skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Court Orders Google To Reveal Commenter Identity
The next big language
Different founder personalities choose the city or valley. Funky hipsters want to live in the city, head-down coders choose the valley, and many are pulled both ways and have to make a hard choice. Rather than the geography causing cliques, I think personality types determine both geography and friendships.
I'm not sure that worked terribly well the last time the US/UK did that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iran#Mohammad-Reza_S...
It will be interesting to see what comes of these grants.

I feel that the companies that were successful when their founders dropped out of school were driven by a founder who believed so intently and was committed to his idea that he was willing to drop out and pursue it despite the lack of incentive to do so. Instead of the alternative where a halfway decent guy who just isn't that happy at school goes off to pursue some startup because someone gave him a decent amount of money which i suspect will end in failure almost all the time.
Well, in the modern world even school kids may have cancer - my daughter has a classmate who went through it, and that's primary school. I don't know the details though about type of cancer etc.

But those cultures didn't have cancer, din't have obesity, diabetes, heart disease ... I don't even know what diseases they died from.

I do not have the book "Cancer, Disease of Civilisation" and the blog post does not tell about the age. Here's the compilation of two other blog entries from the same blog:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-among-i...

One of these physicians was captain George B. Leavitt. He actively searched for cancer among the traditionally-living Inuit from 1885 to 1907. Along with his staff, he performed 50,000 examinations a year for the first 15 years, and 25,000 a year thereafter. He did not find a single case of cancer. At the same time, he was regularly diagnosing cancers among the crews of whaling ships and other Westernized populations. It's important to note two relevant facts about Inuit culture: first, their habit of going shirtless indoors. This would make visual inspection for external cancers very easy. Second, the Inuit generally had great faith in Western doctors and would consult them even for minor problems. Therefore, doctors in the arctic had ample opportunity to inspect them for cancer.

This entry does not mention lifespan, but the other one does:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/mortality-and-...

Excluding infant mortality, about 25% of their population lived past 60. Based on these data, the approximate life expectancy (excluding infant mortality) of this Inuit population was 43.5 years. It's possible that life expectancy would have been higher before contact with the Russians, since they introduced a number of nasty diseases to which the Inuit were not resistant.

I do not have data at hand about cancer rates in the western world by age, but my guess would be that it's not so uncommon at the age of 60+.
No, it's not contrived - it's what people actually do. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Of course, but that's not a year one problem. If I say how much energy does a 10kg rock gain falling 50m in a 1G gravity field you can just solve it. However, when handed a simple programming problem the natural instinct is to ask for just a little more information.

I find many programmers have issues quickly context switching between thinking about the problem, discovering what the constraints are, coding a solution, and then debugging that solution. Ask them to do it on a blackboard under a little pressure and they can't do it. The problem is the better programmers often do worse in these situations because they think about more things at each step so they need to keep purging more ideas.
I've always thought of dynamic programming as memoized computations + ordering. Maybe memoization isn't quite as efficient as dynamic programming but it feels like it is halfway there.
Product video production tips
oh snap...
and we all used to hate on Microsoft so much, but they never 'pulled' a windows app
Working on it to make the site look less like a place with ads and to improve the design (this should solve the problem).
Stories like this blow my mind and make me very thankful to live in a free country.

I don't care what anybody says about being ethnocentric and relativistic morals and "it's their country, their rules". This country has absurd rules and it's just wrong.

Letters aren't going to do anything, in countries like Iran they arrest their own citizens for speaking out, I can't see non citizens having any effect at all.
Android 4.0 Codenamed "Ice-Cream"
Not my site, but I'll show my friend (the creator of appharbour) this thread :)
is there a need for jar2:3 at line 12 ?
So how is this "challenge" more interesting than thousands of problems on SPOJ, UVA, topcoder or project Euler?
Good if it works out like that. But what's the point of linking the grant to dropping out?
A 10% shot at most jobs is not worth 1 day of PTO.
I think that fear is the wrong way of describing it. I might be frustrated or annoyed by undocumented spaghetti code, or be puzzled about some aspect of a project, but I wouldn't describe this in terms of fear. If software development made me frightened I would have given up with it at an early age.
Interesting -- thanks for the perspective!

Would it be fair to say that valley startups are more likely to tackle hard technical problems while city startups are more likely to tackle hard non-technical (business, marketing, etc.) problems?
Microsoft versus Java [Romanian Style]
To where? If you think the crappy states lets anyone in, do some research.
Thanks for streaming the event
Honestly, I wish I were on the other end of this. I wonder how many solutions I could find test cases to break even assuming I play nice and allow only positive integers?

Yes, I really did imagine all kinds of cases involving zero time and negative time rules (or having zero time to produce anything) and tried to conform them to the spec, but most of them conflict with the output requirements. Not all, though...
Here is what I did for myself.

