skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Myers isn't trying to argue that the million lines of code aren't there or aren't important. He's trying to argue that those million lines of code have to run on hardware which is poorly understood at best, and that trying to reverse-engineer the hardware is several orders of magnitude more difficult than trying to understand the original programming. The hardware components don't follow the law of superposition, either, so we can't just look at each element in isolation. The entire thing has to be understood.

Imagine going back to ancient Roman/Greek/Etruscan/&c times and handing them a ream of paper filled with the hexadecimal representation of an x86 application compiled for a Windows environment, and then showed them what it looked like when running. "Hey, look, now you can play videos and music!" Now imagine it was several orders of magnitude more difficult than that, and you're beginning to get the idea.

"If you could reproduce those 1 million lines and set them loose, allowing them to construct a human being..." The exact point he was making was that there's a lot of handwaved complexity in this statement, and that the abstraction "understand human being program, run code" is abstract to the point where it no longer accurately reflects the reality of the situation.
Anyone knows where I can order this book in india? I checked and couldn't find it in any of the major book shops or libraries. Amazon is not an option coz I cannot pay for the shipping. Any other ideas?
Your suspicion is correct: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html

The vast majority of the wealthy started off that way, and the higher up the chain they start, the easier it is to move even higher, which is why wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated in our society.
If Playboy Were on MarkLogic, Jodie Fisher Shots Would Have Been Up a Week Ago
You can have a private facebook profile without using a fake name/identity.
OMG, let's go looking for Ms and Ws in stock price data
The Linux Desktop Showdown: Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora
The first time you can find the @ is from a 1448 but it was used as a measure , meaning 1/4 of a quintal (an ancient spanish weight measure) .
(In spanish with photos of ancient @'s) http://tejiendoelmundo.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/la-curiosa-h...
(In french) http://hapax.qc.ca/Pourquoi_arrobe_dans_10646.html
So who was a better Soviet general during WWII?

Of course with one million Soviet soldiers in Stalingrad, there bounded to be many heros, but Zhukov was the top commander in charge of the defense. Even if he's not on the street fighting, he can claim some credit.
If you want people to remember your domain name and type it into the browser than you really need the .com extension. You have to market the hell out of .net or any other type of domain for people to remember it. They might remember your domain name but forget the extension and will likely try .com. If you don't own it because somebody else does you are sending traffic you worked for to them. Most people will shrug it off and forget about your site or worse become engaged in their site leaving your long forgotten. Try to come up with a different name or a multi-word domain to get that .com. The domains are out there, you just have to be creative.
Technical analysis has always seemed like nonsense to me, too. I've never once seen an example that seemed to have a firm logical or mathematical foundation.

Has an authoritative source ever debunked it?
As one of your customers, I wouldn't mind you looking at my traffic, assuming that you notified me of it afterward and that you didn't store anything that could be used to establish patterns that could be traced to me individually or the actual data I was sending (it is liable to include, among other things, passwords).

However I would expect you to get a notification before you started to murk around with my traffic, since it is liable to interfere with my use of the services that I have paid for.
Why can you never be broke if you produce energy?
The trend seems to be build the brand around a less ideal domain and then buy the .com when you can afford to. Facebook (thefacebook.com), Dropbox (getdropbox.com), Delicious (del.icio.us), and Groupon (getyourgroupon.com) did this.
Year Without a Summer
Disappointed that the top voted comment there recommends Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the rest of the Robert Kiyosaki dross.
And now any disagreement can be immediately disqualified without further argument. Well done.
Silverlight is supported by MS on Macs and by Mono Moonlight on Linux.
I agree to an extent - I just think it says a lot more about the individuals than the methodology. TDD doesn't magically transform bad solutions to good ones, and nobody should claim or expect that. It's a shame that what is really just a useful technique has been overhyped by people trying to make a buck.
Beyond Mobiles: Android as a Universal Development Platform
I didn't mean to suggest that quantum effects were the only source of uncertainty.

If I've got a cubic meter of pure water, I can slosh it around and observe all sorts of interesting effects. I can then model that cubic meter of water with another cubic meter. That second cube won't behave identically. A cubic meter of water has a very high Reynolds number and can have considerable chaotic turbulence (chaotic in the classical sense, not quantum). The exact motion of the water simply won't be the same, no matter how precisely you mimic the 'input' into the system (forced motion of the cube, for instance).

Nonetheless, the second cube is a fantastic way to understand the first cube, and in some way is qualitatively identical, even when the specific motions aren't replicated exactly. This is exactly the same for computational simulations of the fluid. Of course they can't predict chaotic behavior, but for all intents and purposes they can be just as useful as having that second cube of water.

