skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I found this explanation far more confusing than a good explanation of continuations (of which I've seen several). And giving them a new name is bad mojo.

I believe the brief description being derided in this article, "the remaining work to be done", would be fine if it included the important bit: state. As he rightly points out, the work isn't the important bit...it's the state of the work+data that matters in continuations, and I didn't find his explanation really made that as clear as several other tutorials out there. Comparing it to goto was particularly uncomfortable for me (because again, it's the state that matters...and goto is effectively stateless in this context, and has the same flaw as just saying "the remaining work to be done"). The key to continuations is that you pick up where you left off with all data (the stack, as pg points out) intact.

So, pg has it right, of course, but I'm not sure very many dynamic language developers really have a very good comprehension of "the stack".
I do too neighbor!
I live on both ends of the extreme. On Linux I use gedit and on Windows I use Visual Studio. If you are going to write in a static language like C#, you might as well have code completion.
Fundamental limits to virtual reality
Actually the embrace of big search engines might be the death-kiss for the semantic web, as blackhat SEO will game the data and the little valuable content that exists will be drowned by junk & spam.
Has anyone seen the film 'pi'?If not, this would be a fine day to see it!
I totally agree -- I've been slogging through writing down as much as I can about Audiogalaxy here: http://www.spiteful.com/the-audiogalaxy-chronicles/

I haven't gotten around to writing anything about FolderShare yet. Maybe in a few more years :)
Great movie! I'm a big fan of the director Darren Aronofsky, I would recommend his other works Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain if you haven't seen them.
Jack of all, master of none
JavaScript: Search and don't replace
High Wire Act
You think of wealth as money. That's the wrong way to look at it.

Wealth is value added for people or companies. If you create a web-app that saves a company money, then you've created wealth. The demand that companies have for saving money is unlimited. The limits are on the supply side: Can you think of a web app that saves a company money?

On the consumer side, it's basically the same. If you can save customers time, or money, if you can entertain them, or educate them, or make their lives better in any way, then you've created wealth.

Again, the demand for a better living through web-apps is unlimited. The limits are on our side - how much can we deliver?

If you have really created wealth, step two is how to monetize it. That's where Google and Yahoo come in. But that's another issue altogether.
The night the IETF turned off IPv4
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/031208/how-many-digits-of...

=p
For Europeans the same time 3/14 1:59.26 is 14/3 1:59.26. Expression as two numbers we have

3.1415926
1.4315926

The different between those two numbers is the cube root of 5.
A veterans vote for type systems - not just Stevey's n00bs
Japanese magazine filled with only QR codes
Mocking a Python standard library
http://pi.ytmnd.com/
Hair Extension | Hair Replacement | HAIR & COMPOUNDS, INC
Hair & Compounds, Inc, is a wholesale Hair Extension and Hair Replacement manufacturer carries high quality Human hair and poly hair extensions, wigs, hair pieces, hair care products at fast delivery world wide.
You can choose to buy Dell or not in the first place as well. (And if you say that people can have Dell products forced upon them by their company, well, they can have OpenDNS forced upon them by their network administrator as well.)
Structured data exists in data silos more commonly known as relational databases. This ramp-up will really only occur once SQL servers start speaking SPARQL.
Until all the AJAX-y stuff got labelled, "Web 2.0" was the Semantic Web. I can recall much of that usage around 2003/4 or so.
Yes, it is a question of opt-in versus opt-out and the difficulty of making those actions.
We can try sfbay.craigslist.org (99% text)
i'm sure it did... it was a world map of the entire fleet. i was touring as part of a boyscout troop at the time, and someone dropped the ball and forgot to turn it off... and they were very, very nervous when i pointed out the screen that was turned on :)
This type of valuation has been mentioned before ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121206 ).

Yahoo purchased GeoCities for US$1100 per user. Microsoft purchased a stake of Facebook for US$300 per user. So, AOL buying Bebo for US$250 per user is a relative bargain.

