skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The SEC probably chose Python because it has a reputation of being easy to read and write.

For me the deal killer about Python in particular is that it uses native arithmetic, which means that going from machine to machine, and operating system to operating system any program that uses floating point will have unspecified behavior.

I've worked in finance and dealt with programs that use floating point. I've encountered the fact that behavior changes on different machines. Now a 1 or 2 penny difference on a several million bond flow may seem unimportant, but it is unfortunately very important because the first thing anyone in finance does to verify that two numbers match is look at the first digits, the length of the number, and the pennies. If those agree, you move on.

So those insignificant penny differences are unfortunately the first thing that gets noticed. Been there, done that, not fun.
My understanding is that medical school is ridiculously expensive, because it costs so much to pay people with MD's, even if the just stand in front of a room full of people for an hour and do absolutely nothing.

Other people trained in similar environments (physician assistants, pharmacists, nurses) don't require significantly different materials for their educations, but their tuitions are generally much cheaper. They also tend to have few or no MD's teaching them.
List of statistically superlative countries
Even if the tuition doesn't go up, you are paying for it one way or another. Grant money comes from somewhere and in most cases that is your money (taxes) as well (and if not, then it is coming from corporations like Apple).

I would really doubt any school would take a loss on something like this, but even if that was the case you are paying for that too since sooner or later that loss has to be recouped (either through tuition or some reduction in services).
Google enabled switching between multiple GMail accounts
Some users can differentiate... assuming they notice.

The issue is in the real world building a system to handle both typos and hostel networks requires some form of authentication.
Yeh sure man they are really bad people, but none of the article is about reading, or maybe it is because I only skimmed them.

I did say that there is a serious point there, and suggested that you make it. Coming up with such things as they killed him in a nicer way, the Taliban would consider him to be his friend after burning his daughter, rather than probably thinks he really hates them and will inform on them on any chance he has, so really I doubt he is the kind of person the taliban would hardly suspect that he would inform on them, and taking the extreme action of burning a person for reading really are not serious points.
In the interest of balance, I suggest a Marvel HN meetup. </pun>
Tell HN: We're building a "HN Office Hours" app. Help us.
Ajax Stylish Captcha and Contact Form using JQuery and PHP.
First of all, thanks to all of my readers who like my work and prove this by sending feedbacks over facebook style tutorials. I always try to create some useful tutorials for my users using Jquery. This tutorial is about ajax based contact form with jquery validation and ajax based captcha.
Captcha is main part of any form and if it is ajax based then it looks awesome. Hope you will like this and send me your feed back. Thanks !
I completely agree with the article. Although I think Google is doing too much, going into too many industries, releasing too many unfinished products, I love the fact that they're actually trying and don't mind failing. Not everything can be a winner and you can't find them without trying. Risk aversion is more dangerous to an innovation-driven technology company in the long run.
Sure, but editing the hosts file works for every browser.
ACM seems to favor languages with a "complete and rigorous mathematical specification". Python is standardized by having a main implementation, not a formal standard.
In this example, Google's clearly wrong. Facebook has an advantage in this arena. Why argue?
I don't know your particular circumstances, but barring a personal reason for not being able to leave... It's your first job in the industry that you just started last week and your father in law gave you the position, it is always an option to leave. And when you do leave, you will feel better for having done it.
Good luck with that, especially since emotions are so funy and... irrational.
IIRC, paulsingh created something similar (Philtro?) a while back. The focus was a little bit different--it acted as a spam filter--but I think you could definitely benefit from his knowledge. Good luck!

EDIT: It appears philtro was acquired back in 2009. He may not be able to speak freely about the service because of it, but that does certainly help validate your market.
Personally I am so paranoid with SSH that I don't run it on the default port.

That alone allows you to avoid most attackers trying to guess valid server ips.

