skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Currently, I think others rate us on the things we own (cars, houses, businesses, etc). Ideally, people should judge us by the content of our character rather than the material things we own or have earned. I don't know how the American Dream is going to change, but it's different for everybody. People will always be driven by the need to earn and accomplish.

America is a capitalist society, so the next "American Dream" will probably have some quantifiable aspect to it (ex. "How many people did you save?", "How many vaccines did you purchase for children in Africa?"). That's just a thought though.

I'm sure the idea of not wanting stuff could take off, but people like convenience, and more over, people like stuff, and will probably be unwilling to give it up.

As far as your example goes, I think the "Green" thing is just a trend. A good trend, but probably still a trend. People are capitalizing off it all the time. For instance, credit card companies probably don't care about saving trees. But since you go paperless, they get to call it "Green", and then also save a ton of money in the process.
Interesting. It did demand-load here. In fact it is still loading (there's a progress bar at about 80% in the middle of the screen and some parts of the image are still blurry)
I wrote about something similar on my blog a few months back after realizing that persuit of money for the sake of money is dangerous.

http://pathdependent.com/2009/11/11/money_isnt_everything/

Also, to be precise, our "inherited national charter" made no promise of happiness, merely the pursuit of it.
Student lending isn't subjective, it's completely taken over.
True. The triangle doesn't really call out the issue of non-linear increase in cost/risk of changes as the project progresses, or other aspects of Brooks's Law.
Electric Nissan Leaf priced at $33,000 in U.S.
This is almost mine verbatim. However, I feel fortunate to have achieved #1 (I have a fiance and a 9-yr old son). I'm working on #2 with my business. Hopefully after I complete #2, I can then do #3! It's been a great adventure so far and I consider myself to be very successful (not monetary, but in level of happiness) up to this point.
I like the spatial aspect this tool brings to task management. For me a list is too constraining - I like to use a grid and this looks like it gives a lot of freedom to organize things how they make sense to you rather than how they make sense to the creator of the tool.
Travel is another point I've pondered a lot since I started our website. I used to fly a lot. In most aspects of my life, I can be a pennypincher, but it was the one area that I felt like the experience was worth whatever pricetag. Then I started reading about the carbon emissions of flying (and the emissions of kerosene jet fuel) and I started re-evaluating. So I started to pick my trips more carefully and to try to fly less and stay longer if I could.

While at first it was an environmental consideration, now I'm realizing I'm actually happier without all the moving around. My husband calls it my family's "pack-and-go" mentality. I'm not saying everyone would be happier this way- as I definitely had my share of years exploring the world/my country a bit-, but for now, I like staying in one place a bit more. And the curious thing is, I doubt I would have discovered that if I hadn't thought about carbon footprint stuff. I mean, the "pack-and-go" mentality is a part of my family culture: I live in Spain, my sister lives in Sydney, another sibling lives in the South, another in Seattle, my parents in San Francisco, another is married to a Canadian... it's tough to avoid, but possible to cut down a bit I suppose.

And now that my income is drastically reduced from what it used to be, flying really isn't an option like it used to be either. So I am grateful that I don't feel the need to move about like I used to. Though, that's not to say, I don't fly. I live abroad so every year we take one trip home. And that in itself is more than the majority of people. So all I can say is I've reduced my moving about, just a bit, and am happier for it. For now.
Congratulations to the Octopart team for the fantastic work! For those wanting to try out javascriptMVC3.0 here's where you can get it: http://github.com/pinhook/framework
Not so much. The U.S. government has always assumed all of the risk on student lending and was essentially just giving free money to certain private lenders without getting anything in return. It's removing a layer of bureaucracy more than it's a government takeover.

http://www.coffeehousetalks.com/2010/03/landmark-day-for-edu...
Ruby Hero Awards
To summarize in two words: Its ugly.

Tcl syntax is ugly, tk GUI's are ugly and look old.

Also, Python is the winner for me because it's syntax resembles C but is a lot easier to write.
Introduction to Parallel Computing
I wish that process consulting was making me a millionaire. That aside, I think in one of Jerry Weinberg's books he says something along the lines of "things are they way they are because they got that way." In other words, in most cases processes in big shops have evolved in response to past circumstances. It's kind of like contracts - they're long and complicated, but each clause reflects a lesson that someone learned in the past (the hard way).

