skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have no idea how you come to this conclusion, but it is very very wrong. It only vaguely makes sense if you believe that there can only be one cause for something. However, clearly there are multiple factors at play.

I actually had two chemistry teachers in high school who fit this description. The first was a drunk that they hired off the street (seriously, the administration not believe us until we found an empty whiskey bottle in the back cupboard). They replaced her the second quarter with a flighty woman who didn't understand the material and regularly lost our assignments and tests; some time after they fired her I saw an article in the variety section of the local paper showing her in her home, back to the camera, with her hands on her hips staring at the massive pile of junk in her house—it was an article about ADHD adult packrats. For the final quarter they put us in a real chemistry teacher's class, where none of us were at all prepared having learning nothing for the first 2/3rds of the year, and they had to just give us the credit for the year.

The point of this anecdote is that there were plenty of smart, motivated students in this class, but the teachers made it impossible to learn, so the performance of everyone was equalized to the lowest common denominator. The only people who learned anything were the ones willing to read the book for its own sake without any guarantee of proper labs or tests. The next year I got into the physics class of a teacher who was widely regarded as the best in the school. We learned a lot in that class, but even there you had problem kids who refused to make any effort, despite the fact that the teacher clearly cared about the students; they saw him as someone to be taken advantage of.

So you see, neither factor stands alone. You need decent teachers, and you need kids to show up.
I agree, the word "feels" correct. The problem is we consent to using PayPal. Check this out:

> PayPal, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to close an account at any time for any reason, including but not limited to a violation of this Agreement, upon notice to the User and payment to the User of any unrestricted funds held in custody.

Didn't everyone click "I agree" to that?
It all depends on your market. You can't ignore IE if your customers are on locked down, corporate workstations with guerrilla IT departments dictating IE only. Know your market, then decide accordingly.
Right, but his puts run for another ten years, or thereabouts.

So when that time rolls around, we'll see if his big bet on derivatives was a mistake or not.

So I was wondering if he was alluding to that in particular.
I met some of the Opera devs at a conference a while back. They seem like they have a lot of fun.
Drought may threaten much of globe within decades
but languages are written in text and IDEs are basically text editors with a few extra features.

Not necessarily. The text editor features of most Smalltalk IDEs were pretty gimpy, but the text editing was never the exciting part! It's the whole environment being like iPython on steroids everywhere and all the time.
I agree with you almost entirely. One tiny exception:

>I know it's tongue in cheek, but my god does the current generation not have any humility at all?

Come on...how many times do we have to go through this "young whippersnappers don't have any humility anymore" nonsense before we recognize that young humans, in general, have less humility than they should? Just because you (perhaps) had more humility than this kid doesn't mean your entire generation did.
"They all have fiberglass shells, which are less prone to cracking than concrete and, lacking steel, won’t show up on target-acquisition systems."

How well does it withstand impact compared to concrete or steel?
Mobile-focused VC firm Eniac Ventures launches on East Coast
There was already the histwin plugin available.
(http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2932)
You don't need to know the future. You just need to hear the rumor before everyone else does.

Why do you think Apple had a big run up before they announced earnings and then dropped the past two days? Just a coincidence? Maybe, but more likely Wall Street knew the news before it was news and the folksy wisdom of "buy the rumor - sell the news" seems pretty spot on.

I do agree with your sage advice that for the individual investor, buying and holding good companies is a sound strategy (Peter Lynch and Warren Buffet would agree too). But no matter what your investing strategy, the individual investor is typically at an information disadvantage vs. investment professionals. They spend all day doing it. How can you possibly be more in "the know" than they are?

Over the long term, perhaps it evens out as you suggest, but the comment above me was wondering what explains why Apple stock would lose value on the day they posted their largest quarterly results ever. Wall Street buying the rumor and selling the news makes some sense to me. I've seen this happen over and over again (not just with Apple yesterday).
Thanks a lot Steve, this will definitely come in handy.

Quick question - It looks like this requires python support for vim. What would happen if I didn't have python compiled in, and then tried to use this plugin?

(You can check for yourself with :version)
The "no HTML5" is a biggie. A lot of websites have come to rely on having WebKit based browsers on smart phones, and so their mobile content uses HTML5 features that Windows Phone 7 does not support. So you have to fall back to a really crappy experience.
yeah, submitted, a couple of days back :)
I'm just wondering what device it was, and what tasks it did better than the phone, to the extent that you'd carry it around.

Because I'm having a hard time seeing what tasks would be notably better on a half-ipad-sized screen. Reading would be better than a phone, sure. Videos, sure. But beyond that, I'm not sure what the draw is.

It seems any task beyond those two (consumption, the very thing people dismissed the ipad as only being good for) would suffer from the lack of significantly increased tap real-estate.

