skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
- At least choose a font for your title.

- "can probably be compiled on many other UNIX-like operating systems" comes across well from one nerd to another, but probably not to managers. This gets into the question of who your target audience is.

- In the intro, talk about what tarsnap does instead of just saying it's a secure online backup service and talking about the "client code". What makes you different from the hundreds of other backup services?

- The red yellow and blue color scheme isn't doing it for me. Looks better if you make the red yellow, but I know you want to draw attention to the call to action.

- The gap between the left column and the news is ugly. Consider not having news on this page at all.
Running a Startup? You’re standing on the shoulders of giants.
"When we imagine the kind of person who believes things that are obviously false, falls for scams, ends up joining a cult, etc, we probably picture a stereotypically right-brain person."

I don't think this is because right brained people aren't thinking logically. I think it's right brained people are more apt to realize that large chunks of the human experience can't be conveyed through language, and that the scientific method is unfortunately broken for these areas of the human experience. (Because without language you can't define phenomena, have multiple people test stuff, etc.) Thus they realize that they can't discover the truth on many issues without taking the experiences of others at face value, even if it means getting snowed once in a while.

If you don't believe me then there are many substances that can make one temporarily more right brained, so you can see for yourself. :-)
Happened to me yesterday, too, from an HN link - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=819367
John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace "wins" Lunar Lander Challenge [video]
The trouble is that food production is more organism than industry. And most of our obesity problems in this country, and a great deal of greenhouse gas effects, derive from ignorance of that fact.

The American industrial food chain consumes more oil than American automobiles. The industrial food chain enforces a farm mono culture where a plot of land sees only one crop, year on year, for decades. Or maybe two: Maybe soybeans get thrown in the mix. Local polyculture farms raise animals and a number of different crops in a little dance that mimics the natural cycle of life. Cows eat grass, and they and horses are the only animals that can. Birds clean up after the cows. What's left when the birds are done grows more grass. Goto 1.

The industrial farm leaves over-tilled dead soil in desperate need of artificial fertility, and ridding these farms of animals leaves them all on gigantic feed lots with manure ponds.

If you don't see the problems with this, you've buried your head in the sand. And that doesn't even touch the surface of the massive amount of fossil fuel we use to truck produce and meat 2000+ miles to a supermarket that itself is filled with thousands up thousands of food-like substances.

Huge agribusiness has proven you can indeed industrialize food. And to anybody that's ever looked closely at it, it's also proven that you shouldn't.
A related article describes Google's plans with regard to realtime searches.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/larry_page_on_real_time...

Everything is going realtime. It makes me wonder what the effects on quality will be.
Or local laws can be written and enforced about noise pollution early in the morning. Probably not that different from regulations that don't let your neighbors put a noisy windmill on their roof.

I remember a long time ago the town where my dad lived was going to build an animal shelter with an outdoor fenced in area for dogs, which would result in nonstop barking. The neighborhood got together and put a stop to that. Sounds like you would have told them all to just buy better windows and stop being victims.
Is there a site dedicated to hacker house like hackerspaces.org for hacker space?

Unrelated ideas: A steampunk style home that double as a lab and a shop for cool electronics projects, as well as a place to conduct research into cybernetic technologies. Buy a big hunking commercial place that is run down, etc, and slowly transform it into something cool. Probably requires the capitals of several hackers if one is not a millionaire.
Just curious: what's with all the esquire.com articles?
People aren't interested in making informed decisions about this, they're interested in making a religious decision, which is why the labels must stay off. Its for the good of the planet, not first-world consumers. We need their food dollars driving research to feed the rest of the planet.
Relatively low? Organic foods are about 150% of the price of non-organic foods. Producing them is much more labor intensive. If you don't use roundup, you have to weed.

Boutique: small scale, upper crust.
Innovation Happens Elsewhere, Open Source as Business Strategy
I would suggest you actually parse what it says - that was a review of multiple studies. There are studies that swing either way.
Anatomy of a Malware Ad on NYTimes.com - Inputs & Outputs (Troy Davis, Seattle)
The essential problem with the Peak Oil theory is that although it correctly understands that oil prices will rise as oil gets more scarce, it doesn't recognise that higher prices cause a change in people's behaviour that causes more oil to be made available. (More exploration, better extraction methods, substitution with alternative energy sources, conservation of existing oil usage). All the oil we have is because the high prices of oil have caused people to go and look for it in the first place.

High prices are a signal to society that we need more of something. If/when oil prices rise it automatically moves people into the energy business in order to solve the high oil price problem.

