skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
an English degree is not required to write well. However, writing well, one would hope, would be required to obtain an advanced English degree. I'm focusing on the ability to write well as a marketable skill.

Yes, you need to add that to something else to be useful, usually, but the ability to write well is fairly rare, and it's a skill the guy has, so it's a good place for him to start.

>Writing documentation is a skill that requires more than a good command of the English language. The technical writers that I've hired in the past didn't even have English degrees, but were excellent at what they do.

non-technical products require documentation as well.

Like I said, he'll need to learn some other things to go along with the writing ability, but having the writing ability there up front helps a lot, and hopefully allows him to find an employer who might be willing to take a chance and be patient while he learns the rest of the trade (at a lower pay rate, of course, than an experienced documentation writer)
The reason is that Aldous Huxley's vision was far easier to implement. It didn't require a massive conspiracy, which is extremely difficult. Anyone who has ever been a checkout supervisor at Wal-Mart will tell you how hard it is to coordinate a large number of people with individual personalities, desires, etc. even if the end goal is something as simple as everyone taking a 15 minute break without having too few cashiers at once.

Huxley's vision just required a bunch of people independently trying to make money and becoming good at it, which is pretty much what people do best.
Because I've always paid with cash on hand, because I'm paying with cash, phone companies expect me to pay more. When did cash become less valuable than debt?
Which is a perfectly legitimate source - my issue is that the javascript they're using to render it onto the canvas isn't available for me (or anyone else) to test with.
We is great, and remarkably similar to Brave New World. I like the mini-controversy surrounding it, here it is as summarized on Wikipedia:

"...in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World as a reaction to H.G. Wells' utopias long before he had heard of We. According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying. Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.""[1]

If Huxley hadn't read We he was def. channeling Zamyatin's aura somehow or another.

Vonnegut is too hard on himself saying Player Piano was a rip off of Brave New World. It is great in it's own right.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)
Epidemic Influenza And Vitamin D
It also doesn't help that the remark is homophobic.
Anecdotal again, but every worthwhile programmer I've known does not use an IDE.

Not going to touch this other than to note that at Google, IBM, and Sun, most of the Java devs use one of the big 3 (Eclipse, Netbeans, or IntelliJ), you can certainly ask around if you doubt this.
imho, you have a very misleading point where the government is just not providing access akin to drugs; however, books contain knowledge, and drugs do not. The government in the Brave New World isn't just "not providing a service," it's actively attempting to make a dumb citizen through not only the means of censorship, but injecting fetuses with alcohol to lower the intelligence of the individual. Our government has a ban on drugs to protect us citizens(theoretically), whereas the Brave New World has a ban on books to protect itself.

I'd also like to note:

Most personal offenders in our government get treatment instead of punishment (drugs). Most personal offenders in the Brave New World get banished (reading).
The biggest Hollywood female strippers, check’m out
I don't really look to big corporations to decide what to use. That was the whole reason I started a company.

Big corporations do things that make sense for big corps. One is to treat programmers like factory workers and have them all use standard coding styles, IDEs, etc. Everyone is just a cog and easily replaceable.
The events happened at least three years ago.
People seem to assume it's a choice between Huxley, Orwell, or the combination of the two. They miss a very big option, which is that humanity is in fact better off than it used to be. Marx was dead wrong about the future(remember, he thought that global communist revolution was inevitable) but he was dead right about the time that he lived in. Up until the 1950s or 60s or so, a good half of the population wasn't able to hold any but a rare few jobs. During the early days of the Industrial Revolution up until about the decade of the 1900s, you would be considered lucky if you were paid in money rather than company scrip that would be useless outside of the company town you lived in, meaning that if you wanted to change jobs you pretty much lost all your money. In the Middle Ages, ...if I have to explain to you why the Middle Ages sucked compared to today, you're already a lost cause. I could go on.

Want a real dystopia? Read a history book.
I think a good balance is necessary. That is, for example, what I really like about my bank. Each time I have a problem that cannot be solved via their web page, the person answering my call is competent, professional and quickly solves my problem. Even if I only have to call 2 or 3 times a year, the fact that I get great service those times is enough for me to not change banks.
>>>A totalitarian system is only totalitarian insofar as it can effect fear on the part of those subjected to it.

Not being snarky, but have you ever had a run in with a cop lately? Especially when the issue is legal and the cop is ignorant or thinks it's illegal? You'll know the imposition of state-sanctioned fear then.
Yes, you can mmap() and munmap() as needed, but that makes things a lot less convenient - you'll still need to keep track of which data is on the disk and which data isn't, etc. At this point, you've already solved half of the problem of using malloc(), read() and free() instead of mmap() and munmap().

