skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The lasers used in the lunar ranging experiments are pulsed, in much the same way radar is pulsed, so even though the laser's peak power is very high, the average power could be less than a watt and accomplish the desired objective.

The other thing about this experiment is that it relies on autocorrelation to avoid a need for very much power. Autocorrelation depends on knowing the departure times of the outgoing laser energy and accumulating many samples at the expected return time, which is predictably and reliably related to the transmission time. This integration technique produces a clear return signal that would be lost in noise if only one sample were collected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocorrelation

In principle, if someone was patient and had good enough equipment, one could detect the reflection of a very small outgoing power level by collecting hundreds or thousands of samples. Autocorrelation is an amazing technique.
Tynan is already over 30.

He doesn't seem to be indicating anyone plans to live there permanently...it sounds like it is intended as a getaway, rather than a home. No mention of building gardens, major construction, or dealing with longterm freshwater, garbage and sewer, etc. In other words, he's building a private campground, not a commune.
Tynan and friends, congrats. First thought: build cool treehouses.

[PS Tynan: Hope this HN juice finally gets you accepted into YCombinator.]
Thanks for the info. Good luck with it!
Thanks for posting that. Before watching that, I was under the impression that Gabe was against Windows 8 because he fears competition from new digital distribution systems that can compete with Steam.

After watching that, it has solidified my belief that his only complaint about Windows 8 is that competition is coming.

What am I missing?
My HTPC has the desktop off the top of the TV and frequently the HDMI audio doesn't work.

With my ATI graphics card on my desktop I have a script that runs on startup to force the display drive to to detect my 1920x1080 monitor otherwise it displays the screen with big black bars all around the edges.

Audio and video are still a pita for me.
Ahh, I misunderstood.

We're actually pretty close to the shore on one side, in cell phone coverage, and have the phone number of our closest neighbor. There's definitely danger there, and we're big on safety, but it's not as remote as it probably seems.

Thanks for the advice and thoughts!
Edited: Public opinion went down on the Boston Bombings. Money was lost. In the interest of money, someone decided not to do the same thing again. Whether this was the right call comes second.
for a minute there thought you were describing Pyongyang, but even it has more life, even if Dear Leader tells exactly where everyone to be at every moment
I've volunteered at Lean Startup Weekend a number of times, am currently a Hackstar at Techstars first Austin-based program, and have been working in-and-out of Capital Factory with a number of its startups since before it opened.

As such, I'm super excited to see how this event differs in practice and have already signed up to volunteer.
It hit three of their big metrics. What it looked like was probably a perk in comparison to cost, where it was, and availability.
The end goal is of course to combine this system with a headset like the Rift and a treadmill like the Omni to offer fully immersive VR with boundless movement.

That being said, I still think PrioVR on its own has a lot to offer to games that hasn't been offered before. Imagine a fighting game where you dodge punches by actually ducking down, or a dancing game that can actually capture the full extent of your motion and respond accurately. Both of these concepts could be implemented without any fear of running into a wall, and should present a whole new way to interact with games.
Odd that Pittsburgh, another Midwestern industrial town of about the same size as Detroit, has faced very similar difficulties, but is now doing pretty well for itself, so much so that some now consider it America's most livable city. Why the huge difference in outcome?
If Red Hat had supported .deb packages maybe packaging wouldn't be such a pain in the ass and we wouldn't have a .tar, .deb and a .rpm for every program.

There are a lot of things in linux land that don't make sense, I think picking on Canonical for choosing to do what they want as opposed to all the others who are choosing to do what they want, is very un linux like.
Yes, next summer we'll have a drone to survey everything. This trip was just to inspect before purchasing and explore a little bit.

The mainland neighbor we met was pretty confident no one would ever go to the island without permission. He's lived there his whole life, works as a fisherman in the bay, and has never seen anyone else on it. Even so-- we'll put up signs and not mind too much if people use our fire pit when we're not there.