9:30 Andy Bechtolsheim
Founder Arista Networks; Founder, Sun Microsystems
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271978319
0:02:00
(not full)

10:00 Paul Graham
Partner, Y Combinator; Founder, Viaweb
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271983983
0:00:00

10:30 Andrew Mason
Founder, Groupon
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271983983
0:29:30

11:00 Break

11:30 Tom Preston-Werner
Founder, GitHub
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271992324
0:03:20

12:00 Greg McAdoo
Partner, Sequoia Capital
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271992324
0:36:00

12:30 Reid Hoffman
Partner, Greylock; Founder, LinkedIn
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271992324
1:04:00

12:55 Lunch

2:30 Ron Conway
Partner, SV Angel
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272002787
0:01:00

3:00 Adam D'Angelo
Founder, Quora
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272002787
0:40:00

3:30 Dalton Caldwell
Founder, Picplz; Founder, Imeem
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272002787
1:08:30

3:55 Break

4:15 Mark Zuckerberg
Founder, Facebook
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272002787
1:50:30
and
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272007200

4:45 Brian Chesky
Founder, Airbnb
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272007200
0:23:00
An excellent example of a clear but entertaining README.
Looking into Unbounce right away.
We've been so busy calibrating the engine, that we hadn't had time to do a proper paint job...
What if it turns out you're a lousy entrepreneur and still want to solve hard problems? Without a degree, you're forced to be an entrepreneur. They won't employ you to work on interesting problems without any kind of formal education. Not having a PhD isn't quite the same.
I don't think the algorithm you're proposing works, although that was my first idea as well. And I don't a priori see why the pair (x,y) would have to be unique (but it does appear to be, even if instead of choosing x and y in 0..5 you choose from all natural numbers).
The goal is not to illustrate the best algorithm known to researchers, but simply to demonstrate that the candidate can explain the obvious algorithm and get reasonably close to correctly implementing it. Primes is an easy problem to explain and to solve (the naive way), but I wouldn't ask such a commonplace problem because a sub-par candidate may have faced it before and partly memorized the answer.
So basically $100k for some teens to build a bunch of RoR CRUD sites.

And
""Our world needs more breakthrough technologies,” said Thiel. "From Facebook to SpaceX to Halcyon Molecular, some of the world's most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn't wait until graduation. "

Don't know about the other companies beside Facebook, but it seems that Facebook doesn't belong on that list of "breakthrough technologies"
Perhaps I should mention that we really need a good designer. If anyone is or knows somebody, feel free to write me (my email address is my username at Gmail).
Live Watch: Scream Awards 2010
Doesn't seem like there is. Also, is my count wrong, or does that only produce 31 white balls? It's still more than the 29, though.
Well he was already in Canada... He was arrested while "visiting Iran".
I agree. It definitely seems as though the author is working from their own design intuition rather than data.

On a side note, what effect do you think design has on the decision between pricing plans compared to the decision to buy the product at all?

When I'm buying software I think, "Ok, I'm going to need x user accounts, xx of this feature, what's the cheapest plan that has that".

I dont think many people that need 2 users would go straight to a 10 user plan if there is a 3 user plan.
Is the MIPS architecture still seeing continuing development the way ARM is? After Sony stopped using them with the PS3, I stopped paying attention and had begun to write them off.
The section under "Submission Directions" is exactly the same as the directions here: http://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php verbatim even down to the exact version numbers.

Is there some standard testing package that these are both using? Otherwise it seems fishy.
It is all about risk/reward - I would assume that nobody hands out $100K without a large degree of due diligence. So by crossing that hurdle you probably have gained enough of a reputation that would equal (or exceed) the value of a CS degree.

I would also guess that most universities would allow you to put your course of hold for a year or two - keeping your options open.

I would also dispute the question about whether you need a degree (or even a higher degree) to work on "hard problems" - to me, basic aptitude, ability to self learn and sheer drive are far more important than academic qualifications of any kind. The only area where higher degrees are an absolute requirement being a few exceptionally picky employers and academia itself.
Ask HN: Support, uptime and pricing in a saas business?
I have a couple of questions regarding a saas-business. The application is a solution for companies in the real estate market which hopefully will become a full-featured business solutions for this market (for small-sized companies).

The point is: I am a student and I am afraid.
Support:
How can I handle support when I am alone in a company and not available for support whole days? How do you, in my situation or similar, support your customers? I think its a quite essential part in this field..

Uptime:
This kind of business lies in the web and hopefully will become critial for the customers, in the way that they really rely on the application. How can I avoid getting hacked and leak information? How can I ensure that my uptime really is close to a const figure?

