skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You really can't get one movie's worth of value out of it per month, even with the extensive catalog of older stuff they have? Cause that's all you really need to get out of it to make it worthwhile...

I'm finding Netflix streaming over the $99 AppleTV to be an incredibly better deal than paying $70-$80 a month for digital cable.
From what I've seen, I wouldn't say CS is immune to this at all. CS seems to only be accepting papers that illustrate some big win.

In my short PhD career, I've an article in the drawer where the result was inconclusive. This result, in and of itself, was fairly valuable. It spoke much about all the ways things went wrong. However, wrong was not acceptable for publication, it had to be right. Much hand-wringing was done to identify the bits that could be pulled out from it, polished, and then submitted (I was not especially pleased about this). The paper was, rightly, rejected, but all the valuable findings are still in my drawer. The pressure to produce Good findings rather than Bad findings does not meet my expectation of scientific pursuit.

I took great joy in seeing a history of science exhibition recently, and reading the notebooks of people like Newton and Darwin, who they themselves spend a lot of time writing out all the things that went wrong, all the concerns they have about their "results", and general humbleness. It speaks volumes that the greatest scientific minds that have ever lived have put more caveats and concerns in their published work than 98% of what is published today does. To get published, it seems you have to be 110% sure that your work is 120% amazing. I don't think this is a good state of affairs.
Modern Perl Released as Free ePub
Here's an overview from someone who did it last year: http://creating.concepts.com.au/2011/02/the_startup_bus_and_...

It costs nearly $1000 a participant, so I think $200 is actually a good deal...especially when other hackathons charge $100 but are no where near the same experience.
I think that the most ridiculous contracts are the ones that attempt to assert ownership of things you have produced before you even worked at the company. (i.e. anything that you have created, are creating, and will create in the future) Companies/lawyers will do this claiming that it's only a defensive measure, but once they have that power over you, they will not hesitate to go on the offensive if they think they have something to gain by doing so.
What do you think about the the idea of letting hosts ask the network to drop certain traffic upstream?
The official site has it via http://soe.stanford.edu/alumni/cerf_lecture.html (sadly, requires Silverlight)
Not sure how comments like this always get so much support. We just witnessed citizen militias giving the US military trouble for years in Iraq. It didn't stop until we started paying those militias not to attack (Awakening) aka "The Surge".

And in Afghanistan the fight is still continuing. In the long run a professional military cannot beat a indigenous population without resorting to near genocide. It's too easy for the locals to bury their weapons and go about their business until the opportune moment presents itself.

Professional military must supply, train and fund soldiers continually. There is no "taking a few months off."

Also people who think the 2nd amendment has been nullified by our military having better weapons always seem to assume soldiers themselves are thoughtless automatons incapable of rational though. If the situation in this country ever came to insurrection a portion of active military would certainly end up on the citizens' side.
My wife and I use Netflix differently than you. Netflix is not what's new but what's good. And over the past year we have discovered that there is a lot of good content on Netflix, you just have to change your viewing habits. We don't look for a movie released last year. We look for a sci-fi movie with a time-travel theme or a comedy show about evil corporatations. Also, I highly recommend instantwatcher.com to find good stuff to watch.
If someone enjoys scripting but doesn't like CS, it is probably the CS curriculum that should change.
Atheist Sees Image of Big Bang in Piece of Toast
I'm curious in how things would have turned out had he not been kicked out of YC. My guesses are he probably wouldn't have been that much better off. My analogy for this would be the situation of a Harvard drop out. You've already accomplished the toughest task - getting ACCEPTED. Whether you graduate or not seems pretty insignificant since it's so much more unlikely for an average high school student to be accepted into Harvard, compared to an average Harvard student finishing the program he was accepted in. Ultimately he was able to demonstrate his ability to network and raise fund despite not completing YC. What I don't know is how much did having that YC stamp of approval (despite being taken away later) helped in those endeavors.

Edit: rephrased my question a bit, still seems awkward...
Nokia's industrial design seems like the only real contender to Apple's in terms of being sleek, modern, but still distinctive and immediately recognisable. It's hard to make a touchscreen phone anything more than a screen, but they both manage to pour the identity of their brand into their devices in a way that few others do.
If you listen to this interview by Techzing with th creators of a "web tv show" Pioneer One, they talk about how releasing it on Bittorrent has given them access to many new people and new lead gen.

(Also I note they mention in it in the blurb)
http://techzinglive.com/page/643/102-tz-interview-pioneer-on...

Assuming Khan do a "nice bit of self branding" at the start or end of the video with the link, then I can only see this being a plus, it also keeps the videos more in the public domain, instead on youtube, for instance... I believe ultimately it will bring them more exposure.
I'm sure this Shell and Ferrari commercial doesn't even come close to the real life experience. Still, what a soundtrack it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6gcwIt5nSM
UK legislation will only give an employer copyright if the work was created "in the course of his employment" (Chapter I section 11(2) of the act). So essentially if it's part of the job.

