skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It sounds like you know it already, but absolutely quit if you think anything turns into hazing -- it's a cheap way to build friendships and good fraternities don't need that. Past that, don't go overboard on drinking at first either. That's really not a good reason to be joining a fraternity anyway, you can drink with anyone.

Use your nerdier qualities to help the fraternity. We built an interactive carnival booth for a campus event that used a program I wrote to play different songs when an external switch was toggled. Don't let the fraternity change you -- use it as a way to be comfortable with your nerdiness. Friendships and social interaction will start becoming natural after that.

To echo what frederickcook said, there are -great- fraternities out there that will give you an opportunity to become a leader (and they are often the chapters that are winning national awards). Taking advantage of these opportunities is something I regularly cite as one of the best moves I made in undergrad. Try picking a less involved position in the house as soon as you can -- there are usually a few suited toward freshmen.
I'm an Engineer (though I count myself as extroverted) and joined a fraternity in college. It's my junior year now. I also know a few Comp Sci kids in other fraternities.

The answer is: it depends on which fraternity you're looking at and what their values/priorities are.

The stereotypical fraternity guy that gets portrayed in tv shows does exist...but only in specific fraternities. I would shy away from that.

A fraternity can be a great experience and one you couldn't really trade for anything else. Not everyone starts college extroverted and outgoing.

My advice? Find a fraternity that will embrace you and extend your character NOT change who you are inside or alter your values. If that's what you've found, go for it. If not, keep looking.

In my fraternity, I'm hardly the only "nerd" around in terms of interests. We may not look like it from the outside but the topics we will discuss in our free time (which is sometimes at 3 in the morning) include everything from the typical college scene, to Israel/Palestine, Obama/McCain, melting polar caps, and the philosophy of death. I can easily say that my fraternity in college has let me find those guys that I want to be there at my wedding...not to mention gave me a number of fun stories to tell later!

Shoot me an email (it's in my profile) and we can gladly talk more about this if you want.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see your last question! I think it might come as a surprise to some, but the things you will need to learn to fit in a fraternity are the same sorts of skills you need to be successful and outgoing in society. Don't focus on "learning drinking games"...but more on learning to be social, outgoing, raising your public speaking skills, etc. You'll find out that learning those skills not only makes college life a lot cooler (you'll also turn into a leader and hone those skills) but also raise you in society, and that covers everything from nailing a job interview to successfully talking to a lady.
A bonus question requiring previous knowledge can be fantastic as a shibboleth if crafted well — it reinforces to the potential applicant that there is a clever compatriot on the other side, and makes the job of screening resumes easier.
What do you guys think of http://www.extrahop.com/jobs/ ?
Busting balls is a social skill?
> children who traveled (from more rural areas) would be given a military escort in order to ensure they were present

Reminds me of an article I read about South Korea, where the police escort students to the big high school exam.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1203397...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GK30Dg01.html
It's not as though Apple is rejecting GPL'd apps. Quite the opposite, the terms of the GPL are what prevent apps licensed under it from being included in the App Store.
My advice is to try to find a middle ground here, since the mental and other risks associated with option #2 might undermine your awesome ambitions.

What's your current visa status?
300K inboulder? Where do you live? 300K is like C-suite salary in most of the country.
MacRuby soon on iOS
Cookies are a weakness of mine. It will be interesting to see if this puts me off of fig newtons... probably not. :)
Well, it does that, too. It has auto-complete with suggestions.
Own the geekiness.

Being comfortable and confident with who you are is the most important thing in life IMO, and other people gravitate towards people that are confident.

You can't fundamentally change who you are... it just doesn't happen, but you can grow gradually through your experiences, so I say take full ownership of who you are and don't force yourself into super uncomfortable situations. I say try it out, but be prepared to drop it if you find that it's just not for you.
Google Fiber: Faster than Denard Robinson? OK, almost as fast.
Just don't ever look at the germs in your mouth or the rest of your digestive system.
1) Just join it's better jump in the water so to speak, because if you wait a semester more than likely things won't be very different from the way they are now.

2) The is no catching up so to speak. But the closest thing you can probably is to just show up to all the events, chapter meetings, socials with sororities, and things with your pledge class. Observe and thing will start to come naturally, and don't be afraid so speak up.

If I think of the errors people make is trying to hard. Don't try too hard, if you do people will pick up one that and it will back fire.

I wasn't always very social, joined a fraternity in college(which wasn't my natural inclination) and was for the first year the only engineer in my fraternity. My senior year there were three of us out of 80 guys. I was eventually VP of my fraternity. So things can totally work out.

Honestly I think joining a fraternity can be one of the best things you do. But it's a lot like schools, girls or cars, you need the one that's right for you. Just like startups or companies the culture can be very different. Yes I said culture. Pick one where there are generally good people, there are always asholes in every organization but is almost everyone a ashole or one or two.

