skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"...tell you they have a "tiny" hedge fund already worth 500 million and they can give you a return on your investment within one year, and in 5 they’ll be worth a few hundred BILLION. Oh, and if they fail the Fed will bail them out so there’s no risk."

As far as I know, the Fed did not directly bail out any hedge funds, except those internal to big banks. The last 2 years were a blood bath in the hedge fund world, with hundreds of shops closing down. Zed's text is amusing, but it does not reflect reality all that accurately.

Last but not least, I have never heard of a hedge fund worth hundreds of billions. A 1-billion fund is common, but hundreds of billions? When Jim Simons of RenTec started talking of a 100-billion hedge fund in 2006, everyone was so excited...
with gusto
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not but I'd point out that he probably wasn't using the thing continuously for all 65 hours until his rescue. Also when in stand by mode my iPhone lasts for many days w/o a recharge so I'd say this story is quite believable.
Mine routinely lasts 48 hours. I have turned off push and 3G (no 3G service where I live anyway)
I don't find it difficult to accept myself. Sure, some people are better at some things than other people. Some people are hot and some people are ugly. If you think that you're some kind of intellectual rebel because you've noticed these obvious truths, then I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but none of this has anything to do with what I was saying.

>the idea of all people being equal is pretty strongly ingrained in our society,

The idea that all people have equal rights is deeply ingrained, but I've never met anyone who actually thought that everyone was equal in a dumb, literal sense; that's just a straw man.
I think you overestimate the truthfulness of our mainstream free press and cable news media.
Why You Should Start A Company In NYC
Basically my friend tried telling him about how John Taylor Gatto's new book suggested that there were some unstated assumptions behind KIPP that were worth examining, but Gates wasn't at all interested in even talking about this, let alone reading the book.
Having the same here with Chrome on Vista
> why shouldn't Chinese govt monitor the emails of Chinese citizens?

At least the US had a freaking law about the action. The prc government on the other hand, plays trinity in market: rule maker, judge, and player.

There's a joke on twitter, the government rape you, then sue you for prostitution
In China you would not be able to report on or criticize the monitoring, nor could you take legal action against it. In fact you could be thrown in jail for years just for complaining. In the United States and many other countries you would be free to challenge the government in a court of law and the government would have to defend their actions. It doesn't necessarily mean that they would lose their case, but a citizen can confront the state.
good luck with that google - where will you go for cheap handsets now? Taiwan? Oh, wait - its part of China. D'oh!
Why the Apple/Publisher News isn't Really News
Do you honestly think I am arguing against the banal and obvious truth that some people are more attractive than other people? I'm not going to rehearse my point all over again, but please, give me some credit...

> I know that anyone whose judgment I respect would view me as a "quality person"

But then, presumably you wouldn't respect their judgment if they didn't :)
...African or European?
> But then, presumably you wouldn't respect their judgment if they didn't :)

Indeed, but that's the point, isn't it?
You were reading the NY Times before 1935? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Hays_Sulzberger

Jokes aside, NY Times has never been unbiased. Try reading the Power Broker.
Doing Deals in the New Decade: 7 Tips for Entrepreneurs
Fun fact: Did you know that the word "man" was originally sex-neutral? The generic term was co-opted for the specifically male sense centuries ago and the original masculine term mostly disappeared.

So, fight sexism by using "man" in the gender neutral sense! Reclaim the language!

(If you're wondering, the old terms were something like wer and wyf, prefixed to the generic "man". The latter obviously relates to "wife" and the compound wyfman shifted into the modern "woman". The compound werman disappeared, while the prefix remains only in terms like "werewolf", which is thus literally "man-wolf" in the distinctly masculine sense.)
So, would you say that "protectionist trade restrictions, massive stimulus spending and bailouts of financial and automotive firms deemed 'too big to fail.'" from the past year are positive, or have increased economic freedom?

