skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Every time I point out that educational outcomes in right to work states aren't any better than outcomes in states where teachers unions have collectively bargained contracts, I get downvoted. People just really want to believe that it's about the unions instead of poor pay, the entrance of talented women into the rest of the workforce, and other harder-to-solve-in-a-vacuum socioeconomic factors. But again: educational outcomes in right to work states aren't any better than outcomes in states where teachers unions have collectively bargained contracts.

34 states and DC have laws mandating collective bargaining with teachers. Now, it is true that in the other 16 states, there are other laws that can serve to protect teachers. But these states certainly have the ability to engage in ruthless combat with the unions, and they don't. I blame the voters and the legislators - unions exist to protect their members.

The best freely available overview of this problem I've found is here: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/BetterBargain.pdf
It would be nice if I could click a button and give the guy $5 or something...
Ah, I see. I was going off memory that Arial existed in Open Office. After double-checking my sources (OpenOffice.org 3.2 running on Ubuntu 10.04.1) I see that I was incorrect in that. Nevermind, then.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, dress up in Jedi costumes and shout out malapropisms[1].

[1] http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-revenge.html
I'm pretty sure jwz bought the DNA Lounge as a running business as opposed to starting from scratch.

It's also a dance (and other function) club and has a different set of concerns.
I think the negative reaction has more to do with how the website owner was not only discourteous, but has gone further in promoting a campaign of harassment against someone.
Further, as a nerd who lives in flyover country but has at least made the mandatory pilgrimage to San Francisco, I think jwz offers some (admittedly jaded) insight into the culture of SF as a whole. The dnalounge blog and his own LJ feed are practically required reading for those of us who wish to hear what goes on beyond the silicon valley echo chamber.
I've never heard of Lift before. I had no idea what it was while reading their page. Only here I've learned that it's a Scala framework ...
Of course, we have an rms here, and the intelligent folk of HN know it's not the king of open source. I understand why it might be a prudent factor in making ones decision when registering, but I don't see why we should be tossing around advice to other people on choosing their HN handle.
So, if you decide to try any of the "tests", let me know how it goes. I've played around with them in Firefox and Webkit so far, with some occasionally really gnarly results.

I'm trying to agitate for some sanity in the way Firefox and Safari especially handle tabs and resources; figured a good way to do that is to demonstrate why they need work.

Someday soon-ish I'll add some clickable information about the various tests.
Doing the Board: A simple daily planning exercise is our most important process
This is true. He bought it, didn't build it from scratch, and he most certainly has concerns above and beyond what the average bar owner faces. Of course, the average bar owner in San Francisco seems to face quite a bit more trouble than a bar owner in many other places in the US, so YMMV.
Lots of good info in the blog posts. Congrats on your success with the app.
Emergency bra now available
I think this is awesome, can't wait to try it out. Especially for writing apps that can run in desktop mobile webkit adobe air.

Ditto the comment on node.js integration. Need to wrap my head around this.
Start a Blog that resides on your website (either blog.YOURCOMPANY.com or www.YOURCOMPANY.com/BLOG). Blogging is the easiest way to 1) add pages that will be indexed by Google and the other engines and 2) act as "link bait" where other bloggers will read your content, share it with friends and colleagues and create content of their own and link back to your site.

on page seo is approx 25% or less of SEO - identifying keywords (search queries) that you want to rank for, then using those words in the Title, Permalinks, Headers, content.
off page seo is appro 75% or more of ranking - attracting QUALITY inbound links from other quality and relevant websites.

Simple way to start attacking on page and off page is to blog. :)
Scalable method of link generation that 99% of SEO-focused people never implement: have a remarkable product.
A bunch of stuff about game controllers
Running only one test only ties up one CPU. (Chrome 6.0.472.63, mac osx 10.6)

I'm posting this while running the infinite loop. Just killed the tab, alls fine. Same with fork bomb.

Heap death didn't do anything

Frog blast got the tab's ram up to 900MB (I've got 4GB, so it didn't even hit swap) and then died. The tab was still running fine. Not sure why it dies.

Element overflow just pushed the CPU up to 100%. Core 2 Duo is having no problems still functioning. The joy of multicore.

For the record. My browser has not crashed. The worst that happened was that the tab became non responsive and it tied up one CPU. As such, running multiple tests at once isn't really working, as the page doesn't respond.

Interesting site though. I like it.
You'll benefit from familiarizing yourself with - and using - certain tools. Here is a list of keyword tools:

http://www.kikabink.com/news/7-top-keyword-research-tools-fo...

