skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I tried to build one from scratch based on my own L4 microkernel. Given the bloated nature of monolithic kernels and their irrelevance to embedded space, I had the thought that if I wrote something small and neat it could gain traction for embedded systems. For that I took the BSD virtual memory design, and implemented a complete VM system from scratch. Then I wrote a VFS layer but that one was partially complete. I had demand paging implemented and supporting calls like fork() execve() etc. It was challenging and fun - but an incomplete project, also my biggest error from a startup/making money point of view. Basically having a new kernel is a hard sell nowadays, no matter how neat it is. It was more of an intellectual challenge for me rather than a startup - but still I was in the expectation that it could be a success.

About exactly a year ago, I changed my direction to virtualization. I ditched about %60 of the software that includes all that VM layer and VFS for which I put loads of effort (many man months...). I realized I was out of focus, so I changed my focus to enhancing only the microkernel itself. I decided upon three specific goals: 1) Adding multi-core support for latest ARM cores (e.g. the ones that will be on most high-end mobile phones and devices) 2) Adding fine-grain security and control based on capabilities. (in short, having control over system calls) 3) Adding virtualization support for the linux kernel. Right now I am done with the first two, and about to get done with the 3rd one.

My interest has always been to create something new in the OS/kernel space. After doing much research I decided that L4 microkernel design represents the most promising work in this field. This is because a) monolithic kernels are mature and good for what they are doing b) microkernels can solve certain new problems like virtualization.

Eventually I was convinced that embedded virtualization would be the most interesting problem I could solve. In my opinion there is still room for systems-level work particularly in Virtualization. The APIs are not set in stone. Not many people know how virtualization works, let alone design an interface for it from scratch.

I think new areas like this will come up but its quite important to spot an unsolved problem because if you dive in to write a kernel its an expensive journey.
http://www.quirksmode.org/ is pretty good for what you can do with a particular browser and realize its limitations.
You're billing $200/hr and you can't hire a developer for your personal project or attract a partner who can share the burden on the consulting side?

Paul was "right" because he thinks about consulting like you do: as a day job without benefits. The difference between a day job and a consultancy is that your day job gets pretty upset when you hire someone to do your grunt work.

You seem dead set on scaling the wall when there's a perfectly good ladder hanging right off it. Stop killing yourself on a contract so you can earn the right to kill yourself on a startup project that will very likely fail (they all do). Engineer a solution to your current problem ("people will pay my company $8000/week to do something and I am currently the only person in my company"). That has to be easier than trying to figure out how get "liftoff" with a "1 year runway". Sheesh.
I tried putting the docs on GitHub, but GitHub unfortunately does not have an HTML option for the README as far as I can see.

The markdown format should theoretically pass the HTML through, except that GitHub significantly modifies or ignores the tags so that the formatting is completely different. I will probably make a custom landing page a la Tornado.
When I began, my friend had me start here: http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach-Usability/...
I studied in Chile, and it's a great country. The climate is similar to California, the people are great and the cost of living is pretty low. You'll need to know some Spanish to really get the most out of it, but most of the wealthy speak okay English.

On the business side, if you look at Chile's consumer websites (used cars, apartments, etc.) they're all pretty old-school 90's looking. There's definitely room for local and South American innovation.

Likewise, local software education is a little old school overall. This means that they need progressive devs and progressive devs can really benefit there. I see this program as trying to use this synergy.
Make a guess. I have 100x less knowledge than you (it sounds like) and I want to know if my guess of within 10 years is way off.
The map viewer they use [1] is familiar, I've seen it on several other sites (same exact icons). Anybody knows if it's open source and what's the name of the project?

1. http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapviewer/
My advice: treat college like a job. Treat the library like an office, and go there for a fixed number of hours per day, and just heads-down work. You'd be surprised how much you can accomplish in, say, 3-4 hours per day.

If you do this with discipline, you'll have plenty of time for hobbies, programming projects, and just plain partying.

