skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't want to suggest that anybody who speaks a language other than English is disadvantaged in any way. Quite the opposite.

But it is a fact that English is the language of technology (and science). If you want to participate then you really need to be familiar with the lingo. This is why I said "love it or hate it".

If you want to be a good hacker then you must learn English because there's a huge amount of advice on the web in English to help you. If you can't read it then you're missing out.

Starting a community in another language works in the short term, but it really isn't productive in the long term (either for the members of that community or the wider community). This was the key point I was making.

To address your specific point: what is six months? I've spent over 20 years learning to program in various languages. Why not spend six months learning English so that you can participate with the global programming community?
Oracle is a classic case where being first was everything. In Oracle's case, being first in number of databases sold.

I am on a new project in an 'enteprisey' environment and a decision was made to use Oracle database simply because that's what most people know.

Oracle became dominant (for a generation) -> lot's of dba's learned Oracle -> now many (in 2011) still choose it because that's all they know.
I was trying to post up material as soon as I heard it, which is why I didn't take time to add context. I was finding the US media coverage largely useless and many hours out of date, while the Japanese media/agencies were also slow at getting English versions up on the net (for obvious reasons).
I will confess that I do this too :-)
So he's an angel?
many valley startups expect six day workweeks and think that vacation is the time you spend between jobs.
Do 1x Programmers keep 10x Programmers down?
And the inverse, if the Japanese don't escape unscathed from radiation, will the global pro-nuclear contingent become anti-nuclear?

I suspect the answer to both questions is no. Firstly because unscathed is vague: 0% radiological impact? 3% impact? How much damage is allowed in the definition of unscathed? Secondly because the true impact will be debated, challenged and studied for decades. And thirdly because the pro contingent will insist that with knowledge gained from this failure, we now have enough knowledge to safely implement nuclear power.
Abu Dhabi, though, is in a similar monetary situation and yet it has prospered. While it has its blemishes and extravagance, it has turned its primarily-oil GDP into a well structure economy. It has diversified significantly. Instead of spending $2b on a race track, Abu Dhabi spent $700m on a solar plant.

I would liken the current status of the West as more aligned with Abu Dhabi. Dubai is something that could happen if our eyes get bigger than our stomachs.
The author writes, "Americans hug friends of the opposite sex, but during this hug only their shoulders touch, and participants end by rubbing each other’s backs as proof that the hug was nonsexual."

This is so true. There are 3 types of hugs: the sideways hug (as the author mentions), the "A" hug where just the tops of the bodies meet, and the full on bear hug. If you get an "A" hug after a date, that's not a good sign. ;-)
Why? It's just a kiss on the cheek, like you would shake hands. It doesn't mean anything... We do this in Greece too, every time you see someone again (or maybe meet someone for the first time) it's customary to kiss them, usually twice.
It makes web apps (that work with any platform) slower, while native apps are not penalized. That increases Apple's revenue because it will encourage people to make native apps instead of web apps, which has a two-fold effect: one, they get 30% of the app's revenue, and two, you have to buy an iPhone to use it.

I'm sure it's a bug, but if it's not, it's not really a bad thing for Apple.
Yacc is not dead
When will they allow to change security groups for a running instance? duh!?
The activity legally required by a mortgage is to pay the debt. The existence of a penalty doesn't change this - it simply makes the calculation of whether or not it is profitable to violate the agreement a lot simpler.

By your logic it is morally right to deliberately violate the terms of any contract as long as you accept whatever penalties the courts dish out. Instrumentally speaking, all contracts have an embedded option to break them and accept the legal judgement against you.

Personally I don't buy into this moral schema. But that's just a question of values, I suppose.
Well I was thinking in terms of 'completely unscathed' as in the failsafes etc. ultimately did their job and the radiactivity was contained (or kept within normal operating limits).

