skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Youngest Crocodile Tamer
Samantha Young is the youngest crocodile tamer in the world.
Thats awesome, thanks for helping out.
Ah, yes, the sales guys -- the guy who visited us seemed very sharp, and we did get a good impression, overall. But he was dismissive of our DR/business continuity questions, and it raised a number of eyebrows, hence leaving us with the impression above...

I have no trouble believing that this is more of a perception issue than a technical issue.
I hope he started the day after rejection, is what I meant
I would second some of the advice about working on a set of small bugs or features. At my current job we have 2 million+ lines of code in a proprietary language with absolutely no documentation! I found while working on smaller issues it gave me an opportunity to familiarize myself with the rest of the codebase. I also drew a diagram of the class hierarchy as I went but quickly ran out of paper. It's a daunting task but you will become familiar with the code in no time. Good luck!
Okay, am I the only one who's a bit tired of hearing that every rejection is a badge of honour and the like? I mean, okay, learn from failures and all that, but they aren't badges, they're things to avoid. There's no need to sugar-coat it, sometimes your idea just sucks or is unworkable. Take the feedback and do your best with it, but being proud of it is a bit of a stretch.
I agree entirely. I imagine the reason why the media lumps science and engineering together is because they really are inseparable in driving technological progress. The article suggests that not recognizing the difference between the two could lead to misinformed decision-making, but if a politician for example decided to exclude one or the other from a decision, that's an even bigger mistake.
I'm sure you understand this, but it's worth explicitly pointing out that this blog post is a one time cost, whereas email overload is ongoing. Plus, email (for me, at least, and apparently the author) has a much higher psychological burden (reacting to input) than writing a blog post (creating output).
Minor correction - Lieberman is a former Democrat, elected as an Independent after losing the Democratic primary, who happens to caucus with the Democrats, though for the life of me, I cannot understand they put up with him, since he often sides with the Republicans.
300,000 Android phones activated a day, claims Google
Boomerang for Gmail update: Now in public beta with revamped UI
@roder, can you include the ./config file in your github repo for toyserver.js? Trying to replicate your setup and this is missing.
Hmm, could a free market approach to African development be what we were missing all along? If only we could come to some sort of consensus on that approach. We could call it the Washington consensus.
Note Hacking
Note Hacking using a ChLCD Boogie Board
Have to say I disagree with this. The point of schemes like this is that you're collecting miles for money you would have spent anyway - if you're spending extra money to collect miles, you're doing it wrong (since with most airline programs you can simply buy the miles for a few cents each to begin with).

But racking up $4k in 6 months is not actually all that difficult if you put everything on your card (utility payments, insurance payments, groceries, cell phone, gas, etc).

And if you can't meet the required spend by normal means, there are schemes out there to help you get there without actually spending any more money. For example (as mentioned below), buying $1 coins from the US mint with free shipping with your credit card, and then depositing them back in your bank account.

If you spend any amount of money with a credit card, and are responsible enough to pay it off every month (rewards cards typically have higher interest rates), there's no reason not to collect rewards from it.

The main question becomes whether to get a standard 1% cashback card or an airline miles card. This mostly depends on how much you fly (or plan on flying in the future). But if you do fly, the bonus miles offers and the potential value of the miles can be worth a lot more than the standard 1% cashback.
"Scientific Outsourcing" does not say "college students" or "extra/menial work to me". Based on the tagline, I would expect something more like consultants with MS or PhD who do freelance research projects.
I feel it takes so much mental energy to hack rewards cards that it's a net loss. He's obviously bright, I'm sure he could have used his time simply earning enough money to take his dream vacation.

As far as rewards go, amazon's reward card gives a good return without cognitive effort.
Stances regarding Wikileaks cross party lines. The current Democratic administration is against them, and I noticed some attempts by narrative-seeking media to pigeonhole support for Wikileaks as being the province of Tea Partiers. But lots of the US left like Wikileaks, so that doesn't work well. A slightly better division might be that the extremes of both the Left and the Right like Wikileaks to some degree, and the middle mostly doesn't. But support on the Right seems to be scattered throughout the span of extreme to moderate, possibly based on whether they think of Wikileaks primarily as attacking the Obama administration (them) or primarily as attacking the US (us).
Sorry, I should have put it in in the first place:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ngozi_okonjo_iweala_on_doing_busine...
Come on North Dakota!
I strongly recommend that you consider one of the affiliate networks (CJ.com or one of the other big 4) to use for this type of thing.

They all handle payments and all of the other details automatically. All you have to do is keep some money in an escro account and be willing to absorb their fees. Generally they charge 20% on top of any affiliate payments.
A great screener question for a tech interview - what's wrong with this paper?
I'm not sure I completely agree. A scientist can create a new measure or a new tool. I would express it as:

A scientist explains why it works, an engineer is happy when it does. ;)

Then again, I am a scientist...
Robert Hooke wrote Micrographia, about his observations using a microscope. Today the field is called Biology. The field of Computer Science is still stuck with the name of its primary tool. It like calling cosmology "Telescope Science".

