skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Chalk does not maximize friction in all cases. With light pressure chalk reduces friction, under heavy pressure it increases it. Which is clearly a best case situation.

As an example of this pool players use chalk to smoooth out their stroke.
Insert long discussion on the limits of predicate logic when applied to anything involving human language here

This seems to be embedded in English, at least. If I say "I don't like chocolate", that's universally interpreted as "I dislike chocolate". But I only meant what I said: I do not possess an active enjoyment of chocolate. The listener just assumes "if yer not with us, yer agin us".

It seems that taking sides is baked pretty deeply into our thought process.
It's a social prediction market. Sorry, none of the content is available until you sign up. I want to keep it mostly private until it launches officially.
"Rudder reversal is a different issue."

I don't believe so.

> The bulletin also stated that a rudder reversal was also known as a "rudder doublet" and was defined as "a large rudder deflection input in one direction followed immediately by a rudder deflection input in the opposite direction." In addition, the bulletin stated that "large 'rudder reversals' or 'rudder doublets' must be avoided on Transport Category Aircraft" because "these inputs can result in loss of control or structural failure of the aircraft."

-- Report on Flight 587: http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2004/AAR0404.pdf (page 114)

[Edited to add: i.e. the pilot goes from having the rudder full left to full right, or vice versa. This is what happened to Flight 587.]
Buy a Mac?

Just kidding. Mostly. If you browse to http://help.benm.at/ from your iPhone (UA checking), you can download a carrier profile that will enable tethering. Reboot your phone and you should be good to go.

I recommend downloading the carrier file manually and verifying its contents before applying the setting changes.
the stereotypical American with no accent

:D
Was his name David?
Tomorrow Market is a social prediction market. Hacker News members get to skip the email verification. Let me know what you think.
A couple of FREE products I would recommend are:

Simply Accounting First Step Express for accounting
http://www.simplyaccounting.com/downloads/firststep/express/

and

Billing Boss for invoicing
http://www.billingboss.com/
This is an awesome tool. If I were an investigator I would DEMAND that. From the video it seems so encompassing!
The way I see things:

Suppose I want to hire you for a few months. You tell me you will be traveling in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand for 6 months. You tell me you will have access to the internet and work while on the move.

I would think you're not committed enough. I would also worry that you may get your laptop stolen with proprietary data on it while on a bus trip through the Cambodian jungle. And I am worried that you will have trouble accessing the internet in some remote locations, which would cause you to miss deadlines. To cut a long story short, there are too many risks. I would be better off hiring someone else.

The freedom would be great. Everyone would love to have the freedom to travel around. That does not mean it's not a fantasy.

Why not travel around and do rentacoder.com programming gigs once in a while?
But it's not worth the trouble to get to the bottom of these debates (at least based on the values of the typical person).

As shown in "The Myth of the Rational Voter", the amount that it costs a person to understand the issues exceeds the amount of benefit that his vote is likely to make. So people just aren't motivated to learn what's going on, and vote based on their feelings.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter for more information.
Application-centric view completely fails for things like Terminal / TextMate windows, Cmd-Tab doesn't work as expected.

OSX Virtual Desktops (Spaces) don't work too well, they have problems with application-centrism, and with particular programs not understanding them, that includes TextMate.

As for hardware faults, single mouse button on trackpad is a massive pain.
But why design your life based on how happy you estimate you'll be on your very last day(s) alive? Isn't it more effective to maximize current happiness?
I hope that as this technology becomes more widely available we're not trying to funnel it down to a single set of coordinates and one click.
He said himself that "a quick eye-ball sample says those failures mail are mostly spam that wasn’t classified right". Mostly? That means he already knows badly-encoded but legitimate email is not only possible but actually exists, so what's left to verify? Either you're okay with losing messages or you aren't.
Then you're either a)not testing correctly or b)writing code with too many dependencies, or c)both. If a thousand tests break from a single code change, this should be a code smell that says your architecture needs work.

This is where testing gets its real value. Finding bugs is just a side effect of testing. The real value is that testing helps you design good code.
Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise...

Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks!

EDIT: I'm looking for specific suggestions of which artists/collections/radio channels worked best for you. Thanks to all who replied!
Sphinx: Search Outside the Box
The author tried to show how hard it is to be homeless; The Sims 3 makes it pretty easy to be homeless.
The T400's battery does stick out the back though... so you're not making an oranges to oranges comparison. I, for one, don't like the idea of the battery sticking out the back. I'd prefer it to be a nice neat package (removable or not).
How Does Our Language Shape The Way We Think?
>> We strongly believe that predicting should be a social activity.

