skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you skip college entirely, you'll be explaining that decision to friends, co-workers, and prospective employers for the rest of your life.
> the current graduation rate of 64 percent, a number often promoted by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as evidence that his education policies are working.

It is so sad when a 64% graduation rate is seen as proof that policies are working.
Nobody likes the record labels, so they are always a convenient bogeyman for these arguments. However, what if the artists themselves dictate distribution terms you don't like? Is it still 'ethical' to pirate their material?
Churnalism pops up again, its proverbial ugly head once again raised for the cliches, its existence in this article thoroughly destroying its validity right down to its core assumptions, so that nothing remains to rise from its ashes.

How long has it been since the "Amazonian tribe that cannot count" has been refuted? What is the name of this "Amazonian tribe?" How did the anthropologist hear of the existence of this tribe? How did he contact with it? How long did he study with it? How many people did it claim before it was made extinct by logging operations?

So many other questions that I'll bet could not be answered because that damned "Amazonian tribe that can only count in binary" never existed.
Lines like this:

[I don't do interviews because] I hate taking time away from my writing, and I'm making enough money to stop doing things that I dislike.

are some of the many reasons I love this blog.

I don't know if that is going to be the experience of most authors, though. I think there is a wee bit of App Store Goldrush going on where the ridiculous superiority of the distribution channel makes marketing less necessary than it previously was for people at the head of the distribution. Konrath -- who I literally take physical notes from when it comes to marketing -- may be able to get by with less hustling than he used to, but I think more authors are going to approach the sort of tactics one uses to sell ebooks or software -- list building, online marketing (aside from just "uploading to Amazon", etc).

I think the same is likely true of the App Store too, come to think of it. Angry Birds can be Angry Birds, but everyone else has to work against the platform's strong incentive to marginalize most of the catalog on any given day.
> Isn't this enough for the authorities to pursue legal action?

Where's the actual evidence? You'd have to actually find his IP address downloading something from somewhere.
What do you think of people who keep pitcher plants in their homes? The larger ones trap cockroaches, small lizards, and even mice in a slippery sap, slowly digesting them over the course of days.
You think a bomb blowing up a plane is more scary than a plane just randomly deciding to fly into something? I don't. Plane control hacking is vastly more scary than bombs because one break means someone on the other side of the earth can do what ever he/she wants with all of them at the same time.
I/O Error 2011: A Conference for the Rest of Us
A lot of people got really pissed by the fact that the Google I/O Conference tickets sold out in 56 minutes, filled mostly, I think, by swag-seeking hoards. So, we thought: why not have a parallel gathering in SF at the same time, to return to the innocent, tech-driven Google I/O days of yore.

davepeck has stared a signup sheet at http://bit.ly/h9KQrR. If there's adequate interest, e.g. > 20 people coming for sure, we'll find us a space and sponsor(s).

What do you say? What talks would you want to see at a such a gathering?
Anon hacks HBGary and all they get is a lot of already public information? Maybe Anon just stuck their hand in the honeypot...

Just thinking out loud.
UCS2, even though being an outdated predecessor to UTF-16, has some unique qualities that make it useful for things like databases or other storage mediums that you are not mixing with a lot of low code point characters (like you do with XML and HTML markups).

One being that's fair for all languages with respect to size so when you may be storing your standard Chinese, Korean, Japanese characters.

When UTF-16 made UC2 variable length, a few of the nice things were lost, but when dealing a lot of the higher code point characters mostly, UTF-16 may save you space.
So what if you don't see what the motivations are of the people who own the content or the distribution network? Can you imagine a world in which those people are making decisions whose justification they don't wish to share with you?

Maybe they've done A/B testing on the way to release content to maximize their profit or some other good that they value and think that revealing the results to you would affect the outcome.
Corruption: is Italy a step ahead?
I'm sorry, dchs, but this is neither hackerly nor even newsworthy. This app is barely a step above the laminated cards posted outside confessionals in most Catholic churches.

