skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
iterate repeatedly over the sequence in question

Does that ever seem like a good idea? The description suggests it may be a long list. That should give you a hint that you don't need to do this to solve the problem.
paste the 'single' character into the textbox and click convert

example screenshot grabbed from reddit:

http://i.imgur.com/LwCSK.jpg
I'd go as far as to say everyone should just move to English for everything, not just Operating Systems.
I don't know about the religious thing -- other than it is important to people -- but:

I can see how people get attached to thier tools. We make our living from wielding and manipulating those tools. Further, there is this wierd western culture thing of "you are what you do", meaning if I do android development, I AM an android developer. This attaches identity to tool choice. Furhter, there is a certain passion for doing well with ourselves in the geek communities. Combining all that, if you insult the tool, it is no different than insulting the people.

I don't really agree with this being a good idea, just observing the things in play that seem related to reactions. Similarly see how old scientists react to their theorys being overturned (most observable in soft sciences, where data is more interpretable/has more confounding variables).
Great. So now we're going to be hearing about TDH zealots (Test Driven Hiring).
Ooooooo reply :

I didn’t enjoy reading this.

I dunno man, perhaps you’re new to the tech thing (somehow I doubt you are) but since the days of Nintendo VS Sega (probably even before that) there have been these arguments. It’s nothing new. I feel that, as a blogger you should either (a) state your bias or (b) try to be as unbiased as possible. Even if your bias is minute, putting it out there will, at least, give some validity for your words. With that out of the way, you could go for the two-sides-to-a-coin perspective. I’ll draw an example:

While I’m an iPhone user, I do see instances in which the N1 (or Android) could do better. the same applies in reverse. [listing off the pros and cons relative to both. Removable battery, multitasking, UI, storage space, resolution, call quality, multitouch, browser, usable apps, media playback]. All in all, you should definitely be choosing the phone that meets your needs, with that said the N1 is currently the best phone you can purchase under Tmobile service (though you can run it via ATT though you won’t be able to get 3g service).

You see, that way you come off as someone who loves their choice but respects another product. There’s no escaping fanboys but this way you give them much less ammo to call you a biased idiot.
> Are you saying you believe simply viewing particular light patterns should be a crime?

I think your deconstructing too far. And I think your not equating the act of viewing with the effect further up the chain; aka the abuse.

> Should "thinking inappropriate thoughts about minors" be a crime also?

No, clearly not. But I think there isn't a single line in the sand regarding this. Would you be comfortable with someone interacting with your kids who goes home and uses them in his/her sexual fantasies? There is a hazy line and we must use common sense to ensure minors are protected.

In the case of thoughts, no I dont think they should be illegal. But if someone admits to having such thoughts I think it should be legal to say "I dont want to around my kids".

> If you believe viewing such images should be illegal, then even law enforcement officers should not be able to view them

This is where your missing the point entirely; the whole issue is context.

Think of it this way; viewing the images is, perhaps, impossible to define as illegal. However viewing and distributing these images feeds the cycle of abuse and so the viewers are directly or indirectly perpetrators.

If XYZ person viewed an officially indecent image with no sexual motive (either accidentally, in the course of their job or for whatever reason) do I think they should be prosecuted? No!
I have been playing around recently with Play! Framework (http://www.playframework.org/). It has functional programming support (Scala), write-save-compile-deploy takes 0 seconds, it's java, can be deployed as War in every container, has several goodies already built in.
Might need some way of making explicit which libraries are available?

eg. if the programmer goes off and writes a multithreaded solution, they might only realise too late that pthread isn't included. Admittedly they should have checked first using verify, but you never know with interview pressure.
Didn't think about that. Any idea where I could find that VC information?
A lot of USB sticks with 'encryption' have serious flaws, similar to the fingerprint USB sticks. Most of them use encryption only to check if the password is correct; if it is, they send some kind of initialization string to the usb stick which activates the stick-side USB Mass Storage Device. The encryption really is only used for marketing purposes.
>> "What guarantees the existence of such people, if not the freedom of the software ?"

Usually some aspect of monetization.

For instance, plentyoffish.com is free, closed source, but has someone behind it who cares, because it's his livelihood.
People want to learn how to manipulate others, not how they themselves were manipulated. The fact that this article which basically just says "I don't try to manipulate you!" has been sitting at the top for a while validates this.

When people are done being offended maybe they will realize that there is something to learn from it, whether you agree with it or not. It would be interesting to see how this would have played out if the target of this "hack" had been someone other than the HN community themselves.
Trouser-bomb clown attacks - how much should we laugh?
Yes I was in a bad mood when I wrote the above, but I feel my point still stands. There was very little meat of anything to gain. Yes you see 6 months they obtained 1200 users, and it's sufficient to support the operations, and they didn't take any VC money. There was nothing in the article about what they overcame to get to their position. Maybe they didn't and got very lucky, but luck is just one aspect of getting a company successfully running. I'd be more interested in a recap 1.5 years from now where they have had more growing pains, more trials, and more interesting successes.

