skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I care about the disrespect you showed towards computer science. And to basic logic.

You claim shipping perfect software is an impossibility. I would find it entertaining to hear you trying to prove this. Unfortunately, you are avoiding that burden.

I took a stand against the pernicious impact baseless affirmations like yours have on attitudes throughout our industry. They imply it's OK to write something faulty and then debug it into shippable form. And then ship it. This is not the way it should be done.

I would be OK if you said shipping software that does (only) what it's supposed to do was "horribly difficult", "prohibitively expensive" or something on these lines. You equate perfection to invulnerability to external attacks, narrowing this "perfection" to fit into your expertise.

I "specify" no "abstract way" for software builders other than to have faith, at least until it's proven it's impossible to do our job right, that perfection is achievable and we should try really hard to get to it, something you seem to disagree with.

So, again, please prove our efforts are futile so we can finally shed our hopes and follow your lead.
"The U.S. awarded 22,500 doctorates in natural sciences and engineering in 2007, but more than half of them were awarded to foreign nationals....The report noted that 60% of temporary visa holders who earned doctorates in science in engineering in 1997 were working in the U.S. in 2007."

Ah, sweet irony...you rarely see it put so plainly in print. I wonder if the report noted the percentage of US natural science doctorates who have in-field employment after graduation? It might go a long way toward explaining why US students aren't doing it anymore.

As one of the people who filled out the survey in 2007, I think it's telling that even today, not all of my PhD friends who graduated in 2007 have jobs in their field (and no, I don't count "post-doctoral research" as a job). If the US wants more PhDs in the sciences, they're going to have to do something about the labor market for scientists. Right now, it's a sucker's bet, and smart kids know it.
Unfortunately, academic computer scientists still seem to model their field after the “hard sciences” instead of what they should modeling it after — social sciences like economics or sociology. As a result, computer scientists spend a lot of time dreaming up new programming languages, operating system architectures, and encryption schemes that, for the most part, sadly, nobody will every use.

I think this is a really interesting observation. Many of the interesting things in computers such as advertising bidding systems, social engineering security attacks, social networks, collective knowledge systems, games etc are at the intersection of technology and people.
I know in the UK there was a big problem with degree programs. The UK government has 'encouraged' so many students to go to universities to get degrees that it has destroyed many industries. I worked on several jobs with a plumber who earned 6-figures and the guy hadn't touched a used toilet in years, why? Because the shortage of trades is so prevalent that he could opt not to unclog toilets and sinks because he had enough work fitting boilers and maintaining heating and gas systems that the usual "bread and butter" of a plumbers job didn't even touch the side plate of his finances.

What happens to the university grads? Well my local supermarket had a nice selection of degree qualified workers. The guy who worked the Deli counter had a degree in forensics, one of the stock boys I knew personally and he had a degree in economics.

I don't know the situation in the US, but job selection for degree students in the UK can be seriously hyper-competitive in many areas. If you lose your job, for whatever reason, there can be literally no other job on the market because there's already a dozen workers with lower pay expectations.

This, sadly, leaves jobs in the trades wide open and the governments have to bring in immigrants, often training them up in the process to do the job. The government, at least in the UK, needs to organize its departments. Education isn't serving the industries, which increases immigration and increases unemployment of those born with citizenship.
> I've set up emacs to do the right thing in c-mode

Would you mind posting a .emacs snippet? I've tried to do it in the past and got the impression it was not possible. I'd love to see what you did.
We are using the C version of BDB (which is also GPL) because this makes potentially accessible from C++ if anyone cares to port the Java code :) The Java version actually started started as prototype that would become the "real" C++ version.

As for the license, HyperGraphDB is LGPL in the sense that a version where the BDB dependency is removed will have no strings attached for commercial use. Architecturally, HyperGraphDB has a low-level storage layer that is isolated by a handful of classes and is currently implemented with BDB. So it is not such a major undertaking to replace it, given a suitable (in terms of license, functionality etc.) replacement.
That's cruel to gambling.

The first (and only) item I checked was a Kindle that had 1066 bids placed on it, before selling for $159.90. At $0.75/bid, that means BigDeal received $959.40 for a $259 item.

Even a sucker bet at the casino is far, far better value than that. (And more transparent as well.)
"each time an article is posted here that takes a stand one way or the other, it prejudices the resultant discussion."

Wouldn't a good thing to do in such a situation be to write an article of one's own summarizing the key points from both the pro and anti arguments, titling it something like "To tab or not to tab" and linking to that instead?
That way you don't have to take a stand on a polarizing article but could get the benefit of the HN community's discussion?

HN usually has great discussion even on crummy topics and I can empathize with the intent to tap into such discussion on a subject of interest, but this dual posting (in my purely subjective opinion) has a whiff of deception about it - a "letter of the law" vs "spirit of the law" thing.