If there is 'some' fallout, then of course the debate will rage on indefinitely. Which is why I did not suggest the converse position that you put forward.
Having lived in London for a year, it was a far cry from Greece. Over here, we almost never talk to strangers, although I think I've developed a self-confidence that does allow me to do that and not sound creepy, nowadays. I've found that, in the UK, you can talk to anyone at the pub and it's natural, and in California even more so, but it's not that big of a difference.

Of course, maybe it's just me talking to everyone regardless of the norms, but people respond very well.
Why? In my experience an nudity in a non-sexual context does nothing. I have never been aroused by changing clothes with other people. It seems that the brain has a switch that is quite independent of nudity, which makes sense in times when people didn't wear clothing.
In a related note, I hate limp handshakes. I don't judge the person based on it, but it puts me off and maybe sets the mood a bit.
It's not fun. Clinging to the carpet is a good instinct. Many people run around in a crazy panic but there's really nowhere to go. Most people here climb under something sturdy right away. I visited an elementary school and they had special towel type things to tie over your head for padding during drills. Japanese people get lots of practice.

I believe most people in a quake get killed or injured by falling debris. You're probably more likely to get injured trying to run out of the building or by having glass or a piece of a building fall on you than you are of having the building collapse.

If you live in a coastal area, after the quake stops, we have now all learned step two: get your ass to high ground in a hurry.
An example of the partying culture in parts of Britain can be seen in these pics of the late-night crowd on a Friday night in Cardiff, Wales:
http://www.pbase.com/maciekda/cardiff_st_mary_street_zone

Definitely not "reserved" and "prudish", if you ask me... but I've never been there, so I don't know how far this is from the truth.
Dubai's not going to die. This article has some points, but they're very poorly put across. Much better articles have been written on Dubai.

Dubai is the business and financial center of the Middle East, apart from all the other stuff. The point is that they build up the services sector and infrastructure before they run out of oil.

Let's take this bit of the article:

"It’s a holiday resort with the worst climate in the world. It boils. It’s humid. And the constant wind is full of sand."

That's great and all, but what can they do about the climate? -- it's not like they chose it. Don't like the climate? Don't go to Dubai.

The rest of the article is similarly vapid.
VanityFair would not have written this article back in 2005 when thousands of western engineers were making millions in the world's largest tax-free construction site.

excellent point!

I've had the same tour experience as you with pakistani expats there 5 years ago, and they seemed utterly amazed by the whole Dubai thing, as we did.
I'm generally extremely uncomfortable touching people, even some people that I know pretty well.

Depending on the exact situation, the kind of touching discussed here would result in either me flinching/pulling away, or being less subtle in my expression of dislike, in a strong Glaswegian accent.
Why Twitter Should Think Twice About Bulldozing the Ecosystem
(=゜-゜)ノ UTF is in style
You do indeed. For me that page says: "Sorry, you need 20 karma to create a poll."
I think most rich people want to believe that they are not merely rich people—they want to believe that they are working (if they work) and spending for a higher purpose than mere consumption. The article does not condemn the citizens of Dubai for having money; it condemns them for being both cruel and crass (the Russian word nekulturny comes to mind).
http://www.corrupt.org/columns/martin_regnen/condensed_moldb...

To be fair, I didn't need to wear a tinfoil hat when reading _every_ paragraph!
Probably the opposite, making sure that the employees can figure out what they want to do with their career, and know how to get there without leaving the company is a good retention tool.
The byte-order mark (BOM) in HTML
Considering Oracle's MO, I wouldn't be surprised if they try to wipe out the Internet Archive's backup of Sun webpages for copyright reasons. Sigh.
Wow, this has damn near fuckall to do with hacker news.
He does, but you have to read between the lines (so to speak). In graphic design, objects feel anchored when they have some strong relationship to the other objects on the page or to the placement on a series of pages. You could plop everything dead center and be done with it, but most designers would say that that's terrifically static and dull. Usually designers like to work with a grid pattern. But here he's also working the corner angles, to get a further relationship to the page elements that helps to anchor the content (in a subtle way) without being static and without looking arbitrary. Ultimately, the only thing that's important is that it's just a very pleasing structure.
Ha, definitely. There seems to be some kind of bacteria neurosis embedded in the baby boomer psyche. I'm always astonished by the bottles of alcohol hand-sanitizer EVERYWHERE. And the hands-free paper towel dispensers. And the automatic flush toilets. With disposable toilet seat covers.