I mean, even the keyboard itself would have to be annoying. In portrait, it'd be little-better than a phone and in landscape it's the same width as the ipad's portrait keyboard, which is just not good. (far too narrow to touch-type, but too wide to thumb-type[1])

And I can't say I'd be optimistic about Android app developers notably filling the gap at the outset. Even if they can figure out how to add capability in that space, with the array of screen sizes on their way, I wouldn't want to gamble on how much attention they'll be spending on any one screen size. Not until there's some shake-out and consolidation.

I recall that you had and disliked an iPad. It just seems odd to me that you'd dismiss the iPad as not being useful enough, yet jump on the bandwagon for a device that is inherently less-useful.

It'll be smaller and lighter. But still large enough that it's not going in your pocket. So what's the draw?

[1] and that's coming from a fairly large-handed fellow; I found the original xbox "duke" controller to be the most comfortable gamepad I'd ever held.
I was talking in terms of transformations, such as the clone tool. Clone takes a set of pixels, applies some math, and gives you a new set of pixels that look a bit like what you want. After you've applied clone, you're done (although you might need to apply some finishing touches).

The pre-packaged refactorings in the Smalltalk Refactoring Browser are like this. There are checks to see if the refactoring is guaranteed to be correct, and if the refactoring runs, you can be very sure it is. The refactoring commands are even undo/redo-able.
Swivel tried, and it died:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1786982
Real question: why is this really necessary? Creating a vertical split quickly is something I do often, all day, with ctrl-w v.
Google bringing Dead Sea Scrolls online
Today is the last day for applying to Y Combinator
Everything explodes. It's on my list of things to fix: http://bitbucket.org/sjl/gundo.vim/issue/6/errors-on-startup...
I disagree. This guy is indeed special. If for no other reason than for the fact that he had the fucking guts to write this.
Unique Product Marketing Idea - Custom Vinyl Stickers and Custom Folders 
When it comes to the custom vinyl stickers and custom folders, both of them play a vital role in your long term business identity development. That is why online printing company offers you cheap sticker and folder printing services worldwide in a most practical and dedicated manner.
I have no encouragement to sign up. Why not? Because I can't see what kind of discussion is happening in the community. If I click on any of the communities I get a sign up pop up and no discussion. I'm not handing over my info till I see what kind of discussion is happening. I get frustrated and then I'm off to Motley Fooll CAPS or Stockhouse.
Naming things was even harder when filenames were restricted to five characters or less.

That's why they had to name it Forth.
Yep, Gundo is inspired by histwin. I got the "playback" idea from it.

Histwin only seems to show the "leaves" of the undo tree, much like :undolist. For visual people like me I just can't grok that as well as seeing it all drawn out.
"I grew up in a state that had charter school mania, and it was always something like, some weird guy with a master's degree had a boner for Medieval Literature and his interpretation of the Origins of the University, so he'd start a charter school focused on Rhetoric, Sums and Figures, Swordsmanship, and Court Jesting."

I'm laughing because that sentence instantly reminded me of pg because of this:

http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html

(Which is actually one of my favorite pg essays, but it's still kind of funny.)
any guess on number of applicants this years ?
1. They weren't showing a tablet, they were showing an idea. Nobody can build that thing at a reasonable price with technology that is available in the next two years.

2. IMO, they are making a long bet on C# and .Net that may pay of huge. C# in particular is a bit to programming languages what Apple is to computing devices: nothing really new, but really nicely packaged. Having said that, their focus on backwards compatibility doesn't help in keeping things nice. For example, .Net has how at least 3 XML serialization technologies, all with their own set of problems.
Thanks for that marathon monks link, it was a great read. Is it weird that I want to do that now?
Seconded. Not only that, but the point about topics not being interesting floored me. There's a serendipity in conversation that you rarely get from other places; you're exposed to things you might never find out about otherwise. I'd far rather be a well-rounded person than a single-minded one with a narrow focus. And conversely, I'd rather spend time with that kind of person, too.

Simply put, the author doesn't seem to put much value in other people. That's not something I can get behind.
I'm undecided on this issue but slightly biased towards public schools (my mom is a public school teacher, I send my kids to public schools --- but because of where I live, my kids are going to de facto private school). I found this critique pretty devastating, and would be interested in seeing if any HN'ers can knock it down.

Here are (I believe all) of the factual arguments presented in the article:

* The film admits only 20% of charter schools gets "amazing results". In reality, the huge study that stat comes from says only 17% of charters beat public schools, 46% generate comparable results, and 37% are worse.

* The film higlights successes but ignores chains of charters with newsworthy mismanagement scandals (real estate scams, embezzlement, religious indoctrination, $300-400k salaries to teach small student bodies).

* Since test scores are what determines the perceived value of a charter, some charters expel students just before testing days or have high student turnover, particularly with low-performing students.

