skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
tl;dr: Before developing a product, test the idea by creating a landing page with a feedback mechanism (survey, email notification, newsletter, etc.) then setup an AdWords account. It's a recycled idea that he has re-branded as "Ghetto Testing".

What he leaves out is that this is also a good way to gauge the cost of acquisition. I've seen several products developed that never advertise on AdWords because they discovered after development that the keywords were too expensive to bid on.
Who came up with that name? It's terrible. I'm not offended, but I have to say, I think of way worse things when I hear "ghetto testing".
It's hardly only Krugman who's in favor of economic stimulus; most orthodox neoclassical economists believe in at least some role for fiscal stimulus, including those who lean right. For example, The Economist has generally supported some degree of stimulus programs and warned against too-quick budget reductions plunging economies back into recession, despite usually being against government intervention in the economy.

Where I'll agree is that it does seem preferable for stimulus spending to actually produce something useful, preferably something infrastructural that produces long-term value, as opposed to just having people dig holes and fill them back up again. For example, the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s produced a bunch of schools, bridges, hydroelectric dams, national park trails/structures, etc., many of which we still use.

That was one of the criticisms of the 2009 stimulus plan, which in the interest of short-term stimulus ended up spending a bunch of money on things without any real lasting value. E.g. instead of building $20b of high-speed rail, we spent $20b on repaving roads.
Ask HN: How can I get the most out of SICP?
I've heard so many people highly recommend Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, and say that it changed their complete view on programming, that I've decided to dive into it for the first time. I've been looking into the MIT OpenCourseWare to use a basis, and I've heard good things about the video lectures as well. I have a time frame of about two months to work through it, although I hope that it won't that long; there are other things that I want to work on during my break.

So my question is fellow HNers is do you have any suggestions for how I can get the most out of this book? Are there any concepts or sections that I should pay particular attention to? Are there resources that would help me understand it better? Thank you.
I think some aggregate, separate list of rental properties would be nice. MLS typically covers the available properties for sale fairly thoroughly but renters are left scouring through craigslist, newspapers, and shoddy realtor sites.
I would guess it is unlawful, but not illegal. Meaning that the median bad consequence for doing it is that the authorities tell you to stop doing it and then you have to stop doing it.
Not really. I was doing "whatever fits on my 22 widescreen monitor", but a teammate asked me to keep on 80, and I started to change my style to make him happy.

Then a new member came to the team, and his coding style was not very good. I told him to read and follow PEP8, he downloaded some script which checks source for PEP8 compliance, and he really made the effort to format his code.

So, it's not something that I would personally go insane trying to keep width to 80, but when two things happened: I was already doing most of the PEP and my teammate wanted me to keep 80 chars, and I had to eat my own dogfood :) when the new person came on board.

In the end, it's something easy to do, and keep my colleagues happy.
Well that's interesting. I can't help but think internet businesses have been spurred by this lax enforcement.

So the real question is should they continue to enjoy this oversight.

I suppose the eventual taxation of all online commerce is inevitable.

Seems to me that if the present conditions continued, eventually tax would be forwarded to carriers(UPS,FedEx,USPS). Maybe this is pessimistic but I see all online purchases being charged sales tax in the future. Of course, the bureaucrats will have to set up some system for that, which will take years if not decades.
There is a right way to explain a feature to a person, and a wrong way.
The somewhat mind-boggling aspect is that he's so incredibly wealthy that, even if he carries through with this plan in full, he'll still be one of the richest people in the U.S.---the remaining 1% of his wealth totals $450 million. Not that it doesn't make his pledge laudable.
git (sensibly so) refuses to permit aliases like that.
Its such an amazing find. Rock from that time period in Earth's history is rare enough, but to also find fossils in them is a lucky and/or fortunate event.

When you look at it in the right context, 600 million years of complex life is such a short period in the history of the Earth. If more ancient rocks and fossils could be found, I really wonder what it would tell us about those aeons and aeons of unknown time. What could have been happening here on Earth that we simply have little or no record for?
The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
That gives me hope for Perl code from the 90s being intelligible even 1000 years into the future.
Wow, I'm damn impressed by the performance. This may finally give me an excuse to write some real JS demos; wonder how small it can be packed to.
> After undergrad I thought I could take on the world … Only now can I safely say that I can do the job that is required.

Given that history, would it not be wise to complete a PhD to make sure you're not having the same mistaken thought once more?
Re: "it only stores name, email, and phone" that's true only when adding your first contact (to keep the landing page simple). Leave that specific interface within the app and come back and the form will show more fields, Skype etc. Re: "communications logging", once you've added a contact, click the link to their name in the success notice that pops up, or search in the top right. From there you can log.
"Group" was the first name I used for "Account" in fact.
This is how I did it

" Trim trailing spaces and convert tabs to spaces
map <F3> :silent! %s/\s\+$//<CR>:retab<CR>
Just having a credit card for a while which you pay on time is the easiest way. Make sure you pay it off in full every month so you don't pay the ridiculous CC interest rates, though.
Do you know if they lab test pre-release?

