skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At one point I told my doctor (a psychiatrist) I had ADD and needed ritalin. Stupid bitch said I didn't...cost me a lot of suffering before another doctor confirmed it.
Learning quantum mechanics at age 14
As i understand it, your body is made of various different types of cells. Now, a virus has to be able to mate with these cells to break through and then change the RNA of the cell so it can replicate- remember, viruses are sub-cell agents and need to cause mutations of good cells to replicate.

So given your body is made of different types of cells, viruses only have the keys to certain cells - where there's enough in common in their RNA to mate. This is kind of what's meant by the ports the author describes- H1N1 has enough similar encoding to the cells in your throat, nose and sinuses to mate and cause mutations.
I wonder who owns these places.
Desertec seems to be planning a water-based system: "...added benefit of the concentrated solar power, or CSP process is the desalination of water...". Doesn't that mean it will be a daytime-only system? Wouldn't using seawater rapidly corrode the system itself?

Years ago, solar in Northern Africa for sale to Europe was pitched as a way to apply the technologies used in Solar Two (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project#Solar_Two). That system used molten salt in order to provide 24-hour power generation. It looks like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Tres_Power_Tower is being built in Spain.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13725855 has some interesting discussion of thermal solar as a technology.
It's pretty easy to do number 1. use a regex ([0-9]*) and check if there is more than one group of matched values. If there is more than one group then you can either error it out or do some more sophisticated checking(i.e. 100 meal at 10:50pm, two numbers but easy to discern what the intent was) number two is a bit more difficult but still fairly easy.
Yes, all coders everywhere listen to techno, no exceptions.

[Edit: it's a little known fact that, in addition to starting the FSF and the GNU project, Richard Stallman was the first to sample the Amen Break.]
You can also use Mugasha, I have been working on this for the last 9 months. http://mugasha.com/ use FB connect or hackersftw as invite
The free physics textbook
I prefer bands such as Talkdemonic and This Will Destroy You.

http://www.myspace.com/talkdemonicmusicmaking

http://www.myspace.com/thiswilldestroyyou
How Good (or Not Evil) Is Google?
At the end of the post however, it does mention "This post was prepared using Wikipedia."
My girlfriend works in Public Health, and finds herself in the position of correcting doctors' misconceptions about illnesses she is monitoring. Seems like she gets to correct someone who should've known better about once or twice a month.

What makes this even more ironic -- as a patient, she has a very difficult time communicating with doctors. When she was in graduate school, she did studies on disparities in health care based on race. Somehow she gets caught up in those mechanisms without seeing the patterns she once studied in grad school. (She's African American, and she constantly has problems convincing doctors that she's not exaggerating the degree of her pain, and at the same time constantly disregarding her doctor's instructions. A couple of days ago, I did a double-take and said, "OMG, a little voice in my head is yelling 'African American Health Disparities!' Do you realize you're living a stereotype?")
Another good place to get good electronic coding music is http://www.di.fm They have a bunch of different radio channels and very few commercials.
There are "sorting algorithms" faster than O(n log n); that limitation only applies to comparison sorts. These typically have complexity depending on the keyspace (for example, counting-sort has linear complexity in whichever is greater, the size of the input list or the keyspace).

They're also typically kind of useless, as in this example, because we rarely care to sort an arbitrary list of integers with no metadata. Radix-sort is a rare exception, in that it can easily be modified to carry metadata, hence people actually using it in some applications.
The problem is not with physicians, rather its a structural problem with the American political system.

I have no doubt that you and many of your colleagues are compassionate and well intentioned. But you also pay dues to an organization that has a political lobbying arm. This is of course, entirely understandable. Washington has a ton of power, power which can be used to steam roll you. Thus you support an organization that has a goal of looking out for your interests in Washington. It does so quite well. Too well, in fact. As a result of AMA lobbying, America has far fewer doctors than most other developed countries. The result is higher prices for consumers, and no evidence of better care. See: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/04/05/the-futility-o... Again, I don't blame the doctors, I blame the design of the political system that creates constant factional fighting over the resources of the country, with some factions getting screwed and others doing the screwing. ( Oh Madison, how wrong you were ... )

Part of the way the restrictions of new doctors work is by restricting medical schools. This of course drives up the price of medical schools, sending doctors into massive debt. Frankly, there is no reason that doctors need four years of college on top of four years of college on top of four years of high school. I'm sure the whole thing could be compressed into eight years, as other countries have done.

For new doctors, loosening the barriers to entry would be a Pareto optimum improvement. Salaries would fall, but so would the costs of schooling. Overall the public would benefit without harming new doctors.

