skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is nothing wrong with this comment. The objections he raises are perfectly valid. Yes, it could have gone dreadfully wrong. In this instance, it didn't, and it is a credit to the engineer's skill that it worked. For many other people however, it would definitely be a bad idea to try.

Yes, it's great that he did it, and that he took fast action to save a life. It really is; it's a great story! But a down-to-earth comment is not worth downmodding over; it is neither wrong nor irrelevant.
I read somewhere that some ISPs bandwidth monitoring is based on self reporting. Meaning that your modem actually sends out your usage data. It might be worth looking into for academic purposes.
There is a lot of overlap between the HN community and the YC community, largely due to PG's leadership role in both; but of the people on HN only a very small minority have been through YC.

Welcome! You'll learn pretty quickly what sort of stories get voted up and which ones get killed by the editors; let that be your guide to content.
My college would sponsor students' travel expenses to go and do volunteer work at a major game dev conference (if you volunteered, you'd get to see it for free). The problem was that the sponsorship only covered game dev majors. So I quickly declared a double major. Bonus perks include access to lab with the best computers on campus. I need to remember to drop it before I graduate ... Too bad I was busy with other work and never did end up going to the conference.
A rewrite:

"Personally, I find no use in people with simple technical skills. Not even if they can program a time machine into a Commodore 64."

"This is because I'm at an advantage. I can easily learn or hire whatever technical skills they have. Things such as coding, databases, server architectures are trade skills and basically a commodity. These mechanical skills are MUCH easier to do or find than imagining a valuable product, finding a market and customers, selling the product, and building a business."

Etc, etc. Undervaluing the contributions of other fields such as sales or marketing is the mark of someone with little real-world battle scars, regardless of the direction of the contempt vector.

Unless this was satire, in which case Bravo.
That's only really a problem if all that energy is transferred to another object (near) instantaneously - for instance if the vehicle hits a stationary object like a car waiting at an intersection.

Colliding at a relative speed of only a few miles per hour and then hitting the brakes allowed Innes to dissipate that energy in a more controlled way. Risky, certainly, but I don't think it's as risky as you think it is.

edit: as an analogy, think about landing a spaceship on a meteorite - it may be moving fast enough to wipe out civilisation as we know it if it hit Earth, but you could still safely stand on its surface. Relative velocity is key.
I feel similarly constrained when traveling and using my limited bandwidth 3G card. I did the following:

* Installed Squid locally - This has the benefit of allowing all your browsers to share one cache.

* Run AdBlock in Firefox - This causes advertisements to not download. The latest AdBlock in Chrome also stops the downloads (this wasn't always the case)

* Run Flashblock - Whitelist sites where you need to see flash.

* Rarely I'll disable images to view sites that I know are wasteful of bandwidth

* Use elinks, rather than lynx. elinks feels much more user friendly.

My current machine runs OSX and I used brew to install squid/elinks.
We have people from all walks of life here, from Silicon Valley startups in the ramen-munching phase to CEOs at companies with eight figures of revenues to a wide, wide assortment of folks with an interest in business and/or technology. Folks are generally pretty friendly and interesting things about non-YC companies get voted up all the time. Don't feel the need to be quiet just because you're not in YC.
I use a standalone ThinkPad keyboard (complete w/ pointer nub) and find it very comfortable. It's also nice and compact since it doesn't include a number pad.
That is kind of non-sequitur
Did you try Django-nonrel? It supports a lot of Django features out of the box (even the admin). Also, it makes it a lot easier to move somewhere else. You might not be able to switch to SQL, but you can at least switch to MongoDB or some other NoSQL database.
And the reverse is that if there is a line to the women's bathroom, use the men's.

I never understood the segregated bathroom idea.
If my math is right, the kinentic energy of 2 ton vehicle going 40 MPH is roughly equivalent to 70kg of TNT.

