skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem is that while 50/50 can work, it rarely does, and it's nearly impossible to tell at the beginning whether it will, unless you have already had such an arrangement with someone and it worked well with them.

Sometimes it works well for a number of years, and then, at some later point, priorities change or differences emerge, or a culture clash happens, and the partners can have their own 'camps' of people, who sometimes don't get along.

In most cases it is better to have one person set the culture and long-term objectives of the company. However, they can and should start with other partners, who can have significant influence on both of those aims; with a good CEO it can even at times appear undifferentiable from equality, but at the end of the day one person should have the ability to call the decision to eliminate stalemates.
My understanding is that the reason WebKit does not use the TeX layout algorithm is performance. WebKit has a zero-tolerance policy on performance regressions; the only way the TeX layout algorithm will make it in is if it can do so without sacrificing rendering speed.
He basically said those things in an interview once. So while he might not react that way when looking for a job it really just depends on how much he wanted the job.
> > I work in Sunnyvale, my wife works in SF, and we play in Monterey

> Yes, but you've chosen those places due to the prevailing social norm in your society to drive all the time.

You've got it backwards. We chose those jobs because we like to make money. Driving makes it possible for us to earn much more money than we would if we didn't drive.

> Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/Cupertino, so that one of you could walk to work, and you wouldn't have to do too much urban driving to get to Monterey.

There's no "urban" driving between Sunnyvale/SC/Cupertino and Monterey. Urban is inside SF, Oakland/Berkeley.

> Unless I'm going somewhere obscure and far away, or travelling on Sunday, a train can normally get me to within 2 miles of where I want to be, within about half an hour of when I want to be there.

Middle of the day CalTrain schedules aren't every half hour and CalTrain isn't within 2 miles of everywhere I want to go on the Penninsula.

But, let's assume all that AND that CalTrain doesn't take any time to get between destinations. The half-hour schedule gap and 2 miles is an hour travel time.

Only one of our typical weekday trips are anywhere near that.

> That's plenty accurate enough, and certainly as accurate as urban driving.

No, it's not. It's significantly worse than what I've got now. Then again, the only urban driving that we do is inside SF, which is a small minority of our driving as we live in San Jose.

For some of the SJ to SF trips, Caltrain works for us. However, it doesn't a large fraction of the time.
You'd probably enjoy iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon, if you haven't read it. Great stories of his childhood and totally inspirational. He makes you want to build things.
My Average Karma hasn't changed? Does the algo only calculate new averages after a certain threshold?
Is there a mayavi tutorial somewhere? It looks pretty interesting, but I could never figure it out.
> As usual, someone with limited computer skills that can't get a better job somewhere else, ends up teaching computers for slightly more than minimum wage.

Statements like this make me rage a bit; students have to put up with non-technical teachers in part because precious few people in the high-tech sector can be moved to do teaching work in their community.

It's as much our fault as anyone else's.
We have plans to build a more fully-featured, Go-centric compiler (and there's the beginnings of one in the source tree under pkg/exp/ogle), but we haven't had the time to get stuck into it yet.
Cognition Enhancing Drugs: Just Say Yes?
You shouldn't do something really stupid?

Cop out:)

Ok, so I've pretty much done this to some insane extremes. Thing is, it's a lot easy to do it as a game than as part of life. Example: go tell a girl she is ugly as hell. A good % will ask you if you've a bet with someone; and indeed it's a lot harder to honestly express that than to do so as a challenge.

For people more interested, I'd check out this book called Radical Honesty. If you do this challenge and want to "graduate" to next level, that book is solid.
I love the idea of this, but these days I always have something else sitting in front of apache (usually nginx), it seems like this is where i'd want a module like this to be running.

If apache rewrites the html with such things like temporary optimized versions of files, nginx presumably won't know anything about serving them, so it'll break (date urls being an exception here I guess).

For things like media, I really want to keep apache out of the loop completely.
By "worked in government" do you mean "worked in a department of the civil service eventually reporting to a cabinet minister"?
The situation seems to be the same as in the US, where a high-school diploma no longer guarantees mastery of remedial English and math skills. Forcing colleges to front-load that education before moving forward.

HS graduation rates may be higher today but I'm not sure that correlates with greater mastery of basic intellectual skills.

This also helps explain the increasing reliance on college degrees (any degree) as a necessary prerequisite credential for many office and knowledge worker jobs.
and of course Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre who wore the skin masks of his victims to help take on their personality.
Reminds me of the bit in Cryptonomicon where Lawrence Waterhouse takes an intelligence test for the navy:

"They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back?

Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat. Clearly, 5 miles per hour was nothing more than the average speed. The current would be faster in the middle of the river and slower at the banks. More complicated variations could be expected at bends in the river. Basically it was a question of hydrodynamics, which could be tackled using certain well-known systems of differential equations. Lawrence dove into the problem, rapidly (or so he thought) covering both sides of ten sheets of paper with calculations. Along the way, he realized that one of his assumptions, in combination with the simplified Navier-Stokes equations, had led him into an exploration of a particularly interesting family of partial differential equations. Before he knew it, he had proved a new theorem. If that didn't prove his intelligence, what would?

Then the time bell rang and the papers were collected. Lawrence managed to hang onto his scratch paper. He took it back to his dorm, typed it up, and mailed it to one of the more approachable math professors at Princeton, who promptly arranged for it to be published in a Parisian mathematics journal.

Lawrence received two free, freshly printed copies of the journal a few months later, in San Diego, California, during mail call on board a large ship called the U.S.S. Nevada. The ship had a band, and the Navy had given Lawrence the job of playing the glockenspiel in it, because their testing procedures had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else."
Managing your marriage when your spouse has ADHD
Oh man, Mockingjay? I loved that whole damn series. I bought the first two books in physical form and the final shortly after I got my iPhone as a Kindle book. I may just go re-buy the first two as Kindle books when I go to re-read the series again.

(Partly because Kindle books are so much more convenient to me, and partly because I'm not a huge Collins fan and don't mind pumping her sales figures at all.)
Apologies for my American-centered knowledge of an education system. Could you provide more background about this issue? A-levels vs IB (Internaltional Baccalaureate I think)?
iTunes isn't clunky. It's a well-designed application that does what it says it does. That it has features I don't use doesn't bother me because they are grouped or hidden away from view.
I stopped reading the list at item number two.
That's because it's being served as raw text data from the Subversion repo.
This essay is great and appears every so often like The Last Question from Asimov. It is one that is very true to the life of a company as it matures. It also shows why innovation will always happen at smaller companies with smaller teams just like everything good ever invented.
Put this somewhere if you ever have a kid: The Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg. I've just finished applying what I learned, and believe me, you never knew how much you need sleep until you go without it for a few months. It's a great book.
Supreme Court hears arguments on violent video game bans
For my degree (Computer Science at Warwick), the first year did count towards my final results. Even without it counting, I feel it would have been fairly difficult to adequately teach Computer Science without the 'extra' year at the start.
Also interesting to note that they're generally the product of upper middle class families and probably had a strong financial support system to fall back on if they failed.
The upgrade is practically automatic. iTunes nags you every time you plug in an out-of-date iPhone and only requires a single click. That and the jump from 3.3.1 to 4.x is an absolute night-and-day excruciating difference in speed and usability.
I found this exchange in the reddit comments to be interesting:

karlr42:
The only way you beat crackers is to set your site up securely and maintain it. Nothing else, including this post, will help.

MrWeiner:
No argument here. I could explain what the issue has been, but I'd rather not do that publicly. Suffice it to say that we're doing a lot of cleaning house right now.

Depending on how one interprets "cleaning house" it may be the case that Zach has in fact realized the exact point you're making.
Do you have full control over the amount of data your system is taking in?

The startup I founded had analytics code in a ton of iPhone applications and was handling the load just fine right up until the day it suddenly wasn't. By that point we had customers who relied on us, and we had to deal with it very quickly. Not fun. And there's certainly more to scaling than just cheap architecture. We thought EC2 would handle the overflow until we unexpectedly became completely I/O bound. Firing up a few more instances can't fix that.

If you're just running some scraper and can control what you're taking in, that's a completely different story.
Design Candies are Not for Me
MODERN WARFARE 2 & BLACK OPS FRAUD
If you research online with MW2 hacks or MW2 challenge lobbies you will find a number of ways people can do cheats for one of the most popular games available on all systems including PC. These cheats are being released by activision so that people will stop playing or trade in their old MW2 games for the new one coming out in a few days. This isn't the first time it's happened and surely because nothing is being done about it. It will persist. The really messed up part about it is that people are being taught indirectly how they can manipulate programing in order to bypass the rules. The smart ones are figuring out how to use these back doors to do more serious damage. Like stealing peoples private info and at times stealing stuff that people purchased on their accounts and adding it to theirs. Although I can't say for certain peoples Credit Card info isn't safe. If people are stealing stuff you bought with your C.C. then it's like stealing your credit card. This needs to be stopped. Corruption needs to be stopped on every level. If you research it enough you will find that it is news worthy. The MW black ops game that is due to hit in a few days boasts high pre-game sales. CHECK IT OUT THE BIG NEWS NETWORKS MAY FIND THIS INTERESTING.
A fun read, but a reductive and somewhat cliched thesis. Software companies don't die because they let the marketers take the reins. By the time that even happens, the disease has already set in. The influx of suits is a symptom and not a cause. Usually it's a symptom of one or more things:

1) The company has grown complacent;

2) The company has lost touch with its userbase, or with the landscape in general, or with the competition;

3) The company has reached its liquidity event, at which point it's no longer "cool," and cannot attract or retain top talent;

4) A bad investor, founder, or partner took control and started making poor decisions, or a great one ceded control and left;

5) The category is disrupted entirely.

