skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You could write a little essay on the subject of props and what they are for. It would be a meditation on questions like why is it so much more dramatically effective to have two characters fight for possession of a gun than it is to have them shoot magic lightning at each other from their fingertips?

Or you could write an essay on all the things that neophiles forget when they declare war on paper. The good news is that Malcolm Gladwell wrote that already:

http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_03_25_a_paper.htm

...in the form of a review of an MIT press book on the subject.

Or we could just make a list of why one would use several PADDs if PADDs were free. You can juxtapose two reports on a desk and rapidly glance from one to another. (Paging Edward Tufte, who goes on and on about this.) You can walk into a room with five people and hand one report to the first four and the remaining three reports to the last one. When you do hand over a stack of reports, they can be in priority order. And you can add commentary to the reports via the way you hand over each one: A careful two-handed presentation (note the proper technique for exchanging Japanese business cards), a jumbled stack, a light toss, a disgusted look as you gingerly pinch the report between thumb and forefinger, or even a mock attempt to shield the bad-news report behind your body as you hand over the good news first. See? Props are not just for actors; everyone is an actor and we all use props.
Ironically, today Apple announced the App Store Volume Purchase program, targeted specifically at education institutions. Apple don't provide much information precisely how it works from the point of view of a school, but from the 5 sentence blurb on the developer connection site it seems volume purchases and discounts on volume purchases are in the mix.
Dave McClure on Putting Other People’s Money Where His Mouth Is
Ask HN: The [Sales] Pitch Deck (for potential clients, not investors)
I've a rough prototype developed. But before I even get to demo it, I want to talk to potential clients who may be interested in the product (or who could offer valuable input/feedback).

What is the best way to go about doing this? I'm planning on meeting up with a few potentials, and giving them a 6-slide deck, printed out. Is this how you guys do it?
For the next 20-30 years, your "512 anywhere" will remain at 512Kbps since they don't give you money. And your select sites would be getting 100 Mbps since you put all your resources to where money is..

Hence these few companies would have lockin on infrastructure critical for future innovations like Virtual reality, 3D games, High def videos etc.,

And so the internet would not be open anymore. And so it wouldn't be called internet.
Yeah searching for a specific location throws up "Anywhere" listings. If I am searching for jobs in a specific location I want to work in that location. Could be taken both ways so perhaps the ability to disable "Anywhere" jobs?
How to get Health tips
And..... a non-neutral internet locks out all of the little guys.
Isn't this the same guy who makes money patenting obvious things in programming and computer science and then collecting taxes on others' hard work? I'll pass thanks.
There is no cap on advertising bandwidth. You can advertise on your on body and walk around the town. But bandwidth is limited and prioritizing one over the other isn't a "open system".

And the traditional businesses of course aren't "open".. hence the much higher barrier to entry and success than on internet.
>Everyone who's tried to teach has noticed that some people pick things up better than others.

Obviously. Is this a problem with the students themselves, the teachers, the teaching strategy/material or some combination of those things? I think it's rather short sighted (not to mention far too convenient) to just assume it's the student and move on.
I used McCarthy definition of LISP in LISP to implement my first LISP Interpreter in C++. I just written in C++ following functions: car, cdr, cons, cond. Then I translated line by line eval and apply function into C++.
All the rest functions were implemented in LISP itself.

EDIT: I also implemented simple mark-and-sweep garbage collector - otherwise you will be running out of memory pretty quick.
I basically agree, but only to a degree. I agree that essentially everybody is smart enough to get to PhD level in any subject. I've seen a couple of examples myself of people with no innate ability and average intelligence get a PhD in math simply by working really hard and really wanting it.

That being said I think it takes some sort of innate smarts to take it several levels above that. To be the person who comes up with the sort of fundamental breakthrough that only shows up once a decade or so. That takes something beyond simply putting in the work, and I don't think everybody has that potential.
It's one thing for the designers of the prop to talk about the possibilities amongst themselves - and remember it thusly - and another for the director to request that multiple physical devices are passed around to represent multiple reports, for the sake of making the storytelling clear.
Or instead of handing over PADDs at all you can simply tell the intended recipient that the report is ready and they can tap the screen and read it on their own customised display. They can call up multiple reports side by side, etc, etc.

Yes, I understand and appreciate your points, and I, personally, use more paper and physical means of thinking and reasoning than many of my colleagues. That doesn't mean that the original ST people got it entirely right (as some people seem to claim). Handing over PADDs only gets part of the story right, and part of the story wrong.

I look forward to the 24th century to see how these things really do get used.

