skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
British Columbia, 1986-1987, Went to the Provincial Finals in the Grade twelve, mostly, I suspect, because I actually managed to get to all the preliminaries and score enough points. The people (a lot of them from private schools) at the at the finals were really, really good. Our poor teams from Kamloops, and 100 Mile house didn't know what hit us.

We actually had both approaches to debating in terms of advance preparation, one time we knew in advance, and so had time to prepare (My high-point in those debates was using the text from Catholic Doctrine that demonstrated abortion was acceptable if the purpose of the operation had some other principle medical reason - hard to do if you haven't had a chance to do the research in advance), but we also had one in which we showed up without knowing the topic in advance - the rationale I thought, at the time, (or had been told) was so that we didn't have to do even _more_ studying around mid terms. Maybe it was just a debate format.

We definitely switched back and forth (sometimes with just a 5 minute break in between) between the Pro/Con on each topic - though the way to weasel out of actually doing that was the way it was done by the debaters cited by the OP in the prison - they didn't argue against providing education to Prisoners directly, they argued against the entire educational structure.

We also switched from Cross Examination to Parliamentary throughout the debates, and some significant time was spent on what was an acceptable level of "Heckling" during Parliamentary, and what would be scored down as abusive. I recall in the finals one effective debater absolutely devastating her opponent with "Point of information - I'd like to note that the honorable member opposite has his fly down." :-)

[Oh, and just to make things insanely difficult, there were a few round thrown in that were in _french_ (And this is in British Columbia) - I'm not sure how you got selected into that round, presumably some bilingual competence was a pre-req]
This raises several scholastic questions.

Would a benevolent God leave innocent puppies and kittens behind, putting them on the same level as atheists?

After true Christians ascend to heaven, will they have some sort of omniscience? In particular, will they able to verify that Eternal Earth-Bound Pets is fulfilling the contract?

One authority says "I don't know if they should necessarily trust atheists to take care of them". Atheists might torture your pets or leave them to die. What about not-so-true Christians like Catholics, Anglicans and Orthodox people, who don't believe in the Rapture? Will they ascend anyway? It looks like they would be a better choice of pet carers.
50 million user Scribd scraps Flash for HTML5
Then there's an opening to follow Google's website-innovation model here: don't do it first, do it better.
Haha so true. I spend 10 days in costa rica surfing and get by with just bringing a small back pack. Surfboards take up a bit of space tho ;)
Tons and tons of people still use twitter via SMS. @EV talked about this during his (otherwise boring) SXSW talk. I don't see them ditching that anytime soon.
I'm confused. Maybe I'm stupid, but I didn't even understand what the supposedly better "other way" is.

The MPI codes I've seen are scientific codes where the data is a large domain that can only fit distributed across many nodes, and where there are interactions that must be passed between these. Typical examples are hydrodynamics codes, N-body codes, radiation transfer codes, or combinations thereof.

Can someone explain to me in an understandable way how they think these applications should be coded?
In case you're wondering what cascalog is (like I was):

http://nathanmarz.com/blog/introducing-cascalog/

"A Clojure-based query language for Hadoop"
A good point that I'd be interested in hearing some advice about. It goes without saying that the OS on a phone is tailored to be small and compatible with the hardware present, but what about the UI? Anybody have experience hacking their mobile UIs?
You're supposed to make a group instead, but not everyone knows that.
The fastest coding is no coding. Some pre-programming thoughts:

Problems are easier to fix the earlier you find them. Try to define the problem (get it clear in your head); try to define the solution. A minimal product can help (does it solve the problem? is it the problem real?), or mocking up a pretend solution (e.g. a manual backend, or no backend), even on paper, or with a tool like balsamiq.

Can you solve the problem using an existing tool, perhaps by modifying the problem to fit (constraining it, generalizing it, or transforming it)? This can be embarassingly effective, esp if you have NIH syndrome and just want to code.

Can you make the cause of the problem go away? ie Doctor, my arm hurts when I do this. Don't do that.