Alternately just say you want me to check out a centralized bookmarking site.
I did in the past and was rejected. I don't need to anymore, this month I will make 15k in revenue + still have my salary. I'm comfortable.
> There are quite a few critical reviews that say it doesn't.

Can you show the reviews URL for the rest of us?
I've written several blog entries where I say, basically, that the blog is for me. If the rest of you like it, fine, but that's not the point.

I find the truth is a little more complex, however. Analytical guys being what they are, I look at my blog stats from time to time. (Look! Shiny numbers and graphs!) When I start doing this too much, then I end up trying to "game" the system, and my writing goes downhill.

So I had a very visceral response to John's post: if you really are just writing "you", then you aren't looking at your stats (and not caring whether other people do or not) If, however, you're looking to the community for validation (and don't we all do that to some degree)? That's when you start writing posts that are basically "Look at me! I'm much more honest/trustworthy/humble than that other guy"

Write for you, yes. But if you tell us too many times "I write for me" then you're really not writing for you anymore, are you?

Sorry if that sounded like Mr. Asshole Guy. Like I said, the criticism comes from my doing the same thing.
> Prison is not by definition dangerous.

The prisons that you're willing to put people in are dangerous.

You argued "innocents may die". Do you really want to amend that to "it's bad if innocents will necessarily die but okay if they die in practice so long as I can convince myself that they needn't die in theory"?
The interactive projector :
Fed up of lugging a heavy laptop around? Soon you could be typing documents and browsing the web on any nearby surface with the aid of a pioneering pocket-sized projector. An innovative British company called Light Blue Optics has created the Light Touch, which transforms any surface into a 10.1in touch screen, reminiscent of the film Minority Report.
But that's the point. They're only fixed as long as someone behind the website cares about it. The fact that you care about it helps not one bit.
Have you tried topcoder? It's the same as codility, but with cooler/harder problems.
What do you imply by that?
As much as I love C++, it's getting a bit too hairy for my taste. Instead of making things more simple, it's just getting more complex.

I'd love a statically typed Ruby, for example. Duby looks interesting, but a bit young and incomplete to use.
I need to spend 250K. Your logic is correct, and the 400K number already takes that into consideration.
Terra and Gia are Latin and Greek for Earth.
If I have an account and am taking a test that I've created, you should provide a link back to the dashboard after I've submitted so I can check how I did. Currently, I'm taken to the the "enter a password" screen and have to manually go back to the homepage and then to the dashboard.
>> "And I think your not equating the act of viewing with the effect further up the chain; aka the abuse."

I know there's a multitude of complexities here, but I think 'viewing images' should never be illegal. Paying for someone to obtain images that involve illegal activities should definitely be illegal.

So maybe we sort of agree after all...
Seems like a cool idea. If they were smart they'd not only target companies looking for people but people looking for jobs. e.g. Adding a "Allow the codility community to take this test" check box. Then you have the a whole world full of people taking your test.
I agree. For instance, by using Gmail in English you get all the new stuff first.
So I got a Mac.

Now seriously: that's not a real reason to use the whole system in English. I do that (except for the keyboard layout, I love the Spanish one <3), but I don't think I anyone should ever do it if they don't really like/feel comfortable to. Translations are very good, so that wouldn't be a reason... and IMHO what the post describes is an acceptable risk (hey, you probably will get sorted of this, but will have to Google more than a few minutes).
Ask HN: I've got a sleep problem, I always wake up at night
Hi, I hope someone here will really help me with a hack or a tip from their own experience. My problem is, that I can't sleep through the night and it ruins my whole next day. Say, I go to bed at midnight: then I sleep 3, maybe 4 hours at best and wake up feeling thirsty and what's worse - hungry. I obviously can't fall asleep again with that (I tried), so I have to go make some food and then it's really hard to force yourself to sleep again and I only go to bed at 8-9am and sleep through the whole day then, because I simply can't get myself to wake up. Then the next day I manage myself to go to bed at midnight again and then I wake up at 4-5am and can live the next day normally, because I had enough sleep the day before. But then the cycle continues.

I work at home on my own projects. I do my runs almost everyday on my treadmill for 25 mins and go to the gym. Recently I discovered how exercising positively influences the brain, the ability to learn and the mood, I've even written about it: http://romansnitko.posterous.com/how-exercise-makes-you-smarter
This book I'm talking about in the post also suggested that exercises should normalize the sleep process, but I guess that's the only effect I haven't managed to achieve so far. I also tried to google it, but only found a list of well known advices that don't work for me and posts about such problems in infants.