The distinguishing feature of a scientist is the ability to observe and generalize. The engineer is good at constructing things. In the early days of a science you need both skills to get things going, so it is easy for outsiders to confuse the two.
I just got mine too. Sadly, as expected, flash brings it to its knees and fonts look like Linux :(

Otherwise pretty sweet. Think I'll try and sneak some better fonts on somehow and then use it for everything save Hulu and development.
what does the "full screen" button do? Isn't chrome os full screen by default?
The argument is very much inflicted with the bike-shed disease, largely because memorizing the planets is a common school activity so everyone feels they have a stake regardless of their scientific understanding of the subject.

The basic problem is that the definition of a planet has transitioned over time, a lot of time, from a colloquial definition to a scientific one. For the longest time "planet" was just a name for any large, permanent part of the solar system that was worth memorizing. Initially even the Sun and Earth's moon were planets, but the heliocentric revolution placed the Sun in a different category and inadvertently relegated the moon to a minor body along with all the other moons (notable only due to its proximity to human civilization). For a few decades the first 4 discivered asteroids were planets, but the discovery of hundreds and then thousands of similar asteroids brought the realization that these 4 bodies were not quite as notable as once thought. Pluto lasted much longer as the only known KBO for the better part of a century and thus snuck into planet hood.

When Pluto was alone it was much easier to ignore its differences and just chalk it up as the quirkiest member of the planets despite its tiny size, eccentric orbit tilted to the ecliptic, etc.

As we've discovered more planets in other systems and as we've discovered more objects in our outer solar sytem a firmer definition of planet has become more necessary. The new criteria for planet hood are straightforward and useful in understanding the nature and evolution of planetary systems. However, Pluto doesn't satisfy them. In scientific terms this isn't a big deal, but for the public and for the colloquial definition of planet there is still a lot of resistance to change.
Objection: Dependency Injection in Objective-C
the study found that 35% of dealers charged women more than men -- including 20% where the difference was > $500.

so it turns out that it's not a myth. not sure why they chose that headline.
He's actually even more tactical than that. The multiple depended on the job his kids get. I think he said he'd quadruple a nurses salary but they wouldn't get anything at all if they became investment bankers.
Greater transparency in the UI would be welcome, but what I think would be the best solution is a "temperature meter." Think barrel temperature in some action games -- fire a lot all at once and you'll overheat; fire efficiently and you'll be able to fire whenever you need to. It could be displayed as simply as a numerical percentage in the top right.

The same system could even be applied to other user actions such as voting, replying, and story submission, to help emphasize quality over quantity.
Here are some videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxgRBC47SAo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T5lLlNTvkQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMBaHgfEGG4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPowc1yM0NQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVQAi73ypPA
Found out the hard way: This is not safe for work.
Anonymous punished some bad corporate citizens for doing the wrong thing, and bullied some of them into doing the right thing. This is in direct response to the bullying Assange has gotten. Legal or not, it's sort of awesome to see bullies get bullied back.
Is there any indication if you've been rejected (other than simply not receiving a new toy?)
Ask HN: Feedback on InsightOutpost.com
Hello Fellow HNers,

Insight Outpost is a site that I developed in collaboration with its founder, Mike Neiss. I/O is a social writing forum for you to share your creativity with the world. Registered users can easily submit their writings for others to read, vote, and comment on. Our goal is to create a smart and fun community where anyone, regardless of experience, can submit their writing and get quality feedback on. The site was born out of the experiences of Mike and his attempt at writing a satire piece. Here's the full story - http://bit.ly/cuChF2.

We would love any and all feedback you may have on the site.

http://insightoutpost.com

Thanks!
Erlang has various defects, but it is bomb proof in many ways - it's been out there for many years with many people using it for critical infrastructure.

I'd bet on Node.js and similar efforts for the future, but Erlang is a pretty nice system and well worth looking at and learning from.
Would you hire a physicist and material scientist to design you a bridge? Or the civil engineer?

You are right, there are degrees of each profession in each other. No one (not the least the IEEE) will deny that. But that's a huge leap to 'It's all the same to me'.

This is like saying 'oh, as a sysadmin I periodically have to write scripts and small programs' and therefore there's no big deal conflating sysadmins and being a programmer/developer.

Also, to nitpick a bit... biologists aren't building organic circuits. Biologists along with bio-engineers (and a whole buttload of other engineers) are building organic circuits.

