skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nice example of the distinction between different kinds of average (see the "lying with statistics" thread). This is presumably the mean rather than (say) the median. Perhaps, e.g., 1/3 of the population they sampled is in a reasonably healthy sexual relationship and not grossly hampered by extreme old age, ill healthy, etc., in which case the average for that portion of the population is about 3 minutes per day, which could mean e.g. once a week for 20 minutes.

Then, of course, some respondents might be reluctant to report that they had sex (pushing the average down) or might tend to exaggerate how long they spent at it (pushing the average up) or something.

The one thing the figure almost certainly doesn't mean is that a typical sex act reported in the survey took 54 seconds. Although, depending on how you define your terms, many of them might be very quick...
Yet I can't help but laugh at stuff like this.

"As with many white people activities, being vegan/vegetarian enables them to feel as though they are helping the environment AND it gives them a sweet way to feel superior to others. For further evidence, note how the vegetarian world has increasing levels of extemism (no meat, no dairy, no eggs, no fish, nothing that has been cooked, etc)."

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/27/32-veganvegetaria...
The ATUS categorization doesn't have a top-level category for computer use, and some varieties of computer use get recorded in ways that don't indicate that a computer was involved. So the actual amount of computer use time might be bigger than reported, both because not all computer use is explicitly recorded as such and because whoever made the interactive graphic might have missed some categories.
I know, but I also believe it would be great if those two sites served as a hub for companies like SliceHost and Linode to put their support material, which could then be readily improved by the community.
Brooklyn, NY on verizon dsl(3/768): page load takes ~4s; after that the images load in less than 1s
Hmm, yeah. Need to get initial response time down on the server.

Thanks.
The ATUS only covers people aged at least 15, so not exactly children. But yes, this is surely an age effect: university students, e.g., will typically have no children and do less (of what the ATUS classifies as) work.
I get AWS, AWS is scale on demand + multiple datacenters.
I get the lower linode pricing levels, they're a good deal.

The large ones make no sense to me. If you're paying monthly for a bigass machine then linode is way overpriced vs. dedicated. If you need to scale up really quick then linode won't work because they bill monthly. They have redundant DCs but if one got knocked out I imagine there'd be a scramble to use all the available ones if a DC went down.
It needs higher quality names. "depressurancs" cannot really be one of the best five names available.
Haha that's a bit of a stretch! If it's their own internal data and they want to monetize it in this way, the market will decide whether the price they set is worthy of the product being sold.

While I might disagree with the usefulness/pricing of their data considering widely available alternative sources it isn't exactly on par with maligning someone's civil rights :D
Apple, labels stir up deluxe digital Cocktail
I don't actually think of books so much as I think of browsing stores for actual goods. On the one hand, I have too much stuff (http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html) on the other hand, I'm far more likely to unexpectedly encounter a useful and actually buy a thing (say a cooking tool) at the mall than online (even something simple, like a quality spatula).

I wouldn't even look at cooking items online. No AI recommendation engines have ever recommended cooking utensils to me that I can remember, and certainly nothing that I was interested in. I've never made a conscious decision to outfit my kitchen, so I've never gone on an online shopping spree for that sort of thing. However, if I walk by Williams-Sonoma in the mall, I may stop in and check out what they've got.
is that "Raptor Jesus"?
Fake ATM doesn't last long at Defcon
Fast. Cool site.
Nissan unveils world's first mass-market electric car, the Leaf
I had a similar experience - blank page for 5 seconds or so, but once the DOM loaded the images loaded in a flash. Its clear you've worked hard on this, its impressive.

Regarding the initial delay, I have a suggestion. The way the page is including your Javascript files is likely causing more of a delay than you are saving using CloudFront. Really easy to fix though:

Combine base_packaged.js, application.js, and listings.js and move the combined <script> tag to the bottom of the page, right after your </div> tag for #footer-wrapper. base_packaged.js alone is 252 KB, and the browser will block until its finished downloading. This means it won't be rendering any elements which occur after the script include until the download completes. Because your include is in the head the user sees nothing but the title until the script has downloaded. Importantly your img tags aren't rendered yet, and so the image downloads aren't starting for several seconds, during which time the user is left with no feedback.

