skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've gotten that "Soft No" from 37signals, too. I was reporting a bug in the BaseCamp example API and was told that maybe we just had different views of how the API should be designed. I guess I was the only one in the conversation with the view that it should return data instead of raise exceptions and crap out. I no longer use BaseCamp.
Thank you very much !

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222317
Speculation and Commodity Price Increases
A refrigerator to boost computer performance!
Or, you had a certain innate intelligence to begin with, and are only now practicing with it.

At this point it's impossible to know one way or the other. Genetic intelligence versus developed intelligence is something that the top scientists of several fields are still investigating.
I've done it both ways and the customer service reps much prefer when it lets you know if the email was sent or not. Otherwise they get lots of calls from unhappy people who put in their old email address and didn't get their login info. It's a usability trade off.

I think a good compromise is limiting to a few attempts within a time period. That way you won't get a dictionary attack, but if someone has to try a few email addresses they can.
damn good for 19 years old, but as i see there aren't groundbreaking works i hoped to see. =(
"Intelligence" is a hidden variable g, which comes out of statistical tests of various mental examinations. Basically, give a bunch of people a french test, a math test, a physics test, a driving test, etc.

Run statistical tests for hidden variables, and you will discover this mysterious hidden variable 'g'. It is relatively independent of cultural knowledge: i.e., french is nearly independent of g (1), while physics, plumbing and loading irregularly sized boxes into a truck are highly correlated to g. This all comes out of the statistical analysis, and is not assumed apriori.

Then look for correlations between g and career outcome (and other such things), you'll discover strong correlations there as well. Physicists tend to have high g, janitors low g, etc. For instance, I've never met a math/physics/eng faculty member with an IQ below 120 (though mine is below 100).

So this statistical measure g fits very closely with the intuitive picture of intelligence. It's not cultural, but we don't know what it means computationally either.

(1) Amoung frenchies, people with higher 'g' will score better on french tests. But a low g frenchy will beat a high g brit.
"...how could such conclusions, were they actually true, be put to use by society?"

If there's a cause, someone could try to find out what it is and it might be useful. Or not. But knowledge isn't moral or inmoral, it's knowledge. Wishful ignorance is wrong for my sense of morality.
Hi - we are about to announce our free trial. Head over to www.WORKetc.com to get started.
Oh, great. This will just delay our nation's addiction to oil (esp. foreign oil). It's certainly a good thing in the short-term, but I really hope it doesn't affect people's current high interest in alternative energy sources.
I don't think that we can really investigate "genetic intelligence" until we have a definition of intelligence which makes -any sense at all-, which we don't.

I find a lot of the opinions of neuroscientists I've talked to/read articles from to be really dogmatic in their interpretation of intelligence (probably because they aren't regularly faced with Very Hard Problems in the sense that mathematicians/computer scientists are - their conception of intelligence is often a little more superficial - but anyway, I'm massively generalizing).

My entire point is that I don't think it's useful to think about intelligence as a "thing." I think of the brain as a computational structure. At birth, it has certain properties. It changes in certain ways. It can get better or worse at certain tasks. Because Official People have to say Official Things they always treat their own statements about Intelligence as if they're objective and well-informed which, let me tell you, they are not.
...oh, and should anyone wish to re-enable my account, it was registered under: miahs101[at]hotmail.com (yes, it's a desperate attempt, but I might aswell).
My reference for this kind of stuff is http://w3schools.com , a bit light on examples, but a good reference if you just need to know the syntax.
"Buses are getting the same capability [kill switches], in case terrorists want to re-enact the movie Speed."

I may be wrong here put didn't the bus in speed blow up when it stopped?
I think it's less about people using streams more (though I think that is true) and more a representation of what is happening to information.

In the document (or batch) mode of interaction, you have full knowledge of some set of content. In stream mode, you only know what's happening right now in the stream and what has happened in the past. You don't know what you don't know. Traditional web form submission seems very document/batch oriented. The RIAs being developed are more stream like.

I think there are some fundamental information concepts going on here. We've been treating information like it's a static set, but in reality it's more like a continuous movement of data. At any split second in time, there may be a static representation for some information. It's almost as though every transaction in a relational database is like a single frame in a 3D game. I think this will get more and more stream like and continuous as our systems develop with greater distributed concepts like the semantic web.
Don't hate to say it. It's a reality of the web that usability trumps security. And those who disagree should unplug their computer now, because it's not secure.

