skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This was a ridiculous protest. Doe and Moffit (the two main campus libraries) were shut down, students created do not cross lines, and a bunch of idiots pulled the fire alarm in all the big buildings. Berkeley students with technical majors who were too busy working to protest had to evacuate buildings because protesters kept pulling fire alarms.

If you walked through Barrows or Dwinelle (humanities buildings) they were empty. Conversely, if you took a stroll through Soda or Cory (CS and EE respectively) they were packed with students finishing final projects.

I once had a professor who stated that no matter what, Californians will always vote for less taxes and more services, which is exactly what is going on now. I don't understand how they can chant "End Budget Cuts, Don't Raise our Fees!" in the same sentence without the cognitive dissonance making itself blindingly obvious.

I took a stroll to see the actual protest today. It was a bunch of kids who wanted to feel like they were part of something; a large group of people who wanted to scream and cheer as if this was a football game. Students were trying to shout over each other to lead cheers to get their own little slice of revolution. In the end, they presented no solutions besides "Cut Executive Pay" and have contributed nothing to either cause they were fighting for.
I posted it, I didn't remove it.
Chocolate tastes great salted alone, with chili peppers, or in savory protein-heavy dishes.

You don't have to put the lego pieces together to make what's on the label!
But aren't the goal posts already way over on the football field 40 miles away? I mean, it's not like any of these conditions are new or somehow they're being made up. There are a series of things -- each of which has to be necessary and sufficient -- in order for the argument to take drastic action to hold water. This has always been the case, and this will always be the case. This is the nature of convincing anybody that drastic action must be taken -- about anything.

We just choose to talk about one goalpost or the other. It's not like people are making up extra requirements of proof simply to make it harder on the other side. The only reason folks talk about each of these goalposts one at a time is just to make the conversation easier on everybody.

So yes, if you get through the "man can change the environment" hoop, which I believe, you have about a dozen other hoops to jump through, some of which I find much less plausible than others, before you get to the "we must do something now!" This is just the structure of the argument -- debating style or political trickery has little to do with it (in my mind)
Why couldn't it be copyright concerns? YouTube has negotiated deals with different copyright holders. We don't know all the provisions of those deals. One provision might be "no playing videos on set top boxes." Instead of trying to explicitly mark which videos have this restriction and which don't, they could opt to just disallow TV viewing entirely -- and try to drive views to the XL product as a replacement for people who still really want to see YouTube on the TV.

That being said, the points made elsewhere in the thread about the line being blurry are valid. My phone (HTC Touch Pro 2) has TV out and explicitly lists YouTube as a video source for that TV out. Does that count?
The reason people who express skepticism about AGW are compared to creationists is because they make the exact same kinds of arguments creationists make--unquantified claims about "there isn't enough evidence" mixed with misrepresenting whatever evidence does exist and loudly complaining that they're being shut out of the scientific discussion. Hell, they're even represented by the same political party in the United States.
If a moderator has killed it, especially for the reason unalone mentions, then please put it back up.

Read the article, not just the title damnit.
Except that these people are dedicated "tech journalists" (and thus are neither).

They were invited to this conference because they republish the constant press releases of all the Taiwanese and Korean companies as they churn out poorly-differentiated consumer electronics, many of which feature poorly-customized Microsoft mobile platforms.
More to the point, you're cherry-picking the skeptics. The skeptics found that all of the ocean-rising data is due to a single measurement station. The skeptics found that the "hottest year in the US" data was wrong. The skeptics found that the hockey stick wasn't. And so on.

You don't have to be a "skeptic" to look for faults in scientific papers. That's how the process is supposed to work.

And no, motivation doesn't actually matter. Only facts and interpretation do.

Of course it matters. Ulterior motives in science have reliably blinded people from facts for hundreds of years. Just look at how long it took people to agree that tobacco was harmful--and how much money was being paid by the tobacco companies to try to avoid that conclusion.

