skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
OK I just finished the first block (Subversion Reeducation) and one of the main points he makes is In Mercurial, every developer has their own repository, living on their desktop

But if you read the subversion book, or any other good tutorials, you know that developers using svn can just as well make their own private branches

So under branches/ I can have bob/ sue/ alice/ and they can have copies of trunk (or other branches) to their hearts content.

So why is this a big "win" for Mercurial?

(Will read the other sections later, no time now)
http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/65A/1/57...
R, while an excellent toolkit in many ways, suffers somewhat from a deficiency of useful programming tutorials. It's not as though I'm new to that style of data manipulation—I loved APL when I was younger—but almost all R documentation out in the wild is either "how to do some elementary statistical thing" or "reference", with little in between. "R in a Nutshell" is the best I've found so far at filling in the gaps that exist in my knowledge.
I don't quite agree. While in some cases, there is certainly subjectivity in morality, almost everyone would agree that certain things are definitively a darker gray than others. Almost no one would argue that murdering random people is morally superior to nursing an injured bird back to health. It is true that some people might, but I think that the vast majority is sometimes right in judging comparisons like that.
Ok, ok. =) And yes, I started as a print journalist, too. We worked in column inches, but still, I feel your pain.
Using graphics/images from iStockPhoto and similar sites helps convey the point.
An important rule to remember: your audience will either be reading your slides, or hearing what you say. So make sure they compliment each other.

Guy Kawasaki has some helpful advice on how to use text in presentations: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html
Important to realize he is using the term "geeks" to refer to smart people as a whole (not techies). After that the article makes a lot more sense.
If we accept this writer's theory, it would be more plausible to say that women desire to get impregnated by jocks (w/ physical strength and social intelligence) but then have their kids raised by geeks (w/ money and abstract intelligence).

I've read a stat somewhere that claimed at least 10% of fathers are not raising their actual sons (and they are unaware of it). Unfortunately I can't find the study.
What's next: an article about the War on Christmas (TM) by Bill O'Reilly?
Microsoft Kills Watchdog Website Due to Leaked Documents
Includes comments from a lengthy interview with EFF folks.

Still waiting to hear back from MSFT...
Same here... without binging, I have no idea what MacHeist is... I went to the about page and got a list of people.
How about encouraging food producers to stop sticking sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup into EVERYTHING. I'm almost to the point that I feel I could go to the store and look at the ingredients for a container of salt and see sugar/HFCS in there instead of just 'salt.'
Why do you assume jocks have social intelligence?
Agreed... I stared at it for a few secs... tried to click on the boxes/truck. Then went to the "About" page which says nothing about the site/company but more about the people behind the site (at least I couldn't find anything relevant in 10-15 secs)
How about companies like RackSpace which " stores persistent data from one party and republishes it to arbitrary others" - are they safe?

How about your local web hosting company, which " stores persistent data from one party and republishes it to arbitrary others" ?

How about your ISP, running a caching proxy such as Squid which " stores persistent data from one party and republishes it to arbitrary others"?

There are a lot of independent entities out there storing, publishing, and forwarding your content. Most make fractions of a cent on each "piece of data" - photo, video, blog, whatever that flows through their system. They cannot commercially afford to screen it all, or even sample it.

Can you read every single article on the new page of Hacker news? 24/7? How about on Digg?

Why do you expect someone else to?
Mechanical News and Money Laundering
Uhmm... So I believe that newspapers and other reading materials are also banned in his cafe
Yes on all counts, but SHODAN is remembered as the iconic character of the hacker-themed game.

PS: And 'shodan' also means 'to search for something' in Hindi.
Amazon pays Microsoft Tax for using Linux
keep in mind you can send username/passwords like so for browser-based debugging:

http://username:password@example.com/myresource/
To be fair, it's not clear that Microsoft explicitly knocked out the website. Network Solutions took the site down (apparently earlier than they claimed they were going to), so it's not a given that this was the result Microsoft was after when it sent the notice.

