skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting. On the page about the book[1], Zed also links to How To Think Like a Computer Scientist, another popular book for learning Python.

Allen Downey was the first author on that book, but initially he wrote it in Java:

"I released the book under the GNU Free Documentation License, which allows users to copy, modify, and distribute the book.

What happened next is the cool part. Jeff Elkner, a high school teacher in Virginia, adopted my book and translated it into Python. He sent me a copy of his translation, and I had the unusual experience of learning Python by reading my own book."[2]

It's funny that the same thing is happening here, but Zed has a very different reaction than Allen's.

[1]: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index
[2]: http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/book001.html
Re: #2. Let's look at voting according to its consequences, as a mechanism for hopefully getting good outcomes.

A zero-information voter picking between two candidates is 50% likely to choose the better candidate. Slogans & sound-bites are designed to efficiently (i.e. at low cognitive cost) deliver a message which will inform a voter. If a slogan is totally useless, it leaves me where I was before, at 50%. If some are slightly helpful, I become a slightly better voter, e.g. 50.0001% likely to choose the better candidate.

Now let's start with a group of high-information, analytical voters who spent costly time and energy making a decision -- these people should definitely vote, as they're (say) 60% likely to choose the right person. Now, adding any number of additional 50.0001% voters only makes the better outcome more likely. So we should try to include as many low-information voters as possible.

There are some ways in which slogans could still be bad. For example, let's say that slogans are in general more easily constructed by "bad" candidates, people who are unqualified for governance (not that slogans have zero correlation with quality, they're negatively correlated). This seems very unlikely and probably requires a radical theory for the function of language. Another example, somewhat narrower: let's say sloganeering is consistently better at selling certain ideas (e.g. low taxes, xenophobia) over others that inherently require more cognitive energy. This seems plausible, but it also seems to me that both "good" and "bad" slogans can have inordinate power given certain conditions in education and culture, so flaws are likely temporary and can be remediated by work in those areas.
When in doubt, shout
forget the sharing part. the available is the big issue. Making them available isn't the same as distributing.
I currently write clojure on a macbook[1]. It's an ideal setup. I prefer it to my past linux setups (maybe just personal preference). The core setup is bash/emacs/slime/lein. I think it comes down to being an emacs user more so than which operating system.

In general any *nix based system with bash will always be easier to get lisps setup and running(including OSX). This is due to most lisp developers already using such setups.

In my opinion the key to successful lisp development setup is having an integrated REPL. So whatever you do try for that. It would be easy enough to create a setup on OSX that didn't have this and thus was a difficult setup on an otherwise capable OS.

Are you interested in doing GUI or native development on OSX? If so you'll likely end up using FFI of some sort. This is doable but could be hard without some exposure to C/C++/Objective C.

Also it's common practice in the community to just roll your own instead of modifying something that is only a partial fit. I think all the lisp communities have improved on this but it's still a noticeable difference. This can be frustrating if you are coming from a language where the code is more often than not already in a library or framework somewhere. You just have to find it and call it.

NOTE: Windows users can use msys/msysgit/Console to get a functional bash terminal running on windows.

[1] http://clojure.org/
The only difference it seems is that is will there will be MIDI support through a USB connection, MIDI support already exists in tons of apps through WIFI and unlike the article said is being used very seriously in quite a few top DJs I know, Deadmau5, Michael Woods, Laidback Luke, Richie Hawtin at least. The latter who actually got involved writing Griid.

So it's already very serious, Griid, BeatMaker, MidiPad, etc. etc. do exactly what the author of the article says he wants -- they're basically a grid full of clips that you can quickly launch through the iPad, and most of them you can switch the interface from clip launching to controlling effects and other parameters of your DAW through MIDI. Actually not only that but some like TouchOSC also support OSC which is light years better than MIDI.

One good thing at least will be the reliability of having a hard connection rather than sending your MIDI over WIFI.

In terms of professional use you're still going to need at least a sound card and mixer as well, so the computer is not going away. So all-in-all not really exciting as they're making it out to be.
Interesting. In one case, a content creator who calls for vigorous defense of copyright is attacked for it. In another, a violator of copyright is attacked. How many of the people who Wall-bombed Cooks Source’s Facebook page were also cheering the anonymous crackers who harassed Gene Simmons? Why the disconnect?

People take the side of the Cook's Source copyright victim but not the RIAA because of two things: support for the little guy, and money.

In the Cook's Source case, a company was violating "the little guy"'s copyright for monetary gain. In the RIAA case, the little guys are flaunting copyright for personal use.
The "good riddance" posts really sadden me. I've generally found the Ruby community to be a great place, and then comments like these come along...
Also, having bought my fair share of consumer electronics, I've found that the research and anticipation of buying a product is sometimes as much fun as the afterglow of owning it.
No cstring coverage.
Lion Server? Has there even been talk of it? Dead now?

