skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would suggest you that instead of trying to be jack of all trades, you choose to be the master of a few that are relevant. I assume you don't have any kind of development experience so this is the route I suggest -

1. Frontend - Learn HTML 4/5, CSS 2/3, JavaScript, XML, JQuery/JQuery UI (or any library of your choice). Read books, online tutorials etc to learn the basics and then practice the skills by developing front-end part of your startup idea. This will help in not only polishing your web designing skills but you will also have a working HTML Prototype of your web application.

2. Backend - Learn only one backend programming language. Choose from Python/PHP/Ruby/Java. If you want to take easy but good enough route learn PHP. If you want to choose the best, learn Python/Ruby. While learning the backend programming language, at some stage, you will be required to learn database technologies - SQL (MySQL), or NoSQL(CoucheDB, MangoDB etc). When you feel comfortable with your skill level, take the html mockup developed in first stage and implement its backend to have a fully functional prototype of your application.

3. Frameworks(optional) - Though step one and two are enough to help you develop your application, it is always good to know a good framework for your language of choice. I would suggest codeigniter for php, Django for python and Ruby for rails. For practice, try re-implementing your application in the chosen framework.

4. Mobile Technologies(optional) - It is important if you plan to have a mobile version of your application. You have many options here. Start with Android/Java and then ios/objective-c. Develop the mobile version of your application.
The story is a good example of why these projects fail in the UK and the USA.

Leaving aside the staff problems - British Airports Authority (who run Heathrow) and the RMT (Rail maritime and Transport workers union) have a history of confrontation which makes the whole Isreali-Palestinian thing look like a family game of scrabble.

Just to pick one example, the software was left in debug mode. Everybody knew this but it took 3 days to find the person with the contractual permission to tell them to turn debugging off. Not for any technical reason but just because everything was done by such a mesh of semi-privatized companies, contractors, sub-contractors, outsourcers etc that nobody knew who was in charge.

The UK has just abandoned an ID card scheme setup by the previous government. It's costing 20m quid to just work out how has done what, and who is owed what in order to shut the project down.
Stuxnet Worm Used Against Iran Was Tested in Israel
I had a similar experience the first time I tried it. It was unplayably slow, but now I can get a solid framerate. Check back in a few months, the DF guys seem to be making some progress in performance, etc and the next build might fix your issue.
Part of the reason 30" displays cost as much as they do is that they're just physically larger, regardless of DPI. This requires a lot more yield-sensitive silicon on its own, and also requires a lot more in terms of display illumination.

Also, let's not ignore economies of scale: compare the number of iPads sold in the last year to the number of 30" monitors ever sold.
Are you sure your sickness isn't being caused by an unnaturally small or high Field of View (FOV)? This is a common cause of motion sickness-like symptoms in gamers. Usually adjusting to a FOV of 90-100 degrees fixes this (depending on your screen's aspect ratio).
While I appreciate many points of the article, I find it ironic that I read this rant on... the Internet. (of course it is old, and most likely transcribed by someone else, but still hilarious)
Cosma Shalizi - A Fermi Problem in Western Pennsylvania
BackType is hiring hackers
We're growing!

We live and breathe product and ship to production every day. We're obsessed with measurement and data to inform decisions, learning about our customers and their problems, and doing whatever it takes to minimize waste.

We hack with a wide range of technologies: from Python and Clojure, to Cassandra, Hadoop and Thrift. We open sourced Cascalog, a query for Hadoop, created a database optimized for batch exporting and serving data and are currently developing a stream processing framework (code-named Thunderlog) that will generalize our real-time work-flow much like Hadoop does for batch work-flows.

For the back-end hackers:

- we have > 25 TB of compressed data

- more than 100 billion records

- serve more than 400 requests per second

- operate a cluster ranging from 60 to 150 nodes

- we do this with 3 full-time people (just added two interns)

For the front-end hackers, our flexible back-end lets you build what customers ask for very rapidly. Features that take other companies months take us less than 24 hours.