Now to put a honey pot on port 22.
Treat yourself like a machine

I think that would require some serious change in my wiring so that's a no go. Still, interesting article even if the ideas in it aren't anything new. One of the previous comments mentioned that it was a little simplistic and I tend to agree. I've had problems with just getting things done before but that's not easily fixed as suggested here. Previously, advice like that has dragged me deeper down since I thought there was something wrong with me since I couldn't get things done. I guess they work depending on where you stand in life. Now, they might work better than before. Who knows. I might try.
Here's a designer that adds illustrations into his sites that even though serve no functionality, add character to his designs. I don't know what style it is, but it sure ain't minimalist, but it still is an enjoyable design, so you can add that to your list...maybe.

http://hugsformonsters.com/
The main advantage of having an official "developer" model like the N1 is immediate access to the latest OS. Google pushes updates to the developer models much faster than carriers do, which means you get all the updated features on actual hardware much sooner than your carrier-locked counterparts.

The Droid does have a physical keyboard, but after owning both a G1 and a Palm Pre, I don't really trust any sliding keyboard mechanism to not get crunchy and/or loose after a few months' use.
i dont get why do they still stick with agpl. there are a lot more _companies_ built on products with licenses other than agpl, such as, wildly popular apache projects. even microsoft releasing code with apache license but not mongodb guys!
If you want, you can use the decimal module:

http://docs.python.org/library/decimal.html
I was hoping to the see the average points for Ask HN posts based on date and time.
The recent history of governments vs. the Internet
From Bedouin Shepherd to Israeli Diplomat
My point was that 'adding bandwidth' is not actually a solution to congestion-related problems. Double the bandwidth, now StartCraft II downloads in two instead of four hours, during which time your VOIP calls still drop. This is not unlike a problem urban planners have run across - adding lanes to a thoroughfare often does not relieve traffic congestion. So unless you can add bandwidth indefinitely so that there is never, ever any congestion, the issues are somewhat orthogonal.
Apple is a little more up on ADA then Amazon and the Kindle. Check: http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/accessibility.html
Trading time for money
That's a good question. I don't know the legal answer, but I did check Gamespot for NFL games and there don't seem to have been any since 2005 (2k5, Blitz).
While not specific to ASK HN submissions, in my experience it's almost useless to submit in the evening (EST). I have submitted several interesting stories that were ignored due to the time of their submission.

Two examples:

IBM and the Jeopardy Challenge: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1566395

The Day Einstein Died:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492997
U.S. Army Goes Agile; Gets 5 Winning iPhone/Android Apps
You don't see engineering schools "giving" every student a graphing calculator...

Alas for us nostalgic old-timers: They no longer need to do this, because in the future every freshman will have already paid $2.99 or so for a smartphone app that outperforms every graphing calculator I ever owned.

Yesterday I sold my last graphing calculator: A very nice HP that I won in a raffle. It brings tears to my eyes, but I never use it for anything that the iPad/iPhone and something like PCalc won't do just as well.
Html or xhtml for newbie
I am reading the excellent Head First HTML book. It's a little bit outdated because it predicted that there would not be a HTML5 because XHTML would become the standard. Now it seems with HTML5 this is not correct and there are going to be both HTML and XHTML standards from now on.
For some exploring HTML and CSS and later hopefully Javascript with a view to making some apps for mobile devices which is the standard to choose?
It doesn't matter, since so many of the Internet's most popular sites are signed by crappy CA's; right now, you have to honor most certs.
they should put a video of it, and if there is a video, make it easier to find.
I have no idea what I just read about. Anybody point me to a beginners guide? lol
No, this is pretty much dead wrong. An SSL connection set up under a self-signed cert is not "secure". Authentication isn't a feature of a secure channel, it's a requirement. Without it, marginal effort by an attacker allows them to silently, quickly, and transparently decrypt your traffic by inserting themselves in the middle.