I like the idea of the water flow survey... would be awesome if we could get fresh water without desalinating.
Octopus cards are incredibly cool in HKG (RFID, of which NFC is a subset). Store some cash and you can use the MTR or buy things from 7-11 super easily. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card Once you try it, you wish North America woke up...
Long passwords are good, but too much length can be a DoS hazard
Fun nit: this is one of the times when effect is the correct word to use.
Reddit continues to play whack-a-mole with controversy, ignoring the fact that using /r/SRS and /r/SRD to police a social media site into political correctness will produce inevitable blowback.
We didn't transfer the money until seeing it. As the commenter below said, it hit our metrics, so we figured that barring an infestation of wild tigers or something, it was worth buying. So we went up, camped for a night to check it out, and wired the money the next morning.
such as lackluster kernel performance developments, that would impede game development and performance

Be honest, this is FUD. My own experience and every report I have read is that Windows 8 is faster than Windows 7 hands down. And how is Steam not a closed system? In the talk he complains it took 6 months to get an Apple Store update through. How long does it take to make changes to games on Steam? Can I put a game on Steam today? No? How long does it take?

This isn't about Open vs Closed. This is about Gabe In Control vs Gabe Not In Control.
PICJUG: A FOSS Replacement for the FT232 USB Chip
I guess Reddit thinks that sort of thing is best left to 4chan.
My physics teacher hates Miley as well
Yeah, I installed Ubuntu on my computer illiterate dad's computer and he prefers it to Windows 7. He says its faster and easier. He doesn't even know how to copy and paste.

Couldn't really say that 10 years ago.
If their boat is more of a skiff, a couple paddles and a milk jug cut in half for bailing might be sufficient.

In terms of winter storms, this is approximately as bad as it gets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Juan .
Ask HN: What programming languages are used in hard-sciences?
I'm going to be graduating in May with a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology degree. I'm mostly interested in doing research (cancer or stem cell if I can), and I'm curious if there's a language that will make me a more competitive job applicant. I've already had a good amount of lab experience outside of school (helping a professor in his lab) and have a decent GPA.<p>I know Python is used in the lab I'm in now to build software that analyzes the data we're spitting out of the lab and I know it's used a lot in physics research as well so I've pinned it as the language I should be learning.<p>I already know a little Python and Ruby (mainly I've just gotten through Zed's tutorials and made a few side projects), but are there any other languages people in the field have seen that are used specifically for research or that have pointed biomedical applications?
Good driver support is still pretty important... it's definitely one of the worst parts of Linux right now. I have an Nvidia card with Optimus in my laptop, and it's a total headache... I can't do stuff like connect a TV to my laptop and extend my display like I can with windows. The performance is not as good (which obviously matters for demanding games). The battery life is not as good. I just broke my X server when I tried installing some package (with apt) which wiped out some of my graphics libraries somehow... definitely not something your average joe can handle.

Overall, it is a huge pain in the ass. I oh-so-wish that graphics cards would "just work" like wireless cards now do.

But if you're on a desktop and get a well-supported card, you're right. It's not a big deal.
There's a lot more framework in place for building an application here... hash tables, configuration files, JSON, performance counters.

libevent/libev are easier to retrofit into existing applications. This looks like something you'd start a new application with. libuv is somewhere in the middle.
> Actually ARM SOC faces some serious issues about increasing performance. Especially with memory on chip. None of the ARM fabs are able to produce at the size needed to get further speed increases easily. Intel on the other hand is still driving their size down.

Didn't apple just announce their A7 chip (64bit, double registers, etc), supposedly based on the arm8? Rumor is that it is 20nm process with TSMC as the fab.
Is there really a problem with gdb apart from IDE integration?

I am using gdb sometimes and it is just fine. Especially with the Python scripting support now. I used the Eclipse CDT gdb wrapper once and that, I agree, really sucks.
But then we've lost another level of discoverability - putting the method name first also gives you information about the arguments for the method.
I suppose they don't want to encourage vigilantism?

