skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As far as failed states go, this could push Haiti from Haiti level to maybe even Somalia level. So I have to wonder what the repercussions of this could be. Somalia is a "safe" distance away from most of the rich and powerful countries--it's kind of a distant problem that Somalia has no government and even the piracy is kept to a sustainable level. Haiti's a lot closer to home. The US was pushed to action in Haiti in the 1990's, and chances are we'll have to do so again.
Django isn't Rails-inspired - they were developed at around the same time, with no real awareness of each other (at first).

As to the merits of "form" classes and post handlers, I think the complexity is only there if you need it, if you're doing something more interesting (read: complex) than CRUD-type inserts/updates and basic validation (if that's all you're doing, ModelForms are pretty close to magical and light on syntax).
There are multiple studies, all in prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals, that show that there is no link. In 2010, the peak of advancement in our species, you cannot get closer to fact than that.
I was sure there was a pygame-package for Ubuntu. But I can't find it. So it's probably just my bad memory that makes it up.

Pygame is a really nice library for 2d gaming, if a bit low-level. I like their approach to sprites and sprite-groups.
There's not a lot of math in plugging forms into database rows, or even in plugging values into MSRs and managing interrupts, but there's enough math in general programming that I constantly regret ditching that part of my education.

I am, with surprising regularity, annoyed that I can't pull basic trig out of my head without looking things up --- to say nothing of signal processing and number theory.
They do claim it costs 3x. If someone told me that they had a kit car convertible with the crash safety of a Honda Accord, but it cost $80k, I don't think I'd be surprised.
I always believed that people like her should be granted a medical license.

If she can do that, she can be a surgeon.
Regulation has a role to play, but you're right; people forget that making it really hard to start a bank means we get stuck with the big ones no one likes.
I'm not sure I understand the point of the article. Security through obscurity does work in the sense that it decreases crimes of opportunity (I'm sure this is true even in the world of IT). Obviously it doesn't prevent someone who is motivated from getting in, but I don't think any reasonable person would suggest that it does. Does having a lock on something decrease your chance of having it stolen? I think the answer is: Absolutely, yes.

If you don't believe that security through obscurity is effective the following experiment should easily be able to confirm this: Place a couple of expensive bikes propped up on the street in random locations around town. A day later repeat the experiment, this time putting a lock on the bikes. Now I'm pretty sure no one is actually going to perform this test, precisely because the outcome is so obvious.
Ask HN: Room for innovation in retail niches?
Any fat man knows what I'm talking about. We've got three options: Custom tailor, casual male xl, or rochester big & tall. Our clothing options begin at 2-3x the cost of a non-fat guy's equivalent .. For 20-30% more fabric, and the same amount of effort.

Camera stores are another one. If you've tried to buy a hot camera in the past year, like the Canon 5D Mark 2, or the 1D Mark V, then you know what it's like. The smaller shops tend to have some in stock when Amazon and the 2-3 larger players are empty.. But so many of the smaller shops are playing some pretty awful bait and switch games.

It seems that there must be a better way for both of these niches, and others.
You know, lots of people talk about using keys instead of passwords... By doing that if you box is compromised, the attacker will get access to ALL your boxes.

So, the best option is to use an encrypted ssh key (so you have the type the pass everytime) or a good/different password for every box.
I think he meant OECD countries.
For your large people idea, don't forget tall people too.
I am from Somalia, and I have witnessed its decay right to its downfall, including the three days during which the government dispersed and the central bank threw out its stash of local currency in large garbage bins.

Haiti will not die. For one, the suffering has been universally afflicted on all Haitians. This will strengthen their bond more than anything. Even if warlords and gangs form their own fiefdoms throughout the country, the humanitarian efforts, whenever they're ready a year or ten from now, can always tap into that shared Haitian identity, forged through an equally-endured hardship.

An earthquake has no one to blame. Probably as many Somalis died as in Haiti (though not in one day) but we only have ourselves to blame, and each victim left a blood debt on his killer, which "must" be avenged (or it has been avenged, and now the victim's family are awaiting reprisals)
Excellent news! Congrats Salvatore (antirez here on HN).
The TrueType font files, & derivatives of those files, are subject to copyright. Copying the design, with printouts of those fonts, is fine.

Treat the font file as a program. Slightly modifying it so, say, the points on the curve are a 1/1000th off doesn't get you off the hook. On printouts - I'm saying on paper, not PDF - the program is obviously missing, along with information on kerning & whatnot.

