skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You inspired a related question: is it irrational that I feel proud of the two French people although I'm not French, I just live in France ? Plus, the Vietnamese mathematician has studied and worked in France.

I somehow feel proud that I made a good choice of place to live for now, if that makes any sense.

PS: I noticed they are almost all "outsiders", foreigners that immigrated to Western countries, or locals outside the traditional elite of the Western countries. The point, which is a depressing one, is that mathematics and, more generally, pure science, is an "outsider" activity nowadays.
I wasn't stating my opinion in my last post, just facts/clarifications.

But yes, I agree that UTF-8 would be a better default than ASCII unless someone provides hard evidence that encoding/decoding is a severe performance bottleneck in most real applications. (even then, I'd default to the "correct", not the fastest)
About 1980, David Owen wrote something like this, "Punks in Pinstripes", for Harpers. Doesn't seem to be out there via Google.
>instead of describing how objects fit into a taxonomic hierarchy, objects or typeclasses are described by what behaviors they fulfill.

Can't this be said about Java interfaces too?
5 Lessons Creative Entrepreneurs Can Learn From A Filmmaker
The State of Open Source System Automation
Pfft. "root on your box" is so last week.

Here at TripAdvisor, we give engineers root on EVERY box.

I'd add "modulo the live site", but when I needed that, it was made available.

I think of this as the computer equivalent of the HP story of one of the founders using an axe to break into a storage closet so engineers had access to equipment over the weekend.

(blah blah blah we're hiring blah blah blah)
I'm a complete non-techie. Use Windows.

What I did is: bought a new portable hard drive. And installed Ceedo on it (Ceedo.com - $50). And then installed all the softwares I used on the portable hard drive via Ceedo's installer.

And then backed up this entire portable drive using Ceedo's Backup & Restore app ($10). Took 2 backups.

Any time something happens to the portable drive, I buy a new portable drive - restore Ceedo and everything else on it - and am running back within 15 minutes.
40%-50% seems standard, some novelty apps my friends have out only have like a 20%-20% install rate
I'm not sure of the hours, but I would definitely make more money of I was doing contract work for someone else.
I recently started playing with phpStorm from jetbrains (the people who make intelliJ). I've only been using it for about a week, but so far it seems to be a great php editor and by far the best javascript IDE I've used. If you don't use php they have a cheaper version called webStorm which only does javascript, html and css. My only real complaint is that is a bit of a memory hog and sometimes feels quite sluggish on my netbook.

Other than that generally use topstyle 4 for html and css and pyscripter for python. All of which I'm very happy with.
Fusion works (in that it successfully fuses atoms) and has since the 1960s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

You don't get more energy out than you put in, but if your goal is to make helium, that's hardly the point - just about every other industrial process also consumes energy.
Helium is really hard to store for extended periods of time, it will eventually leak through microfissures in metal containers.
The author thinks "support" means syntax highlighting and indenting, but Vim 7.2 could do those things just fine. Vim 7.3 has added interfaces for scripting in Python3 and Lua, plus persistent undo and a few other things.
Well their screenshot/mock-up does, take a look again.
Ask HN: How does marriage affect the creation of a (successful) startup?
Paul Graham said in his essay "How to start a startup" that the best age to start a startup is between 23 and 38. Among these people, some of them must be married, right? So I have been wondering how a married life (and possibly one with kids, ugh) affect the chances and the process of creating and running a startup. Now, assuming that marriage is supposed to be a very important part of life, I imagine that it is rather hellish because Paul Graham also said that "Startups Take Over Your Life".

How does a married hacker do it?

I am 28, I just got married in May and I am pondering the possibility of starting something with my hacker friends in Hong Kong.

Would any married startup founder enlighten me (and other prospective married hackers)?
Well, the demo is an amazing demonstration of HTML 5, and the limitations of HTML 5...if your browser can swing it. It runs pretty great in Chrome, not so great in FF and sucks everywhere else.

What if this were a Flash demo? Only be mildy interesting -- and that's only for the presentation itself. From a technology perspective it'd be ho-hum.

I think more important than that is that it's not even interactive. Interactivity with HTML 5 apps has light years to go compared with Flash even if browser vendors can lick the performance problem.

In other words, HTML 5 as a content delivery platform has a very long way to go...and as it is is certainly not anywhere near as a cross platform as Flash is. It's just not a swap out substitution for Flash yet and forces developers to produce software that's just simply not of the same quality as Flash is able to handle.
The other reason as I see is some quite weird perception that OOP == inheritance.
It's really a big gap though between having an understanding of the basics in an area and really knowing enough to follow the current research. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this guy actually had looked at things in basically the same direction as some of this research and still isn't able to really follow what they have done.
But HTML 5 is being touted as a drop-in Flash replacement today. And it's clearly not.
A Mac Pro with two ATI Radeon HD 5770's gives you 4 Mini Display Port and 2 Dual-Link DVI outputs.
Is this a serious question? You don't see any anti-Apple sentiment on this site? Nor raving Google fanboyism? I could accept that if you said you didn't see apple fanboyism either (personally, I see all 3), but if you say that you see one and not the other than I think that means you're in one of those groups.
S.F.'s new dot-com boom grows
That sounds like a good reason to just leave the data in UTF8 rather than converting to ASCII embedded in UTF16 which is broken by design.
>Oh dear... on paper great, but can you imagine how long it would have taken them to come to a standard?

