skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While I do think it's a bad idea for the military to outsource computer networks this article uses terrible evidence to back up it's critique and complaints.

* "Worse, HP — which acquired Electronic Data Systems and its Navy contract in 2008 — still operates under performance metrics set a decade ago. A typical workstation on the network costs the Navy $2,490.72 per year."

A secure workstation with full outsourced support costs $2,490.72 a year? That sounds pretty damn good to me.

* "That includes an e-mail inbox with a 50-MB capacity (Gmail’s: 7,500 MB), and 700 MB of network storage (compared to Evernote’s unlimited, free plan). Anything above that is extra."

Most corporations give their staff 150mb inboxes. Let's see Google meet the military's requirements at 7,500mb per inbox. Better yet, let's see Evernote give the military unlimited storage space. I bet they could meet all of those requirements for free! The public market client is exactly the same as the Department of the Navy, so it should be a quick switcher-oo! Problem solved!

* "A year’s use of a “high-end graphics” workstation sets the Navy back $4,085.64. Extra applications on a laptop or desktop computer can run anywhere from $1,006.68 to $4,026.72 annually. A classified Ethernet port — $9,300 to $28,800 per year, depending on where it’s located."

Yup, that sounds about right. High-end graphics workstations and their software are expensive. So are classified networks.

* "What’s more, HP isn’t required to take security measures like hard disk encryption, threat heuristics, and network access control that are common today, but were exotic in 2000.

Really? They're not taking any security measures?!

“Anti-spam services” runs the Navy $2.7 million per year under the contract."

It costs $2.7 million to filter spam on the second biggest network in the world? Oh, only the ENTIRE INTERNET is bigger? $2.7 million is a steal.

* "Cleaning up a “data spillage” – classified information that got placed an unclassified network – costs $11,800 per incident. In 2008, the Navy paid about $5 million to wipe the data from 432 compromised computers. That’s “almost 10 times the cost of simply destroying the affected machines and replacing them with new ones,” the Washington Times reported."

Security incidents are expensive. The Navy sets the protocol for how these incidents are handled, you can't simply dump a computer into an incinerator and certify that the data is destroyed. Well, I suppose you could, but running an incinerator at the level of heat required to completely destroy data is FREAKING EXPENSIVE, TOO.

In the several parts of the article that they mention lack of what sounds like quality response tie and botched security updates/software roll outs there isn't enough evidence on the incidents to make any comment. Those incidents are asserted in a manner that is hear-say rather than official reports.

I've been really disappointed with Danger Room's tech in National Security reporting.
My understanding is that under an S-Corp that yes you can write off expenses paid by your personal account as a business expense. You need to see a CPA though so that you are on the right path, they save you a lot of money by identifying strategies you can use to cover purchases as tax deductible. A CPA is a cost you can not afford to not afford.
Moving the Server to the Browser
>calls your nation unfit to live. What I see above is not loyal dissent by any means.

I think you are exemplifying my point. The appropriate response is to say that she's wrong, not that she's disloyal or beyond the pale.

Edit: he->she
I'm in the same boat here. The only reason I use git is for github -- for work or collaborating with other people on something. And even then, unless I need branching, I'll still use Mercurial, through the hg-git plugin they provide[1].

Nothing against people who use git. If it works for you, use it. I don't like it because of its arcane incantations and tendency to let me destroy my work for the past few hours by using the wrong command. The features are great. But, not what I'm looking for in a DVCS. But, thats just me.

1. http://hg-git.github.com/
Ask HN: Best PHP hosting provider?
I have a small app that is built in PHP. Just wondering who you all would recommend for a hosting provider? We aren't big (yet) but, would like a solution that could scale with the business.

Thanks!
Stay classy HP. We need to publicly shame these companies like HP, Halliburton, Blackwater (XE) that take advantage of the government and tax-payers.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1650367
That's probably just a wish of seed manufacturer.

