skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"piping strings is dumb"

I used to believe this. I was simultaneously learning Bash and PowerShell. I love PowerShell....(when I am stuck with Windows), but I'd never trade in my Bash shell. Piping objects is cool, but in reality, what is it really? It's just a programming language with a terse syntax for manipulating iterators.

Let's compare...

Powershell:

Get-Process | where { $_.Handles -gt 200 }

C# 3:

Process.GetProcesses().Where(p => p.Handles > 200)

Hmmm... what does piping objects even mean, really?

OK, so now why piping strings is interesting: forced serialization.

Every component of the transform can be debugged simply by deleting everything after that component. The new output goes to the screen or you can pipe it to a file. You get persistence for free. You can checkpoint your work and continue later. Imagine you are doing some very heavy duty processing that you only really need to do once. If you keep piping to a file along the way, you have backups and checkpoints.

What if you want to send the results to another server? You're going to have to serialize your objects. If your objects are arbitrarily complex graphs, how do you serialize them? It can get hairy, fast.

In summary: if you need to do arbitrary logic on arbitrary objects, use a programming language. If you need to transform some serialized data into some other serialized data: pipe strings.
I think I had a damn seizure. I could understand this if this was 1997 and he was 11 years old. But geez- isn't he paying attention to the web? Furthermore, he can't seem to figure out how to make an é symbol...
Uhh Yeah Dude: America through the eyes of two American Americans. http://www.uhhyeahdude.com
I mean, any other export would just be the result of some query. And it doesn't have to be a complicated query, either. Just "WHERE customer_id=5" or whatever.

Or am I missing something?
Can you find 3 advantages of IPhone over Android?
Just did this on an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.0.1. Worked like a charm! Some of the Cydia repositories are being hit hard and may time out the first time you load Cydia (BigBoss especially).

Edit: MyWi's USB tethering works, looks like Wifi tethering does not.
I initially looked at languages like clojure, but the slow load times of the JVM put me off. Now that you mentioned gcj, I found this note from Rich Hickey: http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/msg/58e3f8e5dfb876c9 which makes it sound like one could compile clojure => java => native binaries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junction_table
Linode guys contacted me that my server was being used to carry out ssh brute force attacks.
I saw that somebody had created a user named test on my Linode.
I think it might be related to postfix or dovecot.
After I stopped those services so far there have been no problems.
The other services I have running are Apache, Tomcat and ssh.
That's my hometown :) A very high concentration of tech companies in the Herzliya Industrial Zone (almost wholly tech companies and fancy restaurants these days).
The graphics sound like tower defense.
Lost my FaceTime capability after jailbreak.
Nice one, thanks, and good luck with Firetweets!

There is tons of job tweets, but most have "job" in the username and/or app source. Also any app source that contains "bot" or "feed" is most likely safe to ignore.
Flash doesn't deserve to "die" per se, but it is massively over used currently and I think Apple's efforts to fight back against that overuse are justified. That being said, this trend of casting every disagreement in tech as a Manichean life and death struggle is getting annoying. We can have differences of opinion with regards to technology without casting it in such black and white good vs. evil terms.
This is related and blew my mind.

http://www.chiefog.com/drilling_process.html
This is all based on hard data we have collected from my company StartupDigest. direct link: www.thestartupdigest.com

The strongest 5 cities outside of the US for us (60% of our issues are outside of the US) based on subscribe size, growth, and click through rate are in this order:

1. London
2. Paris
3. Tel Aviv
4. Beijing
5. Toronto

Granted I haven't lived in any of these cities long enough to know whats it really like but these are the top cities from our data alone.

My advice would be to get in touch with with founders, hackers, and VC's in these areas to get the real feel for what these cities are like. Then visit your top choices, and cowork there for 2-4 weeks.

