skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
as the pagination on the a-z seems a bit broken, they do have a full listing page of whats planned on launch - http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/data-packages-launch

edit: sorry, that page is list of whats planned for launch, not whats there now
Does this mean Unladen Swallow is giving up? Just kind of liquidating the useful things they made into Python proper?
He's also a pretty cool cat. Not like I'm making a fan club or anything, but yeah.
It's probably up to the investors in FiltrBox to decide what share of cash and stock that want. Or rather they can accept/reject the deal and that would be one of their considerations.
I dare you to remove Obama. I dare you and a thousand of your friends to remove Obama. You can't. Your voice is useless. In the elite system, let's say there are 1000 people who belong to this elite class. If 10 of them start agitating against the leader, then their problem will immediately be heard. Each of those 1000 people has a circle of people around then, the second class of elites, who can get a message to them. In this system, if you want to lead, you only need to get into the upper circle, you don't need to do the completely impossible step of being elected.

If chinese leadership were corrupt, then they will be immediately removed by the large number of intelligent people who are in the upper part of the party.

Those countries I listed all have a similar system, and power is handed from one member of this elite ruling class to the next - strangers or opposition don't jump in and take over power. Yes, there is democracy, but there is no chance of someone not in the system getting into the class.

Yes, what I'm advocating here is the complete opposite of everything you have been brought up to believe - but the difference between me and you is that I think about even the things you are supposed to accept. Democracy is good - whoever would think to question that? You should. Question everything, even the things you think are obvious.

To truly understand, you need to believe in what is wrong for a while. Only then can you understand both extremes of force and see where the truth lies.
OK, having read the whole article, it seems like energetic people who buy in to what they're doing are more likely to be successful than people who despair at their ability to control their outcome. People highly energetic about where they're going are more likely to work harder at it, so that's not all that surprising.

And there have been enough links on here about 'grit' to make that consequence not surprising at all.

The interesting question to me would be to see longitudinal results from random teachers in general. I remember in high school having a PHENOMENAL teacher who was in his 3rd year of teaching. I went back to visit him recently (he'd have been teaching 10 more years now), and he was very, very despondent. I wonder how his 'class performance' during those first 3 years compares to his class performance during his last 3.

"Great teachers...were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: 'They’d say, "You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could." When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.' Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing."

Sounds like software development, too.
Cutting the categories is also a bad idea in general. Google results have been gradually (when possible) replacing displayed URLs with your sites category structure...Building your site's structure the way google wants is probably a good idea.

See http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-site-hierarchies-...
"[T]his seems to be one of those things where the presence of these metrics has drastically altered the way the programs operate."

I think this was actually the whole point.
A new species of patent trolls: Marking trolls
I started with their socialauth app, and heavily modified it for http://bln.kr. I wanted to allow a user to login with one service, then add additional services to the same account.

http://uswaretech.com/blog/2009/08/django-socialauth-login-v...
I am assuming it is <$5 million exit because Jive itself has funding of ~27 million
If you need a private group, we built http://tgethr.com to be an alternative for us to use instead of a private Google group. We have things like code formatting

http://support.tgethr.com/faqs/how-to/how-do-i-use-code-form...

Integration to services like bug trackers (unfuddle) and dropbox.
Okay, this is getting a little convoluted now, so I apologise if these points lack clarity or are poorly made.

> I'm not a fan of China's government either (though I hate the US' about equally), but I really think this argument is vastly more complex than you're presenting.

I don't think America is without problems, and I think the direction it is going, especially w.r.t corporations is alarming, but it cannot be compared to China.

> 1) People in China can get on the web as well. Due to how the firewalling work, most probably don't even realize it happens. Just sometimes they try a link that times out. Happens all the time. Are you sure it isn't already happening to you?

The link is not "some link", it was a link to an organisation that reports on deaths in police custody. They probably do dead trees and libraries as well. Yes, I'm sure the US government is firewalling the internet. Some of it we have already heard about, some of it we'll hear about in the future. For that reason, it doesn't bother me.

> 2) Are you sure the information you're seeing is true? In some cases you wont have any way of completely proving one way or another.

Well, for example, the USA confess around 1000 deaths in custody between 2003 and 2005. That sounds pretty bad, but I suppose they could have rounded it down. The point is you have to trust systems, and the only systems you can trust are ones that are self-correcting, with independent actors and oversight.

3) For some countries, seeing the info doesn't affect anything because of the level of indoctrination the people go through. For example, you can point out what ever you like to a Scientologist, you wont change their mind because their indoctrination will prevent them from believing you or your source. Are you sure you or the citizens of your country don't also have this problem?