Generally, move every script to the bottom of the page unless there's a reason you can't (e.g. you're using document.write to render page content).
Word. That itch inspired my current Big Scratch.
Took just over 5 seconds, but most of that was waiting for the page itself (especially the js).

Here's a screenshot of the Firebug net tab: http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/5097/doleaffirebug.png
Heh. At first, I felt bad for all the people on the low end of the hotness scale, but it's actually randomly generated on load. If you reload, everyone has a different hotness level.
Or as Gladwell says: "Talent is the Desire to Practice."
It's certainly interesting - there might be more data in the government report.
The easiest way to learn a second or third language, would be in school. Many Indian schools are English medium, but kids learn at least one more language, as their 'second' language. Sometimes Hindi, sometimes Sanskrit or even a foreign language like French. In addition to it, we learn our mother tongue (assuming Hindi is not the mother tongue), so its easy to be trilingual.

There is one disadvantage though. Kids don't get to choose the language, its pretty much decided for them by their parents. When we learn as adults, we can pick and choose - depending on our goals.
There's a heap of fail in the hotel's security not noticing an unaccounted for ATM right next to their entrance. In Vegas, of all places?
See? This syntax trouble is already lesson #1 you learn from pointers: The _address_ of some value and the _value itself_.

If you have a pointer (that is, the address), then you need to prefix it with a * in order to get the value in order to do useful things. If you have a value, you need to prefix it with & in order to get the value's address in order to pass it around more efficient (at least it will be more efficient if it is some large data blob).

Did anyone ever mention addresses and values and their difference when looking at Java from a users point? Not to me, to be honest.
Top 10 Hottest Firefox Add-ons
It doesn't support timeouts.
I think the "Java <-> C"-debate is an instance of the problem "Should studying computer science be mindwreckingly hard or should studying computer science make you able to program things?". Plus, you can also bash Java in this special instance, which is always nice coughs.

Other instances include "Compiler construction or not?", "Theoretical computer science or not?", "Assembler or not?".
No, I didn't. I graduated a while back.
I completely understand where you're coming from and totally agree that for the kind of stuff you're talking about, Linux is the definitely the go.

Open source web dev tools are great on the Mac though. I get by just fine using Ruby Gems for all my Ruby/Rails package management needs (the Ruby Gems system actually makes sense on OS X where as on Debian, it just felt redundant at best and annoying at worst) and I prefer to compile Ruby, MySQL, PHP, Git etc. myself in /usr/local anyway. I feel like I've got more control of where everything goes that way. When it comes to using these kinds of open source tools, I very much prefer to have a Unix style terminal to work in rather than what passes for a terminal in Windows.

I'll never totally give up Debian for OS X, but if it's a choice between Windows and OS X for my general work/entertainment machine, I'll choose OS X.
Brad Roth on Ruthlessness in International Law and Politics
В Контакте | Катя Екимова
Nearly instantaneously but please add a display:block to your nav css. :)
My bad, didn't check my facts, table-cell is in CSS2! Of course, in my defense, it doesn't matter which standard it's defined in if it isn't supported by IE. It isn't even supported in IE7 and we've just recently dropped support for IE6.
Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with pentatonic scale
But that is relatively new. Many US universities had a foreign language requirement for graduate degrees, but since English has become the standard language in most academic fields it has been seen as unnecessary.

