skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's more a general philosophy of life. The argument is that, in the end, you will be more satisfied by creating value for other people than if you only do things you find interesting or enjoyable in the moment, but do not impact other people's lives.

Of course, that's not to say you have to choose only one. Google seems an exercise of doing really interesting things that also have a massive influence on people's lives.
Sure; while we haven't launched them yet, our Firm accounts won't actually billed by the blog, they will be billed by campaign. So a campaign might include a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a landing page and a group of blogs who you have hired to promote your content. That combination is billed at $100 per month, so the pricing structure is a little different. I will look at finding a different way of wording it, but there will be more information on the page when that plan is ready to go.

Working on the hover states now! Thanks for checking it out.
The list of things they eat could be right, but the arguments behind them wrong.
I think you're wrong about that, but we'll have to wait to find out. So how about Brushes, which was used to make two New Yorker covers?
upvoted because I can easily see myself using this for all sorts of applications in the future. Thanks!
> foxnews.com
Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites
Offer HN: Advice for Landing Page Optimization to improve conversions
We are two hackers who have worked for various startups (and Google). One of us has PhD in Computer Science, and deep expertise in page-rank algorithms, analytics, website optimizer etc. The other has deep expertise in online sales, human-computer interaction, SEM, data-mining etc.

We have taken the next week off, and are planning to use the week to help the brilliant and always helpful HN community to optimize their websites' landing pages to increase their sales and conversion. We'll try to help as many of you as possible on a first-come-first-serve basis. Our suggestions will be especially helpful for startups that are using paid advertising (PPC, Display, Email etc), because the benefits of funnel optimization are more measurable for them.

Please send us links to the website/landing pages, sample of you ads (screenshots, text etc), the value you give to each "action" on the landing page, etc. Basically, anything that you think will help us understand your needs better. Our email address is: hackernewsoffer@gmail.com (great email id, isn't it? ;-). Temporary email address to protect our identities.
Dallas Big Data Micro Hackathon Coming March 22
The real question is, does this include websites that simply USE facebook APIs?

If so, it would be extremely uncompetitive :)
Ah that explains it, i grew up around plenty of people who couldnt afford a computer ten years ago :)
Well it's certainly only a single data point, but my mother has been teaching the exact same lesson plan for nearly 15 years now. Even if I were to be generous and say 50% of her summer break were devoted to preparing for the next school year, which is an absurd overestimation, that's still waaay more vacation time than just about anyone else in this country gets.
Remotely debug a mobile web app
That depends on the context. (Do you pick up hitchhikers? If so, when?)

If I have to choose between something I value more (say my wife is in anaphylactic shock and needs to be driven to the hospital), and someone I see in a car wreck on the way to the hospital, I'm going to choose my wife, because she's a higher value to me than anyone else.

However, if I don't have something that pressing to worry about, and I physically come across someone is injured in this way (so this is an emergency context, which is by definition something that doesn't happen frequently), I'll help. The sight of someone suffering from an unforeseeable emergency is an awful thing, and if I happen to come across it, I'd do what I could to help, so long as it wasn't a sacrifice for me (didn't leave me significantly poorer, less able, etc.)

None of this means that I should drive around town looking for people that are stranded or injured, or that I need to give my money to people that I'll never meet.

I hope this clarifies things.
Kids know who the bad teachers are. Principals know, and schools have both student results year-over-year and evaluations which are good indicators. But these are confidential, and if you can't fire someone, have to keep paying them, and can't afford a replacement, you're highly unlikely to publicly finger problematic teachers as 'bad'. You have to pretend they're good enough, because they're all you've got.

Portraying this as just some unthinking partisan campaign against unions overlooks the fact that the total compensation of teachers and other public employees has been going up while service quality has stagnated or declined. They are being compensated for their reliable political power, not their value in providing necessary services.

And if the only decision criteria is, "teachers are good, give them all the work rules and benefits their unions ask for", there's no end to that trend. The full-time political operators in the unions, accountable for their groups' interests but not society's results, will continue to extract greater pay for worse results — until some other decision criteria, which says 'no' to the union in favor of other interests, can be applied.
I'm curious: what kind of a business model does EyeQuant have?
As for responsibility, Ricardo's comparative advantage says you should do what you are best at (even if it's crappy compared to everyone else):

England may be so circumstanced, that to produce the cloth may require the labour of 100 men for one year; and if she attempted to make the wine, it might require the labour of 120 men for the same time. England would therefore find it her interest to import wine, and to purchase it by the exportation of cloth.

