skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"the right wing papers will use this to once again call him a socialist while still pocketing their subsidy."

Why on earth would right-wing papers get a subsidy? Or, more accurately, why would papers that disagree with whomever controls the pursestrings at the moment get a subsidy? You don't even have to cut off a paper the payer doesn't like, just reduce their payout.

And why wouldn't Obama support it? Why wouldn't any President support it? Taking possession of the fourth branch of government is supposed to not be at all tempting to him? Are you still laboring under the delusion that he's something other than a politician or something? But, hey, even if you still think that's true, Bush III (hopefully only figuratively, but hey, who knows, Jeb's name keeps getting tossed about) or President Palin is only two or six years away from the Presidency, you know. You think they're going to resist this?

That's why this is so dangerous; he who pays the piper calls the tunes, and the tune calling need not be anything so crass as "Play X again"... it can be subtle nodding and gently manipulated suggestions from plants in the crowd. There is absolutely, positively no such thing as a free press sponsored by public funds directed by the government. Yes, I include all current press sponsored by public funds as well.

(Edit: If it makes you feel better, pretend I didn't say that Obama isn't more than a politician. I'm sorry I'm too cynical to believe in the myth; just pat me on the head and move on.)
Better; thanks.
Understanding Cognitive Surplus and Television for Smoother Social Apps
Hey, I never said there weren't solutions, I just wanted to point out the problem in the parent's "pick it up by the handle" approach.
While I wouldn't doubt that excessive debt is bad for any company, I think the recent collapse of advertising and broad decline in circulation are the most proximate causes of newspapers (and lots of other print media outfits) losing money.

A-and I'm not sure there's much the President can do to avoid right wing papers calling him a socialist, subsidy or not, but at least under this scheme a paper's right wing (or left wing) editorial board could then plausibly claim that their opinions reflected a considered take on the news, and that they were paid only (mostly?) by the blind subsidy rather than by some corrupting influence like a right wing (or left wing) political machine.
"So would I, and there's nothing in NCLB that stops that from happening."

I don't care what's causing it, because something is. What label you stick on it, I don't care. NCLB was merely a small course correction sitting on top of a fundamentally broken system and I reject your attempt to frame my argument as anti-NCLB. I'm talking about the whole system.
"Men's fragrances" means cologne to me, and I'm under the impression we have proper cologne in this country.

Old Spice is what you rub under your arm so your sweat doesn't stink, traditionally. I don't categorize that as a fragrance per se, even though it has a dark manly scent to it. I guess they sell "body wash" now too, which is like soap but harder to use.
Standard rent seeking behavior, people don't want our product so let's force them to buy it.
1) I know they don't need my email in order to analyze my site, so I am immediately suspicious. There is no checkbox for agreement with a privacy policy, nor is there language stating I will never be spammed, etc. Thus, I did not try the demo.

2) If they really do demand my email address to try their service, they should let me see a screenshot, at least, so I can get a sense of whether or not I want to risk giving them my email address.

I think that this errs on the side of giving too little information to make an informed choice about wanting to use their service. There are many sites that will, without requiring an email address, do some basic SEO analysis for me. Without knowing what their site does, I was not enthusiastic enough to actually try their product.
Generator tricks for systems programmers
Err... why does the existence of shitty "C apps abound" have anything to do with how performant C programs are written?
I think that's often true (one common example is stl sort versus C stdlib's qsort(), which is often a big win because of inlining a datatype-specific comparison operator), but I think there are quite a few cases where the object code bloat you get from multiplying the code by the number of types it's instantiated for (vs. using a polymorphic/generic function) kills your cache more than enough make up for any optimization win.
This is the strategy I'll be taking, although I'm 20 and have little to save as is. If there's a bout of deflation or price/asset decline, keeping money in savings as opposed to 401(k) assets could earn a much better real return. The only reason people don't normally think of this is because this normally doesn't occur.
No, this is not my work. I am working on my own clj reference which I hope will be really comprehensive.
Online Sales Tax Loophole Closing
US laws are significantly harder than a lot of European nations, the easiest of which to get citizenship are Sweden (my plan), UK, officially France (although in practice perhaps not), and Belgium. In Sweden you don't even need a job, if you have a self employed business bringing in 2k+ per month, you can just move there for 5 years and get citizenship.
The NHTSA spokeswoman said the agency wouldn't comment on its Toyota probe until a broader study is completed in conjunction with NASA, which is expected to take months.

NASA? really?

They then went on to mention 'the National Academy of Sciences', so I'll assume it's a misprint.
Really? I mean, we can agree that if there is a glitch that makes the ECU think the throttle is WFO, the log will say WFO.

The important thing is that the log also says the brakes were completely inactive.