"by posting two articles, one pro-tab and one anti-tab, the submitter has neatly sidestepped that problem. "

Yes it is a neat hack. But I also agree with Mahmud in that this seems (somewhat) trollish.(What's next? Pairs of "Lisp is cool/ Lisp sucks" "Ruby is better than Python/Python is better than Ruby" articles? - Good on you for spotting it, Mahmud!)

A trollish hack? Why not?
The rules is somewhat common sense. But I have had to tell people the rule (mostly to very new programmers). Interestingly I haven't found that they wanted to quibble about style, they just didn't notice they were doing things differently.

Putting the correct thing in their .emacs usually clears things up (show-trailing-whitespace throws your loose whitespace habits right in your face).
We've worked extensively in this field, primarily to help vendors ship these products more safely --- so we're enjoined against publishing specifics. But it's a real problem, and I'd refer you to IOActive (a competitor of ours) for details.

Two things to remember about embedded RF devices and security:

* The boards themselves are a hostile environment for developing crypto, because they're solid state (low entropy), severely power constrained, and have very little headroom for code storage; the difference between supporting SHA1 vs. MD5 could come down to blowing the instruction store budget.

* RF is a hostile place to deploy crypto, because it's group based, severely rate limited, slow, and every individual bit of message encoding is precious.

Very smart developers never get crypto right even in environments where a shift from an MD5 MAC to a digital signature is just a line of code, without regard to message sizes, and where the only constraint against adding protocol steps is breaking compatibility with software that can be upgraded in minutes. Draw your own conclusions about how hard this problem is.

(As Nate pointed out a year or two ago, the exact same problem exists with tolling systems).
I have been interested in software radio for some time now but lack the technical knowledge to understand it fully. Can someone point me to links that can help me understand this ? I am sure it will be helpful to many people.

From what I have read one needs a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) for sending and receiving radio signals but searching for this leads to things like daughter boards etc. which I did not understand.

Can someone explain it here ?

Thanks
Who is this with?
I wish they made a (much) cheaper USRP specifically for GSM, I wouldn't use the rest of the radio functionality (AM, FM, etc).
Sadly, there are a lot of people who care more about making money than creating value.
Heh, you guys are awesome.

Here is the number of numbrs http://webnumbr.com/webnumbrs
Example? I thought I covered that case.
Self-referencing ManyToMany through with Django
How to implement self-referencing many-to-many relationships in Django. Example use cases are modeling asymmetrical following (a-la twitter) or symmetrical friendship (a-la facebook).
Not that it's all that relevant, but njs, who plays the part of the questioner in this transcript is one of the developers behind monotone.
The compiler compliance question would be good to look up if it was easy to look up. It is in fact just a bad question (I got it wrong, saying "most" where they expected "all").

Embedded developers don't usually need to look up word size issues; it's hard to do your day to day job if you don't know what an "int" is. Nevertheless, that issue actually has very little to do with the question, which you answer simply by choosing the constant that is most specific about its storage requirements.

If you don't know how const works, you probably don't use const much; keeping code const-correct (a waste of time, for what it's worth) drills this stuff into you pretty quickly. Again, it's not a great embedded dev question, but it assessess what it means to assess: whether you know how const works.
And even the two GSM carriers (T-Mobile/AT&T) have different frequencies for 3G, so even though you can move an unlocked Nexus One across their voice networks, if you want 3G your choice of device determines your carrier.
Now Russia Threatens to Hold Up Oracle-Sun Deal
they're solid state (low entropy)

That doesn't necessarily follow. It's easy to put a real RNG into silicon; the problem is simply that very few people bother.
Google Agrees to Censor Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry in Australia
Couldn't you just press the Close button?
Manifold Learning, Calculus & Friendship, and Other Math Links
This is especially true when multiple developers have been editing the same file. Some developers will use tabs some spaces. The end result is code that is completely unreadable and that must be manually re-indented. The developer that uses tabs that is editing a hard space indented file, might not even realize what evil they are introducing to a file. Then the next developer opens the file and screams.
The USRP doesn't do any AM, FM,... It's only a very fast ADC/DAC. Some of the additional modules have up-/downmix capability, though.
Corporate media is the problem
I've always found Google's 404s jarring and retro in the worst way possible. They are in desperate need of a complete overhaul not the least of which should be the author's 'Did you mean?' functionality.
It's not as simple as you make it out to be, but you have me at a disadvantage as I've actually worked on products like these and can't rebut with specifics.

In the meantime, I'd dispute the idea that embedded developers even understand the relationship between secure random number generation and cryptography, outside of the abstract.

