skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Mint Map: America’s Most Frugal Cities
SocNode, distributed social networking
I've actually shifted into a greater acknowledgment of my weight and fitness this year (hat-tip to Joe Fournier). My initial goal was to shift 5 Kgs, which I not only achieved but now also recognise as limiting.

Here is an excellent focus point for my next set of fitness goals.
They haven't done things perfectly (apps), but they did a few things that were enormous, not technologically but conceptually. They had a few incredibly brilliant ideas that made them as lasting and as sticky are they are.
Not really newsworthy, but good to hear.
But there are other hardware companies that make just as good hardware.
am I reading it right that there was virtually no variation in skin color 20,000 years ago?

I think the correct statement is as you say in another part of your post: there has always been variation in skin color in the human population. It was geographically segregated (forming "races" in the biological sense) only very recently. And even today there is a lot of variation among individuals in skin color within each continental subpopulation of human beings.

The usual view of evolution of skin color is that the ancestral condition was white skin under dark hair (as we still see in chimpanzees). Then at some unknown time, human ancestors became less hairy, and darker skin pigmentation became necessary. Then as human beings (Homo sapiens) migrated to latitudes with less sunlight (VERY recently) gene frequencies changed again in favor of lighter skin in some areas. (Inuit people are quite dark skinned for people who live near the North Pole and usually wear heavy clothing.)
"Those with enough patience and a large closet can rest easy knowing that everything they have ever purchased will be in style again, if they wait long enough (well maybe not that particular tie.) Of course, this is style obsolescence, a variant of planned obsolescence, and its a big driver of product sales in our culture."

I am humorously reminded of a passage in "How to Survive Without a Salary" where Charles Long talks about wearing the same wool winter coat for many years. Every few years, he would get complimented on his wonderful coat. On the years in between, he was plied with lots of sympathy and hot coffee. :)

Not exactly IT related. Though I guess I do know some IT types who are generally resistant to the "ooh, shiny" phenomenon and stick with stuff that works reliably, if that makes sense. I suppose both things require the type of personality that cares less about public opinion/trends than functionality.
Dawkins is skeptical of non-adaptive processes in evolution and of natural selection above that of the gene (i.e. at the organism or even species level).

I'm not implying that they have a hostile personal relationship, but their academic disagreements were significant. Examples include the gradual view of evolution, and also Gould's claim of NOMA, which Dawkins (detests).
Especially with WebGL and O3D in the works we will see the browser become the delivery mechanism for the new-old-school fat client.

I'm sorry but I fail to see what 3d technology in the browser has to do with application UIs. The two fundamental problems with HTML are the complete failure that is the box model, and the W3Cs complete ignorance of real world requirements.

As an example for the latter just look at the pityful HTML widget-set that hasn't changed one bit over the last 15 years. Every OS GUI toolkit in existence has native widgets for comboboxes, date pickers, sliders and various other amazingly useful primitives. I don't see any plans for finally bringing any of that to HTML. Instead we'll continue to see every new javascript framework reinvent them to varying degrees of success, along with a long list of other baseline functionality (client-side form validation, anyone? WebSocket really soon now?).

All the while the W3C invents fancy audio/video tags, 3d widgets, a questionable canvas API and lots of other stuff that hardly solves any real problem we developers are fighting every day, in any app.

I don't think the evolution of RIAs will wait for the W3C to get their act together. I rather think the alternatives to the browser will see a raise in popularity in the foreseeable future, as the HTML/JS combo gets maxed out and more people start looking for ways to notch the expirience up further than possible within the browser constraints...
But the long term trends are clear: Centralized players lose to decentralized services. If you think that's not true, you need to broaden your perspective and look at more history. All those centralized services you see today? Those aren't the trend, those are the remnants of the stacks upon stacks of corpses of centralized services destroyed by decentralization, the only things still standing. From email, through RSS, and through Twitters eventual decentralized replacement, the march has been relentless.