No, that would be impossible to prove. I can claim that I currently believe that I believe very little, but that doesn't really help. I mean, I don't actually know China exists at all.

Look at is like this: From China's perspective, the problems we are talking about here are not problems, they are features of a system designed to control the population in every way. Whereas from America's perspective, if these things are happening, they are a big problem that needs fixing. That doesn't mean they aren't happening in American, but they aren't the aim. You need a pretty big conspiracy to make American as bad as China.

Can I also suggest reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_society
Obviously there is a trade-off with levels of crime, poverty and so on, but I'd rather live in an albeit imperfect western open society, or even India, than China.
I'd like this embedded in my eye glasses. I'd also like a pony.
Structured Parallel Programming
I don't agree with the idea that designers should just hand off mock-ups to developers and expect them to implement it properly. All of these points can be addressed by coding your own HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Developers don't have the time to worry about your grid, they have enough to do as it is. Design that stops at Photoshop is only half finished, and a web designer who doesn't have the skill to implement their work is not really a web designer at all.

When I work with developers, I just tell them to do their thing and make it work. Don't worry what it looks like - I'll do the rest. Using GitHub on our projects has made this really easy for me.
Yes, there are a number of solutions for django. The one used by the forum (and also by cnprog.com) is django-authopenid (http://bitbucket.org/benoitc/django-authopenid/wiki/Home) which integrates with existing django auth db. Users can choose sign up for an account on your django site or sign in with an openid.

Some other solutions include: django-socialauth (http://uswaretech.com/blog/2009/08/django-socialauth-login-v...) and django-rpx (http://github.com/howthebodyworks/django-rpx).
What constitutes a startup mistake?
A Guide to Efficiently Using Irssi and Screen
That's a hard problem.

The human eye is only ~2 megapixels but it's focused on a small part of your field of view. So if you wanted to fool the eye you either need to track what it's looking at or to create a huge high resolution screen most of which is ignored. Add in the ability to focus and you suddenly need to add depth information and a display that can handle it or you will not fool the eye. Now add the fact that most people have 2 of them and it gets even more insane.

PS: Video cards have far higher internal bandwidth than external bandwidth for a reason. Focusing on the brains bandwidth is not going to be enough.
As the saying goes: You gota kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince
Congrats, guys!
I'm pretty sure I've read that the resolution is somewhat unlimited (i.e. it your field of vision blends in seemslessly with short-term memory) but the bandwidth is actually quite limited, but variable (i.e. can handle much change in a small area or little change in a large area).
This is an interesting concept, and I like the role reversal.

However (and this is devils advocate for sure), what is preventing these companies from seeing your ideas (who then ask you about implementation details), and then walking away with those instead of wanting to hire you? It's almost as bad as giving away your idea.

Its also sends a message "I'm not a competitive job seeker who can shine in a crowd" and you are putting yourself out on the corner so-to-speak. It could convey desperation or over-availability.

If you have a long employment track record and think it would be fun that's one thing - but in the end I still think the advantage lies with the companies, and almost even more so. It's marketed for the young-start-up, possibly unemployed segment, "the hacker fair." Its an identity that, while very technically advanced, can convey young, unemployed code-monkeys that could be taken advantage of as long as they feel important in a position they are given.

I'm all about getting buddies jobs - and a showing off their proud work. That part is awesome. But something about this set up motivated me to respond in this way.
Great metric for "good enough" batteries, of an overnight charge. But as devices shrink, the batteries also shrink.

Also: if there is a non-trivial market for ARM netbooks, Microsoft will produce Windows for it (they probably already do, internally). They are highly sensitive to business risk.
A good abstraction is one that makes it easy to express the solution in a way that the customer wants. A bad abstraction makes it hard.

For example, if the customer in an end-user and wants a table-like presentation, using an HTML table is a good abstraction. If your customer is a css designer who just wants to see divs, an HTML table may not be a good abstraction.
pmorici has good recs (XBee is especially fun), but the Arduino starter kit alone can be found here:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...
JQuery Code Smells
Every bit makes it exponentially harder to factor and 1024 bits is the standard, so I'm not worried.
TRECA Filter Review
terrible imo. he contradicts himself.
Free Fixer - A Must Have Malware Removal Utility For Advance Computer Users
As with most every human organizational construct:
They were created for good reason and have done good things, but are inevitably perverted over time.
Sony Flaunts 3-D TVs
Influenza Surveillance System (US Based)
I'm going to try modesty, but I doubt I'll be able to get through. Also, CloudFront is ideal for events like this.
vomit

how about we stop calling corporatism capitalism? they are diametrically opposed.
2010 bug hits millions of Germans
The dissatisfaction is real but temporary. People hate their jobs because they feel trapped. As soon as the recession lifts, prospects for the old bonuses return, and they have more job options, most will stay instead of leaving as the article contends.

