skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the government should focus on the spam Google funds. I don't even remember the last time I saw a trashy spam site that wasn't plastered with Google ads. Between SEO and spammers machine-generating or just copy-pasting content it's no wonder a lot of people feel left out of search results.
Sounds like Turkish tea, which we drink at the office every day.
A lot of people that aren't tech-savy live-and-die by Consumer Reports reviews. They've been around forever, so are trusted by the "old-school" folks.
I remember in the earlyish days of Facebook (after the Ivy League exclusivity ended but before it went outside of colleges) their FAQ page had a snarky response to the question "what graph theory algorithms do you use?" or somesuch.
They want to look like they're "doing something" and in the process keep the populists happy.
I've read a number of people say things like, "It's
completely normal. You just have to deal with it like
everyone else." That's wrong, and really, really
dangerous advice. Suicidal ideation is very different
from feeling 'blue' every now and then. Suicidal ideation
is an indication of something more serious, and if left
unchecked can get much worse (did you read my opening
line?). Not everyone can get out of depression on their
own or with 'natural remedies'. Depression is an illness
just like diabetes or hypertension. Sometimes medication
is necessary to get better.

Er, FWIW, I wasn't saying "just deal with it." Just giving the OP some thoughts based on my own experiences. The only reason(s) I didn't list "Go see a professional" is because A. I never did (and doubt I ever will) and B. it had already been said by others in this thread.

But yes, I would certainly advocate that anyone who has serious questions about their mental state see a professional therapist.

I'm glad to hear that you have an appointment with a
doctor. That's an important step to take, even if you
don't start medication or therapy.

Doctor? Not me... maybe that bit was meant for somebody else? I don't go to doctors unless I see large amounts of my own blood or there's a bone sticking through the skin. :-)

As a side note, if you're interested in trying any
natural remedies for depression, there are basically
three options: 1) SAM-e, 2) 5-HTP, 3) St. John's Wort. I
have listed them in the order of their generally accepted
effectiveness for treating depression and, how would you
say, time before affect? St. John's Wort typically takes
2-3 weeks (IIRC) before you start to feel it's effects.
SAM-e is supposed to work with in a few days.

Interesting stuff. What's SAM? Never heard of it. 5HTP is interesting, but from what I've seen there isn't a lot of research on it. I used to drink an "energy drink" before my workouts that had 5HTP in it, but it's hard to quantify how much (if at all) it helped my mood.
http://www.odgaard.org/jeod/funny/interview.html
TLDR: 2010 will most definitely be the year of Linux on the desktop.
The Middle Class Is Being Wiped Out Of Existence In America
Classic Zed. Nice, haven't heard from him in awhile.
The last time I researched the issue the government quoted the national number at 20%. It skews higher for minorities and low-income people. You're welcome to your intuitions -- it might only be 40%. Either way, it isn't a small number or one which is evenly distributed across all demographics.
The Internet never sleeps
http://screenr.com
Ask HN:Small ideas
I can make an initial invetsment of 5000 and work/code 6 hrs weekdays and 8 hrs weekends still keeping my day job.
I am ready to do that for the next 1 year.

Can I build something whithin that 1 year which starts giving me $1000 profit every month ?

I can code decently in java , Python and capable of build/configure Linux servers for my environments.

Any small ideas to hit the $1000 per month profits are welcome.
"Most people" don't think about it at all. Disclosure - long BP
(I submitted this) - don't agree with all their stats and the article could be better, but thought it would be interesting to hear HN community's views on the issue.
But if you offered a man who was utterly unable to attract woman 40% odds of acquiring just 1 or 2 partners per year through PUA methods (and a 60% chance of no returns) I think he would (rationally) invest a huge amount of time into this.
I have recently switched from Textmate to VIM and I am loving it so far.

check this out http://jmcpherson.org/vimrc.html
In my limited experience, the most successful people I know either had parents who were 100% supportive of their endeavors or they were from homes with no parents, or their parents totally did not give a shit about what they were doing. The unsuccessful ones came from homes where the parents were around, but were always telling them to do something else. Quit fooling around with computers and become a radiologist, etc.
There was a pretty astonishing if deadpan interview on Fresh Air recently with a psychiatrist who, although more orthodox than Whitaker, has published a book questioning the overreliance of psychiatry on drugs. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1281075...)

Among other things I didn't know, he recounted how many of the leading articles on antidepressant efficacy were in fact written by advertising companies (yes, you read that right). The pharmaceutical companies would then pay famous psychiatrists to use their names as the authors of the already-written piece. These studies were published in all the leading journals (New England, etc.). The interviewer asked this guy what consequences there had been for the psychiatrists who had been bought off in this way. He said there had been none.

