skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm really interested to see if the advent of HDTV will actually help in the future.

My sense of epidemiological research that I have read earlier suggests that genetic susceptibility to myopia is triggered by an environment of maintaining the same near focal length in vision for long spans of time. The key preventive thing to do is not to avoid looking at things that are blurry images, but to make sure to vary one's eyes' focal length continually throughout the day. Most outdoor sports with balls in rapid motion (soccer, backyard baseball or football or basketball, etc.) pretty much ensure this. My second son's vision has actually improved in the last two years from almost needing glasses for myopia back to not needing any vision correct as he stays active on his town club traveling soccer team, which trains year-round. (He LOVES to read and spends many hours in front of the computer writing stories too, but I make sure he gets outdoor play every day, all winter and all seasons.) Vary your eye focus to preserve the best vision you can with the shuffle of genes you were born with.
I've only been a customer for about 5 years, but in that time I've heard their CEO saying they won't be banning or hunting down people who use their phones for tethering, I've seen them roll out the Android phone before anybody else, and I've had really good experiences with their network (in msp and in the rocky mountains). I don't know if any of those are "forward-thinking", but I've actually been a happy customer, rather than a grudging one.
When Amazon and Kindle Win
I suspect that we'll see a much bigger push towards biodiesel as high fructose corn syrup continues to get attacked. Also, anybody capable of growing corn should be capable of growing soybeans, which is something that's also added to every type of food (if not an outright substitute). The corn growers will adapt.
The wide-angle photo of the flight deck under "who's building" is very cool.

Beautiful aircraft.
Really? The iPod touch is $199. Cell radios really aren't that expensive.
Has anyone just completed an exit?
3D may revolutionize cinema, but if it does, I'll bet that it comes to the home as well.

BluRay has been out for a while. It's time for another format....
If your webserver machines are so secure, why put them in the database at all?

You do put them on a web server. It just happens to run software optimized for extracting a particular entry from a large data set :)

Ironically the way you suggest is more secure: because to compromise it (assuming the web app is out of the equation for the moment) requires a system exploit. Whereas you have the added complexity of the database as an additional weak point.

EDIT: im confused about the downvote.. what in particular appears wrong (so I can explain it). Having Database software certainly lowers security on any system :) it's another failure point (any good security text book will explain that)
The license states that source must be provided "on a medium customarily used for software interchange". Honestly I would think that in this day and age, a link to a git repo or whatnot would qualify. I wonder if such issues would arise if there was simply a set of links to the source for the unmodified versions.

Of course, setting up a github fork for your company's branch of a project is relatively straightforward, and also solves such issues.
"When a male dog gets a whiff of a female dog in heat, it has certain extremely intense desires, which it will try to extremely hard to satisfy. We see the intensity only too clearly, and when the desire is thwarted (for instance, by fence or a leash), it pains us to to identify with that poor animal, trapped by its innate drivers, pushed by an abstract force that it doesn't int the least understand. This poignant sight clearly exemplifies will, but is it free will?" - Douglas Hofstadter (I Am A Strange Loop)
CalTrain carries bikes too.
Build to flip?
Lunch in Boston? This time of the year? Hope you have a nice warm / sunny day on Friday! :)
Dazzboard Launches Drag and Drop Media Management for Android
I don't put a ton of faith in iSuppli, but regardless my point is that it is unlikely anyone would sell a device at a loss--and $99 would surely be a loss, yes?--without any obvious way to recoup that money.
Self breast examination guide
> If you're in SF South Bay, there are plenty of low-traffic roads where you will beat the cars back home

Yes, there are plenty of low-traffic roads in the South Bay, but how many people can bike faster than cars go on said roads?
Aishwarya Rai Desktop Calendar 2010
Replacing Init Scripts with Supervisord
Wow that would be amazing. Any chance you could track down that article?

