skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I saw something the other day where Firefox will allow you to browse a website that is zipped up and you can use urls like this:

http://somewebsite.com/somezip.zip?/index.html
http://somewebsite.com/somezip.zip?/images/logo.png

Then the browser only downloads the zip file once and everything else is cached. I can't seem to find the link anymore though because everything in the search engines is so frickin SEO'd that all i can find with zip in the search terms is winzip or winrar or something about putting a link to a zip on your website...

This is the closest I can find: http://www.aburad.com/blog/2008/05/view-contents-of-zipjar-f...
The forgotten astronaut of Apollo 11
War in no way creates wealth, it is an act of destruction and while it may employ people and kill off lots of people, everyone's standard of living is lower and they lose wealth. Instead of producing goods to improve the lives of those around them they waste time, effort, and material on tools of destruction.
Desire(learn django) > Value(rails knowledge) ? django : rails

Nobody can tell you what those values are. Both are acceptable frameworks, just pick one and move on.
At the same time, if I simply had stuck with what I knew over the years I'd still be doing old ASP...i'd be more miffed as an investor if you had a great idea but killed it because you did it in vbscript just because that is what you knew, or if you chose something that would cost a lot more to scale, thus requiring greater investment just to see a return.
"The authors of the study are reluctant to draw such broad conclusions"

But that doesn't stop Time Magazine from doing so.
Unless something changed, django doesn't even run on psyco cleanly and the combo is unsuitable for production. Unladen swallow also isn't ready for use in production with django and it's unclear when it will be. But performance from these languages aren't the bottlenecks in web apps, and Ruby 1.9 and Python 3 have similar performance, anyway.
The big mistake was declaring the moon a public commons. Instead it should be private property, first come, first serve....get there and stake a claim!
Harnessing Crowds: Mapping the Genome of Collective Intelligence
Is this somehow different than mod_deflate?
I am certainly not saying that with approval, but I think it is undeniable that war has served, intentionally or otherwise, throughout history as a way of getting out from under economic crises of various forms. We can see examples of this in many of the British Empire's colonial conflicts.

Without the growth sparked by WW2, it's hard to imagine the American economic boom of the post war period.

Obviously this doesn't mean everyone benefited from it or that it was good, hence my musing about the benefit of a "science" war, although perhaps I should have been more clear that I am using the term as analogy only. I mean it as an intense period of competition, which surely you can agree can be beneficial.
Techcrunch = TwitterCrunch
That might be relevant if we weren't talking about modern and very actively developed web frameworks on modern and quickly evolving languages.
We already tried this with napster. From what I hear it is not going well. Filesharing sites do not succeed on brand equity, they succeed on the fact that they offer things for free.
And in addition to that, iq shares insights and techniques behind his 4kb graphical hacks at http://iquilezles.org
I simply don't trust ruby-core to produce software with decent operational characteristics. I'd rather use JRuby.
The research is good, but the article title is misleading; what they've shown is that females devote more mental activity to interpersonal relationships. Males are far more disengaged. This is consistent with other data. For instance, we know that women are better at reading social cues, prefer jobs where interpersonal relationships are central, enjoy CS classes more if programming is done with a partner, etc.

Perhaps the fact that women are so interested in interpersonal relationships explains partly why so few of them gravitate towards jobs in which one programs all day :).
Dead??! Is it born yet?

I think we may just be witnessing a very long and difficult conception.
I didn't see anything extraordinary in the article either. The guy focused on what he wanted to do and improved through practice.

The best book I have ever read on outlining how learning works is Mastery by George Leonard. One of his points is that many people assume we learn at a linear pace and so get frustrated when we find we are not making progress.

He says that is false. We actually learn in short bursts. There will be a period of flatness, followed by an intense period of gains where you will plateau and then fall back a little behind you're highest point but above where you were before. This will then repeat itself if you keep up. The time frame could change as well. One flat period may be days while another may be years.

This seems to be exactly the same process as the guy in the article went through.
I designed the UI so that it pushes users to use existing tags. There are also moderation tools that allow an admin to merge one tag into another. The merge also records the lesser tag as a synonym of the greater tag so that you only have to do each merge once.
Amusing, because a few years ago a friend quoted some research that said exactly the opposite: girls tend to socialize with lots of people while boys are more likely to stick with one friend. I remember this because it matched my kids' behavior exactly (I have a daughter and son) and made me worry less about my son.
I haven't used mod_deflate myself, but my understanding is that it compresses each individual request, rather than putting a set of files in one zip file that are all sent together as one request.

The advantage over mod_deflate is that you have the latency for only one request of perhaps 100's of files, rather than the latency on each file for the site.
I'm not a doctor but I went to university and took chemistry, biology, mathematics and whatnot. I'm also an informed person who knows how to google "what is a metabolic panel" and understand the information presented. Considering this, I'm qualified to request a metabolic panel for myself. It's just a series of diagnostics and there's no reason not to have it done.

