skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Of course, but he should be able to give a ballpark figure. Are we talking about millions, billions or trillions?
It's really hard to get that kind of straight-talk from instructors or native speakers.

The best rationalization I can think of for someone learning this language, is that if you enjoyed the meditative focus of learning how to write cursive as a child, or you miss the wonder of constantly discovering new words as an adolescent, you can re-live that for the rest of your life with Chinese!

Fortunately for Chinese (Mandarin at least), it is a very beautiful language, and every dose of that beauty seems to make you want more.
Maybe AT&T noticed that Verizon got away with a dramatic ETF increase earlier this year and figured why not? Who's gonna stop us? As the article mentions it's still $25 cheaper than Verizon's ETF. Previously it was $175 cheaper. I can't think of any good reason AT&T would want to undercut Verizon on ETF. I suspect this has more to do with the economy than the day-to-day dynamics of the SmartPhone market. Both AT&T and Verizon are probably seeing a lot of customers not fulfilling their 2 year contracts.

The FCC (or congress if needed) really need to examine this situation. I understand the need for the ETF in the context of a 2 year contract a customer signs but I'm deeply opposed to the lack of transparency on the real value of hardware subsidies and the way the cellular industry punishes people with lack of choice if you don't want to sign a contract. Why does an unsubsidized customer typically pay the same (or more) as a subsidized customer? That's just not fair.
The use of FSJ's name in the title was just for convenience, I think. Many here would know who FSJ is, but many fewer would have heard of Daniel Lyons.
Congratulations on finishing your book. I'm curious, how does support for non-.NET/non-Microsoft stack on Azure work? Do you get to install whatever you want in your Azure VM? Is it easy/hard? I've done a couple of small projects in Azure, and didn't realize this was possible.
I do front-end stuff mostly. html, css, javascript, and some php, Django or RoR (depending on the team I work with).

I work on my Acer Aspire one (no, really), with an external monitor. I run Ubuntu (virtualbox for testing in ie). I do all of my coding in gedit or vim, and use Git for bigger projects.
Another line of research that has been progressing since the early days of fundraising (because it was cheap to get started) is the search for bacterial enzymes that can break down the gunk that builds up in your cells with age, and as a consequence destroys the cellular garbage-collection mechanisms. You might have heard of lipofuscin and its effects on autophagy, for example:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/12/lysosomal-activit...

The links at the bottom of this page outline progress to date - some potential enzymes are found, which could feed into a larger scale project to develop them if funding arrives:

http://www.sens.org/sens-research/research-themes/lysosens

Meanwhile, small scale funding can keep people working on screening bacteria for more enzymes to break down more types of chemical gunk that cause your cellular systems to fail with advancing age.
What a joke. Ruby might not be as popular as C or even Perl on TIOBE but that doesn't mean it's dead or dying.

The Ruby community is spending a lot of effort on finding elegant and friendly and fun ways of coding. Once you use something like Sinatra, it's hard to go back to any other style of coding web applications (even Rails).

And in general, once you get familiar with Ruby it's hard to use a language that doesn't have a nice block syntax, method_missing, and other metaprogramming techniques.

Personally I'm are aware that I don't need these, and that I'm taking a performance hit using Ruby and interpreted tricks, but unless I'm working on high performance code, the only thing that matters is my ability to flesh out ideas and have my coworkers be able to maintain some of my code with me. This is way easier in Ruby than in C.

The Ruby community is very sustainable, and all of computer science and programming is advanced by this effort. Take a look at Java's Spring Roo for evidence that Java needed to learn some lessons from this Ruby on Rails whippersnapper.
It's a good idea, but I question how useful it really is. So, my search results page for "naughty things" is encrypted, but all the links on it aren't.
Pixel Bender Displacement Map Fakes 3D Effect
That would be the case, and what I said up-thread was badly formulated. But it still remains that in the way things happened, aging is evolutionary neglect. We've evolved repair mechanisms that help us pass our genes, and also parents who take care of their children (since it takes quite a while for a human child to become self-sufficient), but through most of history, humans died pretty young and so we never had time to evolve repair mechanisms for the kind of damage that happens when you are 50-60, etc.
If there is no proof up front then best case it will be equal, worst case it will be (much) worse. Contrary to popular belief investors are conservative, they will gamble on the companies involved but they are less likely to gamble on changing the formula.