You're off by a factor of 1000. It's 62.9 grams of TNT:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%280.5+*+%2840+mph%29%5E2+*+2...
Just start posting. If you get a lot of downvotes, try to figure out what you are doing wrong. Learn as you go. You'll be fine.
I pray I never fear to make the decision to save someone's life, all risks reasonably considered.

I have been in a similar situation, and I can tell you: your mettle is tested. You have a tiny amount of time to make a decision, so little that it almost comes down to your instincts. You have enough time to make an assessment of what kind of fallout is about to occur for all parties involved, and your main concern is, hopefully, to minimize the damage.

Sure, you may not have all the information at hand to make a perfect decision, and few of us can say to have any reliable precognitive power. You have what you always have in life: some information and the ability to make a choice.

Let not fear stay your hand. Fear kills as easily as a heart condition. It can always go horribly wrong, but when something appears by sound reasoning to be inevitable, will you have the courage to intervene?
The first comment on reddit talks about the fact that it is not a good choice for a desktop app. I agree, if you want a cross platform desktop app, Adobe AIR or one of the other is a far better choice.

If you are doing web that works in conjunction with a larger set of systems, it still has a good deal of advantages . Primo Facto being the availability of off the shelf libraries and integrations with other technologies.

As for JSP, JSF, Struts, tag-libs, tiles, velocity and all of the other Java web technologies, my personal opinion is they are the worst of the worst. I would say working in PHP is preferable to having to work in them and I do not like PHP at all. For me, I stopped using server side languages all together and write my UI with HTML / CSS / JavaScript. This gives me the ability to plug into any back end technology and allows me to keep the UI agnostic of any non-web technology (e.g. JSP, ASP, PHP).

In the way that we build web apps, Java works well, we use JAX-RS to expose REST services. and then use Java to integrate all of the back end pieces together. As a language it does leave a deal to be desired but I don't think that those lackings are a killer for it. I think the Java web stack was a killer and pushed a lot of people to PHP, as it was so intrusive as to be almost abusive to the designer. It favors the developer over the designer and it is evident in it's design.

The old web frameworks chose the designer or the developer this is evident in the various takes on how to do the web on the server. One only needs to look at the contrast between PHP and Java Web to see the evidence. You can see which one each favors pretty quickly.

The thing I like about the way we do things now, is we exploit the advantages of Javascript and it's rapid development capabilities that better suit a UX designer on the front end. As well as exploit the rigor that the back end developer needs with Java and transactions, guaranteed rollback, dead recipient and all of the other standards that guarantee that something does not fall through the crack.

Anyway, I don't see Java as dead I just think it will play a more out of sight role in the future but I think the same can be said for a lot of server side technologies. JavaScript web apps are growing by leaps and bounds, it has its detractors but most that actually try it, see the advantages pretty quickly and convert, it takes far less time to deliver and provides a superior result. It is the way that the industry is heading. I think that is a far more important decision than whether or not you use Java as your back end.
I used it for a project for a client. If you want directory submission (and mass directory submission isn't really that helpful), there are plenty of people who will do that as a service for you, and their average quality will be better than the Turkers.

In general, quality is about what you would expect from someone with 2 cents on the line. You pretty much have to write your own logic to pit Turkers against each other for every unit of finished output, or some of the abysmal ones will escape into whatever the project you're doing. (My client just filed 10 bugs against my data set caused by a) turning the floor for data quality down in options and then noticing b) "amusing" Turker understandings of the instructions.)

That said, a few hundred bucks saved me a week of work (and by implication, saved my client several thousand dollars) of having me have to hand-classify a few thousand datums. For their specific need, Turker accuracy was good enough.
ohMore.com - it's supposed to be a health tracker, but with a new kind of input. You write down everything in plain text and let the system behind it generate stats etc. Something like twitter, but with no followers.. Or like wolfram-alpha, but remembering the user.

