skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Absolutely! I suppose when I speak of asymptotic analysis, I'm including average case/expected case/degenerate case analysis in the whole exercise. Perhaps "runtime analysis" is a better term - it can then incorporate latency analysis as well.

But yes, that was integal to the treatment of the subject. I remember having to determine what the worst-case of quicksort looks like as a part of an assignment to exhibit, in practice, best/average/worst case runtime of a number of sorts - and this was an freshman-level intro course. That particular problem was one of the most fun homeworks I've ever had - a rather satisfying solution.
SEO = digital snake oil
Getting an MBA is only of use if you want to work for some big corporation or one of the big consulting firms. You can't teach, delegate nor outsource passion, ditto for creative thinking.
YCatalyst is HackerNews in Node.js (Coffeescript/FOSS)
I wouldn't say easy, but there seems to be an underlying message that it is a deterministic, repeatable process - if you're willing to endure the stress, are smart and hard working you'll succeed - when in reality luck plays a pretty big part, especially in built to flip startups.
As this unfolded (the comments) I realized I very well might be talking out of my ass, and I hate when people do that to me so I grabbed my gear to divine the electronic truth. Here are some facts I learned:

My MacBook pro gladly puts out more than 1100ma @5v no matter whats connected and no matter what "handshaking" occurred (or didn't). Its a little scary really.

My iPad does charge albeit very slowly even when it says "not charging". When it does so, it consumes about 750ma (thus, breaking the spec anyway in a strict sense). It stops charging if you turn it on and just runs from usb power. So its kind of telling the truth, when it says "not charging" on the screen, it actually isn't.

The ipad increases charge to around 950ma when it gets the OK from an Apple Approved device. (my MacBook, only when in OSX mode)

When connected to my palm pre's "dumb charger" the ipad does the "not charging" thing @750, even though the pre's charger can deliver 1500ma.

The official Apple wall charger seems to deliver about 5.5v and nearly 1000ma to the pad.

It seems the choice is actually left to the iPad itself whether to sip or slurp and it does this by detecting what its connected to. (or rather, what it isn't connected to)

In conclusion, this operational profile is frustrating. "Purposely broken" may have been too strong but they didn't go through any extra effort to make my user experience stellar if I elected not to go the full monty on apple gear.

But what does it really mean to me? I can't charge my 'pad on the damn plane on that freakishly long SF to Sydney and watch all the back episodes of "Mad Men", using that nifty USB jack on Qantas' new A380. Bummer.
Hmm, is Chrome's WebGL implementation just so slow or why feels the game so sluggish? I assumed WebGL was using 3d HW accel?
"Actually the best model would be to say that the outcome is the product of skill, determination, and luck. No matter how much skill and determination you have, if you roll a zero for luck, the outcome is zero."

http://paulgraham.com/really.html

"There is a large random factor in the success of any company. So the guys you end up reading about in the papers are the ones who are very smart, totally dedicated, and win the lottery."

http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
Compared to the current situation, with 90%+ of the population using Windows or Mac?
Not at all. If google wants to they should go ahead and delist Facebook.
Interesting set of documents. Most of it isn't new to me, but I did find the chapter on character encodings interesting. Hope to see more of that.

"i18n and l10n are big topics in themselves. For example, they cover issues such as colours: while white means "purity" in Western cultures, it means "death" to the Chinese and "joy" to Egyptians. In this chapter we just look at issues of character handling."

While I generally make a concerted effort to supply decent unicode language support, I never really considered the part about colours and symbolism differences and how they may affect potential customers. This is probably something I should be investigating further.
ثورة حنين
The chain of succession has been broken a few times, most prominently by assassination, where the next candidate assuming the throne had, ahem, well, ample reasons to be glad they hadn't invented DNA testing yet. The unbroken succession is largely an article of faith, concocted in the late 1800s in the service of turning an often fractious bunch into a modern nation-state.
As a ruby dev, this happens to work (for better or worse) because if you're not updating, it may not work with the latest version of ruby/rails/whatever. If I see a rails-related gem that had its last commit in 2009, I know some work probably needs to be done to make it work with rails 3.