Still bad form either way, though.
You might be able to distribute the publishing of content into the house, but can you distribute the failsafe hardware? Redundant connections? UPS?

When you buy hosting online, you buy more than space on a hard disk.
From my own experience, women of above-average intelligence and education tend to seek men who are at least as intelligent and educated as they are. Within that pool they will still prefer men who are are socially well-adjusted, good looking, and rich, probably in that order of importance.

So if you're a male geek looking for love, whether your IQ is 130 or 160 (the pool of women doesn't increase much from one to the other), you need to work on your social skills. Actually you boys in the 160+ range need to work a bit harder as you spend so much time thinking about esoterica your 'game' is probably quite weak.
It's not "freedom to laugh at retards" that's the issue. No one is arguing that Google should have been able to keep the video up (not that there isn't some merit to that argument), just that as long as Google complies with police requests in a timely matter, the company and its employees should not be liable for someone else using their service to post content.
When did we last elect a fat President? When did we last elect an ugly one?

Since the invention of television and the dawn of universal suffrage, politicians have gotten taller, fitter, and more attractive. There's a reason.
Funny thing is that Google is quite capable of opposing a country like Italy. They could simply cut all the traffic - search, documents, emails, g.apps, everything. There are many people depending on G. for work every single day. It's just not a sensible thing to do, financially. But if Italian prosecutors start suing employees of google.it for example - who knows? I would risk saying that Italy is less valuable and more annoying to Google right now, than China ever was...
Intent to Change License for Squeak 4.0
Huh. I thought you could just adjust your 401 error page HTML, just like you can adjust your 404 error page HTML... instead of putting something cute on it, you could put your login page on it.
Yes. From what I gather MSFT wanted to get their PDF removed. But surely they know that's not how DMCA allegations work, right?

Yahoo! Did the same thing not too long ago, and when Young refused to remove the document, Yahoo! just let it drop. The site never went down, and Yahoo!'s doc is still there.

Also! Here's Microsoft's spy guide: http://www.scribd.com/doc/27394899/Microsoft-Spy
It's a win for DVCS in general, not just Hg. A couple of use cases off the top of my head:

* I can take my repository on the train/bus/wherever and still commit.

* If I'm working with someone who needs to use my 'buggy' code I can push just to their repository (or they can pull from mine).

* I can have my own workflow and create as many branches, checkouts, etc. as I need.

Of course, the example that he gives there is bizarre - effectively the Hg equivalent of hanging onto your code for 6 weeks and then merging all at once...
http://www.stanleyshilov.com/online-tools/convert-special-ch... in combination with Syntax highlighter http://code.google.com/p/syntaxhighlighter/
Chemists in general are a crazy lot.

I once worked in a lab where my job was to dispose of chemicals and clean out beakers and glassware (a dishwasher). Sometimes we needed to use concentrated sulfuric acid to clean out the particularly nasty stuff when regular detergent wouldn't cut it.

One drop of this stuff will make your skin peel off and fall into the sink; one splash could blind you.

I was always donned in a lab coat, thick gloves, safety glasses, etc. but my professor used just his bare hands, rotating the glassware so that the liquid would touch all surfaces. Meanwhile, I would watch in awe and wonder. Awe, because he was cocky enough to do this knowing the risks, and wonder, that he was still alive in once piece.
Natural Gas Figures for US (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...)

Natural gas - production:
582.2 billion cu m (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 2

Natural gas - consumption:
657.2 billion cu m (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 1

Natural gas - exports:
28.49 billion cu m (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 10

Natural gas - imports:
112.7 billion cu m (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 1

Natural gas - proved reserves:
6.731 trillion cu m (1 January 2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 5
I beg to differ. A real-life scalable and modular I/O engine server is very tricky just to design.

nginx's code is amazing, even being barely undocumented.
"We need great weight loss drugs that adjust the metabolism to keep weight off without side effects."

