skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
thanks. we plan to use EC2 for higher volume aspects of our service. cheers,
Microsoft sponsored conference brings out the Mac users
Digital Cocktails: (Dis)Believing Your Eyes - Believable Imagery
Mathematician solves rowing boat "wiggle" problem
Stupid != irrational.
The Value of Visibility: The Strongest Link in the Supply Chain
The point I was replying to was that "... third party apps are just as often or more used on iPhone than on, say, Windows and Mac OS X".

I really doubt this is true given the lack of any killer mobile apps. I don't personally consider any of desktop apps in the list I gave 'killer', but fairly sure they've sold lots of computers.
Technology Review: Self-Cleaning, Super-Absorbant Solar Cells
Java.lang.outOfMemory
Here's instructions and links to get the image. They have released images for VMWare and VirtualBox too. Download requires a gdgt login.

http://discuss.gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/general/Download-Ch...
> Ironically, after how they covered the Iraq war, it seems it it is the fourth estate that has sold their soul.

You seem to think that coverage of the Iraq war was special/different. How cute.

Journalism and journalists haven't changed recently. Your awareness of them has. (I like to say that there was a change in the mid 70s, but that's probably my awareness changing.)
Youtube Introduces 1080p Full-HD Videos, We Tell You How To Download Them
Aren't viruses typically a factor of OS market share? E.g., viruses are prevalent on Windows because the market share is around 85-90%. Symbian and RIM still hold a sizable lead on the mobile front, so unless Apple plans on obliterating the mobile OS market, viruses will continue to be a non-issue.
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951335
Steve Jobs is a man of a few words
Folic Acid and Vitamin B12 Boost Cancer Risk?
I just say that mentioning audiophiles and swine flu vaccine in same article makes me uneasy. And not acting on something you hear in media is neither stupid nor irrational.
Not to mention that none of the apps on my desktop have been "approved" by anybody (apart from myself).
I've worked from home for four years now and can't imagine consistently getting anything done at an office.

And that is even with three young children in the house because they know that when I'm at work, I'm not available and concentrating. Our development team's communications revolve around high bandwidth when necessary, but otherwise leaving each other delicately alone. But that would be different at the office: there would be many lunches and things of that nature as well as coworkers we are not directly working together with who have (admittedly very interesting) things to distract us with.

Sometimes I do need to break out my "cone of silence" which is a mix of earplugs AND whitenoise on headphones.

At one point I rented a spare office in a coffeeshop a block from my house... that went OK, it definitely helped with the "separate work environment" psychology that I think is necessary. The biggest problem with that was being in a coffeeshop: temptation to spend money on espresso constantly. After about 6 months of that, I decided to come back home. YMMV.
Long term, haircutting is screwed. There's no real way to improve the efficiency of 1hairstylist:10-100 clients. Most attempts just result in an inferior product. Increasing productivity in all other areas means that the hairstylist and the resulting haircut get more and more expensive (everything else gets cheaper in comparison).
Ask HN: How can I invite facebook friends to join my application via api?
Hi guys, I'm very confused about this.<p>I want to implement a system that allows users to invite their friends from facebook to join my external application (which is not a facebook application). They could either send an email to the whole list, or send a message.<p>I'm really frustrated because I can't find how to do this via api. Also I'm not sure if I should use facebook connect or what (why don't they have oauth?). I'm trying to do it with ruby on rails by the way.<p>Any kind of help would be appreciated.
This is something that might be a good candidate for openjdk and/or
icedtea. The only problem is the build seems to be regularly broken
in the repository. - Andrew Oliver

I'm surprised that a project that large doesn't use something like tinderbox or cruise control.
> Download requires a gdgt login.

Guh. Who's gonna take one for the team and free those downloads from captivity?
If Chrome OS does what it claims to do, I will install it without hesitation on my parents, inlaws, and grandparents computers.