I don't think it would have to take too long. One browser could do it and then the others could copy it. Further, the standard could be general until it's worked out more.
Yes there is, you can take delivery of the good and store it or pay someone to store it. And sell at some point in the future.
Your statement was:

"A RAID0 over three disks has about 1/3 the MTBF of a single disk."

This is incorrect, the MTTF and MTBF are not significantly changed. Assuming you meant failure probability, my issue with the probability variance is the linear relationship you imply.

If the variation were linear, a RAID array composed of drives with a 5% failure probability would reach certainty of failure (1.00 probability) within the interval at 20 drives. In actuality, it takes 225 drives to reach that probability.

The difference is a real world consideration for capacity management. What it means is that RAID0 arrays are not as failure prone as people think they are.
You need to find something that interests you and that you can care about. When you do, find a company that does it and try to work for them. If there isn't a company, make one. Obviously this is easier said than done, but it always takes some extra effort to get out of a rut.

Best of luck!
Bullish on Longevity: On the science of life extension
Edison, Insull and planning for the future of VRM : BatesHook
Inflation in spending is very misleading. I'm reminded of certain statistics that begin with "<x> minority is the fastest growing <demographic, religion, political affiliation, etc> in the country" ...well of course. When you're the minority, it's easy to be the fastest growing.

I relooked at that second link and the total instruction and research budget are only growing slightly slower than the total budget over the entire time period ie. a multiple of 2.17 vs 2.3
It should be noted that in general APIs are a modern form of slavery!

I think that's a little over the top, nobody is forcing anyone to use their API. If you rely on an API, you should accept that it can (and likely will) change in the future.

Twitter has been pretty up front about the fact that HTTP Basic would be shut off since they first released OAuth. I think they've done just about as much as they can to help people move away from HTTP Basic.

I wish more services would implement open protocols, agreed upon standards than just proprietary APIs.

I'm not sure what you mean by open protocols and agreed upon standards. HTTP Basic and OAuth are both open and agreed upon.
The typical organization goes through 100 "investigations" or idea concepts to get to one success*. They have a larger pool of resources to execute those 100 investigations, but I think the larger point is that you need to get through a lot of muck to get to the one success.

As long as you're learning lessons along each project I say more power to you. You'll known when you hit upon a project that you're passionate about.

To that point, have you read “The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit”? The summary is (taken from Amazon):

- Winners quit (regroup. cut their losses, switch gears) whenever necessary on the path to winning.

- Be the best, and the world comes knocking at your door.

- Work through the pain, because the reward is waiting for you further down the road.

Sounds like keep doing what you’re doing.

Source:The Human Side of Managing Technological Innovation: A Collection of Readings
or find ways to use rare materials more efficiently

This won't necessarily have the effect of making the remaining Helium last longer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I do agree with you that worrying about the resource needs of society 500 years from now is unlikely to prove useful. Furthermore, it strikes me a bit odd that the lives of humans hundreds or thousands of years after we are dead is of such great importance to everyone. Unfortunately, this article seems to be discussing running out of Helium in our lifetimes, which probably is something we need to think about.
1. Twitter is RSS for the rest of us. To subscribe, you just click. No worries about which feedreader to use, no need for multiple feedreaders, no copy/paste of URLs.

2. Twitter is completely opt in.

3. Twitter got its timing right: People have very short attention spans and want immediate gratification. We have become a world of scanners (not readers).
Finding better way to learning is always a difficult task. Especially for those whom english is not the first language. We faced some hard problem and still facing. To solve this we started a very small attempt. Created a user generated tutorial site where reader can find simple tutorial post. Please have a look on our CSS section here already some bunch of basic tutorials added which we think very helpful for the newbie.

http://www.codesnipr.com
Keynote Speaker.  What should I talk about?
All corporate cultures select for "More people like us, please." (Especially the ones who mention how important a diverse workforce is to them. That line is not neutral with respect to the kind of people you want to hire.)

The least they can do is be honest about it.
This is why we'll be recommending a bunch of hosts who are good.
If your business experience is in talking with and listening to other people, it is valuable. If you know about marketing or sales, it is valuable.

Instead of worrying about what to do, worry about how to meet people that are also interested in building things. The rest follows from there.

