skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Actually I had most of that information in my bash prompt before I switched to Zsh (the battery level and repo-characters are the only things that are really new).

To get to that point I'd been poking around and tweaking for somewhere around 4-5 years, so no, it's not just a case of wanting to use as much of Zsh as possible. Actually very little of that prompt is Zsh-specific.

You might find it distracting, that's fine. I don't. My eyes/brain have adapted to recognize the prompt line(s) as a whole unit. I don't read every single item every single time I see the prompt. But when I do need a piece of information it's right there in front of me and my eyes can home in on it quickly thanks to the color-coding.

Examples:

When I'm switching directories a lot (maybe I'm setting up a new project and installing plugins) my eyes tend to focus on the green text in the center (current directory).

When I'm merging translation branches for hgtip.com's content repository my eyes focus on the magenta text near the right (the current branch).

When I'm using MQ a lot my eyes focus on the list of MQ patches.

The "dirty" flags ("?" and "!" at the right) always jump right out at me if they're there, because they're a different color than the text to the left of them and there's not even a space as a separator.
"I'm not really sure if he really wants one or just makes fun of the hype."

Why is there an 'or' in that sentence?
We're based out of Austin, we use python / django extensively. I would say that we're really efficient at this junction and just don't need to hire another person (yet), but we also can't afford it since we're just starting. Nevertheless, speed and elegance does seem to be a benefit on the surface... 1 python dev = 2-3 et al.
Cool, and there I discovered a plug-in for my default zoom issue, if anybody is interested:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jgfonhdeiaaflpgp...
There were also a TON of Python people from the DC area at last year's Djangocon.
What do the special characters represent?
Voice crypto fails spark astroturf claims - SecurStar denies dirty tricks
have you checked out indeed.com and the python job board? The python job board gets updated surprisingly frequently.
That's a really fascinating poll. I'd really like to see similar data on the perceived cost vs. actual cost of other federal programs -- do you know if anyone has conducted such a study?

It would be interesting to see how people respond when asked only about one or two pieces of the budget, vs. being asked to "complete the pie" by estimating the federal budget when looking at it as a dozen (or so) components totaling 100%.
Rude Q&A
There's always Google.
I like playing flash games and watching videos in full screen, but Flash Full screen does not let me multi-task. So I wrote an extension that lets me resize flash on web pages
Ten-Year Venture Capital Returns Continue To Slide
Again, speaking personally, not for us. We would need "Python and C++" or "Python and assembler" or "Python and web site management" or "Python and MatLab." For others, I'm sure "Python and SQL" would be a reasonable combination.

But perhaps the real point is that "Named Language" only sells to HR departments. The people who really do the work are looking for people who are "Smart and Get Things Done(tm)." Listing fluency in only one language seems to mark a candidate as someone who doesn't program because they want, but program because they're trained. I've hired someone who couldn't program in any of the languages we cared about, because he could clearly program in a range of other languages, and was a natural problem solver.

I recently read a remark (third hand) from a basketball coach. They said: "I hire tall players. I can teach how to play, but I can't teach height."

Curiousity, puzzle-solving, hacking about, learning, playing withh computers, these are things that show that you are fun, smart, interested, self-directing, and generally have the potential to be useful.

I've got off-topic. Sorry. Hope that helps - there's lots of other advice here.
Landing Page Optimization
How can we then tip from one equilibrium to the other?
I didn't write anything about the lack of transactions. Well, one should examine the atomicity level provided by the engine and then there's some work needed to be done by architects & devs to ensure data consistency where it's needed.
Hacking the Wii Motion Plus
If they find out, it most certainly is a problem.
The Kh(aX)n Machine
Or they will pass a law exempting themselves from those laws
I personally don't believe you'll ever teach entrepreneurship how people here at HN are interpreting it. We expect to take nothing but our time and hopefully one day sell it for millions.

Hackers are no different than writers (which I am), musicians and artists. We start with nothing, and produce something worth far more than the sum of its parts.

If you want an entrepreneurship course to tell if you have the material of a true entrepreneur then here's my suggestion: Find a way to throw 100g of shit at a fan (that is running) and have it not splatter.

Here's the grading breakdown; 1) If you get the shit through without it splattering or being cut, you've got the makings of a billionaire. 2) If you get the shit through with slicing, but no splattering, you've got the makings of a millionaire. 3) If the shit hits the fan and splatters, you might as well get a day job and hope you make 6-figures.
Why did java have the reputation of being slow?
I actually did write a script to do this as an exercise in learning Python. I didn't realize there was a game at the time.
That is me, and thanks very much for the mention :-) I didn't realize it had gone onto youtube yet.

It's fairly depressing counting the number of times I say um. Something to improve rapidly.

(Incidentally I'm still looking for places to talk about this - or project management - in Atlanta or California in Feb.)
The limit of my response is but of my own humble opinion.

