skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It was unexpected by me so I consider it a bug.

You're encoding the game state as a giant switch statement. This is not the best approach. The size of your code will increase exponentially with the complexity of the game. The only reason it works at all is because tic-tac-toe is very simple. You should read up on representing this as a game tree:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_tree
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensive-form_game

Here was my first run, pretty much randomly choosing boxes:

Enter H or T to decide if you will go first:h
Enter 'X' or 'O' to select the shape that you want to use:x
#### Initial Game Board State
[-1, -1, -1]
[-1, -1, -1]
[-1, -1, -1]
Enter the slot(location) where you want to place your shape:(available slots are :'0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8'):1
you have chosen to place an 'X' at 1.
#### Game Board State After Move By:player
[-1, 'X', -1]
[-1, -1, -1]
[-1, -1, -1]
cpu has chosen to place an 'O' at 2.
#### Game Board State After Move By:cpu
[-1, 'X', 'O']
[-1, -1, -1]
[-1, -1, -1]
Enter the slot(location) where you want to place your shape:(available slots are :'0', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8'):2
Enter the slot(location) where you want to place your shape:(available slots are :'0', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8'):3
you have chosen to place an 'X' at 3.
#### Game Board State After Move By:player
[-1, 'X', 'O']
['X', -1, -1]
[-1, -1, -1]
cpu has chosen to place an 'O' at 6.
#### Game Board State After Move By:cpu
[-1, 'X', 'O']
['X', -1, -1]
['O', -1, -1]
Enter the slot(location) where you want to place your shape:(available slots are :'0', '4', '5', '7', '8'):4
you have chosen to place an 'X' at 4.
#### Game Board State After Move By:player
[-1, 'X', 'O']
['X', 'X', -1]
['O', -1, -1]
cpu has chosen to place an 'O' at 5.
#### Game Board State After Move By:cpu
[-1, 'X', 'O']
['X', 'X', 'O']
['O', -1, -1]
Enter the slot(location) where you want to place your shape:(available slots are :'0', '7', '8'):8
you have chosen to place an 'X' at 8.
#### Game Board State After Move By:player
[-1, 'X', 'O']
['X', 'X', 'O']
['O', -1, 'X']
cpu has chosen to place an 'O' at 7.
#### Game Board State After Move By:cpu
[-1, 'X', 'O']
['X', 'X', 'O']
['O', 'O', 'X']
Enter the slot(location) where you want to place your shape:(available slots are :'0'):0
you have chosen to place an 'X' at 0.
#### Game Board State After Move By:player
['X', 'X', 'O']
['X', 'X', 'O']
['O', 'O', 'X']
#### Ending Game Board State
['X', 'X', 'O']
['X', 'X', 'O']
['O', 'O', 'X']
player has won the game...

Hope that is helpful.
You are correct. So I suppose I should alter my previous post by saying that it is a good way to go iff you are also willing to be diligent in your updates to keep the documentation as current as possible.
High paying is relative but after doing the calculations of joining a startup with ≈15 employees the possible upside was really low when compared to benefits such as stock options, employee stock purchase programs and 401k matching.

I realized the the upside really exists for the founders...so that's what I'm doing.
It's not just what makes them attractive, but also what doesn't make them suck.

The biggest turnoff is the sight of stringent, fascist language for benign requirements that can be met by anyone who bothers to do a basic preparation. "MUST be able to come to an in-person interview. Do NOT apply if you can't come in" -- why is that even a requirement for an on-site job?

Other gems are:

Equating completely unrelated qualifications "Minimum: masters in computer science, or Red Hat certification".

Being sticklers for dipshit, minor-celebrity tools that anyone with half a brain can pickup on their taxi ride to the interview: "MUST be able to use JIRA/Trac/Redmine/Bugzilla; MINIMUM 10 years".

Offering me $30/hr, with no other benefits, while enticing me with the usual fare of juvenile delights: pop soda and foosball. Specially when you're the 40 y.o subsidiary of a Fortune 500 conglomerate.