I've also ordered this book http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Sleep-Medicine-Connection-Happiness/dp/0440509017/ but it would take time to read it, so I decided to ask if someone had similar problems with sleep here and how they managed to defeat them.

Would highly appreciate the advices.
No worries, It is good to be "that guy" -- I think your reaction is how most people would react. Thanks, though -- that is exactly why I posted it here... so I could see what people really had to say.

One piece of context to add is that the structure I described is exactly how some art shows work today. Artists don't participate in shows to make a profit. They participate because they like the concept and want to be part of it.

But I guess this does confirm that the thought processes that take place in the actual art world aren't going to translate over into how people think about things online.
Go to a doctor. Not the most exciting answer, but there's any number of sleep conditions you may have that a doctor can diagnose and treat.
James Cameron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you are the copyright holder, you absolutely can. That's the entire point of the article. As a user, you can't change the licensing terms.
He limited it to words that weren't "Scrabble words", that is, ones he recognized. Another rot13 pair of length 7 are purpura⇔Chechen, in my /usr/shared/dict/words. Pairs of length 6 are, cheery⇔purrel (what is 'purrel'?), greeny⇔terral (what is 'terral'?), orphan⇔becuna ('becuna' is a type of fish?).
You really think there are fewer abandoned close-source projects? It's just that you never even knew they existed, unlike the open-source projects. Classic selection bias.
Give HN: Proofreading Bookmarklet that Works Here
View-source is a great resource for learning html/js/css, but at the same time, I think the quality of references for html have improved. When view-source was the most critical - in the early years - there wasn't a site like w3schools is now to allow anyone to easily learn html syntax and rules.

It'd still be a horrible thing for the webdev community to lose/throw-away the ability to view the source of any site, but I don't think the effect would be quite as bad as it would have been ~20 years ago.
I deleted several replies, and decided to go with the following:

If this is your best/last idea, move on. Cut your loses short and find something else within your means.
I read the whole thing as sarcasm. Where content is more important than self promotion.
I'm curious if anyone knows how this type of solution would work if there is more than one person sleeping in your bed.

Wouldn't two people in the same bed be pretty likely to not have synchronized sleep cycles? Or would they be synchronized? Anyone know about this?
Thanks - you made me realize that my writing on the page addressing exactly this issue was unclear or placed wrong and not read.

I think the overall reaction shows that it is not worth pursuing the idea, but if I change my mind, I'll definitely re-write my plans around that issue.
I'm certainly considering this, but I would also like to hear from anyone who also experienced it. Besides, It's been times, when I managed to wake up at 8am and go to bed at midnight for almost 2 months. So, I guess, there should be something I haven't noticed yet, that influences me most and feeds the abnormal condition.
I speak two languages: English and Russian. Though it drives me crazy when I have to use software and especially cellphones in Russian - I can't understand anything there.

I'd say, everyone needs to know English, but I wouldn't like if majority switched to English as their only language. In my opinion, other languages help us to learn history of their countries.
I own and run two smallish ( ~ $1 mill/yr ; ~ $0.5 mill/yr revenue) ecommerce stores ( http://smartflix.com and http://heavyink.com ) and I bought a few textbooks books on warehouse layout and design.

There really wasn't a lot in there that was applicable to me, but I bet that (a) the Amazon folks have all read these books, and (b) they could write much, much better ones if they wanted to spill some of their trade secrets!
Summary: human languages have network effects too, and using one of the more popular ones may have benefits.
This is why my company decided to go with a logging/messaging mechanism that stores messages by ID with parameters. We can get a log file from customers in France who see the error message in French, but we can read their log file in English because it's in a neutral format.

This isn't a panacea, as it means that there's a bit more work involved to integrate with tools like Splunk, and we obviously don't log to anything like syslog. But it makes it easier for our support people to support customers who prefer to see their messages in their native language.
Heh, I moved to Poland three months ago from my native England, and the one thing that's really helping me with the language is setting my Windows installation to be in Polish.

Note: I guess this step isn't necessary if, unlike me, you don't suck at learning languages ;)
Actually you should switch to software that keeps localization in configuration space instead of code, allowing you to switch languages on a per-user, per-program or per-session.

Having user-targeted messages hard coded is a bug.
At one point this applied only to the US English interface; it may still.
Is it just my screen? I can barely read the code samples.
Now we know where the Ark of the Covenant really is.
Also, Rot13 contains the longest pair.