See "seed piracy".
CVS?
It still does. As a younger programmer, it was my first taste of Lisp. Still, it would be nice to have more language choices.
Cannibal bacteria could lead to new antibiotics
Up until the mid 1990's yes. Then they switched to Visual Basic and C++ which were considered easier to integrate with the Windows environment or something.
Three arguments for the consciousness of cephalopods
Great idea, in case you hadn't noticed...

"Instantly turn any Wufoo Form into a phone survery!" - typo on Survey.

Good luck
After your cilantro bolts, let it flower and harvest the seeds when they're light beige. Presto, you've got coriander.
That is a killer release cycle. It is a inefficient as hell. It encourages people to hide in the long deadline. Switch to 2 week releases, even if it is only internal. Eventually switch to two week releases to customers. They will get new goodies every two weeks and they wont have to wait months for bug fixes. Who knows, the discipline might solve part of your problem.
Pretty well. It's no slouch in sunspider benchmarks, particularly if you overclock.

10s @ 1Ghz so comparable to an iPhone.
Dumb question: does this mean WebOS will also include V8 (Chrome's JS engine)?
Um, I am not exactly an arm chair critic. I actually think that in order to find a solution to a problem you need to look at the truth first.

I can't tell you how I feel when I walk by a child slaving in a teashop. That child doesn't know the meaning of loyal dissent. That child doesn't have people speaking up for him/her. That child needs to have a future and I am willing to spend a large part of my life trying to give them one. However, in order to do that you need to see the truth.

I have not written a single opinion in that post except for the observation that this state is slowly disintegrating and although I might be wrong I have tried to prop it up with data. If you feel hurt by it then I am sorry, but this is what the cards are and I would rather spend my time deciding how to play the hand.
Bradly, I think he meant that this is really exciting. There aren't many ways that its not exciting. Hence there are very few ways it's not exciting. And then omitted the "very" in the sentence.

I don't think he meant "there are 3 ways this is not exciting".
I think "Lisp has no syntax" is an unfortunate meme. Lisp has a syntax. It's a very simple syntax for defining trees, and you're basically using it to write the abstract syntax tree for your program, but it still has a syntax.
Your best...was good enough. I don't follow Clojure much but I understood what you were trying to get at through the article. Nice job.
Oh gosh! What's wrong with Google lately? They don't seem to be capable of making one really stable system. I don't know if it's all FUD, or Google has lost its ways... but I want the old Google back!!! :)
The only thing that could make github more awesome in my eyes would be if it was open source. While a lot of work has gone into gitorious, it seems like they are just playing catchup to some extent with github.
When you're debugging code you didn't write, and you don't have time to read and understand that half a million lines because you need to ship in one week, and you have 2 hours to fix the bug, the debugger can come in handy.

We're talking about programming, and that's not programming. That's called piling shit on top of shit.
It still growing. More apps are being release particularly since the native SDK is now available (for games etc.)

For the community, WebOS Internals (http://www.webos-internals.org) and PreCentral (http://precentral.net) are the places to go.

And it's still the only mobile device where you can update the kernel at the supermarket =)
Little known fact: Hipmunk founder Adam Goldstein came up with the name Greplin, the day before the March 2010 Demo Day.
Before I read your post and from reading the title I thought you would say why is it so cheap.
How is linking to Wikipedia at all relevant? Much less a common knowledge ad campaign?
I work in image processing / computer vision (albeit in completely different applications), and the technology is not very good at doing that, at least yet.

On the other hand, whenever you mention 'skin color' in a research proposal, that does not have an easy route either, even when it has nothing to do with racism.
Yes, you're right. Expression trees are especially interesting from an integrated DSL perspective, since you can do ridiculous things like turn lambda expressions into a syntax for hashes and so on. I omitted them because I believe that really did require a runtime modification to support.

