skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Nurses and especially Doctors have years of pure science before they're ever allowed into their trade schools.

This is an (unnnecessary) North American tick, whose pernicious influence is spreading.

Medicine has traditionally been an undergraduate degree in Europe and all former European colonies aside from the US, and those countries that are in its cultural sphere (like S. Korea, which got rid of its undergraduate medicine degrees.) My cousin started his Medicine degree at 17. It will take him five years. It's not like this is even unknown in the States, IIRC UCSD has a runaround where you get a Bachelor while doing an M.D.

And even in the US there are different types of nurses, some of whom went to college, some who didn't (LPN, RN and Nurse Practitioner). I understand demanding continuing education and testing to ensure competency, but college is a means of doing that, but not the only one.
I don't think it's necessarily a career path, or lack thereof, but the companies' perspective on software: I left biotech because the companies I worked for, and it seemed to be an industry problem, viewed software not as their differentiator or edge or product, but rather purely as a cost center to be minimized. From that distinction, everything flows.
That may be more to do with the Minecraft running in Java and not making full use of the GPU.

There's no reason that graphics of Minecraft's quality shouldn't be blazingly fast on current hardware.
Lesson learned: Never let the outside world see your First Big Project Ever.

This is what Fred Brooks would have called the First System. Everybody builds this thing at the beginning of their career, and it's always this embarrassing. Mine, in 1996, took this a step further and actually prepared SQL statements in javascript before submitting them to the server to run. Yours probably did something equally bad. It's the rule of the First System. It's where we learn all the lessons we need so that we can do things right the Third time (I'll spare the Second System description for the time being...)

The key though is to make sure that nobody ever sees that code. Hopefully it will be locked away in some intranet vacation-time-planning app that nobody will ever dig into. That way you can look back at it in shame, but few others will ever know about it.

So here we have a team of people who have clearly never built anything at all, trying to learn on the job while being scrutinized by the entire world and actually submitting their code for public review.

God help them.
"World class economists" disagree a lot more on economics than world class physicists disagree about inclined planes. For every Krugman there is a Becker, a Hayek, a Friedman. So argument from authority just plain doesn't work in this area.
Microsoft Says It'll Sell Bonds, Raise Dividend
I think TC was suggesting something in line which Jason asked - that the phone will boot directly into Facebook.
Who says it's a bug? Maybe they've omitted it on purpose to de-emphasise the desktop/OS as part of their Chrome OS play. Still a pain if you use it though.

As an aside, it's interesting that the reporter says it's their favourite feature. Either they're emphasising for effect or they don't think of most of Chrome's core features as features.
Obligatory Userfriendly-link: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20000229

Perhaps that's why.
Netscape source code that didn't make it past the lawyers
That sounds very interesting. If someone could solve this, it could be the most important startup in our time. What I would say, though is please put your ideas through the "Satan's computer" and/or game theory test. That is, if you assume every actor will act in their own personal best (best being defined as "optimal short term rewarding") interest at the exclusion or detriment of everyone else but your system still functions then it's a good idea. For example, in your incentive example above it strikes me that some teachers would purposely not use material from other schools because they want that incentive money for themselves (game theory).

I would also mention that there will be a potential resource problem. In every field there is a small subset that are the pinnacle of that field. If your system will only pick that pinnacle then you'll be understaffed. Imagine if software development were staffed this way. The software that actually was produced would be much better today, indeed much less would be needed. But we wouldn't have enough.
Is it possible for a Chrome extension to access desktop settings, such as the background?
Chennai Super Kings enters into semifinals
In the last-four duels, CSK will meet Royal Challengers Bangalore on Friday, while South Australia will take on Warriors on Saturday. continue visit mybuzzdeal.com/articles
It depends on the client driver. They have insert, delete, save etc. which send those commands with the user supplied data encoded, but most of the drivers also have an exec or execute which dumps what the user enters straight onto the db.

for eg.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/mongodb.execute.php

"This method allows you to run arbitary JavaScript on the database."
Do you think Toronto might be better for startups?
Obligitory reference:

http://expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/03/examplecode-produc...

(exampleCode != productionCode)
It's not about the ability to find astronauts to accept the risk.

