skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd suggest giving them your old iPhone/iPod touch/Android device. My son has been playing with those since he was 1 1/2, and now (2 1/2) he is an expert at the interface. It's quite a testament to the UI to see how well a 2 year old can move around an iPhone. Then, he'll be able to "interface" with computers so much easier. They won't be this foreign thing, they'll be what shows them music videos.

From there, you have plenty of time. I know my dad started me out with BASIC when I was ~5:
10 PRINT "HI DADDY"
20 GOTO 10

After that, I didn't touch code until I was 13. So ultimately, my advice would be to not push them. If he wants to learn, he'll learn.

Just make sure they are familiar with technology, and you'll all be fine. Aside from that... read to him. Now. They pick it up quickly if you keep doing it consistently.

But really, don't worry about it and let him be a kid. The inner geek will come.
I worked at ITA software for a few years, in the team that wrote the software that searches for airfares.

The prices of seats and their restrictions are published, and the data format predates the web (by a large margin). There's no field for "browser type."

Each seat has about a dozen prices, and the only other way the user sees a price change is by turning a given price on or off. But the protocol that asks whether a given seat is available doesn't have a "browser type" field either.

When you go to an airline's web site, they could presumably use whatever info they want. But if they used the browser while travel agents didn't, they'd either be presenting a lower price than you could get through the agent, or a higher one. It seems unlikely they'd do that, but I suppose it's possible.
Agreed. Also, you can start on non-picture books earlier than you think; my dad read "The Hobbit" to my sister and I before I started kindergarten (a little bit each night).
What is the right way to gather this info? Our expectation is that the prices advertised are firm. Is there a way to perform the test without violating expectations?

Using something like an geographic IP lookup would mitigate but not solve.
It's a whole different story if the input gets longer and the quadratic complexity kicks in. Just change the testdata like this:

testdata = range(256)*100

Result:

f1 5.539
f2 40.747
f3 5.072
f4 5.311
f5 0.068
f6 3.304
f7 1.431
I had three student loans, and I am doing it the mathematically correct way. I paid off the second-largest with the highest interest rate before it came out of deferment, and am currently working on 2 and 3, putting all the spare cash into the one with the biggest interest rate.

It's really not psychologically difficult at all, except it's slightly more effort to pay two bills each month instead of one (since I could have afforded to pay off the smaller but lower interest rate one already had I not put that money into the higher interest rate one.)
s/_/ *

[replace _ with * ]
I think you can certainly be successful in that mode. I was--working in almost complete isolation, and afterwards I still wasn't really a part of the startup community (since I didn't really know many people in it).

What I missed though and what I've realized since is that if you actively engage in that community you end up meeting people that end up helping you that you would otherwise never meet because you can't justify meeting them with your head down all the time.

So it ends up being sort of non-intuitive, and hence the post. I think if you do relax that mode a bit your chances actually go up. Of course there needs to be a balance though.
The hypothesis though, is to remove the emotional part of the memory, which this does seem to be doing a reasonable job of doing it.

Much better than bilateral lesions to the Amygdala!
It would seem like one would prioritize savings, but due to the variance in interest, the net gain is in favor of paying off high interest loans vs building low interest savings.

Sorry, but you're wrong. Your retirement savings should go into relatively high risk investments with good long term average returns, such as the stock market. At this point the average return on investment for retirement savings exceeds the interest rates on your loans, and therefore the net gain is for preparing for retirement. (Unless, of course, you're facing a short term cash crunch where long term returns become irrelevant to your utility.)
I was going to say "but then you have to say 'complexity'", but I realised I already did, so I should have done that instead.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html

shows it to not be #2 but close to the top.

And I think the point is still valid that CA could balance their budget if we had that nice ratio.
As a Windows git user, this is a minor concern. msysgit works from cmd, powershell, and the include bash prompt, and the gitk and "git gui" tools are actually pretty good once you're familiar with the metaphors.

The one thing that still gives me the heebies is the CRLF handling, but I think that's because rails generates unix-style files, and I get a warning from git gui whenever I use those scripts.
2) Why would publishing up/down voting information cause flame wars?

3) What is "OP"?

4) Currently comments are ranked based on the whole Hacker News community.

My suggestion is to rate comments based on votes from people who think like I do (or how you do if that rated list would be presented to you).

That's important differentiation, because I care about opinion of some people much more than about opinion of other people.
False positive with spam filtering in HN
Long time lurker, but just registered here.
I was about to read a thread but suddenly the link was killed.
There were two review startup pages recently got killed:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1860963
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1860858
The later one was killed twice I believe.

This becomes really annoying because review of new startup is one of my favorites in HN.

