skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You managed to cherry-pick the few Good Parts.

Question for you: what is the syntax for declaring a variable, initializing the variable, referencing the variable later, and assigning the value of that variable to another variable? ;-)

Now that I have refreshed your memory, do you still insist it's not lousy?

For the innocent bystanders, here is how those steps are:

set var # just creating the variable .. easy
# but set is a configurable command!
# see your "sh" variety man for more info

set var=value # no space on either side of '='!
# 'value' can only be one word string,
# number or character.
# because single characters are
# ubiquitous in nature ..
# chars chars, everywhere
# if you want a multiword string, use ()
# or "a raw string with spaces"
# unless you want $ not to be expanded
# then use 'raw constant string'
# and if you want to run a program and
# insert its output into the string ..
# use "`program`"
# did I say you can't put spaces around =?

# eskooz me, I am just dereferencing var
set newvar=$var # need a magic syntax, it's teh C ptr
# unless you want the *whole* value
# then you use ($var) or was it $(var)?
# again, ask your sh variety manpage
# I love portability
# if $var isn't bound, use $?var to test
# we said 'set' is a command above
# so using unbound var is ..
# dependant (sic) on settings

# if var contains multiple words (why is that a unit
# of input neway?) you can index it and count elements
# with $#var and $var[i] respectively; we made everything
# an external command or built in, but LENGTH and INDEX
# need to be special syntax, because they're more vital
# than goddamn assignment (which is fine being a builtin)
But will Facebook be willing to open up their social phone to other networks like twitter or will it just be Facebook contacts? I think a device unassociated with a particular network has a better shot since it'd be willing to open up to all networks and give a better experience.
> Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. Which is exactly what Apple and everyone else does, too.

What? Apples and oranges. Apple designed the hardware, they're a hardware company. What TechCrunch?
From what I understand, the biggest argument is that higher granularity gets more information to the market faster, so it will move in the right direction faster. However, this seems to me to be a fairly low-granularity model itself; there must be much more subtlety in practice.
Facebook is growing more powerful than Google.
The most significant concept the article touched on was the potential to call people rather than their numbers. I think at this point it'll be hard to get beyond what Apple and Google are already doing on that front, however, as they already allow one to call Julie's Mobile.

The next stage would have to be calling Julie in a sort of Google Voice type of way, where her location isn't even an issue. At that point you could just call a person, but until then there will still be a need to define which location to call them on.

I wrote something about this type of convergence a while back called the Water, Steam, and Ice of Communication: http://danielmiessler.com/blog/the-steam-water-and-ice-of-mo...
It's extremely discouraging to write a sincere comment that receives downvotes without explanations, giving no chance to clarify or modify ideas. Sometimes I have no idea what people are objecting to....

I felt that my comment (the one I linked to) was on topic and fulfilled what the TC had asked for, yet downvotes and no explanation.

So I felt hurt, and here I am bringing it up. "It," the downvoted comment, basically being the reason I don't post here much anymore.

I don't mind my downvotes in this submission, since unclear comments aren't good comments. So I should have written a better comment.

I do respect this community a lot, I'm just not very "active" anymore.
This. A million times, this.

It drives me fucking insane when I'm trying to work stuff out mentally to hear people speaking.

Edit: ear buds aren't great since I'd like to still hear in 10 years, plus, in my ears, they get uncomfortable around hour 4-5. And I've tried the full variety of foam and hard, medium, and soft plastic that Shure offer; they still get uncomfortable after long enough.
Building a reliable network to support these phones, a solution to all of our connectivity problems.
Short and simple; two-fold.

1. Read the advice on this page so that you've allowed yourself to see all possible angles.
2. Call the police and take it one step at a time with them.
"The Web does not need flash"
A few thoughts on the future of flash from someone who makes a living from it.
Couldn't agree more. I just had discussion yesterday about the differences between employees and entrepreneurs with my wife and this article sums everything up nicely.
Unless FB are considering making it impossible for others to access it's API, building a phone seems like a better deal for Facebook than it does for it's users.
Sterling Silver Jewelry feels so Affordable
But they outsource the actual manufacturing to FoxConn.
Your Personal choice is Tiffany Ring : Tiffany Watches,Tiffany Jewelry
I'm still waiting for the long-rumored Facebook gmail-killer. Wasn't there a rumor of a Facebook browser at one point too? So I'm not holding my breath on this one-although a Facebook-branded version of Android might make sense.
single page

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml...
This really seems like a scam to me. It's possible that the amount of guilt that this person feels is sufficient to motivate them to buy the a 160 gig disk (and spend time selectively copying the most important data) but not to motivate them to buy a 250 gig disk and copy everything. It's also possible, though, that this person is trying to draw you into a conversation focusing on how important the data is to you, in order to convince you to send money to buy a disk or buy the laptop back.

