skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I use Ubuntu in French and I find the translations to be in a pretty good shape. When I get an error message then I just use the command line to launch the same program in English: LC_ALL=en_US program. Works pretty well.

Recently I switched my parents to a Romanian version of Ubuntu and I was pretty disappointed with the state of translations. Bad wording, inconsistent translations, partial translations etc. But English is not an option for my parents. For now I try to identify translation problems and contribute patches to fix them.
Am I wrong? This is the same series of overlapping monologues that arises each time the subject of GPL licensing is broached.

Each time time this horse gets dragged out of its casket.

Same stuff. Same blather.

License your package the way you want, and move on.
Seems to be an issue of identification more than causation.

People with more education are aware of things like autism more in their children, have higher salaries, better jobs, health insurance, etc...

All of this would lead to them actually identifying something as being wrong with their children and them taking them to a doctor for diagnosis.

Poorer parents without the education background or money would potentially just think, "that's the way kids are" or even if they recognized it, they might not have the money to take them to the doctor for diagnosis.

And finally, wealthier people seem to have trends for what they blame the problems of childhood on. Some level of this outbreak of autism is likely parents going to their doctor and saying, "my child is autistic- right?" just as they were doing with ADD years ago. Moreso, the doctors are able to provide prescriptions ($$) and additional visits ($$) to people that have some illness.
Thanks, I read the html-linked content. He talks about the "mental effort" required to make a micropayment and how that's a hindrance to the technology. I agree in that I wouldn't want to take the time to "OK" every payment. But that doesn't kill the entire concept.

It seems what we need is a very, very simple payment model. Suppose, for example, I tell my browser(s) that I am willing to pay up to one cent for an article from the Wall Street Journal. When somebody from HN posts a pointer to a Walt Mossberg review of Apple's latest gadget, the link appears in some distinctive format, like a green-colored link (or with a '$' suffix, etc.) When I click the link, my wallet is debited one cent and the article appears. There's no extra effort on my part, except for an occasional wallet reload.

This would seem like a technically feasible approach that avoids the mental effort of going through with a separate purchase step. OK, not everybody is going to be technically astute enough to set themselves up with whatever wallet technology is used...but this is just another problem to be solved. Maybe PCs and netbooks come with built-in wallets preloaded with a few dollars or euros. Maybe wallets are set up via multi-level-marketing, so the tech-savvy set up their friends and family. Maybe something else.

Point is, I don't think it's an impossible problem. We just don't have the right models yet.
I am fully aware of all the attempts, but like file-sharing had been attempted many times before Dropbox, I think there is still room for it to be done right. Not saying I am the one to do it right, but I definitely wouldn't use history as an accurate predictor of future attempts.
Harvesting email addresses surreptitiously
Many times, I have been shown architectural diagrams that painted pretty pictures of what turned out to be disastrous codebases. In retrospect, there were other, non-technical "smells" that indicated that the sausage might not be so well made -- dumb developers, vague managers, production broken-ness, etc.

I've seen a lot of Java codebases over the past decade, ranging from good to awful. To get a feel for the overall quality, I've learned to check out some common things that are usually indicative of overall quality. For example, bad developers never seem to understand exception handling. Database connection management is another easy spot to check out -- letting the pool close up one's connections seems to be a favorite pastime. Other stuff that's not necessarily Java specific -- use of custom frameworks that, according to the developers' own descriptions, are replicas of existing stuff.

Perhaps, as @hga pointed out here, sitting at a terminal with an experienced developer and insisting that he/she show you the stuff you want to see (as opposed to a passive, guided tour) would be a quick way to gauge overall quality. And, you'd get a pretty good idea of management's notion of "experienced developer."
Or for success in the line in the first paragraph that reads "We want to pick up a golf club for the first time and be Tiger Woods."
"this point needs to be looked at further." why?

On average, men and women with the same size fingertips perform at the same level so once you know the size of someones fingertips knowing their gender is useless (in this context). What more do you want to study?
Firstly, writing test-first permanently changed the way I write code .... They still tend to be short, descriptive and as self-contained as I can make them, and as a result easier to understand and change

I learned exactly the same lessons from writing code in a functional style. The experience changed my style for the better, and that carries over even when I'm using a language that doesn't lend itself very well to functional programming.
NeHe's guides are pretty well recognized now to be damaging to beginners. The code is sloppy and encourages copy-pasta coding by failing to properly explain the purpose of the code it provides. I really have to recommend against the NeHe guides.
all that data still needs to be routed and transported between the ISP's access points, a cost that scales up with usage.

isn't this happening anyway?
Quick, someone write a chess app with AI. It will be the greatest single character ever.
The drawback is that you're spending significant amounts of your time working and commuting instead of studying. Realistically, there's also a limit to how professionally-relevant a job you can get while working part-time.

