skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's not a great explanation b/c it doesn't go into what "measure" and "volume" mean.

Tough to do without going through a full course but a slightly-less-handwavy explanation would go like this:

There's a mathematical tool (called measure) that formalizes-and-generalizes the notion of "volume".

It generally behaves very much as you'd expect; your intuitions about how "volumes" combine and intersect will generally apply.

There's a catch, though: the way the tool is constructed leaves open the possibility of a non-measurable set, meaning a set for which the definition of the tool leaves you unable to assign that set a well-defined "volume"; you can't just assume that the measure of a set exists.

If you assume the Axiom of Choice then not only are such sets possible, but you can construct non-measurable sets.

The core process in Banach-Tarksi looks like this:

(1) take the sphere (a 'nice' set, which we'll say has "volume" V)

(2) divide that sphere into some sub-sets that are non-measurable (are sets for which our tool cannot supply a measurement)
(2.a) Effect on total volume: should have no impact, as the parts we have reassemble to an object of known volume

(3) move the subsets around by sliding-and-rotating them
(3.a) Effect on total volume: should have no impact, as neither sliding nor rotating changes volume

(4) wind up with 2 spheres (both 'nice' sets, each with "volume" V)???

The paradox comes from getting double the volume through a sequence of operations that are apparently volume-conserving.

You can go with this a couple different directions.

I'm not convinced this should be an intuitive outcome.

An intuitive, hand-wavy explanation for what's "really going on" would be something like non-measurable sets carry around infinite amounts of finely-detailed structure (too finely-detailed to perceive using our measuring tool); depending on how you position some sets relative to each other their finely-detailed structure might either cancel out (adding no volume) or reinforce each other (adding lots of volume).

That said I think the real lesson here is that your intuition is trying to have its cake -- a non-measurable set -- and eat it too -- have the "volume" of a non-measurable set be preserved under volume-preserving operations.
To clarify, I don't mean the actual policies just at any one time.
I did hesitate when I wrote that, knowing that modern Apple's DNA is pretty much pure Next. The history of the Next doesn't lend much to the theory that Steve's presence is all you need to make a successful company though.

It's a tricky argument though, he really is such a remarkable CEO it's hard to say he's not proof of the great man theory! I just can't think of anyone else whose great man status can't be plausibly explained by survivorship bias.
That argument is a form of definition-mongering.

It's basically "because you can't provide an EXACT line that separates these things there's no separation at all!"

But that's plainly not a convincing argument.
Bah, why is he just complaining? A true open-source hacker would charge blindly forward and implement something that duplicates functionality of existing projects but with a different (and unique) set of deficiencies and bugs, is subtly incompatible with everything else, and that either will never be used by anyone or will fragment the user base resulting in long religious wars between users and another talking point for the "open source is bad because it has too many choices" crowd.

(Disclaimer: firmly tongue in cheek, I'm a long-term and very happy desktop Linux user--though seriously, how many open source DVCS projects are there by now?)
BBC Ends Its Use of RealMedia for Streaming Audio
I'd be up for forming a group trip with the intention of some day moving there at least for a little while. People immigrate to the US in groups why not migrate from the US in a group.
The best racks on the net
Pretend there was a type "numbers between 1 and 4."

Pascal and Ada have this I think. I think Eiffel has contracts to enforce that type of thing instead.
> After reading this and its complacent I've-learned-as-much-as-I-need-and-besides-I-have-kids attitude

If you think he's claiming that he's learned all he needs, I don't think that you really did read TFA.

> I know at least five guys who have small children and hack in their spare time. Yes, it's a struggle, but they all do it. I also know quite a few with small children who never do that. They never did before they had kids, either, but the kids furnish a nice excuse. Kids are handy that way.

Yeah, well, work sure does furnish a nice excuse for not being present in your kids' lives too. You can play this from both angles.
I think you mean M-R to search previous input. This works for just about any interactive input.
I think it's brilliant. Nice work!