* The NAEP test the movie relies on for the claim that 70% of 8th graders can't read at grade level says nothing of the sort; the movie distorts the results so that any student scoring less than a B is "below grade level", when in fact only 25% are below C, not 70%. The author of the article was a member of the NAEP governing board.

* One of the film's heroes, Geoffrey Canada, runs a organization managing two (2) charter schools that is funded to the tune of $200MM, and is paid $400,000; the author of the article is an admirer, but implies that no public school system is similarly well equipped.

* In 2010 state tests, 60% of Canada's 4th graders were below "proficient". Canada also expelled his entire first middle school class because their scores were too low, which the movie didn't note.

* Another charter the movie celebrates, Green Dot's Locke High, took $15MM in funding and got only tiny improvements; only 15% of its students are now proficient in English, up from 13.7%; math rose from 4 to 6.7%.

* Another charter, SEED in DC, is successful, but spends 3 times what the average public school spends ($35,000 per student).

* Studies appear to show that teacher quality --- while the most important factor within a school --- accounts for only 10-20% of outcomes, while non-school factors account for almost 60% of the outcome.

* Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of schools in general, but 77% of them rate their own school A or B.

* Finland, the movie's model school system, is entirely unionized, has much lower poverty, and has a stronger social safety net than the US.

* While the movie points out that only 0.04% of teachers ever lose their certificate, it omits the fact that 50% of new teachers leave the profession within 5 years, mostly because of working conditions.
Normally I won't take the bait on comments like this. But today my filter isn't working so well...

There are tons of researchers (the people this software is targeted towards) inside for-profit pharmaceutical companies who spend their entire lives trying to advance healthcare. I'm not saying everyone who works at a pharma is an automatic saint, far from it. But, people who work on the research side are genuinely motivated by the desire to make the world a better place and cure disease. It's a good thing too, because the work on its own sucks. You spend months or even years on something promising, only to find out it's a failure for reasons completely unknown to you (biology is a fickle thing). Then you pick up, and go back to the drawing board. If you're exceedingly lucky, maybe one or two things you've worked on in your career will become an actual drug. If it weren't for the knowledge that your work might actually help someone some day, it would be awfully hard to get out of bed in the morning.
Health Care and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Yeah, if I was an employer (and I have been from time to time) I'd probably read this, smile wryly, and move on. But someone else might not.

I don't have a problem with the guy asserting that he can pick up new technologies quickly, as long as he expects he will only be offered entry-level positions. You do not write Python the way Shakespeare wrote prose after six months.

I do however have problem with him not providing anything to back up his assertion. But he probably figures in a tight job market he needs to find a way to stand out, and this is it.
The Evolution of the Geek
Any HN'ers out there using this stuff? Bioinformatics has always had a pretty heavy bias toward *nix, so I'd be curious to know if the MS stuff is any good.
Once you know one language well, many of the skills transfer. Besides, he states he is looking for an ENTRY level position and fully realizes he's not a guru.
"You don't need to know the future. You just need to hear the rumor before everyone else does."

Good luck with that.

"How can you possibly be more in "the know" than they are?"

That's exactly my point. Also, if you do have privileged information, that's illegal.
The 16 most annoying hotel features for the road warrior
I totally don't get why talking about topics beyond work isn't valuable. Okay, maybe not in an immediate how-will-I-solve-these-problems sense, but in terms of networking, emotional well-being, knowledge about the world and interpersonal skills / relationships, it's vital (as well as being kind of fun). Thinking long-term, being social is the way to go.
tl;dr: "I was convinced to go to law school by empty promises of a fulfilling and remunerative career"

I've got no sympathy for this guy. I challenge him to come up an actual promise by the Law School that he'd have a "fulfilling and remunerative career". Oh, sure, they might have published starting salary statistics from recent years, but how is this different from any other case where you assume good times last forever? Did you found a dot com in late 1999? Did you buy a house in 2006? Did you invest in silver in early 1980? In fact, in this case, he's even better off that the people who made these other investments, because it's entirely up to him what he does with this education. John Cleese and John Chambers both have law degrees, but were never hired by a big name law firms.
Auto Transport Pomona, Shipanycar
I think this is just a difference in terminology -- I don't think of this as memorizing, but rather as learning. When I think of memorizing, I think of someone going through a pile of flash cards or something and repeating them over and over again until their contents are a list of facts crammed into the person's head.

That said, we're saying the same thing -- rote memorization without applied knowledge isn't worth anything. Learning by doing is the way to go.
This sounds like a generally positive, inclusive sort of resolution, but what greater context does it take place in? I admittedly don't know much about what being a Debian Developer means.
(disclaimer: I work there) Actually, the AT&T research labs are alive and well:

http://www.research.att.com

Also, Bell Labs went to Lucent when AT&T split, not because of SBC.
For more of this sort of thing:

http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Delight-Henry-S-Warren/dp/0201...

which should be on every serious programmers bookshelf.
Take a look, also, at the wonderful MIT HackMem report. Its Wikipedia entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAKMEM, has pointers to online versions. The venerable PDP-10's influence shows, but there's lots of cool stuff there.

