skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Also, you suggest that people deprived of artificial light snap into a "exactly" 24-hour schedule. This is actually not correct. Many studies have been done showing that the default schedule ends up being about 25 hours when you deprive people of clocks and light sources.

According to the book, the 25h result was a result of previous studies not controlling the presence of lights carefully enough (just a single light bulb in a room is bright enough to make a difference), and when this was recognized, the natural circadian period was ~ 24h 10m. This was a study by Chuck Czeisler at Stanford and has apparently been confirmed by other studies.
Norm Brodsky: When Negotiating, Always Listen Before You Speak
Yahoo Crowdsourcing Green Products Competition: Make It Green
Well, here's a book

http://books.google.com/books?id=-HTQY_b1_84C&printsec=f...

Search for ad verecundiam for a discussion on the matter. Really, what he's doing is an opposite of argument from authority, and I think the author suggests that is 1) Sometimes appropriate, and 2) Sometimes ad hominem.

In my eyes, the PhD-holding article-writer is sufficiently credentialed to write mild articles on mild subjects. To say he's wrong because he didn't go to a sufficiently good school is a rather obvious personal attack.

For what it's worth, I initially typed in "your comment is 95 percent name-calling" to parrot him, but then changed it. I mean, it was just so laughable that he went on and on about the guy's fricking school. and then made the insane charge that the author was mostly name-calling. Geez.
In my (limited) experience with this sort of thing, that's the type of manager who is far more likely to be understanding of what you're trying to do.

I was able to get my consulting company off the ground by going from full-time employment down to 3 days a week, and I used the other 2 days a week to pick up clients and freelance. I did that for about 9 months before I went to consult full-time. After that, I kept my old company as a client, and when they needed help, they had the benefit of dealing with someone who already knew all their systems.
i see this thread as less news-driven, and more commemorative (that's why i did not submit it with the title "Michael Jackson Dies"). you have to admit, as strange as he could seem sometimes, he did make some major contributions to the music industry. he's fairly entrepreneurial as well.
Wolfram alpha thinks there are 1000 bytes in a kilobyte apparently
To reference Dement's book again, this seems to be well established. If you deprive people of REM sleep, it will start occurring sooner and sooner after falling asleep, so that after a while the subjects would fall asleep and start dreaming almost instantly. (Which made the experiment difficult to continue since the subjects would get very angry after being repeatedly awoken immediately after falling asleep... ;-)
I think I caught a discussion elsewhere about this; but Wolfram gets it right when using the SI notation:

http://www05.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000000+MiB+in+GiB
Kayak can cry foul all they want but there is nothing stopping MS or anyone else from copying the site design.

It is a shame that MS could not come up with anything more usable, original and innovative.

(I am avoiding blanket statements such as 'they haven't done anything innovative since xx)
I think it's also interesting to hear the hacker perspective on certain news items. Even though people can be pretty critical of technology, etc. there is a certain sensitivity here that is interesting to read when something totally non-technology related occurs.
Oh, I completely agree. And not just that it's good to act as if effort were what mattered. I think both imagination and intelligence can be learned.
Michael Jackson was probably the great hacker of all time (in DANCE).. sidewalking.. moonwalking.. he was good :)
CNN just updated that link... confirms he's dead.
Look, I was a HUGE Michael Jackson fan when I was a kid; I bought all of his tapes as soon as they came out and wore more than a few of them completely out.

But when you look at these things in comparison:

HeyZap (YC S09) Launches Microtransaction Platform
Why CouchDB doesn't scale
Starting Out With Comet (Orbited) Part 2
Why A Low Calorie Diet Extends Lifespans: Critical Enzyme Pair Identified

and

RIP Michael Jackson

It just seems out of place. Clearly it's important to everyone here, given the sheer number of submissions it's gotten. I guess things have just changed here, that's all.
AP, LA Times, and other reputable sources saying he's dead.
. . . and Jon and Kate are fertility hackers, and Paris Hilton is a PR hacker, and the Jonas Brothers are teen girl psychology hackers . . .
I was actually wondering the other day whether Apple does any kind of arbitrage behind the scenes of their international app store sales. Seems like they could be making a lot of extra money that way.