And here is a list of competitive analysis tools:

http://www.kikabink.com/news/top-16-free-web-analytics-tools...
What the Elephant God Can Teach Tech Entrepreneurs
Pretty much everyone believes they are organized thinkers, can separate truth from crap, etc. I certainly thought so when I entered college. After 4 years of Caltech, though, I emerged with the realization that I didn't know much about any of that before. While maybe I still am not an organized thinker, I could tell that I had gotten a great deal better at it.

Additionally, when I work with others, even though they have college degrees, I can often see the disorganized thinking and lack of problem solving skills.

I see this a lot in the programming world, for example. Many programmers, when confronted a bug, flail about essentially at random hoping to get lucky and fix it. If you show them how to approach finding the problem in an organized manner, it's like you're speaking a foreign language to them (or at least I'm a very bad teacher, which is entirely possible).

For another example, I once had the job of figuring out the force involved when a screw drive ran full tilt into its stops. I worked out the math, etc., coming up with a formula for the force, plugged the numbers in, and got the answer. My colleague nearby (with a 4 year engineering degree as well) asked me in amazement "what book did you get that formula from?"

If you're an EE, and you carry around a card that has printed on it V=IR, R=V/I, I=V/R then you do not know how to solve problems - you learned how to formula plug.

Some people can learn all this stuff from self-study. The risk with self-study, however, is that you may not be aware of where the gaps in your skills are, especially if they are difficult to quantify like "organized thinking" or "problem solving skills" or "ability to separate truth from crap".
Good stuff...

it would also pay to look less like a communist movement.
What good would that do? Any malicious app will just lie about its reasons.
My bad for reading the post wrong in this regard.
18 days ago, I pointed out that there are teachers unions in right to work states. I also pointed out that right to work laws simply allow employees to work without joining the union. They do not prohibit unionization or collective bargaining.
Despite temptation, a beginner's introduction to a topic is not the place to list every permutation of the basic concepts that somebody, somewhere uses, but rather to simply explain the basic concepts. Trying to do both at once results in the student knowing less at the end than when they started; not only do they still not understand, now they're afraid of the topic!
Thanks for the info -- I want to update it later with results from others. One quick question: can you open up the error console and see if the browser stays on its feet? The "frog blast" seems to trigger a crash once the error console is opened on FF/Safari.
I've used set theory to hack up a search engine for a collab project in an evening.

I've made an app that gets around the lack of transactions in MySQL MyISAM and allows auditing of arbitrary django ORM models with logs.

I wrote a micro-compiler last night using llvm and my own lexer, parser, and tokenizer.

I simply don't write things that are necessarily "accessible" to the general public, and I don't go out of my way to promote them.

The fact that I'm leery of people who are aggressive self-promoters or opportunistic doesn't mean I'm "jealous", I don't actually want to work for Google.

I'm leery because in past experience, the aggressive self-promoters are covering for a lack of something, whether it be scruples or technical aptitude.

I was making an observation and expressing reservation, you're outright saying you wouldn't hire me.

But hey, lesson learned, I'll just make one-off apps that don't actually do anything and promote the shit out of them.

God forbid someone express reservations about the enthusiasm over relatively unproductive demonstrations without getting publicly hammered by a well known startup personality.

You shame yourself and demonstrate why many programmers I know don't take Silicon Valley seriously.
I would expect students who are investing large sums of money to be better prepared

So did I. I spent a lot of time during high school looking over options of where to study. When I enrolled, I knew almost as much about the CS department's course offerings and degree programs as the faculty did as well as what courses I would take to fulfill my general education requirements. I was very confused at the large proportion of students I encountered who knew very little about the teachings their departments (and the university) offered. While I now acknowledge that this is the way things are, I still do not understand why. I have not determined whether this correlates with the degree to which students put effort into their own education; this should make for some interesting conversations (I think I'll start with my brother).
That was my implication -- that if they're guilty of anything(other than being total assholes), it's this (and not the privacy issue).
A few context elements are missing from this short piece:

* “public records” are not public, and for instance, it is illegal for social workers to ask someone in jail what he is in for; the memory of Google Suggested search introduced something that the French people deem inappropriate;

* a similar trial, by a distinct court, allowed Google to Suggest “[Name of the company] scam” because it did so using an algorithmic relevance that was appropriate, summarising “common opinion” needed for “good business” (business courts treat differently companies who face many accusations, because too few consumers go to court);

* that decision was based on Google's testimony that they censor “inappropriate” associations (“naked”, “sex tape”) so exert enough editorial control.

Also missing to an American audience is that libel laws are more stringent, but you knew that.
I was worried about the validity of his arguments and advice because of the lack of rigor in his research of what degrees undergraduates can earn.

