skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
(I know this has been discussed last week already on HN but...)

I'll share you a personal true story [1] : when I was in middle school, in a 100% white town on the East Coast, 6th grade. Learning division. Say, 4 | 16. I would compute the answer: "0.25". Fine, I knew that from having just transferred from Europe. The only problem was that the expected answer was 16/4=4. They were still dividing integer values only, no decimals, and I just got confused because US and Europe write divisions in opposite directions.

Bottom line: curriculum was at least 1 year behind in math, and it didn't get any better by 12th grade. That being said, US education placed so much emphasis on soft social skills, so what you lose in math, you gain in future marketing/business acumen.

[1] I am aware that one story doesn't prove anything
Why not look for someone who recently had a successful exit?
What do you think is the most beautiful algorithm?
This is neither new nor remarkable.
The way it is supposed to be done is with a DMCA complaint, and I don't think you can do that unless you own the IP in question. Or are you saying that they are ignoring DMCA complaints? That is a much more serious accusation.
Sorry for my slow response; how does the process handle scaling above 1kb? Traditionally there's a predictable curve of expected performance as the scale of request size increases.

Happy to take this conversation private; spent the last 10 years in performance and scalability as a indie consultant for Fortune companies. I know a lot of people looking for replacement mechanisms for high volume, variable sized transaction enterprise buses.

Also interested to understand the data access methods you've tested and what works best with your code. eengstrom >at< gmail.
You're burnt out, in the true sense of the term. If you don't take care of yourself now you may end up this way for good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_(psychology)
There's definitely something psychological about design that I don't understand. Cars are another example - new cars today somehow look new, and putting them beside an older model makes the older model look old as well.

I wonder if it's because we're exposed to these designs, and that's why they look old? (We're familiar with them, we know they're old, therefore they feel old). It'd be interesting to see two models of something that you're not very familiar with, and see if the same phenomenon occurs.
Or read how it's used for internet telephony: you're supposed to support 3 indirect results -> NAPTR query returns a regex and a list of ideas for SRV queries, which give you a list of queries to resolve with A. So much fun!
You're attacking the messenger, but you fail to address his core argument which boils down to Marx's criticism of capitalism (the fact that workers don't own the production means is unfair).

"Just start your business" as a mean to all ends doesn't scale. Your last paragraph also seems to ignore that, for some people, just getting by takes (sometimes a lot of) effort. You may be clueless at some key point in your life, make a bad decision and get caught in inextricable situations.

The difference between left- and right-wing views on economy boil down IMO to ethics. Both sides agree on the fact that the world is unfair, but they differ on how to address the problem.

From the extremes, the left promotes forced altruism, which has historically been proven not to work so well; whereas the right promotes egoism (relying Adam Smith's Noodly Appendage to shelter itself from remorse), which, with the ever growing rift between the very rich and the rest of the world is currently coming to its own absurd conclusion.
Why Twitter and Facebook don’t cut it
You have people talking in this very thread about a walled garden being better:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279823
Ask HN: Anyone remember the article comparing Apple/Samsung's product scopes?
I can't seem to find the article in my saved articles, bookmarks, or by searching YC.<p>Anyways, the article compared how Apple has one phone, a few laptops, and one desktop to how Samsung/HP and others have dozens. The article used a word starting with F to describe this, focus maybe? It definitely wasn't fragmentation.<p>It was a good article and wish I could find it. I appreciate any help, even if someone can just suggest what f word might be so I could search Google/YC a little better.<p>Thanks!
I Am Number Four (2011)
This hasn't rolled out for everybody yet - I see it at work, but I don't see it (when signed into the same account) at home.
We're looking for Foursquare superusers ( 500 check-ins) to beta test Scoville
You forget the new computer scientists and the people just learning about arrays that find this place sufficiently interesting to read around it.

I'm not one of them, but not everyone is far enough into their CS career to have come across the numerous contributions he has made.

In fact, with the web-development world we're living in, I imagine it's pretty easy to go very far in {php, python, <insert language here that isn't often formally taught>}, and write a ton of code (or at least stitch a great number of libraries together), even ones that use semaphores or some other construct/algorithm he's helped develop, without ever having heard his name.

I would say: "If you don't know who Dijkstra is, you need to read more algorithm books", or "you need to study more history", or "you need to read more academic papers", or "you need to work on harder problems."
Collaborating to find E.T. Makes sense? Since the WoW message nothing
Chrome already has full-text search of every page I visit (and keeps it around forever, as far as I can tell). The only advantage this seems to offer is letting it be accessed from anywhere, and storing it in the cloud. I'm very unsure whether it's worth the risk of funneling every page I visit to a third party. Yes, you have a privacy policy; that's great. What are you going to do when someone hacks into your service and steals all the data that you've collected? Is the data encrypted - and if so, does anyone other than the user have the key to decrypt their data? Why doesn't your site support ssl? You offer users the ability to delete all their data; how long will it persist in back-ups? If you have to restore from backup, how will you make sure that deleted data doesn't get back in? What measures are you taking to ensure that no one steals your backups?

