skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most of these are really easy. I got a partial derivative of a constant. And honestly, if you can't answer basic math questions, you probably have no use for a quantum random bit generator.
Ask HN: What's the big deal about Ruby and/or Rails?
It's not a rhetorical question, I'm really, honestly, trying to understand what the big deal is about Ruby. I'm not trying to start a "my programming language / framework / environment / technology is better than yours" fight, so I'm not looking for opinions on why Ruby might be better or worse than (pick your poison). I'm just trying to understand why and how Ruby is getting so much momentum, and whether it really matters, or is just one of those meme things that happens in a close community like tech startups.
Ha, by this logic, a large majority of the current world population aren't humans :)
This is me to a tee. And it's terrible. It's such a bad feeling to have so many assignments or projects pile up while you imagine how perfect they could turn out.

In the end, all of the things I sit on for much too long get done, make other people happy, make the grade, and work, but there's always that lingering thought in the back of my head: I could have done this so much better.

I need to stop doing this...
You demonstrate a rather charming lack of awareness of how universities actually operate.

The last thing on their minds is the comfort and well-being of their ovinian undergrads.
Yes the shady-looking site is the one ... I know it's just a horrible ridiculous "spec-ops / warrior-themed" silly uber landing page. But the sports / education / science bits behind it are sound and a lot of effort, expertise and coaching experience went into the videos. My guess is that this guy tried hard to be his own marketer or hired some "ebook sales copy pro" or his cousin to do the overall presentation. It looks shady but isn't one bit once you get to the actual contents.

Maybe better to start from here:

http://www.rmaxinternational.com/forum

The TacFit coaches are also RMAX coaches or somehow connected but sell their own TacFit creation under their own label it seems.
I am curious as to what methods/strategies you implemented to bring server load to acceptable levels.

Author mentioned the helpful assistance of Rackspace.

More specifics, please.
So who's going to this year's conference?
Even if you were to ignore the iPad apps that were available from the early SDK release, you'd still be comparing "devices with no platform-specific apps" to "devices with no apps".
There's also a graphic further down in the article about how to prevent various injuries (search 'kevin brown'):

http://www.mensjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/picture-81.jpg
I hear people say things like this all the time. What does it really mean? Do you believe that politicians are bribed with big cases of money? Or are you referring to campaign contributions?

I would probably attribute it to agents wanting to further their careers by catching some people and getting them convicted. All of the agent's office buddies are going after copyright violators, so they do too.
I did a blog post on using Starbucks as a main business-person hangout, and got some criticism on it. Which is ironic, cos everyone WANTS to use it as a main business-person hangout.

I just think its so much untapped potential for Starbucks.
Sounds like a great way to stock up on fake accounts submitted by people who just want to know if they got the question right
The author clearly equates fitness with strength, and some of his claims are way off.

Here's one: "...maintaining cardiovascular fitness doesn’t really take much more than breathing uncomfortably hard for about 20 minutes, three times a week"

As a former competitive runner, I've read hundreds of studies and abstracts about improving various cardio-vasuclar metrics. 20 minutes, three times a week is barely enough to generate even modest VO2 max improvements. Ideally it takes 40-60 minutes, five times a week, plus an extra long session of over 90 minutes. This is about the minimum training you'll see in a 5k runner or 1000m swimmer. Top 10k runners generally require 70-90 minutes a day, even when doing interval work and have long runs of over two hours. The results of this sort of training are measurable. LT, VO2max, resting HR and a variety of other metrics show a dose dependent response.

Many studies[1] have also demonstrated that even recreational distance training results in a wide variety of benefits that weight training does not, even including increased rates of neurogenesis and longer telemeres than average for one's age.

Weight training clearly is superior for increasing muscle and bone mass, but it isn't a magical silver bullet that improves everything.