Hiring for systems design or knowledge transfer, while insisting on specific tools to be used: "we need a consultant to advice us on global on-demand video advertising delivery, and recommend architecture and design insights .. MINIMUM 10 years Oracle. 10 Years Java. 10 years Perl. 10 years C++. 10 years Sybase. MS Office. Photoshop. Batchfiles" .. you can just tell whoever wrote this has no clue what the solution might entail, so he adds everything he remembers from MIS 101, and requires it all from the guy who will be most likely working with biz analysts and delivering nothing more requirement documents, and possible the first few job ads for the future team lead and project manager.
Marco also notes that the app has to contend with the user's expectation of what it should do. Which might not have any basis in reality. If an app doesn't do what a user expects, regardless of where that expectation originates, it earns the 'useless' designation.
I hear so much about the desperate shortage of hackers in NYC yet I send my resume to a few startups, full of relevant experience at top-tier companies, and get not a peep back. What gives?
I left a great well paying job at TripAdvisor for a startup. It was definitely a hard decision and I don't know which way it would have gone had I not gotten into YC.

Had my job offered to double my salary or something rediculous like that I probably still would have left, but coming from a middle-class family where having a high paying job was a major motivator (for the stability, not the luxury), it would have been a very painful thing to do.
For me, it's not what attracts me, but what turns me away.

For example, if I'm looking for a Python job, than any job regarding Python is of immediate interest. That's all that's necessary on the attraction side of it.

Things that keep me from applying for jobs are, in no particular order: using the word "Rockstar", mentioning how difficult things are or how quick they are, mandating requirements that don't really matter (college degree required! skill not important), vague details, trying to sound too cool or fun to work with.

My advice would be to sit down with someone else there and tell them about the job. Tell them what you're looking for, what you offer and any important details. Actually have a conversation with them about this. Record it. You'll have the basis for an honest job post in conversational tone that tells potential employees exactly what you want.
yep, i did. i found out that you go from $ to 0. And it's very hard to make the first .01 cent. But you will learn a lot, so take it as having fun for a year and learning more than you learned in Univ. and you will be ok.

Actually I wish our profession wasn't just 0 or big chance payout but had some in between too.
I sent an e-mail to the address listed, and it failed.

-------------

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

nyc@adoptahacker.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 "Unknown User" (state 14).
An Android fan/wanna-be rather than a user yet, but of the two Android handsets I have played with, I was disappointed with the Nexus One, but really liked my friends HTC Desire (The "Sense" UI seemed to make a lot of difference).
I haven't done any real investigation on the whole thing, but the general feeling I get about the whole thing is that over time, system-related processes may hold on to more and more memory. I don't know what specifically is doing it or why it's doing it, but the end result is that trying to load a 2048x2048 pixel image will work one time and the next time your app will get killed for it.

iOS devices have NO virtual memory at the OS level. Once it's out of physical RAM, that's when it really begins to clamp down on app memory usage. There's only 256 MB of RAM on the iPad, so loading that one image needs at least 40 MB of that. If a bunch of the Apple-originated processes are resident in memory, and it seems like it hangs on to a bunch of them even after the app is closed, then it may or may not let you use that much memory.
Directory Owners: Why You Should Moderate Links Better
this is why i love hacker news.
You can call landlines in Canada and America for free from Gmail. I did it from China to Canada and the quality was very good.
To incent right job seekers to respond, I think it's a function of making it interesting on 2 fronts:

1. The job itself - Will the person be solving or doing interesting things?
2. The company - Does the company have a clear vision and seemingly a chance of success? Evidence of traction here can help, i.e. being a YC startup, press, etc.