Talk about missing the point. As discussed in Good Calories, Bad Calories (aka The Diet Delusion), there was a study done of mice in which a group of mice was bred with knockout genes in order to be much more obese than normal mice. However, they were given the exact same diet as a group of normal, healthy mice. The obese mice had no higher rates of any of the illnesses commonly associated with obesity (diabetes, heart attacks, etc).

But a group of mice that were fed with an unhealthy diet to become equally obese had all of those problems.

Obesity and other health issues have a common cause. Obesity does not cause (most) health issues it is commonly associated with. Solving obesity without solving the common cause will do little more than make us feel better about ourselves.

Being obese doesn't make you unhealthy--being unhealthy makes you obese.
This seems so significant for music as artifact, but less so for music as communication. Analogy: even if you get an AI to generate emails in the style of my friend, it still won't convey any content my friend wants to express. (Provides great insights into their writing style though.)
Executive summary: VC Mike Maples Jr. makes an extended analogy between Godzilla and ambitious startups that are challenging incumbent giants by using new technologies. Around the 14-minute mark, he starts talking about "Hatching a Thunder Lizard"; this is the most substantive part of the talk.

To the HN audience, this solid 30-minute talk is valuable primarily as an indication of what top VCs are looking for. In a nutshell: a huge potential market that no one else is tapping, either because of some inherent advantage you have (IP or unique expertise) or, more interestingly, because you're going against conventional wisdom.
"... food producers to stop sticking sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup into EVERYTHING. ..."

That is a sign you are eating the wrong things. Just as I like my gasses simple [0] so I like my food simple. In fact a Scot would recognise my breakfast (Oats) and any Italian, Greek or Frenchman would recognise what I'm having for lunch (vegetables celery tomato cabbage spring onion spices olive oil soy sauce spices as the noodles & meat are gone) ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4383706461/ left over from last night.

As Jamie Oliver was quoted in TheAge, Good Weekend, p20: "There's a new type of poverty and it's f...ing knowledge poverty".

[0] Obscure Zodiac reference: "...The simpler the molecule, the better the drug. So the best drug is oxygen. Only two atoms. The second-best, nitrous oxide—a mere three atoms. The third-best, ethanol—nine. Past that, you’re talking lots of atoms ..." ~ http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson#Zodiac_.281988....
We are hiring smart data engineers
Hi,

I work for a cool startup in San Francisco, and we're hiring for a variety of engineers. Most immediately, we're looking for someone we've been calling a "data engineer". The job is involved, the company is awesome, the people are smart, motivated, and fun, and the location rocks.

I'd give you a URL for the company, but the project we're hiring for has no public info on the Web yet. Basically, we're in the private company intelligence space. This involves collecting, storing, and processing some interesting data. Below is the public job posting, but if anyone has any questions, I'd love to answer questions about the company, the job, the perks, etc.

To apply, send a short note about yourself, and your resume, to the work email listed in my profile.

----

Your Attitude:

Data geek. Be excited about opportunities to discover, collect, and structure some of the world’s most important information

Detail oriented. You are pedantic about details and rigorous in your pursuit of perfection with a clear eye for process.

Technical whiz. You understand the different ways data can be stored, accessed, and analyzed. And you have the scripting skills to use it for creative and innovative products.

Experience. You have experience working with large datasets and text mining.

Naturally curious. You want to know everything there is to know about new and innovative companies.

You will be:

Confident in designing, building, managing, and owning a growing and complex database. Your past experience should reflect success with something similar.

Taking large heterogeneous datasets to deliver clean, synthesized streams of data into the world’s largest database of early stage private companies.

Extracting insights from datasets using statistical / machine learning tools such as R, Weka, or using parallel transformation and processing techniques such as Map-Reduce.

Combining multiple sources of data from APIs, RSS feeds, and human input into a single, structured data store while dealing with issues of duplication, cross-referencing, relational structure, and non-relational/denormalized storage.