Maybe there's an opportunity for a startup here?
I've been thinking a little about that example. And I really don't think it gets at the core of the issue. The problem with that example is that academic disciplines, whether it's due to an inferiority complex or what, have decided to model themselves so much after the hard sciences, so that of course the hard science experts are going to be able to study any of those disciplines and acquire a PhD. It's because the programs were modeled after the hard sciences.

Take a different example: if aliens came to earth and demanded that all PhD physicists get as good at sculpting, drawing, and designing as the world's foremost artists; and all the artists must acquire PhD's in physics. I'm not sure who would do better as there's not a clear hierarchy between the disciplines. They're different fields, catering to people with different interests and talents.
http://www.scoopler.com/search/#%22micheal+jackson%22
Maybe you should read his biography.
Maybe I'll go with Berry Gordy's first.
for jmtame:

"thrilla"
http://www.thesixtyone.com/Villains/song/Thrilla/493/

"michael jackson (calvin harris remix)"
http://www.thesixtyone.com/TheMitchellBrothe/song/Michael+Ja...
Never thought I'd see the day when any link from TMZ would be on hacker news.
MJ died today. The rest of the usual HN fodder will still be around tomorrow. The chances of him dying 2 days in a row are slim.
Plus, with a free download like the iPhone SDK, it's more fun to get one's own first impressions than to read somebody else's.
It's an interesting point, I'll bite. What did Michael Jackson do that was in the hacker spirit, as opposed to just being an immensely talented musician?
No way. If we went by that rule the site would be full of [pic] submissions.
I think it's a pretty sure thing at this point, but for what it's worth, CNN still hasn't confirmed it, they're just reporting that others (LA Times and AP) are reporting it:

"CNN has not confirmed his death."

edit: they're now reporting on the broadcast that they have just confirmed it.
A guy hacked the NES and sent his wife this classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px06aFDlJrs
So, is it just me, or has CNN been "Jackson-dotted"?

Edit: It appears to just be the mobile site.
TMZ is a pretty terrible source but the NYT is reporting this as well: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/michael-jackson...
HN Toolkit - New Version w/ Saved Links
New version of the HN Toolkit GM script is up:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039

This one allows you to save links for reading later. Also improved the new links preview.

Biggest change is how the blacklister works. It's more like a style rule engine now. You supply a regex, and all links that match that regex will get that style. If you omit a style, the link is hidden (blacklisted).

As an example, here is my current rule setup:

paulbuchheit|gaborcselle->background-color:#FFFF00;
Ask HN->background-color:#00FFFF;
codinghorror.com

The part before the '->' is the regex, the part after is the style. These three rules highlight certain links, and blacklist codinghorror.com links.

Let me know what bugs you encounter, if any.
he hacked his skin color.
I feel bad for what the media has done to him, calling him names and what not. It's all over now. Rest in peace Michael. we loved you.
When I first heard of 'Kibibytes' and 'KiB', I thought it was silly.

But each time there's confusion, the pedantry looks a little better.

And certainly when writing documentation and user interfaces, the KiB/MiB/GiB/TiB/PiB distinctions should be made clear.
Perhaps the technology take on this is that Twitter was also briefly dead. Also this might have implications for marketing: did news sites that announced his death before it was confirmed get more page views than websites that waited?
Hard drive makers also prefer the SI definition, as it makes the sizes seem larger.
This comes perilously close to "the soft bigotry of low expectations". What you are saying is true, your assessment of your abilities need to be grounded in reality, but it's also true that if you think you can succeed through hard work, you are much more likely to do so, regardless of the actual nature of intelligence. See research by Carol Dweck et al. This is an instance where the truth really can hurt you.
And if they died, they'd prolly get a post on the front page here for an hour or so.
If what you're saying is true, then it will not be a victory in the sense of A defeats B, it will be one where the world is changed. If pirates win, the whole industry as it is now will disappear and a revenue model will win.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I'll leave up to you. But it seems likely that if the pirates win, both the industry _and_ the pirates will disappear...
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right...
Thanks, that's actually quite a bit more useful than search.twitter.com good job scoopler :)

