skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The tragedy is, to the people calling the shots (ie. the invading military or government), a foreign civilian's life would probably be worth far less than $100,000.

As a previous comment notes, civilians killed are thought of as 'collateral'. That's just not acceptable. The burden lies with the occupying/invading forces to do everything possible to make sure civilians aren't killed or harmed in any way. Even actions that would lead to rations being withheld or basic needs not being met could be considered a breach of international humanitarian law and the fourth Geneva Convention.
Ask HN: I need help hacking a Nespresso Gemini CS 100 Pro
In my office there's a Nespresso Gemini CS 100 Pro machine. We noticed that it has a DB9 connector under a little cover and so I couldn't resist hooking up a computer with a serial port to it. After a bit of fiddling on Linux with minicom and discovering that I needed a null modem I got it to echo back characters.

But I can't find any way to get it to do anything else. Is there a Nespresso tech. out there? There appear to be no online resources for servicing these machines, and fiddling with the keys the best I can do is get a hidden interface on the LCD giving me serial numbers and firmware versions.

And why do I want to do this? Because it's there...
It's not anti-scientific, it's an old engineering adage. It's the unknown unknowns that will get you.
Cold Temperatures Improve Sleep
Live in a native speaking country is still by far the most effective way of learning a language.
Now support calls on a web app are unlikely to be related to the technology used on the server side. Usually they are more related to the design of the application itself or what resides on the client side.

It also depends on the number of users, if they only have that little number of rails app, its probably because started using to test the water, and I doubt they used the large applications with a ton of users to begin with. If you have less users, you have less support calls. Applications that are critical or have to adapt to unplanned conditions also get more support calls.
I could come up with similar figures for Lotus Notes, Oracle forms or excel spreadsheets based apps.

In other words, the article doesn't really mean anything.
Indian Parliament passes landmark Right to Education Bill
>It almost feels like you are sacrificing usability for a developer's laziness.

More like sacrificing usability for time/money. You may be able to create a Cocoa app in the same time as a Titanium app, but can you create a Cocoa, Windows, and Linux app in the same time? Probably not. Not all apps need native features.
Humans are terrible with big numbers. Once they become so big we don't have real-world comparisons things start to break down. 12 is a number you can relate to because you can picture 12 apples. And you can compare it with 100 apples. Or oranges ;-)

Once you get into the territory of millions, billions and trillions we don't have any meaningful comparisons to guide us. The result is that we don't really grok the difference between a million and a trillion.

The remedy is charts. If you make a barchart showing the difference between a million and a trillion it becomes obvious that there's a huge difference.
Uhh, hell would freeze over before I'd use it in anything. Paypal is bad enough, but Apple's App Store policies have tarnished their reputation in my book!
The story explains Netflix's reasons.
For one thing, the use among civilian populations of white phosphorus as a weapon (rather than as part of a smoke screen) is of dubious legality; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus
How about having different categories?
Their Philadelphia-area distribution center, where I get my Netflix DVDs from, is located in a place called "Southeastern, PA".

This place does not actually exist. That is, there's no city or town called "Southeastern". It's just a name for the particular post office they use.
Netflix has deployed the largest "legacy adapter layer" business process that I can recall. This is a great example of how to start a business where the end-state model is dependent on things outside of its scope of control (or even influence).

When Netflix started in 1997, Most of its potential customers were using dial-up, and there was no way Hollywood would have allowed digital distribution anyway. So, they rode on top of some existing infrastructure: (1) the US mail system, and (2) existing laws that allowed physical media movie rentals.

My wife and I have been Netflix subscribers for years. However, most of our viewing is now done via the little Roku box, and physical disk delivery is of a much secondary importance (their streaming media is better than DVD but not as good as Blu-Ray).

Netflix is in this fantastic position of having a large customer base that can shift from its relatively high marginal cost* business model to its new, much lower marginal cost* * one.

* postage and manual labor.

* * I presume the movie studios are getting paid per-view?
Student Arrested for Modding Consoles
I'm learning Spanish at the moment, purely using Michel Thomas's course CDs, and going to Spain for a week every few months. I guess going to Mexico as often as possible would be the US equivalent (I'm in the UK). The CDs are available free in libraries here, so you can rip them for free onto an mp3 player & listen to one per day repeatedly.
I got by well in rural Spain for a week without using English, but I'm far from 100% fluent yet. Other suggestions here like podcasts, radio & TV etc. are also all good. Best of luck!
For Many Americans, Nowhere to Go but Down
Wow, this site looks pretty cool. I would not give up so early.
It's certainly not a bad (for me) now, but at the time I considered it a bad because I wasn't used to seeing three people get fired in two days.
Four ways to redesign Facebook
I made a web-based proxy for that when I finally got too fed up with that. Has a own open-search provider too.

http://googlealready.com/ (plug)

These days I use bing though, but that service is still online.
I agree, if you can program on paper, you can program on anything. Paper programming forces you to slow down and think.

