skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great idea! I'd love to see the "interactive" side of your idea. For me the coolest thing about starting to learn coding was writing a line, running the app and seeing something output to the screen.

Also what helped me learn was having a mentor who would answer questions and push me to keep learning. I learned a lot mostly from books and working on things I wanted to build. However I recently went through Rails for Zombies and really enjoyed the interactivity of it.

Just thought of a silly but perhaps useful feature... (And assuming this is all done on the website) At the end of each tutorial ask them to write out a commit command. Get them used to version control (Git would be great).

Good luck!
Yes, you're right. Esp your third paragraph -- having someone demonstrate that they can repeatedly succeed is the surest proof. On the other hand, you can try to analyze process, and guess at if that process can reasonably produce results -- but that's not really an easier problem.

Let me paraphrase a story from the book that addresses Buffet. Taleb compares people playing the market to people flipping coins.

If everyone in the US flipped a coin once a morning, after about four weeks, you'd expect to have maybe a thousand people who'd flipped all heads. You could go out and interview these people, find out what their 7 highly effective habits are, whatever, but you couldn't actually be sure to be learning anything about what's "really going on."

On the other hand, if after four weeks, you found that all the people who flipped straight heads were clustered around Omaha, and all reported taking their coin-flipping-lessons from one guy in the town, then it might behoove one to look a bit closer.

In both cases, you can study "process", but without an understanding of the phenomena, you might just be spinning your wheels, coming up with correlations rather than causations.

TL;DR -- causal mechanisms are hard to find.

You should read the book :)
This joke has an expiration date of May 3rd this year. Best to use it while we still can.
Freely sharing the data in the sphere where you're trying to catch up, while zealously guarding the data in the sphere where you've got a massive lead, is the alleged hypocrisy.

Hard-won bits is hard-won bits, at a suitably abstract level of analysis.
Webmaster's shoot themselves in the foot a lot. "My site isn't showing up in google" is a frequent complaint on webmaster help forums, and typically the problem is robots.txt or meta noindex. From that standpoint, since most sites do want to be indexed, it makes sense to follow the standard as strictly as possible. It should be hard to remove your site by accident, which case insensitivity would make somewhat easier. Google states explicitly in their robots.txt policies that it is handled in a case-sensitive way.
The idea isn't particularly revolutionary.

I realize it's not. It's quite old fashioned. Just trying my best to answer the question someone asked me.

I'm about to get offline as I need my rest.

Later.
I think he is selling himself short. He is saying that he wasted three years of his life and now he feels stupid. I think that's a normal reaction. I applaud this guy. Mark Cuban and Jeff Bezos have both made statements about living life with no regrets. What if he didn't do it? Would he regret it later? Surely in the three years this guy learned a lot about building a business, marketing, coding, etc. I'll bet that next time he won't make some of the same mistakes.

In three years he did more than most will ever do in their life. It would be a tragedy for him to not try again at another business and just simply give up.
The problem exists when that web service is on Windows - ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, static html sites, probably a negligible percent of PHP sites etc -

/pv is /PV is /pV is /Pv
Technotise the movie
Best. Parents. Ever.
I think you're trying too hard to rationalize Google's claims.

With regard to the 1-in-1000 signals, clearly they have that many signals because not all 1000 signals are strong for every query. In Google's case, they "Googlebombed" Bing, but instead of using the "anchor" signal (which most people use to alter Google's results), they chose the "click stream" signal. Google specifically chose scenarios where the other 999 signals weren't being used.

If I had a toolbar installed on millions of machines where people opted-in to send me their click activity, I could start a search engine that used only click stream data to rank results. You'd be seeing the ranking effected by all sorts of sites including Facebook, Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, etc... As it should, the ranking would be effected by the click activity that users perform on the most popular websites. Effectively I'd have crowd sourced my ranking. If Google is returning a result for a particular person's name, but Facebook's click stream activity is returning a fan page for that person's name which is clicked on more frequently than the Google result, then the Facebook result would show up in my search engine for that person's name.

All Google did here was choose a scenario where every other signal wasn't being used by Bing, effectively turning Bing into the click-stream search engine described above. Furthermore, Google chose a scenario where even within this single signal, they were the only input to it. All Google did was googlebomb Bing. Any well trafficked website could do the same.

It's ridiculous the lengths people will go to while trying to discredit Microsoft. Bing has built a generalized system that partially learns rankings through behaviors observed on high-reputation websites. That's it.