I think gimmicks and attempts to make a job description "stand out" through wit, humor, etc may work, but they don't always register with everyone and can miss altogether at times. Not worth the risk (esp as as a first attempt IMO)
Your experience echoes mine. There are only two situations where I use the full-resolution image, and I had to go to great lengths to make sure NOTHING else was loaded. The rest of the time it uses pre-rendered representations at various smaller sizes.
If You Miss Out There is Always Another Deal The Next Da
Running website forked - Hosted & "hackable" nodejs Twitter streamer
The blog did file it under "Apple Fanboyism" and "Microsoft Bashing", so at least they were honest about where they were coming from. I presume that since Android is being touted as an "iPhone Killer", it will have to kill the iPhone first before people want to bury it in turn.
You probably won't get the same pay to work at a startup as you would get at a bigger company. However, I currently work at a startup and I wouldn't consider myself destitute. Just because you're working at a startup doesn't mean you'll have a low standard of living.

If salary is important to you, I'd recommend a later stage startup. It will likely be the happy median between an early stage startup and BigCo.
Earlier this summer, there was news that the FBI was trying to help the Brazilian government access data related to a financial crime of some sort. TrueCrypt was the method used and it (supposedly) thwarted the FBI's efforts. Just google "fbi truecrypt" for the sources.

But here's the thing... I'm not paranoid in the style of "The Lone Gunmen," but this news never quite passed the sniff test. I find it difficult to believe that if the FBI was unable to crack a TrueCrypt volume that they'd let that particular cat out of the bag.

I conclude two possible motives: 1) Subterfuge to get people feeling "safe" with a method that can be broken; or 2) Demonization of strong crypto in the media as a prelude to criminalizing its use (or at least the refusal to hand over keys, as in the UK).
> Diggs 100 or so employees all need to put food on the table somehow.

I think that's the real problem here. People don't give a damn whether Digg's employees can afford food; they want what they want, when they want it, and for the price that they want it. That, or they expect someone else to do the paying for it.
Ask HN: Anyone from Mexico or LATAM applying to YC?
I would like to get in touch with YC applicants from Mexico or LATAM.
It's one thing to put it in your apps, which can be updated when they get tired, but if you put lol in your name you're pretty much stuck with it (or facing an expensive rebranding exercise)
the more you know about where your food comes from, the better. maybe you wouldn't eat that burger if you knew the pesticides, hormones and antibiotics that go into it. maybe you wouldn't eat that shellfish which may be full of birth control hormones. and maybe you wouldn't eat that genetically modified corn. in the bigger picture, eating a dead wasp seems like the healthy choice.
I couldn't resist... Well done. This version appears to be unbeatable.
The Woz's business card
They are correct. Most of the figs, at least the fresh ones you would buy in the US, are parthenocarpic. Dried figs, or what might be in a fig newton, well... you're on your own on that one.

There is an amazing amount of wildlife in a wasp pollinated fig. If you break one open, all sorts of interesting stuff crawls out, not just immature wasps, but also a lot of organisms that prey on the wasps.
Don't forget to tinker; the Android SDK is an absolute joy, specially with the Eclipse integration, and you don't need a physical device to write apps. The simulator is faithful to a fault (you can even get plugins to simulate the sensor, to shake and tilt the phone.)

Jump in! It's fun, clean, ambitious and Free. Most importantly, it has "winner" written all over it.
Everything I've read about Android phones indicates that the Nexus One is by far the best. I refuse to use any phone which locks out its own user, which rules out some of the cheaper offerings, but the extra $100 is less important to me than being able to modify its behavior.
Ask HN: whither Billmonk?
My roommates and I have been happily using Billmonk (http://www.billmonk.com) for years. Today, it appears to have vanished. I knew the service wasn't really being actively developed since the Obopay acquisition, but that's OK, it was perfect for us as it was! I don't recall seeing any "we're shutting down" message, and there's no status blog I could find - the company blog has been dormant for over a year.

So, with that:

1) Does anyone here know what's up with Billmonk - are they just having a nasty server problem that they're not motivated enough to fix, or has the plug been pulled sans announcement?

2) Anyone have contact info for the [former] Billmonks? (I believe they were a YC company? Not 100% sure.) My roommates and I have some valuable (to us, no one else) data in there... at a minimum, we'd like to have our final totals so we can settle up; ideally, we'd love to have our history.
I left a well-paying gig but left knowing 3 key things:

1. Had a solid financial cushion via savings to really give myself enough runway to do the startup thing sincerely and whole-heartedly

2. Knew that if even things blow up, I'd always be employable

3. Very few folks become really wealthy working for someone else

The upside monetarily is a motivator, but the bigger thing I've realized after jumping to startup-ville is that my worst day in my startup is honestly better than my best day in corporate America. There are immense non-monetary benefits (and a whole lot more stress as well)
I think he was listing guesses.

