skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have been saying something of this sort for a while, but not as articulately. We in the technology end of things are likely to think of our impact as being highly "advanced". The example I like quote is that of my grandfather, who was born in 1888 and lived for 94 years. During his lifetime, he saw the popularization of the automobile, the application of radio, then television, the deployment of air travel, and men walking on the moon. I have argued that we are not likely to see changes of that magnitude over our lifetime.

Another perspective is the impact of technology on rural life. During his lifetime, we saw technology increase the productivity of the american farmer by two orders of magnitude. No other segment of daily life experienced that form of amplification. The impact of today's technology on say a clerk's life is not as great.

As we work in this field, we see amazing things (one poster here quotes the impact of Google), but few things have improved lives the way that the technology of the sewer has.
That ties into the article about the $99 a month, all you can learn on line university which was just on the front page of HN. That's the kind of thing that has not had a profound impact on ordinary people's lives yet, but may have a very profound impact in the near future.
In regards to running a startup I have found that analyzing the worst case scenario (negative thinking) has helped shape smart decisions a lot more than positive thinking. I find that this is especially true with entrepreneurs where positive thinking has frequently been the downfall of many great companies (ie. build products -> make free -> ??? -> make money)
I don't see any evidence of it in his other submissions, so it probably wasn't intentional.
AppsForDemocracy Community Edition final prize awarded
The Prius isn't an electric car.

Yes, I do disagree with that assessment because it's fundamentally the same sort of thing people complaining about computers 30 or 40 years ago said. It's technology that is still under development and has not reached the mass market stage yet where it will change the way we live.

A computer in 1959 was something only Professors or Government researches got to use. A computer with comparative computational power in 2009 is something that is so cheap that it is disposable.
right now i'm trying http://github.com as a source of finding new projects and interacting with the community.
Despite the somewhat inflammatory ad hominem remark (I had to look up "astroturfing".. yay urbandictionary), I do agree with what is likely a controversial sentiment:

everyone who works for them is culpable
>The ReCAPTCHA team has a member whose sole job is to break the system, says Dr von Ahn, and so far he has been unsuccessful.

Should he be fired?
I assumed "usual" implied not a certain specific joke, but the presence of a joke.
Note that silly services like ours ( http://tinyarro.ws ) further compress the character length by using unicode after the / so the URLs never grow beyond 3 characters (and can do 2 characters for a very long time).
OT, will you now give those away? Particularly as you see them as being especially valuable?
All I can say is LOL to you. But seriously, may I ask you why you seem convinced that the rate of technological progress has slowed? Whence the vehement defense of the thesis?

The example of the cars is so completely bogus that it ought to be embarrassing for a physicist (which Locklin is) to have written it; one would expect them to know better.

It's about like saying:

- between 1900 and 1950 we invented all this awesome new technology

- but the information density of printed books (words-per-page) has remained roughly constant from 1950 to 2000

- ergo the rate of change must be declining

...in other words, compare:

- in column A: an unqualified sense of "rate of progress" over some time interval

- in column B: a product whose performance on some metric is substantially constrained by some combination of physics and rigid human factors

...and then point to lack of substantial improvement in the product's score on the metric in column B as evidence for the deceleration of progress; it is at heart only a qualitative improvement but there's no radical improvement to be had in that area, so looking to it and wondering "why no radical improvements in the information density of printed text?" says more about you than about what's happening.

Now, why the car example is bogus:

There's only so much energy in a gallon of gasoline, and fuel-efficiency is thus bounded to a pretty narrow range of variation.

Modern cars are larger and heavier than equivalent product categories of yesteryear, mainly in response to safety regulations.

Just look at the Nash Metropolitan (conveniently parked in a standard USA parking space for size reference):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nash_Metropolitan.jpg

Or if you're not so good at depth perception:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef01156fb...

(next to a cooper mini for comparison).

There's no mystery here: the 40mpg car he picked out of the past got 40mpg b/c it's a tiny car.

This isn't a case of some technological triumph of our forefathers being abandoned by decadent successor generations; it's a case of the laws of physics dictating the range of possible cars, and there being not all that much stateside consumer demand for microcars like the metropolitan.

So yes: cars today are little different in fuel efficiency than cherry-picked microcars of the 60s and 70s because the laws of physics haven't changed between now and then; we're not driving 100mpg micromachines because no one wants to buy them (yet).