Here's a direct link to the app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/confession-a-roman-catholic/i...

Any practicing Catholic would know this stuff cold by adolescence. A worrisome "feature" is "password protected profiles." You'd better choose a secure password, or anyone who steals your iPhone will have (even more) blackmail material on you.
Anyone have some reliable numbers as to how much tv stations pay to license certain shows?
Robert Maas is mentally ill.
That's a slightly harder Turing test. pg will insist on them moving to Silicon Valley, so we'll have to use tech like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EveR-2#EveR-2
Groupon Digs The Hole Deeper
Interrupt Component While Working With Large File & Chart to Image
Aspose.Cells is a Java component for spreadsheet reporting without using Microsoft Excel. Other features include creating spreadsheets, opening encrypted excel files, macros, VBA, unicode, formula settings, pivot tables, importing data from JDBC ResultSet and support of CSV, SpreadsheetML, PDF, ODS and all file formats from Excel 97 to Excel 2007. It is compatible with Windows, Linux & Unix and supports all advanced features of data management, formatting, worksheet, charting and graphics.
How about having enough evidence to pursue a warrant? Taking a big name to trial over something like this might actually be worth their effort.
A friend of mine swears by a strategy he calls "smashing ideas" to generate ideas for research: Take two fundamental ideas from the literature (the more fundamental the better) and try to smash them together into a new idea. Says a remarkable amount of research (and successful papers) can be viewed in this light. The strategy is obviously a great creative tool, generally. Though, for business I still reckon the best primary mindset to have is identifying real world problems and thinking of solutions to these problems (perhaps smashing comes in at this point). In research and art, creativity pays off more because real world benefit as voted by paying customers is not as important.
Some of the european broadcasters are trying to accomodate this. Usually for really popular shows like LOST it will air the same night or the next night (You could have watched the series finale of LOST at 3AM) or catch it the following night. But most of the less popular shows are shown months or years after they show in the US.

Anyway, TRON: Legacy is showing here next week and the buzz is already gone due to the fact that most people that wanted to see it already have or read the plot. I'm just waiting for it to come out on bluray since the excitement of seeing it in theaters is largely gone.
I suppose I don't see that as part of the copyright social contract, though some people do argue for a complete ability to control (for a temporary period of time) the use of a work. The model of copyright that makes sense to me is intended to provide a mechanism for creators to be compensated for published work, i.e. to prevent readers/listeners/etc. from bypassing the paid distribution channel. The justification is that if everyone is funneled towards the paid distribution channel, that will provide funds and encouragement for more such work to be created and published.

But if the work isn't being published (or isn't being published to a particular audience), then that side of the social contract isn't being upheld, so the purpose of copyright (to encourage such material to be produced and made available) isn't being fulfilled, and therefore I don't see copyright as ethically applicable (or ethically applicable to that audience).

I guess a shorter version of the obligation I feel users of a work have is: Compensate the creator, if they'll take your money.
Making Predictions for the Year 2030
The real point isn't piracy, it's that the band and the record company lost the sale! They had a customer ready to give them money and they failed to get it. At that point whether he pirated it or did without is irrelevant. Talking about piracy just made it more dramatic.
Not quite complete, nowhere does the description say the team is "passionate" about technology and/or design.
True it is sad. But to be fair, almost everyone who isnt poor in new york either lives in the suburbs or sends their kids to private school...so NYC is basically one big inner city district.
Socrates and a friend talk about the morality of profit
Startup America -- Dead on Arrival
Online Dating Site Zoosk’s 2010 Sales Up 250 Percent To $90 Million
While this is a perfectly valid point, particularly if you want your site to be usable on mobile devices (where the lower power of the devices mean you need to be more aware of potential performance bottlenecks) of have to support IE6 (which is slower than everything else by some magnitude for this sort of content update), in the example given it may be that only a few items are expected in each response in which case there will be little difference overall but the code is slightly more complex.