Having options to leave improves job satisfaction immensely.
If you're going to compare state sanctioned killings in China with accidental killings in the US you're going to have to make it fair by comparing all the accidental killings in both countries. And don't get me started on Tianamen Square and the more recent "disturbances" in Tibet and the Uighur regions.
I think in a more demanding job market, we're probably not going to have much choice. Hackers in general are going to need to be able to demo their "portfolio" to break into places where they don't have strong personal network connections.

As someone who has for the first time been in the position of hiring, I would have completely gone to something like this to try and land candidates.

Of course, my first inclination is to hire people I've worked with or know to be smart (and this is what I did), but for someone who was willing to put themselves out there like this, I would have gone outside my network.

Heck, I feel like some kind of slacker admitting I don't have a blog/web app of my own to show people now.
Does anyone know where I can find the analogy of building a parachute on the way down? I would really like to give credit to whoever wrote that, but I can't remember where I found it.
FYI: It's verified to work with Mozilla's Bugzilla installation.
Amazing Audio Sampling in JavaScript with Firefox
Sparkfun down under load of SparkFun Free Day
I guess the $100,000 they're going to save by being down for the sale duration will pay for some nice infrastructure upgrades.
Ways to Visualize Changes Over Time
OMG... i had a few tabs of their site open. right this instant, they all reloaded! they're hammering their own servers, which is kinda funny.
it was slow all last night & now seems completely dead.
If it were a closed system (walled borders), that might be more true. However, judging a state as "doing well based on GDP", when it happens to have Hollywood, Napa Valley, Silicon Valley, and La Jolla, I think would be ignoring immigrants to California and geographical luck too much.

In other words. There's good chance, if you're a wealthy Californian, you're an immigrant to California, or you're exploiting it's geographical assets (coast, sunshine, soil). To give the credit to the state government or the school system for those things seems a bit generous.
People love to dump on California's governance, along with other issues. I don't think anyone can deny that Hollywood and Silicon Valley are economic powerhouses.
A bit frustrating to get all the way to the final order page and then have the site crap out...
Teaching under unions is a middle-class, family friendly occupation.

Teaching under Teach for America is a 2-year volunteer gig with unsustainably long hours.

If the unions were to disappear tomorrow I just don't think you'd be able to generate enough enthusiastic effective young people at that burn rate to fill out the entire system.

In many suburban schools, it's actually pretty easy for a group of involved parents to pressure the district to not renew the next year's contract of a new teacher they don't like, as long as it's done before the teacher is tenured (~three years in my state). Maybe this is one reason schools without a critical mass of involved parents suffer under the current system.
Hey joshwa, somehow I never even noticed that thread yesterday. Why? Because I was up to my earlobes implementing a business intelligence/data warehouse system in a very large SOX-compliant enterprise :-).

For current requirements, this solution is excellent. It is third party software, installed on top of an existing ERP system, that enables the users to extract whatever data they need and build their own reports without submitting a ticket to IT. Everyone loves the prototypes and is dreaming about the possibilities.

So instead of beating up on enterprise life, let me just share a little bit of yesterday, one typical enterprise day:

- A 3rd party build just stopped at 98% complete with no error message.

- Another build crashed with error messages I had never seen, so I had to open another ticket with our vendor

- We ran out of disk space on a volume we didn't know the software was using.

- I had to add additional data cleaning functions to remove heretofore unknown control characters in the enterprise data.

- I inadvertantly named 44 files with the vendor's own naming convention, so now no one can tell whose files are whose. We had to reset our standards and rebuild.

- Although this vendor has hundreds of installs, oddly, none of them are SOX compliant. The controls, audits, and duplication of data needed will more than double the resource requirements. Worse, I'll have to do an implementation that no one has ever done before with this software :-)

- Today we start writing our own tools to handle the SOX compliance and satisfy the auditors. Some fun.

I can go on and on. You get the idea. And I haven't even touched upon the usual enterprise culprits: the meetings, the politics, and the lack of project management. It kinda sucks to have to do triple work to get the same thing done.

So whose fault is all of this? No one's. That's just the way it is. Every time I think of a better way to get things done in a large enterprise, someone has 5 good reasons why they are the way they are. It's wasted energy fighting that.

As I've mentioned in previous posts (one example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760704), I think the long term solution will be to eat away at the soft underbelly of the enterprise one bite at a time, with small apps, nimble software, and cloud computing that augments but doesn't replace (yet) current systems.

