skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Static typing defends against much more than simple errors that are easy to fix.

When you want to refactor your codebase and have thousands of calls to a method when you rename it and don't have static typing you have no idea where things broke with out having a unit test for each invocation.

My personal preference is for inferred typing where you get the benefits of static typing with out the line noise of static typing. (eg. F#) C# is taking another interesting middle ground with dynamic invocation. I think the real answer lies in inferred typing by default and static / dynamic typing (invocation) where and when you need it. There is no one universal answer but I think providing both options to the programmer is best so they can decide what is best for their particular situation.
If they don't understand the results and how they got there, how will they improve them?
He said there is a potential for violation if DOT and the public were misled by "engineering-quality work"- even if the authors did not claim to be engineers.

I might be too literal here, but if you did not intend to mislead anyone, why should you be responsible for how "the public" interprets your work.
My wife and I run a Salon and I WANT to use InDinero... but it really seems like it's focused on super-small businesses. Is there value for a $500k+ revenue 12+ employee business that I'm missing? I'm not super happy with LessAccounting, but I still want to keep track of per-employee revenue and payouts and what not :\
Based on the version of events presented in this article, Lacy should be ashamed of himself.

/ringed BASc (non licensed)
The system requirements say "Intel Mac". How much clearer would you expect them to be? Just ask for a refund and take it as a lesson to read reqs before software purchases.
I'm shocked at the amount of suppport on HN (thus far) for Bing's attitude on this issue.

I understand that they may well not target Google's SERPs specifically in their clickstream analysis but they should certainly have excluded Google from it, for ethical reasons.

Google state that Bing created associations from clickstreams through Google's SERPs on common queries (e.g. the tarsorrhaphy spell check test), not just long tail queries. Given that Google is extremely popular, this must have given a lot of weight to clickstream signals resulting from Google SERPs on many occasions, for common queries. That is entirely unethical and I'm shocked so many here don't find a problem with this.

Take the case of a highly-ranked great result on Google for a particular term, which Bing rates lower due to inferior algorithms. Bing's analysis of Google users would send that result higher in the Bing SERPs, mainly due to Google's expertise in highlighting that site, and only to a small degree due to the user's choice of clicking on it. That to be does fall under "copying" Google's results, it may not be illegal, or intentional, but copying it remains.

Bing should have excluded Google from their clickstreams, and I certainly hope Google exclude Bing from their's. (Matt Cutts stated they do in the video.)
Young Justice Episode 5
In Young Justice Episode 5 tells of a poor relationship between Superboy with Superman, and cause Superboy angry to Superman, as well as members of Young Justice as if they do not concentrate on the fight training under coach Black Canary.
"Please don't focus on the word "take", instead the actual argument"

If I don't know what your words are supposed to mean, then I don't know what your argument is supposed to be.
>"I can’t condone any kind of plagiarism or cheating—and that is what Microsoft’s usage of Google data seems to amount to."

By academic standards, Google plagiarizes many times a day.

In Google's "sting" operation the description Google provides for www.cfacu.org is copied directly from DMOZ. Academic standards don't cut any slack for the ODP license and similar terms.

See:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-...

and

http://www.dmoz.org/search?q=clyde+findley+area+credit+union
"Do they do anything similar to correct for lying"

There is an entire literature on the validity of self-reported drug use that they take into account. For example, there is a phenomenon called recanting, where someone will admit to using a drug one year and then deny it in future years. They correct for this by ignoring when someone recants if they have already admitted to using the drug on at least two previous surveys. (Which would be administered at least two years apart.)

What they found was that the people most likely to recant were the ones who got jobs where they would now be fired for admitting drug use. For example, cops recanted drug use after previously admitting to it at twice the rate of the general public. So that's how they made the decision to discount recanting for people who had already admitted to drug use twice or more times.

As for people who try to lie and claim they are taking drugs that they haven't been, this is corrected for by asking about the same drug multiple times in different ways. I think they may also salt the questions by asking about drugs that don't exist.

You can obviously read all about the methodology of Monitoring the Future by downloading it, and here is an enormous PDF with tons of studies on the validity of self-reported drug use in general:

http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/monograph167/do...

All in all the methods they are using seem fairly accurate. It would definitely be a little higher if they corrected for more stuff, so for example when they say that 82% of Americans have used marijuana, it's actually probably closer to 85 or 86% when you correct for additional things that they haven't.
So does almost everyone, when asked. The depressing thing is, when it comes to actual results, the x.99 pricing still works (well, I read this on the BBC a couple of months ago - don't have the link but the study they were quoting sounded pretty convincing).
That site does have great design... it's a little cartoonish, but well done. There are a lot of competitors in the space.
I'm under 20, and given the opportunity (had I known about the Thiel Fellowship before the application date, for instance), I likely would have applied. $100k to drop out of school and create the Next Big Thing? Hell yeah.