Pricing:
Since I don't highly believe in myself regarding the support and uptime, this is the point where I doubt the most. If I lower the prices a lot, it will still be a valuable service even though the support is bad. But then again, if I lower my prices, I will never be able to get a good support either. Moment 22 :|

Now is your time to shine and help me fellas =)
Ask HN: Your experiences/tips with the paleo diet?
Have you tried it?

Could you stick with it?

How did you find it?
Here's something we actually could do (not that any of us will do it. Beyond upvoting and a bit of commenting on freedom/politics, no one is going to lift a finger, me included). Find the name of someone who holds power on this decision (we'd need somebody to help us with this). Then Google bomb their name (in English/Arabic/Farsi) to the top of Google with a site about the case and leave an open end for them to decide - did they condemn a man to death, or show clemency and release him?
That's a similar puzzle. Maybe it's because I solved the homework puzzle first, but the blue eyes puzzle is much much easier. You might want to try to solve that first ;)

The cool thing about the blue eyes puzzle is that you can solve it without a computer or pen and paper.
Send Free Online Fax by using efax
efax is one of the oldest free online fax service providers. It was started in the year 1995. Efax is one of the best free online fax service providers in the market and one of the largest stake holders of this market. One can login to its
I think it's Norwegian not Romanian, see: http://jz10.java.no/java-4-ever-trailer.html

Regardless, it was pretty funny.
same here :D Win 7 64, chrome 6
Some A/B testing of 'odd pricing' (e.g. 39.95 vs 39.99) for software can be seen here http://www.alwinhoogerdijk.com/2009/05/28/odd-pricing-95-vs-...
Ask HN: How do you find domain name for your startup?
How do you come up with interesting names for your startup to find domain name ?
On the other hand, taking an easy but useless action doesn't engender the fast-track to change, either-- it only gives a sense of complacency and self-satisfaction.
Well I think you need to give great support when you're starting up because you need good feedback from your users. A good way to get feedback is through the support process.

I think a low price and not offering support is not a good way to go. I would try and find a way around not being able to offer support for whole days.
Thanks, this was an amazing event to follow, even only the stream. The chatbox action was also interesting at times, except for the inevitable trolls. Good job Justin.tv
again. do not listen to outliers. they are outliers. if you want success in a field, listen to the stories of the average successful person in that field.
>When you live somewhere, you play by the rules of that country

>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Notice that it doesn't say all Americans are created equal or free, but all people. Iran has no right to trample on inalienable rights.
Integer linear programming!
If you want to see the arguments in black text on white paper, you could do worse than buy the book, The Corporation - by Joel Bakan.

It's a great read. I thought the film was very good.
Baby boomers to make the ultimate fix for future economic woes?
Having seen the film and read the book I can say it's definitely worth a watch.

It's a documentary that asks, "If a corporation were a person, what type of person would it be?"

It then follows through on the history of corporate personhood, has interviews with capitalists and anticapitalists and concludes that if a corporation were a person it would be a psychopath, concerned only with the acquisition of power and money.

It's a good film, it's worth a watch especially if you're not familiar with the concepts of corporate personhood.
A Terra Plana store opened up near me so I went in to try the vibro barefoot shoes, since I needed new footwear.

I bought a pair as soon as I tried them on because they are so immensly comfortable; it feels less like a shoe and more like a snug, high-tech sock. Any health benefits are a bonus. (It may have improved my posture slightly, but I never paid attention to this before so can't be sure)
Did you just try to assert that the United States Declaration of independence should apply to all of humanity?

Mind. Blown.
I would say that fragmentation problem is not that big of a problem in general. It should be handled much like iOS is handling in basically they are not allowing iphone 3G phones and earlier not to have certain features, and ability to download apps.. which is essentially the same thing. I have a 3G and theres more and more apps that I'm unable to download, and I don't have access to a lot of features in the latest iOS.
> I simply said that an OS is made to handle an actual real computer, and it's written that way. It has nothing to do with C, it has to do with hardware.

This is one of the most widespread and major misunderstanding about computers. Computer science is not about computers; Just like astronomy is not about telescopes (Dijkstra).

The only thing that really matter about computers is that they are communicating Turing-complete machines. Every communicating Turing-complete hardware on the planet is therefore the same, modulo the necessary emulation layer (performance is becoming secondary, so let's pretend it's not a problem).

What we want as humans is communicating Turing-complete machines that are easy to use. That's a fact about us, not about hardware. Therefore, OS APIs should depend on us, not on hardware. Having an OS whose API is influenced by the actual hardware is a pity. Making an OS whose API is influenced by the actual hardware is a shame.
Why Men and Women Can't Be "Just Friends."
Neanderthink: Desperation With a Difference
There is a kernel of truth in this, like in most hasty generalizations. We definitely fall in the "hard choice" category.

From our Mountain View house we, too, made fun of San Francisco "funky hipsters". Now that we're in the city, we realize that, surprise! We're not the only head-down coders in town.
We have 5 from the start.

