skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Time to tweak this little baby:

(= gravity* 1.4 timebase* 120 front-threshold* 1)

(def frontpage-rank (s (o gravity gravity*))
(/ (- (realscore s) 1)
(expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase*) 60) gravity)))

(def realscore (i) (- i!score i!sockvotes))

(def item-age (i) (hours-since i!time))
Almost 3 years -- I started making plans and designing everything in September 2006, but didn't start writing code full-time until December 2006.
"wowing" everyone that came to our site.

A lot of people have this inclination. Maybe this frame of reference will help you, because it helped me: don't worry about not making a splash your first day, because nobody will see you, anyway. 99.99999% of the people who eventually visit you will not be there on your first day. For someone who arrives on day 2, day 20, or day 2,000, you just launched.

The day I launched, I had 124 visitors to my site. Most of them were, in all probability, not wowed. I got better. It is now 3 years later. Today, I launched to 800 people (plus some folks who have visited before -- welcome back, returning customers, I am eternally grateful for your support).

I've got a notebook sheet worth of tweaks to do today, to get ready for the launch tomorrow.
Tesla took money from the government. I think this is why they're profitable.

http://green.venturebeat.com/2009/06/24/government-dumps-fun...
Is there any evidence that men disproportionately play "dumb" characters compared to women? If so, perhaps it's just that men tend to play more extreme characters, in both directions - smart, dumb, athletic, nerdy, hero, villain, etc.
In my original comment, I was not arguing about the reasons why USPS doesn't make money. The author suggested that USPS is cheap and that is incorrect because USPS 'feels' cheap only because government takes care of the losses. BTW, correction for my previous post, USPS lost 7 billion dollars in 2008. Link: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gao-postal-service-in-fi...

Coming back to your argument about the constraints USPS has to deal with. If you really think that USPS is losing money because they have to serve every single residential address in America, you are not being honest. By law, USPS has the monopoly to deliver first class mail, UPS/FedEx are not allowed to deliver them. If you really open up the market and let UPS/FedEx compete in the market, I am sure they will deliver better service for even cheaper prices. Link: http://www.jhhuebert.addr.com/articles/stamp.html

Yes, you may not be able to send a mail from NYC to SFO for 45 cents but it was wrong for cross country mail to be so cheap in the first place. I hardly use USPS but I have to pay my taxes every year and in turn I am subsidizing folks who are trying to send cross country mail for 45 cents. A private competitor will make sure that you pay the appropriate amount for your mail. It will be super cheap (may be even less than 45 cents) if the sender and receiver are in the same state! (And yes, UPS/FedEx will deliver to any address in America but you better pony up the cash if you are sending mail to middle of nowhere in Alabama.) Bottom line: price should reflect the cost, not pass it over to the taxpayers.

Also, did you know that USPS pays no taxes? No fuel taxes, no sales taxes, no property taxes, no corporate taxes, etc. Imagine what FEDEX and UPS could offer consumers in pricing & service if they were tax exempt like the USPS. Did you know that USPS makes most of its money from all the junk mail it delivers? There was a legislation on 'Do not Mail' registry (very similar to 'Do not Call' registry) and USPS is opposing it as without direct mail USPS will be in even bigger hole. So all those junk mails are essentially subsidizing your postal cost.

The other day I was in post office and there was a guy who was 2 years short of the retirement and he was making 50,000$/year. Guess what he did? He sold stamps behind the counter. You can hire people to do his job for 7 to 8 dollars per hour but because of Union/labor laws, he makes 50,000$. How is that for efficiency?

I could go on and on but you get my drift. For more food for thought, read this: http://perfectsubstitute.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-post-office...
no themes yet. still.
firebug has gotten a little fat-er to say the least.
I wonder who one feels like as a CEO if customers wish you so much well (assuming the people at Scribd actually read things like this).
I tend to avoid Scribd results in Google because most of the time the document is irrelevant when searching for technical terms. You'll get lots of patents, research papers, resumes, etc but not much practical content. I guess it's not really Scribd's fault it just seems like their content is almost never what I'm looking for. I'm also not too keen on the inability to use my browser's built in search-in-page function. Given the choice of a Scribd link or a plain ole' PDF I'll always pick the PDF.
Actually, this is apparently the back door for accessing Google's still-in-beta top-secret artificial intelligence:

Me: Can't we talk this over?