For example, if you go to many European universities and visit any science/engineering/math department with significant foreign faculty, the language spoken is usually English. And of course that's the language in which most papers, theses, etc. are published.
AT&T responds on Google questions, throws Apple under the bus
excerpt: " Like
many other web application environments, Ruby on Rails requires a special runtime component to run
in a web browser.
"

after this there's nothing that can make me continue to read this bullcrap
I've been half-heartedly shopping around for a car. I've been living for 2.5 years without one since selling my Nissan 350Z when moving to the valley from Austin. One of the reasons the shopping is half-hearted is that I think I kinda want an all-electric vehicle, and there aren't really any realistic electric vehicles available (my primary purpose would be for driving from Mountain View to San Francisco and back every week or so). The other reason is that I think that what I really want is another Z car.

What I'm saying is that I've loved my Nissans in the past, and if this comes to the States at a reasonable price point, it could very well be my next car.
China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest
Sadly that just leaves politics to control education. Pick your poison.
" the counterfeit academic Mozarts are common and a contributory cause to global warming and deforestation."

A gem of a quote, and a worthwhile read.
Honestly, I was trolling and expected to be modded down to -8 pretty quickly. It's funny how many of my dead-serious posts get modded down and how many of my trolls get modded up.

It's somewhat sad, actually.
The page took forever to load, but the images loaded instantaneously. I guess you need to put your index.html on cloudfront too :)
There is a saying in czech (and in some culturally close languages as well) that goes like "Kolik řečí umíš, tolikrát jsi člověkem".

I was totally stuck with the translation but google says it could be something along the lines of "You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once" or shorter "How many languages you speak, so many times you are a human being".
Curiously, I don't think I know of any librarians working at Google. I wonder what they'd think of the zillions of documents at every engineer's fingertips here.
it breaks for me in chrome - when you move both sliders all the way to the left it won't let you drag anything right again. 'show all' restores it so it's probably just an overlap issue.
I think it's a lot more similar than you realize. It's just that most web developers don't have the luxury of deploying to a homogenous environment, so they take it for granted that the site has to work in half a dozen browsers.

Or, turn it around: would you insist your intranet apps support IE 6, even if using IE 6 is forbidden by IT policy?
FDC Servers (fdcservers.net) is another good option for high bandwidth sites. 100 meg unmetered line (you can push 15 - 20 TB/mo) - good colo and dedicated server pricing.
Damn straight.

If the project is small enough, you might even design the hardware and write all the code. Nowhere to hide and all the bugs (and glory) are yours.
The capitalists bunch as a whole are a more attractive group then the nerds.

I did not understand the hotness portion as it ranks an older heavy set guy as the only 10. Usually, not what our society would rank a 10. The blonde chick sure.
That's right. Be afraid; be very afraid; and don't go outside for any reason whatsoever especially if it's to vote.
JQuery - How to simulate digg comments style
Today we will play (once again) with jQuery.
This time we will simulate the digg’s comment style, scroller style. I mean, let’s imitate how digg shows the more comments with jQuery (Ajax) and PHP.
I'm surprised no one started taking it apart
Even if the apps already work on Firefox, it would cost additional time and money (creating/updating documentation, another set of security patches to track, etc) to support the new browser.

Even just testing all the apps on all the sites to find out if they are compatible with Firefox costs time and money.
He should have asked the coworker how many languages he spoke.
Wow, the Leaf has a strong 'face' with a smirk:

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2009/08/nissan...

It's almost like one of the Pixar 'Cars' or the characters in the Chevron commercials from a ways back.
The book is wrong. People here in Taiwan can get PHDs without working knowledge of a second language, depending on the school and department.

Recently, some English-only programs have been popping up and foreigners here are getting advanced degrees from Taiwanese universities without learning any Chinese. Amazingly, quite a few of those foreigners are getting degrees in Taiwan Studies, without the ability to understand much of anything Taiwanese people speak or write.

