skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
unfortunately this kills the "minimize windows into dock icon" option :(

why can't I have my cake and eat it too?
This is the first thing I do on any new Snow Leopard install. Not looking forward to it (likely) breaking permanently in Lion :/
You are using the "official" inflation numbers. Do you really think they report it accurately, when so much depends on it -- not just confidence in the economy, but COLA adjustment for our massive social programs, etc. That is like asking an encyclopedia salesman if you should buy an encyclopedia.

The official inflation numbers have all kinds of wonky adjustments in them. For one thing, food and energy are not included (because they are too "volatile" we are told), yet food and energy are the #1 expense for most American households. Also if something rises in price too fast, they use "substitution" (saying that people will buy something else instead of that) and therefore that products inflation is not included in the "official" number.

It's no different than the games they play with the unemployment numbers -- not including people who have been out of work longer than unemployment covers them, people who have accepted part-time work when they really wanted full-time work, so-called "discouraged" workers who have stopped looking, etc.

I don't know what products you buy, but I can tell you that where I am the price of milk, bread, and almost everything else I buy has gone up a helluva lot more than 0.8% per year in the last few years. The few products that haven't risen in price considerably, have gone to smaller product sizes/containers. Some products have done both.

Now, I'm doing just fine so inflation isn't much a burden to me -- yet. But for millions of Americans who are either low-income or worse on a fixed-income, it is a very big deal. Quoting the fed's own numbers about inflation to say everything is alright is like trusting the fox to guard the henhouse -- that is the true definition of a financially illiterate comment. Don't take their word for something as critical as this, research it yourself and use facts to support your position.

And admit to yourself that they have an inherent bias, a conflict of interest, to make things seem rosier than they are, because it allows them to sell public debt, treasury bonds and short-term T-bills, to fund our massive deficits. If they actually reported the truth of everything suckers around the world wouldn't be as likely to let us keep spending trillions more a year than we earn like a teenager who doesn't understand how credit cards work.

Call it fear-mongering if you like, I'd rather face the realities of our situation than stick my head in the sand. You have to admit you have a problem before you can address it.
The Ultimate List of Free Web Conferencing Tools [Dimdim Alternatives]
Myspace Plans to Lay Off 550 to 600 Employees Tomorrow
Agreed, they took literally the most immediately identifiable property of a window--its size--and threw it out in favor of a grid with text labels that I never read. The only justifications I can conceive of are that they wanted to give each window an equal click target, or that somebody really wanted text labels. Neither really impresses me. The old layout was a better visual metaphor too, akin to spreading out everything on a table; the animation for the new layout gives me a headache.
It's being worked on. There's a lot of overhead inherent in random access, which really isn't necessary for most applications. ;)
I think (as in I am making this up, but it makes sense to me) that spam sites bring in more revenue to Google as they are specifically designed so that people click on the adds. While non-spam sites are generally designed to deliver content.
yeah, me too. a NoSQL replacement for tar.
I think it's not immediately obvious why they would.
Writing Your Own Distributed Compilation System
You mean the yellow buttons don't work, or command M, or something else? I haven't tried this hack yet.

Edit: tried it, and those two things do work.
Why Caltech Is in a Class by Itself
For simple CGI-generated charts and graphics I use GD::Graph an awful lot:

http://gdgraph.com/samples.html
I couldn't figur out how to update the link. Will do that with future posts.
Awesome. Question: I was under the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that it would be impossible (or very hard) to statically compile a highly dynamic language like Javascript. Yes, No? Are there shortcuts Mug takes or disallowed coding styles?

How would Mug handle the following RuPyScript pseudocode:

for i in 1..10; eval "def function$i; print 'I'm $i'; end"; end
Another really great tool is

http://jsfiddle.net

It allows you to mock up quick examples/bugs/etc.
How To Shoot Yourself In The Foot With Your Online Marketing
For those really wanting to learn JavaScript, I also recommend reading the Ecma 262 standard it is based upon:

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...