But I agree it's better to just get it agreed upfront.
"As with the report on Tuesday, the preliminary examination given to Congress in August found no evidence of flawed electronics in vehicles that crashed. That examination found only one instance in which an accelerator pedal became trapped under a floor mat and none in which a pedal became stuck or sprang back too slowly."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/business/09auto.html?pagew...

One instance out of millions of cars.
How about Singapore?
"... Still, a couple hours later, I boarded a plane with my wife, dog, and all the necessities for the summer stuffed into a suitcase and flew to SFO and hoped for the best. Seven days isn't nearly enough time to find a proper housing setup in SF, so we checked into an extended stay hotel where we would end up living for an entire month.

The next morning, Paul emailed and arranged a meeting with the entire YC team for us to discuss the future of Storenvy in YC. Since we didn't have a car, and I didn't have enough time to figure out something better, Janette and I took a $100 cab ride down to Mountain View. ..."

Anatomy of determination.
First off, I'm glad you are trying - and don't give up. It's all part of the game that people are busy and sometimes you have to do the heavy lifting.

I think that finding blogs of some of the founders and commenting to them directly (in context at first) is a great way to break the ice. You can then step the relationship up as you feel more comfortable.

Of course you've taken this route which is a good one, since you can email me for starters at niket@getpunchd.com - I think as a community, we entrepreneurs should try our best to help one another.

Just keep up the persistence...it's a good trait to build anyway IMO.
It also isn't a currency anymore;

This isn't the result of free markets, but a result of the actions of violent institutions.

The "durable value" it had in the decoration field is gone. The durability isn't a matter of decoration. The durability matters most in that it's not going to rot/rust away, so that an ounce of gold remains and ounce of gold rather than turning into half an ounce of gold.

If it were ever actually put to the test it would collapse to a much lower value reflecting its actual industrial and decorative values which are nothing like what they used to be.

You're forgetting it's value for trading and as a good store of value, which are most like among the biggest reasons it is valued by most people.

The subjectivity of value is why backing is so important if your currency isn't to collapse. Something's got to stop the subjective system from just deciding the value is 0, aka, hyperinflation. Or, more accurately, realizing the value is zero.

The "backing" is also subjectively valued...everything that is valued is valued subjectively. The universe doesn't set some standard value for things that humans are supposed to agree with.

but call me when you've actually got a functional currency that corresponds to what you claim is possible and even remotely resembles the real world market size of even Microsoft Points or Eve Online's currency. BitCoin is not it, and it won't ever be it.

Bitcoin just started as a grassroots project that is growing and growing quickly. You'll be hearing more news about it's further successes, I'm sure. Maybe after a few years of watching it grow, you'll decide you're ready for it.
Genieo.com: new way to get a smart home page
i've lately been espousing the opinion that colleges should add some scripting and data manipulation to gen ed requirements in order to adequately prepare students for the next generation of white-collar work.

then again, i barely remember a thing from my entry-level stats course.
I came across this site earlier today: installed their software that run in background (Mac), and so far results provided are quite good. From their online doc and from looking at the HTML generated the results computed is all done locally with no data going to any back end server.
This seems like a very practical website about the algorithm but where is the theory and proofs of the time complexity of the algorithm??
The other way of looking at your latter point: I try to work for people who would brag about successful former employees. Enlightened managers cultivate an "alumni network."
IANAL, this is also for UK.
I as well was employed in the UK last year and had my contract checked by a lawyer. The contract contained few vague clauses regarding IP discovered during the term of the employment and some non competes with any business of the company or of the group companies. The lawyer confirmed the only safe route would be to have an explicit agreement providing me IP ownership and entrepreneurial freedom signed by the company.

Then it depends what your relation is to the company. Do you want to tell them you have more ambitions than being a loyal employee ? If your bosses are a 'general' management and not a founder etc., I very much doubt you will achieve anything positive yourself. I believe these contracts are a norm here from what I heard as well. (I quit in the end before starting my venture).
Actually, then it's time to get all fancy (that's right, I'm talking Reverse-Smiley! (-: )

But then it's like he's bald.
Who says it has to be a material reward? Are you arguing against reward-based systems of any kind and saying that the proper way to raise children is with negative reinforcement (punishment) only?
TheFunded.com: The Resource for Entrepreneurs.
Not gonna lie those looks sick. I also really liked using the Windows Phone interface, when I played around with it in a T-Mobile store the other day. I prefer it to Android.