Either way, I remember last time during the Boston bombings when 4chan and Reddit users had purportedly unearthed a conspiracy that Blackwater guards were involved, which caused a buzz but later turned out to be an immense red herring.

As for troll havens, that's always been part of their culture, so no surprise there.
I would suggest a tontine.
Whether or not the distinction between "real" and "casual" gaming is real, there is undeniably a distinction between the sort of games that Microsoft currently seems to be trying to sell through their App Store, and the sort of games that Steam sells.

Surprising to very few, this distinction just so happens to align pretty damn close with the alleged "casual"/"real" divide.

(Also, you've been able to dock laptops for years, that isn't some sort of neat "Surface-like-device" trick, yet all the "real" gamers that I know still own dedicated desktop machines. Their screens, keyboards, mice, and controllers are all bulky. Their setup is already the antithesis of portable, going through all that trouble just to use a docked underpowered device just doesn't make sense.)
If that is what was meant, then I'd argue it should not read as "not viable for games" but instead "not viable for the Steam business"
I'm already over 30, as are many members of the group. I was extremely selective on who I invited, and they're all people I trust completely. There will be issues in the future, but we've come up with rules to deal with them.

Also, as noted below, none of us are planning on living there full time-- just visiting over the summer, hopefully all at the same time.
Valve and Ubuntu might have popularized Linux gaming, but they also screwed us over.

Every desktop CPU sold in the last decade, at least the ones capable of running games, supports x86-64. The only reason 32 bit installs exist in the wild is because Ubuntu (still) makes it their default download.

Enter Steam for Linux. Targeting 32-bit Ubuntu, it makes this the de facto platform for Linux games. My desktop OS is now cluttered with multiarch libraries, and the top-end games I want to play won't take advantage of either the better instruction set or all my ram.

Linux gaming could have been a fresh new start, a break from the 32-bit instruction set, but instead we're now stuck installing, maintaining and supporting 32-bit libs forever..
It was a pretty clear violation of existing policy. And I'm glad they jumped on it quickly, after the mess that happened with the Boston bombing.
> Rather than do what's right, they're now more concerned with public image?

That's always been true. Their justification is legitimate if it was actually the reason for the ban, which after the /r/FactualFalcon debacle last month is dubious:

> Erik Martin from reddit tells us: "We banned it because it violated site rules by encouraging the posting of personal information. The quote from the side bar that subreddit that was banned said "no personal information about leads unless you are really sure." We do not allow the posting of personal information under any circumstances."
I'm sure this won't get me any love, but I worked at Experts-Exchange at one point, and it's not the horrible place SO and Jeff Atwood have painted it as.

Spammy marketing tactics? Sure. Is SO better? Absolutely. But in the process of building SO, Jeff and company have basically trashed EE's name, and after seeing EE from the inside I'm one of the rare few who don't think EE is evil incorporated.
This is not really news. Reddit has always been against "doxxing" people, and you can't really collaboratively determine the identity of someone without doing so.
What It Feels Like When Your Dreams Come True
As someone who spent a lot of time in Japan I can also report that cellphones as payment has been in large use for years now for public transportation, vending machines, etc.
Trailing == gives it away.
Interactive US Electricity Visualization Using d3
I made this data visualization using d3- tell me what you think!
I'm fairly confident this is because of IE8's lack of support for SVG which is used heavily for data visualization, mapping etc.

IE9+ has some sort of support for SVG while IE7 and IE8 implement VML. :-/
Are you going to run internet access to it (or put in satellite)?
I love this guy since the first time I watched 'Are We There Yet?'.
Its only an exchange. A weakness in Mt.Gox does not create a weakness in the greater BTC network. It just means it is that much harder to find a BTC Exchange that you can trust.

Its like history unfolding again. Eventually, people will (re)learn that giving large sums of money to people you don't know requires major amounts of trust. Ex: What guarantees do I have that Mt.Gox isn't trading with my money?

