skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is so true. My wife works at the level 1 trauma center here in Seattle and she often has to make the decision to call Airlift. After a couple of crashes a couple of years ago she is much more careful about weighing the risk to the crew against the real need of the patients.
Quick and Simple PHP Honey Pot Spam Prevention
6:15am Wake Up

6:30am Treadmill

7:00am Breakfast

7:30am Bus to Work

8:30am Start Work

9:00am Stand-up Meeting/Task allocation

9:30am-4:30pm Continue Work

5:30am-6:30pm Weights Training

6:30pm-7:45pm Check body stats and change diet accordingly, cook foods

7:45pm-9:45pm Study Maths/Physics

9:45pm Study Log/Random reading/Shower

10:15pm Bed!
Truth. That's exactly what it is. Personally, I only remember seeing falling blocks in my head, never looking at buildings at fitting them together, as referenced by the Wikipedia article.

You're so old school, by the way. Haha. Nobody around my age (21) ever regularly played on anything other than a TI graphing calculator. There was a great viral effect to this, in that when you downloaded the game from someone else's calculator, you inherited the high scores on their game as well. It's funny to think about some current high school freshman playing tetris on his calculator and thinking, 'Who the hell is this Towle guy? What an asshole.'

And on top of that, the ubiquitousness of the versions of tetris on those calculators allowed for true player-to-player comparison. Sure, there was way more than one version available, but you might be surprised how few would ever use play non-standard. Let's see just how ubiquitous they were/are! (Hopefully someone responds with scores that make logical sense by comparison. Otherwise I'm going to look more ridiculous than absurd.)

Can anyone beat ~42k on the TI-86 version? Or ~498k on the TI-89 version? Or have inherited high scores in that range? (Note: a good, experienced player on those versions would have high scores around in the low 30-thousands and 300-thousands, respectively. I was obsessed, wouldn't beat my own scores for months before having an "in the zone" game, pushing them significantly higher each time.)

{Damn right. "Hold piece" is nonsense, too.}
Oh, sure. :) But a lot of people seem to find them impossibly intimidating, one of those things that are "perceived to be magical artifacts, carefully crafted by the wizards, and unfathomable by the mere mortals."* They're really not that tricky at an implementation level, until/unless you're going for extremely high performance.

Keeping reverse compatibility is a huge pain, though. No argument there!

* From Abdulaziz Ghuloum's excellent "An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction" (http://scheme2006.cs.uchicago.edu/11-ghuloum.pdf).
Terry Tao: Cayley graphs and the geometry of groups
Interesting to note the market opportunity in non-Western markets
That was an amazing article. I've always been intrigued by flight but I think I have a newfound appreciation.
How does one "Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it?"
Founder personalities and the "first-class man" theory of management
wow - no words about personal responsibility, no self-reflection about what 'your word' means or what it means to agree to a commitment.

Just a plan to weasel out.

I'm flabbergasted.
You sleep 4 hours 25 minutes a night‽‽‽
Facebook Like not enough to topple Google just yet
This is a fantastic survey book. It's one of those few books that's exactly what it's called. You can always dive deeper on the stuff that's interesting/relevant to you after reading this book, but I have yet to find a book at this level that's this good.
The rationale is that I wanted to learn how to write an interpreter, particularly some of the more challenging parts like tail recursion, macros, continuations and laziness. It's in Ruby because that's what I know best; it's not intended for production use as a replacement for Ruby, though I have used it myself to do a little code transformation and testing in Ruby apps.

So basically it's a toy, but one that I hope others can learn something from.
If you're running stock (or close to stock firmware), you'll get a popup notification saying there's an update available. If you haven't received one for a few days, you're more than likely up-to-date.
A better way of doing this is having the hidden form element named 'email' and the actual email input named something else, as many scripts will be set to auto input based on these submissions
What I'm worried about more is people throwing around labels such as "xenophobe" and "homophobe" whenever someone has ideas that run contrary to their own.