Likewise, a computer simulation of a neuron may never exactly predict what a real neuron will do. Just like one neuron can never exactly predict what another neuron will do. Just like one bucket of water can never exactly mimic another. But who cares?
Right. Freaking out random people is a great way to stand up to that pesky government. That will show 'em.
Real life shows, ref-counting, when done manually, is more error-prone then GC. Programmers make errors. As single missing release keeps your object locked in memory. One missing add-ref crashes your program. Microsoft soon learned this lesson after the introduction of COM and quickly added smart pointers. Still not a good solution. For their followup technology (.Net) they used GC. Lession learned.
There was a fascinating discussion on how geeks are not like other people in this regard:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1080272
A lot of spam filtering is tokenizing and looking for patterns in TONs of email text. While it's best to spot these trends in real or near real time, there is still some value in crunching older data.
The solution to this is digital white boards. If you are going as far as Anybot to enable virtual participation in design meetings, I think it would be reasonable to go all the way.
This particular idea really consists of many sub-ideas. I'd rather explain the problems and motivations behind the ideas rather than just dump a list on you.
There is some really good stuff in here, but there is one point on which I totally disagree: operator overloading.

Operator overloading can be abused, yes, but there are many things which don't belong in a standard library and nevertheless lend themselves to adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

See:
Growing a Language, by Guy Steele
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8860158196198824415...
Gabriel (yegg) will be on TWiT tonight @5pm EST talking about DuckDuckGo
The problem that stopped SCO going head-to-head with Microsoft back in the days of Windows 3.1 and OS/2 was licensing encumbrances. AIUI, every time they sold a copy of Open Desktop (the predecessor to SCO OpenServer) they had to shell out $200 to various licensees. Sun got around the problem (at least as of Solaris) by forking out $BIGNUM on a permanent license for SVR4. SCO stuck at SVR3.2 -- because by the time they knew they wanted an SVR4.x license, AT&T were wanting eye-wateringly huge license fees per copy shipped -- but did some white-room cloning work so that by 1994 or thereabouts just about the only AT&T SVR3.2 code remaining was the copyright declarations in the kernel headers: OpenServer was effectively an SVR4.2 clone. (A year or so later they actually bit the bullet and bought an SVR4.3 license ...)

But rewind to 1990, in our time line. Until then, Microsoft were the junior partner in the IBM/Microsoft alliance. They'd promised to deliver a superior OS to MS-DOS, with a windowing system on top; the first couple of iterations of OS/2 were dismal, as were Windows 1 and Windows 2, but the plan was to collaborate on OS/2 2.x and then ship a next generation product, OS/2 3.0, aka "NT".

As it happened, Microsoft gambled on NT while IBM stuck with OS/2, thinking that they still owned the market.

But if we back up to 1987, before OS/2 1.0 shipped, the UNIX-on-PC codebase was clearly a better platform for a multi-tasking OS, and MS-DOS backward compatability could be supplied via VP-IX (if I'm remembering SCO's DOS-box's name properly). If we posit that Microsoft retained Xenix and decided to develop UNIX further, the only question is whether Bill would have coughed for an unlimited AT&T license, just as Sun did. And I think -- given MS's history of buying up the IP they needed in order to hit a marketing requirement (and remembering that I'm an outsider, so this opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it :) -- they might well have done so.
i think the author follows a similar idea as Tim Berners-lee with this paragraph in the "Giant Global Graph" article:

"So the Net and the Web may both be shaped as something mathematicians call a Graph, but they are at different levels. The Net links computers, the Web links documents."

published at http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/215

so, if it is something that is not a html document that can can be reached via a hyperlink is not part of the web but it just uses the internet.
Ah! Trying to up upvote on an iPhone gone wrong! Meant to upvote and downvoted.. Might two people proxy their votes to correct my error?
I do not think the final one is. it is significantly different. My only question would be the background circle. We all use other stuff for inspiration, doing so is not infringement. The part you are in a gray area on, is using the original to trace a template. Granted you modified the character but did you modify the background? As usual, I am not legal council so take my ramblings with a grain of salt.
I highly recommend going through Zed Shaw's "Learn Python the Hard Way". Other great Python related books to pick up are:

Pro Python by Marty Alchin
Expert Python Programming by Tarek Ziadé

If you're looking to get into web development then, I'd suggest picking up:

Practical Django Projects
Pro Django
and Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

Hope that helps!
Oh come on. This isn't chronic distrust - it designed specifically to look like a katana!

If someone called in a regular old umbrella as a weapon, sure, I'd call that paranoia - but this thing is designed to look like a weapon, and you're blaming people for thinking it was real?

"Handlebar fashioned specifically to look like katana assumed to be a katana" - is this really so unreasonable?
If comment flagging was possible I would have flagged this post (edit: for being spammy).

edit: Below comment is not why I would flag a comment, not sure why one would think so.