In terms of a business model, it may not be a million dollar idea, but with enough connections (like an iphone app) you could certainly make some good income.

Keep up the good work.
In case you really want to just replicate your old workflow, look up personas and openid delegation. Together they should resolve all your problems.

https://www.myopenid.com/help#personas
https://www.myopenid.com/help#own_domain
T-Mobile: "We Probably Lost All Your Sidekick Data" (Cloud computing fail?)
Exercise. Seriously, it keeps you healthy, gives time to think (away from a computer) and keeps your mind fresh.
here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16244/16244.txt

"One day the Cogia walking along the plain met a heifer, and forthwith
laying thievish hands upon it, led it straight to his house, where he
slaughtered it and stripped off the skin. The proprietor soon appeared
before the Cogia's house, making a loud cry and lamentation. 'Who would
have thought,' said the Cogia to his people and his wife, 'that my
flaying the heifer would have made that fellow's face look so black?'"
Look at it from the context of the recent Russia-Georgia conflict http://www.defensetech.org/archives/004363.html

My tin-foil hat's as big as most (and bigger than many), but let's look at both sides of this equation.
If anybody is looking into this, and might be interested in a "man on the ground", let me know. My step-brother has lived in Chile for the past 10 years, running a non-profit. He has a Chilean wife and is 100% fluent in the language and culture.

I'm sure he'd be open to consulting with a tech company as an interpreter, etc.
Contrary to what most people here have said, I believe there is a use for such a service. However you would have to focus on a niche. Lawyers time their tasks - they bill by increments as short as 6 minutes. To be useful for lawyers you would have to add more features. A few that come to mind would be having multiple connected timers (starting one stops whatever other one is running), labels associated with the timers, notes associated with the timers, and a whole lot of security. Current timer solutions for lawyers are all desktop applications, so a web based solution could be interesting.
Ask HN: Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
We are considering either Rackspace or Amazon for cloud service. Does anyone have any experiences or recommendations good or bad for either.

Any problems with slow speed or outages, things of that nature.

Comments both positive and negative would be appreciated.

Thanks,
My Interview With Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, On Happiness
You could make a strong argument they did. Next and Apple is often cited as a case where the bought company took over the buyer.

The Disney/Pixar deal might count as well. After a falling-out between the companies due in large part to Disney wanting more creative control, Disney eventually caved and "bought" Pixar in an all-stock deal, with top people from Pixar being put in charge of Disney's animation division and the majority shareholder of Pixar becoming by far the largest single Disney shareholder--more than the next five largest combined, if memory serves me.

(Extra credit: Guess who the aforementioned shareholder is.)
* Exercise

* One day without computer (mediafast) (thinking time)

* iPhone/Simplenote/Things

* Snow Leopard/Quick Silver/Things/Dropbox

* Friends & Family

* Absence of scheduled TV (no cable or disc) Hulu instead
Our government is obsessed with the word "cyber", honestly does anyone use that word besides the government and internet porn sites?
35 Logos That Make You Look Twice
But wouldn't the forked process also fork another process (which would do the same...), thus, eventually "fucking yo memry"?
Fogbugz - because I don't know any better.

In a good way I mean. I started coding full-time a year ago and I like to obsess about solving coding problems, not issue tracking.

So when fogbugz offered their free plan to HN, I signed up, spent a day reading the docs, and never looked back.
It's there for me to see what I have to do, and that's (so far) good enough for me.

(sidenote)
Same thing with version control. I only starting version control about 4 months ago. Seems like most of the cool-guys use git, so I pay my $7 bucks at github, read their docs , busted the git init, and got back to coding.

(sidenote 2)
same thing for vps! Cool kids use linode, paid my $20 bucks, read the docs, ubuntu hardy - back to coding.
Ask HN: Unique virtual product delivery solutions?
Does anyone out here have a preferred method for delivering unique virtual products (i.e. software licenses or pin numbers) ?