Perhaps he has some ill-conceived notions floating around in his head. I doubt that justifies your final statement.
Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr. Robot
I wouldn't dare commenting on this part if I did not read the entire post. Maybe I am not understanding something you guys do.
For a $100, if you have the time do it. Even if Ruby doesn't end up being your favorite language, you'll still learn something new. At the very least, you'll learn The Way of Ruby to solve problems and that will improve your coding in many subtle ways. It's simply experience that paying $100 for is a bargain.

Besides, you might end up making new friends and contacts.
Online, We Pay With Our Time Spent Searching
7:01 wake up, check email/HN

7:30 head to gym with protein -- work out

9:00 breakfast, then head to office

10:00 check email, plan day

11:00 snack

1:00 lunch (not necessarily a break. I work at a bootstrapped startup)

3:00 snack

6:00 dinner

7:00 head back to apartment

8:00-11:00 debrief a bit (watch some tv, movies), work on projects

11:00 sleep

Yeah, I eat a lot.
You could also try to teach yourself. If you already understand object oriented programming, then learning ruby on your own should be doable. It really depends on how you learn best. I prefer to teach myself, and was able to learn ruby and rails in a few weeks.
I've read both "Experience and Nature" and "How We Think" and can recommend both. "How We Think" was published first and is shorter - would make for a good introduction to Dewey. "Experience and Nature" is longer and has more weight but is also more work to read. I haven't read more than excerpts from his other works so I can't add much. Otherwise, I intend to read "The Public and its Problems" which is supposed to be a good work on democracy.
Personally I prefer books for learning, and they are cheaper, too. It's been a long time that I sat in a course for a programming language, though - perhaps the courses have improved.
what's the Laplace Transform of this blue chesterfield?

http://xkcd.com/26/
Truth in Numbers (Wikipedia) trailer
You do not understand the argument from authority. Argument from authority would be if PG had said that I'm right because, say, I had a Ph.D. But being an early Google employee when the topic under discussion is the early days of Google doesn't make on an authority, it makes one a primary source.

But you may have noticed that I did not bring this up. That's because your factual claims are easily debunked with information from the public record.
Ask HN: How to get traction for an HN-like social news site?
I guess the title says it all -- looking for ideas and strategies on how to build traffic and momentum for a social news aggregation site. Especially for one that is more niche-based.

Any examples of success outside of the big ones (digg, reddit, HN)?
At one level, I can't see any downside (I mean, short of loosing a hundred bucks and your time).

But at another level there are other compelling arguments... Like you said, understanding technology and the way web sites and web apps are put together is useful.

But here's another thought: if you keep learning after the course ends and can put some Ruby on Rails code together you'll always be able to find work as a junior developer (or better, if you are good) somewhere - the industry is desperate for more bodies.

Now I'm sure my fellow co-founders and startup entrepreneurs will comment that we really need highly talented engineers, but realistically we just need more people across the board right now who can code well and so that means a much lesser chance of being out of work for those who have these skills.

From the individual's perspective I think that is valuable in this economy, esp if the area you really want to work in is suffering job wise.
Taking a 6 week course in Ruby will only give you enough knowledge to be annoying and dangerous to your tech leads in whatever future business you start. Even beyond that, I'd bet the sort of thing they'd cover in 6 weeks (syntax, hello worlds, basic I/O) would be wasted on someone with managerial aspirations. Find something like a survey of web technologies instead, become conversant in the language without miring yourself with technical details that won't really help you.
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Ask HN: How did you learn proper system design?
Im constantly thinking about what layout of classes and their dependancies/interactions will work best for a new project. Doing some iPhone development right now has the "benefit" of forcing you to use things like the mvc pattern and having to rely heavily on delegates and target/actions but still there is always sub-organizing that takes place. The problem is that I never feel like a working solution is the best way of doing something. Studying design patterns only seems to be part of the equation, I guess im looking for new google keywords or amazon searches...

