skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is building upon existing open source the smart way to go, or will it prove to have legal or other difficulties in the future?

Depends on the license. I'm building my backup system (http://www.tarsnap.com/) around the BSD-licensed libarchive library, and I don't forsee any problems at all. If libarchive were GPL-licensed... well, I wouldn't be using it, because tarsnap is not open source.

(Incidentally, this is a perfect example of where the BSD license encourages more contributions than the GPL -- glancing over my CVS commitmail, I see 52 commits I've made to libarchive code in the past 18 months, which is 52 commits more than I would have done if it was GPLed.)
Helping hacked sites (Google engineer responds to guy erased from Google)
I think if I were a lot of people, yes. This is a more appealing option to me than getting paid $9 an hour to be a door greeter at Wal-Mart. With free housing and food and $80k a year salary, it wouldn't take long to become independently financially stable.
Getting the "Free" Business Model Wrong Doesn't Mean the Model is Flawed
Oh crap, nobody has written on our blog for almost 2 weeks. We must have given up too.
I have never had to log in to newyorktimes.com ever
nope. i'm done. rational people have been making allowances for religion for way too long. take your nonsense elsewhere.
I can see it now: "every time I tilt my iPhone to avoid the glare/reflection on the non-matte screen, I end up looking at something different."
Ask HN: definition of a highlevel language?
(might not be the right forum for this but...)

what is the definition of a highlevel-language?

well there isnt one specifically and wikipedia and the like gives just a very general description obv you can say it abstracts away lowerlever operations.

yes but how?

a function like map takes a function and applies it to a list for example.
this abstracts away a common procedure like iterate through a list and for every position do a computation.
so it is a higherorderfunction. is this how higher-level-languages are built?

so are they fundamentally differently built or is it just a lot of lowlevel operations built on top of each other?

haskell is considered a very highlevellanguage but can you do systemsprogramming with it(yes maybe it is very unpractical i dont know but can you)?

is lambda calculus a more abstract and efficient way of modeling a compututation? meaning you start at a higher level of abstraction and can work up to even higher even faster?

how did lispmachines work? was the basic system programmed in LISP?
The latest Samsung SSD on the market now (128GB) was reviewed by c't magazine recently and it already beats 2.5" HDDs by a decent margin, coming close to 3.5" HDD SATA transfer rates and trouncing even SAS HDDs for seek times. Of course, it costs about a gazillion times more...
The US is a less than free country, and I promise you that is illegal in more than one state. I'd guess six.
Thank you for your reply, it's given me more insight. The source code I am talking about is listed under the Mozilla Public License version 1.1. (http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html) any opinion on if it is still smart to proceed?
Thanks for pointing me in this direction. I wonder how much licensing their software cost.

I will contact them.
I'm pretty familiar with BeautifulSoup. My only concern is having to constantly monitor the mark up of hundreds of sites for changes.
or overestimated
This isn't the first time small issues have been around for ages. At work, we deal with eBay and PayPal a lot (eBay not so much anymore) and jesus christ, some bugs that look so simple to fix, but are so annoying have been there for months

I know the process of fixing bugs, and sometimes it may be harder then it looks, but come on .. multi million company .. let's go :)
Collections: Further Thoughts on Abstracting & Indexing Databases
Samsung may have a lead since they make their own flash chips, but I expect other vendors to be only a month or two behind them.
I will give you a page that breaks every SEO rule in the book but that is ranked very high for one of the most important search terms currently on the collective worlds mind.

The search term is “global dimming” and the result I am referring to which absolutely has ZERO SEO, is this:

http://www.documentary-film.net/search/sample.php

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=global+dimming&...

It is now up to others to disprove my claims, that:
1) General White hat SEO is no longer relevant
2) That you cannot game Google with any form of SEO on a new domain.

Enjoy the doc btw.
See substantiated claims, in my other response.
or not underestimated here
I guess the prefix www. isn't stemmed for the collision detection algorithm, then...
After hitting the jackpot, tech entrepreneurs school start-ups at Stanford
Agreed. Though when I posted a rant about that on RWW last October, it was met mostly with blank stares.

ref: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dear_new_york_times_tea...
Startup Lesson #1 - Leave Your (Trust) Issues at the Door
Sometimes Crowds Aren't That Wise
Where and when you can, don't roll your own format. Use the existing libraries and routines, and/or use language-specific storage.

Save for specific and rare cases, neither time nor money seem (to me) appropriate in floating point. Whether or not the integer format (implicitly factional in most representations of time) is most appropriate, not all boxes have floating point, and floating point is not appropriate in various contexts on various boxes.

Do either include the timezone or offset, or always operate in UTC. Avoid the TZ processing where you can, otherwise plan for and implement it.