Perhaps a better metric is the most recent commit combined with the number of open issues. Or maybe just the number of open issues, judged by their severity.
I grew up in India where slightly above poverty level means an altogether different thing.
You're very direct and straightforward about the process you went through, which makes the process look approachable. You've made it easier for companies to get started via YC, and people don't realize that "easier" is relative, and it's still really hard. You talk about how to solve nearly every problem an entrepreneur might find, which makes people think that their problems are all fundamentally solvable. And it's a natural outgrowth of what you do that you spend more time talking about the successes than the failures, even though in reality the latter probably outnumber the former.

You're doing your job well, and a natural byproduct is that it looks easy. Watching Michael Jordan makes it look like it's not that hard to dunk. Doesn't matter how many times you disclaim otherwise.

Not sure why you got downvoted, though.
First, find a better color scheme for something you intend people to read. That was painful.

Second, when I was a CS student I expected to be graded on my response to a particular problem. If you wanted me to roll my own sort, I expect that to be specified. If you want me to explain in comments why I chose certain algorithms say something in class. I'm not going to waste time implementing an efficient sorting algorithm for a 100 element list (or 1000 even) just to provide a TA with a nerdgasm.

I feel this article is asking if students should be graded on an arbitrarily deep rubric. I had enough to worry about as an undergrad without caring if a bored TA was going to dock me 10 points for calling Arrays.sort.
Well, ok :)

I was viewing it from an overly western perspective. Countries like India or China are especially interesting, they might be able to leapfrog certain developments in Europe and North America, i.e. take a different path altogether.
In case you hadn't noticed this is a thread about the MPEG-LA and WebM. Saying that discussing WebM here is evidence of some kind of weird agenda is crazy talk.
The 4 Elements of Digital Content
Sorry, but fuck that. It's totally possible to do this without a job. Live from savings, or do consulting, or something. There's no need to get a full time job.

I couch surfed and therefore didn't need to pay rent for about a month. Met a ton of people through HN, some school contacts, and misc. friends. The network isn't enormous but it's definitely big enough to not require a full time job to get started.
"Volunteering" at a for-profit company is indeed against the law, in that it violates minimum wage laws. There is an exception as noted earlier for training positions, but real work generally doesn't qualify.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html
My love/hate relationship with JavaScript
5 things I love & Hate about JavaScript
I'm going to skip most of your comments, because if you're trying to equate "download amazon mp3s" with "run (binary emulated) windows apps (built for a different cpu)" you're clearly just looking to score points for the home team.

But as far as the "at least 54% of streaming video is html5" I had to laugh. Yes, I realize you linked to someone who said it was true so it must be. I take it, though, that you don't actually try to watch web video with nothing but an html5 client - or you'd never have felt comfortable repeating that. Statistics of course can be bent, and I'm sure what they're doing is weighting for volume - and since youtube has 18 zillion videos and supports html5 that's probably at least 40% of their number right there.

However, in the real world...

MeFeedia’s index includes over 33,000 publishers including Hulu, CBS, ABC, YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion and others.

Hulu: Hulu requires Flash Player 10.0.32 or higher. Please download and install the latest version of Flash Player before continuing. (Indeed, yes, you can pay $8/mo for a dedicated ipad client)
CBS: Should work on the iPad - sadly, it only gave me: This content requires Adobe Flash Player 9. Please click here to install it.
ABC: This content requires Adobe Flash Player - Ver 10.1. Click here to get the latest version of Flash (iPad? Download an app!)
Youtube: It works!
Vimeo: It works!
Dailymotion: claims html5 support but no video plays (FAQ: Why is the video not playing? You might need to update you browser's Flash plug-in)

So OK, 33% (or maybe even 50%-66%) of their main list supporting html5 is actually pretty good - and it's only 21% below their figure. The only problem? That list is slow pitch softball, every single provider on that list publicly supports iPad content in one way or another.

