skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You were correct; the idea was that no MIT EECS graduate should be completely at sea if he had to do some programming or had some weird electrical problem to deal with (as a nearly total CS type, I can tell you the latter is extremely valuable):

The early '80s curriculum had a core of 6.001-4, in a word or phrase they were SICP, Kirchhoff's law, Laplace transforms, and low level architecture (gates and circuits, microcode and assembler).

Those were hard courses, each 15 units compared to the normal 12 for a typical course (one unit equals one nominal hour of work a week). I and others can attest that even if you were an experienced Lisp hacker 6.001 made you sweat blood.

That system is no more, the department panicked when the dot.com bust resulted in an unprecedented and permanent crash in undergraduate enrollment, which had been steady for decades.

So they terminated 6.001 with extreme prejudice and replaced the mandatory core with two new "fun and exciting" (but still hard) courses, 6.01 and 6.02. The first is robots programed with Python and the second is communications inspired by cell phone networks the last time I checked (I haven't looked hard at it).

After that there are different paths that can be taken by majors focusing on EE, CS or both, but almost all of the current student body goes for the later.

So MIT grads starting about now are a "new thing", a different "product"; obviously they will still have a fair understanding of both, but the guarantee for one of them is much lower. And you are of course you aren't going to see many who are in it for the money alone.
Learn pre-calculus including trig, then proceed with calculus and classical mechanics and E&M. Then you'll have a solid foundation for serious EE.
Help fund an open source implementation of the Bussard nuclear reactor
Kids Say the Darndest Things: Teens In Tech 2.0 Video
Halliday & Resnick is still a great introduction to Physics, and it will be for quite some time.
That's because most of the Review my startup posts are really "check out my weekend project I threw together". You can get all the advice you need through great books and online content, and reach is simply a matter of building up your online presence through a good blog, open source projects, etc.
Also Mormons tend to be conservative and Glenn Beck is one of the most popular conservative commentators.
It's true that lexically scoped variables can replace closures when all you're using closures for is to wrap a section of code in starting and ending sections. But blocks are more general purpose than this. Have a look at the clean API that blocks have enabled in Ruby's Enumerable module, for example. Once you're using blocks/closures, why not use them to acquire/release resources as well?
What's CompE?

Note, CS departments generally either came out of Math departments, in which case they emphasize CS and not much in the way of EE, or they came out of EE departments and strongly emphasize the EE side of things even if you're pure CS. MIT is an example of the latter, I think the same is true for Berkeley and Stanford, I'm not sure about CMU.
So these might be great ways to make a little bit of money, but they don't really create value (except for the theme). Creating a successful startup should be more about creating value then making money, if you create value the money will come. When you think about success do you define it as money or building something people use and love (and also makes you money). If you want to make a cheap buck there are plenty of ways to do it without providing value. Go create a trash blog on a popular keyword, become a domain squatter, etc. But I want to create value and build something people will use and enjoy using.
something in the tubes went wrong! (100% cpu usage, 100% disk io), my linode got throttled
The one thing to keep in mind here is that beyond the modified Linux kernel, there's not much if anything about Android that looks like a "traditional" Linux distro. Android has recreated a whole new userland toolchain on top of the kernel, centered around Dalvik (Androids' JVM). If you want a more traditional Linux system to tinker with, buy a N900 instead, which comes with a Maemo Linux distro.

Most Android development in the actual OS level seems to be based around patches to the AOSP codebase. Cyanogen has created a github repo with his build environment/overlay, which supposedly should allow you to start hacking on the internals, and then build/flash that new image to your phone. Building on top of that, the NDK will at least allow you to write Androids apps in C/C++ that could potentially hook into any changes you make to the core OS build, and would give you the most options for tinkering how you like.