Wouldn't such a cure be 10-20 years away? I mean they're just now having the first clinical trials for stem cell therapies developed 10 years ago, right?
Phoenix Bankruptcy
There's something like this in one of Gerald Weinberg's books, probably _Becoming a Technical Leader_, an auto-company story from something around 50 years ago.
I couldn't agree more. I was stupefied when I saw this headline on HN.
Here's a potential solution. Computer monitors that appear to be say 500 ft away, but take up the equivalent field of view as your current monitor.

I.E., it would appear you screen were being projected onto the side of a mountain, but as a visual illusion (not really projecting a 1000 ft screen).

Is that possible? How might it work, holograms?
Right, but I dont mean junk juices. I mean natural fruit juices, the one just out of the fruit. They are supposedly full of fructose and no fibers, right? So are they just as bad, on a fructose point of view (as in supposedly has the bad side effects the article lists) as a cola with the same amount of fructose derived from HFCS in it?
Ask HN: Which PHP chart solution do you use?
I am searching for an efficient, free chart building solution for my current PHP based startup project. I have explored a number of different options, from image based charts to flash.

However, before I actually start coding I thought I would throw out the question to find out which PHP charting libraries other programmers are using.

Please tell me which PHP libraries you have used or would recommend.
The valuation of your startup is now binary
A couple of lenses should do the trick.
There's also soem great videos of Octopi solving mazes. What's particularly interesting is not that they win quickly, but that they cheat - 'choose your own adventure' style - extending one arm into each possible outcome, and only investigating those where the outcome allows further exploration.

They're amazing animals, and really blow away the whole concept of invertebrates not having great intellects.
How do you suggest this intern should determine whether or not the broadcaster has the rights to the content they're broadcasting? There have certainly been companies that have decided to use Justin.tv legitimately without telling us first.
I've seen them used for a couple of other reasons:

- Some email clients break wrapped urls

- Physically printing a long url -- takes less space, and easier for users to type
The iPhone is $100. Wintel was able to beat Macintosh due to pricing, not due to quality. Windows was the next best option for people who didn't want to shell out $$$$.

iPhone is the nobrainer choice for anyone with a clue, unless they are specifically looking for something open source. That's maybe .5% of the market.

Android's market is as an alternative to the iPhone on carriers that don't have the iPhone- a market that's being shut down abroad as Apple expands beyond their launch partners.

Edit: it helps if I use the right words :) Don't post on HN before coffee!
If this is really true, I will consider ebaying my droid, coughing up the $150 cancellation fee and saying goodbye to Verizon forever.

The U.S. badly needs an open (i.e. European-style) cell phone market. Google has (hopefully) realized this and is doing something about it.
Course: What Is Mathematics? (aka Math for Poets)
Making an open source mobile OS isn't a great way to make money either. Google sees mobile as critical to long-term success and is spending money to make big inroads. If they spend a billion dollars and get 20,000,000 new people as Google mobile users that may be a coup in the future. Hell, they spent more than that for YouTube.
Eventually China will stop buying our treasuries, they are already discussing it, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487245,00.html, then the government will have to drastically cut spending or inflate the monetary supply. No one seriously believes they will cut spending.
That makes sense: the thing that works in their favour though is the sheer number of huge companies who can bring their clout to this. They will collaborate to tie the proceedings up in decades of endless litigation. But more importantly think of the political clout of these companies.
FiveThirtyEight: Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill
I probably wouldn't use a gang member as an example of a sociopath--to him, his society is one where killing rival gang members is a cultural norm. He's not a sociopath, he's normal in that he fits into the culture around him.
First flight is a bit more than 2 years late according to Wikipedia.

However that's not bad for a project this complicated, being built in so many different places. I know more than a few aerospace engineers who would be delighted to deliver their projects only 2 years late.

For the frequent fliers here I'd recommend this wing load testing video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe9PVaFGl3o - it's from the 777 program but it's pretty interesting.