If so, why not address those points rather than deploy ad hominems?
A friend's project: http://fairspin.org/ tries to expose some bias issues. Perhaps interesting in this context?
You guys don't get it. The whole point is to convey yourself and not some pretend version that will get the most dates.
Ya I noticed that too. I'd love to have some performance benefits from JIT too but not at those costs. 2.43x - 2.76x increase in memory to Django[1]. Ugh. That's a large enough change that I'd have to upgrade hardware. Come on now.

[1] http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3146/#memory-usage
The administration does not take positions "on behalf" of the president. Obama is not the administration nor is the administration some kind of perfect reflection in every detail of Obama's innermost thoughts and desires. And verily it is possible that a sparrow falls from heaven without Obama knowing about it.
How Zynga uses minimum viable products
If you want to make your own iPod/iPhone hardware, apply at http://developer.apple.com/ipod/

Last I check it requires multiple in-company points of contact and legal contacts before you start.

You are charged a licensing fee for each unit sold and they revoke your access if you don't renew your contract with them. There are some iPhone in-car systems that stopped working because the manufacturer didn't continue paying Apple the appropriate licensing fees (so in the next software update, Apple disallowed that device from talking to the phone).
Well, I don't agree with that. You should respect the judgment of people who think that you're a bad person if they seem to have generally good judgment in other areas. Basically, this is the jester's point in Twelfth Night: "I'm better because of my enemies and worse because of my friends."
Google didn't explicitly say this is the reason. They talked about censorship and doing business in China.
I find this line from the greeting letter a bit odd, "It often feels like I'm back in school, as I spend a lot of my time learning about issues I'm passionate about." Didn't he drop out of college to start MS presumably because he felt like the things he was learning in school were a waste of his time?
I was wondering why there wasn't more functionality too. I guess he follows the release early and often philosophy.

I saw that one of the people that Gates follows said this:

http://twitter.com/inafried/status/8000814417
Chinese here.

This kind of BS derives from a more common theory: Chinese people don't deserve democracy because they are not well educated. It's stated on many official newspapers and comments. TFA is just a little elaboration. You can find even funnier nonsense everyday everywhere from Chinese politics news.

The CCP behavior is hilarious to watch, Internet users in China loving posting pre-1949 propaganda from CCP, something like Xinhua Daily says 'One-party rule is disastrous'.

Here's an example

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1946%20%E6%96%B0%E5%8D%8E%E...
Take these tips with a grain of salt. MySQL query performance tuning requires a lot more nuance than a list like this indicates. For example:
2. Use LOAD DATA instead of INSERT
For raw insert speed this is usually true, however if you care about things like table locks and replication, LOAD DATA can be harmful.
When in Europe, with data off, in standby mode my android lasted about 4-5 days with one charge, with few phone calls and some texting in between. Basic light usage.
In the US, with 3g, some web usage it lasts about two days. With heavy usage, about one day.
Make Money
I’d like to teach you secrets that most people will never know about how to make money.
Can we trust the medicine? Observation on the accuracy of drug company trials
Somebody forgot to factor in the effect of an 8000-mile supply line, or the reluctance of a people to give up deeply-entrenched customs.

That's not the problem. Britain ruled Egypt for many decades using only 5,000 soldiers and actually turned a profit. Egypt at the time had 9 million people. Back in 1900, logistics were even more difficult, and Britain's technological edge was actually much less.

The core problem is the the U.S. cultural DNA is anti-imperialist. No one in state department or DOD has actually read the memoirs from the British empire about how they did it. Nor is the U.S. willing to use imperialist tactics. For instance, if you're doing imperialism you need to have a native army reporting directly to the ruling officer class. Instead, the U.S. is trying to police every street with American soldiers. Second, instead of encouraging political parties and democracy, an imperialist needs to prevent them. Political parties incite people to action by blaming other ethnic groups for problems, and they spend all their time worrying about grabbing their peace of the pie. It's very easy for political parties to turn into actual gangs. Third, you cannot be afraid to issue the entire population ID cards, have curfews, checkpoints, population control, etc, until the region is pacified.