Question could probably be: How did you go from goto and general pasta to well designed beautiful code that made people write articles in your honor?

Books? Articles? Down-and-dirty coding? Finding a mentor? Doing open-source? Slaving away as a PhD student in applied mathematics and system design?
Was the startup building solutions around generating content for dry tests? Like a skeleton landing page generator? That thought crossed my mind as I read through some of these articles.
The 'explore the surroundings' is pretty cool also. Not to nitpick, but it'd be pretty awesome if that was all in the same page. And picasa linked up with youtube, real-time (galleries became available in the same page as you progressed).... It's pretty amazing as it is though.
Welcome to Computers Vancouver
I suggest you listen to the lyrics of 'kinky sex makes the world go' by the Dead Kennedys.

It's an old song but the actual lyrics aren't too far off of what we might have to resort to to pull ourselves out of debt and depression down the road.
Thanks for the compliments, Teye. We're working on SEO -- doing a lot better after yesterday's traffic. If there's something obvious we're not doing to improve our results, please let us know! Thanks.
In the UK, perhaps. When I go to the cheese counter here (in Finland), nearly all cheeses have the holes in them.
While driving home after a marathon LAN session of DESCENT, I was cut off in traffic. My first instinct was to bank smart missiles of the nearby burger king. My hand even grasped toward the turn signal controls to fire.

I guess that's where my mind decided the smart missile controls would be.

I remember it very clearly, as I've always been slightly unnerved that not only was it a reflex thought, but that I'd actually moved to act on it.
Dumping Microsoft would be a smart move, not only in terms of saving money on licenses but also in order to increase the governments IT procurement options (freedom from lock-in). Ideally to maximize return on investment any software written using public money for public use should be open source.

In reality the government won't be able to dump old systems overnight, but should put in place a transition plan similar to the Open Source Action Plan proposed about a year ago. Any new software developed should preferentially take advantage of any open source systems currently available, before considering proprietary options.
Thoughts and Perceptions
On ideas:
Ideas are inspirations influenced by the current state of things.

On consciousness:
Consciousness is inseparable from its biological components.

On evolution:
Truth lies in all possibilities.

On economics:
To get to the top all you need is your own pyramid.

On death:
Does the cell that is shed from the body go to cell heaven?
Does the leaf that falls from the tree go to tree heaven?
Does the human who leaves humanity go to human heaven?

On me:
Am I something that thinks its something that wonders what it is?

On me:
If I die alone, then I am my judge, and I won't be able to lie to myself that I was a good person.

On consciousness:
Its all small assumptions.

On life on earth:
The universe is the hell. Earth is the paradise.

On self:
You spend your whole life trying to be what you wanted to be, then one day you realize you became what you were supposed to become.

On self:
Your life is the film and the sun is the light that projects that life onto the screen.
Where have I seen this before..? :P
You can click the "Edit" button at the bottom of any memorial page. Please email me directly if you have any questions or suggestions.
This is awesome, I always wanted to make this journey but never had a chance.
PDF link to the Tractatus:

http://filepedia.org/files/Ludwig%20Wittgenstein%20-%20Tract...
You should have left off the smiley.

Meeting of engineers, one engineer gives a presentation of a system that will be extremely expensive to integrate with, has unknown reliability, offers no benefit, will suck up the time of a lot of capable people, but we're going to integrate with it anyway, because we've been told this is part of our "direction."

Plus our division is going to be paying a crapload of money to some other division for the privilege of integrating this system, which will affect our bonuses. It's pretty easy to explain why this is a stupid idea, but the order came down from our boss's boss's boss's boss, and nobody is allowed to explain things to a boss's boss's boss's boss, not even our boss's boss. Especially when you want to explain that the thing she's doing to look good to her boss (and her boss's boss,) presumably to improve her bonus, is actually bad for the company.

When it's all done, they will claim it's saving us $N million dollars per year, even though it was actually a costly mistake. How do I know this? Because the same thing happened less than two years ago.

