skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm writing a new text editor and I spent an inordinate amount of time on the undo system. I never realized how many things the choice of undo implementation would affect.

But I did come to the conclusion that Emacs' default undo system is where it's at. Every modification should be undoable, including undos. Once you understand how it works, there's no longer a need for trees and the complexity that brings.
> Standards suck. It's just that everything else sucks more.

Made me smile.
> Leading content providers (News Corp, NBC, ABC/Disney) have stakes in Hulu.

It's also part of the problem from an investor perspective. Hulu is pretty much never "profitable" but that completely ignores the fact that its major stakeholders get a huge chunk of its revenue since it's their content. I can't find the article now, but one stated the content providers receive upwards of 60% of Hulu's revenu. So Hulu doesn't make a "profit" but basically everyone that owns a stake in it is getting a good return on investment. That conflict of interest with the other major stakeholders would give me major pause about buying into Hulu.

EDIT: I think this is the article I recall reading http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-hulu-turns-prof...

And the numbers there are different (and probably a bit better) than what I stated above, but the general point stands that you're buying stock in a company where the major stakeholders are getting a return regardless of whether Hulu turns a profit or not.
Vitamin D also helps prevent lots of forms of cancer: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml
A Tale of A Serious Attempt At P≠NP by Richard J. Lipton
Fred, any reason this wouldn't work for you?

"yes, my wife doesn't use gmail"

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/the-family-crm-service.html#...
Yes, he did move to Canada and then the States. He may not have looked back. At the same time, as a South African myself, I would find it hard to discount my South African heritage, or say that I was not at all influenced for the better by it: the diverse melting pot of people, the rhythmic languages, the sports, the myriad of cultures, people like Raymond Ackerman and Anton Rupert and Nelson Mandela, children dancing in the dusty township streets, vast natural beauty, the tension and miracle of pre and post 94 Elections, Rugby World Cup 95, FIFA 2010. South Africa lives and breathes hope.

Regarding not having "a chance at the global market":

Mark Shuttleworth's Thawte was based in Cape Town, South Africa yet captured almost 50% of the world's SSL certificate market, in the 90s, at a time when South Africa barely had dial-up. In South Africa we have a saying "'n boer maak 'n plan" (a hard-working man makes a plan).

But that was then. Today, I can read Hacker News from my desk in Cape Town, South Africa while looking out at Robben Island or Table Mountain. I can SSH into Amazon EC2. I can PayPal. I can send an email. I can be connected. I can ignore the hype of the Valley when I need to. I can use the distance to think. I can focus on my work and put the hours in. Sometimes, the "disadvantaged" are in fact advantaged.
Why don't you spend an hour or two and make it read/write ?
This was discussed a couple weeks ago - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1550974
Depends on the problem and how you distribute data.

e.g., each node can generate its own subset to check, so you only need to distribute the program and input. That can be done using a multicast tree of some kind which brings distribution costs back down by a log.
Fred Wilson: "I want to tag our contacts with words like #christmasparty, #vegan, #potluck, etc, etc. I want to be able to search by tag, location, and of course name."

Me: Do groups work for you? Functionally they're the same thing. I would say that tags, labels, and groups are basically just groupings of items by some common attribute that you define. We allow you to search by group, location, name, and email address using substrings.

Generally speaking, when people speak of "groups", they are thinking that each item is in one (and only one) group; "tags" implies that each item can have many tags.

If HobsonFiles permits each contact to be in several "groups", I'd recommend you re-name them to "tags", to reduce friction.
I've used both pretty extensively. The authentication system in Django isn't something to be that jealous of. It's not that it's bad or anything, it's that sites have very different authentication needs and it isn't a lot of code. Examples: some sites need email verification, some don't; some sites want authentication by email address, others username; some sites want usernames, some don't (ala Facebook). And, it's important to note, Django really only takes care of the model part (it doesn't provide the templates and controllers/views). Creating a User model in Rails isn't that hard.

The main reason (in my opinion) that Django has an authentication component is because it has an admin section. That requires authentication. The admin section is something to be jealous of because it's a lot harder to duplicate. Creating a user model isn't that hard. While there have been Rails projects trying to implement an admin system as nice as Django's, they aren't as nice and clean as I'd like. And that's a lot more complex than a simple User model.

And yes, I'm aware that one can do lots of things to extend the Django User model. Examples: while the User model doesn't require an email, you could have the form you build require an email; in Django 1.2, you can have "@" and other email characters in usernames and then just reference the username attribute rather than the email attribute when you want the email; in your controller/view, you could first search for the user by email and, if found, grab the username from that object to pass to the authenticate method. It's more that a User model isn't such an incredibly complex piece of code and I find that different sites often want slightly different things that make it just easier to make one's own.

