skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sometimes I find the copyright follies amusing, sometimes not. Its important to understand that when an organism is dying it has no compunctions about killing nearby organisms if, for some reason, it feels that its actions my lead to it not dying. Sort of like when a person loses their balance on a balcony, and in their panic grabs the person next to them and they both get pulled over and fall to an untimely end.

As I am fond of telling people, the news business is alive and vital and healthy, the news paper business is dying like cold blooded reptile in an ice age. Why the discrepancy?

News is, at its heart, and information business. Data is collected, it's analyzed and digested, then presented as editorial for consumption. You can think of this as a value chain where raw data costs $x to acquire, people (or algorithms in some cases) cost $y to convert that data into news, and it costs $z to reproduce and distribute that news to consumers. Consumers pay for the information either directly (via subscription) or indirectly (by tolerating being marketed to) or doubly indirectly (by giving up demographic data which will be later used to market to them). Sometimes its a combination of all three.

Take the revenue (ads and demographics have to be converted to $ first but they all convert) per reader, multiply by the number of readers, subtract off the cost and voila, your gross margin. Lop off of that what you will for recurring costs and presto you're a news business. If the remaining margin is greater than 0 your a profitable news business, if its less than 0 you are a dying news business. Newspapers are generally lumped into the latter category.

Newspapers are carrying a lot of costs they don't need to carry (printing, newsprint, delivery services). There was a perceptive write up about how the New York times would save money if it sent everyone a Kindle and just stopped printing the paper [1]. In fact it could send all of its subscribers a free Kindle, cut the cost of a subscription, and make more per issue than they currently make. Its not a question of 'making it up in volume' its about 'the cost of goods has just dropped 42%.'

Papers are an old old institution. As institutions they don't accept wholesale change to their business model (even if it means survival). They have both a strong cash base generally and political base. So rather than move past the Asteroid strike/Ice Age and join the Web 2.0 mammals on the other side, they are flailing away in their newsprint and india ink tar pits. People walking by the tar pits have to watch out for them grabbing them in an effort to keep from dying, to bad they are already dead.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/printing-the-nyt-costs...
How have the things in the article changed since then? Does GitHub still have no office and four employees?
This makes me want to get a tinfoil hat. Now do I give up one of my most vital tools because someone knows where I am at almost all of the time? Do I trust the government to make sure this data is not misused? Or do just go all in and make sure the google, fb, twitter etc have it too and continue to whistle through the graveyard? There has to be a realistic middle ground to protect privacy but with the global data cloud surrounding us I have no idea what that would be.
I went through a phone screening with them recently, and they had a first phone interview set up. But the more I thought about how the screening went, the more it irritated me. I would not have sat through that were it not for the "Google" label. I decided that label or no, I have better things to do with my time than play "20 questions" where you're not allowed to use reference materials. That's not how I work at all. So I politely let them know that at the present time, their firm had been declined an opportunity to work with me, or something to that effect.
A lot. I work for one which has a similar product. Though we are much more than just twitter, a bit less real-time, more in-depth analysis though.
downvote.
Do you honestly feel that your idea is far more valuable than my ability to build it (which I could do in about 4 hours)?

is the shortcut you are talking about?

also, as a lot of people are talking about here, a pop culture question (ultimatum?) isn't really appropriate for filtering out anything (except maybe pop culture).

E: comma and spelling, geez
Dual Boot in Mobile (Android and Windows Mobile) using RunDroid
I agree. It's horrible and it directly affects health and disease. I don't know how to quantify that, at least with respect to this discussion. I was replying specifically to the parent comment and whether intentional injuries were skewing the mortality numbers.
In our past games, we had extensive C++ serialization (marshalling, pickling, whatever you call it).

We had to fight gcc 2.95, metrowerks, and few other compilers putting the "virtual table pointer" at different places - begining of object, end, etc. Then alignment differences (not strictly C++), and bitfields. Hopefully mangling was avoided, as we did not had to reference at runtime the data, we had pointers.

It was quite messy, and you could not reuse exported data - had to be for each platform/compiler.
Awesome article, thanks.
Worth noting the conversation you're referencing was from six years ago when I was 17. A lot has changed since then!
There is no stock market bubble.

nobody said there was a stock market bubble. but I suggest you to check few graphs on Google/Yahoo Finance.

But the market will decide that. Not us nerds.

I hope us nerds are a little bit more aware about stuff going on than Mr. Market.
Can innovation be disciplined without killing it?
so basically what you're saying you want to do is do work for clients who have a high probability of not paying you because they don't even know what they want. This can still be accomplished but it still needs a requirements doc. Let them know that they'll be charged for an initial requirements doc, then you'll create a prototype, then a rewrite of the requirements doc. Also charge these clients a 50% retainer for this part of the project.