Undergrads are notoriously bad at time management; crack that nut, and you'll rise easily to the top.

Also: choose your classes based on who the instructor is, not on the subject matter. Find out who the best teachers are (ask students!) and take whatever they are teaching. An excellent teacher can make even the most dull subject come alive; a mediocre teacher can suck the life out of even the most fascinating subject matter.
Sartoris microkernel tutorial: starting from scratch
There's also already a Lisp-on-Node project called Sibilant. Jake's got a neat live-compile-in-the-browser demo up here:

http://sibilantjs.info

And the source is available here (and as an NPM package):

http://github.com/jbr/sibilant
All of Zynga's flash games are free, and players have the option to purchase virtual currency in the games. The vast majority of players probably don't pay a cent for the entire lifespan of their playing. I'd say Zynga is definitely making a living.
College freshman myself.

As it was explained to me (in the format of getting you to join clubs), you have 15 hours of class a week, plus 30 hours of studying for said classes, 20 hours for a job, 8 * 7 hours for sleeping, 10 hours for eating, comes out to something like, 50 or 60 hours to do others things, probably more.
You forgot one important detail. For the author of the book poor people don't exist and everyone important lives in the cities.

Alright, I was being sarcastic. But on a more serious note. The author probably doesn't address at all the suburbs only. America is built of suburbs. But I think the argument he makes applies to large cities only or large cities. His exact point is to tax everyone driving into the city -- poor and rich. The poor ones will be affected first, and will drop out completely and move to a different city or suburb, or pile together in over-crowded city apartments. He basically wants to disconnect the suburbs from the city. You either stay in the burbs, live and work there. Or go to the city and live and work there. Getting the benefit of both is too costly.
Maybe these "dummies" would benefit more by learning about social media or python programming.

Why fixate on this particular problem as opposed to learning all sorts of other things that are more useful?
So you mean "Lisp for JavaScript"? Why limit it to node.js?
@tocomment

I really can't. I don't even have a day of college education, and I wasn't exactly a stellar student in HS either. So, it's quite likely that you know 10^10^10^10 times more than me.

Also, I am really not as smart as I sound. In fact, I am the most boring and dumbest# person you could possibly ever meet.

#Hence proven.
anybody knows if they have property taxes down there?
Maybe I missed something, but is this really how Firefox's location services work? By phoning google with the MAC address? I understood google was logging them, but didn't know they were _using_ them...
I'd appreciate it if you tried and use it a bit and then give me feedback on what is difficult to learn because it is overly esoteric or specifically what you could not do.

Some advantages are that it integrates more cleanly into Python code, the templates end up being smaller, you get guaranteed closed tags, and it has a significantly smaller API and thus it is easier to learn while being quite powerful (very Pythonic). It does all this without compromising on speed, legibility, or power.
Nothing in life is free. If you hire Jr. Mahmud to take over 80% of your job, and your aggregate productivity drops by 1000%, you will probably lose your client and be forced out of business.

So don't do that.

A steady $200/hr consulting gig offers an awful lot of wiggle room to figure this stuff out. When we hire a new consultant, (a) we're very picky and (b) they tag-team with us on projects, often for months, without being billable. That costs money in the short term, but pays for itself in the long term.

Also, it's wrong to assume that a consulting gig has to be performed by one person. Time and again friends of mine have found that they could hire cheap for 20-40% of their project work (documentation, test harness coding, automation, etc) and then had that person grow quickly into a full-on replacement. And all due respect to 'mahmud's domain knowledge, but the examples I'm thinking of are pretty high end.

At the end of the day, this problem is a fundamental challenge of running a business, and I have to respectfully/tentatively suggest that if you can't figure out how to hire and train a replacement for your own work, you stand very little chance of running a successful software company, where you'll also have to hire QA, ops, marketing, and sales.