I was an iPhone 3G user for a while, then went to the darkside with a MyTouch 3G, then Nexus One, and yesterday I picked up a VZW iPhone 4. I can honestly say that with due time for developers to get up to speed with Windows Phone... it will offer a much nicer experience than Android. I still think that Apple does it best though, and adore this new VZW iPhone.
No DBLP profile for the author, no proofs on site, fastest algorithm known "to me" qualifier, no results for "suffix tree" on page, not a good sign.

EDIT: Am I missing something???

Complexity analysis according to the author:
m = search term, n = text

O(m) preprocessing -- that's right, O(search term). And
O(n times m) worst-case query string search, so the worst case traverses the whole text.

Now compare that to suffix trees:

O(n) preprocessing
O(m) string search

where worst case complexity is linear in search term.
I feel like they could make a crapload of money if they sold/licensed their music selection technology/music information database. It would make their own streaming radio mostly irrelevant though.
I hope they spend it on advertising. Their product rocks, i think they just need wider exposure. They also claim exclusive providence to being able to authentically post jobs in the bay area looking for "rock stars" to help out their company ;)
Odd but this made me think of _The Long Walk_. First one to stop coding gets it!
How does 600BHP from 1.5L in 1951 sound?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16
Ten One Design Pogo Sketch stylus for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch (Hot Pink)
I stay with Pandora precisely because I can't listen to whatever I want, whenever I want, as many times in a row as I want. That's a whole lot of deciding and deciding takes time and effort. Pandora knows the music I like and is amazing at finding new music that I will like, without any time or effort on my part. All I have to do is turn it on. I have farmed out my music selection responsibility to them and I couldn't be happier about it.

P.S. My friends are always complementing me on how awesome my music is. I try not to take too much credit for it.
Pandora Files for $100 Million Public Offering
Assuming you mean "manufacturer" when you write "carrier", I think they can very well differentiate themselves by building the best devices (better screens, better battery life, better reception - well that would be the carriers, lower price, etc, etc).
9th Circuit Court has gutted enforceability of FOSS licenses
The article comes across as either boastful or gushing about memristors, and hand-waves over as many hard unsolved problems as old AI predictions ever did. This makes it quite hard to take seriously. Prefix all these bold statements with: "If MoNETA is successful in its goals..."

I have no doubt that trying to simulate mammalian brains with memristors will lead to some great new AI advances, but I won't hold my breath that it will solve all AI problems simultaneously, and neither should you.
xkcd has something to say about that too

http://xkcd.com/541/
What does scripting have to do with CS? Scripting is nice, but it has as much to do with CS as running cable (OK, slightly more, but not by much).
> Why are they still using it? Inertia, I assume.

Well, that and that migrating to anything else would be a huge nightmare. They have a ton of infrastructure written around Perforce, just for starters. Then there's the fact that moving to, say, git, would require significant refactoring of their heavily incestuous code base. Moving to Subversion would be easier, but svn's problems with branching and merging would probably make that a non-starter.
Ask HN: Is unobtrusive javascript/gracefully degradation important anymore?
Twitter's new interface doesn't degrade gracefully (thought they do link to old twitter). What are the communities thoughts on this subject? I am working on a project and I spend 60% of my front-end time making sure that it works without JS even though I have every intention of it being used with JS enabled? Is it a waste of time? Should I focus on releasing the product and to hell with degrading gracefully?
A few thoughts on this:

1. I have done transactional work and litigation in and about these areas for nearly 30 years in Silicon Valley. Based on that experience, in practical terms, the risk you deal with in doing side work boils down to this: it is rare that an employer will make a claim to IP you develop on your own time and using your own resources but, when it does happen, its effect is pretty horrific.

2. California gives you more scope only because it has a law on the books that generally prohibits employers, on public policy grounds, from making claims to IP generated by employees working on their own time and using their own resources.

3. Even in California, however, an employee owes duties to his employer and one of those is that you don't misappropriate your employer's IP for your own use. This is why the California law says that you don't keep your side-project IP for yourself if it is in your employer's line of business or anticipated line of business. You can imagine the chaos that would result if any employee could state that, "no, that valuable IP that I came up with might have directly concerned what my employer was paying me to develop, but, in fact, I developed that particular key piece on my own time, etc."

4. In this sense, there is a common sense element to this area of law as applied in California. You typically will sense, without being told, whether the work you are doing on the side is capitalizing on the things your employer is doing or if it is truly unrelated.

5. That said, don't mess around with this sort of thing. It is both contract-specific and local-law-specific. That means general statements you hear from time to time (including those I just made) may or may not apply to you. If what you are planning to do has commercial value, then make sure to get it checked by a good local lawyer who can guide you through the pitfalls and explain alternatives. This is particularly so if you are not in California.
This seems to conflict with mukyu's post above:

"As with the report on Tuesday, the preliminary examination given to Congress in August found no evidence of flawed electronics in vehicles that crashed. That examination found only one instance in which an accelerator pedal became trapped under a floor mat and none in which a pedal became stuck or sprang back too slowly."
I worked at a Chapters (Canadian large chain bookstore, like B&N), and while I was talking to the manager one day he said he had someone coming in for his third interview, and this was for a regular (non-management) position.

