skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The top rated post has some good points, but this is just plain wrong:

"Using terrible tools, and taking pride in their awfulness - Especially common with programmers, who take pride in using programming languages and text editors that have been designed by programmers, not updated since the 1970s, and never touched by anyone with a modicum of design sense. "

Comments:

* Since when is being "designed by programmers" a negative thing? Best tools are built to scratch an itch.

* "Not updated since the 1970s", I hope he isn't talking about emacs, C, UNIX and (many different) Lisps

I'm most productive with Linux, emacs, slime and a either an ML dialect or Lisp (I also love C greatly). All of these have their roots in 60s, 70s and sometimes earlier but have been updated recently (that's where there's "C99"). I don't know anybody running SysV and using Bill Joy's original ex, or original teco emacs. Seems like the post is just flame-bait against hackers who use tools they love and are productive with.

The part about Apple products is the same as well: I like my Macbook Pro laptops and I like the idea of iTunes (but I find Amazon MP3 to be a better implementation). However, for many of their other products hackers simply aren't the target audience: am I being "stupid" by not using an iP(phone|pad|pod) when it just doesn't do what I like?
Random Thoughts on Programming (2001)
Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.
George Orwell
I agree. If they can get a major shareholder as even a figurehead, it would add a lot more credibility over "9 young shareholders", which means they have at least 1 share each.
I've found that there are some more taboo (but valid) questions that are only ever answered on Yahoo! Answers, presumably because people aren't worried about their identity there.

For an extreme example:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071113122412AA...
(Warning: Taboo. And the answer probably isn't relevant to 95% of the posters here. :)
All of the visualizations are on http://twitterdots.posterous.com/
Assuming this is genuine, it is too little too late.
Nokia needed someone to come and say this before the decided to jump ship.

Its staggering to think of how many resources nokia have, and how little and slowly they've innovated. Nokia has been falling behind for a long time.
One thing I always found disheartening was their desire to compete against themselves, and ignore others, as illustrated by them releasing an older version of symbian for their business phones, while using the new symbian for their media phones, but it seemed there was no place to get 'the best' nokia. It was always a choice, but one that didn't seem to have an easily identifiable consumer flagship. Just N's and E's and everything in between.
Ask HN: If you knew this was a bubble, what would you do differently?
When I saw that the valuation of Zynga might be between 7 and 9 billion dollars, I honestly began to get worried. I think that for people in the startup field, it might be hard to think of that as an unrealistic number, because everyone -wants- their new business to be so valuable. Maybe someone has experiences to share from the last time the tech stocks crashed, whether there were warning signs?
No, it's suggesting that, for example, when interviewing a black and a white candidate, each of whom has a reference letter and a set of test scores, the interviewer would favour test scores if the white candidate had higher test scores, but would favour reference letters when the black candidate had higher test scores. If only test scores or only reference letters were available, they'd hire based on merit.

In other words, people engaged in discriminatory behaviour when there was a way to rationalize/cover it up, and pretend they weren't doing it -- possibly telling themselves that, too.
I don't think smartphones can win without apps, and the OS market is getting pretty saturated. If iOS, Android, WebOS, and WP7 all have more users, when am I ever going to get around to writing MeeGo apps?
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell
You already have the SafeSearch filter that can be toggled on and off to show you different search results. Why not an Editorial filter as well (perhaps disabled by default)?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
George Orwell
The problem with esoteric languages in this modern era (with the web) is what I called the "college music problem" with the increase of college radio.

By the time the early 2000s hit, the people who listened to college radio no longer self-selected for people who knew a lot about music, but rather were just people who were generally anti-establishment. But they hadn't built up an especially rich musical knowledge base.

Fast forward to 2011 and languages. Now I'm almost as likely to see Clojure on a resume as C++. Yet the quality of applicants doesn't seem to have gone up all that much. TDD knowledge seems to be MUCH more prominent, but I haven't noticed an uptick in knowledge of algorithms, complexity, anything under the hood, or programming (as can be judged in a day long interview).

In 2011 the choice of language says less about the programming ability of the person, and probably more about their personality. Much like the college radio heads weren't especially musically sophisticated (on average, but of course some were brilliant), but they all seemed to share a counter-cultural vibe (even when you went from goth to hip hop to polka).
HackInTheBox E-Zine Issue 005 released
I've read "Gatsby" over 25 times in the last 5 years, and have taught it twice. It's my favourite piece of literature by far, and would be my nominee for "Most Beautifully Written Book In The English Language" (should such an award exist).

After you are finished, go back and re-read the first 2 pages or so (until the double-carriage return); they take on a whole new meaning when the end of the novel is known.
Looking for internships
I'm looking for a computer science internship but can't find any in Minneapolis. Any ideas to get me started? Help would be appreciated, thanks!
There are also a number of similarity search indexes available:
http://obsearch.net/
http://www.sisap.org/Metric_Space_Library.html
http://lshkit.sourceforge.net/
That's a bullshit excuse.

