skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've used it once, for an app that holds data which was not a good fit for a traditional relational database. The app in question essentially involved collecting data in a web app and then using that data to fill out hundreds of PDF forms. It gets really complicated as the data has to be potentially formatted (say a phone number might need to be split 555-555-5555 on one form but one number per square on another), concatenated (name might need to join first, last mi), as well as data about what page and x/y coordinates things go on for each form.

Initial attempts in SQL were painful. The only real way to do it was a key value table, but that gets painful when it comes to formatting for web presence (notably, each document has sections with a group of fields, plus some fields may need to be grouped together such as a series of checkboxes, or parts of a name). So at that point we're looking at writing up XML files to describe the presentation of these 200 forms from a key/value table to the web app.

At that point I realized this was doable, but going to be a mess. Enter mongo. Mongo essentially let's us store a dynamic schema of documents. For each form we can stick it all in a single document, as a series of embedded models, with all metadata and values needed in one go. We also get nice revision control within that using mongoid. We can now fetch all the data for a form, as well as save all the data for the form, in one VERY fast atomic operation (we're talking 100-800 field definitions for each form). Having never used mongo, it only took me a few days to implement this complete with handling for all field types and performance was fantastic.

Mongo also made it quite easy to populate our data since we're essentially just storing a tree of key and values. We wrote up a tool that loads up the PDF's and let's us draw boxes on top of the fields and set up the metadata, then export that to a YAML file for each form. The YAML is then stored in a tradiational SQL database and is used to create a new form in the system by simply converting it to a nested hash and having mongoid save it. Slick.

I'm getting a bit wordy here, but I think it's a great real world example of the type of problem mongo is a good fit for. I wouldn't personally use mongo for something that a relational database is a good fit for, but for something like this it allows you to solve the problem quicker and with significantly less code to maintain (really, the CRUD code for forms is no more than with SQL and probably less since it's only one operation on a document, and my pdf form generator is < 200 lines of ruby).
correct. opcodes are unique to a processor architecture, not an operating system.
"Of course you're not going to rewrite Word by piping data around, for opening and saving and doing spell check."

No, but Apple had a project called OpenDoc that did something similar. The idea was that you'd have a UI centered around the document, and you could pull in spell check and editing and all kinds of other components instead of having a program like Word. It didn't work out, for various reasons, many of which were unrelated to the merit of the idea itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc
Chart shows low tax burden for rich
The name of your dog is "personal" information? Isn't it "dog-al" information? :)
Cute idea, but I surely wouldn't invest in it. At some point in the future the licensing scheme that favors physical DVDs over digital copies will come into line with reality and they're going to be stuck holding a lot of pointless hardware.
First sale doctrine. You buy it you can rent, sell or destroy. Can't edit or change. Argument would be if you are "changing" by encoding, I would assume that's why they are stressing the DVD player solution. If you look at some of the case law, the entertainment companies used to make arguments that playing a dvd in your computer violated first sale because you were sending a digital signal to a monitor. They lost those cases.
Not in our lifetime.
If it can still stay on topic when it becomes mainstream then people might be impressed.

I don't like the social aspect to it actually so I don't think I will ever use it. I much prefer how stackexchange works.
I don't think saying 80% or so of YC founders didn't go to top-tier schools means schools don't matter- I haven't seen the data on the applicant pool which is obviously relevant to this, but to me it seems like if 20% are coming from top-tier schools that's a much higher % than the pool of say, HNers that went to top-tier schools.

Of course this could simply be because the applicant pool has 20% applicants coming from top-tier schools and there is no bias in who is picked, but just saying that "80% or so didn't go to top tier schools" doesn't mean much without context.

And of course, in theory those that went to top tier schools should make better candidates, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have an advantage in the interview process because they went to a top tier school, rather that person is just more likely to be a motivated/intelligent individual.

(All generalizations up for debate, of course- merely pointing out that the 80% figure isn't exactly solid evidence for the point).
Github'd genome license has interesting restrictions for cloning
You know, you're probably fine if you always assume there's only one body tag.

That said, I've seen this and worse when looking at the output of highly-paid web dev departments at large companies. One site we recently saw had five opening html tags, head sections, and body tags. All the head sections were different, and none were closed, including roughly half the content tags we saw. It's a testament to the "be loose in what you accept" mantra of the web, and to the browser devs themselves, that this monstrosity rendered properly.

I'm not saying "enterprise" developers are bad by definition, but the enterprise sure is large enough for the bad ones to sneak by.
Works perfectly in the latest mobile build of firefox (albeit slowly), which is a pleasant surprise - I expected it not to. Alas, for some reason the stock android browser can't even finish loading it.
Thanks for the domain offer. I'll keep it in mind.
That was very difficult to read. It was more of a rant filled with rambling generizations than a coherant argument. And what an inflamatory headline. I've read it twice and I'm still not sure what he expects to accomplish from his accusations and random thoughts. If anything, I feel like he needs to leave his bubble. The designers he described weren't anybody I've worked with or met since my college years. If anything, being in the industry for any amount of time beats these traits out of you.

