skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the problem is not so much the low standard, but the lack of reliable tests for the personal aptitude, and this should not only be a problem in CS. Universities should spend a lot of effort prior to someone beginning their studies, to find out if the person really wants to do what they chose, in a way that the person itself realizes that quickly. This phenomenon is still huge in Germany, I started studying CS in 2002 and after one year, 60% of the people in my year had quit, mostly because they did not have any idea what was expecting them...
(But note that CL implementations also don't provide clever sorting or any kind of regexps at all. SBCL and Allegro do get case conversions right -- at least for Latin characters with accents. I'm too ignorant to test more exotic characters.)
Whitepaper: Sustainable Social Media Infrastructure
I think you're right. Google's page on how Trends works is pretty vague:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html#10

... but it does include this bit:

9. Is the data normalized?

All results from Google Trends are normalized...

Remember, Google Trends shows users' propensity to search for a certain topic on Google on a relative basis. For example, just because a particular region isn't on the Top Regions list for the term ‘haircut’ doesn't necessarily mean that people there have decided to stage a mass rebellion against society's conventions. It could be that people in that region might not use Google to find a barber, use a different term when doing their searches, or simply search for so many other topics unrelated to haircuts, that searches for ‘haircut’ comprise a small portion of the search volume from that region as compared to other regions.

The last phrase of the last sentence is the key: It suggests that Google's "traffic" number is a percentage of the total number of searches. (And then they display that number on a relative scale by dividing it by its own average over the time period, removing it even further from the realm of the concrete.)

Ironically, right there on the Google Trends page for "web hosting" is a chart of the absolute rate with which the term has appeared in Google News stories over time. And that rate is increasing.

I'm not sure who deserves the most blame here: Google for publishing graphs that are practically useless, or the original poster for failing to read the fine print. I'd tend to blame Google, for making poorly labeled graphs with a limited choice of normalizing methods (i.e. "no choice at all").
HOW TO WRITE LYRICS - LESSON 2
Thank you, Adobe Reader 9
How to write lyrics
why not try http://www.lightsphere.com/dev/web20.html and http://www.dotomator.com/
"be willing to seek out help from people more creative than yourself", well I made a start by asking you guys :-)

The way I try and do it is write down the main subject, then words related to that subject and then feed those into something like bust-a-name or wordmaker.

However I'm fiding that this method produces less and less results, not helped by the fact my latest project is based in a popular area (Soccer)
Speed Sticks: Three Wireless USB Modems Reviewed
jugaad is slang for 'work' or 'effort'. So while myjugaad.in might not be the best name for a slide show website it's a pretty nice name - esp for a site that showcases a person's projects/websites.
Install Ubuntu Linux In 12 Easy Steps
How Starbucks' Growth Destroyed Brand Value
I think more than anything else, this is probably the largest problem with Lisp adoption. Maybe Clojure will have better luck in this space because of its ability to drop into the JVM to get libraries.
How much you can do with an EULA covered software?
I like it, can you make an option to bust out the current page from the slideshow? This would be helpful if I want to add it to delicious or send a specific page to a friend.
python (before learning python: perl)
Nevermind, I figured out how to do it :)
Problems With Life Extension: The Brain
I am really enjoying these weekly posts, but I was hoping to hear a little more about the YC summer session. For example, who spoke this week?
nVidia and ATI: It's not their fault you have to choose between the configuration options. As a user, you shouldn't even have to see that screen. That's the OS's job.
That post is worthless without discussing extensions. Really complaining about something that download statusbar fixes? FF is 90% extensions.
Perhaps this list should just be called "Top 20 public figures" Most of these people couldn't qualify as an intellectual in even the broadest sense of the term, they would be more concisely described as politicians.

AlGore is NOT an intellectual he goes around talking about the work of intellectuals. That makes in a public speaker, aka a politician.
It's amazing that Glenn Curtiss (the aviator mentioned in the article) set the land speed record in 1907 by riding a hand-built motorcycle at a sustained speed of 136.5mph. I'd be terrified to go that fast today, even with modern safety gear and a modern bike that's designed to be handled at high speeds. But 100 years ago?!

http://www.glennhcurtissmuseum.org/educational/glenn_curtiss...
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you've never actually worked seriously in C. You probably had to maintain someone else's code at some point, got confused by the linker or debugger semantics, and decided you hated it. [disclosure: I peeked at your blog and resume, and it seems I'm broadly correct.] That's fine: work in C is grounded deeper than web development. You don't have the scaffolding around you to provide a fallback for changes. Sometimes you need to fix bugs from first principles, and that takes a lot more knowledge up front than web work does.

But that's not the same as saying that someone who has that background is as unproductive in C as you are. Seriously: spend some time writing something serious in C, you might like it better. It will certainly seem more powerful than it does to you right now.
Codebase - Git repository hosting with source browser, changesets, etc...
Windows XP tips
Why search engines suck
2001-2002 wasn't bad. I know it seemed that way but it really wasn't.

