skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most airlines (at least here in Europe) have set weight limits for your carry on luggage as well now, so that trick doesn't always work.

What I have seen done though is someone taking out two jackets from their luggage, filling the pockets of both jackets, and then wearing both jackets through security. That seemed to work fine.
A delightful parody of the modern presentation
Since the root comment talked about Python's set, you might want to have a look at Haskell's Data.Set. Haskell's Data.Map is more or less equivalent to Python's dict. You can also map and fold over Sets and Maps. There is no built-in function for applying a function to a set to get a map, but you can easily add one.
No, he means "horizontally challenged"...
A mortgage has an interest rate set (in part) by an idependant body. This is generally below 10%. You will find that this deal we're discussing is the other way round the label slicing off 90% off the actual sales. That is their "interest charge" for the loan they provided.

If we're going to stick to this mortgage comparison: do you think it would be fair if all the banks colluded to charge interest rates starting at 90%?

Right/wrong, morally/legally that doesn't bother me. Is it fair? That's the question. The answer IMO is "No".

This is what riles me, especially when as a consumer it is very difficult to find this kind of information so it is difficult to make "fair" purchases to stop this kind of thing.
Startups: Marry your Co-founder
I'm extremely happy to see this. This is a great day for http://en.wikinews.org/

Oh, and guys -- you perhaps ought to consider writing for it. :) The HN crowd is very educated, so many of you are the ideal candidates to be writing the news, as you witness it.
The labels, are, in effect, lending the money the band needs to start and promote itself. If you give me 100K today and I give you back 100K three years from now, I won't expect you to think we are even.
Ask HN: Help me on a fun little project?
Hey HN, this morning I stumbled across a very basic flash version of Snake and decided to make a script that would play out the perfect game, even if it took a little while to rack up the points. If anything I'd learn a few little new skills and be able to confuse a friend with my impossible high scores.

After a quick Google I had learnt about and downloaded AutoHotKey (www.autohotkey.com), it seemed to promise what I would need and maybe after this I could use it for anything similar that might ever come up.

Armed with the help file that comes with the program I started on a very limited version of the script that used hard-coded time interval values to trigger the turns which proved to be useless because the slightest lag or activity on my computer made these totally inaccurate. A little disheartened I had a quick look though the documentation before giving up on the puzzle and stumbled across a command to get the pixel colour of a given coordinate, maybe my friend would get his ass kicked after all.

So far the script doesn't work but it gets awfully close. Around half way through worming its way around the grid one of the coordinates I calculate to turn the snake at slips over into the wrong grid square and never fires. (at least I think this is my problem)

I have tried a few changes which are now commented out because they seemed to make things worse. Rather than give up I figured maybe there was at least one person on HN that might get a kick out of something small like this so I decided to share it with you. If anyone can get it to work then even better.

Since my usual webhost is down at the moment I zipped up my stuff (the macro, some images of the game, the game itself and an open office document with a grid and highlights on the squares that the snake should make its moves at) and uploaded it to the first free upload site I found, hope it doesn't cause any problems.

If no one wants to download a .zip file I can go back and upload them all separately for you.

http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=198583 (the goods)
Agreed, my job is quite fun but it requires specialized knowledge that produces economic benefit for my employer so they make more money by paying me than they would if they didn't. I am by no means unique -- many people are in this position because they picked a career in what they love to do not what they thought they could make a living in.

By creating a symbiotic economic relationship our companies get the stability they need in the jobs for it to be productive. The "people would be paying to do this" argument isn't true if they perceive they could be sharing in the economic benefit to the company.
Urlaub Österreich, Hotels Österreich, Wellnesshotel Österreich, Österreich Reise
I always liked the idea with a slight twist. A flat ~10% tax that's split back to everyone in society. If you consider the cost of SS, welfare, and the long term effects of increasing automation. I would assume it's a fairly stable system until people start messing with the percentage. This would also make it reasonable to switch to a flat tax with zero tax breaks.
8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight
Simple Tooltip for Huge Number of Elements
This is a good move, but I think jsHub's approach of separating the page meta-data and the JavaScript that reads it is better.

http://jshub.org/blog/2009/10/17/universal_tag_or_universal_...
The essential guide to landing page optimisation
I was not aware such things could be ranked.
The base interest rate is set by the government and the banks can whack on whatever margin they want (including negative for a period)

Do you think it's "fair" that banks offer Interest Only[1] mortgages, where you the householder can pay off 100% of the price of the house... and then owe the bank the same amount again?

I understand why you are riled... but see my other post about my friend who offered better terms to bands and got no business[2]

-----

[1] http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages-and-homes/tips-and-gu...

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=971950
Now you're making me sad.
I wonder if there is a band leader that writes a decent business plan, puts on a suit and goes to an investment bank seeking funds.