Paying for video hosting is something I would never consider. Archive.org hosts mine now.
I went ahead and submitted it to HN in order to get the word out...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1611966
You're comparing two very different things here though. One bucket of water is substantially like another just as one brain is like another. A brain and a computer model of a brain are two very, very different things, with completely different meta-properties.
What has irreversibility got to do with it? There are cellular automata that are irreversible but obviously deterministic.
Humans v2.0: Thinking Abstractly and in Frameworks
I'm wondering how - if you created something that is potentially patentable - would you "protect" it? Not protect in the sense of "ensure a revenue stream" but protect in the sense of "ensure it's available royalty-free for any future users"?

From what I understand, Licenses (MIT/Apache/GNU) are different than Patents, so it seems that just licensing it wouldn't work. Can you receive a patent and then immediately put said patented idea into the public domain?
IANAL, but my guess would be 'yes'. It looks like a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work to me. It's definitely a gray area.
Not a lawyer, but...

Yes. At least in the U.S. http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html#change

See also the previous question on that page, called "How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?"
The data I've seen suggest that the ability to make wealth is passed from generation to generation, but wealth itself usually isn't. Genetics, environment, and upbringing are all more valuable than a trust fund, which shouldn't be a surprise at all.

As for hard work, it is a great way to make money as long as you're smart about what you work on.
Why is it "about time"? You make it sound like Vimeo is years behind the pack, but in fact---if my understanding is correct---they are at the front, at least in regards to other big video hosting such as Youtube.
Here's an exercise via excerpt from the blog post I'd love to know if anyone has ever tried & get comments on:

"Here’s the problem: People just don’t know how to talk about what they’re going to talk about! Instead, they just start talking about it!
Not sure what I mean? Well, let me frame it for you. Whenever you participate in a conversation, there should really be two things you’re trying to do: #1) Understand what the framework of the conversation is, and #2) Communicate and receive specific points.
Everyone always jumps to point #2. Rarely do people even realize #1 exists. Here’s a concrete example: Next time you’re on a conference call, run a little test. Start the call by saying, “I’d like to go over our agenda. Here are all the things I’d like to cover on this call.” And list your items. When you’re done, ask, “are there any other topics that anyone wants to add to the agenda?”
Now, what you asked for were more agenda items. This goes to point #1 – the goal is to frame out what the conference call is going to be about. But often – very often – what you’ll get, instead, is that people will dive into specific items. It’s the most frustrating exercise, to realize the futility of it, and the difficulty that the human brain has in processing #1. People will say things like, “Well, I wanted to talk about XYZ. And the thing about XYZ is that….” and there they go – off talking about specific items when you were trying to frame out the agenda of the call. Try that test; I’d love to get your comments."
Ur a Nigerian scam artist obv
Let's be perfectly clear and honest here. If you say anything about the atrocities committed by any group at any point in history, certain nationalists (Orwell on nationalism: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_na...) take it as their sacred duty to defend the reputation of their chosen idol or to tear down the reputations of any other nationality to establish moral superiority, or at least equivalence, for the object of their defense.

Hence, a perfectly sensible remark acknowledging the brutality of all sides in World War II, paired with the observation that the Western Allies at least had a deserved reputation for being countries one was better off surrendering to, opens up an entire chasm of nationalistic anger, first tacitly denying that any such atrocities occurred, even on the part of the Nazis themselves (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1609926) followed, through the psychological mechanism of projection, by accusations of attempting to claim a "moral high ground" for the western Allies (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1610175), judging as propaganda near-universally-accepted truths about the brutalities of certain regimes (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1610199) and ultimately declaring that, whatever the evils of communism and fascism, the evils of the English speaking countries are worse (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1611142).

Alternatively, the entire campaign can also be viewed as purely an exercise in negative nationalism, attempting to tear down the reputations of the English speaking countries with the initial, tentative defense of the Nazis and Soviets meant only as an exercise in moral equivalence, rather than a genuine defense of totalitarianism. The psychology is the same.

Either way, there's no real point being made here, just a nationalistic knee-jerk reaction to anyone pointing out unsavory aspects of the history of totalitarianism, or alternatively the "savory" aspects of the history of certain English speaking countries.
Thanks, you found our first production bug! Should be fixed now :)

We still will require the file description, because in our opinion, the page that allows someone to upload the file should have some sort of reminder as to what file they are supposed to be uploading is (even if it is very brief).
One big difference is that a lot of people are willing to pay $0.99 for and app while the same charge for a web page bookmark would not go over well.
Yup, wire it up to a baby-shaped I/O package and ask one of your grad students to take it home with her.
Where is the information describing the machine ABI in the following legal C++ program? "#include <iostream>\nusing namespace std; int main() { cout << "Hello, world." << endl; return 0;}\n"

Next question: how large is the pre-processor / compiler / linker / runtime, relative to the given program.