Can you explain more about what the purpose is? I can see why predicting certain things can be important, but after reviewing the "tour" and the issues being discussed, it seems like a game of chance to me. What are the benefits to being involved in a community like this?
On iTunes you can go to Radio -> Ambient and there are a bunch of stations that play the style of music. I'm a fan of StillStream and Drone Zone.
Key-Value Stores: Beyond Filesystems (Jeff Darcy)
Just curious -- how exactly do you know that any given signup is a HN member?
> Imagine being able to move your mouse cursor just by thinking!

I'm pretty sure that's what you'd have to do, too.
The real difference between what I pay for and what I won't pay for is not so much "long tail" vs. popularity but "specialness" which include exclusivity, insight and trust.

Walt Mossberg of the WSJ is really popular in tech so it's not very "long tail" but he has the exclusivity, insight and trust worth paying for.
oh, i agree. i don't think that i would be able to procure many longer term gigs like that, unless i had some special connections. the scheduling alone would be rough.

i think the ideal solution would be to do something like create my own subscription-based niche web app that would hopefully garner enough users to support the process (which i am in fact working on doing now). and then spend the 'work time' performing maintenance and improving it. and, if extra income is necessary, procure short-term gigs that i could knock out in days/weeks.
duplicate:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658264

Kill this thread
Exactly. I have experienced this first-hand, and my swings are much smaller than that. The thing is, anything worth a spit is going to be hard; there are swings in "regular" professions as well. Learning to deal with them is part of growing as a professional, in my opinion.
I think that there are many life lessons to be learned at the table, virtual or felt, and mental toughness is one that can be extremely beneficial to someone traveling the globe.
There isn't a swing out there a pint or four can't cure!
Organovo Pioneers 3-D Organ Printing: Hype or Hope?
The variable 'special' is set through the URL - my guess is that's it.
I can't recall the last time I saw an ad on reddit, but it's quite possible I blocked them myself at some point. I would be genuinely surprised if most technically-savvy people didn't do the same.
Ask HN:Firefox only design?
I've been redesigning different aspects of my site, and keep having issues with IE 6. I hate it so much.

How many people think its a huge mistake to suggest to users to view the site in FF before entering (if they have IE)?
>>"engineering quality, not greater mass, would be the dominant safety factor for the buyer."

Nope, people want to feel safe not be safe.
If you're working for yourself, then it could work.

Revenue is just one part of the picture. If you can lower your costs dramatically, then you don't need much revenue to support your nomadic lifestyle.

When traveling around Poland, I met a couple of Brits who had moved to Poland for some months to work on their startups. They did freelance work over the internet to pay for their expenses. Thing is, living in Poland you bleed off money a lot slower than you would in London, and you enjoy a much better lifestyle for the same price.
i think its a huge mistake to _require_ users to get FF by either forcibly denying them, or by 100% ignoring cross-browser compatibility in such a way that your site is unusable in IE6. not yet, anyway, as IE6 still has a chunk of the market (15-ish%).

for the most part, building a web application that degrades gracefully is a good idea, and you can forcibly degrade it for older browsers.

and making a suggestion is good. there are quite a few sites that will show a message suggesting browser upgrades.

/$0.02
How do they teach then? Are they teaching students who already have some English knowledge? Your friends are helping them improve, instead of teaching from scratch? Its understandable if thats the case.
Because often, being in the now clouds your reasoning. It's the same reason you set goals and make investments; deferring instant pleasure will result in greater payment later, but you only understand this by looking at the sum of all parts.

By introducing the "deathbed" one assumes that the most important things to that individual come into focus. If I didn't have a family, I'd have different deathbed priorities, but that is not the case. If my greatest desire in life was to win a Nobel prize, I would probably make choices favouring that outcome.

I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that for most people, their families (especially kids) will be more important to them than any professional or individual achievement. In the daily grind that is life, we have a tenancy to forget this. Focusing on the sum of a life brings things back into perspective.
Prediction markets* aren't games of chance; they're an economist's tool, an alternative to polls, or an embarassment to prognosticators. Not that they're perfect+.

Even less perfect when I can't find a list or search-box to select among the "symbols" to sell and purchase. Also, the "social" part is difficult when I can't find a place to "discuss" on each contract.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_Market
+http://www.slate.com/id/2189135/pagenum/all
It's interesting both in concept and execution, but isn't it a bit empty? It's usually a good idea to populate something like this beforehand, even if it's with fake/random accounts.

Also the bidding interface might use some contextual help. Everything is probably explained if I read the docs, but if I just want to jump in it's a bit difficult. For example the difference between Market and Local.
A basic but essential point. You want to post about this to Less Wrong? (I can bless the account if you don't have enough karma.)
+1. Consulting requires a sales pipeline. If you have a good network, that might fill the pipeline for you... You certainly don't want to be competing on oDesk and the like from abroad.
You've just launched it on Hacker News. Why submit something deliberately concealed?
A related question:

Is the social aspect of this market the difference between it and competitors like http://ppx.popsci.com/ ?
Very few people want free markets. The rest just want the standard of living that only free markets can offer.
I think it depends on the site. Most programmers are probably already using FF while they browse - but if your target is the average home user, it might be more of a problem.