Also, consider that the brakes will operate no matter what the ECU thinks, and in at least one case the brake pads themselves were examined, and experts concluded they had not recently been applied at high speeds under full force. The findings support eachother.
- Make it clear that an email address is optional for a report. I almost left the page right away before deciding to try it out with the email field blank.

- Merge "Things you need to work on" and "full report". Put errors/suggestions on top.

- Auto-expand the top most report field or make it more obvious that those are links.

- Add re-analyze site button. Typing the URL in over and over again is tedious.

- "You have too many meta keywords." It says I have more than 10 phrases but I only have 9. Off by 1 in the code?

- Change "domain is too new" to yellow instead of red since there's nothing that can be done about it.

- "Good! You your page has a meta description." has a broken img link in the report text. Ditto with "This page has a title tag."

- "The CSS on this page isn't valid." The only invalid part is foo-border-radius. I think that's typical.

Pretty useful. Caught that my HTML wasn't valid anymore due to some changes I made recently.

It also convinced me to add a sitemap to my site even though it's only a 1 page weather webapp.
I used it in Code Golf to select a string from a list based on the truth of some conditions.

So no, it does not have a use :)
> Perhaps by the time one achieves this freedom, their best work is behind them.

I think SpaceX is a great example to the contrary.
It's not an editorial, it's an opinion piece, by... some guy. If it were an actual editorial in the WSJ that would be shocking.
My life became measurably better when I gained the independence to set my own schedule. I have to say that financial independence (for me at least) brought a significant amount of happiness, that I am very fortunate to have.

I now work from my house, and have 3 small children. The ability to drop what I am doing to seize the moment when the kids are doing something eventful (walking for the first time, speaking there first word, playing video games with them, doing robotics with them) is an amazing freedom and blessing.

We frequently pick up and leave to go places on the spur of the moment, which also provides experiences that my kids would not otherwise have been able to do. The best part is I feel more creative than I have ever felt in my 17 years in the industry and I am far more productive and work longer hours without burnout.

I see a lot of people saying that achieving financial independence did not make them happier and I don't understand it. For me it gave me the ability to create an environment where I could have a more satisfying family life and a more creative work life. It has done wonders for my happiness.
"However, generally people do their best work when they are in adverse circumstances"

Bullshit.
It was Wikileaks' publishing of the private pager messages in New York from the day of 9/11 that turned me off to them. (http://911.wikileaks.org)

Would Wikileaks also have published all my private email from that day had they obtained it? Can't say I'd be down with that.
Hey, I know you!

Seriously though, when are you going to start a company? There's at least 4 of us (Kevin M, John H, Dave N, me) working on 3 startups in SF. Join us!
Why has no-one brought back a JuicyCampus clone?
10^4 dollars? 10^4 thousand dollars?
How's that?

Each country has millions of sources of private-sector income, but only one government. There's the occasional potential for conflict of interest when a news outlet has to report on the doings of its own parent company, but news stories about news companies are quite rare and news stories about the Government happen every day.
There's another decent collection of quotes here:

http://www.bobarcher.org/software/programming_quotes.html
> In these situations, I have had the best results by staying vigilant, and forcing myself to engage other people in small ways until I feel more comfortable

Assuming the neighborhood is safe, if you want a kick-ass warmup say hi with a smile to 50 people. The first thirty or forty or so (e.g. why am I trying) will suck but once you hit the social warmup zone people will start smiling back and responding and you will be ready to mingle.

> As for social fearfulness, it should be eked away at whenever possible.

I have friends who are natural at meeting anyone, anywhere. Unfortunately it all comes down to how committed you are to meeting someone. The difference between hovering vs. a weakish handshake vs dragging a chair across half the floor rather loudly to sit with a bunch of people who you'd like to meet.
In Soul of a New Machine, there is talk about the formation of Data General in 1969. The attorney advising the founders suggested that they set aside $1m each as part of any deal for the purpose of FU money. The usage may predate even that.
When Did Cheating [on college campuses] Become an Epidemic?
If you think the WSJ would try to cover up something for Toyota you're an idiot. This isn't some second-class blog we're talking about - it's WSJ.
And once you allow one Business Software Alliance ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_Alliance ) product into your business they claim you have agreed to be audited (which can be expensive even if you are innocent).
Not for the federal government or DoD.
My Darwinian Daughters
Ridley's views are strongly colored by political dogma, which makes his ideas on science suspect.

I've only looked at the URL so far, but George Monbiot accusing anyone else's ideas of being suspect because they're coloured by political dogma is like a kettle being called black by a galactic-core sized black hole. Painted black. At night.

Yes, I realise I'm relying on ad hominem to dismiss someone else's ad hominem review here (I finally looked at the article, he starts off by complaining about Northern Rock, I haven't read on...), but I'm gonna assume that if Monbiot's points have any validity they'll eventually appear in a review by a less far-out reviewer.
the strftime format is an open standard that's already the same in all languages.
As always on hacker news, no fun allowed.
Is FU money more satisfying when we've earned it ourselves rather than winning it (inheritance, lottery, marriage, fraud)?