And before you try to apply your logic to them, remember- they are rumors. Rumors defy logic.
You'll need to tell the employer before signing any paperwork, for sure, but you don't necessarily need to mention it in your first or second interview unless it comes up. I'm not suggesting you deceive the employer, just that you can take time to evaluate them and let them evaluate you for your skills before providing details on your off-time projects. If they discount you for being passionate enough about development to start your own, non-competitive thing on the side, they're probably not a great fit for you.
I only now have begun to use the I'm feeling lucky feature. I will type in my specific query, or rather begin to and as soon as it brings up a match I hit the down arrow and then I hit the right arrow. This has already become muscle memory and I recommend that everyone give this a try.
Academic Navel Gazing Spirit Quest
Ruby MongoDB driver is now 2-3x faster with Phusion team commits
More on parthenocarpy, a word I did not know existed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenocarpy

Essentially a mutation that gets trees to produce useless fruits that don't have actually developed seeds and don't need pollination. While that sort of mutation would normally be selected against, since the trees can't reproduce via seeds and are expending energy on producing fruit for no reason, it's deliberately selected for by farmers who artificially reproduce the trees via planting cuttings, or grafting them onto rootstock.

(Though I guess really the "naturally" versus "artificially" distinction is a bit, erm, artificial, if you just think of humans as another species, since lots of natural selection is influenced by relationships between species, like the wasp-fig relationship in this article. So trees evolving to please humans isn't really different in kind from trees evolving to work well with wasps.)
Should you disclose that you're working on a startup before accepting the job? Yes. Do you need to disclose it during the interview? I would say that you don't necessarily have to as long as you aren't dishonest about it.
I think the idea is that with linux comes many other languages.
Nectar is also a term used for sweetened and watered down (until it is drinkable) fruit puree. I haven't seen any recently, but you used to be able to buy apricot nectar at any grocery store, and gourmet food shops often had pear and peach nectars as well (and rarely oddballs like plum or blackberry).
I'll just be putting these figs back on the shelf now.
I love it. It is a great tool for finding literary references,for instance, recalling part of a quote or a poem you have in memory, and correcting based on results, turns out to be a great time saver for me.

When my search is exact, I don't use it, and since I search google primarily through chrome or the search bar in firefox, this feature is only visible to me when I actually require it.
at any rate, I genuinely thought it was interesting
The way I see it, there is only one Android phone out there: Nexus One. Getting anything else does not make sense - you're essentially getting a loan (!) for a dumbed-down, restricted and less capable phone hampered even more by "value adding" crapware, running an obsolete OS without any guarantees of an upgrade in the future.

T-Mobile offers cheaper plans for those who don't need a loan to buy a phone, i.e. getting a financed/subsidized crap actually ends up being expensive in the long (2yr) run.

Its not the carriers who are guilty, it is the users who keep flocking towards subsidized crap. Its like buying laptops from Dell at 50% off financed at 20%APR that have Windows+crapware engraved in ROM, incapable of booting anything else.
Yes, Wikipedia would be another example. It is one of the most useful destinations on the web, but does not charge anything. So too are web-comics, just about all of which are free to view, while the creators make their money elsewhere (through donations, t-shirt/book sales etc.). In these kind of things it is the voluntary readership/participation that makes the site/blog/comic a success. The existance of a community of users is a valuable resource that should not be alienated lightly.
You are correct about the representation, but I went for the most low-scale approach since the search space is so small. The next version will learn how to build its own rules, but that is for another day. Thanks for all of your help though. I really appreciate it.
Google does an interesting engineering interview. The best advice I can give:

1) Read the first couple chapters of Introduction to Algorithms (Cormen et. all) enough times to know it cold. Something in there will come up.
2) Dedicate a day or so to browsing pertinent Wikipedia articles. Simply read as much as you can.