[1] I've cited all of these on hn before, most don't have paywalls and they should be googleable.
It's a reverse captcha! If you answer too quickly it knows you're a computer.
I had the same experience as you. My strategy is to tell people that although I know how to code, I've made a decision to focus on design. This way I don't get the "jack of all trades" label.
yeah but is entertaining to see former MS serf get his ass handed to him is it not? :)
Generally speaking users are stupid. But they are absolute experts in knowing what they like and don't like, and what they will and won't pay for.
Well, to be fair the easiest captcha's are easy high school level equations and (as someone else already pointed out) if you can't solve these you have no business obtaining an account for extremely high quality quantum random numbers. (I believe they provide about 7.8 or 7.9 bits of entropy per byte)
I want to see how it handles a blowout...in the rain.
Cloud Ping
Libya turns off its internet: this time it's a flatline
That Apple is getting way too much sympathy for something that anybody else would be crucified for.
The argumentation is as follows:

* Cutting and pasting doesn't work as nice on an iPad as on a PC
* Therefore, the iPad is worse than a PC

* Also, Apple sells a lot of macs
* Therefore, they must have crippled copy-pasting on purpose

* Therefore, the iPad 2 isn't better than the original iPad

Doesn't make sense to me.
Oscar Night in Hollywood (1948)
This is amazing. I remember an old CMU paper from 1996 about AI driven cars being one of the reasons I decided to go to grad school. It's a classic IMO, and a very accessible introduction to the whole problem: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.15.4... (click the cached pdf icon in the top right corner). I imagine the solutions have moved on since then though.

Anyone care to hack up a little frontside car camera and steering position sensors?
This sounds more like kidnap-ransom than sales to me.
Designing for the best user experience is the same as designing for revenue.
I suspect it's because of Rails and the commercial potential of the web these days (Groupon, etc.).

As an aside, it seems like a pretty nice GP language in its own right. I had to write some shell scripts for a Windows box and picked Ruby largely on a whim. Two months later, and I've got a stack of Ruby books and I'm going user group meetings.
Your third paragraph sums up the reason for the problem the original post described. Someone has software engineering experience in Foo Language, but wants to get a chance to work professionally with Blah Language for whatever reason. Obviously, his years of Foo programming aren't completely transferrable, and you point out that he's not going to compete for a role with someone who's been a Blah programmer all along. However, if he recognizes his lack of experience with Blah and applies for a junior or even entry-level position, you say that there's a risk he won't be happy with the salary and will skip town.

Your solution hinges on people accepting OS, hobby, academic or otherwise "extracurricular" experience as meaningful. I have not found that to be the case, and the other post someone alluded to described exactly that. I'm not accusing you of causing this problem, but you've highlighted it so perfectly that I think it warrants a little bit of exploration.
Yes! Not just Olark though, I've had a similar experience using SnapEngage.
Not only that, but our "nature" has changed considerably since those times. Evolution has been far faster, likely 100 times faster the past several thousand years than it was before civilization. 15,000 years ago, nobody was lactose tolerant, nobody had blue eyes and who knows what else was different.
Navigating the age of democratized media
Indian government blocks Typepad, Mobango and Clickatell
Do C10K testing with gevent
Isn't using math questions to stop bots(computers), a bit like trying to stop tanks with barbed wire?
Thanks for letting me know. Great tool though.
Creating A Company Culture That Attracts 2,000 Applicants A Month
Making 2 threads in under 4 hours on HN about your website/portfolio seems like a pretty good marketing strategy to me.

/s
Where to begin? What to choose?
Hire More Help and Fewer Helpers for Your Startup
SEO Lessons from the NYT JC Penney Google Link Building Exposé
would you take coding advice from someone that couldn't write "hello world" in C? Then don't take fitness advice from someone that, by his own admission, could only squat 40 lbs before he wrote the article...
Maybe what a grandmother would recognize as food.
I think that one of the weaknesses of Pollan's saying is how it can be interpreted by people who haven't read his other stuff. Taken literally, someone much younger than Pollan might think that Pollan advocates for broccoli to be boiled and smothered in Velveeta.
i even made a typo in my login handle >_<

got the question right though.
I'll stick with Lavarand, thanks... good enough for my needs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand
Ask HN: Who are your favorite charities and why?
I don't know if it makes much sense to anyone, had I known it was going to be cringely I'd have not clicked.