Start producing 4 more (2 jars) at timestep 1.

Start producing 4 more at timestep 6.

Start producing 22 more at timestep 12.

22 + 4 + 4 + 5 = 35
The New Sex Scorecard
I found that adopting the native idioms meant never having to notice the 1- based indexing. Everything is a hash table, and if you find yourself using literal numeric keys, there's probably a nicer way to do it.

The lua users wiki is full of interesting ideas for tackling the basics in ways that leverage lua's simple flexibility.
You're right, it's not Romanian.

And this was on hn before:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1460896
Short of overthrowing the government, you could try to get Amnesty to add him to their letter writing campaign, they have a pretty decent track record of saving people and they already have more people writing letters now than you could ever get on HN.
Haven't tried the app but looking at the side I have a couple of thoughts.

You're going to have a mine of user-generated content. Sync the recipes with a server and let people publish their recipes as well as comment on them. Make the recipes public and add a link to the iPad app on every Internet web page. Implement a scoring system. Give people points for publishing their recipes with multipliers based on comments/upvotes to encourage sharing.

Allow people to put in the ingredients they have and give them a selection of dishes with options to have dishes that include those ingredients, or dishes that only have those ingredients. Sync the details of what ingredients people have, anonymise it - you can sell this.

Use the geo-location capability to find nearby supermarkets. Add in the capapbility to get online vouchers for discounts from supermarkets. Again, you can charge the supermarkets to reach your customers if you have enough.
Yes, or at least the principles on which it was based.

And I am not an America, so this is not a nationalism issue.
It's not the best algorithm known to researchers. It's the best algorithm known to people who took any course in number theory or a higher level computer science course that covered approximation algorithms. This is used in actual applications like crypto (RSA) frequently.

It is exactly like asking an applicant to sort an array and expecting the naive bubble sort response to check they can develop and implement a naive algorithm for searching. It says you can brute force a solution with a for loop. It says nothing about how well you understand advanced data structures, recursion, algorithmic analysis, language features, domain specific knowledge, program design and structure, or knowing when you you're out of your league and should google the best approach. It quizzes chapter 3 of any intro programming book and basic division in a situation where you would never use it.

Ask them about event handling or something useful like hash tables or linked lists or version control systems. Any math major can answer this question easily without knowing much beyond for loops and arrays. It tells you almost nothing about their programming skills. I was math/cs with grad school in math and every math major I know could do this. Most of them have no idea how to code. I know some great developers who would struggle and fail because they typically don't use this math in their job and have forgotten it. They work at some of the top companies out there (which are frequently discussed on this webpage).
Not too interested in selling it. I've turned down 5-figure offers.
It has nothing to do with indexing memory--it has to do with 1 based arrays causing "+1" and "-1" to be sprinkled all oever the place. I find Dykstra's argument to be compelling: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EW...
I tested it with my GV US number and it is working very well. Great job. Too bad it doesn't work on iPad because of the flash applet. (Java wouldn'd help either) But that's nothing you can do something about.
Another reason to downvote tl;dr comments is that such a comment is simply not up to the quality level expected at HN. If you can't be bothered to read the original article & post a thoughtful comment, simply don't comment.
Thanks another great year at Startup School. The Airbnb after hours was good too.
Yes, it's just the link that is from a romanian site.
That is entirely possible. I can tell if someone doesn't know perl or python because they write for loops like a C coder instead of looping over containers. So I can believe that you don't come in contact with that detail very often.

It just bugs me that such an obvious wart exists in an otherwise very clean language.
I "highlighted" (aka. trimmed and titled) my favorite talks here, this might be a little more convenient: http://www.justin.tv/c3oorg/videos
Video on Steve Jobs personality
Sorry,, modded you down accidentally. Totally agree about moonlight, silver light content won't even point your browser to moonlight plugin on linux.
That's not a bad idea.

I was hoping that xer0x, being a friend of Saeed, could point us in the right direction. Perhaps his family could use some donations to hire lawyers, experts or whatever else is needed.
you should be using a real debugger anyway

I know that I should, and if you know a "real" debugger that works under IE7 (and preferably IE6) that is more powerful than print debugging I'd love to hear about it.
What else would you call the emotion that paralizes you into inaction?

Because that's what we're talking about here. The developer is unable to get started or continue because they are unable to take the next step. They are afraid to get it wrong.

The usual solution to this that I've heard is Research. Learn more about what you are trying to do so that you can eliminate the fear.

The solution I used when I was learning to program was to just jump in and start trying things. It's very time-consuming and more than a little stressful, but it works.

At any rate, ANY action is better than inaction when faced with programmer fear.
Quick edit note, its Robert Scoble, not Scobler. Great writeup altogether.