People on HN can and do argue about this until they are blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is that authenticated connections aren't just a special "bonus" that SSL provides beyond encryption. Every secure encrypted protocol makes arrangements to authenticate keys; this is the same thing that makes your first SSH connection to a new server insecure (demonstrating that problem used to be a sport at security conventions).
Pagerank is a like a markov chain - you iterate the same dataset over and over until you're happy with the result. If 20 is good enough, its good enough. Good explanation here: http://www.iterativemapreduce.org/samples.html#Pagerank

Whereas if you include signals from multiple sources, the joins are each one MR job, never mind the calculations.
Google denies deal to end net neutrality
New Advice for Building Your IT Team: Generalists Are the Future
Agreed, I'll only buy Lisp and Ruby ;p
Leisure College, USA
What happens when your 1 relay host goes down?
I also don't like how they go about claiming that dynamic typing is bad. This is only asking for flames.
This is an awesome idea! If a collection of gurus pull up interesting answers within a week and provide brief commentary (why this is interesting, which answers are particularly illuminating, etc.) it would be super.
Dear Hacker News,

I'm sorry you missed the Twilio demo at NYTM. I decided to create a number for you to call in to so you don't feel left out.

+1 516 619 8182

Go ahead, give it a try. It'll be fun, and I promise not to share your data.

Cheers,
John Britton - @johndbritton
Developer Evangelist
Twilio - http://www.twilio.com
Presumably if the simulator and the prospectus differ in a material manner, the bond packager/issuer would be subject to some legal liability.
Yeah, I guess I didn't think of that. I think this is the first time I've ever felt old on HN.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/39209/20100728/internet-spee...

I would love to know how much of the Japan rhetoric is actually based in reality.
Floating point cannot represent money.
My understanding is that xhtml is more mobile-device-friendly than html. There aren't big differences between the two. xhtml is a little stricter about having quotation marks around everything and a few other things.
In my personal opinion, net neutrality is not best for Google, aside from the PR hit. They have the cash to pay for the premium bandwidth pipes, unlike hypothetical startups they're trying to compete with. Net neutrality lowers the barrier to entry for competitors: without it, startups might have to raise serious capital if they want to provide services with the latency and bandwidth Google does.
I would by an iPad if...
..it had this version for a better fit:

- Smaller screen size (6" vs. 9")

- Smaller price ($249 or $299 for 16 or 32GB)

- iOS4 for multi-tasking (I'm sure this is on its way)

- Mid-resolution Video Camera (probably also on its way) with Facetime support

I really want this, for lack of a better description, "iPad Junior" especially for eBook and Netflix consumption. I think it would sell a few million more if Apple came out with it, and prevent me from wasting my money on a Kindle (I just hate the page transformations on eInk devices)

Anyone else interested in an iPad Jr. like this?
I think if there is a bug, it's your job as an investor to find it and report it (if it's unintentional of course). The program is provided to you in source form to allow you to verify and modify it.
You are correct, names of sources is different than both nuclear secrets and outdated opsec. Congrats, you understand one of my points. Amusingly, at the same time you commit the exact same error I was pointing out: The strawman attack. I was not stating a position on the nature of the original leak, but instead pointing out how there are situations with different ramifications and consequences.

The most you can infer from my statements, without making assumptions, is that I am not fond of strawman arguments.
acocunts.yeahhhh.
Register to Become Featured in FastCompany
There's good reasons to have immutables in your financial agreement's code model.
That thread caused a lot of ripples. It's clear that this is a service that many people want.

Here's another thread inspired by kentf's submission; http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1517198 and there's a collection of google docs here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1517198, you might want to build your database around the type of infomation people want to share.

Also, minor proofreading thing on the homepage: "want to build a site to those facilitate interactions"

I'm not a django guy otherwise I'd be offering to dive in.

I can offer space and bandwidth on my dreamhost "unlimited" shared hosting plan.

And I love beta-testing things!