Personally I think the A380 will be more successful due to the increase in the number of Chinese residents able to afford flights and their population density making big city to big city routes a larger component of demand. However there's clearly space in the market for both as they have different roles.
Tool of the Day: Keep Track of Shared Bills With BillsAreIn
Haveafortune: 2010 is the Freakin' Future
Yet the iPhone costs more than twice that.

And the ADP1 (an unlocked G1) has relatively modest specs compared to this new phone and costs $400 from Google. I don't think that's because Google is trying to make a mint by sticking it to developers.

Virtually all new HTC smartphones retail in the $400-600 range. I don't think HTC is making a fortune off them.
Why Are Europeans White?
What is the probability that a plane by Boeing or Airbus will encounter a flight problem in its first flight that would be noticeable to the general public?
I pay $60 per month for unlimited voice and data, and I can tether as much as I want with no fees, etc.

tmobile's main problem is network coverage (around San Francisco it's quite bad) ...

But its policies and customer service are quite reasonable. From what I gather, at&t has just as bad network coverage but doesn't like you to tether and charges a lot more.

To get measurably better service one needs sprint or verizon, which charge even more than at&t
People pay 2.7 times what a PC costs, for the Apple product with the exactly same interior components.

In what parallel universe is this guy living in? Why is his number so exact? Is there a citation?

I'm pretty sure if you want Apple hardware specs for a third of the cost you need to own your own factory in China.
We'll have to wait and see how it plays out. Being "open" hasn't propelled Linux over Windows. And it should be noted that most people aren't using Android in a way that's more open than the iPhone - people get their programs from the Android Market, OS updates are provided by the handset manufacturer/carrier, etc. In some ways, the iPhone is more freeing since one doesn't have to worry about the carrier or device manufacturer abandoning it for OS updates - as my roommate looks forward to a 6 month wait for an update to his HTC Hero which is now two versions behind!

I think what it really comes down to is who provides the best experience. Freedom is part of that experience - can you use the device how you want. Part of that is open-ness, but part of that is having something that works right. No one would say that anti-virus software enhances the user experience in its own right, but millions use it because it prevents something worse. Likewise, restrictions on what you can install can have two sides.

It's a balancing act. Whether Android or the iPhone will get it right is debatable, but I think it's definitely a balancing act.
There are quite a few.

BUT:

When I looked into this a few months ago, I found that PHP generation of graphs is expensive. It was cheaper to send just the data to the browser and let a Flash control or jQuery do the graphing. This removes a big bottleneck.

I settled on a for-pay mapping Flash control and an open source Flash graphs control. Both accept data in sensible XML and so it wasn't hard to talk to them.
Crystal - minimalistic PHP database toolkit
Vanity - Experiment Driven Development framework for Rails
Because apple is pretty greedy, and the iPhone has a camera.
Seeing this kind of rumor posted to HN always makes me wonder if it has jumped the shark.
Nah, the only categorization that really needs to be done is by topic. It's easy to tell if something is, say, a tech article, or tech/programming, or tech/linux, based on source and keywords. If your algorithm did that once per item that's in anyone's feed, everything else is refinement. Ideally, a human won't need to touch it at all. Even if the machine gets it wrong, it could be corrected with a "this is in the wrong place" button. In any case, an article shouldn't rise too high in any category that it's not relevant for.
It’s like saying, ‘Let me look through your e-mails,’ Crichton said

It is quite literally that, for people who use FB for messaging their friends.

But so long as the head of HR gives his or her login details to every applicant, I don't see the problem.
It doesn't matter: Google knows it will make good money from mobile search, and if the offer those phones at a market-shattering price, in which the will sell it in volumes, they will more than make up for what they lost in the first place.
but GV is not the google phone, right?

So fine you can use google voice on your old phone, but this is a separate fact from the question of whether the google phone uses data/voip for voice calls.
Okay, that was one of my worries, that PHP generation of the graphs would overload my server. However, I haven't yet found a good looking flash based graph generator. Open Flash Chart looks like it might be an option, but I don't really like the way their charts look.

