skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First use historical statistics and if possible, historical examples of the ideas being implemented. What the article presented was not much more than circumstantial (costs are going up, we have these programs, therefore these programs are causing costs to go up). If the evidence seems sound by an independent advisory board, have a pilot program put in place at one hospital, one city, or one county and carefully monitor the results. If proven successful in those trials, expand further.
I see some possibilities to test hypotheses like "$MEASURE will achieve $GOAL"

a) Gather historical data where $MEASURE was attempted and see whether $GOAL was reached. This can give results like "$MEASURE is positively correlated with achieving $GOAL".

b) Test it on a smaller scale. Instead of reforming the entire health-care system, search for something small but similar to reform.

c) simulate. Build a simulation of economic subjects and, before simulating the Friedman health-care reform, test it on past scenarios whose outcome is known.
That would mean 20-50% of Facebook users have ninja-like reflexes that let them close a browser within milliseconds of clicking an ad, before a redirect is recorded. Unlikely.
Don't get your hopes up too much about the transcription - you still need to listen to them to get the details. It's fine for getting a vague idea of what the call is about, but otherwise it really isn't very good.

Also, if you get phone spam, GV will only help you if they let you port your number to them (which hasn't been the case in the past) - otherwise they're still going to call your direct number and bug you.
I've never quite understood how or why broadband vendors can get away with not allowing their customers to actually use the broadband they're paying for.
There's already a pretty decent integration app for iPhone:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...

There also seems to be a similar app for Android (no full integration yet):
http://www.cyrket.com/package/com.evancharlton.googlevoice
There is a definite improvement in responsiveness. It's especially noticeable in the email app; it used to have a slight delay between emails and now switching between messages feels instant.
Ziff Davis to shut down ExtremeTech web site
One place a savings might be found is in reduction of tests done just to protect the physician from liability.

Also, the cost of keeping up medical billing companies is high enough that there might be a good savings if the local clinics and doctor offices didn't have to run all the paperwork for every checkup and infection.
That the HGP isn't as significant as the discovery of DNA is pretty obvious - DNA ranks with fire and the atom as the most important discoveries in human history. But it (or, more precisely, the science and techniques developed to accomplish it) is easily as important as the other things you listed. The HGP is to the discovery of DNA as quantum mechanics is to the discovery of the atom.

And you're being overly reductive when you say the Grand Challenge is a "pretty natural extension of Turing, Von Neumann, etc.'s". I'm pretty sure the physicists that you've mentioned would take exception to the idea that their work didn't have a clear lineage of its own.
Weird. The article is invoking Benford's Law without identifying it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law

Here's an article that concludes that the election results do not run afoul of Benford's Law:

http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/06/benfords-law-and-iranian-ele...
And an even more in-depth analysis [PDF]:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.2789
I've heard the 1/3rd rule from other investors as well.
The article is about the last digits of the numbers. Benfords law is about the first digits.
In the Lisp 'world' a thunk is often a function/closure with no parameters.
IPhone 3G S Comparison Chart
Because the URL is different:

http://www.tlb.org/keyboardchop.html

vs.

http://tlb.org/keyboardchop.html

HN does not try to "normalize" URLs. You can also add parameters... if you submit the following it will also be a new entry:

http://tlb.org/keyboardchop.html?hi=hello

SearchYC did not turn up anything with either of these URLs as the main item, but the link was mentioned in the context of this discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=185743
He is proposing turning XML into s-expressions. Eg.
<p>Hello world!</p> turns into (p Hello world!)
Can you please tell me what reasonable and effective method I could use to get you to stop expressing joy at Erik Naggum's death? I'll happily employ that instead of downmodding you and calling out your current behavior as every bit as terrible as or worse than the worst of what he ever did.

When you die and some idiot troll posts a link to this thread and expresses glee that you're gone, hopefully someone will come along and call that asshole out, too.
Yes, bureaucracy is a terrible thing. But universal health care paid by employer and administered by the state is a proven and mature technology. In a lot of countries it works without much noise. And health care and basic education free for everybody is something I absolutely want.

People with low income are still motivated to work for food, clothes or a home. Threatening them with illness or death is not a more effective incentive, and has the colateral effect of upsetting people. and lowering general health conditions that could cause epidemies.
Why is the post filled with grammatical errors ( very obvious ones ) and spelling mistakes ?!

