skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> [...] there isn't such a thing as happiness.

> Misery and pain is part and parcel of being alive and that's the way it should be.

Is it not possible that there is happiness, but also misery and pain? I've felt both.

Is happiness "achieved"? Or "encountered"? "momentarily brushed-up against"? "allowed"?

In any case I think an approach like TTL's is worth trying: nowhere do they say "that eternal bliss is possible". It seems they're just trying to help people make things better for themselves.
http://www.jsconflive.com
Praise my N1
Is there a simple generalization of Boyer Moore to regular expressions? Can something be said about the optimality of string searching, for example by assuming a probability distribution of input texts?
The Big Lie (Thoughts on Why School Is Not Only About Workforce Development)
One of the issues of Apple's Develop magazine a long time ago explained the Boyer-Moore, the Tuned Boyer-Moore, and the Self-Tuning Boyer-Moore, which is what I used for a C library I was working on at the time.

If you think Boyer-Moore is a trip, check out Self-Tuning Boyer-Moore. There's actually a really good writeup on it at http://www.grouse.com.au/ggrep/string.html
Most programs don't involve much or any algorithmic design.

Indeed, but I was consistently surprised at how students with no prior programming experience were bad at even basic algorithmic thinking. Things that to you and me are afterthoughts took fifteen minutes (or more) of patient back-and-forth between me and the student, including diagrams, analogies and examples.
I imagine that could be a fringe benefit of a startup, even if you don't intend to pursue self-sufficiency: it fills in gaps in your resume while allowing you to dictate how you apply your time.
But they can't show you if you have logic errors. The more code you write without testing it, the harder it is to test.
The article mentions other good predictions/leaks and another wrong one.

I think that even if a person had perfect product pipeline information from Apple any prediction more distant than the night before has a good chance of being wrong because there are so many last-minute points at which a product may be modified or pulled all-together. Example: the space on the PCB for a camera in the current iPod Touch.
It's really not that hard. One fair sized project and a bunch of browsers with tabs. It surprises me very much how much RAM that gobbles up.

I'm not even testing stuff with VMs right now, as soon as I get in to that I have to shut down the IDE at a minimum or I'll hit the swap.
In practice, most regular expressions contain some literal strings. You can use Boyer-Moore to anchor the match, then do a full regexp match from there.
Materials science is my counter example.
Yes, of course. You can index tries with pretty much anything, though elements with constant-time comparison (individual bytes/chars, pointers, hashes, etc.) will have less overhead.
Samsung Captivate here. Took 30 seconds to root it and another 10 seconds to remove the AT&T bloatware with Titanium Backup.
This article has some incorrect facts.

"Members such as HTC have gone off and added lots of their own software and customizations to their Android devices without contributing any code back to the Alliance"

That's not true. HTC added sense UI on top of android. They are 100% allowed to do that. Android is licenced under the GPL, and HTC came along forked it, and added their own stuff to it, then released the source code (http://developer.htc.com/). The alliance is free to take whatever HTC does and merge it into the android core if they are so inclined.

I'm not buying that carriers and are gaining 100% control of the software. They are legally bound to release the source code. That would have never happened before the open software alliance and android, ergo, the OHA is not "in shambles", and is working as intended.

Carriers are free to charge for whatever services they want to provide. The market should take care of most of that. If sprint wants to charge $30 for tethering, but T-mobile will let you do it for free, then it's advantage T-mobile.
A 99$ TV box, and a 500$ remote control for it? So really a 99$ "make your TV an iPad peripheral" box.
Automating the Capture of Web Timings with Selenium 2
You compare a many thousand man years VM (HotSpot JVM) to one that has been largely written by one person in isolation ( Ruby 1.8 series ).

Ruby 1.9 has 90% of the features you mention above and RBX will soon remove the GIL on top of it. Async IO is arguably further along in Ruby then in Java.

