skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why Are There So Many Articles on Why There Are So Few Women in Tech?

Okay, I'm being facetious. But as a female entrepreneur and founder of a growing tech startup, I would much rather read about the women who ARE building tech companies than endless articles on the women who aren't (i.e. articles about why so many women don't work in tech or start tech companies, etc).

That's not to say such articles don't make some relevant points. But are they really helping or hindering the situation? Which kind of article would inspire more women to get into tech... another article lamenting the lack of women... or an inspiring article profiling some of the women who have, or are, building wonderful tech companies?

I know which kind fires me up (and of course I get inspired by ALL entrepreneurs - men and women).
Try it:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+your+favorite+c...
> What you're arguing here is that because there are some cases where pure Python is simply not fast enough, there is no point in thinking about performance at all in a Python program. It's a false dichotomy.

No, it's a very real dichotomy. If your complexities are right (e.g., you're not using a quadratic algorithm where you could be using a linearithmic algorithm) and Python still isn't fast enough for your task, switching from a hash table to a binary tree is not going to make it fast enough.
No but it does has insignificant white space - the language doesn't care but you are free to argue about it.
I should also build my brand and portfolio more. That, I think, is the biggest barrier next to geography.
The joy of having a virtual assistant.
I'LL HAVE WHAT SHE'S HAVING — didn't come close to fitting the puzzle, but it made I'LL seem an unlikely starting point. Because HAVE is the word that probably follows I'LL, and here, Burke was searching for a three-letter word.

Um, what?

I'll GET

I'll SEW

I'll AGE

I'll BAY

I'll BET

I'll DIG

I appreciate that none of these conjure memories of phrases off the top of my head, but the idea that "have" is often the only option following "I'll" is simply not true.

Let's face it, she's quick on her feet, smart, familiar with phrases and - most importantly - got lucky.
I'm pretty sure the phrase itself played a part here. Just imagine it - you've figured out something that fits using only one letter. You're probably feeling a little bit excited, but it's a bit of a gamble to guess - how many other phrases might fit? Do you have a good feeling about it...?
(And Ruby Summer of Code, organised by the community, after Google declined to sponsor any Ruby-related projects this year.)
Holy wow - thank you so much everyone for your feedback and comments! I leave for 2 hours (taking a tour of Zappos in Vegas, amazing and life changing btw) and this thing goes crazy!

I've enabled billing in appengine as I'm nearly over quota:

http://imgur.com/SN0WQ.png

If anyone has any tips to optimise my outgoing bandwidth it would be very much appreciated! Hopefully I caught it in time to avoid any real outages. I'll try and keep an eye on it though.

Ok - right off to trawl through the comments and responses and reply!

Thank you all :)
Ask HN: Analytics: Hosted or Custom for my publishing platform
I want to add analytics to my application (I basically host Facebook Pages for users), so users can see how many users viewed and or clicked on their links.

All I really want to do is log views and clicks and display this to my users in their publishing dashboard. I can't decide if I should write something like this from scratch, or if I should use a service like Mixpanel to do it for me.

What would you recommend and what would the pros and cons of either solution be?
I had considered doing this, but I get the feeling it wouldn't help should the company in question ask us to take it down. :)
Of course, who could forget the puzzle in the "Family Guy" parody of WOF:

G.
.UCK
Y.URSEL.

(Phrase)
> I'd strongly recommend anyone starting out developing something to find some kind of mentor. I wish I'd had someone I could have asked for help but in my case...

So is there already a hn spreadsheet up somewhere where one could find a, say, rails mentor? :)
Not to mention keeping an eye out for the movie. It would be awesome, and perhaps the commercial success of The Social Network will make it more likely.
I completely agree - annoying as hell when you click the logo and you just stay on the blog. Joined up thinking people!

Of course it helps that I built it all from scratch so integrating the blog was pretty easy :)
Depends on how useful the concepts are. If, say, macros or continuations save you a boatload of work and make your stuff easier, then "you language sucks" is a bit of a stretch.

Obviously there are different trade offs of learning/doing, depending on your tolerance for it and how long your things take to make. For an afternoon framework maybe not so much, but for a longer project learning a bit more upfront makes sense if it'll save you time down the track.
So I am split mentally. My rational side wants to push forward, to "release ASAP!", while my emotional side is trying to prevent it from happing.

Have you ever been skydiving, bungee jumping, or something similar (even public speaking for many)? Unless you have a disposition of steel, when you're at the point of jumping, your gut is screaming at you to not do it, even if you're rationally aware of the (low) risk and want to do it.

Comparing launching something on to the Internet to jumping out of a plane seems silly on the surface, but there are some strong parallels. The more you do it, the easier it gets (though in both cases it rarely becomes a breeze).

