skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
idk where he want to school or what he majored in, but if he could study for an hour and ace the exam, it seems that he didn't really need to be taking that course in the first place. (Why not just be self taught?)

There are a lot of reasons for getting straight A's, and if you are reasonably smart it is easy to game the system at a university and take courses where you will only have to study for an hour or two (either looking for easy professors, easy subjects or both).

But if you look beyond the grade, it probably isn't worth it to take those courses. I personally measure my intellectual growth in terms of how painful something was for me to learn. If something is really hard and I am struggling, I know that I am working at the appropriate level of difficulty.

I can see how (if these techniques actually work), they would be nice to apply to stuff like foreign language.
This is USEFUL
Simplicity on Steroids (Clojure's for-construct)
Not 100% on-topic, but still :

Does anyone else think mind mapping is more hype than substance? It seems to be an incredible waste of space, for starters, which itself is a put-off for me.
Travels With Gulliver Game Download Free
Think Twice Before Cutting K-12 Music
Wake up to the wealth confiscation
Possibly a little SA centric, but worth a link I thought
I never buy meat at Wal-mart. They don't have any local butchers. The story I heard was that one store's meat cutters were attempting to unionize so Wal-mart fired all of it's meat cutters nationwide and consolidated it's meat cutting and now ships cuts of meat to individual stores.

Maybe it's because I live in the Midwest United States but, I like knowing there's a professional handling meat and someone I can speak with if I need a special cut or something that's not available.
Defending original thinking
Genetic programming is a vastly underapplied solution in modeling. You automatically get a rough mathematical model, analyze and understand and make progress with it.

The scientific community hasn't really embraced what vast computational power can do.

Some are catching on though - look for symbolic regression or automated scientist on google.
(There's a fully automated 'robot' that does biology experiments built by a university prof in england though i'm not sure whether he usss genetic algorithms or genetic programming.)
Want to be smart? take an afternoon nap
What specific rules do you refer to? I'm not under the impression that things have ever been any better elsewhere. Europe does recognize "prior user rights," which is a step in the right direction, but (at least in the UK) it still requires that the prior user have taken a significant step towards commercialization to benefit. I don't think that would really help US software startups.
Slightly amused by the engineer worldview evident in the last line.

"psy optimizations are the single most critical feature ... they're the reason that Vorbis beat MP3 for audio"

So in other words, they're not the most critical feature since Vorbis quality and freedom didn't budge MP3 and so, if we imagine a parallel world where x264 does not exist and Google's VP8 was actually noticeably better than the best H.264 (like Vorbis vs MP3 or on par like Vorbis vs AAC) we would find that anti-competitive patent pools would still be forcing us to use their choice of codec.

The best we can reasonably hope for, as we saw with Vorbis, is for a strong competitor to prevent crazy licence fees. And maybe in time for H.265 the EU or China will have enough political clout and common-sense to demand that international video standards must be royalty free.
I didn't read textbooks back then - it was mainly osmosis due to assignments that had to be done and compulsory labs/tutes I think that got me through. I do have a very good memory for important things, and a terrible memory for unimportant things - perhaps it's a filtering mechanism. Years later I learned about memory techniques that I tend to do naturally (e.g memory palaces et al).

I fondly remember purposefully going into an exam completely blind, not a minute of prep and acing it. The year following was exceptionally lazy :(

Regardless I look back and wonder what could have been if only I had actually studied those topics and found things I enjoyed. Since I skipped so much of it (spent a lot of time in the sun at university and went clubbing most nights) I never knew what I was missing. I've since gone back and revisited the materials and really enjoyed it.

My lesson is that the goal isn't an exam result, it's finding things you find interesting enough to work hard at. Grades are beside the point entirely. If I had of gone to lectures and perhaps picked up some research assistant jobs back then I would have found my calling much earlier.
Anyone tried setting up a VPN server ( as a sort of proxy ) in Europe to stream the coverage to the states ( for personal use of course )?

I might try this later, if it works I'll report back.

EDIT: I got it working, the location I am right now has less than 1Mbps down so I cant tell if the lag is due to the VPN and the distance or the BW limitation. In a little bit I'll be home and I can test with a better connection (8Mbps)
Wouldn't voluntarily paying extra taxes be akin to donating money to the government? Say what you will about Buffet, but I don't think you can criticize him for not writing a few extra zeros on his tax check.

EDIT: Fixed duplicate words.
Lesson learned: even you can sound like a crackpot.
Well, while I certainly agree that this is perhaps a way off in terms of technical capability, that won't always be the case perhaps. I'm not talking about everyone learning to code, that's dead in the water.