We have world-class investors (http://twitter.com/BackType/investors/members) helping us out and are generating significant revenues. Drop us a line at jobs@backtype.com.
Control a Humanoid Robot using Kinect [video]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming for anyone who doesn't get the reference

His work was mainly concerned with manufacturing/production, but is still (I think) well worth reading

Edited to add Deming's Seven Deadly Diseases as I think they're worth quoting here for those who don't wish to read the entire wikipedia article

The "Seven Deadly Diseases" include:

Lack of constancy of purpose
Emphasis on short-term profits
Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance
Mobility of management
Running a company on visible figures alone
Excessive medical costs
Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees

"A Lesser Category of Obstacles" includes

Neglecting long-range planning
Relying on technology to solve problems
Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions
Excuses, such as "our problems are different"
Obsolescence in school that management skill can be taught in classes
Reliance on quality control departments rather than management, supervisors,
managers of purchasing, and production workers
Placing blame on workforces who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes where
the system desired by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended
consequences
Relying on quality inspection rather than improving product quality
I'm sorry but I just don't see what the big deal is. Alex names mog as an example of users wanting native desktop support, yet most are just fine using the flash version. It's difficult to draw conclusions based on a developer's perspective (which I've often been guilty of)
Starting a precedence like that is never a good idea, although it looks like the US and Israel had very little choice - as the only option to stop the Iran's nuke program is an all out war. So I guess, a very sophisticated but non deadly cyberwar is a better alternative to a conventional war or strike.
Awesome HTML5 Game - Take That Flash
this is surprisingly funny
In other words, trying to boil down Minecraft in this fashion is pointless and silly.
Yep, I think it even predates the invention of computers. For hardware, the H.264 level of "open" would have been enough.
I installed the Firefox 4 beta.

It's crap.

I've now removed it and will no longer be using Firefox.

Seriously, it is that bad, and will probably never get any better.

RIP Firefox. We hardly knew ye.
It is an argument about competing priorities when resource constrained: try the cheap stuff prior to dropping six figures of dev time on a feature to rescue business which all available evidence says is one account worth $20 a month. (You could go try to find evidence that users actually want to download native apps. For example, put a download button on your page, then see if anyone clicks it. If nobody does, send me half of your six figure dev budget and you're now strictly better off. It is downright disturbing how many very expensive features fail to change user behavior because business processes optimize for the satisfaction of people other than the people who actually pay money for stuff.)
If Iran is going to do, or is already doing, cyberwarfare then they'll do it whether or not they get attacked first. But now, everyone will be on guard.

I think for the most part, Stuxnet will be a one of a kind event in history. Though it's a nasty thing to do, only one team ever gets to do it, and I'd rather it be us than them.
I'm one of those haters who thinks Java IS kind of corporate and boring. On the other hand, it's just a programming language, and it's what you do with it that counts. You could write enterprise CRUD apps in Lisp if you wanted to.

I think it's more interesting that Minecraft is a Java APPLET. (at least the free version I played was)
I was transfixed and I watched the stream for several minutes.
Iran doesn't get nukes until later

So, we're not going to change the end-game, we're just going to piss of Iran....and you think that's good?

Consider things from the Iranian's perspective. Back in the day, they were establishing a legitimate democratically elected government. The US overthrew that government and pushed a brutal dictator into power, who tortured and murdered many Iranians. From their perspective, the US is an evil nation that does evil things. Nuclear weapons look like the only thing that could give them security against the US. And we're hellbent on stopping them. Heck, the US has never even apologized for overthrowing their government and installing a murderous dictator: can you really blame the Iranians for believing that the US government is trying to screw with their country?

The only way this ends well is with a deal and deals require trust. Does Stuxnet promote that trust? Or does Stuxnet just provide further evidence that the hardliners are right, that the US is trying to screw with their country?

industry figures out that they need to lock down their machine controllers

This seems like wishful thinking. We have a terrible track record of getting large scale systems secured, even in areas where those systems are under continuous public attack. Industrial software is not one of those areas, so developers of such software are unlikely to take security very seriously. But even if they did: we don't know how to get them to build secure systems.

