, and four of the interview:

http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/goals_of_scala.html

http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/scalas_type_system....

http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/pattern_matching.ht...

Edited: to fix hyperlinks.
all the more reason to understand it...
Impossible to know since you haven't explained yours. All we know from your comments is that anyone with a different idea is a "fanboy".
I'd slap dad and also avoid having to touch faucets in public restrooms. Guess I'm a registered independent for a reason.
This sounds eerily reminiscent of the objections, including muscle pain, I heard to PCs going mouse+GUI in the 1990s (also yesterday here on HN :) ). Multi touch (which has been absent from this HN discussion but is present in Win7) allows many possibilities which are unavailable with a mouse and is what delivers the win.

Yes, interfaces will have to change and evolve - snapping will be more important than ever, a mouse is still more accurate for fine work (but so is a stylus) and it's going to take time to figure out how to communicate interface information when we can't necessarily rely on having a cursor. But we'll get there. Early WIMP systems were pretty lame too compared to what we enjoy now.