Regarding your blog, its only worth US$25000 if you can sell it. Otherwise it is worth nothing.
I like our Milky Way for the simple reason that it's the only part of our personal cosmology that has any individuality to its naming. Our planet is just the common word for dirt in one of our languages; our sun's name is Latin for star; the system around it is just named after it, and, skipping past a frame, our local galactic group is called... the Local Group. But hey, hey, if we ever get famous, they'll find us by the ol' curds and whey!
You don't need cash to acquire companies ( http://www.billparish.com/citigrouppyramidintro.html ).
>> Microsoft purchased a stake of Facebook for US$300 per user and an exclusive advertising deal.

fix'd.
Yes, dabbledb.com runs on Seaside, a continuations-based web framework running on Squeak, and Avi Bryant has posted that they're very happy with their ability to support thousands of user sessions.
Who Might Be Spying on Your Communications? (Hint -- It's Not Just the NSA)
VoIP technology is still relatively new, and hackers are finding new ways to rip off service providers and their customers. Just who might be spying on your online communications? You might be surprised.
Ask YC: Why have/will you build an startup?
Simply because you can? For the money? For respect? For fun? To change the world? To avoid pointy-haired bosses?

I will do it because I can, for fun and to change a little bit the world.
Because I wanted secure and efficient online backups, and nobody was providing them (at least, not up to my standards for security).
Thank you I will evaluate this thing, I'm curious. But I'm not really in favor of adding complexity to the stuff (complexity-> loss of money). I think the best thing I can do is finding an euro-based ad network.
Google Sky launches
An interesting idea is to use culturally biased captchas, based on popular local movies, local news and politics, names of local bars or restaurants etc.
This is a truly stunning sight:

http://www.google.com/sky/#latitude=-70.00556654574503&l...
Pi day and the celebration for St. Patrick's Day falling on the same date?

Happy Green Pi Day!
Be sure to not have any sharp objects, guns, bottles of narcotics, or any other way to kill yourself around after watching Requiem if you haven't seen it yet.

In fact, you might want to go ahead and buy a kitten and call someone to tell them you'll need them to come over for a big hug in about two hours right after you pop that DVD in.
I'm in favor of the speed of flat files. I have two Windows desktop applications (one for sale, one freeware) that both were converted from using a database to using a simple flat file. It was easier to program and much easier to distribute. One of the programs has a search functionality - it's just the normal linear text search. Even with all the data I have in the program it's instantaneous.
Looks like a good post but somewhat spoiled by the site's advertisements and surveys blocking progress through it's multiple pages.
The following article is my functional programming bible. I always refer to it when things start to get a little hazy.

http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html

If you read it (the continuations section) you will understand continuations. I stake my HN reputation on it (whatever that's worth).
Casino insider tells (almost) all about security
The Secret China-U.S. Hacking War
A good reason for a startup is because there is a large gap in the market which currently exists, is emerging, or is imminent.
I consciously try to program like a newbie, moving ahead clumsily and directly. Make it work, then make it small. Code is a bridge, it doesn't need to look good, just get me across. What use is a beautiful bridge to nowhere?
Did you look at Jungle Disk?
Just so you know, I modded you down due to blog spam. That was short enough you could have put it in your comment (not to mention, the "everyone's first VI session" skit is probably older than me, and definitely not due to the website you linked).
Why isn't RFC1365 more widely implemented? This would provide all of the address space needed and without needing a grand switch-over.
I liked the dust cloud http://www.google.com/sky/#latitude=-70.00556654574503&l...

Almost broken into tears, what about you Scoble?
I wish that the bakers and the mathematicians would get duke it out and settle this:

http://www.piecouncil.org/national.htm
A couple of years back, when my son turned 3.1415 year's old, I had a Pi-day party for him! Adding to the confusion, I went to the local grocery store and bought everything that had the word pie in it: apple, peach, pizza, spinach...

yum.
Fengtek Releases Motherboard Designed Using Feng Shui Principles
Hey Matt,

Here are a few of my own humble suggestions for you. I've been developing for 23 years and have been in OOP on the Microsoft platform of tools for 10 years:

1) Most of the bulleted items below are great. Dusklight has some VERY important things to say, as being a developer is surely NOT all about slinging code.

