skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Or maybe they'll be better prepared because they actually learned more in school.

8th graders with 1 hour of sleep less perform two whole grade levels lower on tests (i.e. like 6th graders.) There's an entire chapter of Nurture Shock devoted to this topic, and it's pretty damning.
Opera submits iPhone browser to Apple for App Store review
I don't get this. Why submit an iPhone app that is (apparently) without iPad functionality, during the time window when Apple has started accepting "universal" iPhone/iPad apps? Why not get it right, do it as a universal app, and then submit it?

Maybe it's because they hope to avoid the duplication of functionality trap. On iPhone, at least on the current OS for iPhones, you don't get multiple content panels on the same screen except as part of a horizontal scroll. On iPad, I believe you do, so in that case there would be duplication.
Not sure about that, but they do censor child pornography. Like their practices in China, there is a note at the bottom saying that results have been censored.

Try this search: http://www.google.ca/search?q=TiP5As2jNc
Interesting links, thanks. The one thing I am concerned about is the maintenance stage too. The 100pushups program is cool, but what to do afterwards? You can't do 100 pushups 3 times a week. That is why I am trying to learn about the options for maintaining a certain level of fitness when I get there, and why I chose a longer term goal of doing a triathlon. That gives me a year to figure out the optimal program for staying fit.
Good to hear that you managed the first stages by keeping it simple, as that is the path I am on at the moment, good luck with figuring out the maintenance stage!
In a couple Wall Street companies I've experienced, the penalties were harsher for being a few minutes late than just calling in sick, so there were a lot of unnecessary sick days that happened because a person would rather "throw a sickie" than get reamed for showing up at 9:08. It's really stupid and counterproductive.
Cool! But the OED disagrees: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/few

The wikipedia article says that using fewer for counting nouns is fairly new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less

So I guess you're probably right, and it's not worth correcting people on this matter.

(But I'm probably still going to use fewer instead of less).
You make it unprofitable by tracking and killing as many of the pirates as possible. It raises their costs substantially.

I can think of a couple of possible solutions:

a) Dummy ships. Get a warship of some sort, make it look tempting and fill it with armaments.

b) Cheap UAVs to help spot the pirates. (You don't necessarily need to scan the entire area, just scan ports and then follow the ships that leave).

There are other things you can do, like banning negotiation with the pirates and penalising anyone who pays a ransom but that's probably not palatable to politicians.
The Certified DBA
However, Opera needs to be sure to disclose/advertise the app as a proxy and not just a browser. Personally, I will never want to use a "browser" app with a proxy in the middle, but as long as others are fully aware of what they are downloading then they at least knowingly get to assume whatever risk is involved.
(copied from the comment I left on the post)

I think a lot of programmers were turned off to math by boring classes that focused way too much time on how to calculate rather than applying it. This typically happened early in their life and was unfortunately followed by reinforcement in later classes that that is all math is.

The biggest leap I took in math was when I started unlearning this math brokenness due to a great math teacher in middle school. Had this not happened, I doubt I would have been excited about the math.

On my blog, I've been trying to show very cool applications of slightly advanced math such as explaining how the Xbox Live TrueSkill algorithm uses some basic statistics to rank and match people. It's a beautiful application of "statistical machine learning." In addition, I tried to show how the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) uses some really neat finite field algebra.

The hardest part is overcoming people's fear. This fear has been reinforced so much that you really have to go out of your way to break through the fearful blank stare people get when anything math related is mentioned. I'm just trying to take baby steps now; it's really hard.

