skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
[Radix sort] breaks the theoretical lower bound of the O(NlogN) complexity, which only applies for comparison-based sorts. Radix is O(kN), with k = 4 most of the time

Sigh. In fact, radix sort is O(k*N) with k = log N. There's nothing magical about it.

More precisely, radix sort is O(N log U) where U is the number of distinct values the inputs can take (e.g., U = 2^32 for 32-bit integers) while comparison sorts are O(N log R) where R is the number of distinct input values (e.g., R = N if the values to be sorted are distinct). Radix sorts often win due to being easy to implement efficiently, but they have the same or worse asymptotic behaviour.
Foot between heights: assuming identical diets, absolutely. Different people metabolize and absorb things differently. Assuming ideal diets for everyone, I'd bet a foot would be near the limits.

Muscle mass, depends significantly on how much exercise. Some respond to it differently than others, so some would be more muscular with light exercise while others would be more with heavier. A difference though, yes; if somewhere near the middle, accounting for height / overall body build, a moderate amount of difference, but not a whole lot.

Intelligence, barring physical defects, I don't know. People certainly seem to have specialties, especially if you consider some of the "greats" of history as nigh-savants, but measuring an overall intelligence of a person is a nightmarishly subjective task. Very broad statement: not much of a difference. A lot of specialists are severely lacking in communication skills, a lot of artists in engineering, etc, and those deficiencies would have to be factored in.

At the end of the day, I'd bet we're all pretty darn similar. But I do lean significantly towards the nurture-over-nature side of the argument; do nothing, and you become a blob, regardless of your biology. It happens to animals too. There are, of course, some differences, but you have an incredible amount of control over what you make of you.
Clickables:

1) http://www.localmind.com and http://www.dayri.me

2) http://www.webpop.com and http://www.thinkfuse.com
God dammit, I hate it when somebody does something I wanted to do, but has better execution.
No love for grooveshark?
So if JCPenney sells black hats.. shouldn't they rank #1 for black hat?
"Stuxnet is one of the more powerful viruses to ever spread across the internet"

Is an interesting statement, since to my knowledge it spread via USB drives instead of the internet
This story should be more about Google's ranking code than a none story about JC Penny paying a SEO company, who did their job.

Matt_Cutts, people pay 3rd partys to "get me to the top for xx" when they deliver, you penalize then into oblivion?
Stuxnet has nothing to do with "nuclear reactors". It targeted uranium enrichment centrifuges.
Ask HN: Why doesn't Amazon have a purchase api?
Amazon is typically an innovator, and I would think that they would have some way to programmatically make purchases. Is this infeasible? Useless? Are there any ecommerce outfits that have a purchase api?
Source or object code? The article doesn't specify.
Windows and linux seem to be doing better because ctrl + tab and ctrl + shift + tab don't intuitively mean anything like Cmd + arrow does on OS X

so even though the convention on windows and linux is not as easy to guess, it's also doesn't make intuitive sense to be used for anything else
A Social Network with Scholarly Interaction
Patents are one way people can make deals with innovators that can make some innovation more likely, but its not the only way this could be done.

I think the coercive element, the idea that someone can be sued for doing something they have an inherent right to do is the problem.

It is one thing when people agree that they need something and offer to buy it exclusively from whoever creates the first viable product. It is quite another to coerce everyone to do so.

That said, we should not hand out monopolies that are not in the interest of most citizens. And what is in our interest is determined rather badly with winner-take-all elections and the power they give to lobbyists.
that's pretty rockstar.
I have to admit it's not totally due to IP, but the infosec field has fun smart people in it and has the feel of the early days of the PC. There's a real need for it and funding to match. Plus it's usually easier and more fun to break stuff than build it. :-)
Paper Confetti for any occasion
For example, no startup could hope to survive without laws protecting trade secrets.

The assumptions here are that your secrets give you an advantage by being secret, that they're easier to steal than to rediscover, and that that advantage is necessary to success. These assumptions are not universally correct, and I suspect that their degree of correctness is rather strongly overestimated.

Founder groups would have the same problem in pre-formation situations. Say, four founders build something that they have worked on for a full year and are prepared to launch. One of them defects and says to the group, "I am going to take everything that we have worked on and take it for myself." Of course, that is outrageous. Buy why? Because laws exist that declare it illegal for someone to misappropriate what the founders have been working on. Those are IP laws. They protect the interests in intangible property. Without them, every founder would be vulnerable to such defections, without any form of legal recourse.

That doesn't sound like any of the standard copyright/patent/trademark/trade-secret categories, it sounds like it has something to do with (probably implied) contracts.