It's about the blow to national prestige and to NASA when such a disaster happens. The public will not abide a spacecraft with the flag on it, crashing.
This already works on KDE, just drag the picture from chrome to the desktop and you'll be asked to set it as wallpaper.
An Exiting Nokia Executive on What Went Wrong
maybe that's why I use Chrome and dread IE ;-)
The major performance killer is the view distance. If I set that to FAR, I get occasional hangups and even crashes, on my MacBook Pro.
I cannot see it in the Market. And the direct link inside the market does not work also. Is it somehow limited to only a few countries? I am in Germany, I have Froyo on two phone ith Market and the old gmail. One is Cyanogen on a Milestone and the other is a self-made build Froyo on a Nexus One.
"Theoretically you could make an extension for this using the Context Menus API (http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/dev/contextMenus.ht...) and an NPAPI plugin... "

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1019#c45...
Whats more interesting for me, is the way that a lot of news stories are specific examples of interesting things ripped out of the odd bit of research. For example, once the Forbes 400 list has been compiled you could pretty much auto-generate articles like this one.

They've just dragged in a load of facts about the two people, combined with facts about the people from their Rich List. There's pretty much no non-trivial analysis here.
Hmm: "direct from our Browser, like we have since the dawn of the internet". I'm young, and the internet existed when I was born, but I don't think there was a web in the internet's "dawn", let alone graphical web browsers. Still, aren't applications made for their users? The use case would be commoner among the less computer savvy people I suppose (i.e. not the three Google people).
"I wouldn't beat up on our designers too much, since we gave them a wordmark set in Avenir to work with."

What's wrong with Avenir? There's nothing wrong with that typeface and it's just plain weird to try blame it for why Matasano's home page is a super wordy giant wall of text.

I inherited a logo set in Avenir at the day gig, so we used Cufón to work it into the rest of the site and whatever else you might say about it, you probably wouldn't call our stuff undesigned:

http://isocket.com
This thread made me realize how disciplined a team must be to resist feature creep.
Good post. It comes down to inexperience, and I am sure we have all been through it ("pfffft.. I could do that in 4 hours" -- younger me).

There were red flags in their kickstarter post:

* "We are four talented young programmers from NYU’s Courant Institute trying to raise money so we can spend the summer building Diaspora"

* "Diaspora knows how to securely share (using GPG) your pictures, videos, and more."

* "We have a plan, a bunch of ideas and the programming chops to build Diaspora. What we need is the time it takes to iron out a powerful, secure, and elegant piece of software. Daniel, Ilya, Raphael, and Maxwell are all ready to trade our internships and summer jobs for three months totally focused on building Diaspora"

* "We promise to you that Diaspora will be aGPL software which will released at the end of the summer."

They also said that no similar system exists (they do)
This is a feature I'm glad Chrome lacks. This is also an excellent reason why you need a deep understanding of your product and its uses so that you know when to ignore user suggestions. Users will beg and plead for you to ruin your product if you're not careful. Remember the importance of listening to your users, but also remember that your product is not a pot-luck.
Talk about building a bike shed :D

Personally I think I've used that feature in other browsers more as an accident than on purpose, so I see why they don't have it.
I default, (by which I mean redirect non-'www.') to 'www.' simply because if you have a few subdomains too, it makes sense in a 'grand scheme of things' kind of way ...

www.
dev.
old.
cdn.

etc etc ...
Damn yes. The unsettling feeling you get when you enter a night and realize you haven't found any brimstone (or whatever is used to make torches) yet is awesome.

It's a bit too easy to escape the creepers though, because the physics are too forgiving. You can just build stairs in the sky and destroy the bottom steps to make an unreachable safehouse.
Ask HN: How to Create Vanity URLs in PHP
Hi, I'm looking to create Vanity URLs for every user on my website (in PHP), like xyz.com/userone - which will host his profile. Editing may or may not be on the vanity URL.
Any ideas/tips/resources on how do I o about doing this ?
> Also, I assume for virtualization you are talking about the worst case (perf-wise): running Linux in a VM inside another operating system? Rather than the better one of having a hypervisor directly manage both the user's main OS (win/osx) and linux?

Yes. I usually run Linux and WinXP on top of OS X and WinXP on top of Linux. Works great!

EDIT: I use VirtualBox OSE. VMWare works even better if you can afford it. Sometimes I use Qemu for trying out toy operating systems, but I find it too slow for actual work.
I agree, they gradually push the user towards a browser-only environment. When you have no wallpaper, you do not like to look at your desktop that much. But when they are ready to make Chrome OS more mainstream, the Chrome users may go easier in the transition.
In terms of speed? Erlang's not even in the ballpark that C is in. I'm pretty sure Haskell significantly outperforms Erlang as well.

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-lang...
I'm the 'Glen' from the Chromium UI team referred to in the bug report; we actually do torture ourselves over questions like this - it comes down to painful decisions about keeping Chrome lightweight.

Sure, a single small context menu item might not make a lot of difference, but there are thousands of features like this, each servicing a different small set of people. In addition to the interface overhead of having all of those features, the engineering (don't forget cross platform, keeping it up to date, translation into 40 languages, and support) is never as small as you think it is.