It's also the case that amongst security practioners in general purpose code there is still precious little best-practice understanding of how to groom and maintain secure RNGs; a Black Hat talk from just a few years ago busted up a bunch of RNGs on security products, both with algorithmic attacks and things like cold-start entropy.
Presentation on the new Python GIL
Good plan. vote for it :http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestio...
Integrating Wordpress with Django.
Using pavlovian conditioning to get people to use your software
Yeah, i agree about the scraping. The good news is you can edit your numbr (if you registered with an openid) then you can fix your scraping.

Also, you can start a new numbr but with the history of an old numbr imported. I don't have that in the UI (taken out due to clutter) but i'll figure out a place to put it back.
>The Southern Metropolis newspaper said a man from the southern city of Dongguan recently had his phone blocked. China Mobile’s customer service told him their computers had detected lewd words in his messages and that he would have to take his identity card to the police to reactivate the phone.

The west is monitoring, which is a problem, but China goes further by, as the above text shows, disrupting communication.
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson.

http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/d...
When I run stackoverflow through tidy, I get back "<html><body></body></html>". Vote for it :http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestio...

As for the the ajax call, does it say "Not a number" where it shows you your extraction? A screenshot would help a ton if you can sent it. spam@paulisageek.com
404's need to be somewhat jarring, because the user needs to see a difference between a normal and an error page. Having "did you mean" suggestions would still be useful, though.
Every recession has stories like these: Here's one from 2001 - http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/magazine/commute-to-nowher...
i'm not suggesting that dual posts should become the norm, I'm just noting that this is a clever hack that illustrates a problem in the system. i think it's human nature to prefer a two-horse race where half the viewers root for one and the other half for the other, rather than a one-horse race where half the audience is rooting for, the other half against.

if this hack started becoming common, I'm sure the editors would eventually put a stop to it.
You mean like... drumroll http://webnumbr.com/webnumbrs.all.json (large, once every hour for about 6 months).

Do you really like CSV? If so, vote and i will build it. http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestio...
But remember one of their largest costs is also disappearing. Newspapers almost certainly lost money per copy by selling it for 50¢, and made up for it by selling ads. The problem will be selling that same metaphor of "copies" or subscriptions, when each additional subscription costs them next to nothing.
Co-founder Google Doc - stage 2 (a semantic wiki)
I've just upgraded to FF3.5 and dailymotion.com was featured on the welcome page, I've checked the dailymotion.com and it was cool except one seemingly buggy video on the main gage (the one in which people are saying welcome to FF in their native languages) I must say,the results are very fine and promising, but I think the MOST important aspect of HTML 5 is not the end-results we see on web pages but the convenience it offers to the web app developers.

I firmly believe that HTML 5 is the only way to go for the web developers. It's like the declaration of independence from abuse-prone and CPU-eater Flash applications, finally.
The intentions of a government program is no excuse for unintended consequences, especially when it involves tax dollars.

That tax dollars was taken either at the threat of gunpoint, jail-time, or confiscation of property. It is a far more serious matters than a private program of an ineffective nature, in which resources are donated or gained through voluntary measures.

It is not just about individuals who game the system, but the whole enterprise of the system that enables these people that should be questioned.
First: The purpose of unemployment insurance is to provide some income while you remain unemployed. That's why it's called "unemployment insurance" and not "get a job, any job, insurance."

Second: It's a form of insurance. When you have a job, you (via your employer) pay into an unemployment insurance pool; when unemployed, you draw from it. It's not government money, it's your money, via a government program. This is why you get higher UI benefits if you had a higher salary. It's why when you're self employed and don't pay into the system, you get nothing if your business folds. Etc.

Third: it sounds like you're the sort who has an issue with any government assistance period. That's fine, but it doesn't give you the right to expect others to martyr themselves in the name of your ideals.

Fourth: the oft-repeated mythical welfare queen imagery leaves a very bad impression of you. Make your argument; don't bring up side issues, particularly "dog whistle" ones.
"Hire Stars and Let Them Do Their Magic" is a poor choice of title for the paragraph that follows. "Stars" might imply "people with long resumes". But the actual point is about people who work well as a team, and not hiring "brilliant jerks" (whom many would classify as "stars"). Basically, "stars" is too ambiguous.
> What atheism argues is that reason alone, not faith, should guide our acts;

Surely this is axiomatic - you don't derive this by reason. So you are establishing that you should always derive logically your system of ethics except when choosing a system of ethics. Isn't there some crazy dissonance there for you. (I don't think you can square this circle I think it will boil down to a parallel of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem - you have to assume logic into your worldview by faith!).

I don't believe that "atheists cannot possibly have ethics" (that's not a Christian position as it's clear in the Bible that God has created in each of us a conscience) but I do think that atheist can't have objective ethical standards that are logically derived. It seems incompatible in my mind that neo-darwinist atheists can claim any action to be objectively right or wrong; things just are under such a world view.

How could you possibly have objective anything in a randomly occurring macroscopic quantum anomaly?
Wow, thank you for your feedback.