Even if every single thing that someone says is factual, they may have committed dishonesty by omission of relevant information. Merely validating the words of someone with ulterior motives cannot ensure that you have not been misled. If you cannot trust someone's motivations, you cannot trust them at all.
This. I find myself using upvotes for bookmarks about as often as I do to "promote" something.
The NYT coverage: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.ht...
Proton Beams Are Back On Track At LHC
SB Nation is hiring a Ruby/Rails developer and an operations engineer: http://www.sbnation.com/jobs

We're a network of 220+ community-driven, fan-centric sports news sites, with a passionate audience of 7+ million. It's an interesting and challenging space to be working in, especially given the current transitional period for news media. We're based in Washington DC but are open to remote workers.
> ... Java is that its terseness ...

Compared to what? Java has a reputation for many things, but terseness of syntax is not one of them.

I'm not trying to be derisive to the language, I just thought that was an odd assertion to make.
Free education is a legitimate, and IMO highly noble goal.
Webs.com is looking for a front-end developer. Strong HTML/CSS/JS skills, located in Silver Spring Maryland. Right on a Metro line, we're essentially at the DC border. Position is in-office, no telecommuting options. :(

Anyone interested can email me directly (ryan [at] webs (dot) com), or hit me up on Twitter (@ryanmcgrath).
"...so that there are no obvious deficiencies" - Hoare on ALGOL 68
Give em some time, those wars were already in progress and the US government doesn't turn on a dime.
You and the responders to your comment have a notable point about the students' crying over spilled milk, but a 32% increase in fees is quite drastic and shocking! The average cost increase for a public 4-year college is 6.2%[1]

[1]http://www.collegeboard.com/press/releases/208962.html
> Where were these students in years past?

Busy with their high school and without the right to vote? This is the first time those people can say anything officially and be taken seriously. If they don't like what's happening, then I think they're doing pretty well - started to get involved as early as they could.
Hi. To try to calmly explain a bit, "End Budget Cuts, Don't Raise Our Fees!" is not the self-contradictory statement you make it out to be. On the one hand, although state revenues are down, state spending priorities are all messed up (e.g., we spend way too much jailing people for non-violent drug offenses for stuff like pot, constantly increasing state spending on the prison system - while cutting support for education). On the other hand, the UC system's spending priorities are also screwed up with may more than is rationale going to capital investment. It is true that the Regents lack authority to correct these problems and, to the extent the protest moves only the Regents, it is indeed a waste of time. However, if the protests are regarded more as simply putting a foot down against the log-jam of a larger political situation - it's quite sane.

Also, "presenting solutions" is really not the protesters' obligation in a situation like this. Forcing a crisis that elevates as far as possible and draws attention are reasonable ends in and of themselves. These kinds of action are how, historically, political debates shift focus. Solutions are not hard to come by. There is no shortage of them. The state needs escape from prop 13, from ballot initiative spending mandates, from its high incarceration rate, and so forth. Implementing those solutions requires action by voters, the legislature, the regents, and so forth.

You have to start somewhere and that's what your peers did today.

Incidentally, the violence score appears to be roughly: Protesters - shoving some crowd control barriers; Cops - clubbing with batons, indiscriminate use of pepper spray, and allegedly at least one rubber bullet fired.
I didn't think he acted like a hostile asshole. That comment about sheer ignorance had already been made to him, he was just handing it back.
In this sense I meant it: that they are collecting valuable data. That their own analysis is flawed by their own bias is evident to me, but does not diminish the value of their data.
The top competition for netbooks and the Chrome OS will the smartphones.

Smartphones are in a position to be your second computer in the next few years. Personally I prefer the smartphone but I can see some people wanting a web only computer.
Across the table from the protesters sits the UC Berkeley administration and the UC Berkeley campus police. Rehiring the custodians is the only immediate action for which the administration has authority - the administration lacks authority over the fee increase. Even the Regents (board of governers of the whole University of California system) have very little authority to do much about the fee increases. Yes, they had to act to impose them but it appears that too a large extent they had no other choice other than to become protesters themselves (and essentially have the UC system violate the law and/or various contracts).