I hear so, and anyway that is my only possible channel of ever having that much money. But as far as I know, people who inherit money, win the lottery, marry into money, or defraud people of money don't feel bad about having the money.
so how would you say something like ISO8601 week of the year?
Safari on ipad crashes on this page.
Is that a new kind of sarcastic review?
> Ms. Marseille said in an interview Tuesday that she was entering a parking space near a library when she heard the engine roar. "I looked down and my foot was still on the brake, so I did not have my foot on the gas pedal," she said.

Ms. Marseille, if you are so sure that is what happened, I invite you to sit in my friend's '09 Camry, and from a stop, stand on the brakes and then simultaneously floor the engine. Let's see if you go anywhere.

There is a reason cars can brake many times faster than they accelerate. The only way to start moving in the above situation involves really big engines, manual transmissions, and careful 2-foot, 3-pedal technique.

> "It makes me very angry when someone tells me, 'She probably hit the gas pedal instead,' because I think it's a sexist comment, an ageist comment," she said.

If someone has proof, it is neither sexist nor ageist. (I'm calling the surveillance video evidence that the brake lights did not go on proof. Brake lights basically can't malfunction, short of blown fuses or bulbs, yet they turned on after the impact)
But to be analogous to "ideas having sex" it'd have to be "thoughts drinking" or "ideas showering".
Yes, I think I read a story somewhere that during one of the VC rounds he was so nervous about the terms that he ended up curled up on the floor of the bathroom??

Anyway, I think he seems like an all around decent guy, and I admire anyone who has the guts to turn down a billion from Yahoo (especially at his age, and on his first business!) That shows vision and confidence, so I think he's the perfect CEO for Fb (which will likely one day have a market cap greater than Yahoo).
Yeah, I'm exaggerating. I think that the term happiness really refers to two different things. The first (call it happiness0) is how good you feel on a moment-to-moment basis. This is what I was referring to above (pg is always grinning and bouncing; I'm huddled in the corner furiously typing--again, I'm exaggerating). But happiness1 is how you feel looking back on what you've done. And when it comes to that, I feel like the happiest1 person alive. I certainly wouldn't give that up to get more happiness0.

I thought that money would allow me to increase my happiness1 by letting me choose what to work on. But it turns out all the things I've chosen to work on pay just fine, so in practice it hasn't really been a big deal. I think this ties in with something pg says above. Basically: if there's something you really want to do, just go do it -- don't wait for the money to roll in first.
"He predicts that advancement in communication will slow down in the future, to be replaced by another area, such as, for example, biotech."

Then he may understand generalized futurism, but he doesn't understand Singularity theory. They're the ones going on about brain uploading and nanotechnology, not saying we'll have nicer cell phones in the future. Predicting that the future will be the result of current trends just played out a bit larger is not a problem Singularity theory has, as the entire argument is exactly the opposite.
Already on front page: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1513000
I agree that Japan is ahead, but seriously, who gives a crap if every other person in Italy has two cell phone subscriptions? Thats retarded.
I took that as meaning, "under $100,000" ...
I should not that there is no way in hell this has a global monthly search volume of 1,600. Google Adwords lists it at 1,600 probably, which means that the actual numbers are more like 100.

You have to remember Google is inflating these numbers for their own gain - being increased PPC spend, of course.

Who in their right mind would search for "red yellow blue"?
My friend got skimmed at a gas pump in Georgia. He used his debit card with PIN. They cleaned out his entire account. He's still fighting to get the money back. Please consider not using your debit card and PIN.
http://collegeacb.com/ is big at Penn State.
There's a lot of truth to this, but the worry about investing it wrong is definitely new. There wasn't anything I really worried about that way before the money. Maybe if I had a family to support, it'd be different, and I would have constantly worried about having to take care of them. pg talks about always being worried about being broke; I don't recall ever worrying about that. If anyone ever asked me, I guess I would have said that I could always just move back in with my parents.
The Benefits of Top-Down Thinking & Why it is Critical to Entrepreneurs
I think maybe he is impressed.
What was it? There's not enough info in the linked blogpost to figure it out.
<strikeout>Journalism needs</strikeout> News agencies need government help because they fucked up. Royally. Repeatedly. With technology, with competition, with content, with Q.A.. As badly as much of the Media industry has, but they're less entrenched. They have resisted change so strongly they've built up a momentum of backpedaling that probably can't be reversed enough to even reach stagnation.

