skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was born in the USA and currently work here. I am fully aware of what the Constitution says and how it has been subverted.

For example consider the 4th amendment protecting us from unreasonable search and seizure. As http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty... points out, 2/3 of the country lives within areas where the border patrol both can and sometimes does periodically set up spots where they randomly stop and search whoever they want. In pursuit of the "war on drugs" courts have come to accept that if your belongings are directly sued that you personally have no standing to contest the lawsuit, and your protections against unreasonable seizure is null and void. Telecom companies at the request of the Bush government made virtually everything tappable with no oversight. This activity has continued, and telecom companies have by special act of Congress (the current President voted ye on this) been given immunity for their violation of our privacy.

We are not an extreme police state. But we are well on our way. As a random example, in the last several years at every job I have worked at I was unable to enter or leave my place of employment without a security badge. Just 30 years ago this kind of widespread use of pervasive security systems was considered unthinkable in this country, and people were proud of it.
Well I'm glad to see the raging class / education war raging in the comments of that post isn't taking place on HN.
How 3-D Movie Projection Works
Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers
Gamedev.net has one of the most civil and informative forums on the internet. At some point they had a pretty mean spirited community too, and the owners pulled the site into one of the best sites on the internet. I spent a lot of time on these forums, and I think there are three main things that contribute to very high quality.

- Non-threaded comments. I know this has been discussed to death, but I think the downside of threaded comments (fragmentation of the discussion and incentive for witty one-liners) far outweighs the benefit (having separate unrelated conversations). A non-threaded approach gives huge incentive to bring the community together into a single coherent conversation, gives the reader a great sense of a timeline (which gives further incentive to maintain an intelligent discussion), and discourages fragmentation of the discussion to a point where it isn't interesting to anyone anymore. I know this is a big change, but I would strongly encourage at least giving it a serious consideration - it can make a huge difference if done right.

- Active topics - on sites like Hacker News and Reddit it's very easy to lose track of interesting discussions that are going on because top threads are tightly coupled with the top articles. We can have interesting discussions long after the article has left the front page, and an active topics page would go far towards encouraging intelligent interaction. Basically, every time an article is commented on, this article goes to the top of the list. This way I can see all active discussions at glance (including the ones I participated in), and continue interesting discussions, even though they're not on the front page.

- User rating system (not article/comment system) - in real life, if I am usually a very interesting, intelligent person, and one day I suddenly act as a jerk, it can very seriously ruin my reputation. On gamedev people rate users, not comments and articles. So, I can give a user a rating - extremely helpful, helpful, not helpful, jerk. The karma is a combination of ratings for a given user, and the strength of a user's vote is proportional to his karma. So, if someone is a jerk one day, it can affect his karma far more significantly than simply downvoting his comment. In addition, jerks have less affect on the system overall. Rating people's comments never made sense to me - it always ends up signaling agreement or disagreement vs. usefulness. If people rate users instead of comments, this problem goes away always entirely, plus very strongly discourages aggressive behavior.

I think these three things would help immensely to scale the community. These are big changes, but I think they're worth seriously thinking about.
How about letting those with big karma attach tags to their downvote? Others could agree by downvoting the tag. This allows a slightly more organic approach where the best tags emerge over time. Maybe anyone over (lower) karma can propose a tag but the tag only applies if a few agree on it.
Yes to the first question: the better comments you make, the more points you get. I'm not sure what you mean by the second.
This site is actually really easy to get started with and willing to let you study without bothering you.

Regarding the approach (type in a translation for the requested term), I am a bit sceptical. It seems to require that there is one unique translation for each term. Maybe multiple choice would be better? This would also solve the irritating keymap for foreign language problem (http://smart.fm solves this nicely with a custom input mechanism in flash).
Yeah, I think that describes it pretty well. I don't think I've met anyone else who claims to be able to smell it.
Add difficulty levels. Only 50% to get to the next level? Too easy! Being able to raise that percent will make it feel more like a difficult yet fun game. [Some] users will want to keep trying over and over until they reach that goal, and really feel accomplished when they do.
A Simple Intro to Learning Theory
The likable smell caused by the bacteria http://science.howstuffworks.com/question479.htm
I agree with you about the voting swings. I think that, more than the extreme numbers, may be why voting is starting to seem such a mob thing lately.

It's a very interesting idea to have users see only the votes of other users they choose. One problem though is that it could easily lead to leaking who voted for what, which would make a lot of users (including me) uncomfortable. E.g. your pool is your 7 coworkers, and user x. One day you know all your coworkers are on a plane, and that you're therefore seeing user x's votes. Another problem is that it could be a lot more expensive to generate pages.
I wouldn't design an interview just for a specific programming language. If they can prove to me that they understand OOP and functional programming concepts up to my standards, then they should be able to write useful code given a week or two to learn the language at hand. In the case of Ruby, this time line could potentially be shorter. The syntax is dead simple and the API is rather intuitive.
<digression>

As this involves rain and earth, This poem immediately springs in the mind.

