skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My partner buys his LEDs in bulk off eBay for a much lower price than can be found in stores - I don't know if this helps you at all.
One of my friends is an IP attorney and I had a conversation with him about the ridiculousness of patent law and software and his response to me was, "I think one of the problems with software engineers and patents is their over-estimation of 'obviousness'."

What he meant was that we can look at something and quickly reverse engineer the logic to construct it, but coming up with the idea originally is often much more difficult than the simple patented solution would indicate. That's what we do right? We take difficult concepts and distill them into solutions.

Realize, this algorithm was developed in 1918. Try rewinding your mind to what the world knew back then and this algorithm may have been ground breaking!

A lot of us hackers think these problems are easy to solve when really, we never even realized before we saw the solution that it was a problem at all! Another issue is that we often, through modesty, humility, or a lack of self-awareness really under-appreciate how smart we really are -- relative to the population as a whole. We judge ourselves compared to other hackers and the other brilliant people we work with over the years. We isolate ourselves from the masses to a large degree and so we think we aren't as smart as we are or our ideas and solutions and our inventions really aren't as unique and innovative as they are. Most of the things we take for granted are really far beyond what the vast majority of the world even remotely considers or ever will consider for the entirety of their lives.
I guess if it ain't broken don't fix it.

All the threads live in nice tables and gifs are the appropriate technology to accompany them! Enough to give any CSS or SEO evangelist apoplyxia!
I just downloaded the free Kindle iphone app. I would think that if this were a competitive thing that they would have killed this one off first. Or maybe they're waiting until after the release of this rumored tablet?
wow that site looks horrible
It seems to calculate the image's width to construct indentation. I think it would be easier to just enclose the comments with <dt></dt> and the child trees with <dd></dd>.
So... how do I tweet about this outage?
Brazilian Conservation Group: Conserve 1 flush/day by peeing in shower
a.k.a. "people are twittering"
Cap-and-trade would trigger a new global trade war
Nothing get's by you.
I bought an item (an audio connector) from Ebay and when I got it, it was clear it was from Maplin (like Radio Shack in the UK). But it was cheaper than Maplin, and a great buy, and I respect him for beating Maplin on postage (and they do charge too much) by combining orders and posting out at cost.
No worries. I'm a lifelong Mac guy, and with the 10.x naming scheme they've chosen for OSX, there are a lot of trolls that basically say "o lol it's just 10.3 to 10.4, it's like XP to XPSP2!!!!111". So you just pulled out my gut-check reaction, sorry about that.
I really wish there were. I paid $5 for Tetris, and I dislike it immensely, and wish I could get a refund. Oh, well. At least it's only $5. :P
I remember this being discussed at Defcon. Wouldn't surprise me if someone managed to script a JavaScript DDoS worm. It really wouldn't be too hard to do.
Yeah, the headline is really stupid. 30% improvement… of… something.
Anybots is for real: Check out Trevor's robots on the Surrogates trailer
Blizzard pushed release date of StarCraft II to the first half of 2010
This is bullshit...

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/718877/000110465909047364/a09-20544_1ex99d1.htm
Stars in Early Galaxies Had a Need for Speed
Not everyone, just the vast majority of chrome developers are on Window and develop in Visual Studio. There are a few people working hard on the Linux and Windows ports, but Windows is the important port.
Their typical error image is a whale carried by birds. This image is funny because it's bird carried by whales. The image is a little more lively as well, with gradients and such.
Sorry thought you were being ironic!
Maternity rights = government/employment things to do with having a baby.
eg. A right to a certain length of time off work after the baby is born, a right to free/subsidized childcare, rights not to be discriminated against at work. etc.
I'm guessing it was a DDOS due to the amount of time the site was down - if it was coming from a single IP or single IP range they would likely have been able to block it off a lot faster.
30% improvement in branding! :) On Linux it now defaults to not have your window manager paint the boarder and handles it all by itself (what could go wrong?) so that Chrome looks the same everywhere even if it really doesn't fit into the rest of the Linux desktops.
The eBay suggestion is probably a good one, but since you're in NY, you might check with NYCResistor to see where they buy their parts.
"I’m going try Ritalin for two weeks, and then Adderall for two weeks."

I'm skeptical that is enough time with either to get a proper feel for their effects.

I've just switched from rit to Adderall; the ramp-up to the regular dosage of Adderall is two weeks.

Also, my experience with Ritalin is that it took some time to acclimate. I didn't care for it at first, but the experience improved. (Now, however, it hardly seemed to be doing anything, hence the change.)
Well, you know. Twitter has put themselves right in the middle of a national uprising in Iran and so are facilitators or perhaps enablers of conflict. I don't want to get moralistic or anything like that, but it should be expected that if you are helping one one side of a conflict that could potentially errupt into a full on civil war, that you are not immune to attack yourself.