Math is simple language that has been refined for centuries. It's sad that so much fear is associated with it. Leslie Lamport's interview on Channel9 goes into this more.
Palm moving to Android to stay alive? Not according to Palm -- Engadget
if you have questions about it, you can ask it here, I will answer
Which means that if you're at a funeral, you're better off being the guy in the casket than the one giving the eulogy. /paraphrasing Jerry Seinfeld
Good stats can also be very useful for metrics and project management.
Computing with units and dimensions with Clojure
You might earn a trip to the unemployment office instead.
Of course like said it's single-player only games and wouldn't work for multiplayer. That's why I don't think we will see them soon.
10am is when lessons start. My school expected us to be in by 8:30, with lessons starting at 9.
Well, the data speaks for itself. Did you read the article? The official school hours are the same, they just shifted classes from the morning to the afternoon slots for that group. And they still get out of school earlier than the typical adult workday ends.
One can use C++ as C with stricter type enforcement.
I think it's best to treat C and C++ as separate languages. While you can certain compile (most) C programs with a C++ compiler in practice the way you code in C and the way you code in C++ is very different.
Microsoft Sync Will Kill You... For Real
A bit like Apple with the app store, is it not?
And perhaps the "real world" will adjust too. Flexible hours etc.
I get that too :)
Do you know offhand what that version is? The only version I see on Amazon is the 1988 2nd edition.
This would be a nice feature. I spent a few minutes refreshing and hoping to find one I liked, but none really stuck with me. If I could freeze the color of keywords, refresh, lock another color, etc etc, that would make it much more useful.
Regarding cooking: You will never go much beyond a set of frustrating, memorized axioms unless you understand food science and chemistry. I feel as though it works the same way with programming.
If Apple is banning apps because the developers are rude to them then that right there is a problem worth highlighting.

I would suggest it is already a confrontation, the fact that almost all other developers have cowed before Apple (because they have no leverage and will therefore lose, possibly for utterly random reasons) and Opera has chosen not to, doesn't change the fundamental nature of things.
Opera do highlight this in their FAQ: http://www.opera.com/mobile/help/faq/#connection

Is there any end-to-end security between my handset and — for example — paypal.com or my bank?
No. If you need full end-to-end encryption, you should use a full Web browser such as Opera Mobile.
In high school, I would fall asleep in class all the time. Teachers would yell, I'd get in trouble, it was awful. It wasn't intentional, I was just so tired that I could not keep myself awake. If I could have stopped it, I would have been much happier, but I couldn't.

Even during my waking periods, I'm sure I wasn't operating at peak mental efficiency.
Basically, I like the disambiguation pages and zero-click info panels. Granted, google usually has the wikipedia article for a given query in the top 5 results, but with ddg it's always right there at the top along with a paragraph of (usually relevant) the wikipedia article. I don't think it's necessarily a mind-blowing search engine (I don't know if that's even possible), but I tried it out a while back and haven't had any compelling reason to switch back to google (except for the occasional query). I've been using it for a week or two now.
That's pretty basic software development. There is always a new feature you can add, but if you keep pushing back the release due to new features you might never get to a release.

Opera Mini for the iPhone is ready now. That is why they are submitting it now.
I'm a journalist, and I can confirm that this is great advice.
MessagePack: Efficient, Cross Language Binary Object Serialization
I start work at 10am, because I have flexitime. I just work later than the people who start at 7:30.
They even give a startup idea - some kind of social network for pattern recomendation (design guidelines?):

"people that found this pattern useful have also liked this one..."
while a newbe i asked on irc what would happen if i move /usr in my sgi indy to a new scsi drive i just installed. sice no one replied i opened a terminal and `sudo mv /usr /newusr; sudo ln -sf /newusr /usr` or something dumb like that.

While i waited i opened netscape and went to read something. Then while it was coping irc was flooded with bad omens and curses about what would happen if i did that on a live system.

The only thing i noticed was that the icon state (the desktop shortcuts changed picture if there was any process open for their target files) would some time blink. But that was it.

