skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am going to go on a limb here. Is this actually a shill for launchly.com?

If not, your wordpress theme looks great, and sillyapp seems to work just as well as every other customized WP blog. Honestly, it does look great, but lets get real, it is a blog.
I also feel that biology requires a different mindset from those who would rather go into physics or engineering. Back in high school I would always excel in biology while one of my friends would excel in physics. On the other hand, it took much more work to also do well in the other's field.

Although some complain that biology is more about rote memorization, I've found that that works only if you want to pass the test. Understanding something like gene->protein is much more interesting when you try to understand the context and reasons for everything. It's hard to explain, but I get the impression that biology requires a stronger understanding of how large systems work, while physics requires a strong ability to manipulate and refactor situations to solve problems.
Does RMS support usage of Java?

If yes, are there no threats there?
If no, have they given any thought to having an official recommendation for new GUI (GNU) projects, at least a language with garbage collection.
Because it has a bunch of buttons that are irrelevant, which basically add too much unnecessary visual "noise" to the page.

Between the slideshow and the video, I would suggest going with simple screenshots of the control panel and a short summary of what the service is. Then have a separate longer page that explains features in a bit more length, and also have detailed description available in the Documentation section. Currently, the page simply has "too many characters".

Also the color scheme should not be white on dark. This is purely a perception thing. You are pitching clarity, reliability and simplicity - the color for these is white.

Also the page looks a bit sloppy layout-wise. The "exactly" from ".. showing exactly what .." actually sits on top of the slideshow.

The "NOW" part from "Try out monitoring NOW" sounds tacky. Also the dark-on-gray is not a very good color choice for an action button. It's gotta be bright and it should look visually pleasant.

The "WIGS" is effectively another source of the noise that detracts from your primary service. I would consider renaming it into something a bit more human-friendly or taking it out completely. The same goes for "security videos of the academy" link at the bottom. Why the heck would I care about some academy.

All in all, the site needs to be simplified and streamlined to focus on just one thing - your primary service. The service itself appears to be valuable, but (a) it's going to be a tough sell (as its value is in detecting abnormal conditions, i.e. its value is not tangible under normal conditions) (b) make damn sure it respects robots.txt, because otherwise with a one-minute polling interval you will be blacklisted in no time.
If there are indeed patent threats any time, it can be worked around or that part of the functionality can be removed.

Why throw the baby out with the bath water?
Can you point to these actual claims?

As far as I've understood, they were just stances and FUD. They haven't made any specific claims. That's as vague as it can get.
Somewhat generic advice: Find a good local bookstore (way easier in cities, particularly those with universities) and start flipping through relevant books until you find one that speaks in language you understand -- there's really no substitute for this, since your background (maths/physics/compsci) and learning style are super-relevant.

I'm a really big fan of MIT press textbooks; they consistently are of excellent quality and authorship (and no, I didn't go to MIT). They're not cheap, but they're significantly cheaper than taking a course.
Excellent site! As an exercise of a new computer platform I used to write a simple life implementation. Its been a while since I paid any attention to wat was going on, thanks for posting this.

Do anyone know anything similar for 3d Life? I used to subscribe to a newsletter from Carter Bays covering new stuff in the field.
(http://hackerne.ws/item?id=676000)
Is Free Software Foundation all about "no", "don't", "shouldn't" etc ?
Its actually probably because the cost of making and distributing an album like hers is pretty high. Shes probably just not even close to breaking even on the costs she owes the record label.

The fact that it was ben folds produced leads me to believe that it probably cost quite a bit.

So shes right, shes probably made nothing and is in fact probably still in the hole.
How I started the Jacko flashmob by accident
Another vote for no scribd on the landing page -- it looks foreign and distracts from the sign up button (your "call to action").

"How it works?" isn't really a question. Either "How does it work?" or "How it works:"

This might just be me, but WIGS is a strange thing to see on the header. I get that it's the name of the product, but it wasn't obvious from the main page that Sucuri made WIGS. Something more descriptive, like "about" or "about WIGS" or "about the product" would be better.

If you want me to check out the demo, don't make me type in the username and password. A form with some hidden fields and a button requires way less user effort.

Style looks good, says "security company." The (BETA) in the title doesn't really jive with that message, though.

Why is it free, by the way? I think any businessperson looking at a service like yours would be _less_ likely to use it for free than for pay if something of value is on the line.
In a *nix environment, set the shebang line of the file to point to the precise interpreter you want to use. Any imports that file makes will be from the /usr/lib/pythonX.Y for that version of the interpreter. (In order to get the library installed into that path in the first place, it must have been done via that version of the interpreter specifically, so its quite possible to keep 3.x and 2.x versions of the same library quite isolated).