Currently I'm gathering various kinds of inputs and trying to find some free time to implement first analysis (caffeine intake & spendings). I worked with bots & ai before, so hopefully I know what I'm doing :)

what do you think?
Search the net for one or another of the SmallC compilers (Ron Cain wrote the original one) published in Dr. Dobbs Journal. Later authors tarted up the original code adding more of C to the mix to make it more useful and managed to confuse things.

Chris Fraser and Dave Hanson's A Retargetable Compiler is another good example system with code to read and modify.

http://www.amazon.com/Retargetable-Compiler-Design-Implement...
I have the same thing here in Canada where people switch to French while I want the conversation to stay in English. I just say "Désolé je ne parle pas francais"(sorry I don't speak french) practiced to sound like broken french.
it's a little depressing that mr. stewart is considered a game changer. i've seen the daily show a number of times. i don't necessarily disagree with much of what he says.

but...his smirking, smug, winking schtick is tiresome, prepackaged drivel designed precisely for semi-disgruntled but well off (hi advertisers!), cnn-watching, barely left of center cube-dwellers.

you do realize that he has a team (a TEAM) of writers that come up with "his" stuff right? he's in the business of selling you. it's a show kids. howdy doody wasn't a _real_ cowboy either.
We were going to offer this at Fifobooks.com.

In fact, we were going to offer a feature whereby any ebook you bought on any device could be made to work on any other device.

Unfortunately, we found out from a legal review that the DMCA makes that a criminal offense (we thought we would be covered by a consumer's right to make personal archival copies of media they'd purchased, but that common-sense right is not part of the DMCA).

Anyway, the lend feature is really a step behind what AMZ should be doing: portability of ebooks from device to device.
But grip, feel and balance are very personal, individual things. What fits for one person may not work for another. Just like programming languages.
Meeting women hack:

I was bored one Saturday night and didn't have anything to do. I'd also struck out on a date recently and wanted to get some positive momentum going on that front.

There's a club near my neighborhood that always has a long line and is quite popular. So I got spiffed up, went over there, and waited ACROSS THE STREET from the club, watching the line.

About 10 minutes later, I see a gaggle of late 20s women round the corner and start heading toward the back of the line. One of them had a tiara on so this was clearly a bachelorette party. I speed walked to the back of the line myself and got just in front of the five of them.

I kept my back to them, stood squarely in their way, and held up the line on purpose while I looked at my phone. This got me a jab in the back from the bride-to-be. I turned with a big smile on my face to mess with her and her friends.

15 minutes later, one of them paid my cover to get into the club, I had a beer with them. Then I excused myself to "go meet up with some other friends" set up a lunch date with one and got her phone number. We went out a few days later. It didn't go anywhere, but next time I'm in that situation, I have a go-to spot now.
The role of gaming dynamics in user experience
OK look at this way. A cheap desktop CPU(4G RAM) costs > 200$. Say 4 VM instances on it (i really am not sure if that can give good performance).Electricity cost for this is 3c/hr. Bandwidth extra - say 1c/hr. Cooling is 3c/hr too.
So, if i need to recover the cost of this machine over 2 years (the average life of cheap off-the-shelf stuff) i would need to charge 7.25 cents/hr.
And i haven't even considered network equipment, maintenance, redundancies, etc.
Check out LiveCode (formerly known as Runtime Revolution), it is a cross platform language + IDE. It is a modern descendant of Apple HyperCard that is able to deploy Desktop Apps for Macs, Linux, Windows. Has an engine like PHP for Web Application development and soon will be available for iOS.

I've been using it for the past six years to do most of my development and am quite happy. I am able to develop on my macs and deploy anywhere.
And good on them, for making the most of what they had. I'm pretty sure I made the most of what I had, I just didn't grow up in a situation that encouraged hacking. At the age this kid (in the original story) is fixing bugs, I was experiencing the internet for the first time. I didn't grow up with computers at my disposal. My grade school used Apple IIe's, over 10 years after they came out. I didn't grow up around other kids who were interested in computers. I didn't even grow up around adults who were interested in computers. I didn't know that there was such a thing as being interested in computers until I was about this kid's age.