(note to HNers, please save the discussion about what "unlimited" really means for another time.)

edit: another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1516015
Related, the best day/time to submit an article:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1175223

It's from a while ago, so things may have changed.
OT: That's weird, I didn't see this and just posted a dup - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1579024 - but it didn't get caught. The only difference seems to be in the www in the url.
Highlights of interesting emerging tech from SIGGRAPH 2010
Hacker München Meeting
I'm new to the area, and would love to meet with other hackers, programmers, learners. Please send me an email if you're interested in an August meeting.

Mention whether you prefer weekends or weeknights, and which weekend and weeknight days/times don't work for you.

(Incidentally, if anyone has any German/München specific events or websites to recommend to me, please do! Auf Deutsch ist auch schön.)
Ask HN: Advertising Rates
Hey HN,

I've just been contacted by a person interested in putting advertisement on one of my sites. He asked about advertising options and rates.

I'm not incorporated and am running it myself as a side-project. For the moment I'm using AdSense and getting about €0.6 CPM, with about 500k pageviews a month. This is the first person to contact me about ads.

How do I continue? What rates should I start with, and will the fact that I'm not incorporated be a disadvantage here? Any other help? Thanks guys!
Fast Company is going to post a picture of anyone who registers on their site. The size depends on your influence. By registering you will be able to say "I appeared in Fast Company magazine under the Most Influential People". :)
A whistleblower points out wrongdoing. This is different from pointing out lawbreaking. Please note for future reference: legality and morality are at best loosely related. Just because something is legal does not make it right, and vice versa.
The Motorola Droid is nearly a year old and has lower specs - half the RAM and slower processor. Plus the Droid won't fully support all of the new features in 2.2, such as tethering. Droid 2 apparently launches next week and will be on par with the Nexus One/Desire/Incredible/Galaxy S/Evo/Droid X.

If you just want a device to develop apps with just buy a used Droid for under $200.
Hiding Secrets Online
Thank you. Just fixed the typo.
Sure, and there was nothing stopping blacks from using the water fountain set aside for them. It still wasn't right.
Interesting stuff. I've been working on some WebGL stuff and it would be interesting to see if it could run as a native desktop app also. Maybe they could ensure to be using the same api (OpenGL ES) just to make that possible.
And there's a Heroku add-on that supports it as well.
North Polar Layers of Mars
I'm sorry, I did not mean to suggest otherwise. The illusion indeed is maintained in the vast majority of cases.
I would tend to think of HTML semantics as the blueprints, with Photoshop as an artist's sketch, but perhaps that's just me.

As to the general feasibility of jumping straight to code, you might find this post by Andy Clarke interesting: http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/designing_the_cannybi...

The design was all done in HTML & CSS. And I, at least, find it more compelling than most Photoshopped web designs.
hey guys, ezl from pybrew here. So we're basically a python shop, but we'd really love input/collaboration from anyone.

The primary reason we're trying to approach this as a group project is we think it'll be fun to collaborate with new people; so even if you're not a Django guy, please feel free to contribute. We definitely need people with design savvy, UI advice, people who just click around the site and look for broken things, etc.

Don't feel like you have to stay the whole weekend or anything. Hop in and say hello. Any advice/suggestions are welcome.
In older senses, yes you are correct. This is not really the case in the last 30 or so years -- a snitch is anyone within a group (hacker community, black community, drug underworld for common examples) who informs to the police about someone within that group. It has less to do with the informants involvement in a specific action(s) than his/her group membership.
I got a replica pair. Wonder how easy I can migrate it to a replica set.
The Tiger Oil Memos
For some reason, I was able to control it with the mouse for 6 seconds, then it became too laggy and also had to use enter.
He's using sIFR for "non-standard" web fonts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIFR

If you look at the code in the article, you can see that the HTML is pretty clean, and the Flash is injected by js at runtime. This means searchability isn't compromised, and the page degrades gracefully for non-Flash-enabled browsers. But it does kinda break copy-and-paste.
Fundraising is still terribly distracting for startups. If you're a founder in the middle of raising a round, the round is the top idea in your mind, which means working on the company isn't. If a round takes 2 months to close, which is reasonably fast by present standards, that means 2 months during which the company is basically treading water. That's the worst thing a startup could do.