search.twitter.com - "25,415 more results since you started searching. Refresh to see them." - Refreshing to show 25,000 new results at once doesn't seem the best way...
The noise it makes when you push the keys is repellent but it is very close otherwise to the HPs I remember. I really want a 41CX, tho.
I don't discount the importance of it. I am just questioning the relevance of it.
So the joke is that the physicists have the hubris to think that French Literature isn't hard, right?

It would be an incredible feat for anyone to learn French in a year (well enough to critique its great literature) and also become expert in the existing body of knowledge of literary criticism. Much less a physicist, who probably dreads writing a 10-page conference paper because there's too much prose in it.
That's just so...shocking. It always seemed like these type of people stay around forever to be made fun off and prodded - and then when you read about their death.

It brings things into perspective - we're all just blobs of flesh, here by chance, and we will all be gone, washed away and forgotten before very long.
The Fed/Treasury/Gov triumvirate is getting mortaller every time it has to monetize treasury bonds.
I guess there are enough pop singers to die in a row to keep HN cluttered with news about them for quite a long time.
Tapping into the nostalgic geek market? As much as I like the HP 15C, I'm not spending $30 for an iPhone version of it. They need to re-evaluate their price.
Maybe it depends on how old you are: to some of us, this guy dying is almost like Earth being hit by an asteroid. He's deep in the psyche of a lot of people on this planet, and it sortof transcends "topics".
An article which explores Jackson's legacy from a 'hacker' perspective would be topical.

A news flash as might appear in a thousand other general-interest forums -- and from bottom-feeders TMZ no less -- I'd rather not see here.
Should be "RIP Your Posting Rights" for even considering putting that here. I'm having a good laugh over the fact that it's #1 though. I love hearing how people explain how something is relevant to hacker news when they post stuff like this.

I don't even care that you posted it, but I'd love to hear what your rationale for doing so was... if for nothing else than to get another laugh.
I imagine that trying to do weird sleep patterns will exclude you from that other great evolutionary need : sex. Not many partners would put up with someone dropping everything and running off for a 20 minute nap. They'd likely classify you under 'freak' and go and find someone else to share genetic material with.
man made such good music in his prime it still gives you shivers.
Might have focused a little too much on the Google-Moderator part. I’m curious about the outcome of the experiment though.

Since I’m German I’m not that familiar with us-charities but I highly recommend to have a look at http://givewell.net/. I really like their evaluation approach and they have a good blog as well (eg check out this category regarding program expenses / total expenses: http://blog.givewell.net/?cat=6).

P.S. I made a similar comment in the friendfeed-goup (http://friendfeed.com/collaborative-charity) using a different username.
The business aspects of Jackson's career are, perhaps, interesting and useful to this audience. For example, he acquired the publishing rights to much of the Beatles catalog at a bargain price in the 80's.

http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.asp

This was, obviously in hindsight (and probably at the time, as well), a very astute move, and the value of that catalog of music has only increased over time. Most of us would be very happy to have made business deals that put tens of million in our pocket, while still holding a share worth more than originally paid.