Monolingual PHD programs aren't limited to Taiwan, either. In mainland Chinese schools, 100% mandarin programs are even more common. I've also had the acquaintance of a Japanese physics post-doc with what couldn't possibly be construed as a "working" knowledge of English.
Your 'Blog' Sucks
I recently moved from Campbell to San Diego. I miss Silicon Valley. :(
Good points. I have had my market destroyed in a similar fashion to what you describe. I also did not think it was the right course to sue my new competitors that were giving away their product. But if the French want to have more strict and protectionist controls, so be it, its their economy. It will be interesting to see how such lawsuits pan out.
I simply love this. It nicely riffs on their innovative UI. It's also just a fun way to display their management team -- much better than just boring photos and bios. Great branding.
Actually I bought mine because it's an iPod and a phone with a nice browser. Apps/Games are a frosted topping I use when bored.
...which will be great in 2015 when enough browsers implement it to be useful. :)
I had the same experience, Micah (from Augusta, GA)
Is there some case law or legislation you can point out that aggregation counts as transformative?

I hope that it would be. But my non-legal view of the term transformative says aggregation is not.
Thanks. I will read it some time when I am not so tired. :-)
DRM music video Converter - DRM music Converter, DRM video Converter 
DRMBuster is an all-in-one DRM Converter to convert DRM protected or not video and audio to commonly used formats for use on dozens of playing devices. You can use this DRM Converter to remove DRM protection and convert any video and Audio to suitable format for iPod, iPhone, Zune, MP3 and MP4 players, DVD players, mobile phones and others.
I've always wondered if it wouldn't be easier to use the grid to power cars instead of thousands of tank trucks on a daily basis to fill our gas stations which at the same time consume more gasoline.

From the practical point of view, we should use the oil to generate electricity, not to run our cars. Until we find a way to replace oil with nuclear, fision or whatever, then the grid remains intact we only change the source. And cars remain electric without any change.

See? blame BigOil for stomping his boot on the head of progress...
http://smart.fm is a very useful service for learning a second language (especially Japanese), highly recommended.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Linguistic_maps_o...
These thoughts have long been a serious inspiration for us as we home-educate our eight children. (25 (long done) down to 8.)

Sayers is also one of the world's best crime novelists (the Lord Peter Whimsey series), the first woman PhD from Oxbridge, and made one of the most compelling translations of Dante. Brilliant woman.
> I find it very strange, I'd sooner Hindi or Urdu

Hindi and Urdu are practically the same languages (though, with different scripts - Hindi uses Devanagari; Urdu uses an Arabic-derived script). You can refer to both Urdu and Hindi as 'Hindustani'.

Furthermore, learning Hindustani really is very advantageous. Every other grad student I see nowadays speaks Hindi (Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis, etc.). Its speakers are usually very warm-hearted, and even more welcoming when they see someone making an effort to learn their language (and culture).

Oh, and it's also the second most-spoken language by number of native-speakers. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_... ]
Leksah - Haskell IDE in Haskell
www.xat.com/rinija
Scale your web app with Chef
Lies, Maths, And Health Insurance
if i had to choose, i'd go with linode just because i like the founders so much. this is a great step for them to be taking.
Seeking a college degree forces a person to learn a lot of material in a short span of time. I am fully aware of MIT's open-courseware and I've watched a few lectures, read syllabuses and assignments, but I still plan on enrolling in my local university's distance education program in order to take their core computer science courses in preparation for the masters program.

Could I just read some books on assembly language, data structures and operating systems? Sure. But I don't trust myself to crack open the books and do assignments every night unless my money and grades are on the line.
Wow, I bet you're one of very few eight-child fathers on HN -- good going! I'm one of eight, but father of two. I haven't read any other Sayers, but intend to now.
I've always found it quite strange that the people who make the money off an article (assuming diggs/reddits etc are generating revenue) are those who merely aggregate content and submit it to these sites. They add nothing to the equation.

I don't see this as fair use.
This reminds of Picker from the Simile project (http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Picker)

And just to nitpick, there aren't any asynchronous calls going on! The data is all pre-loaded.
If-else vs switch – Which is better?
Massive Windows 7 roll-out: 200k laptops
I have read enough of these articles now to think that the points the author makes cannot be rationally argued against. In other words, the foe is simply the status quo.