Knuth's Art of Computer Programming,read closely, occasionally divulges clever hacks, particularly in the exercises.
My advice: get Ubuntu or Debian, and help fix bugs. Report them, investigate them, discuss them with the developers. Propose improvements, with patches. Don't get bent out of shape if they reject your ideas, but try and learn from it.
That's a rough beat. Way to keep at it... I found it interesting to hear how you're frustrated with recruiters not calling you back but then you're not going to respond to every job offer you receive. I'd rethink that. Don't close doors. Also, I didn't notice a mention of networking to find opportunities. Did you talk to your friends that landed jobs for introductions? Best of luck.
Some more anecdotal evidence, my company (not mine; http://getglue.com) actually originally launched solely as a Firefox extension (primarily distributed through Firefox AMO).

This actually played some role in my decision in taking the job- this was still in 2008, when ignoring IE was essentially almost never an option. Better, was that the extension views were developed in CSS- so I was free to explore CSS3 much earlier in live projects.

More timely, even as a website we still have very little focus on supporting IE users.

IE makes up for < 7% of our total visitors, and IE6 only 4% of that. More interestingly, a lot of our visitors now come through consumer markets like HBO and Fox. I think the numbers are surprisingly low for IE already; but considering our market is no longer a techie market (quite the opposite), the numbers are somewhat more interesting.

That all said, I think this speaks true to the title of the article. It's just a careful decision you need to make- but fortunately not one that is impossible to solve quickly, should you make the wrong one.
Or, the opposite is true, and we need to spend wildly more to offset the fact that public policy can't fix the non-school factors at play. The average school apparently spends ~100k per student from k - 8. What's the lifetime dollar value of having someone complete high school with grade-level performance, as opposed to having the system give up on them? The average cost per year of keeping someone in prison is apparently $22000.
10 Powerful Tips to Leverage Content Theft
This is going to be the best operating system ever
I didn't assume it was a self-post. No worries.
Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (Late October / Early November 2010 Edition)
Please lead with the positions' locations, whether telecommuting is an option, and also if you're open to contract/part-time work (for those of us who like side jobs).
It's nice to hear that CoffeeScript is nearing a 1.0 release very soon now. Not that the API changes all too often, but a 1.0 release signals that the language is ready for prime-time to both developers and to book publishers.
Ditto. I use Opera for almost everything, but I use Chrome for Facebook and Google Maps.
We did this for our app, quplo, which is still in public beta as we figure out payment (like these guys describe). Our app involves some complicated javascript for a syntax highlighted, code completion-supporting HTML editor. Common sense indicated it wouldn't be a good idea to invest lots of time making things work in IE when a) Analytics showed less than 2% IE visitors, b) our target audience is web designers and developers who by and large don't use IE as their preferred browser, and c) the app is an enclosed environment where it's okay to say "use these browsers for the app".

So what to take away from this? If you're a startup, you should be prioritising, not obsessing. And high on the list is making money, not making a marginal number of users happy, handling politics, or premature optimisation (eg. writing code that works across all browsers).

One thing we messed up on: not creating a kick-ass UX on Mac from day 1. We fixed it in the meantime, but we're developers using Windows, and a significant portion of our userbase is designers on Macs. So Safari, Firefox, Chrome and especially things like Mac font rendering and UI controls needed to be lickety-split.
What fact?

The fact that apple have the most popular ecosystem out there with nothing even close.

The fact that everyone knows how to install an app on the iphone.

The fact that the iPhone helped introduce the idea of an application to the general consumer.

The fact that the iPhone just works and is consistently thought through, the UI is easy to use.

The fact that apple not anyone else solved the GUI for touch screens.

iPod, iPhone, iPad what can I say they all resolve around the most lucrative ecoystem that exist besides the internet itself.

The fact that when you want to write for iPhone you write one an distribute to all devices.

Want to write for Android? Good luck. Ask Tweetdeck how many versions they had to develop to get out on as many android versions as possible.

I am not even talking about the number of apps that each store have.

I am talking about the in my mind pretty simple fact that an android with only one market and one system to develop to is better for both the the consumer and developer than 3 different markets and who knows how many permutations of the android platform that exist out there today.
Q&A with Swipely Founder & CEO - Angus Davis
I worked for Opera from the start of 2007 until the start of this year, (webapps team). It's really fun seeing the company from the outside again, great people, great place to work, great product; I just wish Norway suited me better.

My main hope for Opera 11 is that they focus more on their Mac version.
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