The late economist Julian Simon has a terrific book about these issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource

See also the "Conservation of Resources" section here: http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p242
With the services available on the internet today, ie: VOIP, and Hulu, free wifi would equate to free telephone and TV as well which would put the government in direct competition with the phone and cable companies.
Fun fact: He only specified serif for the headlines.
Perhaps it's you who should ditch Times as your default font?

You have a point, though, in that he should explicitly put 'sans' in his CSS for the 99% of the population who can't be bothered to change their browser default font.
> It's physically impossible for this development to continue indefinitely

Why can't oil be made synthetically? Say by genetically engineering bacteria etc. That being the case I don't see any limit to oil production
All I kept thinking about throughout this article was the semantic web.
'There are studies that swing either way' <> 'scientifically false'

That is my whole point.
You could get much of what he asks for if you asked for it and told the people why you wanted / needed it. Doubtful? Look at what some will do for Mardi Gras beads.
it is the most expensive fashion statement you have ever made in your life

Touche! To be fair, it's not just a fashion statement, though -- it's also a matter of branding.

... improved design, for example one which replaces the subtle "get started with Tarsnap" link with an attractive 200x60 button...

Good idea. One question comes to mind, though: Is increasing the attractiveness of signup links as effective for commercial services as it is for free account-creation? I don't dispute that it would help -- I just wonder if it would give me a large number of new accounts but only a far smaller number of new paying users. (Only one way to find out for certain, of course...)

If you don't have the time, skill, or desire to do this, there is an Internet full of starving web designers out there.

I have a few friends who are interested in graphics and web design, so I'll throw this in their direction and see what they can come up with -- at least now I have a basic structure for the content to get started with.

Thanks for the advice!
Being a software engineer often means that you are in the job of fending off well-meaning, but unreasonable requests from clients on a continual basis. Learning how to say "No" repeatedly without coming across as lazy or a jerk is an extremely important skill. I read "The Power of a Positive No" by William Ury (of "Getting to Yes" fame) looking for wisdom in that area. Now, I recommend it to every engineer (and manager) that I know. If everyone read Ury's books, the world would be a much happier, smoother-running place.
HTC Phones
Discver some interesting information about htc phones
Over at Slashdot, there are some interesting comments pointing out that this has been done for over 30 years.

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1367009&cid=...

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1367009&cid...

One amusing quote, whether you agree or disagree:

The reason why no one has heard of this before is because no one thinks it's interesting enough to tell the press about; except MIT students, who apparently think that everything they do is hot shit.
It's Donald Norman's site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Norman

You'd think a usability expert would know how to make a readable web page, right? When I come across a page like that, I use Readability to punch it up: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

Not my project -- I just find it way useful.
My opinion on it would depend totally on cost. If the city could provide free wifi for all at a cost significantly less than what the city currently pays privately, go for it.
Is increasing the attractiveness of signup links as effective for commercial services as it is for free account-creation?

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: Yes.
Montreal has Ile Sans Fil but it's doing rather poorly. I heard that Quebec City and Sherbrooke's systems are doing much better though.
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Same. I eventually refreshing a bunch of times recycled the ads and I was able to view the article without an annoying redirect.
Even after reading the whole thing I still couldn't figure out how Jack used the rope to escape from the tower.
Free lectures from the UC Berkeley School of Information
Screams "one-person shop".

I'd rather be honest than rich. :-)

Still simply does not explain to a typical user why they're any better off with you than with Mozy.

True -- but I don't want typical users. Let's face it: Tarsnap is a computer geek's backup system. The design principles are security, flexibility, efficiency, and utility -- not ease of use or eye candy.

A year or more from now, once tarsnap has a GUI and supports windows, and once I'm shipping precompiled binaries? That's when I'll want to compete with Mozy. Until then, there's no point trying to attract users who won't be happy with tarsnap.

even for technical users, Mozy's security page might sound better than yours

This is probably a dumb question, but... Mozy has a security page? I can't find one.

Lose "does not support Windows"

I'll think about it. I put that in mostly because I get too many emails already from people asking if tarsnap runs on Windows (it's nice to know people are interested, but replying to such emails is a time sink) -- but I see your point that it doesn't necessarily give a good first impression.
That is correct. He made an assertion of fact, and the assertion was scientifically false.
That footage looks really fake doesn't it?

I mean, I have complete faith in John Carmack but if that had come from Iran I think we would all be calling it fake.
It's a shame, but Metro-Fi in Portland, Oregon was a spectacular failure. I'd suggest that efforts to deploy metro wifi networks focused on the wrong technology at the wrong time.

The project was a partnership between the City and a private company (Metro-Fi), who agreed to put up access points all over town with an emphasis on public spaces, parks, and popular gathering spots.