Python is a relatively simple language, with a small learning curve, and many applications. I've seen python used as a tool more than a primary technology for shops (unless they are a web company running Django.)

My advice is that it seems like you are looking at your career a little narrowly if you are simply looking for "python jobs" because it doesn't seem like you are willing to challenge yourself.

Do a little more personal stretching and you may realize there are more real opportunities than you have previously allowed yourself to notice.
HTML5 isn't exactly old, nor is it complete, that's why no one has given it a 'real shot'. But honestly, walking down that path seems like an enormous headache with little reward.

CMS systems already solve the problem of "how do I make and update a website", with an order of magnitude less hassle for the developer, and much less hassle for the user.
Make this use case easier, or just parts of it; for all critical IT infrastructure that isn't core to my business:

I'm looking for a wiki program to run. I want to force people to login before they can read any of the wiki (it's for internal use). It also needs to support LDAP.

Currently, I load up Wikipedia and find their table (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software). I can then take that table and import it directly into a Google Spreadsheet, which lets me do better filtering. Hopefully the table on Wikipedia has the fields for the comparison I want. If not, I have to go and fill out the list myself (and then add it to Wikipedia). I then spend the next few days playing around with the short list until I'm satisfied with my choice; then implement.

Thats all well and good. But I'm not the IT department! Okay, as a startup, I am, but it isn't core to my business. And I feel like it has got to be a solved problem. How about for inventory tracking? A trouble ticket system? Etc.

This shouldn't be that difficult.

Asking people what they use certainly helps, but they may or may not have the same requirements.

As an app, a better way to use tables on Wikipedia would be great (especially when things are split across multiple tables as the list of wiki software is).

(I'm not affiliated, but while writing up my use case, I came across this: http://www.wikimatrix.org )
Very true, we've got a lot of Django stuff going on around here. Discovery, NASA, PBS, Washington Time, Washington Post, and a number of startups all using Django in one capacity or another.
Is there a non-recursive solution for this question?
>> BCrypt::Password.create("hi,mom", :cost => 10)
=> "$2a$10$L/c.1uoZSh3oaU1fLrnYK.yyU4PiJXsIAzN22qnbU41liyLn5/of 2"
>> BCrypt::Password.create("hi,mom", :cost => 10)
=> "$2a$10$3F0BVk5t8/aoS.3ddaB3l.fxg5qvafQ9NybxcpXLzMeAt.nVWn.NO"
>> BCrypt::Password.create("hi,mom", :cost => 10)
=> "$2a$10$VEVmGHy4F4XQMJ3eOZJAUeb.MedU0W10pTPCuf53eHdKJPiSE8sMK"

Despite the pages and pages and pages and pages of conversation about how to select and format "salts", adding random nonces to hashes is not one of the world's great CS problems.
I have a place in my brain that keeps telling me that I could never get hired by Google (not-good-enough), but then the part of my brain that keeps me going replies: "On the Internet, no one knows you're not a Googler."
This is a somewhat related question. I read that IIS was down to 24% marketshare and was surprised because I remember reading scare stories about Apache being overtaken not that long ago.

The latest Netcraft survey shows a huge hump where IIS has risen and fallen over the last three years, and the active sites (a newer metric that excludes placeholder sites) show a rapid rise for IIS before totally falling off a cliff after April 2009.

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/01/07/january_2010_we...

Does anyone know what caused these trends? I paged through the monthly updates but Netcraft doesn't seem to comment at all on IIS losing half of its active sites, about 16 million, over just 6 months.
Why is this guy getting down-modded?

He is correct is he not? Those ugly comments are part of your online footprints... just like writing ugly blogs...
I doubt this is representative, but we are a C++/Qt4 ISV and I'm looking for a Python/Django intern for the summer to help with some internal web sites and possibly setting up a customer portal (read $12-$15 an hour, no benefits)

In other words, Python is an on-the-side language for us that I would look for say a CS undergrad student to fill the need, where as for our C++ devs I have a much higher bar of required experience/education.
"The current number of daily earthquakes is well above typical daily earthquake activity at Yellowstone. Nevertheless swarms are common at Yellowstone, with magnitudes occasionally above 4.0."

"At this time, there is no reason to believe that magma has risen to a shallow level within the crust or that a volcanic eruption is likely. The current swarm earthquakes are likely the result of slip on pre-existing faults rather than underground movement of magma."

http://www.seis.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/Maps/Yellowsto...
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/publications/2010/10swarm.php
Do a search on the web for "zero tolerance" policies in schools. Read a few of the horror stories, and you will no longer doubt our ability to blow things out of proportion.
It makes sense; there's no real reason for the government to own and operate a spaceflight company. The exciting stuff in aerospace is happening in private companies, and especially in smaller ones.