Developing processes to monitor and ensure data integrity.

Capturing data from human analysts and implementing QA processes.

Working with cross-functional teams, analysts, mathematicians, and engineers on projects including text mining, structuring data, and extracting entities.

Excited to find creative new ways to gain insights and information from a range of sources.

Technologies you know and love:

APIs: ReST, XML-RPC, SOAP.

Dynamic languages such as PHP, Ruby, Python; and R.

MySQL/PostgreSQL, document-based stores such as MongoDB or CouchDB, and key-value stores (Memcached, Redis); their distinct advantages, disadvantages, and trade-offs

Column-oriented stores (HBase, Cassandra), graph-oriented stores.

----

Thanks!
Bill Clinton was fat, even when he was elected. As for the general trend in favor of tall, attractive presidents, the top dog out of a field of millions is going to have most of the major helpful assets. There's no disputing that height and attractiveness are helpful.
Noodles are hardly a good example of a healthy meal. They consist of pure refined carbohydrates, which are metabolically equivalent to pure sugar. It's not much different from eating a candy bar.
Cafe owners are certainly free to structure their cafes how they like. I actually appreciate that his laptop policy is clear, I'd feel welcome going there with a laptop on weekdays. Sometimes they make the power outlets inaccessible, or tell you to leave when it gets busy, and they don't post those policies so clearly.

I think it'd be neat to have a cafe with different sections of seating arrangements aimed at laptop users, chatters, newspaper readers where people weren't getting in each other's way.
No, what would happen if everyone did that is that a lot of people will say "oh, <insert country here> is doing a really good job at maintaining freedom", and so a bunch of freedom nuts move there and (we're assuming everyone does it, remember) that'll be a large- and passionate-enough niche (they're passionate enough to move for better freedom, remember) that they'll have influence over the government and be able to keep it from happening.

Also, as much as we hate to admit it because it makes us feel insignificant, "if everyone does it" is not a very good way to make decisions. Unless you have a lot of influence over many, many other people, nobody else is going to do it just because you did it.
It's good to differentiate between who girls are willing to date(ie have companionship and sexual relations) versus who they will marry(ie. Have kids, Pool resources, Grow old together if they are particularly romantic).

Attractiveness is so much more important when dating as the only real advantage of a dating partner over a friend is the sex. So you tend to date based on attraction. Where as when you are thinking long term, you look for a larger set of attributes, such as earning power, emotional stability, communication, etc. (Of course some people date with the intent of find a partner. But the point is easier to make if you think of it in terms of the extremes of dating for fun versus dating to find 'the one')

Either way, there are guys who are both highly intelligent and athletic. They are going mop the floor of either extreme overall anyway. So in the end, yes brains matter more now, but good luck competing with taller more attractive and nearly intellectually equivalent guys.
"... Noodles are hardly a good example of a healthy meal. ..."

But in moderation. Probably twice/week. I'm eating the left-over vegetables only.
"... What differentiates those that grow from those that don't is whether they go deeper ..."

Good point.
"... I was trying to be polite about our colonial friends. ..."

I always miss this from replies.
Yet another thing that organized religion has gotten wrong.
> That is a sign you are eating the wrong things.

Really? Do I really need to have HFCS in my whole-grain bread? Or am I 'eating the wrong things?' I'm not talking about removing sugar from donuts or pastries in some attempt to eat junk food and still not get fat. I mean, I'm sure that I could find HFCS in mustard or all things.