It will help you understand how the core of the language works. I also keep the Mozilla Javascript Reference:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Javascript/Reference

handy for looking things up. For the browser compatibility side:

http://www.quirksmode.org/
Scala Team Wins ERC Grant
Wow ... I was one of those that thought 9rules was making serious bank ... I used to see your logos EVERYWHERE.
Great insight about aggregation, I do some of that myself and everything you've said about it is spot on (high google traffic, few repeat visitors, low pageviews & stay times)
The criminal mastermind: bufferbloat
I agree, it's not immediate application. But Bayesian is one of the most important or fundamental knowledge to develop these cutting-edge technologies.
The Legal Issues in the Goldman-Facebook Deal
Quite sorry about the confusion; but no harm done, at least.

If you have showdead turned on, there are lots of spam posts around - mostly just bunches of links from users who are dead (they can post stuff and see their own posts normally, but no one else can) - but this strategy is rather worrying, because it's harder to catch automatically. On the upside, the community is large enough now that most of these posts should be caught and flagged.

Simply skimming through noobcomments looking for spam might not work as a strategy anymore, though, especially if they start grabbing comments which originally contained links (especially citations) and then replacing them with legitimate looking links to new sites; basically, if they figure out a way to stop the links from looking spammy, they're going to require a bit more human effort to catch, which might let lots of them get through - especially by posting on older articles which have fallen off the front-page.

(Great, I'm giving advice to spammers now. Bit worried about posting this, actually, but someone else is going to think of it - probably already has - so I'm probably not doing any harm.)
Off topic but ... Welcome to HN!
Well, speak for yourself. I, and many of my Facebook friends, have gone on deleting purges before and I've never seen that reaction. The main fear seems to be upsetting the acquaintances that you unfriend.

If you're going to spend time on Facebook at all, it's worth the time every now and then to make the time better spent. They even have a page called "edit friends" where you can just go down your friends list ticking the X button to unfriend them.
Ahh. Thanks. BTW, Rob Pike added a comment on the blog to discuss a better way to do this, and another dev wrote up Pike's solution to the comments.
http://www.mprescient.com/journal/2011/1/9/concurrency-in-go...
Don't be too jealous, 'cool' does not pay the bills.
Peter Schiff Mortgage Bankers Speech
Production is Red, Development is Blue
Launching a spaceship almost certainly uses Bayesian methods for tracking (e.g., Kalman or particle filters for position tracking), but I seriously doubt that building a supercomputer requires a dedicated use of Bayesian statistics.

On a different note, perhaps you could be slightly less condescending in your future posts.
I don't mean to detract from the message of this story, but source? I'm hoping you can point me in the direction of similar stories of software lore.
Porsche 918 RSR Hybrid official pictures
The Frontend Performance Bottleneck
From a strictly logical perspective, they might not. But I would wager a fair amount that there are Bayesian methods used somewhere in the stack supporting those two things. I also suspect that genetic algorithms designed for scheduling purposes probably help your phone call data get transferred somewhere along the way. That is to say, just because the two technologies are not obviously connected doesn't mean the former isn't used somewhere to achieve or improve the latter.

That said, even if there is no presence of Bayesianism in the efforts producing those tasks, his point was surely that, in today's world, an education sufficiently advanced to train people to do those things would certainly include Bayesian statistics somewhere in the curriculum.
String#slice, Overflow Buffers, and Optimization Math
Of course, when we're talking about the top of the income scale, we're very specifically talking about the group of people who live in that privileged bubble.
Ah, point taken.
Did he seriously write that entire article without bringing up Steam?

