skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'll play for sure.

I've been tossing the idea of a game layered on top of reality around quite a bit. The pitch is "imagine a group of WOW players exploring a real cave in Yosemite National Park and fighting against a real invisible dragon for loot.". The world is great, there is no reason to invent another one.

In more abstract (and less crowd-pleasing) terms, I believe that such a game can give a motivation for changing people's behavior (for better or worse). If I have a boring commute to work on foot, then I can just go on a "quest" to work, which will be reflected in my profile. The quest could even be charitable. Maybe there will even be an API for quest-givers, who know ;)

The real fun begins when you include group dynamics. Imagine getting a quest to capture the dangerous thief kind of Alcatraz, but unfortunately he is so obese that you need at least four people to carry him away. Would you ask strangers to join you on your quest? ;)

Check out this great related TED talk by the guy who runs SCVNGR: http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_t...

I think thee idea is a little ahead of the curve, but in a few years (call me crazy!) something like this has the potential to be the defining game of a generation.

Keep us posted on your progress.

P.S.: I second the "no fantasy" sentiment. Fairies and dragons don't work for everyone.
Ask HN: PHP for Python programmers
I've been happily programming in Python for a long time (6+ years) and so far I've been fortunate to never have to write a single line of PHP. Recently I was contacted by BigNameCorp regarding a good job opportunity. Problem is, PHP is the main language (among several others) of said company and chances are that at least part of the job will be writing and reading PHP code. Although that's not necessarily a show stopper, I'm afraid I have been spoiled working with a high level language for so long and I'm not particularly thrilled to move down the language totem pole.

I've seen blog posts about moving away from PHP to Python, Ruby, and other better languages but not much about the opposite direction. Have you been in a similar situation and if so how did you manage to adapt and maintain your sanity ? Any suggestions, warnings or pointers on learning the good parts of PHP (if there are any) for advanced programmers would be most helpful.
> That's not being polite. Being polite would be to say "Just visiting for fun".

No, that is revealing information unnecessarily.

"Sorry, I am not required to answer that question" is a polite version of "none of your business".
We have a 1000 years of history of what works in education, but people keep ignoring that.
Ask HN: Should I leave university?
Hey, I am currently trying to decide whether I should quit university. I am half way through my degree studying computer science, and feel as though I am learning nothing. I have self taught myself iPhone development and ruby on rails. People keep telling me that I'd be crazy to leave now and that I will get nowhere without a degree.

So my question is really would you hire me without a degree? If yes what is the best place to look for jobs?
someone mentioned further down the thread that it is a willys which by looking at it I would agree but I am not 100% sure without psychically looking at it and it's plates. I guess that is the beauty of these machines in certain ways they have not changed much. It is somewhere in the era of 40's or 50's, as you mentioned. One thing to bare in mind about these machines is that they are designed for a specific purpose and that purpose is not that great for a standard civilian vehicle. The military jeeps where all dowel and pin fastened which allowed them to be broken down and repaired rapidly but it was at the sacrifice of high speed. With items like the leafs dowel and pinned they rattled like an SOB at any thing over 40mph which results in a pretty wild ride.

The suspension in modern jeeps is far more complex in order to give a smoother ride -- the jeep in the video has leaf springs on front and back. Modern jeeps typically don't have leafs in the front.

A lot of modern off road suspensions are a 3 or 4 link suspension set up. They can be dowel and pinned as well, and can be broken down faster than a leaf sprung vehicle, but again you suffer from the fact that they is play in the suspension components, that is not there with a bolt fastened suspension.

The point is, that while it is a great engineering feat to build such simplicity, there is also some huge sacrifices that you make to achieve such simplicity. Safety and high speed performance being the top two.

The JEEP is a great machine and I recommend them to anyone who wants to get into off-road motor sports, they are probably the best beginners vehicle one can buy. As they can grow with someone as they get deeper into the hobby.

As well there is no other off-road vehicle available that has the aftermarket availability of products that JEEP does. I say that as an owner of a 68 Bronco. The JEEP is a well respected vehicle for motor-sports hobbyist. It is one that they got right from the beginning. The original Bronco and the International Scout are great choices as well.
Another way to say that is that there's no such thing as a "theoretical" vulnerability. There's either a working exploit, or there is not and we can test it. In physical security, though, there are plenty of movie plot threats that nobody has ever actually tried and which are not, in fact, practical.

With software, you can have the computer try millions of times to go after that one crazy race condition. Meanwhile, your average crazy bomber generally has one chance to get it right before everyone on the plane attacks and subdues him.
So they have a global effect, true. But with spam filters that effect is very small. One or two spam messages get through now and then, but you delete them and move on. If you get murdered you stay dead, people around you mourn, and your neighborhood is perceived as less safe.
Previous discussion on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1132991

At that time, he only had solutions for up to 5 players. I submitted the first 6-player solution [0], which is also the only constructed solution I have seen (the others were found using brute force algorithms.)