Prototypes aren't as useful as you would think. Clients see them and are like "hey that's a nice mock up, now make what I want", then you build the actual application and they say "well where's feature X, Y and Z?!?! when you say it wasn't in the prototype they just say "well I thought it wasn't there because it was just a mock up"

Ideally though, you want to charge them for the requirements doc (and get paid for it) before you start the actual project. You can usually tell the client this and tell them they can use the requirements doc to shop around with other developers so they can get the best deal. Clients are usually happy with this and usually don't bother shopping around.
Perhaps the reason you rarely see it mentioned is because they are busy (or busier than the other group) at creating their product.

While there are no right answers, I find the following types of questions can help direct me.

1. Is one of the ideas time-sensitive?

2. Can you take a stab at getting traction now, with a quick trigger to quit if you don't see a positive reaction?

3. Suppose you succeed with one idea, without trying the others. In 30 years, even though you were successful, do you imagine regretting not pursuing the idea? (The "will future me dislike this decision" question)

4. Relatively weight the following on a 1-5 scale. Success ceiling (best case success level), personal fulfillment, balance with personal life, professional ambition, project difficulty/frustration, stability.
The point of the Winklevoss twins is that they aren't techies which may be why I liked that silly made for TV movie so damn much!
Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate this.

1) I totally hear you on this. I was wondering what sort of response this would get. The goal is definitely to rewrite in portions. However, we've been trying to do exactly this for the past couple of years and it has been really slow going (because of the reasons I listed in the post). It seems to me that at least one more full time developer is really needed right now to make this happen.

2) Yup. That's one of the biggest challenges. Every customer needs something slightly different. I have few ideas in mind that would make the software more flexible so that custom work would eat up less development time. Again though...this means a big investment in the software.

3) That's a good question. Marketing has been pretty non-existent in the company. That said, we probably respond to 10 or so RFPs per year. We usually win a couple of those, but the bigger companies (Fortune 10000) have been passing us over. The questions this raises are 1) is this because of the software, or 2) is it because no one has hopped on a plane and flown out to meet with them and held their hand through the process (i.e. sales). I'm not sure what the answer to these questions are, but it's prob a good place to start.

5) Yes. Everyone is 100% agreed on this one.
If you sanitize every input then I think you will be ok. You just have to get in the habit of always running your safe() function on every variable that comes in a POST or GET. I would also make sure that SQL errors don't return anything. The page should just die. Automated scripts testing inputs look for error messages.
> But why are carriers storing this tracking information for more than 24 hours, unless of course it's by government demand.

This information can be invaluable in crime investigations. Think if you're abducted and manage to keep your phone with you and on - they can track it.

It's a situation where the data can be valuable, but someone needs to watch the watchers.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play review ("The Playstation Phone")
FaceSounds - Change Your Facebook Chat Sound
Show HN: My Startup - Tweeplayer Launches Open Beta
:D Glad you like it!
Actually yes you can and yes you should. Infants die in third-world countries because of lack of healthcare, but often because of weak immune system and other effects of poor health that children survive from in western countries.

If you compare dogs bought from reputable breeders and puppy mills, you can't exclude all the puppies that die in the first year from a puppy mill and get a fair comparison. You can't exclude puppies died from both suppliers and get a fair comparison. The only fair way to compare is between total numbers.

Life expectancy is a product of health and health care. The unhealthy live longer in places like the UK and US than the healthy in many places of the world. When the west has people with AIDS outliving people in the middle-east and africa with no recognizable condition, then those places cannot and should not ever be used in reference to a healthy place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercentenarian#Verified_super...

Do you see an Afghan? No you see people from the allegedly 'unhealthy' western countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenarian#Numbers_of_centenar...

Again do you see any Afghans? Do you even see any middle-east or African countries with accountable estimates? No.
Yea, dropping tables or otherwise destroying their server is a very bad idea. FYI: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358058
That [music] executive called the move "somewhat stunning" and noted that some within the media industry said the service might be illegal.

I wonder if these executives were equally stunned when they learned that people store digital files on hard drives.

I hope Amazon takes a hard line and elects not to negotiate any licenses with the music industry whatsoever; I'd imagine that their counsel is weighing this option right now.
Thanks for making the Aristo theme for jQuery UI (and you're welcome) :)
Sure, some of them don't, but then I don't want to work with such kind of companies...

And, sure, I don't take it personally :D
I just don't like this behavior.

I didn't ask for details, just a general idea.

I've done a fair deal of job interviews, in order to get this kind of feedback and improve my skills; and Google was the only one that was that little polite on the feedback (even MS was nicer)

They didn't even say: "we can't tell you because of general policy or because of fear of lawsuit"...
The Woz worked at HP where he was well liked but hardly seen at CTO material...
Let's not forget that the twins made at least 60 million dollars from NOTHING but an idea and very little effort. That seems like an incredible business model.

