skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is really cool!

The main problem right now is that since the market is long-biased and there's no concept of time in the rankings, it's easy to get to the top by always clicking "Buy". It would be cool if you could make the rankings actually reflect a confidence score of how well a user is beating the market.

I'm not very strong on the statistics, but here's a possibility: for each trade, calculate the user's excess return against the market, represented by an index fund: (user's return % - market return %), and multiply that by the number of days. Then assign a confidence score using a t-test, maybe: t = (excess return * days) / (sample variance / sqrt(number of days)), and look up the confidence level based on the t-value. Finally, rank users according to their confidence level.

Something else--since this is technical analysis, it would be cool if you could include some other indicators on the chart, e.g. RSI, more than one moving average, bollinger bands, etc. That could give you some cool metrics--you could track how well each combination of indicators improves picks, by user and in aggregate.
Funding business plans from first time entrepreneurs won't happen anymore
I wonder successive releases make the Mono team cringe. Then again, despite not supporting every new type from every namespace, you can write really rich applications in Mono. There's always a core set of types that tend to dominate your application.
Facebook To Launch New Privacy Controls; Confirms Chat Is Coming
"Funding business plans from first time entrepreneurs just won't happen anymore!"

Until at some point a first-time-entrepreneur does something really cool, and gets funding, and becomes a success. Then this will be popular again, and the VCs will only fund "new entrepreneurs who aren't stuck in the old way of thinking!".

I give it 24 months, if it ever even becomes reality in the first place.

VCs will fund whatever makes money. If my dog could write a nice RoR app, suddenly the Humane Society would be filled with potential CEO's...
Aggregate Your Online Social Life with FriendFeed
I think the answer depends on what one is actually working on.

When I worked as an equity trader, having multiple monitors was a godsend; it eliminated the need to flip through at least five different systems all on the same monitor.

At home, I have a Windows laptop and Mac desktop that I will often switch between while programming, and I don't feel that using both of them at the same time makes me anymore productive. If I am programming in C++, I will be using Visual Studio on the laptop, and if I am programming anything else, I will be on the Mac in vim. I would only stop to look up something on the other, but usually if I stop to look something up it is because I am frustrated with some problem, and at that point I usually take a break from code just to clear my mind.
Disqus is quite interesting, and amazingly simple to use. For that alone it is good to know that they are doing well.

On a unrelated note: since when half a million qualified as a "VC" round of funding?
Rob Dougan is one of my current favorites. A shame he only has one album out. I'm also digging The London Philharmonics' album "The London Philharmonic Orchestra Plays the Music of Pink Floyd"
I've worked that way as well, but lately I've found that I'm typing C-x b RET a whole lot to find my way to the buffer I want to view or edit.

So I've ended up with multiple terminal windows:

- emacs

- mysql

- console output

- extra shell to fiddle in

I'm well aware that could all be in one big emacs window, but not having to switch buffers is a worthwhile tradeoff.
Matt, I feel the same way (and I enjoy your writing!). I don't know why people would downvote you for saying that.
Unless you take the effort to write regularly (doesn't have to be daily or weekly, just consistently) and write quality stuff there, don't bother. A crappy blog won't help and may reflect poorly on you. On the other hand, a well written blog with lots of quality posts can make a big difference.
Well, sometimes I wish I had a screen wide enough so that I can have 2x2 emacs-windows instead of 1x2 and then another screen for firefox.
Probably the 8 leg design was already tried by nature and it was not successful for large animals.
I have the same problem! How do you deal with it? Whenever I'm exposed to a new thing I want to learn, I ask if it's something I can and will apply relatively immediately, or something I'd learn only to incorporate it into my 'zombie plan' (or any other unlikely contingency). If it's for the far off future, I stick a pin in it and come back if the urge becomes more than a whim.

Also, I try to limit the time I spend ingesting info (discounting recreation) to about 20% of the time I spend creating.
I had the same question as well.