Ruby will never be as fast as Java, but micro optimizations like the OP will not hold back the inevitable progress of ruby vms.
As silly as it sounds to say... At this point it's iPad support and not other people's computers that would get in my way. Has anyone had success keeping _both_ layouts in their brains?
Monalisa's smile mystery solved
Whiteboards....whiteboards.....anyone? Beuller?
Does anyone still use a white board or notes when brainstorming? If you do, are you a developer or a business head?
I do too (and wow isn't it a wonderful feeling on the rare time when you write a whole page of code and it compiles and runs right the first time?) but I certainly couldn't do that when I first started, and trying to do so just made me get lost in a morass of logic mistakes and compiler error messages. It seems like lots of beginning programmers naturally want to write a ton of code right out of the gate and they have to be taught to do otherwise.
Apple's government Mac sales surge 200%, enterprise grows 50%
The history of Coke shows that they litigated with a vengeance everyone that tried to compete with them. Coke has never liked competition. A "napkin" agreement between Coke and Pepsi many decades ago, established this playing field.
Clickables:

http://www.GroupTabs.com

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-ad...

http://bit.ly/a8s2Ad

http://bit.ly/9alqKF

http://bit.ly/9UmAjH
> - video starts out blurry, and becomes sharper with time (hence the name! ;))

This is a fantastic idea.
However, it'd be better if that fact were known from the start.
Android is licenced under Apache v2 (not GPL) http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/android_faq.html
Though it is still pre-loaded with the Amazon MP3 store.

We want it all ways. Take off everything we don't want, but don't dare to sell to us anything less than all of the packages we do want.
It happened again, above.

It seems to be something that has been 'figured out' and is now spreading. I'll theorize that it has to do with people that are afraid of the down-mod mob to avoid their karma taking a hit after posting something silly or they're afraid of being found in a decade by a google search from some prospective employer.

I could restore the deleted bits (without naming the author) if that's desired?
While there are kernels of truth, this is a garbage article that has no place on a site like HN. The author is pandering to the iPhone fanbase where it will certainly see traction. Do a "news" search of it in the next 6 hours and you'll find it linked on every Mac and Apple site, and will almost certainly see linkage on Daring Fireball.

It's garbage. Utter claptrap garbage.

The author (a strong iPhone proponent, as an aside) is holding the iPhone as a model of openness (open from carrier control at least) which is absolutely perverse. The iPhone is very tightly controlled by Apple (they just finished patenting how they'll brick your rooted device), and Apple's control has a strong input from the carriers, where in the US your choice is limited to one.

Why can't you use facetime on 3G? Why can't you tether for free? Why can't you use Google Voice without essentially using a roundabout? and on, and on, and on.
I've been using Dvorak for ~10 years, but primarily with the command line or other non-mouse driven interfaces. However, at work I'm condemned to a life of Windows, Office and Visual Studio. One trick I've found is to keep both Qwerty and Dvorak installed. When I want to use Ctrl-S,Z,C,V while also using the mouse I can just do "ctrl-shift ctrl-[SZXCV] ctrl-shift". The ctrl-shift action is quick enough that I barely notice it anymore. This is also useful when using other applications where remapping the keyboard would become tedious or isn't possible. It helps that I'm not too slow with Qwerty so there's no hunt&peck when I switch layouts.
Notice how Neuroscience can't be split into two words... This exception seems to be supporting the rule.
If Firefox were an OCaml project, it would have likely died before hitting 1.0.

Also, I've never used OCaml, so maybe I'm wrong here, but I highly doubt it's faster than C.
Slightly overstated but I think the author has correctly identified a trend and it's one that we would do well to resist.
Did you factor taxation into your location change or was it an incidental outcome?
Nielsen: Should You Copy a Famous Site's Design?
> If you've built habits that are lazy, bad, procrastinating, and blaming others and avoiding responsibility

This is a false choice: work hard vs. lazy, bad behavior. The middle ground is to meet expectations, but don't bother exceeding them if there aren't any benefits. You can use that extra time to learn new things, improve yourself, or actually have a real life outside work.