Think of this current challenge like a warmup.
SEC to Blame Traders for Flash Crash
I've scanned the Parenscript docs and it doesn't seem immediately obvious how to combine node.js and Parenscript without having to include Common Lisp. Also, there's a number of things on my wish list that compelled me to write my own lisp implementation (there are other JavaScript lisp implementations):

* only requirement is node.js and the lisp source distribution, no other dependencies.
* ability to debug lisp code from the browser.
* immutable data structures.

I feel I can implement a lisp that can run the examples in <i>Let Over Lambda</i> in a couple of weeks. The lisp won't be as stable as Parenscript but that's ok. Only at that point can the real work start of building the web framework that is lisp.js. I think the most important bit for me is to have a base that I can modify as the needs arise. I'm already trying to include as many lisp concepts in the test source as I can find to make sure lisp.js is a general purpose lisp. In that respect I'm setting several goals: get lisp-in-lisp working, get Let Over Lambda examples working, ... any other useful lisp constructs that I come across. That's a journey I can only make if I do my own lisp implementation.
Actually, Silverlight can play video just fine on less powerful machines where flash completely falls apart. There is a reason Netflix uses it.
Average costs:

- Apartment: $320 - $420

- Transportation cost: $100 - $180 (30 days)

- Grocery: $20 - $45

- Very good beer: $3,60

- Jeans: $50 - $75

- Taxi: $10

- Dinner: $20

- Internet access: $80 (Cable, Telephone, Internet)
But that's how Firebug does it in Firefox!

And on my Chrome, there is a regular inconsistent bug that when I want to inspect an element, the new tool UI is displayed but the element is not selected.
Python does have limited syntactic flexibility. This makes it bad for making completely new languages. You are correct.

My philosophy recently has been that you do not want to create a new language. Haskell makes it easy to make a custom DSL. Unfortunately, that means a preponderance of new languages and mini-languages that you need to learn to get your work done. More importantly, these mini-languages invariably are missing features that you are used to in your powerful language: imports, decorators, debuggers, etc. Django templates did not even have variable assignments for years.

My recent philosophy is Pythonic: don't make DSLs but make domain-specific libraries. I have gone through many iterations to get this as minimal as possible while still being explicit and resisting putting in any magic. The results are still surprisingly readable after a little practice.
It might one day become a general lisp for javascript but for now the concurrency-free server-side environment of node.js is assumed.
How is your templating solution different from these?

http://breve.twisty-industries.com/

http://code.google.com/p/dirty/

genshi.builder is similar too.

More here

http://wiki.python.org/moin/Templating
I'm conscious that in this scenario, I am biased towards the seen harm, rather than the unseen--I'll never identify the people who might have been pulled out of poverty if we hadn't screwed up their economy, so my tendency is to discount them.

Recognizing and counteracting this cognitive bias is one of the Big Ideas that I took from economics classes. (See also Predictably Irrational.)

Here's a hypothetical discussion between an environmentalist and an economist that brought it home for me. The topic is whether to pave over something pretty to make a parking lot.

Environmentalist: If we pave over the prairie, we'll lose the prairie forever. Even if you might want to have the parking lot, you can always get the parking lot tomorrow. Don't pave!

Economist: If we don't pave over the prairie today, we'll lose the use of the parking lot tomorrow forever. There will never be a tomorrow in which we'll have the parking lot. Pave it!
I totally agree. You should only be checking for routers that have known vulnerabilities, but was not the initial question.
Kongregate was recently bought out by Gamestop (for an undisclosed sum) and all they did was host free flash games (a gross oversimplification).

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/27/gamestop-kongregate/
Silence is valuable. People take for granted not paying for that audio-frequency near-field modulated air pressure bandwidth.

Why shouldn't that spectrum be sold? Shouldn't we be paid to have people talk to us or make noise? It's time to buy audio pollution credits. And if you're poor, don't even think about farting.
exactly my point. This involves you gettign an expensive heavily enginered power converter built by a certified company, installed by a certified electrician and then approved by the power companies inspector.