Not a thing happened. Even the bookmarks i saved on the netscape bookmark file opened before the move ended up on the right place.
That you were able to do it is not evidence that it was better than the alternatives.
Automated Sports Content: The Future of Sports Journalism?
This is huge. When is software patent going to go?
Don't sell for less than 100k: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1014108
One problem with this, is the field of vision will be very small, so the effect would be poor. However 3D iPad type device could be really good. Maybe with the new DSi XL is a sign of things to come?
How can they manage to get so many upvotes in a post with essentially no content?

I am absolutely baffled.
I don't think you'll get anyone to take you up on the local elder thing. If someone turns in the local elder and gets a whole lot of cash their life expectancy won't be very good. Cash is only good if you're alive to spend it.

Look at it this way, we've had insane rewards out on Osama Bin Laden for a while and have precisely dick as a result.

On a side note, you also need really good intel on the ground to make sure that the guy you're paying money for really is a local elder and not some poor sucker who's being handed over for the money. Getting good intel in Somalia is a non-trivial problem.
Based on this sample set, plain weirdness correlates with productivity. Mozart seems to be the only one who followed a "normal routine".
Ask HN:  What makes Lisp hard to learn?
I'm interested in producing educational material on how to use a LISP. What are the major pain points on the learning curve for everyone? Specifically, what's tough to get coming from a Java or C# background?

Share your stories!
The three kinds of platforms you meet on the Internet
I wish more services would offer a Level 2 platform, not just Level 1.
I second the recommendation of van der Linden's book. It was through that book, along with lots of programming and experimentation, of course, that I finally understood C.
New Bing Maps Application: WorldWide Telescope
Why Virtual Nerd Declined a $70,000 Competition Prize
Am I the only person who likes to be able to type in a flexible date format and have it autocorrect that to a known date? (I set this up for an internal work tool using http://www.datejs.com/ and it worked great.)

I type faster than I use the mouse. But everyone wants me to use a mouse. :-(
The people who actually care (i.e. you and I) already know about it. The people who don't care, have much bigger security concerns, IMO. Most people don't check for SSL when entering credit card information, so I doubt they would care about this if they thought it good speed up their browsing as much as Opera says it can.

edit: Though I do agree - I would trust them a little more if they were a little more outspoken about the security implications of what's going on.
Ask HN: I want to write a book (fiction)
I've been seriously considering writing some sort of novel and selling it through Amazon via CreateSpace.

I'm a decent writer overall, and I have an excellent imagination, but I have no idea where to start when it comes to writing a piece of fiction.

Does anyone here write fiction (or non- even), or know of any good resources on where to start?

Thanks!
3. Understand their needs - You need to understand a journalist’s needs. First, understand their deadlines

The fact of the deadline is one of the big driving forces for the need for a meta-journalism site. If no one calls them to account, journalists will keep skimping on proper research and understanding for an undiscriminating public.

This applies more to general interest science coverage than to tech and startup coverage, however.
That is incorrect. For most of Ibsen's lifetime, Sweden and Norway were one country (Norway separated in 1905). So Strindberg was his countryman.
MSDN Channel 9 Video:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LauraFoy/Bing-Maps-announces-...
Not to mention it sounds like they're using it as an excuse as to why it took so long. They should have just done something simple in IE7 and iterated from there.
Ford saves over $1 million by shutting down computers
Having a long term goal of completing a triathlon is great! One thing I've realized is that I can't do the same exercises week after week forever. I get bored and I have to switch it up a bit. As long as your overall goal is just to stay healthy it's easy to be comfortable switching your short term development plans.
how do you separate the creative thinking from the logic? it's like being an architect but not caring how a building stands up. if you don't know whether there's an O(nlogn) solution then how do you know if your (creative) idea will scale?

the idea that technical knowledge and creativity are separate is very restricting. it might seem like that at school when you're surrounded by idiots and the teacher has to cater to the lowest denominator, but to do good creative work in almost any field requires mastering the technical aspects.
The truth about the Startup Visa
Nvidia driver di linux
No, I'm actually pretty skittish about publishing things these days; it's all risk and no reward. I've been writing C since '94 and I guarantee you there's some douchebag who will build an entire website about how little I know about C once the courseware hits Reddit. Pass.