I'd imagine the only use case for server that couldn't be done easily in a better way was spotlight server, and it's only a matter of doing it more cheaply than available CMS solutions.
I'm not speculating. Work isn't something you feel, it's something you do. It's documented historical fact that Jimi Hendrix played the guitar incessantly.
I agree, up to the point where someone might try to start a business on Kinect reversing. It was hamhanded for MSFT's spokesperson to invoke law enforcement.
Ask HN: selling to entreprise, is it possible as a recent graduate?
Here is my situation.

A friend from college and I are ready to start building a product now. So we're at the "idea exploration" stage.

My dad works in a big corp (sales side), and after having talked to him I think I spotted an opportunity ( something that can be fixed using technology ). It's ideal for customer development because the product would be targeted at people like my dad !

The question I have is : do you think it's possible to sell software to big companies when the team is composed of 2 CS grads ( 23 years old ), at least at the beginning ?

What are the different techniques to sell to big and middle corporations when you don't come from inside ( but can have some connections, in this case through my father ).

Has anyone done it before ?

Thank you.
Going to do be starting the third 40 day set soon (Jan 2011)
Why is the article so inconclusive about whether or not they can hear each other's thoughts? Can't someone just ask them?
page 4 of the pdf: "This book is Copyright (C) 2010 by Zed A. Shaw. You are free to distribute this book to anyone you want, so long as
you do not charge anything for it, and it is not altered. You must give away the book in its entirety, or not at all"
It's Microsoft's prerogative to make business decisions for itself. They don't have to rationalize them against the C.W. of hacker forums.
This also seems like a strange thing to emphasize. Instead of pointing to the advances in motion tracking that Microsoft made to create Kinect they choose to emphasize the advances in DRM that they have made to prevent people from doing interesting things with their product.
Git may be more innovative, but Linux is hands-down Linus Torvalds' greatest creation.
The Language Instinct - Steven Pinker

Interesting Times - Eric Hobsbawm

The Great Crash, 1929 - John Galbraith
Ultimate insider trading, inside your rival's infrastructure...
In that case, I think you'll hate future Ubuntu because (like its mentor OS X) it won't be very configurable at all. Easy things will be easy and everything else will be impossible.
It would only be "the same thing" if Zed chose to release his content under the GNU Free Documentation License, which he did not.

It's his content, and he can do with it what he choses. If he doesn't want folks to "copy, modify, and distribute" his content, that's fine with me (not that it matters, since it's _his_ content).
I personally wouldn't use this for gadget recommendations - I am too picky and enjoy the research process too much.

However, for buying a toaster or a microwave or something, I can definitely see this site being useful. Usually I end up going to the store and picking something out based on the blurbs on the packaging - not exactly a prime source of impartial data.
Scientists Overclock People's Brains
It did inspires ESR to write the Cathederal and the Bazaar.
The License is located at the bottom of page 4:

"This book is Copyright (C) 2010 by Zed A. Shaw. You are free to distribute this book to anyone you want, so long as
you do not charge anything for it, and it is not altered. You must give away the book in its entirety, or not at all."

In Creative Commons terms, it's basically cc by-nc-nd: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
I wonder what new security measures this will lead to.
Note that its pretty much a must if you plan to have a MongoDB server as part of your dev environment on your home box - Mongo by design eats all the RAM it can find to map files to, and if you have Apache, Solr and MySQL running on the same box, things can get ugly :)
From the readme:

What is Sizzle?
---------------

Sizzle is an open source implementation of the Sawzall programming language designed for
interoperation with the Hadoop MapReduce and DFS stack. It is implemented in pure Java, is easily
extendible, and the programs produced by it will run anywhere that has a recent Hadoop installed,
even if Sizzle is not also installed.

Why Sizzle?
-----------

Up until a few days ago, there was no publicly available implementation of Sawzall.

About six months ago, I asked some of the authors of _Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with
Sawzall_ [[http://code.google.com/p/szl/wiki/Interpreting_the_Data]] for more specific details about
how Sawzall worked than was explained in that high-level document. Mr. Pike explained that he
intended to open the source to Sawzall; however, when I didn't hear from him for several months I
started my own implementation.
Yes, I've know a few people who've done it, but I have noticed an interesting pattern.

The more specialized you make your software, the easier it will be to sell to a particular company since you're solving a specific problem for them, but with that the volume you sell it also get smaller.

The trick with enterprise is connections and marketing skills more than the technical aspect.
Where do you work? If you're allowed to say, I'm always interested in hearing about Linux deployments, much less Ubuntu and/or professional "desktop" Linux usage.

There should be an Ubuntu testimonials website... Weekend project?
Well, how much would it have cost per song to purchase from the copyright holders licenses to do what she was doing?