Here's a list of all words (in sowpods.txt) of six or more letters which translate in rot-N for some N:

1 anteed bouffe
1 azlons bampot
4 ganjah kernel
4 lallan pepper
6 fusion layout
6 alohas grungy
6 jigjig pompom
6 bombyx hushed
6 mulmul sarsar
7 inkier purply
7 manful thumbs
10 muumuu weewee
13 cravat pening
13 harira uneven
13 abjurer nowhere

(sowpods.txt is at http://code.google.com/p/scrabblehelper/source/browse/trunk/...)
How about Singapore? no tax if income is under S$100k for the first 3 years. http://www.guidemesingapore.com/corporate-taxation/c321-corp...
What database did you plug Pentaho into? Like I said earlier I was thinking of using LucidDB but according to this benchmark: http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2010/01/07/star-schema-b... it seems InfiniDB might be a better candidate.
Is there not already "CryptoCracker" website? Where, for a fee, you can submit a cracking task to a cluster and have it send you the results when it's done? Price is set according to a matrix: crackable items down the rows and turnaround times down the columns. The harder the crack and the faster you want it completed, the higher the fee.
Sex correlates to but does not determine hand size.
Ask HN: Requesting code sample from potential employer?
Employers frequently request code samples from candidates during the interview process. It seems reasonable that candidates should be able to do the same and request a code sample from the company.

Does anyone have experience regarding this type of request?
That would require the watcher to be educated. It's an impressive technical achievement, but people see the same kind of image everyday on the TV. It's just not real-time.

You could compute the physics of billions of snowflakes in an video in real-time, but, still, unless your audience is educated to appreciate what you are doing and the immense implications of having a computer capable of doing that, it's lost.
My attitude to blogging has shifted over time.

At first I took it all at face value. Gradually I started hating the apparent dominance of snake-oil-selling bloggers. Then I decided that there was more to it than I first thought and am preparing a strategy that fits in blogging with my other goals.

Consider: what is the art of promotion, but another form of power? It can be abused, just like programming skills can be abused for malicious purposes, but it can also be applied to contribute to other efforts.

Blogging is a worthy cross-promotional tool, and it could give you the star power necessary to start a community or a collaborative project from scratch. And in the meantime, ad monetization gives a little bit of reward for building a strong site.

And you don't have to work within the "make regular posts on vapid topics" cycle to succeed: Good posts on niche subjects can go a long way, especially if you stick to making them search-friendly "evergreen" articles and not pure news/rumor/opinion. While you can't compete with the likes of Demand Media on quantity, you can exploit specialty subjects far better.
Another small example of the network effect increasing the dominance of the already-dominant language.
Right, I think the point is that quality and freedom are not correlated. Regardless of the code quality, the user needs to have the ability to fix bugs, write extensions, and distribute them whether or not the original author is around or cares about the software anymore.

So it kind of hearkens back to the day when computer users were also competent programmers.

I think the modern day analogy to proprietary software would be someone sending you a locked excel sheet with a license that says 'you may not change, copy or distribute this excel sheet,' and then having glaring error in the spreadsheet.

You see the error and want to fix it but are obligated not to because of some silly rules. Instead you have to email the idiot who wrote the broken excel sheet, and have him fix it. (And wait for him to reply, which he may or may not do).

This resonates with me because I hate wasting my time on extra steps. I should be able to email the guy 'Hey, i fixed a bug, look at this' and be done with it.

Granted, the majority of computer users now are not of this personality type, and even if they are, wouldn't have the expertise or experience.

For FSF to really win, we would at least need a much higher level of computer education in the general population. (IMO 90% of people are functionally illiterate, with regard to computing).
Yes... I run several moderately successful blogs and I'm overwhelmed by correspondence (in waves). Starting from the top and answering everything would be a way for me to make my full time job answering e-mail, while getting behind.
Palm Developer Program: Project Appetite, $1M How App Program, and more
In that case, there's not much you CAN show, visually, unless it's up there with Avatar-like quality of imagery.
So does a well written and targeted blog post.

Website owners do it for money. Bloggers and Twitterers do it for fame.

I would personally love to see more posts on Good writing, Audience targeting and Engagement.
The article's position is in the opposite way. Charging extra for the right to use the software under a non-free license.
The reason why the laptop example works like you say is that laptops are commodities for you. It isn't that hard to exchange laptops and it isn't that big a deal once you do.

The problem with software is that once it is integrated into your software ecosystem you often wind up locked in. If that software stops being able to work for you (for instance your license stops working and you can't purchase another one), then you frequently have a very difficult transition ahead since there is no drop in replacement available.

RMS sees this, knows that users often don't realize their potential future pain until they are committed to it, and concludes that non-free software is evil. By contrast an economist sees this, assumes that the market will be rational, and writes a book like Information Rules explaining how one should best act given the economic facts.

My view is that most people who really care about software have been around the block enough times to have experienced the economic fact and in practice act more like economic theory says you should act. Of course this provides an economic argument for free software, which has of course lead to the open source set of arguments.

YMMV. And on this topic it tends to vary widely.
But, he can be hit by a bus, or get hired. (Details in my post above.)
The 14 Days of jQuery