As far as I can tell, they don't use their computers for anything more than facebook, forwarding patriotic emails, and clicking on malware links.

It would certainly make my job as unofficial family sysadmin a lot easier.
> Ending Prop 13 would give the state quite a bit in revenue to continue funding higher education and fund many of the chronic deficits California faces.

No it wouldn't because local property taxes don't fund higher education and never have; higher ed has always been funded at the state level.

> Ending Prop 13 would give the state quite a bit in revenue to continue funding higher education and fund many of the chronic deficits California faces.

You're assuming that CA has a revenue problem. It doesn't. It spends gobs more than most other states (per capita).

CA has a spending problem. That can't be solved with more revenues.

> . Unfortunately, even though the California public views higher education as an important goal they also want low taxes at the same time which is impossible to sustain (if 8 years of Bush have taught us anything). Those are opposing goals!

The US govt also has a spending problem.

It is possible to not have a spending problem. Texas (among others) manages to have decent schools and low taxes.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-voegli1-2009nov01,...
From the start because I could not afford to commute, but I am also a cofounder so I have a lot to say on the issue. I think that for just plain "time to crank out massive amounts of code" nothing beats working from home. I've coded most of the non-routine new stuff like new improved libraries and frameworks this way. For coding maintenance stuff: I think I can do that better at the office.
I have the same problem as some commenters on this link point out: http://discuss.gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/general/Download-Ch...

Doesn't work for me on VirtualBox on OSX. I cannot login to the OS, saying there's no internet access/no offline login available.
Climate center's server hacked, revealing documents and emails
> But donors and the state can stop paying when they don't feel like it. The students don't have that luxury.

Sure they do - it's called transferring. And for potential students, it's called going elsewhere.

Yes, students have higher transaction costs, but that's just another way of saying that they should investigate more before making an initial decision.

To put it another way, did you really think that the free lunch would continue, that all of the spiffy stuff didn't have costs that you might have to pay?

Decisions have consequences, even for college students.
Google adsense new feature - star marked ads
No you don't:

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
Twitter to launch paid-for corporate accounts this year
Reminds me of a rant from a friend of mine who used to work in a recording studio.

"You should see the 20 meters of grimy, oxidized and plain cable under the raised floor tiles that the signal travels from a musicians guitar or mic to the recording equipment, before it gets recorded. Then people buy $200 cables and claim to be able to tell the difference. Whatever."
Link died for me, HN crash the server?
Sony Unveils Its Answer to Apple's iTunes
Zipped it is 330MB or so
It would seem that they have violated HIPAA by both losing the data and not informing anyone about it.

Violations and Penalties here: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/solution...

Note that "The DOJ concluded that the criminal penalties for a violation of HIPAA are directly applicable to covered entities—including health plans, health care clearinghouses, health care providers who transmit claims in electronic form, and Medicare prescription drug card sponsors."

I would think that a data loss like this would likely hit the maximum $1.5m fine..
such applications would be able to do things system-wide

You should see how many ways I could make someone miserable with shareware running on Windows, and that didn't stop 100,000 people...
Original source: http://www.theqbf.com/?p=project&id=theambientlife

I like the aesthetic, but I didn't see anything particularly insightful here. Yes, we're working on P2P networks to augment existing networks, and functionality is constantly moving into the cloud. But having a human doctor monitor your vitals 24/7 remotely? Replacing emergency responders' communication devices with those flimsy video chat things? I'm not convinced.

Also, it really bugged me that the woman had wireless medical sensors in her clothing, but no cell phone or equivalent.
older computers, new at this, and would rather learn all this stuff the hard way. I do know what vmware is, I don't want to screw up what I have
Ask HN: Review my iPhone hacking game.
Hi everyone, I just created and had my first iPhone game approved by Apple. I created a "hacking" game that emulates basic computer hacking. I tried to make it so that anyone can play it. I would really like feedback on the UI, do the hints make sense, what would you like to see added to it? Anyways check it out at

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ihack/id327130017?mt=8&uo=6

You can email me for a promo code at phillip at boomcollc dot com (I only have 10). Thanks!
But I think that is the point of this article. What you state is a valid way to handle things. 4-5 years in, you have a profitable company that needs grown out from 70mph to 90mph. But the trend is currently to start thinking about handing the company over when it still has training wheels on, way before it has hit 70mph.