I got the top job rating in my first job at a giant company, but my boss explained that due to HR policies I couldn't be promoted much faster than the average employee. So I subsequently aimed for a good rating, but didn't bust my ass anymore. I did grad school part time instead. Worked out well.
Having lots of memory can serve as a poor-man's SSD. At least on a Linux system files are read from the disk and left in memory until that memory is needed for something else. This can increase responsiveness by reducing the need to go to disk for frequently used filesystem data.

More info:
http://www.linuxatemyram.com/index.html
> (I would deal with the business side of things)

Remember that technical people are interviewing you too.

You need to demonstrate that you can do said biz things.

For example, you may not be able to build a demo, but you better be able to explain the idea and its utility and experience to both technical and non-technical folk.
The introduction-video shows the effect. However, this might not be enough to communicate this concept to visitors. Will think about how we can improve this. Thanks!
PR2s Available for Sale
I don't know enough about mobile to say if everything is false here. But this article's internal logic doesn't hold together.

As a commenter "batpox" on that site notes, "Using the same logic, the dirty secret about Linux and Windows is that they let Acer, Dell, HP, etc. determine what hardware our OS runs on."

I think the article is trying to claim (in a roundabout, implicit way) that good phones are the ones which are so well-marketed, and so tightly controlled, that it gives the manufacturer leverage over the network carrier. In this article, other forms of leverage (like manufacturer alliances) are disparaged based on innuendo and hearsay.

In other words: the iPhone is the only good phone. Google is evil.
> Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said, “iPhone is the first phone where we separated the carrier from the hardware. They worry about the network, while we worry about the phone.”

Wow, did he really say that? Here in Europe, many people buy their phones separately from their SIM cards, myself included.
Even if it appears in the NYT, this isn't news. It certainly isn't new.

http://searchyc.com/submissions/replace+shell+script?sort=by...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1378784

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192790

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1102238

The original, however, is interesting, and worthy of being in an archive of great articles/talks/items.
OK I really love this idea. I do have some imo important feedback:

1. You have to change your tagline. I had no idea going into the site what it was, though it can be summarized as "ChatRoulette, only it works" (or something along those lines). By now, everyone knows chatroulette, and you're missing a huge opportunity to get what your site does across. I'd even consider changing the name, something like blurryroulette or blurrychat or something, since this is a very memorable and easily described idea.

2. Someone else mentioned, don't ask for access to video/mic right away. Especially now, make the intro video more obvious/accessible.

3. Have some text explaining what the site does for people who don't want a video. Again, you have a really easy-to-understand concept - take advantage of it!

4. This is just a guess, but I think this kind of formula would work especially well for dating - this will definitely let people connect without letting looks bother them, at least at first. And by the time you've talked several minutes, you'd already have some kind of connection. This is just crazy enough to work - so start thinking how you can take advantage. For example, connecting people by location is a real easy addition to your site, which facilitates connecting people for dating.
Public transit is impractical and uneconomic in many areas. The real solution is smart roads and computer-driven electric cars.
If Apple do intend to launch a product called iTV then I imagine there will be trademark issues to resolve:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITV
If efficient use of pavement means park the most cars on it Then by all means fill every available space. Safe following distance increases with the square of the speed so higher average vehicle speeds means the road carries less traffic. The road moves the most cars around 30mph, so if traffic slows below 30 it will crash to 0mph
Bilking the rich through higher taxes does not help the poor either.
Maybe this loose cannon statistician should make the first couple pages of his proposal a refresher course on the dependence that a couple big industries, agriculture and pharmaceuticals, have on statistics, and how SAS is installed in nearly every Fortune 500 company.
Ooh, I hadn't thought to quantify that, but as an only child living almost 2000 km from my family, it takes me around 7 hours of transit (3 hours on a flight, 2.5 in a car, an hour or so for airport security, intermodal transitions, and other miscellany). Essentially a full working day devoted to travel each way. To make it worth while, I need to stay at my destination for at least two subsequent days.