I'm trying to recommend something for my father, who needs to deliver PIN numbers through a store front. The best solutions I've found are http://pomidorcart.com/ - about $450, or adding some bit of code to zen-cart to trigger a pin lookup on a table of pins and send the next unused one - just my time.

I imagine that there are some people one HN who sell software (with licenses) so I'd like to ask what your solutions are (since it's essentially the same thing).
Well, it's called a DVCS. There you commit locally and test your commit before pushing it upstream.

I must say I'm a bit baffled to see such an elaborate (yet horrible) workaround for a minor problem that has been solved 5 years ago.

But I guess the photo gives it away...
i guess gold and silver are the best bet.. though i dont know its a right time to buy right now as prices has shot in last couple of years... dollar crash may also result in to stock-crash and someone who can predict this can also buy 'short' ETFs. Dollar crash will also create demand in Oil which in-turn will increase the oil price. all these factors can help anyone to shield from now. Also one can start investing in forex, many smart immigrants have started investing in their home countries so that there is some risk mitigation.

Interested readers can also read "10 Bubbles in the making" @

http://www.businessinsider.com/bubbles-in-the-making-2009-9#...
Some "artists" do as well. I like Ted Nelson's take on the word...it adds nothing and the only word with cyber in it that does mean something is "cybernetics".
I don't think the dollar will collapse, if it does however many people other than the US need to be very worried.

If I'm wrong: I live in the mountains have plenty of trees an axe, a gun, and a stove.
Microsoft/Danger lose Sidekick user data in server failure
I've been to three Panera Bread locations. All of them had friendly staff, nice food and and easy going environment. We even have had project meetings at Panera. Panera++.
I just get a 404 from github when I try to visit this page.
Me to Ted: And I wouldn't hire you.

Not only are you an asshole (that would be excusable), you are an asshole that consistently writes articles full of sound and fury, but completely vapid. As a writer, you are incompetent, albeit rabble-rousing.

To top it off, from what I gleaned from your articles, you know very little about programming. You consistently seem to misinterpret ideas, either deliberately in order to mock them on unsound grounds, or simply through ignorance.

In short, I wouldn't hire a troll.
Cloud Server API's
Give me a break. Next was in the negative when Apple acquired it (Next was bought for $350 million + Apple agreed to cover Next's $50 million in debt). Moreover Apple was planning to buy Jean-Louise Gasse's Be (creators of the BeOS) first. Only after Be demanded more money than Apple was willing to pay did they then go to Next.

Also remember, Next failed to even get an IPO off the ground. They tried but interest was so low that it was cancelled.

Jobs maneuvered Gil Amelio out like a pro but that's an example of office politics not a statement on the value of Next.
Since you mentioned desktop searching, check out Everything (http://download.cnet.com/Everything/3000-2379_4-10890746.htm...)
It isn't really time off if you are working is it? It is time spent thinking and learning and depending on your life outside work this could be accomplished without taking time off and just working less.
Translation: don't sell commodities. If people can find what you're selling elsewhere with the same level of quality, then you can only compete on price and location. That's a tough business. It's easier to differentiate yourself from your competition by doing something they can't do, or by using style, design, and aesthetic coughapplecough to set your products apart.

In software your competition is working on providing a huge featureset just like you are. What can you do on a level that is not just a laundry list of features that can set your software (or site) apart? Look to the meta-features, the implicit features of every product: performance, robustness, security, usability, fit-and-finish, etc.
Only apply the theory to stocks you'd like to own.

I acknowledge the strategy isn't risk free (no strategy is), but if you're going to buy a stock, considering using this strategy instead.
sure. you've got to watch out for black swans..you should certainly shouldn't plan your portfolio around such a thing. You may as well put your money in CDs.
Alternative theory: Many people of the type he talks about 1) were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, 2) had strong, effective organizations working for them, 3) were smart and competent enough to make effective use of #1 and #2, 4) stepped down while they were near or at their peak.

Most people, no matter how great, are not going to have #1 and getting #2 is difficult and unreliable.

