skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most of those investigations deal with the fact that many 8 and 5 mile an hour bumpers (meaning they shouldn't break under lower impacts) end up shattering at maybe 2mph and cost thousands of dollars to fix -- implying that the manufactuers are engineering them that way on purpose to sell replacement bumpers or that they are no effectively engineering the bumpers to meet the specifications.
> I am sure google won't put ads on those sites

Not only do they, but they have an entire scheme just for it:

http://www.google.com/domainpark/

> those sites merely serve to annoy ppl

Actually, parked domains convert really well.

Typosquatters and the like, yes, they're annoying, but that's not what we're talking about here. Most of these are vaguely generic domains or things that people are typing in because they assume there will be something useful on them. A well parked domain then directs them off to where they actually want to be (and makes some money in the process).

Don't forget, you only need to earn two cents per day to make a profit.
This is a good list of many things that people might not get.

But the crazy thing is that there no guarantee that a given user will or won't any one of these things - as well as no guarantee whether they will or won't other subtler things.

After all this, it actually makes me less inclined to pander to all the user's possible ignorances. Rather than worry every strange conception that users might have, we should create a UI which is self-consistent, powerful and hides as little as possible.

"Drag-and-drop" and "click versus double click" are two approaches which were created to make things "intuitive" but which are a disaster because they don't make any announcement of their presence and don't actually increase the number of options a user has. Hierarchical files and hierarchical menus may indeed not be "gotten" by some people but those people need to be educated and once they are, they use just about any standard-conformant GUI app whereas each time the latest visual-fu-metaphor is added to a given app, everyone will always need to parse it again.
I agree wholeheartedly. However, there's a problem. To date, the only known physical system that has produced life is the one we are made of. To extend on that, we definitely have more knowledge now than before about the basic chemical interactions that make up many of the component molecules we're all built from. Despite this, we still haven't pieced together a bottom to top knowledge base of how you get from amino acids to dna/rna to functional, if simple, self-replicating systems.

In the last couple of years, advancements have been made in getting DNA and RNA to replicate independently in a test tube. Similarly, and more important, there have been at least a couple of experiments where completely synthetic RNA molecules (meaning manufactured and using amino acids not found in living creatures) have shown limited self-replication in test tube environments.

Other research efforts have been studying how certain collections of lipid (fat) molecules can form porous membranes, allowing some molecules to enter while blocking others. This is what our cell membranes do.

From the other direction, projects are in progress that are attempting to knock out all the un-necessary genes in a simple bacteria to create the simplest cell possible. Craig Venter is pretty far ahead on this. http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_is_on_the_verge_of_cre...

As part of that project(I think) they have created a fully synthetic genome. The next part is to put it into an artificial cell and get it replicating.

So we have approaches from both the top and bottom that are seeking to meet in the middle.

I think the EvoGrid, if they are actually trying to simulate real biochemistry, is a very valid approach to help solve this problem. We're probably very close to understanding how to go from basic biochemistry all the way up. An artificial simulation that incorporates known physical properties might offer some additional insights on how this works.

My belief is that once we have a rough draft of a theory on how it all fits together that can be experimentally repeated, it will provide a firm starting point for figuring out the mathematics behind why it works. Think of it as being similar to the Standard Model of physics, but for life. Once we know one set of rules that works, then it opens up the way for experimenters to setup massive simulations with all different kinds of parameters to explore the full range of possibilities for life.

One very interesting extension of this idea is that once we know for sure how carbon-based life arises from the proverbial molecular soup, it lets us start experimenting with other elements. We can examine if its possible for life to arise in previously dismissed areas of the universe. We could determine how likely it is for silicon-based biochemistry to work. It also gives us the opportunity to engineer life using elements that really can never get together in the regular old universe due to natual laws.
I've often thought of doing a startup to provide maps of all malls, shopping centers, and big box stores in the US. Imagine how much easier it would be to find things in Home Depot for example.