1990-1994 was frickin' nuclear winter for (almost?) all engineering in (almost?) all western nations. Senior staff in many offices would be left reading newspapers at their desks (superb people with no contracts and nothing to do) and there were extremely few junior positions to be filled. Any work which brought in food and paid rent was welcome, and most of that was stuff I never thought I'd see with a degree.

On the flip-side: After surviving that, bootstrapping a company from scratch was a breeze.
I disagree. Code is more like literature than software. It is wrong to take it without prior owner's permission.

Algorithms, and software ideas, however, are like math. So patents on software make no sense. There's a difference between code and algorithms; algorithms shouldn't be copyrighted/patented; code, on the other hand, is the property of whomever wrote it, and thus it may be copyrighted.
Create any size wall posters from any size images
Tooltips using CSS only, no Javascript
How the world's most successful art forger fooled all the experts.
I'm personally more concerned with keeping CS as a study of the science of computing rather than adapting it to improve the job prospects of students. My feeling is that really so many people going into CS aren't looking to study the science. They're going for software engineer/architecture/analyst jobs that make them a decent salary.

Some of us went into computer science out of genuine interest in one of the most revolutionary sciences in our lifetime. If it hurts our job prospects, well, that's part of the sacrifice.

I think what we need to do is ask CompSci students what they're wanting to achieve after school. Universities need to offer (and encourage) a broader selection of software development degrees (software engineering, business software, etc) rather than try to dilute CS to be all businessy. I know some schools offer more, but I'm not sure they set student expectations appropriately. Businesses (maybe even more importantly) need to learn how to ask for the degrees/expertise they actually want rather than asking for CS all the time for every software engineering job.

If you're reading this and making hiring decisions-- you can help by changing the wording in your job postings. Stop asking specifically for CS degrees when you really just need someone with a degree who can hack with the best of them.
Viacom vs. YouTube: Beyond Privacy
The Burden of the Humanities
This Day in History July 5
A Gmail tip You Don’t Know about.
Google faces Street View block in UK
It was Aubrey's theory first. It's also my theory, currently.

You are mistaken about evolution. There are random mutations, but those are not complex features, they are tiny changes. It takes many mutations to build up to a major feature.

Example of "lack of trait" winning by default: might humans have the ability to breath the air on Mars? no. why? there's no reason that feature would have been created. you don't have to be unsure whether they might or might not; unless there's an argument on the other side, the "no breathing on mars trait" wins by default.
Meraki brings free WiFi to 100,000 San Franciscans
If you declare

int i[10];

you can't do

++i

because modification of the value of i is not allowed.
Seriously?

So if someone else has the email george.bush@gmail.com and you have georgebush@gmail.com which email will g.eorgebush@gmail.com be sent to?
40+ Tools and Hacks for Gmail
if you buy me one I'll give it a try ;) Barring a gift I'm stuck with my 32bit macbook pro for a while.
Make Windows Genuine by a simple trick
:)

Soccer is indeed a rough area. Why not take a look through your elevator pitch and single out key words that describe your value proposition / problem that your product solves. Play with those for a while and concentrate on synonyms as well. You may find that takes you in some good directions.
You USE (do) the software anywa. The gpl only limits distribution
She really is a marketing geek. I'd never have believed it if I didn't see it.
Species Extinction Threat Underestimated Due To Math Glitch
Hello: Macs are about to get interesting again
The gpl explicitly allows you to charge for your software.
You think that's bad?

ESR just compared Obama to Hitler. No, I am not kidding.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=301

Quote: "There is a pattern in the lives of the really dangerous charismatic tyrants that they tend to have originated on the geographical and cultural fringes of the societies they came to dominate, outsiders seeking ultimate insiderhood by remaking the “inside” in their own image. Hitler, the border Austrian who ruled Germany; Napoleon, the Corsican who seized France; and Stalin, the Georgian who tyrannized Sovet Russia. And, could it be…Obama, the half-black kid from Hawaii?"
> unicode is an issue that should really be solved at language level

with lisp, you don't need anything to be built in "at the language level" because you can modify the language much better than with python or ruby. many "built-in" lisp features, that would be language-level in other languages, are just built-in macros, and you could have written them yourself exactly the same. for example, loops are done this way.
Google, privacy and Street View
From the article:

One of the sacrifices that will have to be made is that we will have to admit that we could be emulated on a computer and are little more than self aware information.