POSIX mandates a 32-bit int - UNIX hasn't ever run on a 16-bit machine (yes, I know there are some abominations.) Au contraire, 32-bit machines are still common; download one of the 'whole archive' files from http://popcon.debian.org/ and run:

$ awk '$2 ~ /^linux-image-/ && $2 ~ /86/ { SUM += $6; }; END {print SUM;}' by_recent
$ awk '$2 ~ /^linux-image-/ && $2 ~ /amd64/ { SUM += $6; }; END {print SUM;}' by_recent

I got 8174 for /86/ and 4420 for /amd64/. Admittedly, this is in no way representative of anything, but clearly people are still using i386 (note that I summed the 'recent' column!)

In short, i386 is not dead. And suggesting that it cannot handle "gigabytes of data" is absurd - Postfix/Dovecot, or PostgreSQL, or SAMBA, or pretty much whatever, can handle many, many gigabytes of data without issue on a i386 platform. Yes, you'll need to upgrade to 64-bit for the truly demanding tasks, but a database with a couple of (tens of) GB of data in it can work perfectly well on a scavenged i386, which is one of the good things of a unix-ish system.

(That said, you can trade off ease of implementation for being crippled on 32-bit platforms. But you are sacrificing something.)
Quote from site:

It is currently at an early, unsettled stage of development.
Windows has greatly improved in this regard but it's still a huge pain point. I believe that the frequency of required reboots after patches is likely a leading cause for machines remaining unpatched.

Ultimately it comes down to lack of having "no reboots" as a clear goal. SQL Server has a pretty strong goal of being able to patch a running server without rebooting and they do a good job meeting that goal. For Windows OS it comes down to programmer laziness winning over in the absence of a directive to avoid reboots.
Ask HN: Help. Humbly request aid brainstorming the killer 5 minute demo
I've come to the folks that know killer demos when they see them. Need help brainstorming for an app for the Web 2.0 conference in late September. need something to WoW the audience, something amazing that'll fit into a 5min demo.
My first idea as a visual interface cleaner (the sands of time). In retrospect that will bore them to tears. I need something much sexier.

Any and all input and help appreciated!

Fred describes the conference here:
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/07/startup-showcase.html

you can reach me by email at messel at victusmedia dot com or messel at gmail dot com
One Frame of Fame: brilliant music video collaboration idea
Depending on what you mean by phone companies, a cash transaction is generally less valuable because it doesn't generate a relationship. They have to exert themselves for each transaction.
My dream is to travel, and to work remotely.. I'd definitely take a $50k/year hit to enable myself to do both these goals while accumulating experience. It would help a great deal if my employer were willing to share travel and/or relocation costs.
prawn has helped me with some ideas this week

(my first idea for the demo)

The Cleaner: assigns a half life to visible bookmarks, email labels, etc. Old stuff shrinks without usage, or maybe wilts and grows brown. The idea is to keep your thoughts clear by reducing mental distractions/baggage

ZenGardens: a user customizable living web site for browsing social media. Folks can read updates on the undersides of butterfly wings, or flowing down a stream

Map2me: a location aware site that copies a URL with a map to your browsers location for easy email/tweeting/etc. The recipients get directions to your location and can remail a new url
The fact that a teacher is "worth" $320,000 does not mean that the teacher should be paid $320K. If they were, then the teacher is capturing the entire $320K, and society as a whole is not better off at all. Instead this number provides an "upper bound" for the proper salary. A more reasonable figure would be 1/3 to 1/2 of the value they're adding. IMO, society should receive "most" of the value of a teacher. That still leaves lots of room to increase the salary of a teacher.
Am in full agreement with jacquesm.

Here's my partial list:

Application virtualization, <2000. Submitted invention disclosure in 2003 or so, when prior art search revealed someone had a patent issued a year earlier (so they must have been filed several years before that).

Physics hardware acceleration, 2000, while working on a virtual reality game. Learned about PhysX in about 2006 or so.

RISC and VLIW processor architectures, 1996, junior year undergrad, while not being aware of their prior existence.

Following two were while I was working on Sinclair Spectrum+ at 12-15 years of age, and largely unaware of what already existed at that time:

3D computer graphics/animation, 1990, 13 years of age, after learning coordinate geometry two years ahead of peer students. Tried to come up with a simple mathematical function f(x, y) that that would resemble a human face, with no success. Prototype created frames offline using interpreted BASIC and cycled them on the screen using hand-written machine code.

Compilers, while using slow interpreted BASIC on Sinclair Spectrum, 1992, 15 years of age, when I first learned how to program in machine code manually. My prototype would only convert text code in reverse-polish notation (RPN) to RPN instructions available on the processor (so more like assembler really).

Envisaged zero static power logic with complementary relays (like CMOS), at high school, while not knowing anything about CMOS then.

Lesson learnt: (See jacquesm's comment).
Rubish.

