skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This doesn't really address the problem; the "life skills" grade isn't standardized and will be meaningless for just about anything beyond the report card. Its value is as a signal to parents.

So why not have a comments section? Is it too much to ask that a subjective assessment be spelled out in a written sentence or two?
Microsoft TV: A Bold Move That May Blow Up Broadcast
My wife's boss doesn't like 9's. So if a student get's a 59, 69, 79 or 89 at the end of the semester, you get a call.

Failure does not exist in the U.S. public school system. Even if a student does not participate, they are "remediated," wherein they sit in front of a computer for 6 weeks in order to receive class credit.
First Look at the “Git Tower”
Free Engraving for Non-Economists
The periods indicate text I removed to make the title < 80 chars.
Yacc is dead
I'd like to buy enough downvotes to make this comment disappear forever.

A startup is still a job, and a job is still only part of your life.

There are jobs before and jobs after, but nobody lays on their deathbed wishing they would have spent _less_ time with their family.
And then it gets stuck halfway up because the user didn't notice that there was a traffic sign attached to the post.
Anyone who is offended by a sexist title (this one is an apt historical reference as well) is probably going to have a problem in a startup where employees "[t]ell jokes that would make sailors blush". I bet a fair number of those jokes are sexist, too.

This may be an effective filter for a sexual harassment lawsuit.
Red Hook Capital
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Firefox already alert you on startup of newly installed Plugins?

Eh sorry I don't know the answer, been a Safari/Chrome user for a while.

From an end user POV, I think it would be okay to have both the OS permissions grab and a warning from Firefox that new plugins have been installed.

You've already granted the original app (iTunes) permission to install whatever, but it wouldn't be much more of a hassle to have Firefox popup a confirmation box that new stuff has been installed (assuming it doesn't, or at least it didn't on the OP's system).
"In the case of Windows the solution turned out to be
government intervention."

I think that's debatable. The solution was innovation. People realized that they couldn't beat MS at their own game so they changed the rules. Open Source, Apple, Mozilla, They all changed the rules of the game and now MS is finding it hard to compete in the space they created. I actually don't think Government intervention had that much of an effect at all.
Even so, if you're a top performer, you end up subsidizing the paychecks of a lot of people.
That's very interesting. Thank you very much.
Fred Destin, Atlas Venture, on Venture Success [video]
Do you really think the developer world, particularly within startups, doesn't have a serious problem with sexism?
It's really unfortunate that this poorly-chosen title overshadows an otherwise very attractive job posting. Sexism is still sexism, whether or not it's from 1914.
-female and feminist programmer here.
This seems like an obvious move. The only question I have is why they didn't do this years ago.
British Navy selling aircraft carrier, HMS Invicible, via Internet Auction
Fair enough. I really like this sort of post. It's intriguing to see people's interpretations of what a Lisp is, and what a compiler does, and 89 lines is short enough to digest the essence in a blog post.

I guess I should probably come up with my own Lisp implementation now :)
Correction to your correction: It isn't LGPL, it's GPL v2, with an addendum adding a linking exception. They couldn't use the LGPL because it uses some code from git, but they apparently got permission to add a special exception for that code (but not a license change). They may rewrite that part, but it's not a high priority at the moment. This is a weird special case - IANAL, but it seems like a de facto LGPL.

I've been talking with Vincent Marti about this, because I'm considering writing a Lua wrapper for libgit2, but wary of relying on libraries under the GPL. (I'm fine with the LGPL.)

Also, I ported the library to OpenBSD - it needed some finagling with preprocessor directives for thread-local storage. Contact me if you're interested. It's a bit rough, just good enough to get started on the wrapper.
Sure, but you then need to get everyone else downloading the (original) torrent to download and use your new torrent. The new amazon torrent might split the file into differently sized chunks compared to the original. In short, you'd need to get all original downloads/uploaded to use your new torrent.
> The question we need to ask about education:
> What are we trying to produce?

K-12 education as we know it today was first mandated/implemented by the King of Prussia in the 1860's to jump into the Industrial Revolution. We sent envoys to study and copy his schools. He sought 3 products: Compliant citizens, efficent factory workers, and obedient soldiers. We in the US have added a 4th purpose: free day care so both parents can be productive workers.

Can't separate the tree from the seed. Talk of "reform" needs to remember origins.
If these are indeed true accesses (and not just phishing attempts), I would take a very careful look for malware on your computer. There is no way they are brute-forcing passwords like "j@zz!t7p=()++" (and Gmail would have long blocked their failed attempts).