I continue to ponder YC's RFS #6...

[EDIT: I continue to ponder "Ideas We'd Like To Fund: Enterprise Software" whichever number that was :-)]
Eating Soup is a Nutritious and Delicious Way to Lose Weight
Wikibooks
You made it all the way to the final order page? After two hours I was able to get a few items in my cart and have -almost- managed to create an account.
There's also things like this:
http://data.london.gov.uk/datafiles/crime-community-safety/a...

<Ward_Code>00AAFB</Ward_Code>
<Ward_Name>Aldgate</Ward_Name>
<District_Code>00AA</District_Code>
<District_Name>City of London</District_Name>
<Count_12-2007/>
<Count_1-2008/>
<Count_2-2008/>
<Count_3-2008/>
<Count_4-2008/>
<Count_5-2008/>
<Count_6-2008/>

So... is that zero (a safe area) or no data (an unknown quantity)?
> "I remember times where as a team we were denied the ability to create scripts or tools to do work for us."

When people say 'corporate culture is the problem', that's what they're talking about. Of course better technology and processes can help. But if corporate culture actively prohibits anything new/unknown/non-standard, what is the true problem? That the tools aren't being used, or that the tools can't be used?

You're not actually disagreeing with anyone who points to corporate culture as the culprit. You're just not at the root cause yet.
Math visualization: (x + 1)^2
Only 2000 compute years of a single AMD 2.2GHz were reported to be used. Using the rough estimate of 9GFlops for that chip, the current top supercomputer (that we know of) is very roughly 200,000 times as powerful.

The paper estimates 1024 would be "about a thousand times harder". 1000 times harder than 2000 compute years on that chip is roughly ten compute years on that supercomputer. Closing in...

1024 is widely not recommended anymore, though.
It would be cool to know how many of us tried this and what the result was. Timing out for me at the moment. Will post again once I have a final outcome.
SnapABug - the Story of a TechStars Incubation
Looks like the issue is pretty widespread http://search.twitter.com/search?q=sparkfun

Seemed like a good idea at the time... Back to bed for me
Looks like SFE is going to have a fun customer experience situation on their hands - how they deal with the collapse of their website will go a long way towards burnishing (or burning) their "friendly neighbourhood electronics supplier" brand.
I am curious, given the amount of memory that we can put in smaller and smaller devices, is there a clear 64-bit migration for the ARM like the Atoms already have? It seems we will be exceeding 4GB of RAM in devices in the the not to distant future.
Building A Strong Indie Game Development Team
Well, in my opinion nothing is completely opaque or transparent, but to me ORMs (given their ability to fall back to arbitrary SQL, which their main task is to abstract away) are way more transparent than relational databases (that constrain you to their relational model).

Indeed, RDBMSes give you a myriad parameters to tune, but if you think about it almost all of them affect the behavior of the system in a global way and almost none of them is really an escape hatch that lets you do things in your non-relational non-ACID way (e.g. you can't choose not to persist some of your writes to a given table immediately, although you can choose to keep the entire table in a memory-based storage engine in mysql).

SSDs are not that different from hdds I believe. The nature of hard disks is that you should minimize random access. With SSDs you can do all random access you want on reads, but you still better write continuous blocks. There are storage systems like Cassandra that were developed for hdds but conform well to this SSD-optimal pattern, it would be interesting to see how they perform on SSDs.
Social Networks Without the Networking
This reminds me of trying to buy playoff tickets online - an exercise in frustration that probably just ends up pissing off most of your customers. Although the PR might end up being worth it.
Type Checking XHTML generation with Eliom (in Ocaml)
I'm pretty sure the guys picking up work from their laid-off coworkers, pulling extra un-paid hours to cover it all and being denied bonuses/raises despite profitability are dissatisfied with something more than a feeling of being trapped.

As soon as the recession lifts, the fair-weather employers will be forced to correct those inequities - which is why those who stay, will stay.

You absolutely can not write off the objective ways people's working environments have changed and will change again, when you look at whether they leave or not.
Asking the Hard Questions: TypeKit and Web Font Licenses
It is good that mobiles do not work in the tube, as real-time position information is a security concern.
I'm stuck trying to enter an address. Already re-entered it 3 times...
Quick, someone write a Chrome extension that alerts me with a really loud sound if the page loads and refreshes until it successfully does so.

I'm tired, and I want to go back to sleep. Must. Get. Free. Stuff.
Yep. Of course the security-minded (read: paranoid) people still cringe at schemes like this (the password generators mentioned above are more secure), I think this is a pretty good compromise for the average person.