skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for the story. There were some very good lessons in it.

> every time I managed to fix something[1] I proved him right in a way deepening the misery and the complexity of the next challenge

I have a similar situation with the startup that I work for now. I've done some decent work, even though I don't nearly have the toolset (or background experience, tbh) that would usually be required or available. This has been interpreted as "you've validated working with what we've got" as opposed to "you can do impressive work, in spite of what we've got." Now I'm asked to do the usual improvements (better performance, more features, and lower cost), and expected to figure a way out with this "validated" workflow.

I guess this is just a wordy way of asking if you have any advice on that matter. It would be appreciated.
most people view rape as something committed only by men

In English law rape can only be committed by a man.
If you work harder when I put a gun to your head, why shouldn't I do that all the time?

We aren't nice to people because it makes them work better, instead we "aren't nasty" to people because it's nasty.
> The company, MuseAmi, now has half a dozen software engineers and about as many patents applied for.

I know it's cliché to bash patents, but as a musician and someone who often brainstorms opportunities for music software, this is frustrating. I haven't tried to look for these particular patents, but I'd almost bet that they aren't that innovative. This whole business of "navigating the patent landscape" just sucks the ambition out of new ideas whenever they come up.

Yeah, patents shouldn't stop you from doing it, etc, but that just postpones you having to deal with the problem if you become successful.
I stopped reading when the author said everyone wants stocks to go up. You can make money no matter what direction the market goes. A brief skim of the rest of the article finds similar errors. The OP doesn't seem to understand the basics of asset allocation and diversity.
I'm one of the founders of http://AdGrok.com -- we're in the current YC batch. I just turned 40 (one week before demo day!), have a wife (we just celebrated our 16th anniversary), and two kids (8 and 10).

I'd look carefully at your situation. Through this whole experience, my wife has been amazingly supportive -- there were no hesitations on her part as to whether I should go for it or not. She's been just as important for me in keeping the AdGrok ball rolling forward as my co-founders have.

Make sure all parties involved know what they're going into. It's my fourth startup (the second I was a founder in), so she knew I was going to be "heads-down" for a decent duration, frequently coming home after she was asleep (or just sleeping at the office). Make sure she's expecting crazy-long work days. You don't want or need her surprised by anything in a month or two.

I've worked with hundreds of hackers through the years, and there's only one common regret voiced by the older of my hacker friends: it's the soul-tearing sadness of not spending enough time with your kids. Just try to keep that in the back of your mind -- you'll have to try to decide what "enough" means.

Good luck!
Chop-Shop Workers and Bootstrappers: Chile Really Wants You
5 Fashion Trends That Double as Self Defense
It’s not always easy being a woman.
Also Mac's Terminal app is only 16 color.
2010 User-Agent Blacklist
Assange: Conspiracy or coincidence
I wouldn't necessarily categorize them as a "start-up" before. They're a mature, growing, and very profitable business.
I don't really get why, since you can't use a namespace before it's defined and namespaces are scoped. The only reason why you'd have to stream through twice is if you wanted a list of all namespaces in the document at the start of your parsing, and why would you want that (let alone care about it)?
This is true; it's unfortunate that Stross is misinformed on this point. But it's also true that all the weaknesses of C are still present in C++. (I suppose std::string mitigates the char* damage in C somewhat, though I suspect there are rather too many APIs out there still using char*. And the lack of bounds checking is an ever-present problem...)
New post on Techcrunch about Chile "Chop-Shop Workers and Bootstrappers: Chile Really Wants You"

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/21/chop-shop-workers-and-boots...
Your use of the word 'exterminated' makes it sound like you're arguing that the US is directly responsible for Muslims killing Muslims.

In general, wars tend to cause lots and lots of people to die. That means that countries that starts wars for no good reason are responsible for the resulting deaths.

randomly murdering people wouldn't be my response

I'm glad to hear that your violent revenge would stop just short of murder. Brave talk from a man who hasn't lost much.

I also would like to see a source that says Israel intentionally attacked Lebanese civilians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_shelling_of_Qana#Mohamed_A... says "A United Nations military investigation later determined it was unlikely that Israeli shelling of the U.N. compound was the result of technical or procedural errors."
Or dividend income
You don't need to know more than the other market participants to do well in the stock market, you just need to know one thing that other people don't (assuming your investment is a tiny fraction of the money in the stocks you pick). You should always expect that all the information on a product that is accessible to Wallstreet traders is already factored into a stocks price, but there may be things (does this product really make sense for someone like me who lives in a small appartment, how will this inovation interact with the stuff I learned in all those technical courses I took in college) that you might better information about than the market makers.