Manned spaceflight doesn't have many good arguments in its favor, and in any case, if the government wants to get involved, why not buy the tech from a contractor? That's how pretty much all military technology works, and as wasteful and inefficient as it is, it's probably a step up from direct government ownership.
Unfortunately there's no explanation which means there's no science here. (The world seems to be full of studies which measure things that are easy to measure and say things that people want to hear.)

Here's an explanation as to why exercise might be good for you: exercise transfers attention away from repetitive thoughts and into one's body and one's surroundings. It thus confers benefits similar to those of meditation.

This theory may well be totally false. But, hey, at least it offers an explanation. There's something there to be false.

The next step would be to criticise the theory and then, if it stands up, to test it against current theories.

Any testing though, would be highly unlikely to resemble the observations referred to in the linked article. It would instead depend on the relevant details of the rival theories.
Agreed... it's like judging the whole book when in reality he just finished the "preface" part.
Network Naming Schemes
This is great advice, thanks :)
From what I noticed so far, Python is not hot in the market. Java, .Net and PHP still dominates the market. Again, this is just my observation though.
We are looking for someone with Python and strong Teradata SQL knowledge for a contract position in Orlando, FL.

Dice.com posting: http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302...
A mathematically proven way to achieve happiness
Notes From a Conversation With Y Combinator’s Paul Graham
The ongoing bit could have been part of the PR too.
Privacy isn't about having things to hide. Privacy is about who has the right to control the flow of information that is your identity. It is a human right and a basic human need. Any argument based around "having nothing to hide" misses the point entirely.
Simple deploy script for PHP applications
The disk rotation speed bottleneck
Would a good CRM program help with the girls? You could maybe use a good forecasting and sales feature to line up new ones.
"In addition, the patents surrounding HTML5 are owned by a group of companies; Apple is a part of that group."

I did a double-take here. First I dismissed it as the usual journalistic misunderstanding, but is it really inaccurate?
I want to hear what Eliezer has to say.
I have been using python for network related stuff.

From this thread, it looks like python is being used mostly as python/django or for in house stuff only. Also where I come from, I hardly see a python job add without mentioning django. Is it correct to assume that there are very few industry jobs out there for python programmers who are not into web programming?
IPad: A computer for the rest of them
We (the U.S.) protect rich people's freedom of speech. We protect organization's freedom of speech. Saying corporations have no freedom of speech is like saying peaceable assembly is a separate right from freedom of speech. It's not. The first amendment gets value from thousands, or millions of people getting together to say the same thing at the same time.
Create a fan with a hole in the center so you can throw the shit through it. The fan rotates around it- the center is just bigger and hollow rather than something fancy. The fan might be bigger, but the shit won't splatter.
On one hand, you may be right. On the other hand, our constitution was written in deference to an understanding of basic human needs and human nature. Exploration is certainly one trait of human nature so it doesn't seem so out of line in that regard although from a purely intellectual standpoint there is not much justification.
Our diversity will save us.

(No, not really.)
Dollar bills seems a little bit cheesy. Twenties would have made a big enough pile.
The author was careful to restrict his comments to SLC drives, which have reasonably long lifetimes.

The newer, cheaper MLC technology flash drives have far less useful lifetime, somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000-10,000 erase cycles. These drives just won't cut it for usages defined here, though they will work fine in your cell phone.

See (e.g.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Write_Endurance
Yes. While I understand the point of view of the article, I can also see a corporation just as a group of persons acting in concert. Each one of these persons has natural rights, so why can't they exercise these rights in concert?
Are there any history buffs out there who can shed some light on this for me? Is there any link between a civilizations' predilection for exploration and its' longevity?
The startup I work for is hiring python UI devs. We're based in NYC. Feel free to email me if you're interested or want more information. We're using django with mako templates and (largely) MongoDB as the backing store.
Before the Citizens United case came down, thousands or millions of people were free to get together to say the same thing at the same time by donating money to organizations (“527 corporations”) whose specific purpose was political advocacy. (Or they could give money directly to their favorite political parties or candidates, but then each person involved faced limits on what he or she could contribute.)

What wasn’t legal was for another kind of corporation to use its general-treasury funds for the same purpose. The laws banning that kind of spending were based on the idea that when a for-profit corporation injects itself into the electoral process¹, it creates the appearance of political corruption if not actual corruption. After all, if the corporate directors authorizing the donation didn’t expect to get some kind of benefit from the politician in return, then they were wasting their stockholders’ money.

The majority in Citizens United acknowledged that preventing the appearance of corruption was a legitimate concern (which is why restrictions on direct donations to political parties and candidates were allowed to stand), but was so committed to the “treat corporations as people” principle that they didn’t see the point of restricting contributions from corporations.

¹I.e., corporations could run ads saying “nuclear energy is great”, but not “vote for Smith, because he supports nuclear energy”.
In defense of the GP: he probably did not mean 'travel through an intersection after slowing only slightly, or slowing at all'.