I've recreated a font from print, & the legal research I did made me comfortable with openly sharing the results.
Did you capitalize your name? It seems to be case-sensitive...
http://www.swimwithoutgettingwet.com/hnusers/?user=Sukotto&#...
A lot of issues aren't binary. News outlets are often sloppy reporting on any remotely complex issue.
Interview: Chrome OS Zero's Hexxeh
The Somali have customary laws which allow them to operate and grow their economy despite political chaos.

However, it would seem to me that that Haitians have no common law system or a customary kind which would permit the growth of an informal economy.
I think it is a reasonable question. There are plenty of places without drinking water and sewage infrastructure of any real note. Why then does this earthquake mean that we should fix Haiti's water/sewage. Why not fix Somalia's instead?

Given the comments about Haiti's resources it seems it should be quite rich monetarily, certainly enough to pay for the rapid construction of Hospitals and the like. Yes, we'd want to help with skilled workers if sufficient don't exist locally for the timescales sought.

I don't think (hope) that the parent is saying we shouldn't help Haiti, just asking why only help them or help them in preference to others that are suffering as much.
There's a u.s. company that reuses abandoned shipping containers , to build cheap homes for Mexican families.a family house built this way should cost $8000.

http://renaissanceronin.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/drumroll-pl...

So it would be probably much more effective to reuse container to build homes for the poor , than to fold them.
Funny, I hear that a lot but I did not find so much of a hurdle. I guess I did start with some tech. I ran a BBS, then stopped coding and did marketing in the entertainment industry for 10 years, then went right into IT security. I don't think there is anything inherently more complex in Applied Cryptography than there is in some of these absurdly obfuscated balance sheets.
Congratulations to the jQuery team for the optimizations in 1.4. It's hard to believe such gains were made over 1.3 considering how significant that change was over 1.2.
This article is flamebait.

Transparency isn't good or bad.

Suppose a company released internal R&D documents to shareholders in the name of transparency... that would give the shareholders a better idea of the value of the stock, but it would also give competitors valuable information. This is why firms strike a balance between transparency and confidentiality.
Sounds awesome. I'm going to have to update ASAP.

Great work - coding javascript is seriously easier than it was before JQuery came along.
Didn't those hammerhead things have feathers on their heads?
A 4 year progression of startup offices
What about game programming? Nobody mentioned it. It's the ultimate test. Try to hack together a simple pool game. You'll be amazed of how much maths and physics go into a simple game that millions use and enjoy.
This is exactly the problem I'm working on. If you're interested in this topic and would be willing to alpha test or otherwise help out, please drop me a line at http://startupsquare.com
Three new destination markets in some months
a story about Catalyst, RabbitMQ and CouchDB. It was the first major rewrite after one year of operation. It was substantial and it paid off.
Indeed. I'm assuming that most people simply won't pay and enforcement is hard and unlikely to yield good income so they price them high to catch design companies who can't afford not to pay (high profile, lots of money and clients to lose) and simply ignore the little guys.

Unfortunately with webfonts they don't have to go checking someone's flyers against a reference font they can automate the finding of infringers and sending of C&D and probably make it profitable to be a font troll.
I wish I could. I was in the middle of a lab when I did it, and as I fixed it I thought "I should really save this and figure out why it is segfaulting." Alas, the lazy part of me prevailed and I just fixed it so I could demo the assignment. Next time I run into one of those issues I am going to write about it as an example for the argument I just made.
Hopefully you have heard of lesswrong.com by this point in time.
I started programming before I learned algebra, and was a couple years ahead of the class because solving algebra problems was just "running the computer" as I used to call evaluating code in my head. Substitution was just expanding an inline function (at the time i thought of it like copy+pasting the gosub...)

I think that abstract symbol manipulation within a set of constraints facilitates skill transfer between math and programming. Learning to see paterns, to perform abstractions of statements for simplification, to construct something larger out of component parts bottom-up (like simple proofs,) these are all useful skills in both.
My Java Experience
Making a Space Invaders clone with PushButton - Bullets
If you've never used a DVCS, the concept seems crazy. Everybody has their own repository? Everybody pulls patches from everybody else? Seriously?!?

The reality is that everybody - even Linus - has a centralised repository containing the canonical version. What DVCS gives you is version control over all the stuff that happens before you commit to the centralised repository, which is most of the work. Pretty much everybody would be better off using DVCS, but the only way to find this out is to try it.

Thanks for making the effort to try to explain this to people.
I'm not sure what the point of these facts are. All you've done is state some information about Indonesia prefaced with a list of resources that Haiti has.

Are you claiming that Haiti won't fall apart due to their natural resources or are you claiming that Haiti will fall apart due to substance abuse centered around harvesting their natural resources? How are these related to this article or the disaster itself?
This sort of thinking reminds me of Tim Bray's recent "Doing it Wrong" article: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/01/02/Doing-It-W...