There are a number of questions that need answering before you can get someone to take a bigger risk.

20 start-ups at 20K = 400K invested, 20 shots at a payout of a million or more.

5 start-ups at 80K = 400K invested, 5 shots at a payout of a million or more.

The chances of any one of those 5 being successful are not nearly 4 times as high as any one of the 20, and you'd have to cross that hurdle for it to make sense for a VC to drop their working model in favour of your unproven one.

In my opinion, when it comes to seed capital, the amount is the lesser factor in determining success, so I would figure that the chances of success are exactly equal for each of the five as they are for each of the twenty. So it is the other method that has a 4x higher chance of success!
The similarity between the two is clear when you're running an early stage startup: being either funded or profitable means you are not imminently going to run out of money. And since that is usually the main thing you're worried about in a startup 6 months old, that is an important similarity.
> Also, people hate to hear this, but a jailbroken iPhone provides a much better experience and much more competitive than Androids.

That's your opinion, not a fact. There's no reason to hate you for your opinions, unless you somehow imply that your opinion is somehow more relevant than my opinion (hint: it's not).
Azure and its companion products look compelling. Unfortunately, I'm a cheap dude who doesn't want to spend a penny to try new shiny toys. That, and the marketing stuff in Azure website is a little bit confusing to me at first.

If Azure is free in the future, and if your book is still relevant in terms of code/API and stuff, I'll buy it first.

I wish you the best sir.
David Moser (author of this article) appeared in the Sinica podcast this week along with Gady Epstein, Jeremy Goldkorn and Kaiser Kuo. All familiar names for China watchers.

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/sinica/maos-legacy-and-forei...

Quite a good episode. Strongly recommended.
I've used elance for finding designers. Though it worked out for me, it is not guaranteed that we always hook up with a good designer. I think we've to make sure that portfolio is decent and also make sure you write terms and conditions with low upfront fee/very close 1st milestone with at least 1 web page design. If you feel that it is not going in the right direction, dont hesitate to back out. I think the first few days of design activity is crucial and you need to make sure you've interacted sufficiently with the designer, before cutting the relationship.

obviously, if you find someone good, hang on to that relationship.
- 06:05: Alarm goes off, hit snooze

- 06:10: Decide that you can sleep a bit longer and set the alarm to 06:30

- 06:30: Turn on PC and think "I'll spend 10 minutes reading news while I wake up properly"

- 07:00: Find out that I have spent too long and run to the shower

- 07:20: Get out of shower. Think "Tomorrow I will not think so much about programming in the shower and save time"

- 07:25: Breakfast is made and I watch news/weather on the TV while eating.

- 07:40: Prepare my clothes for ironing

- 07:42: Brush teeth / shave while waiting for iron to heat

- 07:55: Bus leaves

- 08:30: Arrive at work, thinking about how much time I have wasted this morning
monit works wonders for me.

I got it through a post much like this one.
I don't know what the numbers were, and they kept changing, but in the lead up to the recent UK election over 30% of people were saying that they were intending to vote LibDem. In the end it was far fewer, around 22% or 23%.

People when polled give answers they think make them look good, or intelligent, or logical, or attractive, or something, but aren't necessarily truthful.

Of course if someone is asked in the current climate they will claim that they are considering quitting Facebook.

But it won't happen.
I have a Kindle DX. Love it for reading research PDFs from start to finish.

I had also figured it would be fantastic to shrink the shelf space for tech books, and always have those books at hand. Big downside that doesn't hit you till you try to use it for this purpose: the e-ink can't page flip fast enough to be useful.