Does something need to be done here with the spam filter?
Fair point, though I wonder whether those dynamics will shift in the coming years -- either for or against the carriers. What's funny is that I could see the balance of power going in either direction in the US. Either way, it'll be fascinating to watch.
This book, "Hello World: Computer Programming for kids and adults" http://www.manning.com/sande/ might be a good place to start once your child is older. It's written by a father and son and documents his son's foray into programming using Python. I believe his son was 10 at the time.

Personally, my parents got me an Intellivision at the age of 6 and I played it every day. By around 4th grade, I wanted to start writing my own games so they got me a Commodore 64 and a couple of books with game listings in Basic and I started having more fun writing games than playing them.
also - Pippin, Macintosh :)
Reading and Flash Cards. A lot of teachers hate flash cards, but the confidence to do the simple math allows for learning the hard stuff. Never underestimate the value of a good foundation. Learning how to actually use a dictionary might not be a bad idea.

[edit] when the kids old enough: legos - lots and lots of legos
How Much Do Solar Panels Cost?
uhhh, True?
The real moral is not to release a shitty product. APB was a terrible product, marketing and all the other stuff aside, it just plain sucked.
Most browsers send the OS as part of the user agent though, which I'd assume would be a more reliable metric.
Both ran smoothly (FF 3.6.12), but there were some collision issues with HTML5. Hitting the ball with the side of the paddle almost always results in the ball passing through it.
HN Ask: cannot downvote today...
Is it just me? Does this have something to do with election day? Or do I have to crawl out of my non-procrastinating non-participating non-threatening hole and earn some more stinking karma?
Another random thought, though probably for slightly older kids: getting into programming through game modding. Starcraft 2 editor, WC3 editor, XML editing/modding, eventually Python editing, etc.

The bait is the chance to tweak and modify your games to make them more fun and personal for you. Could be a fun and pain-free segue into programming proper.
was this pretentious blogger yourself?

Yegge? Do share, please.
Hold on. What happened to your original claim that, by not voting, you were sending a stronger signal of your libertarian views than you would by showing up and voting for libertarian candidates? Did you concede that point, or are you still holding onto it, or what?

Please pardon me if this seems obsessive-compulsive, but there's an interesting pathological form of "debate" where someone keeps throwing arguments out, ignoring any refutations, then declares victory. Of course I'm not accusing you of this -- such an accusation would be very flimsy -- but it's always something to watch out for.
Most people you know have 9 loans?
I would just forget about computers and programming completely and focus on the building blocks by a playful approach to solving day-to-day problems with logic and reasoning. Like how do we decide which things belong together? You can also play progressively more complicated iteration games like for-each-time-this-happens-let's-do-this-this-and-this! Or make complicated rube goldberg devices out of household objects and then debug why they don't work.

Computers would be just a distraction from the real work of building a foundation in cognitive skills.
The number one thing to do as he grows: allow his curiosity to flourish, even if it means letting him hurt himself a bit. Some learn better through words. Some learn better through visuals. This is mostly rote memory stuff, and it's crap. Everyone learns better through experience, and experience builds both memory and extrapolation. He might only be six months old, but he's already got a keen brain for gathering data and deducing outcomes. It's intrinsic to human nature, and it's commonplace to stifle it with too many boundaries. Don't. I'm not saying you should throw caution to the wind, but don't be as protective as the societal norm says you should be.

Allowed to be curious, he'll get critical thinking skills, passion for exploring the unknown and street smarts out of the deal. He'll immediately be better at anything he sets his mind on than those who have been forced into learning only through written and verbal means.
What is the world coming to, that you have to explain vi commands on HN?
How to win an elevator pitch contest
NB: not sure why I got down votes on this post - if an investor has put $ into a company, then he can't just pull it out at short notice unless the shareholders agreement allows for this. If you put cash in, you put it in. It won't come out unless there are either a) dividends or b) a liquidity event of some kind. An investment company is not a bank holding deposits and investors shouldn't put money in and then create waves by expecting it out again outside of a) or b) - unless they have a redeemable convertible note of some kind....
But maybe I missed something?
Nov. 2, 1815: Boole Born, Boolean Logic Logically Follows
You can avoid entering spaces by lifting your finger when it isn't touching the centre area. It disrupts the flow significantly when you do so but it does let you stop half way through a word without putting in an extra space.

After playing with it for a while I think that it's an interesting idea. I'll stick with it until I'm familiar enough to make a fair judgement but it's difficult to imagine 8pen being as fast as the standard keyboard - there's just too much movement involved for every character.
Report: Chrome OS smartbooks coming this month
C++ Language Tutorial
Just to follow up on the noise, if anyone's interested (or happen to notice this followup comment at all), noise is not an issue. I received my 13" about 24 hours ago, and only heard the fan briefly while it was syncing my entire Dropbox. Otherwise, it has been absolutely silent (and not even warm).
Visual Website Optimizer is a fantastic product and Paras is a great guy. If you run a website, you need to be using VWO. You will easily make your money back within one use.