Yes, there will be exceptional people who so perfectly blend scientist and engineer, that in that person, the two become the same. But as a whole, they are two intertwined, but separate things.
I thought this was going to be about some super-ineffcient international route, featuring multi-day layovers that was offered for $418 by a carrier.
How fast can you code this?
This is pretty cool problem, and interesting idea, which programming language can code this the fastest(read easiest) as well as run fastest. As of now python is in the lead over ruby. :)
Clicky click - http://insightoutpost.com
I always thought engineering was the application of science. A scientist observes, experiments, and records his findings. An engineer uses these findings to build stuff.
Perhaps it's just hard to tell the "I outsmarted him" story when the people you're telling it to relate more to the antagonist (the guy) than the protagonist (you). It makes me want to ascribe more negative features to you than I have any rational basis to really do so.
To be fair I think that's what he just did
Wow Carl, you are really welcome. If you have any question or suggestion for the comments, please ask :)
And since this IS a technical community, here's some other points of interest:

- Built with Django, jQuery, and Git (hosted on CodebaseHQ)

- MySQL

- Served up by Apache on Ubuntu Karmic

- Hosted on AWS

- Fabric for deployment
Ask HN: Best programming font?
Every once in a while I tune the little details of my programming setup. Today I am wondering if there is a font I would prefer to the default Ubuntu emacs font. What is your preferred programming font?
Well, I was trying to not get into the details of the first company's response because I did not want to bias my posts one way or the other to other posters. But the response and I am paraphrasing was "I am a small shop, I work hard for my money and I am tired of people asking for hand outs, The pro version is for professionals and given that your daughter is not a professional she does not need the pro version" This is not the exact wording but close.

The second response was, paraphrased: While we understand the needs of educational software, we cannot offer educational discounts for non accredited educational use. The video codecs that we use require us to pay licensing fees for each seat sold unless that seat is used for accredited educational use. I am really sorry but please see our position, when developers salaries are added in we will eat the cost of those codecs if we sold the software at our educational price.
how do you trigger an erase anyway? is that eye-looking thing on the side a button? is it possible to erase just a part of the "screen"? neat looking device though for throwaway scratchings.
More from the same author/author background: http://www.ted.com/talks/evgeny_morozov_is_the_internet_what...

I knew I'd seen that name before.
That's what IBM says:

Given the realities that software source code
is human readable, and object code can be reverse
engineered, it is difficult for software developers
to resort to secrecy. Thus, without patent
protection, the incentives to innovate in the
field of software are significantly reduced.
Patent protection has promoted the free sharing
of source code on a patentee's terms - which
has fueled the explosive growth of open source
software development.

This was part of their amicus argument asking the Supreme Court to not eliminate software patents.
Please tell me you didn't shut that down. Work/life balance! Stress relief!
The only problem with this (note: I speak from no experience, just reading other comments) is that it's at the application level. For the serious DDoS stuff (Anon, extortion rings), you have to filter at the TCP level (from what I know). That gets more complicated when the attacks originate from a botnet (especially if that botnet has infected IP ranges similar to what your customers use -- can't very well go off and ban Time Warner, if you're in the US)
As of yet don't have one. But I'm on pacific time, so may come later today.
Preparing for the GIANT "Unplug"
Jim Collins Should Follow His Own Advice
Seems like there is a simple distinction:

Science is the pursuit of knowledge (using math, logic, and reasoning to obtain knowledge).

Engineering is the practice of applying a process to create something (either concerete or abstract--like software).

Sometimes you must perform science before you can engineer. Other times engineering is necessary before science.
Roulette of Wikileaks cables
gist was updated, I included a client, which is needed to recreate the issue.
> What if all your (Anonymous) friends went to Wal-Mart and stood in line to buy something. Then when they got to the front they would fumble around in their pockets and say, "oh darn, I forgot my wallet", then they'd got out and come back in and do it again?

Here's another analogy (asked of someone who thinks that it's okay to do the above to walmart). Suppose I interfered with your ability to do your job via similar tactics? What if I just blocked your ability to get to work?

What? "You" are not walmart? So what? Are you more important than the folks who work at walmart? Are you more important than the folks who own walmart stock?

Heck - are you more important than the folks who want to buy something from walmart? You're not just costing walmart money, you're interfering with folks who want to buy things at walmart.

Such intereference may not be vandalism, but that doesn't make it acceptable.
How Ford turned a crash into a profit
Groupon doesn't seem all that interesting to me...I've never really sought deals in that manner.

However, if you could pull off something like they do here at Bonktown: http://www.bonktown.com/

I might pay attention from time to time.
Right? I came here to post the exact same thing. My animal brain kicked in immediately at the $800 a year and thought "woah, why is it so much?" Then I realized that's just $65 or so year.
If he's enjoy it, which he appears to be, then he's having fun hacking as well as getting a near-free vacation.