Rest assured, I started tinkering in 8th grade, and taught myself various programming languages all through high school. At this point, I made the most of what I had. I just didn't get the ridiculous head start that some kids are allowed.

This isn't to say that I'm not satisfied with the way my situation played out. I could have never used a computer until college, and I'd be going for a degree in History or something. It's so ingrained in my mind that I want to do this for the rest of my life that I can't imagine what I would do if I hadn't been interested in computers and programming. And I'm glad for this. And I'm glad that there are kids in high school who know way more than I do.

So when I say it makes me bitter, it is solely a cathartic response to something that doesn't really concern me. Would I like to have grown up in a better scenario? You bet your ass. Does it matter now? No. It's not a damn race.
Ask HN: How do you use Twitter to reach out to press?
I have heard from quite a few people that they use Twitter to reach out to press/writers for their startup. I would be interested to hear specific success stories of how people did this.

A few weeks ago I got into a small conversation with a tech writer from Fortune and an AP writer about a story on the front page of Yahoo. Neither of them follow me and nothing came of it, I am checking to see if I should blatantly ask for a story or try to continue the conversation or...
Not sure I agree with the author's assertion that matrix math should be avoided until absolutely necessary when learning graphics programming. I don't even agree with the idea that matrix math is particularly difficult.

When I was in university, we learned graphics programming by taking a linear algebra course or two. This was applied in a graphics course in which all students built their own software renderer, from top to bottom.

I have seen coworkers who never learned matrix math fumble with obfuscated code that could be replaced with one line of matrix operations. Several game companies I have interviewed at make linear algebra a very big part of their technical interview process. IMO if you are even remotely comfortable with math, learning matrix math is a HUGE benefit (maybe even a necessity) if you want a serious job as a game developer... the easiest way to get going with it is to just take a university-level intro to linear algebra course. That is all you need to understand the math underneath the entire rendering pipeline.
sorry forgot the url for LiveCode http://www.runrev.com
http://www.stealthmodewatch.com/

Just four days after I "soft-launched" by telling a few friends, the site wound up on TechCrunch (http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/04/stealth-mode-watch-another-...), and now I'm adding more features with the goal of creating a freemium/pro-upgrade business model.
I was searching for an OCX control that was missing, and after 15 minutes on yahoo and no useful download pages, someone suggested Google, which I had never heard of before.

I search, first result, OCX download. Never used anything since.
If you can get it to deliver the stats, I like it a lot and will be happy to promote it on my health site.
Ah, my bad. I think the I missed the joule/kilojoule conversion in the reference I was using.

Thanks for the correction!
My bf and I broke into a property we were staying in for the weekend after we accidentally locked ourselves out by unscrewing the entire door handle (it was an old house and in the country). We tried picking it before we cottoned onto this idea but neither of us had any picking skills... then we noticed that the screws for the door handle section were entirely on the outside of the door! Many high fives were had.
Also, don't let downvotes discourage you. It's an experience to get a downvote on HN. Just try figure out why, a lot of the time it's unwarranted, a lot of the time it isn't. Learn from it as Mz says ;)
I think it's hilarious that people are aspiring to 'retire' at 35 --> they must have picked the wrong occupation to begin with!

i can't imagine a day when i won't want to work on something that i'm passionate about --> will i ever really retire?
I like the Netbeans user experience, but at times I do wish it was a native app. The 'swinginess' of it can make it a bit of an eyesore.

IIRC, Netbeans was the first editor on the Mac that I found where I could just select and hit tab to indent the selection block without having to change any settings. All the other Mac apps I tried would just replace the text with a tab. Coming off of Windows text editors, it was a huge nuisance to me.
I think it was Cocteau, who asked to name France's greatest poet replied "Victor Hugo, helas." No question, if you're looking for rhymes, English gives you a tougher task. But if you think it's about the rhymes, maybe you should be doing something else.
X (which sucks in many ways) does have a security extension (which isolates X clients from each other); a lot of applications don't work with it, but this problem has been considered.