It almost makes you wonder, who paid for that survey?

Check a few more...

FOX: We're Sorry! You need to update your flash player
NBC: The NBC video experience requires flash
Al Jazeera: We're Sorry! You need to update your flash player
Comedy Central: To view this movie you need the Adobe Flash Player plugin.
Amazon Instant Video: You do not have a supported version of Adobe Flash, a requirement for watching Amazon Instant Video
PBS: To view the full experience of this website, please download and install Adobe Flash Player 9.
Metacafe: Needs flash
IMDB: In order to play this video, you must have Flash 8 or higher installed on your computer
Yahoo Video: Yahoo! Video requires a more recent version of the Adobe Flash Player.
etc etc etc

Obviously, I could list those for pages. I think you get my point.

All tests done with Chrome + VP8 & Opera w/ gstreamer h.264. I couldn't find my iPhone charging cable.
Those aren't closed ecosystems. OS != ecosystem.
Named after Dick Costello? Yeah right.
Perhaps because Github came out first, and pioneered most of those features?

Not to say that BitBucket isn't a nice UI, but what major features did they invent? (not a rhetorical question)
The Microsoft example is a good one because Apple inadvertently stumbled on the solution. At first, with the iPhone, Apple embraced the idea of the device simply being a consumer of the web without any dedicated apps[1]. That is effectively Microsoft's nightmare. However, the app store quite effectively mitigated the advantages of web and they've had an explosive growth of native apps despite the existence of a strong browser.

Microsoft lost the Internet war, not necessarily because the Internet is incompatible with desktop but because they never actually competed. Instead they tried to smother it. Honestly though, before the app store, I'm not sure anyone knew how one could compete with the web.

[1] Assuming that wasn't the strategy all along.
Playboy's 1976 Interview of Jimmy Carter
Will do for the color scheme.

What I was trying to ask was: Should real world performance be more heavily weighed? I feel like right now all the CS curriculum focuses on is O() performance as the end all.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm getting at. Or cases where multithreading an application may look like it's going to bring obvious performance gain only to see the overhead kill your performance.
Why Apple Doesn't Trust Developers
The clever tricks used may make the code easier to write, but come at the cost of readability.

Given the choice between smarter compiler errors but types that fail to model the domain intuitively, and relying on a unit test suite but getting more readable code, I know which choice I'd make.
First, find a better color scheme for something you intend people to read. That was painful.

http://rdd.me/3ltgecrd
You really should write a book. I think anyone who has done something like this should write a book. Authentic stories of determination and persistence usually do well as books, movies and motivational speaking gigs.
You'll need a good editor and publisher of course but I think it's worth a shot ...
Right, but there is also the cases where a nlg(n) quicksort for the most part is slower than the O(n^2) version in the real world. I wonder if current CS teaching is completely ignoring real-word performance.
Which is why we should let life unfold as its going to unfold. Living in this time is what we should be doing.
Dear Steve Jobs, why have you forsaken India?
TL;DR

Yes, I know this is HN, not reddit, but it was just too apt not to do it.
>>On Tuesday evening, the Android team was made aware of a number of malicious applications published to Android Market. Within minutes of becoming aware, we identified and removed the malicious applications.

As per http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/fvepu/someone_just_... the developer of the original app had been trying to get Google to remove the offending apps for more than a week.

Google took no action until after a third party reported the problem on reddit.

The post says that Google acted "within minutes". However, it doesn't even mention the fact that the problem existed on the market for more than a week. Posting an update is fine, but it is troubling to see a post that refuses to acknowledge basic facts.

If they aren't willing to acknowledge a problem, it will be very difficult for them to prevent this and other problems from recurring.
They could be a typographer who is very legitimately angry at the whole state of affairs
PHP is the Walmart of languages, everyone uses it because everyone uses it, but nobody really has anything _good_ to say about it.
Connecting with a developer? My best advice would be to check my profile for my email address.