I live in one of the largest cities in the USA. AT&T's 3G sucks here. If I go 15 miles west of here, it's suddenly way faster. This is entirely because AT&T doesn't invest in backhaul infrastructue. It's got nothing to do with the density the country, and everything to do with the lousy infrastructure investments of the wireless carriers.

Wireless in this country sucks cause we don't demand better. If it's socialist to want my government to go after these bloodsucking bastards and make them provide better service for the exorbitant fees they charge, I'm content to wear the red armband everywhere.
The Forrst Story: Raising money, goals, and monetization
I always thought it was "honey" -- like the stuff bees make?
As a UX note, I've always quietly loved autocompletes that aren't just a flat list of terms, but actually contain structured information organized in an intuitive fashion. The design of the suggestions on SeatGeek is fantastic.
A good way to start is by looking at your school. Have you found any luck there?
"I was like a thespian berserker" Phil Factor & the pitch of a lifetime
SYSPRO Accomodates Needs of Growing Mobile Workforce 
COSTA MESA, Calif. - December 7, 2010 - SYSPRO, the leading provider of visionary, pragmatic ERP software, today announced that SYSPRO, recognizing the requirements of an increasingly mobile workforce, is now making SYSPRO ERP software available via the iPhone. SYSPRO ERP users can now run SYSPRO wirelessly and securely anywhere in the world via the iPhone through the utilization of the SYSPRO On the Go iPhone application, which is available for download from the iTunes store.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.
George Orwell
"it's related to the word "popular.""

Well, no, it isn't. Many things are notable that are not "popular", or even common. Leprosy, flesh-eating bacteria, progeria, Jeffrey Dahmer.

There's also a vicious cycle here: the existence of an article on Wikipedia may lead people to not post related articles elsewhere on the web, instead relying on the WP article. That may lead in turn to the article's subject being considered insufficiently notable.
Supposing they did get elected, I would expect they would cost Nokia a lot of money, possibly ultimately bankrupting the company, from litigation MS would inevitably bring and probably win. It would be a huge embarrassment to WP7 and MS if Nokia backed out, and if there's any way MS can swing damages for that kind of thing given their contract with Nokia, and I'm sure there is, they will definitely do so. I think that the ship has sailed and they're stuck with WP7 for the term of the exclusivity arrangement.

If these guys want to make Meego the dominant smartphone platform, they're going to have to do it with something besides Nokia.
Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
George Orwell
Well, it was a bit of a kick in the pants to fail so spectacularly, believe me, I'm not trying to protect whatever fragile ego I do have left, after that intro the technical parts of the interview were brutal, the interviewer decided to hammer it into me that I wasn't good enough, and basically threw the book at me :)

What I learned was that I am woefully unprepared to interview at such a place, but not that I'm not going to try again (I am, I refuse to give up).

Question for you though, how did you develop a math intuition and the ability to enjoy math? I used to enjoy math in school, but I'm 31 now, and I find it tough to slog through the very basics again, so I find it hard not to skim over things I think I know. I think a part of the reason I enjoyed it at school was that it was basic, plugging numbers into memorized formulas, using pattern matching to detect the type of problem, simple stuff if you've been programming, so it was easy to pull off the straight As.

Time to really learn now though.

From what I have read on HN in other post, it seems there was a "light going on" time for a lot of you? When did it happen? What did you do to get to that stage where you started revelling in mathematics?

I think I have the substrate for math, it doesn't take too long for me to grasp concepts, but solidifying them is what I have a problem with. Without doing that, it's like anything in programming that I haven't written a program for. I lose it and forget it quickly.

What is the equivalent of writing programs, but for math, for you?

Thanks
Yes, we too are trying to figure out best way to establish relationship between users, either through email or follow/unfollow. Thanks for the idea addition.
Exactly. It should be easier AND cheaper to roll out the better wireless where there are more, wealthier people and where there is greater density.

The fact that wireless sucks in the big cities of the US is indicative of crappy service, not technical challenges.
Mobile Gaming Just Got Taken To A Whole New Level
Looking into it, I found a Ruby implementation:

https://github.com/jmhodges/minhash

Which depends on a Ruby implemenation of MurmurHash2:

https://github.com/jmhodges/murmur_hash

Anyone have any idea what the 23 is for?