Yet somehow, nobody covers their mouth when they cough!
The issue affects UIWebView, which means it affects native apps too. Not quite to the same extent, naturally, but the issue is there.

Perhaps Apple crippled UIWebView as some kind of plausible deniability, so that they could go about their evil ways. /s
Ning party at Mohawk is cool!
YC companies are the cream of the crop and have YC's backing, so are in a different position to many other startups also getting funding.

YC companies are likely to be in a stronger position for debt to get converted or extended than most startups. They're more likely than the general market to be good quality companies in a stronger negotiating position, and Angels aren't likely to burn YC. Plus it's fair to say that they have the cream of Angel investors, who are likely to act in a reasonable way.

I think Adeo's argument is about what happens to the bulk of the market - so applies more to all the others. YC companies have been the exception to many a rule.

I hope it proves to be wrong. But if there is a panic/bubble-burst and a herd mentality develops to rush out of the market, it's reasonable to expect many individual angels will lose their nerve and want out, at least beyond the top end of the market represented by the YC startups.
If you think that participating in a startup event is building a startup you're highly mistaken. The reason to join a startup event is primarily meeting great people, networking, and taking advantage of the PR inherent in the event. The point is not to 'win' the event, the point is to hustle, code, market, and pitch.

I'm doing startup bus right now, and my team is excellent. We are Answer in 30 if you're interested. We don't go into the pitches expecting an offer, we go into the pitches to spread the word in the community, increase awareness, and meet people we can use in the future when we're in a better position. Of course we wouldn't turn the right offer down. It's unrealistic to think that you'll get an offer after 48 hours. However, if you can generate interest you should take advantage of it. My co-founder Margaux and I remarked today how wonderful it was to get 4 hours of sleep. We're taking full advantage of Startup Bus and SXSW to promote, pitch, and generate interest. We've interviewed at least 50 people for our startup (video answers to questons in under 30 seconds) at any time in the day we're driving the startup forward. And we'll never stop.

Even this post has potential to raise awareness. I have a feeling your perspective of the individuals involved derives from media and not from being a part of a startup event. If you'd like to know what my co-founder and I think I'll try to make a point to respond to this thread. But we've got a busy schedule including 4 hours of rehearsal tomorrow for a 5 minute pitch. We're dedicated and realistic that we may not receive an offer, but we're going to try, and if we fail we will pick ourselves up and try again. Startups are an ethos not an event.

We're pitching with blue hair, we're both burners, we created a 2 person team when most had 4 to 5, and some 9. We're out and about talking to our userbase, the spirit of rebellion is alive and well. We believe in the idea and will see it through the entire lifecycle. Startups die when the founders give up.

There are just as many amazing startups out there as was X years ago, it's just the noise floor is higher now. When we interviewed every startup on startup bus we were surprised how many people said that whether they'd continue was dependent on what the judges thought. It never even factored into our decision.
Disappointing Experience with Rackspace
They just evacuated 170,000 people. They may be able to cool down the reactor safely, but there is no chance they will escape from this "unscathed."
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Seems like a bad idea from an SEO perspective.
I took the requisite 30+ minutes to read the Lewis article on Ireland's finance problems, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And by having lived in Ireland for the last 3 years, I can say his analysis makes perfect sense to me. The nouveau riche still need some time to figure out how to spend their money wisely.
I agree. As a chinese guy, i've never even hugged my parents.
This is one area that has always disappointed me. Compiler-compilers just never seem to have lived up to the promise of making it easier to define your own languages. If anything, languages like Ruby have done a far better job (albeit in a more limited way).