The red earth and pouring rain.

Red earth and pouring rain[1]
What could my mother be
to yours? What kin is my father
to yours anyway? And how
Did you and I meet ever?
But in love
our hearts have mingled
as red earth and pouring rain

[Translated by AK Ramanujan (Kuruntokai - 40)

</digression>
Whenever this topic comes up, there are a huge number of replies to the effect of, "I learned on BASIC, and I found it satisfying. I don't think kids can deal with more complexity."

This is a valid point, but there is a huge change that here that we seem to be missing. When a lot of us started out, computers were not ubiquitous. Getting a computer to print out "trjordan is the BEST!!!!" in a loop was insanely cool, because that's what computers did. The reason BASIC seemed so great was because you could make computers do what you thought was their primary use (text-based input/output, and decisions based on your input).

Today, kids have a totally different relationship with computers. I can't claim to understand it, but the sheer pervasiveness of graphics, color, and mouse-based interfaces changes how kids work with computers. When you think of it this way, BASIC, Python, and every other programming language falls short, because you basically can't create things that ape real programs (interface, no logic) in a few short lines. Sure, Python is great for some kids, but it's not hooking anybody whose mind isn't already "wired for programming", in some sense.

So what's the answer? I'm not sure. I do think that we need to provide something to get GUIs and graphics in front of them in a fast, easy, and intuitive way. LOGO's turtle is OK, but ultimately too limited. I remember _why's Shoes seemed like a step in the right direction. Kids love building things, and programming are only endeavor where you are only limited by your imagination. With the right set of tools, they could get start on a lifetime of building, but they need to be shown how powerful that keyboard and monitor are.
I've tried Rosetta, smart.fm, others that score you based on your input, but by far the simplest and best method I've found is using Anki, which just asks you 'did you remember it?' and it's up to you to answer truthfully.

http://ichi2.net/anki/
I think Schroedinger's dissertation was only 7 pages total.

http://www.lynge.com/item.php?bookid=38111
Thanks for the link, that is pretty cool, and seems potentially like one of the best sweeteners. I guess I have never really looked at molasses because nobody eats it anymore. If my understanding is correct it is more concentrated in minerals because it has the minerals that have been removed from the table sugar. So it is also a type of refined sugar, but nutrients have actually been added instead of taken away.

I tend to stay away from these kinds of factory produced foods. You have to put trust in the manufacturer not to be adding chemicals, etc.

But maybe this could be a healthy part of the diet. The fructose is bad or sugar/refined carbohydrates is bad theories have not shown that the health problems could instead be caused by a lack of nutrients in the sugars we consume.
Ask HN: SQL query has me scratching my head...
The 'non-technical' CIO
Alternative Lisp to Clojure?
Excellent first choice language of Mandarin. The competition is either not good or very expensive.

This is going to do very well. I'll go through the entire course.
That's odd, because my AP experience was exactly the opposite. While I did have more homework in AP Literature, the homework was meaningful, personal, and founded on the cumulative knowledge attained over the course. On the other hand, in my AP Statistics class, the homework hardly counted at all while the emphasis was on the tests (which I feel is appropriate for the subject). In my ordinary classes the homework was boring, redundant and even comical at times.
The Burj Dubai as Storm Machine
Tech: Avatar: James Cameron Full Interview (20-min uncut, pre-roll ad)
This kind of thing was supposed to be standardized by SMPTE's DC28 group, but I'm not sure they ever did. Of course, it's been since 2004 since I worked on this stuff.

We prototyped and delivered a secure D-Cinema device in 2002. We had a smart card for identification of the operator with backups. Each viewing of the movie would do a unique online authorization with our audit server. If that failed, there was a backup modem that operated via cellphone. All of this was in working order in 2002 as our demo included yanking the Ethernet cable and hitting "play".

Press release mentioning the system design:
http://www.cryptography.com/company/prel/20021029-CRI-Digi-F...

Case study talk given at USENIX 2004:
http://root.org/talks/Usenix_20040629.pdf

This system got a lot of interest, but ultimately SMPTE was dominated by existing proprietary equipment manufacturers, most of whom were afraid of Microsoft Windows Media and cheap PCs (rightly so). Anyone have an idea how many screens today are just that? I know that Landmark Cinemas here in the Bay Area mentioned that was their approach.
Shards: "Let no one read me who is not a mathematician."
> I find it frustrating that a country that admits 1.2 million immigrants a year is so often accused of being "anti-immigrant"

The USA is anti-immigrant, not because it doesn't open the floodgates, but because it has zero organized system with which to import foreign talent that is needed domestically. You have policies to allow existing immigrants to sponsor family members, and a myriad of other methods by which people that the country has no dire need for get in, while talented people demanded by local industries are locked out.