2) Nearly everything JFred said below is great advice. However, I very humbly do not agree on his #1 recommendation. If you are a programmer, then be one. If you are a manager, then be one. If you try to be what you're not, then you'd be happier stocking shelves at China-Mart at night. Concerning the upper tier of income for developers, they make more than the managers, have way less stress, easier schedules and WAY more fun. Consequently, every single developer I've ever known that has climbed into management has loathed it. I personally know a CTO who hated his job and busted himself back down to programming. Same for a former corporate department director...went back to programming (each making around the same money, BTW).

3) Now that you're graduating, your education is only now starting. Put www.bookpool.com in the top 5 of your bookmarks...buy everything from them (unless someone can give you a better, cheaper alternative).

4) Don't think on this one, just do as I say: Buy every single Head First book you can, starting with the ones you know you'll be using right away: "http://www.bookpool.com/ss?qs=head+first"
Buy the "Software Development" and "Object Oriented Analysis & Design" books immediately. These are not quite as daunting as some of the other books out there that practically speak to us in machine language.

5) If you end up going down the Microsoft path of development, then focus on C#, not VB.Net. This is an extremely religious subject, so please don't allow me to explain. I have an entire word document I created as to why. If you do indeed go down this route, then buy the following Wrox Box as soon as you're able: http://www.bookpool.com/sm/0470048409

6) Subscribe to every coding newsletter you can related to your chosen technical focus and create a rule in your email client to funnel them into a folder. Read them.

7) In my humble opinion, you're like a hammer without a handle if you can program but don't know SQL and a DBMS or two. You may already know this, but Microsoft's DBMS is SQL Server.

8) If you do go the Microsoft path, you can get versions of Visual Studio and SQL Server Express for free. Also, since you're a student, they've also recently come out with plans for you. Download what you can while you can before you leave school!

9) Go out to various auction type development sites to bid for jobs that'll allow you to not only practice and hone your skills, but will also give you a small stipends and give you another notch in your resume. Example: www.rentacoder.com

10) Relax. You're going to do great!

Boyd
That's no dust cloud; that's a star cloud! :-)
The Mystery of b := (b = false)
Geeks as a whole are nothing like gangsters.

Entrepreneurs are like gangsters because it's practically the same job.

My friend tutored young black kids in North Carolina. She reports that all the smart ones -- ALL of them -- are in the drug trade. And that some of them are barely aware that it's supposed to be wrong. One of them wrote an essay about his lifestyle before he got caught as "living the American dream".
The Smart Goggles that could make lost keys, mobile phones or iPod a thing of the past
For the money, the respect, the fun, to change the world, and to avoid pointy-haired bosses (and a few more reasons).

Why would there be a single (or even a handful) of reasons?

I wouldn't believe anyone who says:
- I don't care about the money (even if they were already rich - all the wealthy people I know want to get richer!)
- I don't care about being respected (everyone wants to be respected)
- I don't want to have fun
- I don't want to make the world a better place (for me or others)
- I like to be ordered around by someone less competent than I am
I like the site design.

Very different...
I've always been dissatisfied with my employee's life. There are various way to get in control, building stuff on your own is one.

Moreover, if I can have a positive impact on average people health with my sport website, that'll be better.
And Nerds Became Queens: Yahoo and Smart Searches
For the flexibility of schedule, as a better test of my abilities than landing a high-paying job, and to change my tiny little piece of the world.

It's not revolutionary, but I enjoy the complexity of online stores, so I'm working on a solution that addresses: Easier customization for 3rd-parties/customers (in terms of time and knowledge required); Prevent upgrades from breaking those customizations; and some other things.
Microsoft Pitches Merger Vision To Yahoo at Meeting
That seems awfully unlikely.
I fail to see the point of this. Geeks are not a distinct breed of people and it feeds into second-rate, misleading stereotypes to suggest they are.
Carlyle Capital's ills rattle world markets
Well, I appreciate your opinion about 'interestingness' but whats the point of google when there was yahoo?
I tried the built-in ip address geocoding in the Rails plugin, GeoKit.