Open source is no exception. It relies heavily on rules of copyright law and on licensing to make its system work. If everything were freely shareable without any form of restriction, one does not have open source - one has freeware.

So then Postgres, SQLite, the BSDs, clang, etc are freeware instead of open source?

Startups depend heavily on IP laws. Such laws have great value in today's startup culture and ought to be recognized for that contribution. Reform them, absolutely; abolish them, don't even think about it

I don't think that's a sound argument, we've done just fine abolishing other practices that businesses seemed to depend on. What is observed to happen when/where such laws don't exist or are generally ignored?
This is why i read hn comments first when i see techcrunch anywhere in the title.
YQL - It's a bit of an API of APIs (if one can say that) http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/

I made a Drupal frontend module for it here: http://drupal.org/project/yql
Very cool. :)

I have been trying to become more involved in the Israeli high-tech scene. bitorama just became a "Check Daily" tab.
Startup Strategies that Survive, Prosper, and Win
Wasn't aware they had an official API?
If I were Elop, I'd want to hire someone I knew and felt I could trust to do the job. Elop probably knows a lot of people at Microsoft. Expecting him not to hire a Softie would be tying a hand behind his back.
Dan Ingalls, implementor of Smalltalk isn't on the list.
The Long Game
Upvoted: I thought I specifically saw 'source' in there, but going back, it just says 'a copy.'

There are also things like this: http://anonleaks.ru/email1.html
Not at all, by upstart i mean small companies without massive legal departments and lobbying dollars.
It has multiple attack vectors, not just USB.
Vacuum has friction after all
There was a question about this in a formal exam, in my first year at uni:

"RFC 1149 was release on 01/04/90, but what was it about?"

Some lecturers do have a sense of humour!
"It's important to note that the sleazy stuff comes from HBGary Federal."

Some of these email "teasers" would indicate otherwise:

http://anonleaks.ru/
@kpozin, obviously I was replying to kylekramer :)
Ah, it seems you're right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet#Windows_infection
Ask HN: What should I ask Dr. David Ferrucci, the leader of IBM's Watson project
A little background: I am a senior CS major at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and this upcoming week my school will be holding a 3 day event to cover the Watson computer system taking on Jeopardy. The lead researcher, David Ferrucci, is a graduate of RPI and will be here one of those days to do a Q&A, but I don't really know much about the system and figured HN might have a few insightful questions that I could forward on.

Also, kind of a weird twist, but Ferrucci happens to be my roommate's first uncle (he's a management major and never mentioned it since him and I don't really talk CS all that often), so I might be meeting Dr. F personally afterward - making the question asking even more feasible.
Yes, Google does generally penalize that behavior, if the SEO companies cheat. Do what JC Penney apparently did -- use a load of unrelated sites to artificially boost its standing in search results -- and Google has a good reason to penalize you. Google can only stay trustworthy (and therefore relevant) if it eschews results like that.
And the uranium is use for? (weapons aside)
That's why I object to the term "statistical myth" - it implies the measure is not useful in cases when it is. If g is a useful proxy, it's useful for policy makers. All they need to know is that low T implies dead homeless, and low g implies a higher probability of unskilled employment.

The fact that g is actually a sum of independent variables, or T is a sum of squares of velocities of particles is irrelevant to them.
You're commenting on NEWS.YCOMBINATOR.COM. Perhaps someone here knows how many YC companies --- there are lots of them now --- have been litigated against by patent holders.
I look forward to the rest of the series.
I wouldn't call any social messaging apps that I've seen "massively distributed". "Painfully centralised and proprietary" maybe. I wouldn't use the term infrastructure for them either.

If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, the Internet would continue to function just fine. If email disappeared, we would be royally screwed.

Facebook could disappear for political, legal or financial reasons. Email can't.
Sounds like school vouchers would do better. No?
"software industry" and "software innovation" are two different concepts.

> It is predicted that in China, Linux market (both server and client) will grow with an annual rate of 34 %. The client-side share growth will be comparatively faster.[citation needed]

I recently walked around a large computer bazaar in China looking for a laptop with Linux pre-installed. I finally found one with a sign saying "Computers for sale with Windows or Linux installed". I walked in asking for one with Linux, pointing to the sign. The seller went "Uhh?!? These are all there are, and they all have Windows. You should know better than to read signs."
I agree. In fact, I specified that using the browser is good in some cases with the caveat that there is at least a master password protection. But a good password manager is always a better idea. Of course everyone chooses the one that best fits his needs, but the important thing is that you use one. 1password is a great product for consumer and individuals.
I was talking about innovation, you are talking about growth.