Capitalism says "die", I say "good riddance", because something will rise from the ashes. As long as people want info on (scandal|war|economic|reader's digest|the history of) X, someone will attempt to provide. Heck, they already are, we just need to lose the horrendous setup we currently have to allow the progressive ones to make enough money to continue and improve.
Yes NASA, really.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/30/autos/NHTSA_NASA_Toyota/inde...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has been criticized for lacking sufficient technological expertise, has recruited nine experts from NASA to help the agency understand how issues such as electromagnetic interference may have contributed to Toyota's acceleration issues.

Separately, the National Academy of Sciences will conduct a study of unintended acceleration and electronic vehicle controls across the entire automotive industry.
Consider Microsoft Bizspark http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

A program that grants free software licenses for startups. Fairly easy to join.
I love it how TGJ gets downvoted for no apparent reason, other then respectfully stating his opinion on using foul words for every day language
"Unfortunately, even with great traffic and strong user loyalty, a business can’t survive and grow without a steady stream of revenue to support it. In these historically difficult economic times, online ad revenue has plummeted and venture capital funding has dissolved. JuicyCampus’ exponential growth outpaced our ability to muster the resources needed to survive this economic downturn, and as a result, we are closing down the site as of Feb. 5, 2009."

Sounds like they're in a Reddit-like dilemma...

Plus, they received a lot of flack for the stuff they had on there, so it's a headache waiting to happen
Jewel goes undercover at karaoke bar for Web video
No, I don't believe that's correct. Thou is intimate, you is formal.
Because it's evil.

Initially when I heard of it, I thought it was a great idea. I thought it'd turn out like friends gossipping about friends. But friends gossipping isn't google-able. It also isn't that anonymous. When you gossip in person, or with your identity on the line(versus anonymous gossipping), it significantly restricts the damage potential.

Why would you want to create a tool that is primarily used to hurt random college students? Not a rhetorical question, I'd really like to know the views on the other side.

To me, it makes no sense from any of the key angles(doing something I can be proud of; making money).
Doesn't the US Postal Service get a ton of subsidies? I rather appreciate them, and the only reason they may be becoming less relevant is not through a fault of their own.
That's a pretty thin pretext and it only covers a fraction of the behavior I'm referencing.
So... abuse the creative types until they succeed, then drop them like a ton of bricks?
I've made something like that but specific to our school. It was sort of an automated "Gossip Girl" system that used Twilio to send texts of various tips. It relied on secrecy though, which was impossible to preserve in the end.
Here at Wesleyan, too, where the kid that runs it, Peter Frank, attends. When Juicycampus shut down he paid them to redirect their traffic to collegeacb, but it seems the deal is off now.

However, running this sort of of site is really asking for trouble. Peter gets a lot of flak for providing this outlet for anonymous spittle between students, with some people even threatening lawsuits (for example, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1942971,00....).
Also, she mentions people saying "She probably hit the gas pedal instead", not "She probably hit the gas pedal instead because she is in a certain age range and female". People shouldn't confuse a statement about a person with a statement about a group, data supported or not.
Just curious, how can it be non-obvious how to stop the engine? Why couldn't the drivers simply turn back the key? Is there some safety feature I'm not aware of?

In my car there's nothing preventing you from completely removing the key while the car is in drive (this actually screwed me once when I parked on a hill and forgot to shift to park). Is this unusual?
Apparently, an uncensored gossip site for college campuses.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Juicy_Campus

Though I was in college throughout most of the existence of Juicy Campus, I never heard of it, though it's possible my school wasn't in their list, or it just didn't gain traction there.
C++ also makes it perfectly possible to build this kind of mess. I know because I've worked on the exact same situation you describe, except in that case the TreeMaps of pointers were hand-rolled, "tested in production", and yet another problem to maintain.(^)

Java might make it easier, and granted the extra object allocations around Longs and Integers will make it scale poorly more rapidly, but bad (or compromised) design and poor use of data structures is always going to lead to problems of some kind or another.

(^) Yes, I know about STL et al. Original programmer clearly did not.
I'm new to hackernews and I thought maybe you people were as respectful as your mission statement suggests. This is Ad-hominem.
it's been unbanned, post away.
Sounds like a no. But I assume the strategy is to slowly move everything across from "regular" to "plus".

Still, at a significant fraction of the cost of a Netflix subscription, which really does give value for money, I can't see myself ever paying it.
What I Want Out Of A Web Framework
The BBC does a better job at journalism than any US broadcaster or cable network channel. It's also completely funded by taxes.
Yes, but we were talking about writing code, not communication.
It's amazing how much your demeanor matters. You can't just go through the motions when it comes to socializing--if your heart isn't in it, it comes through in every single microgesture, and people see through your perfunctory patterns instantly. They won't even know they're doing it; they just won't respond positively to you, and it'll be a lost cause.
If you're here on HN to learn new things, you should read this article from ZeroHedge, about the WSJ and the way it panders to power and money.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/new-york-feds-editorial-inf...