It's relatively accurate except for when the visitor is accessing the site from a corporate or school network, in which case it shows up where their main ISP hub is, which could be across the US. Unfortunately that's a large percentage of our users, so it just ended up confusing most of them. We had to remove that feature :(
What's the URL to your site? I don't see it in your profile.
Software "hiccup" undermines trip past Saturn moon
5 ways to fail at IT training
Blog Fight! WordPress and Movable Type Square Off
Because I can. And because it seemed like a fun thing to do...
Life Clock: One Revolution Per Lifetime
I second that (using Scala), it's amazing. Totally compatible with Java and the JVM, but lets you mix in really concise functional programming, along with a dozen other big pluses and scores of little treats (for a long-time Java programmer like me). We're using it as the primary language for our start-up. I use the Emacs mode for syntax-highlighting and indentation (and I've fixed a couple annoyances). I use two Emacs shell-mode buffers for a scala prompt and a shell prompt to run build scripts (I don't use whatever facilities scala-mode has for those things).
It's a nice idea, but I don't think it'll hit home as large as Google Earth and Google Docs has. This is for a niche market.
We'll know Google is truly awesome if they ever manage to launch a satellite to do their own surveying.
Justin.TV Teams With Qik For Live Mobile Streaming
OK, look, I'm going to try and reply to this in the politest possible way, but sometimes I find that difficult when faced with statements like this.

I really don't understand where people get off preaching about other people's business decisions. In what way is Dell installing whatever software they like, on a computer they build and sell, "wrong"?

What law of nature states that computers shouldn't have logos on them? The non-t-shirt-turing-machine-no-logo law? I haven't heard of that one.

OK, I'm done now. I'm perfectly happy that you make aesthetic and technical decisions about software and hardware, but don't go calling people who engage in voluntary trade "wrong", or telling them what they should or shouldn't do.

Just Don't Buy It.
The Fountain is a great film. Clint Mansell's score is even better.
Providing savings accounts to Indian sex workers might reduce spread of HIV
pg has written about this in one of his essays, but successful startups pay a lot because a) it's hard to measure the impact of a good developer, and b) a successful startup gives a market valuation on a small team. As long as BigCo can't properly measure or evaluate developers, there will be an incentive to get a proper valuation by doing a startup.
The premise behind the post is that virtual reality is an exact replication of real reality. The author argues that this will be impossible to create, since the computation required is equal to the computation required to actually make the real reality.

I think that the basic premise is flawed: If you want real reality it's already there. Virtual reality is recreating a subset of real reality, accurate to nature or of your own devising, with less accuracy.

If you want real reality, just go outside.
collapsible commenting, ala reddit
Nah, the price of stale ideas and rehashes is very low. When there's a new big idea and big success, it is very highly valued (look at Blogger, del.icio.us, etc when they were released and bought vs now). The point of a startup is to validate an idea in the market. A validated idea is worth MUCH more than an unvalidated one, but when you copy a validated idea, you're also competing against the people that validated it, which brings a whole new set of problems.
Original Source:
http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2008/03/05/simplicity/
There's no better feeling than solving a problem/need, and having people thank you for doing it.
Google Sky Rises Above Google Earth
Seconded! People get dang picky about the price they pay for free services.

This pays for the free services they provide: a) faster, more reliable DNS lookup, b) automatic phishing protection, c) optional content filtering (both blacklist and whitelist, and d) fine-grained control over lots of network preferences.

Great podcast interview with the CEO over at http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3550.html . It's about an hour but it's a great listen.
He interviewed me, or I interviewed him

Good god, what an arrogant prick.
One of the great classics - good to read it again.

This piece really shows how intellectually curious feynman was. He sets out the premise for the dream of nano-machines in a scientifically plausible way. He does so 20 years before Drexler started his initial writings about it. And the full implications of this talk have not yet permeated the scientific society. And he came up with it almost 50 years ago.