Also, the example given is an example designed to illustrate an unrelated matter: a callback method within a given API. In such examples it is generally best to include the minimum extra code needed to make a working example - adding extra code unrelated to what the example is demonstrating in order to optimise around browser bottlenecks could muddy the issue.
Not to be OCD or anything, but isn't it time to break the teachers unions and eliminate tenure?
I recently found this Scheme to C/JVM/C# compiler: http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/fp/Bigloo/
And do Geico and Home Depot get much possible value from your viewing their adverts?

I'm not wholly against you on this; the current media market setup is patently flawed in the Internet age and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that so's the broadcast content model for anything but inherently live content such as sports and _maybe_ rolling news. But, that content is paid for by advertisers trying to reach prospective customers. Overseas viewers are, almost without exception, not prospective customers of the advertisers so they're not interested in paying to talk to you.
maybe the Sea Peoples were using
disruptive iron technology?

They did. I think it is even mentioned in the Bible (the Tanakh, rather), although I am not sure about the details. And archeological evidence seems to support it rather strongly, afaik.
How to land your first patch in Rails
Strangely, I couldn't find a place in the book where he directly cites the dozens of studies he says he read; but he does quote from this one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19578660
That reminds me of Network Solutions registering domains that people searched for as "nice service". That was a fun day.
The main problem is that the performances of the emulated POSIX would likely be terrible.
Is Your VC Really Committed To Your Seed Round? - robgo.org
Draw a pirate on the packaging
So i ordered a Sony Liveview from eBay, and in special delivery instructions i wrote "Draw a pirate on the package" http://twitpic.com/3xo0cs
Product Leaders as Poets and Librarians - robgo.org
Facebook & Youtube to be unblocked in Syria today
'Twitter messages not private' rules UK Press Complaints Commission
Let the 95 year reign of Angry Birds begin!
"If every ebook is cheap, and readers pig out on them like we do at an all-you-can-eat buffet, where will anyone find the time to read all of those ebooks?"

"Answer: they won't."

Just wanted to say that as I was reading the part about price and space not being important in the decision process, I thought "Yes, but what about time to read as scarce resource?"

And then hit the above quoted section, as if my thoughts were spoken out loud and he was responding to them.

Anticipating your reader's thought process this well is a hallmark of good writing.

ps What's coop?
Coding web apps is the new literacy
Lately education has become a bit of a cause celebre, but a few years ago, when the numbers were just as bad, whenever this problem was mentioned there were two immediate responses: 1) It's the parent's fault, and 2) Need more money to get better results.

At some point, the American public started believing that the cost of something purchased with public funds was directly proportional to the value it gave. So it was like "New aircraft carrier? That thing costs 2 Billion dollars! Must be really valuable to national security"

But the amount of money you pay for something and the good that it provides -- especially in systems that are immune to the retooling and re-engineering effects of recessions -- are completely independent of each other.

Especially with the U.S. budget crisis coming, maybe this issue will open some eyes, but I doubt it.
Isn’t IE9 supposed to have native support for media queries? http://caniuse.com/css-mediaqueries
It's this sort of thing (among others) that's why I have a PC hooked up to my TV for streaming media. As far as every provider is concerned it's Just Another PC so I don't have to worry about compatibility or this sort of silly artificial restriction.

Works very nicely BTW, I'd recommend it to anyone.
Wasn't aware of that, but I don't think it changes anything. I don't want my view to come off US-centric either. No one is going to detain/imprison Tony Blair either. Nor Angela Merkel. Nor Jacques Chirac. Nor Gerhard Schroder. I would posit that the indictment of any head of state -- present or former -- belonging to a superpower would involved the explicit action of said nation, or at least the full cooperation of many other nations bringing extreme diplomatic pressure on the government. You don't just snag them while they're on a trip to your country.
I was a perl enthusiast in the day. But those times are long gone. But I must agree when in a pinch and I need string manipulation or some quick script that is just bit to complicated for bash to handle I'll write some perl :)
Reminds me of 'The Incredible Machine'...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine_%28game%...
Consider that the selection of US TV shows on iTunes UK is mediocre. If Apple can't do it with all their money and clout, what hope does a startup have?
I don't watch the adverts.