Frankly, I was expecting this to be a pro-DAC (SELinux/grsecurity/TrustedBSD) article.
And keep in mind that some downvotes are just a slip of the finger. I occasionally ask for feedback if I find it too baffling. I don't bother if I knew the odds were good that my sense of humor was leading me astray but I just had to say it anyway. :-P
I think iOS is a really tough problem for them - porting Mac Office to iOS would be a huge undertaking and, when finished, would be going up against Apple's iWork apps.

Apple's apps have massive advantages from being produced and sold by the hardware/software/store vendor (can't say I have a lot of sympathy for Microsoft's plight on this particular point!), a narrower feature focus (which is in many ways more desirable on touch platforms), and the mostly-impeccable Apple taste that Microsoft isn't known for.

In my opinion, though, the most difficult hurdle to overcome is that Apple sells the iWork apps for $9.99 a la carte. I can't imagine Microsoft selling Word/Excel/PowerPoint a la carte for even twice that price; they'd be reaping far lower margins than they're used to getting for Office. And I don't think they can do a heavily stripped-down version, either: it'd still take a ton of work and would be even more directly going up against iWork. What's the point?

But if I were the head of the Mac Business Unit, I wouldn't want to tell Ballmer that we have no plans whatsoever and are just going to cede what's been one of our very most profitable markets on what appears to be one of the most important platforms going forward.

And, of course, they're about to run into a somewhat similar issue with the Mac App Store: Mac iWork apps appear to be going a la carte with on-demand instant gratification on what I expect will be the primary channel for users to get Mac apps within a couple of years. Will be interesting to see Microsoft's response on that one, too... Mac Office has been a big cash cow for them.
And, sadly:

www.archive.org:

>0 pages found for http://google.com/search2001.html

>Sorry, no matches.
Freshman year in college.

Phase I: Got up very early and signed up for a (very overbooked) ME class that included lab time in the machine shop, something I knew would be a lot of fun (been hanging around and working in shops for years).

Turns out the class was a pre-req for a very popular ME class involving a robot competition that all the seniors wanted. Due to the overbooking, limited lab space, and the pre-req status, the prof decided to give preference to the upperclassman that didn't have any other chance to get the class in. As the only freshman, I was out. As were all the sophomores.

But I didn't pout or run off like the others did. I stayed long enough to take the first day shop tour, where I put phase II of my plan in play.

I'd been hanging around the lab/shop in question off and on for several weeks before and had gotten friendly with Marty, the shop instructor. When he saw me in the class tour and learned that I was out because of the overbooking, he offered to the prof to stretch the shop rules and let me in anyway (knowing that I wouldn't require much supervision).

Victory over the system as a freshman!

Needless to say, many of the sophomores came by and griped about it later. I'm not sure if they were mad at me for bending the rules, or themselves for not thinking of it first.
I'm the only user so far: http://bizzybe.com/bgrohman/
In The Fight Against Apple’s iAds, Google Plays The Cross-Platform Card
They are close to the real thing. But not quite. Multitouch events, for example, are hard to accomplish.
IntelliJ is faster than Netbeans. Download the free version and give it a try.

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download

Netbeans performance has gotten better in recent versions. Probably worth keeping an eye on the updates.
I know the last time there was a bloomberg video on hn a person associated with the company read the comments here. Is there any plan to expand the video options to something more palateable to the iPad/iPhone?
At the time I was not on the airline I was flying and because it was short hops I only made it to the right level near the end and although that allowed business class check in, that's a useless benefit since I was checking in on line. The high level status didn't allow access to the business class security line.
How casino typical, mathematically guaranteed to make a profit.