Do the above three things, and imperialism is easy. You can do it with 5,000 troops and turn a profit. But do it American style, where you are doing imperialism without admitting it, and you get disaster.
Even Williamson believed that the whole venture was too risky. When he finally wrote up a revised version of his key scheme, he cited these reservations as the reason for the two-year delay. "I find myself in an embarrassing position," he wrote. "I have come to doubt the whole theory of nonsecret encryption. The trouble is that I have no proof that the method ... is genuinely secure." He conceded he could not find anything wrong with the system, though, "and would be grateful if anyone else can." No one did. But by then the GCHQ had tacitly concluded it wasn't worth the effort to implement a public key crypto system.

They tried, hard, to find weaknesses, but they couldn't, this was the problem.
That doesn't work either. One, there's the assumption that you're two opposed news sites are "really" opposed. Are Fox News and MSNBC diametrically opposed? Amy Goodman would disagree. I could also read the Socialist Worker Magazine and the American Enterprise Institute's newsletter, but I don't know what conclusions I would draw.

The issue isn't that all media organizations are biased, it's really that I am biased. I think the world exists in a certain way and the news that doesn't agree with that or fails to convince me to change the way I think, well then that news source is clearly biased.
if he could write interactive fiction, then he could sell subscriptions to connect to the server and play/read.
If I started a store with 5 movies to rent that no one has ever heard of and advertised a limited supply people would think I was crazy.
Has this conversation really fallen to the technicalities of a definition in 3 replies? That's not a good sign. Go ahead and define it anyway you want, I really don't care. They are acquiring something of which they did not pay for and do not have a legal right to have, that sure is stealing in my book. Ask the creators if they care what the difference is, I'm pretty sure they don't either.

Beyond that, I can pretty much copy and paste my last response to be used here. What you or anyone "feels" is correct or logical is completely irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is the law and how we as a society choose to create them and enforce them.
"Dropbox helped me convince my old boss that I could work from home."

Can you talk more about this? How do you use Dropbox for telecommuting and how did you convince your boss it was an effective tool for telecommuting?
I agree with John Gruber, who cited this tweet from Dave Winer (developer, entrepreneur, writer, and a pioneer of RSS and podcasting):

"My opinion, the NYT will never implement the paywall they talked about today. If they were going to do it, they'd just do it."

http://twitter.com/davewiner/status/7990139921
When the page loaded, the site started shouting at me through my speakers about something National Geographic wanted me to see about some kind of law enforcement group that has something to do with illegal immigration. I think. I actually swore at the page as I was desperately playing "find the close button on this ad." I finally just closed the tab, while it was still shouting at me.

Sheesh.

I'm actually still tense. It really pissed me off, I have an aversion to being shouted at.
If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It HackMe
That's actually what the name of the method is in .NET 4.0 (the official version).
You might not be familiar with Zed's writing, but the level of sarcasm is very high in his posts, to the point of just plain falsehood. Take it all with a grain of salt.
Since the site is currently down, I had to view the cached Google copy... Chrome recommended it...
Tuning a Parallel Ray Tracer in F#
You can't.

You have to read widely and deeply, correcting for bias as you learn to spot it.
Most of the VM is written in C. Only the core of the interpreter is written in assembler (generates ~13K of machine code).

And the port of the interpreter to x64 is already done, so it was certainly practical. Porting the rest of the VM and the JIT compiler is what takes most of the time.
Does this person really not understand the difference between picking someone else's food under slave-like conditions, and learning to grow your own food?
Boone for Bloggers: the Free Dragon Dictation iPhone App
There's a difference between the value of a hedge fund company and the total assets under management.
This article is completely baseless. Some analyst at a finance firm thinks Apple's tablet is going to run on Verizon? What are they basing it on? Oh, there's nothing you say?
Netflix Just Gave iTunes A Big Fat Kiss
24 Hours With Google's Nexus One
I haven't heard of this School Garden movement before, but despite this article it sounds great! I'd love my kids to have an opportunity to do this at school here in Australia.