Estimate times, by sub-dividing the tasks, then doubling the estimates.
Then re-ask what is really essential. It can change the balance of what alternatives are reasonable to consider.
[x2 seems to account for one's optimism. But confirm it for yourself: make some estimates and check what happened.]

Reread The Mythical-Man Month. eg He suggests 1/6 of project time be allocated to coding. (p.20, anniversary edition); the rest is planning (1/3) and testing (1/2)
I didn't know that to create a Facebook page you had to be promoting it or advertising something... so do you create a group to show you're a fan of something? The Facebook landscape has become so convoluted.
How is this ethically any different than an insurance company betting against, say, you totaling your car?

That said, I wouldn't buy insurance from a company that writes trade mag articles professing the non-existence of auto accidents. These people need to get a bona fide Christian spokesperson/salesforce.
Always carry Tire Inflators
Marriage laws have plenty of logical issues even without this kind of issue. Can a woman who was born a man marry another woman?

http://www.texastribune.org/blogs/post/2010/may/04/tribblog-...
At least Volvo aren't claiming they are the safest car in the world in Sweden anymore, after our courts ruled it was non-verifiable: http://www.thelocal.se/25492/20100312 :)
Mark Cuban: place a 25 cent-per-share transaction fee on Wall St. trades
I'm using them interchangeably. :-)
Brewing TV: When homebrewers attack the web
First of all, this is from 2007, since then the number of openMPI deployments has increased steadily, the latest release is of the 4th of may of 2010, so to declare it dead is realy a bit premature, it looks like MPI is alive and kicking.

Appistry apparently makes its money by selling cloud management software. This is fine and good but does not overlap 100% with the main field of application for MPI, which is large scale number crunching in the scientific world.

This includes large scale simulations of all kinds, including fluids, particle systems, molecular and sub-molecular simulations.

While it is possible to run these on a different architecture by porting them, the amount of code that is written for and around MPI means that MPI is here to stay for a long long time. After all, rewriting all that stuff would take ages and cost a fortune.

Probably MPI will be around just a little longer than FORTRAN.
Red Light Progress Bar
I would pronounce it with the first syllable rhyming with "stew", not "too".

I admit the distinction would be lost on anyone with an American accent anyway since "too" and "stew" rhyme in American English.
IMO people deserve as much privacy as they're willing to pay for. If some people choose to stick with Facebook, that's not my problem.
( This article located due to mention by ruang: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1331269 )
It means "ban index funds, stock futures markets, hedge funds, and every other imaginable thing that is basically a service provided by a proxy who buys a set of stocks and then gives you money if they do certain things." Stocks themselves represent interest in the company's financial welfare; these other things are abstractions, and the people who buy them are too many steps away from the actual company to care what it does, even though, by purchasing those abstractions, they are indirectly affecting those companies.
Mini Cannon Firing and Destroying Targets
Right, but those people aren't sending URLs to each other.
Do you think that every investment you make is in the next Google or Microsoft? How about other investors? It seems like if you were specifically looking for the next Google or Microsoft that would be a great thing, but what if your not.

Do you think that the majority of investments you make (which likely aren't going to be the next microsoft or google) could be better done with an MBA on the team? Has this really been even tried in the startup world since the dotcom bust? I am not saying the way you in vest in founders is wrong by any means, but could VC's be missing out do to a bias of trying to find the next microsoft when in reality they know the company they are looking at is likely only acquisition bait?
Sure, why not. As long as they're both of age and it is consensual.
Or they could apply URL canonicalization to tweets delivered any other way: follow all the 302s until they get the actual page, then replace with those URLs instead. (Actually, the best approach would be to canonicalize the URL on its way in, and then shorten with a single, known URL shortener on the way out, if sending via SMS. This would stop the "shortener wars" in its tracks, which is probably a good thing, because each shortener that dies leaves dangling links in its wake.)
"I have hundreds of friends all locked into FB - a mass exodus is definitely not possible."

