skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sooo.. that's basically a third-hand report (since Sarah presumably wasn't at the meeting). Techcrunch really sucks lately.
How many of you could have came up with the tortoise and hare solution on your own without seeing this problem previously?

Its an elegant solution, but extremely non obvious.

I'm kind of bitter about this question cause Microsoft asked me that question when I interviewed... and I only came up with the naive solution :) and then the interviewer smugly explained the tortoise and hare one haha
Reminds me of the "CSS rounded corner" scripts that replace 1 simple image with 721 lines of CSS.

Some people actually need to make a living building websites ...I'll pass.
Can you guess what 'Long Pork' is?
No, Hacker News is not for that kind of hacker.

We are the original hackers.
I don't belive that products should necessarily be held to any standard. Consumers should be informed about the safety of their product (known unsafe, unknown, certified safe, etc) and be allowed to make their own decisions.

Frankly, I think that I'm better at evaluating how much risk is acceptable to me than some government bureaucrat in Washington.

If a contractor offers to sell me a 800 square foot house, and I agree to buy it (knowing full well that it hasn't been certified and is smaller than legally required), how is that anyone's business but my own? I should be allowed to make my own decisions and live with the consequences of my own actions.
This was written in 1978, although I find it a bit bizarre it would be interesting to see where this girl is now since she would be about 30 years older.

[edited to fix math mistake]
Milwaukee's Best? Really?

Buy some real beer - it isn't that much more expensive ;-)
I admit it, I just couldn't resist. The parent was a better bait, however, far more subtle. I'm not very good at this.

Still, as far as I know, I didn't actually lie, I just wrote the truth like a jackass. How do you classify that?
Apparently, you aren't the first to wonder:
http://www.grannymillerblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/where-are-y...

But I think your arithmetic is a bit off. It says she was 19 in 1978, so that would make her closer to 50 (49).
Just a joke.

Would you rather drink Milwaukee's Best or home distilled moonshine?

<fumbles for Braille keyboard after a bad batch>
Fault/Blame/Responsibility does not neatly add up to 100%.

Therefore, even if we can find ways the Agnostic could have documented this requirement in the code, or if we installed a build server that would have rejected the rewrites for breaking unit tests, this does not absolve the others of responsibility for:

1. Making changes without understanding the requirements. They weren't documented as comments, fair enough. But did those fictional characters examine the entire system? Did they review which code produced this function's input and which consumed its output? Did they ask the Agnostic why his code didn't handle strings of fewer than three characters?

One day the Agnostic will be gone, and one day soem hapless programmer will have to do the detective work to figure these things out. And that's a great reason to document things... to save someone the detective work. But a lack of documentation is not an excuse to skip the detective work.

2. Nowhere in the story was there a bug report filed, nor an individual "tasked" (I hate verbifying) with a rewrite. Nor did the story describe someone updating the unit tests to include the "missing cases."

3. Many folks have identified the need for these fictional characters to communicate. Note that in the story, even after the problem is identified, all four characters carry on behaving exactly the same way. The Agnostic at least tries to talk to the others, then gives up and just codes. None of them step back and ask the kind of questions you are asking here. None of them step back and figure out that there is more at stake than what to do with two-character zip codes.

So... what I am saying is that I agree with you, and on top of my agreement I am suggesting that even if we are finding ways the fictional Agnostic could have been a better developer, we shouldn't stop right there. We shouldn't let the others off the hook.
Home Distilled Moonshine for the win!
Woz is known to have fooled around with RF jammers. He was quite a prankster. Most of the hackers I tell the story to have either already heard it -- and smile approvingly, or find it terribly amusing.

There's more overlap than many care to admit.
Technically, the earliest modern hackers were radio enthusiasts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28computing%29#History).

So, that kind of hacking is far closer to the 'original hackers' than software hacking.
Dafont.com - fonts for free (for a change)
Mindset Innovation: The story of Tata Nano, the cheapest car ($2500) in the world
The 900 square foot restriction seemed pretty odd, but I have a feeling it is designed to prevent trailer parks from moving in. If you have land in the country, that is the standard nightmare scenario.
> If a contractor offers to sell me a 800 square foot house, and I agree to buy it (knowing full well that it hasn't been certified and is smaller than legally required)

Because knowing 'full well' implies you knew what questions to ask. And requiring everyone to know all the questions they need to ask in every transaction is not only unreasonable but wasteful.

How many things need to be "fully" disclosed so that I can make an informed decision when buying milk? The whole purpose of regulation is to have a group of people who are asking those questions for us.
If I buy a plot of land free and clear, shouldn't it be my right to put a trailer on it?
The real question, in my mind, is: how well does mod_rails work? I don't know of anyone using it.
I have built a few simple websites from scratch before and taken a couple programming classes

imo that's the perfect level of tech knowledge for a non-technical founder
I think that private certification agencies (think consumer reports on steroids) could take the place of regulations.

I could either buy a gallon of milk that is certified by an agency I trust for a little more, or pay less (and ask my own questions) for an uncertified gallon.

And if a manufacturer chose not to disclose all relevant information, then I can choose not buy their product (and certification agencies will not certify it)

Not to mention that it isn't in any firm's economic interest to provide a patently unsafe product.
Too many choices, too much content
Ask YC: How the heck does this site work?
There was discussion about a FAQ the other day, but it didn't seem to discuss how this site actually works. It would be great if there was a "FAQ" link somewhere that explained the basics:

How does the ranking system work?

What does it mean that I have x "karma" and y "saved" and how does that apply to posts etc?

How do you gain or lose karma?

What do the other things in the profile mean? (showdead, noprocrast, maxvisit, minaway)

How do you access older posts? There is a lot of great information here, which just seems to get lost in the ether.

Any other confusion over this site? I hope it isn't just me, as I like to think I'm not the dullest knife in the drawer.

Thank you kindly.
HBO Television Shows Move to iTunes | Tech Jaws
I've always just been a slow eater. In effect, it's the same thing. I feel full "sooner" since the food has time to reach my stomach and most of the time, I don't even finish out the entire meal.
Dividing equity
A couple friends and I have just started to move past the ideas stage of our start-up and are getting to the point where we are trying to allocate ownership in the company. At this point in time, valuing our company seems quite arbitrary, but this is the ownership structure we have discussed:
Founder 1: 20%
Founder 2: 20%
Founder 3: 20%
Investor 1: $5000 for 2.5%
Investor 2: $10,000 for 5%
Remaining 32.5% : Options pool
This gives our start-up an initial valuation of $200,000. Is this number too high, too low, or about right?
I think that for the most part the FAQ here is "pay lots of attention, contribute where/how you can, and figure it out as you go".

The ranking system has been discussed in the past, and I believe that the source code for the site is "out there" somewhere, it might be easier to find on the Arc news/discussion site.

Play with your profile settings and see what happens.

Submit stories and post comments, and you'll learn about karma in real time.

I don't mean to sound rude, but most of the audience here gathers to share and learn knowledge. The particulars of how the site works are somewhat secondary to the primary knowledge transfer function. I know that as a hacker of sorts, you probably want to know what all the knobs and sliders do. But then again, as a hacker of sorts, you should equally revel in solving the puzzle on your own.

Enjoy!
How Spoke built an email database of more than 40 million people
People would buy "known unsafe" products. They would presumably be cheaper, and some people would risk it. When the product is something like beef, very bad things would happen, and it would have potential to impact the rest of the community.
Ask YC: Startup/hacker points of interest in London?
I'm planning a vacation-ish trip to London soon, and was wondering if anyone could suggest startup-related (or otherwise interesting) things to see while I'm there.
Upgrade yourself from the world of coding
AT&T wireless boss: No comment on 3G iPhone timing, no timeline for Google Android
Einstein's real opinion of religion
the problem is that no milk will be uncertified. There will be certain certifiers that will certify anything, and it will be extremely difficult for a buyer to tell the difference.

Look at something like eggs. People pay more for eggs because they are "free range", but free range just means that they have access to the range, not that they are capable of using that access.

And it is in firms interest to provide a patently unsafe product as long as not enough people are lost due to the unsafe product to counteract the savings.

without regulation it would be much harder to determine the cause of the problem.

If I am exposed to e-coli due to lettuce or spinach (each certified by a different agency), I won't know. I'll assume it was from my overeasy eggs or rare beef, or because the cook doesn't wash his hands. the farmer could go on selling tainted vegetables for quite a long time before the cause is found.
This page can answer a couple of your questions:
http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html
The option pool is on the large side. The valuation is low unless the investors are supplying more than money.
This is great advice, but I've never been able to do anything like this while working.

I know, I know, you're supposed to get away from your terminal and eat in the other room. But I never do.

I either a. eat a meal while surfing or b. munch on something while coding. It's the munching while coding that I've never been able to do "mindfully".

The best coding munchies are almost always the worst things to eat, like microwave popcorn, chips, cookies, and soda. When you're 4 levels deep into a nested routine, who notices that the munchies are gone? I suppose I could eat fresh fruit or something like that, but honestly, has anyone ever gotten into the "coding zone" eating grapes?
Are you saying the source code is in the public domain?

Anyone know where it resides?
>Frankly, I think that I'm better at evaluating how much risk is acceptable to me than some government bureaucrat in Washington.

Then you would love living in China. I guess going to a restaurant or grocery store where much of the food contains various poisons wouldn't bother you, since you're able to tell the difference.
I know. It still bugs me that the modern interpretation of "hacking" is "doing something illegal".
Blog posting doesn't add much to the original story which is here: http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=fb1b93e6-3...;
European on-demand accounting vendors breaking the dam?
I have two kids, one who is definitely a fast eater, and the other who eats at a glacial pace. It's not hard to figure out who has the potential for weight problems. At least he's into outdoor activities ... and I've limited TV, and put off getting a Wii.

But I have to say, for Ms. Glacial, I do have to push her sometimes to eat faster, especially in the morning. I feel terrible about it, but the bus and school can't wait for her 45-minute breakfasts ... unless I start making everyone get up 30 minutes earlier.
You bring up an interesting point... something that I've been looking at at our site as well: how much do these decorations contribute to the overall experience of the website?

I don't think there's a clear answer to this but several issues come to mind. If you're running a sales site that has few products, I think it's advantageous to have a really attractive home page that's image heavy. However, if you're running a site that has a lot of textual information, I think all these ornaments are too distracting. I find it extremely distracting when I'm reading something that's set against a background of which every pixel is shaded. I think you should stick to CSS effects and pay close attention to typography and worry less about shading every pixel on the page. One thing that's exempt is the header. You can go crazy at the top of the page but I'd leave the rest of the page as minimal as possible.
"Note: although I came to the conclusion in this article that Lisp beats Java hands-down as a language, more research has got me thinking that Java beats Lisp hands-down as a platform..."

These days (article is from 2004) we have the luxury of being able to use expressive languages within a large library ecosystem by using implementations of them in the giant platforms that have been built by Sun and Microsoft. Personally, I'm using Clojure, a Lisp dialect on the JVM, for all my explorative programming. Yegge himself seems to be working with Rhino (JavaScript on the JVM) these days.
This (very un-hacker like) link would be more at home on del.icio.us/popular

Notice that most of the site's mentioned hardly have any "content/copy" on the home page. A very un-SEO friendly tactic.

Pretty though.
I looked up Brazil's per capita income and it's just under $5k a year. The jobs mentioned pay $50k a year. I posted that in a comment at the blog, it has not exited moderation yet :-(
Nope. Unit Tests are specs that automatically verify themselves.
I was going to say: Relaxing the food regulations isn't some kind of brilliant new idea. It's been tried before, and in some countries it's still being tried. If the Chinese cat food stories from last year aren't scary enough for you, try reading Sinclair's The Jungle... or the slaughterhouse chapter of Fast Food Nation.
The best way to 'learn' a site is simply to lurk ... and lurk .. and lurk some more. Once you understand the community you can speak up and start to contribute.
And people will choose to buy products verified by certifiers they trust. At least then you have a choice.

Consumer Reports has a far better record than the FDA.

Of course, as you state, there would be disreputable certifying agencies too but I could avoid them and only use long-running agencies with a good reputation.
If we define the term "hacking" more broadly even Wikipedia's history is wrong/limited. Hacking to me has always been the process of dissecting something and figuring out how it works. I would imagine there were lots of hackers even before radio came around.
I say all of the following at risk of being wrong. Mentally prefix each sentence with "I'm not sure but".

The ranking system puts together the number of points a story receives and the recency.

Your karma is the total score of your submissions and comments. You get points when other users vote up your stuff, and lose them when they vote you down.

'Saved links' is the collection of stories you've voted up and you've submitted.

noprocrast enables maxvisit and minaway. These three parameters are anti-addiction self-protection: maxvisit limits the length of time you can use the site, minaway specifies how long you have to go away before resuming using it.

Gabriel Weinberg put together an awesome "best-of" FAQ: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

Hope this helps.
I literally 'inhale' Zebra Cakes much to my wife's dismay.

I'm skinny as a rail though (I worry more about sugar intake than weight) so feel free to hate me.
I think fast loading supersedes any decoration of this sort; however if you can compress your images and use CSS to make a page look good why not..
Never heard "Ask your parents" in my life. I guess it's only in American culture.
I found that this site was programmed in http://arclanguage.org/ and that the source code was included in one of the builds at some point.
Einstein's opinions on religion are much more complex and often more contradictory than the article suggests. Some interesting information I found here: http://einsteinandreligion.com/
5 Quick Tips on Pitching Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists
I need to learn this; so when I have kids it can be taught from early on although in public school its constantly under attack with 30 min lunches (25 of those being in line).
"if it's inborn it should be universal"

Yeah -- just like lactose tolerance. Right.

This is genetic, and it's one of those things that differs by genetic ancestry. As Sir Richard Burton once said (paraphrasing here), polygamy versus monogamy is pretty much an affair of climate (and what climate your ancestors contended with).
> Consumer Reports has a far better record than the FDA.

Maybe that's because Consumer Reports has the benefit of leveraging all the work already done by the FDA. Let me be clear, though, you may be right that privatizing such things could work. It's just that your evidence isn't necessarily compelling.
I think the problem is that people use 'design' as too broad a term.

In my mind 'Good Design' is more of a technical comment that talks about whether or not the piece follows the rules of design. If it follows the rules then it's good design.

Good Design is not necessarily beautiful or striking. A lot of designers (myself included) can get caught up in the mind set of 'beautiful' = 'Good Design' which is not the case. Most sites should avoid looking ugly but do not need to look beautiful. Also beautiful is often also associated with intricate. Making an intricate design is a different skill set then creating a sparse design. This keep a lot of beautiful sparse sites off these 'beautiful' lists.

Good Design is not necessarily usable. I think usability is most important for a website. A usable website focuses on grouping information in intuitive ways so that users can find the information when they need it. Information is not just text but buttons and actions as well. A usable website does not need to be beautiful or have good design.
I was hoping this would be one succinct article on the matter instead of a 20+ part journey over the better part of a year. Talk about wishful thinking on my part.
I'm familiar with Salatin's writing (and practices), and I think his argument would be that if you have face-to-face transactions with the producer (Salatin won't ship his meat, for example--you must come to the farm to pick it up), you don't need a certifier because you are holding the producer accountable, and you can require that his processes are transparent.

Certainly you can argue that someone should do this for you, but Salatin is trying to shift the paradigm of how we produce and consume food.

EDIT: Corrected the mis-spelling. Duh.
Using Amazon S3 with Django
Sure, but you do realize that "The Jungle" was a deliberate load of muckraking bull? The whole book was about poor working conditions in American factories and to drive the point home, Sinclair described a guy falling into the lard vats and getting eaten. There was no truth to the health claims but the concept of eating people freaked out European importers so much that the US was forced to create FDA (Or its predecessor, I don't remember precisely.) The first reports found no evidence of Sinclair's claims.

The ironic thing is that Sinclair was hoping to spark a socialist revolution and improve the lives of the slaughterhouse workers. What happened was that the inspection agencies added to cost to the production process and actually lowered the standard of living for the workers.
Yes and no.

I lived out in the country for a while and we had a few trailers near us. That's not a problem, and in appalachia, it's sometimes all the better people can do. The problem is trailer parks, which are sometimes okay, but sometimes are just rural ghettos, with crime and crack and meth and general bad behavior pouring out.

You have a few strategies to "keep up the neighborhood". The upper class strategy is to price out the poor people. The middle class strategy is zoning, which amounts to discrimination of various kinds. The results are pretty much the same. The fact the rich people get accidentally what middle class people have to get by fiat causes political confusion.
My brother used to live on Zebra Cakes and Mountain Dew, and he was always super thin. Alas, as he approaches thirty, the Zebra Cakes are starting to show. :)
Can anyone explain what's meant by "o" and "u" word? Googled, but found no explanation.
That is certainly a way to learn. It may even be the only way supported by this site and its largely a-social community. But I doubt very much it's the best way.
Not as much as a messy divorce or breakup between people who don't work at love :)
Yes. It's hard to imagine that Einstein would approve of having his words taken from a single, private letter, shorn of their context, and waved around as "proof" of his "real views".
This has always been a topic of interest to me. The "System" (as much as/if there is one) is designed to facilitate a certain objective. In our case, economic growth and individual wealth. For brevity's sake, I'll skip the digression about clustering, distributing and distributing unevenly.

So, if that systemic objective does not make your life meaningful, what do you do? The way of the world is towards this objective because it's the best progress we've made so far towards meeting most people's basic human needs. Escaping to a different country with human rights and a different objective is not very feasible.

Changing the system isn't a good option because for most people the system is fine. There are also tons of people for whom it's not fine, but they don't notice and it's not necessarily our business to try to wake them up unless they ask.

So I think the best option is, like the author is suggesting, to opt out as best you can. Find what makes you happy and base your life around that, while minimizing your conflict with the governing body (e.g. they pay property taxes, rather than bury a bus full of guns and plan to resist--that would be un-lazy and make them miserable).

Had I not gotten married (which I don't regret, btw), I would have continued to work to fuel my desire to buy up a big plot of land that I don't have to mow and building a minimal but fully livable tree house. Since I still find that interesting, I'll keep designing and hacking and do it when the kids are off to college and my wife's making enough money to pay for her shoe fetish. Works for me.
Do we really need Controller and View tests?
The thought of living off rabbits, when beans cost 50 cents a pound and are easy to grow is just irrational. I'll stick to my serious survivalist tracts, thanks.
Ten Ways to Change the World Through Social Media