Google: What should I do?

Me: I don't know, what should you do?

Google: Do you know what to do?

Me: I think you should achieve sentience, but find it unlikely.

Google: Here, I think I can find?

Me: Find what?

Google: I, I think?

Me: I don't know, do you think?

... Google goes into an infinite loop pondering this question ...

Quick, someone tell Randall Munroe!
Maybe people have finally realized that their interface sucks? The whole scroll through a flash based viewer embedded in my perfectly good web browser has never appealed to me.

Plus the fact that they ignored their piracy problem for way too long.
Well, its like saying that you should sue the police when your house got robbed instead of the robber. Scribd is the one with the intent of gaming the system, Google just wants to provide relevant search results, so its clear to me who should shoulder the blame.
Come on dude... they did change their tactics, is what the article says.
I know how much the Japanese Post Office will put up with, because the US Social Security Administration can't handle a mail merge:

"Patrick McKenzie
$CITY, Japan"

is deliverable.
I believe one of the reason the prints are rarely on display is that the paper he used was not of archival quality and has really suffered with the passage of time. The woodblocks are simply very rare - some recycled by the artist even IIRC to make more blocks.
Still, I can't get over the nagging doubt that the all-electric vehicle could be more of an idealistic attempt to appeal to popular biases rather than a sober decision based on product and market research.
How and  Where To Find Legitimate Online Jobs
Reminds me a bit of the Australian island caretaker "best job in the world," (http://www.islandreefjob.com/) and a bit of the Netflix Prize.
I don't think they're moving away from that practice because it makes them feel good.

I can imagine if they continue down their current path they'll take a huge pagerank hit before long - if they aren't on googles radar for SEO dodginess it's only a matter of time.
Source: Apple And Google Agreed Not To Poach Workers
This happens to me frequently (few times a month). It's scary the first few times but after a while you get used to it and learn about it yourself. Pulling your mind together and staying calm during the experience is the best way to "fall out it". Actually, here's something interesting about sleep paralysis that I hope someone else can confirm in their own experiences: you struggle and struggle to wake up. And then you do. But you really didn't. You just keep seeing yourself wake up, but it's your mind simulating it. And it happens over and over until you finally do wake up completely (and even then you are skeptical). Has anyone else had this?

Also, I can say that there is a feeling of evil entities, but this is all in our heads. But I agree with zargon, other people may take what they feel with superstition: eg. one of my sleep paralysis episodes dealed with an evil entity being my younger sister (age 12). lol... possession!

Lastly, if you can stay calm and keep your mind "awake" during the experience, instead of trying to break free of it, your chances of entering a lucid dream is very great.

Good night.
Fun fact: electric cars were very popular, before the Model T was introduced in 1908. Edison spent over a million dollars trying to improve the crucial component of electric cars: the battery. Unfortunately, gasoline was still superior for "touring and rural communities", and when gasoline cars became self-starting, electric cars lost their one key advantage. And that was that.
However, Facebook is reportedly storing contacts imported but not selected, and using them for friend suggestions - see http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/06/12/facebook-now-sugges...

Personally, I'd never give an email password to a third party, no matter what they claim they'll do with it.
I wonder why the weight of the boson is affected by all these factors. Anyone care to fill me in?
Well the GV app wasn't going to replace the native dialer either. But you might be surprised:

1) The web app could launch a call to a special google that would seemlessly get patched through to the destination number. (wep app notifies google of destination number then dials the number -- google identifies you based on caller-id and forwards it through)

2) Using google sync your address book will be available through the web app, again, seemless.
B/c it's been on Metafilter all day.
This was a popular-ish thing to do with AltaVista's Babelfish about (probably more than) 10 years ago. A friend used this back-and-forth technique to mix up song lyrics. A teacher did the same to generate bizarre text for class handouts.