Of course, it might just be that random chance has caused the author of the post to do badly in the market and me to do well - causing us both to be biased. You should always diversify your investing and its probably a good idea to put most of your stock money into index funds.
Mr. Assange might disagree with you.
It's kind of strange requiring a video game as a required activity for all students. Subjects like reading and mathematics are things taught in grade school and have required proficiency levels before admittance in to university, but there are a lot of people out there who just don't play video games. Portal is not a difficult game for people who play video games on occasion, but people who don't will have an awfully difficult time.
"what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the alternative"

Does it? Does Mother Earth care whether your pollution came from a car or bicycle? You're just another polluter, you big bad polluter you.

More seriously, I think the reference here is to the idea that you can somehow objectively measure your negative impact and that anything above zero is bad. Since I pretty comprehensively disagree with that statement (impact to something as dynamic as the ecosystem can not be measure concretely, most people's metric of "impact" are incoherent when you really examine them, zero impact isn't a useful metric in light of these things, and I have at least as much "right" to exist and impact an environment as a beaver), I tend to agree with you. My point here is that it depends on your point of view and there are common points of view that disagree with you, and the piece was very clearly invoking this "radical" green point of view very often.
Warrants outstanding Jacksonville
you can have your warrants outstanding Jacksonville here.for more details visit our website arrestedinjacksonville.com/
What is Curation?
Why do you think the police would need to be bribed or anything to record a claim & decide to prosecute ? I wouldn't be surprised if they were bound to investigate/prosecute (by law) in such cases.

Only thing I don't get is how on earth you'd be able to argue that Assange has a "position of power" or that you fear him - is he some kind of uber-rich tycoon or politically connected kingpin or something ? Or did they fear he'd wikileak their private facebook ?

To me it's textbook character assassination - even if the claims are withdraws (maybe especially if they are without an investigation or trial), people will vaguely remember this and Assange will be 'tainted' forever.

I'm not saying well-known people don't do bad shit (Polanski ?) but some kind of hard evidence (a rape-kit confirmed DNA match) would have / would be most welcome in this spooks-rich context.
Upvote. Great point, but laws are written by people and therefore reflect the thinking of the folks who author them. So I stand by my statement: Most folks view it that way. That doesn't mean it is accurate to assume (which such a law clearly does) that a woman is incapable of violating the will of a man and having sex with him without his consent. For a variety of reasons, it may be less likely but that doesn't mean it never happens.
And little boys, too, tried as adults.
What stocks are paying good dividends now (or likely to in the future)? (honest question)
Oh, they sound innovative, they just don't sound patent-worthy. At the core of his idea he's just plugging some OCR algorithms into a midi player, but the way he's described it I wouldn't be surprised if some of those patents essentially amount to a patent on a specific yet unremarkable implementation of OCR with a midi player attached.

The implementation may be innovative, but not patent worthy since it's a fairly straightforward application of existing tools.
"Water conservation discussion need to be very localized."

I live in Michigan. Tomorrow my car is going into the dealership to be examined to see if the flood it was in last week damaged it in any subtle ways, then it needs to be cleaned up since I wasn't quite able to get it dry enough to avoid it smelling.

This snapshot gives you a reasonably accurate idea of our relationship to water around here. (I'm smart enough to live where it won't flood, unfortunately my work office is built in a flood plain, albeit on stilts so the main office won't flood, I was out to lunch, bit o' rain pops up, bam.)
This could just be a stunt pulled by the tabloid that reported it:

Assange said "Jag har inte blivit kontaktad av polisen."[0]

Translates from Swedish as "I have not been contacted by the police."

0: http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/anklagelserna-skakar-wikile...
Platform-dependent behavior; what crashes on your Linux box doesn't necessarily crash on the embedded system running your flight control software...
Given that it is Sweden, there won't be a "jury of 12 ordinary people":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_system_of_Sweden
This is where 85% of people in India live
And a lots and lots of people were innocent until proven innocent.

Why you'd bring Reiser of all people in this is beyond me... Is it because Assange is kind of a geek and Reiser a programmer ? If this seems like a valid connection to you, I wonder how much persuading you'd need before agreeing with throwing, say, all muslims in jail right away.
Sorry. I posted this as soon as I got the info from a friend on IRC... I thought it was still valid. I haven't tried the code myself, since I have a lot of other books to read right now, but hoped it might interest other people.

Also, I wasn't only posting this for the "deal of the day" part: I thought it might spark some interesting discussion about the book.

Mark Pilgrim is the author of http://diveintohtml5.org/ and http://code.google.com/p/doctype/wiki/Welcome?tm=6 (reddit discussion here ).
He's also the author of "Dive Into Python", which is a well-known python book, but Zed Shaw does not seem to like it very much ( http://oppugn.us/posts/1272050135.html ), so here you go...
No there must be checks out there. From the top of my head and stuff I've noticed I would do the following;

Ask the victim to describe the assailants crotch area etc. and cross check.