With a decent enough BP, I doubt a suit is needed.
Thanks. MIT trumps proprietary any day.
Or a "time" could be the setting of the "start bit" on a single phone.
How did you get $75 for 3 transactions (during Dec, so far)? Do you count the yearly $60 as per month revs?
Clearly not blogspam by any reasonable definition, but I agree that the Stack Overflow post has more interesting content.
we actually thought about Krautconcept for a day ;-)
googles actual post about it: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/google-analytics-laun...
There is an interesting interview with the producer of Babylon 5 where in theory he is owed 10's of millions because he traded salary for a large slice of whatever profit showed up.

However, the contract was written so they could do some accounting tricks and make it look like the show was a net loss. He knows the game well enough to know he was never going to see the money. But there was an odd moment where an executive happened to mention the actual billion in profit from the show. And he said something about his cut. At which point the executive said something about how it was still in the red. Even though as a producer he know how much the show cost, he could read the subtext and in the interview he said "I want to keep working in Hollywood and I know the game."

However, if he took them to court he could probably get a large payout at the cost of never working in Hollywood again.
Yes. And I guess if you choose a strict language like Ocaml, even the space overhead isn't that bad. With a lazy language like Haskell the unevalutad thunks can eat a lot of memory. But you can always make your Haskell programs strict, if you know enough magic.
Probably. But maybe less so in transactions that are not illegal.
Everyone is talking about court orders and legalities, and no one is questioning the basic absurdity of one's own bought-and-paid-for hardware acting as a stool pigeon. Required reading: http://glyf.livejournal.com/46589.html
I guess you've never played any of the games the Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed?

http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/?page_id=13
However if I gave you 100K today to start a company with the condition that I get 60% of every sale you make plus you still have to pay me back the 100K out of your 40%, then it is certainly possible for me to make out very well from the deal even if you never actually manage to pay me back the full loan. At what point we are considered "even" is of course up for debate.
Yea, I used to work in the mortgage industry. Interest only mortgages are there for people who have investments to cover the cost but just to want to ensure the liability doesn't increase.

What is unfair is selling these mortgages with endowment plans as a "dead cert" to consumers like banks did in the 80s in the UK. They were all successfully sued and settled in the late 90's / 2000s.

In the UK the council that sets interest rates is an independant entity.
Another victory for Murdoch I guess.
+1 because Manna has a nice message about what could happen in a utopia:

"Live Your Life means that you are able get the most out of your life, as opposed to the least. Instead of dying in Terrafoam, or dying in some job that you hate, you live your life in the Australia Project in freedom and prosperity. Live Your Life means that you are in control -- again, the emphasis on freedom of choice. You decide what you want to do, and then you are able to do it. You reach your full potential. Live Your Life is the idea of thinking about your life as a whole, as something that you get to design and control. Does that make sense?"
Internet addiction: New-age diagnosis or symptom of age-old problem?
Ask HN: What equity percentage for a co-founder joining after de-risking?
Bob, a business guy, is trying to recruit Alice, a coder, as a technical cofounder for his startup, Frittr. Frittr has no revenue or customers yet; it will require software to operate, but software won't be the main revenue source. Bob is currently the sole founder. He believes in the business and his projections suggest it can be very profitable.

Alice agrees the business can work, but by working on Frittr she would be giving up opportunities, and she sees two major risks that could kill it, neither of them technical. Alice doesn't want to commit until Bob has reduced those risks. Bob has a plan for how to do so, but points out that since Alice will be assuming less risk at that point, she should expect a lower equity stake than if she signed on right now.

What does the HN community have to say about this scenario?

* Bob isn't really assuming any risk, since he currently bears all the risk in the venture, but he will have to spend time on reducing it. How should Alice value Bob's de-risking, besides the value of time spent?
* Should signing on later reduce Alice's stake by an order of magnitude or by a smaller factor?

(All names, including the name of the startup, changed to protect the innocent. This is vague for obvious reasons, but if with more details you'd be able to give a more helpful response, let me know and I'll provide what I can.)
There is an explosion indeed, with two main directions IMHO:
- frameworks like yours on top of Node
- frameworks like helma-ng and nitro on top of Google App Engine (via Rhino)

These offer the best scalability guarantees and I'm still torn on what is the best approach for my personal projects.
How to be a great client
The .pdf is an image. The following are the references:

Crunch in the game industry

* http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons (updated)

* http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/01/crunch-mode

Best team size

* http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=150...

* http://www.teambuildingportal.com/articles/systems-approache...

Sleep and problem solving

* http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/01/21/sleep.crativity.ap/inde... (broken)

Sickness and Overtime correlation

* http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15461524

Prioritization

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Things_First_(book)

4 day work week

* http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1093/is_1_42/ai_53697...