Personally, I don't like it when a website tells me I have to use a certain tool. Now granted, most of the problem is that IE chose to be different than everything else, but still - when I'm working, I would rather have a smaller feature-set that runs on everything than a larger feature-set that requires a certain browser. I would rather be told to use FF than IE (my utility company requires IE, and it bothers me because it's all financial transactions - and Microsoft has, on occasion, not even trusted its own product). But still - I would advise against requiring a certain browser.
2:20! do you have the dual graphical cards? I find that switching to the low power graphic cards will give me around 5 hours, but my mbp is only two months old. I'd be sad if it would deteriorate to 2 hours in just half a year.
Large-scale graph computing at Google
In my mind, there are two main purposes: 1. You can make your prediction public and gain social status for being the most clairvoyant or the best trader, and 2. When the markets stabilize, the prices will give an indication of the likelihood of certain events. The game of making predictions involves chance and skill, and I think there is enough skill to make this game more interesting than Yahtzee.
I don't think flat out denying entry with an ie6 useragent is the way to go.

I'd suggest throwing a banner across the top that says something like, "Your browser is outdated and some parts of this site may not function correctly. Upgrade here"

The more sites that encourage users off ie6 the better off we'll all be.
For the community it's a game (with either real or fake money), but the predictions tend to be surprisingly accurate, given a few conditions are met.

It can also be used by large organisations in the decision making process (which is how I presume this could be funded), but I haven't heard of this actually happening in the wild.

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

edit, better link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
i'm always on the lower power GPU. for clarification, i can get around 4 hours with wifi off (on planes).
The earlier example of grasping a wet wine glass. That would seem to be an example.
All of the symbols are listed on the sidebar. Good idea about contract discussions. That's in the pipeline.
Isn't this the same thing as Inkling: http://home.inklingmarkets.com/

...or am I missing something?
Ask HN:  How can I fix awkward gestures in Numbrosia (and upcoming Numbrosia 2)?
You can find a description of Numbrosia here: http://www.numbrosia.com

I use swipes for column/row rotations. This is fine.

The awkward part is in the gestures for incrementing/decrementing a row/col. This is done by tapping the row/col, then quickly tapping a different point to indicate what to do.

In particular, for a row, you tap the row, then tap a point to the left for a decrement or a point to the right for an increment.

For a column, you tap the column, then tap a point below for a decrement or a point above for an increment.

Needless to say, this is pretty confusing initially although you get used to it after a while.

Is there a better way to do this?
Tethering has very little to do with the platform, and much to do with the carrier.

Carriers want to be able to charge for it regardless of which phone you own.

As for the 'pretty icons'...
Apple/RIM/Google are realizing that users are beginning to care less about what hardware their phone has, and more about what they can do on their phone. All 3 are focusing on providing app driven platforms, and Apple did well to grab the early lead.

I don't see a future for winMo in that ecosystem.
Ask HN: Customers and Revenue
You read all of the time that 20% of your customers contribute 80% of your revenue (and the obvious corollary.)

Many distributions of revenue across your customer base can lead to this result.

My question is can anything be told about your growth based on a more specific look at this distribution?

For instance, you might be worried if you had one customer bringing in 75% of that revenue or if there was a "cliff" anywhere in that distribution (or if 20% brought in 20%.) Similarly if 20% of your customers bring in 40% of your revenue what is that indicative of?

Thanks for the thoughts...
Yeah, it's the same book. I don't know what the differences are between them; it may just be a name change.
> Why not travel around and do rentacoder.com programming gigs once in a while?

I was considering trying this in the near future. Has anyone here used it (or odesk)? If so what was your experience? Is it difficult to get jobs given that depending on where you are people in other countries may be able to undercut your price by a significant amount?
Pandora also has a good selection of electronica and ambient music, and can store and learn what you like in a custom "station".
It's similar, but not the exact same thing. It's supposed to be more social than products like Inkling and InTrade.
Sun Is Said to Cancel Big Chip Project
Note that "any iPhone" should have read "any 3G iPhone." This won't work for a first-generation iPhone.
This disables visual voicemail. It did for me at least -- i had a backlog of messages I never saw until I realized what the problem was.
If you like a job why would you vote it up when it will increase competition for the job?
No. The new batteries are non-removable, and wouldn't fit.
There is a substitute, and that substitute is information. If you're claiming that you got new information from your "solidarity," you should be able to use that information to convince other people you're right. If the information you got convinces nobody but you, it's not data -- it's a bias.
Building a terrabyte-scale data cycle with Hadoop and Project Voldemort
How LinkedIn uses Hadoop and the distributed key-value storage system Project Voldemort to build an online/offline data cycle.
Fair enough. This may be something you want to put on your "About" page.
I love when people disagree with a question by downvoting it instead of trying to engage in a useful discussion...
The problems on the Boeing planes resulted from /uncommanded/ rudder reversal due to a problem in the hydraulic systems. There's no suggestion that an uncommanded rudder reversal occurred in this crash. The suggestion is that pilot-commanded rudder inputs put the rudder beyond its structural limits. Thus, the issue is one of the structural strength of the vertical stabilizer. This was not the primary issue in the Boeing incidents (the stabilizer remained in tact in most cases but the planes were in serious trouble anyway since they were pretty much uncontrollable).