That's not to say a TMZ link is the best choice.
Nokia N96 16GB Unlocked
Nokia N96 16GB with multi features and terrific look multi functions of the phone. It’s a dual slider, giving you quick access to your multimedia collection. It also retains the 5-megapixel camera, but this time it’s got twin LED lights for those darker shots on the dance floor.
Bunny Project: Carrot Terrorism
The Web Collapses Under The Weight Of Michael Jackson’s Death
I would put much of Pixar's success at the feet of John Lasseter.
and still generating revenues. One the CouchDB hackers was a Notes guy
I don't know what he is doing wrong but Windows 7 is extremely solid.
I'm trying to figure out if you misspelled his name on purpose, to slow down the rate of results being returned or something. ;)
I'm using spreehq.com now for this very reason.
I expect MJ's death will open the flood gates for 'copy cat' pop singer deaths...
I was hacking my Apple IIe with "Thriller" playing in the background. I would like to think that counts for something. Perhaps that doesn't warrant the top link on HN at all - after all his death has no impact on the computer world. At the same time, his cultural contribution to my generation is just as much important to me as was the contribution of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak.
If you don't think it is, then flag it.
I think procrastination (caused by day jobs) usually kill startups in their infancy, before anyone except the founder(s) would even notice. Maybe the founder(s) launch a version 1.0, over the course of months. They work on it for a while, but it's not profitable and sucks up all their free time. When something important (like a high priority project at their day job) comes along they neglect it, and it eventually dies.

I personally have met dozens of people who have this kind of story. Probably quite a few people on HN do.
Flagging is the right thing to do - it's more effective, and doesn't add even more noise.
Could someone put into proper context why this is crowdsourcing? It's an interesting application but I don't think it has anything to do with crowdsourcing.
How dare you! I am a beautiful butterfly! I am a late bloomer! My genius is in areas not measured by IQ tests!

It will be here any day. Any day now.
Ask HN:  Feedback on my app engine project?
Hello -- I built this simple app engine project...

I'd like to request suggestions, feedback, etc.

the site is:

http://www.wikifieldtrip.org
Funny: after a couple minutes of watching that feed for both spellings, the "Micheal" one is actually a lot more active.

And indeed if you look at the "hot topic" list, the wrong spelling is winning ;)
Eh, it doesn't make much difference in this case... this particular posting has been brought back from the land of the [dead]. I'd assume to stop the torrent of posts that were showing up about it on the new page.
" not sleeping well (deprivation) can cause those things, but it does not mean that polyphasic sleep causes them. "

Until there's research conducted on the long term effects of polyphasic sleep, who's to say it doesn't cause those things?
It's not. If you can, flag it.
Probably not for most people. Might be useful for receptionists in a public area.
Useful if you can make it a requirement for eg. nurses stations in a hospital.

A version built in to ATMs would be good.
Yeah, there's probably enough of a niche market for unconventional beds that making them out of conventional materials isn't the best solution.
Wait for the silent majority to vote before declaring yourself part of the minority!

(This story has only been up for an hour, and I believe many of the best HN contributors/voters only check HN once or twice a day.)
Gossipy people don't spell very well?
Yes ! I would totally fit in that camp of many many years experience with RDBMSes and DBAs. Things like CouchDB are a sight for old sore eyes.
Turing Machines are Recurrent Neural Networks
My worst comments get upmoded. My best comments get downmoded :(
Interesting that Zynga and Heyzap are both USV-funded now.
where is a university education only $50K?

Canada, as an example. Other places, such as many places in Europe, it's "free" (i.e, publicly funded).
If you don't like it, flag it. I did.
I appreciate him and his quirks... RIP
Add Wikipedia to that list.

By around 3:15 p.m. PDT, Wikipedia appeared to be temporarily overloaded. The site reported the error: "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties... Cannot contact the database server: Unknown error (10.0.6.24))"

from http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10273277-93.html.
I can certainly appreciate that because there was a time I felt the same way. Also -- and maybe this isn't a big deal for you either -- working hardcore like that for a year straight without getting paid a dime becomes rather stressful, despite the fact that I'm indifferent to wealth in those terms. The longer it goes on, the more pressure builds to get out of the deepening hole.

I also differ a bit from the stereotypical hacker in that I am a lover of balance; it would take an unending stream of highly interesting projects to sustain me merely with work and sleep and there would have to exist no grunt work to let my mind stray to other desires.
Decorating ActiveRecord Accessor Methods
stay classy google:
http://twitter.com/googlemapsapi
can't believe i actually linked to twitter. here's the actual content they posted:

"Sad about MJ & FF? Cheer up by watching some Geo I/O talks: http://bit.ly/11aXr3
Obviously only pg can decide for sure and to be honest I personally wouldn’t have submitted this. That said...