There are many more root causes, but you get the idea. The suits don't actually kill the company; they are just correlated with the death.
I agree mostly with this statement, however for most schools (including the one I attended) where you are going for a Bachelor's degree, you are required to take a certain number of general elective credits and required basic classes. Supposedly this makes you a more well-rounded human, more of a broad thinker, what have you.. But for a major like mine (CompSci) it makes you wonder if it's really worth it in comparison to a 2 year degree or tech schooling. Was falling asleep in geology 101 every day for a semester and ending up with a bachelor degree and more loans worth it, when I could have been in the work force 2 years earlier probably doing the same thing? Who knows.... but universities should take more emphasis off general electives (badminton anyone?) and offer more major-related classes to those who are interested.
My personal freaking struggle to ethically invest
The best part :
If we are just considering the round ones, then they are round by definition. That statement is a tautology.
Based on my reading of Jim Gleick's biography Isaac Newton and my background as a theoretical physicist, I believe your comment is essentially accurate. In particular, Newton's desire to connect calculus with Euclidean geometry is certainly correct. As you note, the Principia eschews calculus in favor of geometric arguments: Newton used calculus for his private calculations and then translated the results into more conventional geometry to meet his audience's expectations. I'm not sure about the religious aspect, but Newton was privately a heretic (he believed in a unitary god—an awkward belief for a professor at Trinity College), so he definitely knew how to placate the religious authorities. Finally, the Leibniz anecdote is new to me, but it sounds plausible.

In any case, I don't think your comment should have been killed.
So how much were you able to actually get into CS your first year?? I was limited to mostly programming 1 & 2... you couldn't get into any higher level CS studies until you had those two classes completed, and you couldn't take them at the same time. That led to a lot of fun side projects, no doubt, but that was when I wasn't falling asleep in my under-water basket weaving class. I often wonder if a technical program at a computer-specific school would have yielded the same results for much less dime.
buy something in themeforest
software without bugs? seriously?
reminds me of this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05WS0WN7zMQ
Yeah, if a university education is a gleaming skyscraper the first year is like the foundation that holds it up: often unappreciated, but necessary.
Yeah, EA Vancouver/Burnaby is one of those "satellite" branches: when there's a problem, they get to experience first-hand on what downsizing means. Wouldn't count as the best bet since aside from OT there are big possibilities of massive lay-offs.

I'd take entry-level Java boilerplate code at any given day than a Microsoft boilerplate code (which is what Vancouver has to offer these days, especially with the government around here). Vancouver salary is also between 20-30% less than to that in Toronto.

And lately, since all the fun lies in Asia, I can't wait to go there. Vancouver becomes boring (and gray) to me. Especially with the 10 months of rain.
I don't know if you had a 3G, but the IOS4 upgrade made adamant on my decision to ditch the iphone and go to android.. It would lag out for 3 or 4 seconds while dialing a number -- it became unusable as a basic phone, let alone a smart phone. It had nothing to do with the carriers.
A latent gift from _why
15 things that Apple worries about
What things? The manhole stuff? Do you have a link?
I think I've seen this before, except Feynman was going on about how circles aren't the only constant width shapes:

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/CWStar.shtml
More than willing to next time you're in Padova!
Mostly I determined it through failure.
"Which is exactly why we should not have government run healthcare. Where does it stop, should I have to pay for people that decide to take high risk carrer paths, how about high risk sports as a recreation. "

I actually agree with you here. I never want government run health care because of this. It also makes it so it's in the government's best interest to make sure you don't increase your health risks. Many other "risk" behaviors will be banned or taxed (such as fast food).

"You open up a slippery sloop when, you don't agree with someone else's choice and decide you are going to enforce your view of the world on them."

You can choose to smoke pot and do whatever you want with your life. But, you start encroaching on my freedoms when you force me to pay for any negative health problems or force me to hire specific types of people.

As a sysadmin or developer, there are times when you need to come in after hours or in an emergency situation. If the person that needs to come in is high, I can't count on them to do their job.

Unlike the government mandates that you support, you can choose not to work for my company.
Or Paul Dirac. He had a very literal mind.