Access to the network was free, but included HTTP-injected iframe ads and frequent interstitial ads between pageviews. Compounding the woeful experience this provided, the network itself was very slow. Checking anything beyond the complexity of Reddit could become a multi-minute affair. The company also offered Metro-Fi Premium, an ad-free version of the service for around $20/month. It was positioned as a replacement for Comcast or Qwest, but no one took it seriously.

The reach of the network was also quite poor. I could almost never get a signal or acquire a connection if I found an AP - it's the sort of thing you'd regard as the last resort if there were no open APs nearby.

In the end, Metro-Fi went bankrupt, defaulted on their contract, and left the city littered with dozens to hundreds of wireless antennas atop intersections, utility poles, etc. that the city now has to pay to remove (the cost of which was estimated at something like $70,000).

(An alternative project called PersonalTelco.net, a non-profit gang of Portland hackers who wanted to bring fast, free access to popular gathering spaces like coffee shops, bookstores, etc. had much more success in bringing fast access to some of the most popular spots, but I wouldn't include it as a "metro wifi" project in that it focused on a few spaces rather than blanket coverage.)

Several months ago Clear (a partnership between Intel, Sprint, and Comcast) launched WiMAX across the metro area. It's fast. Real-world tests (read: dude with his laptop at a bookstore) came out on par with a DSL landline. It's cheap, at $20/month. And because each antenna has roughly the range of a GSM tower (in fact, most are mounted upon them), the network's range is much greater at a fraction of the cost. And while most laptops lack integrated WiMAX support, people are quite happy to plug in a USB adapter.

It's still too early to see how Clear will fare in Portland, but these factors give them a much better shot at success. I only wish the city would have had such foresight a few years ago and invested in WiMAX instead of wifi.

Can anyone from Atlanta comment on Clear's performance and public opinion?
Congratulations to John and the Armadillo team!

Commander Keen FTW!
If the local San Francisco government had queried the local technology voter base instead of immediately selling out for a franchise deal with Google/Earthlink, we'd probably have city-wide networking (not just WiFi) by now.

I've done this kind of work professionally (including wiring a multi-acre outdoor campus), and I would have happily donated my evenings/weekends to wiring my own neighborhood. I also know quite a few other technology-capable individuals that would have pitched in as well.

It's the kind of project that needs a central municipal hand to provide an organizational and management framework, right-of-way, etc. I wrote my city supervisor about it when the WiFi idea was languishing, but unsurprisingly never received a response.
Since canceling my cell and Internet mobile service I began carrying around my iPod Touch. I'm in Maryland suburbia and wherever I go i'm able to see WiFi connections. Unfortunately for me in 2009 70% of those are locked up. I wish everyone kept their wifi unlocked that way there would be a solid free option in all cities and even in suburbia(s)!
Yes. In fact, the entire private space race is so fantastical that it all seems fake. A bunch of hackers going to space?

But its real. I love it!
> there still isn't such a thing on the mac today

how close does Spotlight get you?
XXXX XX XX XX
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XXXX => XX XX => XX
XXXX XX XX XX
XXXX XX XX XX
XXXX XX XX XX
XXXX XX XX XX
XXXX XX XX XX
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Lame, I know.
It's almost like playing "Lunar Lander" in real life!
He's talking about development in terms of oil well depletion.
Inevitably, this overallocation of capital leads to: (1) vast new discoveries of hydrocarbons

Inevitably? All we have to do is spend money and we will find more oil? Forever?

Phew!

People who said there was enough oil for four years were wrong. People who say there is a finite amount of oil are right.

In view of this history, presupposing a impeding permanent shortfall in global hydrocarbon supplies is akin to prognosticating the end-of-the road for Moore's Law and a subsequent end to the IT industry.

There is a difference - we are burning through a finite amount of oil at increasing rates, once it's run out that's it. Moore's Observation could stop tomorrow with Intel saying "we can't fit any more transistors into a chip" yet there would still be room for optimising the transistor layout and CPU internal design, the temperature of operation and resulting clock speeds, multiple CPU arrangements, and software and peripherals. The IT industry depends on computers being useful to businesses, not on them having more transistor density in a chip.

What are you arguing - that the use of remaining oil reserves is difficult to predict, that it's impossible to predict or that it's useless to predict?
I'd keep mine open if I wasn't afraid of being arrested and -- perhaps more importantly -- having all of my equipment confiscated for an indeterminate amount of time because someone decided to download child pornography on my network connection.
I wasn't really trying to be funny; it's advice my Mother gave me, repeatedly. I think it's sound, regardless of the issue with the hospital.