-- OpenID

Leave it blank if you want (maybe I should write "optional" somewhere). I didn't want to make a username/password scheme and openid seems like a perfect fit.

-- Opera, IE7

I never tested it there. Adding to list...

-- Text associations

I've been tossing this idea around, but couldn't come up with a good way to do multiple related extractions and plot some as labels and others as graphs and correlating them. Maybe v2.

-- Nicer way to query

Well my interface just lets you click and it gets that numbr. If you want something fancier, you can write some code (XPATH) and it can happily get your numbr. Go ahead and do substring-before and after. See this one : http://webnumbr.com/semantic-sm-video and look at the xpath

-- Alerts

yes, great idea. I also wanted highs and lows. Vote for it http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestio...

Thanks for the feedback, its nice to see excitement over something I've built! :)
The Flat Enterprise Society
Lead in to recent NY Times interview of SunGard CEO talking about ECM.
Eh, they could at least use their current logo and make it link back to google.com when clicked.
Why don't IDE's just do the conversion on the fly on a per-user basis?

Sure you'd need to know the standard occasionally but can't the code just load with my "stylesheet" and then use tabs. Then when it's saved the code is simply reverted to space delimits. This sort of formatting issue should not be an issue anymore surely?
"i'm not suggesting that dual posts should become the norm,"

I agree. I wasn't implying you did. Apologies if I gave that impression in my post.

" I'm just noting that this is a clever hack that illustrates a problem in the system."

I agree with this too. It is a clever hack(good) exploiting a hole in the system (ambiguous), intended specifically to provoke argument( bad imo).
I just find it mindblowing that all of these ra ra China articles take for granted that an enormous growth bubble will continue indefinitely despite a huge bad debt rate and a shaky political situation.
Elastic tabstops, anyone?
http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/
Perhaps something like the way Chrome handles bad URLs with "Oops! This link appears to be broken."
Naïve Parallelization: C++ vs Haskell
I'm glad you said that because for a short time only I can sell you a guaranteed value-making proposition for 3 low charges of $19.95* Act now because you seem to be the sort of person who values value above all else.

* actual charge may be $29.95 plus corkage
Don't the likes of Kasparov use strategy to beat the number crunchers though? How about a series of parallel strategies rather than simply crunching all moves and then assessing the best of the strategies. That is imitating a number of lesser players pitted against a better player - could the world #2 and #3 beat the world #1 (if not then probably no mileage¹ in this technique).

---

¹ Kilometrage?
Fighting religious extremists just justifies their existence, which further enhances the problem.

Creationist moronism is a mainly US problem, linked directly to the abhorrent education system. Creationist belief is inversely linked to the quality of education, but instead of actually spending time increasing the quality of education and managing to spread understanding of the sciences people are wasting time fighting the extremists.

It's, quite frankly, ignorant. Instead of advocating education, you're advocating wasting time. You can destroy the creationist and extremist belief through positive efforts and action towards increasing education. The 40 year olds who believe in creationism will never be educated, you have to educate the 10 year olds who haven't had their minds set in poor ways by time and lack of education.

Dawkins has a remarkable talent for explaining science, and he should be targeting this towards the young. If he managed to strike the right chords, he could destroy creationist thought in the majority of that 40% of US citizens who believe during his lifetime. If he hit the next 20-years of highschool students strong and hard, the US could easily drop its creationist belief well into the ranks of the rest of the western world.

Sadly, Dawkins does little more than provide fanservice to the atheist masses.
Counterexample: google.com/dumbass is a 404. Searching for google.com/dumbass returns results. "Did you mean: Google It You Dumbass" is not kosher.
NS will only let you read 3 articles - then it will ask you to register and you will be able to read another 7 in one month and then you need to PAY, since I normally buy the dead tree version this is just harassment!
Is it not that in (a) the FBI have the file that is the issue. Just as now we'd be concerned if the FBI was keeping particularly close tabs on our FB details (I mean closer than the standard trawl-net approach).
French law criminalizes fighting within marriage
Third: it sounds like you're the sort who has an issue with any government assistance period. That's fine, but it doesn't give you the right to expect others to martyr themselves in the name of your ideals.

The quotes "taxation is theft" applies here. People will work themselves up for no other reason that they felt being wronged by others.

Nobody like their money goes to people who have not worked a single cent for it or have a need for it.
Good point - this could me mitigated by only returning the results if there are matching Google products
Git Docs: It is a bold start
I copied (almost) all entries from the doc in a semantic wiki: http://www.startuplinkup.com Please go and search your entry there, refine it, rename it, etc. Hope this is more manageable than the google doc. Follow @startuplinkup.
Does anyone know why multiple kernel threads are used at all? If only one thread can run at a time, why not just use a single kernel thread?