I'm not saying this DOS or DDOS is related to the Iran issue, but I am saying that twitter has become a weapon of sorts, a communication enabler that benefits one side of a conflict more than another, so an attack like this is inevitable, even if this particular one isn't coming from the Iranian incumbents.
ICU64: Realtime Commodore 64 Memory Hacking
"Preferably with flash support.. "

Same for Ubuntu. I find it funny that I use a Google browser to view a Google site (YouTube) but can't see the videos.
"Blizzard Entertainment has moved the anticipated release date of StarCraft II to the first half of 2010 to coincide with the relaunch of its upgraded Battle.net® online -gaming service."
I don't get it, wasn't Steve Jobs one of the greatest entrepreneurs ever?
The thing is that a lot of the simple scripts only bang on 22. Moving the port means that a lot of scripts will move on to another server.
Don't forget to other funding agencies besides DARPA:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sbir/solicitations/sbir093/index...
as well as the STTR program:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sbir/solicitations/sttr09B/index...

The SBIR grants money to small businesses, about $100K for Phaise I (six months) and $750K for Phase II (two years).
The STTR is for collaborations between a small business and a research institution (e.g. university).

In this batch of solicitations, I have seen a solicitation for "Computational Models of Leadership" as well as a STTR on GPU/CUDA computing.

During the pre-release period (i.e. now) you can communicate directly with the topic authors. This is a technique you can use to establish rapport with the topic authors, which makes them more comfortable funding someone they've never funded before.
"Not everyone, just the vast majority of chrome developers are on Window and develop in Visual Studio. "

Wow. I'm guessing this is because Google really wants this on Win PCs, not because the developers are such VS fans.
Geomentum Aims to Measure Ad Results Down to the City Block
"Matter of fact Gee Chaung has and is a member of freenapkin and registered in December of 2008. His idea is not spur of the moment and this post about ‘ebay of free’ for free auctions needs more attention."

So he signed up for the site and saw an opportunity that free auctions can be done better. What's the crime in that? The listia site looks a whole lot better and their execution is different (too early to tell if it's the right one).

Just another clear example that execution is more important than the idea.
TechCrunch is calling it a DDOS, but as we know accuracy isn't their strong point.
No it didn't. It worked perfectly as designed. Buzz Aldrin left the rendezvous radar on, which together with the data from the landing radar overloaded the computer, but it handled it properly and kept on running. Great work, job well done.
The rich are having more children -- an important change in demography
It's sad that YC needs to stay on good terms with TC so that its startups continue to get exposure through TC's channel. Any other submission or comment with a similarly dumb title would be flagged or downvoted.

On the substance: perhaps Scoble's unfollow script is making the rounds. ;)
I'm pondering the same question. The thing is, I like the platform (as I think do most developers) and most apps I make are for my own use first and selling them is a secondary consideration. Still, I'm not sure it's worth the $99/year just for the privilege of being able to create and install apps on my own device. OTOH I'm hesitant to switch to Android or another platform mainly because I don't want another device. I know other developers are hesitant to switch because of a smaller potential market, but remember that developers are the lifeblood of any platform so it will only gain traction if more developers adopt it.
Icon Driven Development on the App Store- how we make $350/day without marketing
I thought everyone did that...
Usually home improvement stores now carry them, I bought several and very pleased.

Although if you want super bright, go for the 10mm 100000mcd+ ones off ebay, 50 of them easily replaces a 70W light. I bought 1000 of them, cheap in bulk, and their a lot of fun. If you're making your own LED series don't forget to add resistor to limit the current.
Lulz™
Left4Dead 2 was announced at E3. http://bit.ly/15VdCY
Wow. Funny though really, I heard a story in the past about how hardware companies assign the worst members of the team to build the software drivers and such. Hardware it appears to them is the hard part and software is the easy part and here a company that enables the production of hardware has been hosed by bad software engineers.

Gotta love it.
If you upgrade from (32-bit) XP to Win7, do you need to reinstall all your apps?

Isn't that an important issue for a lot of folks? Yet no comment either way in the review...
Why you don’t want to shard
If you're reading this they failed.
Kind of a high-tech spin on sending your twin to work.
Your Money, Your Brain, and Your Happiness
I'd say this is more evidence to that argument. After all, Apple was in shambles by the time the company hired Jobs back in 1996, and what is more impressive than obtaining a bundle of cash from one of your biggest competitors?
pretty sure I read the US Military regularly gives "toys" to for use in movies.