I'd recommend the Nexus One for any Android OS work though, as Google made it trivial to gain root access from the bootloader and flash your own image to the system. If you really don't like T-Mobile, you could always wait a bit longer for Google to start selling the Nexus One in CDMA format for VZW.
You should make clear that it's a fusion reactor; "nuclear", while technically correct, connotes fission.
It doesn't surprise me you were a management consultant. You're getting downvotes for repeating simplistic abstracts, without suggesting anything close to a reasonable course of action.

"How do we fix this problem?" "Well, all problems can be fixed by fixing the problem." "Ok, so how do we do that?" "Simple, fix the problem." "Right."
I agree, it's getting tiresome seeing all these op-ed pieces posted here. HN is under steady assault now from astroturfing.
they don't really create value

Maybe they do -- it depends on who's judging. To use Max's example, let's say I am casually interested in owls. Seriously, there are such people. I'm 60, I am on the internet but am somewhat uneasy with how to use it, and I like owls. Somehow, I find Max's owl video site. I like it! Maybe I even see an ad and click and buy. Maybe. But to me, finding the site and being entertained by his collection of owl videos -- that has value.
Nowadays it's being used for good there, as well:

http://www.labenevolencija.org/en/current-activities/great-l...

A friend of mine is doing some research with them, and I've had the pleasure of meeting several people involved with the organization here in Holland.

They use a dramatic soap-opera format to follow the lives of some characters during a horrible series of events, their experiences, conflicts, etc. Something like 90% of radio-owners in Rwanda listens to the program regularly.

The goal is to teach how cycles of violence can be cut short, to lend a platform so that people can think about and discuss their experiences, and to help give tools to individuals to help deal with the psychological trauma that nearly everyone there shares.
How to Use Twitter to Generate Writing Ideas - Kikolani
Just installed it and it seems to work as advertised.

Certainly more useful (and less in the way) than twitter results in Google searches.
Yeah, the people who created the owl videos are providing value, youtube is providing value by making them available, the owl site is just leaching off of that to make a buck.
he considers it something to be proud of

I think he considers it that only in the sense that someone else may find it entertaining.
Of the big 3 modern smartphone platforms, I believe only Palm's WebOS is doing forced over-the-air software updates.
Dumb-ass Features and Really Agile Management
Why Did RAVAN Lose?
Blocks are objects themselves and they preserve their access to the local variable scope (i.e. they are "lexical closures"). This allows you to write control structures yourself. E.g. if-statement:

def my_if( cond )
if cond
yield
end
end
x = 3
my_if x < 5 do
puts "#{x} is lower than 5"
end
# prints '3 is lower than 5'

Unfortunately the syntax for a control structure accepting more than one block is less elegant. But you don't need to compromise on the semantics:

def my_if_else( cond, a, b )
if cond
a.call
else
b.call
end
end
x = 2
my_if_else( x < 0, proc do
puts "#{x} is lower than zero"
end, proc do
puts "#{x} is greater or equal zero"
end )
# prints '2 is greater or equal zero'
the owl site is just leaching off of that to make a buck

Editorship -- or, if you're more cynical, "leeching". There really is value in collecting other people's works. I am convinced that it's more than mere leeching.
"Hence the cursing."

While it may make sense in light of your internal narrative, to an outsider like me it's immensely distracting. So much so that I ended up not caring about whatever point you were trying to make. Instead, I was trying to figure out why people try to write like angry disaffected hipsters.
Well, don't know what his experience was but mine was: "Sorry, you have exceeded your 1 allowed article in 30 days..."

That's funny, as this was literally the first time I landed on that site (oh, and likely the last time, too).
Over time I assume the maintenance/attention would drop off. Though, I could see revenue dropping off too.
This is a followup to a post I did on survey incentivization, covered on HN here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058669

Short version: survey incentivization worked very, veeeeeeerrrry well for increasing response rates. The survey itself got me actionable insights, and when I say that, I mean I did eight commits today based on them. I'd really recommend you try one for your business if you haven't already.
I think we're going to start seeing alot more ideas from gaming start to creep into applications. I've definitely been noticing a trend of this even recently here on HN. It's going to be interesting to see how these two worlds collide (and what startups form from the debris).
"Bristol university graduate Tiffany Philippou originally set up the group in response to a competition from ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi to win a mere summer internship. However, it seems unlikely that Tiffany will be too bothered. There’s now a holding page and Twitter account (@secret_london) as Secret London morphs into a full-blown startup."