But I would argue that since DSLs are all about affordances, it's not sufficient to say that similar functionality would be "possible". If the new approach doesn't represent significant semantic compression (which your hypothetical LINQ+C#2 would not), no one will use it. By that measure, the syntactic sugar added to C# 3.0 was absolutely a necessary precondition for LINQ.
Newd.: CP+B admin opensourced
Pretty decent social panel. (php)

"We like sharing. If we wanted to keep things to ourselves, we wouldn't have built a site that shows you the nasty things people say about us alongside all the nice stuff. In fact, we like sharing so much we're even going to share this site with you by making Newd™, the code behind cpbgroup.com, open source. Do with it what you like. Build a website for yourself. Add a module to your existing site. Or, if you're into sharing too, maybe you want to develop a new module for our site. We can't promise we'll use it. But if it's amazing, we promise we'll be amazed. Because besides sharing, we also like really smart people."

http://github.com/cpbadmin/newd.git
http://www.cpbgroup.com -> 'developers'
There were quite a lot of comments about this yesterday when announcement on Google blog was posted (instead of the direct link):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1646430
You might be right, but if so it sounds like the talk of Linq, and syntax, and 'DSL's served to obscure his actual point, which is a shame.

Guys, honestly, downvote if it makes you feel better.
While none of the popular DVCS's perfectly match my normal workflow, bazaar is usually the closest. i see the power of git, but i don't really need its particular power bits and i find both mercurial and bazaar easier to work with.
Everything went better than expected
There were several comments on it here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613137

I think it's a neat idea. Technically easy, but some of the best ideas are. I'm not using OhLife, but I coded a version (mainly to see if Google apps could be used to make a webapp, but also because people were concerned about privacy - the script's in the above thread); and I've been using it for the past week or so. I keep a paper journal anyway, so it's not really necessary for me on that score.

I'm mostly interested in the effect of their idea of being reminded of a previous entry. I think a week isn't long enough to tell; but so far a positive is that it shows I've made progress. It's reminded me of things I wanted to do (or problems I wanted to solve), that I have now done (or solved). So I'm using it partly as a technical journal.
Looks like I'm going to have to leave BitBucket. Features like these are just too compelling...
Just be careful where your property lines are when you plant your trees. Whether a tree is on one property or another seems to be a common dispute. However, if you're giving your neighbor several pounds of free fruit, they may be more amicable to a tree growing a foot or two on their side.
Khan Academy on Chartbeat

http://chartbeat.com/dashboard2/?url=khanacademy.org&k=0...
Is anyone still using iPhone OS 2.2.1? Yes.
Very general guidelines (see a CPA for precise guidance):

Under technical IRS rules, you need to be "in business" in order to be able to deduct your business-related expenses. That means it can't just a hobby. It also means that you can't just be doing preparatory steps to start the business (expenses incurred in preparing to start, even including incorporation expenses, are normally classified as "startup expenses" and are not deductable, though you can elect to amortize them over a 5-year period once you do start).

Assuming that you are in fact "in business," and that you have already started, you can deduct away regardless of whether you have any current revenues. With a proper S election for a corporation, or with an LLC, you can even pass through the losses (to the extent of your tax basis only) and offset them against other income you may be earning.

Again, check with a CPA for details.

Hope this helps.
Ask HN: Where to sell your profitable company
I am a student living in Canada, over the last 2 years I have built out a company in a niche market where at the time there were a couple of competitors (now around 5-6). 3 of them are VC funded.

I am doing this part time still and trying to earn my business degree but now I am finishing up and want to sell this business so I can try something new, the business generates around 2 million a year (CAD) in profits, so I am wondering what sort of 'investment banks' or people I should get in touch to sell this company.

I love working on this and would not mind working on it a more, the sad part is, being in Canada and not a active guy in the 'VC/Tech' scene so I don't know which route to take or who to approach.
You don't have to solve a problem in one fell swoop with one technique. Medallions aren't the only way to reduce congestion, and they aren't a complete solution, but they certainly do at least partly address the issue as an explicit goal, not a side-effect.

I would welcome a separate congestion tax levied on certain other kinds of traffic to complete the solution. You want cabs in the city, and you want them running all the time - they're doing the useful work of moving people around, and should certainly be preferred to traffic that congests the city during rush hour just to cram into a parking lot for eight hours.