I'm a CS student the University of Texas, and quite a few of our professors, especially at the entry level programming courses, disallow students from brining computers to class and all our programming tests are all written. This encourages patient THINKING and not sporadic TINKERING.

And about powerpoint: I dislike it because most people do it wrong. The lecture should be guiding the powerpoint, but most people allow the powerpoint to guide the lecture.
Can you tell us how you found this tutor? Did you interview multiple people? And finally how much did this kind of tutoring cost?
Full-time Startup: Skribit Week 30 (Coding, Coding, Coding)
I wouldn't use it but considering how many people do use iTunes to buy things (both iPhone/Touch apps and music) this makes a ton of sense. I doubt it'll take much extra effort to add the infrastructure, if any. And it creates additional revenue stream.

Interesting to see where this goes if true.
4 Advantages Of A Virtual Goods Business Model
Or single-run custom parts. Great if you need something that is no longer being made or isn't readily available. Just as you say, there are advantages of molding/stamping, but it all depends on the situation.
YC/HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve.
About six months ago, I put up an HN post asking everyone about a problem they want to see solved. It sparked a lot of discussion and a lot of great ideas. So here's edition #2.

Name any problem: technology, politics, cooking, world peace - whatever bugs you or pops into your mind.

Original: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=442571
I'd change that to "Marry a native speaker who doesn't speak English." It's too easy to revert to the common tongue.
From my research in Software Factory/Domain Specific Languages/Frameworks i crystalized certain rules for assembly and the funny thing is it is simple and not domain specific and should be implementable in any language.

Rule 1 - Define a context - Give it a name
Rule 2 - Add Components into that context
Rule 3 - Configure those Components in that context
Rule 4 - Link those Components in that context

If i create a assembly framework which understand the above 4 simple rules, i should be able to assemble components into applications thereby separating assembly from coding.

Assembling components implicitly gives meaning (domain) functionality to an application where the components may be generic or specific and can be rewired to give different meaning.

The edge cases will be that the components are very specific for a very narrow functional area which is like a single large component. Even in these case, no component is standalone and can provide all the functionality, even specific components will need to link to generic components to provide all the desired funtionality.

To prove to myself this is possible is why I created my website www.arshu.com using an assembled approach. If you visit my site and move the cursor to the top right hand site [red mark] of a page, i will tell you how many components this page uses, how many properties is being set and how many links i am creating.

Thanks for the links
Excellent Points!

And actually this is where we are having a little bit of difficulty.In that we are actually excluding many tweets, like the ones above. Out of 9.1 million total tweets on Tweetflix.com we are actually only counting 30% towards the approval rating and the rest are more of the "pulse on the movie".

Does it make more sense to split them out into "chatter" and "reviews"?

Thanks for the once over, very helpful! Also as far as the design goes, have to thank @kurtwojda for the time put in!
Browser data centralization with XMPP
The order difference between iRobot's revenue (10^8), and the defense budget (10^11) is smaller than difference between a Starbucks coffee (10^0) and a car (10^4) or a house (10^5). I would hope people could handle that math.

I suppose the mortgage crisis is evidence that people can't handle even that every day math.

I agree visualization is a great solution.
I see his point, but I think we are already powerless against the government militarily.

What does the average American have that can stop a tank, or an armored personnel carrier, or a jet, or a helicopter.

Iraq disbanded its military, all those guys went home with AK-47s and knew where the ammo depots were. The IEDs beating our guys are up often artillery shells wired to a cell phone. We all have cell phones, who knows how to get artillery shells in the US? Not nearly enough people to make a decent fight.

The only way it could happen here is if a significant portion of the US military sided with the revolutionaries - ironically what happened in both the American Revolution and the Civil War. There is no example of a successful revolution based solely on civilian soldiers. A lot of the people in the US army during the revolution were civilians prior to the shooting, but they were led by men who had fought in the French & Indian war for the British.

So if some of the military is joining the breakaway sect, robots or not will not change the situation since both sides will have them.

I'm still more worried about chemical, biological, or nuclear attack.
Well, one thing is clear: anybody who has billions of cash on the high side and his mind at the right place, will now, at this tim in history, investigate if he should enter the banking industry in some form or another.
I'd like to be able to enter a URL and see every place on the internet that people have talked about it.
Ecommerce Web Hosting - Cash in Online
I remember reading an article (don't ask me to find it, it was a long time ago) about how they don't actually "store" many DVD's, they unpack them, see who is next in the queue to receive it, and put it in the pile to ship back out. This sped up the turnaround and reduced storage costs significantly.
I took seven semesters of German in high school and managed to skip everything but one 300-level grammar course at university, but I appear more to be the statistical anomaly than the rule. I'm fluent when discussing matters that are mostly mathematics and physics, but I find myself tripping on several everyday things.