Funny thing, though, is that 90% of the product placement happening in US shows are things I can buy right here at home. Or I can buy some sister product the same umbrella corporation produces.

Furthermore, it is increasingly the case that product placement is happening for online products. I've especially noticed this with The Big Bang Theory (possibly because it's a geek show)

Hell, just take this for example: The only reason I went to the Cheesecake Factory on my US visit last year was because I saw it mentioned on a tv show I pirated.
This is about CMD-Click, not CTRL-Click. CMD-Click sends a 'click' event to the page, since it counts as "left (primary mouse button) click", not "right click".
Arianna Huffington: Queen of All Media
Assuming he used Bittorrent, how are you going to find the logs? Where was the torrent from? Nobody observed him actually doing it...

I'm pretty sure that the evidence would be lost in the aether by now, but I'm no security expert...
Angry Birds used an input based gesture that was unlike the mouse, and really took advantage of the touchscreen gesture capabilities of the device AND intuition of its user.
Sony lawyers now targeting anyone who posts on PS3 hack
In Thier Own Words: Obama On Health, Holder On Race
Project Description
fuv is a programmer's editor that is an excellent replacement for vim.

All editing is done by searching and replacing over the existing text, using regular expressions.

If you are tired of the lack of power in vim it's time to step up and use fuv.

Three other functions are supported. These may be taken away.

:o to open a file
e.g :oc:\temp\file.txt opens the file c:\temp\file.txt

:s to save current buffer
e.g :sc:\temp\file.txt saves the content to c:\temp\file.txt

:q to exit immediately
Note there is no prompt for unsaved changes.

TAKE THE FUV CHALLENGE.
Use fuv as your only text editor for 1 year.

Then you will be ready for emacs.

==========

And it's a Windows-only program hosted on Microsoft's open source outreach site. Hilarious.
My first software dev job entailed building and configuring a LAMP stack. It wasn't much to deal with: some perl, some bash, some administration, IP filtering, code deployment, the basics.

On my first day, the person responsible for the project went on vacation and for next 10 business days, I was told to do research. That's about it. It was the oddest startup experience I have ever had. Other members of the group, asked me questions about how everything was going, but couldn't answer any of mine. So I indeed did research.
That's true, but these posts aren't ever of the "language Y is actually as good as or better than C, always!" variety, are they? Instead what we get is the results of (in the best case) a couple of micro-benchmarks that happen to show comparable performance to C.

If someone could show me that "yes, your Python programs are now AS FAST AS C!" then of course I'd be ecstatic to hear that; but the posts letting me know that "Python is as fast as C when approximating solutions to problem X, for some X you've never heard of and never will" get kind of old after the 137th time I read them.

For me this is comparable to someone posting about yet another problem in NP that is REALLY FRICKIN' HARD, so probably P=/=NP. I know many problems in NP are hard - you're not adding anything to the discussion by showing me yet another one. Let me know when you have an actual proof that P=/=NP.
This is the first context where the dollar sign sigil made complete sense to me. :)
> What’s more, the company is demanding that a federal judge order
> Google to surrender the IP addresses and other identifying
> information (PDF) of those who have viewed or commented about the
> jailbreak video on a private YouTube page

That's exactly why forcing users to link YouTube and gmail accounts is a terrible idea, Google.
At least in the past the Shootout code wouldn't have explicit (declaim (optimize ...)) in the source files, but the command used to compile the files would have it. Did it really get removed from the command line?
I just started reading the thread linked from the blog post, and it felt like reading House of Leaves. Here are some choice quotes from various authors:

Re Clojure: "This is a 'babel' plot to destroy lisp."