Add comedic and artistic skill, and voila, a Dilbert strip. Maybe two or three.
"Once The Game Is Over, The King And The Pawn Go Back In The Same Box."
"Authorities in Washington, DC are reportedly worried about DST’s latest acquisition: ICQ, an instant-messaging service previously owned by AOL."

Living near Langley, I've heard from a few different people who work at the "state department" that one or more of the DST guys is less than squeaky clean, something to do with private user data. I don't really know. But they all dropped off Facebook or created new profiles with pseudonyms after the DST-Facebook deal went down.
Interesting... I had never thought of doing this as a way to develop a marketable skill. And as you say, even if I'm just able to put some basic code together, that would be a very useful ability to have in a startup environment where everyone has to wear multiple hats.

Thanks for the perspective!
This sounds like the same idea as:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1463751
On IA-32, a decrementing-until-zero loop gets its own instruction (called—unsurprisingly—LOOP.) If it optimized in that one case, it would take microseconds to execute the whole test, which would show up as 0ms.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann...
During an aerobatic glider ride for the initiation of the first maneuver all I saw was the horizon rise then slowly drop below the edge of the cockpit. A few moments later the pilot behind me said to look straight up. Directly above me were cars on the highway. I had no sense of being upside down. Very cool. Later maneuvers were more visceral.
Thought and Performance, Live Coding Music, Explained to Anyone – Really
Their knowledge of German would be more likely to be a result of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic.
Likewise people that went to school in the former GDR all speak a basic or even advanced level of Russian.
So true. That's at least one of the reasons we load up coffee with sugar & cream in North America. In Italy I never felt like adding anything to the espresso.

But Americanos from Starbucks in Canada taste like a cup of mud, without a flavour shot or something else to mask the real taste.
I always considered that the "Syphon Filter Effect" in honor of this TV spot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdrBM-265ns

I don't think that commercial would get OK'd today. A video game that makes you hallucinate shooting innocent bystanders? It's so pre-columbine.
Interesting that no one is a night owl here.
Working on large projects where you experience the consequences of bad judgment calls made years earlier, and trying to figure out how things could have gone better.

Probably the nastiest way to learn, but still the best.
Do what the Reddit guys did, create different accounts and post stuff under those account names to simulate the appearance of a growing community. Classic chicken or egg problem.
I used to prefer Pepsi when I was younger, and whenever I did the Pepsi challenges I could always taste the difference. I remember some of my friends couldn't distinguish them so it clearly depends on the person.

Pepsi is a bit sweeter. Or was, I don't drink soft drinks very often these days.
Did you do it just because you could, or was there some actual reason to take the train?
I'm pretty sure this is from The Great Gatsby -- I remember the dumbbell part. Am I right?
Oh, absolutely. And a lot of those are choices to make and fine-tune rather than obvious boolean working/buggy issues. ie The Tetris Wiki lists a half-dozen different rotation systems alone, some of which show fairly complex behavior (http://tetris.wikia.com/wiki/TGM_Rotation). Add in getting the controls and timing just right, and a simple puzzle game becomes a lot trickier to pull off than it might seem.

Oh, and yours isn't all that bad. I played through an entire round without quitting out of boredom or frustration with the controls, which is better than I can say about a lot of random Tetris clones out there. Or maybe I'm just more forgiving of games that openly admit to being stupid and unoriginal ;)
Thanks! I'll let my friends know.
Hello, could you describe what kind of utility app you made?
Toyota lashed out at instructor during big recall
A professor at SIU (heavily-backed by Toyota) demonstrates that certain cars under certain conditions can have unexpected acceleration that is not recorded on the blackbox. Toyota ignores him. Said prof then demonstrates the unrecorded acceleration on national television. He then testifies to US Congress about the same. Toyota eventually writes to SIU suggesting that said professor should not be teaching at the school. Reminds me of the wargaming Motorola did against the cell phone researchers at University of Washington [http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/march05/wakeupcall01.html]
Sounds like you're doing it. You are looking for a way to make yourself a better developer and this never ends. I found eventually, that no one every really knew a good design. It seems like we always invented that along the way. Yeah, we all knew patterns etc, and were bound to certain ways of doing things, but somehow we seemed to always get lucky on most designs. It quite possibly may have been that the problems solved themselves eventually. And after we saw the code we wrote we looked at it made it better on the last few days creating, in most cases, an elegant design. The designs were more apparent after the project was done which were never consistent from project to project.