I've never had anything of mine compromised, especially Gmail (at least to my knowledge). Knocks on wood.
It seems to me that one of the best preventative measures for both theft and vandalism is having a bike that 'doesn't stick out' or attract attention. This fails at blending in.
They were not "proved wrong". Prior to that decision there was no exemption for jailbreaking.
Note on side note: CNAs are not nurses.
Related: https://github.com/3b/slime-proxy
Setting the Startup Accelerator Pedal
Groovy Array: it just keeps going...and going...
Foursquare founder's advice for Entrepreneurs
Good to see the mainstream finally getting it. A few choice quotes:

"What's striking about the pirate kings is that they've been much less successful in the straight world than they were as pirates. An anarchic worldview coupled with brilliant code doesn't travel as well as you'd think in the bean-counting world of legitimate commerce. Good code empowers users by giving them choices and options, but empowered users aren't necessarily good for business. What you need to hit it really big in legitimate commerce is an authoritarian sensibility that limits users to doing what you want them to."

...

"Johansen rejects any attempt to associate him with piracy. "As far as I'm concerned, it has nothing to do with me," he says. "I support fair use, which means that when you actually legally acquire content, you should have the right to use that content on any of your devices, using any application." For Johansen as for all of the pirate kings, it was always about writing good code, and what good code does is give power to the people who use it. That's the real reason the pirate apocalypse never happened. The pirates never wanted music and movies and all the rest of it to be free — at least, not in the financial sense. They wanted it to be free as in freedom."
It's not so much "offended" as the fact that I do not like what developer culture has become.

Speaking up about it seems to be a small way to create some change in that culture.

If I keep quiet, then the hive-minded sausage-fest will march on, assuming I share its beliefs.

On the other hand, speaking up about it really is just tilting at windmills, and incredibly frustrating each time.
I have my doubts that bundling a browser with other software will really convert those that don't know what a browser is.

They go online by clicking the blue 'e' icon on their desktop or start menu, as that's what they've always done. Adding another browser or changing the default browser doesn't change this behavior, and IE will ask the user to make it the default again as soon as they do.
There are some already listed in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1938859

I launched a CSS sprite generator at http://instantsprite.com.
Full circle completed?

More like a spiral: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0876570/

The movie I was talking about is apparently not yet released, though on the same subject. Hm.
In practice, there is nothing you can really do to prevent software running as root from installing whatever it wants. If you are going to install software using a company's installer, you'd better trust that company. Linux and BSD package managers can avoid this issue by replacing the original installer completely, but often times a package is just a thin wrapper around the company's own installer, in which case the problem is doubly hidden.
Interesting. When I was going to school in ex-Soviet Union we did have a 2 grades. A 'behavior' grade and an academics grade. There was a strong correlation between both but not always. I guess one could distill the behavior grades into other sub-categories as well.
Supreme Court to Decide Standard for Proving Invalidity of a Patent
Their choice of headline is a reference to a historical document from almost a century ago. Would it be better if we: a) rewrite history, or b) never reference it?
If you have a problem with the title of this job post, then chances are you're not fit for the company, or most young startups for that matter.
Just a hunch: I suspect they're not auto-detecting the trees, but rather relying on (amazing) tools like

http://www.urbanforestmap.org/
It is very possible, I agree.

I have often wondered why some companies (even mature ones) actively recruit entrepreneurially-minded folks. It just seems to me that they would create trouble for you once they realize you aren't acting like a market internally, and are only willing to pay labor-market rates (except in discreet circumstances).
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1951757

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1947436 <- This one has comments
This is why you should encourage people to install apps via http://ninite.com

We decline obtrusive toolbars and other junk automatically. Software installation is unbelievably terrible on everything but phones.
Still to this day there is a lot of miscommunication
happening due to the lack of intonation in communication
mediums such as text messages and emails. People think
I am ‘mad’ all the time because I send brief emails,
or they think I am joking when I am anything but joking.
Is that why Apple decided that FaceTime needs to be
an “open” protocol?

I feel like I'm biting bait. No, the openness of the protocol is not related to miscommunication.
Single page link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/19entre.html?page...
How to Write like Groupon
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948048 <- Many comments.
Your entire desk as a touchscreen monitor
أهداف مباراة برشلونة وريال مدريد
I just went to post that... can anybody explain to me what exactly is going on? I'm not familiar with Groovy, and I try to forget Java when I can, but this just plain doesn't make any sense.
I don't know that all of the Go bullet points are correct.
For one, Go doesn't have RAII or destructors specifically, but it has "defer" and runtime.SetFinalizer which provide similar capabilities.
Also, does Go necessarily have global GC? My understanding is that it currently does, but that's not part of the language spec... could it not in theory use reference counting or per-thread GC?