Hope this helps!
If you have a secret cryptoanalysis capability, then using data obtained from it in court will render it no longer secret, and it is no good for intimidating people. Having a nonsecret capability to do the same thing solves these problems.
JailbreakMe 2.0. Jailbreak the iPhone on the device itself
Yes, come to Scandinavia! It's happening a lot here, there's some great iniatives to become a real innovation hub for tech companies. And most importantly - we have competence and willingness to make great inventions. Stockholm is the natural hub, but both Helsinki, Copenhagen, Oslo & Malmö is great. The South of Sweden have become a great place with many iniatives, companies and events.

I know, we have higher taxes, but it's a lot cheaper than UK (for example).
Looks like MMS vanished too, at least for me.

UPDATE: You can work around by doing a backup first, jailbreaking, and then restoring from backup (which just copies settings/etc over). Stays jailbroken. If you have a pre-jailbreak backup apply that to fix.
How to Create a Great Startup Office Space on a Bootstrap Budget
confirmed. wonder what else is broken.
The App::Cronjob Perl module is great for adding effortless locking to existing programs:

@daily cronjob -j some-uid -c '/usr/bin/some-command.sh'
It doesn't seem to throw out / properly mark insignificant results: http://rubybenchmark.com/reports/10 (is there any reason these 2 variants could get different bytecode results?)

That's the way echo -vs- print wars start...
Yeah, it isn't about the tool. It's about the person using the tool.
What's your target?

In a perfect world, a prosecutor only brings a case if they have enough evidence to have a reasonable expectation of winning. I honestly don't know if 90% is a problem, but the natural knee-jerk "fair" outcome of 50% would actually mean that half the time, a prosecutor is bringing a case that they shouldn't have. That sounds like an awfully high rate of false charges to me.

90% doesn't sound so wrong to me, and I don't think that's where the problem lies. The problem is the breadth and variety of ways in which the prosecutor can bring a successful case against you.

(This is important because if we're going to push for reform, we want to push for the right things, not just kneejerk that everything is wrong every time we see a statistic.)
I'd like to know how this works, and it does indeed work. Using this method, couldn't any site install arbitrary software on an iPhone through Safari without the user knowing?
People on twitter are saying if you jailbreak from jailbreakme.com, and then do a full restore, you will get FaceTime/MMS functionality back. Unconfirmed
Feathering the blades is windmill "gearing". It matches the power available from the wind to the power that can be absorbed by the generator. In the overpowered case, it scales back the power converted from the wind: it "spills" some of the wind energy by making the blades less efficient so that less power is generated (totally feathered results in no power, but the blades can be feathered to any degree necessary).

Adjustable gearing would add a lot of complexity, weight, and reduce reliability. Reducing efficiency by (partially) feathering the blades is a much better method, especially since it is already a necessary capability of the windmill.
Techzing is a great podcast about startups, web development and general discussion. http://www.techzinglive.com
I find brace most alluring: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=929645
Scaling, it provides cheap, quick sharding from Day 1. If your db is overloaded, just move some to a second machine. FB used a similar approach with mysql and isolated university databases in the early days, I believe.
Ask HN: Tracking unique visitors on a page by page basis
We're holding a contest on our blog to see who can bring in the most number of unique visitors this month. In order to do this properly, we'd have to track the unique visitors to each post page, but can't seem to find that option in google analytics.

Is this possible in google analytics? If so, how? If not, what analytics solution would you recommend?
There's probably a happy middle. Basically what you're saying is that you want a weakly-typed format, which unpacking that statement yet further means that you want a format that lets you do pretty much anything to it. Types boil down to a set of restrictions on what the data can be and what you are permitted to do with it, and a hunk o' text (TM) is just about as untyped as you can get.

But it might be nice to pass around JSON or something instead. It isn't quite as untyped, but on the grand scale of things it's not very typed.
I'm not optimistic about this ever being legal even if it ends up being safe and effective. The bottom line is that I can't see the FDA ever approving a mind-altering drug that isn't for a recognized disease.
You'd need to set up two companies, one in the Mainland and one in Hong Kong, when doing it in China. Use the Mainland one for stuff involving low costs, and the Hong Kong one for when you start making money, for the legal protections.
In this case, the many to many relationships should be obvious, but I feel I must point out:

Based on that text specifically, all that's needed is that the patient and hospital each have a doctor ID column. How many would get it if you specifically pointed out that they need to consider real-world circumstances in this, and / or if you enumerated all the requirements?