I worked summers, while taking classes during the third year of my degree, and participated in a coop program. The summers and coop program were great, but I regret working while in classes. The money I made wasn't worth the hit to my marks and comprehension of the material. In retrospect, I'd have been better off taking a bit more debt and concentrating on academics.

Also, when my father went through school, his summer job not only paid for tuition and books, but gave him spending money and paid for his car, gas, and insurance. I couldn't afford a car until well after graduating, and even then with insurance and gas it cost a quarter of my paycheque. Had I done the same thing, I'd have needed a year-round part-time job just to cover the car.
Finding a Job You’ll Love: The Interview
And French was the language of diplomacy from the 17th century until WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
Glad to help! Thanks for being so attentive to feedback and timely in responding.
Do you disagree with the conclusion or the use of uhaul data? While I don't think he proves all his points with respect to why people are leaving California, it is certainly surprising the cost differentials in Uhaul rates between California and Texas - which is indicative of migration demand/patterns irrespective of the "why".
I guess some languages are different than others. Some cultures tend to translate pretty much everything (I noticed that in spanish), others accept foreign neologisms.

In portuguese we tend to use the english words for technical terms and jargon, sometimes slightly corrupted to fit the grammar. Terms like delete, debug and commit are conjugated in as if they were regular portuguese verbs and used frequently even with acceptable translations existing. Delete in particular is quite common even among non-technical people.

For many technical terms, specially newer ones, I can't even think of any acceptable translations without it sounding silly. Most of the time they are left as-is and you need to know the jargon to understand the translation.

I much prefer to read technical documents and books in english.
Android 2.1’s Best Features in Screenshots
CES: How to get mentioned in a Steve Ballmer Microsoft keynote
Jerf,
There are many truths to your point, and I do agree that the post as presented does come against some of those inherent problems with the ISPs.

Because I wanted to simplify the post, in an attempt to strip it to its bare minimum, I left out a very important aspect of the model - which changes the economics of the legal botnet a bit. Revenue share split with the ISPs. The bet is not on whether or not ISPs would do nothing in response to an inordinate amount of their network being used for P2P traffic. The real goal is to convert the 'bad' P2P traffic, but incentivizing the current P2Pers to use their machines for good use (and earn some money) while doing so. Again, of course, at the limits there might be some problems with the economics of it all - but I think rather than it blowing up, it is just unknown. No one knows exactly what will happen when the majority of the bad p2p traffic converts to good p2p traffic.

I do agree that there are major quality issues, but I think we have reached the stage of technological advancement that those problems can be solved. Maybe not with something off the shelf, but definitely solved.

As to your last point, the truth is that this idea actually has two business models and uses. I think I might do another post to flesh out that side, but the name of the post bares it out. A legal botnet. In other words, a legal way to fight fire against fire for DDOS attacks.

The only way to defeat a DDOS (as far as I know) is to throw more bandwidth at the packets being sent. As it stands right now, it is very expensive to do that from one single ISP (or even a handful of ISPs). With a network like this, it would become an arms race. I would postulate that the legal side would win, because economics is on its side - for many of the larger targets anyway.
That could be very true, but it's not the point he's trying to make. He is using spending figures as if they were on equal footing:

Just look at Texas, which spends 12 percent less per pupil with a similar kind of population but does significantly better educating its kids.

I see no discussion of cost of living, fiscal policies, or zoning.
Really? I'm mostly liberal and I found this pretty fascinating.
I agree with milkshakes on this one. Brazzy...you are right. CDNs (in their current form) don't scale well.

A properly executed p2p CDN can scale much better, IMHO.

As for not including users themselves as middle men, I must disagree with that. It makes economic sense for the ISPs to want to convert bad p2p traffic to good p2p traffic. That's their goal...all the while monetizing that good p2p traffic.

Put it this way, the ISPs will do nothing, except sign a revenue share agreement and possibly change their TOS to allow customers to resell their bandwidth. For every GB resold, the ISP makes money.

So in essence, they are converting bad p2p traffic to good p2p traffic and making a killing - the economics works in their favor.
Relationship between US medical spending and innovation
Exactly; something is happening. I've read that 3,500 people leave and 2,500 arrive every week, a substantial net out migration that's supported by the U-Haul rates, which have always been used as an independent and honest indicator.
Seth Godin: Now available as an iphone app
That's awesome, and now I want one.

What's funny is that back in '92 when I was supposed to buy my class ring, I didn't because of a budgeting decision.

In the end, the money want towards a new hard drive to have a clean Linux (0.49.2!) install on.
Good article, I've liked newLISP since I discovered it a few days ago but wasn't sure about it after a few responses to my comment in the newLISP webframework thread...