I like the idea of regular, frequent delivery, but my experience has been that for a lot of IT shops that is not a practical approach, either because of user or management expectations. And in a few, rare cases it may be because of IT's technical capability. More often the heavyweight process has evolved because of issues that have occurred in the past (unplanned outages, etc.), or because of management's desire for "predictability" in their delivery process.
I didn't use it because is Windows Vista only

That's why there's a helvetica/arial fallback in the font stack.
Yes.

The interface looks so intuitive and just plain fun. Plus the battery life and 1.5 lb weight is fantastic. I can see myself spending the vast majority of my non-coding time on the iPad.

Being able to use my bluetooth keyboard with it is also a big plus.
So that's what they're called.
I have been pleased to note that, after moving in with my girlfriend, I have "infected" her with my anti-clutter mindset. I try to live by the general rule of, "If I haven't thought about it in 6 months, it shouldn't be here," and it delighted me the first time I saw her with a box full of old odds-and-ends and explained on her way outside, "I haven't thought about or used any of this in years."

Your note about not being immune to the "stuff treadmill" (great term, btw) rings true to me, too, though. Because of our cultural upbringing, it's incredibly easy to get caught up by the consumerist undertow.

I was inspired by George Carlin's rant on "stuff," which someone transcribed here:

http://www.writers-free-reference.com/funny/story085.htm

It's less endearing without his delivery, but the idea is the same: we get emotionally connected to our stuff, and in many cases, that isn't conducive to removing stress from our lives. I think he also touches on the (somewhat pernicious) assumption that Americans grow up believing, which is the assumption that everyone is "supposed" to want and have a big giant house filled with all kinds of tchotchkes. I may some day own a house, like I said in my OP, but I never want to have so much stuff that I couldn't fit as much at least half of everything that isn't furniture into the back of my station wagon. No specific reason for that particular measure of proportion... it just feels right.

Other than the "6-month rule," I just try to be brutal about every individual object I come in contact with. I try to occasionally remind myself to ask, "How does this thing improve my life and make me happier?" The answer could be as simple as, "Looking at it makes me smile," but if it really doesn't do anything for me, I put it in a box, and--as with before--if I don't think about it for 6 months, it fails the test and I get rid of it.
This is an issue we constantly deal with in the PSLC DataShop.

https://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/

(PSLC = Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center)

We are basically a repository for click data from computer tutors. Learning researchers access the data to run analyses, test hypotheses, etc. to better understand how people learn. Some analyses can be run in the DataShop, and we provide tab delimited downloads of the data. We have also recently added a REST API to the data.

There are privacy issues with the data, so we cannot just dump the entire database and make it available to everyone. I'm wondering, though, if a limited SQL dump might be more useful to some of our users than the tab delimited files. If you were to imagine yourself wanting access to our data, what would you ask for?

We would also like to find ways to encourage people to share more of their learning data and analyses through the DataShop. We are planning to allow researchers to post analyses through our REST API. Beyond that, what do you think would make it more convenient for you to share your data through the DataShop (again, imagining yourself to be a learning researcher)?

One last note, some of our data is being used for this year's KDDCup.

https://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/KDDCup/

If you're interested in machine learning challenges, registration starts April 1.
> Even so, I don't really care either way if a copyright-free world cause less books to appear, or more books to appears. If I want more books, I either download them or buy them. I see no reason to fret over what is ultimately a business model or entrepreneurship problem.

i.e. "Me, me, me, and screw everyone else."
Its very neat and simple. I think its going to be a winner.
Ask HN: How do you add to your programming toolbox?
To become a decent programmer, it's important to have a variety of tools in your mental toolbox so that you can pick the right tool for the job. However, even though I learn about other tools, when I approach new problems I fall back onto the tools I know well, even if they aren't the best solution. For example, as a Java programmer working in Python, it's easy for me to fall back onto for's and classes when a lambda or generator would be a much more elegant solution. I'm curious to hear any books, essays, ideas, or techniques you use to combat this problem.
I'm getting a worth of $0.00 for every Twitter username I input. Even when using twitter users with over 1 million followers.
When I was there, I was expecting the iconic god image to be huge but it was only a small part of the ceiling.