My general opinion is that copy & pasting is pretty good in the iOS, it's certainly good enough for my everyday usage.
Aspose.Newsletter March 2011 Edition is out Now
Aspose Newsletter for March 2011 has now been published that highlights all the newly supported features offered in the recent releases of its JasperReports exporters, SQL Server rendering extensions, .NET, Java & SharePoint components. This month’s technical article explains how to validate one or more signatures in a document & check its security certificate. Also a demo for updating chart data with OLE frames using Aspose.Slides & Auto-filtering data, in the technical tip section.
Sure, the important part is the first two items. Creating a browser app means it is cross platform and flexible... the move to browser apps for everything illustrates well why MS knew they had to try to kill Netscape and control the browser market.
I would imagine way better than a human. Computers don't get scared.
The cringely.com didn't give it away? :)
Jason Fried (37signals) talks about design and creativy [video]
There was a whole section related to bad coding practices, so I don't think this article was as simple as "Devs awesome; users suck".
I originally wrote the HTTP ping tool for this blog entry:
http://blog.restbackup.com/how-to-use-amazon-ec2-as-your-des...

But Posterous doesn't allow JavaScript, so I had to cut it out. Today I decided to put it online and try out several technologies:

* My DNS Registrar's domain forwarding feature, to forward
http://awsping.com/ to http://www.awsping.com/
* Amazon S3's new index document feature
* Amazon CloudFront

I'm happy to say that they all work great. But the ping script doesn't work in Opera.
I don't think it would be hard to do, in fact, they reverse the whole point of a CAPTCHA.

A CAPTCHA is supposed to be a task that is easy for humans, but difficult for computers. High-level mathematics is difficult for humans but easy for computers.

They do have some success of telling computers and humans apart, though.
Actually I find that much easier than blurred text on random lines in the background
do you know how it compare to Insanity - I'm especially interested in the Tabata interval angle.
Ugghh...how annoying.
The number that wvenable mentions is shipped units and conveniently ignores Samsung's admission that sales are low.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/01/31/android-tablet-marke-share...

When you have to twist numbers to demonstrate a drop in Apple's market share, it's a good sign that Apple's market share is sitting pretty.
How are these posts getting on the front page? The content both shallow and banal.

Designers should write their own HTML and CSS if they care so much about alignment and margins. It's difficult to know the limits of your medium if all you do is make PSDs.

What's worse than coders who can't design and designers who can't code are coders who can't code and designers who can't design. I've met an unfortunate number of those.
I tried a few, and it looks like most (all?) of them can be answered by wolfram alpha.
Nic Brisbourne, Partner DFJEsprit, Quirky London Venture Capital Industry
It seems like folks in cities, and some foreign countries, don't understand how much different the transportation situation is out in rural America. Getting to mass transit is frequently no easier than getting to your actual destination directly, even for non-trivial trips.
I could easily write a captcha breaker for this...It's much simpler to do than one with fuzzy characters.
I take "the iPad 2 isn't even better" to mean:

- Although iPad 2 is good, it would be even better (than itself) if it made copying & pasting easy

- Copying & pasting is more difficult on the iPad 2 than it could be

- Therefore the iPad 2 could be better (than itself)
I'm not sure about Sony's Vaio line but a lot of computing/electronic manufacturers will build specific models for various chain stores, not sure why they do this but I guess it's to head off comparison shopping by consumers.