And no they shouldn't remove Google from the signal because that'd imply they've done something wrong.
I'd have liked the opportunity to self identify with multiple options as I'm sure others here would as well.
> even if it is rejected, you can still patch your own version and have the feature you want

One longer term issue there is that you are now stuck maintaining this code through any changes the upstream authors choose to make in the future (if you really want this feature that bad)
Taking liberty to concoct a scenario. If Walmart asked shoppers to take a photograph of the product layout on display at their favorite shop (which say happens to be Target because its the most popular in town) and used that to make small modifications to its own layout, would you say Walmart needs to credit Target, or that its copying Target? This is an arrangement between Walmart and its shoppers and there is nothing Target can do about it other than making a brouhaha. I don't see why things have to be different in the digital world. We all know how user interfaces historically have been blatantly ripped off.
to the contrary, some of the High-Net-Worth individuals i've had the misfortune to interact with have a much greater interest in succeeding more than once -- especially the ones who are more self-aware than usual. I think they want to prove that the first time wasn't a fluke, usually to themselves!
If you're comfortable writing a design brief (ie., what 99designs requires) then you might want to reach out to designers directly. Some good locations for previewing portfolios that I use:
http://creattica.com/logos/latest-designs
http://dribbble.com/search?q=logo
Congrats on the NYT article. That's got to feel great, in addition to being great publicity.
There is a howto on the gnupg site, but frankly it's a little out of date. It focuses enough on hardware to scare people away, but these days most readers are libccid compatible, so it's a non issue. Setup is actually pretty simple.

Basically you either get a card and reader:

http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/product_info.php?cPath=1_26...

Or get an all-in-one cryptostick:

http://www.privacyfoundation.de/crypto_stick/crypto_stick_en...

And setup your gpg keys on there, either by generating them directly on the card or transferring existing keys. These are simple commands documented elsewhere. In addition to the normal signing and encryption keys, you also generate an authentication key.

Then 'ssh-add -L' will spit out your public key in ssh format to copy on the host machines as usual.

After that you just make sure that you'll use gpg-agent instead of ssh-agent. The man page for gpg-agent shows you what you'll want to add to .bashrc.

Then when you ssh into a machine, gpg-agent will take over, pop up a little dialog called pinentry, you enter your code, and you're good. When you go to lunch, remove card, and ssh authentication with that key no longer works.
How to Retain Your Top Talent (Who Might Be Looking for the Exit)
robot.txt excludes /search not /Search..big difference as 99.99% of return results are ../Search*

MS mistake on robot.txt file not Google's
Google TV Web UI Library
This certainly sounds interesting, but is it something that will turn into "pay me $xxx/hour" after the first month?
I think you got the wrong RFC number:

http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3938.txt

No mention of robots.txt, nor a section 6.
Maybe you also want to go on http://hackerbuddy.com. It's a site where hackers can help other (future) hackers
The Only Four Chords Needed For Every Pop Song
So it appears the only way to not appear is to let them crawl to see your NOINDEX tag.

And while it's clear NOINDEX prevents a page from appearing in results, it's not clear that it excludes the page contents from analysis by any of Google's algorithms, once collected. (Is it still used to train the spell-checker, for example?)
I watched it twice because I didn't really pick up on 3 separate ideas. I guess they conflate into one and that's why it works. Plus, it's a bit naive of The Business Insider to think success in innovation can be attributed to only 3 main ideas. But correct me if I'm wrong, these are the 3 key points I picked up:

1) Don't be afraid to try new things (be bold).

2) Execute quickly while keeping future quickness of execution in mind.

3) If/when keys 1 & 2 work out and "explode" your userbase, giving you massive leverage... use it.
I think a website to teach people to program could be very useful. However, I do not think videos are the best way to do this. People would want to see your examples in text on the screen so they can copy it, or just take their time reading and understanding it at their own pace.

Also, if the lessons are laid out in text, you will receive much more search engine traffic from people who are trying to figure out how to do something.
Nope. That's not how OAuth works. If you are getting the users password, you did it wrong. Let Netflix handle the authentication and access control.
"What was the revenue plan? Advertising?"

How else would one of those "thumbs up/down voting + comments" sites be monitized? People certainly aren't going to pay a subscription for it.

I like one of the upvoted comments on reddit: turn the ship slightly, port over to Facebook, and slap adsense on it.

Then move on to the next idea.
People have made that point, but I don't understand it. 'kecgx...' shows up as a parameter in the url of the Google query. Tons of sites include relevant information in parameterized urls; why is it unexpected that Bing would use that information across the whole web? Other people have said that implies that Bing has to have special Google url-parsing code, but that's not true at all - query parameters in urls are standardized. You would have to have special code to understand the specific semantics of Google's query urls, but there's no reason to think Bing needs or wants parameter semantics, they could easily just be interested in making probabilistic associations.
Also, your splash page is confusing. An 'authenticate with netflix' button would be better. If you need users to 'sign up' with your site, make that a seperate and distinct operation.
This article is from 2008
I use a hacked/extended version of:

http://delta.tigris.org/

For all kinds of reductions, mainly code which causes compiler failures.