And think of all of the augmented reality potential? And you could recommend things to people based on what aisle they're in. The possibilities are endless really.

Anyone want to join me? I'll do all the programming. I just need someone to call up all these places and get floor plans...
The plan is to slowly cover more and more TLD-s. Each TLD's whois has it's own formatting of data so we need to make parsers for each case. Well at some point they will start repeating. I am aware that adding more tld-s in necessary, now even more aware. :)
I guess if you are constantly wondering why you are a tiny bit shorter than your brother, then you should get a hobby or a doctor. Logical or, there.
William's talk at TED - http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_how_i_harnessed_t...
You still have to be careful with a +/- rating system, because for it to work you need a constant number of viewers for every item. The more the actual number of viewers deviates from the ideal constant then the
more unfair the voting is. An example would be a popular item getting more finite votes because a larger sample of people were exposed to it. So a +/- system probably must be expressed as a percentage to correct this problem. However I can see a 5 star system being improved by showing some sort of relative data too.

So I guess a +/- system may not necessarily be more advantageous. It all depends on how carefully and correctly you interpret the data.
Very similar experience.

I had registered getwellconnected.com, which I had vague plans to use for a nonprofit idea to let sick kids in hospitals connect together.

I got an email from someone claiming to be a consultant working for a small hospital. They were building a site and wanted to use that domain name. They offered a fair but relatively small price, and since I didn't have immediate plans to work on my idea, I agreed to sell at the offered price - no higher.

A year later today, I see that the domain is parked. It's quite a good and general domain name. I registered it with plans to use it. What a ploy.
Poor Credit Personal Loan: Choose The Best Lender
I didn't want edit controls to pollute the interface because after you initially enter your domains your edit vs viewing slice of time will be very minor.

Yes, this is very valid point. I will think about how to make it work as you describe. Thanks!
http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01D4TSCOm-zWKiOCtV-umHZQ==...

I thank you
Lack of Vitamin D, Excess Fructose Linked To High Blood Pressure
Looks cool - consider me a new user! Two suggestions for the FAQ:
1. How much space will this use up on my machine?
2. Will this slow my browsing experience?
Thank you Anon = D

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01S9YAdboZIVU3lS_4bnk0jg==...
Thomas Carlyle on Reading and Working
Blurring a large image is really CPU intensive. Someone could DOS amazon using a blur URL.
Tell HN: How to find karma thresholds in the HN source code
Sure, you could ask pg to tell you what the karma thresholds are, but the fact of the matter is he's already told you -- it's just embedded in a sparsely commented, 2600-line file that is only distributed as part of the ARC language package.

Behold! The three-line recipe that will enlighten you in several ways:

wget http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.1.tar
tar xf arc3.1.tar
grep -n -E "\(= [^-]+-threshold" arc3.1/news.arc

As of 2009/09/30:

1) topcolor threshold is 250

2) downvote threshold is 200

3) flag threshold is 30

As an exercise for the reader, figure out what the comment and poll thresholds are.

Bonus points: what is the mysterious leader threshold?
I would like to have a recommendation as well even if it ends up being just that.

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01e7vop0KFZQ0PZIqgjJSWeA==...

Thanks in advance!
Gotta love a barter system
phpThumb[1] + mod_rewrite is a simple way to get up and running with a similar cache of your own. It supports ImageMagick so you've got a lot of options.

[1] http://phpthumb.sourceforge.net/
You're conflating a few different types of computer literacy. Introductory programming, especially nowadays, doesn't have much to do with knowing whether the monitor is the computer or how to transfer files over a network. Certainly if you're programming for math or science you might not need those 'general computer skills.'
I'm undecided because, while Facebook's message is like email, it doesn't need to behave identically.

For example, the mailbox view could simply display the first line or so of the message's content to give the reader context.
Thank you so much for this. I've got my fingers crossed.