# 23 can be any unsigned 32-bit integer (i.e. from 0 to 2**32 - 1)
hash_number = MurmurHash.murmur_hash("somestring", 23)
There's a whole community on Reddit call Cord Cutters that use Internet steams and Broadcast TV to replace cable Television:
http://www.reddit.com/r/cordcutters/

I dumped cable 2 years ago due to the high cost, and relish my broadcast television.
You measure it by counting how often people write about it in certain contexts. That seem to be "related" to popularity to me, but if you don't think so, that's fine, go your own way with my blessing.
Recent research shows that obesity is caused more by the types of food that we eat than the amount that we eat. (And the types of food that surround us these days are increasingly the wrong kinds).

I would suggest that you and your wife do some research into obesity/nutrition and form a meal plan together. It is much easier to eat the right foods when you're doing it together. It's also fun to cook together. At least, that's working for me and my partner.

I suggest Gary Taube's or Mark Sisson's books for research.
Yeah I heard they were heavily targeting CMU. Here are some pictures of the new offices.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-pittsburgh-office-2011...
Quick bit of feedback: I thought it was odd that I couldn't type in my city name in conjunction with a band name to pare things down to just the show in my town. Instead, it shows no results.
MeeGo, at least last I knew, follows in the vein of Maemo and doesn't need special apps written for it, it can run the same software as any Linux userland. Perhaps this has changed recently but I don't think it has.

You can unify most of the codebase in .NET probably; use MonoTouch and MonoDroid for iOS and Android, Mono for Meego, and MS's included CLR on WP7. That only leaves webOS.
Kiwitechpress
Anything you guys want to see kiwiized?
There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.
George Orwell
That's actually a very interesting point. Is maintaining another app distribution system viable in the face of "developer fatigue"? I guess that also sorta begs the question: is developer fatigue real?
Thanks, I wasn't even aware of iTunes U. Looks great.
The problem though is that not all women think like this. And if you actual are humble and not "manly" you may have actually bagged a woman who values that. Likewise, if you're an overweight woman, the man your with may actual like you being overweight. Losing 50 pounds could make you LESS attractive.

There's a big difference between optimizing behavior when you're single and trying to score as much as possible vs being in a relationship and trying to optimize your relations with that one particular person. You're no longer dealing with a population.
Thanks for posting this. I got called into work and missed today's Jeopardy! episode, so seeing this link was definitely a relief.
What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
George Orwell
My question would be (assuming you answer yours): Why are you acting in a way that you wouldn't if you did know it was a bubble?

Doing something stupid has little to with the macro-economy. What you should be doing is conducting yourself in a non-idiotic manner all of the time, as protection from things like bubbles; then you don't need to worry about a thing.
Definitely Bigresource if you're doing anything with Flash/Flex.
Even if that were the case, you still have to package your app for distribution. The app store model probably makes this easier to do since you don't have to develop a framework for pushing your apps along with any updates you have down the road. Naturally there are libraries for this, but you still have to mess with them, and maintain deployment stuff on your own end.
I give Nokia Plan B a solid D- for too little too late. MeeGo got a horrible reception today by Intel (http://www.slashgear.com/meego-preview-at-mwc-2011-disappoin...) and it's obvious why Nokia abandoned it at this point, even for a bad choice like Win Mobile 7...what other choice did they have? Symbian? Bleeding market share like gutted cow. Android? Can't differentiate in that space.

So to hear these 9 disgruntled folks say they're going to stick with a bad plan and make it happen sounds like lunacy to me.
Right. It's totally too little too late. Getting a billion dollars from Microsoft and using their ecosystem may be their best option at this point to get in the game again. Otherwise, they have too much ground to catch up in too little time.
They weren't going for a record... They were pushing the aircraft _well_ beyond what it will be experiencing during normal flight operations.

It wasn't "Hey, look how fast we can make this thing go." It was "See how far outside the normal operating envelope we can push this before Bad Things® start to happen?"
Which package is in the wrong color?
Does anyone know how much it costs them to acquire a new number? In other words, every time a user creates a new group, they are assigned a number. How much does that cost GroupMe?
Not bad. I like polar(x + sin(y) = 1) due to the simplicity, but polar(x = y) seems the most poetic (y from -1.5pi to 1.5pi) or (y from -1.5pi to 1.5pi).

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=polar%28x+%3D+%28y%29%2...
By launching the plane in red rather than blue, Boing clearly sees their future growth market (for this plane at least) as being the Asian countries --- where red is the sign of luck and prosperity.

Also, this interested me:

The two airlines with orders for the 747-8, Lufthansa and Korean Air, were in Seattle for the unveiling along with private customers for the of the business jet version

A private business jet version of the 747-8 -- the world's longest passenger jet? I wonder what that looks like inside and who buys them?
After integrating this feature into Google search, a nice enhancement would be to allow sharing of people's personal exclusion list. Let the community help clean search!
App Engine Datastore Workarounds and Search
But still cool, regardless of how.
My first few searches took a while, then every search was pretty fast. Is it the load?
+1 to a report in WMT - to detect problems in our sites and also potentially abuse.
The size of interest payments on public debt relative to the entire US federal budget is quite astonishing. That's the reality of running a budget deficit for more than ten years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
one word:
compatibility.