I wonder at the reasons for this. Is this simply the wrong theoretical approach? If you look at formal grammars and how Yacc, ANTLR, etc deal with them, they're intended to be unambiguous. This is actually a problem in many ways.

PEGs (Parsing Expression Grammars) are a relatively new (~10 years) development that I find far more interesting for this reason as they solve the ambiguity problem by simply ranking the alternatives, which can have hideous backtracking possibilities (and tend to expensive in space terms) but in practice seem to lead to more natural definitions (at least in my limited experience).

I just have to wonder if we're going about this whole language thing the wrong way.
Pwn2own considered (somewhat) harmful
I went a step further. I compiled it from source. I never managed to get it working, except in a virtual machine... And that was so slow and painful that I gave up.
If it doesn't do any good this time, will the global contingent of people who continually and arbitrarily divide the world into static, irreconcilably opposed groups of people do it again anyway in the next discussion?
I loved this a lot more than I probably should have.
WiBi - O Buscador Que Dá Prêmios Em Dinheiro
Leadership Strategies
Yeah, I wasn't expecting to find racist slurs in Vanity Fair. (Non-native English speakers: see http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=towelhead for clarification.)
I think you approached this article with a different set of expectations than I had. It felt like a personal essay early on for me. I don't think it's meant to be an empirical distillation of the ways in which a few cultures are different from one another. I found it to be elucidating in the way that a standup comic might be (I recognize the pattern, but never thought of it concretely; e.g., 'Guys always leave the seat up.') Maybe you have a more broad exposure to different cultures than I have.

A wiki on cultural differences is a really good idea, though.
Fair enough. If I were younger, I'd probably be looking at it more from that perspective. :-)
Does Apple really want "native apps" that are really wrappers around web content they don't control?
Most of these are well-justified in his essays; obviously a condensed summary will not be very convincing.
Japan quake could hit semiconductor production, prices
Thanks for sharing. I know a lot of people who are burnt out by WoW and it hasn't been fun for them in a long time.
It depends on your goals and on how big you believe the company will ultimately be, and how likely you think it is to succeed, among other things.

Let's say your goal is to have "FU money." And let's say that, for you, "FU money" is, say, $4 million USD. If you believe the company will eventually be a $400 million dollar company, then 1% equity achieves your goal if the dream materializes as planned. If you only see the company as a $4 million company, then, well, the math doesn't really work out.

And note that I'm intentionally generalizing here and ignoring taxes and other factors. I'm also talking about an outright stock grant, not an option scenario. Options aren't necessarily bad, but I'd think that as the first hire and - if I understand correctly - the person who will be responsible for building (all|most) of the initial product, you should be getting some equity outright.
Thank you so much for the correction.

I had somehow read only the part about the sequence of food reintroduction having no association but missed the conclusion from that, which now of course seems obvious.

That really is something different. I'm surprised that this lede was buried in the articles on this result I've read. So the mystery continues. Very curious.
There are a couple of factors the author is wrong about.
1-dubai was designed and built to become just a trade/commerce hub of the region in the first place. The economic, immigration and even tax policies are designed to facilitate economic growth, not formation of a culture or anything else. That's what it was made for that's what you see there. Dubai was designed to not have any culture, that's why it was not built on the top of an old arab city with deep cultural roots but instead it was built on the beach of empty desert.

2-those who planned dubai knew that they will have to bring lots of foreign workers to fill the positions that will be created by enormous economy because local people won't work either of not satisfying salaries, lack of expertise or simply laziness. You can't create a culture of you bring thousands of people from different parts of the world to work and create environment that they don't want to have families in there and actually try push them out of the country when you are done.