Pull the trigger. Buy it. You won't regret it.
Doesn't seem to work well, I ran this code on my mom's phone and it returned False. I'll have submit a bug report when I get home...
I disagree with the business model being powerful. Think about it in terms of lifetime customer value. How many occasions is a person really going to have to use this service? Maybe once? Twice? Even if it's $50 per message, the lifetime customer value is low.

Furthermore, doesn't buying 20 messages at 10% so you're sure it will go through defeat the purpose of sending a message that you don't really want to send?

I also don't see how you come to the conclusion that the recipient can't respond.
Enormous Palaeozoic flesh-eaters created in lab
Children are able to gesture long before they have the physical skills to speak. So, if you teach them some basic signs, they'll be able to communicate their needs months before they'd be able to speak them. As for whether it helps learning in general, I don't know.
I'd assert that people who would want to use it tend to associate with like-minded thinkers, and thus are more likely to use the app effectively within their network. So it might be fine that there's not a very wide appeal.
If you believe that Y-combinator provides better than a 10% improvement in your odds of success, then they are more than worth what they ask for.
The karma threshold for downvoting was raised to 500, a few days ago. There are some recent threads on this.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator....

Edit: Stripped superfluous query string parameters
One of the recurring bits of wisdom from entrepreneurs (even before the web era) is that your first idea will likely not be the end product. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

So run with it and learn how to program. You'll learn how to think through the problem and implement it.

You have no idea what it will become.

You didn't write that there are opportunity costs here - that is, I'm assuming you're not quitting your day job and letting your kids go hungry. If there's nothing to lose, go for it, because you do have the experience to gain. If it works, great; if it doesn't, you'll be better prepared to evaluate an idea's success next time (and better prepared to implement the next idea too).
Gah. People please stop using Z as the default key for down (or whatever). If you can't detect my keyboard layout use keys that are the same on every keyboard, no matter the language, or provide an option to configure the keys. My Z (on a Slovenian keyboard) is where your Y is (on your English keyboard).
This makes the game unplayable for me, since my "down" key is above my "up" key, which makes it almost impossible to play. /rant over

Awesome demo tho. Would love to see source of the flash part (maybe I missed it) so we could compare the source, not just performance (which seems to be about the same on my 5 year old laptop).

edit: who's now working on a (HTML5|Flash) vs Silverlight demo? That would be even more awesome.
You should create email template for users which should have a unique passphrase. Since most of the emails are sent over https, you should not have to worry about plain text passphrase. If there is no passphrase then you should send a conformation email or request user to verify his submission.
I am implementing a similar process for the application I am working on. Would love to hear how you are managing this.
Shutting down vs sleeping your machine
I remembered reading his books in my younger ages.
Yes.

Dr. Marilyn Daniels at Penn State University has found that hearing students in pre-kindergarten classes who receive instruction in both English and ASL score significantly higher on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test than hearing students in classes with no sign instruction. Her studies demonstrate that adding visual and kinesthetic elements to verbal communication helps enhance a preschool child's vocabulary, spelling and reading skills.

This citation and many more studies are listed on http://sign2me.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie...

The most recent meta-study (as far as I know) has this to say...

Doherty-Sneddon concludes by arguing there are three different levels of support for the benefits of baby signing: indicative, if not evidentially strong, evidence from baby signing research; related evidence from deaf sign and hearing gesture/language research; compelling anecdotal support from families who have embraced the approach.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language_in_infants_and_to...
Wikipedia has a
Daniels, M. (October, 1994). The effects of sign language on hearing children's language development. Communication Education, 43, 291-298.

Daniels, M. (1996). Seeing language: The effect over time of sign language on vocabulary development in early childhood education. Child Study Journal, 26, 193-208.

Daniels, M. (October, 1994). The effects of sign language on hearing children's language development. Communication Education, 43, 291-298.

Daniels, M. (1996). Seeing language: The effect over time of sign language on vocabulary development in early childhood education. Child Study Journal, 26, 193-208.

Other researchers have found evidence that sign language supports early literacy skills.

Felzer, L. (1998). A Multisensory Reading Program That Really Works. Teaching and Change, 5, 169-183.

Wilson, R., Teague, J., and Teague, M. (1985). The Use of Signing and Fingerspelling to Improve Spelling Performance with Hearing Children. Reading Psychology, 4, 267-273.

Hafer, J. (1986). Signing For Reading Success. Washington D.C.: Clerc Books, Gallaudet University Press.

Koehler, L., and Loyd, L. (September 1986). Using Fingerspelling/Manual Signs to Facilitate Reading and Spelling. Biennial Conference of the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. (4'th Cardiff Wales).
As ridiculous as it sounds, I'm with you on this.
I'm certain my little dude recognised my voice when he was born.
I'm not going to vote. It's not rational. It's a lot of effort and my vote is proportionately very small and therefore can have no effect.