This is also not to mention all of the fruit juices/cocktails that are on supermarket shelves that are so loaded with additional sugar or HFCS that I can't even drink them. It would be nice to not have to pay twice the price to get a bottle with 100% juice in it or at the very least have a larger selection of juices that aren't loaded with sugar. It's not even that I'm a huge juice drinker. It's just depressing to see some juice at the grocery store that sounds like an interesting blend of fruit flavors only to realize that the first ingredient on the list is sugar. I mean how many people are actually reading those labels? They are probably buying those bottles of juice thinking that it's somehow more 'healthy' than drinking soda, only to be deceived by the juice companies.
well its clear he hasn't spent anything on web design: http://www.drinksoverdearborn.com/
says "talking to twitter....." done...
then "talking to twitter....." done...
and then "talking to twitter....." done...

again and again... never goes anywhere.
fail.
Growth Hormone is stimulated by exercise. The simplified story is that GH puts sugar into cells so that it can be used. Sure you can choose to buy that diet drink if you don't stimulate much GH (don't yell at the food companies for giving people what they buy) but if you ride your bike and take the stairs having that coke will only leave you with a smile.

Excess sugar, on the other hand,is toxic as we just ain't used to it (evolution). If too much sugar floats around the blood the immune system feels the need to respond and the sugar related molecules collect and glom into more antigenic moiety junk...blah,blah we then get chemical and physical reactions and clogging of capillaries and membrane pores and all that other complicated stuff. Bad for most systems in the body, it's only been recent that we figured the brain was just as susceptible as the tiny nerves and the tiny arterioles surrounding the nerves in the toe of a diabetic.

Bodies can make sugar out of other nutritive molecules. In general, eat less sugar and stimulate more Growth Hormone by exercise. GH is a true fountain of youth.
Groupon runs on a similar concept ( http://www.groupon.com/faq ). A business can offer a discounted rate that's only valid if a certain number of people commit to paying said discounted rate. I guess the rationale is that if you get a certain number of people in the door for the discounted rate, you'll have good odds of having enough of them buy other things that are not discounted that you can make your money back. Bar promotions are like that too, they'll have cheap beers and cheep foods to get people in the door who might also buy liquor or cocktails, or who might bring someone with them who will.
"And most importantly, per year we grant the highest number of people political asylum. These numbers, combined with the fact that unemployment in the US is the highest it's been since the early 1940s, makes accepting large number of immigrants impossible."

This claim is specious: the high-end immigrants who are likely to start tech companies and earn PhDs are enormously employable and likely to employ others. If you want more employment, bring in people who are likely to make jobs; notice the high number of tech startups with founders who are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

Still, I doubt that these visas are going to have any noticeable impact on unemployment because the rate at which they'll be granted isn't going to be high enough.

As for immigration more generally, see James Fallows' comments here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/american-decline . Allowing immigration is one of the relatively few things that America does right.
Why is this interesting?
I doubt it, and honestly I don't think there should be. Businesses can't be allowed to censor what is said about them at will.

Yelp may be a flawed implementation, but the concept is sound.
Amazon SimpleDB Consistency Enhancements
How Virtual Teams Rock
must be those facebook users logging in via google
Double check the relevant treaties. They are often written to say that where double taxation exists, the secondary country may collect their usual tax minus what was paid to the primary. Therefore if the secondary country has a higher tax rate, there is an incentive to keep it off the books.

That said, Canadian law tends to tax people on Canadian earnings. (Or at least it did the last time I paid attention, which was admittedly 15 years ago or so.) Which contrasts to US law that taxes US citizens on worldwide earnings (though the US does give a large exemption for foreign sourced income that keeps this from affecting a lot of people).
>> almost everyone would agree that certain things are definitively a darker gray than others

Yes, but we must ask ourselves: Does widespread agreement on an opinion turn that opinion into a fact? If 100% of humanity were to suddenly believe that red is better than blue, would that make it objectively true? I think the answer is no. The difference between fact and opinion is not reliant on the number of people who believe one way or the other.
"I understand they want to provide some sort of malware protection service for which they need to periodically log in to your vps with your password."

This is so unusual, and so unexpected that it should have been in the TOS, at the top. This should NOT have been a surprise, with proper description of the REAL TOS, rather than just the written TOS. (I am assuming this isn't in the TOS, I'm not a GD customer.)