skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's unfortunate that this kind of logic isn't emphasized more in mathematics or science in a pure form. I'm pretty sure in high school I had one semester of this kind of logic associated with geometry. That was it until I hit discrete structures in college.

Failure to understand this logic might be part of the reason there's so much magical thinking about things relating to pseudoscience (e.g. paranormal activity, UFOs, conspiracy theories, New Age anything). A stronger base in logic would help people understand exactly why these things are impossible, stupid, or plain crazy with simple deductive and inductive reasoning techniques taught in logic courses.
When the logo becomes this generic and in this many styles, you're probably going to have a hard time maintaining a trademark on it.
And I thought I was crazy looking for 40 unicorn trainers in los angeles
Perl is easy to learn. It also borrowed from a lot of languages, and a lot of languages borrowed from it, which makes it easier.

If you already know C, bash, Ruby, Python or PHP, you will find a lot of carryover to Perl.
I lived in Den Haag for three months and I was surprised at how little Dutch was spoken on a day-to-day basis. Everyone defaulted to English all the time, and the only people I met who didn't speak it were immigrants from other countries (usually Russia).

I was eventually able to pronounce Scheveningen, though.

Edit: All this is to say, of all the non-English-speaking countries to go to as an English speak, The Netherlands is probably the easiest to get by in.
Hack.lu open convention (27-29 October 2010) Luxembourg
You DO realize that by almost any measure, about 50% of Americans are below-average, don't you?
So who's going to make the Django tutorial screencasts?
Same here. I went from knowing nothing to being somewhat proficient in about two weeks thanks to your tutorials. Thanks a million for the excellent help!
"...and people who dream bigger than people in Boston." Ouch. I'm surprised Mass High Tech gave you press with a mouth like that.
StackBlur: A Fast Gaussian Blur Algorithm In JavaScript
Timelapse of my Rails Rumble app last year
If she gambles and loses, then she's basically dead broke and can't even buy food, and if we're assuming she has no outside sources for help, then she is supposedly going to starve to death.

Yes, this is a very good point, perhaps the way I should have phrased the example was that she had $130 left in the bank after obtaining the necessities of life, to remove that concern. In that case, I think the logic goes through a bit better.

She can make the gamble of driving without a license, as the risk of being caught by the police is a lot less than losing everything by betting on black.

In my example, that's exactly what I did (I drove as little as possible, but on occasion I had no choice), and I did, in fact, get away with it long enough to get my license back (it's worth noting that had I not gotten away with it, getting my license back would have been a much more troublesome process). But be aware, I was pretty lucky - if your license is taken away, your plate will get flagged if the car is registered in your name, and you'll absolutely get pulled over if a police officer sees you driving and has nothing better to do. My girlfriend was pulled over several times while driving my car during that period, and then immediately let go when they realized it wasn't me behind the wheel.

reducing everything to dollars and coming up with the conclusion that "if you're screwed, put everything on black," is a fallacy

Indeed, it's not always the right solution - but it's also wrong to assume that just because the odds are against you in a bet, you shouldn't take the bet, if the other option is to do nothing, especially if doing nothing leaves you screwed anyways.
Your dentist wouldn't happen to be in the Bay Area, would he?

Edit: ninja'd
I was there. This talk was epic. More importantly, it was an extremely well-argued critique of exactly what's wrong in the JavaScript community right now -- and what to do about it, not just bitching.
Indeed. That's why I said `straight men should', and not `homophobes do'.
"When in doubt, use brute force." -- Ken Thompson
Or: go to the courthouse to get on a payment plan or ask the judge to waive the ticket or let you perform community service. It's not like you're the only person ever who hasn't been able to pay a ticket, that scenario gets handled all the time with zero drama.
Good idea. They already do it.
Thinking about this a little, I can kind of understand why Amazon would consider entering this business. Even if Apple would allow it, probably no other company would invest significant resources into trying to unseat the Apple AppStore. You have to have some kind of leverage to beat a competitor like that.