Too much focus on the traits and actions of individuals is probably a result of the general cognitive bias to cast events in terms of structured narratives with well-defined causes and effects.
The initial description deceived me (e.g. the layman :-)). It used the word "piece" in a very technical way. Piece means contiguous chunk in layman's terms, it typically does not mean a set of fragments of the object (that would be many pieces).

If someone told me you could, mathematically speaking, take 5 piles of fragments of a sphere and combine them into two identical spheres, it would still be slightly mysterious, but it would only take the words "infinite density" to make it clear, instead of three paragraphs explaining what "piece" means. :-)

Anyway, I still thought the following explanation was pretty clear. It was probably not the absolute correct mathematical intuition, but what summarization of extremely technical topics are completely correct?
And sleep! I am focusing on sleeping more this year. It does wonders for my productivity.
Water...all I can say is water....

While I knew that drinking more than 1-2 glasses of water is good, I never thought that the impact of drinking 1-2 liters of water a day could have such an significant impact on my ability to concentrate and focus on programming.

My suggestion: drink at least 1-2 liters of water without bubbles (or gas) and try to work on a mentally challenging task. And if you are stuck, drink half a liter more.
Me too -- saw issues previously with other github links posted here. Is github having issues with a portion of its app servers?
> That happens to some people...they bounce from dream to dream without ever making any of them come true, because they never fix the fundamental problems with their assumptions.

That one is going in my quotes.txt! I've found it very difficult to get people over their fundamental misconceptions, how can we do that efficiently, without being jerks?
GitHub discontinues building gems
E-Ink is great for e-books but I suspect a lot of folks, the ones who rarely read books, would prefer e-magazines, e-comic books, e-manga and web content in which case a color screen is very important. There's plenty of room for both but I suspect the more casual, multi-pupose approach, will end up being a bigger market.
If the title of the post didn't disqualify him from my fantasy hiring process, then certainly this line would.
Hear, hear. I'm glad to see someone else on HN who doesn't buy into the belief that software is a commodity (unless you make it so!)

I think more HNers would succeed with their businesses if they took what you're saying to heart.
Netflix Grand Prize technical presentation from Pragmatic Theory (pdf)
The #rrggbb text is still displayed with normal text color. So it will never look like a floating semicolon. Try it. It is not even a problem when #rrggbb color is same as the foreground, as I have (global-hl-line-mode 1)
i don't think that's the whole story.

there is a question/answer thread on stackoverflow that revolves around a post i made on my blog. seeing that the answers weren't reflecting as much as i personally know about the subject, i figured out how to log in to stack overflow. then i discovered i didn't have enough karma or whatever to leave a comment. i don't care enough to stick around however long it would take to get however much karma it would take to do that. so, too bad stackoverflow users, you're not getting the benefit of my knowledge.
Beware 10 future bubbles in the making
Hey. Regarding the "how do I set up a credit card payments system", you might like this free little ebook I put together when I was going through that particular hell:

http://jumpstartcc.com
Windows Key + D = minimize everything.
Most of you probably know this, but for the few that do not... you are welcome.
Thank you. [re:Favorites] The best I can do for now: http://github.com/ki/my-dot-emacs/blob/master/dot-emacs.txt
I use all of Rackspace Cloud's offerings (Cloud Sites, Cloud Servers, Cloud Files) and I've been satisfied so far. I also use GoGrid for more advanced applications, as they offer free hardware load balancing and mountable cloud storage.

I'm assuming you're interested in Cloud Servers vs Amazon EC2? Depending on your usage (mainly bandwidth in/out), one or the other may work out slightly cheaper, but for the most part they are about the same price (although with Rackspace, support is free and very good). A huge advantage to Rackspace is that the instances can be resized on the fly, and they allow bursting.

For example, a 2GB Cloud Server (based on server RAM) is 1/8th of a quad core 2.4GHz server, but that is a CPU floor, meaning that 1/8th of the server's resources are guaranteed, but if you have a brief spike and there are sufficient resources on the host, you can burst to 100% of 4 cores. With EC2, you can never go above the allotted resources.