I mean after all... Mt. Gox money is virtual currency. Maybe you can't withdraw your money from Mt. Gox because they're playing with it themselves.

You see? Its a trust issue. SEC is in charge of investigating this sort of behavior.
The tax rate on property is closer to 1.8% and not 6.7%. So you would have to have a home over $300k to pay $6700 in property taxes. Also I am not aware of a income tax, at least not in Dallas. The sales tax is a bit high though at approximately 8%.
I should have mentioned this in the original post-- we actually have HSPA+ and LTE coverage! Super lucky, as this is the only utility that we couldn't easily do ourselves.
Steam being a closed system is not a problem for Valve... why/how could it be?
I took the same path. I was actually a bit skeptical at his talks initially, but once they sunk in, he's really head of the curve on this stuff.
You have a strong political opinion, and an inflated sense of authority. That smells like youth, so I forgive you for it. I promise when you're older you'll look back and be embarrassed at claiming to be entitled to make authoritative economic claims.

Regardless, there are certainly economists with more than an undergraduate degree in economics who have held out Detroit as a warning for the US debt problem. Do you have more authority than Rachel Greszler who has a masters in Economics from Georgetown? I know, you'll disregard her because she works for an conservative group. Just be honest and acknowledge that this is about a political difference, not an authoritative truth.

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/08/05/morning-bell-learning-fr...
Actually, as a debugger, GDB kicks ass. From a usability standpoint, however...

This probably isn't good advice, but I really like VIM/pyClewn as a GDB frontend. Otherwise, there's always Eclipse, and 8 billion other IDEs.
I was also thinking about the same thing. I think there are similar concerns while developing for both the platforms and if there is one person who is working on both there will be much better reuse of concepts and functionality. From maintenance point of view also it might be better if one person can do both.
I am not sure if big companies will prefer to have hybrid developers but smaller companies will definitely appreciate the savings and speed-up such hybrid developers could bring.
Not all OSS has a price. All of the code I've releases is under a free license, not a restrictive one like the GPL. This does mean that companies can use my code in their proprietary projects, but that seems to have gotten me more contributions back instead of less.

I also think that a license which is too complicated for anyone to actually understand is simply too flawed to serve it's purpose, which was the original point of my post. This is completely separate from people not giving back to open source.
Make your next conference 24/7/365 days a year by going digital
Thank you! I was hoping to build a treehouse, but a hurricane wiped out most of the big trees in 2003. Now it's all 6-20' tall Balsam Firs, which are too small to make treehouses in. Maybe in 20 years...
Are you predicting an Mt. Gox bankrun?

That might be a bit scary to see unfold...
Over the years we'll build up the island, doing most of the work ourselves. We'll build a communal building with a shower, kitchen, lounge, and bathrooms. Each owner of the island gets to pick a spot on which to build their own little structure to sleep in. Together we'll build infrastructure, gardens, a fire pit, and whatever else we can come up with.

A couple years ago I bought some rural land with the idea that something like this. . . something I think of as "ecosteading" is going to become a trend of sorts. The idea that I'm working on (and have already applied to YC and a bunch of other incubators with) is actually right along this line: a platform for people to buy and sell land, exchange ideas for ecological homesteading, even build out a platform for more intelligent urban planning. When it's done from the "ground up" (literally), there are all kind of future headaches that can be avoided.

Imagine if the Hyperloop or the California high speed rail had been able to be laid down before most of the development around this insanely populated state took place. Population growth is exponential; it's inevitable that we're going to need smarter ways of transporting people and consumables. The key is figuring out where these new hubs of population are going. Like-minded people congregate; and this idea gives them a way to do it with others.

If this sounds like something interesting/exciting, I am kinda sorta looking for people to work with. Research it, tell me what you can offer (it's Rails!) and what you think of what's done so far: https://angel.co/ecosteader (email only please)
Where Job Growth Will Come Over This Decade
Hm. But the article/discussion relates to forming a company (that charges for services) and doing the work "for free". So it would seem either that is legal, or open source work is also illegal?
Overloading lambda
Fun fact: Reddit (& the main culture) is a big fan of "Free Speech" (in the US sense), however reddit bans one form of protected speech: doxxing.
> Would it be harsh to create a simple public list of startup founders doing this shady practice?