And I'll say what I like because this is the internet and I will care about you as much as you cared about my five minutes.

Your tone is patronising. You are shouting at me, I feel like a little child in a very dark room with a very tall man shouting at me and I have watery eyes and will any moment start crying.

First, English Literature. That is arts. Arts and business are two different things. With english lit you write the subjective rubish you did and make me feel very bad for no reason whatever.

Second, is this all fiction?

Third, how old are you? - just to say I didnt read it all, I didnt wanna cry and didnt like the darkness.

Fourth, it is not smart to study English Literature, you read book instead.

Fifth, it is not smart to apply to jobs you are not qualified for.

Sixth, get a proper degree!

Seventh. Are you saying that someone who went to Harvard would be looked down compared to someone who went to, well I dont know about there in the US, but a rubish university by reputation, unless you were appying to be a bin collector?

Or are you saying that really employers do not want smart people - smart by the standards of reality - that is great university reputation and numbers or letters in your paper- when applying for the jobs which kinda - if not in reality than perception - require a lot of responsibility and someone's intellect you can trust when making far reaching decisions?

To Conclude, I don't like you, whoever that wrote it. It is grim, it is shouting at me, at no point, as far as I read anyway, and if you were so smart you would have made my reading pleasurable and I would have finished reading it, did I think that you showed any reason for me to think that you are smart, your article is full of generalisation, opinions,

You know, perhaps if you are smart enough you will understand this, you article gives those same emotions as - and this is brutal - as those articles written by journalists in populous newspapers did when they were arguing for invading Iraq. I do not say it is of that grave scale, it gives those same emotions.

So god let me pray that you do not become a journalist and so too god I pray that your articles, if of the same kind, do not find their way to HN again.
Payday loan firms charge up to 500% interest, too, which they're doing because they're not using the FICA scores. That said, there does seem to be a huge area in which one could undercut that market...if they were willing to hold the debt.

While we're talking about holding the debt, you could drop into microloans in the kiva style, and start with only four figures.
And how they still "break" with any version of IE that the programmer doesn't like. Just give me the crapified (text) version already.
The joy and pain of fashion shopping online - by a fashion shopper
I've been shopping online for over 9 years and have bought clothes from most top fashion ecommerce sites. Here's my recount of what works and what still needs improvements in the fashion ecommerce space. Enjoy!
The licensing costs are somewhat hefty upfront and get exponentially so as your business grows. So the decision (I think) isn't necessarily "Oh it's free now let's do it," it's closer to "OK, this is costly now, and may be worth it now, but down the road, as we scale in people and the app in size, the money isn't justifiable."
Equally interesting, check out the first of those UMass Amherst links to see an example of how little scrubbing Microsoft did in the case of professor names, as well. The same professor is listed as #4 and #5, whereas combined, he would be #1 at UMass Amherst, and in the top 5 or 6 most-cited professors in the history of MIT or Stanford, with ~15,000 citations.

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Organization/3912.asp...
I definitely agree with you pagerank would be one of the most influential paper in Google history. However, for the year filter, I might be wrong but I think it filters based on the year the paper is published, not the year it gets cited. So when you pick "last 5 years", it won't include the citations for pagerank.
Quote: '“This letter is too well written.” He fiddle [sic] with the pen as he read.'
In other words: It can do basic routing and form parsing.
It is true that existing shareholders might not price the round fairly if they have ulterior motives on the pricing.

However, frequently insider funding rounds are at realistic valuations, or even unrealisticly low valuations, to force all existing shareholders to participate or be diluted.
Acttualy, I think it means more what I mean by cash. Which is misleading, because I'm dealing in digital money, no cash involved, but rather than a credit agency, my own bank account, ergo debit transfers.

The relationship, as far as I can see, is the same as that of credit: they bill me, and I send them electronic funds. What am I missing?
This is an archive of urls and names, not of web pages.
The world in Brave New World was portrayed in a very negative light, but I found it to be a utopia where everyone is happy. I don't see why a future where people have everything they may want and are happy all the time without fear is a bad world to be in...
The Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial book (with PDF downloads) is out
Few grand / silly ideas had:

Neuroscience -
Brain scan a person from all religions to show it's the same thing that they are all doing. (massive blood flow reduction in the part of the brain that orientates their positioning)

Eco -
Do a tidal power generator crossed with a desalination plant.
Experiment with resonance frequencies of hydrogen and ionosphere for clean power.
Make ultra cheap solar panels and dump them in the desert. (pretty sure some tin foil, a way of converting and some genetic algorithm shaping should get this done)
Patch any ozone holes with spraying of o^3 / something to counter act the cfcs.
Co2 problem (down to 60% of the problem from 90% a few years ago) harvest the co2 out!