I'm certain that fiddling with my 30 year old pinball machine is a net loss. But I'm going to do it anyhow.
Yeah you erase using that eye-looking button, which is a tactile membrane switch. It's an all-or-nothing operation so that is a bit limiting.
Compiler and tools tricks
You can already get Fiber in Chattanooga, TN =)

I was surprised that we weren't on the list. Be interesting to see what the next city to get residential fiber is.
Evgeny's done a lot of writing on cyberactivism, and was one of the most outspoken critics of Haystack. Even when I disagree with him (which is a lot of the time) I think his articles are generally well-reasoned and well-researched. He comes from a foreign policy background, not engineering, but usually does his homework well.
In the videos posted two days ago they showed a full screen feature which only showed the active webapp to 'minimize distractions.'
If you don't want to build the daily deals software, you may want to check out http://cajoots.com (a project of mine).

Let me know if you have any questions: stevenj134@gmail.com
Stop generalizing. All people are foolish in a lot of things. One can't know everything.
The US fetish with credit scores mystifies me. (I've lived in the US for 15 years.) Especially with the economy in its current state, why would you want credit at the moment?
I ve always considered Engineering an application of science to solve problems (to make humanity better, if you want the pure, idealistic definition). In my opinion,

Engineering = f(Science).

Someone wanna take a shot at the function?
Yay! Green Bay, WI is on the list.
No, You're Not an Impostor
Selling Your Company When You're Running on Fumes
Proof the peer review process is broken
Saying that I think a guy who can swing from rock to rock like a monkey is an attempt to redefine the meaning of the word "climbing" is ridiculous. I actually have no opinion about what climbing is or is not. I was expressing admiration. Like if a quarterback throws a huge pass and the receiver dives across the goal line and catches the ball with one hand for a touchdown. Now that's football. I'm not saying everyone one else on the field isn't playing football or shouldn't be allowed on the field. Maybe I should have written my comment with three exclamation points...Now, that's climbing!!! Boy Howdy!!!

Also, I don't care or judge whether people climb with or without risk. But to your point, you actually could make an escalator the width of a gymnastic balance beam and with bumps, so that it would have adventure and risk, for those who seek that from escalator climbing. I am sorry to have commented because clearly I inadvertantly hit a nerve with a subset of climbers who apparently feel some kind of insecurity or something, when compared to awesome free soloists.

Anyway, I have get going, I can't stay here in the basement typing on my Dad's computer, I have to get back to middle school for the afternoon assembly. But thanks for spending all your time chatting with me.
IIRC: Facebook guys stood outside a Google recruiting session at Stanford handing out fliers saying "Why work at Google? Join The Facebook" or somesuch.
Too bad. For example we got Ice T unboxing our game :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXt2Q8EdzIw
Wikipedia editors delete list of Wikileaks Mirrors
How would this be different than AppSumo?
This one sounds different. It's by an investor, not a rejected entrepreneur.
Is their blog down?
When science isn't driven at least in part by problem solving, there's a tendency to wander off into interesting but arcane fields with little potential for application any time soon.

You can argue that eventually all science will be useful somehow or that as long as someone finds it interesting, it doesn't really matter. But, it seems a waste for brilliant minds to pursue largely irrelevant questions when they could dramatically make the world a better place now just by shifting their interests a bit.
Sure and I understand that, i ask that you don't see it as an "I outsmarted him" post that was not my intention (which has got kind of lost). My intention was to serve as a warning to how customers make decisions and that placing earmarks on customers can be dangerous. I am by no means disconnected from the realities of writing software, it is after all what I do for a living. Rather than bragging about outsmarting someone (which I never felt I did) I merely wanted to highlight the dangers of earmarking bargain shoppers as being difficult customers. Contrary to how I may be perceived in these posts, I am a developer first and for most and am very rational when it comes to dealing with other development organizations to my knowledge no one has ever seen me or my organization as a difficult customer. We may be critical of who we establish business relationships with, but after a relationship has been established they are generally amicable.
Ya that's my thought too. The logistics of running a business are different (and in my mind easier to solve) than the logistics of programming, and should be solvable in a more general way. Also there is a social aspect to it. It's pretty obvious in any project who is pulling their weight (at least for people on the inside).
> There's at least a factor of 50 available between today's batteries and the energy density of gasoline (for example).

That difference doesn't imply that batteries can be improved at all, let alone by 50x.

There are lots of differences between batteries and gasoline and some of them may limit the energy density of batteries to be less than that of gasoline.

Even small differences matter. For example, diesel has significantly more energy per volume than gasoline. (I forget how the various alcohols rank.)
Brake lights sensitive to braking force
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=19013

Stanford faculty is getting it
It's not a C-clamp. A c-clamp won't produce nearly as much leverage. It is the difference between a vice grip and a plyer. I can assure you there were plyers before vice grips, and the guy who invented vice grips went on to make a whole lot of money selling them to people who had a problem a pair of plyers couldn't solve.