Where are the Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Foursquare, LinkedIn? Look at all the startups and new ideas described in Techcrunch every day, how many of them came from China?
Forbes doesn't have a spell checker? "Siemen's"?
Stack Overflow http://stackapps.com/questions/1/api-documentation-and-help
Ask HN: Suggest software to setup virtual classroom in India
I am putting down the requirement and please suggest the best hardware software you think might help us . (It can b paid as well as expensive)

1. A teacher will give lecture to students in a remote classroom. The classroom will have one projector screen.

2. Students will make presentations before the class one by one and the the Prof. at remote location should be able to see both the students talking as well as his slides.

3. The setup (at both ends) should not be "fixed" It should be movable easily. (With the same ease as it would take us to move a desktop PC).

I liked WebX but it does not support voice interactions as yet.
Google does this already - compare [flowers] with [ipad] with [ghc syntax]:

http://www.google.com/search?q=flowers

http://www.google.com/search?q=ipad

http://www.google.com/search?q=ghc+syntax

There used to be "More/fewer shopping results" in the left nav as well, but these seem to have been unlaunched.
Thanks a lot, I'm glad to hear that. Hope it wasn't too obvious I used iPhone headphones. Dan knew immediately :)
Instead of being surprised to see an answer missing, why not add the answer?
Inside Microsoft's Science Fair
I've never heard of it, or seen it referenced on any design blog, or seen any marketing of it whatsoever. I'm not necessarily claiming that I'm an accurate sample of the web development/design community, but it certainly seems to be pretty under represented.

From what I can tell from it's product page, it seems to have a very gimmicky marketing-speak write up (count the number of times the product is named!). It also doesn't let you run IE7 and IE8 at the same time.
Writing interactive fiction without a programming language
Some thoughts on Quora Good or Bad
Wrong.

What you claim isn't the only view. Here is a paper in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review which argues against this (see pages 2026-2028):

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1457848

"it does seem at first blush that it is only a court’s decision to protect a trademark as “property” that makes the trademarked term economically valuable...Trade secrets and patented inventions, however, reveal the initial cracks in Cohen’s critique...The reason is that inventions, regardless of how they are legally protected, would be valuable even if there were no legal system that protected them..."

"Modern patent theory, as informed by law and economics, understands and embraces this fact. The economic analysis of patent law assumes as one of its basic foundational premises that an invention’s value preexists its legal classification as property in the patent system."
Right. I've cooled off somewhat, so I'm going to delete my other comments because I feel that they are intemperate and, in some cases inappropriate. I apologise for them.

To answer your question ...

That's not what I said, and I feel it's a misrepresentation of my position. I was answering the question in this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2211298

where the author said:

Could you clarify why having
more cash will not help?

My point was that the socio-economic conditions of some kids being dis-engaged, disinterested and actively disruptive would not be helped by throwing more cash at the school, or at the teachers.

Whether you blame the teachers, the kids, their parents, the social circumstances, the gangs, television, or whatever, the situation is that in some classes there is behavior that prevents any kind of learning. That behavior won't be fixed by mending copiers, or providing laptops.

That's my answer to the question that was asked.

In addition, however, I will say that yes, in some cases I do blame the kids, but in some cases I don't. I don't know that I would be any different given the circumstances that surround them. The challenge is to find a way to give them the skills, tools, abilities and opportunities to go where they can make something of themselves.

My wish for every child is that they have the opportunity to be the best they can. Sounds corny, and it's certainly Quixotic, but I put money and time into it.

And now I am going away for a while.
"Worse" in this case is subjective. Perhaps firefox today is objectively not as good for me (as a developer) as it was at 1.0.

My argument is that I'm not necessarily the main target demographic any more, Firefox 3.6 is fast enough and has the features that Joe average wants.
Really? Around the time of RollerCoaster Tycoon (and beforehand) games were written in Assembly language. I was writing games in assembly language back in the 80s and early 90s.

Certainly if you wrote games for the Atari ST, Amiga or any of the 8-bit platforms you would've written it in assembler. Compilers just weren't efficient enough at producing the fastest code possible at the time.
look at China, which has no IP laws. How much software innovation do you see coming from there?

Yup, zero.

The IP laws here mean they wouldn't be able to sell me anything that resulted from their lack of IP laws, and the language barrier means I wouldn't likely see anything they weren't trying to sell me. So why would my not seeing anything have any meaning?
Win32 :)
How J.C. Penney Became Number One Result For Nearly Every Google Search
Martin Kool (of sarien.net infamy) on The Setup
As well as civil copyright law, the US has criminal laws with penalties up to five years in prison (and doubled for repeated offenses).

http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/18usc2319.htm

I don't believe there's anything like this for patent or trademark infringement, though.
We passed on them because their homepage didn't feel professional and trustworthy.
Sobieski Vodka Review - Great Vodka under $15
No.