He also said (no surprises here) that he and other psychiatrists routinely tell their patients the chemical imbalance theory despite knowing that there is no evidence for it, on the grounds that people want a little "knowledge" about how the drugs they're being prescribed.
Perl does indeed warn about the use of = instead of == in a conditional.
Banach-Tarski paradox
What I was driving at with the "it depends" part is that, in the real (commercial) world, there's only so many reasonable ways to get something done. There will always be a variety of important details, but the fundamentals don't change much because of the natural constraints that exist. The same cannot be said of just about any software development activity.

I stand by the blueprint:building :: X:code concept. Brian posted a comment on the actual post along the same lines as your rebuttal:

"With regard to "blueprint:building :: X:code", I think code is the blueprint. If not code, then a specification that's precise enough that it may as well be code."

And I'll repeat here that if precise specifications required code, then you wouldn't have regexes, SQL, or any of the other common (and uncommon) DSLs that flit about. If you think those things are code, then what about BNF grammars? RDF triples that inform expert systems? There are a lot of things that system behaviour that don't suffer from the problems of software as I described, and they often are far closer to the relevant domain than any "code" that would be required to implement the desired behaviour directly.
I generally agree, but there is an issue if Google has a monopolistic market share, even if there are many other options.

As you say, there is very little customer lock-in, so there should be a high bar for calling Google a monopoly. On the other hand, there is a large entry cost for the search martket.
Well, Bjarne Stroustrup has a rant on C++! But it’s not actually pro C++. (It’s also fictional, but a very amusing read.)

http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/Invention_of_Cplusplus.shtml
I don't think that's Techcrunch's mission now.

However, they could start a sister site (like CrunchGear) and dedicate it to that. I wonder why they haven't... the market is probably a bit too niche. It would require the same amount of manpower as something like CrunchGear, but have a smaller readership.

Maybe an opportunity for a subscription-based Techcrunch sister site?
Deus Ex, Is it still worth playing?
An interesting article comparing Deus Ex to more modern video games. The reviewer misses a few points, but its still a pretty good read.
And I thought my day job got in the way...
Zed is literally the Kimbo Slice of the technical community.
It's Time to Prepare for the End of the Web as We Know It
Can you teach yourself synaesthesia?
Yes, you can build something in a year that brings in $1,000 a month. BUT. Unless it's a problem that you, yourself, are having, I'm skeptical that you'll have the energy to see it through. Put another way: What annoyances do you have about your life? Where is the internet falling down on the job? Build that.
On a long enough timescale, most things can be handled by the environment. That timescale may extend past the human timescale in many instances, which is generally viewed as unacceptable.
I've seen this pattern a lot when it comes to the order of learning/mastering languages: C, then C++, then back to C
I skimmed part of this, and had to giggle a bit at this quote (of a quote):

"It's clear that C# isn't the best language to use for Web Development. Just ask the guys who are writing the frameworks with it."

Sure C# is verbose. But I still feel it's pretty expressive. I'm working on a web framework in C# (http://github.com/ecoffey/Bebop). Granted it's totally a toy thing, but still. Looks beautiful to me :-P

Also it annoys me he compares non-idiomatic C# with idiomatic Ruby.

I guess I should quote this FTA: "My whole point here is to tell you why I like it - not to convince you of anything.", and finish with it all comes back to the right tool for the job shrug.
The best pro C++ argument is that for all its flaws there's nothing out there that completely replaces it and it's still widely used.

My own view: I'm not in love with C++, but it's not nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Most of the arguments I hear against C++ are the same tired things I've heard hundreds of times. They all have a grain of truth, but nothing so bad as to condemn the language.
If Google is forced to out their algorithm, Coke better be forced to out its recipe. They are both trade secrets at the heart of a competitive market space, though I think it would be far more catastrophic for Google's algorithm to be outed than Coke's recipe.
It's been successful in every country that has tried it. Granted, the US has a bad habit of poorly implemented government programs so who knows, we may be the first exception.

PS: Medical outcomes are far more dependent on the average level of care than the peek level of care. EX: There is a lot of evidence that the average doctor is significantly more effective than a "high preforming" doctor that is sleep deprived.
See my reply to zb here, that addresses this more.

Associating general-purpose programming languages with materials science seems reasonable. Building the systems that are used to build systems, etc.