See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730253 :

Despite temptation, a beginner's introduction to a topic is not the place to list every permutation of the basic concepts that somebody, somewhere uses, but rather to simply explain the basic concepts. Trying to do both at once results in the student knowing less at the end than when they started; not only do they still not understand, now they're afraid of the topic!

In addition, see what I wrote under the section "Degrees:"

Congratulations: you’re now probably working toward your B.A. (bachelor of arts) or B.S. (bachelor of science), which will probably take four years. If you earn that, you’ll have received your undergraduate degree.

It's easier to write "B.A." in most circumstances than B.A. or B.S. or S.B. or B.F.A. or the various other ways of getting cross the same basic idea.
I highly recommend working as a bartender for a bit before thinking about owning one.
None of the courses were labeled with "organized thinking" or "separating truth from crap". Learning that stuff was a side effect of probably 80% of the standard curriculum.

Separating truth from crap is essentially what the scientific method is all about. If there is data that doesn't fit the theory, no matter how small, the theory is wrong and needs to be revised. A theory may explain existing facts, but it is useless unless it can make predictions that can then be tested. Stuff like that.
Clicking stuff in the GUI is fun, but hard to maintain. Who knows what security problems you're exposing. (CGI scripts written in C and sh? I think the entire Internet crashed in the early 90s because of that...)

The problem I've had with cheap routers (Linux or otherwise) is that their state table fills up and then it stops accepting connections. I was at a conference with flaky Wi-Fi once, and kept losing my ssh connections. Eventually, after only about 10 dropped connections and IP changes, the router's state table filled up and the thing was dead to the world. No ping, no web interface, no routing, no ssh. Dead.

And then when the states expired the next day, it was back again.

This is unacceptable.
This reasoning doesn't hold up because all of the information is already available through course descriptions and syllabi on course webpages. You don't even need to attend a school to get at that information.
You really can't tell a lot from this article. It all comes down to what this piece of software does. A faulty component in the UAV doesn't necessarily mean that the weapon lands off target.

They definitely aren't modifying the guidance system on the weapon - those weapons are not built by the CIA. It sounds like this piece of software helps them correlate coordinates for targeting from one computer system to another. That may be bad, it may not.

(Also, in my experience the vetting of designs is pretty rigorous, but I work on the mechanical side and our customer is DOD not CIA so your results may vary.)
Agreed,many of his concerns came from trying to convert it to an all-ages club. This is very difficult in most areas. He also got screwed by the ABC and is still fighting that fight.

SF can be tough on business owners, but his issue with the ABIC is actually a classic sort of SF vs. The Feds sort of issue. In that case SF mostly couldn't care less and generally actually gets pissed when the feds start crap like this. We see similar issues around marijuana busts. Generally SFPD doesn't give a shit about marijuana (in general the SF DA won't prosecute these cases and they if someone does get popped its a misdemeanor), but every so often an overzealous US Attorney comes in and makes an easy, and high profile bust.
They could really start improving their security model by not forcing me to whitelist them in noscript just to read a user page.

Though I haven't seen that error consistently.
Main Requirements of MLA format
The MLA format is a common format used for dissertations and research papers. There are many requirements which need to be fulfilled when following this formatting style. However, having a basic idea of the main requirements of MLA format will make it easy for students.
Frankly, I stayed up so late last night/this morning that I had nightmares when I did finally pass out because I was hacking on a compiler.

ESR can't sling enough code to contribute to a random OSS project without people getting exasperated, of late.

Don't spout platitudes at people you don't know.
> "They want to kill people with my software that doesn't work"

Let's see, we assassinate people without any trial, in a country we are not even at war with, and the obvious problem is that the software is a little buggy.

What is "buggy" here is the whole assassination system. When Bush wanted to dispatch special ops around the world to assassinate "terrorists", everyone was up and arms about it, When Obama does the same thing using drones, nobody seems to care, and the problem is a couple of bugs in the software.
Restaurants turning to Twitter to fix customer complaints
As somebody continually interested in new and successful user interface ideas, the GUI one has me tickled pink:

http://catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html

because it is true that point and click will always suffer from a loss of expressivity in the way that this story so perfectly captures.

In a way, though, the koan also illustrates the flip side: if the expressive solution to something is a new language, how do you empower somebody who doesn't know or can't learn the language? The same way a person who goes to a foreign land tries to communicate basic ideas--by sign language, or symbols, or pictures. Sure, sometimes you will be misinterpreted and get peed on. And you can only handle the basics, like asking for food or directions; discussing philosophy or politics is probably out of the question. But it's better than not being able to communicate at all, and for many problems, people are happy with buying the pictographic toolkit that lets them do their job.
I still haven't been able to finish Infinite Jest. It's just... not that interesting, I guess. Part of me thinks English is not a very good language for what's been attempted there; English as it is usually written is too terse and direct, which is precisely the opposite of what DFW was going for.