Wow what good advice.
Why do you dismiss this as dogma and not practical for real world use? I have used similar techniques in everything from bank customer portals to complex embedded systems. Our industry is plagued by bug ridden, crappy software. Please be a part of the solution, and not the problem.
The bill is fascinating!

The FT is always supposed to pay; if somehow it didn't, you can expect the piece to say so.

The tip is grouped together with tax, not separately enumerated.
I tried for a moment to figure out how to deselect all the text.
Oh, geez. Lighten up.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Echofon.

The issue with Quickbar is not that it is an annoying overlay, but the fact it was added. It is clearly something designed to stuff promoted posts down people's throat, and it looks like Twitter is going to keep doing it even with the new version (it just won't be an overlay). This is how you kill an established goodwill - a major strategic mistake that creates huge opportunity for the competing apps.

Twitter now faces a choice between (a) backing off and making Quickbar optional and (b) modifying their API T&C to force other apps prioritize trending/ported content differently. It'd be interesting to see what they do.
Combined Livestream and Flockdraw to let people draw remotely on our whiteboards
My understanding is that it is the norm in journalism for the interviewer to pay for the meal, when an interview is conducted over one.

I can think of a few reasons for this, but the ethical one (avoiding the appearance of bribery etc.) seems by far the most obvious and important.
Tactics for Designing Games While Depressed
Generally, performance isn't interesting in cases where asymptotic running time isn't dominant. You could sort 3 items with a couple of `if` statements, which would compile to a handful of microprocessor instructions. That's not interesting. Surely, in any data structure or algorithms course offered as part of a CS degree, the sorting assignments are for the "general sorting" problem. This implies relatively large data sets (and unpredictable, since you don't expect to be able to use a faster non-comparison sorting algorithm).
These have been good to me. Nice way to preserve permissions as well.

tar czf - files/ | ssh whatever.com "cd /path/to/; tar xzvf - "

ssh whatever.com "cd /path/to/; tar czf - files/" | tar xzvf -
These are not clever tricks, they are the mathematical foundation of our profession. Why do you assume the types fail to model the domain intuitively? Have you ever heard of denotational semantics?
If nothing else, this article shows how extraordinarily difficult it is to make a good api and also how hard it is to decide what a good api is.

For example, his scheme involves making it extremely hard to do a lot when your program could do something wrong - if your code could take back a move at the opening, you can't even compile it. This might be very good but it might very bad, depending on the complexity of undos.

Personally, I'm still working on determining what a good API is. I like the QT guidelines on the subject - they feel more down to earth than a lot of comments.

http://qt.gitorious.org/qt/pages/ApiDesignPrinciples
Yes, a few professors discussed situations in which a theoretically slower algorithm was better in almost all real situations, and situations like timsort in which it is best to fall back on an asymptotically slow algorithm when your inputs are very small.
We were taught what big O notation actually is, so yes. The whole point of big O notation, what makes it so useful, is that it hides information (namely constant factors). It's not supposed to "tell the whole truth," it's supposed to allow the analysis of algorithms not at any one runtime, but in an asymptotic mindset.

With big O notation, you're not interested in how fast an algorithm ever actually runs (for that is the realm of constant factors), but rather how its running time changes as the size of its input changes.
The journal's website[1] doesn't exactly inspire confidence either. It drops a lot of names and then takes submission fees using PayPal.

[1] http://journalofcosmology.com/About.html
Singel-Minded: Facebook Comments Are Another ‘Good News, Bad News’ Proposition
For certain skillsets (including some that the OP lists), charging less than $100 / hr should probably include some justification or people will just assume you're not any good because you're charging too little.
Right on, TotalFinder has solved pretty much all my remaining gripes with Finder.
We talked about these things as well. I remember studying how to calculate the percentage of data sets of a given size that would bring out the worst-case running time of quick-sort.