Just amazing...
Requiem For A Dream is very very nice.
Google Exec. thinks high of Android.
Ze goggles, they do everything!
John Resig's ECMAScript 4 implementation tracker
ReadBurner Acquired by Mashable Editor-in-Chief
Can Bebo save AOL's mobile?
EU taxpayers to fund $306m Google rival. No wonder the Yanks think we’re dumb.
Let this rapper teach you seo and marketing.
This time, to solve a problem that I've wanted to see solved for a long time. Hope I'm not the only one.
So far, Microsoft has many formers to take over Yahoo board
The chunkiness that is tolerable with maps seems quite unnatural with astronomy. I mean, it really should feel like a spaceship.

Also, is there some reason why three people have posted the same link? Here it is again, for those who've missed it:

http://www.google.com/sky/#latitude=-70.00556654574503&l...
Pathetic. This type of thing will never work. Let the bickering between the companies begin and watch the money be wasted. Instead of pumping money into playing catch-up with Google, they should supporting start-up enterprises that are innovating beyond Google. At least then these start-ups won't be going to the states because of the lack of support and vision in Europe.
You know, I wish I had this tool when I was in astronomy...it would had been a much better class.
Yahoo land Switzerland for their sweet spot
What's the Caramilk Secret?
Yeah, I read the article. Maybe it said something you didn't want it to say.
I bet when you visit dell.com, you're 2 clicks away from reading in plain English about all the crap they install on your computer.
Some things are wrong even though they're not illegal. And it's only natural to get angry about such things even if you aren't the one who's affected.
Microsoft rapt on Web ad analysis company (Rapt)
Yeah, I came into this page to complain about this very thing. Maybe he should write a post on "How to write blog posts readers will read", one of them being, put the article on one page, and not on a site that keeps interrupting with ads.
You know, there is a much easier way
One of my favorite days. :)
I think as long as the characters are still readable, it doesn't matter.

- also the fact that they can use the ones they bust to make their algo smarter is scary.
Why, it's the pacman ghost nebula! http://www.google.com/sky/#latitude=-70.00556654574503&l...
No, every job interview should also be a chance for you to evaluate the company that you might be working for. The interviewer is the best proxy you have access to before you are actually hired.
Why your team needs a coding style
Here's a link to the actual story about 'Ghosts' sales.

http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/turn_it_up/2008/03/re...
After reading the story, I'm aghast that some people here are more upset about OpenDNS than Google/Dell. What OpenDNS is doing seems MUCH more in line with what a user would expect.
One problem with these postmortems is that they are biased: successful products are more likely to get postmortems than unsuccessful ones, partly because the public is more interested in products they have heard of and partly because the creators would rather not publicize failure.

But a postmortem of an unsuccessful product made by otherwise-competent developers could be more instructive than a postmortem of a successful product, especially in the "what went wrong" section. The book "Dreaming in Code" feels like such a postmortem, and I think I learned more from it than from the various Game Developer postmortems I have read.
Google already jumped the shark in China:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google#China
Yeah... Sorry guy, but the reason there's very little room at the top of Pixar's food chain for you is that you can't tell a better story than Brad Bird or Jon Lassiter. This viewer's opinion is that there is a light-years difference in quality between Pixar movies and dreck like "Horton". The latter is clearly designed only to separate parents from their money, by any means necessary - other than actually producing a worthwhile film, of course.
Perhaps a gap in the market is emerging. 1/3 of Google's first 500 employees have already left and stock options will vest for another 2200 staff in Aug 2008 ( http://www.news.com/Life-after-Google%2C-with-millions/2100-... ). Additionally, Sequoia thinks it is worthwhile to invest US$31 million in a search engine ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=134291 ).
Buy an iPod, get a free virus.
Going forward, I'm wiping new machines and reinstalling from disk when they arrive.

Not to mention that the factory install of os X was seemingly screwed up on my MBP and missing tar and gnutar entirely.