(I just read Graham Farmelo's bio of Dirac, and I highly recommend it for those who are fascinated by genius physicists like I am)
Honestly - get over yourself. You don't have to pay him money, and he doesn't even mention sexuality in that article ('cept, if you really, really want to stretch it, he does mention underwear)

Yeah some of his believes are wrong, but this isn't one of them.
I just saw the entire talk, and its very interesting from start to end.

I would recommend it to anyone that feels the 'entepreneurial tickles'.

Also, in my opinion, the lean startup and fail fast chapters give really good advice.

Thanks for posting this
iOS 4.1 did fix all of the performance problems that the iPhone 3G did have. The real problem here is the amount of time it took Apple to implement the fixes required.
And the next logical step is to read the book that has his compiled letters. Great stuff.
Selective Anhedonia
That's very surprising. I was pretty sure we had stopped asking those questions a long time.
Some other posts at www.datasyndrome.com are less fluffy on the same topic. The 3 founders one was written to suggest a 3rd founder to a startup. Data hackers tend to underestimate the importance of hustling and design.
I read it as "Microsoft is too incompetent to put him in the right department", but maybe that wasn't the intent.
And once you convince them, they will likely say that it would cost too much to migrate.

Then you tell them that you have already been using git-svn for months to do your work, and the migration is effectively done already.
The sad thing is that I really enjoy his books. His newer books aren't as good. Is that because they really aren't as good, or because my reading of them is tinged by my knowledge that the guy is a nutcase?
Yes. I mean, the term "resort" is pretty pejorative, but having worked with Apple products in both the design (video/audio composition and editing) and education (5,000+ UG), Apple's 'planned obsolescence' is pretty devastating. The two ready-to-hand examples:

LogicPro - the migration from a dongle-based system to a non-dongle system was an utter nightmare where some people were able to maintain their old license and pay the upgrade price while others couldn't.

PPC -> Intel - the migration in driver architecture was a nightmare across the entire Apple ecosystem. "Better/faster/just works" did not apply here at all. As a classic example: the version of Final Cut released shortly after the architecture switch was unable to run natively on Intel. Shortly after the Universal Binary version was released, Apple broke compatibility with After Effects plugins and instead replaced it with FxPlugin and once again caused a huge disruption.

So yes, it does in fact seem like the sort of thing Apple would do.
Traction Maths
I had a four hour long interview for a systems programming/administration position where plebeian admins were allowed to grill me for about 25% of the time, asking me to whiteboard viable algorithms for cute little problems they concocted. All of my solutions would have functioned flawlessly and would have met all of the stated requirements, but they didn't involve the same thought processes that the interviewers had used. I "failed" but in the end, I won. I would not have fit in there anyway.
There have been a number of tweaks to A-levels, once the gold standard of secondary education, to make them easier to pass. For example instead of one exam at the end of two years, it is split into smaller modules, which can be repeated, lower marks can be discarded, there is a consolation prize of an AS level, and pass rates have been going up every year. There is even a whole new grade, A* above A - whereas surely A* is really A and A is really B, but that doesn't look so good on the league tables.

Yet all the time that grades are going up, lecturers are complaining that the quality of freshers is going down, in terms of the level of literacy and numeracy that would be expected in previous years, and that most of the first year must be devoted to remedial teaching, filling in the material that wasn't covered in A-levels.

The International Baccalaureate is operated by an independent non-profit organization in Switzerland whose reputation rests not on conning the voters but on being the real "gold standard". Education is too important to be trusted to politicians.

Schools in the UK have the power to do the IB instead of A-levels but are strongly discouraged from doing so via the central funding mechanism, this is for ideological reasons, the New Labour government felt it was "divisive". Hopefully the current lot, who are all about decentralized decision making, will allow it.
Just finished ``On Lisp''. This is an advanced Lisp book and shouldn't
be your first one. It assumes some familiarity with the language so
you're better of reading ``Practical Common Lisp'' first if you're
diving into Lisp for the first time. The book focuses almost
exclusively on advanced use of macros and metaprogramming.

Interestingly, I've also read SICP in parallel -- currently reading
the last chapter -- and there's some overlap in the topics treated in
the two books. I'm also walking through CLRS and TAOCP at the moment,
albeit reading the latter with a slower pace compared to the former.

On the non-technical side, I'm reading ``Drawing with the right side
of the brain'' by Betty Edwards. I've picked up this book since I've
decided to resume drawing one year ago. I highly recommend it if you
struggle to draw a realistic rendering of a real life object or a
landscape.
Microsoft's Internal Tug-of-War: The Open Platform vs. Closed Camps
And yet all of his Twitter links are non SSL...