Replace FB with MySpace and reconsider.
'"Sleep has been the Rodney Dangerfield of med­icine," says John Winkelman, medical director of the Brigham and Women's Hospital's Sleep Health Center in Brighton, Massachusetts. "It just gets no respect."'

A lot of neuroscientists I know, including myself, find sleep to be deeply interesting. But at this point in the development of our field, it's a difficult phenomenon to get a handle on.

edit: That the thalamus might be implicated in a sleep disorder is consistent (along with a bunch of other findings) with the Francis Crick's 'searchlight' hypothesis: http://www.pnas.org/content/81/14/4586.abstract
> People definitely are not using Twitter primarily for short-form communication: if they were, two tweets out of every three wouldn't include a link to long-form communication.)

That's not quite true; people read the short text to figure out whether they want to click the link. Even if long-form communications were allowed, there would still need to be a "title" field, for people to determine if they want to read the whole thing—which would basically be what is currently the tweet itself.
Come Fly Away Tickets  A Homage To Frank Sinatra
It might be better just to put the damn money in a trust to pay off the national debt. God knows everyone with the money to be trading on Wall St. is responsible for that debt.
Tax Silicon Valley! And give it to those without factory jobs!!!! After all it was Silicon Valley innovation that allowed the robots to take our jobs!!!

edit: you laugh now...
Exclusive Hands on video – The first official Enso Zenpad review unit
eh, then Wall St. will just pass the extra expense on to Main St. in the end.

its a lose-lose solution
Hardware Idea: The "Transmutable Hardware Input Device"
Well, it is arbitrary. The problem is not so much that this particular threshold is arbitrary, but that the rule was made after the fact.

For what is worth, in Japanese exchanges the price of any stock cannot go up or down by more than a pre-defined limit. For instance, if Sony's closing price was 100 yesterday, today the lower and upper limits would be 80 and 120. If the price goes down to 80, Sony stops trading. That's a kind of interventionism and some people don't like it, because you might have the stock and there might someone willing to buy for 79 but you can't sell it. But the limits do prevent wild volatility, and it's well known that they exist so everyone can take it into account.
Why tax 25 cents on a $80,000 stock (like whatever Berkshire-Hathaway is now), and 25 cents on a "penny dreadful"?

I understand the point of view - tax away high-frequency trading, but have we really thought things through? Obviously not.
You know the technician isn't from Comcast because he actually shows up to the repair appointment.
Gilbert Strang: Computational Science and Engineering (MIT 18.085)
Presumably they are trying to tell us that the better way is the "Appistry® CloudIQ® Platform".
Did you read the article? The proposal seems reasonable to me, much more so than your comment gives it credit for: a small per-share transaction fee which could be fed into "an annual payment towards the next time Wall Street screws up and we have a black swan event that no one planned on".

It's just an inflammatory, link-bait headline (which maybe I should edit).

-----

edit: I changed the title from its original, "Mark Cuban: Tax the hell out of Wall St. and give it to Main St.", to the current "Mark Cuban: place a 25 cent-per-share transaction fee on Wall St. trades"
> "Pay $1 if you're late to the standup meeting"

If you're discipline enough with your time, you shouldn't worry about things like this. Life is not perfect, there will always be small things that might bother you but not other people. Take it easy, besides, like I said, if you're punctuate, why does it bother you much? maybe it is meant for your co-workers that have time-management issues.

> "No code without passing tests"

I've worked with smart people with big ego swinging their code like the best thing since slice of bread. I've worked with smart people who think they can solve everything by raw-talent. I've worked with smart people but not careful. In every situation, forcing TDD help to store "order".

People out there seems to echo the same story. Now here's the thing, what should I do? should I accept your story and have blind-faith on the new guys? Thinking that they're smart and all that and no unit-test?

Should I trust someone that say "I designed my code to be unit-testable, but I have no time to write unit-tests"?

How many allegedly "good developers" out there that my company can afford to pay? Market also determines the price and right now the price of junior developers are quite high.