As far as outages go, Rackspace had some bad luck with their DFW datacenter this year, but I wasn't affected. The SAT datacenter seems to be more stable.
The answer is - "It depends", on a lot of parameters like:
1. Do you need a dedicated box or a virtual OS on a shared box will do?
2. What are your avg monthly usage requirements- box and bandwidth? And how these requirements shall change of time.
3. You want to customize you box's configuration before u rent it?
4. You want to pay monthly or yearly or more?
5. Will you need additional throw away on demand computational nodes? How often?
6. Do you just wish to use servers or other services like S3, SDB, SQS, cloud-files(rackspace)?
Many more ....

So I think if you describe you requirements and budget better, the suggestions provided will be better.

About problems like low speed, outages, etc. Yes both have their own set of problems, but still a more relevant answer can be given when you have illustrated you requirements.

I have been using EC2,S3,SDB for one of my projects(last 4 months) and Rackspace/Mosso cloudserver for another (last 3 months). Since the durations are short I may not be able to explain everything, but will try my best. :-)
No -- both processes return from the fork() call (with different return values).
This is really, really unacceptable. I don't know how you screw something up this badly.

HINT: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE...

Additionally, I suspect we're going to see these customers really hesitate on future cloud-based services.
Both processes resume after the fork call, and both go into the loop. Only the return value from the fork call tells you which process you're in.

It is somewhat idiosyncratic that the snippet uses both while (1) and for (;;) for infinite looping, which seems to indicate less than total familiarity with C.
What method did you use to do that?
The US is perhaps the most import-dependent nation on Earth. If the dollar drops in half, prices for many physical goods will basically double soon after, reducing buying power within the country, unless credit simultaneously expands 2X (which is what's been happening since ~2001 to maintain our illusion of wealth).
Do you think that the Obama phenomenon has nothing to do with race?
Of Github customers, a lot more of them use pbhb. That was the gist.
Users don’t want rich
Yikes. I assume they didn't have offsite backups, and some dude did a 'rm -rf *' or ran a 'delete from table cascade' command.
Nope, only a single child process is created, and the parent and child go into an infinite loop. And two processes stuck in finite loops do not fucked memry make.
T-Mobile Sidekick Disaster
I've seen this same thing on several Windows machines.
The timing of this is a bit suspicious. I just read an article late last week from an "insider" detailing what a major clusterfuck the Danger acquisition has been for Microsoft and how they've completely neglected the SideKick platform in favor of their own failed attempts to create a competing device. The speculation from this insider being that Microsoft had zero interest in the NetBSD based SideKick and only bought Danger to kill the SideKick and launch their own product to replace it. Most of the original developers are long gone so that makes me wonder who was taking care of the SideKick backend servers. Are they perhaps UNIX based servers? Did Microsoft perhaps throw a bunch of Windows Server guys at them? (that never ends well)
This probably (definitely?) makes me a jerk but I have to say it: They deserved it.

I'm sorry but in this day and age anyone trusting their data to a device that stores it exclusively on the server deserves what they get.

Some will say "the type of person who uses these devices isn't the type of person to understand where their data is located" but I say that's BS. We're in a data centric world now and I don't think it's asking that much for people to be aware of where their data is kept and to make sure they have some kind of "backup" guarantee.

To Anyone Downvoting This: Let me ask you one question. If someone without a seatbelt gets hit by a drunk driver does the fact that the accident's the drunk driver's fault mean it was ok for them not to wear a seatbelt? Or can someone be responsible for their own irresponsibility even though the damage was caused by a party that was more to blame?
I don't know why you're being moderated down. The Japanese had already begun conquering large swaths of East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and so on.

A U.S.-Dutch oil embargo was hardly belligerent compared to the actual conquests of the Japanese.

The grandparent poster reads like they got their information about WWII from the Yasukuni Shrine museum...