Wake up and smell the coffee, Windows users: you've had an app store for seven years now, and its primary target (gamers) are actually pretty damn happy with it now. If they branched out and sold regular apps (not that they would, it seems too dilutive for the brand) you'd basically have a pretty competent Windows App Store. (I can see it now: "Achievement Unlocked, 10 page paper")
Regarding vim and "normal people" shortcuts, if 'source mswin.vim' doesn't work for you, here are the mappings I have in my .vimrc to give it the normal CTRL-C, CTRL-X, and CTRL-V, as well as sharing the clipboard with windows:

" share clipboard
set clipboard=unnamed

" CTRL-V is Paste in insert mode
imap <C-V>	"+gpa
" CTRL-C is Copy, CTRL-X is Cut, in visual mode
vmap <C-C>	"+y
vmap <C-x>	"+d
" Use CTRL-Q to do what CTRL-V used to do
noremap <C-Q>	<C-V>
Why Is LinkedIn Down?  New Data Center in LA?
Nope, I posted it to share some totally neat code with like-minded people. I don't own the book. I found out about the code from this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2087919
I didn't find his tone too objectionable. Always consider that getting the tone correct can be difficult in a foreign tongue.
Their rules are mutually incompatible.
LaTeX resumes are pretty irrelevant, but probably better than a poorly formatted .doc. HTML is probably better.

Definitely include hobby projects. That's all you've got, and it's your best way to sell yourself until you get real-world experience. Convey the fact that you code a lot in your spare time, that you're passionate about coding. If the project was big, that should be clear without mentioning LOCs.

Basically, you want to convey that:

1) you're smart

2) you're passionate

3) you're a programming geek

If you tick those 3 boxes, any smart hiring manager will call you in for an interview.
NO, Doing Problems "By Hand" is not "The Better Way"
I disagree. most people I know have some passion that they do for the love of it. Whether it's playing guitar, doing wood work, cooking, etc. Many of us here happen to have a passion for programming.

But in all cases, money is not the motivator. If money were such a strong motivator video games would be a lot less popular.
New Blocking Activity from Iran
You're right, I'm not really happy with my input in the thread. Obtuse is a good word for it.

I doubt we have that different of an outlook. My passionate disagreement with the original author however is the belief you have to put making money above all else. I've seen too many startups end in failure (many of them clients) because they tried to monetize too early, or put nickle and diming customers above user satisfaction.
Thank you garply.
"an education sufficiently advanced to train people to do those things would certainly include Bayesian statistics somewhere in the curriculum"
is exactly what I want to convey.
Their duty to the stockholders is to do what's in the best interest of the company. It's not a breach of duty for a company to forego short-term profits if, in the management's judgement, those short-term profits can only be had by damaging the company's long-term prospects.

Google stands to make the most money in the long run by being the preferred search engine for the most people. Right now, they are. But that could change if another search engine can convince people they deliver results with less spam.
I think you're missing the point. That's only because other people aren't usually paid to do what they enjoy. However, most of them will have a passion like cooking, wood working, gardening, competitive video games, basketball, etc.

If money were such a strong motivator things like video games would be a lot less popular. Pickup basketball would be a lot less popular.
adware != spyware.
Agreed. If it's Gelman many examples will be from elections, which in itself might be enough to give the communist party in china pause.
I think, by definition, eval () will be impossible in a statically compiled environment.
I prefer the new-style Exposé, I find it more visually appealing. I'd never used it before Snow Leopard, but the changes made it much more appealing to me.

(Meta: I'm always interested why blatant copyright infringement of developer-only software (seen multiple times on HN) is upvoted -- or posted in the first place.)
Understandable, but for future reference to anyone who might be interested, telling strangers to "use their brains" is generally not appreciated in many cultures, since it implies that they weren't.
This subject keeps coming up so much I made a site just to keep track of books hn'ers recommend to each other: http://hn-books.com

I think out of all the books I read, the stoicism book made the biggest impact on me -- http://www.hn-books.com/Books/A-Guide-to-the-Good-Life-The-A... . It really came out of left field and provided immediately useful advice on how to conduct myself both as a founder and as a hacker. But "The Sparrow" was the best sci-fi I have read in years, so I can't exclude that. Terrifically good book. http://www.hn-books.com/Books/The-Sparrow.htm
Even more so than Steam there is Impulse from Stardock which has an active software section. They not only have their own software but from 3rd parties as well.