The errors take away the seriousness of the content of the blogpost
Remind HN: Father's Day
At least, it is in the US. Go, do something special!
The article is very interesting in my view. It states that a sampling of the numbers do not follow expected random patterns.

But let's talk about the real issue. When you forbid independent monitors, announce results before the votes gets counted, and conclude absolute certainty in the results before there is a statistical analysis, it is hard to believe in a fair election.
SO that's where I saw it ! THanks a lot for pointing that out !

And very sorry for such an obvious mistake in not checking out whether the urls where totally different. Well atleast I got something out of posting this !
Glazed Tiles, Tile Glaze, Crackle Glaze Tile, Glazed Roof Tiles
Are you kidding? The 3G has a very noticeable and annoying latency on input (e.g. when entering text, when switching between modes in the Maps app, or when switching between most apps). It's not the end of the world, but feedback is hardly "instant". Text input latency seems notably better with iPhone OS 3.0, happily.
I think Rtm installed something on the server this morning.
I go jogging to maintain a certain fitness level, no to 'induce opiod'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Generalization_...
Hey because I was downmoded and my ego was hurt I looked into the matter further and the OP link was not actually posted before in HN, but I saw it as part of a discussion in HN some time ago - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=185883

Good to know that my memory is kinda ok !
Pre is linux. So, it is possible to port almost everything for it. kismet, aircrack-ng, wireshark, etc.
Feels like maxflow.
You're still dealing at levels of abstraction too far away from an actual product. At a distance, all these things are similar, but up close they are quite different.

How would you "factor in" ebay and twitter into one number that made any sense at all?
These usually just result in people picking holes in the dataset/experiment/simulation -- and rightly so; circumstances change too quickly for historical data to be much use, simulations necessarily have some severe assumptions, and small-scale tests don't simulate macroeconomic effects very well.

This is the reason that I've long classified macroeconomics in with religion: they're both very influential ideas, but neither are really based on any evidence.
Nomic: a game in which changing the rules is a move
Again, people fall into the fallacy that statistical averages must be followed exactly. It is not so.

Edit: Very surprised at the -3 mod. Are people here really so bad at statistics that they think this?

Example: Just because the average rainfall in a spot is 10 inches, does NOT mean it has to be 10 inches every year. If you have 6 inches one year that is NOT an anomaly. That is perfectly normal. Sure it might be unlikely - but unlikely things still happen! In fact they must happen, just not as often at the more likely things.

So the analysis of the votes, sure it might not match the average, but that doesn't mean a whole lot. It could simply mean that you happened to get the 10% chance.

PS. Not that the vote fraud is in question. It's not, it's obviously fake. But not because of this analysis.
That sounds like a cheap rhetorical trick. Here, let me try:

When your document-trading site expects you to trade documents, there's nothing to be upset about. When your music-downloading program expects you to expose yourself to massive legal liability, people get upset.

Oh boy! Now, the people who agree with me get to feel superior about their existing beliefs. Fun stuff.
This stands in stark contrast to the political alternative. In our democracy, politicians are committed public servants who universally put the long-range well-being of the republic ahead of their own political interest. In this way we benefit from their wisdom, shown time and again to be superior to that of conventional public opinion, having carefully weighed and integrated the best ideas from leaders in every field.

</sarcasm>

Seriously, do you think that the US today is a free market? I challenge you to show me one area of endeavor that's not subject to government regulation.

The history of health insurance is completely dependent on government meddling. In the past, people were not dependent on their employers or any public assistance for healthcare. It was generally funded by the patients themselves, with help from mutual-aid organizations like churches and unions.

It was FDR's socialist wage freezes that forced companies to find other ways to compete for the most talented employees (the market always finds a way, despite government interference[1]). The way the income tax worked, offering healthcare benefits was advantageous. Thus, the government warped the existing market and changed the expectations of people. Now employees gripe that employees are greedy by not paying more and more for medical coverage -- but their offering any coverage at all is a very recent development.

[1] This is pretty much always true. Why do people drive gas-sucking SUVs today? Because CAFE regulations in the '70s killed the family station wagon, but exempted cars. People want big vehicles, and found a way around the regulations. And the work-around was worse than what we had initially.
Chrome and Firefox 3.5 Memory Usage
GX - A new JavaScript Animations Framework to create complex animation
Or even a phone call...just do something.
Awesome Yahoo UI Prototype JavaScript Components
Feel free to send it my way - I'll be happy to proofread it for you (email's in the profile).
Inhabitat & Nokia Phone Charges by Drawing Energy Out of Thin Air
He has the same article on his blog: http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/2009/06/19/iphone-therefore-i...
but it also includes a short comparison with one of Nokia's new(?) phones, the N97
"Spending on medical care provides a reasonably good measure of input, but, unfortunately, there is no remotely satisfactory objective measure of output."