It is easy to burn a huge amount of CPU time with reductions (large C++ testcases can take a couple of days), it is just important to remember you are saving brain-time, and resist the urge to try to "help" it along.
Throw a "read code" in there too.
Aider la Tunisie - Maghreb UnionMaghreb Union
Turing's story needs to be told
This may be the best resume I have ever seen
> Actually, it is the users who are figuring out what is relevant not Google

When you do a Google search, Google chooses ten URLs from over 1 trillion that are in its index. Creating this list takes teams of full-time engineers and data-centers full of servers that crawl the internet constantly.

The user spends, on average, less than ten seconds choosing 1 out of those 10 URLs. In a small minority of cases, they'll click to further pages, in which case maybe they were choosing 1 out of 100.

So Google narrowed the search down from 1 trillion URLs to 10, and the user narrowed it down from 10 URLs to 1. And yet you think it's the user who did the hard work?
Brilliant satire....reminds me of my pet peeve - "analysts" who are unwilling to pull and QA data.... when I started in analytics 15 years ago that WAS the path ... you either pulled data or got a job in PR.

The irony is that most of these guys have the intellectual horsepower to learn enough coding to crank version 1.0 in about 90% of the likely startup spaces out there. Speaking as a business guy from a similar school who started refreshing his own tech skills a couple years ago to reach "tech ceo" level competency (can personally deliver a simple app or feature, understands dev and support process, has a clue about design and project tradeoffs, can size up technical talent), these guys have the capabilty.....just being lazy weasels...

By the way, anyone at a startup who considers himself a ceo is seriously delusional.... You are a CEO in training at best. Call yourself a founder and move past it. Get cash flow positive and create 50 - 100 jobs and you can reconsider...
Who’s the Boss, You or Your Gadget?
"git bisect" is one of the most useful and overlooked debugging tools.

http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-bisect.h...
I find a paywall when trying to access the article.
Exactly. I don't suffer from chronic insomnia, but I occasionally go through bouts of difficulty sleeping, and my experience is exactly like you describe. I am completely exhausted, my brain "hurts" (by which I mean any form of input, whether that be reading, computer/tv, music, audio books, etc are all too much to handle), I'm uncomfortable and restless but also too tired to get up, etc. Not to mention that after an hour or two of this, the anxiety starts to kick in (especially if you have anything important the next day), which if uncontrolled makes things much worse in a hurry.

Describing it as going to bed when you aren't sleepy is almost insulting. Thankfully in my case it's relatively rare, but I've seen enough to know that chronic insomnia can't be far from living hell.
Great. This link helps. Google's site basically says that in addition to specifically excluding their crawler via robots.txt, I also have MANUALLY submit a request to them. As I said in a reply below, this is nonsensical and Bing is being more reasonable, but I'll grit my teeth and do it since Google has more power here.

It definitely seems like Google is exploiting a loophole in spirit of the definition of robots.txt. Robots.txt is an ancient standard, and I don't think it was anticipated at that time that search engines would gain enough confidence about pages' relevance to list them even if they had not indexed/crawled them.
Not sure which adobe web app you're referring to but you can try https://acrobat.com free trial if you were using a different one. I've messed around with it and it isn't THAT bad...
Political parties do this too- conservatives are characterized by liberals as rejecting science, liberals are characterized by conservatives as being irresponsible or pot smokers.

The trouble with this argument is that sometimes the characterizations are true. For instance, the neo-conservative movement in the United States is rather well characterized by a rejection of science, including evolution, climate change, and sex education (that is, abstinence-only sex ed has been shown empirically to be useless). It is completely valid to point this rejection of science out, and moreover, it is useful and constructive to do so. By demonstrating that neo-conservative politics deviate from that which can be demonstrated scientifically, we as a society can move more towards policies which are well-supported by reality.

I don't mean to focus too much on a single example, but rather, I'm trying to use that example to make a point: presenting accurate, if inflammatory, characterizations of one's opponents is not harmful to society, but is in fact part of how we engage in constructive discourse.

By the same token, as I pointed out in a comment below, Apple has taken actions which are strikingly similar to those warned about in an exaggerated manner by the novel 1984; to wit, they have built an architecture for censorship and have applied it to restrict the ability of adults to use their iOS devices to partake of pornography or even of more mildly sexual applications. To point out the irony in Apple taking these actions, given their ad campaign back in 1984, is not to "ideologically immunize" consumers, but rather to make a valid and useful point. I do think that point is beyond the immediate goals of Motorola, however, and that their current campaign is riding on the bandwagon of valid criticisms, using them for short-term profit. That is not a destructive thing to do, however, insofar as the original criticisms are well-founded.
The line should be more "most people don't understand what kids can do".
Avoiding vaccinations due to scientifically unsupported fears (and often blatantly wrong information, like that MMR ever had thimerosal) about mercury and other preservatives is like avoiding breathing to prevent pollution poisoning. Neither one makes much sense.
An academically flawless OS, yet no programmer's nirvana on the other end.
Palo Alto to NYC...No Pit Stops
That's a great idea. You should http://news.ycombinator.com/submit it!
Can you link to the Reddit discussion as well please? I can't seem to be able to find it
Pity this one went down without a trace. It's a transcript of a marvelous discussion he had with aspiring filmmakers. Anyone interested in creativity, art, or movies should read it. I came away thinking that I should watch Coppola's movies again (never was a huge fan).
Randi's Challenge to Homeopathy Manufacturers and Retail Pharmacies
I didn't think the video was all that informative. I was hoping it was three keys to the initial success of Facebook. Not, three keys that keeps Facebook successful which are:

1) Culture

2) Developer's platform.

3) Leverage with hiring. e.g. Mentioning the impact that engineers will have.
I believe they're also used for verifying potential new compiler optimizations: http://blog.regehr.org/archives/247

Check out the SAT competition for state of the art solvers: http://www.satcompetition.org/
> For example, in the filesystem area

A good example, because GNU Hurd has different view on filesystems implementation. Debian GNU/Hurd project has fairly nice explainations here: http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-doc-translator

With GNU/Linux you're stuck with "classical" filesystems. GNU Hurd allows to have all sort of fancy things, for example to file to be both file and directory (which is totally impossible in Linux - and Linus strongly opposes any attempts to change this unfortunate state of things).

And it matters a lot to typical everyday GNU/Linux users. They frequently struggle (I, personally, do) with GVFS/KIO kludges (and other non-kernel "filesystems") - which GNU/Linux systems must have because even FUSE filesystems can't generally adequately replace them.

Edit: However, this not as flexible as Plan B's boxes (http://plan9.escet.urjc.es/ls/export/box.html).
I gathered it was Culture, Developer Platform, and Leverage/Impact
At least in my case, there is such a thing as going to bed when you are too tired. Some days if I miss my sleep window, I get "too tired to sleep." That probably doesn't make much sense as described, but I know at least some people can relate.
Here it is, relegated to a niche subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/fc4dw/quite_pos....

I tried finding a link to something that summarized it better than a YouTube video and decided on using the MAKE link.
My new political affiliation (Or how the Kickstarter model can replace politics)
The hunt is on: Today's bounty hunters rely on technology more than muscle
What's the problem with this? It's the internet equivalent of "I'll tell you my salary if you tell me yours."

If you're really concerned about long-term access without adding anything yourself, go ahead and make something up to get through the filter. Bitching about being asked to contribute is just parasitic and lame.
To the author of the website: you have modified google analytics code and removed semicolons, I congratulate you on that. It shows true conviction. :)

Joke aside, that's a good content put together in very clear and concise manner.
It's interesting, but I'd much rather see a chronologically-based bubble diagram for recent experience.

Definitely eye-catching.
What do you call a piece of meat with blood coming out of it?

Bloody.

What do you call a piece of fruit with a lot of juice in it?

Juicy.

What do you call a wound that's extruding pus?

Uh-oh.
"My 2.5 hour Foray in Corporate America"
He may put himself forward as giving up but in actuality, he's going to revise it. [0]

It seems he failed at one most important aspect: Feedback from users (He got unhelpful feedback from friends and programmers though).

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ffu1n/iama_guy_who_inv...
"You would have to have special code to understand the specific semantics of Google's query urls"

That's why people say that it's special-cased. There's no web standard that says the 'q' parameter means that the page is a search engine and the parameter is the query. That was something AltaVista did a long time back (possibly for byte-saving reasons, or possibly because they were lazy) and Google et al copied. Many other search engines use a different system, eg. DDG puts it in the request path, InfoSeek used qt=, Excite used search=.
The only reason GNU/Hurd is still a popular subject of discussion is its historical fame. There is no concrete reasoning behind this project anymore as to why it may find adoption. It is not easy to write operating systems in the first place. Adoption is even harder today because the subject is very well explored and the solution has become a commodity.
Why wasn't it called "The http server written in Arc challenge" at http://www.paulgraham.com/arcchallenge.html?
My kids love this show and has gotten them sincerely interested in electronics (and putting cut-outs on sticks for puppet play) - keep up the good work!
> It's thought that 90% of the cancer caused by tobacco comes from the radiation and not from the tobacco alone...

Thought by whom? There are plenty of chemical carcinogens in cigarettes that are undoubtedly playing a role.
after you get the tactical stuff down, find someone smarter and more experienced than you and turn him into a mentor.
One of the best ways to improve any skill is to exercise the skill in public; the more demanding the public the better. This is true of writing and of speaking and of most kinds of research. Advice like "get a mentor" or "work with the best" or "learn by teaching" is also a special case of this general principle. We become what our friends demand us to be.
The 'software wars campaign map' badly needs an update