And one more thing: I respect your skill for having over 100 projects over a few years of hacking. That's great. There should be more people like you, and less number of failed projects out there. What I'm trying to say is that the statistics (Standish Group) isn't on your side.

TDD is a topic that would always caused a disagreement with a group of programmers who have "success stories" without TDD, open source projects where there are no deadline and have millions contributors (well, eventually the bug will be fixed right... eventually... someday).
FTA: "You could reduce the tax per share for stocks under $5 dollars to 5 cents. But I would leave it at 5 cents even for stocks priced at pennies per share or less."
Did you read the email exchange she posted? Her original email was polite, her first response was a little clipped but not yet angry, and it wasn't until bit.ly had blown her off twice that she started with the attacky language.
Posted by the same user (at the same time as):
"MPI Is Dead … and It’s About Time"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1331226

The above article is from 2007 but the library here was updated in March 2010.

MPI is not dead. Point made?
Not only is the title link-bait. The plan is pure red meat. We all know that it's not just financial engineering responsible for the crisis. It wasn't just Wall Street. Wall Street just happens to be Washington's latest political scapegoat. What I'm saying is beware when their attention turns westward.
Okay, so when I read a headline like this (consumerist.com)

MPAA Asks FCC For Control Of Your TV's Analog Outputs

That means nothing. Can we get the terminology correct before we begin?
Some of these ideas are pretty cool.. here's my take if you care to read:

#1 is a great idea. Really really great idea.
There are a couple of things to consider (I'm sure you've already thought of them) - mainly even healthier restaurants have unhealthy items and the reverse applies to unhealthier restaurants. There ought to be a way for limitation and inclusion. Attemtping a partnership with Yelp might be of some use interms of trying to keep partner restaurants honest.

Also, like any association - the guidelines of this healthy-restaurant-coupon-association will be public and under intense scrutiny - especially from the big boys in the food industry.

#2 - This is a bit crowded right now.

#3 - I don't know if this is already being done and if so, in what capacity, but.. there are many resources for building confidence, empowerment etc... this will be a marketing-heavy project.

#4 - So now rich people have even more escape route incase they blow up the world ten times over? :P. I think its a fantastic idea... fear sells. This is a well-known fact.

#5 - Pretty cool. How about a cross-roads style exchange program built into a basic-goods store instead? I bet someone like IKEA could probably run this (not sure if it has already been pitched). This has cool written all over it. One might even get away with running it like Netflix (order a care package... it comes with a box that you can return the whole thing in).

#6 - Neato. I'll second that AirBnB can already do this with their existing tech... but why would they want to? Unless they're really looking to expand their business horizontally. On the other hand, craigslist could really do this and they wouldn't be shifting focus at all (its just office space for rent).

#7 - A way to "humanize" them isn't good enough. We're talking about putting people's pictures and stories online - I mean, its bad enough that these people have zero privacy. There have to be massive benefits for them to want to do this... why should I, homeless Joe, tell you my story? Whats in it for me? Whats in it for anyone?

There's a spreadsheet of people available to join a startup floating around on HN. I'd highly recommend contacting some of them - there are some amazingly talented people on it!

Anyone got the link? Anyone...? :)
What about a better idea - take away the tax incentive / mandated 401k contributions and allow "Main St." to stop being at the mercy of Wall St.
So their spam detection system isn't as good as at should be. Give them a break. People spreading malware use url shorteners all the time, and I'd bet some automated system just got tripped up here.

(malice -> incompetence etc.)

I'm happy bitly is at least working on spam.
The problem with Microsoft according to Steve Jobs (1 minute video)
ANTI-PC SPY SOFTWARE (Buy / Rent)
Firstly, the hypocrisy of a URL shortener blocking another URL shortener's links because they can't be verified is hilarious. Secondly, if a person goes as far as to shorten every link they copy from their browser and use a Twitter client that shortens all links regardless of length, I hardly think they have much room to complain about the system they're fully backing.