I think that U2 is American in fact, he has a USA flag on his spacesuit...
I had to write an essay back in HS on this topic. My conclusion was that the first bomb was warranted but not the second. A big reason for dropping the bomb(s) was to win the war faster in order to slow down the Soviet advance. In addition, the US wanted to send signals to the Soviet Union.
Ars technica: kde social desktop
Because the code that generates HN pages was written in the laziest and least-accessible way possible.
Feel the same way about Ms Pac-Man. Controls are horrendous - but it looked great in the screenshots so I bought it.
I assume they are using single pixel gifs and playing with the width to indent. That is old school, the way it was done before css. Maybe they just never quit. I still prefer to use tables to structure some types of content, it won't win me any awards from the css crowd but it's just easier. Why make life difficult?
This is what happens when you do business with Steve Jobs: you work for free and he gets all the profits. Whether you are hardware parts supplier, developer or 16 year old in iPod factory in China. You have to understand - Stevie has only 3 BILION on his account and he needs more!
I was curious how an article could be so biased and wanted to check what kind of journalism this paper featured.

"On February 1, a free daily tabloid arrived on newsstands and in mailboxes in the Washington, DC area: the Washington Examiner. The new paper is owned by Denver billionaire Philip F. Anschutz, an Evangelical Presbyterian who has bankrolled numerous ultra-conservative causes and has donated at least half a million dollars to Republican committees and political candidates. The Examiner's first three editorials all took hardline conservative positions."
". I have already argued that Hume's definition of miracles violates the principles of logic rather those of science."

The argument is mere question begging. He claims that miracles do not violate the laws of physics because, he claims, laws of physics cover miracles too.
I completely agree. While I haven't done or seen any scientific study of this, the connection seems pretty undeniable.

The connection is kind of fascinating. I have no idea if it is correlation or causative. Maybe these things are actually destructive to creativity but are so tempting to creative people that they appear causative. Maybe they actually do help creativity. Maybe they just tend to ride along together.

I certainly saw a lot of self destructive behavior in some of the writers I met. There was one dude that got on my nerves in almost every way, and I thought his drinking was a bit of an affectation to seem creative (the way PG in one essay mentioned that some people in computer science depts talk quickly to appear smart). However, 10 years later, he had produced two legitimate novels, and the second one got a paragraph long nod in time magazine and a longer, semi-positive bit in the new york times book review. I thought it was decent, didn't love it, but it was undeniably real and coherent, not 300 pages of drivel stapled together.

Fact is, he did something incredibly difficult that I couldn't do, which is write a real, legitimate, worthy novel. I respect his ability to create - and I'm definitely nobody to judge what he deems to be the necessary process.
Ask HN: Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps?
I'm trying to always keep size of images I publish on the web at a minimum. I have been using the smush.it service a lot, but after Y! took over the service, it hasn't been working too well -- for example I can't smush images stored locally any more.

Also, minifying and merging JS and CSS is a good trick to keep loading times down.

Now I'm interested to know -- which webapps, tools or tricks do you use to optimize your web content?
Run it with --enable-plugins and it will pick up the plugins you have installed for Firefox. I assume the same works on the Mac build.
Not by my reading. It's insane because we already had a system "for approximating and encoding the phonetic value of a word": the alphabet.
Yes. But is also nice to hear it directly from a guy that was actually there.(like you)
MakerBot is pioneering distributed manufacturing
I've got to say, the markup for the comments page is pretty ugly. I'm not going to diss the one who designed it, but I think it could really do with an overhaul. It wouldn't be difficult at all - just cascading, nested divs with incrementally increasing left-padding.

Unless there is a reason for the tables, they're not semantic, it's ugly, and it doesn't make any sense! And it's slower to render.
I think one of the main reasons some web design techniques are "bad" are because they don't sufficiently separate layout and design from content. The problem is - on a site like HN, you're primarily catering to a crowd that just wants a really simple, straightforward design that's easy to use to fast. We get that with a 1-pixel image. Adding css could potentially throw more complexity into the mix.
Inside the World’s Most Hostile Network
First we find out we've been living in a world where most people will give away their privacy freely because they don't think it's worth anything. Then a few large companies finding a way to capitalize on it are not just tolerated but admired. Now one guy treats one of them with the contempt it deserves and is criticized as unethical or ungenerous. WTF?
This isn't Canvas. It's SVG.
safari crashes are sometime related to corrupt preferences files in ~Library (do a search for 'safari') and start deleting them. good luck
I'd guess it's simply that PG codes html the way he learned years ago.

Not snark – you have to justify throwing out your table + spacer.gif knowledge to learn how to do things with div + css. Maybe he doesn't see a huge benefit.

Also (http://www.paulgraham.com/arc0.html):

Arc embodies a similarly unPC attitude to HTML. The predefined libraries just do everything with tables. Why? Because Arc is tuned for exploratory programming, and the W3C-approved way of doing things represents the opposite spirit.

...