Readers on the iPad (iBooks, even Kindle app) don't have this issue.
How much of that money has been donated already? i.e. how much more is needed?

It's interesting stuff. It makes me wonder whether I should be studying biology :)
The biggest cost tends to be the founders' living expenses. If they're young, that can be low. But it is not a trivial matter to reach this threshold after 6 months. Viaweb didn't.
My order went through, but I can't access my book :(
Oh. my. god! There's no "Like" button on the page.....
Newzbin is back?
It's relevant because these are the companies for which YC provided enough runway to get to the next step.
Same here, when I go to the "emedia" page, it sits there loading for a good 3 minutes, then says I don't have anything to download.
Consultant gigs aren't very fun, but they definitely can be a great way to pay the bills while you're planning for your next big thing.

I've recently (in the last week) started offering some specific services on a few forums that I'm actively participating in, and have already pulled in a few thousand bucks. Once I get the system down pat, I'll just crank out work, and eventually have my remaining debts paid off and be ready to do my startup I've been planning, with a few month's salary in the bank just in case.

If you can offer a specific service as your consultant income rather than just "hire me for whatever you need" type stuff, you can greatly reduce the amount of effort you need to use to make the same amount of money.
SMF on Solaris / OpenSolaris.
both are hard.. and both are full time gigs. When you're not programming, you have to some how figure out how to find customers in consulting. Then trying to program for your clients, and then programming a startup. almost impossible.
There are some distinct and useful qualities to the older, physical media.

[Disclosure: The below is an old HN post I made.]

The Social Life of Paper (2002) (newyorker.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434516

P.S. I also subscribe to Safari. It's nice not to lug a bunch of books around, but the reading experience I do find different between the two media.
Textmate and/or vim, Terminal, Safari. Works great
I saw an FCC stamp – getting FCC approval would have taken at least a month. And I have no idea whether something like this would require FDA approval, but I'm sure they had to at least research that.
If you have a business you can sign up for Microsoft's Bizspark program (bizspark.com) and you can get access to Azure for free (not to mention all of MS's other development tools for free as well).
Seems like this is a popular promotion, based on their website performance. I wonder if it will make anyone reconsider the recent controversy over Amazon's pricing for Kindle editions. Seems like lots of people are willing to buy e-books for $9.99.
You've obviously not kept up with recent events, they just recently sued Apple, HTC and RIM over smartphone patents that they own themselves, not part of any standard:

http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2010/04/mobilem...
The calculation is the peak worth of the president, which would include wealth accumulated after becoming president. Particularly for the modern presidents, I'm more interested in seeing the peak estimate up until they become president.
I use supervisord to run my python webservers. Works pretty well.
Also IMO, the ETF should be reduced based on the time remaining in the contract. If you have been a customer for 18 months on a 2 year contract they should have recovered 75% of their phone subsidy. Yet they still charge more than that.
> Of course, this is a USA perspective. Things are probably very different outside the USA.

Yes, here in Italy it's pretty common to find phones that are unlocked, and full price. I saw a 3gs at the store for 600 Euro the other day. Android phones are also pretty expensive, but not quite to those levels.

Overall, I like seeing the full price as it helps you to compare phones, not phones + whatever wonky plan they're trying to sell.
The fact is, society would change drastically if this were to happen, so we can speculate all we want :)

People could want kids for a variety of reasons (to pass on their genes, the utility of having children, etc) and you'd have to maintain that you could only have two children max at one point in your life to effectively replace yourselves and not increase the population.