In this way the US is far, far, far behind every other developed western nation.
Ah, sorry - my intent wasn't to be snarky or confrontational. I automatically switched to review mode after reading that it's a YC startup, since I figured the founders would be seeing this thread.
Actually, as mentioned in the article, the original pdfs are from:

http://econtent.unm.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fnuceng
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Jack LaLanne tried to warn us about this 50 years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJVEPB_l8FU
My name is Matt Tibbals. I'm a recovering pedophile. Read how I did it. http://www.matthewwintibbals.com
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Sounds like what any company big enough would do.

If this bothers the British, they might want to consider a law that allows them to tax both funds transferred to another country as well as funds reported as the company's local income.

That way the country would always get their share should Google decide to have a presence in the UK.
Christmas Discount from PixelCrayons 
PixelCrayons announced a 15% discount on all its services to make Christmas more special.
Actually, it's kind of ironic (at least for us in the Northern Hemisphere) to say Happy Solstice, since general depression can be linked to the lack of sunlight in the winter months.
If you want the jist of this lecture, around 1:15:00 is a good place to start, he rants about Gatorade and McD's. Otherwise, it's O-Chem(?) up to that point. Very interesting stuff. Less Fructose, more Fiber. Less Frankenburgers, more Fruits.
I think this is an incredibly unfair assessment, to the point of being downright silly.

Taking $20 million for a company that's been around for a few years or in this man's case $750 million (!) is not immature or unwise by any stretch of the imagination. Saying no to $750 million, in many instances, leaves the realm of "risky entrepreneur" and enters that of compulsive gambler. He made $750 million before the crash: genius, not stupid.

Perhaps the reason Bezos and Jobs, etc. stuck around to make their companies successful is because there wasn't a Google around back then with infinite amounts of money ready to throw at them. In fact, the story of many of these "early" Silicon Valley companies is about big companies missing the opportunity to buy them or crush them (IBM with Microsoft, Yahoo almost owning a stake in Google, etc). Let's also not forget that in the first bubble the path to riches was IPO, not sellout, thus it makes sense that people would stick with their companies longer, because that was the way to get rich.

To me this is all just a function of the market. Today IPO's are much more rare, and the market pushes towards buyouts.
Nope, it is a collective action problem. There is a simple game theory payoff matrix:

(units: e=energy_savings, ss=social_standing)

One guy's payoffs:

one guy
iron | no iron
everyone iron 0ss - 0.1e = (-0.1) | -1ss + 0e = (-1.0)
no iron 1ss - 0.1e = ( 0.9) | 0ss + 0e = ( 0.0)

Society's payoffs (1000 people):

one guy
iron | no iron
everyone iron 0ss - 100e = (-100.0) | 0ss - 99.9e = (-99.9)
no iron 0ss - 0.1e = ( -0.1) | 0ss - 0.0e = ( 0.0)

Ironing his clothes gives the person no greater benefit than not ironing their clothes--so long as no one else irons their clothes either. It isn't hypocritical to point this out and still iron your clothes.
Do you mean the Django admin stuff?
The point about pressure to take AP courses and exams that students aren't prepared to is rather interesting. One can see this effect by looking at the US News and World Report high school ranking:

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/high-schools/2009/1...

The ranking is not necessary a great resource, but IMO the statistics within each school's stats are telling. Let's take the example of my former high school, Thomas Jefferson, versus another highly-ranked one (IIRC they were second last year):

Thomas Jefferson High School (Alexandria, VA):
Exams Per Test Taker 7.1
Exam Passing Rate (3 or above): 98.1%

Oxford Academy (Orange County, CA):
Exams Per Test Taker 6.6
Exam Passing Rate (3 or above): 76.5%

Some schools seem to get away with enormous numbers of AP exams per student--and still reliably get high scores. Others, despite being top-ranked, don't do nearly as well. Is it because the students are better to begin with? A selective school will clearly get better average scores than a less selective one. Is it because the courses are better-taught? Does any of this count for what is effectively a factor-of-10 gap (in terms of number of failing students)?