Tables are the lists of html. The W3C doesn't like you to use tables to do more than display tabular data because then it's unclear what a table cell means. But this sort of ambiguity is not always an error. It might be an accurate reflection of the programmer's state of mind. In exploratory programming, the programmer is by definition unsure what the program represents.
The Google Bubble
Isn't the point of bankruptcy to wipe out all debts after they took too much risk and/or just got unlucky? In theory that sounds better than giving people a few more months to keep going with their too-much-risk-taking approach now loaded with a new debt. I don't know if that's the way it works in practice, but hell we're just all armchair economists anyway. ;-)
Phil Schiller Responds to App Store Dictionary Censoring
I really liked Greg's commentary on RMSE -- summed up my thoughts better than I could:

http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-is-good-recommendat...
My proposed motto for PHP: putting the "antic" in "semantics". Have a look at the values of

max('1', '3', '10')

max('1', '3 ', '10')

max('1', '3 ', 10)

and better still

max('antelope', 'wombat', 1, 3, 10)

max('antelope', 'wombat', '1', '3','10')

Not at any step necessarily unreasonable decisions, but not (to my eye) obvious ones.
And if you do not consider the fact that the retribution for WWI crippled Germany's economy and paved the way for Hitler's rise. And if you ignore the fact that Germany was (in part, to be honest) led to WWI because the British sabotaged their mercantile efforts.

To sum it up: there are no good guys.
PragPub Magazine #2
Or, instead of statistics, you could study it's sister field: Machine Learning.

Robert Tibsharani provides the following comparative glossary for machine learning and statistics:
http://anyall.org/blog/2008/12/statistics-vs-machine-learnin...

Glossary

Machine learning Statistics
network, graphs model
weights parameters
learning fitting
generalization test set performance
supervised learning regression/classification
unsupervised learning density estimation, clustering
large grant = $1,000,000 large grant= $50,000
nice place to have a meeting: nice place to have a meeting:
Snowbird, Utah, French Alps Las Vegas in August
TheBrain.com - Very interesting information visualization
Idiots! And what did you think that when Bern Bernanke keeps rate at 0% lenders will not come up with something?!?!? Come on it's obvious it is all government intervention fault. Let credit prices regulate themselves. Why on Earth we need government comittee to decide what price of credit should be? Isn't price controls a communistic idea that failed? Of course it is. Understand basic economy 101: if you manipulate prices, you will have issues with item that prices you manipulate. You manipulate with credit prices, you will have credit crisis. Guaranteed. Happened already. Free market would put credit price at 10% at least in the current conditions. But no, we have all-knowing Ben and Obama, they know better what credit price should be - 0% !!! Good luck America in your adventure with setting prices like old good commies.
Get the machine learning book by Bishop.
Gaming on Mars
Counter-anecdote: When I first moved here, I was very involved in the local music scene. In the last two years, I've pretty much lost touch with it completely; I noticed the other day that the curve tracked my gradual abandonment of myspace. Without those bulletins, it's hard to know when bands and venues too small for flyers are doing things.
You can also use CutyCapt to capture web screenshots to PNG, SVG, PDF, etc.
OpenTable: So Web 1.0 It Hurts
Colin, congrats on the success! It's nice to hear an App Store success story instead of the usual bad news.
Darn, we need that population decline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...

See: "Japanese realization of the bombing" This seems like a fascinating episode. A great movie could be made.
So you've just been hired by an IT department...
The traceroute in the article suggests a DDOS, because the network gets progressively slower through several stages in the route - implying that the attacks are coming from multiple locations.
I'm amazed these guys haven't got more press for what they're doing.

It's one of the most futuristic things I've seen. Crazy.
I suppose, given that Google Chrome OS is being built on the Linux kernel, the Linux port must enjoy quite a high priority as well.
I know... I just had to be cheeky. That's why the :-> was there! :-]
This has always struck me as Apple-Fanboy revisionism (and this coming from a guy with an iPhone and a Macbook). For this to be true it would have meant Apple had the upper hand in the negotiation and I just don't see that. Apple gave up too much (and had to look submissive doing it which had to sting Jobs) and Microsoft gave up virtually nothing (a relatively small amount of money and a promise to continue developing a product that was hugely profitable for them)

Also, the Microsoft exec who supposedly gave testimony proving this theory didn't do that at all and in fact continues to deny the suit had merit (even though he no longer works there). That's all chronicled in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Renegades-Empire-Software-Revolution-M...
Trevor comes on at about 1:10 in that video clip, if you want to skip forward.
Birds show Aesop's fable may be true
Because rendering a table is almost always slower. Granted, this is an old benchmark (don't have time to pull up any that are more recent), but: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
I think you mean "across the board".
Chronic Yeast Infections a Problem
UK's new ID card hacked within minutes
There's something a little strange about the idea that a company/product becomes real when it appears in a movie (or in the research/advertising for a movie). Isn't it the other way around? Cool clip though.
Great news for facebook et al! This must mean that they're going mainstream. Attracting the cool crowd as a business strategy is overrated imho.