But systems which allow business people to define their own acceptance and test criteria exist now - tools like Fitnesse, etc. I'm not saying this is feasible today, but a future can be envisaged where writing a repeatable test which determines whether a function works as desired is within the domain of less technical users.
Why Security Pros Fail: No Ethics, No Dice
Today is the 15th Anniversary of the Apache HTTP Server
Max, these are good suggestions. I'll see if I can implement those after this is done. I'm willing to try other ideas.
I wish this was a video presentation :( .
Here are 4 real-world bug reports, in their entirety. Anybody care to rewrite them as automated test cases for me?

* "Try it Now" button sometimes drops below the "Learn More" button in FireFox

* Capitalization inconsistent in top nav

* Popup blockers occasionally stop the App window from opening properly

* Wierd timeout errors clumped around 1:00 am every few nights

* Accounting needs to be able to call up weekly income reports

In my experience, it's actually pretty rare to find a bug that can be wrapped in a test case without actually discovering and fixing it in the process. Most things that end up in the bug tracker are either cosmetic, wierd "solar activity" things, or disguised feature requests.
Waste of space??? If you're doing it right, you should be able to take notes in much less space and your notes should be far easier to review, especially if you use colours and doodles to turn them into a real "map of your mind". However, I do think mind mapping on a computer is worse than useless.
So what's going on with bank reform, anyway? I haven't really kept up. I distinctly recall Bernanke saying, "too big to fail has got to go" around the time of the bailouts. Yet I haven't heard much about progress on that front...
And of course, the testing for any bug can be easily automated. Not!

Look, some things are very easy to test in unit tests: Does sin(180) return the right value? If I do operation X on supposedly const object O, does O have the same value before and after?

And some things are incredibly hard: Does this MP3 sound right after compression? Does the typography for this combination of letters look right? Is the user interface responsive enough? What about the crash that only occurs in just the right hard-to-duplicate circumstances?

Why is it that these hard core test advocates always seem to assume that all bugs are of the former sort?
"study for an hour and ace the exam"

When you're paying to learn what you'll need to know for your career (at some schools $50,000 per year), this attitude toward learning is completely pathetic. It's not smart to do well on tests if that doesn't reflect concrete learning that will stay with you for years.

I hope noone serious about taking advantage of schooling reads this and gives it any consideration.
Software vendor in Pa. school spying case will disable camera feature
I find the info on their site very difficult to evaluate... i.e., to tell if they are just blowing smoke... full of slick images, slack on facts/data.

What are supposed to be the mechanisms by which their products might possibly reduce eye strain?
When I said on the reg page that you can pay anything you want, I meant it. While I'm figuring this out and launching, I'm letting people name their price. Several said they could only pay $10 so I let them do that. A few said free, so I gave them free.
Numbers stations crack challenge
Ah, but the set up was such that the students couldn't use the spycams for any purpose (or disable them) without jailbreaking the laptop.
What Makes Boston's Start-Up Scene Special?
I prefer bits over atoms any day.
probably not fraud, just a stupid reporter. from this and the other article it's pretty clear that this is some kind of catalysed oxidation. it's effectively "burning" the fuel in a way that efficiently generates electricity, which is neat, but means that carbon dioxide will be one of the byproducts (and this was mentioned in the earlier article). so that part of the article ("no emissions") is simply wrong (note that it's not a direct quote - it's background from the journalist, who was probably copying from info on a hydrogen fuel cell, not understanding that hydrocarbon fuelled cells burn carbon and so generate carbon dioxide).
Hey, I was just on my way to rent the movie.

In the future, please preface this kind of message with SPOILER ALERT.
Which are? I've read somewhere they help improve the
modularity of your code, is this what you're referring to?
Are these ghettos as in "People of the same culture, living together like they did in their native land" or also as in "People of other cultures fear for their safety and are made to feel unwelcome here"? I am concerned about people sticking only to their kind (insularity), but not so concerned about people preferring to stick with the familiar, which is human nature. It's a spectrum, but they are on different ends of it.

I am personally familiar with folks from Edison, and at least in my experience, they are not insular although it could be selection bias. Standard reasons for a newly minted NYU or Columbia grad (or a fresh H1B) from India to live in Edison is easy access to Indian food, cheap rent and staying near friends. It is not staying away from "corrupt Americans". Indeed, most of them would prefer to live in Manhattan if they could afford it, and when they can many do.

I live in Atlanta, where people are very family oriented but I can count on one hand the number of times I have faced racism in the 7 years I have lived here. I suspect the number would be similar or more in any other country. I'd be ok with these people coming to my country.
Tips to do term paper writing
There are many forms of essay writing that you will have to write on as you get through your academic career. Term paper writing is one such form, you will not be able to get far if you are not a good writer when attempting such topics.
i have the original MacBook Pro, bought two weeks after the the line was introduced in 2006. It has no latch to close the isight camera. You sure you're not thinking of a different model? I don't think the older Powerbooks had them either although I could be wrong.
The thing I just realised is that powder kegs are _cheap_ as hell compared to either movements or empires. So who cares if they aren't successful most of the time? You only need one success to make it home.