To produce the wine in Portugal, might require only the labour of 80 men for one year, and to produce the cloth in the same country, might require the labour of 90 men for the same time. It would therefore be advantageous for her to export wine in exchange for cloth. This exchange might even take place, notwithstanding that the commodity imported by Portugal could be produced there with less labour than in England. http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/readings/ricardo7.html [I know this from The Rational Optimist]

And, as Aaron concludes, you get better at whatever you do. So you might as well do what you love. Most of success is staying the distance - which is easier if you love it. The thing is, most people happen to "love" what they do well at; which I suspect means that it's not intrinsic love, but it makes us feel good about ourselves (a sense of mastery, objectively confirmed by others).

You can turn this around by lowering your standards, so that you feel good about any level of success - the smallest possible measurable improvement. This happens automatically in school - you're only competing with your peers, who (let's face it) are pretty crappy compared with ordinary adults. Yet you feel good if you do well compared with them. See also the time of year of birth, of hockey players: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=merron/08120...
Yeah, my mistake, I just saw the similar description and figured it was the same model. The Amazon link is the one I ordered. Good looking out though, thanks.
I don't see this post on HN anymore. Did we do something wrong?
And this is why you should always hire the cheapest programmers then?
Tell HN: Get feedback about your YC application from YC alumni
Applications for the YC Summer 2011 batch close on March 20th. If you're in the Bay Area or Chicago and want to get some in-person feedback about your application from some YC alumni, Grubwithus is hosting a series of dinners to do just that! Just join the Hacker News Grubwithus group at http://www.grubwith.us/groups/hacker-news and we'll notify you when the meals are posted.
It's cool that the young upstarts have the better UI. In a sense, it makes sense that the advertisements on Expedia and Orbitz are so distracting: advertising is supposed to grab attention! I wonder how much money these big players are making off these ads, and if it is enough to counter-act the effect of a poor UI. Over time users will discover HipMonk and other travel sites and won't come back.
This statement basically could not be less accurate. The NFL itself thought there was a huge problem with the lack of black coaches in the NFL, so it took a pro-active approach by making the Rooney Rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule), in which a minority head coach must be interviewed (not hired), in the case of a head coaching vacancy. And what happened? Well the number of minority coaches role greatly from 2 at the end of the 2002 season to 7 currently.

Basically the NFL front office realized that a lot of the owners had some unconscious bias against minority head coaches, and thus they made a rule which forced them to at least acknowledge there were quality minority coaching candidates out there. And once the owners were forced to confront this, they started to agree and hire minority candidates.

I think there are a lot of parallels between this and the current gender disparity in YC. In order to solve such a systemic problem, you have to take big steps. YC doesn't want to take big steps, and thus the problem wont get solved, and people will continue to muse about how women just aren't trying hard enough. Reminds me of the prevailing wisdom in 2000 when everybody said minority head coaches just didn't have what it took to run an NFL team.
Tag clouds are suddenly 'in' again?
> I'm not arguing against vaccines though.

I didn't say you were. I've said that your argument can be (and has been) used to prove or disprove almost any theory—including that of vaccines conspiracy. You have to either accept all the conclusions and uses of said argument or you must acknowledge that said argument was flawed to begin with.

And I'm sorry but you can't start your sentence by saying that you're not advocating people to avoid surgery and then go ahead and do exactly that.

Furthermore, dr. Gawande is not arguing what you do by a long shot. Your medical treatment options are always presented to you and you're free to chose a non-invasive one if you wish to. You're however advocating for choosing a non-medical treatment instead of a medical one, and in case of both acupuncture and chiropractic, ones that have no scientific basis whatsoever, and have not been proven to work or have been proven to not work.
did you seriously have no teachers that were just Bad while you were in public schools? i am so incredibly envious.

no teacher who slept and wet herself? or turned a (nearly blind) eye to students being assaulted in her classroom? (two different teachers, both witnessed by myself.)

those are just the first two cases that come to my mind. i could come up with a bunch more, and i only went through 1 elementary, middle and high school each. when the system doesn't make it trivial to replace such teachers, the system is broken beyond comprehension.
PHP Template Engine Comparison
I wish I could say that I don't think this is compatible with the GPL, simply because I don't like it, but I can't. This seems like a good move for their bottom line. It'll suck for CentOS users though.
Three Questions About Your Idea
One reason is that many places classify firefighters and police forces as critical services, and therefore cannot go on 'real' strikes. At most they can enact work to rules, and stop working overtimes. This takes away a lot of the bite of unions.
Great idea, wish I was in one of those 2 areas.

Best of luck to all who take advantage of this offer! :)
The "drop dead" date for prohibiting AdSense was not in 2008, it was on 2/28/2011.
Around here we call it "doing an Office Space".

Of course it's sometimes unclear if it instead means (or also includes?) burning down the building....
>> Okay, let's put these two things together:

You cannot just put these two together without making your proof cyclic. AFAIK, the second one, e ^ x = lim ((1 + x/N) ^ N), can be proven only for real x without using Euler's formula or almost proving it as an intermediate step. Thus substitution from #1 using complex numbers is not legal without proof.