The point that resonates with me is that people are so fixated on the hand-off that they fail to really make a (sustainable) company. People ought to go into a venture thinking: I'm going to make a great company, and if at some point I decide to sell it/hand over management, I'll have that option. Instead, from day 1 they are obsessed with getting out.

I think the article is too strong in saying 'everyone' does this, and I don't think it is the case that 'no one' should do that, but I think that businesses would be better off in general if that plan were the exception rather than the rule that it is becoming.
TechCrunch is also linking to a virtualbox image of the Chrome OS: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5170843/chromeos-image-999.9...
Here's the VirtualBox image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/136177/chrome-os-0.4.22.8-gdgt.vdi.z...

and here's the VMWare one: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/136177/chrome-os-0.4.22.8-gdgt.vmdk....

EDIT: Looks like you lot broke my dropbox public folder:

"Hi Hrishi,

This email is an automated notification from Dropbox that your Public links have been temporarily suspended on account of generating excessive traffic. Your Dropbox will continue to function completely normally with the exception of Public links.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line at support@dropbox.com.

- The Dropbox Team"

I'm taking down the files now. If anyone from dropbox is reading can you please reactivate my public links? Thanks.
Ask HN:Review my science fiction story(part two).
Luke only cares about old people, and how they vote. This is Pittsburgh! It's the correct strategy, unfortunatly.
Microsoft needs to hit a home run with IE9, or the IE franchise is going to go the way of Geocities.

That's not necessarily true. It could be that the current version(s) of IE are good enough for what most users need, or at least that the cost of changing browsers exceeds the benefit. If that's true, then the level of performance that IE provides will prevail, and the recent standards and performance achievements of other platforms will just be sales talking points.

HTML 5, etc., does not represent user demands (at least not directly). It represents what developers want to be able to do. If our users refuse to provide the requirements for those developers' apps to run, then it's going to be the developers who have to change.

(I make no judgments about the merits of this, just observing where the balance of power lies.)
There may be several reasons why sperm didn't evolve to be temperature tolerant. The first is likely that they would have suffered reduced motility just when it's needed, reducing fertility rates.

Another reason might be that maintaining the testicles at body temperature increases the risk of infection. There are very few purely sexually transmitted diseases, likely due to this temperature difference. Those same sexually transmitted diseases rarely cause harm beyond the genitals, and in fact these diseases are far more harmful to the female reproductive system than the male (a woman with undiagnosed gonorrhoea or chlamydia is essentially guaranteed to become sterile, however in men it either takes longer, or they may never become sterile - note that a male can lose a testicle to injury or disease without becoming sterile or losing fertility).

It's likely that there were more advantages to any male with dangling gonads over retracted. The reason why our testicles require constant temperature control (and independent control) is probably a more intriguing question, which IMO likely has a lot to do with our method of motility. A dog's testicles are unlikely to be affronted by the sun, however any naked male human has a serious problem when walking toward the sun. This likely wasn't a problem when we were semi-erect (in the evolutionary sense, not the other sense) and had hairy gonads, however why did modern humans develop wholly unprotected gonads? Think about it, our testicles don't even have protection against the sun! Dense hair provides protection against heat stroke, so did humans already have protection for our genitals before this became a problem? IE did our invention of clothing happen early enough that it actually changed the development of our sexual organs?
Reminds me of the "Pass this law or...think of the children!" style of politics.
This isn't quite true. The vaccine was made in a rush, but it was done using the exact same techniques that have been used for years to make the normal seasonal flu vaccine. And I'd say that is probably the most widely used and studied vaccine in history.