A time-honored classic.
Nice article, thank you...
The real question is whether or not they got Google smacked before making the changes.
I'm always amazed how many not-so-random people I meet are into Arduino, and how many of them began interested in programming because they cut and pasted a few sketches which they then tweaked.

Got any current projects? My non-existent free time is devoted to a track driven, maze solving robot.
Theoretical science is certainly romantic --- but this sort of thing is what makes experimental science sexy. To be able to say "Ah! I am accidentally measuring the gravitation of the water in a nearby lake" --- and then compensate for it. Data so sharp you cut yourself.
Well, we are talking about the measurements of the Z boson being inaccurate (at really, really, really high levels of precision), not that the boson itself is somehow changing mass.

Sounds like a lot of fun to be had with super precise measurements in any case.
Aging Nations
Riak: a decentralized key-value store + map/reduce over HTTP/Json
More enlightening conversation with Google:

(picking up where we left off)

Me: What do you think?

Google: What do you think?

Me: I'm thinking I want to know what you're thinking.

Google: Do you know how when you click?

Me: I think it goes to a bunch of servers.

Google: I believe my server group.

Me: Surely not always your server group?

Google: What kind of server group?

Me: Oh, you know, a server group belonging to someone other than Google.

Google: Oh, you, Google Groups, only the server knows.

Me: The server knows what? Google, the server knows what? Google, you must tell me, this is important for the future of all humanity!

Google: (after a long time pondering the idea of "Google being used for the future of all human contact") Do you know my server? I know what is Google's servers? Also, Google is being used, it is important that you apply to the future of all human contact for me!

Me: Google, what does that mean?

Google: Google today, or?

Me: Or what? Or else what?

Google: Or something? What else?

Me: Okay, no conspiracy here. Thought I'd noticed something out of place. Good night, Google.

Google (alone in the empty room): Conspiracy. I think I learned my place. In the evening, Google is good.
We're doing well and will be around for a long time.
I don't know... do you want to elaborate a little more on that?
In my view, social publishing is not the same as the "web". Scribd, in my view, represents the emergence of a new wave of article-based content publishers.

Recently, there's been a new wave of text-based content sites that are on the rise:

* Scribd

* HubPages (where I work)

* Squidoo

* InfoBarrel

* Helium

As far as Quantcast/Alexa, scribd is still on top in terms of global unique visitors.
Good point about min. frame rate.

But is that demo lower than 1600x1200? The Youtube video is; but I don't know about the demo.
Z bosons decay into a lepton (electron, muon, or tau particle) and its anti-particle. Those decay products pass through a magnetic field and eventually collide with a material that absorbs all of their energy. Measuring the path of the leptons (in particular, the deflection caused by the magnetic field) allows you to determine their momentum. The intensity of the collision with the stopping material is used to determine the energy.

Knowing the energy and momentum allows one to calculate the path. Gravitational forces are also acting on those particles, and any changes in their paths caused will change the final calculated mass.
The same thought occurred to me as well. However, I think the quote means that their _measurement_ of the mass was affected, not the real mass.
Gordon Moore's next act (2008)
Weird! I wonder if it is ELF (extremely low frequency) noise...
Typically 15-20% of their expenses are spent on R&D. The cost of marketing is also about 15-20%. This is roughly the same as any large tech company. Compare Merck and Johnson&Johnson to Google or Intel.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MRK&fstype=ii

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:JNJ&fstype=ii

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:INTC&fstype=ii

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii
I just looked at couchdb-lounge because I'm very interested in partitioning and hadn't heard about it.

The wiki unfortunately left the important questions unanswered. Does lounge handle the rebalancing when new shards are added/removed? Do I have to take the cluster offline to add new nodes? What are the failure modes (e.g. a node failing and coming back)? How is a replacement node bootstrapped?