In closing:
Dear writer, you aren't that special.
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The destruction from the earthquake itself could've been a lot worse in Japan if the epicenter was closer to Japan and not 200km offshore. This map shows that the shaking in Japan was not of a destructive intensity in most areas. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake...

PGA is generally better than magnitude for analyzing an earthquakes true intensity near cities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_ground_acceleration
Japan Quake effects tech economy
tl;dr the total budget of the UC system is $19 billion and they're $1.5 billion short. State funding has been in decline for a decade and tuition costs to students have risen 280% in that time.

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/budgetmyths.pdf gives a quick overview and answers some of the really obvious questions (eg you cannot use funds for buildings to reduce tuition costs). It's not much on details or tough questions, though.

Budget request http://budget.ucop.edu/rbudget/201112/2011-12-budget-summary... and detail: http://budget.ucop.edu/rbudget/201112/2011-12-budget-detail.... Apparently legislators and/or the public don't consider this part very interesting which is why it's buried 4 levels down. More here: http://budget.ucop.edu/

Finally, we now spend ~6% of state funds on higher education (US/CSU combined) vs ~10% on our prison system, and yet we still manage to have 200% overcrowding in the latter. Amazing. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/budget/documents/state...

Can't tell you why I posted this here, really - I'm not in UC or paying off student loans, but I do think that good universities had a lot to do with California's economic development. I've been annoyed about the regents' (mis)handling of the budget for the last several years, but it is a fact that they've cut quite a lot already and are now starting to lose faculty to other states that can offer more pay. I'm not a finance guy so I wonder what other approach other people would take.
I think what irritates me about the people booking it out of Tokyo is that (a) it helps to panic other people; and, (b) fuel and electricity are on the short side right now.

Long rail journeys and trans-ocean flights don't help conserve either of these.
This.

No offense Patrick, you're a great dude, but I'm somewhat put off by that attitude. It's easy to say when you are in Nagoya; do you guys even have the electricity problem in the 60hz zone of Japan?

To clarify, I am still in Tokyo, working in Yokohama at the moment, and I don't think Tokyo has a problem. (I am worried about _long term_ exposure to elevated radiation, but that is neither here nor there.) I do think the foreign media has been blowing things out of proportion (to the point where I told my mom I had relocated to Yamanashi to calm her down).

However, these irritatingly smug articles about how everything is "alright", and not to "panic" are ridiculous. I keep getting such sanctimonious messages on my Twitter feed about how nothing's wrong; I suspect quite a few are infowar soundbytes meant for American consumption. With a lack of clear, trustworthy information, it is entirely logical to assume the worst and ride out the tide while waiting for objective sources of information (geiger counters, etc..) to prove things one way or another.

I "panicked" and bought 15 kilos of rice, canned foods and lentils. (Not to mention batteries, etc..) I filled up my bathtub with water, and stored as much as I could in safe places. (I also did it before the powerplants blew.) Most likely nothing will happen and I won't have to do food shopping for another 3-6 months. However, in the odd chance that things really do go south (another earthquake, etc...), I have an improved chance of getting out alive.

I don't begrudge anyone for feeling that there is more than meets the eye at play, and for leaving. Seeing the "macho posing" on twitter and facebook is stupid; no one is more masculine because you are still here. (I'm here, but only because my company stupidly decided to keep working when its entire staff is demoralized. BTW, if anyone wants a Python/Django engineer and project manager with a B.Sc, I'm willing to relocate. ;) )
I'm pretty happy with a "keep me logged in forever" checkbox. The thing I hate is "keep me logged in for a week" checkboxes. It's a pointless middle ground.
I generate a random password-like string and store it in my password database.
I don't need better movie selections as much as I need better streaming performance.

At this point, I stick to downloads, whether it's from Amazon or iTunes, because nothing ruins a good movie like stutters, freezes, or the dreaded Netflix "this movie cannot be played" error.
"I'm still trying to come up with a Linux-y way to do this."

How about the interactive python shell?

True that it locks out all other runtimes, but given the massive set of libraries, that may be a small price to pay? Same applies to <your favorite runtime with lots of libraries>.
I used this to impress my friends. The ones who are into "basketsball" were dumbfounded when I presented a complete sporty flowchart like I was one of the gang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRGDY
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You are forgetting that most of them are a long distance offshore 100+km. They can barely be felt in the cities, if at all.
Question: why don't the US military forces get involved in the rescue effort at Fukushima? Is it because the Japanese government does not want the US to get involved due to political considerations, or because there's not much the US forces could do to help at this point?
Great advice, thanks for posting. Good to know they consider sole-founders. I know its rare and probably getting more rare considering the talent pool of applicants out there.
If your application does something stupid with SQL, your whole awesome C10K-solving epoll-based framework comes to a halt waiting for the database to read 1M rows off disk.