Thus, this year, I have to budget ~4 vacation days around Christmas, and ~3 around Thanksgiving. If I had the standard American budget of 10 working days of vacation, I would be left with but 24 hours of paid time off for the entire rest of the year.
...but should you have to root it to remove the bloat? On the Evo with Froyo, there isn't yet a root method available. Should those folks be out of luck?

I think the point of the article was that Android was created to allow the average consumer more control and choice over their device. While "enthusiasts" like us will always unlock features we want, I don't think you should have to hack into your device to gain this kind of control over it. If I spend 200-600 bucks on a smartphone, I want control over what software is installed on it.
>That's not true. HTC added sense UI on top of android. They are 100% allowed to do that.

Not only are they allowed, they would never have all worked cooperatively to forward Android if they couldn't. However it's in all of their common interest to keep the foundation constant, which is exactly why they've done that.

It's interesting that if you look at the "proof" that the handset alliance is in shambles, you'll find that it actually claims that Google is too forceful with changes, not allowing partners to act too laggardly. Something this troll author twists this into them being a "poor shepherd".

>Carriers are free to charge for whatever services they want to provide. The market should take care of most of that.

It's interesting that Apple, who couples you to AT&T in the US if you want an iPhone ("freedom!"), has a long history of blocking apps that endanger the revenue stream of their carrier partners. Google Voice, for instance. The author of this terrible, inconsistent, poorly supported piece has no consistency and their argument is absurd.
Whither Mac OS X?
Seems awfully unfair to blame Google for what other members of the Open Handset Alliance are doing with Google's GPL code.

You either have open code and deal with people forking it, or you have closed code. It's tough have it both ways.
Yes, absolutely. This is my experience as well. Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=785498
Google Voice transcriptions are good...for a laugh.
Yes and yes. I think whiteboards are an extremely valuable (cheap too) resource for almost any organization. The ability to quickly brainstorm, diagram and model ideas is unmatched. In a few minutes you can convey from a tiny idea or concept an entire story or explain sophisticated concepts to an audience. If it can’t be whiteboarded then it is probably too complicated to execute.
I'd love to have something similar here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If anyone else is interested drop me an email.
I've actually spent quite a bit of time pondering this. Here are my completely unscientific conclusions.

Imagine a [moving] wall, on an interstate, moving at 30MPH. No matter what is happening behind this wall, it is impossible to maintain an average speed faster than the wall. You can try any amount of tricks to smooth out traffic, but it will be impossible to ever move past this wall. As long as there is a steady stream of traffic, no car will ever do more than 30MPH until this moving wall gets out of the way.

So now let's, more realistically, replace the wall with a bunch of slow drives, and ask 2 important questions:

1. How to get out of this situation? -- We want these drivers to all SPEED UP! It's really as simple as this. Until these bottleneck drivers move out of the way, you can only smooth out traffic, but never increase the speed.

2. How to avoid this problem in the first place? -- In general, there will be some bottleneck. After too many cars are going through this bottleneck at once, there will be slowdown. Ideally, these bottlenecks should be identified and no more than the maximum amount of cars at a time should enter the bottleneck to decrease the speed of traffic.

Of course, that's easier said than done, but I think the important thing to take away from my ramblings is this:

The best way to get rid of a traffic jam is: if you are in the front of the pack and have a chance to accelerate, you should do so as quickly as possible. If everybody were to do this, average speed could then be increased.
I stand corrected. The net effect is the same however.
So how does tethering on the iPhone under AT&T work out. Surely you just click a checkbox, correct?
Amazon's Third-Generation Kindle Keeps e-Reader Fire Burning
> Ianal, but isn't there some system in place to prevent really ridiculous cases going to court? E.g. grand juries or something?

Grand juries are "court", albeit with a lesser burden of proof, and they don't apply to civil cases anyway.