But existing doctors would get screwed, as you point out. To be fair, any reducing of the barriers to entry should include compensation for current doctors.
Well, or more to the point, it sounds like the real work behind all "sexy" pursuits. Movie stars don't get to be movie stars by going to ritzy parties.
Hey, they called. (I knew the suspense was killing you guys. :) They are good people. I love them.
Category Theory for the Java Programmer
Why open source makes sense on smart phones
Circle of Life for Tech Companies
It's not that people don't want to go to a doctor, but after a while people get to know their own issues pretty well, especially if they're recurring. There are many common things that happen to people that they can easily self diagnose from experience. They shouldn't need a doctor to go to the pharmacy and get medicine.

It's not at all uncommon to go to the doc knowing exactly what he's going to do, exactly what he's going to say, and exactly what prescription he'll give you, why waste all that fucking time and money just so the guy in the white coat can tell me what I already know?

I want to go to a doctor when I don't know what's wrong with me, not when I do.
Ask HN: What does winning look like for you?
I'm interested in how startups win, and what they then do.

We're a news startup and we're constantly asked like this - How do you know you've won the news scene? What do you do then (I believe most commonly its exit in some capacity, as defined by winning you'd be awesome)

I've watched other pitches and heard investors ask other startups (eg: time series data) what the arena looks like when you've "won".

So startups: have you ever been asked this? How do you define winning? What does your startup market look like then?
A Wandering Mind Heads Straight Toward Insight
> and I can't tell the difference between a cold, flu, allergies, or mono.

Then you haven't had them enough to get to know them well. Get something often enough and you don't need a doctor to tell you which it is, you learn from experience to know exactly which it is.
Easy mouse gesture recognition
And the demo here: http://www.foxaweb.com/demos/mousegesture/GestureDemo.swf

Nice to see something so easy to program working so well
I'm curious, what is your specialty? To be clear, I agree with you and believe it would be a bad thing if mothers and fathers could buy antibiotics for every gash and flu.

But, I can't go discuss a problem with my pharmacist then buy a generic. And, I would be surprised to hear I can go directly to a specialist, even if I pay cash instead going through insurance. Just saying, it's difficult.
It's blog spam. Created expressly for Reddit, because that stuff always gets voted up there.
Plasma TVs? Really? I can't even fathom why they chose those over LCDs, given lifespan and burn-in issues.
(Disclaimer: I haven't read Catcher) Maybe this is just the inevitable phase change for Catcher in the Rye, from beloved literature to stodgy bullcrap your English teacher thinks is awesome. I mean, I'm sure people loved Ethan Frome and Wuthering Heights at some point, but I just think they're miserable books about miserable people being miserable to each other and, subsequently, making the entire world more miserable.

Which is not to say that I find all classic literature terrible. Just some of it.
This is better http://mugasha.com/ [they are our competitor :)]
"It means that all of us—doctors, hospitals, pharmacists, drug companies, nurses, home health agencies, and so many others—are drinking at the same trough which happens to hold $2.1 trillion, or 16% of our GDP."

16% of GDP? Other developed nations pay much less: on average 9% of GDP (http://opencrs.com/document/RL34175). Health care in the US isn't 67% better than in other developed countries.
Ahhh, undead math. I love it.

Actually, I watched Ghostbusters tonight and in the scene where Gozer asks them to pick their doom, I wondered what would have happened had Ray thought of like... a triangle, or maybe a platonic solid.
That's true; I missed it on the last page... and at least the photos are credited well.

I wish my teachers in school would have let me say something was written by me but "prepared using the Encyclopedia Britannica" when it's a total cut and paste job.
I liked it up until the part about cost-cutting:

> Which brings me to my problem with the president’s plan: despite being an admirer, I just don’t see how the president can pull off the reform he has in mind without cost cutting.

This suffers from two fallacies - the first is that this is not a zero sum game. We may spend just as much on health care but get more value for the dollar and thus live healthier lives and thereby be more productive.

The second problem is the "broken window" fallacy. Doing unnecessary healthcare is a not a reasonable thing to keep people employed. If you take that money out of healthcare it won't just vanish, it will go elsewhere and be productively employed to generate real value for the economy. Far from being a problem with the plan it is the most powerful argument in it's favor.
If 40% were undecided (leaving 40% / 20%), that still means that at least three quarters of all the undecideds had to vote against Ahmadinejad for him to lose.

I've not seen any polls with 60% undecideds.
You assume that people actually prefer health to overeating, smoking, and alcohol. I would suggest we can tell what people prefer from what they do, given that everyone knows that overeating, smoking, and drinking too much alcohol are very bad for you.

I say this, by the way, as an obese guy with a roommate who smokes, if that matters. :)
So, you're saying that all of Internet's intelligible discussion is generated by less then that, right?