There are events in this world that permeate the public consciousness. They are so big that they make all other topics seem irrelevant. Michael Jackson, whose prime was before my birth by the way, is the Icon of icons. His exit from the world is a once in a life time event that affects everyone.

I choose to make Hacker news my community of choice because it’s a community that holds rationality above all else. It is not rational to stick to strict rules no matter what. The corner stone of a community is shared experience and an event that has a profound effect on almost everyone should surely justify a rare exception to the "Tech only" rule.

So, if we assume it is rational to occasionally put the rules aside, the question becomes "is this event big enough to justify such an exception?" As has been pointed out several times here this story is the lead on every news based web site in existence. It’s being covered on every news station and even radio stations built around aloofness (JackFM) have dedicated commercial free hours to play only Michael Jackson music.

To me that signals an event that justifies a rational exception to the rules.
Can anyone with experience say something about this? I would be interested in knowing what kind of difference it makes.
i heard that they were going to melt him down to make toys so the kids can play with him for a change
this is a really long reply chain
Both of the major sides here -- those who think g doesn't exist, and those who think g exists and is important -- tend to have some corresponding prescription for the school system. What's often ignored is that we barely know anything about this with any certainty, and the idea of someone being able to design a rigid school system that works for everyone is ridiculous. And even if g does exist, how important is it really? I'm reminded of amichail's scary idea of forcing everyone to take IQ tests.
Yet again techcrunch gets it wrong. Twitter and TMZ don't constitute 'The Web'. As long as HN is up, the web must be ok ;)
It's not "broken" ... it's that way for a reason. And that reason is so it can be steered to the people who are 'supposed' to get the work.

What the Sunlight Labs people don't really understand is that they never had a chance in a million years of getting the contract. That's why the other contractors have been so friendly to them; they were never seriously in the running. If they had actually been competition, they would have gotten a much more hostile reception.

That's not to say that what they did was a waste of time, but there's no such thing as a fair and open competition when government contracts are concerned. They're all rigged to a certain extent, and there's always more than meets the eye.

If they (or any other company) are serious about winning work as a prime contractor, they need to build up a Rolodex of people who can make phone calls on their behalf. The best way to do this is to start off as a subcon, and work up from there.
Blogger, Nokia 5800 Widget
Keep in mind that, especially for government agencies, part of the goal of the RFP process is to avoid any question of descrimination by making the decision criteria as "objective" and explicit as possible by making it possible to compare vendors along the same set of criteria.

I agree that it's hellish (we fill out RFPs for claims and policy systems . . . thankfully we and not I), but it's not an easy problem to solve either. If you don't standardize responses somehow, such that every bid is ad hoc and difficult to compare to every other bid, it becomes very hard to defend yourself against accusations of partiality (and, naturally, much easier to actually discriminate).

So yes . . . for both the government and private industry, the RFP serves as a CYA mechanism so you can say "we made the decision based on these factors right here" instead of "we made the decision because we just kind of liked this proposal better." But it's also an anti-favoritism, anti-discrimination mechanism, and it's hard to do that without some sort of standardization, which in turn pretty quickly leads to hellish, absurd RFPs.
Shocker: We Still Suck When It Comes to High-Tech Education
Study Suggests People Prefer Bing’s Design To Google’s, But Still Won’t Switch
Well, now we know just how famous you have to be for the HN admins not to kill a TMZ link reporting your death.
That's one way of looking it. The other is: When a link is posted in HN to someone's blogs, why do people navigate back here to comment and not at the web page they were already at? I think there are some good reasons for that, including not wanting to be too critical in somebody's personal expression space, and also because at HN there is a commonly understood standard of discourse, whereas each blog has (or lacks) their own.