/s
Great people are your best assets.
We (at Spreedly) have talked to several QSA's about this question, and their take is that using a redirect removes the application from PCI scope. It's a really good illustration of how PCI != security.
"According to the latest health ministry figures, however, 29% of Japanese men aged 20 to 60 are overweight - an increase of 5% in only five years and a long way off its 2010 target of below 15%"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/02/japan.justinmccu...
Usually, it's a phase. Right after one acquires what could be called "mastery" of a language there's a period where even the most complex (or obtuse) ways to use the language seem simple.

After a while that high subsides and one starts seeing the elegance of simple solutions for most things and complex ones where it's warranted.
They have an office and 26 employees.
Put another way, Pollan recommends looking at more of a systems-level view of food, instead of a purely components-based view.

I do know that some people have raised issues with his science.

Haven't heard too many complaints about his general takeaways though...
Makes you think how much of the recommendations are pure propaganda rather than objective forecasts.
SO gets well over 10k completely new posts (Q&As) on a typical day.

A few thousand older posts are edited a day.

Throwing comments into the mix more than doubles the number of "new things", and of course every question, answer, comment, or edit is displayed on multiple pages (generally, on the owning user's page).

tl;dr - there's a lot more page churn than you might expect.
Stick with php -a, or here's a bash script that does the same thing:

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
$input = implode(' ', array_slice($argv, 1));
$timestamp = strtotime($input);

echo "Raw: $input\n";
echo "Interpreted: " . date('r', $timestamp) . " ($timestamp)\n";

Usage:

./test_strtotime Mar 5
./test_strtotime "Mar 5" 2009
Batched food = efficiency gain
Based on the movie, Zuckerberg didn't have the decency to inform the people he was working with that he'd moved on. The moment he stopped communicating with them, a red flag should have gone up and they should have parted ways and hired someone else. Both sides contributed to the end result. The Winkelvii should have been more closely involved with the execution of the project. They should have also formalized the relationship legally before allowing him to work on it.
+1. Thanks Britta!
Cocktail Chemistry: Parsing The Bloody Mary
Have you tried to eat this way regularly, and did you end up spending less? How long did you last?
I used to think radishes were boring and sorta yuck.

Then I grew a few at my own place, for a lark. Well, that was an explosion of taste I won't long forget.

Pro tip: Fresh radishes are nothing like the dried up junk in salads.
The difference is that they think they can get paid when Amazon sells the song to you and when Amazon rents the hard drive space to you and when you stream the song from Amazon and when you send a friend a link to listen to a song and when you try to download the song again after your hard drive in your home computer dies and when you try to listen to a song on a phone and when you try to listen to a song in a broswer and when you have more than 1 device that can listen to the song at once and when you upgrade computers and when you apply a software update to your phone.

tl;dr there are a bunch of old people that have no idea how the music industry works anymore negotiating with the companies that are their only hope for keeping them in business.
BBC is down... internal error or ddos?
Peter Pham discusses the future of Color
Chuck Moore written backwards is still Chuck Moore.
App stores do not democratize technology. App stores limit access to technology to Officially Approved Developers who don't piss off the platform owner.
From the 1st paragraph (it might be an updated section)

"In the time since I wrote this we’ve grown from four people to twenty-six, settled into an office, installed a kegerator, and still never taken outside funding"
@wtracy Thank you for this info.Yes i want it to be multiplayer internet game,and it's between two players and others players can play on a side of one of them by the opponent permission:it's a money game(like poker).but it has some rules=business rules.
are ther any good frameworks for Ruby,Python.Actually i want to learn Ruby:i heard it's a good language.
I was just about to type all of this out when common sense kicked in and I decided to look through the comments. Bless you for sharing!
Right, because there aren't any similar vulnerabilities that affect NoSQL databases... ;)

http://www.idontplaydarts.com/2010/07/mongodb-is-vulnerable-...
I think Google receives around 20000 resumes per day. If you've got that kind of interest (and what I've heard, justified interest) you'll have to turn most people down (ie. >99%). I don't have inside knowledge about the Google hiring process, but with that many people applying, you're bound to have some false negatives.
It's a gambling game
You're clearly right, because people with theoretical CS knowledge don't use markup, CRUD, Django, or Rails, and because it's a proven fact that if your tools aren't sufficiently complex, it is impossible to create something useful.

I'm impressed by your ability to derive rock-solid conclusions from thin air and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
True, but even a shopping list could reveal information that narrows down where the killer lives or shops or something.
I agree with this :).
Choose the NASA Astronauts' Wake-up Songs on Next Mission
Zwiebelfreunde ("Friends of the Onion") Mission Statement
I hate those signups. The worst part about them is that they're usually on sites I'm required to sign up for, like a school, work, or corporate service.