[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1134906
What do you mean by cooperating with the police? The guy abided by the law, which he was aware of and the border agents were not (or pretended not to be).

You must be of the opinion that laws are too lenient and that the additional bully tactics used by cops, etc., are actually in the interest of the general public b/c they help to correct for insufficiently strict laws.

If you don't believe this, then what is the nature of your argument that we should just comply with their wishes? Politeness? Tradition? Respect for authority? Humility?
Are you kidding? A guaranteed win is hardly negligible. Sure, it's not optimal, in the sense that winning hand dominance is varied, but it provides an entire hand to play with absolutely no risk. You're guaranteed to win, on average, the average pot size. That is a massive advantage.

More importantly, I think the sort of "deck hacking" mindset the author has created can open up a world of research into this topic. Producing decks with some sort of "mean winning hand dominance" that is low would be the step you are describing.

As for practicality, that's another world of research. Would it be possible to create a deck such that when shuffled a specific and non-conspicuous way produces a high likelihood of a Joffe deck? Off the top of my head, one could take the decks provided and produce decks that when riffle shuffled twice, produce a Joffe deck. So, for example, you could take out a "fresh deck" (which is rigged) from a box, and riffle shuffle it twice, pass it to be cut, and still be guaranteed a win.

And don't forget that there are professionals that, with enough practice, could take an actually fresh deck and come up with a way to shuffle it so that it ends up a Joffe deck. In fact, one could come up with a sorting algorithm that takes the different types of sorts available (riffle, cut, hindu, faro, etc) and figure out the optimal path to get a Joffe deck. (maybe).
Neat idea but buggy, News and Events do not finish loading. How about an option to switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit?

Also, who am I to judge but - Google Maps and MSN search? :S
Sometimes being less rugged is a feature. Modern cars are designed to have the front crumple to absorb energy in a collision, reducing the impact on the passenger area.

A dashboard that's soft and light may be easier on the head and save gas, but it sure is annoying the way they dry out and crack from mere heat and sunshine.

Modern engines last longer, but I think that's mainly due to the process the Japanese developed for easily producing hard steel (amounted to a simple additive). Engines aren't worn out at 100,000 miles any more.
Fairly true, however in some sense I will truly always be a windows guy. I learned how to use a computer on windows and I will always have a love and appreciation for microsoft because of that. I have built numerous linux setups over the years and really enjoy both gentoo and ubuntu. however owning a Mac has given me a newfound almost kid-like enjoyment to owning a computer and coding again, not to mention i love textmate! Thanks for reading and for the input! hope you'll come back and check it out from time to time since its still a very new blog.
Why? Crumple zones are simply part of the vehicles material designs and require no additional parts. A piece of sheet metal with engineered weak points takes as many parts in a vehicle as piece of sheet metal. Both form the hood of the car just fine.

> It's not like ... car companies want to waste money with superfluous parts.

Built in pre-market Satellite Radio isn't a superfluous part, especially when you can't opt out of it. The 'man-step' from Ford isn't superfluous? It's the most redundant feature in any work vehicle as it's less 4" lower than the top of the wheel and is placed where a toolbox is, making it impossible to use in the vast majority of vehicles it is placed. Whilst using the wheel (the method used probably since shortly after Ford released the first truck) allows you to grip the side, and gives you enough height to lean over and fully reach into the bed.

Companies place superfluous parts into their vehicles all the time. DVD players and LCD screens help with environmental regulations and vehicular safety? Really?
Alliance of the jailbreakers: Cydia acquires Rock
All good rules except for the one about distributed teams. Some of the best teams I've worked with have been fully or partly distributed, and as long as everyone has worked with everyone before, it works out fine. In fact, it's a good way to get extra productivity out of everyone, since there's less distraction from being together in an office.
If you find the syntax to be a problem - you may find CoffeeScript (http://coffeescript.org/) interesting. It emphasizes the good parts of JavaScript while minimizing the warts, all wrapped up in very nice syntax.
I noticed this gem in the "Programming Scientists" section:

"Putting worcestershire sauce on volume 1 of Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming and stabbing it with a fork until pudding-like."
I guess it's just my bias/skepticism because against flashbulb memories but this sums up my position: "Flashbulb memories are not special in their accuracy, as previously claimed, but only in their perceived accuracy."

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/5/455.abstract
The real flaw in this argument is that as soon as you mark yourself out as "that guy who's being a dick" you attract a lot of attention, and you're more likely to wind up in court on some other charge.

But doing the right thing can also get you into trouble. Just as Pascal Abidor.
I guess you might be using IE, right? A bug in my Ajax code for IE browser, trying to correct it. Right now it's optimize for chrome, safari and ff.
> No--you cannot ever be charged or convicted on the basis of asserting your rights.