A license to make and redistribute copies, with no restrictions on how many copies can be distributed, and no requirement to track how many copies are distributed or to whom, for a one-time lump sum payment is probably going to be rather expensive.
Absolutely. It's one thing to take issue with the tone of someone voicing an opinion or reacting to your opinion, but it's another to whine that someone's not being friendly when he's telling you to stop stealing his work.
A different reaction for a different license. Notice that 37 days ago a fellow hacker realized that the license didn't allow for porting into Ruby though they wanted to do so:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1739890
Not nice? He could have sent a settlement offer... pay me X dollars for damaging my reputation as an author and I will promise not to sue you. Some may argue that Zed was not "damaged" by this juvenile act, but a good lawyer would have no problem proving damage if push came to shove.
I've wondered about that too (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=455864).
42 feet per gallon
Then you're missing the point of the guy's advice. He's telling you to do what you love, so that you won't ever mind working.
basically the Nicaraguan commander was acting inside the space of an augmented reality where the "augmentation" was skewed. In the bright technological future who controls the augmentation controls the reality.
In the U.S., and AFAIK in much of the rest of the world, copyright arises automatically, without the need for either registration or a copyright notice, once the "original work of authorship" is "fixed" in a "tangible medium of expression" (which can include saving to disk). See generally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Obtaining_copyright
Ignoring Chrome's Version Number
Hopefully the controls would be something beyond NSSlider-s, and allow for chaining commands together into groups that automatically move together, creating effect banks that can dynamically be broken down and controlled.

I doubt it'll take off beyond small, avant-garde stage shows, as most theater effects would be pre-run ahead of time. Might be a stupid idea, but I'm basing a guess on twitter:blogging :: monome :keyboard.

See also the painful complexity here:
http://www.innovateshowcontrols.com/support/downloads/midi-d...
Reverse engineering DOS? Eh, they purchased it outright.
I used to not know that stuff. Then I installed Gentoo Linux, and was forced to learn it the hard way. I don't use Gentoo anymore, but installing it was like a crash course in how to get uncooperative Linux software to bend to my will.

This was years ago, so maybe Gentoo has become more user-friendly since then.
Good idea, and I have seen something similar before. It would be great if it really were the best gadgets of their class, though...
What's ironic about an iPad app not working on an iPhone? They're related, they're not the same.
Wow. This is so absolutely fascinating. I only wish they could grow up faster so we could see if they really can read each-others thoughts, or if it's just hopeful pattern making by the adults.
Really? You see no similarities between these 2 cases?

I only see one big difference. One author cares about only himself and his own little world
> "Let's not even talk about just what part of our society would have a real vote and which part would have 3/5 of one."

There was never any individual who had a 3/5 vote; this is a misconception. Slaves were not allowed to vote at all. Instead, they were counted as 3/5 of a person on the census, which was used to distribute seats in the House and electoral votes.

Slave owners wanted slaves to be counted as full people, which would have increased the south's political power. Those opposed to slavery wanted slaves to not be counted, thereby decreasing the south's political power.

Those who complain that slaves were "only" counted as 3/5 of a person are (accidentally) making a statement in favor of increasing the power of slave owners.

> "the two party system is meant to make government more agile and less risk averse."

Far from it. The system with two chambers of Congress plus an executive is meant to create gridlock. It's meant to prevent a small majority from being able to ram through an agenda.

As a result of the 3/5 compromise, the South usually had an edge in the House of Representatives and in electing the President, but the North had an edge in the Senate, and therefore neither side could pass slavery-related legislation. This was intentional. The US legislative system is designed to make it difficult to pass laws without extremely broad support, because the founding fathers (despite all their flaws) recognized how dangerous it would be if a narrow edge in population could be transformed into a huge edge in legislative power.
Why do applications think they can manage my memory better than my kernel?
Or, when someone's pointing out that you're wronging him, don't even worry about interpretation of tone. Worry about whether you've done something wrong, and if you have, then 1) fix it, 2) apologize, and finally 3) don't do that again.

"Make excuses" and "berate the person for being angered by your wrongdoing" are not on this list.
Interviewing & Dating for the Techie : Playing the game
Honest question - how is this different/better than typing <product> into Amazon and sorting by best rating first?
That's not quite the same situation as hardware hacking - DirectTV's countermeasures basically come down to detecting fraud and disabling the users, not preventing it completely.

What just about all consumer electronics companies have failed to do is lock down their hardware from being hacked in the first place - after all, Sony and Apple also pay some of the best in the world, and the PS3 and iPhone have been cracked wide open with software.