Many many many times, when stating a hypothetical question, real-world handling responses are not desirable to the questioners. If the interviewee realizes this, they also realize that they risk losing points no matter how they answer: answering based on the specified requirements fails with you, but answering based on real-world uses fails with people testing against over-engineering / people religious about specific answers to specific questions. And being verbose risks both groups, based pretty much solely on the interviewer, of whom they have effectively no knowledge.

Or have you done this, and it just wasn't included in the example above?
Or huge batteries, I guess...
I would have gone for Wellington rather than Auckland. There's been several large success stories out of Wellington and there's a fair bit of VC cash, they're trying hard to get a good startup culture going. Tons of tech companies there. Excellent (really, truly wonderful) coffee.

The downsides are occasionally (OK, often) hideous weather and potential earthquake risks.

Auckland is a nice place but has horrible traffic, near-useless public transport for some areas and is about to go through a total shemozzle of a local government reshuffle, which may drag things back a bit.
I've found History According to Bob endlessly fascinating; http://www.summahistorica.com/

Short, digestible college style lectures about various history topics.
Thank you very much for that info. I didn't realize Vienna was so active. Switzerland might even go on the short list if their residency situation isn't too bad.

I've been to Chile and I can say that the people there have a very can-do, capitalist attitude. I'll look into the startup program their doing.

Thanks very much!
What about pumping water uphill, then using turbines to catch it coming down when it is desirable to do so.
Israel, The Start-up Nation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EQliG9Wsdo
http://www.startupnationbook.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Nation-Israels-Economic-Mirac...
I enthusiastically second this recommendation; Quirks & Quarks has definitely been my favorite podcast recently and is the only one I listen to that holds my attention and interest every single program. It covers a delightfully broad range of scientific topics and while nothing is explored in too much detail, Bob asks interesting and substantiative questions of the serious researchers he has as guests and gives them plenty of time to formulate a complete answer.
Therac-25 Revisited: Radiation Overdoses and User Error Today
http://www.qingting.biz/index.php?action=page&pid=16

Well, they certainly aren't trying to have Apple level laptop hardware, or even asus level.

Their Q Pro thing has an nvidia ion 2 chipset with an Atom D520 in a 14 inch body.
I think that's a good reason to all start using and improving the Gnash plugin. I use it for my work and it's enough for what I need it for, and one of the most overseen GNU efforts to make things free.
Hands down, Tel Aviv.

London, Beijing, Boston, Tokyo (all places where I have been and interacted with the entrepreneurial community, at least in consumer internet) have nothing on it.

There are naturally downsides to Tel Aviv, which are mentioned below and chief among which is the stupid immigration policy which probably makes it hell for non-Jews to get in to work on a start up.

However, if you can figure out a way to work there, here's what I think Tel Aviv has going for it:

1. High appetite for risk and hunger for success/opportunity among young people. Lots of the best people are technical, and many come from middle class backgrounds.

2. Highly entrepreneurial society/culture.

3. Strong presence of many US Firms, VC and technological (intel, google etc..). Very tight communication lines between the Valley and Israel (many entrepreneurs and investors spend time in both places during the year).

4. Lots of highly skilled engineers and somewhat lower costs (by US standards).

5. A city that never sleeps and has wifi everywhere.

I mean this quite literally. You can go out at 4am to one of Tel Aviv's many cafe/restaurant/bars, order a shot of Jager, a wiener schnitzel with fries and a side salad, and an espresso to top it off, all while enjoying great wi-fi and being only minutes (walking on flat ground!) from the beach (where as opposed to SF, the water is actually warm most of the year). Nobody will even give you a second look.