"Pocket Forth is a free Forth interactive-interpretor that runs fine on my Macintosh "Performa 600" (68030-CPU) System 7.5.5."

"The Mac is a desktop-publishing 'appliance' --- considering
that you don't have a laser-printer, a Mac is about as useful to you as a bicycle is to a fish. Besides that, you don't seem like the desktop-publishing type of guy --- that is mostly a marketing-department girl thing."

"I really foresee the collapse of civilization. The majority of people in America are motivated entirely by hate, fear, greed and envy, and this situation can't continue indefinitely. This is what I describe in my book, 'After the Obamacalypse,' which is included in the slide-rule package on my web-page."

Another time I was sitting in my van in a parking lot. A skinny
Jew walked up to the van, peered inside, then tried to open the door
but discovered that it was locked, so he walked away. I got out and
walked over to him, and I said: "What the hell do you think you're
doing?" He also said that he thought it was his friend's van, but he
didn't apologize at all, but became prideful and belligerent. When I
said, "I think you're a thief," he said: "Look at the way you're
dressed; you're the thief!" (I was wearing a hoodie). He told me that
if I continued bothering him, he was going to call the police, and he
got out his cell-phone. When I said, "I think you were looking for
something to steal," he said: "There is nothing in your van worth
stealing!" I beat him thoroughly with my fists and left him face down
on the sidewalk in his own blood. Somewhat belatedly, be began to cry:
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

It ends shortly after "Discussion subject changed to 'Whining (was Re: ordered associative arrays)' by John Passaniti."
A great set of questions. My startup Intrinsa took a seed round from USVP in the 90s, and it worked out great -- they split the next $4M round with Hummer Winblad, and stayed deeply involved the whole time. But as Rob points out, there are lots of ways it can go wrong ... best to think things through up front.
I'm most worried not for the numbers as for the corrosive effect long periods of unemployment have on employability. You lose the simple habits which are required for lots of gainful employment, such as "getting up before 9 AM consistently" and "working mostly non-stop for 8 hours a day".

I see this in a lot of these articles where folks will, e.g., claim they applied for 15 jobs in 3 weeks. At some point the new normal for him has become that he works 15 minutes a day or less on his job search. (Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes is for suckers.)
That only happens if you end up with no results (eg, you didn't really grasp what to search for). Eg: http://adioso.com/search?q=france -- does not show that bar.
Boomers are Driving a New Entrepreneurship Boom
Just some clarification here as comparing MongoDB and CouchDB's Map/Reduce is a bit of "Apples and Oranges" as they are designed for different purposes.

While in CouchDB, all queries are created with Map/Reduce, in MongoDB Map/Reduce is designed for aggregation. There is a separate system for standard querying which performs much better than Map/Reduce (Before people jump on me here my performance comparison is Mongo queries to MONGO Map/Reduce. Not Couch Map/Reduce or Map/Reduce in general; Not looking to get into a benchmark discussion here, just feature clarification).

The two differ greatly---while Couch requires precalculation of "Views", MongoDB focuses on dynamic querying. Given CouchDB's use of Map/Reduce for these static views, the way they do the iterative addition of new data without re-reducing the entire dataset makes sense.

However, MongoDB doesn't require you to use Map/Reduce to run queries and its MapReduce not designed for day to day querying. Rather, one should use MongoDB Map/Reduce for data aggregation tasks.

Also notable is that in 1.8, MongoDB has added some additional functionality for those who are using Map/Reduce which allows you to merge output and build data across jobs. I did a write up on the changes a few weeks ago: http://blog.evilmonkeylabs.com/2011/01/27/MongoDB-1_8-MapRed...

(In the interest of Full Disclosure: I work for 10gen, the company behind MongoDB; I'm also working on a book about MongoDB.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Excel still outputs UTF-16 in some cases. I remember parsing generated .txt/.csv files and there were issues with it and it's endian order.
A guide for contributing to jQuery Mobile