Really, I think the issue with all the criticisms of asymptotic analysis is simply that too many people (even brilliant programmers and CS majors) just don't understand what big O notation actually means. If an algorithm is in, say, O(n lg n), that says nothing about how fast it runs with 10 inputs, 1,000 inputs, 1,000,000,000, etc. It merely says how its running time changes as its input size increases. The algorithm could literally take 1,000 years with an input size of 10. That doesn't matter. At some input size, it will run faster than a different algorithm in O(n^2) that completes in 1 millisecond with an input size of 10.
Makeityourring diamond engagement rings a seo marketing idea
Their personal website + public projects?
I didn't get it at first. But Google helped me. Jay-Z XD
Incorrect title. From the about page: "The engine does not use WebGL because most people don't have enabled it yet."

This is not a WebGL game.
Just emailed you with a great opportunity to stretch your skills and make a mark for yourself in the consumerization of enterprise software, one of the hottest markets for designers today.
"within minutes" is pretty much an outright lie.

Just the PR equivalent of "nothing to see here, move along. app review? what's that? rainbows and unicorns and Androids!".
Check my comment above. It actually does charge at a slower pace as long as its off on standard USB ports. A message to that effect would be fantastic as it took me a long time to figure this out. Its almost like they wanted me to assume the only way to charge my device was with official chargers, computers, or drivers. Hmmm.
I have no problem with the mandate. It's the clear lack of competence in intelligence gathering that bothers me. Who honestly considers anything said on reddit to be of any significant value to state security matters? They might as well throw a dart on some board and make decisions that way if they are so desperate as to use postings from reddit.
I don't know if it's just me, but Pandora is a pretty low bar for music recommendations. I paid for Pandora One for a few years, but pretty much stopped using it after a few months because its playlists would be incredibly incongruous. My Radiohead station became overrun with, for example, Katy Perry despite my efforts to "thumbs down" songs that didn't fit the Radiohead sound that I wanted.

Invariably, every time I've tried Pandora since, it plays one or two songs that match (the same ones every time, which gets really boring) before it meanders off into a forest constructed of oddities and WTF moments.

iTunes' Genius recommendations / playlists, though, have been incredibly good for me. Relatively obscure / nuanced selections generate amazingly well-balanced playlists with good variety without straying too far from the sound I want to listen to. For example, RJD2's "Final Frontier" is followed by:

* DJ Shadow - Keep Em Close
* Blackalicious - Rhymes For The Deaf, Dumb, And Blind
* Wax Tailor - I Don't Know

Pandora, on the other hand, comes up with:

* Diddy - We Gon' Make It
* T.I - Doperman
* Diverse - Wylin Out

I know Pandora's selecting from a huge library and iTunes Genius is selecting from my library, but my library is incredibly diverse and is in no way narrow enough to improve Genius' results. I get great playlists for everything from Coconut Records to Mayer Hawthorne to The Black Keys to Johnny Cash to the Heartless Bastards.

Maybe Pandora was good for it's time, but it simply hasn't improved enough over time. It's as if Netflix still used their original recommendation algorithm.

tl;dr: Saying Echo Nest is better than Pandora is not a very strong statement.
Certainly not defending 'Alien Autopsy' or FOX News in general as reliable science resources... but that was on FOX TV. It aired in 1995 and FOX News Channel was not established until 1996.
the sad part is, nobody can see your email address. try logging out of HN and looking at your own profile.

if you want others to be able to contact you, you have to put that information in your 'about' field.
there's always a lot to talk about re: inDinero! Just wait for the press frenzy we'll be getting in the next few months... so much new stuff we'll be sharing with media.
While I don't want to minimize the pain of having your app copied and republished, I'd be very surprised if the author had submitted a properly sworn DMCA takedown notice, which is the correct way to get action on these matters. I submitted a DMCA notice for the Android market in november, and the offending application was gone within 24 hours. I'm fairly sure apple requires a DMCA takedown notice to pull copyrighted content from the app store as well.

http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=lr...