Actually, how sure are you that they even have your laptop? Did you mention the theft someplace public, like on a blog or twitter? The only information they've demonstrated that they have is your email address, the fact that you've used Time Machine at least once (probably a pretty safe bet if they know your laptop was a Mac), and the approximate amount of data that you had stored (assuming you know that's correct and aren't just taking their word for it).
New Drugs Stir Debate on Basic Rules of Clinical Trials
Nike Air Force 1 Mid White Black Six Players
AFAIK mainframe business still works exactly like this.

And I see no problem with it.

It is good on two fronts.

1. If you're savvy you can hack the chip thus getting more for less (Premium on your ability).
2. If you're not savvy then you can buy exactly what you're after at price point that is acceptable to you (thus ensuring a proper price/performance).

People feel cheated since they didn't get more than what they paid for? I always assumed that trade happens when two parties reach a level where both "agree" that they get what they expected out of the deal.

There is no need to go all ape on Intel -> IC manufacturing is a cutthroat business with insane risks and low margins. If Intel can profit from different people willing to pay more for the "same" thing (and yes for anyone that knows and understands Amdahl's law its perfectly clear that within a microchip generation difference between high and low end is mostly superficial - regarding to system performance).

I recommend reading Spolsky's Camels and Rubber Duckies: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...
The point is that outsourcing the manufacturing (like Apple) is extremely different from outsourcing the hardware design. That the iPhone's hardware and software is designed under one roof is a huge advantage. It's extremely unlikely that Facebook has hired out the hardware engineering and industrial design teams needed to go the Apple route. If they were doing that, someone would have probably noticed by now.
> Great atmosphere encourages people to linger on that $5 ticket for hours, which is a black hole for money...

This is a problem that restaurants and other places solved a long time ago. I don't get why coffee shops never seem to do this: train your staff to make the rounds when they're not busy. Stop by any table with an empty cup, pick it up quietly, smile, gently ask the customer if they'd like anything else. (Don't nag or harangue the customer or ask the same one more than once an hour.)

Coffee shops have a problem with customers coming in and making themselves at home because they aren't being run like a business: there's very little staff-customer interaction. People come in, order (maybe), find a corner, and park there on the wifi for two hours. Shops respond to this by making customers come up to the counter to get a wep key, but that's the wrong way to do it. Instead, invite people in, invite them to stay, and ask them once in a while if you can bring them anything.

And as an added bonus, your staff will make a little extra in tips, too.
You're presuming a specific text-to-screen width ratio. I tend to favor reading at very high font size on the 7" netbook I'm presently using.

Also, my finger/hand/arm never gets in the way while scrolling.
The numbers look conspicuous to me. "If they get their first service in, itself a 65%-ish probability for a top player, they will win the point with a roughly 75% likelihood." implies a probability of winning the point on first service of just under 50%. Add in the "only 50%-ish of the time" for the second service and the 0% for the 3% of double faults, and I do not see how top players can win so many of their service games.

It still could be valid data for the whole set of professional tennis plagers (male and female), but I doubt one draw conclusions for individual players from it.
Don't bother downloading the PDF with the book-chapter. The article is identical.
A thought I had about money
I don't understand where they're coming from. Android's Facebook integration is a little rough, but all the problems are with the Facebook application.

When it comes to the article's touted benefits of deep integration in the OS - calling a friend, deep syncing contacts, etc, Android does it all already.

I have it set to only sync contacts that are already in my phone, but if a friend texts me who has their number on Facebook, their picture shows up instantly, no syncing required. It's downright creepy to the point of making me seriously consider turning it off. OS integration is a solved problem. It's actually browsing Facebook that doesn't work.
If people like bad media, does that make it good? Or do we just have poor taste?

"Good" seems to be a combination of "quality" and "entertaining". Funny how we talk about these bad books, movies, and other media as if their literal quality were their only value.
If you embed an image in an HTML email, you can find the IP of the machine in your server logs (when the email client requests the image from your server).
Ah, this might explain why their apps and mobile site are such crap.

This could be a popular gadget if done right. "Facebook Phone" is instantly understandable by any FB user, whereas it's not at all clear to them that they can fully use FB on an iPhone/BlackBerry/Android (and indeed, they can't).

They could make it tiny and cheap, which might capture customers that just want a smartphone for social stuff. It would be hard for any mobile app to consistently match the user experience, especially if FB keeps adding features.

They could even do simple third party apps, just like they do on the web site.
Exercise for Weight Loss and Obesity
"I'm also proud that I had a small part to play in ... Remote Agent, the first AI program ever to control a spacecraft. I didn't specify or write any of the software myself..."