Now imagine anybody with a spare bit of wire was allowed to connect anything to the grid to test what would happen?
Applications open for Winter 2011 YC Funding, Deadline October 19
If only there was some sort of massive distributed publishing network which mathematicians could use without worrying about page counts.
On my way back from Santiago two months ago, I sat by an American who operated a group home / missionary.

He claimed he pays approximately $300 USD per year on a ~$600,000 property.

But I believe their VAT is fairly high (for US standards)
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP
Not a ban, but an attempt to reduce driving by changing regulations. It's not necessarily bad, it's just that there will be unforeseen consequences, and it's nowhere near as straightforward as "raise the price of parking -> driving decreases".

As far as I know, Russia has no requirements on parking for new construction either. So developers building shopping centres in expensive areas opt to minimize parking space. The result is not clean pedestrian-friendly cities, it's traffic jams and stores going out of business, because as someone else commented here, people will prefer the store with parking, even if it is an extra half an hour away.

I think this problem is better solved by offering functional transit, but it's somewhat chicken and egg. How do you justify spending on transit when everyone drives? How do you not drive when taking the bus multiplies the trip time by a factor of 5?
Dogs improve office productivity
Far be it from me to stand between a programmer and his own Lisp implementation.
'Super Angels' Alight
The synaptic brain works in cycles, which can be measured with EEG sensors. If the brain is asleep or damaged, the cycles are much slower.

BTW Can't they already map out connections using fMRI or dtMRI?
I went through the demo and have the same question about this: why greenspun Parenscript in this manner? It does all these things, and zillions more, in a nice way. The only reason I can think of is fun, which is perfectly legitimate. Or maybe people don't want to run Common Lisp even to compile their code?
The location services are pretty creepy actually. I gave a site access and it knew my exact address. I will not be giving another site access, until I can specify that it should only provide my city.
Hey cool-RR, I don't believe I added a hotkey for the H button? What is it doing?
What "very good" beers do you like in Chile?

I was there recently and found the beers rather disappointing. The wine, however, was superb!
Thank you for this. I've been trying to figure out the "big picture" of this, and it is helpful to have someone explain it who understands the minute details.
"Useful" is a particularly subjective word, and shouldn't necessarily be the metric by which we measure the opportunity cost of our time.

Many advances in the world that you and I take for granted are the direct result of pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. When Einstein developed relativity, he wasn't trying to figure out how to sync satellites to make GPS more accurate (and obviously satellites didn't exist at the time). But if that theory was never developed, we wouldn't have all the luxuries that GPS provides for us. That is just a trifling example of how the quest for deeper understanding of fundamental knowledge has made the world a better place.

Lots of people on hacker news love writing code. That's great, seriously. Looking down on others because their interests aren't as purportedly "useful" as yours is pretty arrogant and shortsighted.
Parents suspect Wi-Fi making kids sick
It think this is a gross generalizations. Youtube is still very popular. In order for the average joe to watch a video, flash must be enabled OR they have to be using an html5 compatible browser. That is the difference. Many users will not/can not go out and buy the newest toys.

Still focus on flash, as it is not going any where any time soon, but also diversify your funds. If you make a flash game try to also port it to html5 so that you can reach the Android/Apple iP(ad)hone market, and if you can't... don't sweat it.
Every economic advance will hurt someone. The invention of the car left a lot of buggy manufacturers unable to feed their families. Your startup is probably making someone financially miserable.

The job of a responsible economist is to look at how the implications of a change are distributed across everyone in the population, over the long run. This change would hurt those rural folks visibly, but as outlined in the article, many more people would benefit, often in less directly visible ways.

