skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, school sucks: http://www.hulu.com/watch/169534/louie-pta-meeting#s-p1-sr-i...
> Microsoft already has an MVC framework that works just fine.

And that's where people miss the point. Is there any passion towards Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC thing? Because there a lot of passionate Rails enthusiasts around and it runs very well on top of the JVM.
How goes the saying... Computers are related to computer science in the same way telescopes are related to astronomy. It's not necessary to understand the inner mechanics of the machine to do the science.
So basically integers. Floating point can represent integers, and floating point add, subtract, and multiply on integers is exact, so why not use floating point to represent cents?

On a 32-bit machine, using native integers limits you to $40 million dollars or less ($20 million or less if you have to use signed integers). Double precision floating point gives you something like 52-bit integers.

When dividing, you would have to explicitly use floor, round, or ceil to make the result be an integer.
They're lousy people running a lousy business that is run without ethics.

It's a shame the charges didn't stick. Hashrocket doesn't create value, it steals it and destroys it. It's the worst sort of business.
Stop whining.
Indeed.

And there's a view that if you couldn't get the proposal in ahead of the deadline then just how are you going to get the project in on a deadline? Even with a proposal you should attempt to get it in early and to exceed expectations.
The idea of importing a plane manufactured by Antonov, of all manufacturers, would have been really interesting--the US armed forces have never adopted, wholesale[1], equipment from the former Soviet Union, despite many good arguments to do so. Soviet equipment was always cheaper to maintain, and since they are our primary rivals, we can keep up just by importing their stuff instead of wasting money designing our own.

[1] For intelligence purposes, the US has always at least tried to get a few MiG's and Sukhoi's over the past few decades, and keep them in flying condition. Nowadays they can outright buy them--Wikipedia says the military bought two Sukhoi's from Ukraine in 2009.
Canoodle
> It seems like that would be one of the last spaces to be interested in a dynamic scripting language versus pure speed.

First make it work. Then, make it fast.

It's easier to optimize a correct program than to fix an optimized, but broken, one.
I'd be happy if they would just stop censoring .zip files that contain .exes. Makes it a pain to support customers.
OK, now I see there are two slightly different possible formalizations of the problem:

1. You are told that the two envelopes contain amounts A and 2A, but you aren't told what A is. After you pick one envelope, you are allowed to open it, and then you're given the choice to switch. Here the optimal move depends on the distribution of A, and if you don't know it, you can't do much other than pick randomly. After some googling, this is the more common formalization, and it is analyzed in several math papers and blogs.

2. (The version I was assuming.) You are told that the envelopes have, say, $100 and $200. You pick one and you aren't allowed to open it yet. Now you're given the option to switch one last time. There is no problem with undefined priors and weird conditional probabilities in this version. However, the freaking paradox still holds! The expected value you get by switching is $150, no question about that. But the expected relative gain you get by switching is 1.25, there's also no question about that! This is the real paradox to me. Taking an expectation of a relative quantity is intuitively wrong, but why exactly?
Security through obscurity is a falsehood.
Here it is on video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M4tdMsg3ts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment for one.
Maybe. Yet the way they manage to force the process to be rerun is to find events like someone allowing an entry 5 minutes past the deadline.
Mercury is really bad for your brain. It inhibits myelin production, which is the mechanism by which people learn and develop skills. Mercury is found in all aquatic animals, which is why I stay away from all of them.
Considering the widespread disdain for dishones politicians, it may actually do the brand more good than bad.
>Soviet equipment was always cheaper to maintain, and since they are our primary rivals, we can keep up just by importing their stuff instead of wasting money designing our own.

The US has virtually always been a generation ahead of Soviet/Russia military technology. There was a mythology about Soviet military prowess during the cold war that was based more on lubricating incredible military spends ("Better checkbox that new project because of that dominant new Soviet fighter") more than it was based on reality.
You do understand that when you build a company on something Microsoft is not doing, but that is adjacent to whatever they do, you risk being offered a ridiculous buyout offer, followed by a thorough carpet-nuking if they ever get interested in entering your business.

I saw that many times in the past. Microsoft is something you really want to stay away from.
Spamming software.
I think this article is reading way too much into the issue. I'm guessing Microsoft canned IronRuby because there weren't enough people using it to justify the continued development required to keep up with the canonical version.
This one is less obvious and I read it on a random magazine.

Covering head to toe when you are sleeping is bad for your brain. The reason is that it'll increase CO2 concentration in your breathing air.
Just rename the zip anything but zip. zig, zit, zif, zid, whatever. Gmail then will ignore it. Little more hassle for your customers (they have to rename it on their end, but most can handle that).
Sorry if this sounds a bit mean, but what's to stop someone from taking the concept (which is interesting) and just running with it on their own without buying it from you? If all you've got to offer is some almost-definitely-terrible code for an outsourcing firm, some documents, and a few mock-ups, why do you expect someone to pay you for it?