One project down, 399 to go.
Tell HN: Can you figure out what type of attack it is?
Some discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1107020
GleeBox Add-on Eases The Strains of Browsing in Firefox or Chrome
When are you planning to have kids? ... What if [your husband] has to move for work one day? Will you go with him?

So basically, VCs are doing their job and asking legitimate questions about the commitment of their prospective CEO. Isn't this exactly what they should be doing?

What should they do, throw a couple of mil at a venture only to discover the CEO vanished into new mommy-land? Or worse, didn't vanish but stayed on at half productivity? I'm sure the people who's money they are managing would love that.
Here is the link to HTML source -> http://pastie.org/813615
The ping requests gives an IP of [216.15.200.140]
IP Locator tells the IP Belongs to NY USA http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm
http://news.ycombinator.com/rss ?
Where are you, and what local resources do you have?

This sort of stuff is enormously difficult to learn from books and unstructured on-line material. The problem, then, is that you need a properly structured course, with exercises and tests to help regulate your progress.

As others have said, you'll need algebra and trig, then you'll need some calculus. You need facility with word problems, and then some basic physics.

Here are some very, very simple basics to see where you are.

We can think of electricity as water flowing in a pipe. This analogy will get you a long way, but you will have to keep in mind that it is an analogy, and will sometimes be misleading. So ...

Loosely speaking, "Voltage" is the amount of "oomph" behind electrical current, it's like pressure. The more voltage you have, the more current you'll be able to push through a conductor.

However, a conductor will also resist the flow of current. In the simplest case, the amount of resistance remains constant over a wide range of conditions.

So, the formula is V=IR, (voltage drop across a resistor) is equal to (current flowing through it) times (value of the resistor).

The unit of voltage is the "volt"

The unit of current is the "amp" (short for "ampere")

The unit of resistance is the ohm.

So, suppose you have a resistor of 1K ohms (1000 ohms) and you put 2V (2 volts) across it. How much current will flow?

Suppose from A to B I have a resistor of 5K, and from B to C I have a resistor of 2K. If we have 5mA (5 milli-amps, 5/1000 amps) flowing from A to C, what is the total voltage drop from A to C?

Showing how you answer these will help us to provide suitable recommendations.

Finally, is there a local library? Is there a local college/university? Are you limited to on-line resources?
Providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.
Well, I have 2 apps on the app store right now. One of them makes nothing, it's not free, just does not make any sales and one makes just about $1 a day (after I raised the price from .99 to 1.99). Both apps are pretty simple, are in the same category (healthcare and fitness) and I've done nothing to promote them.
oh for background http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/07/indian-it-giant-tata-co...

I thought it would be interesting to see if all security geeks could try figure out how much ever they can when the hack is still on!
Don't worry most people will ignore it in lieu of their preconceived notions of what should work.
While mildly interesting, the article body doesn't exactly live up to its title. :(
A great-grandfather was listed in the 1900 census as a "stationary engineer"; the next two show him as "machinist", and I'm guessing he had not changed trades. I doubt his schooling went beyond about 8th grade, for his father was a farmer in northern Germany.
Can be blocked: http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/Blocking_Updates
Certainly more useful (and less in the way) than twitter results in Google searches.