Not to mention if you'd want to have kids 2 or 3 times over, now that they're growth is only a small percentage of your total life.
Appears to be a common trend, same situation here for iPhone 3D I just got and was excited to 'download immediately' but I get 'no data' or no books to download.
AT&T to increase early termination fee ($175 to $325) for smartphone contracts
Legally, you do have the right not get killed. That's not what I'm talking about. If I punch you in the face, and you attack me back, then I had it coming, regardless of what the law has to say.
Just buy a dumb $19.99 phone (or get it for free from your carrier) and free yourself from the burden of having to choose which icon to click.
Vitamin C, you need it in sufficient quantities as not to get deficient and interfere with collagen synthesis. Moderate amounts of fresh fruit and vegetables will see you well covered. Extra supplementation is not helpful, no matter the belief of Linus Pauling. He has no evidence for that his megadose vitamin therapy is helpful at all. The problem with large doses of vitamin C is that it gives you diarrhoea, and may lead to kidney problems. It also increases absorption of iron, which can be a good or a bad thing. Either way: It's well enough absorbed either way. Less acidic variations may be useful to those with sensitive stomachs, but you'll get your vitamin C either way. Fruit and vegetables is still the way to go, though.
It's partially flash.
Doing things the legal way left me unemployed for over a year and a half, however if I had done things the illegal way I could have been working that full year and still gotten in as a legal citizen without any consequences and it's that hypocritical bullshit of penalizing the law abiding immigrants as to why there are so many illegal immigrants.

Someone from an economically poor background, from a country with a corrupt police system is never going to abide by an immigration law if it makes them poorer and looks more corrupt. It's asinine.

It's also worth pointing out that Citizenship and Immigration Canada is currently facing a class action lawsuit for profiteering off of issuing visas when by law they can only serve them at cost.
Here's some news: you've chosen to install something that selectively blocks the plugin (thus allowing you to still use it) instead of uninstalling it, something you can do.

That's because you like choice; the freedom to run Flash when you want, something you don't have in the iDevices.
Sorry, your statement is a bit confusing. Are you saying the idea of the government actually censoring is dangerous or that there are other entities beside the government that can violate your free speech right?
Normally when cell carriers make a big change like this (see text message rate hikes in the past for an example) you are actually able to leave your contract free of charge, which is ironic in this specific case.

Anyone know if this applies? If so, bye-bye AT&T when Verizon announces iPhone support (which is probably one of the reasons they are doing this in the first place)!
I flip between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04. Dual monitors everywhere, and usually a VM on either setup to allow me to run the other OS without a reboot.

I don't use IDE's, just text editors. GEdit on Ubuntu, intype on Windows. I have LAMP setup on Ubuntu, and WAMP for windows.

All my ruby programming goes on Linux for the most part.
Aha - I think I follow. I thought the 74% was an attempt to inform us about the startups. In a sense, it's not - it's telling us more about YC and its ability to pick and/or guide startups such that they don't quickly crash and burn. Thank you; that makes more sense, now.
I disagree strongly with that, and I've got the numbers to prove it. Software is one place where you can definitely get that sort of profit margin.
At least Mandarin grammar is relatively simple, and it has only 4-5 tones compared to Cantonese or Minnanese. But don't get me started on the multitude of Chinese dialects.

The point about classical Chinese isn't fair, the language itself has evolved little in the past few thousand years. To achieve the same utility in English, you will have to learn Modern English, Middle English, Norman, Old Saxon, Latin etc.
Wow. I wonder what Apple thinks of this? Could they do this without Apple's approval?
Hipstr | Login
You may be right -- it is not currently guaranteed under the constitution that I'm aware of.

A trade off would be ok but hard to enforce, as right now we don't even let people want to die, die legally for the most part.
Encrypted Google Searches
The cache also works over https now:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XhZJrK...

But the "cached version" links on the secure search results still point you to http for some reason.
vim and debian via ssh. Either on a vm on my laptop or on a VPS depending on the project im working on.
AFAIK all ETFs are now prorated thanks to some saber-rattling from Congress.
Wasn't Google supposed to announce an encrypted search this week? Whatever happened to that? Anyone has the inside scoop?
Congrats! We're actually using Azure quite a bit with our Startup. We might have to grab a copy :)
I've been using Caps Lock as Escape for an easy to access escape in vim. I am so used to this now that it is one of the first things I have to change when setting up a machine before I go crazy.
Considering quitting != quitting.