So let's not act surprised here, it has become what it was meant to be.
Parsing is a very small part of the problem; and classical compiler-compilers introduce an extra indirection in your build process. Defining a type system (which may be compile-time, run-time, or both) and coherent semantics is more work.

Additionally, compiler-compilers exist in a particular zone of complexity. Your language has to be complex enough that it needs a dedicated parser rather than ad-hoc regex or recursive descent (and this needs to get over the hump of complicating your build process, which doesn't play well with modern IDEs, what with mixed source languages etc. (actions in rules)), yet not so complex or needing good error messages, recovery etc. that it again needs ad-hoc recursive-descent / operator precedence parsers. Most commercial compilers don't use yacc or anything like it; they instead usually use hand-written recursive descent.
Woo - nice to see this on HN (I'm one of the creators).

EDIT: We're serving this off ec2 + apache. It's all static html + js. Any quick tips for speeding things up?
Searching for New Tech at South by Southwest
Downmod? Care to elaborate?
From a marketing point of view it depends upon the context: For example "act now and we'll give you the first month free" sounds good yet "and if you don't like our product we'll give you up to thirty days to return it" sounds good in another context.
Before and After Earthquake pictures of Japan
hey, not an issue, i didn't take it that way at all. i'm pretty tactless so i'm sure all my comments could be taken the same way. :)
I agree that PEGs are more interesting.

Formally speaking, you can parse PEGs in worst-case linear time with a packrat parser. Practically speaking, the constant factor on that worst case is still much worse than the usual case (the number of nonterminals in your grammar is a factor of the constant factor.)

I've written a one-page PEG compiler-compiler (interspersed with many pages of text explaining it) at https://github.com/kragen/peg-bootstrap/blob/master/peg.md.
I would paraphrase this to "Nitro JS not enabled for fullscreen apps and UIWebView".

Their exact motives will be revealed when they announce whether they plan to fix it or not.

Sure looks like a convenient bug though. In a sense, Microsoft probably didn't intentionally loose to other browsers with IE6, it was just very convenient for them to keep the entire web application ecosystem gimped for a few releases of Office...
I think that message is out of date. I have exactly 20 karma but it shows me the same message.
I can't help but think that you are doing something that you think works but in reality doesn't; if anyone decided to touch my shoulder it would definitely break my current concentration and make me wonder what the hell you are getting at, just seems like cheesy friendly guy with no regards to personal space.

If you touched my elbow I'd probably just walk away (as an american raised male it just seems so wrong).

It would probably be different though if it wasn't someone who I just met and had an accord with.
Wow - both Topolsky & Patel are out now[1]. Before was Ross Miller[2] & Paul Miller[3]. With all these Engadget people leaving, I haven't heard about anyone leaving their rival Gizmodo.

I wonder how Arrington feels about this. Arrington was pissed over Topolsky trying to kill the AOL/TC deal[4].

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/12/hello-i-must-be-going/
[2] http://ohnoros.co/post/3407371558/goodbye-engadget
[3] http://pauljmiller.com/2011/02/leaving-aol/
[4] http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/16/blog-fight-rules-of-engagem...
And a response from the authors of the paper: http://matt.might.net/articles/parsing-with-derivatives/ (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2001736)
Zynga: 40-Year-Old Moms Are the New Hardcore Gamers
Since when is Angel investment a loan, anyway?
Is it up to the contestant to release the vulnerability or not? I must admit that I haven't read the rules so thoroughly, but could a contestant potentially win and never disclose the vulnerability even to the vendor? If so I agree with the article to some extent.

I do however think that there is some value with this event as it is one of very few such events to be covered by main stream media for some reason (at least here in Norway), and it puts the fact that browsers aren't always safe in the spotlight even for the general population.
What would you have called 'The Startup Foundry'?
I like reading the content, but I just dislike the name - I can't really explain why.

Does anyone else feel the same way? What would you have called it?

http://thestartupfoundry.com/
Math Becomes Music: What Pi Sounds Like