That certainly throws the entire value of Twitter into question when you aren't looking for the comments :)
Strange. Well, you could register and get 10 every 30 days; they do publish stuff worth reading, especially in this "Great Recession".
JavaScript memory leak patterns
I built the HN iPhone app. (http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/)

Right now, it's all done via web scraping. I think others have used BeautifulSoup.py and similar tools to quickly grab content.
Relatedly: Some of us have egos. The rest of us have A/B testing. It is a lot like signing up for a lifetime subscription to Humble Pie Magazine, but it certainly works.
Weave Rich, personalized experiences across the web
Aggregation has always had value (the Bible, Familiar Quotes, Readers Digest, The Big Picture, etc.).
Very true, I think Ruby's metaprogramming is an example of the kind of strong feature you were talking about. I don't use Ruby, but I remember reading about it in the Poignant Guide and being really impressed at how it can make code look very different, basically one way to make a DSL.
Facebook Gifts Get Real
We've been very happy with surveys at Matasano; we use Formspring, not Wufoo, we drive them from Twitter (ha! Patrick), incentivize them with posters and Matasano refrigerator magnets, and are using them to generate content. Every survey we do is good for a measurable number of new customer prospects.

The thing I want to mention though is that if you're out of ideas for media relations, and you run a survey often enough with general enough questions, you can take the aggregate results of the survey and shop them to reporters for trend stories. It is one of the older PR tricks in the book.
Keeping Customers Up-to-Date on Development: Cultured Code
Show HN: PatchBin.com - Pastebin for patches + comments + code review.
The New Dating Game
Choice isn't (necessarily) beauty. It's one more engineering tradeoff among others, with its own upsides and its own downsides. Giving up choice in favor of the benefits gained from doing so can be pragmatic, rational, and lead to more beautiful results.

I guess I'm just saying: don't fetishize choice. Assign it a value like the one parameter among hundreds which it actually is.
Just curious, as someone who is considering starting up a wiki, what is your revenue model? Just ads?
they can buy H.264 and give it away for free (open source it), which is impossible without making themselves bankrupt.

As the discussion around H.264/Theora etc has heated up I've started wondering about this. There are now at least 3 rather large players with relatively deep pockets that all have licensed h.264 for products they essentially give away. So what if Google, Apple, and Adobe all pooled together and purchased the patents for h.264 and licensed it for free (or possibly a free non-commercial license, and force any other big players using it to chip in). I wonder what the price tag on that would be.
I actually believe racketeering has an element of something else illegal, ie, gambling or violence.
On Windows, I also use GridMove, which works reasonably well. On linux, I use a full blown tiling window manager[1] (and have been doing so for about a year) and, compared to this, even GridMove seems painful. I cant imagine moving back to a traditional window manager now.

... wasting time sizing, moving, and z-ordering windows, users only need to deal with one maximized window at a time ...

This problem is completely elliminated when using a tiling window manager.

[1] http://aerosuidae.net/musca/Musca_Window_Manager
This is it exactly. I mean to update the post to include this point, if you don't mind.
Can't say anything about opensourcing it yet.

I could write a more technical blog post at some point how it's done, if more people should be interested in that.
I really disagree. Some call it "aggregation," but I'm starting to call this layer "discovery." This very site, Hacker News, is a filter that is mere pointer to content elsewhere. (There are occasional "Ask HN," but most every post posts elsewhere).

Most sites and tools I use every day are filtering tools. Techmeme is another great example.

It is true that a purely automated owl video scraper wouldn't be as good and one that was even cleaned up for five minutes a day, but that wasn't the suggester's point.
Thoughtful aggregation does add value, to me it sounded like the idea was to grab the first X videos on youtube.
The sad thing is, 16 years after the Rwandan genocide, most of the countries in Eastern and Central Africa are unstable and deeply divided between tribal lines and are fast heading towards becoming failed states. Kenya is a good example; after the 2007 General elections burst into chaos fueled by Private Ethnic Radio stations and SMS messages.

If nothing is going to be done soon, either Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda or DRC will fall into genocide preetty soon. My bet is on Kenya during the 2012 General Elections.

The radio stations there are starting to sound as Radio Rwanda. The first thing someone asks you is your tribe!