I wonder if this is how society moves, or fails to move? Nearly everyone, at the individual level agrees with a sentiment, but we're all too entrenched in the current system to find a way out.

Anyway, If I'm correct about how solid the argument against the expensive four year degree is, I hope we're in for some interesting changes.
I just thought de Gray's work was relevant because it addresses the counterpoint to the author's central thesis. The underlying assumption here is that the body has a built-in expiration date that we cannot avoid, but I didn't think it effectively answered the question of when that expiration date actually is.

My problem with the article, I guess, is the lack of a perspective over time. De Gray also posited that the first person to live to 1000 is probably already alive, I'm not saying all of this really makes sense, but it is scientifically feasible and should at least be noted in an article that asserts the opposite.

According to Wolfram Alpha, the probability of living past 100 (in the United States) increased from .17% to 1.4% between 1933 and 2000 and then to 2.4% in 2008. Living past 70 jumped from 45% to 75% to 76% in the same time period. This has a lot of interesting ramifications that I'm not really in a position to investigate, but they are clearly worth addressing.

edit: sources:
http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+U.S.+...

http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+U.S.+...

http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+U.S.+...
And what about the college campus? The atmosphere, the people, the resources.
Mind-blowing 3D projection on German building (video)
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/27/video-life-altering-3d-projection-splashed-on-german-building/
Car Insurance at Much Affordable Rate
Well, yes, most things do become easier with a bit of practice.

If a functional language was taught in beginner CS classes I think it would be easier for students to see how it works. It certainly "clicked" for me once I'd learned a bit of Scheme in my first AI class.
If social networking online is good, real social networking even better.
SocialCord creates payment platform for Twitter; now what will people pay for?
At 18:55 GMT Sat Aug 1, Iceland's national broadcaster, RÚV, had its 19:00 nightly newscast enjoyed to prevent reporting the document. Instead RÚV showed a link to this page.

That's a nice way to sort of get around the injunction and a nice f-u to the courts decision.
VPS should, in theory, be higher reliability, since the virtualisation layer makes it easy for them to move your VPS between physical hosts in the event of hardware problems.

However, you could always do that yourself with physical boxes too.
VPS should, in theory, be higher reliability, since the virtualisation layer makes it easy for them to move your VPS between physical hosts in the event of hardware problems.

It also makes it easier to scale up and down as needed.

However, you could always do that yourself with physical boxes too.
Happens for me in Firefox too.
Static Analysis Tool Exposition
Heuristics (An essay on changing the heuristic function of the A* algorithm)
Yes, the headline is sensationalist and incorrect. What's worse is that I've had to trawl through several hundred comments (I had the misfortune to venture into Reddit territory) before I found someone who noticed.

The actual story is that if any customer who has already purchased one of these apps decided to claim a refund, and that claim is accepted by Apple, then the developer loses the money they made from that sale (70% of the purchase price). That's it.

The only difference between this and any other app, is that these developers are unable to update their apps to fix any existing bugs.
It's more difficult to prove, but having been for commercial use doesn't preclude fair-use:

"While commercial copying for profit work may make it harder to qualify as fair use, it does not make it impossible. For instance, in the 2 Live Crew—Oh, Pretty Woman case, it was ruled that commercial parody can be fair use."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Common_misunderstandin...
You make a good point - I was thinking that Java shouldn't be taught in introductory CS classes for people planning to be a CS major, but obviously didn't get that across.

It would be fairly easy for someone to learn Java once they've been taught C. Professors should not have to spend time going over pointers and memory management in an OS class, however.
That would hold up if learning a bit of memory management was actually "mindwreckingly hard".
NO! this is wrong and I'm sick of seeing it repeated over and over again.

The developer IS NOT on the hook for 100%. They ARE NOT losing money.