Physics -
There's always going to be smaller!
One of the strings in string theory is consciousness

Society -
Legalise all drugs, prostitution and assisted suicide (stops making so many people into criminals)
No speed limit on motorways at certain times

Biology -
Find what plants grow well in all soil / sand conditions. (grow the desert / useless land)
Bacterial recycling / break down of rubbish.

TV/entertainment -
Providers release torrents / streams to anywhere with ads before the pirates do it for them.

And to answer the ops questions:
1. I think it's possible to influence fields you have no expertise in, as can email scientists / producers.
2. yes
3. More empowerment to people to get involved. One day a year ask people if they have any ideas or suggestions in x field.
I don't use drugs myself, but this article is very interesting because it contains science and statistics and talks about a specific chemical test, its history, its serious flaws, its misuse, and how its misuse has become a tool to imprison obviously innocent people. There's enough science geek content in the article that I think it makes sense to be on HN.
As a special thank-you to the awesome community here, the main story link above contains a Hacker News–specific code for a 20% discount on Ruby on Rails Tutorial PDF purchases, good for 30 days. Here is the code if you want to use it directly:

hackernews01

As noted on the Rails Tutorial site, the online version of the book is still free, and purchasers of the PDF will get unlimited free updates through the final release of Rails 3.0. (The online version will also be updated, of course.)

Finally, I'd like to announce that, after the Rails 3 ecosystem and book text have fully stabilized, the HTML source of the online version will be available under a Creative Commons license to allow for translation into other languages. Hacker News readers interested in translating the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book should email me at my personal address (available in my HN profile).
This rings very, very true. In Rio, there are free schools that any child can attend so long as they show up.

The thing is, they put those schools so far away from the slums as a disincentive for the barefoot underclass from showing up.

Sure, a child could walk 6 miles one way uphill to get an education. And some families might support that. But in general, when a family doesn't know when or where its next meal is coming from, it has higher priorities than schooling.
Haskell on a Horse (HoH) is a combinatorial web framework for the programming language Haskell. It is currently at an early, unsettled stage of development. It is available under the "BSD3" open-source license.

http://haskell.on-a-horse.org/
A thousand things advance, nine hundred and ninety nine retreat: that is
progress.

--Henri Frederic Amiel

It's sad to think academics and education policy wonks are still struggling with the question of what is the fair market value of teachers in 2010? I'd bet two generations from now it's going to be common sense to say "great teachers are 10x more productive than average teachers, so let's incentive that behavior." (Hmm, doesn't that sound just like the conventional wisdom about another certain profession we all know about here?). Why is it such a struggle to realize that now?

What absolutely kills me is that we have all of these super smart people dedicating their careers to this, and billions of tax payer dollars spent, and the education system that will eventually become the consensus is going to resemble the earliest modern education system in 19th century Germany/Prussia. (It's a fascinating history itself—the US public school system was originally designed as clone of the German system.)

Oh and after incentiving and selecting teachers for teaching talent based on performance becomes the norm, here is the next question that the education system will confront:

Are great teachers who get to spend one academic year with their students much less effective than even greater teachers who instead stick with the same group of students, and teach the kids for several years of k-12?

After a million studies, experimental schools, and policy debates by people who don't even know what they're talking about, the new consensus will be yes, the greatest teachers are the most effective when they can become semi-permanent tutors for kids over longer periods of time. And then we will have arrived back at the original German system of grad-level teachers who are state-funded, private full-time tutors for small groups of kids.
In looking through the profiles of some of my past co-workers, the ones who have the most impressive profiles roughly coorelate to the weakest software developers I've ever known. I just have to shake my head and laugh. The absolute least productive person I've ever worked with by far, has a tremendous profile: 191 connections, 27 people have recommended, 3 dozen corporations in the last 15 years where he's listed himself as Architect, Consultant, Senior, Project Leader. Also loaded with an impressive mass of buzzwords.

So, from my experience, LinkedIn really can provide a great informational service and you don't even have to sign up for it! If you Google someone and find little or nothing except their trumped-up LinkedIn profile, then that should tell you something about their motivations.
> Now a REAL wedding disruptor would be a tool that
> auto-generates video/photos of you and your family at a
> wedding so you can send those out and skip whole wedding
> nonsense, and go drinking with all your combined friends
> for the evening.

No offense but...you've never been married, have you?

A wedding is a lot like a startup -- there's a whole lot of pain and frustration getting it launched, but launch day is a hell of a lot of fun -- not just for the bride and groom, but for the family and friends too. (The difference is that most people want a wedding.)

Besides, even if you found a customer base that would be willing to buy this, your mother would shoot you for not having her to your wedding. :>
Ctrl + Shift + /(on numpad) works enough for me to hide boilerplate code on Eclipse. We also lose ability to add annotations (say for validation on Struts action classes) to the getters/setters.