I've usually switched to 64-bit and longer for time values for most requirements; non-standard or "packed" formats or optimizing for storage have been more of a problem than a benefit, as compared with the savings from standard formats and libraries and the slight slightly increases memory use. Unless you're storing zillions of these things.

OpenVMS uses centiseconds since 17-Nov-1858 in a long long; in a 64-bit value. There are conversions around in the Perl library, and I and others have posted C code for this.

Unix uses a long or (increasingly commonly) a long long value since 1-Jan-1970 UTC. FWIW, the long (treated as a signed) overflows circa 19-Jan-2038 03:14:07.

In various application environments, you will be stuck with your choice for a very long time. Plan for DST and switch-over cases. Pick wisely.
LISPed: The power of programming languages
Coding Quickie - Android "SwingWorker" functionality
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-st...

So one way to say it is that high-level languages are like porno, "I know it when I see it." Another way to say it is that there's machine language... and everything else. Or fill in the blank for machine language, "C is the last low-level language, everything more abstract is a high-level language".

It's tempting to think of memory-managed languages as high-level languages, but then there's Java...

Ratio of code size to payload is of course another metric.

http://paulgraham.com/power.html

Maybe it's the functional languages.

Why do you ask?
Some of the most pirated games in history have also been some of the most profitable. Consider it a badge of honor that your game is desired by 'pirates'. Pirates talk to less tech savvy people which leads to more game sales.

I predict a large market in non TPM motherboards.
Ask HN: any interest in a hacker social network?
i use hacker news, some comp.lang newsgroups, some blogs etc to keep myself updated and learn more about programming and webculture.

i have recently found the need to have it more integrated.
and sometimes i want to be able to have respones from people from all the different groups.
i have thus felt the need for a social site for programmers and hackers.

i mean there is obv a lot of good sites already for different purporses/interest areas of programming but nothing that puts it all in one easy accesible place.
most programming forums also have fairly low quality. comp.lang is generally good though but there are no community features.

so i was thinking i might do one. a good project to learn diverse skills related to programming and even if noone is interested i learn something.

so features:

*profiles
*forum
*chat
*news(hacker news is great though maybe PG would let me integrate it?)
*jobsearch and advertising, specialized ads for computer/programming-related jobs.
*quick-and-dirty outsource application, ie make it easy for a startup to get in touch with a specific programmer to do some shortterm job for them if they need that.

great thing is that it might actually be possible to profit from this then if you can monetarize on jobadvertising? maybe hard but i could imagine a community based on connecting people to create things and get jobs would be easier to monetarize than a lot of other social platforms.

would you people want this?
i think i will start working on it anyway to learn how to build a big application.
It is a good service but it is complex in my imho
How ridiculous. It's an arms race. There is no end.
Consumers Now Spend more $$$ on TVs than Computers!
I am under the impression that people around me have taken a "Start Trek" life for granted:

* Food magically appears in stores

* Water magically flows from taps

* Trash magically disappears

That could explain why reality-checking jobs like farmer are off the radar. Why, aren't there robots or something doing such things?
For pasting code to IRC you probably want a pastebin.

http://www.pastebin.org/
I'm glad actually. I've always thought a US-based "States Song Contest" would be really cool. 50 states, do it just like the Eurovision. I'm sure Simon Cowell could rig it up and make millions on the idea.
From first look, that term has very little competition and so would not be difficult to rank for.

You have links to the site (4005 of them) http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch;_ylt=ArrNxOma...

And the page has the main keyword in the title.

You rank 3rd on the page.

That doesn't look anything out of the ordinary for SEO :)
I think it is disruptive in the sense that the cost/utility for SSD are soon going to cross with regular hard drives.

Something like 90% of disk drive manufacturers failed the transition from floppy disks to the 3.5", and it feels incremental too.
Please don't post or upvote crap like this! Not only is it inane and pointless, it will attract the kind of people who like inane and pointless. Those new people will start posting and voting and pretty soon we'll have another Reddit on our hands.

And let's not get into a stupid science vs. religion discussion. I very much doubt anyone has anything interesting to say which we haven't all heard a million times (or thereabouts) before.
I say go for it, it'll be fun, but I don't share your sense that there's a problem to be solved here. Personally, I'm most interested in communities where I can meet folks in person in addition to online interactions, i.e. geography-based in addition to shared-interest.
The Value of a Year of Human Life: $129,000
I think a high level language is anything other than assembly language. That is from the perspective of someone that started with machine code and assembly language.

I don't think anyone ever set out to create a "low level" language. There was simply "coding the machine directly" and then "high level language".

Now it is tempting to draw a multidimensional line in the features of languages and partition it into "high" and "low", but I don't think that is where the term originates. It is a one hand clapping sort of adjective.
It's buggy and has an ugly icon.