I don't have any problem per se with the idea that my brain might be a computer. However, this idea has been repeated now for more than 50 years, with very little empirical evidence of the digital modus operandi of brains that I know of. I would appreciate some pointers to recent scientific works which support the brain = computer hypothesis.
as much as i like macs, this article doesn't really have any information in it. just hoping for new mac designs.
MS Tools & Languages are made with corporations in mind. In other words, ASP.Net is structured so that programmers can be treated like replaceable cogs. There really isn't anything wrong with that, but if you aren't in a "replaceable cog" situation, you can get things done faster in other languages that require less boilerplate code.
It's a little strange to attack the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for only giving away 10% of it's wealth per year and investing the rest. They give away a far larger proportion of their endowment than most other foundations. Notably, they recently announced that they intend to give away all their wealth within 50 years of Bill Gates' death. This is much different from other foundations funded by personal wealth: think of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, etc. that have effectively become self-perpetuating entities.
What do you propose a brain might be doing, other than computation?

We have an existing theory that our computers are universal (even a Turing Machine is), which means they can do any possible computation. If the brain does computations, then our computers could do the same computations.
Collaborative Contagion
To be exact, they are writing in the sequence of the ancient chinese language, which is brilliant and bit of sarcastic at the same time.
Top 10 WebOS (Web OSes & Desktop)
You can really like a lot of things about Google, and I still assume that they take "Dont be evil" seriously, but at some point their gathering of information becomes nothing but scary. Even if they keep their efforts up, I think we will face multiple problems through that total concentration of information.
I like Pytagor because organizes my files, Internet addresses and contacts in one Folder.
I've spent over a year in textmate and now I use emacs. Emacs is a much bigger pain in the ass to get setup, but I use my editor for about 8 hours every single day. The effort is worth it in this case (imo). Plus I'm not tied to a mac with emacs.
Mac OS X Leopard users:

[spacebar]
Schwarzman's accounting trial balloon gets thoroughly aerated
I used textmate for over a year. I get it, but emacs is more powerful. I decided the painful learning curve was worth it because I use my text editor for at least 8 hours every day. Plus, with emacs I"m not tied to the mac platform and a non free program.
How can it possibly need 210 MB?
Thinking of it: so PDF maybe stands for (Hidden) Proprietary Document Format?

(In the sense of: you will never ever be able to desire all of our features we are continuously adding to our Take-Over-The-World-Document-Format?)

I'm confused.
Rules for Business
Google Open-Sourced It’s C++ Testing Framework,"Google Test"
is express any algorhitm == do any possible computation?
It seems like what IT really wants is trade school graduates. Someone who should be going to DeVry to learn the J2EE stack or .Net and is only doing so for the paycheck, not genuine interest in software development.

When I was in college (1996-2001), I would say an overwhelming majority of the CS students were there solely for all those tech jobs that their parents read about. They were only interested in learning something for either a grade in class or that someone might hire them to do it. Really, trade schools should be handling those types of people.
Umm, they needed more room to put in more backdoors?

Dunno really, I'm still trying to comprehend that myself.
Yes, because expressing any algorithm = send signals to muscles that produce speech, or maybe muscles that type text on a keyboard, etc. These signals are result of some computation, obviously.
Nice application. It's a really good start and a good guide to how people can make a nice application.

But I've noticed something. All the new webaps seem to have the same (slick) design. I like it, but I can't replicate it. Is there a template or guide you all follow?
ASP.NET is Windows Forms for the web. It uses the same approach as you'd use to build a desktop app in Visual Studio. Which is good if that's what you want to do (or if that's what your developers already know), but starting from scratch, a natively web solution would be better.
I like this notion, but his actual suggestion isn't to kill the users table, rather to outsource it (to OpenID or a similar service).
Might be the recommended amount - it probably wants some space for a disk cache.
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=236211
Affiliate marketing isn't really a "get rich quick" thing. It takes a lot of time and a lot of trial and error. But if you can hack and you are creative and you aren't too uptight you can make some great cash doing it.
another satisfied customer: http://gusmueller.com/blog/archives/2008/07/adobe_reader_9_i...
What you say is true, of course, but at the same time it's true of any Turing-complete languages, and therefore, meaningless. I'm not a bad engineer because I don't have time to start every project from the bare metal. Runtime and libraries make a huge difference in the real world. Sure I'd love to spend the time really diving deep and making LISP into the perfect DSL for me, but the truth is, I can just use Python and go.
kickscorner.com slidetackling.com forthekicks.com

These are available. Not sure if they're good or relevant.
It's a real disaster that Adobe Reader sucks so much. PDF is a wonderful document format - other readers open it in seconds and it works on everything (including Linux, OS X and most phones). But thanks to Adobe if you ever send a PDF file to a windows user you get a five minute rant about how much PDF sucks and can you send it as a wonderful, efficient docx instead :/
This is basically ripped word for word from the blog that he links to. Because of that, I'm flagging as spam.
I Quit My Job
thought people would be interested in hearing of a "success" story so to speak. If I had had a traditional 9-5 job, I probably would have quit in 2003-2004. but for various reasons it dragged out to 2008. I never really considered myself a "blogger", though it seems that's what I've become. My other projects will not necessarily be blogs in the traditional sense.
Don't forget to get Foxit reader if you don't have it yet : http://www.foxitsoftware.com/
Those are not separate accounts from Google's perspective. If you signed up from globalrev it would no longer be possible for anyone to sign up as global.rev or g.lobalrev.
it's not the same in any turing-complete language. lisp makes adding new "language level features" easy, and python makes it hard.

i'm not saying you should always use lisp for everything. but for this particular issue lisp has a major advantage.
I know the theory. I'm asking for pointers to experimental evidence that it is true.