* http://rop.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/28/2/166 (subscription required)

* From http://www.shrm.org/Education/hreducation/Documents/Creating... (pdf)

Team spaces

* "Rapid Software Development through Team Collocation" IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Volume 28, No. 7, July 2002
I just recently referenced this essay in my open letter to Lily Allen: http://quandyfactory.com/blog/26/an_open_letter_to_lily_alle...
Google Wave invites give-away
Hi everyone,
I'm not sure this is the right place for this, but anyway:

I've got:
- 7 wave invites to distribute
- one activation link that I received but don't need (I'm already in!)

The invites are not sent out directly, but I guess the activation link gives you direct access.

Who's interested ?
>> When I say "I like Perl", I am told that I am "the dumbest person alive"

Not the dumbest person alive, that would be a Perl maintainer, more like the second dumbest person alive.
Joking.

I think it is probably related to the whole bicycle shed issue it is easy to rag on and have an opinion on "hate' and "like" because they themselves are opinion statements. Factual stuff like the above is infinitely more interesting than "I like beans" but it also provides less emotional reaction rating, commenting, etc.
I've been using Google's Visualization API's for my latest work and I've been really happy with it. The API is in JS but I believe there are hooks for Python and other languages too.

http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/
Start-up Visas Can Jump-Start the Economy
Marriage is, in many cultures, primarily a religious institution more than a state-governed issue.
Desperate Metaphors, Desperate Revenue Models
The Voynich Manuscript Decoded?
The Guardian also have a shorter version with some extra background - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/01/arianna-huffingt...
Do You See a Pattern?
On hunger strike since 2000
Is this another case where Google of the Chrome frame for IE6, where Google realizes that things won't change until they intervene? Really, the news sites should be the ones to add a cookie on their sites and redirect users after visiting x pages in a day - a very simple thing to build.

I don't understand why Google has to be involved, unless they want to push things forward or be on good terms with Fox and co. A very hacky solution, IMHO, and an approach that won't lead news sites to profitability.
Think back to Keynes' analogy of the government burying bags of money in a mine shaft. His point was that meaningless make-work is no different than what happens under the gold standard with no government intervention. As the value of gold rises relative to the dollar more effort is devoted to digging it out of the ground.

The absurdity of the example is intended to illustrate the absurdity of doing nothing. The point of the analogy is to recognize that creating money to accomplish socially useful tasks is better than either burying money in mine shafts or expecting the private market to deflate or dig up more gold. This is what monetarism is supposed to accomplish by lowering interest rates and why Milton Friedman famously stated that "we are all Keynesians now."

If it were a practical objection with the pennies I suppose one could answer it by adding another slot that converted 95 pennies into single dollar bills every five minutes. :)
I think Google is working with a handful of news publishers on this as opposed having this as a default option for everyone. So if you are not one of the few pre-approved sites you can't do this.

That would make more sense.
Reno Bike Shop – Bikes in Reno | Peloton Bicycles in Reno
Peloton Bicycles in Reno offers many quality and professional bikes. Their Reno bike shop stocks professional gear and professional staff.
I like to think that musicians and engineers belong to completely different groups of people where the majority of each group lacks the ability to pursue that of the other group; like a musician would find it difficult to go into engineering because of a lack in mathematic ability (or something along those lines) and a engineer would find music difficult because of the particular set of abilities it requires.

One thing though is that the barriers of entry into each category is different, music requires a lot more time and devotion and going on to make money can be more difficult because you aren't hired just by the fact that you have a bachelors concentrating in music.
Dynamic Animation of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit Email Network
Animation showing the growth of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit email network.
The post is about books/music etc but i'm going to add a note about software piracy. When I was younger of course I could not afford photoshop, nor could my father who worked at the post office. I downloaded it, played (took me several months) but soon I got good at it. Good enough to get a job using it, I was also still in high school. In addition I downloaded Visual Studio 6. I used that to learn C++ more specifically MFC. Soon I had a job programming. Today I'm a huge Microsoft advocate, and I've urged my previous 2 employers to purchase copies of photoshop for my desk. I'm not justifying what I did... it is still wrong. But they gave me a valuable skill set which i'm grateful for. While I have given them a good amount of additional business. I'll also add that today, now that I can afford it I proudly own (and bought from legitimate sources) most of the software I once had to download.
What is it with libertarians thinking Somalia is some kind of free-market paradise? Functioning courts are necessary condition for a free market, you know.
How To Find Buyers For Your Websites For Sale
Finding prospects for your websites on sale can either be easy or time-consuming for the new internet marketer. It’s always key to target your market with the website you are selling. If you can, always try to sell a few different websites at the same time so that you can put your marketing efforts into more than just one website for sale.
I am conflicted about whether I am actually being a petty jerk by pursuing this, or whether labels just thrive on making fools like me feel like petty jerks.