Currently, those people's parking fees are coming out of someone else's wallet. Make the drivers pay the cost and externalities of their own decisions. If the market determines that these people are producing economic value, then they will be ok. (Maybe their employer will recognize that the employee needs a parking spot and subsidize it.) If not, then sooner or later people need to figure out a way of living that is economically sustainable.
"The short answer is: the biggest unsolved problem of theoretical computer science, and one of the deepest questions ever asked by human beings!"

presumably, 'reading' is one of those more useful things that are worth learning, as well.
Corruption is forcing Russia’s best and brightest to flee the country
Well, it's actually sort of hard for "distributed network" to be wrong. That's not because it's a brilliant insight, but because it's so vague it's almost inconceivable it does not include the truth in the immense number of organizations that can be called "distributed networks".
Regarding using NodeJS with ParenScript: it is really easy.

I am using Node on the backend of http://tryparenscript.com/ simply because it was easier to get up and running than Hunchentoot. Source code is on GitHub, if you want to check it out: http://github.com/fitzgen/tryparenscript.com

Here is the "Hello, WOrld!" example from the NodeJS homepage in ParenScript:

(defvar *http* (require "http"))
(chain *http*
(create-server (lambda (req res)
((@ res write-head) 200
(create "Content-Type"
"text/plain"))
((@ res end) "Hello, World!\n")))
(listen 8124 "127.0.0.1"))
((@ console log) "Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8124/")
You can't take European philosophies and apply it to America. Things are completely different over here. You spend so much time worrying about congestion, but we have so much open space here that it's simply not an issue. The population density in Europe is 70 ppl/sq km. In America, it's 32.
Interesting. So what number of daily views of hacker news can we estimate from the number of views on that youtube-video?
Like he said, it was too late. You don't know that the results would have been different if the stores on the promenade had been able to compete with the big box stores.
Adobe's making massive moves to get Flash gaming on Android. At the moment they have 3 big competitions running with Kongregate, FlashGameLicense and MochiMedia to get games designed to work on Android.
When Einstein developed relativity, he wasn't trying to figure out how to sync satellites to make GPS more accurate (and obviously satellites didn't exist at the time).

These "dummies" have essentially zero chance of making any meaningful contribution to the P vs NP problem.
Wow, excellent resource, definitely a must-read. However, I still stand by my opinion that there are more intuitive ways to control flow in python other than generator tricks.
I'll take the exact opposite view - treat college as your very last vacation. Have a fantastic time, don't sweat the details, focus more than anything on your friends. Let's see how that goes over in this group. :-)
Did 'Star Wars' Become A Toy Story? Producer Gary Kurtz Looks Back
Actually, even your site uses the same rounded edges and pastel colors.

That said, it is pretty awesome. !.
Cloud Delivered Security – Solutions for Your Business
What is the banana equivalent dose of a strong wifi signal?
Novel, yes. Good for a startup? Probably not.

Being in a foreign country is taxing even when it's rewarding. I get much less work done here in Brazil than when I'm back in the States.

The 40k is definitely a nice perk though.
I encourage would-be applicants to read this before applying.

http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html

It's odd how many don't seem to.
>For example http(s) should not have any limits put upon it.

Entry of specifics into statute is not helpful - a lot of work was needed to alter laws (in UK) which included prescription of snail-mailing various forms or information so that the laws could be used with fax, then with email.

Hence, the specific protocol should not be used to limit only as an example (admittedly this was probably your thinking too) - "there shall be no prejudice held against network traffic sent using end-to-end encryption regardless of origin except in the following cases ..." or some such. The specific encryption can be mentioned in headers or in associated rules or in a definitions section.
Kunstmann (Torobayo) and Austral (Yagan).
We were doing that back in 2006:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060409104104/http://www.carbonm...

Back when Carbonmade was a side project.
Great lines in science reporting, 2010:

"I'm not saying it's because of the Wi-Fi because we don't know yet, but I've pretty much eliminated every other possible source."
Yes, but seeing how vast the stretches of high-density rural population are is quite amazing. (Other map from gp post)