A couple of ideas:

1. No monetization, just eyeballs until an acquisition.

2. Freemium model: paying customers (bloggers) get access to more useful services (eg: better spam protection, user tracking, demographics on commentators, better threading)

3. An attempt to make the conversation the destination. Consider a system where the comments become more interesting than the original post (/. was this way once...), and disqus having that niche, since they own/host the comments.

4. Comment aggregation, a la blog rolls. Again, make the conversation the destination.

5. Enterprise deals: the Harvard Crimson was mentioned. How about lining up CNN's iReport?

Others?
which implementation is this?
"Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for... those jobs don't get filled by people emailing in resumes."

To: board@ge.com

From: wannabeceo@gmail.com

Attachment: Resume.doc

Dear Board,

Being your CEO sounds like a great job. Please take me under consideration. I have attached my resume. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Wannabe

CEOs have resumes so their credentials can be reviewed, but that's not how they are chosen.
Except they don't really kick the competitions' ass. The page view counts are bogus because SezWho does not host a site's comments (which most sites prefer, frankly). SezWho has more customers and activity than Disqus.
this struck me as fairly absurd at first, but the more i think about it, the more i think i'd probably get sucked right in. the designers could busy themselves adding more and more ways for people with high karma to influence the site.

it would depend largely on the first few people admitted into the inner circle, though. pick the wrong people, and you'd end up with a mess more catty than a fourth grade schoolyard.

i don't participate all that much here, but i have to admit that i got an abnormally big rush from a comment i made the other day that got a totally unexpected 15 upvotes. this site makes you worry more about how you're being perceived than any other online hangout i can think of.
I had this same problem for quite a while. I had force my mind to accept that I probably didn't pick up everything the first time around. I didn't let that stop me in my tracks. I simply went onto the next thing. Eventually, something would come up, usually a compiler error, that would force me to flip back to some section I have previously read. I would find out what was causing the error and fix it. I have stopped trying to learn it all, and instead I read once and then reread only what history has pointed out I failed to pick up on the first round.
"Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for" - hardly general advice considering that most jobs suck.
Whether in nature or manufacture, those legs aren't free. Is four more legs worth the energy required to grow/build them, and could the mental processing power necessary to run them be used better somewhere else?
This is the exact reason why I don't use C# anymore.
What happens if we extend this notion beyond online conversations?

Does it lead to gated communities? The segregated townships in South Africa? Ignoring people because they're not part of your fragment? To the extent that we make people into "others" we reduce their humanity. And it might be that full populated fragments would reduce any tendency you'd have towards reaching out and making an "other" someone in your fragment.

There was a meme some time back about the way that cable TV changed the nature of water-cooler conversations because no one watched the same stuff anymore. I'd argue it is even worse now, because you can hop over to TelevisionWithoutPity and have a substantive conversation with people that DO care about the retcon in the 8th season of Buffy. And you'll still have nothing to talk about at work.

Do we want things reduced to limiting possible cultural touchstones to sporting events?

I don't have answers, I'm just asking questions.
I thought the way its legs moved and the way it stumbled and rebalanced were extremely lifelike. I was wondering how they control it - is it as simple as a remote joystick? Just point in the direction and it figures out how to get there?
Thanks twampss. Like what I hear so far.
After spending 5 years in nothing but .Net, the CL libraries seem rather sleek and streamlined to me! I was always a little confused when people complained about the bloat in CL.
Why not throw a div over the image or... disable right click, make a little harder to cheat... at least.
The Disney Rules Of Marketing
Tone - It really is important (Xobni)
Nothing personal, but this is the biggest load of crap I've read for awhile. It's just complete and total FUD.

Personal preferences aside, .NET is no different than any Java, Ruby/Rails, or any other programming stack. Programmers typically gravitate towards one stack or the other based on experience. Microsoft doesn't have any sort of "evil plan" to fill your mind with .NET.