The other points seem pretty dead-on.. Rust seems to prioritize safety over simplicity, which is probably a good thing.
Why does Facebook change my link to translate.google.com?
Hi.

Maybe it's just me, but whenever I try to put any link to translate.google.com (for instance http://translate.google.com/#en|cs|asaasa) I see this link on my board: http://translate.google.com/#en|cs|Suck%20my%20balls

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but this looks weird, to say the least.

Best regards,
szeldon
Sorry about that-- annoying if you're not expecting it. Appears I'm too late to edit it.
New programming languages are never necessary, but they should scratch some itch. Something that was cumbersome in other languages should be easy in the new language. Or the new language should be the union of things that only existed disjointly in other languages. Rust seems to fall in that latter category.
Original post from Asa Dotzler: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2010/11/why_do_t...

The linked pcpro article doesn't add anything of value.
Similar: Hacker News thread on engadget.com article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1951662
Ask HN: Best way to transition from free beta to paid?
I recently took over an app that has been in a free beta period for about year. There are a decent (yet still relatively small) number of users that have been on this free beta.

I'm planning on transitioning the application out of the 'beta' and to a freemium subscription model.

Some users would qualify for the free level of service, some would be at paid levels of service after the switch.

What's the best way to handle this kind of change? Migrate all beta users to free plan and let them decide to upgrade? Let them keep current level of service and give them X days/months to enter payment information? Give them a discount over announced pricing plans?

Curious to hear how other people have done this.
It's pretty easy to balance one inverted pendulum. Especially if it's long or heavy. Two though - that would be hard.
While there are a number of telling studies and statistics relating to gender issues, I think there is enough missing information that it isn't really possible to say much of anything intelligent on the subject. Given that we literally can't even tell the difference between a mental illness and a physical illness much of the time, I don't think science is ready to put a number on the percentage of the entrepreneurship gender gap that's attributable to sexism. For all we know it could be due to social factors or biological factors that are so non-obvious that no one has even thought of them yet.
They chose the headline; I did not -- and it seems pretty clear from more than just the headline that the AdGrok folks value anti-PC posturing quite highly.

If it were me choosing the headline, and I had a desire to reference Shackleton's journey, what's wrong with "Wanted for hazardous journey: [...]"?
Dude, we're not talking about The 300 here. It's not a scholarly work, a historical piece, nor even a stand-up-comedy routine. It's a job ad. That matters.

HP Lovecraft's poem "On the Creation of the Nigger" is also a historical document from a century ago. We should not bury it, as it's an important document. I like the Cthulhu mythos, but I wouldn't quote that poem in a job ad in 2010.

Now of course people will reply "saying 'Men' isn't as bad as saying 'Nigger'", and miss the point.
That definitely seems like a better way to do it.
Its a historical quote from Ernest Shackleton when he was recruiting the crew for infamous 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition with ads in London newspapers that read:

MEN WANTED: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. Sir Ernest Shackleton.

I very highly recommend the book - http://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfre...
In practice, most people prefer a. Compare history books from different ages.
You need something a bit more complex to parse the referrer from a Google Image search, due to the way Google links images to another page on their site instead of directly to your page. You end up with a nested URL within the referrer that needs to be double-decoded to get back the original search term, or something along those lines.
Larry Sanger Comments on Wikileaks
"how projects grow in that community"

They don't, generally. C#/.NET hasn't exactly been a fertile breeding ground for innovative new open source projects. The most important .NET project are typically Java or Ruby ports (unit testing ports, Rails-alikes, ORM ports, NAnt, etc.).
I actually enjoy programming with C++ and Qt containers.

Both STL and Boost seem like pathologically complex ways to do something that's already hard. Consider; in a situation where you're doomed to sometimes use a for-loop, where for-loops are pretty much the underlying semantics, using some proportion of higher level methods like filter when they don't shorten your code, turns these construction into obfuscating, leaky abstractions.

But perhaps you have to actually be a C++ fan to use STL and Boost. I only view C++ as the least-bad-for-my-purpose language.
First, point to anything else in that blog post that indicates any kind of "anti-PC posturing". Specifically anything that reveals any kind of gender bias. I'm guessing that you can't without revealing some gender biases of your own, but try me.

Second, there's a difference between "anti-PC" and anti-equality.

For example, I can say "fuck political correctness" because I think running around mincing your words in a (pointless and futile) attempt to avoid offending anyone is cowardly, but that doesn't mean that I hate minorities or am against equality. It just means that I think "political correctness" is stupid. If you're offended by my opinions, that's really not my problem; it's yours.
The solution of asking users if they want to install these plugins is horrible.