It's painful because taken individually, we know we could fix an issue and make a set of people happy, but there are never ending piles of these issues, and we none of us want to let Chrome become a never-ending pile of menu items and buttons and extra leading to cruft and bugs.

Now I have made myself sad.
Sometimes I wonder if Dixon is indeed a very nice guy or if he deliberately tries to construct that image just to be a stark contrast to some other angels.

Anybody had him return all their calls?
> Saying that the market doesn't solve every problem in no way implies that it can't solve a given problem.

Nope, I never made such an illogical assertion.

>By opt-out I mean opt-out of your standard assigned school district, not out of education.

I was pointing out why education may be inelastic. Not assuming you didn't want your children educated.

>Teaching 20 kids per year is worth $30K by definition

Extremely bizarre logic. If we pay $30k for something and fail then it obviously something is wrong. If other systems pay more than this and don't fail (or at least not as badly) then that makes a rather strong case that the pay is too low.

>but we as a society are not opting for it.

That doesn't mean it's worth less, that means you're not paying enough and it shows. This furthers the argument that education may not be an elastic market. If people are simply incapable of acting in their own best interest (given the choice, always picking the crappy cheap education for their kids) then there must be intervention.

The only reason I'm not convinced that this is indeed the case are grandalf's posts.
I haven't written any CouchApps (I really don't like JS so much I'd like to write my whole app in it, even though the notion is quite awesome), but I've used CouchDB in a few projects. Most importantly, we've been using it at work, where it's awesome at solving some of our problems. Streaming replication to our off-site backup server was almost trivial setup and makes it easy to switch our entire operation to the using the backup server instead of the local network. Map/reduce queries have made it possible to provide very fast overviews of large amounts of data. And it's just awesome that you can debug your queries by firing off HTTP requests from your browser...

Oh yeah, and Futon is an awesome tool. On some of the sites where I've been too lazy to build CMS tools, I'm just using it to update the site, and it works quite well for that. It also makes it easy to just jump in and fix something up whenever you need to.
I won't disagree with any of that, nor on the face of it do I disagree with Patrick.

My only issue with his comment is that he's challenged an argument on the basis of a faulty assumption (that charities do good) by introducing a new assumption (that charities might do good, but often do evil) without defending it. So from the standpoint of defensible logic it isn't much better.

I see another commentor made a point about the International Tobacco Growers Association. That's all I was looking for... something we can sink our teeth into that allows the skeptics among us to reject Conclusion A for Conclusion B.
Austrian Collection Societies Want A 'You Must Be A Criminal' Tax On Hard Drives
Also, the article says that views can just be written in JavaScript. It's true that the default query server is written for JavaScript, but query servers exist for other languages, including but not limited to Java, Erlang and Python.
I can answer that one... their pointy haired bosses read the ads in the airports and business magazines that say "98% of Fortune 500 companies" use Oracle
A few minecraft related comics:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/9/17/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/9/20/

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=292
I built this huge thing which was fun (or at least not boring) but if I change perspective it just seems pointless. I don’t think there is anything wrong with some pointlessness – not better or worse than watching TV – but it seems like I wasted just a few too many hours on that pointlessness. It’s called Minecrack for a reason.

Don’t get me wrong, the game is awesome. I like the art and its general style very much, it feels like a piece of art.
Same here, on the MacBook. I was actually afraid that the repetitive mad clicking would wake the entire appartment.

And then I realize you have to keep it pressed.
Thank you. That looks like a well documented project. Will have to benchmark to test it and benchmark it for my uses.
DF makes about $30k in donations per year.

It's insane to see MC make more than that per day. Poor Toady.
Gotcha. I'd look into the fruit flavored variety - that was my entry into the world of tea. Aka, they make green/black teas with raspberry flavor, cherry, mango, etc. Kind of a nice half step from soda/pop. Good luck/hope that helps.
are you using a framework? usually comes built in with most php frameworks.
The cynic in me finds it convenient that Zuckerberg's first major act of philanthropy is announced just a couple weeks before a major film portraying him as a jackass is released.
Social Networking or What I Really Want
Reflections on Diaspora and what I am really want from social networking.
I don't have access to a box with ruby on at the moment, what does that line do?
Follow-up question: why specifically does Paul Buchheit think that "Facebook has the potential to be worth more than Google"?
http://www.quora.com/Paul-Buchheit-1/Why-specifically-does-P...