This is really missing the forest for the trees though. If you log in via a plain text form, who cares that your password gets sent in a plain text email? There are easier ways to get people's passwords than to sniff plain text emails - phishing, for example, or social engineering, both of which are much easier to implement than an email-sniffing man-in-the-middle server.
No. That's one of those ideas that sounds great on paper, and in the real world consistently fucks people over. At this point, by posting the vulnerability, we'd be violating our own code of conduct:

http://www.matasano.com/log/mtso/ethics/

In this case, 37Signals has already been notified. They've been told about other flaws on public forums and not fixed them. What would we be accomplishing?
Nope. That's not it.
I disagree with most of your points, though you're more qualified to talk on the subject than I am.

| All the easy math has been done.

How easy are we talking about? While I was in high school, I remember a news article about some other high-school-age kids that happened to a solve a long-standing and relatively simple problem in geometry involving triangles. I can't remember the specifics, nor can I find anything about it now, but I think there are still plenty of relatively entry-level problems to work on.

| It is probably impossible for someone at a midpoint in their lives to suddenly develop an interest in math and make a meaningful contribution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_mathematicians

It's a pretty crappy list, and most of the names are from centuries past, but there are a couple of interesting entries there.

| Do you have to be gifted to run in an Olympic Marathon?

Your example of Olympic marathons is specifically a zero-sum game, whereas mathematics is not.

| But then again, anytime a new field opens up there's hundreds of PHD students across the world that jump into it looking for a new bit of math to write their thesis on.

This seems to contradict your previous point that mathematics has become inaccessible. There are a few differences between a grad student and a sufficiently dedicated hobbyist, and none of them are genetic, nor are any of them necessarily bound by a particular age bracket. Indeed, someone in middle age could attend university on a specific curriculum, and in a few years be looking at the same problems as the PHD students. The older person might have some advantages in self discipline or experience in tangential fields.
I try to avoid snark on YC, but the "armchair philosopher" approach to physics makes me think of http://www.timecube.com
This is a good point. I agree that my feeling smarter does not actually mean that I am smarter. I -do- produce a lot more, but this could be due to other factors.

I think you're hitting very close to the important issue here which is that all of this is very difficult to define/think about without a really good idea of what sorts of computations our brains perform.

My point isn't really so much that I think it can change, even, it's that we should be way more skeptical when it comes to making claims about subtle concepts like these. Usually I find that those who say "we are only really growing intellectually until we're 5" have a very limited and kind of rigid conception of intelligence.
Yes, that was the entire plot.
Should [Firefox] developers charge for add-ons?
Apple now ordering 17 million total iPhones for 2008
That makes much more sense.

Thank you for your correction.
That's what 37Signals has done. They've simply put it at the bottom of their list, behind adjusting the pixel alignment of their sidebars.
Ask YC: 40Tb in a year. Would you use Amazon?
Hi there. We're building a system which stores voice audio files. We're looking at good compression codecs for it (speex) but we're looking at 30 million minutes of audio a month which is looking like 40Tb of data storage a year. These kind of figures scare me a little!! Wondering if you would use Amazon for this or go another route? Just interested to hear from anyone who's doing anything of a similar scale
Just because people disagree on exactly what constitutes intelligence doesn't exempt the brain from the same general limitations that we see elsewhere in physiology.

Take fast-twitch muscle tissue for one example. Different people have a genetic predisposition towards developing more or less fast-twitch muscle fibers, which gives them the potential to be faster runners or have faster reflexes. Now, that's not to say that someone without that predisposition can't train hard and also be fast; likewise, if someone with that predisposition doesn't make use of it on a regular basis, then they're not likely to be any quicker than anyone else in reasonably good physical condition.

However, assuming the same training regimen, the person with the beneficial genetics will always have an advantage.

There's no reason to think that intelligence -- regardless of definition -- doesn't work the same way. Yes, someone of average intelligence can work very hard and produce the same results as someone who's more intelligent and less motivated. But, you're comparing someone who's operating at their peak potential against someone who isn't.

I think cperciva's original point was merely that due to the nature of the field of mathematics, there's a huge barrier to entry where that genetic advantage becomes necessary. I disagree with that point only a little bit; if I worked really hard at it, I might be able to produce a small handful of exceptions against the very large body of evidence in cperciva's favor.
I agree with this point, but I think that what you run into is that there are certain important cross-cultural trends which might cause g to be pertinent. What I mean is that perhaps the set of tasks which we "regularly perform" are governed by g - these tasks usually involving "problem solving" of the you-give-me-a-well-defined-problem-and-I'll-solve-it variety. It's a kind of reciprocal process - society will produce lots of jobs/roles which fit mass statistics it can determine, and it will also screen for that mass statistic.

What interests me, and what I'm worried that focus on this sort of gross statistic deprives us from thinking about, is the non-regular. I'm interested in the philosophical, the revolutionary, the artistic. I'm interested in what made Einstein Einstein. I don't think it's "g."