I'd wager a fair amount that in a universe in which we were all driving microcars good old Locklin would be bitching about the forgotten musclecars are of yesteryear, along the lines of his concorde complaint in the same article.
The investigators themselves are slightly more temperate than Science Daily. They used the name "classical magnetic monopoles" in a presentation a couple of years back (http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/people/ClaudioCastelnovo/...), and explicitly said they're not elementary particles (though they did bury that bit towards the middle of the presentation).
Get a blog? It would take some time to get an audience but if you persevere you will get lots of comments from likely minded individuals.
thats a tiny tiny part of firebug, the lack of the ability to introspect the code makes it virtually useless (dom inspection, profiling and tracing, this is also the same problem relating to seo and such)
IIRC, they did not, but that would have been a great idea.
And Linux, and Solaris. And Apache. And Tomcat.
That's a good point, and I agree that it's highly unlikely that anyone will have the time or resources to execute an idea I share with them. I would hope that they get excited about the idea though, to the point where they wish they could do it themselves.

I guess what I'm getting out of this is "don't worry about it". I think that as long as I don't go pitching the ideas to a competitor, I'll probably be okay. I guess it also can't hurt to keep developing a little bit more before pitching an idea, so that I have something concrete to show.
This is a good place to start: http://theinfo.org/get/data
That's why the happiest people are those who are enjoying themselves when others see them as working.
You're not talking about the same thing. It's entirely possible to analyze worst-case scenarios without feeling overwhelmed, miserable, or doomed. Indeed the analysis will be better that way.
Usually the governing body that oversees that industry will have tons of data. In the US, there is a governing body for everything, either a gov't department, or a similar organization. I'm not sure what type of data you need, but here's where I have gotten data to work with:

Population data - US Census (http://www.census.gov/main/www/access.html)
Food data - USDA (http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964)
SAT stats - College Board (http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/...)

I could go on and on...try a search for {subject} statistics and you should get some ideas
All-in-One Enterprise Content Management Software or Best-of-Breed?
The only sane use for credit cards is to increase your credit score and for emergencies.

Use them as much as possible and pay off your balance, on time, every month. period. I set each one up to automatically pay off the balance every month. Watch your credit score go through the roof.

Emergencies are when you need to spend money you don't PHYSICALLY have. You've got it in the bank and you'll pay it off at the end of the month, just like always.

The only other reason I could accept would be if I didn't have the money, but I had a signed purchase order (or something similar), guaranteeing that I will be able to pay off the balance as usual.
My massage therapist girlfriend insists that I should read this, and I would love to -- maybe I will later -- but I have to be at a client appointment in an hour, check in with another client after that, start installing a handful of gigabit network drops later today at another client while doing a workstations audit, and we have to do a quick photo shoot for some upcoming marketing.

Usually I could get all this done a little bit faster even, but I was up until about 3 last night and up again at 8:30 this morning.

...what?
Create a site called hackoverflow.com base it on stackoverflow.com. Im sure you don't need more prompting.

It shouldn't take more than a long weekend... ducks :)
>"You know all those stupid quiz apps on Facebook/fart apps on iPhone? Well, I don't make those, but I try to make more useful stuff on Facebook/iPhone, like X, Y and Z".

Hey...I like that! Let's see if it works for me...

Me: "You know all those bickering nerds who draw the same webcomic about two roommates obsessed with video games, a talking appliance and/or robot, a pet who wants to take over the world, and slacker/stoner Jesus? Yeah. I don't make those comics."

Whoa. It works! Thanks. :)
Yes! Excellent, excellent point. The industrial revolution put a whole raft of the "easiest" inventions within a century's reach. Internal combustion, electricity, telegraphy, etc., these were waiting for just a few pieces of basic core technology (like coke-fired smelting)) to fall into place before they could erupt into mass deployment.

It makes perfect sense that refinement of existing technology would overtake invention of new ones. I don't see how it could be otherwise given the physical constraints you speak of; how many radical new sources of energy can we come up with, aside from fusion?
I think the key is to avoid burning out like that because ultimately you lose more time that way. I was pushing myself a few weeks ago, doing 9 to midnight, and it caught up with me, and I got sick. Oops.
More generally:
If you're laser-focused on having sex with someone, you can only be judged based on sexual desirability (modified by degree of apparent desperation).

If you can hold an actual conversation, then you can also be judged on personality, intelligence, humor, etc.

So if you want to 'fight outside your weight class', keep your tongue inside your mouth.
Traveling, working and living in many countries - a family's story
Ask HN: What open source project(s) should I work on?
I have a lot of spare time lately, and I've finished most of my side projects that I've usually worked on that I found interesting.

Assuming that there are probably others looking to work on open source projects or that are already, what are some good projects to get involved with? Which ones seem the like they are on an interesting track and have room for future expansion? Which projects could be promising if they were brought back to life or had another developers time injected into its lifecycle?

There are so many projects that it is very difficult to really see what's going on with them, so I'm bringing this to you, the HN community. Maybe it'll even get some other people to join some of the projects.

I know that this topic does come around every now and then, but the OSS world changes often, it would be nice to know what needs help right now.
This is magnificent. Zen Habits has managed to squeeze an message against the facile, uncreative, stultified, by-the-numbers webcock formula directly into a facile, uncreative, stultified, by-the-numbers blog post.