EDIT: Oh, and some questions about the interface: Chrome's full-text search only finds instances of the word. What additional features does yours have? Can I specify a date range to search within? Does it support operators; can it give additional weight either to frequently visited websites or infrequently visited sites? (a "the thing I'm looking for was on a site I'd never been to before" checkbox, or something like that). Is it technically feasible to present a demo account to let people play around with the interface and see if your service is worth it before giving you their data?
yes. hiring him is sure a burden, financially + time killer too. we won't be able to do both, neither teach him nor could do our work. it is distractive when someones interrupts your work asking something so stupid, you never thought that silly even when you were just - printf hello world. i will rather be referring him to other suitable works.

i am getting more confidence that i would handle the situation with ease, thanks.
> "That's all we know."

Not true. They know the sub-domain and the path. Either or both could be used to do something more intelligent.
If you set your privacy settings correctly, nobody but who you allow will see anything about you (bar your name, profile picture, gender, networks, and username {which are visible to everyone}).

Poorly researched article.
I have huge respect for your drive and ambition, but there's something I just don't get (and it applies to many aspiring hackers/entrepreneurs, not just you). Why do you need a mentor? Why "cold emailing startups"? Why do you need somebody to "take you in"? Why not just hit the books and start hacking away?

This isn't meant to be a personal attack on you by any means. I've noticed a huge movement toward "mentorship" lately, and I'm just not seeing the purpose. Even worse, those who do not get these critical mentorships wither away and blame others for their shortcomings and failures. Obviously you were fortunate enough to find a group who "took you in", but what would happen if you didn't?

Downvote if you want, but I'm honestly curious as to what's going on with this mentorship trend.
that page also has no body tag
When love means never having to say "...Ok, now right-click on Local Area Connection..."
I don't think you're giving this enough thought.

Some traits are an emergent property of systems, and while it's technically correct to say that this is blaming "other people," it's not a useful idea. It's like getting mad that someone lied to you, and blaming their neurons.

The system we're in has some undesirable traits, and it's useful to think about them and how they might be fixed.

Unless you're suggesting that every person on earth should be an entrepreneur to be happy, I think it's worth thinking about how to make the rest of the opportunities more hospitable to a happy life.
Helping Consumers w/ Data from Twenty Million Credit Cards
Jeri Ellsworth - Freelance ASIC and System Engineer
It's too late to edit my post up there, I meant to say 'render the escaped javascript'. Here's an example PHP script that works as a drop-in assuming mod_php is installed:

cat ~/public_html/index.php

<?php
echo("Hello, world!");
?>

All a would-be programmer needs to get rocking in PHP is basic HTML knowledge (check w3schools for instance), an FTP client, and a link to the online PHP manual with its searchable index and extensive sample code. Getting to that point with Node is still a ways off.
I started programming in basic the year he died, and then Java the year after. I recall a survey that would put me around the middle, maybe (hopefully) the lower end, of the age group of people that read this site (24).
Actually, Chicago is the font on the original iPods: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_(typeface)
"But if you say that, then you have already accepted a premise that the piece is calling into question, namely: why should that be the choice that everyone faces?"

Do you have an alternative? Humans have tried many different methods over many thousands of years and our current system is the result of trying and failing many, many times. It's the most fair and allows pretty much anyone to be successful.

Life is difficult because we have more freedoms. We don't have someone making all of the decisions for us (which might be easier), but the result is more choice. If you don't make the right choices, you could end up living on the street or in poverty. Buy you could also end up with lots of money and a nice life.

I suppose an alternative would be no choice. You are forced to work for the government.
Google’s New 404 Fail Robot Says, 'That’s An Error, That’s All We Know'
Uh, it’s nice I’m sure, but it’s not in-browser Web Sockets. For a start, the majority of new browsers have turned off Web Sockets while a spec security hole is dealt with. Secondly, half the browsers they list as supporting don’t have even support to turn off in the first place.
I use a completely different name for my facebook profile and have a gmail account (unconnected) associated with it. I routinely get job offers for security work even though I have everything set to private.

I'm assuming that this is me showing up as linked to other people that are not so cautious.
Finding a great startup idea and detecting malicious software are vastly different things.