Slightly more abstractly/hypothetically:
The way I kind of see intelligence is that we can function within contexts (e.g. functioning within the "Math context" would be doing math problems) and "g" corresponds to our ability to manipulate symbols generally, so that we are generally good at working within contexts. This is a really abstract way of saying g corresponds to our ability to solve problems. However, I don't think g says anything about long-term problem solving (involving abstraction, self-reflection), novel content creation (involving cross-context thinking), etc.

Does this make sense?
Sure it's not. Not yet. But I think they're some exciting alternatives brewing. Check out Glancing Pad:
http://yanooshray.googlepages.com

It's basically a pad that detects movement. You can use it as a keyboard and mouse at the same time. And, although he doesn't say it, I think you can modify it to key-chord so that you're not just inputting letters, but full words, expressions and commands.
Instead of free trial, I would find it more useful if you had staggered pricing. $45/month for 2 users seems a little steep.
Service-Oriented Architectures
So then, in your opinion, IS there a difference between a language that is "production," ready, and one that is not? And if so, what is it?
To me this highlights that experience over the years and being technically apt and knowledgeable with the burning desire for your company to do well allowed Bill to harness his vast amount of knowledge and experience to 'probe' people. The level of probing would reveal weaknesses very quickly, as no doubt it would begin in the broad sense, then delving deeper, until the nitty-gritty establishes your understanding of the subject matter.

In this example, the common understanding and concerns between the two was there due to the development of Excel to include "Visual Basic for Applications", allowing VB programmers to extend the Office Apps. The Date/Time concerns would have been paramount, particularly as concerns about Y2k were also just emerging - the first online debate being in 1996.
Opera gets proactive and helps you fix your code
Wanna ride a new market wave? Pay attention to the sharks
My favorite billg story:

I actually heard this originally from my ex-boss when he was telling stories during a lull at his startup. A friend of his worked for MSFT in the 1980s; I was just thrilled that it was googleable as I had the gist of the story but not the detail in my memory.

"What are the greatest business lessons Bill has taught you over the years?

Very early in my career at Microsoft, around February 1984, we found a data-crashing bug. I wondered if I would get fired over it. I went to Bill with the head of development. I was then the product manager.

It was a classic meeting. Bill was on the couch looking down. I explained that we found this bug and that we thought we were going to have to recall the product. He nodded, did his rocking thing and kept looked down. We were both wondering if we would get fired. Bill wasn't saying anything so my anxiety was growing.

I explained that we're going to have to recall the product, and that it's going to cost several hundred thousand dollars and be a hit to our reputation. Bill rocks and looks down. We didn't have anything else to say. I thought: Is this when the ax comes?

Then Bill looks up and says: "You came in today and lost a few hundred thousand dollars. You come in tomorrow and hope you do better."

His expectation wasn't that we weren't going to make mistakes. He wanted to know that we took it seriously and learned from our mistakes. That's very motivating."

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/06/25/raikes-bill-gate...
Expanding the Internet Well Beyond .com
Yahoo to Shareholders: Google Is Better for Us Than Microsoft
"There's no reason to think that intelligence -- regardless of definition -- doesn't work the same way."

I agree if what you mean is that there's no reason to believe that there is no fixed, genetically-determined components to intelligence. I disagree if you are making any sorts of claims about what these components are (as I said, I don't even think we can make gross claims like people are born with "good memories").

I also agree with the point that cultures look for certain intellectual traits in young children. I cannot say whether these particular traits are determined genetically because it is highly possible that we learn a great deal (and abstractly) even from the first day of our lives.

The thing is that (as another poster pointed out) there IS a salient statistic (g - for general intelligence) which we can be "better" or "worse" at - but its value in a field like math which requires highly specialized mental strategies is questionable.

---

I think that you should look at the example of the polgar sisters - they were raised to be grandmasters in chess and 2/3 of them did (the other one become an international master). I think this puts a bullet in at least one interpretation of your theory.
Judge Ends Facebook's Feud With ConnectU
Maglev: Ruby that scales
ConnectU vs. Facebook comes to an end
| I cannot tell if this has to do with society's influence ... or something to do with natural talent.

Both. Those with natural talent are more likely to produce notable work at an earlier age. Likewise, for male scientists, testosterone seems to drive creativity, and in later ages that has a tendency to get channeled into marriage and family instead (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1149615.e...).
I don't have an answer to this question, but this seems to be the same attitude that got Lawrence Summers into trouble!

My guess is that "intelligence" can be largely hidden, whereas your physique is immediately apparent even if you just sit and do nothing. That it is hidden then, gives it a mysterious feeling of potential, and nobody wants that put in a box. I think it is a cultural phenomenon that necessitates something like unconditional encouragement.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226402
James Dyson on Engineering and Design
Jerry’s Back! And So Is Microsoft
Yes, but you want it to be YOU that are worrying about it, not every one of your users! Yes, capitals and an exclamation point - I must really mean it.