Makes me wonder whether Internet in it's current state will hold up were we to dislodge with the general ignorance.
Previously posted here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=257374
Another two sources:

DJ Bolivia has programming-inspired mixes at http://www.djbolivia.ca/bolivia.html

And, I can't recommend the Podrunner podcast enough. If you can, throw a few bucks his way as it's almost entirely listener supported. They're made for runners of course but work excellently for coding.
Oh, another big problem is that you need to actually write the data you're swapping out to disk. You can't just drop it on the floor whenever memory pressure is high; You have to wait for the disk so spin up, seek, write, and so on.

What you really want is to be able to tell the OS "I don't care if this data goes away. If you need space, don't bother taking time to save it, I can regenerate it quickly."
I don't listen to anything because I think that music is something much more important than background noise.
This is an example of blatant plagiarism - besides, the content has already been submitted : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=574301
Schools 'too safe', teachers say
The most extensive Commodore 64-versus-iPhone 3G S comparison so far.
Right there with you guys... I lost my Dad about three months ago... he was my best friend.

I'm with you on the grandfathers too... It makes me proud to think of all the ancestry behind me - behind everyone really. All the people who have worked so hard to get us and the rest of humanity to this magical time.

Sometimes when I'm feeling down, I watch this little clip on youtube - I don't have an ounce of Viking ancestry, but I like the message:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN-no1Ka7yU

Lo, there do I see my father.

Lo, there do I see my mother.

And my sister and my brother

Lo, there do I see the line of my people

Back to the beginning.

Lo, they do call to me.

They bid me take my place among them

In the halls of Valhalla

Where the brave may live forever.
To be clear, I agree with you and believe it would be a bad thing if mothers and fathers could buy antibiotics for every gash and flu.

They can, actually. All of the more common antibiotics are marketed for use in fish tanks and can be bought with no prescription from aquarium stores or ordered from Amazon. Looking up the markings on the pills shows them to be exactly the same pills you'd get from a pharmacy with a prescription.

Of course, you should have a pretty good idea of what sort of bacterium you're infected with before you take antibiotics. If you live with two people who are diagnosed with strep throat, and your tonsils swell up a day later, you probably don't need a culture to tell what you have. Don't abuse antibiotics.
Recording Industry vs. The People
It seems that the reason that this type of strategy is so rampant and insidious is because it makes it easy to substantiate cost cutting goals using unrealistic bids from inexperienced subcontractors. The costs that often go neglected in the whole process is the added managerial costs that go along with any outsourced work. For most projects, especially complex ones (as is aircraft design and manufacture), the overhead costs can easily outweigh initial cost saving estimates from outsourcing.

More importantly, it is a very short sighted strategy that favors short term cost savings against the long term institutional knowledge that will help sustain it in the long term. With the incredibly long development and production cycles, Boeing might not have the appropriate capabilities in the long term. While Boeing did do the initial design on the 787, they have outsourced much of the detailed manufacturing design to their vendors, leaving an important knowledge gap.

Here is an interesting presentation titled "Is Outsourcing Profitable?"

http://www.strassmann.com/pubs/gmu/OutsourcingV6.pdf

It presents some case studies and findings that do not substantiate the cost savings claims of outsourcing.
I just realized -- I never really criticize Objectivism in this thread. (That the founder's world view is eventually superseded by advancing knowledge is just a fact of life, not a criticism.)

What I do criticize is the way some people apply "Objectivism." This is certainly not unique. I also find the attitudes of many Christians to be distinctly not Christ-like.
Who rules real-time search?
But would the people then actually prefer to actively prevent illnesses to just dealing with them as they happen? I have doubts ...

I know I'm guilty myself - I need to make 2-3 visits to the dentist to fill some cavities, but I tend to delay this because of time issues, financial cost and pure laziness ... and I think I care about my health reasonably well compared to the majority.
Chromium dev list discusses these results:
http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-dev/browse_thread/th...

TLDR: Vista's default memory readout is actually pretty good for simply adding together like this and getting reasonable numbers WRT shared libs. Chrome really does use tons more memory than FF 3.5 with simple pages in many tabs. Chrome devs chose stability, security and foreground tab prioritization over lower mem use on purpose. They don't think this test much reflects what people actually do with their browsers.
I've had a $35 daily budget with FB for about 5 months now. What should I do?
Often, when laws are changed, some people lose out. Easier entry/certification. Changing trade laws can put whole industries out of business. Zoning laws can make your property double of half in value quite easily. Emission controls can make your car worthless.

Every time a politician sneezes someone get screwed. You can't compensate everyone.
Wickedfire is such a scummy site. I blogged about how people were using facebook to post fraudulent ads, and they cursed me soundly in a forum. I'm surprised TechCrunch would even deign to quote them in a piece.

