skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think he's saying that learning to program in C caused him to become an atheist. I think that he's saying that learning to program led to an outlook on life that caused him to question his previous beliefs (and then, eventually, to become an atheist).

The difference between programming (and math) and just about everything else that he's probably experienced at this point in his academic career is that when he writes a program, he can test it himself; he doesn't have to ask a professor to verify that it works or look up the answer in a book. That's different from humanities subjects and even most science classes, and it probably led him to realize that he can figure things out for himself and to start questioning things that he'd previously taken for granted.
Combining express with http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/ makes it really terse.
My Op Sys class in school was designed around compiling your own toy 'unix' kernel and rewriting large portions of it from scratch for educational reasons. We used the Tanenbaum book and his "Minix" system. It was far and away the most informative class I had in school.
Notch seems to be adopting Google's 10% time (to some extent), but rather with 50% time.

"Because I want to avoid us just focusing on reaching release,
I suggested that we should dedicate 50% of the development time
in Minecraft towards adding fun new stuff. Basically, any developer
working on the game (two people at the moment) can just come up with
something they’d want to add on a day-to-day basis, as long as the
rest of the team thinks it’s a decent idea. If it ends up being fun,
it gets added." [1]

Sure, that 50% time will still be spent working on Minecraft. But it won't be the same as the other 50% time when the developers are trying to reach deadlines and so forth. I think that Notch is now taking control of how the company functions, which is a good thing. Before, it was just him and there was nothing but meeting deadlines. Now that he has more people to help him, he can focus on fun things like this.

[1] - http://notch.tumblr.com/post/2687176736/information-dump-inc...
Wow, nice twist. Didn't expect that at the end. Nice garden path sentences.
It really depends on the type of business. Notably, a lot of smaller direct sales web companies have almost all of their traffic come from SEO.

Most sites I have been involved with see 50%-70% of traffic from search. More brand equity = less importance for search.

More importantly though, search tends to convert way way better than really anything else (ppc included) when goals tracking (ie nav to contact page and thank you page).

You can probably give your traffic a lot of growth by investing more time into efforts with SEO in mind. Let me know if you need help. :)
Some interesting advice on what to do in the event of a relatively small scale nuclear explosion in your vicinity. Prior to reading this article, I wouldn't have known about the (obviously sensible) approach of staying still to avoid the risk of radioactive fallout.
Or the tobi project we released: https://github.com/LearnBoost/tobi
I think it's actually much easier for people without prior programming experience. I met teenagers in #haskell that picked it right up, and were talking fluently about GADTs and MPTCs and the finer points of the type inference algorithm.

Personally, I struggled for years with it. Java rots your brain; it's much harder to understand FP if you were raised on it, C, and BASIC.
Shortchanging Your Business with User-Hostile Platforms
I made a simple ruby script to do that a couple years ago. It's available here: https://github.com/caffo/rssdigest
quality > quantity.

Getting mentioned on NYT.com will yield powerful results. Posting yet another link in a related discussion forum topic won't do much.
We can already write individual atoms on a surface with a atomic force microscope.
So at one bit per atom position we could encode 10Pb in about 0.1micromoles of xenon atoms on a silicon substrate.

Well under what nature can do.
leaving google aside, I think it's pretty obvious that the "royalty-free codec" that entities like Mozilla are looking for is pretty incompatible with "but there's a cap on the royalties."

hence the <video> situation we were in even before last week and google's blog post.
What Tom said. To be clear, nealpoole.com is my personal blog, not a company blog: I just happen to enjoy web application security. :)
Also, I think that the Intel processor that was in the running wasn't the 486, but rather the i860 (a relatively clean RISC design). Which, although a flop for general purpose computing, was used in the NeXT Dimension graphics accelerator in later NeXT cubes.
Registration required. Personally, it is harder to find better journalistic photography on the web.
These companies may want to end privacy but people do not. I am amazed how little my friends post of Facebook. A picture here or there. Something funny they found on the Internet. But what is missing is dramatic! Personal issues, health, finances, 95% of a face to face conversation is missing. They don't trust these services.
the 'on a silicon substrate' is a bit problematic here, a substrate typically is a lot larger than just a few atoms, the neat thing about DNA is that it is a three dimensional encoding, you are talking about a two dimensional encoding scheme, not three dimensional (an atomic force microscope typically moves in two dimensions and uses an electrical charge to deposit the atoms).

You could stack the atoms three dimensionally but then there would be no easy way to read them out again.
It's seemingly safe to believe that there is a very high probability that the US and Israel are behind Stuxnet.