One way to learn good software design is to look at other peoples code who are good at what they do. For me those people are John Resig, Douglas Crockford, etc.
11:00: wake up, shut off alarm
12:00: wake up again, shut off second alarm
13:00: phone rings/roommate knocks on door to actually wake me up
13:30: stumble into shower, check email, catch up on RSS
14:00: lunch (or breakfast)
14:30: actual work, prepare for product launch
19:00: dinner
20:00: more work, TV on in background
05:00: go to sleep
Ask HN: Great hardware companies?
Every week I see a blog post about how awesome the work environment and people at Google are, and I hear similar stories about certain groups at places like MS and amazon; every time a “who’s hiring” post comes up, we get a list of tens of small software companies that sound amazing. But what about hardware companies?

I’ve been interviewing at hardware companies, and when I ask employees about finding a place that’s full of brilliant people, good management, etc., the only people who say their own company fits that description are people who have only worked at one place since graduating[1]. I don’t think they’re being disingenuous, but they don’t have much to compare against. Folks with more experience tell me how great Cray, DEC, Xilinx before Moshe Gavrielov, Bell Labs, etc., were, but all of those places are defunct, or shells of their former selves. There are some well known large hardware companies that regularly make Forbes’s best places to work list, but the general reputation that those companies have in industry is not very good, and the people I know that work at those places are, for the most part, unhappy with their jobs. Great hardware companies must exist. Where are they, and how do I find them?

A related question is: are there any hardware companies that aggressively screen their applicants? I’ve interviewed with all of the major companies and a lot of smaller companies. Without exception, the on-site interview at hardware companies has been easier than the phone screen at software places like Google or Facebook. Having a strict hiring process isn’t a sufficient condition for getting great employees, but it’s probably at least weakly correlated. So how come all of the major players have such a loose hiring screen?

[1] I found one exception when I was searching for jobs when I graduated, and I took a position there. The problem is that I took a verification (i.e., test) position. Unlike at (some) software companies, hardware verification folks are treated as first class citizens, and the work is really interesting, but I want to try doing design (i.e., development) and I’ve accumulated enough verification experience that I’ll be typecast as a verification engineer for my career if I don’t make a change soon. Unfortunately, the aforementioned company only hires experienced designers to do design, so I’m stuck choosing between closing off one career path and having great co-workers in a work environment that has all the plusses that I hear Google has, and breaking out of verification.
I work in an analysis shop for state government, and the minority of us who do "sophisticated" analysis (which is really just basic numerics and trending plus making maps), could go to a Unix/ FOSS world and increase productivity in no time. However, it gives me the shakes thinking about trying to explain CSV's to 100s of local jurisdictions, much less the less sophisticated 50% of OUR office. But when I say "send me an excel spreadsheet of X, Y, Z" EVERYONE knows what I mean; so we won't be installing Ubuntu on our desktops any time soon, unfortunately.
Since it's not covered in the link you posted I can't recommend labrepl enough as a way to get started.

http://github.com/relevance/labrepl
Wow, everyone here is quite the early-bird. For most weekdays:

12pm: Wake up

12-1: eat, email, news, etc.

1-2: bike or run + shower

2pm - 8pm: work

8-9pm: dinner

9-12: work

12-1am : gym (every other day)

1-4am: work

4am: sleep
Vonnegut is great - I guess Cat's Cradle is another book to add to my to-read list.