And honestly, the fact that your first instinct was to outsource to India rather that learn to code yourself or finding someone local that you could work closely with, to me, means that you really weren't that passionate about the project in the first place or lack some basic judgement.

You call this project "accelerated" but I really don't see anything of any actual value in your description. If you were offering quality code in an useable-but-unpolished state, that might be a different story.

Again, sorry if that sounded mean-spirited, but I'm calling this like I see it.
No it's not. Security only through obscurity certainly, but obscurity is most definitely one worthwhile tactic in a security strategy.
Mozilla Summit 2010 and dev culture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M4tdMsg3ts
> Most likely it's just contention on the machine between httperf and Mongrel2, but I'll try to rule it out.

In the same way that Zed gets angry at people who don't understand confounding, I get angry at people who run their benchmarking suites from the same machines that are serving them.
Regardless of the importance of IronRuby for Microsoft (next to zero), the author is right in assuming Microsoft wants to make it easy to port your stuff to Windows, but devilishly hard to port anything Windows to anything else.

Having languages that can be used on both sides of the fence breeds a generation of developers that can jump the fence anytime. This is death for them. They will never encourage it.
Best class I ever took was last year, the professor had been doing chalk and board since 1962, he was amazing, and it was because I was there. Maybe after his generation is gone we won't lose anything from communicating entirely via web, but to get the full breadth of knowledge from the lingering analogites among us, you gotta roll out of bed.
Just because the originating server allows massive attachments doesn't ensure the receiving server will accept it. Within the past week, I got an email from a client saying they couldn't receive anything larger than 5mb and we'd have to gasp FTP it.

...or use http://www.wetransfer.com (unless it's sensitive).
I had to look up "skunkworks." I was wondering if it was just work that stinks, like people don't want to do it, but have to for some reason.

Well, besides being a Lockheed Martin trademark, apparently it means research and innovation by a loosely coupled team. Are there great consulting opportunities in research and innovation?

I think I'm seeing a pattern here. The main IronPython project I'm familiar with is Resolver, a spreadsheet targeted at the financial world, and now this guy leaves the IronRuby team to work for a company that consults for hedge funds. What I don't get is, what the heck is so great about .NET for these financial people? Can't they just run their calculations using scripting languages that have been out for the last ten or twenty years? What do they need the CLR/DLR for?
This is ridiculous. I can think of a dozen different reason why I would want large file size attachments. And the easiest way to do that is with email. You cannot expect the average user to go find another technology just to transfer files, when a ubiquitous technology they already have access to and know how to use accommodates that.

As a developer or designer working with clients, email is the easies way to have someone send you a file, or vice versa. Everyone has email. There's no extra client to install and setup, no new technology or jargon to learn. I understand educating people is important, but at the end of the day there are a lot of technologies that people don't need to know about. And in situations where time is critical its impossibly difficult and time consuming to tell a client to go download an ftp client, install it, configure it, then walk them through the process of transferring a file - all when they have no concept of what FTP is in the first place! Which is easier? That process with all its complexity and opportunities for screw-ups, or simply attaching a file to an email.

On the topic of file content, large files are more prevalent today. We need to accept that and use the technologies that offer the path of least resistance and widest user acceptance. Large files can be a number of different things - an original design file needed for a printer, a copy of the client database, an original high-res photo, typical office documents, audio, video, even PDFs can easily reach large sizes.

The fact that this argument is about Gmail is even more nonsensical. Gmail is one of dozens of web-based email platforms. There's no impact to the user if you get a large file attachment when using a webmail. It's just a link in the email. In fact Gmail will even zip up all the attachments in an email so you can have a smaller download. Where's the negative in Gmail's implementation of attachments - just the file size they allow to be sent? My mail server doesn't even have a limit. Gmail's implementation actually counters against several of the points the article makes. It's easy to attach a file, it's easy to remove the file, it's easy to choose to download the file or not, and it's even a seamless process to upload the large file in the first place. The argument could have well been, get users to create webmail accounts so that it's EASIER to send and receive large files!

Updated: After reading the YippieMove.com site more it's clear that the reason for this post is self-serving. Yippie Move is a service that allows you to transfer email seamlessly between providers. It's clearly better for their business model if people don't have large email accounts filled with big attachments.
Amazon is great for getting the same sort of hosted checkout experience up and running with zero hassle. They don't mind you setting up as many accounts as makes sense for your business, even if more than one of them point to the same bank account.