(And thanks for the reference to the Gladwell article - I'll read that later - it may get into my "Great Articles" library.)
Amazing read. This also demonstrates another benefit of living near a college campus - acres and acres of beautiful land and architecture just begging to be walked through. It is no surprise to me that one of the few places he saw Americans walking through was a university. I live in Chapel Hill, NC just two blocks from the college and I find time almost every weekend to just stumble through campus to clear my mind, check out new buildings, and enjoy myself.
US Military to fund development of exascale computers
A nice example of designing features that nobody wants.
How Many Jailbreakers Pirate Apps? A Lot More Than You Think
A Brief Overview of Concurrency
That which who downvoted me, did you actually read Hawking's article?
Among slaves and losers
Any reason (I can't think of) why they might choose such long URL's for the job listings rather than something short like /positions/air-bnb/ruby-developer-needed/?

Just makes the URL's a bit more readable especially if we're sharing them about :)
Yes, everyone shares the bandwidth.

Google has loads of money so it can buy loads of bandwidth but the next google might not so the next google won't come to be.

Why is it so bad to simply not have net prioritization at all. I mean, I can access all sites conveniently and I am not really annoyed that they are slow right now. If bandwidth was prioritized however, whether over wireless or anything else, then some sites would be great, some sites would not, and eventually the internet would become like the telly where you need loads of money to establish yourself.
Right now I'm using Costco's partnership with Elavon for credit card processing that also includes debit cards, and it's been a while so I don't think there's anything terribly different about accepting them. It's the same old industry that wants to charge you those transaction fees (that's at least kind of reasonable, you know?..) on top of $185972398742134 in monthly fees for everything from renting equipment to account fees and minimum charges and what have you. I think I went this way because it was cheaper than an Authorize.net+whatever mess (for brick and mortar, mind you) and better than the fees others wanted, on top of my spotting the brochure while shopping at Costco.

> ...update from the real world.

All things considered, I don't think there's anything fundamentally different about physical purchases vs. online purchases made with a credit card. The only big one is that micropayment systems and fees aren't really in place for brick and mortar retailers that might struggle just to accept cards in the first place, whereas it's becoming more and more common online because people are buying 99 cent songs and apps all over the place. It needs to happen for the former because people make 99 cent purchases everyday anyway (usually combined with something else, or else they're paying with cash...hopefully), but that's a problem that hasn't even been sufficiently solved in an all-digital world that loves the idea but can't easily do it because of all the damn fees.
They are factored in, alright: cash users subsidize credit card users. And because of the income profile of cash vs credit card users, it amounts to a subsidy of the wealthy by the poor.

EDIT: There's more details here:

http://www.cutimes.com/Issues/2010/August-11-2010/Pages/New-...
Got an ad that said "Remember The Milk is hiring: Software Engineer (Scala) in Anywhere"... Awkward wording at best...
All the plugins I use: http://github.com/remiprev/vimfiles/tree/master/bundle/

My favorites would be:

- surround

- zencoding-vim

- rails-vim

- yankrink

- nerd_commenter
How about your health insurance company charging you more because of your purchase profile? Or your credit score being affected by which brand of alcohol you prefer?

Or one of the latest bits of news from here in the UK - credit ratings firms checking benefit claimant spending looking for fraud:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10922261

You almost certainly don't need to be committing fraud to attract an investigation and all its hassle.
Article headline should be "The US loses money as Congress appears unable to phase out $1 bills". There's really not a 'hate' issue here, and people will use the coins, but it's so painfully obvious that there won't be a change until the bill is phased out. It amazes me that the coin was even allowed into production without a plan to get rid of the bill - I can't believe that the hope was to have "a greater variety of currency media for circulation", which seems to be the only real effect of the coins' introduction so far.
AdLib - Apple’s secret iPad web framework
I take a plastic card instead. Voilà, I can always pay the exact sum!
It is a great introduction to Python, so I'm happy Zed is getting some positive feedback. Way to go, Zed.
#1 rule of best salesmen or IBM sales school is not to pitch (not to give prints etc.) but to "listen".

This is hard discipline. One is always more comfortable throwing info about one's product at the prospect especially if you built it as you are in love w/ it.

Imho the deck is only there as backup (to show you did your homeworks). Best would be that you have a conversation with them about the space your are in (you want to learn and you want to ask them questions) and where they tell you (because they are happy to meet with sbdy that gets their context/pbs) their worries, what matters to them, what they need to solve.

So 1st find a way to signal/prove them you are very serious about listening to them, their context, their pains & needs. (you studied their annual report, their website, blogs, interview of their executives, heard them at a conference etc.). Deck is second and should start with "what we understand of your needs/context". my 2cts
I don't have a change purse, no coin slot in my wallet.

Well … there’s your problem.
One convenience is being able to pay the bill in a restaurant faster without having to do the credit card dance.
I put my .vimrc and .vim directory on github: http://github.com/mgrouchy/vim

Its a constantly evolving thing, wherever I find a pain point, or an optimization to be made, it gets changed.