Another is perhaps even more telling:

The School for the Talented and Gifted (Dallas, TX):
Exams Per Test Taker 13.2
Exam Passing Rate (3 or above): 60.9%

This one's a magnet school just like TJ, but the number of APs they take is utterly ridiculous: and their pass rate suffers. I suspect that there is a certain number of APs per student that is optimal, and beyond that the pass rate collapses.
He also mentions the paleolithic diet as a cure of type 2 diabetes. Link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet
1) this is very similar to smart.fm, which has been around for a year or so now.
2) I just did the first level. It'd be pretty difficult for someone who didn't know anything about mandarin to get anything out of that. If you really want to learn mandarin take a course to learn correct pronunciation. Your first attempt at a tonal language can be brutal.
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With more than a hint of a defensive tone, he said that he didn’t go to college. ... "Really? So where did you learn to write code?"

The most interesting thing about this parable is that no one seemed to have been "writing code" before having gone to school to "learn" it.

I'm not a programmer because of my CS degree, I'm a programmer because I've been programming, learning to program, and continue to learn to program, for nearly 75% of my life, only half of that professionally.
Managing in a Downturn: Balancing overseeing with overdoing
I work on avionics. It's a great job, except you have no idea when or how things can go drastically wrong. We had a bug in our weather data parser that didn't surface in 2 years of constant testing. The weather receiver is only supposed to give data for the continental United States, but we occasionally would get a Temporary Flight Restriction for Iraq, which worked fine.

One day, we got a report from a customer that his panels rebooted twice, in the clouds. All signs were pointing to the weather receiver. I feverishly looked through the code and eventually found the problem.

We were getting a TFR for an air show.. in Guam. I knew that we handled the eastern hemisphere properly, the Iraqi TFR's worked fine.. The data looked something like "....151.235E10.1235N...".. We eventually determined that the floating point value parser was treating the E as scientific notation and blowing up. It worked fine on my PC (glibc), but not on the device (newlib).
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"So it is also a type of refined sugar, but nutrients have actually been added instead of taken away."

From my understanding (not a nutritionist), sugar has been taken away; nutrients have not been added, just concentrated by the extraction of sugar.

"I tend to stay away from these kinds of factory produced foods. You have to put trust in the manufacturer not to be adding chemicals, etc."

Because it's fairly nutritious as sweeteners go, it's available in organic form at many health food stores.
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In the 1970s, a team of pioneering computer scientists at Xerox PARC known as the Learning Research Group investigated this very problem--that of creating a programming language suitable for children as young as five to write programs in. As part of their study, they took their computers and their language into Palo Alto schools and attempted, successfully, to teach children from different age groups how to program. The language, named Smalltalk, underwent continuous revision throughout the '70s and was finally released to the world in 1980 as Smalltalk-80.

Smalltalk is a tiny language, with the entire syntax famously fitting on an index card. It is pure in theory: everything is an object and every operation, even "1 + 2," a message sent to an object. It is also pure in implementation: except for a handful of primitive messages, Smalltalks are written almost entirely in themselves, like Lisps.

That a developer could, in 2009, be completely ignorant of the advances made in his field a quarter century earlier is simply inexcusable. To see people, in 2009, touting BASIC as a fine pedagogical tool (and not a modern incarnation, but classic line-oriented, GOTO-ridden BASIC--the very BASIC upon which Dijkstra unleashed his rancour), and to see others seriously suggesting Ruby, Python or some other overly-complex bastard child of C instead, is to observe first-hand the tribute that ignorance exacts from the ignorant. And that ignorance is not only the cause of BASIC being inflicted on yet another generation of hapless youth, but is also the reason why C#'s classes aren't real objects, why Java's "new" is a special primitive, and the source of countless over incongruities between Smalltalk and nearly every other language advertised as "object-oriented."
I think free-form response might be a bad idea as well. One of the main problems is people being mean-spirited - now we're going to give these same people the option to anonymously write whatever they want to someone, without even the (modest) fear of being down-voted for their comment?

I think this is a GREAT idea if it uses pre-selected phrases to convey specific / useful info to the author.
"May I help you?" is definitely less hostile than GTFO. I just recently used it on a group of people who turned out to have a legitimate request. I didn't trust them enough to let them fulfill their request by themselves, so I did in fact help them out.
Coffeemug beat me to my comment about this post. We're an all Ruby shop, and I don't think we've ever hired someone who (a) knew Ruby well coming in and (b) wasn't up to speed in under a week. If you're strong with Python, Perl, or Lisp, you will do fine in Ruby.

It is not a buyer's market for Ruby devs. Any post that suggests you screen a candidate based on whether they know what the "||=" operator does is offering bad advice.
Policing for porn? Err, why would they do that? I mean, like Willie Sutton would say, "That's where the money is" ...
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No, I mean things like this:

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.1/ref/generic-views/#date...

The powerful thing about generic views -- as far as I'm concerned -- is that they're encapsulated generic logic. Things like "show an individual object" or "show objects published in December 2009" or whatever, which crop up over and over in real-world use, and which are best written once and reused over and over again.