The solidarity with the janitors arises because UC staff are suffering about as badly as the students. There is a recent history here of mutual solidarity.

Meanwhile, national news is now carrying the story about the 32% fee increase and its consequences.
It's a P2 based theme.

It operates just like Google reader. j/k go up and down the page, hit r to reply to a post. No Twitter needed.

Twitter comments are pulled in via Backtype.
Actually, just go to the page and hit '?'... full instructions there.
That's fine. But I doubt the majority of students out there yelling their hearts out for free education know what's involved in working towards that goal.
Extremely similar story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=953404
Illegal != immoral. And personally I cannot understand why foundries don't just give free downloads of their fonts anyway. It's utterly trivial to find "illegal" copies if you wish. The people who pay do so to license them for commercial use; they're not paying for the actual files and would pay regardless.

I really hate people talking about "illegal stuff". I don't see why it's natural or obvious that there is even such a thing as illegal information, or an illegal action you can take with information. The idea that you can incriminate yourself merely by copying a file, no matter what that file is, is abhorrent to me.
Steve Jobs introduces the "Digital Hub" strategy at Macworld 2001
Advice needed: is YC worth it at their valuation?
I just heard from YC that they'd like to fund me. Woohoo! But I need your advice, especially from YC alumni...

My startup is a little over a year old and has earned a more than $1m in profits since its inception. Based on basic math, its valuation is well above $1m, but let's assume it's $1m. I was expecting YC to either reject me, or to say that they'd fund me at around 10k and expect 1% in return.

The YC offer though is for around the same amount but for 7% at a 200k valution. Now I know the logic of rational decision making and how if an option seems like it is likely to benefit more than it's likely to cost, you should go for it. But at the same time it also seems like an unfair valuation.

I imagine others have been in a similar situation and that others will be either today or over the next few days. So this discussion will hopefully help many others. What does everyone think?
I've posted this as news with extended links on related presentations and such here: http://www.rubyinside.com/maglev-alpha-released-2807.html

(Update: After some head scratching I finally got to an irb prompt and have written up instructions on that post on getting it all running on OS X. The announcement post doesn't really go into anything and I couldn't find a README.)

(Update 2: I ran a VERY flimsy benchmark from the Alioth shootout - the Fannkuch benchmark - on 1.8.7, 1.9.1, MacRuby and MagLev and get these results:

1.8.7 - 6.276s

1.9.1 - 3.539s

MagLev Alpha - 2.975s

MacRuby 0.5b2 - 4.649s

MacRuby 0.5b2 (compiled) - 2.901s

JRuby 1.4.0 (basic) - 5.579s

Take with a pinch of salt, etc. It's a single benchmark under less than scientific conditions.. I bet half of that JRuby figure, for example, is JRuby starting up the JVM ;-))
Show HN: I wrote a nifty perl script for managing projects. Thoughts?
Linus deserves a Nobel Prize, but he likes flamewars way too much to get the Peace Prize. How about literature? Why should that be limited to writers of human languages?
This was a ridiculous protest.

I disagree. I wouldn't have heard about it if the students hadn't acted ridiculously. Since they did, their message has been spread far and wide and has gained national media attention.

That's effective advertising.

The real problem is how society reacts to things like this, not that the students hacked that hard-coded reaction for their own movement's gain.
Cool, nice to see a decent write-up on it rather than a Google Groups post.
Their second demand was amnesty, so they kind of had the right idea. Sort of. Of course they all got arrested anyhow. What kind of revolutionary asks for amnesty? Not exactly History Will Absolve Me material
They very much believed that their optimized interpreter would be faster and better than JITing. And it is optimized -- they took into account cache locality, ARM instruction size, etc. You can read the design doc. They spent a lot of time on it.
Hey! Interesting to see you here. :)

You came to my school recently, I believe. I talked to you about the Starcraft AI internship, and such? (Unless that was someone else from Webs.com. I'm afraid I forgot your names!)