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01_krbB4R4sUUPt9CmG92Oww==...
Hopefully I can snag one of these as well! cullenk@gmail.com
Thank you kindly! http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01EiBMD1Iu5xtQlgOZSKA6dA==...
I don't know if invites can actually be shared, but I'd appreciate one if so. Thanks!

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01G5M5dvqqt--v6P30IQKjSQ==...
I agree with you. The reason such errors worry me, even if clarity isn't an issue, is that the next generation reads these incorrect texts and assumes that everything they read was written correctly. As a consequence these kids misunderstand the grammar of their language. Lack of formal grammar training doesn't help. Because language is an important tool for thinking, degraded language skills lead to degraded thinking.

The example that always gets me foaming at the mouth is the persistent confusion of "are" and "our" in online forums, just because they sound similar in an American accent.
It's been hard for me to pin down RMS's exact thoughts on these kinds of things. I think the whole "copyleft" made him and the FSF as a whole seem more communist or anarcho-syndicalist or something, when I doubt that's the actual intent. But I can't say for sure.
I might as well point out that grep -n will give you line numbers in the output, so you can quickly reference the source code to figure out a little more from the context.

You could use grep -C3 to get some context right on the command line, but the output is a little cluttered for my taste.
Ask HN: How do I find a hacker roommate in NYC?
Moving to NYC to take a job, and would like to find a hacker roommate. I have a whole email written out describing myself in case anyone here is interested, but can anyone else recommend a way to find a nice, compatible, like-minded roommate?
oh, and you forgot to add:

Lots of chicks, as soon as you get out of the office.

If I wasn't under H1B stuff, I would consider moving in NYC, just for the dating scene is so awesome there.

Silicon Valley is like the dead sea in comparison.
It's a risky position for TC to take, though; now they can't make link-bait claims tomorrow about how Wave is an utter failure and a sinking ship that will eventually bring down all of Google.
You summarized it well. I read 12 paragraphs without getting a single bit on information.
At first glance I was expecting an article about http://www.kpcb.com/team/doerr
I click links again if it's been more than a few seconds. I know full well it starts a new request, but often that works faster than letting the old request time out and be re-sent.
If you're a fan of Strunk & White, you can usually do without "pretty much" as well. What does it add?
You could save a lot of money, by just asking PG to write a declaration of independence...
I'm deliberating lumping basic hardware and software literacy together. Everybody should understand the relationship between secondary storage, ram and the CPU. Everybody should understand that a computer program takes pieces of data in RAM and manipulates them using the CPU and has to make a special effort to get them to and from secondary storage or from a network connection and every should be able to basically understand how a program is, at some level of abstraction, a set of instructions for the computer to follow. They don't have to necessarily have particular operational skills - transference files on a particular networked system for example - but the basic knowledge of what is going on should be there.
Night sky from eye to telescope: Milky Way panaroma at 800 mega-pixel [swf]
Is there a way for me to test drive the app without having to sign up? I do not want to give my email address then regret that this app is not something I am interested in.
* ESO GigaGalaxy Zoom http://www.gigagalaxyzoom.org/about.html

* NASA Astronomy Picture of the day http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090926.html
The same here, I'm a fan of your company and work.
Why not find a normal one? You can expand your horizons and make new friends.
People that write dumb stuff are best ignored, the more you pay attention the more of a platform they'll have.

It's a pity for Miguel deIcaza that it has to be Jason Perlow that comes to his defence, he's about as tainted as it gets.

As for Miguel himself, most of the people that are jumping up and down to be able to throw their rocks are in their lifetimes not going to achieve one 10th of a percent of the contribution to FOSS that deIcaza has already made.

For Stallman to criticize him in this way wasn't very classy, but at least he's earned the right.

Edit: Perlow just basically sees a chance to pull himself out of irrelevancy by attaching his name to a 'hot' subject in the eternal soap that the IT world seems to be turning in to, and groklaw plays right into his cards.