Microsoft spends a huge amount of developer time and money on system security. They're not very successful. But they devote a much larger fraction of their budget to that goal than any industrial software shop. So expecting industrial software shops to produce code that is even as secure as Microsoft's seems...unlikely.
Why would a hardware vendor add VP8 Support? I can think of two reasons not to:

o They run the risk of patent infringement
o H.264 is already playable everywhere, universally,
either natively (and with hardware support) or with Flash.
didnt see your email in your profile. i might be moving up there soon, we should connect.
I think we agree: autonomy is the whole point here.

I'm not sure what you're arguing, but it's easy for me to say I'm 100% against the prohibition of any sort of recreational drug.

The reason I mention the danger of alcohol and nicotine is to point out an inconsistency in drug policy, which purports to ban the "dangerous" drugs and (presumably) allow the "safe" ones. ...at least that's how the scheduling criteria are operationalized in the US. Clearly, that's not the way it plays out in real life, and the disaster of this is people believing the legal drugs are the safe ones.

...but I fail to see the point of your argument, because it's not hypothetical at all. There are legal, addictive drugs in wide circulation, and although I hate the fact that my best buddy smokes a pack a day, I would oppose the prohibition of tobacco... and obviously I would oppose the FDA ban in your hypothetical. ...not exactly sure where that leaves us, but I'll upvote you for taking the time to think this through.
Kinda shooting fish in a barrel here, aren't we? Just a big communal pile-on invitation? A bit unseemly.
Doesn't show the avatars for me.
This is crap...
The incredible feat of science and engineering that is the Internet and this is what it gets used for...
If you can only see a computer as a more sophisticated sort of typewriter, this kind of flat dismissal isn't all that surprising.
Why do people have agendas on someone's choice of clothing?

Zuck's hoodie's just fine, it tells me: this guy has not lost his spirit yet, have note sold his soul, etc.

In other words, he's still hacker and entrepreneur, rather than a tough businessman from wall street.
I would guess he was just being sarcastic.
the net positive is that cyber-security is brought to the forefront for the US gov, more importantly this will be a great movie staring colin farrell as an Israeli ruby developer that came up with the plan
I have an engineer friend that tweets exclusively about his poop at work: http://twitter.com/poopsatwork

He likes to be very graphic with his descriptions. Personally, I find them amusing.
Is 28 supposed to have a 'bug'? Or is that the clue? Hmm..
Or, from a more jaded perspective, he still wants to be viewed as a "hacker who hasn't sold his soul".
If Iran is going to do, or is already doing, cyberwarfare then they'll do it whether or not they get attacked first.

Why? Is that because you assume that Iranians are irrational and evil?

Usually people do stuff because it benefits them somehow. So, why exactly would Iran launch a cyberwarfare attack against the US in a world where the US didn't strike first?

But now, everyone will be on guard.

Given how completely we've failed at building secure systems, I'm not sure that really helps.
So, your new working hypothesis is what, that Mac users secretly prefer Java UIs? That might prove too much.

I don't think it's a secret that Mac users are, by and large, more comfortable than Windows users at paying for and installing software. The paradox of choice is in less egregious effect, and they have fewer scars from past attempts.
What fuels my passion for technology & writing code
That was also the first chapter in the book where suddenly Erlang seemed freaking amazing. Up until then, it was just a functional language with an odd syntax. After the introduction to message passing and concurrency, I was in love.
i guess you haven't seen Hackers
Google Removes Result from SRP Because of DMCA Complaint
IBM's Watson beats Jeopardy Grand Champions
Haircut 2011
2011 for women promises to be the year of changes on haircuts and hairstyles. In recent years, we have find fewer changes for the length of hair and only ...
I think what it comes down to is that as a developer, you've lost your way if you're creating a product you personally wouldn't want to use. Even if it were the case that the average user might not be that turned off by AIR (and I'm not convinced that's the case), if you've decided to base your product on a platform that's basically a deal-breaker if you're shopping around for apps (as AIR is for me), then I think you've set a really bad tone for your future enthusiasm for what you're making.