I should note that the post was written by one of our writers and I don't necessarily agree with him which I will be writing up a rebuttal type post, so thanks for reminding me of Steam (which I use all the time).

The other one to keep an eye on is OnLive, which right now is just games but rumor has is looking at movies as well so it would be a short step to include software.
Not true. They'll be on both, but by the time they are, it'll be too late. #efficientmarkethypothesis
I guess you're probably right. I know the same is true for the Sun.

However the Mail's science (read medical) writing is so woefully bad that if they do know better they are more evil than I can imagine.
> But if we are to follow precedence set by other Apple products, the Mac will become more closed than ever, with the Web as our only option to access the outside world. Much like the iPhone and the iPad. As a Mac owner, the writing is on the wall, a closed computer is my future.

Em, the "other Apple products" mentioned were never open to begin with. And they are not general purpose computers.

The Mac, on the other hand, always had XCode built-in. I don't see a "closed computer" in the near future...
I should imagine it wraps all values in its own flexible typed wrapper class and defines code for operations on them. This, of course, imposes quite an overhead.
Which changes nothing, as it still isn't a conscious act by Apple to explicitly ban the GPL.

The GPL banned itself from the App Store, plain and simple, yet everybody will still make it about big bad Apple censoring libre software from the App Store. You chose the GPL when you started your project, Apple didn't. If the license that YOU chose for YOUR software doesn't allow you to distribute YOUR software under Apple's EULA, that isn't Apple's fault.

There's also no financial incentive for them to modify their EULA to be more GPL-friendly. They're going to say, gee, those hundreds of thousands of apps on the App Store have succeeded with the EULA we have, why get into legal battles over two publicized apps? The publicity is negative for us, so why bother?
Mystery avian deaths suggest God playing 'Angry Birds'
He makes a few good points: Linux has had this for years, and they have done quite a good job with it (especially with the Ubuntu Software Center). But, as he says: Linux only has 1% market share. Mac OS X has almost 10% market share. If Linux has used this concept to good effect for years, why is it a bad thing that it's now being exposed to a more mainstream computing audience?
> but in the long term, surrendering to spam is going to undermine their reputation.

That's already happened. I am pretty sure that this is not intentional though.

What would sway me is if say 'bing' would have zero spam and google would have a whole pile of it.

Is there any research confirming or denying that?
- Version Control: SVN + Versions, Git (but how I wish there was a Version of Versions with Git support).

Time to test: git-tower.com
I think the SLOC count will not hurt, although it's less important for open source projects were I can quickly check things out for myself if I'm so inclined.

Having done something, even if it never got traction for some reason, is better than having done nothing. Do list some projects, but if you have some real winners don't hide them in a jumble of failed or abandoned experiments.

In general, it's good to quantify whatever you can and emphasize with specifics things you personally have done. Don't be shy about taking credit for your accomplishments in joint work; be honest but save nuance and modesty for the interview.

Good luck.
Just tried the following:

for (var i = 0; i < 10; i += 1)
eval("function function_" + i + "() { print('i am ' + i); }");

for (i = 0; i < 10; i += 1)
this['function_' + i]();

but it seems like eval is not supported yet - i guess for good reasons.
Maybe it was a wrong word. I have to see the book to make conclusions, but I doubt that a book on Bayesian statistics may contain something highly controversial that needs to be banned.
Python function calls have overhead. Avoiding them is a common optimization technique.
Right, right, but then how useful would Mug be if the dynamic stuff in JS can't be used?
> I suspect it is more the case that spammers are targeting their SEO spammy skills to Google's algorithm, and google just fails to withstand the onslaught.