DNA tests if the guy was stupid enough not to wear a condom (but this was Assagne).

Corresponding physical injuries or bruises as described by the victim on the assailants body (there's almost always a struggle in a rape).

Clothing with traces of the victim for example hair samples from a jacket, shoe or clothing unlikely to be rinsed(in case he claims that they have never met).

Trace biological evidence on the scene (can be faked though).

Interrogation. (even very smart people tend to slip up)

Standard investigations (alibis blah blah the entire detective book routine)

----

I think that the real problem is that it takes too long to verify for the 24 hour news cycle unlike a murder.
This kind of thing is very common in almost every corner of the world where there are subways and in general a decent public transportation system. That's how my brother and I grew up. We were basically on our own since 1st grade because where I grew up everything was a two station ride and a block away.
So now leaking is wrong?
Come on, have a sense of humour.

What's great about JavaZone is they can actually be different from your run-of-the-mill vendor conference.

Oh, and there actually are some women in there too.
Most = > 50%.

> You are attempting to shut down discussion by asking for sympathy for rape victims.

No, I merely pointed out that there are plenty of rape cases that are real and that pretending that the majority of rape cases are faked is not exactly realistic.

Rape is a tough thing to confront, even if it is real and there are a very large number of rape cases that are never even brought to the stage of accusation.

True rape cases also have many instances where charges are dropped or where the accuser will not cooperate with the police because it is simply too painful.
Won't this just make people hate Portal and think it's boring?
technically he said people buy stocks because they think stocks will increase in value. it is an useless/obvious observation but different from what you stated.

like cuban i do wonder why individuals think they can beat the market. well connected and well capitalized groups have access to far more information than is publicly available. with the rise of hft and the like not only are you under attack by players who understand the fundamentals better but also by people who can game the exchange platforms themselves.
Ask HN: Any recommendations on how to improve a homepage bounce rate?
I got a personal project where the current homepage bounce rate is 48.90%. Is this bad or acceptable? Any recommendations, suggestions for this kind of project. Can I still improve this? This is my first time managing a site. I already posted the site's url here before and I don't want to be look like a spammer by posting the same url again. If you're interested in helping a fellow hacker, the site's url is in my profile. Appreciate your feedbacks in advance.
This makes me really want to make my daughter study to become an Oracle programmer (wpps, I mean Java programmer)
Interesting. Now: will there be any documents about this case leaked and appear on wikileaks? Variaton: will there be any documents appearing on wikileaks if they are incriminating against Assange?
> Also, digital cameras have no shutter lag, at least not noticeable. The problem is autofocus, that’s what takes time.

Oh but they do. From ~0.07 seconds on professional dslr bodies to as high as 0.13-0.2 second on entry level dslrs.

(and yes, it does matter in practice)
MBA vs CFA
At risk of further downvoting, let me explain. Unemployment checks are there to provide a cushion for people who are not working, but want to be soon. I fail to see the distinction between looking for a job at bigco and ramping up for your own self-employment. Both cases satisfy the spirit of the law (which is to help people get through tough periods on the way to working and generally aid society as a whole).

Obviously, violating the letter of the law can get you in trouble, but in my view, the morality police can rest easy on this one.
Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) have been paying > 6 percent dividends.
You seriously believe that?
When done by the authorities about a case that is under review, yes, it is absolutely wrong.
Solar hot water heating is probably a much better deal than photovoltaics.
Tech Wildcatters to Host Baylor Angel Network
California close to issuing IOUs - again
Accusations are never enough. The proof is in the evidence.

Assange is not free to smuggle drugs, just as the government is not free to plant drugs on him to try to accuse him of something that he didn't do.

Both are illegal.

The problem is in separating fact from fiction and making sure that you do the right thing. Juries have that problem anyway.
>I just don’t think there is any good evidence for this being a conspiracy.

For us, there's no evidence for anything. All we know is that someone powerful governments don't like has been accused of some very suspicious sounding charges right before releasing some kind of potentially sensitive document.

>Just take a moment and think about what would be necessary to frame someone. That doesn’t seem like a simple task to me.

It's very simple in the case of things like rape. You just get someone to make a claim and sit back and wait. Did you read the article? The women simply asked advice of the police and the police filed charges without any evidence from them. This is how rape is handled in Sweden (among other places) since women are often afraid to come forward. There is nothing to go on but the word of two anonymous women.

>They, too, must know that they would be under intense scrutiny the moment they talked to the police.

So far it appears that they've only talked over the phone (that's all it takes). As far as I understand they haven't even given a statement or any evidence.

> Lying to the police is no joke, it’s a crime.

If you can prove it. How are you going to prove they're lying? Even if you could prove they didn't have sex that wouldn't prove they didn't believe what they told the police. You would have to prove they were never alone with him.

> It’s also a risk for the briber.