In short, while Boeing and Airbus both have rudder-related problems, they are different problems. Boeing have an issue with uncommanded rudder movements, whereas Airbus' older models (if the author is correct) have the problem that it is too easy for pilot-commanded rudder inputs to put the plane beyond its structural limits. This problem can surface on the newer models if the fly-by-wire systems go down.
#16: The USB connector. There's no way, without looking into the port and the end of the cable, to know which way to plug it in.
I am on the same boat as you are.
However, you can expect people to upgrade from IE6 to IE7, but not IE to FF or Chrome. Think outside of the geekdom - people are used to and happy with IE and do not want to venture out into anything developed by hackers (for them hacker is still a bad word!).
I am planning to make my app IE7 & IE8 friendly (IE6, forget it! I will live with those users giving up on me).
Perhaps if the extent of the Internet was reddit's mainpage and digg.

I saw a lot of Obama support on other sites I frequent.
anyone know if there are any lightbox type scripts that appear with a warning if the browser is IE6?
It is a good idea, although I wouldn't use real money for something like this.
I agree with radu_floricica that it is difficult to understand how the bidding works on first glance. I'd try to add more information on the pages, not only in the faq and tour.
I had forgotten all about She Hates My Futon! He never finished it?

That's... that's just awful.
Most of the times they have some prior background in the language. But often you teach to very young kids as well, in that case you are usually paired with a local teaching assistant.
When you do a restore, it'll temporary go away. It returns eventually. At least it did for me. About 30 minutes later.

edit:: Also make sure you're on Edge/3G, not wifi.
But what happens if you create a concentration of left brain thinkers? Imagine if an industry sprang up that relied on such people, resulting in a dense population of super-geeks. So dense that they started breeding little geeks. If autism is genetic, as it we are starting to believe it is, would this not cause an increase in the cases of people being born with traits from the autistic spectrum?

This theory was proposed in a paper by Simon Baron-Cohen (ref: http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Systemizers-Have-A...). His study showed that children of "high-systemizers" were more likely to be autistic. If this is true, it would explain quite a bit. The rise in autism rates seems to match the growth of the tech industry and the value of "knowledge workers."
I'm wondering if I should just give up on the IE6 crowd too

hopefully they will be non existent within the next year or so
WARNING:

Don't give your real username and password!
I've tried with a fake password and works!
I was responding to your use of the term 'hope', which made it sound like you thought this was just some blind stab in the dark. He has data, he's asking for more, and he's asking people to shoot him down if it's a dumb idea. It's hardly a faith-based effort.

And now you're parsing his sentence for subtle evidence that he secretly knows he's dropping some legitimate messages? Dude, he posted the fucking numbers himself. It's obvious that he's willing to drop some messages. He's asking how many he actually would be dropping and trying to work out if the benefits of "everything as UTF-8" outweighs the costs of dropping a message every now and then.

Either you're okay with losing messages or you aren't

Yeah, brilliant. There are already several reasons to drop messages (size, mangled headers, etc). He's pushing for another one.
WARNING:

Don't give your real username and password! I've tried with a fake password and works!

[Sorry for duplication]
I think the way most people get started is to build simple C programs, and then use objdump to try and understand the output of the compiler (use -O0, of course =)

The intel CPU manuals have a lot of the low-level systems information about the CPU (like virtual memory, interrupts/exceptions, etc). If you enjoy/don't mind reading that type of technical documentation, you should start there.

Good luck, and thanks for reading.
I want to do things in stages, and the first stage is a private (and somewhat secret) beta.
ok, that makes sense. any idea how the pay is? enough to sustain oneself and travel?
If you're serious, email me details at tomorrow@tomorrowmarket.com. Passwords are encrypted, by the way.

Update: people are confused because the sign up page looks like a log in page because it is so short. You can not log in to Tomorrow Market with any password.
(Do you ever see much US coverage of the anniversary of the internment of Japanese-Americans?)
I guess its incorrect to assume someone might have something legitimately nowadays? :\