There are competing theories. One of them, which is backed by some empirical evidence, is "Continuity of Mind" by Michael Spivey

http://www.amazon.com/Continuity-Mind-Oxford-Psychology/dp/0...

Short summary by Spivey:

http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/CSJarchive/Proceedings/2003/pdfs/3...

Another approach, also relying heavily on experiments, is the "Grounded Cognition" thesis, of which Lawrence Barsalou gives a good summary:

http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/barsalou/papers/Ba...

From the abstract:

"Grounded cognition rejects traditional views that cognition is computation on amodal symbols in a modular system, independent of the brain’s modal systems for perception, action, and introspection. Instead, grounded cognition proposes that modal simulations, bodily states, and situated action underlie cognition."

EDIT: I forgot a very interesting one involving a computational experiment:

Selmer Bringsjord, "A New Gödelian Argument for Hypercomputing Minds Based on the Busy Beaver Problem"

http://www.osl.iu.edu/~kyross/pub/new-godelian.pdf

Now I'm looking for evidence which supports your theory - that brains = minds = computers. Affirming that a theory exists without providing evidence that it is true is not enough.
thought people would be interested in hearing of a "success" story so to speak. If I had had a traditional 9-5 job, I probably would have quit in 2003-2004. but for various reasons it dragged out to 2008. I never really considered myself a "blogger", though it seems that's what I've become. My other projects will not necessarily be blogs in the traditional sense.
"One of the most remarkable of the new graduates credits...a goat"
I sure hope Apple give him plenty of cash for that blow job.
As an example,

modal simulations, bodily states, and situated action

- which of these are not computation?
Your argument is contradictory and therefore self-defeating.

If the method was in sync with normal work patterns, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
I've been building on Facebook's platform lately, and some of the guidelines they have (rarely followed) started me thinking in terms of gradual information request, or a JIT users table.

Need the name? Ask for it, and store it in a cookie.

Need a persistent way to refer to a particular user? Use OpenID (or the Facebook UID, in my case). What if they don't have OpenID? Have links to a few providers, and also be a super simple provider yourself, built into your app. Don't store anything you don't have to.

As you find you need more information, ask for it, and explain why you need it. Make it easy for users to remove selective pieces of information if you don't need it anymore. Help them know when that is.
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/07/04/adobe-9
that hacker and more less costly hackers can be found in india and china lolz
how about one guy to keep telling jokes and bringing beer cans
Computation is mathematical calculation. The brain does not do straight math like computers do.

Most of what we think we know of "consciousness" is based on estimation and assumption, but from the very best research out there we know that the brain is a molecular machine. Through a system made of billions of neurons interacting through neurotransmitters and electrical/molecular forces, we end up with processes like Long Term Potentiation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_potentiation) for memory.

Negative feedback loops (for hormones), neurotransmitter synthesis, LTP, and "thought" do not come from mathematical calculation performing a set of predetermined functions (like software)-- they come from molecules governed by the forces of physics leading to a system designed by the processes of evolution.
He's licensed to practice medicine. He doesn't need much luck. If everything fails, he has an enviable fallback.
i agree its more about PR. thats why we are discussing it here, What good is a startup which no one knows about?
There is a lot of support for niche features (3D, etc) pushed into the base reader because it provides a significant business advantage to Adobe.

For example, they stand to benefit tremendously if a government agency decides to go with PDF as their document review format over Autodesk's DWF. The fact that the average consumer already has everything they need to use these solutions is a big bullet point in their favor.

They don't stand to lose much if some picky internet folk (not criticizing - I'm one too) decide to use a free alternative because Acrobat's too heavy.
Thank you!, I had the strong urge to downvote something :-)
So Schwarzman wants Banks to follow Enron's lead and price assets with mark-to-model instead of mark-to-market?

We need more transparency in the financial markets, not less.
Three paths of B2C startups growth: ads, free ads, and viral
I was in the army after high school, albeit Canadian, and I don't think my choices would have changed if a war was on or not.
ok, then it is indeed very cool.

so they had this feature from the beginning?
The Problem With Identi.ca Is That It Is Not Twitter
Unit Testing iPhone apps with Ruby: rbiphonetest