Small world.
You took it out of the context.

He is talking about the state of affairs and how that creates an immediate opportunity for type designers willing to sell rasterized versions of their fonts, not suggesting an alternative to the @font-face support.
wow, I am amazed at the speed of this.
The Flash version predates the iPhone version.
I agree. And I'd further add that it's quite likely that the time wasted and inefficiencies caused by having to deal with the trifling issue of font IP handsomely exceeds the combined revenue of all font foundries on earth.

The top 500 or so fonts should just be moved into the public domain en masse so we can forget about this ridiculous issue once and for all. Sucks if you're a foundry but you don't get to collect windfall profits for the rest of your life just because you made a slightly more attractive capital A a few months before someone else would have done the same, and the cost of administrating that "property" far outweighs any benefit such a property regime might theoretically deliver.
It's not even so much "do less", but be focused. A mobile device doesn't need EVERYTHING a desktop computer can do. It surely could, but it just doesnt make sense. It needs to be focused on doing things for its purpose. The storm that's brewing is one we haven't seen in 30 years. Computers are no longer just the beige boxes under our desk. They're everywhere, and there's an opportunity for an OS for different purposes. Microsoft may have 90% of the desktop OS market, but... if you calculated up their overall OS market share (desktops, smart phones, cloud/web servers, connected televisions, gaming devices, etc.) i'm sure it's rapidly shrinking and way less than 90%. This is the part where fear usually should start to set in.
In the climate debate there doesn't seem to be a common "climate agnostic" position yet, perhaps we should put our flags in the ground and define one. After all, you don't need to be an atheist or a theist when it comes to religion, so there's no need to make a claim either way on this stuff either.
If that were true then the postcode database would be public, but it ain't: http://ernestmarples.com/blog/2009/10/ernest-marples-postcod...
I think that Obama's prize was because of his work on nuclear weapons

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09...
Meebo is hiring http://www.meebo.com/jobs/openings/
I'm actually applying to transfer to UC Berkeley now. $10,302/year is a freakin' steal compared to what I've been paying.
Yep, we're (Medialets) hiring in NYC. Hadoop experience is a huge plus, but any distributed computing experience is interesting.

Also looking for folks who deeply grok mobile development (iPhone, Android, BBerry).

http://www.medialets.com/

Drop me a line - eric.litman@medialets.com.
Worldwide browser market share October 2009
That price is for California residents. If you are from out of state, it's much higher.
Some previous discussion and a related blog post at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=793130
The linked graphic is from an article entitled "October 2009 browser stats: Firefox finally passes IE6" that has explanations and a few other graphics as well:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/11/october-2009-b...
I'd rather see the emails between the guys at the Goldman Sachs carbon trading desk. Also, these guys aren't stupid (see the one guy's interest in destroying emails) and are going to be careful when communicating electronically.
I like the brown noise on http://www.simplynoise.com , personally. They have a thunderstorm soundscape on there too that is nice sometimes.
I wasn't even suggesting that there's anything wrong with that approach.

Needless to say, if you're a VC you want to fund people who want to create a company that can get a big exit. And people with those aspirations are few and far between in Europe.
Also, since Matt Knox will be there, this would fit well in a there's interesting problems even in the "evil" side of programming theme.
Oh please, this is just Gameloft whining and hoping others drop out so that they have less competition. They've successfully run in the extremely fragmented cell phone game market long before the iPhone came out. Android is, at worst, the same thing they've already been doing. If they ignore Android someone else will come along and eat their lunch with their own business model.
Who cares whether a method was overridden or called or whatever -- if it's in the runtime it can be invoked.