The focus is mostly python development on OSX using MacVim, but I have isolated most things that require MacVim/GVim so they don't load in a terminal.

It doesn't matter so much because whenever I want to get setup, I just git clone those directories into my home directory but I am seriously looking into Pathogen, which seems like a saner way to handle packages in vim.

edit: I just noticed there is a little whitespace bug in my django template handling, so be aware of that until I fix it.

edit edit: Fixed!
Deploying Java Applications on Amazon EC2
The full source is here http://help.apple.com/ipad/mobile/interface/javascript.js

you can actually read it after beautifying it at http://jsbeautifier.org/

It's an amazing piece of code. Obviously comes from many files and they must have a 'build & minify' internally.

Also the binary of graphics is injected within the JS... Again, showing the build system.

n.layer.children[1].innerHTML = '<img
src="data:image/png;base64,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"
alt="Globe" />' + localizationController.localizedUIString("Change
Language");

Shame for the takedown notice (see article), it shows Apple's true colours, once again.
Regarding use of Vim and Eclipse, the Vrapper project has a good enough emulation of Vi in Eclipse, enough so that I've been able to use it without hitting many limitations in my daily use.

http://vrapper.sourceforge.net/home/
Hence the origin of the saying, to get away Scot free.
Malware gang steal over $1m from one British bank
You don't sound familiar with MathOverflow: it is for research level questions in mathematics, and for the most part lives up to that purpose.

The reason I wouldn't want to read about this paper there is that the MathOverflow users don't seem to include many computer scientists; they are mostly mathematicians who work in non-computery areas of math.

In other words, I would go to MathOverflow for comments on a breakthrough paper in certain areas, just not this one.
Locate the Minimize Button for Exhaustion
The one explanation I read on a Star Trek site once (Can't remember excactly where), was that the PADDs basically were a sign of capitulation from information overload: Instead of trying to store relevant information in huge central databases and sending around links, you would store it on a PADD and physically give it to the recipient. Therefore giving the information some... well, weight.
I think the opposite: credit card users subsidize the use of cash. I hardly believe the former can be more expensive than the latter – if you take into account all the physical effort required to replace / collect / move around the pieces of paper / metal.
It's already been used to decline credit to people based on the likes of their shopping preferences. Not necessarily how much they spent and how much they paid off of that, but where they shopped. Whether or not it was justified, I can't tell you. And I am fully aware that tracking history is a vital part of fraud monitoring and determining creditworthiness. But the possibility of abuse beyond the horror of targeted ads is still there, and people can imagine them and they don't like it. I don't like it. I have nothing to hide, but that doesn't mean I should condone the excessive information collecting and profiling either.

See http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-627&#... and http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/RptCongress/creditca...

tl;dr off the top of my head: Congress/POTUS passed a law last year that included commissioning a report on whether or not creditors were actively profiling, and how far it went. The FRB eventually found that most of the creditors in the US applied this kind of profiling to the majority of CC holders, but only a tiny fraction of a percentage were directly affected by it. It was also pointed out that the use of this information to track things like fraudulent transactions probably outweighed many negatives of tracking this information for other uses as well, so limiting the profiling would probably be a Bad Thing. But they didn't have enough information to determine if this was overall a negative enough to justify restricting it. And that's kinda...scary. They may not do it now, but what's to stop them from doing it in the future without you fully aware of what's going on?
Free market, baby!
Yes OK, a small key size makes brute force more likely. Bruce Schneier wrote about how it's not possible to brute for 256-bit keys. Short section here http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9902.html#snakeoil , there's a longer explaination saying you can't even flip all the bits in 256-bit key before the universe expires, but I can't find that at the moment. So once you hit a upper limit (256-bits), you can't brute force anything ever, so faster computers are useless. Algorithms like that get broken by new maths, which could happen at any time, you can't predict it, so you can't rely on it.
I wonder how many of us it would take to start affecting change (no pun intended) among our local retailers by getting dollar coins this way and proceeding to use them around town on a consistent basis.
I own an Aeron, and I used to have a Mirra at work. If I had my money back, I'd go for the Mirra instead. It's still in the luxury price range, but a bit cheaper, and to me it felt better. I used to spend more time sitting in the 'proper' position in the Mirra, while in the Aeron I'll often slouch, cross legs, and otherwise change posture. Maybe I never managed to adjust the Aeron just right. Mirra is less configurable, but it just worked for me, so I count that as a plus.