This whole cult of personality is at some level deeply uncomfortable, but I can't put my finger on why.

edit2: groklaw probably should put a nofollow in the link to the Perlow article, it's one thing to link it for illustrative purposes, but to give it more status on the net is a net loss, especially from groklaw.
Visual Fox is being used in this project because they have a previous app which uses that language.

I'm joining in the "second round" of the project. This round will last between 4-6 months and after that(if the prototype performs well) a new language for the final app will be considered.
Really cool, but why is the progress indicator right in the middle of the display!?
I would consider "dammit", "damn it" and "damnit" all to be acceptable. As soon as you leave "damn it" you're in slang territory anyway, so personal variations are acceptable.

(I will also accept "dagnammit", "dognarnit" and "magnabbit".)
I really want to be around positive people who can serve as social reinforcement for my values.
I'd appreciate an invite.

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01Py0H-tJw2Mektbkg3TyvzA==...

Thank you!
So far there is not. Would a video of it's functionality help you at determining this.

Otherwise I was thinking of making a "get info for this webpage without signing up" functionality, but so far in my thoughts was that you would give an email and be notified on it after all bots collect the info (maybe a minute or two).

But this wouldn't solve the problem as you would still need to give me your email. I will think of making something in a way that you get info immediately. I think it's a good idea.
Some methods of storing trees that I've seen:

You can store a tree using foreign keys for the children, but traversing the tree to level m requires m joins. Finding children at an arbitrary level requires O(tree depth) queries.

You can use preorder tree traversal which consists of mapping nodes to pairs of numbers representing intervals on the real line. Then "x is descended from y" is equivalent to "x's interval is contained in y's interval", and this at least lets you find the children of x. Going up a tree is harder. Inserting into the tree is tricky as well.

Another hack is to store on each node a string containing it's ancestors. I.e., "/2/4/27/35" indicates a node is descended can be reached from the root (node 2) by following the path 2->4->27->35. Then the regex search "2/4/27/35/.*" finds all children of node 35. This one is utter fail.

However, I freely admit I'm not a database expert. Is there some non-ugly solution I'm unaware of?
To push the analogy further - no.

Unclaimed domain names are like parts of the wild west handed out to early claiments, they all had the same value/acre (=almost nothing).
Then when a city had been built on them (=you have a brand) then the price goes up. Even if the owner didn't do any work to build the city, having an empty lot in the middle of it is still valuable.
Pretty much every other part of 1984 has come true somewhere or other, why not that?
HBO tries a out a sort of interactive fiction (video|flash|time-consuming)
Bloody monarchs, coming over 'ere taking our thrones...
Office space in NYC
Dear Hacker News community,

I recently co-founded a tech startup in NYC. My co-founder and I just rented some great space in soho and we're looking to turn it into a vibrant, thriving startup hub. Sorry if this is ad-like, but I feel like the benefit of this place to startups in New York outweighs the spaminess of the submission.

The space is an entire fully furnished loft that is currently divided up into bays that can easily fit 3 to 4 people each. The price is $875 for each 150 (actual) sq ft. bay. I've been looking around at prices for desk space in the city, and this package is definitely one of the best deals in NY. Great for startups because of the month to month lease and all inclusive amenities. My co-founder and I will also be working out of the space. Here are the details:

-Exact location is 447 Broadway (Broadway and Grand) in soho (supposedly "Silicon Alley") which is extremely close to the 1, 6, N, R, Q, W, J, M, Z subways
-Each bay is 150 (actual) sq feet and are $875 each. There are two smaller bays at half of a full bay ($437.50)
-Month to month lease. You would need to pay 1st and last month up front with 1 month security
-Really cool soho loft with a great vibe, 16 ft. ceilings, 2 bathrooms, elevator access
-All utilities (including free internet) included, free use of communal conference room
-Great deli right down stairs that has everything, and great food close by (chinatown and little italy)
-24 hour access
-Free cleaning and trash removal 3 times per week
-Use of kitchen with sink, microwave, fridge, tea/coffee

I think the benefits of this place go beyond the cost if we can fill it up with tech startups... it would have a great motivating community aspect that everyone would benefit from.