Instead of targeting the normal 'seasonal' flu variants, the h1n1 vaccine targets h1n1. So, fears about the risks of this vaccine being any different from the risks of the seasonal flu vaccine are pretty much unfounded.

(Disclaimer: I am a scientist...)
I install all sorts of random jailbroken apps. I also install Android apps.

So far so good, but buyer beware.
Unfortunately I only have one upvote. This is so true. What America, and many states, need is deep spending cuts, not more taxes.
You can argue about if it is good or not, but there is no denying that it is good marketing.
Getting started with Linux: Try a live CD version
This part: "Laptops displaced desktops?! You are deluded."

I _like_ desktops more than laptops, as I argue here: http://jseliger.com/2008/12/26/computer-post-desktop-or-lapt... , but note the link to the Ars Technica article: global laptop shipments as measured both by number and by dollars have overtaken laptop sales. And that was in Dec. 2008: the trend has only accelerated since. That's about as good a definition for laptop sales having overtaken desktops as I can imagine.
Perhaps not the largest slice, but to me the more interesting one to market to. I see HN readers as consumers of "App Store B": http://www.marco.org/208454730
I worked from home for a couple of years and just recently gave it up to work in a co-working space.

It took me almost two years to realize it, but the isolation of working at home nearly drove me crazy. Depending on my roommate's or girlfriend's schedule, two or three days could pass without seeing another person. For me, that just wasn't healthy. I found myself going out for lunch just to be around people. Not a terrible solution, but the cost and calories add up quickly.

So far working a few days a week at a co-working space plus getting a gym membership has made a huge improvement in my general health and happiness. I'm back to commuting on public transportation, which I now actually enjoy. Leaving my house and getting on the train forces a context switch from home life to work life, making me more productive. My work days are also shorter since I find I'm more focused.

Co-working also doesn't suffer from the problem of coworkers interrupting me to ask questions. Sure, a guy at the next desk might talk too loud on the phone but no one is going to tap me on the shoulder to ask for help figuring out why the request params aren't making it to the controller on their ajax call.
4. Push your team beyond what you and they think they are capable of - they will be more empowered and will be able to complete more on their own if they are reaching for a high bar

This works great for programmers as long as it makes sense and you're brutally honest with them. As soon as programmers realize they're being "gamed", it stops working and will never work again.

I once had a leader who constantly moved deadlines up to push us. Being the aspiring overachievers the we were, we always did whatever it took and never missed a deadline.

Then the leader had to push a deadline out 30 days for reasons unrelated to us, but he never told us. He just figured that we'd push as hard as usual and be done 30 days early. We learned the new deadline from a third party and hit the real deadline, not the "30 day early" one. After that, there was nothing he could ever do to push us again.

Leaders, beware. Once you blow your trust with us, all your tricks become worthless.
Game Design: "Natural Attractors" make your game more fun
It's not a question of whether they should reject certain apps, but whether they can. Under the current system, Apple can reject applications that encourage you to throw your iPhone. And the ability to do this is definitely something Apple wants, as they currently use this criteria to reject such apps. This ability would be diminished under dasil003's proposal, so it would be harder to convince Apple that such a system is a net win.
I have been curious about JRuby for a long time, and relatively recently I got a chance to work on a JRuby-powered Rails application that hits a database, uses external Java APIs and serves pages.

The experience has been miserable: the "warm-up problem" is so pronounced that development reminds me of my C++ days when I had to compile my code. Rake tasks are slow as hell. Running unit tests has been so painful that we hacked Rails to run tests via Web interface. Memory consumption is through the roof: JVM-based Ruby eats (or should I say wastes?) about 2-3x times more RAM that RubyEE 1.8.6

You keep hearing RAM is cheap, but for small startups no it isn't - just look at EC2/SliceHost/Linode prices, and 1GB instances aren't going to cut it if you're running this pig (JVM) doing anything non-trivial.