With the amount of traffic their apps receive it would be quick and easy to achieve statistically meaningful data with a simple A/B test on a release.

I personally hate any animation in a UI unless it appears as a direct consequence of my actions.
I'd like to see statistics on the relative success of all medical procedures. I think you ought to be able to see exactly how successful the different options are, including alternatives like massage, exercise and nutritional approaches.

Being able to how well each option works for people of varying degrees of health would also be useful. Some options may work for the morbidly obese but fail miserably with Olympic athletes.

Such data would be very difficult to collect but could help people and organizations make better choices.
I am a Realtor in Texas and this is something I've been talking about on twitter recently. I would absolutely love to see real estate data opened up for consumption by developers.
I think degrees reduce your hiring risk somewhat, at the cost of possibly missing some real gems who dropped out for various reasons. You can achieve the same thing by only hiring people to do X who have done X at their last two jobs. It's a low risk, low reward approach to building a team.
I'm pretty sure that's close to existing; you just can't get your hands on it.
A few will abuse it, ruining it for everyone, unless Apple polices it vigilantly, which is a lot of work and tends to cause PR problems.
perhaps intelligence is just "applied statistics"!
I would love to find a database that describes all structures in the body and how they are connected to each other, including how these vary (not everybody has the same number of muscles, for example).

It would be great if it contained average dimensions for each, along with how each can vary.
Nice as an MVP, but I'm not quite sure the value it provides. As a company, we have plenty of recurring expenses, but not much recurring income (as defined as getting the same revenue every month). I guess we could use this to determine when we'll exhaust our bank account if we don't receive any more income - but that is not likely to be the case. So I'm not sure how much value it provides.

The site mentions the tool was built for internal use at Brighten Labs. Perhaps you can elaborate how you use the tool. An article describing what exactly you put in to the software, and how you interpret the results might be helpful.
Dell Inspiron iM501R-1459MRB 15.6-Inch Laptop
It sounds as if you are till quite young. Trust in time, and don't get hung up on things too much, would be my advice.

Don't kill yourself, especially not over college admission!

Sorry for the platitudes, but couldn't leave that standing... Feel free to email me.
What state is the "seller" located in, in the case of an online store? :-)

Is "location" defined by the jurisdiction where an incorporated entity of some description is registered? Or where the business owner maintains residence? What if there are multiple owners; then, which one? Is it about where the servers are hosted?

All these attributes can be moved around; I live in Georgia but can register my corporation in Delaware. I can host my servers in Norway. And so on...
The replication between client/server is based on: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gray/replicas....
prescription drugs inventory, by pharmacy/city/state, updated daily

customs (imports/exports)

corporate balance sheet

hotel occupancy rates

government contracts
Cookies are usually served by default with any http communication, including serving CSS files.
Assuming the user can tell which app is misbehaving, they may already depend on it or be invested in it by the time they discover the problem. It may be the only app of it's kind.

Clearly, Apple is not simply trying to block bad apps, they are trying to force apps to be better, through the platform. I too am skeptical of this approach, but I understand where they're coming from.
It is missing those features. It has just been launched.
I can't speak of the biggest obstacles but Clojure was bound to the JVM pretty early (hence the j) -- I personally have no real interest in getting off the JVM so I have not followed it close at all. Bootstrapping would be the obvious answer though.
Theravada Buddhism, and The Buddha's teachings actually stress that Buddhism is not nihilism or asceticism[1], and it not about materialism. Instead, Buddhism takes the Middle Path and does not encourage either extreme. Buddhism at its core is about realizing the transience of life. It is about realizing how we are all interconnected and how our reality is formed through our interactions with the world. We suffer because we are overly attached to transient objects and ideas. To be free of this suffering, we must realize the ultimate reality and nature of our world. We must fully let go of our attachments, and instead immerse ourselves in the reality that is now. The transient reality that we and others have created. The reality that is constantly shifting and constantly evolving.

[1] Much has been written about emptiness and nothingness in Buddhism, with one prominent example being Nagarjuna, whose argument was in summary: if you cannot be empty of an individual self, then that means you have an individual self. If you have an individual self, you exist regardless of causes. If you exist regardless of causes, then you affect anything since everything changes you in some way. Therefore, you are empty of any individual self, and instead only have a causal self.
It's a contract that allows you to express love and solidarity, knowing that it's unlikely[1] it'll all be thrown away some point later down the line.