Though DSLs are the most common manifestation of declarative, often constraint-based directives, thinking about all such things as text-based is another blind assumption made by most. Far higher-bandwidth "interfaces" for defining systems will simply be necessary in so many fields that suffer under the yoke of mostly-ASCII text. Just look at mathematics and e.g. Matlab and Mathematica for a super-simple example. More broadly, data, design, and process visualization continues to be a growing "trend" (more like an inevitability, but whatever) -- why shouldn't those visualizations function as the model for the relevant domain experts (whereas they are so often simply presentational)? The sooner they make that transition, the better.
It would be cool if they extended the service hooks[1] to handle that. So then you could get the notification by Email, Notifo, Campfire, etc. (And I have some code that goes Notifo->Growl that I need to clean up and document.) Right now the service hooks are just for pushes.

If I could say I want IRC to get notified about pull requests, new issues, and comments on issues, want to get emailed about new issues (note that that's a repeat) and comments on my commits, and want to get notified about pull requests (also a repeat), that would be awesome.

I'm not sure how many people would want a crazy setup like that, but I could see wanting Campfire/IRC to get notified about more than just pushes.

[1] http://github.com/github/github-services
It's not that any one thing is bad. It's that lots of things are bad.
Bunch of age-old banalities from a famous narcissist on top of front page.. Is there any HN 2.0?
Making something out of nothing (or, why None is better than NaN and NULL)
pls cut the crap. Do not post opinions as facts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder#Antid...
Pretty positive, I expect. From the the end of today's post:

> I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure.
The real question is: Does it have a feature to exclude certain files from the 'recently accessed files' list? There are many examples where you wouldn't want someone to see some of the files that you recently opened/worked with (i.e. top secret work, porn, whistleblower, etc).
I can only assume that your vitriol stems from my lmgtfy post and so for that I apologise. My comment about the points was and is both sincere and practical advice and I hope you can revisit that post and my others in a less antagonistic light.
When geeks attack.
Treating/masking the symptom != resolving root cause.
Microsoft 101: The beginnings of Visual Studio [video]
"Jailbreaking" doesn't exist on Android phones (for the most part cough Motorola). Installing firmwares does.

According to HTC, Froyo is set for auto-update on the Incredible in Q3 sometime. Or you can just install one of the firmwares that's out on the web and get it today.
"There appear to be a lot of good rants against C++....Are there any good passionate pro C++ versus C arguments?"

By definition, the people who write the "entertaining" rants against C++ have an axe to grind. The people who like C++ just silently use it, and feel no need to write advocacy blog posts for the language. Even if they were to blog about it, it would be about as compelling as someone advocating for their favorite brand of screwdriver. Like it or not, C++ is the incumbent, and it's neither interesting nor fun to read someone advocating for the status quo.

Whenever you find yourself arriving at an opinion about a programming language solely from rants that you read on some dude's blog, please keep in mind that you're probably being most heavily influenced by the very people least qualified to teach you anything useful about the language. The internet is filled with useful articles about C++, but you don't remember those. You remember that Zed Shaw couldn't figure out how const works in C++, and once wrote a funny email about it.
Totally not the point. C# is just an example of an application language. The point is that there is no reason why a developer can't master the full stack.
OMG now I know i'm not alone! I also have a 3G and installed the iOS 4.0 update and this video depicts exactly what it's been like for me. Lots of strange hangs in many of the apps I use regularly. It's become a much more frustrating experience using it. You press a navbar button and it just sits there, doing nothing, for example.
It's kind of engrained at this point. How are you going to refer to a piece of information other than a 'file' or 'document'? If you don't call it a 'desktop' when trying to explain it to people, will they really understand what you're talking about? You have to draw parallels to what people already know.
There Will Be No iPhone 4 Recall
Ask HN: Is there a list of non-stealth YC startups?
I was just reading about Optimizely on the Tech Crunch article.

I'm kinda sad that I don't know about these things before they hit TC or some other outlet. I'd love HN to be the first place I learn about each YC startup's offering.
Exceptionally good critique. But there are exceptions: programming for Google's V8 in C++ is a pleasure. I've never seen any interpreter code so clean and easy to extend. Like a breath of fresh air.
That's a bit of a strawman argument. There's a wide gap between the "totally trust" and "do not trust" groups. I would think most people would fit in that gap. The ones who do go elsewhere are in the "do not trust" group.
I can't be sure, but I would think the "totally trust" and "do not trust" groups are minorities in Google's user-verse.
Why can't they just return it?