The situation is different with Android. Building a better app marketplace than the Android market is not exactly a very high bar to leap.
Hi Michael (if you're still here in the comments),

As someone who has read your book (I actually did the first 8 chapters of the 2.3 version and then went back and did the whole thing for Rails 3--it's fantastic, by the way) I'm wondering how much additional value these screencasts really bring to the table (at least, from your perspective). I can definitely see it for someone about to go through the book for the first time, but it feels like there would be a ton of repetition for someone who has already been through it.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
40?!

Are they trying to prove the infinite monkey theorem, empirically?
I dunno. Brent [Bambury] would go through moods where there's be nothing but long-string ambient installations playing for a week or two at a time, and that could be really annoying. I preferred the weekend show out of Vancouver that occupied the same time slot on Friday and Saturday. In any case, yes, that music was royalty-paid through ASCAP/BMI who handled further details. That was true even if an indie musician dropped by that afternoon with a fresh basement-recorded cassette. Things were much simpler then...
StarCluster: High Performance Computing with Amazon EC2
Actually, UK buildings typically contain at least three different standard sockets and plugs--the big ugly ones (with a supply of four different fuses needed), a mini version of that design commonly used for table lamps and floor lamps, and a third design allowed in bathrooms so you can plug in an electric shaver (electrical sockets and even light switches are ordinarily barred from bathrooms). There are also many different kinds of lightbulbs (screw-in, push-in, push-and-turn-to-lock-two pins) in many different physical sizes (as well as different wattages). Running a family house requires a considerable stock of bulbs and fuses, which explains all the "electrical supplies" shops which are unknown in the US. Up until about 10 years ago, in my personal experience, UK small appliances, lamps, etc. were sold with bare AC wires and the householder was expected to add the needed style of plug; now everything comes with the huge plugs.
I agree. Also it is biased towards people who own computers, have internet, and know about this site. Also biased against for people who aren't currently in a long term relationship or refuse to do online dating. I have never heard of this site and I know people who don't own computers.
Based in part on the tax brackets shown here: http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm and several years of adjusting my estimated taxes in order to get as close to a zero-balance as possible when I do my taxes in April.
I don't think really. Based on some discussion, it seems they are more adding a pile of new servers everyday, and they also seem to do a very good job at automating their process etc.
thanks for the feedback!

can you be more specific about how we can improve the home page? we're constantly trying to improve it, but our oldest (and admittedly ugliest) one always converts the best. tell me the dominant page color and i'll know which version you're looking at.
Silicon Valley’s Solar Innovators Forced to Retool
I am trying to pin faults on anybody. I am trying to introspect why the team is not working. I have been part of many teams both successful ones and ones like this. I feel I have learnt more, finished projects faster, felt more content with the quality of output, and acknowledged for going the extra mile on projects that I have worked alone and then in a team environment.

In the team environment, the quality of output is always compromised. I always end up feeling I could have done more to fix the project. And I am dissatisfied and pretty pissed at lack of accountability and aloofness of the team.

I am sorry if I have offended anyone but this is how I feel every working hour I work in a team.
Don Valentine, Sequoia Capital: "Target Big Markets" [Videos]
Ngmoco acquired by DeNA - Founders Note
... not that you have to be very smart to graduate in the USA. (OkC's membership is predominantly, though by no means exclusively, located in the USA.)
I clicked through expecting to be disappointed... but by golly, there's something to this. An imminent, disproportionate late-fee can make a less-than-even chance of instant liquidity more valuable than a more-than-even chance of larger loss.

Of course, assuming any reasonable credit is available at all, and that the person is not in permanent deficit unable to eventually pay back a loan, would give rise to a dominant option C, where enough is borrowed to avoid the penalty. But maybe this same effect is what makes 'payday' loans at astronomical effective rates attractive to some people.