Of course imports can also come from the local dir, via pythonpath and the various manipulations thereof (buildout, virtualenvs etc), so there are a few degrees of freedom via which to manage things.

May be worth pointing out that a file and all its imports will only be running under one interpreter, so a file running on 3.x (via shebang line, say), will not be able to use a 2.x library (even if placed in the correct path) where the code of that library is fundamentally not 3.x compatible.
In later flow charts, quoting Lenin can turn people into a "vampire/communist" somehow. I've always suspected.
Ok, well... I am a biologist and one of the first things you need to understand about "The Selfish Gene" is that much of what Dawkins presents as fact is very much under dispute in the biological research community. Be very cautious about accepting anything he presents as "the one true way" of understanding evolution. It is anything but!

One term you can Google for more information is "multi-level selection". I find the pack animal explanation actually rather interesting. It meshes well with some of the research that I'm doing on evolution as targeted at resource utilization efficiency. I think the real question is to what extent primitive man was a "pack" animal as opposed to a "group" or "tribe" animal. That is, I think there are many open ended questions regarding the social structure of early man (for one thing, if early man was a pack animal you'd have to explain the origin of monogamy, or at least limited polygamy, in place of the harem structure of most pack animals).
Sounds like bullet.
If I want to review something at launchly, I go to launchly. HN should not be used for marketing and promotion. Yesterday you submitted something about launchly, you should leave it at that.
No Recovery in Sight
Best advice: Gates on Gates
Regarding Java: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

As for writing GUIs, how about Perl/Ruby/Python/Lua/... + GTK?
See, the thing is, if they're only down by tens of thousands of £, which is like dozens of thousands of US$, they would earn out from that in short order if the album revenues were similar to their merchandise revenues Palmer cites here.
Some videos from Feynman which make a great impression on me were these..

"Take the world from another point of view"

1.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsgBtOVzHKI

2.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnzB_IHGyjg

3.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNOghidK2TY

4.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvqwm6RbxcQ
Google App Engine's Python is 2.5. I wouldn't bet on 2.6 becoming available for a couple of years.

Django 1.0 just became available on GAE. I'd hate to see things stop with 1.3.
Why a skinned interface is worth it
Now, Microsoft has been spending money to open-source books for a while; they funded a lot of the Internet Archive's book-scanning program. This is the first I've heard of Gates doing it. I wonder if he really will?
He quotes Hippocrates in the opening of chapter 1:

He who does not know food, how can he understand the diseases of man?

...so that answers half my question.

I'm about a third of the way through now. I found the chapters on animal protein and the China Study very interesting and well presented.

Thank you very much. I've read a bit online re: diets, nutrition and health, and Campbell presents a very compelling argument for vegetarianism, or at least very moderate consumption of meat.

It occurs to me that traditionally cured meats have a much stronger taste, and naturally lend themselves to lower levels of consumption--just a little for flavoring, the same way one would use blue cheese. I wonder if there's more to it.
l0phtcrack also seems to have been revived. http://www.l0phtcrack.com/
The fake receipts are $40/each by the looks of things. That prices the service out of the petty theft realm (i.e. you're not spending $40 to expense a fake $50 dinner) and well past most of the legally dubious but (arguably) morally acceptable reproduction of receipts for expenses you _did_ incur. IMO their sample receipts also didn't look that great, with the logos blurry on the edges and not as dark as the text, and the text not an obvious POS typeface.

Honestly the only interesting use I can see for this service would be on the side of the provider -- it would be amusing to see who would pay for such a thing and what they'd request.
I have collected some Feynman lectures as well. See this:

http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com/2008/12/richard-feynma...
really? for many services these days, your only receipt is an email, and such things are easy to edit, why is something that complicated needed?
I wouldn't call it "short."
What you refer to as a "big problem" and "holding back" of the evolution, I don't see at all in the same perspective.

Its not imo an infrequent occurrence that software authors decide to do things so differently in a new version, that it fundamentally breaks compatibility with the old way of doing things.

Ie python 3 is something different from python 2; just like how in the C world a libXYZ.1.0 may have an entirely different api from a libXYZ.2.0, or how linux 2.6 differs from 2.4 for device driver writers etc; because the developers felt there was a compelling reason/opportunity to do things differently/better as the world moved forward.

In all cases, authors of other 3rd party software somehow dependent on the above (ie python, the hypothetical libXYZ etc) must then decide when/if they will transition to the new way of doing things.

And this in turn will have a knock-on effect on users of that 3rd party software, who in turn may suddenly have some further constraints imposed on them in terms of what they can and can't combine, what additional testing may be required etc.