Even cheaper chairs are a significant investment, so I suggest just try sitting on as many as you can, and don't buy one that you couldn't try.
Yeah, that's the cool thing about my business too. I get e-mail all the time about how people were on the brink, and now their life is turned around. It's awesome.
Yes and one good enough to improve the living conditions for his several families, apparently.
"Spend a penny" is British slang for urinate. It started with coin-operated toilets and continues precisely because pennies are no longer spent individually on anything.
I found myself having to place a piece of paper under my left hand to prevent incessant smudging. This, coupled with a desk designed for right handed students made for less than enjoyable marathon note taking sessions.
Are you sure you have exhausted all free sources?

There is tons of free literature out there in digital formats, I find a lot of the manuals I am looking for just searching this website.
Too much time on his hands
Like a lot of people I have a fair amount of Vim-related stuff on Github. I'll put links at the end:

@ pathogen - to manage all the other plugins neatly

@ delimitMate - autoclose quotes, (,{,[ - you can define protected regions (e.g., strings) for no autoclose

@ vim-endwise - automagically enter an 'end' as needed in Ruby files

@ vim-bufexplorer - work better with buffers

@ vim-fugitive - lots of Git goodness for Vim

@ vim-surround - add, delete and change common pairs easily

@ IndexedSearch - show total count number and current hit for searches

@ gist - add support for sending buffers to gist or editing gists via Vim

@ vim-pastie - adds support for http://pastie.org/

@ rvm.vim - show current Ruby interpreter in status line

@ vim-perlbrew - ditto for current Perl interpreter

http://github.com/telemachus/vim-perlbrew

http://github.com/telemachus/vim-varia

http://github.com/telemachus/dotfiles/tree/master/vim/
So basically whether you feel good is a function of who you are and what you do, and we can summarize that in a few meaningless letters? Amazing!
Intel Brings Integrated Silicon Optics Closer
Cory Doctorow has a very thoughtful blog post that expands on this theme and really picks out what's wrong with accusations of "too much time on your hands": http://boingboing.net/2002/02/03/too-much-time-on-his.html It's good enough that I periodically reread it, and recommend it to others.

(Just submitted it as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1591218 )
For JavaScript a good place to start is http://www.crockford.com/javascript/
That's bleeding horrible, and I agree. I've had some pretty miserable landlords (though I still continue to rent, and will not buy a house (at least not in the city I'm living in)).
Ask HN: How do I ask for a salary increase?
I know that it is un-HN-like to be "working for the man". But at some point, most of us will have been. I'm relatively new to the workforce, below median salary and feel like I'm doing an above average job.

Have you ever asked for a raise and, if so, how did you get it?
Google offices raided by Korean police
I'm glad all your transactions require electricity to be present to take place.

Why should I have a physical store of value, when I can trust Bank X's database?

Also, now all transactions can involve at least three parties, instead of two.
"Talent" certainly seems to play a role (though "hard work + less talent" will beat "little work + more talent" more often than not unless the talent difference is extreme), but what is talent exactly? What is the nature of it?

I was watching someone take one of these online IQ tests and they were doing a question where you had to add up a bunch of numbers and tell if the result was even or odd. The person reached for a calculator. I laughed and said what the answer was. That person might have thought I was some kind of math genius. In reality, as a software developer I've learned a lot of interesting shortcuts for these kinds of things. I know that if I represent the numbers as base 2 that there is only one bit that has an odd value. I know that even numbers don't have this bit set and can thus be ignored (0 + n = n = id function). I also know that adding an even number of odd numbers gives and even number and an odd number of odds gives an odd. So given this knowledge I don't need to add up anything, just count the odd numbers. Which I can do quite quickly. The thing that made me so much more efficient than the other person was knowing a trick.

Is this the nature of "talent"? If Joe Plumber plays golf for 10k hours and Tiger Woods 10k, could the reason Tiger is so much better be that he knows these "tricks"? He knows how to make his 10k hours be more effective?

>You've never meet--or even heard of--those people?

I have (in the context of programming). The thing that always struck me about them was that they seemed to be working far too hard.
I addressed this in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1591129.

To continue addressing it, credit card processing does not end at a card swipe. Unlike for internet retailers, brick and mortar can have more steps to take to complete a transaction, and routine things like tip adjustments takes just as much time as collecting and moving pieces of paper and metal.

Other fees collected in the process of accepting credit cards can be just as ridiculous as the fees for hiring an armored service to take care of the cash, or the time/effort required to go to the bank. Or employees stealing cash.

It's ultimately difficult to determine if credit cards are in fact cheaper than cash in a broad sense, although that's something you usually can figure out on a per-business basis.
Why would you take the yolks out if you wanted moar calories? Dietary cholesterol is no longer thought to be linked to blood cholesterol levels.
Very cool, I am glad to hear you are filtering. It was still pretty easy to find a rails app categorized as javascript though: http://github.com/flyerhzm/rails-bestpractices.com

What would trigger that to be JS? CKEditor maybe not on the list of excluded library files?