The structure I'm chasing is:

* C Interfaces and Implementations.

* Every month, a couple hours worth of casual exercises, spread over 2 weeks, along with background material and basic courseware (cheat sheets, notes on the book, etc).

* "Tech support" style assistance for those exercises (ie, send me your code and I'll tell you what's wrong).

* Once a month, several hours of lab-style class time. Each class presumes you did the exercises and, if you had trouble, that you chatted me up about them and we got through it. Each class is 2-3 small coding projects. All are security-focused, because that's why we're doing the class; so, for instance, in week 1 we'll probably write an XML fuzzer and a password cracker.

* If you came to class prepared, I'm buying unlimited drinks and pork product at The Publican afterwards.

I'm planning on the following arc for the class:

* Month 1: Basics (Compiling/running, hello-world, malloc and free, the C type system, very basic pointers, using libraries).

* Month 2: Network programming (Stevens-style socket programming, binary formats, I/O).

* Month 3: Design (Library design, voidstar, function pointers, dlopen, object-oriented C).

* Month 4: Secure programming in C (mostly, memory corruption and string handling).

I guess I'm writing all this here not so much to sell a class that I'm not offering publicly so much as to advocate for the idea of doing things like this at your own company, and to solicit critiques. I've spent a long time giving lip service to training and growing a team, and giving up a couple weekends and plying team members with high-end whiskey seemed like a way of putting my money where my mouth was. (Also, this is the next thing Erin wanted me to teach her. So I'm pretty motivated.)

(If you ping me offline, I'm happy to share stuff privately).
Based on the Internet Information Services Management Approach (http://www.cnnic.net.cn/html/Dir/2000/09/25/0652.htm), anyone who provide Internet information services in mainland China needs to beian (be careful about the word they use here. As long as you provide service to mainland China user, you have to). For non-commercial website, it is free. For commercial website, it is free for you to apply, but in practice, you have to hire an agency to get the licence.

For those who are not Chinese native speakers, I use Google translate to give you the keywords:

"Second, in the PRC engaged in Internet information service activities, must comply with these measures.

"The term Internet information services, refer to Internet users through the Internet to provide information services activities."
That China can take your business assets, cancel any agreement, or even put your employees in jail, is part of the risk assumed by any company that chooses to do business there. This incident is not going to change the way business is done in China. Foreign companies just see the billions of potential customers, and will bend over backwards (and risk losing investment) to do whatever they need to get access to that potential (and human rights be damned). Even Google is not wanting to pull all of it's business out of China, so they can't really be given too much credit for what they did with just the search engine.
Except they have barely half that percentage and it's declining.
When the only thing you have is XML, then S-Expressions are an enlightenment. JSON isn't nearly as moronic, so there's less pain to make you reach for S-Expressions. I guess JSON is good enough.

We use S-Expressions for logging in XenServer.
I like how they censor the title of Dudebro, My Shit Is Fucked So I Got To Shoot/Slice You II: It's Straight Up Dawg Time.

It seems to miss the point somewhat.
I have no sympathy for this argument when you can simply pack up and go elsewhere. It's a cheap PR stunt. They know the terms of the App Store. Why not focus efforts on Android or other platforms? No good PR value there I guess.
My textbook says so… So pls accept it :)
I do not understand Google's decision.

First, the Chinese people would be better off with google.cn, regardless of whether or not it's censored. If anything, having quality results for non-censored topics will help them build economic prosperity, satisfy curiosity, etc.

Second, the decision makes it difficult to tell exactly what is being censured. This helps the Chinese government significantly. The most dangerous form of ignorance is when we don't know what we don't know.

Third, Google had risen above the issue by indicating in google.cn search results pages that information had been censored. This is a powerful anti-censorship message with every search. Now it's gone.