What reason do you have to think that a pattern in place for decades is suddenly going to stop because Mighty Twitter is just so damned special? Think in historical terms, across the decades, and Twitter is little more than a blip in the trend. I'm sure Twitter is going to make some money before it goes, but I'm also sure there won't be a Twitter in ten years, but instead a protocol. Same for Facebook, incidentally.

Centralization is O(n^4) to decentralization's O(1.1^n); sure, it looks like centralization is just awesome for a while, but it always ends up stomped flat in the end.
Don't forget bench press 3000 pounds just in case a car falls on him :-)

(Funny people pay so much to use facilites that do everything except what OP suggests)
Birdsong Studies Lead To a Revolution In Biology
I was going to be upset that Mint would even aggregate and display this data, but then I realized my credit card company probably does it too...
Like copying Friendster? Or was it geocities?

Awesome achievement.
21 points?

Probably this is just a troll or a lame PR stunt.

Edit: Well then, it worked.
The Real Emerging Market
Thanks for the help, everyone!
Australian Senator to question Minister for Communications on Net Censorship
From an email I received on the Greens party mailing list:

Dear Friends

Today in the Senate I will be asking the Minister for Communications Senator Stephen Conroy questions about internet filtering.

The trial results are with the Minister, but we’ve heard nothing but silence. Its time the Government admitted this policy is going nowhere and that there are better ways to protect kids online.

I’ll ask the question shortly after 2.15pm Eastern Standard time, which is 12.15pm in Western Australia and 1.45pm in South Australia and Northern Territory.

To view the live broadcast visit

http://webcast.aph.gov.au/livebroadcasting/ and click on ‘senate’

Then you might choose to drop the Minister a line at minister@dbcde.gov.au

Cheers

Scott

Senator Scott Ludlam
8 Cantonment Street

Fremantle 6160

Phone (08) 9335 7477
Fax: (08) 9335 7499
Local call (WA country callers): 1300 733 450

www.scottludlam.org.au

Sign-up to GreensMPs to receive updates and alerts enabling you to take action on important issues
The Limits of I'll Know It When I See It
Nancy O'Dell Talks About Her Quarterlife
Access Hollywood Host and Author Nancy O'Dell answers Quarterlife Magazine's Questions from Generation-Y!
maybe but it's been a nice 1-minute-reading-1-minute-smile (or i should say 0N3-M1N8-R3D1N-1M1N-SM1L3)
No, but there is some regularity in support for posts and comments that attempt to portray Microsoft in a negative light.

The reason (if this isn't just spam which it may be) this and other similar articles are submitted are because they garner a response within the community.
Platform wasn't sold that way initially, in fact they bragged about how something as core as Photos or Gifts could be replaced by a superior version created by 3rd party developers.

I found the difference now - it's in the description of the main prototypes page: "Prototypes are product experiments built by Facebook engineers".

http://www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php?app_type=6
Trade wars: The chicken fight
Ask HN: Do You Think this Real-Time ISP Spying Software Exists?
Ever wondered how chicken farmers in Missouri affect are affected by un-intended consiquences ?
OP here. This is a Reddit IAmA thread where a guy is claiming he writes covert software that allows ISPs and governments to snoop Internet traffic in real time. I found this discussion fascinating and horrifying at the same time.

Assuming this guy isn't a troll, what do you think about the claims he's making? Do you think hardware/software combos like this exist?
Yes it is my own. And that's probably what I need to do. My hope was to take a 3-6 month "sabattical" this year, be off day-to-day stuff, and work on new ideas. Unfortunatley, I woke up the other day and realized it was September :)