Most (if not all) of the management tools that are currently being used by major corporations are made for IE6 (because thats what was big when it was designed and purchased).

The other particular reason happens to be schools. In highschool (and still now in college) the IT team hasn't managed to get clearance to upgrade (it might /cost money/!)

Congratulations, A winner is You for anything in the US. I can't vouch for anything else, so there's 5% of the share.
How video games are changing the economy.
I don't own any shares in Nokia, I have never nor likely will ever own a Nokia phone, and I don't have any real insight into the nuances of the situation.

But as an avid spectator of the evolving mobile platform "war", this sort of coup d'état would be amazing to witness from the sidelines, no matter the outcome. Therefore, and for no greater reason, I really hope this goes through.
Are you really using the technique described in the Redis auto-complete page? Doesn't that method take a lot more RAM than is necessary using a more specialized approach (i.e. a trie)?

Also, from what I can tell, every query is log(N) in the size of the completion set, instead of linear in the length of the query/suggestion (again, like a trie). Seems like this might have trouble scaling to large suggestion sets.
If you download and build emacs from source, you can give it a cocoa interface that, I feel, is much better (for its minimalism) than aquamacs.

How-To:

$ tar xzf emacs-23.2.tar.gz
$ ./configure --with-ns
$ make
$ sudo make install

[command] + [space] // Spotlight
Emacs

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS
How to play and convert VRO files on Mac
Free step by step guide about how to play VRO files on Mac, or edit VRO files with iMovie, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro on Mac OS X.
Worried about what? That you don't have any Zygna options?
This is the first non-valley incubator in a city where I would want to spend 3 months.
Ask HN: How to do customer development for online retail industry?
Hi HN,

As a part of customer development process, I want to talk to online/eCommerce retailers, or specifically their marketing folks to understand the tools/services they are using for social media marketing.

I have certain ideas but haven't started developing the product. Before I start that, I want to know if they need this kind of product, and if yes, how they foresee using it and what things (features) they care most about.

But I hardly know anyone in eCommerce/online retail industry, so how should I reach out to my customers? Shall I just email them to their Contact email and ask for in-person meeting? Shall I just cold-call them? Or follow/communicate via Twitter? Or shall I look for some introductions?

Also, if you work in online retail industry or know someone who works, then your help in introducing me to appropriate person will be highly appreciated. Please send me an email to aditya dot kothadiya at gmail.com or write in the comments below.

Thanks,
Aditya
I would say a convore group is more like an IRC network, and a convore topic is more like an IRC channel.
Why do you think that MS will help? Microsoft has no established "ecosystem"; not in the mobile phone world, at least. How does allying yourself with the aspirational #3 player in a two-player market help you catch up?
Would be cool to have an example of this running on websockets and get rid of the request/response latency that most autocompletes have. Keep the socket open when the text field is focused and you should be able to cut down the response time even further without that overhead.
Yeah, in which case they'd probably be better to sell the shares than attempt to grab the helm of a sinking ship.
at the risk of sounding ignorant, how the heck are people supposed to pronounce your product name? in fact, how do you even talk about your product verbally with others?
It's the difference between "do" and "should". He's saying the book claims to explain human behavior; it doesn't recommend or justify that behavior.
Postscript: Oracle bought Sun and proceeded to sue Google with the Java patents it had acquired.

Ironic given the "egregious" Kodak suit he writes about.
Ask HN: Starting a Business with Full Time Job
Hi guys, first post on the board...

I was curious if any one has a success or horror story about creating a startup while working full time in a corporate environment (eventually transitioning to the startup).

I have a great idea for the industry my employer is in. I have already began building the product on Force.com on my own time and have my first customer with 500 users waiting for me to finish.

I would not be competing with my current employer, but creating a service that would in turn help my employer (and their competitors) sell products more effectively. This is something I have tried pushing through our company with no success, so I figure it's time to do it myself.

I am working as fast as I can in my spare time, carefully separating my personal time from my employer's time. I should complete my work sometime next month.

Has anyone been in a similar situation and had issues with their employer when leaving? I dont want my employer to claim rights over what I have created in my spare time.

Thoughts? Suggestions?
it doesn't need special apps written for it, it can run the same software as any Linux userland

This type of fundamental failure to understand the consumer space is exactly what's driving Nokia into the ground.

Consumers don't give a fig what userland your device is compatible with. Consumers want a super-simple way of finding interesting apps, putting them on their phone, and having them look good and run problem free.

So yes, you really do need special apps.
Planet larger than Jupiter may be orbiting at outer edge of the solar system