For a proper merchant/gateway experience, I'm with Braintree now, and they are everything you'd want. Granted, you need a real business bank account behind it, and they'll charge you about $100/month as a baseline. But their API just plain makes sense, comes with all the bells and whistles if you need them, and drops right in to your app without a single fist-shaped dent in your keyboard.
If it were (100, 200) or (200, 100) with equal probability, you'd switch iff the first envelope contains 100. Nothing interesting about that scenario.

The problem states that (and is only interesting because) one of the envelopes contains twice as much as the other, but not how much, so that the amount in the first envelope tells you nothing.

This is actually impossible because there is no information about how the amount (let's say the bigger of the two) is distributed, which usually implies uniform distribution. But a uniform distribution is only possible if you assume an upper limit (otherwise, what's the expected value?). If there is an upper limit, the question again becomes quite easy (you switch if the first envelope contains less than half the upper limit).
So, they decided, a week before the deadline, to bid. Then they had to ask for two extra months because they weren't prepared. Then they sent it in at the last minute, and, predictably, it didn't get there on time. I have absolutely no sympathy for them.

It's worth noting that the airforce told them, after the delay at the gate prevented the papers from getting there ontime, that "the company should have anticipated this potential snag and planned appropriately." Not being able to get the papers there by the deadline, and planning to get them there just before the deadline, does not say anything good about their ability to actually fulfill the contract, were they to be granted it.
That might be a little complicated for many customers.
Generalizing the college experiences of the writer to all college experiences is not doing anyone any favors.

My college experience was nothing like that: in intro CS, we were taught Java concepts as the basics of object-oriented programming, and the second class was the basics of advanced data structures, again using Java. As a result, when I saw Python code, it was trivial for me to read it, and after looking at it for a short time I was comfortable writing it. When I took my current job, I had never written Javascript before; I picked it up in a day. Even Scheme wasn't hard to pick up when I took Declarative.

Oh, and I never had a class in CS with more than 15 people in it. Just saying.

You can learn programming in college, but you should not expect classes on "AJAX, jQuery, iOS apps, APIs". Once you know how to program, you can easily figure out how to do any of those things by reading documentation and tutorials. With my college CS classes, I can read and understand Android's developer guides and PHP's online documentation. That's what's important.
Wow. The city of somerville, ma has some what i consider draconian enforcement (street sweeping days so you must remember to move your car to the other side of the street or $100, unposted "snow emergency" rules with $100 and towing fines if you don't get your car off the street, regardless of whether snow actually falls).

They also have a 72h rule but it is not enforced (they state this) unless you don't clean the snow off your car after a big snow fall. Surprisingly reasonable of them...
Yeah, I usually go with .zi_ to avoid the possibility of colliding with any proprietary extension that might be in use by the recipient.

Google's intentions are in the right place but I think they went a little overboard. If someone is going to open an unsolicited zipfile and click on an unknown .exe, there is probably no way to stave off an unwanted visit from Murphy.
But that crashes on null in all three languages, no? (i.e. if evt is null and window.event is non-null.) I suppose you could do this:

function getEventTarget(evt) {
return (evt || (evt = window.event)) && (evt.target || evt.srcElement);
}

But that's probably more trouble than it's worth. Anyway, I agree with you in preferring expressions to statements on the whole. It's hard to imagine why anyone would prefer the more than 4x as long version in the OP; to me it reads like a parody.
I have never really understood (or perhaps know where I stand) on the issue of software patents, this article did not help.

"What is most alarming is that patent office automatically publishes applications online after the 18 months ... This effectively undermines the entire purpose of the patent system: the patent office is charging the applicant serious money for giving it the privilege of giving away their commercial secrets."

You know that going in (that you might not get a patent but that it will be published), it's a risk, but the whole idea is that great ideas will be released into the public domain with enough information to be implemented.

"They had the concept right, but they surely never conceived of Amazon.com patenting clicks in an online shopping cart and methods for having an online discussion"

This is an issue but in my opinion an issue with the patent office granting patents which through granting do not further innovation in the slightest (rather than it being software). A counter to this example would be perhaps, MapReduce [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce.
Gmail should up their bandwidth for attaching files
Read this books and watch this video lectures.

* Introduction to Algorithms (SMA 5503)
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

* Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (aka SICP)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY
Sometimes is even good if you write the same tiny project taking a different approach. I.e. You wrote an algorithm using a greedy technique, them repeat it using a dynamic approach.
I believe that homelessness is cheaper to solve than to manage.