If they even know who the briber was.
Like it or Not - It is a Windows World
If we didn't have the "innocent until proven guilty" principle I would agree. That's the main point. The fact that there is a strong motif to discredit him only adds, even if slightly only, to the probability that he is not guilty.

I speak for myself, because this is my approach in regards to accusations; others may defend him solely for the presumption of conspiracy and would be quick to label a different guy as a rapist.
You're right, there's no reason to try to correct the 20% of the population

Erm wait, didn't I just suggest the exact opposite?

If you really think everyone has been wrong about this all the time then please, by
all means, correct wikipedia or write a blog post about the matter.

This "false" formula has been out there for quite some time and you find it
in pretty much every write-up on the topic, including those from RAID-vendors
who (I'd hope) have spent some thought on these things.

On the flip-side I haven't found a single source to support your thesis.
Thus I'd say the burden of proof is on you.
Taxpayers on the hook for $3 trillion in pensions
How do you educate your teammates without seeming condescending or superior?
Is this a company wide phenomenon or does it just apply to you?
I once made it a month into the cold season here in Michigan before realizing that my house's only heating was coming from my computers...
Depending on the complexity of the product, it's sometimes easier, cheaper, and more reliable to just build it and try to sell it than it is to do all the customer development mumbo-jumbo. If you've got a beta, why not try to sell it?

For a more direct answer, I've seen a lot of anecdotes (and this fits my experience as well) that a successful consumerish freemium web app gets about 1-2% free to paid conversion. Those numbers would be lower for beta to paid because of tire kickers.
US Must Continue Propping Up Mortgage Market: Bank Execs
This toothbrush doesn't require tooth paste
... which reveals the real problem with namespaces, which is that "nobody" actually understands them. There really isn't that much to them, in my opinion, but every time I encounter them in the wild, they're never implemented correctly, with the variance ranging from really, really wrong to just sort of off. XMPP is the closest to correct, but they still screwed up in that a user's connection to an XMPP server is under one namespace, and a component is done under another, yet an <iq> packet with no namespace qualification is supposed to be treated as the same packet in both, despite being two different packets. (I would accept simply acknowledging that they are the same somewhere, but I've never found it.)

Some people use the namespaces in what appears to be a decorative manner. Some people mandate that the prefix be a certain thing <x:tag xmlns:x="thing"> works while <y:tag xmlns:y="thing"> doesn't, proving they're doing it wrong under the hood. Some things get it right with xmlns:*, but don't understand what the bare xmlns itself means, so they only trigger namespace logic if there's a colon in the tag. I've seen cases where the namespace is declared, then used out-of-scope like it's a global declaration or something. I'm still waiting to encounter the standard or software that actually uses them correctly. And despite this listing of wrong answers it really isn't that complicated....
Thanks, we think it's pretty neat too :) Hope we're not enabling your addiction though! Ok, maybe just a little bit ;)
Web development tools have changed so much that it is hard for a web developer with 20 years experience developing SW (most of which probably wasn't even in web development) to be vastly better than someone with 5 years experience. Contrast that to a C++ developer with 20 years experience to someone with 5 years experience developing C++.

It seems to me, however, that changes in web development are coming more slowly, and it is reasonable to expect that in 10 years the author of this post could be much more productive than someone with 5 years experience.
For startup
-Smalltalk for Web app backend
-Ruby for for backend job scripting
-Some javascript

At day job
- VB for some macros in Excel
- R for analysis
- Java for some integration modules and helping on some enterprise apps.
- Scheme for other analysis and generating certain visualizations.
- Bash scripts
Indeed, YouTube is just a start... we're working on other stuff ;)
Long interviews. Psychological evaluation. Media inquiries. Maybe a trial. That’s what those two women will face. And if they were indeed bribed they know that they were bribed even if they don’t know who bribed them. Seems awfully risky to me, both for the women and the briber. To me there doesn’t seem to be a rational reason to do it.
Sure. Actually my original comment left out of a lot of context that is important and was against the spirit of your post, so apologies for being pithy.

In England "rape" is a crime which requires the criminal to penetrate with a penis. There are many other forms of sexual assault that are punished just as severely as "rape" but are just not known by that name. They can be, and are, committed by men and women.
Generally, any company that is doing ok and isn't trying to expand quickly.
First of all: I don't think 49% is a particularly horrific bounce rate, but like all things, it depends on context. Conversion rate is much (much!) more important.

Second: looking at your home page, I can see lots of opportunities for improvement, all of which can be A/B tested.

For example: your "Today's photo" widget is tiny-- probably half the size of the third-party ad I got served by Google on your page.

You might want to talk to a designer, to get started.
It has been this way for well over a decade. The jump to Linux or Mac is much easier these days. A lot more support. Before all the solutions to the little problems were in Google, it used to take more effort to go with the "other guys."