TL;DR: Be jealous of the admin section, not the authentication system.
less than one year. I had a job the last 3 years of college and was able to cover all the bills. I had a couple of small grants plus some student loans. I took the loans for an emergency cash fun, just in case. I invested it in the market, and cashed out when I graduated and payed back the loan.
It doesn't scale, it's not intended to scale. If millions of people were vagabonding, we could look at an array of possible options, the most obvious being an AirBnB-style approach to renting rooms for days or weeks at a time. If you're happy to share a house, it's already cheaper to spend a month each in Paris, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Edinburgh and Barcelona than it would be to stay in Paris, including airfare.

Housing is currently relatively illiquid because the demand for liquid housing is minimal. There's a big gap between "the place you live for years at a time" and "the place you vacation for a week or two" because that's what the market demands. The backbackers hostel only came into existence when airfares became affordable and young people started travelling internationally. Same with Spanish resorts and the package holiday, same with seaside B&Bs and the railway. If technology allows it and people demand it, we'll see it appear quite quickly.

Your second point is the same faulty logic that presumes "we'll always need people to actually make things/sweep the roads/other menial labour". Mechanisation and automation supplants the need for most of those workers, freeing them up to do work better suited to humans - usually in the service industry. The majority of westerners work in the service industry already, it only stands to reason that they will become more skilled and more specialised. There is absolutely no reason why we can't have a huge number of people running small B&Bs or vineyards or boutiques or cafés. The trends behind this article make it clear that we can't expect to continue running an economy on selling 'stuff', the future economy is clearly based on cultural and social experiences.
Darkpatterns.org: naming and shaming black hat, anti-usability design patterns.
Do you mean go looking at other's patents that way, because then you're are wilfully infringing? You're pretty right, but in my experience the flow is more like:

a) "Invent" X.

b) Can we patent it?

c) Opps. We read on someone's patent.

d) Risk assessment: Will any one notice?; EV(X) > cost of future lawsuit?; EV(X) > cost of (cross)licensing? etc. etc

e) Either make X or forget X

f) (Optionally, but for bonus MegaCorp points.) Try to patent X regardless.

Edit: I guess there's a reason the only things I've ever seen in writing from a patent lawyer is a) an invoice, and b) a patent application.
a "pattern" of 2 big, 2 little seems to have emerged

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_line
1998-2003. The fees started at $1300/quarter or $3900/year, and ended at $1400/quarter, or $4200/year. As a California resident, I got the much lower in-state tuition.

Here's a chart of the fees from back then:

1998: http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/archive/fees/1997-98/Winter98F...

2003: http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/archive/fees/2002-03/Winter03F...
Keep in mind that this is not pure engineering, as you're not just trying to solve a problem, you're trying to solve a problem against a living, reacting adversary. So strategy ("game theory") enters into the picture.

Edward Luttwak's book "Strategy: The logic of war and peace" (http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Logic-Peace-Revised-Enlarged/...) has a lengthy dioscussion of the strategic back-and-forth in the Battle of Britain. Besides the beams, both sides were also experimenting with new kinds of bombers, bombs, fighter planes, ways of finding and fighting fighter planes, countermeasures for preventing the enemy from finding your fighter planes, etc. Very interesting read.
Dubai economy may seem shallow but it is based on logical strategies. It placed its bets on real estate, tourism, finance and trade.

The global real estate meltdown is not unique to Dubai and Dubai is paying for it just like Miami or Vegas. Its bet on tourism is based on the theory of providing an alternative vacation destination to the larger middle east and northern Africa population. The tourism bet is also linked to the growth in global travel. Dubai conveniently sits in between West and East airline routes. Emirates airline has prospered precisely by taking advantage of this opportunity. So if Dubai just happens to be a transit stop, its quite logical to try to entice those travelers to vacation in Dubai. Dubai does not have any natural tourist attractions so they tried to build some. Some of it has been garish and comedic (indoor sking, etc) but some of it is quite fascinating from an engineering persective.

Dubai's tradition of trade goes back hundreds of years. Its been the primary trading port between the middle east and the Indian subcontinent. It has invested in its trade hub status by encouraging other industries to use Dubai as the trading hub. This has lead to the creation of Media City, IT City, etc.

Dubai's bet on finance is closely related to its admiration for NYC's financial status and history. Also, after 9-11, it was felt that some of the middle eastern oil wealth should be reinvested back in the region. Dubai tried to seize this opportunity by creating the Dubai stock exchange, and other related financial reforms. Dubai is not alone in these efforts. Bahrain (where I used to live), Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are all trying similar things. As far as the migrant labor situation, the entire Middle East region should do a better job of treating migrant workers.