A common trick is to pull back on some features so you can launch with the "minimum viable product". And even if you do that, yes, it might fail. But at least you'll know sooner and can stop dragging your heels. Build up some velocity and even if your product/site is going in the wrong direction, you can more easily change course than by looping around procrastinating.

I say all this as a semi-reformed procrastinator. My fix is merely to keep up the velocity, even if it's in an unknown direction (examples - at the weekend I built http://tweetcanal.com/ - today I launched http://javascriptweekly.com/ - both procrastination activities of sorts but they fit into my plan). Changing course is easier than starting the engine in the first place.
speaking of google, is it just me or did they just introduce a brand new 'preview' button (with pop-up) beside their search results? that wasn't there before right?
Your webcam has a built-in server? Wow. Which is this?

I wasn't as interested in the security cam aspect as much as how much Mathematica can do with relatively little code, but I'd like to point out a couple of things about actually using this:

1) Not sure what kind of camera/server you have, but it would probably have to run this not yet released version of the Mathematica kernel, which you would have to buy. If that works, great.

2) If that doesn't work, there is another company called Vitamin D that has released software that works in a similar way. http://www.vitamindinc.com/ A single-camera version is free.

(Fans of On Intelligence author Jeff Hawkins might note that this technology is directly based off of his theory of how the mind works. Cool stuff.)
It also has gofmt which neatly takes care of pretty much any such arguments.
Agreed. As programmers we do not work in a vacuum. Our entire industry is built on abstractions. So unless you're programming in ASM you are definitely taking advantage of the work that others before you have done for free or that their company has released for free.
More mind-blowing, perhaps, but probably not that quickly off the tops of their heads.
Could someone who speaks Danish elaborate on the findings referenced on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg#DCSD_investi...

Though he was exonerated on technicalities, it doesn't look good. However, as I don't read Danish, I can't check any of the actual source material.
Twitter Chrome Extension
I installed an extension on Safari called Apperture or something - when you select any text it lets you bring up search results in a little sub-window, conveniently organized to put wikipedia at the top and videos in a separate tab and stuff. Search technology is changing, Google are no.1 at the moment but they need to be a moving target.
Fox.com now blocking Google TV devices | GTVHub.com
I find it fairly sheisty that Boxee Box does not support Netflix. Or rather that they are ambiguous about its support on Boxee Box. It's displayed plain as day on the introductory video on boxee.tv. There's been a lot of "we can't say anything until launch day" kind of stuff. Well, it's launch day and as far as I know there's no Netflix on Boxee Box, so just say it. I came within an inch of buying this thing until I read the fine print and realized that Netflix is only available on PC and Mac versions of Boxee due to use of Silverlight.

Other than, great software. If it ran Netflix and Hulu+ on the Box, it would be a no brainer for purcahse. But as it is, without Netflix, I have to wonder if Apple TV2 is the right way to go, esp. at 50% the price.

At this point I just assume Hulu+ won't work on anything. It barely works on our iPad, and that's a supported platform.

Hopefully Roku will support Hulu+ before the end of the year.
> To maximize the odds of the entire GROUP finding their
> name, we need to ensure that each box is opened the same
> number of times by the end of the exercise.

You were doing really well up to this point, but this doesn't follow.
It was US Airways flight 808
Phrases aren't drawn from anywhere in the English language. They must be guessable.

There are not many phrases in popular culture starting with those combinations (only "I'll get it," comes to mind). On the other hand phrases from movies are common, and those with mild sexual references are more entertaining.
Let's not forgot that academia also produced Go!. You know, the other Go!, that only became known after Go appeared, because it has a similar name.
Green is absolutely treated specially in YCbCr; you just have to understand how YCbCr relates to RGB.

ITU-R BT.601 defines YCbCr as follows:

Y ~= 0.30 R + 0.59 G + 0.11 B
Cb ~= -0.17 R - 0.33 G + 0.5 B
Cr ~= 0.5 R - 0.42 G - 0.08 B

Y is given the most bandwidth, and green makes up 60% of Y. Cb and Cr are allocated substantially less bandwidth, and green still makes up a sizable chunk of the value. In total, green occupies about 2/3 of the bandwidth in YCbCr. That's pretty much the whole point of doing it---RGB spends an unnecessary amount of bandwidth on R and B.

(reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YCbCr )
Consumer Reports declares Apple's new MacBook Air top of class
this may sound harsh, but, not everyone can be an astronaut- someone's got to make the french fries.

Go out and get an 8-5 job, make some money, become independent and work on your project on the side.

Also- don't be afraid to make mistakes.
What will Apple serve up Apple's services on? OSX on Mac Pros or just racks and racks of minis?

Or will there be some sort of dense blade chassis?