[1] Becoming much more likely these days!
Defer: Taming asynchronous javascript with coffeescript
As someone with a CS degree, I agree with you, to an extent. This is more an issue of Baynesian probability. From what I've seen in industry, your run-of-the-mill self-taught hacker is somewhat worse than a high-quality CS graduate--many of them were not making the crafty calculus you describe, they were just too unmotivated to attend college.

You also have to consider that many people do not attend college out of a pure monetary cost-benefit analysis. Besides, even if one did, it's heavily subsidized by Uncle Sam, so until the bubble hits its peak* (like housing), it's still a fairly safe bet.

*I believe humanities and other equally non-vocational degrees have already peaked.
Ask HN: Non-coding, single founders?
I have a number of startup ideas. The thing is: I don't code. (I hope to eventually, but currently only know some html.) At the same time, I'm rather independent - and I don't have any coder friends.

I'm thinking I might outsource the coding for one or two of my ideas. I could do the site, marketing, market research, etc. myself.

Is this feasible? Do any of you work like this?
I'd hire people who studied Computer Engineering. Ask the average programmer how data moved around on the motherboard, or what exactly a processor does and he has next to no idea. Computer engineers learn the fundamentals, while computer scientists learn the abstractions.
> What exactly does concern accomplish? Shouldn't you be "concerned" about space aliens invading Earth?

To have my concerns about governmental encroachment on freedoms put on the same level as space aliens does put us on a different planet, philosophically.
Agreed - great MVP. And nice HTML5 graphs.

However, these sort of "back of the envelope" type calculations (guessing at the future) I usually do on paper or maybe excel at the most. They aren't the sort of thing I keep around or feel like I'd need a web app for. Certainly, can't imagine paying for something like this.

If it auto pulled in all my expenses/income that actually occurred this could be useful - but of course this is an accounting tool and totally different product.

I do think there is a market for a simple/useable accounting tool that auto-pulled in your stuff and made an income sheet/balance statement for you. Mint leaves a lot to be desired in this area with it's "what's left" concept and isn't applicable to business. But again, this may be way off from what you are going for.
I might sound funny, but I'd say, learn to code.

Especially if you call yourself 'rather independent'.

Dabble in most languages, pick what you like best and fit the bill and make your way slowly to alpha.

I'm just worried that if you don't know any coders and nothing about shipping a product, you might end up nowhere and lose a fair bit of cash.

Good luck.
Do Android users buy even a tenth of the apps that iOS users do?

Probably not yet.

I'd blame this mostly on the low number of "killer" apps in the android market.
Many good apps have arrived, but the number is nowhere near the appstore, yet.

Here's the kicker, though: This will inevitably change. It is already changing. When you compare the android market today versus a few months ago then you'll notice quite a number of high-profile apps have appeared.

As a developer you can't ignore android anymore. You're not building an iPhone app nowadays, you're building an iPhone app and an android app.

And it won't be long before the priorities reverse.

Once android devices outnumber iPhones by 10:1 the question will be whether you build an iPhone app along with your Android app - not the other way round.

Remember Apple is at its absolute peak today. There's nowhere to go from here in terms of features or polish.

Sure, they can add voice recognition, brush up the hardware even more and perhaps they'll even find another killer-feature or two to add. But HTC and Google are breathing in their neck now, the gap in user experience is closing. From there the primary differentiating factor becomes price. And competing with HTC on price will be tough[1].

[1] http://moconews.net/article/419-android-sales-exceed-iphone-...
Apple is trying to cater to the audience of people who are completely lost with computers by making computers behave like "real" objects are inside them. The ipad is a great example because it makes things tangible. A child can understand it.

Whoa, pour the kool-aid back for a moment. How does iOS fix the file problem? Seems to me they just got rid of the functionality completely. That doesn't solve anything. You can sync your iTunes shwag, but when it comes to email, contacts, documents, etc, grandpa is even more up the creek than before.
An app that goes wild can simply be uninstalled.
My advice? Take your time, do the exercises, re-read the stuff you didn't quite get, learning is not a speed race. Its a hard book.
Exactly, hardly a lost language.

I happen to have taken an Ugaritic class in college, and after a semester could read the texts without too much trouble. I am a native speaker of Hebrew, so the roots are similar, which made it not very hard.

It used a novel alphabet (likely the first ever) that was a phonetic abjad (no vowels) derived from Akkadian cuneiform (in turn derived from Sumerian cuneiform).

As far as "few tablets" goes, I happen to have used VERY thick books full of transcriptions of Ugaritic tablets. One of the advantages of knowledge about Ugarit (the city) being lost is that until the recent rediscovery of its ruins it lay mostly undisturbed.

So, if we discover another language with close genetic ties to a known tongue and an alphabet that's different but similar, we'll have just the thing :) Of course, this is better than what we had before, my jest doesn't mean to detract!