It can easily become a python replacement for me!
My "can't" should be read as "if they try, the bulk of dev effort will simply flow into a fork". They can't revoke the existing licenses, and with open source that's enough.
Thanks for jumping in with that. Everything in After the Deadline uses context. Even the suggestions spit out by "dumb rules" are run against a contextual filter to remove suggestions that don't make sense.

For an example of what I mean, try this:

Something to conoisur when talking to a wine conoisur.

Either here on HN with the new bookmarklet or on polishmywriting.com
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/2009/gsp0...

The actual data doesn't seem to fit the author's assessment.

California per capita GDP in 2008: 42,064 (ranked 7th)
Texas per capita GDP in 2008: 38,044 (ranked 19th)

U-Haul prices could be explained by demand. There could simply be more demand and fewer available trucks in California.

Anecdotally, I've lived in both states and the quality of life in California is infinitely better =)
Nitpick: it's "asymmetric". Good point though.
Given the global pushback against ISPs from the content industry and assertions they're knowingly profiting at the expense of content - including various threats of legal or legislative action - do you really believe any of them would let you profit at their expense? Such a system would be the very first thing throttled into oblivion by any packet shaping.

The ISPs would naturally (and rightly) demand a profit-sharing agreement in exchange for unblocking this app. Their share would have to cover the costs of their bandwidth - and at that point, why not just do as every CDN worthy of the name has already done and put servers in their network?

While this is a nice thought experiment, I frankly don't see it being any more successful this time around than previous attempts at the same. Perhaps less so, as network administrators everywhere now have more experience disrupting P2P and ISPs are more vigilant.
I'm conservative, but if my state was seeing this substantial a net out migration I'd want to know it and do something about it.

(As it is, Missouri might lose a House seat after the Census, but overall we're doing something in the area of "OK". We've got a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature, and they've both got somewhat ahead of budget problems.)
Amazing. I was expecting some theoretical dissertation about productivity and coding and instead, got a heaping spoonful of awesome.
Email-to-user-info code for 11 services released as open source
2010: The year of the products + a new way of working
Prisons are indeed dangerous, but it is a matter of degree. You seem to be asserting that there is little practical difference between a life sentence and a death sentence in terms of opportunities to right an unjust conviction. Can you support that with evidence?

Should continue executing people who might be innocent until we can suitable reform the prison system?

One of the reasons prisons aredangerous places is the that socity is complicit with rapists and other sociopaths, giving them tacit approval to brutalize other prisoners.
$5.69 means that they have increased the price by $0.001 5690 times.

prices = (1..5690).collect { |member| member * 0.001 }
prices.inject(0) { |price, sum| price + sum }
Ask HN: iPhone app like BB messenger?
I am looking for a great group messaging service that me and my coworkers can use for group messaging.
I'm not sure that contradicts the author exactly. Higher unemployment, high GDP/capita, and net out migration suggests to me that a lot of lower and middle-class jobs have been lost in CA, while the higher-income jobs remain.

And agreed, I love living in California.
The Small Business Server Replacement is Clear(OS)
According to the below article, U-Haul has to pay someone to drive the truck back, which makes the price more expensive. That sounds like a horribly inefficient system though!

The article also contains some city migration statistics which support the OP's argument. Yet, they don't indicate whether people move directly from LA to TX.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/00784-u-haul-prices-migr...
Something about falling down completely and picking yourself up always makes for a compelling story. Also nice to hear you can get back that kind of passion.

Sprout is right around the corner from me - I'm definitely checking it out now. I'm a fan of Top Chef and had no idea he was involved; I would have been there the day they opened.
Calling All Ph.D. Students (for Facebook Fellowships)
I had two questions while reading this:

1) Which unemployment number is he using? I assume U3, but it would still be good to know. I'd like to see the media boosting awareness of the various U's and what they mean.

2) The Valley area has a significant population of startup folks, many of whom are "unemployed" in the sense that they live off savings while building their company. How are these people listed in BLS stats? Are there enough of them (e.g. 300-600k) to slant the numbers by 1-2%?
Are we going to have every one of this series showing up?

Anyone who is interested knows by now how to follow it. It is no longer news. As for the statistics given, there is no question that difficult local economic conditions are going to result in people leaving. And that will result in cost differentials in Uhaul rates. Current results can be seen from a glance at the economy. But the results fluctuate over time, 5 years ago California did not look so bad and 5 years from now it probably won't either. Uhaul rates usually reflect transient conditions and not fundamental problems.