But there's more to it than that. 20 Under 20, it seems, is meant to address a fundamental flaw apparent in higher education, extricating from the "system" bright young minds before they've become too institutionalized. I can't help but wonder, though, if that's the best way to go about it.

My opinion is hardly as strong as Weisburg's, but if your goal is to address a problem within a system, I'm not confident that the best method is to tear it down and start from scratch. Thiel, however, seems to be doing this by proposing that students should address this issue by simply not attending.

Personally, I'm working on a project while going to school. Over the summer, I very well may decide not to come back. But I'm simply acting for my own benefit. I'm not trying to change a system.

Then again, maybe the whole thing just needs to be torn down.
Perhaps :-) Google is a very smart, calculating company. They wouldn't dedicate so many resources to tricking the Bing toolbar if they weren't interested in getting something in return. Perhaps what Google wants in return is avoiding the following scenario: MS bundles the Bing toolbar with IE and data sharing is default opt-in. MS gets a ton of clickstream data from people using Google. Bing takes some of Google's marketshare.
Special-case an exclusion for any site that contains robots.txt?
sounds like a challenge...
^ I rest my case ;)
In one of the 2005 classes, everyone was 23 or younger:

http://www.paulgraham.com/sfp.html

Not specific to YC, he has this to say about older startup founders:

The other cutoff, 38, has a lot more play in it. One reason I put it there is that I don't think many people have the physical stamina much past that age. I used to work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week. I don't know if I could do that now.

Also, startups are a big risk financially. If you try something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big deal; a lot of 26 year olds are broke. By 38 you can't take so many risks-- especially if you have kids.

From: http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
Your C64 runs Mac OS X 10.5? Neat.
Why would they purposefully make their case inconclusive?
Yes, your single page load speed may be good, but imagine how much slower your total gallery experience is. You can always have a load more content on scroll if it's really a problem.
Your site never explains what a baby registry is. The example registry doesn’t really help, nor does your About page. There is no Wikipedia article for “baby registry”, and Google searching “what is a baby registry” doesn’t produce anything helpful. I gather that it’s a wishlist of some kind, but that doesn’t explain why one would want to have one, and why it’s called a “registry” instead of a wishlist.

I’m definitely not in the audience for this site, so maybe all parents-to-be learn what a baby registry is from their friends or something, but it would be nice if you explained to random internet surfers what the site is for. Just a sentence would suffice.
next step is to make this the default. unfortunately the django overlords think it's not important enough to be default.
Flat pricing is predictable and transferred immediately. Your scheme would involve refunds or delayed payment. Sounds risky for questionable benefit.
Google's paying $20,000 to hack Chrome - any takers?
I wrote an cooperative multitasking RTOS for an ATMega processor in 1200 or so lines.
Verion iPhone Review
Alternative student loans What are they for?
As the cost of college tuition is very high many students will not be able to make ends meet. Some students will obtain loans and grants which will help them cross this hurdle. For those who wish to get through this, there are alternative student loans which are very easy to obtain.
"Profits are at least $7/shirt"

Did you factor in the cost of your time?

It sounds like you're going to be doing your own packing and shipping. How long does that take?
OP: Take this as a huge "No".
I've updated the post with a contact at Google Ventures.
Will it work? Who knows, but it sure sounds like it could. So here's my advice to you: try it and share the results with us.
I think Google would require a clickthrough TOS to enforce this. AFAIK Google has no TOS listed on its page, but they do have a copyright notice. And a link would not be sufficient.

But yes, if they did a clickthrough TOS then they could enforce that. Of course the day Google adds a clickthrough TOS there will be some serious scrutinizing.
I'm kind of worried about the logos. But a cease and desist would happen before a lawsuit.
It's legit in his case, he's clearly doing such a bad job of it that nobody could mistake him for a real lawyer ;)
In a way, interesting, on the other hand I already have the "post to YC" bookmarklet installed.
>is the index size, and not the search algorithm

I'm pretty thoroughly sure this is false. I'm sorry I can't show data to back it up, but Google has many many systems that are years ahead of bing's technology. I'm kinda hamstrung here by being unable to reveal anything about them. To a decent approximation, both Google and Bing likely have the whole internet that matters (and that they are allowed to crawl) in their indexes. Bing is just unable to return this data for as many queries as Google is.

>but Bing does a near equal job of creating the lists.

To the extent that this is true, how much of it is due to data harvested from Google search? This is something that google can't really demonstrate with evidence, and what I would have hoped that bing would clarify in a public statement if they had anything defensible to say.
I think we could rule out refunds and go with the Groupon model of delayed payment. And what's the risk in that? Collect the payment information (credit card or paypal) and hit them with the charge when the shindig is up and you know the final costs. I'm not seeing the risks.
I guess I read too much into your comment. Apologies in my part for overreacting.