The tests did indeed show the beginnings of a problem that is correctable but is harder to fix if I would have waited until actual clinical symptoms showed up.

One problem with health care that is that the model of doctor as gatekeeper is not scalable. This problem will not go away with any sort of health care reform. There are simply too many humans in the world for there to be a reasonable patient to doctor ratio. You should be able to go into a booth at Wal-Mart and get a metabolic panel, celiac test, blood-born STD, and whatever else for between $50-$100. If something weird shows up you can schedule an appointment with a GP. The system now is the opposite, and is a waste of time for everyone involved.
OTOH, less powerful developer computers often equal tighter, faster code, as you get more pissed off by the slowness of your own programs.
Why Generation X Has the Leaders We Need Now
I'm almost positive that around the time of 64MB storage, Sony was still very against MP3 and refused to support anything but ATRAC3.
I had a coach who used to say, practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. Which I think is an important distinction, because you need to have direction and focus, not just dedication.
Scientists asked 34 healthy kids, ages 8 to 17, to look at pictures of 40 other boys and girls and judge how much they would like to interact with them online. The kids were asked to rate those in the photos on a scale from 0 ("not interested at all") to 100 ("very interested").

"Good enough"?

34 is a decent number for the ruse. (As the article stated, the whole experiment was a ruse).

Since the sample population was ages 8-17, that gives an age range of the sample population being 10 years +/- 1. The brain can develop a lot in ten years.

I like evidence. No sense in killing the messenger.
>I believe that living by these teachings can lead to a certain kind of passivity.

Yep, when the world is full of possibilities, it is not going any where is it.

Learning a new programming language/framework/technology is an excellent example of training ones beginners mind I think. -- I am addicted to that experience. I like connecting the dots.

I don't think expert knowledge is bad, although expert knowledge in a singular line of technology (where all parts are consistent) is a way to freeze the mind and become dumber. By knowing and being able to use several conflicting versions of "the truth" -- the mind is set free.

Also, there is so much to know, in general, that you always have a possibility to have a beginners mind about something!
India? They certainly have the brain power required, but India is still figuring out how to feed its multitudes.

IEEE Spectrum ran an issue devoted to the Mars mission recently. Very interesting read.

Per my reading, the technical challenges are orders of magnitude more difficult on landing on the Moon. The problem does not appear to be one of mere political will (and subsequent funding). The barriers are principally technical in nature, and US and Russia (and potentially EU) are the most likely candidates to address these technical challenges.

Special Issue:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/static/special-reports

Why Mars is hard:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/mars-is-...

China:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/could-ch...

[edit: +links]
When reading information on the web or through my feedreader, newsbeuter, I use Zim (http://zim-wiki.org) to take notes on whatever I think I may want to refer back to in the future. I place notes in an appropriate category, apply a datestamp, and optionally add some tags.

Zim automatically indexes everything, so when I need to find out how to apply that cool Rails trick I read about 3 weeks ago, it's easily found.

So, yes, output is very important, and taking notes helps me get a lot more out of my online reading than if I simply tried to make my brain act as a sponge.
You also would have to imagine that most major sites are using some form of edge caching like Akamai already. My guess is that their service would replace it and maybe transparently add asset aggregation and/or compression or something along those lines. It seems like unless this is unprecedented technology that it's probably a CDN with optimization features as the emphasis.
Because, in all likelihood, worrying that you're going to be stuck with your initial choice of technology for a very long time is premature optimization. You should be so lucky.

I have no idea what the original submitter's idea is, but I'll still predict how it's going to work out: It won't find product-market fit. So it won't need to be maintained for a very long time. So he might as well just build it with the framework he already knows, get it over with, and move on to the next idea.

Anyone want to bet that I'm wrong? If so, please make out your angel checks to the original submitter.

Moreover, while fretting too much about the apparent greenness of the grass on the other side of the fence is always a warning sign of procrastination, doing so when you already have three years of Rails experience and know exactly where its pain points are is really a sign of procrastination. Just build the thing already! You will save time by working in a framework that you already understand. And, if you like, you can use that saved time to improve the bits of the framework that you dislike.
I wasn't thinking primariy of pure vs. impure, but of user vs. computer. You generally cannot formally verify users, and they often want the dumbest, most illogical things. Like asking that null vs. singular vs. plural cases all be separated out, or that you should filter porn out of their results (what's porn to a computer? hell, what's porn to the supreme court?), or that you should render things brokenly if there's no doctype but do it correctly if there is.