Here's the comments WickedFire users left on my blog, craziest comments I've ever had on a blogpost for sure
http://www.trailbehind.com/trips/view_report/56990/
Las Vegas and its perfect business model
That must make driving directions interesting. We can say "go south down Guadalupe St., turn left on 7th Ave." What's the equivalent where the streets have no names? "Go south down the street between blocks 5 and 8 in district 3, turn left when you reach block 4, district 2"?
We need to change all parts of the system:

For most situations most doctors are over-educated: why should a podiatrist require 8 years of schooling to remove bunions or do surgery on an ingrown toenail? Does a general practioner need 12 years of training to prescribe an antibiotic for a severe infection? Are economics, politics, physics, calculus and other courses really necessary for a brain surgeon to do his job or for a nurse practioner to give tetanus shots?

1. Break the entire medical profession down into smaller specialties and provide only the necessary training within those specialties. Sure, some should take the entire 12 years college + med school + internship + specialist training, but most won't. This would open the profession to competition and provide thousands more medical workers.Doctors won't like this: they'll fight it every inch of the way, down to refusing to train people. But it must happen. Perhaps only a massive natural or man-made disaster can overcome the resistance of the AMA and doctors and cause this to happen.

2. Mandate that statistics be maintained and published, complete with names, so you can judge who's good and who isn't; who takes risks and who doesn't; who's pricey and who is cheap. That way you can choose better and practitioners can be more easily regulated.

3. Eliminate HMOs and private insurance companies: they just don't work. The only insurance solution that will work is one wherein the government maintains the insurance pool. As long as insurance companies exist they will continue to cherry-pick patients and use legal tricks to eliminate patients who develop costly medical conditions.

4. Eliminating the HMOs and insurance companies immediately gives a gain equal to the profit of those firms. Increasing efficiency (automation of paperwork, scheduling, etc.) gives further gains. Improved technology can also reduce costs (something rarely pointed out about medicine). And we haven't brought up the drug companies yet.

There's lots of room for improvement in the current system, but the doctors, insurance companies, drug companies and the HMOs don't want to change the status quo. And they're the only ones with representatives (their lobbyists) in Washington.
"They're also typically kind of useless, as in this example, because we rarely care to sort an arbitrary list of integers with no metadata."

O(n) sorting algorithms are only impractical if the size of the keyspace dwarfs the number of elements to be sorted. In general a key is a variable-length string of bits, which makes for an exponentially-sized keyspace, so you want to stick with comparisons of element pairs.

But "metadata" has nothing to do with it. The last bead in each BeadSort row can contain a sticker with some metadata. That kind of trick generalizes to all sorts.
Uh sorry
Here's the directions to get to my house from the train station (I take cabs frequently):

"I live in XXXXX-cho [n.b.: name of neighborhood] #1. It is south of the $SUPERMARKET."

The cabbie then will ask me:

"Left at the Budda or right at the Budda?"

Its left.

[Edit to add: Half of the cabbies in my town of 150,000 can also do it from a building name. Any building name. Imagine if you worked on the same codebase for 30 years -- do you think there would be functions you couldn't find? Now, if you go to Nagoya, I would suggest not relying on that.]
I've written business plans that have raised a lot of money, won grant applications for my business plan type writing, and I'll tell you the honest truth.

It's pretty much impossible to write a good business plan. Business plans are by nature boring. What you can do is write well, follow general business plan guidelines, and be writing about a good idea. But that's the best you can do.

A good business plan won't get you very far in my experience, and you won't get funding based on a good business plan. A business plan is sort of like business cards. You need it, but it won't make or break the game as long as you spell everything right.
People use landmarks for direction instead of addresses (since nobody can understand exactly where an address is).

There are also small police stations (koban) everywhere in the city that are glad to help someone looking for direction: they take the map of the nearby district and look with you house correspond to the address.

Of course, now with gps becoming common for taxi drivers you can now tell them directly the address, before they wouldn't have been able to help you if all you had was the address without any landmarks or map on how to get there.
This is exactly right. If you can't imagine doing what you are doing everyday for the next 5-20 years, it's time for a change.
Having a start-up is Punk 2.0

Maybe Y Combinator is the new CBGB.
Don Juantrepreneur is sexy, though.

:)
I am. And granted its memory management is getting better with each release (memory usage improved greatly from 2 to 3). Admittedly, I haven't had 3.5 RC long enough for a very extensive experience. I'm speaking primarily of FF3, which for me could get quite painful even switching tabs (especially with Gmail open on one tab). It could be better, but 3.5 RC has only been out a few days. At first, I loved the shit out of FF3, but after a while, I found myself getting furious (at least working on my laptop; on my desktop, which is a beastly gaming machine, I don't have nearly as many complaints).
Yeah, and maybe this is the point of American Beauty and Donnie Darko as well, but not in one of them can I get past the insufferable protagonist. I just can't appreciate stories I wish were over already, even if they are actually brilliant critiques of the personalities depicted therein.