95% of smokers consider giving up smoking and 99% of heroine or crack users consider giving up their dope.

But they'll all be back for another fix tomorrow.
You are assuming this based on a mainstream media article. First of all, you have no idea if he knows the right answer and is just dumbing it down for those who don't understand basic binomial probability. Second, the quote says "well under one in 1000", not "one in 1000". The correct value of one in 1415.8 as calculated by Retric in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1368664 is, in fact, under one in 1000.
The problem with latching on by the media is that goes away as quickly as it comes.

The main problem with Diaspora is that they're focusing on the technology, and on the servers. The real solution to the "Facebook problem" lies with the end users, not with the servers, however decentralized they were.

I'm pretty sure Diaspora will produce an application. And I'm pretty sure only a handful of early adopters will set up the servers, and it will be used by even fewer zealots. The "real" users -- who are a majority on Facebook -- will never switch.

And don't forget that there already is a project doing precisely what they intend to build: http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/05/encrypted-google-sea...

It's coming
This change only applies to new contracts signed after the change goes into effect.
Amazing! It's funny how if Wakemate hadn't screwed up, the world wouldn't be justified in demanding periodic updates! I mean, do you really ask Posterous to give you bi-weekly updates? I just hope the Wakemates realize that (a) the bar is significantly higher because they're YC-backed (b) every day they spend not putting the product in a customer's hands, they're setting themselves up for more work (such as sending bi-weekly status updates) which may not even be common under normal circumstances, or risk pissing off more [potential] customers.

I really hope someone does a detailed post-mortem analysis on the Wakemates (AndrewWarner?); there's a ton of stuff to learn about how not to do PR/marketing in here for the rest of us to learn & implement. :)
Here an unlocked HTC Desire is a good 30-40% cheaper than and unlocked iPhone 3GS.
Minimal viable product for hardware = 'working prototype'.
This is not true under the current ATT ETF rules. I got a 3GS in January and the rules I agreed to said the ETF dropped by $5/mo.
More info: http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/05/encrypted-google-sea...
"The Telegraph" missed a great headline opportunity:

"Scientists devise algorithm to detect sarcasm. No, really.'

Can somebody try to contextualize this articleby characterizing The Telegraph? There's the Times, the Guardian, the Mail and the Sun, but the relative merits of the British papers escapse most americans.
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio: for now on, it's a free download
I know in the airports I've passed through in France, Spain and Turkey, the police were in full bulletproof vests and had personal defence weapons, tasers, batons and pepper spray, but were always very nice and polite.

Entering Canada the police only have vests, handguns and tasers, and aren't nearly as polite.

The one time I entered the US (before this whole fingerprinting bullshit started) they had vests, handguns and pepper spray (I can't remember if tasers were issued into service at that point, but I didn't see them) and were rude as all hell. All I know is that post 9/11 I expect them to be ruder, and adding fingerprinting to the process might as well be substituted for a complimentary whack over the head with a baton.
This is like stopping your ISP from sniffing your search queries and reselling them.
I have heard about BizSpark program offering by Microsoft, that would only be available for a maximum of 3 years if I'm not mistaken? And you have to be a startup (e.g. have a business or whatnot) right? Not just a regular person/user registering to a website and have instant access to all these goodies.
If they had delivered when they first promised there would be no issue at all. But once you go across your self-imposed deadline you have to make sure that those that pre-ordered are kept in the loop on the hows-and-whys.

It's like BP estimating the outflow from that leak way too low. If their estimate had been 'on target' or 'high' there would have been no problem, by estimating too low they've set themselves up for all kinds of trouble.

The interesting thing is that I don't see any perceived cost in overestimating, but a significant cost to underestimating.
Using CSS3 Transitions, Transforms and Animation
> He admits that he doesn't know Ruby deeply, [...] From what I've read plenty of people have done just that [...]

Your argument seems to have a slight inconsistency.