Apple, of course, refuses to play by the rules of its retailing partners.
It's not important what is a fact, it's important whether masses will believe him. An they will. Period. Steve Jobs is marketing expert and showman of the century plus he produced few most revolutionary products in the world. Nobody really cares whether he gets his facts right because they are completely irrelevant for majority of people. He does what it takes to sell it and it works. When it comes to stretching the truth I don't think any company out there is clean but we only notice those things with top ones.
Agreed. If you're prototyping a network-facing application or even building an initial proof of concept, take a look at EventMachine. Lots of bang for your buck.

https://github.com/eventmachine/eventmachine

https://github.com/eventmachine/eventmachine/wiki/Code-Snipp...
Focusing on Problem vs. Focusing on Solution
Me too. I think the worst part is when I "sit on [it] for much too long." I always find myself holding onto projects/design papers/documentation because I know (or, actually, think) that I will be able to fine tune them further and make them "perfect".

Even though I submit great work, I end up getting less work done and as a result, end up looking less competent than some of my peers.
I'm not sure about this, but have you checked moneybookers?
I think the point is that we don't fight it "natually", we fight it with medicine and vaccines. We also have access to clean water which, if we did get malaria, would prevent us from dying from rapid dehydration(which in my understanding is the primary cause of death from malaria.) This is the argument against the caveman diets...
If it allows the car to be driven. I'm afraid I can't let you do that Dave.
Foolproof Fundraising Tips for Non-Profits
It's just a little more targeted than the average captcha. It should weed out both bots and people you wouldn't want using the website in the first place.
I'll start.

Water.org because without clean water there is no possibility of a good life.

Halotrust.org that does landmine removal in countries and helps people with prothesis. My tax dollars removed these people's limbs, this is the least I can as a sorry to US's use of cluster bombs.

And TheFood Bank, where my dollar can magically buy 4 dollars of food.
Same here, or was...

Just quit thinking about it and at least try something.

I've accomplished so much more since I started doing that.

If you wait around till the perfect idea with the perfect opportunity you're going to be so late to the game that you'll probably be dead last.
Or you can be one of the many programmers whose job has nothing to do with the web, or even with UX. We still exist!

That said, I am in the process of putting together a personal web page, and this stuff is a pain. I don't envy you guys.
What's wrong with using 11px?
In McNealy's admission, Sun underestimated 32 bit and thought everyone was moving to 64 bit. Maybe they under and over estimated the price/performance ratios of the two, and overlooked the importance of clustered server farms running Linux.

CPUs aren't like engines, and servers aren't like cars. Cars can't be tied together, and not everyone wants or needs a sports car.
Fuduntu 14.9 Release Candidate is ready for testing
This looks like the derivative of a constant value, which is always going to be zero. I reloaded the page several times, and each time, no matter how complex the formula looked, it was always a constant.

Still, it is cute.
Hardly. You can just type it into WolframAlpha, that works perfectly. (Which is quite funny because you are letting the computer solve something that’s supposed to keep computers out.)

You don’t even need to learn any fancy syntax, “derivative of” works great. (High school math homework would be so much easier with WolframAlpha.)
This is a great idea. I hope applied mathematics in the 21st century will leave purely quantitative fields like physics and engineering, to reach more quantitative ones, for example finance and economy (already done), biology, ecology, and perhaps social sciences like anthropology.
When I was going to the gym (old school) three times a week I couldn't do a single pull up. Once I quit in two weeks or so I could do my usual slack ass five pull ups.

Funny thing is that I still could only do 10-20 pushups but they were effortless, completely different then at the time I was slacking.
Um, the police do this all the time with stolen property.
There were more than 3,000 tablet specific apps on day 1, and there was no competition.

New platforms don't automatically lead to a gold rush. There hasn't been one for the palm pre.

The argument you are making is that normal consumers will pick a more expensive android tablet with very few apps over an iPad 2 with thousands of apps, some of then mind-blowing on the basis that there will surely be a developer gold-rush.

Even if there is a developer gold-rush, people will still have to wait a year for then software to be written.