Good advice, thanks.
Sarkozy in bid to look beyond GDP
Weekend codes: handling html forms with python mechanize and BeautifulSoup
python html forms and sessions handling
If it had copied either, your snarky answer would have warmed my heart. So which of those two sites introduced the live feed to the Internet? Which one was based on granular privacy control? Or had the idea of connecting a "wall-to-wall" to handle discussions back and forth? Or created one of the most innovative ad systems since Google? Or added semantic data to its user relationships? Or created miniature overlapping networks for organizing?
Sorry, I did not mean to offend you.
You are also getting the experience and knowledge of the other startups' founders. You're also a member of a tight knit group that will probably tend to help each other and keep each other focused when things go off track. You just get a different set of benefits from having a strong group of mentors.
MitM + Brute force against weak-ass key. German, but not necessary for basic understanding:
http://sar.informatik.hu-berlin.de/research/publications/SAR...
or skip the theory: http://www.openpcd.org/Downloads.releases.0.html
Face book is going to be "dead" (ok, shrinking) in 10 years. If you look at social networks they are only sticky in the short term. Facebook's growth has hidden the fact that the average user does not stick around for 2 years and at 300 million users they just can't keep replacing people. And as people stop showing up it becomes less useful to those who stick around.

The pattern is simple, a new site shows up that let's you exchange info with people you have not talked to in a while. So you sign up and chat for a while, but you don't really care about those people so after a while going to the site becomes an annoying time sink and so you drop it. For a site that just has your core friends. But then you don't talk to people for a while and...

The only long term niche is to become the psudo holiday site, where people occupationally show up to chat with their extended social graph, but you don't really spend much time there. So, lot's of people, few page views.

PS: The people that "love" social sites and want to keep up with all their friends will jump ship as soon as something else becomes popular with most of their friends.
"If he can accomplish these things he need have no fear concerning the safety of his life should he be forced into an emergency from which he alone may be able to save himself.”

Now isn't that a fine example of circular reasoning. Sorry I do not buy it, I need some hard data. I want the author of that post to piss off a grisly bear and see how many chin ups does it require to save himself from it.
Also worth a read: http://www.cs.umbc.edu/331/resources/papers/Evolution-of-Lis...
A map, sneakers, and quick wits
But MSFT suggests later versions of IE via software updates, even on XP. No? So wouldn't most consumers be on versions newer than IE6 and thus the majority of IE6 users are those from within organizations that don't upgrade?
I agree. What stands out most to me is they're closing 960 stores IN A RECESSION. Recessions are when movie rental places shine. Everyone stops buying and starts renting.

If you can't succeed even when the scales are tipped in your favor then you probably can't succeed at all.
I imagine being able to run at his fastest for 200 yards and leap over objects at or below his own hip height would be more applicable than chin ups in that scenario.

I also imagine requesting hard data based on an article written in 1926, and published on a site called 'The Art of Manliness" which itself notes "If you’re looking for a fitness goal, the five fitness benchmarks Liederman lists are a good place to start" is perhaps being too critical of the piece.
"when the benefit reductions are in lieu of lay-offs, morale shouldn't be affected" -- in isolation, i agree. I think good will is easily lost and hard to re-earn, and spending a ton of cache while asking people to cut back is pretty harsh in my book.

"if the companies don't readjust later" .. i don't think people forget so soon. Also, the most effective people still have options in the downturn and are the ones you really can't afford to lose.

Mergers are really hard to get right, and you need buy-in from on high all the way down through the effected organization.

The bottom line is that you need to account for the ill will internally when you are considering making a decision like this. It may very well be the optimal choice for increasing short-term shareholder value, which is a publicly traded company's number 1 priority.

Now, if Adobe also announced that they'd pay doubletime for vacation for employees that took the unpaid time off and stuck it out, that'd be a Good Thing.
Is this the first documented case of a MythBusters metamyth?
This video is great! The serious action starts at 21:25 when Henryk Plotz completely replicates an RFID card using his iPod. Definitely don't miss it!
As usual, a simple "this versus that" comparison is only useful as an intellectual exercise.

Tornado is a web framework, in many ways closer to Django than Twisted. Beyond that the underlying approaches are different - Tornado does not use deferreds.

