skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
8 years of C# and .NET?

IIRC it was introduced in 2001.

How many years of Java do you have? 20 or 25?
Wow: Regular Expression Generator
Choose something that you want to make, even if it's just a clone of an existing site or service. Then figure out what database, language, CMS etc you need and start hacking it together. You'll be much more motivated with a goal in mind than just trying to learn a language from a book.
Time To Update Your WordPress Install; Version 2.5 Is Out Of Beta
Another good one is sxc.hu.

http://www.sxc.hu/advanced_search

Just select "no" under the restricted ok button. You'll need to sign in- just use a bugmenot account - http://www.bugmenot.com/view/sxc.hu
We stopped using activation email since the beginning. For simplebucket we took a different approach. By directing the site's usage strongly tied to a user's valid email address, we don't have to have activation email.

To upload their photos and later to admin those photos, our users have to go to this "secret url" that they will receive when they first upload their photos.
Ok my bad. When you get to my age your memory ain't so good!!!

Any advice on lisp/scheme?
Q about Exercise 13.3(b) in "ANSI Common Lisp"
Has anyone else worked on exercise 13.3(b) in "ANSI Common Lisp"? I approached it by declaring all the variables in Figure 9.2 as long-floats:

; Use declarations in math utilities:
(defun sq (x)
(declare (long-float x))
(* x x))

(defun mag (x y z)
(declare (long-float x y z))
(sqrt (+ (sq x) (sq y) (sq z))))

(defun unit-vector (x y z)
(declare (long-float x y z))
(let ((d (mag x y z)))
(declare (long-float d))
(values (/ x d) (/ y d) (/ z d))))

(defstruct (point (:conc-name nil))
x y z)

(defun distance (p1 p2)
(mag (- (x p1) (x p2))
(- (y p1) (y p2))
(- (z p1) (z p2))))

(defun minroot (a b c)
(declare (long-float a b c))
(if (zerop a)
(/ (- c) b)
(let ((disc (- (sq b) (* 4 a c))))
(declare (long-float disc))
(unless (minusp disc)
(let ((discrt (sqrt disc)))
(declare (long-float discrt))
(min (/ (+ (- b) discrt) (* 2 a))
(/ (- (- b) discrt) (* 2 a))))))))

However, the running time slowed down as a result of this change, rather than sped up.

Note that I used long-floats, rather than double-floats, because, when I used double-floats, the output was slightly different (only off by 1 on some values) than the original version in which variables were undeclared. However, the output was slightly different with long-floats, too, so I guess that didn't help.

Anyway, should declaring these variables make the program faster, or am I doing the problem incorrectly? And why is the output slightly different if I'm using the largest size floating-points? Below is the diff:

diff "spheres.pgm copy" spheres.pgm
125c125
< 62
---
> 61
179c179
< 62
---
> 61
6837,6838c6837,6838
< 41
< 117
---
> 42
> 118
6866,6867c6866,6867
< 117
< 41
---
> 118
> 42
7028c7028
< 22
---
> 23
7076c7076
< 22
---
> 23
7138c7138
< 114
---
> 113
7166c7166
< 114
---
> 113
7226c7226
< 118
---
> 117
7278c7278
< 118
---
> 117
7416,7417c7416,7417
< 85
< 54
---
> 84
> 53
7434c7434
< 85
---
> 86
7470c7470
< 85
---
> 86
7487,7488c7487,7488
< 54
< 85
---
> 53
> 84
7531c7531
< 19
---
> 18
7539c7539
< 18
---
> 19
7565c7565
< 18
---
> 19
7573c7573
< 19
---
> 18
7831c7831
< 117
---
> 116
7873c7873
< 117
---
> 116
7937c7937
< 19
---
> 18
7967c7967
< 19
---
> 18
8006c8006
< 107
---
> 108
8008c8008
< 128
---
> 127
8018c8018
< 24
---
> 23
8086c8086
< 24
---
> 23
8096c8096
< 128
---
> 127
8098c8098
< 107
---
> 108
8152c8152
< 164
---
> 163
8707c8707
< 110
---
> 111
8797c8797
< 110
---
> 111
I recommend folks jump in with PHP. Rename a webpage .php and you are rocking-and-rolling. Start with a project idea, buy a few books and start hacking!
Flash flaw leads to Vista laptop's fall
Dotcom Millions for everyone! All you have to do is startup your own web company and you too can retire at 17 or 19 years old and party like it's 1999.