According to Wikipedia, if this is true than 2010 had the first occurrence of cyber-warfare between nation states in our history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
The cap is $6.5 million for the next five years and then there is no limit on how much it could be raised after that. The royalties can't be raised more than 10% every five year period, but the cap isn't under that restriction.
Quantity matters immensely too - especially in the context of number of domains linking to you. This is typically referred to as "link popularity".
I found this library last night and was surprised how flipping easy it was to use, and how fast it was.

I wrote a tiny little script to test the max number of concurrent connections.

https://github.com/JustinTulloss/zeromq.node/blob/master/exa...

On my OS X machine it fails at 893 open connections. I compiled zeromq to have max_sockets = 5000 (zeromq2/src/config.hpp)

The error is:

s_849.send(msg);
Too many open files
rc == 0 (mailbox.cpp:374)
Abort trap

What am I doing wrong? Should I just have one connection to zeromq and have all my async callbacks use it? I have a comment below that describes what I am trying to build.
Thanks!
Not really, as garden path sentences are more about incorrect parsing of structure, rather than interpreting the meaning of the sentence to be something else. For example, reading the first sentence above, you can get all the way to the end without having re-evaluate the sentence from the beginning. It's only when you read the 2nd sentence that you realize that the writer was implying something different than you first thought.

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

/pedantry
Am I the only one who wants a JS-HTML combo app that will be both cross-platform and fast, and not one native app for each platform for most of the apps?
It's good you're active on HN, and in NYC, otherwise he might not have heard about you guys ;)
Yup. That change dates back to PHP 4.4.2, which was released back in January 2006. It's listed at http://php.net/ChangeLog-4.php as "Prevent header injection by limiting each header to a single line."

I'm actually curious about a recent feature addition, in 5.3.4:

"Paths with NULL in them (foo\0bar.txt) are now considered as invalid. (Rasmus)"

If that's really the case, it seems like Rasmus has eliminated a large swath of null byte vulnerabilities in PHP applications (at least those null byte vulnerabilities involving the filesystem, which are the kind I'm used to seeing). I've been meaning to compile 5.3.3 and 5.3.4 locally to test out the different behaviors.
There's almost very little point to opening up the VP8 standards process. It seems pretty much designed to challenge H.264 but avoid its patents (how well? TBD). Its severely bound in what it can be by trying to avoid H.264's existing patents.
What are talking about? Video lectures accompany only few of the published courses. Much more often, it is lecture notes, homeworks, reference cites, old exams, and solutions. Everything to "run" a course. There is no better generic term for it than courseware.
Is it ever reasonable to pass a redirect URL directly via the GET parameters? One other concern would be the ease of phishing attacks, e.g.

goodsite.com/login?redirect=http://www.mybadsite.com

User logs in to Goodsite, and is redirected to a similar-looking page on Badsite.

One safer alternative would be to store the redirect URL in the session (presuming one is available) and read it back later.
Ask HN: Looking for a roommate or room for rent in Bay Area / SF
My girlfriend and I are looking for a roommate or room to rent. We're currently employed full-time (in DC), but are moving out to the SF bay area in the next month. We are starting a company, so likely won't have a "full-time" job, where our salaries are paid by someone else. That said, we both have a substantial savings we've attained from working for the past few years and would certainly be able to pay rent.

Both my girlfriend (Ainsley) and I went to MIT; she graduated in 2010 with two degrees in "Brain and Cognitive Science" and "Writing". I graduated in 2009 with a bachelor's in "Computer Science and Engineering." We're very laid back people, not prone to drama (and really try to avoid it as much as possible). Neither of us does any drugs, we'll occasionally drink (not to excess, just socially), and neither of us smoke. Well, I will have a cigar once every six months or so, but that's certainly something I can curb. :) Also, both she and I are 23 years old. We're both very clean people, and enjoy going out with friends, so you won't find us to be hermits. I basically can't survive without some sort of social interaction. Plus, we love animals.

Both of us are looking to move away from the government world and into making things for the world at large. Products people care about, that sort of thing.

A friend and I recently started a company we applied to YC with, got interviewed, and subsequently rejected from because we decided the company we applied with wasn't something we woke up in the middle of the night dreaming about. PG noticed that too. The basic response we got was "come back with an idea you're in love with." We're true hackers at heart, and I am always working on some product I hope people love. Now we're hoping to do it full-time and actually live or die by the products we produce. Ainsley and I have some pretty good ideas, and we want to get to building.

If we sound semi-interesting, we'd love to hear back. :) I hope the fact that we are two people doesn't make you consider us less; we really don't mind living in a single room together. Also, let me know if you'd want to chat on Skype or something to get a better feel for us; we'd be open to that.