There are a number of great projects that use Twisted. Soon many new projects will use Tornado. But the frameworks' respective documentation does not tell the story.
That is one of the more impressive feats I have ever heard about. Even after viewing multiple websites (including the TED video) about his work, I'm still skeptical in the back of my mind. That's how good his work is!
They have studied violence and tribal group's have an insane level of homicide relative to the US average. When you look at children from spouse infidelity in modern times the numbers are something like 10 to 30%. So, I don't think the average family tree is as correct as people think. Add in rape / conquest and I expect most tribes where constantly exchanging DNA. The only real limitations where probably geographic.
But not as good software
I actually don't know what to make of acquisitions when it's two public companies.

That $1.8b is more or less a market price. Think the market is over inflated? What difference does that make if you're own assets are valued by this mechanism also?
Here are some places Bruce Schneier talks about RFID, notice most of these are about RFID in passports, which is definitely public interest, and a big risk:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/02/cloning_rfid_p...

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/hackers_clone_...

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/rfid_passports...

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/04/rfid_passport_...

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/uk_rfid_passpo...

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/rfid_car_keys....
Since you are a music site, you need to know what music they are clicking, downloading, listening, etc.

I recommend using http://mixpanel.com for your analytics.

For feedback, have various "thumbs up / down" as part of the site. Ex: Does hiphopgoblin rock?, etc.
I have built several twisted apps which are in use in production environments, including web and jabber/xmpp apps. I love twisted, and use it whenever possible...

...and I agree completely with the op.

Twisted is powerful, flexible, well architected, and reliable. It is also damn near impossible to get over the steep learning curve and to actually USE it.

Show me a competent Twisted developer, and I'll show you someone who had a gun jammed roughly in their mouth, and was FORCED to learn it at some point. We are all glad we know it _now_, but that learning process SUCKED.
To be fair, Astarte and Ashtoreth are probably the same---just a vocalization error. :)
It's obvious, documentation is always important. It's even more important for proprietary software, since you can't even study the source. But it seems that neither of this two projects has good and extensive docs/tutorials.

You could argue that if Twisted was better documented the FriedFeed guys wouldn't have started their own project. I don't buy it. There could have been many (technical and non-technical) reasons to do this anyway.

I (mostly) agree with a comment on the blog:
This is just pure NIH syndrome. It happened because it’s easier to write code than to read it, and it’s more fun to create than to fix.
Is it an option to just shut a company down and give the money back to your investors before the courts force you to? Is there anyone left who doesn't see the handwriting on the wall for Blockbuster? I hate watching companies blow through billions over a decade or more and eventually end up disappearing with nothing to show for it. Seems like they'd be better off facing reality and folding on their own.
I don't know how quickly they will die. A lot of folks will justify $1.00 for a RedBox rental and not the $40 or more/month for broadband internet.
They're so conservative that they only open their counter 2 hours a day. ;p
The new skins look interesting:

http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator...

http://imgur.com/etdDr.png

I wonder why they changed.
Standard natural evolution and an example of a business unwilling to transform or reinvent itself remain competitive and to out-innovate new entrants (i.e. Netflix and Redbox).

It's sad, on one hand, since I personally remember enjoying my adventures as a kid perusing the many aisles of Blockbuster's New Releases (and the oldies, too) but I've moved on to more innovative things as a consumer (having been a customer of Netflix and having rented movies from Redbox kiosks).

Blockbuster's example is no different than what we are starting to see happen to Microsoft (though that process is still early stage, there are the typical warning signs).
This reminds me of the time someone contacted support because their attempts to circumvent my copy protection did not work as expected.

(She thought she was seeing a bug when reinstalling the software did not allow her to get around the "Only prints 15 unique cards" limitation. "I even installed it on two computers and it always prints the same cards first, so I can't print out 20 cards without getting doubles. Tee hee, I thought that was funny. Can you fix it?")

Suffice it to say that most people who mail my support address get answers which make them happy. She was not most people.
Go Daddy to Boost Infrastructure in Europe
Your third point is probably spot on. Adobe also has services like acrobat.com that they have been beefing up. Maybe their focus on developer and creative tools is expanding to marketing tools that have a more recurring revenue.