You can, however, be legally required to give cops your full, legal name. And you may also be required to say that you are invoking your right to remain silent (rather than simply keeping your mouth shut the whole time). Both have been subject to litigation recently.
Some military jeeps had air cooled engines so that the cooling could not be damaged by an impact of munitioned. Shooting out the radiator was a common tactic for disabling a vehicle.
Yeah, unknown words were the biggest problem. I'd love to see your paper -- withal@gmail.com if you don't want to post a link here. Thanks!

I wonder if y'all ever went looking for 'hidden verse' in published prose, too.
Inevitable reply is inevitable. ;(
I was thinking the same when I saw this question posted on the main HN page. I guess it could have been worded differently and not be an ASK HN When ?
The Ruby tool for doing this is Sinatra.
Christopher Hitchens is on my list. This essay was, in my opinion, one of the best I've ever read: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/hitchens-...

Also, although the topics are fairly silly, Cary Tennis is another author with an interesting style and a deep insight into human nature:
http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked/index.html
I don't think syntax is really that much of an issue. The fact is if you might expand to real-time apps later on, you'll have to write new abstractions all over again for stuff like fetching data, whereas if you started with something like node.js, you wouldn't. It's simply a matter of if you feel it's worth it or not, and it's really case-by-case.
Thanks!

It works. The problem with this bot is that it shows the original URL submitted, but not the HN URL, which includes the interesting and valuable comments.
Easier to read with the Readability bookmarklet:
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
Yes, the crumple zone in a 60 year old car is you.

So best not to get in to an accident, but that goes for any vehicle, including modern ones. Sudden deceleration is a real problem, all the crumple zones do is change that from 1 ms to 15 ms. (that's a huge difference in terms of impact on your body, but still).

The dashboard in a Jeep is steel, but don't worry, in most accidents you'll be thrown clear of the vehicle on to the street, with a little bad luck in front of other traffic. Chances of you hitting the dashboard are much slimmer than you hitting the pavement.

You don't want to roll one either...

Materials science has come a long way since the 40's, I don't think you can compress the 60+ years of research resulting in our current engine life in to 'a simple additive', and it was definitely not just the Japanese that worked on this.

They do deserve a lot of credit for ceramics to metal bonding processes, but there too there was plenty of international collaboration.
Actually, calligraphy sounds great, and I'm going to check now if my college teaches it, and add it to my list. Thanks for that.
Really cool idea. I have a canvas printing company and we'll print pg's map for free if you like.
In my opinion, an "Entrepreneurship" major is a complete waste of time. Entrepreneurship is something that is learned through trial and error.

Right now I am on an Economics/Legal Studies track. Originally I was doing Finance, thinking that I was going to be a Wall Street hot shot some day. Then I interned out in NY... Immediately dropped the Finance major and switched paths.

You can learn a lot at the University level, but you really need to want to. Don't waste your time taking shitty Rocks For Jocks classes.

Enroll in classes that benefit you. I.e. a public speaking course, an accounting course, etc. College is a time to find yourself and who you really are. It is a time to carve out your life's path. A time to learn how to think (logic) and how to work under pressure.

Good luck and most importantly follow your heart's desire.
I don't agree with Kurzweil on much, but the more I read the back and forth, the more it seemed to me that Myers was totally out of his depth. He completely misquoted what Kurzweil said, and then when that came to light he followed it up with fairly thorough misinterpretations of what Kurzweil was saying. I don't think he was doing that intentionally: he just didn't understand what he was saying. On my reading, Kurzweil wasn't really delving into genomics (this was entirely a red herring): he was staying on firm ground in information theory, cognitive science, and computer science, and in these areas it was Myers who showed a fair lack of acknowledgment for his own ignorance in the field.
Thanks for organizing this, and streaming it. A friend and I are watching some of the talks from Portland, Oregon.

Sidebar: the intro mix before the first speaker (Chris Wanstrath ) was perfect for the event. Groovy/dubby, but subtle. We were going to skip through it, but actually listened to all 50 minutes.
http://www.justin.tv/startupbootcamp/b/269855690
Probably not. It is easy to think that making $40K right away is easy when reading sites like Techcrunch because all you see are successful startups. But like others have said, most startups fail. For a normal startup, it's not easy to get a lot of traffic right away, especially without much money to put out for marketing.

But, it's possible. It depends on your idea, execution, connections, etc. If you can establish some great partnerships, you will have a better chance at success. Good luck!
If we ever "fix" aging, imagine how paranoid people will be of traumatic injury.
Hi Jgeros.

I guess it all comes down to motive. Do you have one for quitting? Feeling like you're learning nothing is a good motive for switching universities, not quitting.