The average user has no idea what a browser plugin is. Adding an option (or even worse another screen in the installer) for this will only result in users accepting the default anyway and also feeling confused/stupid/scared for not understanding it.

This for-nerds-by-nerds hyper-configurable approach is a big waste of time. Normals just want sensible defaults. This is the big idea we're pushing with Ninite and it's frustrating to see someone fail to grasp this so publicly.
The scenario I put forward is my current scenario. My wife is due tomorrow (yippee!), I've been to nearly all of the doctor's appointments with her, and I'm cofounder of a startup that's doing quite well.

Sure, I put in plenty of hours, but I never forget the importance of work/life balance. My company is important, but it's not all important.
It's not even the tools, it's things like iterating quickly, having working code, good deployment tools, understanding of usability, etc. Nobody has an unlimited amount of time. And sometimes the people who kick ass at algorithms don't give a damn about anything else (and if they're academics that fine). The 'Rails guys' won't have their dreams crushed by performance issues. They'll learn what they need - in fact, since most web app performance is IO bound that's often the first thing they learn to optimise.
I support this headline. I'm sure these men would hire a female capable of providing the talent they require, and of fitting in with the culture of their workplace. I long to escape to such a place that doesn't cater to people looking for a reason to be offended, when no offense is warranted or intended.
When I click on the link in your install procedure 2. I get an error message "We're sorry, but something went wrong.

We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly."
Yeah, I was being flippant. I certainly don't think openness and good UX are mutually exclusive, myself.

Besides everything you mentioned I've seen rumors that one reason they're restricting third-party apps to a .NET bytecode sandbox is that they're planning to eventually swap out the current CE6 kernel for something different and incompatible (possibly NT-based), and they want to just be able to port the .NET environment rather than trying to persuade third-party devs to port their apps.
I know this is a curmudgeonly thing to say, but I'm happy to see one of these "implementing Lisp" articles where someone started with a lower-level language than Lisp. It just seems like you miss out on a lot of interesting learning if you start with something like Ruby or Python that is so close to Lisp already.

For example, implementing lambda with a Python lambda...really? You are missing a giant a-ha moment there, as you can see from this article.

Note: implementing a metacircular interpreter for Lisp in Lisp is a beautiful special case exception to my curmudgeonliness.
I guess in the US you have to worry about litigation.
They're aiming for compatibility with Java 1.4, which doesn't have varargs. In java 1.5 you could just write

public static Object[] createArray(Object... args) {
return args;
}
I think their corporate nature is incidental. Wired is a corporate media. Perez Hilton is not. This has more to do with getting technical details correct then being a corporation. So maybe "non-technical media" is the term we want?
But don’t destroy the usability of basic fields that are necessary for talking about the user

Allowing more flexibility in the "gender" field is destroying usability? I'd say it's improving usability.
There's a spectrum from machine code up to high level languages. Pretty much all the points on that spectrum already have languages on them.

We absolutely don't need any more languages. Languages aren't a problem that needs fixing.

But they're fun to create, which is why people keep creating them. Also it's very much a 'social' and fashion driven thing. Some people can't bear to be using 'last years' language.
Ask HN: Where to host your site for anonymity and free speech?
This is not about sharing illegal files or disgusting porn but it should be such kind of geographical and technical setup. Where is it save to have one's opinions published without being bothered - ever?

Take a .to domain and host it in Russia for example?
Can't you use variadic function parameters?

public static Object[] createArray(Object... args) {
return args;
}

I haven't done any Java in a while, so I'm just piecing this together from StackOverflow examples (with compiling, of course).
Tried to compile this using Borland's C++ 5.5 (free). The only function not supported was 'isdigit()'. Wrote a simple version just for fun and it compiled.

I was able to run the first example completely.

Not bad for an out-of-date but free compiler with a 1993,2000 copyright.
well, java has variable length arguments now so the whole file could be simply
public static Object[] createArray() {
return EMPTY;
}
public static Object[] createArray(Object... args) {
return args;
}

My guess is they probably had this before java supported such a syntax so that you could create arrays easily. once you auto-generate the file, you just do it up to 255.

I do not have a good explanation of why this is better than the normal array initializer though, apart from the fact that once you standardize on this you may have some minimal advantage in not allocating empty arrays around.
Treat Warnings as Broken Windows
You could accomplish the same thing with a

public static Object[] createArray(Object... objects) {
...
}

but doing it statically, hard-coded like this is faster. You leave it to the compiler to determine the length of the arguments, rather than having to count them at run-time.

The Google Guava library does something similar, but not to this extent, only up to 12 args
http://guava-libraries.googlecode.com/svn-history/r12/trunk/...
Nice, i like the clean interface. The bookmarklet is very useful.