Is there some other 'guardian angel' business model possible from this effect -- protecting the liquidity-challenged from disproportionate late fees, via an automatic loan of just-enough to save the fee, splitting the savings with the affected person?

As in: seconds before BofA or some other institution is about to pillage someone for $30, the 'angel' swoops in with a just-in-time loan, charging the person (in fees and interest) any amount less than $30 -- and lower with more competition.
Simply because not everyone who innovated went to college doesn't negate the value of our public education system. Nearly everyone in the United States after World War Two went to public school for some time.
Microsoft Patents GPU-Accelerated Video Encoding
I was there, too and I had a little tears in my eyes.
Ngmoco acquired by DeNA
milo?
Yeah, right, and how exactly are they planning to enforce that on all those international customers? Seems like wishful thinking on the part of the tax department - and wishful thinking that isn't likely to last long, because if they do somehow try to enforce this, they'll just drive all their hosting businesses out of Texas.
340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 possible md5 hashes
Our top priority is to make Digg as good as it used to be.

I have no idea why, but that line instantly made me remember 96's Clinton/Dole debates[1] (I must have read about this later since I was only 11 at the time). He does sort of correct himself in the next sentence, but I feel even saying that is awfully clumsy as a CEO's first post. It fails to capture the nostalgia for the old digg community and, imho, it fails to show optimism for the future.

[1] (from the nytimes) Mr. Dole's biggest rhetorical mistake, however, was his clumsy offer to serve as ''a bridge'' to an America that he said was better in the 1920's and 1930's. It was an odd line coming from the party of Ronald Reagan, the arch-evangel of American optimism, and Mr. Clinton served notice that Mr. Dole would not be allowed to forget his blunder. ''We do not need to build a bridge to the past, we need to build a bridge to the future,'' Mr. Clinton said in elaborating his theme that he and the Democrats are the best leaders for the next century.
All that you say is practical and true but it seems in this contrived example, the imminent deadline with a disproportionate-to-the-time-value-of-money late fee means that liquidity now, in the winning scenario, has an extra utility -- as if it had increasing marginal utility.
I'm not in the target market. I don't like screencasts at all. And don't see many advantages of pdf over html for the ebook. I like html better. But your book is awesome and I would like to contribute something back. A paypal donate button on the book page perhaps ?
http://ubuntu.shapado.com runs on Ubuntu if you're interested and supports more languages, it also runs on 100% FOSS.

Disclaimer: I'm the admin of that site.
404s do not contribute positively to the conversation. Is it not the case that comments are supposed to earn upvotes if they contribute positively, and downvotes othewise (including downvotes for mere noise)?

(Didn't vote either way, myself.)
Depends on how you define "bigger." If that refers to amount of mass versus volume then a stellar black hole is an extremely large object.
leverage the userbase. build a social network around local news, and let your readers do most of your work for you. they'll bring you leads, distribution, etc.

host your own reddit? submitting all of the articles to it, and letting users crowdsource the headlines, as well as the comment curation. you can offer a more interactive experience and can engage readers beyond hit and run comments or avoid the youtubeish free for alls that sadly seem to dominate the discussions on most news articles. put the power in your reader's hands, because frankly you guys need all of the help you can get.

i really love the way comments sections works in the new york times, for example. it would be really interesting to try take that even further.
Seattle VCs are finding quality startups, just not in Seattle
To debug my wiki engine, I did some experiment with RFCs.

RFCs as wikis: http://simpliwiki.com/yours/SomeRfcs

This is an other definition of "usable" I guess.

I added an orange visual cue when scrolling, to make it easier to spot where new content starts.
What blew my mind was realizing that the amount of energy people put into arguments about "belief in evolution" is far more than the amount of energy put into actual research. (Similar for "belief in creationism" vs actually studying the Bible.) It's apparently very important for everyone to have a strong opinion on a topic that doesn't really matter that much if you're not doing medical or biological research.
Sorry, he's about 2,300 miles away from the Bay Area. :)

Hmm, may I take this as further evidence that my absolutely terrible selection metric has indeed blundered onto a good choice? (I'm honestly surprised, I honestly thought I had just been out of the loop.)
Microsoft sets Patch Tuesday record, fixing 49 security holes
One part of me wants to pat you on the back and say, "It's okay, everybody makes mistakes."