Feel free to comment here, or email me at the address listed on my profile.
I suspect I've got plenty of supporters. The number of down votes is ... interesting. But I'm not terribly concerned.
A bit unusual to equate C and religious belief there, but as one poster suggested, you were probably at the point where you've internalized what these religious means to you and learning C (or any subject that deals with logic/mathematics) was simply a tipping point for you.
This happened to me yesterday, and I'm pretty sure the person who got into my account doesn't use AT&T, unless they provide internet access in Turkey.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105378
This is an important point not just for ideological reasons, but it is one reason why the FUD argument is not symmetric.

Since H264 was implemented in the open with open and large membership to the body, it is more difficult for some company to come out of the woodwork and say, "Hey, we have a patent that H264 rides on, but we didn't know it until now" Note, QCOM tried this with H264 several years ago and got their butt handed to them by the courts (http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=1037466). People have had 10 years to examine this open specification. I think its reasonable to say that one would have found a violation by now. And almost all the majors are already either licensees or licensors. There's a slim chance that there's a patent floating around in some patent troll portfolio that hasn't been examined, but that's the only real vector I can see of a legitimate surprise H264 patent violation.

Whereas with WebM its been in the public domain less than a year. It could feasibly take a few years for it to be reaonable that anyone who would have done due diligence to have done so. It's completely reasonable that in a year from now Siemans comes out and says, "WebM infringes these three patents we have". A court is not likely to throw it out saying they've been sitting on them.
Why I like Union Square Ventures' Opportunity Fund
Jack Dorsey Backed Thingd.com Quietly Rebrands To TheFancy.com
SEO is complex and difficult. This article has errors in it. Keyword density has been dead for a while. She is right about Patrick. He is very sharp (hello Patrick). But one of the reasons he is so good is he uses scientific methods to measure his results. SEO is a science. You can read lots of free information out there but unless you use a scientific system, you will never succeed. This is why we have many research sites. Its very complex and extremely diverse. Ecommerece is different than blog that are different than forums. So many things effect SEO, Countries, Industries, Code, Content, Linking is all very complex. It can only be unraveled with a methodical approach and measurement systems.
> Or at least, by the time minecraft can procedurally generate an experience like GoW, the big-budget AAA franchises will have moved on to something flashier.

Sure, but there's a large audience who doesn't care about flashy, they care about fun. Minecraft is fun; flashy doesn't make a game fun.
Speculative History & Future of H.264 & WebM
Worked for me. Try querying your favorite search engine (Bing) for the opening sentence. I've found news sites tend to like you if you have a search engine as your referer.

"In the end, there was no way to ignore the problem, and no way for politicians to spin it, either"
This isn't a good comparison; Minecraft is an extreme statistical outlier.
H.264 could also be considered a lawsuit waiting to happen

It could be and its been challenged at least once in the past (however Qualcomm lost that challenge), but though its not free, its patent restrictions are pretty clear and tested. It is 7 years old. While stranger things have happened, its very unlikely that as a licensee of H.264 you are going to be sued.

WebM's status is not as clear, sometimes you choose the devil you know.
I'll expand a bit on barrkel's comment:

Back in the day when IE dominated Netscape Navigator/Communicator, IE was the best end-user experience. Flash-forward a few years and IE is languishing, with practically no new development happening on it. At this time (prior to Mozilla taking off), IE is still the best end-user experience available, but not the best end-user experience possible. It to took the Mozilla Suite and it's spin-off, Firefox, to bring a better user-experience to market.

The same applies now. While h.264 might provide the best experience right now, it's (possibly) at the cost of the experience in the future. What happens in the future when the MPEG-LA decides to start changing/enforcing royalties? What growing pains will the industry have to endure to change formats away from h.264 if that becomes an issue? What if h.264 is so entrenched that they can't migrate away from it? Why not just standardize on something now that won't have those problems later?

To fall back on the analogy, if IE hadn't pushed Netscape out of the market, what would the web ecosystem look like now?
as far as i know, drug use has been legal here in Portugal at least since 10 years ago and, like, the sky is still up where it's supposed to be
I like that Minecraft is proof you can write something cool in Java, a language considered by many to be corporate and boring.

All Java haters should watch the video of Notch coding away in Eclipse.
What is the Importance of the Essay Paper
An essay paper is an important tool to ensure students’ abilities of critical and analytical writing skills are perfected. The writing of essays enables students to communicate effectively on paper which will become useful in future business environments.
I really, really hope this is the case. I use my iPad two-three hours a day, and pretty much at the top of my punch list of improvements, is higher resolution. You really do notice it when using press reader, or Zinio to read magazines - the pixelation is very evident on the smaller fonts.
Highly unlikely unless it's double screens.