There is nothing more satisfying than picking some fresh tomatoes or a big zucchini out of my garden.

You all should try it!
What about elementary, middle and high school?
One of the most frustrating parts about learning math is that it is a body of knowledge driven constantly to generalization. This usually pays off, because once mathematicians connect just a few dots then often whole new problem spaces just collapse into yesterday's math, taken down by powerful, general theories, like convex optimization, applied with just the right slant.

The problem is that often those applications are so wide and varied that nobody bothers to talk very much about them. You're just supposed to understand the underlying purpose and need on your own. For someone with the background, that's ok, because the background is the context that lets you internalize the math. Without the background, applications are necessary.

Of course, this is well known for basic math. That's why you learn how to add apples and subtract oranges instead of number theory and fields. At some point, though, if you want to understand "real" mathematics, you need to somehow build that critical mass and context shift to where you can get by on the general level.

My advice is to take the math you do know and go read the proofs that make it operate. Use the applications you already are comfortable with and understand the reasons why they work. Instead of diving both into generalized math and a complex new subject at once, just use your strengths.

My anecdote is that I liked math but never really had a grasp on it until I got thrown through the ringer on infinite series, linear algebra, abstract vector spaces all at once. I learned to read and understand proofs (sometimes), I learned how to prioritize when reading complex math (i.e. internalizing definitions is often half or more of the battle), I learned how to synthesize my own general mathematical arguments.

I wouldn't call myself anything close to a mathematician, but by jumping into the language and structure of generalized math, I have a lot of the tools to get somewhere with whatever field I want. Wikipedia still often confuses me, but if I want to learn it I know how to take what I learn and use it as the building blocks to a deeper understanding.
Yes, standard library! If you read the article, you would have seen that it's some guy's backport of a Microsoft API from C#4 to C#2-3.5.
Way to sensationalize and exploit a human tragedy. Way to trivialize suffering.

:-(

Of all the stories, both happy and sad, you choose to publicize the one about one of your own, and his gadget. If 200 thousand people didn't die, I would be all ears, listening to how vacationing business man used his iPhone to evade death.
Page doesn't load quickly at all for me.
Probably because there's not really much substance to address. Most commentary on "economics" is barely-disguised political advocacy, starting with a conclusion and then working backwards to come up with arguments, and this article is even more egregious than most. Lots of argument-by-assertion and emotionally-loaded phrasing, and a general attitude of having all the answers.

I expect it wouldn't be too hard to find a similar article from an "opposing position" with all the same muddled thinking and question begging, but what would that really accomplish? This sort of nonsense goes firmly in the "not even wrong" bin.

Stuff like this is more about social status-seeking and in-group identity than about the ostensible topic.
I don't think that's accurate - from interviews, speeches and his own writings, he's always sounded complimentary towards his Harvard experiences; it's just that starting Micro-Soft was the right opportunity at the right time, and he grabbed it.
Facts of Life time:

You cannot control who reads your book. Once it's "out there" it's going to be all over hell and back. It might be illegal, it might suck, but there you have it.

So find some things you can control and work with those. You can control who gets to see your book first -- that's a highly honored place. You can control who gets to provide feedback as you write it, or who gets to name the characters, or who gets to appear inside the book.

You can control how interactive the book is -- you could have selected special people role-play some of your characters and provide you with live arguments about what the character "really" would do in a situation like this. You can mix video, games, and 3-D immersion to make the book more of a sensually-rich experience (and harder to copy because it doesn't fit into a neat category). You can even set up an online market to have readers decide which topics/plots they think will make the most money -- and cut them in for a small piece of the action.