The other part of me wants to say, "You have nine million dollars in funding. Figure shit out. This isn't a game."
First of all, congratulations Michael. I'm guessing there is more than a year of effort involved. The video is clean and sharp. Good audio too. Well done.

I notice you used a 4:3 aspect ratio (960x720) and was wondering why not 16:9. There are screencast benefits to both so I'm curious.
I'm going to have to start looking into this language a lot more. For many years I've dismissed it as a bit of a gimmick (in the same light as say, vbscript) but things like the promoteJS movement and AJAX have really changed the way JS is being portrayed
“Plus, they hold up an x-ray and say ‘This is …’ not ‘This might be …’.”

Ha! My dentist actually said ‘This might be …’ as we looked together at a X-ray. He said that we could be looking at very, very early caries or just a shadow and that X-ray images are always tricky. I will be X-rayed again at the next routine checkup to see if anything has changed.

Incidentally, how common are X-rays in the US? It sounds like they are quite common which surprised me. They don’t seem to be part of the yearly checkup in Germany if I’m remembering right. I think it’s rather a every-other-year or every-three-years thing.
Oracle Linux - Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel
I don't really understand how this could work. How does purchasing a service from a Texas company give you a physical nexus in Texas? Maybe if Texas was arguing this applied to those who colocate physical servers they own in a Texas data center I could buy it. But merely being a customer of a hosting company, where you are being sold some storage space and bandwidth on a computer? Whether it's shared hosting, VPS or renting a server, you don't own any physical property in the state.
Wow. This could seriously hurt Texas if people start pulling out of the TX data centers and those data centers are forced to shut down or move to a more friendly state.
I personally use Linode and this freaks me out a bit.
I don't know about the other hosts but being a linode customer myself I know that Linode allows you to move your linode to any other data center free of charge.
Call me sexist, but I firmly believe there are three areas women should not generally be part of: military, cooking and teaching.

Lawrence Summers? Is that you?
That's a great question. Based on the feedback from some early beta screencast reviewers who had also read the book, I think you'll find the screencasts to be a valuable complement. To find out for sure, I recommend downloading the full sample screencast here:

http://railstutorial.org/samples?file=rails_tutorial_lesson_...

If you find yourself learning something new compared to just reading Chapter 8, then you can be confident that (for you) the screencasts will add value over the book alone.
Kleiner Perkins Harvests Over $100 Million From Ngmoco Acquisition
If you want to be a rails developer it is going to take more than 15 minutes.
We married OmniAuth with Authlogic to handle username/password (we're still on Rails 2, so no Devise for us). It wasn't too bad. Handling the validations for users was the tricky part, but Authlogic offers a ton of help in this area... way more than I expected.
The question is actually difficult because an organism can be an microorganism or an animal with organs, so it's impossible to say which ones bigger.

Only if you allow for comparisons between life forms. If you assume that he's speaking of a single life form that contains all the systems then the question is well-defined.
Hey shabda, nice work. I have been following your blog posts to learn django as well. They are great resource for django noobs. The initial chapters of this book pretty look good.
You Know More Than You Know
You really need to provide a visual example on the home page of what it is... ie what does it look like when implemented. As it is, I don't understand exactly what I'm signing up for (in a concrete way) when I fill out the box.
I doubt you'd find such a specialist here. I'd suggest exploring forums related to the restaurant trade, where you're likely to find some overlap between producers, business buyers, entrepreneurs and service providers. Avoid consumer sites, where conspiracy theorists abound.
Can't be that good if they need 40 more keyboardists.
Debt market strips U.S. of triple-A rating
picksie.com is trying to do something similar for things to do around you. Its coming out in closed beta and more data points soon.
The last time I tried MonoDevelop (let alone on a Mac) it was a total disaster. I hope it's better now. I am pretty comfortable with Xcode, but "native" Mac apps in C# is a pretty good reason to consider switching to something else.
Immigration and the housing glut
> - equipment (age of equipment, tech levels (not too high - don't forget, you the patient are paying for it). This is also important as digital x-rays use much less radiation and allow for immediate review with the patient.