If you've got friends to explore with, the question becomes "what do we do?" instead of "what do I do?" and it's a more powerful mental place to start from. Still scary but not such an overwhelming existential question.

Once you've got exposure to the world you want to be in, you'll find your place. In the mean time, make sure you're saving money so you're capable of doing something about the opportunity you find, once you find it.
Getting to grips with LaTeX
Yep, I believe 20 working days is the european legal minimum, official holidays excluded. Countries can go above (Finland and France mandate a minimum of 5 weeks).
When I saw the "we're hiring" comment I went to check out your site.

I'm sorry to say but your careers section is pretty horrible.

Your About Us page is blank:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/careers/chronicle

There's

Learn about us in 30 seconds

and

More about us ...

on the right side that seem like they should be links but they aren't.

Your jobs page:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/careers/jobs

is the standard outsourced and absolutely terrible job database search.

No offense intended but based on your career section alone I would never apply there. I might apply if I met people at a networking event and they convinced me but definitely not based on your site info.
Could a computer virus cause a plane crash?
In Canada, it's common to start with 10 days.
Back in school I helped write a file system based on ramfs that used the ram in all of the computers in our lab as one big shared super fast hard disk. It was a great learning experience.

I wouldn't say it's necessary for every programmer to know how the linux vsf system works and how files, directories and links are stored behind the scenes, but it is really interesting. Here's a good description of vfs http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/filesystems/vfs... . The implementation in ramfs is pretty simple (compared to ext3). You can find it in your kernel source in fs/ramfs/inode.c. Theres a function in there called ramfs_mkdir that allocates and configures a new inode. Anyway, thats how i'd answer the question.
Don’t Go Far . . . Your Dinner’s Nearly Ready
It very much depends on your s.o. if it will work to your advantage, be a neutral thing or be a drag.

Some people really dig it, some people don't care and some will hate it, talk it over, communicate as much as you can about what is going on and make sure that if there are major decisions to be made that you're both on the same page.

Some people work together in the start-up, for some that's not an option. There are a thousand tiny things that matter, in the end doing this can place significant stress on your relationship, it may cause it to break, it may cause it to deepen.

There is no 'one size fits all' recipe here, you're going to have to feel your way, communication is the key.
Thank-you.
Hackety Hack may or may not be for you. It depends.

One of the core problems that the app solves is a toolchain problem. Instead of choosing between 1.8 or 1.9 or JRuby or Rubinius, and Textmate or vim or BBEdit or Eclipse, and then figuring out how to use them together, Hackety Hack lets you just install it and start coding. When you're teaching somebody from the ground up, they don't know _anything_, so it's best to give them something that's all wrapped up in one package.

However, all of the tutorials are just simply Ruby code, so it _will_ teach you Ruby... but you also might find that it moves more slowly than you'd like.

Really, I'd say give it a try, what's the worst that can happen? (I'm a bit biased, though...)
Why would it be a problem? You don't have to code through the night with your buddies every night. It is possible to start and run a successful business without giving over every waking moment to it - in fact, it's almost certainly better if you don't. And for when you have to, as long as your spouse is understanding there's no problem.
Android and the philosopher’s pencil
Four interruptions per hour?! I never realized how good I have it....
Don't forget when they 'killed' slots… and serial ports… and SCSI…
Quite right. We can correct that by showing the classification of main programming paradigms[1]. It shows that, OO just needs records, procedures, named state and closures. (I personally prefer to say the more understandable "OO needs structs, assignment, and closures".)

Now I have a problem, however: what is the difference between OO and stateful functional programming?

[1]: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/paradigms.html
Get Ready for Ads in Books
Re: web confessional

I don't know what you mean by "RFQ" in this context, and I don't know whether you meant this seriously, but in the Catholic faith, confession is not (principally) counseling: it's a sacrament. Neither confession nor any other sacrament may be administered remotely. You may think that's silly (but unless you believe in the efficacy of the sacraments, it seems even sillier to argue about how they should be effective), but of course the question has come up at least since phones became commonplace, and the somewhat related practice of proxy baptisms on behalf of the dead has come up since the first century. In short, I wouldn't bet a business model on the Church changing her mind on this one.

I'm not saying you couldn't get traction calling something a web confessional--in the reality tv age I think the name implies exhibitionism more than confidentiality--but it would be disingenuous to pitch it to Catholics as at all related to the sacrament.
You havea couple of skills that are really useful for startups: you know how to research a topic, you probably know how to schmooze with people, you know how to put together a decent presentation & you know how to write well. Those are all tasks that are terrible time-sinks for developers in a startup. My tip:

Learn how to create a distraction-free environment for developers by taking over all of these distracting tasks that nevertheless need to be done.