I can see enthusiasts doing that by but why on earth would a regular consumer?
Am I the only one saddened by the fact that this would have been a piece of cake back in high school/college, but can't remember how to do them (integrals) anymore? :(
Ruby benchmark shows OpenBSD improvements
Oh they're so sensitive these "developers".
If you are interested on the details of the measurements of galactic distances, Terry Tao has created an amazing pedagogical review:
http://terrytao.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/cosmic-distance-...
That is not the point, and Hutterer never said "devs are clever", much less "users are stupid". Those are your words. Read the article again.

I found it amusing, as it has been happening to me lately.
Show HN: I jumped on a meme - SheenMe.me
The required value seems to be a small integer. A bot trying zero each time, IMO, has good odds passing the captcha.
Feel free to view-source and copy-paste mine :) http://petervandijck.com/

(Unless you want it to be pretty of course ;)
Hasn't bothered me yet, FWIW. I don't think most people will mind unless you start posting your link in nearly every thread. At some point it starts to become obnoxious, spammy and annoying, but it's subjective.

That said, there will always be "that guy" (or girl) who sees one link to your service/product and immediately starts wailing and moaning "oh noes, spam!" You can't please everybody.
The notion of "use it or lose it" is always disappointing, but honestly if you learned them once you can learn them again.
Exactly. Never have understood why Cringely gets so much publicity - I rarely see him write anything that's better than a random blogger. Still, though... props for Triumph of the Nerds, it was entertaining.
I am so happy I saw this post because I know that I'm not the only one. We just need to forget about being perfect and get the job done, while enjoying it.

I think if I enjoy doing stuff slightly less than perfect, or even just a 'good' job, then I would definitely be much happier.
This is really very interesting.

My best ping time is 41ms to the Europe region. But a typical ping to our colo servers is 18ms. AWS isn't a high performance option.
Ugh. That's a nasty experience. Did you get the Verizon plan, or did you try to activate it without configuring 3G first? Up until launch day, everybody believed you needed to activate it on Verizon before WiFi would work.

My Xoom had greasy fingerprints all over the protective plastic film, which was gross. But once I peeled the plastic off, everything worked great. It found my password-protected wifi network without any configuration at all, which means that Google must somehow have copied the access credentials from my phone. Freaky but convenient.

I've seen a couple of the built-in apps force close in about a week of very heavy use, and the OS rebooted once after I did something unkind to it.

It's definitely a 1.0-quality product, with some rough edges, but my experience has been vastly better than what you went through. If it weren't so pricey, I'd happily give one to a non-technical family member. Oh, and if it had decent video-watching options: The biggest problem right now is the lack of Flash and Netflix.
You don't feel fit if you can run 5k but you struggle to move a fridge or feel strain while lifting up you kid or your woman.
Great book. This is the one book that got me started getting professional about programming. I should really read it again these days.
I don't think insurance and traffic tickets are nearly as big of a roadblock as safety regulations for selling a computer that creates 2,000lb projectiles with humans inside.
I think you should not say that they are moving farther apart, but that they are getting farther apart.

The weird thing with this expanding universe is that things can get farther apart from each other without moving. Similarly, distances between objects can grow faster than the sum of the speeds of those objects.
Or the designer who “sucked at math even in primary school”, is a “left-brained person”, or “doesn’t want to mess up the code”…

I believe that should have been "is a right-brained person".
That's a myth IMHO, there is no evidence that this is true.

I have observed a few devs who are not so good at understanding a different point of view while they are also fairly attention getting. I think this is where the idea comes from. Also, it's pretty hard for a non-dev to understand a dev's POV, which adds to the communications problems.
I will be going, and will probably deliver one of the keynote (hour-long) speeches.
I buy my random numbers from a guy in the alley behind my building. He says they fell off a truck.
Do you find yourself making telephone calls that are disconnected numbers or are answered by someone unexpected?
By your standard, he shouldn't make a future claim even if the certainty is 100% because it hasn't happened yet. Most of us don't even hold ourselves to that standard, and I wonder if you do.
Actually, the captcha is quite easy to extract (and solve), so it will probably filter out humans, not bots :)