Moreover, accessing Java classes from JRuby isn't nearly as smooth as using something like Closure. Ruby strings aren't Java strings and it applies to arrays, hash tables, everything. Even importing JARs isn't that trivial. Moreover, your Ruby code which consumes Java libs looks more or less like Java in a Halloween costume. NOT FUN.

The bottom line: yes, Rails on JRuby is about twice as fast (in our application) but you take a shocking hit to your workflow by the startup lag and you pay with an increased RAM wastage by JVM when you deploy.

Next time I am needing some Java libraries in a Rails app, I am hosting an instance of Tomcat and exposing that library via a simple REST service using plain Java.
How could running Chrome OS in a VM "screw up" anything you have?
The only way I'm able to do this is because I live right in the middle of Manhattan, so I'm always able to go outside and see other people (even if it is just talking to the doorman), intersperse the day with meetings, occasionally rotate among nearby coffee shops, and plan nighttime activities. I can see how working at home might drive you crazy if you're in a less densely populated location with fewer people around.
Microsoft: open source protects Silverlight investments
It's just as (in)accurate applied to the courts unfortunately.
That would be about as effective as the use of SSL certificates to prevent phishing. That is: zero effectiveness.
Chargify, new billing API
The title implies that Chrome OS is in fact more than a dumb terminal, but the article does nothing to support the notion, in fact it argues the other side.
the cost of college is also highly subsidized. That's not exactly a functioning market, although the market part of the system is responding to those non-market incentives. That's probably why college has turned into a luxury resort. If you aren't paying the full price, why not go to the school with free rock concerts and a yoga room?

I think a possible solution might be to require that if a college gets government subsidies, it must make it's services separable. That means students get the option to not pay for (and not participate in) student activities. Of course, there should be no government subsidies for non-essential services.
There are "no viruses" for OS/2, either.
The VirtualBox image just hangs at a black screen for me (using Virtual Box 3.0.4) - anyone else have this problem?
Working pretty hard on my open-source projects at http://binaryage.com.

Until today I've got $12 in contributions via addons.mozilla.com :-) But I'm optimistic I hope someday I will be able to do it full time and possibly make living from it. But it seems I have a long journey ahead, for the meantime I had to stick with freelance/client work ...

Any ideas what should I focus at highly appreciated! Your experience may help me move faster. Thanks.
Get the Google cache
The answer to that question is "yes", but that's not the question they ask in the column.

They continually ask about how to sell software after making it open source, which is (or at least should be) stupid by definition, but some people are too steeped in the old ways to understand how crazy that sounds and start asking the real question:

"If it won't let me make money by selling software, then how will it let me make money?"

Who was it that said the easiest way to make money from open source is to use it? (One of the MySQL guys I think)

PS why is there " a session entitled, "Is Open Source Old News?" at the Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference)" The mixed messages on Open Source from Microsoft continue.
I think what Seth is saying is that parents are objecting for the wrong reasons, not that they are wrong because the longitudinal studies say the vaccine is safe.
This is nice, but it's a very conservative estimate of the near future. Many of these things already exist to some extent, or seem likely to happen within five years or so.
I’m a software tailor
I have almost no mobile app development experience, so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to me like the reason you wouldn't have to worry about an Android app wrecking havoc on your smartphone is because it runs in a JVM-ish sandbox, whereas iPhone apps have unfettered access with Obj-C. The Android technical environment is self-regulatory, whereas Apple has to bolt-on a bureaucratic process to ensure quality.
Hacker/Writer needed
I'm the new editor in chief for the social media guide Ploked [@Ploked on Twitter]. We're revamping the site for a December relaunch, and I'd like to get someone to contribute a short post once a week on hacking tricks, technical developments, and open source initiatives in Web 2.0. We're trying to make the site cater to an edgier and tech savvy social media crowd. If you are interested, please email me at lauren@ploked.com.