Even if there are 10,000,000 cabs, if the congestion tax is set appropriately, they won't all be clogging the streets, since they won't be able to make a buck doing it.

I'm deeply suspicious of this kind of reasoning when it's unaccompanied by an explanation of how the tragedy of the commons would be avoided. You're a cab driver with rent and your kid's tuition to pay, are you the one staying home today?
I'd add to that list Blueberry bushes if you have the right type of soil (acidic/well-drained). They don't need pesticide spraying and each bush can grow up to 15 pounds/year of berries.

My yard project this fall is digging out a row of clay soil and making a raised amended bed for 8-9 blueberry highbushes. Blueberry plants are finicky about soil PH and drainage, so I am prepping the bed with sulfur, coarse sand, peat, and ground pine bark chips and getting it right for planting by spring 2012. I expect they will produce ~100 pounds per year in 5 years.
good one. nice and good site
check out this.
http://www.shrtnews.blogspot.com
Re: the underlining -- no idea, just an instructional aid, I guess.

Here's another example that might look "DSLy": http://www.brool.com/index.php/pattern-matching-in-clojure

The pattern matching macro "match" is written entirely in Clojure, without any compiler tricks. I wish I could do the same in C#! (I'd need to have a bunch of cruft defining a predicate object with options for each match criterion.)

All of these techniques boil down to how easy it is to do two things in a language:

- To write DSL code in your structure of choice without having to cover it in a huge amount of syntax goop, e.g. the loop macro or the magic LINQ syntax.

- To analyze and transform that DSL code programmatically, in a way that's more structured than simple string manipulation, so that you can do the right thing with it.

C# 2.0 was very bad at both of these. C# 3.0 improved a lot, by adding lambda expressions for the first, and allowing you to analyze C# expressions as a syntax tree. But Clojure (& Lisp in general) is really good at both.
All of Flickr's open source stuff is now on Github
Starting a startup is like having a baby
Forgot to mention, I built it up myself and still maintain it myself only and that I am looking for a exit because I want to pursue something even bigger with the funds I get from selling this.
Even after cutting the medallion fee in half, NYC would have $9000/cab to devote to policing taxis. Assuming the 4x yearly safety inspection costs $1000/inspection (at a rate of, say, $333/hour for the mechanic), that leaves $5000/year/taxi for police work.

So for every 15 cabs, the city could spend $75,000 on a dedicated undercover taxi inspector. Lets say this undercover inspector works 250 days/year, and rides 3x/day. Thus, every taxi is subjected to an undercover inspection every single day (on average, assuing 250 working days/year). Assuming an average fare of $12 and taking revenues of $90,000/year (see my previous link), a taxi driver has 30 fares/day, one of which is an undercover inspector.

Each time he uses shady tactics, his odds of being caught are 1/30. 50% of cheating cabbies will be caught before they manage to cheat even 20 customers.

Also, if you don't feel that $35k/year (higher household earnings than 37% of the US) is a living wage, then what is?
Will IEEE 802.11af or IEEE 802.22 be seen commercially first?
Which of the standards IEEE 802.11af or IEEE 802.22 will be seen commercially first? A discussion about commercial pros and cons for the two standards more than the technological pros and cons.
Not exactly a vegetable, but making your own beer is cost effective, and tastes great (Though it will turn you into a beer snob).

It costs around $100-$200 upfront investment, and then about $50 to make 5 gallons. The time cost isn't that bad either, 3 hours on the first day, then 15 minutes, once a week for three weeks.
Tech pioneers Ray Stata and Bernard Gordon named High Tech All-Stars
digg really shot themselves in the foot here
How common is it for companies to not have names until that late?
Something I'd really like is the ability to search through my social news comments/submissions. Will websites like Hacker News and reddit be added to the list of indexes?
"besides, for a generation, the value of what they're buying has gone up steadily." From a purely financial perspective, has the value of higher education ever risen as fast as its costs?
The name has a cool sound, but I think "grep" is only meaningful to people like us, not the mainstream that it targets. Still, create something useful, and the name doesn't matter as long as it's memorable and distinctive, as this is on all counts.
Nice app. Definitely functional, though I echo sourc3's sentiments to raise the barrier of entry.