If you try to do it with an empire, you can expect to spend decades building it, if you go the movement way you will properly spend less time, but you are unlikely to succeded.
Django Advent - jQuery in the Admin
If I recall well the argument, the whole point about war is that it serves as a counterbalance against the problems that perpetual growth brings.

It is never truth that the war is economically productive. But the destruction of capital that comes as a side effect of war keeps inflation on check (monetary inflation defined as money growing faster than the tangible economic output; not price inflation, which is one result of the former).

Besides that, while it might be a net negative economic event, War puts lots of public money in some chosen private pockets. So there are always people lobbying to get into conflict in a perfectly rational way.
Yes. I meant to. It was a goof.

My plan was to create the premium service. Only apply it to older shows and let people pay whatever they want -- even nothing. Then tell the interviewees. And after all that, announce it.

I worked on that plan for weeks, but then we goofed and the HN audience caught it quickly so I had to react.
Mark Twain on Risk Analysis
Let us put aside for a moment the rah-rah, "Go Team USA" focus of the NBC coverage that often bugs viewers who would like a more global view of the Olympics.

That was the first sentence, and they lost me right there.

The first night I watched they went on and on (and on) for so long about how absolutely desperate Canada was to win a gold (and on and on) I thought I was viewing Canadian TV. Later they showed the mogul skiing event (I believe it was) and were so focused on the fact that a Canadian had won gold that they never even mentioned how the US skier did. Only later did I find out he took bronze.
I'm going for sparking a powder keg, followed by starting a movement and resulting in building an empire :)
If you are going to say something, just say it. If you're going to accuse someone of libel, just accuse them. Don't be all passive-aggressive when you're accusing others of being passive-aggressive. It looks kind of like you're projecting a bit, y'know?

In this case, I wasn't making any accusations about Backupify. I was merely pointing out how their external behavior is indistinguishable from phishers'. For all I know they're stand-up guys with the best of intentions, but I object to business models that are based on encouraging bad security practices. They could do everything they do by providing software that verifiably keeps passwords and keys on the user's computer, never storing anything unencrypted in Backupify's AWS cloud. That would be just as useful, and it would be the responsible thing to do, but offering a service instead of software is easier - no platform-support issues. If they're using GPL programs (probably) then they also get to take advantage of the "service provider" loophole to avoid distributing their modifications, and if Backupify ever becomes popular then a service model has better revenue-generating potential. All good for them, so apparently they don't care that it depends on users doing just about the dumbest possible thing security-wise. They might have no intention of abusing their access to users' data, but can they guarantee that every disgruntled employee or contractor will be so noble? Hardly. That's exactly why giving your password to anyone else is a Bad Idea. Business models based on encouraging users to do stupid things are IMO worthy of derision, so I gave them some.
Our office has a foosball table. Playing a game of foos every couple of hours is a great way to avoid wrist pain. Of course you end up with calloused hands instead.

Other remedies: learn to juggle and take juggle breaks every so often. Get some silly putty and play knead it while you're thinking.

The basic thing to do is get your hands away from the keyboard and use them in a graspy way.
I learned the basics of Haskell by doing some problems from http://projecteuler.net. It's probably not as exciting as actually building something using the language, but it's definitely worth checking out.
"Absolute Software is probably best known for its LoJack for Laptops", they don't believe in self-help (the legal term of art, they use "vigilantism") but in a service model where you file a police report and they then work with the local police (claiming a 75% success rate), they acquired this product last December and will fix it ASAP.

I would suspect you might even see this fix applied to systems in the field, at least if and when some of the PA school spys end up in a criminal court.
"But systems which allow business people to define their own acceptance and test criteria exist now - tools like Fitness."

Out of the mouth of a business person, wonderful.
Out of the mouth of a developer, worthless.
A listing of facts contains editorial opinion.
People that spend inordinate sums of money to go to college and then spend all their time there figuring out how to only memorize what is absolutely necessary for the tests, and nothing else, are misguided.

That said, in my experience people that are interested in actually learning the material above and beyond doing well on the tests, learn it during the semester, not one night for the test. An hour refresher before the exam if you've been hitting the books all along is great if you already know the material. it reminds you of minor things that can trip you up on an exam, like some notation or some other minor detail.

Cramming tends to be the symptom of very temporarily obtained information for the sole purpose of grades.
How did Google "test" this feature, and how on Earth (literally) did it pass these tests?
Even if you have no money at all, I'm still giving you at least 5 new interviews per week for free, plus up to 10 of the most popular interview for free.

Isn't that a lot?
Learning should focus on understanding how you learn and retain information verses memorizing facts.