Seriously? An economist, of all people, is trying to convince me that we can't estimate the effectiveness of a health care system? At the same time he thinks he can estimate the effectiveness of a theoretical economic model for paying for a health care system? I call B.S.

His comment about Physicians earning much less in Canada than in the U.S. is also disingenuous. Canadian doctors spend the vast majority of their 40-hour workweek being doctors. In the U.S. doctors have to deal with both patients and insurance companies equally, raising the time they spend working and lowering the overall efficiency of providing care.

Besides, lawyers also make much less in Canada than in the U.S., as do senior executives. Is this also because of the health care system?

I like his thesis. I find it elegant and simple. It's too bad that any time he approached presenting a real fact in the article he did so dishonestly.
Worlds smallest microwave plugs into USB
The fact that it works in many other countries doesn't mean it will in the United States. Agreed that it successful in many other countries like Canada, UK and France but if you look closer there are a lot of factors that will work against universal health care being successful in the United States. To see if this will work you also need to look at failures. Take India for example government health care in India is awful for the obvious reason, population.

United States population is growing at almost the same rate as India. We also have a new immigrant population every year. We also have the most expensive form of health care thanks to the system that rewards bad doctors. Given this if one were to start universal health care for everybody it would just mean a lot more taxes for all of us. Which is fine with me if I knew that it would work but these issues that I stated above cannot be solved by throwing in more money. There need to be a change in attitude of health care providers towards the business. It might be rewarding them for now but in the long run it is self destructive.

HSA like the earlier comment made on the thread is step in the right direction but it is mostly optimal for younger people. Also even in places like India people have come up with novel ways to solve this problem (http://iaimtomisbehave.org/2009/06/04/healthcare-doctors/). There are alternatives out there we should consider before taking this big step towards universal health care.
HN: How does one get feedback on comments?
How does one get feedback on comments with low mod scores without bringing up downmoding?

Downmoding is by its nature ambiguous:

Is the comment unclear?

Is the comment in bad taste?

Is the comment factually wrong?

Is the comment really troll bait?

Is the comment insensitive?

Many comments, especially when they are short, may be misinterpreted. This is hard to decipher when there are no replies to a comment.

Talking about downmods is boring. Helping posters to clarify their comments may turn out to be interesting.

One way to do this is to allow people to associate a label with a comment. When a poster sees these labels, it will give that person the ability to post a clarification.

The assigner of a label would be anonymous. People could then vote on these labels so that they only stick if enough people don't disagree.

People shouldn't have to put on their karma helmet to get feedback.

What do you think?
Top tier VCs like Fred get to invest in the cream of the crop, so the numbers are different for him.
Phone calls are special, unless you talk to him every day on the phone.
I was fortunate enough to catch NetShare on the AppStore and have been using it for my tethering needs. Seems to be undetected by my provider, as this one seems a bit more official with a comment on the YouTube instructional video indicating that ATT did charge them for their tethering, using this method.
Not sure where to put my reply, but this place seems okay. Write your own resume - when I started college and was looking for internships, I relied heavily on "professionals" (resume writers and critiquers in the school's career services department) as well as the advice of numerous people who never seemed to have trouble finding jobs.

I still got no interviews. It wasn't until I decided to really think through the logic of resume reading and writing that I finally settled on my own style that, in my final internship in college, scored me 15 interviews in 2 weeks.

You sound like you have plenty of experience but are failing at getting noticed. This is not a bad position (beats the opposite: lots of attention on paltry skill set). A couple basic pointers I've found useful:

- make it look different. I use a sans-serif font unlike most people, who go for the elegant, professional serif fonts. I also throw my name is large bold letters at the top (much bigger than most templates would tell you).

- make your way past HR. Many recruiters in HR only scan for keywords, not being devs themselves. Cater to their whims by starting off with a litany of keywords. I start my resume with a large (but well spaced) list of languages, major libraries, databases, etc. I have gone to many interviews where the only thing highlighted on my resume were from the keyword section.