There is still much waiting to be said to fight back against the lifehacking, GTD, how to work for only 4 hours a week by being a giant dick and how to convert all of your farts into actionable GasHacks and become more productive by making sure you never have an original thought again movement. It is not said by productivity bloggers with a shitty book to hawk.
The stack is not open source -- the player is a blob.

One of my co-founders like flex and have programmed some admins in flex, in xml. Myself I don't care much for flash. I've dome some actionscript programming and presentation development but I only do it if I really have to. I much prefer to work with HTML/Javascript. My co-founder would like us to work with flex instead of rails which he dislikes. I have no love for programming in XML, so the middle ground is that we have coded up some small web frameworks in java with seaside-style html generation. It works fairly well.
That is exactly what "fluxus" (a software package which was linked to in an earlier hacker news post) does, with scheme.
I never use URL shorteners in my tweets. I just figure out what the URL without all the extra shit is.
blogs seem a little one-sided to me. i guess this is the old-skool method: everyone creates their own blogs and gets feeds from everyone else.

the main problem, as you mention, is finding the people to connect with. i'm not really into blogs or community creation. i really love coding and laughing at the hacks of my housemates. a slightly wider community would be sweeeeet. (i've tried to create cambridge meetups--social underground programming!!!!!--but other than a few miters folks it didn't really take off)
Listening to the brain?: vid of fMRI made into music
I strongly doubt that anyone forgot how to be lazy. Laziness is a very basic innate characteristic of human behaviour designed to conserve energy.

If what you do is interesting and challenging, it can be very enjoyable. If it isn't, then you need to change. And yes, a bit of balance with time to play and run outside is definitely a good idea too.
Hot Bollywood Actress Photos, Pictures
Sigh. Yet another person who seems to entirely misunderstand the concept of astroturfing.

Hint: If you know a person is a Microsoft employee (as I am, FYI), it's not astroturfing. It's not that hard, kids.
Create your own version of Twitter with real status updates.
I solve my most difficult problems when I'm not trying. Usually while driving or napping. If I push myself to keep going until I figure it out, I just waste a lot of time and get frustrated. Work hard, take breaks.
Sketches on concurrency, data design and performance.
that's not makeup, that's photoshop. besides, it's an illustration, not an engineering diagram.
God, I can't believing that changing a tire is still considered a masculine topic. No self-respecting American woman under forty would hesitate to pull out the jack and take care of a flat herself. Feminine helplessness went out with crew cuts, Jello molds, and green bean casseroles. Men may be generally more interested in cars, but nobody changes a tire for fun -- they change a tire when and only when they need to. Men don't have more flat tires than women, and even the nutty car enthusiasts I know don't rotate their own tires -- it's really boring, and it's much easier and quicker for a pro.

So I ask again, why is it a masculine topic? (Yeah, I know the answer, but it depresses me.)
I often recieve tweets via SMS, and then just type the bit.ly link in, because that's easier than opening up the page of whoever tweeted it and clicking the link.
This might be the first time I've seen a mainstream news publication use the work "hacking" to mean something other than "criminal subversion of computer systems." And we're talking Economist here, not Wired or another geeky outlet.
This is a great series of sketches/presentations about concurrency and data design from Mike Acton.
I treat the www as one giant database...

The nice thing about that is that it is all real world data, so quite messy. That gives you a good grip on what it takes to massage data before it becomes usable, and it also gives you some control over the level of abstraction.
Hold on to your hearts: It’s deep-fried butter - TODAY Food and wine
He addressed your second point, and your first point isn't reasonable. Product "security" pages don't need to read like SEC disclosures.

Compare their security page to:

* http://www.salesforce.com/company/security.jsp

* https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing/g...

* http://www.apple.com/macosx/security/ (heh)

* http://www.webex.com/pdf/wp_security_overview.pdf

* http://www.netsuite.com/portal/infrastructure/main.shtml

Don't ask 37s to meet a standard that nobody else meets. It's just muddying the real issue, which they're clearly trying to address.

This comment, btw, isn't about 37s. It's about the singularly bad advice that web startups should have a fully-transparent conservative "security" page that talks about cross-site scripting and CSRF attacks, when their competitors have pages about "state of the art firewall security". To normal people (ie, customers), the "state of the art firewall security" people sound like they know what they're doing.
Loopt to work in the background on iPhone via deal with AT&T
That's a good idea to develop a little before sharing it...at least you'll have a head start when the competitors start copying.