These guys did very well for a years worth of work and deserve every penny. But don't for a second think these guys are gonna go out and buy Aston Martins or live in the Four Seasons with their "millions".

Funding:
yCombinator: $25,000 - $35,000
(Some articles say there were 4 founders ($25k) but their own website show 6 people ($35k))
Angels: $400,000
From Paul Buchheit and Chris Sacca

Ownership:
yCombinator: 2-10% (Typically 6%)
Angels: Unknown but split among 2 people
Founders: Unknown but split among 4 to 6 people

Exit:
$5 Million Composed of:
- $2 Million Cash
- $3 Million Stock in CMNN.OB

So YC's take is $100,000 (2%) to $500,000 (10%) (Typically $300,000 (6%))
Angels take is unknown but if they made no return it would be $400,000. However its likely that they made at least 1x return.

This would leave about $4 million to be split among the 4-6 founders. So they each made a little ONE million or less. Of course a large portion ($3 million) of their earnings are stock, so their actual earnings could be a lot more (multiple millions) in the future than what they are now. However, they are in effect paper millionaires as none of them have $1 million in cash.

The deal was announced around 12:00am PST March 26, 2008. March 25, 2008 close of CMNN.OB was $2.69. Friday's close was $2.62. So its possible that 2.6% has already been shaved off that $3 Million. The actual amount obviously depends on what price they obtained the stock at.

Let's also not forget that these guys are leaving the valley, moving to Vancover and will likely be settling into their 9-5 jobs with bosses, office politics and other employees at Live Current in a few weeks.

It will be interesting to see how everything turns out in a few years time. However, by that time the media will move on to hyping another startup and we'll probably never hear about these guys again. Unless they quit and start an new startup.
Talent Agents in the Digital World
If I had a fledgling hacker under my wing I would show him how I develop, which, for me, is the laziest and most productive way I have yet found.

gentoo, sbcl, emacs, slime, weblocks, ec2, git.

YMMV.
Attacking someone's credibility has no bearing on that person's argument. A true statement spoken by the devil doesn't make that statement false.
Next, it's very hard for someone to correctly divine the motives of another. It is often the case that it's easier to make up base motives and assign then to an opponent than it is to refute their argument.
Finally, that people "decide their position on an issue and then seek supporting evidence" simply shows that "people" are idiots.
I think he's not so much concerned about the medium (or even content) as he is the read-only-ness of it. We do hold authors in much higher regard.

But this brings up another question: why does there seem to be this general obsession with the consumption of this particular medium? I would say they're in love with the form, but they don't mention doing any writing. I would say they're in love with great art, but they don't mention any other forms. (Is it a NYC thing? Manhattan always seems downright foreign to me.)

Imagine asking the people quoted in this NYT article about the last manga they've read or the last modern symphony they heard or the last painting they made.
AI "beam search" method found to be effective (though not optimal) on my Numbrosia Puzzle -- can you do better?
10 Great Snappy Comebacks
Learn a free Unix - like Linux or BSD. Really. A huge part of hacking IMHO is taking an open system that is sometimes quite complex (like an OS), shedding your fear of breaking things, and tinkering. When things do break, you will learn so much from fixing them. =) It is a lot of fun, free, and will get your feet wet with some of the other stuff that mechanical_fish mentioned.

I also recommend Emacs. I haven't worked with git just yet, but I use Mercurial all the time (and I will eventually get around to using git). Avoid CVS like the plague.
My dad recommended this course - should I bother?
I'm not saying this article is right, but can you point to something specific it says that you feel is incorrect?
That sentiment is what the up arrow is for.
While some of the lower forms may not be effective in refuting an argument, they may be effective in its discussion. For example, pointing out bias may be considered an ad hominem attack. However, it may also be useful to others while forming their own opinions on the validity of a statement.
The "mirror self-recognition task" used in cog dev involves placing children in front of a mirror with a red dot on their forehead. Up until a certain age the baby treats the image as if it's another child and tries to interact and play with it. However, the older babies will realize that they are looking at themselves and will reach up to pull the sticker off their forehead.