I vote for the second option.
Ask HN: what is /tmp/com.hp.launchport?
Hi all,

Google fails to deliver the goods on "/tmp/com.hp.launchport", a proc that apparently shows on everyone's netstat on OSX. Anyone here knows the details on this process? Thanks.

(No, I don't have an HP printer.)
I don't know if all the cells in your eye are perfectly tuned to three peeks. I expect biological systems to show some variance.
Well, just charge the skinny people less and raise the "normal" price? :-D
The problem with a lot of "business" apps, is that they're all really about workflow and control. The emphasis is on control. Productivity is actually a fairly low priority. If apps are really about productivity, then they tend to get out of the way of users. If you want to control what your shop floor is doing, then let them do what they want, but then keep an audit trail and write reporting software. Use the organizational structure to exercise control. Isn't that what it's for?
He believes in the business and his projections suggest it can be very profitable.

He damn well better, otherwise, what's the point?

This "how much equity" thing comes up ALL the time here. There is no pat answer, but it often seems like every founder/co-founder and first employee has delusions of grandeur about the whole thing.

I'd guarantee that whatever risks you eliminate now are less than 5% of the risks and roadblocks you'll have to knock down in the next year. In otherwords, until you have a product and customer and enough data to make a real extrapolation from, your value is essentially 0.

Alice's risk is exactly the same before or after Bob addresses these theoretical risks.

If Bob wants to haggle over small equity proportions now he probably has his head up his ass.
How A Facebook Game Makes Zynga Millions
I nevertheless think that the feminist idea that we are fundamentally identical, except for socialization is the best way to think about the world. Because it means that since it's all socialization, we can change ourselves, we can understand each other. If we are hardwired to be different, all our efforts at change are futile.
Derek Sivers has single handedly changed my opinion about musicians. Not that I know many musicians. As an engineer, I was under the impression that musicians are lazy bunch leading not so responsible life styles. But reading couple of blog posts of Derek changed it all.My respect to Derek.
Yes, it should be stable, because when enough people go voluntarily out of work, the pie gets smaller and so get the 10%.

There's an interesting suggestion by some landreformers of the late 19th / early 20th century. They say that the rent from land comes ultimately from the population density, so all land should be owned by community, but leased out to the highest bidder. The proceeds would be distributed equally to all. (Alternatively you can just have a high tax on real estate, that gets redistributed. Make it say, 10% of the value of the land anually. Owners get to announce the value of their land themself, but will have to sell their land at this value to any party, to avoid them setting too low a price. Of course the value of the land will be changed by the tax.)
Quick, Free, and Easy Ways to Market Your Startup
JRuby and Clojure STM
North Korea Changes Currency
I found even groceries in Oulu expensive compared to German levels. In Germany you get around 650 Euro for studying, if your parents and you have not enough income. (This includes ca 150 Euro child benefit, that students are eligble to get (until they are 26 or so).)

In the east you can live a comfortable student's live on this. Though you would be hard pressed to afford rent in Frankfurt or Munich, I guess. (Perhaps you can make it work by sharing a flat with 4 people, or living far out of town.)

I am all for citizen's wage. (Or basic income. Whatever you call it.) We decided to have these levels of welfare in western Europe anyway. So we can get rid of a lot of administrative overhead and breaks of privacy. Of course average earner will have to pay exactly that basic income back in taxes. (Plus other expenses of the state that don't go into basic income.)
It really needs a way to support local and regional news for areas around the world. Johnson Press announced on monday plans (and a trial scheme of 3 local news areas) to paywall all of their local newspaper sites in the UK - this will be a huge loss to the internet, as JP effectively has a monopoly on UK local news - they are the only local news provider for about 80% of the UK.

As an example, my local newspaper and regional newspaper are both JP papers, and they are my primary source of local news online, as well as in print.
Personal Kanban And The Pomodoro Technique – One week practice review
EBay Visualizes Black Friday (interactive map)
Fail is HN Fail.

PS: Sorry, some comments are worth the karma burn.
The catholics also do divorce sometimes. Though they do so by pretending that the marriage did never exist in the first place.
Pirate stock exchange helps fund hijackings
A very hacky solution, IMHO, and an approach that won't lead news sites to profitability.

But if they do it right, they'll make the news sites happy as they are going out of business. The news sites will blame the users. Also, if they do it right, the users will be blaming the news sites and not Google.

I think Google is out to call Rupert Murdoch's bluff.
I have no experience with this, but a 49/51 split seems weird to me. It basically means the guy with 49 spends as much time/money/effort as the other guy, but never gets a say? I'd rather be in for 30% and invest less, or something.
only if they monitored it from their holiday location
Can you send me an invite here?

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01RxSmw8ds0gccYt1JV7X-vA==...

Thanks.