The former gives you some depth. The latter, breadth. Outside of off-the-wall Wikipedia articles, you should not be discovering anything radically new. If all goes to plan, you should be able to answer the bulk of the straight engineering questions. If you're lucky, one of them will click with a Wikipedia article you've just read. See: Fragmentation, Skip Lists, Virtual Functions, whatever. Read lots. Even if emulated, breadth counts.

If you get lost on step 1, this isn't the job for you (right now).

Good luck!
I recall reading somewhere that this is one reason there's so many ways to get magazines for free via various promotions and third-party deals and frequent-flyer miles and such. Magazines charge mostly as a way of convincing advertisers that their readership numbers are legit, rather than for the actual revenue--- if you ship 100,000 copies to people who actually shelled out $30 each, that's more convincing evidence to advertisers that people are actually reading it, versus if you mailed out 100,000 free copies. But magazines are always trying to game the system by finding various ways to get magazines to people while having them still count as "paying subscriber".
Also you neglected to mention the most interesting part of this:

http://github.com/RichardBronosky/Tic-Tac-Toe

The forked network for this project is interesting. Is this for a class or something?
Meta-quibble: A fig is a modified inflorescence (more precisely, a synconium), and can contain many hundred nectar producing flowers.
Hallowed Ground
Some data which may be interesting and indicative of less interest in Twitter-oriented startups overall.

Investment in pure-play Twitter startups dropped 50% vs last year.

http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/pure-play-twi...
I really like my Nexus One. I got it with no cooperation from any carrier, so they have no direct influence, and the hardware is actually pretty good.
What does the filler text lorem ipsum mean?
Dried figs, or what might be in a fig newton, well... you're on your own on that one.

err, that's what I was most interested in... I've eaten an entire pack of fig newtons in one sitting.
These are all great points; I'd most like to second "be clear with your methodologies". You've gotta be honest here. In particular, don't say Agile when you're not actually following an Agile methodolgy (the number of companies to whom 'agile' simply means "we don't do any planning"...). I've worked for companies that aren't Agile, who also never do unit testing, let alone TDD, and yet manage to be successful. I'm not necessarily put off because I don't see those things in a job posting.

Claiming these methodologies when the reality is different is just going to lead to disillusionment (and no, 'in the near future' doesn't count)
Hiring has to be pertinent to what you are doing...

For me "equity" or "equity plus small amount of cash" generally means you are looking for volunteer labor. I've done a bit of this, but generally most postings of this nature are of the "we want you to work for free" nature.

I avoid them.
I always make my first search from the Chrome address bar, and if I then modify my search on the actual Google page, I finish typing and hit Enter well before seeing any of the so-called instantness.
I've seen a lot of people asking for a description of the problems the position will be addressing. Discussions with clients over the past couple of years have led me to understand that in some cases, companies don't put out many specifics because what they want you to work on is a bit of a competitive advantage (in some cases this is even justified). Letting your competitors know you're hiring to build system XYZ to do ABC gives them a heads-up as to what's coming down the line.

Granted, this isn't the case in all or even most postings that are vague. But if other aspects look legit, but the posting is a bit vague, give them a little 'benefit of the doubt'.
Mostly toy projects, many of them still in development.

A little homemade web framework. A blog compiler to generate a static site. A one-on-one chat client to be integrated with other already existing websites, a browser-based version of the Apples to Apples game, a brainfuck interpreter, maze solver, etc.
> Most nice people grade on a curve.

I don't understand this, could you explain?
I am pretty sure the "android vision" is "run on as man phones on as many carriers as possible", which mirrors the approach of Windows over the years. Which is unfortunate due to the bloat-ware that carriers will add, which is pretty much similar to what pc manufacturers added to Windows PCs over the years.

I have both a Nexus One and an iPhone4, there are things I like and loath on both platforms. However, thanks to Apple's control on the iPhone and a straight Android install, I am free of carrier bloat.