As for choosing a career path, while .NET isn't the trendiest stack, there are definitely plenty of jobs to be had, just like with Java. It's true that if you're interested in working for a startup, you might want to learn Python or Ruby, but if you're interested in job security (which is what you're talking about), you better stick with the "enterprisey" stacks like .NET or Java.

I'm a .NET developer, but I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft. Still, I can't stand it when people claim that everything Microsoft does is some sort of evil plan. No one is claiming that 37signals is trying to take over the world because they promote the use of Rails.
Learn as Many Languages as You Can (or just learn Scala)
I wonder why on earth someone at Microsoft don't work on taking stuff away from .NET platform. If someone at the company is already doing it I would really love to know after-effects but it seems otherwise. On a side note, Microsoft also seems to be disconnected from their Gold partners & this is horrible. I know a Gold Partner. They were rolling out their own MVC framework & by the time they finished developing it Microsoft announced their MVC framework :)
This made me smile:

"this amazing program which calculates an approximation of pi... literally by dividing a circular area by the radius twice[...] Naturally, a more accurate value can be obtained by using a bigger program."
Trance! (Again!) http://www.di.fm/trance/ !
This seems to be an interesting article, but that website keeps harassing me. Anyone got all 6 (!) pages in a format that doesn't insult me?
You must be referring to "Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd" performed by the London Philharmonic. It's pretty good, but there was an even better disc that came out around 1989, "Objects of Fantasy: The Music of Pink Floyd" performed by David Palmer (formerly of Jethro Tull) and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Java is Faster than C++ and C++ Sucks Unbiased Benchmark
Improving Your Business with Technology on a Budget
Geared towards non-tech people who own small businesses.
Typical response, IMO - A lot of professional developers use .NET and Visual Studio, create great apps and make good money - I've worked in the videogame industry and now at a web startup. In both instances, we have used MS development tools to varying degrees. At the game studio, we primarily used visual studio - We preferred visual studio for a lot of reasons which I dont feel like enumerating in quick post; Developing for cross platforms, VS was the best choice and supported by all first party vendors (SONY, MS, NOA).

Although it might be the trendy thing to bash MS, their developer tools and support are very good - Yes, .NET libraries and API's are certainly bloated in certain areas, if so, hack it to your liking and create a smaller footprint - .NET is very flexible and is really not that hard to learn; You make it sound like learning MS technologies and other development tools/languages are mutually exclusive, when in reality anyone who has coded .NET knows that to be untrue

If you are asked to learn .NET in a professional environment and your response is 'Send out my resume', I'm not so sure I would like to have you on my development team. (goes both ways I suppose, if you dislike .net so much, you should find an environment/job where you can develop to your preference)

Seems like I'm a shill for MS ;) I'm not, I just think they deserve a bit more credit than they are given - in my current job we develop in a mixed mode environment with MS & LAMP (might sound weird, but it works)

My 2-cents
Silverlight 2 contains a subset of the entire framework so we'll see how popular that is as Silverlight grows.
QUESTION: Is there a place I can submit someone's email so they get Spammed?
I got the email of my some annoying telemarketer that continually keeps calling my cell phone. Is there a website I can submit their email to so that they get a barrage of Spam in their inbox?
underground 1960s and 70s psychedelic, modern composers, electroacoustic noise, idigenous folk art, (Joik anyone?), mentally ill street buskers, field recordings, fractal and tesellation sound structures, Heitor Villa-Lobos, evolutionary algorithm -based interactive composition, Roxette, aleatoric compositions (Cage for example), and "The Free Software song" (just kidding about the last one).
$40M and now my eyeballs hurt... but my average return is just .02%.
What happens if blog tools (Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, etc) include threaded comments in their next release?
My heroes.
Seattle, WA
Does that really seem to be the best solution to your problem? Will that even solve your problem?
When it comes from a VC. :)
This won't work if they already have your cell phone, but in the future, get a GrandCentral number and only give that out, so you can always block someone if they get annoying.
You never find yourself, say, opening the same site in two browser windows that are as large as possible -- one Firefox and one IE -- and then using emacs to implement CSS fixes while simultaneously ranting about the stupidity of IE6 to your sympathetic teammates over Skype chat?