The increase in perceptive capacity between slowing to 2-3 ft/sec. vs coming to a complete stop is negligible (and allows one to stop completely if the situation warrants it).
Has anyone actually used Flash on a touchscreen, whether tablet or phone sized? It would appear that there would be major obstacles (e.g. how do you hover the "mouse" over something or get keyboard input for games) but I've never heard anyone complain about it so either it all just works beautifully or it simply doesn't exist yet.
Personal Care Dropshippers
I've only met two googlers in real life. One past, one present. Both talk about google like its a great place, but both seem slightly spent/burnt from the place.
Let's see.

I offered advice on gmail that solves complaints I have heard about it in the past from heavy email users. I described a scene of perpetual chaos that plenty of people would hate. And I gave the piece of information that Google is hiring.

Those are three pieces of information that I thought were worthwhile sharing which are definitely not simply "Google is cool".
* Blah-blah, Google is so cool, nothing worth reading, actually.*

Bit like your comment. Hence the downvote.

It is interesting that someone from the outside has now joined Google and found a lot that they would like to say, but can't.

I've also seen anecdotal evidence that the 20% time is largely ignored and up to the employee to push for, but he comments that it's both used a lot and you are marked on it. I guess that varies with where in Google you work.
this is useful, thank you.
Because corporations aren't people. You can't arrest a corporation and send it to jail. You can't draft a corporation into the military (though drafting some of those defense contractors and paying their workers military salaries would sure help with the deficit).

Corporations have separate rights and responsibilities from the people that own them.
I am blown away by some of the stuff Google puts out, I can only imagine what their internal technologies and tools must look like.

To me, that more than anything validates their approach to hiring, development and business strategy, of which I would otherwise be very sceptical.

I'd never get hired at Google, and rightly so; I look at some of their stuff and know that I could never do that. I used to think (not without some scornful resentment) that they were elitist snobs, but you just can't argue with their results.
A Response to Dr. Phil’s Scolding of Farmville Mom
Alexis Ohanian (kn0thing) from Reddit (YC S05) on Getting Traction
Boxing Training Techniques to Improve Conditioning and Stamina
Fast Food Direct and Indirect Harm & Negative Effects Of Eating Fast Food
“I Sleep Two Hours Per Day”- Month One
This article really made me want to go work for Google. Is it possible to get tours and meet real employees?
Hopefully that will change as a lot of CS programs are starting to use Python.
Funny, they changed the original article and have now added the quote from the TechCrunch article.
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1067333

Many comments there. This duplication would've been detected by the system I outlined here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012215
Mike Arrington's Smartest Move Yet: Bailing On The CrunchPad
On the happy peasant and miserable millionaire
The way I like to think about it is that the current laws were written with a balance between the text of the law, and the knowledge of those writing them that they could not catch every single infringement, nor do they even necessarily want to.

When you enter a regime where every infringement can be caught, the balance of the laws are broken. Very badly, in fact. Over the centuries we have been allowed to delude ourselves into thinking the law actually says what it seems to say because it was utterly physically impossible to completely enforce them. Our generation is going to have to re-discover the idea that even a broken law isn't worth enforcing unless there's a compelling social reason to do it.

You can already see the movement forming, if you know where to look; the current manifestation is a small movement towards re-enshrining the idea that a violation of the law must be accompanied by "criminal intent". (Which, among other effects, is the end of "ignorance of the law is no excuse", which also has to go. That only applies to natural or moral law; ignorance of the illegality of murder is no excuse. Ignorance of the illegality of importing orchids damn well is an excuse!) But it is small and has a long way to go.

Copyright law was not meant to make it completely impossible to copy anything, ever; it was meant to prevent large-scale infringement on either a personal or business level. It was never really designed to go after every infringer for creating mix CDs of music they already own copies of, even though a strict reading of the law says that's illegal. But where's the social harm in that? (Bearing in mind I said they owned legal copies already.)

The laws don't say what they appear to say, there are hidden caveats based on the physical possibility of enforcement, the humans involved in the justice system, and the impossibility of turning 250% of the population to the task of law enforcement. Until we make these caveats explicit, the law will increasingly become the anti-lottery, winning you the right to a randomly destroyed life for no good reason, and you can't not buy a ticket.
Poll: Do Corporations Have the Same Natural Rights as Individuals?
Please vote and comment using non-partisan opinion and reasoning.
> Some version of this can still might happen if Microsoft would be seriously threatened by Google.

Hardly. I don't think Microsoft would want to play dirty with Google.

> since google optimized for money per ad

Google only gets paid if people will click on an ad. People will only click if an ad seems useful, so optimizing for money is optimizing for usefulness.

If you want the objective, not-for-money results, look in the big column on the left.
Freezing it first should get me to the millionaire level at least. If only startups were so easy.