No, a database connection is just another socket in your "awesome epoll-based framework".

Worst of all, your ORM likely hides the facts from you

Maybe if you're writing your app in BASIC? A good ORM doesn't hide the query logic from you, and there are plenty of popular languages that have good ORMs. The difference between using an ORM and not using an ORM is that you don't have a bunch of code to map SQL rows to application domain objects in your app. That's it.

(Note: Active Record and Class::DBI from 5 years ago aren't good ORMs. But people have written good ones in the intervening time, like DBIx::Class.)
Beluga is called out for text spamming, gets defensive about it.
"
Question: wtf

yeah... i knοw what u mean.... that is upsetting that we're getting a new sausage. i have nοthing against the mexican sausage.. lοl it's just that i like the οriginal 4 better cuz klement's sausages made thοse 4 fοr a really lοng time."

WTF indeed.
>If IP laws disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't be any closer to owning a Lambourghini.

Why do you want a Lambo?

To me this seems contrary to the ideals that would support the liberation of IP. Why should we be wasting resources on such things?

You'd probably be able to get any item you liked with a Lambo TM (or are we keeping some form of trademark laws? please?) and certainly be able to buy some sort of Ford/Toyota/Kia with a Lambo shell. But it will definitely be a knock-off.

Lamborghinis will still be expensive not because of scarcity but because they're a huge waste of money and so in practise few people really want to spend the money on them.

If you wanted a Volvo instead I think you have a chance but you'll probably find it extremely hard to get one that lasts more than a few months, is safe. It will probably be even harder to get parts that are actually worth fitting.

If you wanted an iPad then I think you stand a chance and it might actually be half decent, Chinese factories are already making ripoffs of such things after all. Apple would have to own the supply chain outright otherwise the manufacturer will undercut them (sell at lower price exact same product) and Apple would be left with the R&D and design bills.
Let's take a vote. All in favor of never using the term 'Best Practices' ever, ever, again?

(no offense to the article's author.. actually looks really lucid and well written. I just tire of the idea that Best Practices™ exist. They don't.)
I didn't "land" this -- I didn't seek it and don't particularly want it. Folks in the media in several English-speaking countries abroad have been contacting me repeatedly for the last couple of days, and when contacted I try to say "Yes, I would be happy to do that" with the goal of improving the reporting available in English and averting panic.

As to why I'm suddenly several reporters go-to guy for this? The biggest reason is that I speak English and am accessible. They know about me because my blog post on Sunday got widely distributed abroad. (I suspect many of them follow Jimmy Wales, who retweeted it.) My blog has working contact information on it. Also, since the media are pack animals, as soon as anybody quoted me then I was a Certified Expert (TM) and so everybody else should quote me, too.

They really should be talking with the guy I talked about in my blog post who actually pushed the button to turn on the warning system at our clients out east. (Someone at the company found I had mentioned them and passed the word around. He sent me a message saying that reading it gave him hope and pride in trying circumstances. I would trade a hundred thousand angry emails from people for that.) Or they could talk to any city office in Japan and ask "So, what is SOP for this sort of thing?"

Either of those would be better choices than me. But, again, they don't speak English and they're not in reporters' Rolodexes. Through a quirk set of circumstances, I am. So when they call and ask "How much should we be panicking?" I say "Don't panic." (A radio station wanted my opinion on the likelihood of them getting poisoned by radioactivity from Fukushima half a globe away. I'm not a nuclear engineer. Of course I immediately said "I am not a nuclear engineer, but to put your listeners at ease, that will not happen." It's the right answer. It probably shouldn't be coming from me, but someone should say it, loudly.)
What bothers me is that so many people say everything is fine. How do we know? The people in charge have left the building !

"Its under control" means someone is actually controlling it. However if everyone has left the plant it can't be under human control!
Which is the problem with democracy.
It seems to show a rather low tax burden for everyone by historical standards. I wonder if part of the issue is that income taxes have fallen but various state and local taxes, and fees for government services, have gone up instead. I think people might be willing to tolerate a somewhat higher 'headline' rate if taxation were simpler and didn't involve so many different transactions and associated administration.

an oldie but goodie - the growth (in pages) of the US tax code: http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2005/12/measuring-...
Dodge tsunami charity scams http://www.atg.wa.gov/BlogPost.aspx?id=27544
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Notice that most of the affected advertisers are the ones running the CPM campaigns, not the CPC campaigns.