Here's an analogy to consider:

1. Boyle's law: P1.V1 = P2.V2

2. Charles law: V1/T1 = V2/T2

Multiply LHS and RHS of the above two.

3. P1.(V1^2)/T1 = P2.(V2^2)/T2.

Yet, the gas equation is ...

4. P1.V1/T1 = P2.V2/T2

... and not #3.

While there is nothing wrong with the multiplication used for computing #3, this process adds the assumptions used for #1 and #2. Here's a more precise version then:

1'. Boyle's law: P1.V1 = P2.V2 when T1 = T2

2'. Charles law: V1/T1 = V2/T2 when P1 = P2

Multiply LHS and RHS of the above two.

3'. P1.(V1^2)/T1 = P2.(V2^2)/T2 when T1=T2 and P1=P2.

Derivation for #4 avoids those two assumptions.

In your proof of Euler's identity, the assumptions for your #1 and #2 cannot be considered to be compatible without proof.
Nope, it's still here.
Just wrote you back! Awesome product btw!
I think you are right. I've worked hard to keep a list of ways I've added value to the corporation. My most valuable contribution (from a dollars and cents perspective) has not been any bug fix or feature but rather stumbling across a program/organisation which subsidizes partnerships between academia and industry. We're hoping to hire 4 graduate students for a new team so if we offer a salary of $50k the company only shoulders half the amount. The potential savings of 100k is well over what the company is paying me....
Many software projects /are/ big. Many of them are complicated and monolithic, written by "someone else", unrefined, and quite possibly the first thing that they managed to get working. I find UML diagrams (sequence, class etc) invaluable for understanding code like this, as a reverse engineering tool.

"An occasionally invaluable tool" is how I could describe UML diagramming.
Thanks for providing more information about EyeQuant. One thing that I wonder about is how sensitive your system is wrt the customer's users. If I am running a gaming site where most users are men between ages 12-39, will you only use data from test subjects that share similar characteristics?
Oh, I see it now. Thank you. :-)
I find Aaron's essays pretty difficult to read because they tend to come straight from the navel.

On the other hand, he's a young guy. When I look at stuff I wrote when I was in my early twenties, I was pretty far up my own asshole too. Now that I'm in my late twenties, of course, I'm a worldly old sage who has a keen sense of perspective on the world and my place in it. :P

I'm interested to see if Aaron gets some perspective too, or if perhaps his very young success will have permanently warped his worldview.
I remember seeing a bit of this mindset shortly after the bailouts.

GM pension obligations? Just drop em. But AIG bonuses? Those contracts are sacred!
I used a lot of diagramming tools (just out of my head):

Flow Charts (later criticized for encouraging GOTO)
Syntax Diagrams (similar to BNF/EBNF grammars)
ERD - mainly database stuff
UML - complex C++ systems and recently for Erlang gen_servers
MSD - message sequence diagrams
StateCharts(and FSM diagrams in general)

They are all useful for documentation or for meetings as a communication tool.

When working on huge waterfall projects in C++ I just wrote the code stub first and then run reverse engineering tool for UML class diagram generation - it's easier than drawing the diagrams yourself.

The problem with UML class diagrams may arise in large organizations, when Architects can be tempted to put many small rectangles on UML class diagram, frequently forgetting, that each such rectangle can be days or weeks of work for a programmer to fully implement, debug and test.

FSM and MSD are especially useful, even for non-OOP languages like Erlang/OTP.

If you learning new grammar or writing parsers - Syntax Diagrams can be useful too.

In recent years I just switched to using web-based and offline tools to generate diagrams from text (GraphViz/dot/msd/ditaa/etc.)
We talk a lot about "lean startups" here. I think this is an example of Apple being lean and going where the market has taken them. My guess is that, as they were building the iPad, they had a hunch things could go this way (e.g. "post-pc device"), but weren't sure. Rather than spend billions building out an infrastructure on a hunch, they build the device and have followed the market.

The market is saying the iPad is "post-pc", so Apple will (eventually) get there. And we'll likely be charged for the privilege (most likely through MobileMe).

Personally, it is a huge complaint I have. I would love to switch my mother to an iPad, but the requirement to continue having a PC doesn't make things easier.
"you only need to apologize if you aren't following your love and passion."

Or maybe you are trying to stay alive in a war torn country, or figure out how to keep your family from starving.

Let's all keep in mind that the possibility of "following your love and passion" is only available to a privileged minority of human beings on this planet.