There's a preliminary stage, where each party moves for summary judgement in their favor, but even that can get involved. (Google is involved in an age-discrimination lawsuit where the parties are fighting over whether they even go to trial. That decision went to the CA Supreme Court, took years, and cost lots of money. Yes, it's an outlier but....)

The preliminary stage tends to weed out the truly absurd but remember you're only hearing one side here.
Thanks Jacques and good catch. Has been fixed.
I agree completely that one should not optimize for one area without taking in account the penalties incurred on the other areas. I hope I didn't give that impression.

One of the more major reasons of GNU developing the habit of writing utilities that were significantly different in their implementation was to make sure no UNIX/BSD code could leak in, since at the time the project was underway, BSD was stuck in that whole USL vs BSDi suit, and BSD's code was tentatively deemed 'non-free'.

One also needs to account for the time period these utilities were written, and for what computer system they were originally written for. Both memory and speed were expensive. Writing these utilities probably required much more thought to the smaller details than one would think about today when writing say a word processor, even though one could benefit by doing so.
And flying ponies!

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

(or healthcare, or education, or water, or garbage collection, or roads, ...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_aint_no_such_thing_as_a_f...
Interesting, I read it with the second meaning and not the first.

I'm italian and in my language sentences are less structured, allowing you to move parts around "almost freely". So for me it's natural to bond "complements" to the nearest "object" in the sentence (sorry, I don't know the right words for this).

Is it different in English?
"We received the machine with the original tamper-evident seals intact. The software can be replaced without breaking any of these seals, simply by removing screws and opening the case."

Ouch.

Incompetence doesn't even begin to describe it. Or is this by design?
AMD: 3D Now Instructions Deprecated
Sure, I'll give it to you about the loose links and resources.

But I still can't agree with you on one point. Many people suffer when they don't have pseudo-code or a basic algorithm for solving a problem. Even something simple like a recursive algorithm, I've seen people can't solve it because they start programming without ever thinking about it.

I know some people are naturally gifted and programming is trivial for them but its not the same for everyone.

Also, I can start writing code without writing an algorithm. These tips were meant to describe why people initially can't program not continue programming. So please don't assume beyond what is written in the article.

But either way, thanks for the criticism. Like I mentioned before, I'll use it to improve my writing and avoid future mistakes. Sure, my English isn't the best since its not my native language and I normally haven't written much aside from technical and research documents.
Very well said. Eliezer Yudkowsky makes similar arguments, most recently in his (outstanding) Harry Potter fanfic: (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_...).

"Death is bad," said Harry, discarding wisdom for the sake of clear communication. "Very bad. Extremely bad. Being scared of death is like being scared of a great big monster with poisonous fangs. It actually makes a great deal of sense, and does not, in fact, indicate that you have a psychological problem."

there's this little thing called cognitive dissonance, or in plainer English, sour grapes. If people were hit on the heads with truncheons once a month, and no one could do anything about it, pretty soon there'd be all sorts of philosophers, pretending to be wise as you put it, who found all sorts of amazing benefits to being hit on the head with a truncheon once a month. Like, it makes you tougher, or it makes you happier on the days when you're not getting hit with a truncheon. But if you went up to someone who wasn't getting hit, and you asked them if they wanted to start, in exchange for those amazing benefits, they'd say no. And if you didn't have to die, if you came from somewhere that no one had ever even heard of death, and I suggested to you that it would be an amazing wonderful great idea for people to get wrinkled and old and eventually cease to exist, why, you'd have me hauled right off to a lunatic asylum!
Complicated enterprises, like maintaining Wikipedia or building a Linux operating system, now can be accomplished with little or no corporate management structure at all.

By people who have day jobs in traditional organizations. What percentage of Wikipedia is written by full-time employees of Wikimedia? What percentage of IBM's Linux development budget comes from hardware sales or consulting fees?
I take it you found http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-i-left-math.html then? :-)