The defrauded CPC campaigns were directing people to sites with video content that were running mainly display advertising campaigns. These display ads were mainly from brand advertisers that do not care too much about clickthroughs or conversions (e.g., Coca Cola, or Continental, or Verizon, or ...).

So, even though the guys running the CPC campaigns (e.g. Mevio) were victims of fraud, they were getting the (invisible) traffic and they were selling the display ads to this traffic. Not that Mevio et al. do not care. Quite the oppositve. However they were just getting more traffic. Why would you research your own CPC ad campaign that is effective in bringing you traffic?

I tell you, the scammer has executed this beautifully.
Shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has kids themselves, I've seen this effect over and over with mine.

Interestingly, to some extent I also see the same effect with grown-ups. When I was building machine tools and inspection equipment I was sometimes required to write comprehensive documentation and give training, other times the tool was thrown over the wall and the technicians and operators made it work as best they could. I've had cases where I've come back and found that the processes they developed on their own were more creative and better than what I would have asked them to do, also they often found new uses and approaches I hadn't thought of.
I dunno, "you, WOMAN, only doing X because your HUSBAND is" is pretty sexist. Explicitly so. But whatevs, time spent is time wasted.
Updated List of Deep Link Directories
Even worse is when they ask for authentication with a yes/no question based on something personal about the account. "Is your mother's maiden name Smith?" "Are the last four digits of your social security number 1234?".
I'm alone most of the time except for my cats and you guys.

This has just become my most favorite part of all HN comments.
Thanks, this is like totally awesome. I've often wanted to hack shaders, but never really got to it. This seems like a nice tool for that purpose.
my strategy is after a person had mentioned his/her name, I'm gonna recite it 3 times. it works for me.
Our team had a college dropout, someone who went to a pretty weak liberal arts collect (me), and someone who went to a good state school.
Php|architect - join us in helping the victims of the tragedy in Japan
Ask HN: Django Materials
After my first submission a user suggested I try python/Django before I go any further with Ruby. Suffice it to say, I'm burning through learnpythonthehardway.org... I'm considering purchasing Django 1.0 Website Development written by Ayman Hourieh as the next step.

Before I pull the trigger, I am looking for some trusty HN opinions.

Thanks all.
"A few hours" could be anything between 2 and 8-10 hours. When I was a teenager I'd get in front of the computer as soon as I got back from school and keep the computer on until I went to bed. That added up to ~6 hours a day on average. Anything more would be unrealistic for someone who needs to go to school every day.

Some of the other discrepancies, though, look more suspicious. The very notion that a security-conscious person who has just committed a federal crime would spill so much about his/her life in a random newspaper article reeks of BS.
Definitely older than Hacker News. I got it from Reddit, and I think Reddit got it from UseNet (possibly via 4chan or IRC).

I paraphrased though, and the grandparent post must have a better memory (or better Google skills) than me, which is probably why you can't find an exact match...
Clickables:

First sub: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2303991

Django 1.0 Web Dev on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Django-Website-Development-Ayman-Houri...
They do serve some purpose in encouraging non-musicans to dig deeper. I think the first time you record your own music and are reasonably happy with the output it's a huge confidence booster.
"andyv, the man that knows little about modern grammar."

Oh the horror.
Her father is a software engineer, though. It's much easier to learn pretty high-level skills in a field when you're young if you have a parent in that field.
Yes, but people don't give a flying fuck about coal or coal seam fires when globally coal seam fires release 40 tons of mercury into the atmosphere, 3% of the worlds annual CO2 emissions. Not to mention they're releasing a crap-load of radioactive materials on their own.

People are idiots. They worry about nuclear power going "wrong", but don't worry about all the other far more dangerous power technologies working "right" and being more deadly.

Nuclear power is like a rubber bullet. When it goes wrong, it can kill someone but 99.9% of the time it's phenomenally safe. Coal and Oil are essentially like lead bullets. They can kill someone each and every time they're fired, but people are used to it so they don't care.
There was just an article on HN a few days ago about how hackers and way too mean to each other. I don't think the author read it because this article has nothing to do with helping forward things.
If the problem is broken infrastructure, how can Americans "actually provide" that? Giving money, etc, will be useful once transportation and communication infrastructure is back online, but isn't Patrick's comment based around the fact that the thing Japan most needs is expertise in rebuilding and maintaining infrastructure? While Japan certainly has world class engineers, isn't it possible that they're a little overworked at the moment and could use US expertise as well?
There is a PyCon video about Dropbox:
PyCon 2011: How Dropbox Did It and How Python Helped
http://pycon.blip.tv/file/4878722/
I wonder what this does to their PageRank...
There is a price performance tradeoff at some point.
Counter example - affordable new AIDS medicines Or better internet connectivity/speeds in America.

While competition does have its place for helping humanity, it should also be recognized as not being useful in the production of other types of goods.