One of my cubemates at Google is a project manager who used to work at Microsoft. She said that one of the biggest differences between the engineering cultures of the two companies was that engineers at Google are encouraged to make "product" decisions themselves, while Microsoft engineers basically stuck to code. If a spec was unclear on some point at Microsoft - say, what color of blue to use for the border on some dialog box - the engineer would throw it back over the wall to the PMs and wouldn't work on it until they got further clarification. While at Google, the answer was likely to be "Use your judgment, and we'll fix it if it's terribly bad." That implies some amount of knowledge about what users want, and you generally can't prove what users want.
Shift (A unique platformer flash-game)
Trust me, pencil, paper and folder are the best tools to handle the job.
actually, only on tv. i cant ever remember seeing that in high school, at least.
Ask HN: Have you read the Twitter docs?
I am just as curious as every other young technology entrepreneur. What features are they thinking about building? Where do they see themselves in 10 years? Who's approaching them with partnership ideas/ buyout offers?

That said, I am not sure if I would read the documents if I found them online. If I were in their shoes, I would hope people would respect the basic right of privacy.

What's the right move? Has this sort of thing happened before?
Charles stross said it better than I did. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/07/what_hav...
This reminded me of mindfulness meditation. Like you said, it leads to passivity, which means that I'll be less motivated to change things because "i should be happy with the way things are".

This does NOT jive with my ambitions of starting a business, so i'm done with meditation.
I'll just the change the ending of what mechanical_fish said,

"i have no idea what the original submitter's idea is, but I'll still predict how it's going to work out: It won't find product-market fit. So it won't need to be maintained for a very long time. So he might as well just build it with the framework he "

doesn't know and learn something interesting along the way. It won't take him much time to be fluent in Django if he is as conversant with Rails as he claims.

But yeah it really doesn't matter whether he uses Django or Rails. mechanical_fish's larger point is still very valid.

I agree with "Just build the thing already!"
Blugh, and the company that bought them was all like "We wanna keep the users happy and keep things the way they are"

I think its safe to say that The Pirate Bay has died.
Ask HN:  FAQ about technology-related contracts to address on a legal blog?
I’m on the lookout for future topic ideas for my legal blog, http://www.OnTechnologyContracts.com . I like it when I can try to address someone’s specific question – it’s always nice to know I’m writing about something at least one person might actually be interested in.

The general subject of the blog is, naturally, technology contracts and related issues.

I can't guarantee that I can address your specific question, but I do commit to giving it a serious look.

Usual disclaimers: 1. Don’t include confidential information in your question. 2. Your posing a question and/or my addressing it won’t establish an attorney-client relationship between us. 3. Anything I say here or on the blog should not be relied on as a substitute for legal advice. 4. When in doubt, ASK YOUR LAWYER.

Suggestions?
Dissolving of USSR - I think everything in our current world politics changed after the end of the cold war and more sharply after end of USSR. Until then any nation had to choose between 'his bitch or my bitch'. Two nations trying to win over each other stomping over other nations... (USSR-goes-to-Afghanistan,US-defends-Afghanistan, US-befriends-Irag-to depose-islamic revolution in Iran, USSR extends help to Iran, US defends, S.Korea, USSR considers its duty to defend N.Korea, US befriends Pakistan, USSR naturally is India's best friend...and so on) I think these two gigantic monolithic worshiping of idealisms messed up with our world in all ways and the effects which we overlook.

The downfall of USSR also in a trickle effect that gave birth to the well networked terrorist organization, we all know of (i don't want to go into the history and move away from the question...look it up)

Only because the USSR dissolved and the cold war ended, we had "world is flat" and "globalization", else we all would be mid stream of both governments hacking the other's network and the internet being US internet and the russian internet. Now we have both nations working together in the space station.

That and surely the Berlin wall, End of Apartheid in South Africa(Nelson Mandella), Romanian Revolution of 1989(Ceausescu), end of Iranian monarchy(iranian revolution,Khomeni)

...and windows 95! :)
Your comment prompted me to go back and double-check the article. You're right: the finding is simply that certain regions of the brain are more active in girls than boys when considering potential new social interactions. The "BFFs and packs" business was fabricated by the article writer. You could just as easily claim the opposite: girls are more interested in people, so they're interested in more people, so they're more likely to have many friends.
spin off question: Does an internet company ad wealth to your life if you do not have an internet connection?
I've always been puzzled by the little attention HN pays to demoscene. Coders of those little gems are truly expert hackers in their domains, getting the most of a limited amount of resources with pretty clever algorithms.
Yeah, the headline says "Why...", but the article doesn't actually explain why. There is some guesswork about the reason, but that seem to be independent of the experiment - you don't need brain scans to be able to make wild guesses about the evolution of a certain behavior.