In fact, even though the ceiling takes most of the fame, my favorite painting was Michaelangelo's Last Judgement depicted in the altar wall:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_(Michelangelo...

The later-added fig leaves and robe parts do stand out which I thought was a shame. Lots of art in the Vatican museum have private parts which have been broken (in statues) or covered/painted over.

Another impressive point that stands out is that the ceiling is mostly flat. The painted arches and columns give it an amazing 3D look.
Exactly - plus of course, when you run into something that is stopping you from doing what you want to do, it is highly likely that other people have the same problem - you've just discovered a potential market! Of course, if you are not an entrepreneur, this discovery may not interest you very much - you just want to do your thing...
Fighting to Keep Linux on PS3
Since I do this professionally, I have a lot to say about testing web apps, but I'm going to keep my recommendation short and precise.

Go here:

http://portswigger.net/suite/

Drop the $200 or so for a copy of Burp Suite Pro.

Burp is the industry standard tool for testing web apps; probably more than half of all web app penetration testers use it. It's like Firefox Tamper Data on steroids; it gets between you and your request, breaks out all the parameters for you, and gives you tools to manipulate and replay the requests.

You in particular want to understand the Burp Intruder, which is Burp's fuzzer. The fuzzer takes a request, tries to figure out where all the parameters are (you can help it with that), and then feeds malicious inputs through them and records the responses.

You want to fuzz every page in your application at every code drop. We've seen entry level QA people trained to do this, so delegate the task if you're not sure you can make yourself do it reliably. You want to collect every error response, and you want to grab your application logs and look for every exception or abnormal event. You want to know how the responses are different from the last run each time you ship a new version of the app.

Burp is so extremely effective that I'm amazed every web dev team doesn't already have a copy. I think it's because it's billed as a "security" tool. But it's obviously more than that.

Webdevs have a lot to say about unit testing and cloud testing and integration testing and test-first development. What I can tell you is that I've seen no correlation between test methodology and pentest outcome. The TDD teams fall just as fast as the seat-of-the-pants teams. I want to strongly recommend that you don't waste time strategizing on how you'll test or validate architecture or whatever. Burp is a no-BS tool. Get it, run it, and you will find bad things. Work out your effective bill rate and the amount of time it takes you to adopt or extend a test suite, and it's the cheapest quality enhancer that's probably available to you. Do whatever you want on the testing side, but do Burp first.
MN approves $50m tax credit for early stage investment in high tech startups
Fox markets to a certain group of intensely moralistic people.

That's a very important distinction to remember.

If the network were actually moralistic, it wouldn't defend, promote and directly pay so many people who talk the talk, but have been exposed as acting in stark contrast to the network's stated morals.

(I'm not claiming other news networks are different in this regard.)
The Receiving End of Algo Trading
Was old and ugly. It's getting better, but that doesn't matter, because people are firmly convinced that it is old and ugly, no matter what the developers have been up to. This is precisely the sort of marketing problem I'm referring to: once you create an impression in people's minds, it takes a hell of a lot of work to correct it, even if the actual problem has largely gone away. The impression remains...

> > Lately, there has been a lot of work to update the Tk look and feel, and it has finally started to bear fruit. However, in terms of marketing, the damage has already been done: the image of "old, crufty Tk" has been firmly planted in countless developers' minds, and no amount of facts are going to displace it in the near future.

> Also, Python is the winner for me because it's syntax resembles C but is a lot easier to write.

Yes, I covered that aspect too:

> > The syntax, for your average programmer who doesn't want to go too far out of their comfort zone, is perhaps a little bit further afield from the C family of languages than they would prefer. Still though, a "human" problem, rather than a technical one. Perhaps, sadly, the message is that you'd better not "scare" people when introducing a new language, by showing people something that doesn't look at least a little bit familiar.

You are apparently one of the many who is a bit scared/confused/whatever by a seed that has fallen a bit farther from the C tree.