Just because you join a fraternity you don't have to give in to peer pressure, stand up for what you believe in ultimately when it matters, because a lot of things don't matter.

If you want to socialize your self more don't pick a academic fraternity based on what I believe your goals that you described.

Look your a hacker mean your smart, mean you can definitely figure things out. Go with the flow, RELAX and don't make a big deal of things in your head, when things don't go as smooth as you like, because in all likely hood your the only one who noticed.

Trick number one, none of the other pledges know what their doing either even if they are social don't worry about it.

Don't worry about dancing especially, guys never know what they are doing especially in college.

If you want any more advice shoot me a email, find it in my profile
You are a biological micro-ecosystem. So eating one shouldn't really squick you out.
The Schedule of the Web: Live Matrix
"I've eaten an entire biological micro-ecosystem in one sitting."

Tastes like ... victory.
Do it. I'm almost concerned that there's NO hazing... a small amount builds bonds with your pledge brothers

I spent my first three years at the University of Florida not in a fraternity, spending most of my time doing homework. My classmates in engineering were incredibly boring people. My fourth year, I decided I couldn't do another year of it and I either needed to take some time off or make a radical change.

I joined a lower-mid fraternity(DTD - could have done "better" had I understood rush, but it was an excellent fit for me) and started enjoying college for the first time. I met my fiancee at a social there. My best memories of college are probably the time I "wasted" shooting the shit during lunch at my fraternity.
It may be instructive to note that Finland is another country with a school system that seems to do particularly well, and that is held in high regard by other countries. In contrast with China, their system discourages standardized testing, especially for young children—iirc, they don't even receive grades until fifth grade. See, eg: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wherewestand/reports/globalization/f... and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120425355065601997.html

So what does this mean? Clearly there's more to it than just "more testing is necessary!" or the reverse. Is the Anglosphere in some "unhappy middle", where moving towards either more OR less testing would help? Is the amount of testing in fact orthogonal to school performance? I know both Finland and China are said to have high levels of societal respect for education, perhaps that's the crucial factor—but I'm not aware of any good measurements of this, maybe it's anecdotal.

Another hypothesis is that there's a fairly hard limit to how well children can be educated at this point in time, and that the best schools in Finland, China and the U.S. all near this limit. In China we only look at the best schools and students, and with so many people in China the best will look pretty good. Finland has very high equality and homogeneity, so the worst schools aren't so far off from the best, and the whole country comes out looking good. The U.S., however, has many badly funded schools and marginalized populations, so that could make the difference. Then the question becomes whether we can approach Finland's success, or if the Anglo countries are too inherently different. Again, this entire paragraph is truly rampant speculation, and my mind and gut are both skeptical.

Thoughts, anyone?
What would be an example of this?
Absolute rubbish. 4chan? lolcats? lolcat lingo? No. This describes general Internet young geek stereotype, not programmer. Inane graph. This article contributes nothing useful whatsoever.
I have no idea what Sun's motivations were (and I doubt you do, either), but all the time I've been using JRuby I never got the sense there was anything going on that was designed to hook people into Java other than using the JVM.

There was no more assimilation going on than what I would expect to see from Apple and MacRuby. Less, perhaps, since JRuby apps run on multiple platforms, something MacRuby apps won't do.

And since JRuby itself was nothing more than a jar, developers could slip it into their usual Java environment without having to explain how or why they were installing Ruby.

I've sat in JUG meetings watching JRuby explained to Java fans, and each time they crowd goes from notable skepticism to smiles and head-nodding when they see what they can do.

Sun's support of Charlie, Tom, et al really helped get JRuby up to speed making it not only the fastest complete Ruby implementation but also acceptable to "the enterprise".

Sun may have been all about Java, but to the extent they helped JRuby they've enabled many Java devs to be all about Ruby.
I really enjoyed this answer and would love to know more details, however I can understand why you are leaving out some of the details and posting from a throwaway account. I'm personally most interested in the idea for the new startup and that talent in the team that helped you make the decision to walk from the employer. Is there any way I could ask you a few questions? You can contact me since that is a throwaway account unless you have better things to do. ;-)
Youtube Live Epic Failure (Plaintext DB Password Exposed)
From: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/12/youtube-live-streaming/

The widget embedded is rendering this on the page:

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/__init__.py", line 511, in __call__
handler.get(*groups)
File "/base/data/home/apps/yt-live/1.344714172147360500/event.py", line 69, in get
evs = get_rows()
File "/base/data/home/apps/yt-live/1.344714172147360500/event.py", line 9, in get_rows
client = gdata.spreadsheet.text_db.DatabaseClient('kieran@bynd.com', 'projectmetal')
File "/base/data/home/apps/yt-live/1.344714172147360500/gdata/spreadsheet/text_db.py", line 106, in __init__
self.SetCredentials(username, password)
File "/base/data/home/apps/yt-live/1.344714172147360500/gdata/spreadsheet/text_db.py", line 127, in SetCredentials
raise CaptchaRequired('Please visit https://www.google.com/accounts/'