They have done the same thing with chimpanzees and elephants and it's really cool to watch the videos. You see the chimpanzee try to attack its reflection at first, but then it slowly figures it out and starts grooming its hair and checking out its teeth and stuff. (And then peeling the sticker off its forehead.)

Here is a series of YouTube videos on this:

http://youtube.com/results?search_query=mirror+self-recognit...
A million dollars may not seem like a giant fortune, but it's a lot to most people, especially to someone young. In fact, it's life-changing if you get it that young, because it probably means you're done saving for retirement. If you can get a 10% return (a reasonable estimate considering the asset allocation you'd use at that age), getting $1 million at age 20 is like getting $2.6 million at 30.

Plus I know the Auctomatics are personally planning on doing things to increase LC's value. They negotiated for a lot of autonomy in order to make that happen, and it's a small enough company that they could.

They turned down some very famous companies to do this deal. Why? Because being bought by a public company with a small market cap is in effect a quick way to go public.
OK, fair point, the NYPost is not the gold standard in economic analysis.

On the other hand

1. The author, Stan Liebowitz, is "the Ashbel Smith professor of Economics in the Business School at the University of Texas at Dallas"---not exactly unqualified to speak on the subject.

2. The New York Post may run a lot of salacious pieces, but how often does the NYPost run an overtly discriminatory and salacious piece?

Remember, this is the paper your New York workers read on the train on the way to work. That's about as mixed a bag as you can get. The New York Post, like every other New York paper, does its damnedest to appeal to the widest possible spectrum. The Post is a liberal paper. You can call it conservative, but only when you're comparing it to the NY Times. This makes the article interesting, and it should at least give you pause.

It's easy to take a snotty attitude against reading something like the Post, but the article, which admittedly isn't that great, raises an interesting point. In America we purposefully overlook a lot of things in the name of equality. In underwriting you don't want overlook anything.

The financial analysts who failed to analyze this situation are responsible for the crisis. So are the former home owners who defaulted on their loans. And the people who issued them those loans. But when good analysis is restricted by federal law, and bad analysis is incentivized, how much blame can you place on analysts before next placing it on legislation? Regardless of how much blame you assign to the legislation, you must now multiply that manyfold. This is a little thing that has made a big difference.

The point is that we have to ask ourselves what level of abstraction we are willing to force onto the notion of a person. Are we willing to turn so much of a blind eye that it throws us into economic recession?

This recession is likely to be mild, but deep recessions are a time of great uncertainty. You don't have to read very far back in history to learn that people tend to stop overlooking things when their pocketbooks are empty. Equality, in other words, is a luxury item, and like many of the things we enjoy in America, it's contingent on our economy not exploding.
You are considered ignorant if you don't know anything about Pushkin.

In Russia, sure. But the Pushkin example is completely atypical of our society. When was the last time you heard Pushkin mentioned among non-Russian non-specialists?

The obscurity of Pushkin is actually the point in this case. If she had said "He hadn't even heard of Shakespeare!" the implication would have been "He's a lout", which is quite different. "He hadn't even heard of Pushkin" is more along the lines of, "He doesn't pass the minimum test for my exacting, boutique tastes".
Ouch. I guess this was one of those "intellectual" DH0's. I will put together a real response.
How To Work Better, Tate style
Wow! lot sof links + text. Thank you for this information!
you're scaring me....hundreds a month?
Not at all! As an aside, http://www.mmoworkshop.com/trac/mom/phpbb might be of interest but it is mostly kits for MMOs
I just stared at the 'Bo Radley' for a minute and thought...isn't it 'Boo'? Or maybe just pronounced that way?