If someone gains access to your db, what do you want them to find - A: a users table with an email column and a plain text password column or B: a users table with an email column and a salted hash of gobblygook (please pardon my use of such heavy techno-jargon) instead of plain text password?

I'd choose option B - email addresses just aren't as valuable as email addresses and their associated passwords.
The full text of the article quoted Gates saying he sent emails like that all the time - that was his job.
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821...

I do think the confusion was real. And it kind of makes sense when you think about it.

Bill Gates was very involved in Microsoft code, to the point where he used to review all code, even after Microsoft was no longer a tiny startup. He was a programmer, after all.

But that kind of thing doesn't scale. Especially when you have thousands of programmers, dozens of divisions all with "product managers", and many many products..

He obviously tried to stay in touch with Microsoft products as best as he could. But his role changed over time in his company - he could no longer be the chief code writer.
Readable MySQL command line output (Looks like YAML)
", in 1991," is a parenthetical phrase.
I now think you're allowing your own prejudices on this subject cloud what you're reading, and what you're saying in response. I think I was fairly clear in my position that genetics plays an important role in intelligence, specifically because we have no indication that the brain is exempt from the same physiological rules that the rest of the human body obeys.

| I think that you should look at the example of the polgar sisters...

I specifically covered edge cases in mentioning the impact of training on innate ability.
Bummer. All those reasons above sound like they are either related to false accounts or spam protection.
FTA: "Wait," a third one questioned, "did you do an UPDATE before the COMMIT?"

"Did I what?" the second developer replied. "Oh. Crap."

Thats the real WTF here. Die CVS, die.
You are aware that Einstein's brain had some very unusual features, right? I don't pay much attention to this, but I remember it is unusual enough that it is safe to say most people's brains don't have those features.

Relativity was not a well-defined problem when Einstein came up with it. You can analyze this intelligence in however many ways, but it is highly possible that "quantum leaps" in scientific advancement come from unusual thinkers -- unusual in a way that you can't just train very hard in and attain.
I've made it clear at every job I've had since college that yes, I take naps. Almost every day. The post lunch, put your feet up, headphones on, 20 - 30 minute siesta does more good than coffee (and I LOVE coffee) ever could for clear, effective thinking later in the day.

I've found the folks that are most freaked out by it are those who (often for good reason) aren't confident in their work and place a very high value on looking busy as opposed to actually accomplishing things.
FriendFeed Dark Theme
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/JavaScript
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...
I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Hack-a-day (http://www.hackaday.com/).

They cover hardware hacks in a dizzying array of applications, the hacks are generally very well documented, and their archives go way, way back. One of my old favorites is the robotic sentry gun (http://www.hackaday.com/2005/09/21/robotic-sentry-gun/).
I havent done anything similar. But just my 2c - try to see if you can make use of existing file sharing systems like rapidshare/megaupload etc and link to them. I believe hotornot guys used free yahoo photos hosting and just linked to them to save on bandwidth(it worked then)
Either that or poking. Lets face it if you're going around poking people you deserve to get banned.
Time Management for Startup Founders
Harness volcano power, energy experts say
Why would you even want your account back? Facebook doesn't deserve your page views.
Sorry to hear this, especially as it sounds like you do not have a backup. What you may consider a false positive are common problems with FB/eBay/PayPal and the like who try to act in the best interest of the masses.

If you are unable to resolve this, I can ask my friends who work there to see what they can do.
maybe im wrong, but if you put an iframe, doesnt it get loaded everytime when the page with the widget has been visited.
for eg: if cnn's homepage has your widget, you pretty much got cnn's traffic to serve? maybe im wrong again.
He detailed that in his post. They have control over his personal information and he wants it back.

Is there a FB app that would backup your list of contacts and other information you'd like to have? Is it against the ToS?
Ask HN: "Simple" sharding tutorials using MySQL or PostgreSQL?
Hiya.

I'd appreciate pointers to tutorials on "simple" sharding using MySQL or PostgreSQL.

What I mean by "simple" is:

- Tables are designed so each one has a field that can be used to identify the correct partition to use (in my case, user_id)

- Data/Queries are organized so that the vast majority of manipulation happens on a single partition

- Rebalancing shards is an offline procedure

I'd love to push the details of disks/servers/processes that handle the queries down into the DB layer and not worry about it at the app (in my case, Rails) layer: give me a single entry point that can shared across all of my app servers. We can play DNS games if need be to distribute that load.

Bonus points if a tutorial talks about how to set up replication in this context too.

It seems like many people would be interested in this.
...or a good marketing(/recruitment/etc) mind.
Ya, this would be against the ToS.