I would love to find something that looks and acts like the charts that Google Analytics uses.
There is a better article on this at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427331.100-generatio...

Research discussed there suggests that what appears in peripheral vision may be important. That may also explain why myopia gradually gets worse during years of wearing glasses.
Hacked Wiimote Makes Super Scientific Sensor
Theoretically, maybe, but in practice, the food industry's HFCS sources are typically of abysmally low quality. It's almost entirely from genetically modified corn which has been reported to cause kidney problems for some people.

There's also pesticides and other contaminants.

For example, mercury: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01...

Most health food stores (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, etc.) have a policy against stocking products containing HFCS.
Am I having a dumb attack? His smarter version ends up multiplying row x row instead of row x column. Doesn't this produce an incorrect result?
The explanation confuses Price and Value. The scenario that's laid out for us is that initially the men are unsure which tie is more expensive. If neither of them believes that one tie is more expensive, then neither of them value their own tie above the other.

Thus, each man has two outcomes: either he will acquire a second tie of the same value to him, or he will be left with no ties. Ignoring the diminished marginal utility of the second tie over the first, it really is 50/50 -- but to an economist, it's not for the reasons explained.
A tutorial level for the internet?
better article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427331.100-generatio...

discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=929524
Linux has grown way faster than windows over the past 10 years... Check again in another 5 years.
The Dreamliner cabin was included in the Cooper-Hewitt's 2006 Design Triennial. It looked pretty nice, but only a handful of airlines have any taste when it comes to their interiors.
Meh, it looks the same as any other airliner. Where're the radical designs, a la Concorde (delta), Comet (engines in wings) etc etc? Boeing's just making tweaks to a basic design that's been around since the 1960s.
The original first flight was scheduled for November 27, 2007.

Spelunking back in history to the original delay announcement, http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2007-09-05-b..., is interesting:

"Chicago-based Boeing now is struggling to avoid missed deadlines and their resulting costs in dollars and reputation. Airbus, for example, is running an embarrassing 22 months behind on production of its new A380 super-jumbo jet, its flagship product. Those delays caused management shake-ups, canceled orders and costly payments to customers."

Boeing and the world gave Airbus a lot of grief for the schedule slippage of the A380. Boeing has subsequently gotten its share of grief for 787 slips. Interestingly, I've seen comments holding the A380 up as a success vs. the 787 by people who have already forgotten the A380 schedule slips.
Speaking personally, I didn't donate out of some sense of duty to the abstract concept of open source, I donated because I have a vested interest in seeing Clojure succeed. If it reaches prominence as a language, that has a real, long-term impact on my career satisfaction. There isn't much open source software which fits that description.
Game Theory: The Art Of Acting Rational
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/stem-cells-used-...

It's corneal damage it's repairing, not the lenses, I guess I misremembered - unless it was a different trial, but even so may well be transferable to the lens anyway, stem cell treatments tend to work a lot like 'magic' :).

Maybe 5 years is a little optimistic, but 10 should be reasonable, if they're using your own stem cells there may even be fast track options.

I think a lot of the 'just getting to trials now' treatments had been held up by various ethics and legality issues over the last few years - even when we're talking about adult stem cells, there seemed to be opposition based on ethical grounds.
Roy: "So, what do you do, Don?"

Don Draper: "I blow up bridges."

Midge: "Don’s in advertising."

Roy: "No way! Madison Avenue? What a gas!"

Midge: "We all have to serve somebody."

Roy: "Perpetuating the lie. How do you sleep at night?"

Don: "On a bed made of money."
Being "open enough" made Windows more popular than Macintosh, which is probably a fairer comparison in some ways. Linux didn't even really get started in terms of 'desktop' stuff until around 2000. Also, Linux is way more popular in the server world than Windows.
Macintosh beats wintel on pricing? Could you give an example of that?