Someone asked him how many interviews he did with a given candidate, and he said 'As many as I need to do until I'm sure either way'.

Perhaps this was just the case with this individual - maybe they just couldn't make a hard decision yet.
Agreed, but also rather HP than Oracle or MS!
So if one of those patents also invalidates H264 they will presumably quickly invite the submitter to join the party?

It would be ironic if news of the patent leaked to Google who swooped in and bought them!

They also have to be a little careful reading them - if they discover a patent that H264 infringes on and don't admit that in court when chasing down somebody else they are likely to have their ass handed to them on a plate - judges really don't like that.
Yeah, I've become acutely aware that I'm a product guy. I don't dream in algorithms. Scripting is really good for me, but CS is something I don't like. Scripting solves a problem for me the same way a camera solves a problem for a photographer. For most people, they'll be able to remember the images they produce, and they won't try to create something that means something the same way a photographer would. I'm similar. I create technology that solves an immediate problem for me, rather than some technological piece of mastery.
"There's always a first"

-- From the ancient and archaic TV show Kung Fu that I used to watch with my pet dinosaur and rotary phone.

PS: You did not state your age(s)/age range, at least not that I can find.
The colour wheel is interesting. Although, I wonder about "Asian" being distinct from "Japanese" and "Chinese", and I wonder why they didn't at least put these adjacent to each other, and Eastern European adjacent to Western/American.
@Igor: For management I do feel it is a little bit more tricky since everything isn't just a text file. However, we use some Powershell, Group Policies, and WSUS as management tools (I talk about this in this post: http://blog.serverfault.com/post/1097492931/). Windows also has other management solutions I haven't gotten into yet. So although I am a believer in what Raymond refers to as Textuality in the Art of Unix Programming, it doesn't mean other options don't exist.
I will be very surprised if objectivism or for that matter any philosophy , can be condensed to a movie. The fact that Ayn Rand chose to convey her ideas, although not all of it was entirely new at that point, in the form of a novel, made it more accessible to people but still left a lot of question unanswered.
Impressive. We were building a high dimensional cube just last year for some click stream analysis. Wish I had done some research in the literature at that time.
I generate random passwords for every site, I don't like SSO provided by Facebook, Twitter and Google etc, its insecure and places the trust in a single companies hands.

If you don't allow me to register normally (i.e. without a single signon mechanism) I likely won't register.
From the site:

>Preprocessing phase in O(M) space and time complexity. Searching phase average O(N) time complexity and O(N*M) worst case complexity.

I don't trust the analysis of someone referring to "average O(N) time"; Big O notation refers to boundary times.

Edit: Okay, based on arguments here and on [1], I'm going to accept that maybe he's just bastardizing the notation.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3905355/meaning-of-averag...
"AI is a software problem and if you don't know how general intelligence works, having a new kind of transistor really, really, really ain't gonna help you much."

I'm not sure anyone is arguing against the latter part of your statement but you as you contradict yourself by arguing that it's a software problem first. AI is a biological, psychological, cog sci, EE/hardware, et al problem because, as you state, understanding how general intelligence works is important--as it is important to know how to build the technology that will run it (ie, possibly the memristor + something else, of course).

Sure you can program some sort of AI, but try doing it at the massively parallel scale of a brain. What I think the memristor opens up is the very ability to do this. I'm not exactly sure how--not sure that anyone does yet--but "in-memory" processing and moving away from the von Neuman (serial) architecture might be a good step as I'm not sure we can easily develop highly parallel software without letting the low-level architectures handle that automatically in more of a stochastic way.
After the whole Bratz debacle[1], I make sure never to kid around with the danger of this.

[1]: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bratz#Legal_a...
The magic of F1 cars in the last years was for that although the power output of the engines has decreased and so is the downforce due to regulations lap times have stayed consistent. Its fascinating to see how people like Adrian Newey keep on pushing the envelope to produce brilliant cars with tough regulations.

BTW
A short poll how many HN readers are into F1?
I'm not even sure the title reflects the content of the article. Google is accused of having racist hiring practices; it's far from proven, though.
And yet when I switched from OpenDNS to my ISP's DNS, I consistently went from marginal quality to almost always HD.
> Big O notation refers to boundary times.

No it doesn't. You can have an O(N) amortized time. Big-O is a bounding function up to a constant factor, not necessarily a boundary (as in worst-case) time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amortized_analysis