API's aren't hidden to make developers lives harder, but rather because they may not be stable and may or may not exist in future releases. And if they do exist, they may not do the same thing anymore.

So, users care. Not about the method itself, but about why their app that they may have paid money for has stopped working after they upgraded their iPhone.
I think Paul properly describes why Apple's current management of the App Store would ultimately end up deserving them if they didn't address it seriously rather sooner than later. However, deducing anything about the reasons which lead them to this situation seems a bit risky.

One doesn't need to look back far in the past to find examples of situations where Apple, after refusing to acknowledge the existence of a problem for an extended period of time suddenly came up with a solution that not only fixed it but also extended the playing ground significantly. The iTunes Store, the App Store, the iPhone copy and paste mechanism, etc. John Gruber could probably list quite a few.

Apple, or rather, Jobs' main problem is not one of efficiency but one of communication. His combined obsession for secrecy and control of the end user experience his mostly likely what produces this insanely inadapted public stance in face of the App Store obvious problems.

I seriously can't exclude that Jobs' obsessions won over the best of him and that he's actually fighting the tide instead of surfing it, but I wouldn't be surprised if a solution was already being tested inside the walls of the castle.

If Apple critics and users must learn anything about the company, it's that its public posture doesn't give away any information about what is actually brewing inside the company labs. If Apple must learn anything if it doesn't want to alleviate its most valuable partners (by which I mean developers), it's that posturing is not an acceptable communication practice and should be left people like Steve Balmer who have not much else to propose.
Just a small nitpick; whilst the US has better freedom of speech laws and more reasonable libel laws than the UK, the UK (along with most EU countries) does have stricter privacy laws.
FMI: "Dalvik is the virtual machine which runs the Java platform on Android mobile devices"... but it's not a JVM: different file format and different instruction set. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_virtual_machine
The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery: a Factory Model for Hospitals
The more people share about their lives, the fewer activities can be deemed socially unacceptable. Everyone is on the end of some bell curve or another. The more you share, the more there is to define you. The more there is to define you, the less one data point can define you.
Agreed. I did not buy an netbook because of my iPhone. I have 3 "computers"- my macbook pro, my iPhone, and my HTPC. Each is running a different OS for its specific purpose. Best of all, they all technically talk to each other.
Http://www.linkslondon4lover.com/bracelets-c-141.html
How long does it take to forward a .zip file? I'm sure McIntyre would be more than willing to pay $200/hr for such services.
Notice that Chrome is the only browser with current or newer releases in the wild.
He has my vote if that matters.
World's costliest netbook...wait it's just windows 7. Is it a good buy?
Here is the cost with windows 7

http://i.imgur.com/8zdrS.png

Here with XP. I think i will go with XP.

http://imgur.com/kvz1V.png
negotiate. you can negotiate anything.
I joke about the unfortunate demise of my competitors all the time. It doesn't mean I'm actively working to destroy them.
Sun touch mats warmth
SunTouch systems create a warm environment for both new and existing floors. Available for every type of surface, and for every kind of room, you can plan radiant floor heating for tile floors in bathrooms, stone floors in kitchens or any room where family and friends gather.
While I agree, the middle of a fiscal crisis is not the right time to barricade yourself in a lecture hall for that cause.
If you're a year old and earning a million in profits you should be looking at a larger (VC) round.

Or none at all.
What does everyone think?

That this post is a mistake?
If you are like me - A person knows basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript but artistically challenged. For my site a bought a template from http://themeforest.net and tweaked it to meet my needs. It worked pretty well for me. Most of the templates costs you 10-15$. But you need to deposit 20$ to buy anything. (I hate this part). If you are willing spend around 20$ it might be a good option.
For a bunch of kids fresh out of high school making their first serious political statement, "the state should give me more free government services" is a rather short-sighted, self-serving expression to make.
Kristof calls for a boycott of Bing (relating to Chinese censorship)