I've heard a lot of people complain about how bad aspects of the iPhone are... it was a bold and game changing device, but I don't think a product that has changed minimally since the first version launched should be getting too confident about continued market share.
Would you sell your privacy for a bargain on a phone? I think I might be tempted to. Sheesh.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, they know they'll make tremendous amounts of money from mobile search, and app sales (if/when they pick up for android).

Over a year, everyone with android will probably have supplied Google with hundreds of dollars of mobile search revenue.

If the Gphone sells for a low price, and in very high quantities, they will probably lose for every one sold, but will make much more per user than the $100-200 lost on production.

It also means more sticky users in the long run, popularizing android and turning more people towards google. More apps would be developed, other android phones will presumably sell more (unless the contrary happens, in which case it is the Gphone that sells, which means even more money for Google).
What about the case where the company modifies the code and then publishes the original unmodified source as their work? How is "yeah, look at our unmodified source repo," any better than "yeah, we're using the original source, go away"
I'm a total legal noob... Is it possible that lawsuits like this might be impacted by the outcome of the pending opinion from the Supreme Court on In re Bilski?
The Outer Limits
FOR HALF A CENTURY COMPUTER PERFORMANCE HAS ROUGHLY DOUBLED EVERY TWO YEARS, BUT THE LAWS OF PHYSICS PLACE INSURMOUNTABLE BARRIERS ON HOW LONG THIS GROWTH CAN OCCUR
How To Speak in Na'vi
Theft is the wrong word to use.

Theft implies a physical item that has been stolen. The original code is still there, so therefore it cannot be theft.

Yes, it's an asinine argument. However, the same people that feel this and open source license violations are theft, feel that copyright infringement is not.
Isn't TechCrunch one of the first investors in UStream.tv, the competitor to Justin.tv with almost as many users and live streams? Why do they choose JTV to write about instead of the possibility that anybody could attempt to broadcast anything on any live video web site? You can also find minutes and minutes of NFL (professional football) video on YouTube right now that have been posted for years and years as an example, and YouTube is about 5 years old and is owned by Google and should have even better technology than Justin.tv, a two year old startup, right?

I would understand the point if other live video sites (and static video sites like YouTube) had better technology to detect this stuff, but they don't.

This is like complaining about Apple for rejecting lots of developers during the app store beta when other mobile companies didn't even have anything similar. Surely, they could have hired $6/hr interns to approve more developers!
As much as I hate to say it, It seems like this is something that could be easily accomplished by piggybacking off of Twitter.

Just drop the link, some tags, and misc attributes along with a short description.. Is it much more complicated than that?
I've only seen it done in mass-recruitment situations, like applicants for a graduate trainee scheme at a large company.
There's surely somebody profiting unfairly from other people's hard work here, but it's Eolas.
The best estimates still only put production costs of an iPhone 3GS @ $178.96 1

The rumor isn't so crazy if you remember that google's most general mission is to get people online and using the web and looking at their ads.

You can guarantee that they know roughly how much ad revenue the average smart-phone using individual brings to them and therefore they could justify bringing a phone to market at cost or even below.

1 http://gigaom.com/2009/12/09/who-is-getting-rich-off-the-iph...
Open Flash Chart is what I use and you can style it extensively. The default is horrible though, I agree.

Getting the GA look, or something very close to it, shouldn't be too hard IMHO. Getting the functionality might be tricky if the control doesn't support it.
As ubercore mentioned, some email clients will still break up links.

Further, not everything supports html - they are valuable for formats that primarily rely on text:

Text-based emails are a lot easier/better with a url-shortener. IRC conversations are better with a url-shortener. Etc.

On the other hand, they don't seem to be the big deal that everyone is making them out to be.
We can all see how well this prohibition worked...
Hard Numbers on Stackoverflow Careers
While I'd agree about car vs bike, I'd prefer public transporation. On a bus or subway, I can get some pleasure reading done, which I'd rather do.