That is just the price of progress; and frankly I don't see that anything else (Ruby, .NET) is somehow immune to this ever happening.

I build a lot of embedded systems that combine a variety of components, libraries etc, and there are forever dances around picking versions of things to get compatible dependencies, over the whole spectrum of technologies.

There are also always degrees of freedom, ie sometimes you just have to use both the old and new versions to satisfy dependencies for other components, run things as separate executables and then stitch those together via an ipc mechanism.

I don't think its realistic to think anyone's base technology might not ever change incompatibly; and so even though it might bring more work for a while, I don't see this change in python as anything so different from what we deal with anyway elsewhere, that it would merit me to consider for a moment replacing python with something else, either in the embedded environment or elsewhere.

In fact I applaud the python developers for their courage to be able to walk away from old paradigms and cut old cruft.

Maybe in looking at something like Ruby, right now you might feel a pythonista to be at a disadvantage to a rubyist if the latter is perceived as working with a more "stable" (unchanging) platform at this particular moment, and who's to say you're not justified in feeling so; but to my way of thinking it seems virtually assured that at some future point, Ruby will also undergo the same type of thing.

(Or, as tends to happen to those technologies where developers cannot find the courage to walk away from the old, things stagnate and love withers away).

Thus, I do not see this change holding back the evolution of python at all.

In fact I would argue evolution of a technology is held back precisely when the developers thereof cannot bring themselves to do the necessary to replace the old by the new, for fear of inconveniencing everyone dependent on the old. Eventually that technology can no longer remain on par with the others without such qualms, and it dies.
Interesting online presentations to learn Ajax,PHP,CSS and JavaScript
Indie Game Developer: The Definition
This review, and its references, are a little dated, so I presume that the animal models are much more sophisticated by now:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-1819.1990.tb00461.x
> I wonder if he really will?

Really will what?

"Bill Gates recently bought the rights to a series of lectures by legendary Caltech physicist Richard Feynman."

Do you mean spend money to open source books?
I was honestly curious how this would be received by the HN community. The sole purpose of launchly is to try to get a website the feedback that it needs. I do not see how it is very different for me to post a site that wants feedback on their behalf than if the app/site came here directly and did so?

Would it be OK for the site owner to come here and request feedback (via the standard Ask HN post) and link to their launchly launch so that they are better able to track their launch success/failure in one place? If so, then why is it a problem that I "do them a favor" and remove that requirement from their plate? If that wouldn't be OK, why not? It seems silly for the site to have to aggregate feedback in multiple places just so they don't link to launchly.

I have no intention of ever reposting the same app/site if they have already requested feedback here prior to coming to launchly. HN is an amazing source for news about, among other things, website launches. That's why I follow it every day. I hope that launchly becomes a focused source for that type of news. If we can offload some of the launch news to launchly then HN could focus more on startup and general hacking news.

I'm very interested in hearing peoples' opinions on this topic.
>> So what do I think of sifting through the internet for personal information about candidates? It isn't performance-based.

Two days ago I made one of the bigger decisions of my life: I decided to abandon any attempt to salvage a bio-tech company I co-founded ten years ago. One of the other founders had a quite brilliant invention that I'm more convinced than ever will work. Yet, after ten years, I finally realized that a company is fundamentally its people and how they interact. His performance (narrow sense) as a scientist was tremendous. As a human being? Well, there's the fact that he's been in and out of jail several times for assault and battery as well as drunk and disorderly. And the fact that every time we get close to making a major advance he steps in to sabotage it, which he has done several times by calling customers, vendors and big investors and screaming at them. And the fact that he takes absolutely no responsibility for his actions.

Some of his craziness is apparent from his web page. If he'd had a web page ten years ago I might never have gotten involved and wasted ten years and a lot of money pursuing a dream that depends on someone who has failed at everything in his life and is absolutely intent on making sure he fails at this.

So, raganwald, it all depends on what you mean by "performance". One thing that I am 100% certain of, how someone treats other people, how much they complain instead of take action, etc., is largely what I mean by performance. One dirt bag can make everyone else on the team miserable, and drive the good people away.

I would never ask to log into anyone's social web page. I will always check on their background, including using search engines.
When similar event took place in Burma, the government there totally disabled the Internet. I've heard that Iranian economy is more dependent on the Internet then Burma's was. There are efforts by the pirate movement and others to set up proxies and tor exit nodes, with ip filters, for use by the Iranian people.
Software that spots hidden social networks
Yes you're absolutely right. Staff per passenger kilometer is the missing piece of information. Very good point.
Linux Kernel Design Patterns - Part 1
I just finished watching the first lecture, it was very enjoyable as is typical of Feynman lectures, but what I'm confused about is the metaphor that he chose to give as an explanation for the reason the probabilities are the way they are.