Otherwise, it'd be amazing.
maybe everyone's been dumped on a project to deal with the rising numbers of ebay scammers? of course, i'd have to be highly optimistic to think that something that useful was, in fact, happening. it's probably more like arrington said, it's stuck in a mismanaged bug queue.
heh. if it's done with javascript, might as well be done as a user script. when dom is ready, run through the <a> tags and rewire them.
As much as I hope what you say is true, many government have other priorities then space exploration.

Unless they find something very valuable (gold, diamonds) I doubt the speed of space exploration will increase and even then, the cost of exploitation would be so high...

In my lifetime, I hope they build a large telescope on the moon and that we can go back till the big bang... They would be enough for me :)
Understood; as others mentioned, the hype seems to do with good PR and Loic knowing a ton of the right people.

Then again, who wouldn't want that attention? I'm sure TipJoy certainly would. The only bloggers I've seen with a TipJoy are either YC founders or HN readers -- which isn't a slant against TipJoy, but I'm sure they could benefit form a hype injection.
Ah, I initially understood the title as: "If PayPal doesn't fix the drop down menu bug in ten days they're in big trouble!"
I Know How to Fix Twitter: Let the Public Do It
I promise not to keep ideas in my head, unfulfilled and full of promise - not to let these vague outlines of future actions give me false confidence and security in the abstract. Instead I will execute them quickly and faithfully so that I am again on the brink of the unknown, hoping that these ideas were not the last that would ever come to me from God knows where.
http://www.zefrank.com/ny_06/index.html
Most abstractions are a little leaky, and we usually need to consider the 'how' when specifying the 'what'. For example, adding numbers in C can be accomplished with the abstraction '+', but the programmer must consider whether the operation will overflow the register on the underlying machine. Some even-higher-level languages plug that leak by providing a numerical hierarchy that will not overflow due to constraints imposed by the underlying hardware.

So I would say "higher-level languages" provide less-leaky abstractions. One can specify 'what' without specifying 'how', and one can make assumptions about the way exceptional cases are handled. The ideal language would provide leak-free abstractions but still allow the programmer to dive into any level.

There is probably a lot more to say than that.
HelpSpot is what Weebly uses to handle our support requests... We've been VERY happy with it so far.
high level languages are languages that are close to natural language
Not that this isn't interesting, but it seems a lot like these folks are doing fairly typical research into social behavior and calling attention to it by piggybacking it onto the buzz about online social networks.
"He is working himself to the bone."

Why is he doing that?
Installing Ubuntu on the OLPC XO-1: "My XO went from being a novelty toy to a useful tool"
Twitter’s business model is to sell the company
For certain values of "close"...
HP and IBM's Take on Web 2.0 (What it takes to build Web 2.0)
How the 17-inch MacBook Pro won me over
Charles Lindbergh's Life as an Inventor
What's cool about php
let's the flaming commence
If he really is advertising well, interviewing people and not getting results the offer is simply too low. There must be some factor that we can't see from this blog post that is visible to the people he's interviewed that makes this job NOT worth the money he's offering.
A business model that focuses on selling the company is risky. This applies even more so in twitter's case because they don't generate significant revenue at all, but they continually remain overvalued due to lots of hype. Classic web 2.0 tactics at work basically.
Is Microsoft Cashback the Future of Search?
I'm on a week vacation right now and brought along Founders at Work - it is great.
"The lives of Chinese people are not any worse because of the inability to say ‘R’. Ditto for the programming languages."

Doesn't this contradict the essay?

"The best way is to just take the word of a better hacker."

Except for the difficult issue that great hackers had different opinions about which languages are best. Which do you listen to?
Ddn't know that was 'required'. Can you tell me more? If you are correct I will change the code...
Young New Yorkers Make a Brand New Start of It, on the Cheap
In short, building a product to sell to one company is a valid business model.

It's a valid strategy, but it's not a business model.

It's not that great a strategy either...
It's true that it's easier to donate something with one click. It's also not new to me taht some people don't like them. But money business is a hard business with all the illegal money laundring going on around the world. I wish you the best of luck, but I think it will be very hard competing with paypal
I'm not sure I agree with that. There's always colleagues and then there are friends. There are colleagues who are friends too. From my experience the corp world is good to you upto when you are useful for them. In startups that I've worked for I've seen the 8-5 schedule go out the window and your life's ruled by deadlines and bugzilla lists. That said, the point where people reveal their personalities is the point where most snap or think, damn the consequences. As much as we are emotional animals, it doesn't make sense to be an open book. In fact it might be something which other people take advantage of. Again most corporations have a 20-80 ratio where 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. Though this work share balance might be better in startups, it pays to be on guard at work and keep notes about everyday accomplishments. I've seen really hard workers get fired while those who politick stay employed. While startups are in the gold-rush phase, during hard times, co-workers turn into Gordon Geckos, especially during layoffs, so a teflon attitude is a worthy defense.
Best PHP Books For Beginners
I am a graphic designer who wants to get started in programming. What are some good books to get started in learning php? Any good fundamental/theory books as well as practical would be great to start out with. Thanks!
I was thinking of a model similar to the Pope commissioning Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel's ceilings. It's not bad if it's something that you like to do and the Pope will pay for it. In this day, the Pope could be Google (after all, they do no evil...)