What corporate America wants is often opposed to what is actually useful.
Tall people actually seem pretty well served. Big & Tall clothing really means "For tall people, but we'll make sure fat people don't go naked if they can stand hawaiian shirts"
Thousands.
"sudo aptitude install python-pygame" works for me in karmic.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/earthquake_in_haiti...

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/haiti_48_hours_late...

Most pictures show the human suffering, but there are a few that show the destruction to infrastructure. I wouldn't say "nothing" is the right word for what Haiti had, but it's a good description of what's left.
Twitter is almost guaranteed not to go into photo sharing. They've had tons of opportunity to add in media services but they clearly aren't interested.
It seems you've taken the term transparency, defined it in a way that's quite unlike what people generally mean when they speak of business transparency, then defined translucency in a way quite like what people generally mean when they speak of business transparency. Then you've triumphantly declared transparency bullshit. There's an expression for that kind of argument, haydog or grassgirl or something like that.
Will China squeeze the West on rare earth metals in the coming decade?
Unleash Entrepreneurs From Obamanomics To Create More Jobs
Historically disasters (and wars) have the opposite effect.

In the short term it's terrible, but long term a disaster usually spurs rebuilding and economic activity that results in a better situation than what was there before.
Well, the point is that we can't have the attitude that we help everyone or we help no one. In the case of Somalia, there is political turmoil there that could (hopefully) be avoided in Haiti if we help sooner than later.
I'm very curious what the modern age would look like if Europe hadn't found the Americas until the 1600s, or the 1800s... what would modern technology look like? Modern culture? Would the Americas eventually have sufficient technology (primarily medicine) such that they would be able to resist invasion? How long would that take?

There is, of course, no way of knowing, but if American civilizations had thrived instead, and continued to be "peaceful and democratic" as the article put it, it seems somewhat plausible that we wouldn't be running into these "Tragedy of the Commons" problems... or, at least, that we would be making good progress on mitigating them.

I'm pretty sure that's wishful thinking, though. I'm still interested in what sort of cultures and technologies would have come out of that seed.
The end of conflating failed states, earthquakes, and AGW?
Scareware Purveyors Take Advantage of Haiti Earthquake (Video)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1053831

would someone vote for this one time
iRobot used to do embedded Lisp (back when they called themselves IS Robotics), but I haven't heard anything indicating that they still are. See http://lemonodor.com/archives/2004/08/l_mars_venus.html

They had L, their Lisp dialect, and Mars, the macro layer for doing robotics in L.

The paper "L - A Common Lisp for Embedded Systems" is available at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/pubpg/luv95.pdf
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1053831

here ya go
Tall men may be well served, but tall women are not. Women have specialty stores/departments for short ("petite") or fat sizes. Tall thin women can have quite a challenge finding clothes that fit.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1053831

vote this up and use your linux for it
Skype Founders Pondering IPO Don’t Need ’Love’ From Andreessen
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1053831

vote for this
Reading through the reviews on glassdor it seems like they have some very serious management problems.
Are there NoPNG and NoGIF and NoHTML plugins too?
"Programming is not always intuitive, it's inherently complex, and it's challenging. Once you start feeling like you've gotten a handle on it, you'll learn something new that will make things seem even more complex for a while."

This applies to pretty much any field - engineering, physics, chemistry, even music!

My background is in electrical engineering and it's quite daunting to realize how little I REALLY understand when it comes to the fundamentals... Sure an engineer can make things "go" but they're standing on the shoulders of giants.

Learning is a humbling en devour.
Well that's ugly. Embed a JS redirect via some XSS to a server running that wincrasher script and you could start bringing down a lot of boxes out there.

Hope this is fixed asap. I'm just starting to really like Win 7.
Not much math. Some simple physics like velocity and momentum transfer that you can learn in a tutorial (in a day). I think it is important to make the distinction between game development (lots of simple math and complex "pluggable" formulas) and game engine development (yes, you need to understand linear algebra,trig, and perhaps calculus).
The Final Prejudice
I think one of the most fascinating and under-utilized trends in the retail world is pop-up stores: http://trendwatching.com/trends/POPUP_RETAIL.htm

Combining this concept with serious statistical analysis of when people most often make purchases within different niches, and well-executed pre- ("coming soon...") and post- ("You missed us, but you can still buy online at...") store duration marketing campaigns, I think stores within many more niches could make a sizable profit.