You saved me looking it up :)
I've seen the BoeBot and it is quite adorable. I was wanting to put my software skills to a real test, though and I don't know if there is enough space on a BasicStamp chip. But it does seem like a good place to start! Even, still, I need to be aware of how components come together if I want to do something fancy on the bread board (don't want to short stuff out,e tc).
Microsoft Is Providing Free Unlimited Windows Vista SP1 Support
The Arudino looks neat. I will definitely keep it in mind. I have taken digital electronics while in college and do remember k-maps and so forth, so it should hopefully not be too far ahead of me. :) Thanks again!
This seems like a neat way to break it down. Thanks for your suggestions!
> The New York Post, like every other New York paper, does its damnedest to appeal to the widest possible spectrum. The Post is a liberal paper.

No it's not. It's owned by Rupert Murdoch (also the owner of Fox News), and it's considered a conservative paper. The Daily News is a more liberal paper. Wikipedia confirms this, though I'm sure you could look for more definitive sources if you want to surf around.

Frankly, I would fully expect the Post to try to scapegoat liberal activist groups.

> The author, Stan Liebowitz, is "the Ashbel Smith professor of Economics in the Business School at the University of Texas at Dallas"---not exactly unqualified to speak on the subject.

The author is certainly qualified. On the other hand, it's apparent from reading his piece that (rightly or wrongly), he's had this axe to grind about redlining that has left him out of the mainstream consensus for quite a long time. It could be that this makes him uniquely qualified to make an assessment that no one else needs to hear, or it could mean that he's a kook that no one with any sense listens to.

Personally, I'm certainly not qualified to say that the article is wrong, because it may be 100% correct. However, I would like to see more evidence than the word of a guy who's been arguing a minority position for 15+ years in a newspaper that is not known for its commitment to balance.
I didn't realize that the Hill/Horowitz book also has a companion lab manual. It looks something like I would like to have. Some of the books in the ARRL store look neat, too. Thanks!
That is EXACTLY my point. This article would have me believe that writing bad loans caused the credit crisis.

As a former quant, I can tell you that my belief is that the practice of improperly securing bundled debt is the cause of the credit crisis. When everyone began to realize that their risk analysis was off, they discovered that they held bonds or other more exotic instruments that were improperly hedged. The entire world asked for the same CDS's at the same time. That's when EVERYONE knew the game was up.

BTW, if you are a quant, or if you know your finance, I would be happy to explain why I believe the collapse in the bond market is caused by the asymmetric nature of a lot of the hedging that was going on. Or rather the total lack of hedging, and by implication, proper risk management. CDS's, CDO's and indeed derivatives in general are going to have their problems, but that is BECAUSE of improper securitization practices. We have a USD500 trillion, yes I said TRILLION, house of cards out there because of rampant misuse of these instruments. The mortgage bond market is just the place where the problems cropped up first.

I would be happy to listen to your explanation of how bad loans were the cause, but you will have to have a good explanation for two things. Firstly, explain why the bundles containing these loans were improperly secured in the first place, given that the lenders, according to the article you are citing, freely admit that they knew these to be bad loans? Could it be fiduciary negligence? Secondly, why is there so much trouble in the Jumbo market, (mortgages higher than USD417000), where CRA is not an issue at all, if CRA is the problem they are making it out to be?

I stand by my belief that fiscal negligence, and by implication, a failure to exercise the proper fiduciary duty to the companies, lies behind the collapse of ALL of these enterprises. If you have evidence to the contrary, submit it.
Good luck getting the media to call people "crackers."
The hands on approach definitely appeals to me. I've thought about a local community college but the hours are not compatible with work.

I guess I could n ot worry about details but part of me is genuinely curious about how that stuff works. :)
Do the owners of forecloses houses have to sell them? Could they hold them indefinitely as investments or even rent them? And why don't they do this?
Have you looked into MIT's open course ware stuff?

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute...

That is probably a good place to start although some background with physics and differential equations might be helpful.
I've been playing Toribash on and off for about a year now; it 's a beautifully simple game but getting your character to perform simple maneuvers gets very complicated. It's actually pretty educational to figure out through trial and error how different muscle groups work in concert to do the simple movements we take for granted.

What Toribash is missing I think is real time play. The movements are too complicated to do real time one muscle at a time, but if players were allowed to program combinations of muscles to hotkeys it might be possible. Players would probably want to share the best muscle combinations; I think it definitely could be pretty fun.
What does consciousness have to do with it?