What did she expect to happen? That Bitly would concern themselves with her reputation? If you want a URL shortener who cares, your only option is to run your own. Bitly's only concern is for their business, nothing more.
http://goo.gl/

"Google URL Shortener is currently available for Google products and not for broader consumer use."
Adding a little bit of friction to vast, interconnected networks of automated high speed trades doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world to me. It seems like it might dampen otherwise wildly oscillatory behavior from the system.
I think it already sounds complicated to manage, with all sorts of different groups.

If you look at FB, it is really simple. You don't have to decide what 'group' to publish your feed to, to add pictures to, etc.

You just are doing what you do. They've done an admiral job of keeping things simple.

If you can do all this and keep it simple, then you might be on to something.

I'm a bit surprised to see you start off with the name, as I think that normally comes after you've decided what to build.
Nokia sues Apple for 'patent infringement'
I had an idea for something similar to EventChase but it would been a tool for existing organised teams. The weekly task of checking to see who can turn up to the match and possibly finding replacements could be largely automated and it is actually a simpler problem than a pickup game. You'd basically just have to sell the team organiser on this and they would enforce usage within their team. No real need for 'network effects' for it to be useful. Once you had a base of sports enthusiasts things like organising scratch games and even 'scratch tournaments would be possible.
a note for Mixergy: this is how you provide a video transcript.
When people ask me where I learned to play pool I mention having seen Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land when I was seven or eight years old. Although it didn't help much, since I don't think I'm that good.

The bit where Donald's mind is "cleaned out" so he can think clearly had a big influence on me also. There's a lot of gems in this.
/pedant: it is, actually. Definition is "ready to face danger or pain". "Brave" is mostly used approvingly, but it's also completely proper in sentences like "He decided the app should be IE-only, which was a brave move but one he felt was justified by ..."

Similarly with "daring" -- you often hear of "daring robberies" and the like.
Thoughts on Stack Overflows rise and future plans
Some thoughts and insights on how they've come to be so popular and their recent funding announcement
I haven't been here very long but I have never seen a post by PG with no upvotes. This thread has two - something is amiss.
यस्तो सोख  | मनोरन्जन | ekantipur.com
Actually there is a share trading tax in India it is equal to 2 percentage points of the value that is 0.02% of the value this makes sure that if anyone is going to do HFT there margin is at least bigger than 0.02%
Learn more here : http://www.smartmoneyindia.co.cc/2009/01/all-about-securitie... (not my link)
The summary here seems to be that this guy is pretty familiar with embarrassingly parallel problems, correctly points out that MPI is an error-prone and labor-intensive way to solve embarrassingly parallel problems, and incorrectly assumes that there aren't really any important problems that aren't EP.
So? Run your own blog with your own rss feeds and stop using twitter.
lose-lose-lose
The calligraphy/typography connection I found to be interesting, but I don't think I'd say "computers would NEVER have beautiful typography if it wasn't for Apple", but they certainly put pressure on their competitors to include it quicker.
A per-share tax makes no sense, because a share is an arbitrary measurement. This would effectively be a regressive tax on small-time investors.

As Cuban himself mentions, it would put pressure on companies to do reverse splits. But I believe he underestimates how much pressure. You'd see stratification, with most companies issuing the A-class big investor shares with prices in the $10s of thousands ($100s?) and B-class cheap shares.

Middle class people buying small amounts of cheap shares in retirement plans would pay the bulk of this tax.
How is his question not relevant?

You claim that there is a significant risk of going to jail for "Selling insurance against massive fluctuations".

That's a bit strange because these insurances (CDS) have been sold on a massive scale over the past years and are considered to be one of the main reasons for the crash. I did not hear about anyone going to jail for it, or did I just miss that part?
Does SMS have to display the href? Could Twitter just replace all URL's with the word 'link' and show the real URL on hover, thereby doing away with URL shorteners altogether?
I think it's still pretty cheap to create a community, if you're not trying to get every person on earth to join.