There are shallow people who abuse human rights in Dubai. But there are also visionaries, entrepreneurs and hard working folks who are trying to build real businesses (see http://www.startuparabia.com/). The best thing about all these strategies and efforts is that it provides a space for hackers, creative folks, entrepreneurs, investors and the young of the middle east to try at other human endeavors.
Detexify: draw a symbol to find the corresponding TeX command
That's why I learned how to prove the complexity class of certain problems ;)
It's not perfect.

But given a seemingly random string of characters, is it easy to deduce the exact hash function that I use?
> How do you go about doing that?

Check out this video by Gary Vaynerchuck, covered on HN here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1467017

It's... impressive.
cynicalkane's biased; he programs for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Of course he wants to persuade the lemmings to invest so that he still has a job. Logical? yes. Immoral? probably.
I'd recommend taking fish oil for vitamin D, as it also contains proper Omega-3 acids (many things labeled with Omega-3 contain useless variants).

If you are going to be practical about it, taking a spoonful from a bottle each morning costs about 95% less than the equivalent dose from fish oil capsules.

Taking a swig of fish oil ("tran") in the morning is quite common in Norway. It is normal to start giving it to kids from when they are a few months old, to get them used to the taste.
besides which, two digital reading devices in addition to a laptop (and presumably a smartphone) isn't exactly minimalism...
I've heard the argument that people aren't free thinking enough as it is. There are many people that are willing to give up the decision of what to do now or tomorrow, maybe it absolves them of the responsibility of their actions. If Google starts suggesting folks do this or that how long will it be till people start blaming Google for their mistakes.

Sounds like a science fiction novel to me.
Landing Page Optimization Tips
Absolutely. He needs to be spending time reading literature and visiting art museums and hiking in the woods and fooling around with girls. There's plenty of time to work when you're old.
I gave you feedback that your argument was terrible. Step up your game.
Lady Java
As I mentioned in the footnotes, the improvement one gets depend on his/her level in the Dreyfus Model. When I started off using keyboard shortcuts more, I definitely encountered the initial slow down in recalling which keys. But once I internalized a number of most frequently used shortcuts, the time saved are actual as I described in the post.
Well he didn't exactly say it 'works in IE', just that it works in IE with a plugin.

It's like saying no browser can run flash games... because, they can't... unless you've got the plugin.

Your point about the corporate clients is definitely true, you can't install Chrome Frame in places where you can't install a new browser (at least, most of the time). But that's not the only place people use IE*.
I use a system of increasingly difficult and unique passwords.

Level 1: Social networks, forums, etc. simple 8 character alphanumeric.

Level 2: iTunes, ebay, amazon. Longer alphanumeric with variations unique to each site.

Level 3: Paypal, email, banking. Longer alphanumeric + special characters and completely unique for each site.

Others: Some sites, like my ISP and bank send the password only by snail mail (I had to change my password once for DSL. It was not pretty). This goes into a lockbox.

I'm looking into applications like 1Password.
If I'm reading this correctly, the implication is that social and mobile applications have been (or will soon be) exhausted. I disagree, I think there's a lot of space left for innovation, though it will be hard to displace entrenched companies at this point.

As far as the 'next big thing' goes, do you think that there is any space for a small hardware company anymore? You suggest that the next trend is new form-factors/hardware, and at this point, the companies that would do well at that are those with deep pockets for R&D.
Ask HN: Critique my site please
http://www.TestWhetherTheyKnow.com

Audience: HR managers
Problem trying to solve: The pain of getting distributed employees trained properly, reading the employee handbook, or legally acknowledging a new policy.
Ask HN: Review my weekend project - MobilePly
http://mobileply.com

Mobileply is remote GPS that runs on most GPS enabled phones with a browser (Android, iPhone, some BBs). The app starts tracking you and gives you an id to share with friends, they can enter the id and see where you are on a map, it's as simple as that.

My roommate and I had this idea when we both moved to a new city for new jobs. We never knew where we were or where other people were, and simply saying what intersection or roads we/they were on was far too annoying and time consuming to deal with.

Over the year we've found many useful applications for this, but we're trying to figure out what to do next. So I'm asking the HN community for some feedback and advice. What should we do with our weekend project?

Does anyone else find it useful? Any suggestions for possible uses?
Are you self-employed or do you work freelance or who do you work for and what do you do?

I only ask because this is something I'm very much interested in doing myself, but I'm very apprehensive about making a big change like this due to job/money concerns.
Because I'd be flooded with spam.
Considering I figured they'd died shortly after the bust, 36M doesn't sound that bad to me.
IIRC, the way it works is that Django specifies where in the package namespace it expects things. But you can always load anything into that package namespace. If you have a file specifying models, you can either:

class SomeModel(...): ...
class SomeOtherModel(...): ...

or

from some.other.place import SomeModel
from yet.another.place import SomeOtherModel

and it's the same. Django is Python.