EDIT: Whoever downvoted this, YOU are the reason that HN is going to pot. You may not like that I am not voting, but instead why don't you instead respond telling me why I'm wrong?
You can also change your git options to use a different diff tool.
Absolutely. Play some soft music sometimes classical, even Enya while pregnant as well, but reading is very important.
How Can I Tell If an Android App Is Malware?
I have seen Paras's posts the past year around the internet about Visualwebsiteoptimizer. I am very impresssed with him and his company. If you own a website and are looking to take your business to the next level greatly consider VWO as you will not be disappointed by the results.
Why I Quit My Job as a Corporate Lawyer to Run a Startup
Yes, I tried to do the same, with my youngest when she was about 13 (and with Perl), but she quickly dropped it all, due to my enthusiasm.
It's definitely not a deal breaker so you probably can get some sleep :)
The confirmation email isn't a bad idea. I wouldn't mind it too much.

Perhaps a simpler idea though is to make sure the users can easily delete data or routes that are sent in via email. It doesn't really solve the "spam" routes that could be added to an account, but it does make it easy for a customer to clean it up.

Perhaps require confirmation if many routes are uploaded in a short amount of time.

Perhaps require a secret key hash to be included in the subject of the message.
I totally agree with you, nothing should be removed off the table without a rational discussion about possible merits. My philosophy is: everything should be discussed, nothing should be off-limits due to PC, or hurting a group's sensibilities. In this regard, controversial subjects such as gay marriage rights, right of Islam women to cover their heads in Europe (not much of an issue in the US), the injustice of affirmative action should be throughly discussed with a cool head. And likewise for eugenics, the mathematical ability difference between men and women, etc.

Problem is, rarely I find myself in a setting where these interesting topics can be discussed in a rational setting. But that's the subject of another post.

My rational argument against CWuestefeld's suggestions is simple (based on entropy minimization): Do not make any complex issue even more complicated by your actions.

Let me explain: In its essence CWuestefeld suggestion rests on the notion that some voters' votes are off less value. If we accept this, then the question becomes, how do we determine the value: who should be allowed to vote. He says that it should be contingent on "knowledge of economics, full understanding of the issues etc.". I might counter with a different definition, e.g. "Most politics is dominated by men, so men should know better" or the somewhat better "without knowing the reality of a factory worker, how can you vote on issues that affect us". This leads to murky, philosophical debate that makes the issue even more complex and intractable than the one it's trying to solve.
Slightly modified, the notion could make for a convenient way to ask a female friend out. It allows her the opportunity to ignore it without being rude.
Yeah, I thought about using LaTeX. I've certainly used it a lot in the past, but became quite frustrated with the weird syntax and difficulty extending. Plus its a 1.2GiB download on OSX.

I may well generate latex as an output format as a first formatting step.
++ on Python. There is also a nice Python-for-kids textbook for ages 8+
http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/writing/snake-wrangling-for-kid...

And ++ on not letting your own enthusiasm scare him off. My mother started me on piano when I was 2 years and 10 months by playing herself and not letting me play (she already taught me to read music using flash cards). Depending on the kid, reverse psychology works pretty well.
Certainly, Ruby is a fine first option. I'd recommend any Lisp derivative, or Javascript also.

I see no reason to learn Pascal, or BASIC, nor do I see its effectiveness.
There already is a Facebook app to aide in tagging photos by detecting faces:

http://apps.facebook.com/photo-finder/

It's actually quite accurate too...
Logic & reason are the foundation for almost everything we are hoping to teach him but as far as technology is concerned we really want to encourage him to understand how things work as well as how to use them so I suppose that is what drove me to seek the opinion of the HN collective.
APB was a good game with a lot of potential but it was plagued by two issues. The first being a total lack of variety in regard to story content and the second being that the matchmaking system was horrible. When playing that game I was constantly paired up against people who were a much higher level effectively doing the same mission I had done a bunch of times already.
While I support the idea of people educating themselves (and I would also recommend the reading list you provided), who can guarantee 100% that they are free from propaganda or brainwashing? Especially given the vast amount of information everyone is confronted with every day. We are emotional creatures, each susceptible to misdirection by those who intended it (or perhaps even worse, by those we trust who don't intend it).

Advocating that people take themselves out of the pool because they may not understand the entire situation would eliminate every possible voter.
1. Act rationally. Let him see you making rational decisions, and searching for explanations.

2. Make him talk for himself. Encourage him to meet and talk to as many different people as possible. This starts early, when he wants to hide behind your legs, and it's probably the most valuable skill he can have.
I vote palantir; I have a friend who works on the finance engineering team and he loves it. If you want me to put you in touch, let me know.