A frequent drum-beat on HN is having passion for what you create. Even if it saved me time in the short run and got me some degree of free platform support, I think having to work on an AIR app that I would probably never use in real life would probably doom the project in the long run.

When I think about the independent software projects that I love, it's obvious that the developers behind them love them as well. I (and I don't want to speak for everyone) can't see myself loving an AIR app.
frameworks? I don't need no stinkin' frameworks!
This was clearly copied or transcribed from another source. What gave you the idea that this was Wendell Barry's personal website? Do you have any idea who he is? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry)
Also, I found this link to be a good reading for anyone interested in the implementation detail: https://github.com/agl/critbit/blob/master/critbit.w
"(16bit vs 8bit)"

False.
Picked a number from thin air? Raid six requires 2 drives for back and is normally used in set's of 8 or 16 drives but looks like they are using 45 drives. So 45/43 = 4.65% overhead from using RAID.

Not if they lose 35% on top of that they are around 41% overhead. But, they are taking a huge it on write speeds, network traffic and reliability for doing so.

Edit: Looks like they have 10,058 TB before partitioning the drives so my guess is ~3-6TB of actual user data.
Short version: The H.264 vs WebM battle won't be won or lost on technical merit, but on strategic partnership and market strategy.
Propane is really bad client and using this as example of native app against any AIR app is silly. I've been trying to find a way around it, tried using Sparks for ipad which has it's own issues.
I would use any semi-decent AIR app any day of the week instead of propane. And they even charge moneyz for it.
How to Pervert Direct Manipulation
Java apps done right on Mac OS X look, feel and behave like actual Mac OS X applications, Cyberduck is a free FTP client written in Java for Mac OS X. It is a great example of what is possible in Java.

But there are plenty of apps out there that are mere ports (Qt, or Java) and you can feel it. The drag handles are in the wrong location, the app doesn't behave right when you resize it, the buttons are in the wrong place, or switched from where they are supposed to be. I will still use it, but if something "native" comes along I will switch to it in a heart beat.
This is just a warmup match, but given that performance it's likely to also be the outcome of the final battle on February 14-16.

Here's a good video that explains how this works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G2H3DZ8rNc

And a PDF version that goes into more detail:
https://www-950.ibm.com/events/wwe/grp/grp004.nsf/vLookupPDF...

And the IBM Watson website:
http://www.ibmwatson.com

In a nutshell, the approach is kind of similar to the Netflix Challenge in that it's an ensemble of a bunch of different algorithms. However, while a good argument could be made that the Netflix winners were potentially overtraining on their "test" set by fitting so many different parameters, I think here there is clear out-of-band generalization.
That's the drives they actually have.

2280 * 2 + 3166 * 1.5 + 1 * 749 = 10,058 TB.
The company I work at currently uses a XMPP server to do internal chat which allows us to communicate between members.
One good reason to choose new technology is to ride the buzz wave and build up a technology brand.

Additionally, you can exploit the python paradox to get amazing developers.
Or http://yc.backtype.com/?x=stammy
and here i was hoping that researchers had definitively ranked all animals by cuteness. alas, no such luck.
A great rant by someone who knows what they're talking about :-)

I love it when language geeks and HCI snobs take the time to tear their peers a new one. Enjoy, and make sure you don't spend more than 8 hours on c2 ;-)
> Well, if he were writing with a computer, odds are good that it would have caught the typos "mv" and "computcr".