If it was a startup web app I was signing up for, I'd send the developer a polite email saying that I didn't feel comfortable putting my data in such a system. Unfortunately, all I can usually do is gripe a little in private.
This is an appealing take but ultimately oversimplified. Calories in equals calories out, this is self evident. Assuming that calories in has no effect on calories out or vice versa is where you make the mistake - they are dependent variables and quite obviously so. Don't eat much and you get cold and lethargic, go work out and you work up an appetite.

Saying you're fat because you eat too much is like saying you're an alcoholic because you drink too much. It's true but it doesn't say anything about how to solve the problem and it mixes up cause and effect - in the former case you're eating more because you're getting fat (due to insulin resistance, caused by chronically high consumption of carbohydrates according to some or due to chronically high consumption of fructose according to others) and in the latter case you're drinking more because you're dependent upon alcohol.
Either they have a crystal ball or a DeLorean that time-travels.
Did the last bubble kill the website?

I mean, I remember when a website was something a company had, not something a company was.

The trend toward per-project companies is, I think, fundamentally a good one. It means less job security, but more creative freedom, and probably more money going to the creators and less to managers.
Homer Simpson - 140 Best Twitter Feeds
Why getting noticed is the most important step in startup success.
On the contrary, sometimes "out of the box" thinking by a non-expert is exactly the lightning bolt from out of nowhere that can cause a breakthrough.
Customers want a solution to their problem. To save time they will formulate what they think is a solution and give it to you, in the hope that it will speed up proceedings.

Think like a doctor. When the patient turns up, he or she may have a diagnosis in mind. But it is up to you to study the symptoms and deduce the condition independently of what the patient thinks.

Remember: a potted request from a client is a symptom of some deeper problem they wish to solve.
IMO the question is: do they start recording your location after the warrant/subpoena or do they just record it all the time?
At least this summer, that's not true. They pay a relocation bonus that's more than enough to fly you out and back for the summer, as well as ship whatever you need out with you.

The lack of corporate housing is kind of unfortunate, but the internship pay is enough that it isn't something I'm terribly concerned about.
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/bbc.co.uk
Love this on Color use cases:

We are seeing amazing activity all over the world. The key is less about finding a dense area, but to get others around you to use it at the same time to get a whole new experience. You could be in the smallest populated city, but if you got everyone at the party, restaurant, sporting event, it'll be amazing.

We are seeing music festivals, college kids, sporting events, night on the town, etc. uses.
Very interesting to hear that a bunch of git early adopters "couldn't have done it" without Campfire. I would have pegged them in the IRC demographic.
It went down at around 2239 GMT. I've not seen a hint on Twitter to suggest that it was a DDOS, though I guess that doesn't rule it out.

@timweber: "So yes, it doesn't look too good. both internal and external DNS are down, by the sounds of it."
Edit:
@richard_webber: "Not just DNS down for the BBC, they've been taken off the Internet completely, no routing to AS2818."
Ha thank you! I was typing the pipe character that's in the top left (alt gr + `) that looked the same but is clearly a different character code. It's a bew laptop with a new keyboard layout (US).
That article tends to re-enforce my line of thinking, that Surgeon General's advice of less-fat, more-carbs, and more exercise isn't cargo cult science.

Some of the conclusions from that article:

+ [H]ealth experts have warned that dietary changes, coupled with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, are storing up trouble for Japanese children who, in their taste for burgers and instant noodles, have more in common with the average western teenager than with their tofu-loving grandparents.

+ "The Japanese used to eat food high in protein, but over the past few decades there has been a shift towards eating more animal fat, and that is at the root of the problem," said Shinobu Matsui.

+ [The Health Japan 21 program] has drawn up nutrition charts aimed at those most at risk of obesity - men, children and people living alone - encouraging them to eat more rice and vegetables and to cut down on meat.
I think the "not too much" is also redundant. If you eat bacon and eggs, your hunger will tell you when to stop. It's the non-food (sugar and grains) that mess up our hunger signals (mainly insulin).
I think you're right that the low-fi junk will only increase, but just want to point out that it's not always less qualified people who produce the low-fi crap. Sometimes CS majors just want to go for the cash :)
BBC websites (news, radio, iPlayer) all down
Or the Monopoly guy.
Does adding your phone into a live social group of people make you less social?
That's what those 5-euros-a-month VPN services are for, I assume.
I guess, isn't it weird that nearly matches the graph for English? If each letter moved to the right 8 places closely matched the expected value of that letter that would suggest that that you would be on to something.

Doesn't this point to it might be a fraud as you wouldn't expect an encrypted message to contain the exact same distribution as expected unless they just switched letters of near the same frequency around?