When someone in the audience at Startup School 08 told Paul Graham that people who completed college always ended up working for people who dropped out, the look on PG's face as he shrugged out a "maaaaybe" was telling.

University doesn't yield only knowledge: there's also a lot of people to meet and experiences to have. If your tuition expenses are covered and you don't have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity requiring you to drop out (personally I'm suspicious of the "once-in-a-lifetime" concept), then the wisest thing to do would be to stay.

From my own personal experience, if dropping out is right for you, you won't have to ask people what _they_ think.
I don't mind answering a couple of questions so long as they are keeping our country safer. Some people (namely this guy) need to lighten up a bit. Did answer a simple question or two really effect his ego THAT much? Learn how to make people work for you, not against you. After all, people are your greatest resource.
It says in his Twitter bio that he's a "Total Tran Fan."
Thanks for the article, it's helped clarify some of my thoughts.
After googling CLEP that sounds awesome, I'm surprised I never heard of it. Do you have any experience doing it?

Toastmasters is awesome, I did it a few times last year than started working. Thanks for reminding me to get back to it. I'll also take that advice about professors to heart, it's brilliant. I guess the best way to do it is to google every prof?
I do the same thing whenever I take electronic devices apart. I never really thought about it, though.

Actually, I tend to use spatial organization a lot. For example, I can leave myself a reminder just by moving an object in my room to an unusual spot. For example, maybe I think of something right when I'm about to go to bed. I might just put my glasses somewhere slightly unusual (but not somewhere hard to find) and then I'll remember to think about what I was supposed to when I wake up.
Yeah, but there's something pretty compelling about having the video start playing as soon as you start typing. I agree with a comment in the previous thread that all the other implementation needs is a 'next video' button or key combo.
We'd concluded a management buy-out deal the day before, the letters of intent and term sheets were all signed and I was reading CNN when the first plane struck.

I switched on the office TV and called everybody upstairs to my room and we watched dumbstruck as the second plane hit.

After that I told my partners that the deal was likely off, no way the investors would fund a deal like that in a time of uncertainty, we got the call 15 minutes later.

We felt extremely connected with America in every way that that is possible from halfway across the world, one of us had a friend working in one of the towers and spent a day to make sure she was ok. Half the company was on the other side of the Atlantic at the time and it took quite some time before I was able to go there again.

The images of the smoking towers and then later the collapse will never fade, that's for sure.
not that I've written any python, but is PHP that much low level?
The city wasn't built with cell phone coverage in mind. I can understand that they need to put antennas in weird locations to offer coverage.

I don't get what is so appalling about this. They are doing their best to avoid making it a blemish on the roof of that building.
How does the ability to take a Jeep apart and reassemble it in 4 minutes (by 8+ guys) help you in "doing major repairs at the side of the road with people shooting at you"?

In a hostile context like you describe (if that's what this is meant for) don't you think there might be other design considerations?
I was in 7th grade at the time in the middle of an English test on Greek Mythology. My professor, Prof. Sigñore turned on the TV to watch the news coverage, however, he forced us to finish our test.

I vividly remember a bunch of my friends' parents coming to pick them up at school as if their sons' lives were in danger. My mom called me to ask if I wanted to go home, I said no as I had practice that afternoon at school. Practice ended up being cancelled. There's my story.
Yes I do that all the time too. If I have a particularly good idea while I'm in bed, but am too lazy to get up and write it down, I'll usually stack some objects on my dresser in a weird pile, and when I wake up I see the pile and remember what I had thought about.

Sadly this kind of spatial organization ability is mostly lacking in computer interfaces, although that seems to be changing recently with things like Panorama in Firefox 4 (and other things I'm probably not aware of).
Can you share resources for studying the distribution mechanism?
Sure, lots of people will hire you without a degree. http://buttersafe.com/2010/09/09/back-to-school-blues/ ;)
I pretty much agree about entrepreneurship. The only courses in it that seem useful to me are a few of the real estate courses, since that's a whole body of knowledge I know very little about.
Apply to 30+ YC Funded Startups at once (HeyZap, Heroku, Loopt, and more)
I'm a guy who thinks of the TSA as "security theater" and I still thought the author sounded like a douchebag.

The guys an attorney; he's obviously pressing legal buttons because it's intellectually interesting to him. Bully for him. He has studied the law a bunch and knows exactly what to say / do down every branch of the decision tree.

Me, I'm just trying to get into the country or past TSA as easily as possible and the last thing I need is some dude winding up the officer who's about to inspect me.
Is Apple in competition with anyone?
Good ole Howard.... before his inevitable move to satellite radio.
This sounds pretty interesting. If it's okay with you I'd like to beta test it-- I think I could put it to good use.
I've heard US customs described as an additional penalty on Americans who travel abroad.
my name fouy
and iy love pc