Of course, if someone does beat you to market, you can find a weakness and create a better version.
Amazon Offers $30 Credits To Orwell Kindle Swindle Victims
That won't work, because too much "safe" user-controlled content will contain invalid utf8.
I believe we just pretend to be busy. We think we have so many thinks to do but in reality we do not, it is all noise. The point is that to dedicate your time to important thing in your life and cut the rest of noise. 20/80 rule, just do 20, collect results and enjoy your life. Easy to say you think, but has to be done to enjoy life
Please don't call commenters on HN "douchebags".
lol reminds me of the original Mech Warrior. A faster processor made it look like the game was in fast forward.
Have you seen algebra?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach_algebra
I recommend FreeBSD. :-)

In all seriousness, every open source project can always benefit from more help... provided that it comes from someone who is interested in the project and is qualified to work on it. Moreover, people who come to a project saying "I want to get involved in open source, and I've picked this project" are usually nowhere near as successful as people who come to a project saying "I've been using this for a couple of years, and I've noticed these bugs... want some patches?"

So my recommendation is to simply start playing with open source software, and when you encounter something you think is wrong or could be improved, fix it.
Balancing Acts: If Not Now, When?
hmm... it's easy to view the huge popular projects and the created 2 hours ago projects.

i'm looking for the goofy, short but completed projects in between. plus, it would help if the search results showed more of a description and possibly even some ratings or comments.
I presume that it works by allowing chemo doses to the tumor that would be fatal if administered globally (or whatever the word is for (in the patient's bloodstream)? I wonder if this would reduce the side effects of chemo in non-terminally ill patients.
@tptacek:

Second Google result for "apple security":
http://www.apple.com/support/security/
Are there more Facebook status updates or Twitter tweets?
Govpulse - federal register 2.0, an apps for america 2 finalist
His sticking point is that the brain or mind could be a physical system that is not computable or equivalent to a Turing machine. If we take the assumption that the mind is a physical system, then it would still only be a matter of time before we found the reason for the difference in computational ability (maybe it would be like Penrose's quantum arguments for the mind), but those systems would still be within reach of implementation within a computer system. The brain is still a combination of proteins, amino acids, and a few other chemicals. We would just have to move to using chemical computers (which are already being researched).

Even following his arguments, it would only be a matter of time before sentient machines are created, equivalent to our own minds.

His arguments against AI are mostly 'just because' and has little proof.
I think these 'subway' maps - are a fun thing to look at but they don't convey information that well.
We do. Just because something that was found to be true sounds completely plausible a posteriori doesn't mean everything that sounds plausible a priori is true.

I remember Al Gore quoting Mark Twain in an Inconvenient Truth: "It's not the things we don't know that gets us into trouble, it's the things we know for sure that just aint so."
The video on the bottom of the page: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZlOtFloDQk&eurl=http://b...

Shows how it works and it seems like a great invention. It's truly an uplifting story.
It's easy to imagine the contrary being true, that women would be more tentative in all situations, so it's a real finding. It would be even more interesting to compare results across class and geography.

However, one thing bothers me: Palomares is so smug about knocking down stereotypical differences between the sexes, but his analysis depends on stereotypical differences between the sexes. He's just shuffling the stereotypes around, discarding one by depending on another. It's hardly something to be self-righteous about.
Check out the fast load time on pixlr... wow!
"Are we producing more in order to make more money for corporations? Or to make more money for ourselves? Or just to hold on to our jobs — jobs we might not like anyway?"

I'm studying to be able to contribute to the singularity, so that I can spend a much longer time relaxing than I ever could in this body.

Is that different?
truly amazing. seems seriously unfortunate that it takes the FDA 7 years to approve a device like this. I wonder how much testing they actually spend and how much time is wasted in bureaucratic BS. regardless, the story is amazing and the device seems incredible
Impressive, but also -- in retrospect -- kind of obvious. Why, of course you want to target destructive chemotherapy directly to tumors, via precise physical delivery.

I wonder if outdated assumptions about the limits of manufacturing prevented doctors/researchers/incumbent-companies from more actively pursuing this idea. It may take an outsider on a mission to remind a field of what's possible.
I guess it is easy to dismiss the way technology made a large range of products and services available to billions of people if you come from an upper-middle class American family, but even then, it is hard to argue that you will suffer a lot less if you find a kidney stone today than back in the 50s.
Why are you upset that more men than women can change a tire? Does it upset you that more women than men can knit? Further, why do women over 40 get a pass on changing tires?

I feel that eliminating gender-based barriers is almost universally a good thing. But why be bothered when the majority of a gender expresses its preference not to do something?

EDIT: My aunt Sue makes a damn fine green bean casserole. I look forward to it every Thanksgiving. She also does a lot of needlepoint embroidery, often pictures of cats. She is vice president of a bank. Let people do what they want.
twitter could have easily implemented some kind of even shorter system by using some kind of rarely-used hash tag character like this:

Check out this link : ±xyz7g

Which would be auto-parsed to http://bit.ly/xyz7g. That would save 13 characters.