However, it may be easier to manage (ignore) the problem than to solve.
Blizzard has announced that they are going to have a system where map creators can charge for particular maps, and Blizzard will take a big cut.
Thanks. I think this answers a lot of my questions.
Um... A quick Google reveals:

Union membership as percent of workforce in:
Sweden:	78.0% (2003)
United States:	12.0% (2006)

I don't think you have proper appreciation of the historical power of the unions in Swedish politics. In comparison, the U.S. unions are a fringe.
>Ruby almost exclusively runs on Linux (for the server) and Mac (for the desktop)

http://rubyinstaller.org/ would care to disagree. It's just that it's included by default on many Unixes/BSDs (/GNUs/what-have-yous). Windows includes utterly squat for development of any kind on a fresh install; the exact same statement could have been made for any language.

Literally. You can't compile C out of the box either, nor any .Net code. Does that mean nobody programs in C or .Net on Windows?
The argument about keeping an email around is a bit silly. Most large file attachments the theoretical affected users are going to send are going to be some kind of document. You can just resave those. Besides I've yet to find an email client without a right click 'save attachment' option somewhere along the lines.
Is this an argument to not allow downvotes but only upvotes?
Well said, jQuery is a fantastic bit of programming - but I'm struggling to think what relevance it has to a Computer Science course.
This was posted a few weeks ago: http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html

Lot's of good stuff in there.
I repeat with emphasis: was the proper solution to dump all the patients in institutions out on the street?

That "solution" does not automatically follow from the study you cited.
exercise is good for your brain as already linked on HN http://singularityhub.com/2010/08/05/exercise-boosts-your-br...
And for god's sake, DOCUMENT!

What clarity would documentation add to this example?
The potential with this app isn't in charging people to email them recipes, it's in selling the email addresses to companies who want to advertise to people who want recipes emailed to them. Make it free and get more email addresses.
>So what is wrong with emailing large files? Reason [1..2..3]

What's wrong with other means of transferring "large" files (25mb or less)? Nobody knows how, and other means of transfer do not have persistent storage. And what's this 1gb limit on Gmail? Last I checked they were over seven. My account has 27 gigs for $5 per year, making it the cheapest file storage out there by a long shot.

Reason 3 (you can't easily not download the file) makes sense, but I highly doubt that's a concern of anyone who knows of an alternate method of distributing a file.
I've been building web apps for several years now and I still feel weary (though I've obviously learned to get over it) asking people to pay recurring amounts for services I've built. I'd have a hard time asking people to pay $5 (that's $60 a year!) for something that took me 3 days to build and relies 100% on an API I have no control over.

Of course, this is not a criticism in the least; if anything I'm somewhat envious of your confidence. One thing that took me a while to learn is that the ONLY way to set pricing is by soliciting actual customer feedback, rather than going with your gut or deciding what you think is fair (hint: those don't work). So, good job having learned this so soon.
A Man With Muffin Secrets, but No Way to Cash Them In
Social News sites have permanently fucked most people's brains up
Wait, you're taking the example of SF, where you say many homeless people prefer the streets to a shelter, and extrapolating that to conclude that "a large fraction of the relevant population" would prefer the streets to an apartment?
Rather than abolish software patents, I'd like to see better precedents be set. A software patent should be held to the same fundamental tests (non-obvious, novel, unique) but the bar should be much higher for software because the domain is so fast changing. Many software patents seem very obviously superseded by prior art to anyone in the domain.

I would also love a fourth fundamental test to be added - cost of development. The fundamental purpose of patents is to encourage innovation by allowing investments in developing new technology to be recouped. Devising and implementing a one click shopping system is not a substantial investment.

Unfortunately measuring the "cost" of development gets very complicated and subjective very quickly - accounting for money spent on failed attempts, human capital invested, opportunity cost, etc. Amazon could claim their whole development team was trying to think of innovations and one click shopping was the culmination of all of their efforts.
That's not quite true. You can use Windows Scripting Host from either VBScript or JScript out of the box on every Windows after 95, as well as the batch language in cmd.exe. I'm not saying that these are good options, but they do exist.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms950396.aspx
Dear Google: Don't Be Evil
Wikileaks attack data by year and type, over Afghanistan regional map
Novelty is good for your brain. But then repitition (a.k.a. "practice") can be too. Caveat: practice makes permanent -- not perfect. Malpractice makes malperfect.
> What those people need is real support and care. And an apartment will just isolate them and risks exacerbating the problems for them.

Not to say that I think that giving a homeless person a home will magically solve all his or her problems, but how does giving someone an apartment isolate him or her in a way that being on the street does not? (It's not a snide question; I've never been homeless, and maybe there's a stronger community than I see—but it seems unlikely that that community can provide the real mental and physical care that such an afflicted person would need, and that the people who can provide it find it easier to ignore a dirty person on the street than their next-door neighbours.)