(Not directed specifically at you, but to point out an unstated premise behind the article and many of the comments here.)
>This is true, but I think a "post-pc" device should be able to stand on it's own two leg

The 'Post-PC' statement is just posturing and hype to be lapped up by the media, the general public and Apple friendly bloggers like Gruber. Not meant to be subject to interpretation by real geeks/hackers.

How many people totally have just a tablet and no other 'PC' at home? Maybe a few grandmas but that's it. Have iPad owners sold off their PCs? Is that even desirable? Tablets are just another segment of computers that cover use cases like browsing on the bed, couch, plane seat, car seat, using touch apps, for kids etc.

They're bad for other use cases that need screen estate, heavy typing, serious spreadsheet work, coding etc. etc.

joke:

Maybe it was just an attempt to use the RDF influence to counteract the furor over the 30% forced cut of revenue for online services. I wish Post-PC devices wouldn't come with a 30% consumption tax ;)

/joke
Clickable link: http://www.grubwith.us/groups/hacker-news
The whole (rather breathless) point of the article is that SSDs erases the blocks quite rapidly.

Yes, so the proper way to analyse an SSD is to just access what's in the flash chips directly. Such methods and equipment will probably need to be developed specifically for each SSD controller chipset. Also, investigators will need to get to an SSD sooner.
perhaps, since you're suggesting it's useful, you can tell me what subjects taught in a K-12 education necessitate the teachers challenging the system?

i'd consider perhaps high school literature and history teachers, but beyond that?
"It's his colonial era, easy ranks and easier money, that I'm critical of."

Methinks somebody is jelly...

But really, why should we judge mathematicians by their social stature? Should we also judge Tony Hawk for his lack of sea-turtle related knowledge? It's completely beside the point, you're just looking for something to complain about.
- .NET + VSS?
"But a blanket firing shows a complete lack of respect and lack of commitment to fixing a problem."

And it shows operating on ignorance. "You're fired. No, I don't know if you're a good or bad teacher. But you're fired."
Looks like a really useful service. I run The Startup Foundry and would love to chat with you. Fill out this info and we will be in touch http://thestartupfoundry.com/tip-us/. Keep up the great work, I think it has real potential.
As far as I know, Git was a lot more awkward to use on Windows when they started discussing this move a few years ago.
I really wish this were true since it would solve my original problem, but after reading the standard I don't think this is true. From c99, 6.5.2.2 p6:

"If the expression that denotes the called function has a type that does not include a prototype, the integer promotions are performed on each argument, and arguments that have type float are promoted to double. These are called the default argument promotions. If the number of arguments does not equal the number of parameters, the behavior is undefined."

I take the last sentence to mean that an unprototyped function pointer may only be used to call a function that takes zero parameters.
The rational use of excess money depends on what you care about. If you place more value on living an extra few decades than on the welfare of people you don't know, then from that set of priorities, spending your extra cash on longevity research is perfectly reasonable. You can argue that people shouldn't feel that way -- that we should be more consistent in caring about the people we know and the people we don't -- but you'll be fighting our instincts every step of the way, which is kind of difficult in practice.

(Note that I'm not taking a position here one way or another. If I were, I might point out that new technology generates jobs that can alleviate poverty more effectively than most forms of aid. Then I might argue with myself, saying that there are some forms of aid which are actually very, very cost-effective, and link to GiveWell. Then I might point out that we can do more than one thing, and that it's probably most effective to try to get people to more effectively contribute to things they do care about, rather than trying to change what they value. If you want to directly help people living in poverty, consider going to http://givewell.org/ and looking at what they recommend. If you want to live longer, the SENS Foundation is doing some good work there and could definitely use donations. Damn, I thought I wasn't going to take a position, and now I just took three of them.)
"They wouldn't be spending all that time and money on events if they didn't work"

false
The consensus here seems to be that the FBI crossed the line from passive to active tracking, and should have needed a warrant, when they entered his property to place the GPS device into his vehicle.

Tracking you by something like GPS on your cell phone doesn't require physical interaction with your property. The effect is similar, though. What's the difference?
On first look UML looks like the "proper" way of building software, but it really isn't because software changes way too much while it's built. It's like planning out a road-trip to the minute - it won't hold up. Some compare UML to how architects use blueprints to build brick-and-mortar stuff, but concrete walls and ceilings don't move midway like software does (figuratively speaking).

IMO software process is all about controlling complexity. When the problem is small, our human mind can come up with ingenious solutions no computer can match. So it's better to break down the project into small, modular, and testable components rather than try to overcome the complexity with fancy plans that will start breaking down the moment you start implementing.

UML could be useful for documentation purposes though, giving a bit more info than say Javadoc. But that will come after you write the software, not before. There are some tools that claim round-tripping (i.e., you write your UML, the tool magically generates code, you edit the code, and the tool magically updates the UML to stay in sync). I tried a few and found them too painful to use.