I spent my entire time in K-12 thinking I was average/below average because as a very process oriented learner I needed to make connections with concepts and thoughts in my brain and have those concepts validated. This validation usually comes from the teacher either affirming or denying my assertions but to do this properly would have involved asking 20-30 questions per class (which I certainly wasn't going to do).

Fast forward to college where freedom is aplenty and I started "experimenting" with among other things my learning style. It wasn't easy for me but I finally discovered the method in which my brain best retains information and received high marks.

I'd like to see more of an effort made to help students discover how to learn before actually engaging in the process of learning. It was a life changing experience for me.
"I fondly remember purposefully going into an exam completely blind, not a minute of prep and acing it."

It's amazing how many answers can be found within the exam itself. Obviously this varies from subject to subject, but I found throughout school that exams often gave you so many answers, it's absurd...
Reporting bugs is already tedious. Sometimes more (eg when requiring an account), sometimes less. Asking for a test case would surely reduce the number of "bug reports" to abysmal figures.
Drupal 7.0 Alpha 2 has been released
The rule about not allowing software to be patented?
Could you give us 1-5 paragraphs on your thesis that "people use numeracy to force others into making mental errors" based on greed and fear? I've not heard of that concept before.
I've always been happy to share my results with you via email Gabriel. Let's talk in a couple of months on the results of this.
World's smallest Linux computer
I don't specifically "mind map" and tend to take more outline-ish structured notes, but then as different things are discussed, or something harkens back to something mentioned earlier, I get scrawl in the margins, arrows pointing back and forth, etc.

I just write down the connections I make while I'm listening to things, without really trying to. I suppose that has a lot of similarities with mind maps. Some subjects have more arrows and lend themselves well to that. Others essentially remain in pure outline formats. There's no one true way to do these things.
PSP Emulator Guide
there is: see http://pycon.blip.tv/

All the presentations should be up already, if not, shortly.
Golden Ratio Base
How to unblock blocked apps
> Why is it that these hard core test advocates always seem to assume that all bugs are of the former sort?

It's probably for the same reason that evangelists for certain programming styles will dogmatically insist that you shouldn't have more than X lines of code or Y levels of nesting in your functions, without reference to things like the nature of the programming language or the essential complexity of the algorithm to be implemented.
Inexperienced people tend to overgeneralise from their own experience, and those who have only ever worked in one small part of the programming world are the most disadvantaged of all.
Apple iPhone tops 2009 smartphone sales
Neo4j Graph Database 1.0 released
This wouldn't work for:

* Public bug trackers

* GUI applications, where writing automated tests is difficult or infeasible. (how would you write a test case for "icon is upside down"?)

* Abstract bugs, such as performance-related bugs or feature requests

* Nondeterministic or otherwise unusual bugs

I'd love to live in a world where all bugs were easily reproducible and even a non-programmer could write a test case. A quick glance over my issue tracker reveals this is not the case.
Anyone really surprised by that news?

I expect Google to do a press release tomorrow that they are the top selling "superphone" of Jany :p
You're not wrong about the issues involved, but the way you went about it was attacking Backupify, not directly for bad security practices, but indirectly through the "Backupiphish" scare-mongering.

And as for your accusations, you started with setting up a hypothetical company that looks like them and commits massive bank fraud, then saying that it "has nothing whatsoever to do with Backupify. No sir, not at all. Pure coincidence." If you want to make those accusations, back them up. If not, write a post about their bad security practices, instead of a post about a (hypothetical) web service backup company that's (ahem) entirely unrelated's crime.
Just out of interest, which of the sites in your portfolio generates the most revenue? Or is it fairly evenly distributed across all the sites?
If anyone is really interested in how sleep works and how to manage your sleep, you should really read William C. Dement's conclusive work "The Promise Of Sleep". He's a pioneer of sleep science from Stanford with a great experience and thousands of helped patients. His book is as exciting as it is useful and full of research data, analytics and explanations. A real pleasure to read. After this book, all articles would seem a drop in the ocean.

http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Sleep-Medicine-Connection-Happ...
Block application invites
As someone who sympathizes with the OP's way of learning programming languages, I think what I'm interested in seeing is some commentary on where Haskell's "sweet spot" may be. There are tons of languages out there, and I don't want to learn new ones just for the sake of it. Ok, actually I do if I'm honest with myself, but I need some kind of practical justification for it:-) With Erlang it's easy to say "oh, cool, this is really, really good for this type of application". Haskell seems like it's fairly fast and perhaps good for doing calculations, but that's the only vague notion I have of what it might be useful for in the real world.
"I think the quote about Google being the frontpage to stackoverflow is pretty ridiculous personally."

Why? Because its true?

There's a lot of content sites I use all the time but never visit directly. Yahoo Answers comes to mind.
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