If inserting malware into iOS is simple, it would be done, and done widely. If done widely, the chances are very good that someone would've detected it in at least one such application.
I hope they do change their general approach and not just the update mechanism. I have been using chrome for a couple of months now and just switched back to firefox to see what the evolution is during my time 'away'.

It's quite a mess, from my point of view... As a webdeveloper the browser is my toolbox and while I do find firebug superior to the chrome development tools, the other things that caught my attention where not so positive... It feels sluggisch, was using 1.3gig of memory with 6tabs open and crashes frequently. But I do admit it feels like coming home a bit so I'm sticking with it and hoping things will be better in the future. I just hope this will end well for firefox.

If not they can always start developing another lean and fast new browser that will rock our worlds and gain populairy fast and change names a few times... (anyone remember phoenix and firebird?)
You don’t need a business plan. You don’t need to have an MBA. All you need is a great idea. Anything is possible and you can accomplish it.

- Ron Conway (@RonConway)

http://startupquote.com/post/3602485893
What everybody forgets is that Germany did proactively cut the real income with other means than inflating the currency. The wage cuts did happen proactively before they became really painfull.
As important as reading and learning tools is; my experience is that you'll absorb much more by starting hobby projects and hacking your way through them.

After you've set up a development environment (on your home machine / laptop will do), pick a project that's been on your mind and just start. Everytime you run into something you don't know how to do, hit stackoverflow, read through APIs, and figure it out. Piece by piece you'll become a programmer.

Good luck!
You're right - the only times I've used video tutorials is when performing actions in space (video game guides for hidden objects, where pictures aren't enough, and home repair guides where showing how something works in real-time is paramount).

Trying to teach somebody something like programming over video is taking the lazy way out. In my university days some large first-year classes were delivered by video - I never took any, but I'd wager that student transcripts of the talks would have been worth real money.
commented on your post.

I'm experiencing the excruciating pain of not being able to get your hands dirty... having great devs is great.. but the whole process of turning your vision to reality through code is something I'm embarking on as well.
We're still proud of it. I think a lot of it remains true. It's good to have a permanent reminder of where you started, too.
Posterous Brings Group Feature to iPhone & Android
It's been done. One of the best libraries for managing asynchronous code in JS without hiding it away is http://github.com/caolan/async

I agree wholeheartedly, by the way. There's way too much scope for leaky abstractions when you try to hide away the true nature of asynchronous code.

Same reason, I think, why most people are lukewarm about using continuations in web development, like e.g. Seaside does: in principle, very neat, very clean, but it hides away a fundamental aspect of how the web works, which can lead to all sorts of unforeseen behavior re. caching, debugging et cetera.
>Roy talked a good game in front of clients but required a baby-sitter to actually get anything done

Move him over in sales, he will properly do very well there since he knows the technical part very well but has human skills as well.
It's a fun and unique concept, but I think the general public greatly undervalues what it takes to write, record, and produce an even half-decent song. That's going to make it very difficult for you to present a price that makes sense to people. (What sort of price did you envision?)

Also, this is obviously not very scalable. I think the target market is tiny, though, so that is probably not a big deal.
Show HN: ImageCorpus - A super fast 'wikipedia for images'
The response says the server is "sffe". It seems to be used for static web hosting on android.com and providing HTTP error codes for other sites. I'm guessing it's running on the edge servers, but Google hasn't publicized what it is, that I could find.
Why use canvas for this when plain divs could do the job more easily and more efficiently, with wider browser compatibility? Simply for buzzword compliance?

When we developed swarmation.com we started with canvas and later switched to plain divs. Not only did we manage to throw out most of the code in the switch, things also ran much more smoothly and worked in IE as well.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for cool new tech, and canvas definitely has its uses. But we should be helping people recognize when plain HTML or SVG are more appropriate, rather than being buzzword-driven.
Cache-Oblivious Algorithms
I'm pretty sure the gift card to rule them all is called "cash".
>> Some people wake up in the morning and say "today I want to be a chef", but they are not a chef until they learn how to cook - no company would employ a chef that couldn't cook.

what the analogy.
> Some traits are an emergent property of systems, and while it's technically correct to say that this is blaming "other people," it's not a useful idea.

This is exactly blaming other people, from the article -

> It was during the years of office work that I caught on: I got two weeks' paid vacation per year. ... In other words, no time was truly mine. My boss merely allowed me an illusion of freedom, a little space in which to catch my breath, in between the 50 weeks that I lived that he owned.

There's many ways to work full-time less than 50 weeks out of the year. Instead, the author chooses to point the blame outwards.