As to the technical issue, I don't think this has anything to do with dynamic vs. static typing. It would be theoretically possible to define operator+ in C++ to produce the same behavior as Javascript.
You seem bitter for some reason. We're on HN. You should know that ideas will get ran-through like a $2 whore.

Why did you post a "How I Did It" if you don't want people taking what you've done and iterating?

By the way, I'm getting a lot of compliments about the site design (much of it is from your site anyway!).
"does not run on my current system" is not a sign of rot; "I cannot even make a guess whether it will be useful for me without trying" is. To make such a guess, the following info can be helpful:

- for what platform(s) it is written (e.g. C code where tagged as 'Unix', that use Linux-isms)

- what the license is (home page claims 'free' or 'open source', source files mention license A, read me mentions license B)

- what the library does and, almost more importantly, what it's limitations are.

- what the dependencies of the library are.

- what systems the code has run on (it can for instance be useful to know that code has run in big-endian machines if your machine is big-endian)

The more of this info is present, the higher the probability that I will try to use your software.

There is lots of code out there where too little of this metadata is present. If such software is not solving some unique problem, I would prefer it if its writer did not make it available.
JavaScript Koans: an interactive learning environment for JavaScript
To others it's just as plain that Microsoft's behavior is ethical. I'm still waiting to hear more before making up my mind. I don't blame you for being upset and frustrated, and can see why you think it's unethical. But a lot of people see it differently.

It would be great for Google and Microsoft to both come clean about all the different factors they use in their search but I'm not holding my breath.
Connect to Internet via satellite from Egypt
Hello..
I am programmer from Egypt..
You might have heard about the situation in Egypt, and that we could not connect to internet because it was blocked by the government for 6 days!!

Because of that, I lost contacts with my customers in the U.S... and because it's possible to happen again at anytime.. I need to know how can I subscribe to internet via satellite?

Thanks in advance.
Will Vicarious Systems’ Silicon Valley Pedigree Help it Build AI?
But they have escorts.
He doesn't have any server side code running. He used PayPal for payments. The scheme seems more plausible to me now, but it would definitely take more work.
Yes! I would absolutely participate.
> based upon my observations, Google hires high-profile developers or they are acquired through a startup

Sorry but I dont think that's even close to being accurate. Google makes thousands of hires each year, a vast majority of them will be through normal hiring processes (from their competitors or college) and definitely not acquisitions or high profile. You only hear about the acquisitions and high profile hires because normal non-high profile devs hires do not make good news/blog articles. Creating a startup in hope of getting bought out by Google is like wishing to win the lottery.
Strataconf speaker slides and videos
Thanks everybody for the great advice. Looks like networking makes things easier. Not my favorite thing to do but I guess I have to suck it up. I am more of a lone wolf ... like to do my own things ...
I also like taking part in programming competitions ... wondering if they help in resume ...
Watch the show. He talked about trying $13.99 and other price points. Nothing converted better than $12.
And do you think $12 converts better than $12.00? It sounds minor but I bet it makes a difference.

In my experience we typically do round dollar amounts and drop the ".00", but maybe that helps explain why 9.99 loses to 12. How would 10 vs 12 do?
How much memory does the code the blog poster described leak? How does it respond to edge cases and invalid input? Finally, is it portable beyond one specific OS? Beyond POSIX or Windows-based systems?

Those questions are especially pertinent in C.
People, all people, are capricious.

If they're spending 4/5ths of fuckall for something to amuse them for a few minutes, even more so.
Wondering if adding a new feature to your product or service will really make a difference to sales? Try running Adwords traffic to a split test pitting your typical landing page against a variant that highlights the potential new feature.

I don't get it. You advertise the feature but don't actually build it? That sounds pretty annoying.
I'm absolutely not bitter and I wasn't being sarcastic - if my response came across as sarcastic, I apologize. I don't mind people finding inspiration in my work and will gladly offer tips on design/code/etc, though I do think it makes you look kind of stupid and unoriginal if you "reiterate" word-for-word. That being said, the internet is almost free-reign as far as I'm concerned, so have at it.

Just curious, why are you hiding behind an anonymous HN username and private domain registration? Doesn't seem like you take very much pride in your work.
The Tale of the World’s First Computer (and it wasn't ENIAC)
Shrinking headcount perhaps.. I would imagine that the number of computing devices at HP/EDS is significantly larger than the number of staff..
like it. Quite useful. How about you open a new tab with the discussion thread, since that is why a user would click on the bookmarklet?
Are you American? There may be a cultural gap somewhere.

When women (or couples) are having a baby, they have a baby shower. This is a get together to celebrate and typically the party-goers bring a gift for the parents-to-be and their baby. Sometimes clothes or a stroller or diapers or other baby related items.