As far as the syntax, Tcl is quite elegant, in reality, once you take the time to understand it (which is not much time, as it's also very simple).
The article is pretty horribly written, but the act does indeed have some pretty serious ramifications. Would Wikileaks constitute a "cyber security threat"?
Hmmm... this article is too breezy to figure out if there is any substance behind this claim. Unfortunately, "church programming" is a dead end on Google, for obvious reasons.

Anyone find any more substantive info relating to this article?
Fake Steve Jobs site to shut down
It looks like a great example of the all else equal fallacy: "let's take language S which is statically typed and language D which is dynamically typed [...]. Let's also say that these two languages are identical in all respects except for this single fact [...]"

If all else were truly equal, Britton would be right -- static typing clearly would be better. (I think. It's a question I wrestle with quite a bit.) But all else isn't equal [], so the static vs dynamic distinction is just one of many aspects to take into account when choosing a programming language.

Please correct me if I'm wrong: if there's a language that has the feel and rapid turnaround of a dynamically typed language with type checking performed early, I'd like to know about it! The closest I've used is probably Scala, maybe OCaml (but I've only studied it briefly, and I've certainly never mastered it, alas).
Also the seeming inability to lock an account or communicate the hack attempt to other support people. But I do agree they are a quality company.
Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
I enjoyed your blog. Though I'm curious about one of your final comments: "To be clear, I still want a bank-vault sized pile of money but I have accurately recognized why I want it. I don’t really care about a big house and a fancy car. I might someday; I don’t right now. My cramped apartment is sufficient. What I really want is the financial freedom to sit in a quiet room by myself and explore my ideas".

Do you really think you need the money for that freedom? Don't you think if you work at what you enjoy than you can find enough money to pay for your "cramped apartment"? It doesn't sound like you're averse to working, and I'm guessing there is some work that you'd enjoy that would pay for your basic expenses.

I say this because I had a similar idea as you while in college (and I also had read Rand and loved the Fountainhead). So I studied economics and thought I'd do some business thing for awhile to make enough money to be free to do whatever I wanted to do. But then as I saw the jobs that were open to me, I realized I didn't really want any of them. And then as I began to explore careers, I began to talk to more people who chose to work for money and never really got away from that (and some of these people were getting ready to retire) and I realized my plan could be dangerous.

I started thinking about how short life was and decided to just go for something that interested me. So I decided to find a career where I could interview people. I tried to get a magazine internship, but couldn't find anything. Then someone told me about a television internship open at the local NBC affiliate. I applied and spent the next 7 years at that station (after working for 8 months for free, living at home and doing odd jobs on the side).

Maybe I just got lucky, but I am relieved that I didn't stick with my initial plan to make tons of money and then do what I wanted. Now I love what I do and for awhile, made some good money at it. Though I've since voluntarily downshifted to live in Spain with someone I love and be at home more with my young daughters.
Modern C++ rarely use subclassing¹. The default in my code should certainly be non-virtual.

Someone already mentioned the performance issue. This applies both to run-time but also memory. Imagine we introduce a new type called ‘point’ representing a 2D point. We may have millions of these and we may store them in vectors, here we do not want to pay for the memory overhead of adding a jump table to each point in this vector (or initializing such pointer when constructing points, going through the jump table when doing “simple” math with the points etc.).

¹ Although the substitute for subclassing to achieve polymorphism in C++ tend to be generic programming, many OO languages are advocating composition over inheritance.
On MacOS X, there's got to be something better than Helvetica/Arial to fall back on. And, I'm sure that Adobe CS users have some very nice fonts too. I would love to know what the Apple and Adobe counterparts to the MS ClearType Fonts (C* fonts) are.
I think that our needs naturally change and shift over time. When you did your travelling, you probably found it quite fulfilling (I could be wrong). Maybe you would never have gotten to this point, which you find even more fulfilling, without doing the travelling first!

Also, for what it's worth, when I referred to travelling, I had more short vacation-like trips in mind, as opposed to extended relocations or migrations for years at a time. I would never argue that such bite-sized travels could let someone sample variety in the way that a long-term immersion would, but it would still be a real learning experience.

Interesting point about the carbon emissions... I never really thought about what a technological indulgence air travel is. I suppose that when my social circle splintered and moved all over the place, I felt entitled to see everyone as often as possible, but maybe conquering the distance costs more than just the price of a few plane tickets.