Is it true that google has more spam than other search engines?
http://alpha.beepl.com:8889/ - not quite failed but since my computer died a month ago (which I am unable to replace), .. we too well may be headed in that direction. The deadpool....
so, uh, would they be able to make contributions to political campaigns?
points taken. I updated my original post. sorry for that condescending tone.
Right. Technically Mug will conform to the ECMAScript 3 Compact Profile: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST... Which doesn't include eval() or the with(){} statement (both used infrequently enough that it's not worth the overhead).

A REPL would still be possible, however, it would require some work to maintain the current scope between input.
Nah, I did a buncha tech reading online and on my laptop, but I'm trying to use my iPad more for that. It's just hard to follow along, sometimes. :)
Depends what you mean by dynamic.

If you mean 'dynamically typed', then there's no particular problem - that's mainly a function of how you implement your calling protocols. It's much easier to write a dynamic compiler, actually, since you don't need to catch type errors at compile time.

If you mean 'supports eval', as your example seems to indicate, then you'll have to include either a compiler or interpreter in the language runtime - there's really no way around that. But it's not a big deal unless you're in some kind of embedded environment, and in that case you're probably not using a language that supports 'eval' anyway.
I agree with your first paragraph - there are significant corrections to the rule of "calories in - calories out = weight gain". That doesn't mean it's not a good first order approximation (in my experience, within about 15% [1]). It also doesn't mean that fat people aren't eating too much. If you are 40lbs overweight, eat less. If you are not overweight but don't have a 6 pack, that's the time to start worrying about exactly what you are eating.

Also, you are correct - the straw man you are arguing against is wrong. It would be cost inefficient to eat 18 salads and 0 big macs.

Now, lets say you are obese. That means you are eating 6 big macs. If you are constrained by cost, you could reduce consumption to 5 big macs (saving the cost of 1 big mac), and you will eventually be merely overweight rather than obese. Or you could change your consumption from 6 big macs to 4 big macs + 1 big salad, and you will approach a healthy weight (and save money). If you want a visible 6 pack, you might even need to play around with the exact composition of your 2250 calories.

You are also ignoring the fact that it isn't very expensive to cook healthy food at home. Last night I cooked about 6 meals from rice, lentils and frozen vegetables. Total cost: about $5. 6 big macs costs about $18.

Also, as for exercise, the lowest earners have the most free time and they exercise the least (I won't even get into the vast majority of poor who don't work at all). They spend the most time watching television. The highest earners have the least free leisure time and spend the most time on exercise (and the least on TV). I'm not sure why having more leisure time would make it harder to get exercise or cook a healthy meal.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11.htm

[1] My personal experience: I was obese as a teenager. I got myself down to a reasonably healthy weight simply by reducing intake during a 1 year period when I was living well below the poverty line (this was during college and due to some unusual choices I made). I was hungry as all fuck. My rate of weight loss was within 15% of what calorie counting predicted.
I don't think that opinion of cperciva is relevant to the point btilly made, which is the subject of this subdiscussion. As such, there are no opinions to disagree with. I may be imagining things, but I've seen too many cases of people discarding facts because of some not directly relevant opinion the author/collector/presentor of the facts also happens to have.
The Mistakes The Government Made In Trying To Get Info From Twitter
> I guess the author's book must have some contents/examples regarding political issues; not Bayesian itself was the reason for the book being censored.

Does the reason really matter?
Why next jump acquired flightcaster?
(May be they also want to combine their ecommerce shop with flights along with price predictions data as a differentiator)
but why?
KDE 4.5.4 for Windows Announced
The KDE Windows team continues their progress in bringing KDE applications to MS Windows.
It's a lot easier to blame Apple, and people love doing it.

In the other thread I was absolutely appalled that the leader of the project was shifting all of the blame to Apple, and standing by his choice to do so. Just look at all of the comments on Hacker News (one in this thread) reviling Apple for their supposed "anti-GPL stance".

Clearly, the VideoLAN people got what they wanted: the app removed, and pie in the face for Apple with respect to the GPL. Two wins for the price of one?

Link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2083254