I guess it's just me.

But, even so, an enlightened emacs user can see more at once with a larger screen than with a smaller one.
Because useful simplicity requires synthesizing complex ideas down to their inherent components.
"I'd say that a more common method is to distribute a package (which can then be installed via pkg_add)."

Same problems, though, if I need to distribute a dozen or so packages. No repo-based software distribution means my user either has to download and install them all individually. And, when it comes time to upgrade, they have to do it all over again. So, we've had to write our own package management stuff to deal with the frequent updates we roll out (not just FreeBSD...Solaris also has crap package management).

"Add BATCH=YES into your environment, and the ports infrastructure will run without pestering you."

Lovely. The squeaky wheel does indeed get the grease. I've gotta air my grievances in public more often.
Instablogs Negotiating $3 Million Round
On these things, I always click "Print", then copy and paste the single page into Textpad and save as a .txt file. Then I can read it in Textpad, email it to myself, even put it onto my PDA. Works like a charm every time, including this time.
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml...
Agreed. That would only lead to ...

"I got the phone number of some guy that continually keeps spamming my inbox. Is there a company I can submit their phone number to so that they get a barrage of telemarketers calling their phone?"
Just slip it into a post on some popular forums, I'm sure the bots will pick it up on their own.
Where Does Bear Stearns Go From Here?
Python 2.6 and 3.0 release schedule
They plan for 2.6 and 3.0 to be released in September. Great news!
Yahoo’s Three-Year Plan: Grow Revenues 73% By Focusing on Display Ads, Mobile, and Better Search
you could take the guy's advice over at 419eater.
read the first question.
http://419eater.com/html/baiting.htm
-and do this during a recession.

I'll take a 3 year short on YHOO please!
I'm assuming deals already get done here on an informal basis, and that's probably a good way to go. Why not search previous posts (on one of the search sites), contact anybody who seems interesting or relevant, and in general just network with the coderati? Anyone interested probably has an e-mail address posted in his profile.
ok now I feel dumb... why didn't I see the print button?
+1 despite your use of the word "cult", because you're right -- Apple customers are the ones with the money. Not a bad set of customers to have.

Another factor you don't mention here: Even if you think that Vista doesn't suck, it seems to have utterly failed to inspire anyone.
Workers Uncovering Mummified Dinosaur
Size Does Matter — Bigger Monitors Save 2.5 Hours a Day
this is true, karma doesn't necessarily relate to coding ability. but that isn't the point. the point is to grow and develop a community.
"The thought of wasting 4-5 months of my life like that scares me."

I get that. It is incredibly difficult when you look at it like that. I have personally felt that pain of, "So, who I do I take time from, my wife or my kids?"

However, in the case you mention, it is only 4 or 5 months of nights and weekends. What is that, 30 actual days max? Would you trade 30 days of the thousands and thousands in your life to be able to make something you are proud of and potentially allow you to spend all of your time doing what you love? I know I would.

Obviously, thinking like that can lead to a workaholic, Cats in the Cradle (google it, young'ns) type existence, but with measured use of it and diligence at maintaining boundaries, I think it is possible.

I remember when I had a friend ask to me run in a 5K. Before that, I wouldn't run unless being chased, and even then... However, I realized as much as a pain as it might be, even being slow 5K is about 30 minutes. No matter how painful, annoying, embarrassing, it is, that's half an hour. 2% of 1 day. I decided right then that I could do anything for 30 minutes - and did. This is the same sort of thing.

You can do anything for 4 or 5 months and see what happens. This IS your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

</pollyanna boosterism>
Just downloaded it. Looks and feels pretty good so far. I'm curious - is anyone else having problems scrolling using the Thinkpad middle button?
Great article and lots of good advice.