The point is that this idea that you can just look at the information-content of the DNA is so dumb it's not even wrong.

It's funny that you should mention (and dismiss) the Ken Thompson hack, because that seems to be a much better analogy.

Even if 100% of our genome encoded the brain, its information-content would be a ridiculous under-estimate of the organism's complexity.

Note that I'm not saying anything about whether we actually need to simulate the brain to achieve AI.
I'll tell you who: People who aren't sexually attracted to donkeys.
What should they do it different?

You know what? If you are american you got lucky to spend 5x more resources than anyone in the first world, energy, petrol, plastics, TVs, computers, cars, whatever.

If you think about it, that is not fair!! Travel around and look at how other people lives.

And the number will become 10x,20x if you compare yourself to the majority (over the 3000billion people). You are not smarter than them, more educated or culture(the majority of Americans only speak one language, give me a break)... just lucky.

So you are rich!!, today, now. Just because you were born in the right place.

It seems that YOU want them to attribute their wealth(people richer than you) to luck, witch is a enormous fallacy, is not true, they are not lazy bastards like your prejudices want it to be(so YOUR mind could have an excuse for not working).

It is totally ok for someone to be proud of their work.
X-Plane is a great sim, but it lacks several features that helped to make Microsoft's sim so immersive and popular. X-Plane 10 is rumored to add AI traffic so you won't feel like you're flying in post-apocalyptic airspace, but it'll still be a while before the XP dev community comes close to that of MSFS.

Also, I know "FAA certification" is an oft-touted feature of XP, but it's not certified as a simulator, only as a "flight training device" and at the level it's certified the bar is pretty low.

If you're looking to get sim time for an instrument rating, it's helpful but it's not as impressive as it sounds. XP's certification level is more about, "if the joystick is unplugged, pause the sim" than accurate aerodynamic modeling or flight model completeness.
It's great to see how an idea and functional prototype evolves into a mass product. I like stories like this.
Well, yeah. We've removed people's ability to defend themselves, and replaced it with a knee-jerk fear.

The freaking out is, I contend, more the result of fear-mongering (in this case by Liberals, but in other cases from the other side). The world didn't used to work that way. And in some places it's still more rational. I've got a cabin in the woods, and around there it's pretty much assumed that everyone owns firearms. One can frequently see someone walking around the grocery store with a knife on his belt, and (a) no one gives it a second thought, and (b) no one gets stabbed.
In "People's History of the US", Howard Zinn adds another angle to this story. He suggests that the Americans, knowing an overwhelming Soviet invasion was imminent, used nuclear weapons to force the Japanese surrender to immediately. Then the US would be the only power negotiating the terms of surrender and could guarantee they'd be favourable to American economic interests.

Fascinating read, it's highly suggested.
Agreed, so many hide behind the veil of hard work and its a lie, most got to their successful points in life based on the wealth opportunity provided by finances or friends. Society needs to begin to look at and understand wealth in this manner. Dynasties always manage to preserve wealth in the world because of their inner-associations, rules, plans and initiations and they rarely recruit total outsiders.Its no tin-foil hat conspiracy, its reality.

Opportunity in life is just as beneficial as inherited wealth. You can work for years in an industry and never gain upward mobility because of a lack of personal connections that foster your growth and the insider information and support that you get from those sources, such as being fraternity brothers with a CEO, or knowing/mentoring with someone who has deeper political or financial influence since you were a child, or by having a rich mommy and daddy. Its so much about who you know, and how you start.

There have been several people with lots of money who failed by trying to buy their way into high society, without first making friends, we have all witnessed many brilliant meltdowns from Paris Hilton and others who didn't get the memo.

We need to start looking into wealth and financial stability and creating opportunities for the best ideas to succeed, not just the ideas with the best marketing campaigns. Mom and Pop is where we need to go, in terms of our future business and development outlook support to end the threats to net neutrality and shoddy/arbitrarily wrong/and unethical big businesses dominating our social landscape...
"The Pirate Bay Really Sucks," Says Co-Founder
while I am not in the UK, for me #2 is simple, don't sign a contract that tries to impose those restrictions, they are too damaging to a consultancy.

To some degree, I can understand employee restrictions as there is a long term commitment to that individual (well there is supposed to be). As well, as an employee I would not sign a contract that placed those restrictions on me and did not remove them under the circumstances of termination by the employer.

For a consultancy though, they don't pay the bills after the project is done, I would not sign a contract that extended restrictions beyond the time that that pay runs out. Simply if they are not paying, they don't get a say in what I do, unless they paid me a big chunk of money for me to be bound to a covenant that extends beyond the work.
You mean if everybody would be carrying Samurai swords, there would be less chopping incidents?
Now will someone get Charlie Rose a damn Vimeo account so I can watch him on my iPad?