Isn't another interpretation of that experiment (what I thought was the current default interpretation), that as you increase the distance between the two surfaces you have light rays reflecting back, and because of the distance (not the time it takes an arrow to spin as in the video), the two light rays become out-of-phase, and therefore you get constructive and destructive interference?

Secondly, I was also confused as to his insistence that "light is a particle", hasn't it be established that light has properties of both particles and waves? Certainly Feynman doesn't deny that, so why would he make that statement so insistently? The wave-length of the light "particle" is very important in calculations, and while this characteristic of light wasn't denied in the lecture, it certainly seemed to be ignored amidst the talk of "little spinning arrows"...
Actually, if I'm not totally mistaken, you can and they did it with the BBC broadcast. What you do is that you send interference to the satellite so it can't receive any data. Therefor it's always theoretically possible to jam a satellite that is receiving a signal from Iran. The BBC solved the problem by relaying through another satellite.
This seems disingenuous once I view source on search results and find multiple inline script elements, some not too small, again inline, style/CSS in the head and many dispersed span tags also with inline style declarations. I see some element attributes not quoted but at least the href on search results are indeed between quotes.

From what I can see in their source, there is a lot more they could do to optimize their bandwidth and page load speeds than eating a couple of closing tags.
Well, if Java is under the GPL now, why doesn't FSF actively promote Java for their projects?
Would they be available under a CC-licence?
;)
Very nice response by the PHP team IMO. I fell out of love with PHP a looong time ago but harbor them no ill-will. Seeing how silly some (most?) of the suggestions Google gave was very disappointing.
The whole denial of the possibility of empirical knowledge strand in modern philosophy has long rubbed me up the wrong way, but possibly only in a way that is clear to programmers.

The denial usually derives from a distinction between the mind and the world outside it; things-in-themselves from the outside world can never be perceived by the mind, because all perceptions are mediated by sensory organs, they are all filtered one way or another.

But this seems suspect when one considers a simple physical computer as as an example of a simple mind. We model the "knowledge" of the machine as the state of its "memory", however we choose to represent that memory - flip-flop circuits or magnetized rust.

That "knowledge" changes as the machine's I/O manipulates the state through long chains of physical, mechanical operations, and looking in from the outside with our more sophisticated eyes we may see that the knowledge imparted by the "sensory I/O" may be more or less true. If it's less true (as a digitization, it'll almost always be an approximation), then the I/O or programming may have bugs; but if the I/O and programming are functioning well, is it true to say that the machine has not acquired true knowledge from its "sensory organs"? That it cannot acquire such knowledge?

Empirical (or a posteriori) knowledge is usually contrasted with a priori knowledge, stuff whose truth is independent of the outside world, but is usually a function of the meaning of words (such as "All batchelors are unmarried" - these are analytic truths). Things that are supposed to be true independent of the outside world but not embedded in the meaning of the words are supposed to be "synthetic a priori" truths. But it seems to me that a priori truths come from the brain examining itself, that the only way such "knowledge" can be obtained, i.e. a state change occur, is by examining the physical process of reasoning itself, whether directly, or indirectly as a result of the "programming", i.e. the construction of the machine / brain's mechanism for reasoning.

These "a priori truths" are mediated by the "I/O of self-reflection", and are not actually a priori at all, in practice. The knowledge of the truths, i.e. the experiential sense of "dawning on oneself", i.e. what it feels like to experience a state change in one's knowledge representation, came about because of a physical process which may or may not have bugs; i.e. it is mediated.

So, a counterpart to "we have eyes, therefore we cannot see" - a lovely caricature - is "we have brains, therefore we cannot think". It seems to me no true Idealist can deny that he cannot have ideas.
This is his extraction of the JavaScript code from his Dali Clock port to the Palm Pre, which uses WebKit.

jwz writes about the Palm port here: http://jwz.livejournal.com/1057786.html
How about it pg: would you accept a patch that showed the subdomain when the domain is nytimes.com?
Of course, there's a chicken/egg thing here. Might as well say "it seems a bit extreme to include Python" just because the occasional app is written with PyGTK, for example.

There are plenty of folks writing applications in C# using the GTK bindings, which in turn need Mono. Tomboy is just one that's become popular enough that people want it to ship as part of Debian's distribution of GNOME (not the only one; IIRC there are three apps in there now which need Mono). So sooner or later somebody's gotta ship it by default to support an application, and then folks who don't have religious attachments to avoiding Mono will think it's no more unusual than any other shared dependency of commonly-used applications.