It does not take courage to give up and pull out of China, it takes courage to design a system so essential that the Chinese government relents on its censorship rules.

In reality, Google is not winning in search in China, so rather than have to continually answer to investors about why Google can't manage to make a dent in the search market in China, Google can now claim that it has a noble humanitarian stance. As I've shown above, the stance is neither noble or humanitarian.

I can't believe there is nearly a rate of 100% of people in the west falling for this ploy.
How the [National Geographic] Afghan Girl was Identified by Her Iris Patterns
Background on the story at National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text
> If Apple is banning apps because the developers are rude to them then that right there is a problem worth highlighting.

All else equal if someone submitted a program to a platform I ran then created a "how long since we submitted the app...." counter I would probably click the "go away, jerk" button, to be perfectly honest ;)

There's no need to fawn, certainly. But being grown up is advisable IMO.

> I would suggest it is already a confrontation, the fact that almost all other developers have cowed before Apple (because they have no leverage and will therefore lose, possibly for utterly random reasons) and Opera has chosen not to, doesn't change the fundamental nature of things.

Entirely irrelevant. Opera are just blowing smoke in a sense; Apple are approving apps much faster now, Apple are approving browser apps. There is no prior art that would suggest they are likely to not approve Opera mini.

I dont see how a counter is leverage in this - if Apple want to drop them then they'll drop them. As already pointed out whatever they do there will be whinging - so it doesn't matter too much to them either way. I dont think the outcome of this will fundamentally alter anything about the app store or Apple's process.

And I expect Opera mini will be approved......

This is a PR stunt to Opera. Nothing more.
I'd like to see a source for that claim, because the source I provided above says google has 17% or so.
After K&R, I highly recommend Peter van der Linden's Expert C Programming (http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Programming-Peter-van-Linden/dp...). It's fun to read (yes, really), and you'll understand the language better for it. C is fairly quirky, and this book helps navigate those quirks.

For example, I bet most people who claim to "know" C can neither explain the difference between arrays and pointers, nor clarify where they cannot be used interchangeably. I was lucky to have read that book early on in my days of C, so I actually know the answer.
I do, but I also like the option of a good date picker. Ideally a text input with a calender icon next to it, instead of a calendar that automatically shows on focus.
Labrepl is a suite of exploratory Clojure test projects designed to be used in a classroom setting, specifically the $1800 3 day Clojure Studio. Clojure Studio was taught last week by language creator Rich Hickey and Programming Clojure author Stuart Halloway. [1]

Downloading and building labrepl will get you a guided tour of Clojure examples that you can read through your browser and test on your local machine.

[1] http://pragmaticstudio.com/clojure
The problem is, its a technological stunt, nothing more.

Apparently now, everyone considers things like this startups, in reality, they are just simple technological features, not a business. Not a startup.
The hardest thing is the lack of a "batteries included" standard package. There are competing implementations (which all have strengths and weaknesses) and lots of libraries (many of which are good, few of which are widely accepted as "standard").

The short answer is to setup SBCL and Slime/Emacs (here's a guide I wrote: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/installing-sbcl-em... )

A previous discussion on learning Lisp: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=125766

Plus another article I wrote: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/how-to-learn-lisp/

Additional resources:

SLIME/Emacs cheat sheet: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/public-beta-open-f...

Watch the SLIME movie (http://www.guba.com/watch/3000054867 ) and read my notes on it (http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/reference-for-the-... )

EDIT: To avoid the setup hassle entirely, try Thnake (http://jasonfruit.com/thnake/ ) - a Linux liveCD with SBCL/SLIME/emacs preconfigured, complete with webserver and gui packages.
That's also much more complicated and requires equipment, so most people probably wouldn't even try it.
I'm certainly an idiot when it comes to corporate politics, so someone help me out here. Would it have been stupid politically to just show actual evidence that what this admin was asked to do was actually quite a bit slower and less optimal than what he actually did? Perhaps up the DBA's chain?