In fact this is another instance of what I complained about yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1605928 People see the "DSL" and all knowledge of the underlying language goes flying out the window. Models are actually very, very non-magical, and anything that you do that ends up with class in the certain namespace simply is a model, and any Python language feature that lets you produces such a class can be used to make one.
Surely one should credit Visual Basic with bringing GC to the mainstream. Bill got them to copy Algol 68's "Meekly deproceduring to MOID FORM" and beat y'all to it.
heh... the().show().must().go().on();
Does anyone else think that layout and number of ads screams of a made for adsense site that is more spam than genuine content?
On Investors, competitors and decency
The way it looks now, you could easily mistake it for one of those spammy search pages: http://www.lycos.com/
Do you know if anyone has written up a good summary of those patents?
> I seem to remember that the common Chinese idiom for a tough to learn language is 跟天书一样. "Hard as the heavenly script". If you really refer to your own language as yardstick for complexity, his post has a point.

What is the point? I use my own language as a reference point because it's the language I know best. And I hope others would do the same: comment on things you know best and stop spreading lies, myths, pointless memes about things you know little.

When we say "天书", we usually refer to "无字天书" (the divine book without letter); i.e., a blank book for those of us without magical power. Again, I don't see relevancy here. We don't need magical power to learn Chinese.
What is "Modern Perl"?
Ok, but he should more clearly separate his fiscal advice from his ethical advice.
There Will Be No Double Dip In Economy... It Will Be A Lot Worse
You can do all of these with Django, but not unexpectedly it won't magically work with other people's code. I don't know how it could, if there's another framework that does this I'm interested.

contrib.auth can be made to do most of these if you still want the ability to play nice with other people's code who expect you to use auth. You'll have to create and manage User objects which it sounds like you're unwilling to do, but you can't have it both ways.

I think having it there is better than not. In most circumstances it saves me a lot of time. If I come across a circumstance that I can't use it then I'm just back to where I would be anyways and will have to write a lot more code and modify 3rd party apps.
I take fish oil capsules now and don't care for the fish burps that can come later even when I take them in the middle of a meal as opposed to after. I couldn't imagine just downing a spoonful of the stuff :)
I use Yourls on my domain to shorten and track links. I was curious to see how many folks would click through. It's my first comment here on HN (long time lurker). No real motive behind it other than just for fun to see if anyone cared what I said. I find myself hitting the "shorten" button the majority of links that I post online not only to see if folks are interested in what I've said, but so that if I make a mistake, I can correct it. 8n is just the next random sequence that was generated.

Of note, the Firefox addon LongURL (http://longurl.org/) is a great thing to have if you're at all nervous about shortened URL's.
looks like an akai LPK25. The nanoSERIES keyboard is really hard to play - not very sensitive, keys are more like buttons. Used LPK25's are going for about $40 USD on ebay. Hoping to get one soon.
Try that while raising a couple of children.
Affordable All-Electric Cars Coming to Europe by March
Tata will launch 2 all-electric models in Europe, by March.
Completely off-topic: I don't think I've ever seen anyone refer to NYT as "my local Times" before. I liked seeing that.
The Dancing Bear?
A friend (and fellow young CEO) and I were discussing the potential of getting an MBA versus our full-time entrepreneur CEO/Accoutant/Janitor jobs at current. We're both 24.

He brought up an interesting point in regards to being a young entrepreneur, comparing it to being a dancing bear.

"If you see a dancing bear in the middle of the street, your first thought is 'Hey, that bear is dancing!' You don't say, 'Bah, that bear dances terribly.'"

The point was that being an entrepreneur fresh out of a top-10 MBA program increases the expectations and the risk of being an entrepreneur. You're no longer a dancing bear, you're just another face in the crowd.

Makes sense to me, but what do I know, I'm just a dancing bear. Any faces in the crowd care to comment?

P.S. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my mom, my dad, my dog Fluffy, and HN. I'm "outside the echo chamber" and this site keeps me focused, sane, and inspired. Seriously, thanks.
Or the one by some dude called Fermat. Too bad he run out of space...
Hrm.. you know, there could be something here. If people kept posting variations of NP problems as jobs on sites like GetACoder as a honeypot, you could easily devise a blacklist from all the bids as people you'd never want to hire for a real project.
I agree with you in that the internet has made me lose my concentration. I get easily distracted while I at my laptop, browsing the web. My solution was to go back to reading more books than before and I unlike you I am not distracted when I am away from my computer. Recently I documented my experience here: http://www.diovo.com/2010/08/books-vs-blogs/

At the same time, I can understand that this may not be the case with some other people (like jgc). Ultimately there is no point in fighting over this. What works for you, works for you.
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
THIS. Get comfortable with moving from command to insert mode and back, moving around using the keyboard, and basic commands like delete, change and search (/). See how to combine these. From there, you're doing everything from the keyboard and learning new little shortcuts all the time.