He did fix a bug in it, though -- in a way. :-) That is, back then I noticed a mistake in the unification code which he'd previously pointed out as a common one: http://norvig.com/unify-bug.pdf

(That particular bit of the code was by HN user 'lisper', incidentally.)
Whether it's worth it also depends on how likely it is the laptop will get stolen. Is P(laptops stolen per month) * $3200 > $9, ie, roughly P(laptops stolen per month) > 0.3%?
That doesn't solve the problem Cushman mentioned (and clarified several times to thinkcomp in this thread): giving up all your credentials including PIN/"password" to the merchant's hardware, and trusting the merchant and its hardware.

What's needed is a device you own and control directly communicate with the bank. Cushman suggested using one's smartphone, but I think the card itself could serve that purpose. The card has a display, a processor, and a keypad: everything except a data connection.
Did you actually look at the document I linked to? It explicitly listes the kind of works the DMCA applies to. And none of the things listed says "CPU features" or anything that could be interpreted to mean that by any stretch of imagination.
The thing is, everyone I know uses Facebook the website but hates Facebook the company. I don't see the Facebook brand selling phones (I recall they rated on the bottom of brands in some study).
From what I've seen students here like "big brands". So most would pick working at BigCorp "in the first years" (or so they say). They seem to value the stability BigCorp provides and they also assume they'll learn a whole lot at the job. Being a small company means I don't "look" as stable nor as impressive in the CV.

This means that generally students see the 1st job as something transitional. It also means that a big chunk of the CVs I get are from people that didn't/couldn't make it into BigCorp, ie. people I also don't need.

Changing jobs is also a traditional way of getting a raise and I wouldn't want to get into the counter-offer game too early.

But this time I think the problem is the CVs I've been receiving aren't that great, so I am reluctant to invest in training because I'm reluctant to pick any candidate.
Play Youda Conqueror online from y3 Games
A strange game of Bubble Ball mixed with a conquering game. Build a castle as you play Bubble Ball.
- Drop the shiny, translucent Aqua-wanna-be thing. Windows should look serious, a la NT 3.51/Win2K. It's been downhill since then. If you want to copy someone, take some style hints from NeXTStep, or these guys: http://www.ableton.com/live-session-view.

- Hard deprecate the backslash. Forward slashes have been OK in code since forever. The GUI should display & accept slashes.

- Incorporate bundles into Explorer & the Windows loader (again, like NeXT). This would eliminate thousands of brittle file references in the reg db.
No, you're buying in installments.
Awesome. Microsoft does search, Google does mobile OS, Apple does social networks, now Facebook does phones. Its an all out tech war.
I was talking to my friends about this the other day: NES games (with a few exceptions) are terrible now. SNES games are still fun, though. I guess the 16 bit mark was a timeless threshold.
If they do apps, I bet they will work more like the apps on the site: very high level, markup for UI, thin client, server backed. This will keep the phone cheap, the software simple, and is conducive to the kind of social apps they want.
Worth Seeking a Non-Technical coFounder?
I am nearing completion of the technical & design aspects of my startup; something in the personal-growth space. I'm not starving, but not long on cash either. The particular startup is really targeted at generating revenue, not growing fast and flipping.

I can think of a few reasons why bringing on a partner would help.

Moral support
Share the financial burden
Possible expertise in marketing or the self-help market
Extra pair of hands dealing with customers and marketing tasks

On the down side, as a revenue startup the lighter the load the lower the bar for success needs to be. And to make it worth their while I'd have to give up quite a lot of equity.

Opinions? Alternatives?
Again, it is not a programming language. The shell is designed to do things you think about for less than 10 seconds. If you're trying to reference a variable you used earlier, that's not what it's for. You don't store things in the shell. You create very quick and dirty statements to make data look cleaner.
"but followers hate clicking on links"

Can you qualify this statement? I don't hate clicking on links.
Is "stuff people want" == being owned by some company? I rather doubt it, but then again, human nature is full of surprises. For example, a lot of people might want to be told what to do.
How to deal with so much Hacker News
I recently put Hacker News back into my google reader and now I'm seeing about 150 posts a day. There are a lot of really excellent conversations, links, content, etc., but I simply don't have the time to look at it all.

Is there a way to get an rss feed to the highest rated posts or do you have another suggestion on dealing with TMI from HN?

thanks, Nick
The variation in people absolutely amazes me. I'm only able to arrive at an intelligible conception of how the author has pulled this off by concluding that his lifestyle expectations, workflow assumptions and cognitive habits are vastly different from my own. As someone who struggles with deep practical motivational problems working on things in which I am theoretically, conceptually very interested (call it burn-out on coding if you like) and sometimes go days or even weeks without moving the kind of mountains that the author consistently moves in an hour or two every day of his life, I am awed.