It's human. If one or more aspects of being human aren't computable, then it's plausible that computers will never pass the Turing test.

Of course, if you assume that the space of what can be expressed algorithmically is equivalent to the space of all that is, some of these claims become trivial. But that's a whopping leap of faith. Perhaps Richard Dawkins could get around to writing a book about that one when he's finished demolishing its more popular competitor. :)
I'm self-taught. My recipe:

1 - Find something you want to build

2 - Learn everything you need along the way

3 - ???? <!-- Lots of hard work -->

4 - Profit

I built a pop-up blocker and privacy suite this way (as a single founder) and earned more than I was making at my day job, so I eventually quit.

I see a lot of "things you should know" in other posts, but in my experience, they won't be interesting until you need them. You'll have to go step-by-step, though. I'd probably start with HTML and work my way out if you're interested in web apps.
Music is considerably more important than books, since it's typically hard to avoid the other person's taste, good or bad. "Urban contemporary", "country" music, and anything involving death grunts can cause problems.
Having read Paul's treatise yesterday on the importance of improving our on-line dialectic, this story also reminds me that it may also be acceptable, if not appropriate, to occasionally refer to people as simply 'assholes'. A much better word in this case than 'hackers'.
By the way, no need to guess how the money went down. They were acquired by a public company, who filed all of the agreement with the SEC, who made said filings available on the web. They're pretty interesting if you're into that sort of thing.
I've never heard of a college course on business that helped anyone in a startup. On the other hand, if there were one, it would probably be at Stanford.
The demo was faked. In your analogy, you would see the wife, and she would be hot. But when you ask to see her in the nude the husband says "Not right now, she's not quite ready for that. but can't you see from her in a bikini that she's hot?
The owner of a foreclosed house becomes the bank, or more precisely, whoever the bank sold the bond to. In answer to your question, yes they can hold it, but there are a lot of very complicated reasons not to. They involve liquidity ratios and the like. So selling makes since in a great many instances. In short, what a bank, or financial institution does with it will depend on their fiscal position. Or it SHOULD. This mess has shown us that they can behave irrationally.
I've read all of them. They're a lot of fun, but I think it's important to go beyond them and read the books that inspired J.K. Rowling. Joseph Campbell's works on legends and mythology are particularly instructive.
Yes, I am in complete agreement with you. Which is why I suggested C.

You only realise the huge productivity jump when you first program a small application in C and then do the same thing in Python / <your favourite language here>.

Hence the C recommendation.
It is true that a million dollars is a lot to probably 99% of the worlds population. But those 99% don't live in the valley where "The median price of previously owned houses is $716,500" and the "median price for previously owned condominiums and townhouses is $475,000" even in this housing slump. So basically that enough to buy a house, furniture and a car in the valley.

They'll be a bit better off in Vancouver but not too much. The USD and CAD are near par these days and Vancouver is the most expensive city to live in Canada.

Also, since only $2 million of the exit was cash, none of the founders even have a million dollars in cash to invest. At most they have $500k if there were 4 founders with each owning 25%. However since there were 6 people there, 2 angels and yc, they probably got much less than $500k cash.

It is quite interesting how you view this exit as sort of an IPO for Auctomatic. I think that is a first for yc? This gives everyone on news.yc and the yc alumni to put their money where there mouth is and invest in a yc company.

Will the stock price rocket turning everyone into multi-millionaires? Only time will tell.

None the less, these guys have done a great job and I wish them all the best.
In the mid 90's MTV did a salary survey of moderately successful bands and found that the average yearly salary was about 30k, putting it in the range of an entry level office job. These weren't the biggest names in music, but they were definitely on the high end. This was long before the rise of peer to peer downloads, and even then professional music was not a viable career path. Blaming technology advancements for artists not being able to make a living off of their art is just a scape goat.

The concept of a "starving artist" predates the rise of computers and transcends all media. The only difference between the music industry and painting, sculpting, writing, or any other form of art is that a myth of past profitability has been propagated in recent years. The (unchanged) reality is that artistic expression doesn't generate revenue streams except for the very few, lucky artists.