I took a genuine interest in learning the language, and I made a point of hanging out with German-speaking folks on IRC (in my case, mostly demosceners) and the like in order to get an idea of how the colloquial language works. Reading and writing formal and informal German both help tremendously as far as extracurriculars go if full immersion is unattainable, but it's best to supplement that with something like television shows (telenovelas are particularly useful here) and music.

In addition to all of this, I had the goal in the back of my mind of earning a PhD in mathematics someday. That said, at schools in the US, proficiency in one of either French or German (sometimes also Russian and Latin) is often a requirement as it is viewed as an important research skill with respect to late classical and early contemporary literature.

I go with everyone else here, though, and maintain that full immersion is the preferred way to fly.
I write pseudocode on paper before I implement anything, and it has helped me tremendously. In fact, I think programming on paper encourages nonlinear programming. You can DRAW! Use lines and arrows to code blocks. Sure, it might get messy, but doing it on paper gives you a better idea of how your algorithm should work. You make less mistakes because making a mistake is more costly (you have to erase/mark out the mistake), so you tend to be more careful.
AT no longer allows running as local system.

HTTPAnalyzer is great for HTTPS, but not pure SSL, such as LDAPS, in the example.
I wonder if in the long run it would be more robust to print the mold, and cast the metal material in it. Molds generally created out of some sort of clay/sand with an activated resin bonding the material. It seems as if that would be easier build using a 3d printer than building the metal part directly.
Well you are reading an English language site so the articles are obviously going to be in English. The complaint applies to anyone travelling to a country that speaks a different language. There are also comments from people in other countries who prefer to browse in English.
There's actually a Firefox extension called AddaTweet that shows all Twitter conversations for any given link. Not everything, but someone's thinking about your problem. It's by Dmitry Shapiro (Veoh).
I don't specifically disagree with you, but I'm curious: what are your reasons for that viewpoint?
Thats true, but think of the typical situation where you need a custom part - to replace a broken one. I have a car from 1961 and one of the pieces I've had trouble replacing is the king pin (i.e. the pin that the front tires rotate around on a rear wheel drive car). It wasn't designed strong enough so it breaks commonly. They are not made anymore and it is difficult to replace. This technique wouldn't help me one bit because if cast steel didn't do it, then powdered steel sure isn't.

On the other hand the jewelery idea is probably a good one, strength properties don't matter too much.

You are right that it is all about the situation, but I see too many people that think 3D printing is somehow going to revolutionize the manufacture of physical things, its not. It may work in really specific instances, but thats about it, and if I had to buy 1 manufacturing machine for my home/business it would be a CNC controlled mill not a 3D printer.
Really, they needed to purchase something to offer this kind of thing?
http://www.langolab.com is a good resource
If you're lucky enough to be familiar coding for all three platforms, that's great for you. The last question remains: Do you want to be maintaining three separate codebases for the same product?

The question isn't what you want, but what your market wants, and whether you can afford to deliver it.
Crypto is easy, key management is hard.  A guided example through a Fail.
Fine, yes; but you don't have to use neural networks to get that behavior.
Slowing Time
Live there. Most people I've talked to suggest that a year is enough to become fairly fluent. Also, you'll need to socialise when you're there - going to another country and hanging out with ex-pats is a sure way to not learn anything.

Although a grounding in the language from a course is good, until you are racking your brains for the correct word while talking to someone, you're not really training your brain usefully.
Yes. Most people have taken Powerpoint and tried to use it as a replacement for having 3x5 notecards with major points on them so that they don't get lost during a lecture/speech. Unfortunately that is the poorest use of Powerpoint.

But this comes hand-in-hand with the way we choose professors. They aren't usually chosen for their teaching or speaking skills, just for their knowledge and expertise in a particular field.
Well if you really want to learn a new language, I suggest you start thinking in that language. That's how I achieved my English fluency (and English is indeed a foreign language to me).
GSM codes for replacing iPhone VM with Google Voice
Thank you for submitting this.

At the very least, it diffuses the whole red state/blue state jingoism that just tends to inhibit productive discussion.
OK, then why are you drawing the line arbitrarily between cattle and tomatoes, when both are less efficient than potatoes? I posed that as question, but I don't think there's an answer, because, indeed, I think precisely the problem is that you're making an arbitrary distinction.

My entire point is that, sure, it's less efficient, but that doesn't mean there's not reasons for raising cattle.
It is as if it is ingrained in the laws of physics that as the size of a project in money increases, so is the likelihood of overruns in time. Naturally the cost overruns would force costs to rise. No amount of planning or management seems to change this.