The whole article is heavy on that external blame. It's bad, it closes your mind off to many, many possible solutions. There's definitely lots of problems with working full time for just a paycheck, but it's unhelpful to people to wrap that in such a defeatist externally-blaming way. That kills your mind off to finding solutions.
Steam doesn't manufacture or support the hardware its clients use, though. Steam targets computers, not consoles or console-like devices.
The History of SXSW [Infographic]
Topmost iPhone Barcode Scanners | AllTime Best
Clever to put the fact that it requires Passenger at the bottom of the feature set :)
Cache issue? I see it on my account regardless of where I sign in.
I still rely on my iPod Classic as my music player of choice, though I'd probably want an iPod Touch if I didn't have an iPhone (for the apps).

Somewhat off topic, but I find it odd that I can't get a high capacity phone to also act as my MP3/media player. It would be nice to only have to carry one device with all my stuff, but since I have more than 32GB of media, that's impossible.
Shoefitr: Perfect Fit for Online Shoe Shopping?
I'm 25 years old and I'm pretty much doing the same thing. Taking time off to work on my programming chops instead of jumping into another idea again as the "business guy". It sure beats spending six-figures getting an MBA or going to grad school these days... and I'm learning a ton. I'm absolutely loving it.

I learned Python first, then learned how to use linux and emacs, played with firefox add-ons to learn Javascript better, then started building web apps in PHP/MySQL, and now my plan is to spend my days learning and building stuff in Ruby and my nights working through these four books: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/414779/what-should-a-self...

Best resource ever is from @yegg, I always check this for guidance before learning anything new: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

I've come a long way since I first set up my server on Slicehost. Good luck on your journey too.
That's an equation, not a philosophy. If Rand took a book to say that, she should have fired her editor.
" 3) Users should be able to trust everything in a curated app store, or else there's not much point to those 30% fees."

Exactly. Google is trying to clone the Mac App store without doing the legwork to justify their cut.

• Curation should include safety

• Curation should include some sort of fair promotion

I'm skeptical of the benefits of these "curated" app stores and their high fees but at least Apple does the work to back up taking their cut.
Chrome also only updates through the distro's upgrade mechanism on Linux; the automatic updates are only for Windows and Os X. As there noted above the update would need root privileges so Chrome would either have to have an updater with the suid bit set or use something like gksudo. The first of those options seems like a particularly bad idea but there are issues with the second as well. Most modern distros have awesome package management and having an application try to circumvent this by self-updating would probably be undesired behavior for the majority of Linux users anyway.
The choice between TCP and UDP isn't whether you want your system to be reliable. It's whether you want to handle reliability in the application vs in the protocol.

TCP does reliability for you. UDP lets you implement whatever form of reliability you want in the application.

For DNS, you can do a much better job implementing DNS-specific forms of reliability. For example, if you have multiple nameservers, just move on to the next one instead of trying to retransmit packets to the first one that fails.
Euclid's Algorithm [1]; it's one of the oldest algorithms still in use, simple, elegant, powerful, has lots of generalizations, many theoretical and practical applications...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_algorithm
Joyent's No.de
Any advice for a 24yr old trying to work in high performance computing?

Decided about a year ago to switch careers, and I've been getting familiar w/ a few low level languages (C, C++, Java), and working my way through a few books like SICP, Cormen's and Skiena's algorithms books, Code Complete, etc.

The OP seems to have landed an internship already, whereas I have been failing miserably at this. I've been cold emailing companies, applying for internships, etc. I've written a few basic beginner type programs, nothing large scale or real world yet.

I have a ways to go, but it sure would be nice to have some sort of mentoring and/or get involved with real projects of some kind. I'm doing great self-teaching, but there's obviously value in working with more experienced developers. I know having code to show is important (github, opensource), but what else should I be doing to land that first software job?
The real theft is that the federal, state, and local governments take about 40 percent of your earnings in an array of taxes.
Yeah, I assumed there had to be libraries to do this already, but didn't come across anything that did what I wanted. I'll check out async though, thanks for the heads up.
This is already shown by the rareness of a google 404. You hardly ever get it these days. Except if a server crashes for about 1 second, (where my preference would be "you are the lucky winner to click your mouse at the same second as our server crash!"
Londoners Warned of Card Skimming Risk
You can DOS a DNS server if it accepts TCP connections. This is why most people don't accept TCP connections on their DNS servers.
Great stuff! Code churn is an early indicator of defect density ( http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1062514 ) and rarely gets the attention it deserves. Good use of hashalbum too.

Have you thought about doing coupling as well?
Same thing happens to me. I'm assuming its a cookie or cache issue.
Ha!1 Nice to know that even the almighty at Google are prone to some typos every once and a while.
Thanks for the tips.

Question: why are you hopping around different languages?