I see 2 issues that they need to solve, 1) they need more density than 1U, that's just how it seems to be going. 2) They need virtualization.
I posted this yesterday on the Inc thread but it got lost in a sea of comments so I'm reposting it here (with modifications for context):

I think passion is generally stupid for a couple reasons. First off, we use it as a defense mechanism. "If I am passionate, I won't care about failure because I'll be doing what I love!" Not only will you have a hard time pivoting or calling it quites all together but this mentality already sets you up for failure on a bunch of other levels.

Secondly, how many people have been passionate about their projects that ended up failing? We tell ourselves to be passionate because Zuck was passionate about Facebook or the Groupon guys were passionate about their project, if we're passionate about ours WE CAN'T FAIL!

We don't need passion to succeed, we need brains to succeed. Think critically about what you're doing and you'll be way better off then loving your dumb idea into the ground.

# End paste

Based on the authors article, I get that he was in the "I'm passionate and I don't really care about success" category. Well, if that's what you want then go ahead -- you were lucky and kind of successful (by some standards), not everyone gets that. But most people actually DO want success, so you shouldn't let your silly passion get in the way.
Edward Tufte is selling his library
They did yesterday, if this is what you're talking about: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/09/google-instant-previews/
Yeah that's what I'm finding. It basically comes down to who is bigger. Smaller companies would love the exposure, larger companies consider it "association" and don't allow it.

Frustrating when you see Sony, Johnson&Johnson, Google, EA, MySpace, Travelocity, Staples, Dell and Microsoft plastered all over your competitors sites...but you can't use the same logos on yours.
I've been helping with iDroid and Bootlace, and I can tell you that a lot has progressed over the last couple of months. Power management has been a huge priority, and while some of it is there now, much more is to come. Also, it runs incredibly slowly on a 2G, but quite reasonable on a 3G, and absolutely awesome on a 3GS. In fact it feels faster on a 3GS than on a real droid phone.

Part of the reason that it runs hot is the screen power management is incomplete, so it's always on, albeit dimmed. This should change soon.
Right now the Kinect drivers can't do anything that a pair of cheap USB webcams can't. The only advantage seems to be the on-board depth processing instead of having to use something like OpenCV. http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/
Not to be confused with the "multipart/form-data" encoding type for form-based file uploads. This is not an implementation of that protocol for S3.
From MetaFilter comments:

"The patron saint of information presentation merited a web display of his goods with decent navigation and magnification tools."
It doesn't even run on the iPhone 3GS? Also, the iPhone 2G and 3G have identical processors, so I'm not seeing where a speed difference would come from...
Get a job.

Don't view getting a job as failing. There's a lot you can learn from the experience. Both in terms of what to do and what not to do.

Don't view it as 'making your parents happy'. It's more about independence and self-sustainability. What would you do tomorrow if your parents decided to cut you off?

If you're working 8 hours a day you'll still have a few hours to work on your own stuff. I work 8 hours a day with a 1 hour commute each way and still manage 1-4 hours a day on personal projects.

My advice? Get out there, get some perspective. You can learn a lot about responsibility and self-discipline from the workplace, maybe that'll help you with your own stuff as well :)
ForMyChild.ca
Site dedicated to families, babysitters, daycares and specialized services for your child
* Families and parents; find a babysitter, daycare or specialized services for your child.
* Babysitters, daycares and specialized services for children; offer your services and find families and parents.
I know, I'm not actually making fun of you. just curious what you're doing that that is one of the first things you thought of.
Attitudes like this is why I had to write a book about startups. In 2003, people said the same thing about Google. It turned out that yes, joining Google in 2003 had a very good chance of making you a millionaire, even if you weren't a star hire.

Guess what? Facebook is in the same situation Google was in 2003 today.

2 links:
http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/05/compensation-thought-experi...
http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/04/facebook-google-redux.html
It's unfortunate that the book this is based on seems to be so... wrong: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/21/book-review-the-lomborg-d...
Update - the site just fell over :(

I've activated billing in app engine but no idea how long it takes to come online. Really sorry guys - I assumed the free quotes would see me through! Hopefully it comes back soon.

edit - looks like the billing just kicked in... Phew. Sorry about that! looks like I caught it just about in time. If you saw the 404 page my apologies. I've loaded it up with credits so it should stay up now
Given these two statements by MS, I wonder what threats they do care about.

Getting laid off before retirement.
Try Madmimi. I use them constantly and they are solid. Their stats are a bit weak, but they are more relaxed as to the origins of the email list.
Demo of iSpeedShop, in-store shopping app
Sorry if this post was overly negative. This is actually a really exciting time for cord cutters. I think we're finally at the threshold of being able to buy a black box that just works and gives me pretty much everything I would reasonably need on my TV without having to pay a $80/month life tax to Cox/Comcast/TW/etc. It's been a long time coming.
this is what the iphone's captive portal feature is for, actually.

ironically though, apple created an 'exception' list that lets certain apps disable that feature. so while its a useful feature, most people's phones disable it (for example, boingo app)
I'm interested in seeing this, because from what I have read Bjorn is somewhat middle of the road on this debate, something that is usually missing from any mention.