Hell, maybe there's even a business right there: become a VA for developers so that they can focus on code. Expect to lower your rates though ;-)
Television: why the UK is watching more than ever
Ranking Employees: Why Comparing Workers to Their Peers Can Often Backfire
Eight Questions Every Startup Hopes You Won’t Ask
While I don't see any point any point in turning ipv6 of, I also don't think we are going to run out of addresses anytime soon - it would be nice if we could end natting (It would certainly solve a few of my problems), but just like with the oil situation, the doom sayers are, as usual, way out there.

For a reference, we have been running out of oil since the early 1910.
I think the main concern is to keep non-informative fluff off the site. That includes all kind of fanboyism.
Vaclav Smil - a professor who writes wonderfully detailed books about the history of technology, among other subjects.
Have you ever sat down and figured out what your end goals are?

Because without that, you're just stabbing around in the dark for a couple hundred here and a couple hundred there.

Which is perfectly fine, if all you wanna do is experiment.
OOP is different things to different people. While I agree with you that OOP != inheritance, I believe that polymorphism ∈ OOP and inheritance is a part of polymorphism.
Not to hijack the thread but http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1620333 didn't start out as me coding through the night either, but it eventually did turn in to that and it caused me to break up with a very nice girl.

Start-ups are voracious when it comes to consuming your time and not everybody deals with that equally well.
I have a multi-tierd, multi-pronged approach to this.

First thing of note: I don't really use anything that has licensing issues -- if one computer dies I just install the appropriate software on a new computer. This is partly due to heavy use of F/OSS and partly due to working at a large university with site licenses for just about everything, and partly due to maintaining VMs for certain things.

First I split personal data into 3 catagories.
1. configs and code
2. documents and personal media (things i made myself, and some other stuff that is rare or whatnot)
3. other media

I also keep track of things with an orthoganal index:
1. Public
2. Work
3. Semi-private
4. private

The first index defines how I store the files. Config and code is kept in a set of git repos. For code, it is simply one repo per project. For config it is a mix/match sort of thing that has organically grown over the years. Documents and private media are a combination of Dropbox and tarballs on my shared hosting account. Other media is mostly just kept on a home file server with good raid. It could be backed up elsewhere, but really it is all re-gettable, even tho to do so would be a pain.

The other index is where things get a bit interesting. This is where access control comes in, and some scripts and so on.

For instance, public code is easy, just let googlecode or github do the hard work

Private code and configs are all in dvcs, with my "central" repo on shared hosting, but dvcs... backup is built in.

The other media is mostly just for home use, or is music and moves around on private mp3 players or usb sticks. It is effectively ignored for the rest of this.

For personal documents and stuff, I maintain a second directory structure and links (sym or hard.. depends on OS and my mood that day). The dirs correspond to the privacy levels, and possibly extra descriptive tags like which work, or whatnot.

Finally I maintain a set of scripts for various operating systems which allow me to fetch the data I need from my places. My first step on logging into a new work server box is to wget $myurl/work-server.sh and run that script. It downloads usefull things like .vim, .bashrc, .profile, my personal ~/bin and so on. Then I am good to go, full environment at my fingertips. Similar for a new work laptop (which is in the semi-private realm), and so on.

It requires a lot of up front effort, and some additional maintainence effort, but overall makes things pretty smooth. It gives you the added benefit of being able to work just about anywhere, since your environment can follow you around.
Because I use mercurial. Every commit is a branch if you want it to be. Also, task branching model is a bit heavy for my tastes.
You're totally right.

In fact, we have a project underway to try to make it suck less.

Having said that, if you're anywhere nearby, drop me a line and just come in for lunch. It'll be more compelling than any jobs page we could put up.
I use those phrases when I am being frank, truthful, honest, and when I am relating to what people already know.

Wow, I must seem like the biggest liar on earth to the people that have read those books and listened to those tapes.
Tao has a nice post describing some of the accomplishments of the Fields medal winners here:

http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/lindenstrauss-ngo-s...
Server bandwidth pricing != Consumer internet access pricing.
Warning Signs That Your Product Sucks
Yeah that's the trend now, PTO is either a sick day or vacation day. It's best to clarify upfront what they mean. My last job had 15 PTO days (to be used for vacation or sick time), but my current job is 15 PTO days plus 6 paid sick days. Plus we get 13 holidays vs my last job's 8 (adding Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Columbus Day, MLK Day, and the employee's birthday).
That mostly depends on whether you still have a day job or not. When you do, doing a startup will eat all of your free time. You can only get so far with skipping sleep & overloading on stimulants before you will inevitably crash, so don't go that road.
I don't think being married would have too much of an effect on things, as long as your s.o. knows what he/she is in for and is committed to giving you the time you will need. I am married and we have a 2 year old, which does make things somewhat harder... but not impossible. This is the best article I ever read on the subject:

http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-entrepreneur...
Or research alternative party balloon technologies.