He can make a ho-hum specialty search engine though.
I hear "This site is some means to block out beauty" -- you know, kind of like "ad blocker", only somehow for "beauty". Not sure what on earth that would mean but it does not sound like a good thing if you are trying to sell beauty products (or coupons for beauty products or whatever). I also just think "beauty" sounds vain, so for me it is offputting.

I also associate the term "bloc" with "Soviet bloc countries", which is a real negative thing historically in the US. So I wouldn't be very comfortable with joining a "bloc", even without subliminally wondering if joining this "bloc" would ensure I became uglier. (Edit: I will add that in that context, the idea of a "beauty bloc" brings to mind very unflattering cold war images of Soviet Bloc women. Not anything I would aspire to look like.)

However, my mind isn't normal. So take that opinion as a sampling of one, and no reason to think it is representative of your target market (since I don't wear any make-up ever as I am allergic to everything).

Good luck with this.
I didn't imply, and also didn't mean, that it was more likely than on iOS. I simply meant, this is going to happen everywhere in the industry.

As for net neutrality, I'm viewing that as a mostly-lost battle at this point, until proven otherwise.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and nothing I say is legal advice. Use my advice at your own risk. It may be wrong.

If you are building a website and you do NOT redistribute the website's software (e.g. allow people to run the website on their own server), you can incorporate code from most open source licenses. Here are some specifics:

* The MIT, BSD, PSF, and Apache licenses are fantastic for proprietary websites, even if you do redistribute the website's software. (In which case you may need to include a disclaimer, copyright notice, and/or copy of the license, depending on the details of that specific license.)

* Libraries licensed under the AGPL may NOT be used for proprietary websites. The GPL's language is unclear about proprietary websites, so it would be best to avoid using GPL libraries altogether or to consult a lawyer.

* You may use LGPL libraries, but if you modify them then you may have to release the code that you modified. (Due to the aforementioned uncertainty.) Again, I am not certain about this, but I have seen that claimed before.

Feel free to correct me. I would be happy to hear that I am incorrect regarding the GPL.

Edit: I was incorrect regarding the GPL. Please see http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/07/the-gpl-and-softwa...
I just requested a beta invite.

This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for for my startup. I had a love/hate relationship with Nagios/Cacti/Zabbix at my last job. Having something simple I can set up and (mostly) forget about is all I need at this stage.
why does he say they failed?
I remember the first time I saw the variable cpu on a micro instance, during a kernel compile. I thought the design was horribly broken. What possible use could it have?

I can only think of one use case: you write to logs continuously, and you need a bunch of cycles every five minutes or so when you rotate and compress. The T1-micro is more than adequate for that.
Video Tour of the Google Ventures Startup Lab
Gabest of mediaplayer classic, whoever that may be.
Avery Lee of virtualdub.
Who can tell me about the legalities of home-made cars? What kind of hoops do you have to jump before using something like this on a public road?
I'm getting 404s on all the .exe files. Gone already?
Which subjects in (theorethical) computer science matter the most in practice?
I'm so surprised Fabrice Bellard is so far down. The guy is absolutely one of the greatest developers I've ever ever had the luxury of reviewing the code of.

By comparison, DJB is a force of nature when it comes to programming, but reading his code can be a little difficult (try understanding qmail's source base as an example). I have to admit though, _why's is the most readable of all truly great code, despite the fact that it's at least mostly in ruby.
The real world
Dear Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Harj Taggar,

Thank you for your time!

Regards,
Alexander Dasaev
I disagree that it's only big companies you need to worry about. There was recently a thread here on HN[1] about an open source flight plan project shutting down after being threatened by legal action from a small company that provided a similar service (and had some patents around it).

But regardless of the specific probabilities of any one startup getting sued, I still have a problem with a system where the government will harass you into bankruptcy on behalf of an incumbent corporation if that corporation decides they want you out of the way.

It's like a landmine in the middle of a football field. I probably won't be the one who loses a leg but it's enough of a threat to think about seeing if there's a better field to play on.

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2007899
My guess is that they would tightly like to control the purchasing experience.
I believe Stuxnet messed with the software that ran some fairly esoteric, though nevertheless commercially produced and sold machinery for enriching uranium. Siemens gear I think.
Almost surely. Who has the source to Stuxnet? Whatever American or Israeli agency commissioned it. Anon has no connection to them. Their sole connection is to a small security company, which has no connection to the unknown agency either. All they would have is access to is whatever is in the wild - the compiled binary.
Yes, that looks like the same thing, thanks.