CaptchaRequired: Please visit https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha to unlock your account.
Yeah, they're based on L4D specials, so you have boomers, smokers, and tanks.
Clever way to emphasize the need for hackers
The wikipedia page uses the submitted page and another page, which looks very likely to be based on the submitted page, as its references. The author of the submitted page was actually in contact with the the person who identified the source of the scrambled passage. Long story short, take a look at the cited references before reflexively slapping a wikipedia link on the table.
Google doesn't load JavaScript, that's why they have the AJAX crawling URL scheme: http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/getting-started...

They're the URLs you see on Facebook that have #! in them.
How old are you?

When you are 20, 7 years seems like a long time. When you are 35 it doesn't seem too bad anymore.
I thought the game was really neat. Very impressive.

Feedback:

1) Control scheme was not as intuitive as it could be. Maybe it would be more obvious on an iPhone using my finger? I lost 95% of my health trying to figure out how to move my character.

Not a big deal since I could restart, but I was frustrated and might have left if I wasn't trying to figure it out : )

Also problematic is that this leads me to keep accidentally using up grenades because I keep thinking the intuitive behavior is to click-to-move, not drag-to-move.

2) Something of help could be to show gun ranges, so you know better how to move / draw a path.

3) Bigger issue: it would be very helpful to have a notice or info on what the kinds of Zombies are and what their special abilities are. Tutorials can suck, but even a few lines of text might help here, or something to help out the novice player. Likewise how to use health packs.
Why Django Sucks, and How We Can Fix It [video]
The biggest problem with App Store 'reviews' is that iOS asks for a rating on uninstall, this leads to many '1 star' ratings, with no review at all, leaving the developer in the dark as to what the user's issues are.
Whether Google Fiber ends up coming to Ann Arbor, keep fighting for the cause! A municipal effort could do much the same of what Google is doing. At the very least, it often scares companies into offering more competitive service!
Someone name (off the top of their head) the ten wealthiest men - in the correct order - back in 1970.

Irrelavent. Can anyone name the top 10 wealthiest in the correct order, today? More importantly, why does it matter whether you know or not. What counts is whether they consider to be living the life that makes them feel great. What's wrong with that involving money for some people?

You think money can't bring happiness? Look at the f*ing smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvICN8DNMpY#t=2m10s
if accomplishment and getting laid were mutually exclusive, i'd say things worked out just fine for newton.

since they're not, i feel a little sorry for the fellow, and it isn't obvious what you're trying to say, unless it is "you can't get laid except by joining a frat'
Nature at the macroscopic scale may be red in tooth and claw, but at smaller scales it gets positively Lovecraftian. (See also: the cockroach brain parasite http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/02/02/the_wisdom_of_parasi... )
I like it. Straightforward description, realistic requirements, an interesting but not unreasonably difficult programming problem, and an appeal at the end to lore probably not possessed by any but the genuine geek.
Yeah, there's a time limit (or something similar).
I'm another introverted engineer who was in a fraternity in college and lived to talk about it.

Much more important than your social skills being up to par is whether you think you'll get along with the other guys in your pledge class, and the rest of the fraternity. They will become some of your best friends, so if you hate them then don't do it.

Which college and/or fraternity, if you don't mind me asking?
Outbound VC Dialing Programs
Oh, I took it to be an 'Ask HN'.

My bad, but on the other hand I didn't mean it in an imperative 'RTFM!' way, either.
I can tell you are going to go for it. This is good; don't wait a semester or whatever. As far as "catching up" socially, a lot of that is in your head (i.e., nobody is thinking "hey Introverty is a one-of-a-kind shy awkward loser"). Virtually every one of your freshmen classmates is socially unsure; that's college. People just deal with it differently: some by being drunken and obnoxious, others by never going outside. If you find you can never seem to warm up in social situations (that is, always finding them agonizing to the point of avoidance) you may want to look into anti-anxiety medications (or diet modifications) that will help your confidence.
Meaning they stopped digging a deeper hole?

Or that they do continue to dig, only now it's filling up faster then they can dig?
I havent even taken up a job yet. But I envy Isc for the satisfaction he gets out of running Prgmr. Wow wondering how it feels to be like a hero running the most affordable vps services and getting all those thanks for supporting people at such low prices.

P.S: he also wrote a book on Xen which is in my ToRead list.
Being an introvert is fine. It didn't stop Isaac Newton or Emily Dickinson from doing great things.

Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cavendish

"""Cavendish was silent and solitary, and was viewed as somewhat eccentric by many. He only spoke to his female servants by notes and formed no close personal relationships outside his family. By one account, Cavendish had a back staircase added to his house in order to avoid encountering his housekeeper because he was especially shy of women. His only social outlet was the Royal Society Club, whose members dined together before weekly meetings. Cavendish seldom missed these meetings, and was profoundly respected by his contemporaries. However his shyness made those who "sought his views... speak as if into vacancy. If their remarks were...worthy, they might receive a mumbled reply."

Because of his asocial and secretive behaviour, Cavendish often avoided publishing his work, and much of his findings were not even told to his fellow scientists. In the late nineteenth century, long after his death, James Clerk Maxwell looked through Cavendish's papers and found things for which others had been given credit. Examples of what was included in Cavendish's discoveries or anticipations were Richter's Law of Reciprocal Proportions, Ohm's Law, Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, principles of electrical conductivity (including Coulomb's Law), and Charles's Law of Gases."""
> (...) the "naturally" versus "artificially" distinction is a bit, erm, artificial, if you just think of humans as another species (...)

"Aritificial" means "man-made", and is a (man-made/artificial) word invented to describe things that are done by humans, not other animals. By definition, everything a farmer makes is artificial.
Love this post, and I hope my thoughts can help. I am fairly recent Comp Sci grad who is probably one of the most well liked guys in my Fraternity, as well as other frats.

Do you think I can improve and should try to complete the pledge process?

Yes and yes.

If you guys think I should go for it, how can I "catch up" socially? What do I need to learn and how?

A few things:

1) Think before you talk/act, aka, don't do anything stupid/embarrassing. I see so many guys just blurt shit out that they think is funny, but actually makes people (girls) feel super uncomfortable.

2) Be nice. Always. Don't be condescending or every try and look down on others. Be polite and a gentleman. Don't try and be some macho dick head guy like alot of the other frat guys are. The more you help your brothers out (as well as other fraternity guys) the more they will have your back.

3) Figure out who some of the most well liked guys in the fraternity are, watch them, learn from them. Emulate (not imitate) and build on the things they say and do.

4) Be confident, but not cocky.

5) Careful on the drinking and such. Start off in smaller groups so you can get the hang of it. Once you know how much you can tolerate, then you can start drinking in larger groups and start letting lose.

6) Chicks are really starting to dig nerds, as long as your cool about it. Embrace it, just don't go overboard with it.

BTW, your obviously not truly an introvert, otherwise you probably would be having the urges to change. You prolly just went to some shitty high school with shitty people. College is a great time to really find yourself, and be yourself.

I hope some of these words will help, and if you wanna talk more, let me know. Hell, I love road trips, I'll come drink and party with a hacker anytime.

Curious, who did you pledge?
Thanks for posting this question here kgrin. I'm one of the co-founders of BillMonk, and like you, am disappointed to see that the service is down without any warning or follow up information.

I haven't been at Obopay since late 2007, so don't have much knowledge about how BillMonk is being handled today. However I reached out the company and will be speaking with them this week. I can't promise that there will be any sort of resolution, but I will strongly encourage the company to (a) clearly communicate to users about what's happening with the service on the BillMonk blog (outage or shut down), and (b) if the plan is in fact to shut down BillMonk, to provide users with a way to export their data.

Please check the BillMonk blog (http://blog.billmonk.com) over the next week or two for updates - hopefully the company will post an update there. I'll also monitor this post to answer any follow up questions.
1) My initial game was arrows keys and mouse to shoot which didn't translate into touch. That's the best I've got at the moment that allows movement and throwing grenades. Ideas would be appreciated.

2) I place a light grey outer circle around the player for weapon ranges initially but my wife hated it :) i'll see what else I can come up with.

3) Help screen. You're absolutely right. I'll make it my first priority.

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.
Panasonic announces AF105 Four Thirds camcorder
Not necessarily; if Android was GPLv3ed the carriers might be shipping Symbian phones loaded with crapware instead.
Most of the commercial figs grown in California are wasp pollinated. If a fig is crunchy, it contains seeds, and if it contains seeds, the flowers inside it were likely pollinated by at least one wasp.

Here is a great article with more details :)

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/pljune99.htm
You're right. Sorry, I misspoke.
It’s Real: YouTube Debuts Live Streaming Platform With Two-Day Test
Well, yes, I meant more the philosophical assumption that there's a difference between "natural" and shall we say "unnatural" things, rather than viewing humans as just another part of nature. If "artificial" is just a shorthand for "the part of nature strongly influenced by Homo sapiens", then that's fine with me.
I was about 10 years old, if I remember it right. Also note that the door completely missed the bone, although I remember being able to see a small part of it.
A Dictionary of the Near Future
Automatically Minimizing Javascript and CSS with Rails