2048x1536 on a 10" display is going to be extremely expensive. Doubt it such a display exists now.
People can wave their hands around and say it's good, or that it's bad, but we simply don't know.

Hmm,

It's funny but if someone said to me, "hey we're going to do this experiment on people, it might hurt them and it might harm them, would you like us to it on you or would you rather watch while we do it on Bob here", you know, I'd say "do it on Bob if you must and I'll watch and see if seems like a good idea..."
>If the workers aren't empowered, the success of the project is up to the leaders.

This statement contradicts the findings of socio-techical systems theory.

STS shows that competent leaders are leaders who empower their subordinates - this usually achieves better results than command and control.
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> Its severely bound in what it can be by trying to avoid
> H.264's existing patents.

Doesn't that describe anything that isn't h.264? Might as well say that h.264 got there and patented everything good, so they must have won. We should just pack up and go home, they get to have a monopoly on video codecs for the next 14+ years.
Unless my math is wrong going from 1024x768 to 2048x1536 is quadrupling the resolution, not doubling, as the article states. Am I missing something?
> To probe for information in a DNA database, you construct the reverse-complement of the desired bit of information

To build the reverse-complement of the information, don't you need to have the information in the first place?

I know it's possible to store information in DNA through various means, but I don't believe it can be done at the density the OP calculated. If we're going to take into account only information storage while ignoring retrieval considerations, then we shouldn't compare naked cells with no DNA duplication to reliable whole hard drives.

Call it human pride, but I think we've beaten mother nature in several aspects ;)
The audiences are different, it's possible for people to like Minecraft and God of War, but for different reasons. That's what I mean by different audiences. I like classical Opera and NFL Football, but they have different audiences.

I picked GoW to contast with Minecraft because its a big-budget title with exactly the strengths that Minecraft lacks. It's narrowly focused on the theme of a god-slayer who engages in brutal close-combat. It's loaded with detailed, hand-crafted content that all fits together coherently, supporting that theme. The story, the art, the scenario/level design, the cinematic design, which is seamlessly integrated into the actual gameplay and superb performance on its target hardware (at least, for the length of time I've played it) all make a difference.

A cow in Minecraft looks like a Gateway computer box: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD6qUTQDvU4

A cow in God of War is a 35-foot tall minotaur whose armor spews some sort of steam as Kratos rends it asunder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_xbbD7RgCg

I'm not taking anything away from Minecraft here. It is a fantastic game-- the point of Minecraft is entirely different from the point of GoW. Anyone playing Minecraft cares more about what the cow represents than what it looks like. But people playing GoW care a great deal what that Minotaur looks like. They care how he looks, how he moves, how the camera tracks him during the encounter, whether there is a brief fps hit when the garbage collector kicks in, etc. Currently, to get a game full of scenes like the one linked in that GoW youtube video, you need a team of designers, artists, and developers working with excellent directors and leaders.
Another more detailed guide with some explanations:
http://www.forumvancouver.com/threads/dropbox-dropquest-answ...
HN is currently our #1 hiring vector.
Well, systems theory in general is more or less accepted as 'correct'. As in, you'd be a fool to design any large scale project without looking at systems theory.

It's true that the author didn't go very much into detail into the Chinese vs British thing. In fact, I believe that the whole thing just served more as a hook for the meat of the piece (systems theory).

But anyhow, strictly speaking, when dealing with complex systems, you don't -need- super empowered individual workers. You just need empowered sub-units (with the lowest level as possible), and in general the smaller the sub-unit (all the way down to the individual... sometimes) will make your system more robust (and possibly more efficient). So in theory, you're lowest empowered sub-unit could just have a single manager/leader who still holds all the authority, while all the remaining team members are 'merely' well rehearsed and trained.

So in the case of the Chinese, you could just have empowered managers leading smallish work teams who are 'just' technically sound. Which seems to fit the stereotype good enough I guess.

And on the side, one of the wondrous things about systems theory is that it applies as much to the thing you're building as well as the process to build it. You can have an end product that when finally done preform beautifully from a system's standpoint (robust, efficient, adaptable, etc etc), but development be an utter hellhole (and the reverse).
You're talking about what's known as an open redirect. And you're correct: those can definitely be used to make a phishing attack more effective. But as I mentioned, reddit only redirects users to reddit content: you need to provide a relative URL or use a reddit subdomain (eg: http://code.reddit.com) in the dest parameter.
Actually, that's not what he said. Here's the full quote:
"I’m at the end of the first chapter that explains how Erlang’s concurrency features work"

A quick look shows that it's the sixth chapter. Either way, he's clear about this disclaimer, and his post was enough to peak my interest in this specific book.

For you, first impressions _do_ seem to mean much.