It is similar to when someone gets married and they create a wedding registry of household items they would like as gifts.
54% of Verizon's Android, Blackberry users to switch to iPhone, survey says
Google Unveils Chrome 9 And Credits Reddit For Their Help Fixing It
Hotmail launches accounts you can throw away
I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be art.

I read this press release earlier today describing the project:

http://rhizome.org/announce/events/56864/view/
If you are retouching a favicon pixel-by-pixel I can see that racking up a few hours: £585 = $944, so if a designer is say charging $150 to work on a complex logo that would quickly add up. It's actually much harder to create something good in the space of just a few pixels as opposed to a social media icon which might give you 100 pixels.

By the way I noticed yesterday that Hacker news is going to start a designer's directory because there "are so few good designers". I submit the problem really is that there are so few programmers who can be bothered to learn anything about designers or how they work.

In fact the very notion that designers are some secondary set of dumb hands is quite insulting. The reality is that product design (of any sort) should START with a designer and not an engineer. VCs should give more serious thought that an BFA or MFA is worth far more than a CS or MBA.
The £.99 pricing also makes people in shops operate the till every time to make change, preventing theft.
Top Bad Practices in PHP
Looks nice. The demo runs quite slow on my Galaxy S, though. Should I expect it to be faster at this point?
Hotmail did something!
To a decent approximation, both Google and Bing likely have the whole internet that matters (and that they are allowed to crawl) in their indexes. Bing is just unable to return this data for as many queries as Google is.

Maybe this is true, but its not apparent. I had commented on this a month or so back that I thought Bing was better at "vague" queries, where I don't know exactly what I'm looking for. But I'll know it when I see it.

Whereas Google is really good at targeted queries. I need info on the HP battery model number 003D434F90. These searches in Bing will often bring back literally nothing, while Google will often have one or two links, but they happen to be the link that I want. The text of the query is almost always found in these pages.

From that I infer it is index size, since the text is in the page.

To the extent that this is true, how much of it is due to data harvested from Google search?

While I find the quality of searches similar I don't find the results to be similar, if that makes sense. If Bing is harvesting your results, they're still using other very clever methods to surface other equally good, yet different results.
>I have a suggestion for improving the lot of the poor in the UK: your government should sell more lottery tickets and use the profits to pay for additional policing.

The government were given the chance to have the lottery run for free by a group headed by Richard Branson - they chose instead to maintain the current incumbent who take 5% of gross takings ... that could have paid off some tax bills ...
A few things:

First, There's no such things as "the django overlords". We're an open source community of thousands. Hundreds contribute. Dozens have commit access.

Vry few among these contributors, and none (that I know of) on the commit team thinks that bcrypt support "is not important." If you'd like to prove me wrong, please cite your source.

Now, this has been proposed a few times (http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/5787, http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/5600). Each time, substantive problems with the approach have been found. A few choice quotes from the discussion should illustrate the issues:

Me, on #5600: "[T]here's a problem with supporting any hash schemes not in Python 2.3 (our lowest supported Python version): it means databases created with a different version of Python break when used under a lower one." (Now it's Python 2.4, and 2.5 soon, but the problem still holds.)

Malcolm, on #5787: "As soon as you start generating passwords that are only computable based on an optional model, the database can only be used with Django installations that have that model available. This removes the ability to move the database around easily. Django operates on a "batteries included" philosophy for exactly that reason: runs anywhere without lots of extra dependencies."

Worse, this third-party module (i.e. Python bcrypt module), last I checked, failed to build on Windows. As much as I hate supporting Windows, I recognize why we have to.

What I'm trying to say is that the issue is technical, not personal or political as you seem to think. If the technical issues can be overcome, I don't see why bcrypt support couldn't be the default.

Finally, I'll close with the obligatory note that open source projects get driven forward by people scratching their own itch. If this bothers you, fix it. If your fix is rejected, try again. If you think we're a bunch of asshats, fork the project. Do any of those things, and I'll respect you. Complain and sling personal attacks and I won't.
I don't think anyone is arguing that if you're willing to pay per GB you can't get as much storage as you want, just that providing unlimited storage for a small fixed price is not sustainable.
This is very slick. I changed 'article li .bar:hover p' to 'article li:hover p' so that hovering over the months would show the percentage as well.
Haha, no, just not sure if that was your real name or not. I couldn't find an about page or anything, so I thought it might have just been fancy marketing. Cheers though. :)
Sorry, I misunderstood your tone. I meant to change the copy but I posted the site before doing so. It'll be changed soon.

I actually was worried about the backlash for being so blatant. I'm mostly a lurker anyway. Honestly though, what do you think of the site design? I plan on adding more shirts when appropriate (Canadian ISP fiasco, Egyption revolution, etc.).