Brain scannings can't explain behavior, just as heightened heart rate is not an "explanation" for love or anger.
for the last time, yes i do.
you probably went to an all male high school
making a website 2 to 10 times fast is not that hard, put them on a CDN. The usual suspects in increasing performance are:

- compression

- caching (origin, edge, browser)

- persistent connections

- tcp-optimizations
Scribd might have a thing or two to say about that.
"Jobs are not created"?!? What nonsense!

There were ~1.7 Billion people on the planet in 1900. Are there only ~1.7 Billion jobs to go around for the ~6-7 Billion people on the planet today?

Wealth is created from industry, which creates jobs to build that wealth. We do not live in a world of scarcity -- scarcity is imposed by nonsense such as a command economy's forced reallocation of resources.
Lisp nowadays comes in two main flavours (dialects, technically): scheme and Common Lisp.

I prefer the former and my favorite implementation at the moment is plt-scheme (http://www.plt-scheme.org/).

From the website above you can download the distribution of the language for your platform. It also has a very nice IDE which has been designed primarily for learning.

Here's a book to get you started (it is fully available online):
http://www.htdp.org/

Happy hacking!
The scientists involved all seem very honest about this potentially meaning lots of different things, and further research being necessary to find out. Unfortunately, "We found something, but we don't know what" doesn't make for good news, so journalists often make up conclusions that aren't really supported by anything.
This is the standard broken window fallacy (http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#broken_window). Just a hurricane destroying a city doesn't improve its economic well being even though there will be a boom in construction and other such industries -- at the end of the day everyone involved is poorer. If you want to talk about the post war boom, it could be explained by the complete destruction of europe and an industrial america able to sell to them.

There can be big technology improvements during war due to individuals working night and day to save their lives, but in general the same thing can happen in peace time by people working night and day. It won't happen because they want to enjoy their lives.
I'll take a crippled phone any day over the other complaints (and if my Tour is crippled it's subtle enough that I haven't seen it). There are no perfect carriers but there are less-bad ones.
Before Twitter, LiveJournal usage was predominantly female. Females also seem disproportionately represented on a lot of Web1.0 forums.
Thanks! Any reasons why you prefer scheme to Common?
Sounds more like Pirate Pay
Wow - that looks great. Have you used it? It really looks interesting.
Hi bkhn, thanx for your comment.

No, poll sites are not our "enemies" or so, we just think that it's the shortest path to introduce the market/bet/game concept to our users. Your ideas on this are more than welcome.

Also, what do you mean by "copy"? :)
If you are on Windows, you might wish to try out OneNote if you haven't already. It's not "for writers" specifically but it is a great place to keep up with things like this. It's extensible, flexible, and allows me to just be as random as I want or as anal as I want about organization.
scrivener is a great tool. I just bought it, used the intro and am putting things into it for my dissertation.
you should check it out!
Ask HN: Develop on Android or iPhone?
I would like to start doing some mobile development, but am stuck between the two SDKs mentioned. I have been playing around with both Android and the iPhone, and find there are things that I like and dislike about each of them.

My back-end language experience includes mostly c# and Ruby, but I didn't have any issues getting familiar objective-C, learning new languages is usually fairly enjoyable.

Does anyone have advice for which one to choose based off personal experiences?

Update:
I should add that the two biggest deciding points for me are development enjoyment and speed of development.

I am not overly concerned with user base since it is possible that Android could gain a lot of ground in the next couple years.
Hmmm - I suppose that I don't because I like my email address. No other reason...
Well, didn't you play with brain teasers and abstract shape puzzles and such as a child? Or edutainment software? Studying doesn't have to mean nose-to-the-grindstone.
I also use Twitter as a sort of malformed feed reader. In fact, I blogged about it a bit ago, so in lieu of writing something new: http://scigrad.blogspot.com/2009/04/science-twittering.html
Based on market size, I'd go for the iPhone.
I've done projects in both Django and Rails. Your list of Rails drawbacks is weak. The magic can bite you but most of the time it doesn't. Documentation on any open source project is usually pretty bad. Both Rails and Django have about the same level of documentation at this point. The API is no more inconsistent than anything else.

The minus I encountered with Django is that it isn't as far along with the nice auxiliary pieces that exist alongside Rails. Gems are much better than easy_install or eggs. Phusion passenger is easier to deal with than... whatever Django is doing these days. Capistrano is better than Fabric. Heroku is better than App Engine.

What I liked about Django is that integrating other Python libs was easy, and some of them are way better than the Ruby equivalents. PIL is way better than any of the Ruby image manipulation libraries. Django also makes it easier to do GIS stuff out of the box.

In my experience the REAL problem with rails is that if you're actually doing high-load transactional sites, like serious e-commerce systems, it is not up for the task. The successful Rails sites I built mostly had few inserts and a lot of reads. Tons of transactions == meltdown in ways neither I nor professional rails consultants understood. Those pieces were ultimately re-architected in Java (with some JRuby to help out). I'm not convinced Django would help with a site like this.