Now's a particularly good time to do this because of the increased availability of prime retail space. Nation-wide there are malls with a larger number of unfilled spaces for rent due to the recession.
"I would argue vendor lock-in even leads to better products, since the developer don't have to worry about interoperability. Monopolies are the real problem."

Aren't monopolies the logical conclusion of vendor lock-in that is allowed to flourish? By your logic, monopolies are even better for developers because they they REALLY never have to worry about interoperability.
MyTown is bigger than Foursquare and Gowalla (6x as many checkins)
So based on your experience (as a comp sci student, I'm assuming, based on your other comment), Python and the JVM are both 'crashy', but you don't happen to remember exactly why?

Reminds me of a bunch of compiler bugs I found back in the day. Strangely the longer I program, the fewer of these compiler bugs I seem to be able to find.
It depends. If it were powered by advertising, yes, yes, and yes. If it were customers paying money for goods or services, not if it were really fun.

But I'm still at that pre-$5m net worth stage where having more than that would basically set me for life. If I were already wealthy, the rules would be totally different. At the moment I just want to hop that fence, then forget all about money (to a point).
Just wanted to say thanks for the analysis -- I'm considering learning to draw again and it's great to see these perspectives :).
Can you even hit SMB shares over the internet? Seems to be that the malicious computer would have to be on the same network for this to work.
The web is not, in general, RESTful. State-changes on GET are common, for instance. Client state is regularly held in server-side sessions. PUT and DELETE are essentially unsupported.
I've been a Prototype user for a few years now. I've always kept an eye on jQuery, but my knowledge of it is incredibly shallow. I have to say, I was shocked when I saw that they added the "proxy" method. This description makes it sound exactly like "bind" method in Prototype. Is that a valid comparison? If so, why did it take so long for this to appear in jQuery? At this point, I don't think I could write a snippet of javascript without relying on that method.
I'm often saddened that because CLOS doesn't use a message-passing paradigm (and because Lisp's syntax is prefix?), doing traditional Intellisense-style method listing and completion is nearly impossible.
That starts at 1 million annually. After 20 years, there will be only $7 million left in the fund. Hmm.
Some countries should be disbanded. Their citizens should be given a passport to the country of their choice along with a 1-way ticket and a small stipend.
Watch streaming movies on the PS3
Does that mean the rest of us are bad at figuring out what people want, and we need to try to build the skill? Or are we just not as lucky?
How about we send a "surge" of 30,000 aid workers?

Or does that only work if we are declaring war on people?
"var self = this" provides a workaround that isn't too verbose, so maybe it diminished the need for "bind" enough to put it off.

FWIW, I do use a $.bind method that I got from somewhere in my own jQuery code.
I upvoted.
Opaque: Translucent: Transparent.

All three define varying degrees of perception. Opaque and translucent are defined as being muddied or "clouded" by material that can distort the original image.

Could be paralleled with excessive/unnecessary legalese. The more unnecessary words a contract or legal agreement contains, the muddier it is. I like transparency where average Joe / average Jane can cut through the BS and say "so _this_ is what this is really all about: it appears to be X, but is actually Y".

There's nothing wrong with seeing everything clearly when clarity is the intention.
Access to a computer in a library is very often time limited and you're almost always limited in what you can do on the computer.

It's good that people can use library computers, but it's absolutely not the same thing as having your own computer.
It's shameless-plug-time, I'm afraid:

http://github.com/regularfry/xmlrpc_annotations

A library I knocked together a while ago to generate C# interface files for an XMLRPC service by annotating the Ruby source. It could be extended to other languages, but I never bothered.

I used it to serve the interface file directly from http://example.com/service/Foo.cs. Works nicely for what it does.

To bring this comment lurching somewhat closer to the topic at hand, would this be a feasible approach for RESTful interfaces?
American Pixels
When you log in to an ssh host using a public/private key pair, the server only sees the public key. So by breaking and entering the attacker can disable your ability to log in in this fashion (by deleting the key) or can enable you to log in somewhere else (by copying the key, probably useless) but they cannot use that key to log in somewhere else absent modification of the SSH server. And even then I doubt they could get the private key, although they could probably run a MITM attack.
Yoono
Great finds.
There's nothing inherently wrong with society - it's government, and modern societies' love affairs with them, that suck.
I'd argue that his definition of transparency is EXACTLY what everyone thinks about when a startup is being transparent.

I think he also left out a point. By divulging your revenues, you are exposing information about your partnerships.

By telling us how much you make, are you telling us how much your partners are making?

I would never partner with a developer who spills all - as I am not a transparent person and I don't run a very transparent company. It would be like opening the back door to my company.

Hmm. Kind of like trying to mix GPL'd code with closed source software.