Sanctions need to be imposed on the leaders of this countries or else the Rwandan genocide will look like a Christmas party.
Do you have a newsletter or blog?
Yeah, I'm in that same boat. Two apps on the store, one is free, the other is making about $3.00 a day:

http://www.platinumball.net/hearts/

Kind of frustrating, because when I made my app free, it was being downloaded 1700 times a day. So it seems like there is demand, but not enough to push them over into the 'pay real money' category.

I'd love to work with somebody who is better at marketing than I am, if somebody wants to get in touch.
Ask HN: Do you feel a need for reviewmyidea.com?
There are lot's of ideas flying in the air, do you need a feel of a service that will help you to get a feedback on your idea before diving in?
Could that be because the chalkboard notes were neater? Or the professor didn't have to worry about getting the technicalities just right?
I didn't like gleeBox, so I used Keyboard Navigation for Chrome. However I disliked that it searches for links on the whole page (scrolling to top if needed), but when you want to "click" a link with keyboard, you only want to search inside visible links, so I modified it a bit.

You can see a little demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ZrUMzBoPI

(note that I changed ESC to focus to Ctrl+ESC in the latest revision)

I haven't packaged it as extension yet, so you'll have to install the original one first https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jdfpnijdiejbheba... then cd into the folder with this extension and pull changes from my fork: http://github.com/dchest/keyboard-navigation-for-chrome
Sounds like a good idea in principle, but what would prevent it from becoming "stealmyidea.com"?
15k followers is not in-crowd that's more like the exclusive country club crowd. Most seem to have 60 or 70 followers. The people who are just random programmers and not real marketers seem to have 400-600. But I obviously did not do any serious research on this.
I wouldn't say that people have "no problem" with it; plenty of people are terrified of flying. Jet fuel and hydrogen are worlds apart in danger and ease of handling, as jet fuel stays where you put it and will extinguish your cigarette. Finally, a jet engine is hardly an open flame; it's very well-contained for a dozen different reasons, not least to keep its own thrust from blowing the flame out.

I agree with your point about the hydrogen fear trigger, but your strawman caricature of the heavier-than-air aircraft industry weakens your argument.
John Gruber on the “Auteur Theory of Design” from Macworld 2009
Om runs multiple successful conferences a year. They also have a pro/research offering. I bet they make the most out of all 3. Om is happy.
Josh Hackler – A semester in Oviedo, his love for wine and spain = Spanish Vines
This was posted here just a few weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058359
It looks like you're in San Francisco. Mobile Monday Group is holding some kind of event tomorrow about how to increase app sales. I saw the post on the Silicon Valley iPhone Developer's Meetup Group mailing list. May just be a sales pitch but might be worth checking out as it's free: http://momosvfeb10.eventbrite.com/
And being followed on twitter will help you a big deal in growing.
Well, I would not fear that my idea would be stolen, in fact ideas are cheap ( http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html )
I think it's because the professor was off to the side, drawing on a tablet, while we were staring at the screen it was projecting on. It also didn't help that we were in a computer lab, with huge 22 inch iMacs in front of us, making it hard to see the screen and basically impossible to concentrate. When a professor writes on chalkboard, your eyes tend to follow them around the room, rather than staring at what they wrote.
Site's down.
"The sites that I advertise on do not optimize for their user experience because if their website is better than my textual ad, they don’t get paid."

Eureka! Offer a free web-based product so lame that it drives visitors to click the ads of competitors. Even I can do that!
While I not only concede but actively promote this to be an important issue, I nonetheless question that it belongs on HN. It's not something that, in the words of the guidelines, gratifies my intellectual curiosity.

The problem is, for technical people who are in a community whose members they respect, where else can they go to discuss things like this?
It all depends on what you put behind the word 'project' (and there's no judgment in my sentence).

For most programmers, a project is something that has already a decent size, is complex to get out and test on the field.

If you think this way, a "side-project" can only be rare.

On the other hand: a friend of mine started exactly the way Max describes a long while back, and currently runs way more than 400 sites/projects.

He is also doing way more than 12k€ per month.

The thing is 95% of his projects wouldn't even catch the 'regular' (if there's such thing) programmer's interest :)