The one about cheerleaders is important. I'd hemmed and hawed around my idea for months, but once I started building it, using it myself, and had a few friends as alpha testers, it became much more exciting to work on because I was making it for me. I could see the incremental things needing to be done to improve it as opposed to just a giant mount of unformed and uncompleted toil.

I also like the idea of using wasted time to at least learn something. Of course, the danger there I face is reading a new blog post that more elegantly solves a problem than I recently had and wanting to go back and refactor (or worse, rewrite from scratch). As long as I can keep that in check and moving forward, it's great advice.
U of Waterloo: All intro CS courses use Scheme (for Math students too!)
Seems to me that it's less about tone and more about providing immediate results to the user. Xobni could just make the extra effort to get possible solutions from their "answer search" or "community forums" and put them on that page.
UncleShare - ShareAnnotation-Based Access Control
I'm fairly certain you can list your cell number on the national do not call list.

https://donotcall.gov/
I go around not wearing pants, but that isn't to really make any kind of statement. It's usually just because I forgot to wear them. Maybe that means I'm a genius though.
i applied to the developer program because that's how you get the key necessary to install apps on an actual iphone. until you get that key, you can only write apps for the built-in aspen simulator.

i'll gladly pay 100 bucks to install my apps on my actual iphone, if and when apple will let me.
Good point, but not necessarily a defeater. Maybe that's because they are competing with other CEOs, whereas an uber hacker is already the top of their competition.
I also tried to come up with something inspirational, but failed miserably, as you can see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G4uDiI_FqQ
it takes too long to load the page. fix it before you submit stuff
Hmm, and here I was thinking this was standard practice. This does raise a few conundrums.

On another topic, can I interest you in some fine grade meat?
I believe that was a prosthetic. :)
what'st he point of IM over facebook it's supposed to be for friends and you can go talk to them at the park?
Ahh, damn, I actually resubmitted this; and that was after browsing through the first 3 pages to make sure nobody had.
sigh.

The amount of work it takes to produce a really good benchmark is something more than what this guy did.

Exhibit A: his analysis of optimization impact.

I've been accused of biasing the results by using the -O2 option for GCC, supposedly because -O2 optimizes for space, thus slowing down the benchmark. This is not what -O2 does. According to the GCC -O documentation...

-O2: Optimize even more. GCC performs nearly all supported
optimizations that do not involve a space-speed tradeoff. The
compiler does not perform loop unrolling or function inlining
when you specify -O2. As compared to -O, this option increases
both compilation time and the performance of the generated code.

On the other hand, -O3 performs space-speed tradeoffs, and -O performs fewer optimizations. Thus, for these tests, I think -O2 was the best choice.

Uh...what about optimizations performed in the JVM (or, more specifically, the JIT)? How do they compare? How do you know that -O2 is the right choice, other than "it's kinda in the middle between lots of optimizations and not many, so that sounds good."? He could have started with this: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/1.4.2_whitepaper.html

Exhibit B: he may have introduced a ton of bias through test selection and doesn't even know it

Some of the C++ tests would not compile. I've never been very good at decoding GCC's error messages, so if I couldn't fix a test with a trivial modification, I didn't include it in my benchmarks.

What?? If you can't read GCC's error messages, I don't get any warm fuzzies about your ability to decide which tests compare the things you want to compare or not.

There's plenty more to be critical of here, but the above two really were the sore thumbs in this article.

/me gets back to real work and plans to dissect this more tonight
Well $131M now. I find it's all about effective use of the 'skip' button.
Right you are. ;)

It just one more example to show how VC is turning more and more of a seller market.

Now, the bigger question: at what valuation?
Ask N.YC: What is the best (cheap) way to prepare taxes (for an individual and a small business)?
I understand there are several online services that seem a lot nice than doing it by hand, but which is best?