- whitespace. So many people adhere strictly to the one-page (or two-page) rule, and somehow think this is license to cram the page. If your resume is a chore to read, it wont' get read. Give lots of spacing - information density has an upper limit before the brain gives up.

As for job searching in general, I've found the following useful for both internships and post-college first-job situations:

- Find the name of the recruiter. Have no shame in doing this, especially at large companies. A good way in that I'm fond of using is thinking hard about the position, and coming up with (good, non-obvious) questions that you may have about the job. Then, hit up the company and don't stop until you've reached the recruiter-in-charge and had your questions answered. This shows enthusiasm, initiative, and most of all your name is now anchored - which greatly increases your odds of making it into the "interview" pile (or get rescued from the "trash" pile after the fact).

- Once you have the recruiter's name, write a personalized cover letter with your resume. Use the recruiter's name. This will stand out greatly amongst the sea of "Dear Recruiter" lines, or even no cover letter at all.

- Go to career fairs. Your odds of success increase dramatically if the recruiter can tie your resume to a face. If there is some spark of recognition you will likely end up in the "interview" pile. Don't just make smalltalk at these things, genuinely try to grok what the company does, ask intelligent questions to both engineers and HR, and make an impression.
I think this would be a neat project for a GreaseMonkey script-- those who want to see it can, those who don't, won't.
The OP is not looking for an explanation of why USENET declined, he's looking for suggestions for where the new best places are.

Old USENET is just an example of what he considers 'good' to be.
Is the huge memory use from Chrome just because it opens separate processes for each tab? If so, can't some of that memory actually be shared by the OS even though it shows up as duplicated (like what happens if you do vfork?)
Just to note - this is done on Vista, which means that the browser stats may look very different on a different OS.
>write a one-off resume targeted for a specific job

I heard it can be good to have a "full resume" with everything in it, and then for each job you cut out the irrelevant parts. This keeps you from forgetting important job-specific parts that were previously edited out of your generic resume.
What an awful poem. If people are going to share poetry, please make it at least readable. I offer John Donne for instructional purposes in this regard, this piece newly dedicated to the folks at Yahoo:

A BURNT SHIP - John Donne

Out of a fired ship, which by no way

But drowning could be rescued from the flame,

Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came

Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay ;

So all were lost, which in the ship were found,

They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drowned.
You really can't compare a beta or Release Candidate with final versions of other browsers that most definitely will put your numbers off.
An email is the best I can do. I don't like talking to my father.
iLounge also posted these speed test videos: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/iphone-3g-s-s...

They only show game loading speed, but it's still impressive. I can imagine the people using their phones for games a lot to want to upgrade; the loading speeds are nice, but your FPS should also get a boost.
The design of OLPC's XO laptop might have been the root cause. That had Sugar, a custom icon-based desktop environment. Asus is a hardware company; it made sense to take whatever software design choices were made by the OLPC team as a good set of defaults. Even Ubuntu Netbook Remix took some time to bake properly.

There was also the initial confusion over what consumers really wanted out of a netbook -- a minimal laptop, or an internet communication device. The XO and original eeePC interfaces fit the latter, but feel a little strange in the former case. (UNR hits a nice middle ground, I think.)
Photo Of Einstein Nets $74K At Auction
4 GB of memory can be had for $50.

When I use a computer I usually use: browser + music, OR browser + emacs.

I want my browser to be fast and responsive, and the memory isn't being used for anything else.
Probably the ratio is to stay, since the other platforms are treated with the same indifference by the developers.
I wonder how they're going to check this. I'm almost tempted to test it out, and see what happens. Buying a new prepaid sim only costs £4, but changing phone numbers is a bit more of a hassle.
'The "verbose" end-tags like </p>, </body> are very helpful syntax when manually editing large documents (which may have deeply nested structures spanning several screenfulls). However for simple and compact data structures a simple ")" (or even "}") is easier and clearer.'

The verbose end tags also make it easier the write consistent robust parsers. One complaint about SGML was that it hard to find a tool that correctly implemented the entire spec. The XML spec is 11 pages.

XML came from a desire to have SGML on the Web. As you've pointed out, people have used XML were it likely didn't belong.

To be fair, though, once the world had a choice of decent XML parsers and tools it made sense to use XML for many things, even where the syntax itself was less than ideal for the given task. The proliferation of JSON parsers will likely fix a lot of this abuse moving forward.

Still, berating XML for how people misuse it would be like saying Git is crap because some people use it as a general purpose database, and there are better ways to design relational databases.