Those are not typos; on neither QWERTY nor Dvorak keyboards are "v" and "y" close together, nor "c" and "e", and the letter sequences "mv" and "tcr" are far less common than the letter sequences "my" and "ter". No, those are OCR errors, made with a computer.
Why is this news? Google - like every other website that doesn't want to get sued - routinely removes content that's the subject of DMCA complaints. The only difference is that they tell you about it, while most other sites will just quietly delete it.
h.264 doesn't have a patent cliff. The move from mpeg1->2->4 has been one of gradual refinement. Like the move from 1 pixel to .5 pixel motion estimation. We should be using a layered codec so those ridiculous patents can be folded in as they expire.
While I do not agree with his position, I think it's a little unfair to claim him to be hypocritical based on this article. The linked website is not his, though the text is written by him, and he lives without electricity or running water, and grows his own food (at least he did in the 90's, now I don't know.)
Once you click that "allow permissions" button, an applet is pretty much exactly like any other Java application. It has all the permissions it wants, up to and including running native code.

The paid version gives you the option to run it either as an applet or a downloadable auto-updating jar.
Ask HN: How do you guys stop scrapers from mirroring your site?
I'm about to put a ton of really useful, unique and valuable (in the CPC and usefulness sense) content online. Scrapers are very quickly going to want it all. How do you guys protect your content? [keeping in mind that suing someone offshore is difficult]

My current approach is going to be to limit all non-USA crawlers and crawlers that don't identify themselves as Google, Bing or someone else I care about. I'm planning on using nginx.conf and the maxmind country database to do this.

By limit I mean limiting each IP to viewing a maximum of 50 to 100 unique documents per day.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
The hoodie tells me that he likes to wear hoodies. Nothing more. Nothing less.
We're using a bit of Ruby, but not C, and mostly Scala and Clojure. Either way, I think reliability is a process thing, not a technology thing.
Looking at the list of what's included with lazynewb, I really don't see much in there that I'd expect to reduce the difficulty for a new player. Plenty of utilities and such for making the interface easier to understand, but the gameplay mechanics are untouched. I'd say you're far better off with a good tutorial (even better, someone who can help you in person).
The step up from this is Linux From Scratch. As a teenager, starting with a host os and loading the individual pieces of a functional linux distribution taught me a skill that has turned out to be very valuable.

Whereas the link above will help you learn the innards of a kernel, this will help you understand what packages on top of that make a functional, useful system.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
I think Zuck's wardrobe is his own aethistic choice. It was aesthetic decisions that made facebook dominant. He obviously has a certain visual style that he prefers and that he considers important.

Remember that facebook, out of all the social networking sites, was the least ugly. It had a simple, conservative look without looking archaic. It was understated and tasteful.

This reflects one of Zuck's greatest strengths. His intuitive ability to select an aesthetic.

Facebook was preferable to MySpace in no small part due to the modern uncluttered UI.

Zuck doesn't look like RMS or Steve Jobs or Fred Astaire. He looks like Zuck.
If you're going to downvote me into oblivion at least counter my points with facts. What does the real evidence show here?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200
Isn't this a problem for a CAPTCHA?
"However, once everyone agrees, once the establishment gets on board, once you are worth a reported $14bn yourself ... shouldn’t you start looking like a responsible person, as generally defined by responsible people such as, well, lawyers? Or maybe just your dad?"

No. Absolutely not. You should do whatever the hell you want, because you're worth 14 BILLION DOLLARS. What a ridiculous article.
Get your site to the bottom of the Internet - quick
from the creator of the ExpressJS (http://expressjs.com/) framework for node
I get what you're saying, but to be fair... is there any particular reason to suggest that a hoodie is more indicative of not having sold your soul, than, say, wearing a three piece suit?

I mean, yeah, the hacker stereotype is what it is, and sure most of us favor jeans and t-shirts (and maybe hoodies) most of the time... but I'm reasonably sure there are a few hackers out there who wear suits at least sometimes, simply because they like doing so. Hell, to be honest, I don't mind going the "dandied up" route every now and then myself. But the key - in my mind at least - is that I do it when I feel like it, and because it's something I like, not because it's something somebody else expects me to do.

Anyway... just a thought.