Try that anywhere but New York City (with its six months of crappy weather) and I guarantee you will want to shoot yourself.

6. Hot weather throughout the year. No need to deal with stupid externalities like snow storms or days where you get SAD because of the weather (see London...).

7. Great research universities.

8. Only hours flight from all major european cities. If you need to fly to London for a day or two, no problem. It would cost you a few hundred dollars - and it's shorter than flying from NYC to SF.

9. Tons of amassed experience in building tech startups.

10. Access to capital.
Thanks, that's the kind of unexpected answer I was hoping for to some extent.

How's the cost of living? How much would a 2Br 2Ba apartment in good proximity to mass transit go? Would it be super expensive to get broadband to said apartment? Or would it be something like the US where you just ring up a provider and they turn it on?

How much is english spoken there? I'll look into the residency and visa issues and put it on my list though.

Thanks!
In my experience good people are the hardest investment to come by. By investment I mean long term. Qualitatively, I mean how open and capable a person is not only to his craft, but to changing to the demanding forces of a startup, growing as an individual and as part of the corporate culture. It sounds as though what this candidate lacks in experience, he makes up with his professional skills so it seems promising.

Is there any way you can have your cake and eat it too? For example, depending on what the circumstances of his two months are (student?) maybe you can start having him come in on a more relaxed schedule so he can get his sea legs. During that time, spend the money to outsource some of the work via contract to established individuals but have the new recruit play a role in this transition so in two months, he is already off to a running start, has clarity, and can focus on his priorities.

I find when you give people opportunities and are supportive of their needs, they will amaze you.

This is an interesting scenario and I'd also like to know what other HNers think.
Wouldn't the term "junction" tell you what you need to know about this table?

"Junction", "join table", "intersection table" - really, you are going to judge someone's competency based on which flavor of a synonym they use?
The biggest hurdle is that it doesn't work. Ok - it does in general, but 1) you need a T.38-compatible termination (to get past ~90% reliability) 2) Whatever you do, you're unlikely to ever reach 99%. Unless you peer directly to the SIP termination network, standard packet drops and jitter will give you enough random connection errors to annoy at least one customer.

Other notes: 1) Please don't assume "voip == asterisk". Have a look at FreeSwitch or Yate too. 2) If you don't feel like reading and understanding most of RFCs 3261, 4566 and some texts about T.38 renegotiation -- start looking for some experienced VoIP person to set you up with the basic gateway. VoIP is unfortunately far away from the "make install && forget" types of services - it needs a maintainer who knows the stuff inside out.

So the best way to go about it? Unless you've got some VoIP / telecom. experience, I'd recommend finding someone who can do it for you either on the *-biz mailing lists, or on typical freelancer portals.
"Switching gears" shouldn't make a difference unless it brings the blades to a halt. There's still (roughly) the same amount of energy, it's just producing different voltage / amperage based on your gearing. Rotating the blades slightly, however, would control power generation without trouble (though possibly more cost / repair / etc, unless they do this already?).
Analytics -> Overview -> Top Content -> Sort by "Unique Pageview" -> Filter by URL, or export to CSV then filter by whatever means floats your boat.
You "looked the word up online" just now and feel qualified to judge whether or not someone is a qualified interviewer?

EDIT: Meh, I have been trolled.
Bring on the smart grid + power storage (ie, flywheel) industry! That way, not only could it be absorbed and properly used, but info back to the turbines could get them to throttle down before more than can be absorbed is created. The power companies wouldn't have to worry much, and the power storage industry could off such bursts, instead of the excess pretty much being wasted.
Don't take it for granted.

With modern software design and especially OOP the risk of data inconsistency is less of a problem (I do web apps for entreprise and it simply never happened to me).