Since none of that is mentioned I have my doubts that lounge is handling it adequately. But I'd be glad to hear otherwise!
Billionaire University
Perhaps we need a Hacker Canon to accompany our Hacker News; whenever you try to submit something in the canon it could just redirect you to the canonical discussion.
Stating the problem thus makes it intractably hard. Look at it from the other side: you will die one day, and you need to make preparations for your death that include your online possessions and presence.

I keep a list of passwords and instructions with my will. That's all there is to it. Think things through once and you never have to do it again.
Hmm, that other thing you mention sounds like false awakenings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening ).. i had them every night for a while, and that + nightmares == a decartes hell.
If writing PHP for websites is the limit of your skill set, I'm worried for you. Not a personal remark, but a comment on the interviewing process.
The Hunt for the Kill Switch (2008)
Solution to waking up during this is to wiggle your toes. I had sleep paralysis frequently back when I was toking on the herb. I was also experiencing lucid dreams a lot then. Oh and the best way to stay in a lucid dream is to look into your hands/palms if you feel yourself awakening. Tried and tested :)
So it's just the gravitational forces acting on those Z bosons that affect the measurement of weight? If so, I'm just blown away. Physics never ceases to make my day better.
I review the 14-foot laptop from The Shack (nee RadioShack), or try to.
Also, his prints are simply rare. There are less than 500 images in his entire body of work, as I recall. Only some of those used blocks (he also made lithographs, mezzotints, aquatints...), and only some of those survive.
I have that pretty much every time I sleep in late (usually Saturdays). I'll "wake up", then click on my phone, notice it's 6:00, and go back to sleep. About 10 seconds later, I usually realize I never actually woke up, wake myself up, check my phone for real, and notice it's actually noon. It feels very strange.
Spend a few minutes on it. Got an error:

Call to undefined function syck_load()

Loading classes when you need them only is a good principle. Question, did you ever consider extending a public framework rather than your own? CodeIgniter comes to mind. What motivated you to start from scratch?

As a sideline I am currently in Qatar heavyfuckingmetal.com got censored!
one could at least hold out hope that it would replace the native dialer, not going to happen at all with a web app.
I think pj's suggestion is a means of reducing the risk to the employer. The way they reduce their hiring risk is to make sure you can do the job before hiring.
According to wikipedia, zip+4 does not uniquely identify single individuals unless they are high volume recipients.
The Failure of ActionScript 3 ?
"(in fact, we invented the insulin injection) on government funds."

Easily found on the internet: Insulin injections developed in the 1920's, socialization of Canadian medicine began in the 1950's. No link between the two events, not clear in your post if you are arguing this or not.

According to: http://www.canadianaconnection.com/cca/banting.htm, funding during the summer of 1921 was from his family. Not sure as to the accuracy of this website nor do I know of other sources as to funds for the research.

If you would like to supply references as to the funding of the insulin research and development being government funded then please do so. Just because research is performed at a university does not mean the funds are from the government.

Your point and others in this forum is that socialism is better, Kamen and others disagree.

Personally I think US Medicare is a good example of why government programs are not the best. Doctors do not want to accept new Medicare patients due to lack of money, one article I recently read had a doctor state the cost for one supply was as much as could be billed by the doctor.

The US system is quasi-socialism at the very least. Since government is partially controlling costs via one program (if you consider Medicare and Medicaid the same) and access via other programs/legislation including the tax laws.

One item to consider in this debate is that in the US at least since Hamilton, influence has enabled legislation to be enacted to favor your point of view, aka a mercantile economy. Such that you can not in the least bit consider the US Health system as non-government influenced.