Microsoft is certainly better than most (the 360 doesn't yet have a software patch - there are hardware solutions - that can be used for piracy), but they are by no means immune to hackers.
I agree. I think some of this is instructor based. Some kung fu teachers focus on the practical aspects while others focus on the sports aspect just like taekwondo point fighting. I think you have to go in with an open mind. If you've already made up your mind that you want a "practical" martial art and that taekwondo is only for point fighting then you will not enjoy it. That said I still think a professional Korean Tiger athlete will wipe the floor with most geeks and my money would be on the Korean Tigers.
You know, there are often hidden fallacies embedded within these "massive spending == job creation" arguments.

Chief among these being, all of the regional governments are currently facing major budget crises, and (no matter whom you chose to blame) are already laying off blue-collar workers, helter-skelter, as a result.

For example, in reference to the ARC project cited in the article, MTA (the agency which runs the NYC subway and regional rail lines, for example), looking at something like an 810m deficit, and has slashed something on the order of 600 jobs as a result -- not to mention collateral economic damage to the region caused by loss of transit service, and the damage to come caused by enormous (20%+) fee hikes it is proposing.

Of course, money for the ARC project wasn't coming directly out of the MTA budget. But the money has to come from somewhere; part of the reason behind the current MTA morass has a lot to do with the lack of NY state money (or moral capital) to bail them out.

Point being, however you slice it, money is finite; gobs of money (supposedly) creating X jobs over here could also be spent creating (or saving) X+1 jobs over there, etc.

Another aspect to consider is that for some reason, people seem to love to cut and paste supposed job creation figures for these wonderful projects, without looking into what these figures rally mean (let alone whether they can be substantiated). So quite often you'll find that "6,000 jobs" really means, umm, guess what, "6,000 job-years", or more like an average of 1,200 jobs over a 5-year project (say).

And that's even if these jobs actually come into being (to the extent advertised). It actually turns out to be really, really difficult to predict the number of jobs that will be directly created by any of these projects.

I actually tend to favor, or at least consider to be not so bad,the idea of spending for job creation on general principle -- but at best it should be thought of as a "winback", or an ameliorating effect of the fiscal damage caused by extravagant ($10B+) public spending projects.

At the end of the day, they should be evaluated for the direct benefits they might bring (e.g. relief of congestion, revenue from projected ridership), rather than as the fantastic "job creation engines" they are often touted as being.
You'd still have to buy the Kinect. And, I'd think, having useful Kinect-compatible software from other sources increases the value offered by the device, compared with what it would be if only Microsoft's software used it.
The guy has a dong api... class defense fail.
https://github.com/martinemde/dicks
Hopefully with better reception than my cellphone.
This page renders horribly on my evo.
He's obviously never seen the movie Ong Bak
The main requirement for Arc is an older build of plt, which works wonderfully on OS X
Same story, many times:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873948

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873017

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1872990

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1872306

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1872289
Hi Dan, I'd really like to talk to you about that, couldn't see any e-mail on your profile, mind dropping me a mail at sales [at] handwritr.com?
My question is, what will Apple use internally for their server needs? I assume at least a part of their servers are running Mac OS X Server.
I spent the past year sharing office space with Paul's lab, so this result doesn't really surprise me. I dislike the title that Technology Review is running, but that shouldn't detract from this.

The major histocompatibility complex sits on chromosome 6. Our best disease associations for HIV and autoimmune disease show up here. There are a number of published associations outside of this region, but nothing as blazing hot as the signal in the MHC. There's an ongoing debate in the field about 'missing variance' -- we can estimate the heritability of diseases haven't found enough variation in the genetic soup to explain the heritability.

(I'm afraid I need to run out the door, I'll do my best to answer questions on this work or similar studies.)
I see what you're saying, but... it's copyright infringement and license violation. Politeness is not a requirement.
"If you want to write a similar book for Ruby then have some class and use your own words and write your own book."

I'd say that's harsh, and unnecessary. I'd feel attacked if that was directed at me, too, especially if I felt (rightly or not) that I'd kept things on the level.

No one needs to be polite, especially when they feel the need to protect their work. But in not doing so, they belie a certain amount of lack of empathy.

It's a shame posts like this get upvoted for the drama and this behavior is rewarded.
That's an interesting point. I'm reminded of the way we perceive colors. We may see completely different things as "green", but because they've been given that linguistic label, we can identify them as the same. However, if I see red when you see green, it's fundamentally impossible to explain or imagine that.

This being Hacker News, however, I think there are broader implications. Understanding what Tatiana and Krista experience may prove invaluable if we develop some sort of direct neural interface. It's already been shown that we can adapt to synthetic limbs or additional sensory inputs. (Interesting experiments done with magnetometer sensing http://feelspace.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/index.html) However, I feel like this could prove it possible to directly inject data into the brain, since everything we experience is from sensory input.

Basically, is telepathy fundamentally possible? Or would the raw neural data be incompatible across brains? I think these twins could explain a lot about that.