Here, let me repackage it for you so it's less topical: if people are doing something that you think is dangerous, don't do it just because they did it.
GPS Tracking Cell Phone Vehicles With GPS Tracker System
I think the hack here is that $20 is the price of renting someone's loyalty. $10 isn't worth it, $50+ makes you a bit crazy and possibly dangerous, bu $20 will get people to bend the rules temporarily without worrying about whether you're a criminal.
Agreed. Thank you for a well-written analysis. As a practical matter, however, there is a finite supply of oil. Doesn't it seem irresponsible to ignore the inevitable consequences of increasing demand for a dwindling supply? (I'm talking on the scale of decades, mind you.)
Until the last few seconds, I thought I was looking at a ~2' high model.
This is not Digg!
How about the nerves of steel on someone
running up to seven foot high flames right next to a fuel tank?
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The upcoming GWT 2.0 supports code splitting (including resources splitting)
Here's the one that most hits in:

>Most importantly, the criminal laws are far more likely to result in having our children arrested, placed behind bars, and stigmatized with a lifelong criminal record than they are likely to in any way discourage them to try pot.
I was going to say. They seem to have figured out how to milk pop psychology. I say that as someone who can't resist clicking on these articles.
Well, it's more like the pro is that there is no profit motive to keep her there. The staff would be delighted to get rid of her to a bigger facility elsewhere. I live a kilometre north of a large hospital in Sydney, Australia and we get helicopters coming in all hours of the day and night, presumably doing just that.

The "con" would probably be that there would be no facility for spinal surgery in a rural area in the first place. She would not be able to choose to be treated there and she's getting on one of those helicopters.
Same here! It's a lot bigger than I thought.
Funny thing is: I've tried to successfully learn macros (or a part of it) from a number of different sources, but those slides were the most enlightening source to me.
He seems to recognize (correctly) that Apache's mpm idiom is crap, but he still seems to think that its model of loading multiple language runtimes into one monolithic process is a good idea.

Why does it matter if you use 4 or 8 event-handling processes on one machine, each with their own database connection? If that's your scaling bottleneck, you'd be running on many machines anyway, so a small constant multiplier doesn't change the story. Besides, you could use crap like ODBC to have one persistent DB connection per machine.
No, it's an audiophile thing. You need the hat to get that warm yet crisp yarn sound that no digital effect can replace.
Several hundred (or more) at Amazon.com...
Good quote from the article:

'What turns me on is when 20 of your best friends tell you it won’t work," Hunt said. "I think that does something to me."
Agreed, where's the damn 'print version' link?

Anyway, I'd love to jump on this kind of thing, but for my lack of millions. I've wondered what happened to the installation and it drives me nuts to read of a huge capital resource like this just sitting there gathering dust.

Lacking vast cash reserves, all I can do is take a tip from another current story and offer $20 plus a friendly attitude.
Several companies in Portland are teaming up to offer exactly this.

Comcast has a new plan for $49 that offers a 12mb/2mb cable internet connection along with 4G/WiMAX across the Portland metro area. If you tack on another $20, you get access to Sprint's 3G data network across the country, with the same USB adapter.

It's really a great deal, and you're only paying one company for it. I don't work for any of these companies, but am intrigued by some of the deals that are coming out.

Check it out here: http://www.comcast.com/highspeed2go/
It is on one Urban Exploring website, one of the doors was open and they explored the facility until they opened an door that triggered an alarm. It was interesting, but all of the equipment had been removed.
"I'd rather be honest than rich. :-)"

There is a distinction between honest and forthright. He's saying that you're screaming it. Not screaming it is NOT dishonest. Having an attractive web site that could conceivably belong to a company with a big team is not dishonest.
Interesting. Yeah, it does sound like if either group has their way, it very likely could have a side effect of preventing this particular scenario from happening again.
How Symmetry and Antisymmetry Impact Your Photos
There are some great points here but I'm not entirely sold on the 'Right Brain Optimistic' , 'Left Brain Pessimistic' part. I'd say the Right Brain is often great early warning mechanism for a lot of people (i.e. that gut feeling that something isn't right). If taken too far it would most likely be the source of phobias. It's like a 'black box probability engine'. Very powerful but difficult to debug.

From what I've read the Left Brain is the 'communicator' as well as the 'logician'. I suspect this is the reason why discussion of probabilities, risk and 'expected returns' are often fraught with confusion - because the Left Brain doesn't really know how to process these things. The Left Brain prefers to round probabilities to 0%, 100% or 'unknown/50%'. It seems like many of the science/policy debates in the world (and on HN) are caused by people having different rounding criteria and starting probabilities.
Tutorial on User defined exceptions in python
I think it is has a couple factors.

First, a guy who found a site that does not have a lot of articles from it that are submitted and someone who found that the esquire is a major booster of karma.(I guess it matters to some people)

Secondly, on the weekends it only takes a few up-votes for a story to reach the front page.