On the other hand duplication of information is a great way to scale an application. And incidentally offers data security since you can cross check your data in case of corruption.
s/Kill/Block

Thank you.
What about South America -> Chile, Argentina, Brazil?
Does someone has experience / anyone familiar with a startup scene in these countries?
Of course. That's very common approach and there are many such power plants ("storage"). But as you can imagine, this cannot be built anywhere, cheaply enough and in large enough quantities.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Dlouhe_st..., 2 × 325 MW for 6 hours when full, ~250 millions EUR to build)
>11.2. We shall not be subject to any obligations of confidentiality regarding
submitted information except as outlined in our Privacy Policy [5] or as
otherwise specifically agreed or required by law.

>If you post any material (including information) on our website, you
agree to grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, transferable,
assignable, sub-licensable (by multi-tier) licence to use that material as we
see fit without notice to you unless otherwise agreed in writing between you
and us.

So who are you selling the owner info to?
A very good article about Chile on techcrunch:
http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/10/chile-wants-your-poor-your-...
Massive undersea river discovered flowing on sea bed
This is something that's never far from my mind; the unknown sliver of time we have. I think about it when I wonder if I'm saving enough money for the long term vs spending it on some experience that will enrich my life in the near term. What's the point in saving for retirement if you could be gone in 20, 10, 5 years, or tomorrow?

Thanks for saying this. I've been overly worried about money here lately. I'm 45 and "should" have died in my mid-thirties (and nearly did). I'm healthy now, as are my sons even though one of them has the same condition I have. You can't really put a price on that.

Peace.
Does this also mean that they have visa/residency programs for entrepreneurs? Or is it just focused on chinese nationals?

One concern for china is the level of bureaucracy necessary. But in every other regard China would certainly be a hoot- it is an amazing country.
I'm not saying that Unix's approach is the the final word on the subject. In fact, I quite agree with you: structured formats are a good idea.

I, for one, would like to see --format options added to many of the standard Unix tools. I'd probably define --format= as a shortcut for specifying both --informat= and --outformat=. It would be great to have some sort of XPath or dotted object notation on the command line rather than hacking around with awk, sed, cut, etc.

Rather than:

ps -ef | awk -v p=$PPID 'p==$3{print $2}'

Do:

ps --format=xml | xquery "/process[ppid=$PPID]/pid"

Or something like that. A bit more verbose, but far more understandable.

If I were to design the future, every tool would have metadata which describes which input and output formats it supports and prefers, so that most --format arguments would be optional:

ps | xquery "/process[ppid=$PPID]/pid"

I'd prefer that 100 times over object piping.
Being the lone genius is an anti-pattern
devils advocate, but why are you asking database engineer questions during a software developer interview?
Netscape Communications First Press Release (1994)
Jacob Appelbaum, Wikileaks editor, detained by US customs
IBM and the Jeopardy Challenge
This is worth a read if only for this gem - "Netscape Communications' new Netscape provides cruise control for the information superhighway".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_language

Unix shell scripts is listed as the first example.
Outrage as a Source of Enterprise in Detroit
I usually include some extra details about each entity to imply that each should be its own table.
I hadn't seen the Perl6 junctions before... that's an utterly awesome language feature o_O

I really need to take a close look at Perl 6 some time.
It depends a lot on the complexity of the system, but I have a rule of thumb: if after 2-3 days I cannot get a minimal prototype of something I want to achieve (this doesn't include running attached examples), it's time to reconsider. Maybe the interface is too different, maybe the system was not designed for what I need, or maybe it's good but we simply have to spend more time on it. Then again, maybe we learnt enough to write our own solution instead.
Definitely Not the Opera (DNTO to those in the know). http://www.cbc.ca/dnto/ The best way I can describe is that they take a theme from day-to-day living (small talk, friends, language, etc.) and have a series of thoughtful discussions about it. It grew on me quickly and is a nice change up from tech, news, and tech news. ;p
Introducing Gruen Tenders - a simple way to induce an unbiased prognosis
Yes I'm referring to the free plan. I don't get it, why let trial users try with a subpar offering, it really is bad for "showing off" what Heroku is. I would put free trials at 30 or 60 days limit and give trial users something to talk about.