It could even mean they start to make more money off what is produced with their technology and cheapen their developer and designer tools or even open it up more.

In terms of web analytics and putting return to web marketing, Omniture is probably the best at it.
I see your point but technically that also means going down without a fight. As I commented above, even though we don't see any business model and product innovation from Blockbuster (aside from trying to copy/steal from Netflix's model), it's still possible that perhaps with the right minds/leadership/people/talent, Blockbuster could change and become a leader again (look at what happened to Apple, Inc.).
The Vyron isn't a performance car. You can easily build an Ultima GTR for less than $100,000 with well over 600 HP. People often mistake expensive with fast, when expensive really means safe, luxurious, flashy and then fast. Ellison's roadster is not safe, or luxurious, but it is flashy and fast. [ http://www.ultimasports.co.uk/Content.aspx?f=usaintro ]
It's working tonight. I don't know what the problem was. (from my home computer, So Cal, USA both times).
In most cases, we are just swapping some startup time (for java, qt, etc.) for download time in the heavy web 2.0 apps.
Sub-pixel is a new way of captcha generating.
> the GPL protects nothing in a world where software is delivered over the Web

The author seems to be aware of GPLv3 but neglects to mention this is one of the problems it's intended to solve. Odd.
It's a public company, so if you think they are dead, you sell the shares.

What could happen is that so many people sell shares that the price goes below what the fixed assets of the company are worth.

Usually that acts as a floor - the share price will not go below that. But it could be that the owners of the shares will vote to shut down the company, and disburse the value to all shareholders.

It's possible, but I don't know if that has ever happened before.

Much more likely is that no one will lend them any money and they will shut down that way.
Yeah, the market is dumb sometimes.

Regardless, my primary concern, if I were at the helm at Adobe, would be trying to figure out how to make this seeming odd couple work out right. I don't see how it can possibly add $1.8 billion to the value of Adobe, but maybe I'm short-sighted.
yep:http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/f/eyecolor.htm)
While I never went as far as QM I learned a lot of math by listening to a teacher walk though the problem. I have had plenty of classes where I could not read the teachers handing writing and I still got A's on the final.

PS: As a rule I never studied which was fine to get the equivalent of a major in CS, and a minor in math. (I was like 3 classes from a double major, but I took a semester off and wanted to graduate in 4 years.)
Why? Apple will just fix the bug or have their sales reps say they're sorry and fix the bug. End of story.
Buy RVs for Sale by Owner and You Could Be Missing Out on a Great Deal
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There are responses from dkubb and wycats, and the conversation shows it's not that simple and that there are other perspectives, as is often the case.
The resistance to letting kids go at the fastest pace they can is phenomenal. The tracking label sucks...even though it seems to work:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11...
Work hard. Play hard. Recognise when what you're doing is a blend of the two, and always know which of them is the primary aim of any activity.

Massive respect for this quote as a way to back your team: "Truly, it may look like we’re constantly out drinking and goofing off, but I dare you to find anyone on our team that doesn’t work their ass off and care deeply about our service...you’re only fooling yourself if you think otherwise."
Not all of Twisted's documentation is bad. And if folks can't figure out the docs, Jean-Paul and Glyph are available to help in IRC and know everything about Twisted (since as far as I know they represent 90%+ of the current contribution and maintenance).

Besides, Tornado can afford to have (seemingly) more comprehensive documentation because it is far smaller in scope and support. Twisted has a large number of robust libraries for doing all sorts of things asynchronously, from web servers to ORMs to SSH and everything in between. It's like comparing an orange to a bushel of apples and it's silly. Twisted has never supplied a web framework, which is exactly what Tornado supplies.

The Twisted docs are lacking in many ways, I just don't understand how Tornado is objectively better because it doesn't currently have that problem -- they aren't the same thing!