So if investors want to get the best deals, the way to do it will be to close faster. Investors don't need weeks to make up their minds anyway. We decide based on about 10 minutes of reading an application plus 10 minutes of in person interview, and we only regret about 10% of our decisions. If we can decide in 20 minutes, surely the next round of investors can decide in a couple days.

This 20 minute figure is missing the point. What matters here -- to founders at least -- isn't how much time YC spends on the startup. What matters is how long the startup spends on YC. I don't know how long the average group spends filling out the YC application form, but I'm sure it's quite a bit longer than 20 minutes.

(Back of the envelope calculation: Suppose a typical group spends 3 hours filling out investment-application paperwork per investor they're pitching; investors take 1 out of every 20 applicants; and a startup wants to take money from 5 investors. Then they've just spent 300 hours -- over a month -- filling out application forms, and it's probably going to be 2 months before they can focus on something other than raising money again.)
Thanks for the clarification. This blog post is also helpful: http://www.novell.com/prblogs/?p=2836
The Repeated Game Nature of Venture Capital
We are a Web development service provider. We design and develop our own website, as a proof to clients what we can do. But sometimes, when it comes to your own website, you tend to put everything you know in there - make it the best one you did. As a result, you take too much time doing it, instead of others doing it for you. So if you have a specific launch date, develop your own website within that period only. Otherwise, hire someone to deliver your website at your desired deadline.
Given the wider context of the video it seems the suspicion could have been legitimate in good faith

Anyway; the point of this aside was that legally the deaths could have been, well, legal. But they were certainly morally/ethically problematic.

Which is the point about whistleblowers; they don;t necessarily just air illegal acts but morally wrong ones as well.

This is probably not the thread to get back into the whole debate of "were those deaths illegal" :)
> is not the process of Western state apparatuses attempting to take groups like the Taliban off the threat list through proactive policies

My guess is if the US didn't want the Taliban to exist they wouldn't have trained them and sold them arms (http://nyti.ms/ddOTcu) in the first place. Zbigniew Brzezinski puts it fairly bluntly: "The secret operation was an excellent idea... What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" (http://bit.ly/tPpQJ).

>You have just gone on my list of people who suffer from an insatiable thirst for Hollywood conspiracy theories. Enjoy the time-cube. http://www.timecube.com/ You'll feel right at home.

The belief that an empires acts for the benefit of civilians is about as believable as the idea that oil companies act for the benefit of those who buy petrol. Grown-ups have beliefs founded in history, not fantasies promoted by vested interests.
this is a side project, so don't overcomplicate this.

charge a lump sum for a length of time that will approximate the pageveiws at a rate you think is fair, but more than what you're making now (ex: €500/mo @ €1 CPM). if more people start asking or you start making more via adsense, you can start raising your rate. use the proceeds to incorporate.
Bubbles, gullibility, and other challenges for economics
No Jacket Required - Motorola Buys Full-Page Slam Ad Against Apple
Step 1: Don't use threads.

Step 2: If you think you need threads, revisit your design.

Step 3: If you ignored step 2 and/or still think you really need threads use one of the GILless Python implementations.

Step 4: If you can't/don't wanna use one of the GILless Python implementations then pick another language. There's plenty to choose from.

Step 5: We all get to read about stuff more interesting and important than the GIL.
My house: cook in it, sleep in it, exercise in it, practice music in it, work in it, build furniture in it, wash my clothes in it, entertain guests, dine in it and so on and so forth.

Most web apps: browse it.

Can't remember what my point is, but that you're oversimplifying on the first two examples and expanding the web app example.