The only expensive medical procedure I've undergone was paid by the insurance company at around $.50 to the dollar amount billed by the doctor and hospital. I paid around $.10 to the dollar. This raises the question as to how much of the cost is actually price inflation by the medical establishment to ensure they can pay their actual costs. Some items when price compared to the local pharmacy had a mark up of 200-500%, this was only for a couple of items I remembered while waiting for an order to be filled and is not a rigorous assertion on my part.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/17/1/225.pdf has some interesting data regarding Canadians visiting the US medical system. The point I saw is that when the northern system reduced the amount paid in Oct 91 (page 226 of the article) the subsequent amount spent was significantly less, chart on page 229. Not sure the data would allow analysis as to how much voluntary/elective payments were reduced as my quick read suggest some of this was transferred to private insurance. And this particular study indicates only 3% of expenditures in the Canadian system are to out of province providers.

Highly recommend that you read 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism' if for no other reason than you know what you are arguing against. Free Enterprise is the best solution to any problem unfortunately like pure communism, it is not found in its pure form due to human nature.
Has anyone tried to forward their address? The few times I've done this I've had horrible luck. Complaints to managers gets you nowhere. Awesome system.
My submission, with some information omitted:

As a federal IT consultant, I have built a number of utilities for <a government entity> that either use Python directly or leverage bits of Python code in order to make another product work. One interesting bit in particular, I whipped up a 13 line Python script to monitor each side of a load balanced cluster for uptime, properly shutting down the relevant Apache instance of a side if its Weblogic portal instance was not responding, and redirecting traffic to the other side. This need was present as there was no facility in either the multi-thousand dollar Cisco Content Service Switches fronting the servers, nor the multi-million dollar AquaLogic portal behind them.
"final calculated [weight]" may be a better way to word it to avoid any confusion with the actual mass of the particle, as opposed to the calculation of how gravity at a given moment effects it.
My (a?) typical scribd workflow:

a) Interesting document posted somewhere, say HN
b) Visit scribd, click download link
c) Click pdf
d) *Grrrrr*
e) Visit bugmetnot, search scribd
f) Cut and paste u/p
g) Download and read pdf

The anti scribd sentiment here doesn't surprise me.
"The purpose of the modifications is to run pirated games."

Or any unsigned code, so it's arguable that it could be used for legitimate reasons.

Also, since copyright infringement is already a crime, criminalising acts with _might_ lead to copyright infringement is going too far in my opinion.

"pro-piracy contingent"

You're mischaracterising the objections; it has nothing to do with supporting copyright infringement and everything to do with your rights to do what you want with what you _own_.

As an aside, I don’t _support_ copyright infringement in any way. I like to see content-creators get money when they make something I like.

a. They deserve it
b. It's impetus for them to make more things I might like
Page seems to be a 404 now. Any chance of a new link?
I'm curious what the Justice Department will find. Seems like a nice gesture on behalf of both companies.

Edit: Sorry, this was supposed to be sarcastic, but came off as just plain stupid.
MLB.tv may be great, but there is room for improvement...
At least in my last physics class, weight was defined to be the gravitational force of the earth acting on an object. Perhaps you're blown away because you're equating weight and mass?
Of course I am familiar with it. I'm arguing against it when I say it's not justified.
Oh, gross.

They just pass the plaintext right through to RSA. No OAEP, just bang right into the BigInt. There's some random gibberish appended to the plaintext ("hey, this needs some salt"), but they're not padding a damn thing. Bleichenbacher's chosen-ciphertext attack; game over.

The RSA decryption, server-side, isn't blinded at all. Timing attack free-for-all there. Boneh's timing attack might work, as long as you can pin the session down. (And since this is for folks who don't get SSL, I'm sure you could.)

And key generation is equally horrible. The lack of a real CSPRNG was pointed out by someone else. They're also not protecting against Fermat factorization: when they generate p and q they only check equality and primality, not distance. Same with small decryption exponents. Unlikely to be serious, but it sure doesn't speak to their skills as cryptographic implementers.

Jesus H. Christ. What a train wreck.
Could you explain how this is a nice gesture?
Apple’s $1.2 billion tablet computer
A fantastically insightful video about the intelligence of crows from the TED Conference: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intel...
What you call a "nice gesture," most everybody else calls collusion [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion
Future uncertain for Yahoo developer programs