I am currently involved with a Project (construction related), where all the ingredients for success are there. Good management, a plan with approximate 26,000 activities (in Primavera), good external Client controls and yet the Project is behind one year!

Does anyone have the answer? Is there such a thing like a 'self-organizing-project'? It maybe the answer!

Just to digress, if you multiply the above 26,000 activities say by about 50 sub-activities (to break down the tasks to minutiae) you will have approximately 1,000,000 activities and can immediately observe the similarity to software development. Except in the 'real' world you cannot execute these instructions and start debugging immediately and in the computer world the 'bugs' start appearing only after completion, when a missile lands 30000 km due to someone converting meters to ft!
Categories just invite meta posts of the 'not <category>' type. Articles that fall into multiple categories are another problem, and tags don't quite solve that one either. They also inorganically split the community and add an extra step to the voting or submission process.
Wrong. The manufacturing cost of the robot may be a mere $100,000. But besides the argument that human lives are often valued at less than that, there's also the security argument: 'we can't allow our technology to be stolen and exploited by the enemy'. I can pretty much guarantee you that one will get trotted out. It's not very logical, but that has never mattered in war.

I mean, let's not be naive here. When the fighting in Iraq was intense a few years ago, the biggest threat to coalition (and especially US) soldiers was 'IEDs' - improvised explosive devices, which in turn was a fancy name for 'homemade mines'. Generally these were triggered by cellphone and there were many comments about how cowardly and evil this was (because it was happening to us). Imagine the reaction if these had been mobile devices - or more accurately, when they are. Because while there are many engineering challenges involved, there's nothing fundamentally difficult about it.
I had to write code in college for tests. Didn't bother me at all.
I program better on a computer because despite my Catholic elementary school penmanship training my hand begins to ache after a few minutes of handwriting, and I write slowly. The longer I have to hold a pen or a pencil the more difficult it becomes to concentrate on anything but how uncomfortable my hands are.

I reach for pencil and paper all the time for solving problems, but if I can't write what has to be written in less than 5-10 minutes it's not worth it.
Dial this: * 002 * 6175551212 # ... replacing the second string of numbers with your own. That should direct your caller to Google Voice messaging for busy/unreachable/no-answer on your iPhone (or other GSM network) but will still give you plenty of time to answer the call as usual.
The CloudMade Developer Zone
Should Your Brand Have Its Own URL Shortener? Coca-Cola Now Does
FWIW, JRuby does not have a GIL, plus you get to use java.util.concurrent.* classes in your Ruby code.
I'm a native spanish speaker. To learn english I followed these basic steps:

1. Learn basic grammar and vocabulary.
2. Read. Read a lot.
3. Listen to movies and songs and pick up pronunciation.
4. Keep on reading!
5. Now you know quite a bit!
You could fork the source and run your own A/B testing.
What if you're married to an English speaker already, and you can't leave the country (tons of kids and a job)?

Immersion is obviously ideal, but not always practical. Then, you're left with finding friends who speak the language, college courses, movies, etc.

Any other ideas?
Geolocation is bad for detecting the language, the HTTP Accept-Language header is better for that. But Geolocation can be good for localising content. If I'm in Germany and search for fast food, I want to see the results in English (if possible) but they should be about German businesses.

It's impossible to get it right though because you need to decide what the user wants to see localised vs always in their home locale. Maybe another header that you could set per site like "Accept-Content-Locale" or something.

And of course, both the Accept-Language and GeoIP methods fail miserably at determining things like the user's time zone. There really should be a "home" and "roaming" locale system in browsers that sends the preferred language, time zone, localised content preference, and anything else that could be useful in generically customising content. The user could set the locale browser wide or per site.
geez that was depressing.
Nice comparisons. The problem is not that people can't handle it, the problem is that people don't think about it.

I'm pretty good at math (in comparison to most people here I'm probably terrible but anyway) and I don't really think much about it. It's easy to do the math and come up with comparisons like you did, but you're exposed to so many numbers and so much information that you don't really bother.

Thus "Government overruns budget by $10 billion" becomes the same headline as "Government overruns budget by $10 trillion" in my mind whereas the headline "teen has three daughters" is distinctly and instantly different than "teen has fifty daughters"
Make your own diamond-based thermal grease
Here is a seemingly relevant thread from the Clojure group:
http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/...

It was pointed out on there that this is not only a language comparison but a data structure comparison as well. Also, there are no type hints in the Clojure code. Without type hints it would be expected to run significantly slower. It's still an interesting comparison because you would generally only use type hints in performance bottlenecks. I'd be especially interested in seeing what kind of difference it would make in this case.
I have a hard time taking someone seriously who tells me that arrow keys harsh his zen calm.
Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH