skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That is just semantics, it sounds like he means design of the implementation.

However, I suppose it does depend on whether the design was flawed and allowed for data corruption or if it was strictly the result of a bug.
1. http://presentationzen.blogs.com/

2. Practice, practice, practice.
It's traditional on the Internet to post your April Fools as soon as it turns April 1 on the International Date Line, which is at 8:00 AM EDT on Marchc 31. So today's really the day when they all come out. They're usually gone by noon tomorrow.
Fascinating diagram of relationships between basic mathematical structures
I saw that title and came to the same conclusion without even reading. Skipped to the bottom and you're right, it's pretty obvious there.
Dammit. I was really hoping to have ONE legitimate news story to follow tomorrow.
To be fair though, the execution in the category Once won for was superb. Note that they did not win for, say, cinematography.
I'd be happy with v0.1 ... txt xxxid where id a parking lot id and it returns how many spots are empty. Or even just if the lot is full (all I really care about).
Work through the Django tutorial and then take a look at Beautiful Soup http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/
Posted by a man named Christian.
Technorati running x-rated advertisement
As I mentioned below, I have the same problem: all my karma and my comment history disappeared.
Looks very nice. Few thoughts:
1. Why does it ask for my first and last name when signing up? I expected that field to want a screenname, given the pretty standard signup box requiring sn, email, password, password again you find everywhere.
2. Do you have to use a java uploader for pics? I'd rather just upload one at a time manually than have to have java on my PC. Can that at least be an alternative?
If that were the reason, couldn't you simply publish a web form where we can enter in all those variables and get an idea of the price? I suspect that you would already be using such a tool internally.
As a web site owner, I've always seen openid as a nice thing to have. It was #40 on my list. Then clickpass showed up and it moved to #3. Last week I implemented it. I integrate with disqus. Log in to either disqus or ourdoings via clickpass and logging into the other site is just 1 click. It's very slick. If people do adopt clickpass they'll be reminded that I'm one of "your sites" and come back.
Well, you first have to be a boy to then grow into a man then (makes sense). Because to know what techniques fit the job, you have to know the available techniques, and to know them you have to learn them, and to learn them you either have to know or trust that they are or might be useful.

You can't really know how useful they are before you know how they work, but you won't be bothered to learn how they work if you don't know how useful they are. It's a bootstrapping problem the solution of which is to accept that there's a percentage of new things you learn that will turn out not to be useful to you. So, there's a lot of value in using unfamiliar techniques just for the sake of it.
The Facebook tool which turns your mobile into a snoop (Loopt competitor?)
Twitter Acquisition Announcement
"We’ll be filing the lawsuit tomorrow" isn't the punchline.

"I can say without hubris that I am a very important person" is. ;)
Smartphones will soon turn computing on its head
Wow, this year could turn out to be a lame April 1st.

Try something creative, like announce an ultra-secure social media blogging startup, in which the whole site is write-only to prevent spouses, co-workers, or employers from seeing your funky 3AM passed out drunk with your head in the toilet pics.
TechCrunch acquires Tiger Beat, will rename it CrunchKids
Why, oh WHY, do those #?@! nutheads use vi?
This is getting really old, really quick.
I hope no one minds if I kill this now that the problem seems to be fixed...
I can't help but think some of this reaction to your essay is going over your head. Sort of similarly to how the essay itself went over some other people's heads.

You're taking inputs and synthesizing them in the context of intellectual, emotional, biological contexts all in parallel. You're artfully communicating these intuitions to other people using all of those contexts. The ideas and messages are very complex and subtle because they involve life and human nature. It is not posible to reduce these intuitions down to a purely rational argument.

This "output" then is taken as input by other people (each hugely rich and complex). They process it. Some approximation of your original intuitions form in their minds. Some of these people will "get it". Others will not.

Trying to respond to the people who didn't understand what you meant using purely intellectual tools will not necessarily yield results. Because it's highly likely that nonintellectual aspects of what you're saying and how you're saying it are the causes of interference that are preventing the concepts from getting across.

In that sense what you wrote is not perfect. But I don't think it can be perfect. You need to choose one set of tradeoffs over another. You're choosing to be bold and decisive rather than measured and cautious.

There are plenty of deeply important true statements that can't be proven true. How much time and effort you want to put into trying to convince every last person of your ideas is your own business. There are a lot of people who do understand and appreciate what you're thinking.
(A) Presentation Zen both the book (that came out recently) and the blog: http://www.presentationzen.com/ and
Beyond Bullet Points, http://beyondbulletpoints.com/ the book and online seminars.

Yes, both of them are primarily focused on "static" presentations, however the focus on the telling a good story through your demonstration is the point. In presenting Krugle at DEMO06 (and winning a DEMOGod award, woohoo!), the biggest failing we saw in many of the other presentations was the fact that the "story" was a confusing, convoluted mess.

(B) Spend a lot more time building and practicing your presentations/demonstrations than you think. Video yourself is great if you can do it but just standing up and actually running through the entire presentation/demo repeatedly goes a long ways.

(C) For online/web demos, I always build a completely usable, static presentation (in Keynote/PowerPoint) using lots of e.g., diagrams and screenshots so that the presentation still works for the audience even if the network/server is down/slow.

(D) Have a personality -- and bend it towards your audience. I.e., a presentation needs to be engaging/interesting to the audience. I.e., think at least as much about entertaining (in the best possible way) as you do about being e.g., informative.

(E) Have fun!

Hope this helps,
John
The blatant sexism is paragraph one is vaguely annoying.
Technology driving motorists to distraction
RESTful Services with Erlang and Yaws
how come no one uses this?

thanks for the info.
I notice random slowness everyday with Comcast...
Awesome! I've been using vi for about 14 years now and am still learning new shortcuts and ways to harness the power of vi.

I love vi for its combined power and simplicity. It is installed by default on almost every terminal I've ever walked up to, all flavors of nix, BSD, HP-UX, etc. seem to come happily installed with vi ready to go.
Hey, Sarbanes and Oxley, You Killed Our IPO Market--Are You Happy?
I have a, perhaps strange, opinion that these topics are not that difficult, just difficult to explain and usually explained poorly.

Once you've gained knowledge, it takes a certain type of empathy to explain it effectively. I think this skill occurs less commonly in left dominant math/engineering oriented brains. This is why some programming books read like poorly translated stereo instructions and developer positions requiring customer-service skills tend to pay very well.

This doesn't negate the intelligence or persistence needed to pick these programming skills up in any way--they remain difficult for these reasons.
I can't tell if this is a joke or not, given it's by April Fools and all. And when I looked on Google Au, it wasn't there.
we use your f+lname as your identity when you post things and invite other people to the site. the point about the confusion over the sn field is valid, we might want to reformat that screen (or ideally have a live demo that eases into a real membership - like weebly).

we use the same java/activex image uploader that facebook uses (hoping people would be familiar w/ it). however, there should be an option "use the simple uploader" that will take u to a standard file-input setup. let me know if this isnt showing up.
Bug 439858: swf mozilla plugin - no youtube for Linus Torvalds' wife
for april fools, Im going to work at 8am tomorrow (on time)
The Baton Passes to Asia
Microsoft's new weapon against open source: stupidity
haha..I lolz
A new wave of Silicon Valley companies is bringing live socializing online
Oh, and I'd add cryptography because it's difficult enough that you probably shouldn't write your own unless you've been formally trained and have put some time in as a practitioner.
Unix Timeline
Thanks for the reference, I added it to my list of books to read.
Simplebucket closes $1.23M Series A funding
Triple soy latte was a great touch... hahaha
I edit posts extensively before submitting, so I frequently see "Unknown or expired link."

This error is a minor tax on carefully worded, carefully considered posts. I've lost posts following this error due to back button/refresh mishaps. I could post, then edit, but then people are voting and replying to content that is changing.
I know these things are cool. But I can't help but crack up to see this article.

Really? Instant communication over Internet? Chat! IM?

I want more focus on the innovations in Google Docs etc.

Multi user interfaces stretch my perception of what to use my computer for. Multi user apps have yet to really break into the mainstream outside of games and IM. Should be interesting to see the explosion as "comet" is starting to become easier to do than not.

Just wait till it in something trendy like rails :)
Distributed earthquake detection... using your macbook
3. But only if each is wearing a top hat and wielding a cane.
Someone should tell them that their "VI Gang Sign" is a pretty close analogue of the Shocker. (Not that that couldn't be a convincing argument to learn vi...)
There's a way to fix this, but it isn't widely known yet. Using browser history sniffing[1] you can determine which popular IDP the user uses (let's say AOL) and then you can customize your login box to say "log in using your AOL screen name". So you're doing OpenID, but the user doesn't have to know what OpenID is. This is a little cumbersome to implement; maybe somebody will write a JS library to do it.

[1] which will probably be removed from browsers at some point, but let's exploit it while it lasts
Seven Dirty IT Jobs and the Skills Needed to Do Them
Ask YC:  I'm about to give up on computing altogether and pursue a career as a pharmacist.  Mistake?
I've basically had it with failure after failure. In fact, I'm sick of computers altogether.

I'm planning to study pharmacy at the University of Toronto:

http://www.pharmacy.utoronto.ca

Do you think I am making a mistake?
Joshua Bloch's presenting is as good as his writing. This is a really well articulated, practical presentation.
Google Finally Launches Offline Access for Docs
You got the link wrong - this is probably what you want: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/03/quake_...

;-)

Really cool idea btw.
Ignore all news everywhere starting.... now.

This is just stupid. Twitter is worth at least 60 million!
Being a dedicated emacs user, I could only shake my head and sigh as I read this.
Your "(Incendentally, a moment's...)" comment makes me sad. Obviously Roth spent well over a moment reading and contemplating your essay. The fact that you disregard his thoughts so flippantly, along with those of other intelligent people, makes me wonder whose opinions you would respect.

He clearly states he thought your central point was: "It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck," because "humans weren't meant to work in such large groups."

How is this so different than your stated thesis that: "the central point is that in an organization organized as a tree structure, structural forces tend to give each person freedom in inverse proportion to the size of the whole tree. That we work better in groups of 10 than 100 I feel is obvious enough not to need justification?"

His refutation relies on examples of humans partaking in behavior that they were not originally "evolved" to do. It is a direct response to your reliance on evolution. If you thought the whole point of your essay was "obvious enough not to need justification," then why did you write a whole essay on the subject?

To address your central point, I would cite the space program. Humans were obviously not evolved to be space-faring creatures, and yet hundreds (thousands?) of human intellects in concert (in a tree-structured organization) managed to land a man on the moon. The idea of synergy, where many humans in an organizational structure can accomplish more than any single human's evolved capabilities, has long been recognized (http://www.complexsystems.org/magic.html). Many people that work in such organizations draw personal satisfaction from the fact that they are furthering what they consider a greater good, rather than their own personal desires. Where a start-up glorifies individuals, organizations tend to glorify the whole. The fact that this is not satisfying to some does not mean it is not satisfying to others, and certainly does not imply that “You were not meant to have a boss.”
"Why provide rating dates and movie names?"

Other datasets provide it. Cinematch doesn’t currently use this data. Use it if you want.

As it happens we provided years of release for all but a few movies in the dataset; those seven movies have NULL as the "year" of release. Sorry about that.

"Why not provide other data about the movies, like genres, directors, or actors?"

We know others do. Again, Cinematch doesn’t currently use any of this data. Use it if you want.

http://www.netflixprize.com/faq
I'm working on #2 and #3.
security settings from the browsers prevent it. how, technologically speaking, does your browser have access to the whole screen's framebuffer?

You have to use java or flash or some kind of plugin which can access the windowserver.
all that it takes to get a concept is time and effort and nothing more. do enough examples and exercises related to a concept and you get a pretty good model in your head of what the concept is actually about.
There's nothing wrong with starting over in pharmacy if you really believe that's where your interests lie, but I would encourage you to make sure. We can all get temporarily distraught due to failures, bad experiences, unpleasant people to deal with, etc., etc.

For the past few weeks I too have been feeling distraught with my life in computing, but a few weeks is hardly enough to toss out the past 16 years of working and studying to be a software engineer. Maybe someday I will change careers, but it ought not be a quick decision.
"... I've basically had it with failure after failure. In fact, I'm sick of computers altogether ..."

You lack determination.

It might also be your approach. Woz advises youngsters using computers to get some form of immediate success to avoid the negative feedback loop you describe. So carefully look back at what you are doing and see if you can choose projects, problems that have a quicker positive pay-off.

Choosing to do pharmacy does not necessarily mean you will avoid computers.
We're just outside Pitt, so if you move back we might have enough for a Pitt Meetup
Man, I agree with the notion of power, but I simply cannot see how anyone could call it simple. The array of keystrokes and their combined meanings is not anywhere near simple, in my opinion.

That said, I would really like to sit down and learn vi sometime.
Foul play there. Linking to the video would've been cool, but the betcha-can't-close-this-window site, no good.
In my case, we're a startup with finite time. Adding OpenID support (AFAICT) would take more than 3 lines of code, and very few (if any) of our target audience has an OpenID. Therefore, today, I think it's not a good use of our time.

If/when this equation changes (i.e., everybody has an OpenID, or it's trivial to support), I'd be happy to add it.
Using a hash property for security and caching
Before this gets too much out of hand, it's a joke! Slightly early for April fools...

Anyway, it is true that I am sick of failure after failure. But I have no other career choice given my personality: I have to be in control of my own destiny and have been in love with computers for a quarter of a century.
Ask YC: (summer) Housing in/near San Francisco
I'm going to be interning at a startup in San Francisco this summer and currently searching for temporary housing from mid-May to mid-August. I was wondering if anyone had a room for rent, or if there were any other interns looking for roommates. My contact info is in my profile. Suggestions for places to live are also welcome; I've had a friend suggest living outside of the city (i.e. Berkeley) and commute to San Francisco via BART. This is all a very unfamiliar process for me, so any guidance is greatly appreciated.

note: I realize this isn't craigslist, but I figured it'd be worth a shot to possibly find someone like-minded to live with this summer.
To re-emphasize/clarify previous statements, OpenID doesn't require visitors to know about OpenID. A website can offer a registration/login process that requires nothing more than the visitor's AIM screen name, or livejournal account. (See example http://nshrine.com/u/registerhere.html )

This not only eases the yet-another-name-and-password problem, but it also allows services complimentary to existing services to ease information sharing. For instance, OpenSocial functionality will be a breeze if accounts are already using an OpenSocial provider's OpenID.
You got me. :)
As a website owner, OpenID nets your site security. Most people reuse the same small set of usernames and passwords. A not-so-small number of sites store cleartext passwords; they can even mail it back to you. Regardless how well you execute security, a breach at any of these sites compromises security across many user accounts across many sites.

Several weeks ago a Web 2.0 company launched a Gmail backup app that asked for addresses and passwords, which at least 1777 unwitting folks provided. In addition to backing up Gmail as expected, the app also socked away the address and password combo. When the scheme was exposed, the company said debugging code inadvertently made it to production. http://codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001072.html

I can see scenarios where the government may be the least of our worries. Much more likely are significant others' jealous exes who are also system administrators, and other real or potential enemies. The sooner we move away from passwords and other shared-secret systems, the safer we'll be.
What is this a Facebook discussion forum?
First Eric S. Raymond disses Fedora, now Linus gets in on the act.
Me too. Seems a perfectly valid question. Perhaps if I knew you personally it wouldn't seem perfectly valid. :-)
How will you make money?
hjkl motion is retarded on anything but a qwerty layout :/
The Story of Stuff
One of the javascript dialog rickroll sites is hard coded into news.arc as a site that autokills a users account.
The top 10 security land mines
My understanding of IPOs is that you do an IPO if you want to raise money to grow your company to the next level, could this just be because larger companies are now simply more aggressive about purchasing small promising companies?
about the longest 'combos' you make are action-move combos, which is 2 keys, and both the actions and move keys do things by themselves. 'w' for example moves to the beginning of the next word. it's a common travel key. 'dd' deletes the current line and is also commonly used. combine them into 'dw' and you delete everything up to the front of next word

so you preface any motion command with an action and you get the intended effect. it's a lot more intuitive than it may look at first. a combo i use a lot is 'cw', which replaces the current word. but when programming this is equivalent to "replace variable." it's things like that (see the 'smart ranges' topic on that link) that make it feel like you're more directly connected with the code, rather than editing it through an interface
I think you should be forced to code only in ADA for that stunt.
16characters - FriendFeed & AIM
">There's no reason to doubt representativeness of his sample.

So the sample of programmers that he has known and observed over his life is unquestionably representative?"

there's no reason to doubt != it is unquestionable that
Maybe a single thread for all April fools jokes would be appropriate?
At least the Facebook/Techcrunch lawsuit prank was decently well written and moderately funny.
A joke it may be, but not a particularly funny one.
i use vi with Dvorak without any key remappings. it did take some getting used to at first when switching, but probably less getting used to than it took when i was first learning it on qwerty

also, hjkl aren't used often. you don't usually have to alter just one character in a word for example. the movement commands i use the most are (by far) 'w' and 'b' (next/previous word)
DH1?
Big mistake.

You should study Life Sciences at University of Toronto instead. Guaranteed to launch your career forward.
You seriously think anyone on Hacker News would consider a career as a pharmacist? I mean maybe a software engineer/researcher in bioinformatics, but a pharmacist?!
Berkeley is a nice (and affordable, relatively) place to live for a summer. Living in the city is either expensive, or slightly sketchy, depending on where you live.

South of the city is also an option if you can find a place (ie Burlingame, South SF). There's a lot more stuff to do in Berkeley though.
Ask YC : Are multicores useful? What will you do with 32/64/128 cores?
Before you remark that people need more than 640k, read this patiently. My parents run a 3-4 old year system on XP and it runs just fine. They are able to browse the web and run skype. Most of their meets are already met by web based apps. I see no reason why they would ever need a 64 core computer. On the other hand, they do have a real need for a portable machine. They would also benifit by better connectivity, easy to use user interfaces and reliable (no viruses please) software.

Is the same thing happening to the "normal user" the world over? Apart from servers and games, are there any real needs for much better CPU performance? Or is the focus shifting to "other things" ? Perhaps to cost, mobility, reliability and ease of use? If so what changes do you see happening in the computer industry?

Notice the big push of Atom processors by Intel. Notice the success of EEE Pc. Are big changes coming?

Please tell me what do you think people will do with 64 cores? On the technical side, keep the Amdahl's law in mind too. For applications with even 3-4 % serial component, you will be very hard pressed to double performance with doubling of cores. People talk about better programming languages. But have parallel algorithms matured to a point where we can indeed take advantage of 64 cores?

Does the emperor have no clothes? Will the multicore revolution be relevant for the populace at large?
was surprised to see the word "imbedded" misspelled in the NYT ( not to nit pick )