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msbmsbon NFC Stickers Make Smartphones Smarter

I did the same thing. Tag next to the entry-way light switch for changing to an "at-home" profile, tag next to the bed for switching between night mode and morning mode, tag at work, keychain tag for switching between car mode and quiet mode.

And profile switching is just the basics. You can have a tag that connects guests' NFC-enabled phones to your wifi without having to hand out the password, for instance.

NFC task launcher + tasker is an amazing combination that opens up all kinds of possibilities.

msbmsbon Ask HN: What music do you like to listen to while you program?

Anything that I already know very well (and like, of course). What that is will depend on the day/mood.

The main thing is that I find I work better with music already known over silence or new music. My brain can kind of just go along with it without any extra work since the patterns are familiar and it seems to help thought flow.

There are times when I prefer no music though, if it's involved research or something I really need to think over or internally debate.

msbmsbon Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual

The google map linked in the article[1] contains many entries that don't quite fit the oddness of some of the die-offs people are talking about. For example, [2] refers to 150 tons of tilapia that died because of being farmed too densely. [3] refers to fish that died when a small city lake froze over with a bunch of decaying leaves trapped under the ice releasing methane. And others.

[1]: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=20... [2]: http://business.asiaone.com/Business/News/Story/A1Story20101... [3]: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/201...

msbmsbon Google Labs: Books Ngram Viewer

Country names/adjectives: English,England,British,French,France,German,Germany

In most cases the adjectival form of a country tracks pretty closely to the nominal form (e.g. France vs French and others) except for the case of England vs English/British, the latter two spike from almost nothing around 1795. I can't think of a good explanation for why those two forms were so rare in comparison with "England" before 1795, anyone have an idea?

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=English%2CEngland...

msbmsbon Google Labs: Books Ngram Viewer

Exactly

msbmsbon Google Labs: Books Ngram Viewer

Also interesting, the 1700s were not kind to the numbers "six" or "seven":

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=one%2Ctwo%2Cthree...

msbmsbon Google Labs: Books Ngram Viewer

The parsing of contractions/words with apostrophes is broken/unsupported:

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=can%27t%2Ccouldn%... vs http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=t%2Ccan%27t%2Ccou...

msbmsbon Google Labs: Books Ngram Viewer

one,two,three,four,five,six,seven,eight,nine,ten

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=one%2Ctwo%2Cthree...

In order, except "ten" shows up between "six" and "seven".

msbmsbon Vmail - A Gmail client in Vim

I can't upvote this enough.

msbmsbon Inside Google’s (open source) Compact Language Detection tool

Link to the Chrome branch's tool source code: http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/third_party/...

msbmsbon Keys to Being Excellent at Anything

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6273202.stm

Larger lung capacity, larger heart, lower lactic acid levels, higher Vo2 max.

Also: "Spaniard Miguel Indurain, who took five successive [Tour de France] titles, had lungs so big they displaced his stomach, leading to his trademark paunch. Indurain's lung capacity was eight litres, compared to an average of six litres."

msbmsbon Review my startup: An artificial intuition based Q/A engine.

How does this compare to other question answering systems?

msbmsbon Blekko partners with DuckDuckGo

I like how they're sharing features with each other.

msbmsbon Blekko Partners Up With Search Engine DuckDuckGo

Very interesting mashup. I like how they've decided to share features with each other instead of just one incorporating those of the other.

msbmsbon Browse github fast with GithubFinder

All diff views are returning HTTP 301s instead of the commits for me, same for everyone else?

I really like this viewer, definitely much easier to quickly browse a repo than normal.

Also, link to original HN post by app author: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1630306

msbmsbon How is HN karma calculated?

Ask HN: How is the avg in my HN profile calculated? -> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1648811

msbmsbon You probably misunderstand XML

Got it.

msbmsbon You probably misunderstand XML

I looked for a prior submission before posting - search and browse. Somehow I missed it.

msbmsbon Ask.com to refocus away from search, towards Q&A

No problem. That nextweb article is misleading.

msbmsbon Ask.com to refocus away from search, towards Q&A

Ask.com is not shutting down. They are ending their in-house general crawling & search system to focus on the Q&A aspect. These articles[1],[2] have better details. They will be continuing to offer general search results on ask.com, but outsourced through an unknown provider.

"Ask will continue to use its web crawling technology, but far more selectively. Rather than trying to find everything from across the web, the crawling will be much more focused around sites that provide answers to questions people search for at the service. Ask will also continue to maintain its own news search service, both through crawling and pulling in news feeds.

Of course, Ask doesn’t want to be in a position where if someone does a search, they come up empty if Ask’s own database of answers has nothing. So the company will outsource for the comprehensive web search matches that it used to gather itself.

Which company will provide those results? Leeds said he’s not allowed to say. Almost certainly, it’s Google."

[1]: http://searchengineland.com/ask-com-to-focus-on-qa-search-en... [2]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-09/iac-s-diller-surren...

msbmsbon Google Sawzall now open source

Buzz post from a Googler on the release: "We have inflicted Sawzall on the world."

http://www.google.com/buzz/100587561646339426146/2Ehn2s7Nf1D...

msbmsbon Ask HN: Should I put my github profile on my Resume?

Definitely. Many professions have some kind of portfolio of previous work to demonstrate to a potential employer. Since it's common in the development field to not be able to show any source code you have written from a prior company, any kind of visible open source code you might have should definitely be on a software developer's resume.

msbmsbon Approaching Optimality for Solving SDD Linear Systems

On a post made a day later... tear

msbmsbon Delayed in 2008, Google restarts Data Center build near Tulsa, OK

The project was delayed in 2008 with the slowing economy. This is a good sign for the economy as a whole, not to mention the NE Oklahoma region.

Quote from Google:

"We always intended to make the Mayes County data center operational at some point. In 2008, we determined that we already had the server capacity to meet current demand, meaning that it was unnecessary to bring the Mayes County data center online at that time. Google’s traffic has continued to grow since then, and we believe it’s time to make this site operational so we can meet greater demand."