Not to be a stickler, but I would remove the TM from your sub-header. Or move it to your app's name.

That isn't a slogan you can trademark, so it's kind of out of place.
Showcase your startup, see others, meet founders.  Scrappy Startup Happy Hour
Sometimes you sign up for something and wonder how you ever lived without it. I'm getting that feeling already, and I haven't even used it yet. I signed up before finishing the article, it's indexing my data now.

Assuming it works as advertised, this sounds like a brilliant concept. Any timeline on when I can actually start using it?
Actually, in CL, you can write a "reader" macro that interprets your first infix examples. You probably do not want to because overriding ()s (as opposed to overriding maybe []s or {}s) is complicated. But you can.

As for the issue of spaces, 1+4/5 is just a symbol, which you can interpret as a string, which you can then parse back to symbols.

All that said, if I really wanted infix math, I would probably just make something that interprets this:

{1 + {2 / 3}{4+5}}

Or if I really love my parentheses...

(!! (1 + (2 / 3)(4+5)))
How I Became a QB Telepresence Robot for a Week
Can't help you with finding a VC, but I can tell you that others will be interested in the following:

How will this business fare with you gone completely?

Is it something anyone can be trained to do?

If so, what barriers to entry are there to keep someone else from duplicating what you've done without buying you out?
#1,2 - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1649922

#3 - inspired a "printState() div" 10,000px off-page

#4 - Especially when there's more than one way to do it, relying on my little mind saves huge amounts of productive time.
It already does.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Ref...

Great non-linkable comment on the Examiner article discussed: "if you want a degree - go to the University. If you want an education - go to the library"
Thats why it felt like a cheap detour to me. To me it read like Linq is completely unchangeable and you're stuck with what MS/C# language dictates it is, but almost every single component of it can be swapped out with your own implementation and overloads that in practice you can do much of what is implied as unachievable. Its been so long ive lost some of my grasp on it, but from what I recall you can swap out even the core methods that the C# sentence type syntax ends up being converted to, now is that not really close to what was highlighted in the article as impossible? With expression trees added on top to build out queries with decision trees during runtime you can make it work against whatever kind of datastore youre interacting with. In the end I felt its not nearly as immovable as portrayed in the article, and at the time i felt like the article was past its prime since it had been an hour with few comments - though im kinda wishing I kept my mouth shut now that theres been an invasion of comments.

To start splitting hairs about exact definition of what was written in the article seems to miss the point to me, the general flow and feel was dismissive of its ability. Is it clumsier? From what I can tell so far yes its clumsier, but its not powerless and immovable which is how it came off. Maybe im just sensitive though, or maybe im insensitive in how i portrayed my argument, but I really did just meant my original comment as constructive criticism.
Giving them my entire life (a lot of what Google has + a lot of what Facebook has + a lot of what Twitter has + a lot of my files if I decide to do Dropbox) raises serious privacy concerns. But it looks so awesome that I don't give a damn.

EDIT: But I am refraining from doing GMail, Google Voice, or Dropbox for now at least. I try not to do any communication that I truly care about staying private via Facebook or Twitter, so those don't concern me as much.
You're a cab driver with rent and your kid's tuition to pay, are you the one staying home today?

If congestion charge + other expenses > expected revenues, yes. Actually, things should equilibrate roughly at expected revenues - congestion charge - other expenses = average low skill wage.

The real trick is to set the congestion charge somewhat higher for taxis than for regular vehicles, since taxis spend more time on the road. The proper ratio would be (taxi charge/regular charge) = (taxi time on road / regular time on road), presumably this could be estimated using sat photos.
PHP Done Right: Church and State (presentation vs. logic)
HP Settles Kickback Case for $55 Million
After standing accused of offering kickbacks to systems integrator companies in exchange for recommending HP products to U.S. agencies, the OEM has agreed to fork over $55 million to put the whole incident in their rear view mirror, the Justice Department announced this week.