There are more effective methods to stop this practice:

* If the email doesn't have an opt-out link, or if the opt-out link either is complicated to use, requires a signup or results in more mailings from anyone, it's spam as defined by the Can-Spam Act and the sender can be prosecuted. To get the ball rolling, forward the e-mail to spam@uce.gov -- remember, just click "forward" in your email client program. A forwarded email has all the headers and information that the original did, allowing the sender to be identified and traced.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/07/newspamemail.shtm

If the sender has a gmail address, try forwarding it to abuse@gmail.com also. This might work, but over the years I have begun to suspect that Google doesn't think businesses that have gmail accounts are capable of being spammers.

Finally, there's SpamHaus, which does what to can to list and sanction abusers of the email system:

http://www.spamhaus.org/

How effective is SpamHaus? Hard to say, but someone thinks they're effecrive -- someone has been thrown in jail for trying to DDOS them out of existence:

http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/spamhaus-ddo...

Quote: "Police in the Netherlands Friday announced the arrest of a 35-year-old Dutchman on charges of having launched 'unprecedented heavy attacks on the non-profit organization Spamhaus.'"

> Ultimately I want a positive solution to something I think is a serious problem.

I suspect being thrown in jail might put a damper on this practice.
Nominalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics
Dolphin switched to its own browser engine, at least on Android.

http://dolphin.com/dolphin-browser-is-the-fastest-html5-mobi...
I think Bryan has been doing a followup to Copperhead, probably easy to just ask him :)

I don't know what you mean by predictable performance. Flattening is a direct transformation and seems simple to reason about on SIMD architectures, though the recent dynamic schedule (work stealing) approach for multicore/distributed has the usual caveats. (I tend to avoid it for HPC.) Given the 10+ year history of the researchers involved, it seems like a slow-but-steady project..
I met him once. We exchanged words. I didn't even know who he was, when it happened.
Funny you should post that. I was travelling by car near Cap Chat when that hit and it wasn't amusing at all.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=cap+chat+quebec&oe=utf-8&aq=t...

The st. Lawrence river might just as well be ocean for the purpose of driving along the shore road in winter, in the middle of a snowstorm like that it really makes you wonder what the hell you were thinking of driving there in winter.

I went there to visit a huge VAT ('eggbeater' or Darrieus rotor windmill), I should have kept a better eye out for the weather reports rather than to keep on driving, and I only caught the tail end of it. Live & learn...

(someone else's picture of the windmill: http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryman_76021/555075211/ )

It's an interesting experience to try to dig out your car before the next snowplow comes along.
Proprietary driver I assume? That always has been, and always will be (as far as my crystal ball permits me to see), a clusterfuck. If you opt-in to that sort of pain, don't act surprised when you receive pain.
I stand corrected - sort of - a bit more research shows the reality is "some dynamic/Ajax content" is indexed by Google, and not all search engines (i.e. Bing) are doing it yet.

For example, same search on Bing - http://www.bing.com/search?q=uiji.js

References:
- https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/131425949597179904
- http://www.biznology.com/2012/01/no-more-seo-worries-for-dyn...
No offense but you have a lot of 'privledge' to insist that you are owed live broadcast of sports. So owed, in fact, that you can justify stealing it when same-day or next-day options are available to you.

I mean, go ahead, I justify a large amount of piracy myself, but you sound like someone dismissing a minimum of work (I have to CALL them and ASK to pay less? UGH!) in favor of reverting to piracy.
True, but this would be even more inconsistency, as each app has to do it themselves.
Yep, only some form of protected speech are banned. The proctected speech that's possible to attach real world consequences to people who advocate for beating women.
I hope they finish CS:GO soon, that's the only reason I still dual-boot Windows.