Don't weep over the things that are gone. Concentrate on what works, mix in several ideas, and run with it. Some of these ideas are old and hackneyed (multi-media books, for instance) but with the right mix you might just pull it off. Look at how many times 3-D flopped before Cameron picked it up for Avatar. Like Cameron, you have to keep the business model moving or it will easily be overtaken by technology.

It's a great time to be a writer, but probably pretty scary too. We IT guys have been in this constantly-changing business model stuff for some time. Welcome to the party.
Is this the same Caitlin Flanagan who was obsessing a few years ago over Rainbow Parties?
It's the author's way of explaining the Patriot act, that the FBI are allowed to monitor communications without seeking the permission of a court.
After reading more about F#, and some of the stuff coming up in C# 4.0 / VS2010, it's going to be tempting for me to seriously think about going back to MSFT stuff for my work at home. Microsoft has been reactive in the right way over the past 5 years with regards to .net.
Advanced Google Search Operators
There's no conflict there. In an actual school, you're not the one setting the curriculum. This involves a lowest common denominator of a variety of subjects, some of which you'll never apply. I imagine that now he's spending his time studying things he's interested in and likely directly related to things he's doing or trying to accomplish.
Ask HN: Detecting prototype mobile browsers
Considering all of the "Apple Tablet" rumors, I thought I would ask a question of the people who have experience working on new mobile devices, mobile software, or Web analytics:

When a new device is tested out for Web browsing, will the system specs show up in the traffic logs of the sites that are visited? If it is using a non-standard browser, OS, or screen size, will that be recorded? Can the specs be cloaked?

I am trying to determine if evidence of such a device (or any prototype mobile device) can be revealed by the tracks that it may leave ...
I'm coding my startup in F# and I love it -- I don't ever want to go back to C# or any of the other .NET languages.

The cool part isn't just the FP, the cool part is how you can suck in all the other libraries written in .NET and use them easily.

If mono supported tail-recursion optimization I'd go there in a heartbeat, but I'm very, very happy with F# and a stripped-down MS stack. Plus as long as I don't start writing aspx pages (and I'm not!) and keep my separation of concerns, I can easily move to a *nix environment at some later date.

I'd encourage you to check out F# some more. I had a hard time coming from an imperative background, but eventually it started clicking.
Yup. In both cases it's the editorial board that drives the publication to the right. There are great articles in both pubs but you can't call either unbiased.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/18/froomkin/i...
I love all of the speculation on a device that no one knows anything about. And unless that person is Steve Jobs, anyone who says they know anything about it is lying. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if even Verizon and AT&T didn't know what was happening.

So some analyst thinks that Apple will use a chip from Qualcomm. That could be almost anything. Qualcomm makes a lot of chips.

But if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it would probably be one of their Gobi chips that does 3G data in both CDMA and GSM. But that doesn't mean it will be a Verizon exclusive.

I highly doubt that Apple would produce a tablet that would work exclusively with Verizon. Why? Because of the iPhone. The iPhone is currently only with AT&T. How many people would want one account for an iPhone on AT&T and another on Verizon? The Mac ecosystem is self feeding... they want you to keep buying more Apple gear. Two mobile devices, split between two wireless carriers, isn't Apple's MO.

That being said, I'm not convinced the fictitious tablet will require 3G data. Why would it? If it's a media device, you don't want to pull down HD video over any sort of 3G service. For that, you'd want to stick with wifi.

Okay, so where would this leave us? My guess: a new iPhone that is GSM/CDMA compatible (Gobi). And then with tethering built in to the phone (cough AT&T), you can connect your tablet to the phone via wifi to download your morning paper. This is just as far in left field as any other prediction.
From TFA "We view reducing memory usage as a blocking issue for final merger into the py3k branch. "
Less important that the ability to vote, the ability to marry, freedom of speech, ability to move freely, freedom of association, etc.

Without any of these, there can be no economic freedom.