The problem with companies like Twitter is that they don't know if the Pope will like their art. My point is that if you are going to create one product to sell to the church, you should try to attract the Pope's interest as early as you can to reduce your risk.
Are you a law student or paralegal interested in the intersection of technology, finance and law? Tipjoy wants you.
View the job on our site at: http://tipjoy.com/jobs/1/

Are you a law student or paralegal who is interested in the intersection of technology, finance and law?

Tipjoy is a new micropayments service that will revolutionize how payments are done online. We're strong supporters of free culture and currently support a voluntary payments model. We make it extremely easy for people to leave tips for stuff they love online. Rather than turning people away by gating content, Tipjoy allows people to choose to leave a tip for a content if they think it was valuable.

Tipjoy needs to prepare legal paperwork in order to be regulated as a Money Transfer Agent with the US government and all 50 states. This paperwork will enable Tipjoy to allow its users (even those outside the US) to withdraw cash from their accounts.

We are looking for someone with legal expertise who wants to learn more about the ins and outs of trying to start a new business in the financial space. This person will be expected to gather and complete all the necessary paperwork, as well as research precedence and recommend strategy in this area.

We are located in San Francisco.

This could be anything from a paid summer internship to a full time position as one of the first hires in a growing, capitalized startup with strong ties to the startup community including the Y Combinator network. That all depends on you.

Paralegal experience and/or completion of your first year of law school is required. The greater your qualifications, the greater your potential to be very influential in shaping the future of Tipjoy.

If you are interested, please send your resume to us at: founders@tipjoy.com
i think if there were some way to codify distance between language as typed by programmer and machine code executed, we'd have a handy function to determine how high-level a language is.

further, aren't all lines multidimensional? ;P
Well, a "business model" to sell companies would be something like an incubator...a company that continuously created new companies and sold them off. Of course, since the talent that was able to execute on these ideas is going to be the most useful asset that these spinoff companies have, eventually your incubator will look more and more like an investment firm. If you think about it, investors are in the business of (helping to) build products to sell to other companies (or the public).
There are no details on how this is going to work, and I don't think it will. The TPM is not a magic crypto-chip that only the game manufacturers know about. It's designed to help the user protect his own data. Regardless of any encryption, eventually the CPU will have to execute instructions that aren't encrypted. (Hint: memory, cache, busses, etc. aren't encrypted. The PC was not designed to be a secure architecture, and it isn't.)

I assume they are planning on some sort of online distribution. You give the game publisher your TPM's public key, they encrypt it, and then the game can only be played when your TPM decrypts the game with its built-in private key. But there are tons of trivial attacks on this. For example, write a driver that looks like a TPM, but has a known secret key. One person does this, and the game is pirated.

All in all, this will fail. The TPM was not designed for this purpose.
Strictly speaking, it's Lempel-Ziv coding. LZ compresses text by replacing the second occurrence of a phrase with a pointer to the first, as above, whereas Huffman represents more frequently used characters with shorter bit strings, like Morse code.
To rephrase Freakonomics, "what do drug dealers, high school football players, and young New Yorkers have in common?"
http://freakonomicsbook.com/thebook/ch3.html
The Twitter team already knows how to fix Twitter. All they need now is time to develop the new components and make them stable enough for production. In the words of Fred Brooks, nine women cannot have a baby in a month.
now it's called jackpot
I think the notification upon removal makes sense. This is because I assume google removes sites as soon as it detects / determines that it has/is spam. The alternative is to have google continue to index and serve up known spam while waiting for action to be taken? That sounds like it would be good for the webmaster, but bad for google and the searchers and the advertisers. So, them's the breaks.
Why do people do anything? This isn't uncommon, though; plenty of people here work themselves to the bone on their software projects. When you own your own business, you get ahead by working.
Pragmatic VC: Stop Coding, Start Marketing. Getting Your Positioning Right.
Most people are confusing "free software" with "open source" largely preferring (sometimes without realizing it) the latter, which (as they hope) translates into "free stuff without any obligations"
I think it was on Matt Cutts blog that he mentioned any links to advertising should have a nofollow, to protect your site from being seen to "sell links", which would then result in a penalty in the form of not being able to pass page rank, and having your page rank reduced.
He apparently even has enough free time to mod me down. Amusing.
Actually people call it FLOSS precisely to avoid choosing between free software and open source ... FLOSS means Free/Libre/Open Source Software
Community based agile certification site, a bit like advogato