Of course, sometimes there's something you don't know. I don't mean to impugn the author's credibility or authenticity in any way (how would I know?), but some of the people I have encountered who claim Herculean feats like this turn out to have mixed up the variables differently than they say, even if their omissions are unconscious. That is, I've seen people who, in the author's shoes, are 1) getting a PhD in something fluffy and not particularly rigourous, or perhaps in an institution that fits that description, 2) have grandparents who take care of the kids most of the time, 3) are doing startup work that is also not overly intensive, or move at a glacial pace. Even then, it would still be an impressive accomplishment to consistently pull through on #1 and #2 whilst complicated slightly by #2 without losing motivation, interest or focus!
It's the twitter problem all over again; they want their data and network/platform to be ubiquitous but while reaping all the eyeball revenue from being the frontend of choice and making every other client second-class.
I cant bring up the exact stats right now, but everything I have seen would suggest the same, if I remember off the top of my head 2 things with a reasonably large reach on twitter ( between 100,000 and 1,000,000) had around 0.5% clickthrough rates, that struck me as tiny.
But kids have so many things they could be doing, and programming is a long-term reward

I think it depends somewhat on the cognitive reward mechanism. I could not help but learn to program at that age not because I went long on a career bet[1] or a committed theoretical pursuit, but because I found addicting the short-term effects of making the computer do what you want. For example, I would love it when, as a 10 year old, I wrote a few lines of code, compiled them to test, and they spit out some additional output on the screen. That very small, local effect, and, as I got older, more complex derivations of the same underlying feedback mechanism, gratified me in itself and kept me glued to the keyboard for many years.

[1] In fact, coming from an academic family with scant social knowledge of business prior to being working age, I had only a very distant, nebulous, and unsubstantiated awareness of the fact that I had skills that were actually marketable -- and did not really think they presented a particular job market advantage -- as late as 18. I had seen them as aesthetic pursuits. I could've just as easily gotten into violin or oil painting as into programming, if we're going by mindset and sense of purpose alone.
Air Max 90 Leather UTT Untold Truth SPC
They're thinking about revenue growth, not user happiness. Obviously they could just roll their own interface/dialer/contact list/etc for android if they wanted to just make a "fully integrated" experience.
This is what happens when you staff a company with brilliant "generalist" engineers.

Heed the warning folks, hire specialists or your startup will be making phones before you know it!
I think it works like this:

Intel develops a CPU and looks at the market and sees that their chips is competitive at $150 price point. So they go and sell it at that price. But the production costs of a CPU is probably closer to $10. And because there is a market of people who do not want to pay $150 for a CPU, Intel cripples some features of the CPU and sells it for $100. This way those who are willing to pay more will pay more, and those who are not pay less.
Yes, ETF won't have a short covering rally that is an due to lack of availability of the position.

What you failed to explain is why this is a bad thing.

(It can still have short covering rallies if the price move too much.)

(Also, they can definitely get stuck with more shorts than they can fill. It is called going broke..)
Sounds like another Kin. I don't want Facebook integrated deeply with my phone that would be intrusive, it's there when I need it.
I put together my Daily Hacker News (top 10 articles from each day) to handle this problem. There are also some twitter feeds with all the HN stories which cross predetermined thresholds.
From the book titled "The Myths of Innovation" by Scott Berkun-

"The talent for taking two unrelated concepts and finding connections between them is called associative ability. Persons with low associative barriers may think to connect ideas or concepts that have very little basis in past experience or that cannot easily be traced logically. Read that last sentence again: it's indistinguishable from various definitions of insanity. The tightrope between being strange and being creative is too narrow to walk without without occasionally landing on both sides, explaining why so many great minds are lampooned as eccentrics. Their willingness to try seemingly illogical ideas or to make connections others struggle to see invariably leads to judgement (and perhaps putting some truth to stereo types of mad scientists and unpredictable artists.) Developing new ideas requires questions and approaches that most people wont understand initially, which leaves many true innovators at the risk of becoming lonely, misunderstood characters."
Right, like everyone else.
Mobile-device-as-a-service? Why not, half-billion users is enough to try.

Like a Kindle just for one kind of activity - reading, it could something like an iPad with only one big app.

Seems line the history repeats itself and we're heading back to the future from an era of general web sites in a universal browser to a closed world of connected devices. ^_^
Interesting. I have not had any problems using FreeTDS and UnixODBC in large-scale production environments to talk to SQL Server, although I agree that the interfaces of the tools are brittle and pathetically clunky, in a minimalistic sort of way.

I work in VoIP and have several customers who insist on storing all of their production data from open-source Linux telephony app servers in SQL Server because they are otherwise a Microsoft stack shop, and have not had an issue once all the DSNs were correctly set up.

Of course, said organisations are all using relatively old versions of SQL Server and intensely disinterested in upgrading, so who knows what awaits when they finally do and the FreeTDS v8.3 protocol implementation may not work properly anymore.
So What? Does that make it obsolete? I guess indicating the year is important for older tech articles, but definitely irrelevant in this case.