Onwards with Linear A :>
You should be careful in thinking that you have to choose. In fact, regardless of what you do with .NET, I think it's a good idea to learn about the *nix environment and some languages that you're not yet comfortable developing in.

In my program at school I see a ton of students leaving university knowing nothing but one to three statically typed OO languages, and assuming that those paint an accurate picture of the full range of programming languages.

I'm not saying this is you, but if you're not comfortable outside of C#, Java, C/C++ etc. you're limiting yourself. Programming languages may be difficult to master, but you can glean a surprising number of lessons from one language by spending a few weeks with it. I think a few languages a year isn't asking for too much, and whether you use them or not, the lessons will transfer to the language you spend most of your time in.

If all of your programming experience involves using IDEs, do yourself a favor and spend extensive time in a powerful text editor like vim or emacs. While these editors might not have the advanced features present in IDEs, making the trade in favor of a more powerful programming language used in concert with a less powerful editor may actually make you more effective. The point is that you can't discern between the two until you've spent ample time in both. Being uncomfortable outside of an IDE can be a serious crutch as it keeps you using languages that the IDE can take full advantage of, and this excludes a number of languages that you should expose yourself to.

Nosql is an orthogonal issue. While relational databases are unlikely to ever go away, if nosql databases continue seeing success, there's no reason to think that seasoned .NET folks won't also make use of them.
> I guess to me, tax rates are really low on the list of concerns. If someone's agitating over free speech, over unreasonable searches and seizures, etc., then I'll support them, but whether taxes are 5 or 10% this way or the other way just doesn't seem to be that big an issue to me. It's not a totally unimportant issue, but I wouldn't put it in my top-20.

I take tax-rates much more seriously. Taxes are a direct line to slavery--obviously a 100% tax rate would be complete slavery. My current 1/3 tax rate makes me 1/3 slave--maybe a fair trade for being 2/3 free, but a trade nonetheless. Unfortunately, as you succinctly pointed out, tax rates of late have had little relation to spending, but in the long-term input = output, so as a young individual I see taxes and spending as two sides of the same coin.

To the extent our government has shown restraint, I think that is due to people making their concerns known and visible, as well as some good old fashioned American luck. Politicians will tend to acquire as much power as the people let them.
Shit happens, and good stuff, too; you just have to deal with whatever comes. One disagreement though - never, ever say, or even think, "Things can't get worse". There is always something worse that can happen.
Well....he does like expensive planes...but multiple houses (not so much). So that $450M should suffice him.

I do agree though...even 1% (i.e. crumbs from his plate) is more than enough for both himself and his entire family to live off of - and have everything they will want or need (his words, not mine).
Followup thoughts on the Bilski decision, by Mozilla lawyer Luis Villa
In 2006, Buffet gave away 30 billion dollars worth of stock to the gates foundation
A perennial favorite:

http://searchyc.com/submissions/last+question
You could get all the advantages of a tadpole configuration and mitigate the risk of blow-out considerably by using two wheels at each spot side-by-side, that's fairly simple engineering and this is used on plenty of lightweight fly-over trailers.

The tadpole configuration has stability issues though, rolling it over is fairly easy if the vehicle has a high center of gravity.

The Reliant Robin solved that for the most part by reversing the arrangement putting the single wheel in front, but they still tend to overturn quit easily.

The accident mentioned above during the demonstration probably really was caused by that other car, but the ease with which a three wheeled configuration turns over most likely contributed to the severity, and in the long run would have had to be solved using tricky engineering such as a single wheel for low speed maneuvering and two wheels for higher speeds.

Here is a Reliant Robin doing what it does best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr8SvdSzs7c

I think there is a topgear episode where they try to improve the Reliant Robin by putting training wheels on it.
Yes, but always good for a chuckle followed by a deep thought or two :).
The video lectures and problem sets from the UC Berkeley course (CS 61A) taught by Harvey are very good (and freely available), although you will need to use Berkeley Scheme to get the most out of it. Two months is ambitious, but you can get a lot out of it in that time even if you don't finish.
Apex Predators
I think its great when people see more to gain by being open and collaborating. Its also fine with me when they choose to act on their own and proprietarily. While I'd rather have things cost less, sometimes you don't get a thing at all if people can't make a profit making it.
Why ? They don't need to be synchronized at all, as long as they're roughly spinning at the same speeds in opposite directions there is 0 effect. The only effects you'd be left with would be from the difference between the two rotational speeds. If you stop one and the other continues that's a different matter.

Besides, keeping two wheels synchronized is not the hardest thing to do, a car contains a lot of moving, synchronized parts.
"I mean, really, I want to know what every person I meet of the opposite gender is thinking, but that dataset won't exist until I build more hardware."

You can build the dataset yourself by talking to them :)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15556326/Structure-and-Interpretat... is a pdf version made from the texinfo source.