Please get in touch if interested and tell your friends!

Chris Dickson
dickson@atmanetworks.com
The arc release is not 1:1 with the arc running HN.
No information at all with respect to industry or responsibilities?
Longer pointers (64 vs 32) means that programs are bigger and thus are more likely to bust the cache, causing sometimes significant performance hits.
Surprisingly, to my knowledge there is no layperson-accessible site that explains and offers downloads of the most popular open source offerings--firefox, open office, GIMP etc.

Everything I have found is either hopelessly technical or stuffed with thousands and thousands of poor quality programs.

There are lots of individual sites, but no where that you can point someone that will take care of them.
You can lose a trademark case if you have been too selective in who you complain about. Especially if you are seen to be ignoring small time infringers but only going after those with big pockets, the case can be thrown out.

Lawyers tend to err on the side of sending C+D letters to anyone, such as the case of Sun and the island of Java tourist authority.
The apple/orchards bit was irony - it's in the dictionary.

The other problem is judges/juries and computers. The trademark has to be in the same field, but the courts aren't always as tech savvy as HN readers and frequently regard all 'computer stuff' as the same field.
So while we would see a CRM package and a forum website as completely different as a magnolia plant shop and a magnolia paint company - a judge might not.
Thankfully, you can use http://www.mailinator.com/ for disposable email addresses
Thanks in advance,

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01aP2MvWIvDQ4OpkxqTDLENw==...

On a sidenote: I think you should reply to your original comment once you have one so there isn't duplicates.
Single page: http://www.realworldtech.com/includes/templates/articles.cfm...

Good find.
This is an interesting way to do categorization.
The thing I learned from this is that Stallman did not call Miguel a traitor.
Good point. With the recent experiment involving hidden comment scores, I understand pg was updating the code in the REPL.

...but if you want to grab the source code, is there any other way to get it, aside from the version that is bundled with arc?
Search google through ubuntu terminal
Andreessen: Watching Netscape Disintegrate
Henry Blodget interviews Netscape founder Marc Andreessen about selling Netscape to AOL, what he did next, and how he saved his next company.
You can expand your horizons by making new hacker friends. Good luck!
Tip: if you don't have wget installed on your fresh Mac, run curl -O instead.
I think this is valid. Some of us are in the position where all of our friends are non-hackers, and we are the odd ones out. For us, meeting hacker friends is expanding our social horizons.

Personally, I enjoy working with other hackers, but I prefer to socialize/live with mostly artists, musicians or people from some profession that I don't know a lot about so that I can learn from them (living with 2 treasury economists right now). That said, living with another hacker would be awesome!
Ask YC: Ever consider contacting start-ups to invest?
I've noticed recently there are a number of start-ups asking HN for feedback, which is great. This got me wondering: Does YC ever contact start-ups (either through HN after the start-up asks for feedback or just stumbling upon a gem). If so, how many and are they still afloat?
How large are you?
No, PG explicitly said that there is some stuff in HN that will not be released, here is the reference:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=830838
Wow... stealth mode and already profitable?
+1 for jQuery. To me, it's one of the best thing that happens to me in my developing career. A lot more miles with a lot less fuel.

One thing I may suggest tho is that if you have a page that gets hit with a lot of traffic, you might consider out sourcing you jJavaScript.Query file or just use plain
Agree. And if you want to get specific about that quote as it relates to product dev, read up Eric Reis/Steve Blank.

I actually feel relieved since I have come to the realization that your dies are not inherently supposed to work. They are mere hypothesis until proven by the market. It is true for every entrepreneur--no matter how successful.
Next year's computers same speed but more cores/cpus: developer challenge
This guy is a true hacker.
True. Lack of "white space" between functional elements (submissions) is key weakness.

Could be easier to read if every other submission had a darker background (creates contrast to help skimming).