Paul answered: "Because the future is in people."
Ask HN: JavaScript book recommendations?
With node.js and all the other interesting JavaScript libraries being created, I'm keen to spend some time properly learning JavaScript. Can anyone recommend some good (up-to-date) books to get started with?
What does he mean that "it's already trading at $25b? It's private stock, no?
Thank you for valuing simplicity!
# define rename hpux_sucks_wet_farts_from_dead_pigeons

I would have liked to have seen the context of that line.
Very impressive. This make me want to ditch my own Safari extension[1] and switch to Chrome. Perhaps when you setup a central repository, we can share the same import format. :)

[1]: http://code.grid.in.th/
>The actual implementation of non-profit status in the US is a different issue.

And how would you change that? I mean, you can't actually have the government decide what is "the greater good" and what is not- the whole point of charities is that they are non-governmental entities; they work on problems the government is either not addressing or addressing ineffectively.
In that answer he links to an article which ends on an important point that the author of the submitted TC article seems to ignore:

Of course there's no guarantee that Facebook will actually realize any of this potential -- there were many search engines before Google, and they all fumbled the opportunity they had, but it's important to at least understand the potential for big things.
I've never noticed the lack of this feature in Chrome, and I don't think I've ever used it in a browser that had it.

Maybe this is a feature an extension could handle, assuming Chrome's security model allows it.

The security model is one area in which Chrome could, perhaps do with a bit more complexity. The fact that I can't use mouse gestures on local directory listings or the new tab page annoys me. I want to mark the mouse gestures extension as trusted and therefore allowed to run on any page Chrome can display.
I am curious about how Facebook will manage to hold on to its users if some other more attractive social networking site opens up. We do remember what happened to Myspace and Orkut. Google could hold on to search because it was very hard for a new company to build Google kind of search infrastructure.
I no longer accidentally misclick these things either. I find that with some UIs and especially those where everything has a hotkey by default, i end up doing all kinds of crazy things. Owning a cat just makes it worse.
> Let your old company tell you you can't have your job back, don't make that decision for them.

This. If you were leaving on good terms, and were a valued member of the firm, there's absolutely no reason why they wouldn't take you back. In fact, they should be glad to keep you!

There's no shame in having wanted to try something new. People move shops all the time. So this time you got unlucky with the move, but no biggy. Just be upfront with your current employer and tell them what's happened.
15% of clients don't do compression, usually because of "internet security" software altering the Accept-Encoding header.

From the talk you linked to in another comment... http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2010/public/schedule/detail/11...
I disagree on Gates wasting money. If you put enough money at nearly any problem you can solve it. The question is just how much will it take. If anyone has a chance in Africa it's Gates.
JavaScript: The Good Parts, http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockfor...

Watch Crockford on Javascript at ydn: http://developer.yahoo.net/blogs/theater/archives/douglas_cr...

Watch @ryah on nodejs at ydn: http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/05/20/video-dahl/ (and the other javascript related videos linked on that page)
The thing that struck me was the level of passion that the users who wanted the feature had.

Also the range of argument quality: "i think ya'll should be able to have your thing mothafucka" vs "Lengthening the context menu? Finally a REASON as to the WontFix. A seriously flawed one, since you could easily allow your users to customize things such as what's displayed in the context menu."
I doubt your current company will have any issues with you retracting your resignation, it costs them more to hire a new employee/train them up and so on, so just go and speak to them I'd imagine they'd be happy for you to stay
For one thing, always just assuming the best intentions allows people to be as slimy as they dare and just buy back karma with the money they made/stole.
Htsomethingiknow
Excellent information here cause in my language, there are not much good source like this. This interesting post made me smile. Maybe if you throw in a couple of pictures it will make the whole thing more interesting.
The True Cost of Free
This blog post is all over the place.

First, we have the Gmail/FF founder saying that FB could be worth more than Google. I guess that's something one can have a discussion about.

Second, then we have this tangential point about how the shares he received for FF will be worth more than they were originally. No shit.

It states that when Friendfeed was acquired they received $30M is Facebook stock. FB valuation is skyrocketing. But that doesn't mean, as the blog post implies, that the FF valuation is also rising. In other words, if FB were buying FF today, they'd be getting less stock for the same price of $30M.

Third, to make the post even more noisy, he brings in the Q&A site Quora, where he heard all this.
Don't overlook Facebook's advantage of universal popularity. Everybody uses Facebook because everybody is on Facebook. That's a tough barrier for any new player to surmount.
Entrepreneurship in Italy from a non-Italian’s perspective
Secondary markets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_market
I watched the Pixar story movie and learned a lot about Jobs, Lasseter and Pixar. Lasseter is definitely the visionary behind Pixar, financially so is Jobs. He bought them from Lucas in '86. Toy Story wasn't released until '95. That means for 9 years, not only was he not making money, he had to write personal checks to pump in money every year just to keep the company afloat.

The man deserves every bit of credit he gets for Pixar.
I think most adults will fail to meet your standard for maturity, from time to time.