Now he's focused on facts that make California look bad. But that is just fact selection. If he had a different bias he'd note that California's atrocious way of managing itself has consistently lead to an excess of economic growth compared to the rest of the country. That is why average salaries here are higher, property here costs more, and expenses here are also higher. (Which explains why education here costs more.)

Furthermore over time California consistently has paid more into the union than it has taken away, and Texas has done the reverse. Sure, the current budget here is a mess, but if California could ask back from the federal government the recent excess that it sent, California's budget would be fine. If we did the same exercise with Texas, Texas would be worse off than the California state government is now.

So if you look at one set of figures, Texas is better. If you look at another it looks like California works better. Reality as always is messy, and perception is more in the eye of the beholder than the facts on the ground.
In both cases, it’s almost three times more expensive to rent a truck to leave California (from San Francisco or Los Angeles) and move to Texas (Dallas or Houston) as it is to leave Texas and move into California, suggesting that there is a huge outmigration of trucks and people away from California to Texas.

Wrong.

This is a classic case of using hard data to jump to a false conclusion to support your argument.

OP conveniently omits the simple fact that it has always cost 50% to 300% more to ship anything from west to east, whether its a rental truck, container, or LTL load. Why? Because most food in the United States moves from west to east. So the demand for space on equipment returning to California for more food has always been lower.

Anyone involved in trucking, logistics, or distribution has known this for years. When in doubt, keep inventory in the eastern part of the U.S. because in an emergency, it's always cheaper to ship from east to west. Hell, many manufacturers have found it's actually cheaper to make a new product than to ship an existing one back from west to east.

Entire manufacturing and distribution facilities have been built in the east financially justified by freight rate differences alone.

Sorry OP, your false argument is outed. At least until someone figures out how to grow produce in Philadelphia in February.
TC50 startup SeatGeek raises money
The opinion of those who know significantly more than me is that newLisp is to be avoided.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=788157

In most anything written by a fan of newLisp, you'll find something like the following (taken from the linked article):

> Today, unfortunately, whenever someone mentions newLISP on an online forum frequented by adherents of another LISP, an almost clan-like flame war will erupt. An adherent of one particular dialect, usually someone who has never used newLISP, will shout obscenities such as, "newLISP goes back on just about every advancement made by LISPs", or "dynamic scope is evil!"

Maybe there's something to newLisp, but any time I see a group with that flavor of persecution complex ("All the criticism is wrong because they just don't understand!") I take pause.
Why is losing 1000 people a week when the states in question have 24 million people (Texas) and 36 million people (California) notable? It seems like it's nearly impossible to determine 'why' given those population counts, personally.

(population sizes grabbed quickly from wikipedia)
Hey, thanks for the explanation.
Has anyone tested this? If it works it seems like a very interesting security hole.
Having gone through most of my K-12 schooling in SF Bay Area, I can't say I'm surprised by this decision. Being an advanced student was not encouraged by the school district, nor the schools that I attended. Accelerated programs were canceled right and left to make everything "more fair". Scheduling was always a nightmare. Talking to my husband who went through his K-12 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was very eye-opening as it seems his district made every effort to push the advanced students forward that much more. At this point I don't consider myself disadvantaged; I was lucky enough to have parents who pushed me to excel in spite of a system that holds people back, but not all are that fortunate.
Upvoted for interesting perspective. Do you have sources?

(That's not meant to be combative - I've also been pleasantly surprised by Boris so far.)
Right, I've been thinking about this as an extension to the Joel Test (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html).

Good point on asking about finances.
If we are executing enough people that capital punishment duty is actually a meaningful way to acquaint people with the gravity of taking another person's life in the name of justice, then our society is already repugnantly sick and violent. I think we are some distance from that, and I'd rather not move closer.

Furthermore, I think the risk of such an experiment is that we desensitize the population to the taking of human life.
Too bad this wasn't hooked up to a hashtag when it twitters so that we can search for them.
Probably because it would be statistically overwritten to an NSA-approved level by the obvious fact that the vast majority of autistic people do not develop relationships resulting in progeny.

More probable related factors would include increased parental age, particularly maternal age at first-child delivery, increased rates of delegated childrearing during critical developmental phases, parents being physically present but intellectually and/or emotionally absent during the same period, and so forth.

The causes of autism are not well understood. Although there is an interesting apparent correlation between visual processing loci (particularly as it applies to facial recognition) and autism, no-one knows whether the anomaly is causal or merely indicative. Even if autism is strictly a product of genetics, "genetic" is not congruent with "inherited" -- else we'd still be a layer of ooze in a tide pond somewhere.
Portraits of an aging, decaying Biosphere 2
You could just search for the message itself ('Another merge failed.').
Perhaps a collapsed details or additional actions pane
Tax Story: VC Carry vs Founder Equity