Novels like 2666, written in Spanish, feel a lot more natural in their distorted rambling and crazy deviations from what you guessed should be the plot.

But then again, I can't judge it until I finish it. These are just my thoughts after having it around for over six months.
Developers like it because if their software sits next to a bunch of other professional, polished looking apps their software looks better by comparison. If it's surrounded by "~~~FREE RINGTONES~~~", it doesn't look so great.

The objection to the app store, in my mind, was always not that it was highly curated by people, but that it was highly curated by people and there was _no_ other way to install software.
You teach two classes a semester? Professors in my department don't even have that load. No wonder if takes humanities students so long to graduate. That must be awful - not the teaching itself (I love teaching), but the large, constant teaching burden on top of research.
New music service lets you stream your entire library anywhere
Kalidity provides you with access to all of your music through a simple, easy-to-use web interface. It also works through mobile web and provides background streaming on 3G iPhones and iPods. There are no space limitations, and zero syncing hassle.
I've noticed that many non-scientists who have read Drexler seem to acquire a level of belief that has more in common with religion than science. Religious characteristics of this include:

1. Getting so angry about those who disagree with you that you can't even bring yourself to link to the thing you're supposedly rebutting

2. Using "Smalley" like it's a swear word.

3. A reversal of the usual burden of proof (Drexler likes to go on about how nothing he wrote has ever been proven wrong yet, but usually the onus lies on those who say something is technologically possible rather than those who say it isn't.

4. And of course, attributing a lack of success in proving their hypothesis to something somewhere between incompetence and conspiracy on the part of the scientific establishment.

What I find most aggravating about the molecular nanotechnology folks, though, is that they're always complaining that research on MNT is underfunded and understaffed, but so rarely propose specific research projects that we could actually do.

You think it's possible to build a universal assembler? Heck, I'm willing to entertain the idea. But how do we get there from here? What specific experiments and calculations can we start doing right now that can get us closer to that goal? I suspect that any answers to that question are likely to wind up looking like the "ordinary chemistry" which this MBA guy is so quick to deride.
While I now acknowledge that this is the way things are, I still do not understand why.

I'll posit some reasons:

I didn't know what I wanted to major in or what I wanted to study. This is very common, as is switching majors. It's also hard to evaluate schools because so many factors go into a decision: large or small school, big university or small college, scholarships, tuition costs, geographic proximity, faculty sizes, student culture... the list goes on. And the people choosing are 17- and 18-year-olds, most of whom aren't particularly well formed or knowledgeable about their interests. There's a reason why you're supposed to discover yourself at the university: because most people don't know themselves before they go. There's a reason why the bildungsroman is such a popular genre: most people go through phases when growing up and learning about the world. Maybe you did so earlier than most. I didn't.

I also think that most people are bad at anticipating what their future selves will want. That also applies to me, and my feeling has been reinforced by books like Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd's _The Time Paradox_, in which they talk about time preferences and how those change. One reason I like Paul Graham's "What You'll Wish You'd Known": http://paulgraham.com/hs.html is the hang glider metaphor: you don't know where you'll want land, so stay upwind.

If you _knew_ that you wanted to be a CS major and you stayed in that major throughout your college experience, you're in the minority of students.
What do you mean, he doesn't really code? He has certainly produced open source code in the past. You mean he's not primarily a programmer at the moment?
Squeryl is really awesome as far as scala-orms go.
I've used it in a couple of hobby projects and currently am using it in a bigger, and hopefully revenue bringing, project (a mix consisting of scala, wicket, squeryl and mysql. So far so good!)

Maxime, the guy behind squeryl is also very very helpful.
I've posted a few questions on squeryl's group and have never waited more than a day for a reply.

Perhaps it's because squeryl still is relatively unknown, but still, this goes to show that this project at least has a Human Interface which is always nice.

Lastly, hopefully squeryl will get some more attention now that Lift has given it some official attention.

Anyways, yeah. Squeryl. Cheers.
It would be, if you were naturally that way. The fact that you're questioning it seems to suggest you're not acting like yourself.

Seek help, from a friend, or maybe even a professional.
Evidently The New Yorker doesn't like linking to the printable version. Link below should work:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_...
I'm curious -- Why did your parents sell the bar after just three years?
Is that your PR strategy, too? It could use improvement. (And, regardless, it isn't a checklist level item either way.)
What happens if the stack overflows?