I haven't had time to get and/or read his book (no space in reading schedule for this type of thing) but I will be interested to see how this goes.

If it manages to thread between the polarized opposites on this debate, that will be quite an accomplishment.
This is awesome - I built a site called 22books a couple years ago as a way to learn Ruby... it took me a little longer than 4 weeks but I think I launched with more functionality.

I haven't done much with the site but it actually ended up getting used by teachers and librarians so I would feel bad ever shutting it down.

http://22books.com
Texas may have infringed photographer's rights on 4M+ inspection stickers
I thought they were all gone!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1698035
Airbnb (YC W09) launched an iPhone app
Is that a gingerbread literary reference?
At the start of a product cycle, game consoles are typically sold at a loss. Manufacturers recoup this loss through licensing fees paid by game publishers.

If Microsoft is selling the Kinect at a loss, then Microsoft will be motivated to keep it locked down to ensure that they can recoup the loss through licensing fees.
There's tons of variance in wins and losses, so any ratings system comparison should consider results over the long term.

If you're interested and have the statistical background, you should definitely give it a shot. For related ideas, check out Brian Burke's excellent Advanced NFL Stats blog: http://www.advancednflstats.com/
PIN length is the wrong area to focus on. The two questions to ask are whether they block failed guesses and require out of band confirmation for major actions like transferring funds.
Hey mate - we spoke on email a few weeks ago! I was gonna drop you a line about the site but things have been a bit manic recently. I think I'm going in a slightly different direction to you so hopefully you don't mind too much that our sites are similar. I'm going to look at exploring the community angle in the coming months so hopefully we won't tread on each others toes too much.
I haven't used some of the cooler import features of Google Docs Spreadsheets, but my guess is that Refine will be better if

a) you are not skilled in a language that handles text easily (I have friends who might have a need to aggregate that data but would have no clue how to begin writing a program to parse it).

b) don't have a Peter Norving-like facility with algorithms: http://norvig.com/ngrams/ i.e. you could code the transformation given sufficient time, but Refine would be faster, both in development and, for large data sets, run time.
In case you're interested, here are other reports of the same story:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1869772

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1870798

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1871276

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1872308

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875650

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1876231

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1886156

None of the submissions have any comments ...
"The Kinect sensor has been hacked"

I did not know that writing a driver for a piece of hardware can now be called hacking the chip, but well, I guess things have changed...
Ask HN: What should I do in San Fransisco?
Hello all,

My fiancee and I will be visiting San Fransisco in a few weeks. Are there some awesome touristy-to-not-so-touristy activities/sights/hits/misses that we should absolutely not miss?

My lady and I are both into science and technology (I'm an epidemiologist, she's a MD), but also sports, wine, good food, all the good stuff.

We're also always up for meeting new people. Although we're not entrepreneurs or hackers (yet), we're reasonably interesting!

I'd appreciate any suggestions!
That is a very week premise, which looks disguised as an attempt to sell one book by criticising another. You could equally apply that much scrutiny to any public profile book or movie (anything by Michael Moore, for instance).

I'm sure Lomborg's book contains exaggerations and selective presentation of the truth - after all, it's a popular literature, not a scientific work. But the very same standards applied to other 'popular' works of Global Warming media, like 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' and 'An Inconvenient Truth' have also showed up outright lies, fabrications and distortion of the truth.

In other words, it's unlikely that anyone can print or make something in this genre without someone else finding all sorts of facts that are wrong. But the whole thing is down to interpretation.

Ultimately we should be judging these books and movies for ourselves, and realising that much of the material contains a kernel of truth, probably much embellished for the narrative.
Kyro, I'm planning a follow up "lessons learned" post already (#1 - enable billing on app engine 'just in case'!!).

Thanks a lot for your feedback :)
Thanks almost :) I hope the story is inspirational but also, really anyone can do it with a little work. I hope I inspire people to follow suit and code their dreams
First 2 iPhone generations had a 600 Mhz ARM 11 CPU but they only ran at 400 Mhz. iPhone 3GS was about twice as fast with a much better Cortex A8 CPU and a 600 MHz clock.

Besides he said it's working even faster on iPhone 3GS than on a Droid 1 (same CPU and clock). Did you even read the comment?
I like the idea. I have wanted to easily log more of my life and I think their is a market for a product(s) that make it easy.

I wish I did not have to have a facebook account to login though.
Creating safe and composable 'mixins' with traits.js - How To Node - NodeJS