From what I can tell, it's like being addicted to a drug. You know it's bad, but you can't resist. I have coworkers who have the reception problem who would rather alter the way they hold the phone than return it. Even though they loved their previous iPhones, somehow they can't go back now.
A more apt comparison would be Red Ring of Death on the Xbox 360. An annoyance but the product is compelling enough for people to put up with it. There are lots of other fun parallels like Microsoft's slow response to admit there was a problem and their suggestion to put the 360 into a vertical position for better cooling (your entertainment center is holding it wrong)
Nice article! Thanks!
If the title suggests the article is directly relevant to me, I'll open the article, then the comments. If the title merely looks interesting, or there are a lot of comments, I'll take a look at the comments first, and then maybe the article.
The Feynman Algorithm
Having Optimizely featured on TechCrunch reminds me founder of another A/B testing startup visualwebsiteoptimizer.com asking advice on HN about why his startup is not getting featured on TechCrunch. VWO is definitely compelling and valuable product, but it didn't get covered after multiple tries. Many folks on HN gave advice that - "have a compelling story."

The compelling story in Optimizely's case is - "A YC funded company". I'm not against of Optimizely in any way, but this just shows the power of being YC network.
I used to receive the Sun-Chronicle. Pretty decent paper from what I remember, although it's been some years. I'll be interested to see if it works.

An idea: what about using Hashcash instead?
Maybe if all you're doing is writing silly blogging software, then you can get away with that. I need to develop apps the report live on nation-wide sales and inventory data, down to the individual shipment. You start dealing with a database intended to hold 10, 20 years of warehoused data, application languages turn into a blur in the background.
Couldn't they use a tree-like distribution system where each node only receives pulls from a small number of child nodes?

You could organize this by giving each server an incrementing number and using math to deduce their parent node, much like an implicit binary tree stored as an array: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_tree#Ahnentafel_list

That way you can still use the http or git protocol without having to invent a special flavor of BitTorrent.
I really dislike C++ but more to the point I really dislike other people's C++.

This is triple compounded when you only have to do C++ occasionally. I've never even got close to the point of looking at something like const *const char & and reading it like it was something normal like others seem to do.
Unfortunately I think you may be right. To build a very high quality system, you need to be adept at identifying every major and minor flaw, actual and potential. Happy people often seem unable to do this rigorously. "My code is great! The sky is so blue today! I love my awesome wife! That SIGSEGV was just a hardware problem!"

People rationalize to maintain their preferred emotional state. Thus, to find problems thoroughly, it helps to think the whole system is thoroughly fucked.
Google Ocean Is A New Feature In Google Earth 5.0
> It's built on GTK+ but doesn't depend on GNOME.

IIRC, it still uses gnome-screensaver, gnome-power-manager, etc. Lots of the GNOME background processes are in use, unless they've recently weaned themselves...
This is the first time I heard of Grace C++[1]. Looks very useful. I was looking for string that can be used for binary data. Looks like they support that too.

[1] http://grace.openpanel.com/
There was a google doc once with all the startups and their current status. All I could find right now is this - http://www.crunchbase.com/company/y-combinator On the left it lists all the things YCombinator invested in.
And that the founder handled analytics / testing for Obama - resulting in additional donations of $60m - that's a great story / connections in and of itself that's helping . . .
Sarah Palin's New Strategy on Facebook
And then, occasionally, Objective-C.
> You remember that Zed Shaw couldn't figure out how const works in C++, and once wrote a funny email about it.

source?
This is pretty cool. Interstingly enough we developed a similar system internally. Without more details I don't know how their analytics work but I'd recommend that they patch into Google Analytics in some way.

If they had a system that automatically created the custom segments and let me analyze the data I want in GA that would be incredibly powerful.
More like, "See? See? Linux desktops can be innovative and not just copy what MacOS and Windows do!"
Apollo News for iPad
Since when does one 'click' a keyboard button?
what's the pricing going to be like when this goes live? i.e. VisualWebsiteOptimizer is $49 a month, how much will this be? $39? $29? $19? $9?
No change in US. Expected.
Those aren't problems with Java, they are (respectively) something that isn't important in many cases (and not even always true), something that is really only bothersome for short-running scripts, and a severe annoyance that can nonetheless be overcome fairly easily. There are plenty of reasons for a Lisp, or any language for that matter, to use it - a highly developed GC and JIT compilation capability that you don't have to write and maintain yourself not least among them. And the massive array of existing libraries that already run on the platform is not a negligible benefit in the least.
1. iPhone.

2. Android.
>The video states that they will be looking into how best to do deploys across centers in the future, but they are not going to have peers connect across their wan links. One tracker and seeder per location is a first musing.

Heck, use a VPN to accomplish this if you're lazy.
Yes, I graduated in '03 from the MBA program and '99 in INFO. Drop me an email with your contact info (my email is in my profile). If you are around Aggieland, come out and visit us sometime.
"If I wanted to fry my brain trying to figure out how to add two numbers with templates I'd go use LISP."

Probably just a tongue in cheek comment, but I wonder what he meant.
Notably, they also moderate comments and close threads fairly aggressively.
By "the rest of us" are you referring to Macintosh users?