My brother, who is a dentist, used both film and digital in school and found he preferred the resolution of film. No doubt digital will improve though.
I don't see how that follows. Most chess grandmasters are men; should women not play? If you accept the hypothesis that males have greater genetic variability than females, it shouldn't be surprising to see men overrepresented at the very top (and bottom) of just about everything.

And military requires more endurance that women normally have.

It also requires more endurance than most men have. But if an individual woman can legitimately meet that standard, why deny her the opportunity?
Not really. Whether or not a system is a satellite relationship is based on their comparative masses and orbits. If the Sun where the less massive we would refer to it as the satellite (well, there would be a lot more consequences, but that's one). If the objects were approximately equal we would call it a binary system with the more massive being referred to as the primary.
Wrong. It was the official justification when the patent system was established in the United States.

People have discussed if natural rights applied to patent rights. Some argued not so, and some thought so. This has been going on since the age of enlightenment.
Have a look at the html source... some http://www.intelli-computing.com/wordpress/?super_sale=DDDD code in there...
Strangely enough, it paid in many cases last year to overpay your CEO.
Great, that will be 4 states I have to file taxes in now ... yuck.
A Gentleman's Guide to Failure
The main challenge would be to convince business owners to publish data about their stock to the web. The rest should be easy.
The screencasts are also being published through Safari Books Online (via Addison-Wesley) later this year. (I'll include a link on the Rails Tutorial site once they're out.) The 4:3 aspect ratio was chosen mainly to match their request for a 1024x768 screen resolution, though it's also the aspect ratio of my monitor so it was convenient on my end as well.
I've thought about it and I think I agree with you. I've only taken a little advanced math and I was able to understand most of it.

However, I still don't agree with the OP that that makes this presentation pointless.
"Strong AI" isn't really a meaningful term anymore, because we keep moving the goalposts:

) "A computer will be intelligent when it can beat a human at chess. Oh, Deep Blue did that? Umm, ok, then...."

) "A computer will be intelligent when it can recognize a human face. Oh, every digital camera on the market has basic versions of that built in? Ummm, ok, then...."

) "A computer will be intelligent when it can TRANSLATE between human languages! Hah! Try THAT on for size, you geeky boffins! Wait, what? Google has been doing that for years, and AltaVista did it back in 1995? Oh. Ummmm, well...."

) "A computer will be intelligent when it can pass an unrestricted Turing tes- [someone else whispers to the speaker] What's that? Computers have passed the Turing test? And humans have failed it? Um, right, moving on!"

"Strong AI" is the magic incantation that means "a computer that is so smart we don't understand how it works any more"--because, if we DO understand how it works, then it's just another computer program.

This says interesting things about why we regard humans as intelligent. If we actually advance neuroscience et al to a sufficient point that we deeply understand the brain and the mind, will we stop thinking of ourselves as self-aware and free-willed?
and women are more likely to not comprehend the question or click incorrectly?
Chiming in with the touchy-feely watery eyes here. My job was to talk Chris off stage after his talk and I didn't find any sane words for a bit until I started rambling to round off JSConf.eu. It makes me very happy to have Chris close it really with such an important speech.
I'm getting "Error establishing a database connection" when trying to see this - does anyone have a mirror?
Just used it. Got good feedback from blog readers on how the app post compared to a web post.

Only problem is that I can't see a way of hyperlinking text?