skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A SEO Consultant Or SEO Software: Which One Is Better?
A SEO Consultant Or SEO Software: Which One Is Better? http://bit.ly/i08j2x
Czech Constitutional Court cancels storage of data on all e-mails, calls, etc...
James Cameron to amp up Avatar frame rate
Microsoft files monopoly complaint against Google
Any other boomers think back to the days of John Glenn?

(edited because I forgot the first two flights didn't orbit)
I don't get why you'r downvoted. Here's my perfect iPhone: Retina display in the front, eInk in the back. As a bonus you can use eInk to 'skin' your iphone with your favorite art.
Edible Candy Pen
YouTube instant search
I think YouTube should implement an instant search for their videos on every video page. The lack of such a feature is, in my opinion, YouTube's biggest problem.

I've built a proposed solution for this. It's called YouTube SmartSearch and you can find it by searching Google for "YouTube SmartSearch". Let me know what you think and if you disagree that this is a major problem in YouTube's UX
The people on our endorsement lis are all collaborative and are interested in meeting and helping startups -- so it's definitely OK to cold email. (be polite, obviously, and provide them with context). We try to get endorsers around the country and world, but there are limits to our reach and ability to vet the universe obviously ... let us know whom we should add to our list if you think someone is missing and we'll investigate for next year. Our hope is that remote experts will be able to connect you to one of the existing endorsers in the meantime. Send an email to endorsements -at- masschallenge.org you have questions or problems. We are a very small team but are serious about reviewing and responding to inquiries. Thanks!
I just had a thought: How about having a phone round first, and ask all applicants to provide a sample of their coding skills, like suggested in the article. Then, in the second round you leave each applicant for a couple of minutes to analyze the code from someone else and find out what it does and what's so special about it.

That way your work of looking into the code samples will be minimized. Even better, you'll get an idea of how well a coworker with a similar skillset can cope with that code. You can also judge how well people are at dealing with code from their coworkers and don't have to come up with examples yourself.

It does sound pretty good, no?
or a restaurant for solo diners? wifi, space for a laptop on the table, and strictly one person per table, so you don't feel uncomfortable sitting all alone - everyone else would be in the same boat...
Writing a Resume, My Way (for recent College Grads) !!!
practice, practice, practice

The more you automate routine tasks, the faster you'll become. Don't just do a calculation of:

# of times to do a menial task * amount of time to do menial task <> amount of time to automate

That oversimplifies and doesn't take into account how much faster you'll be at scripting etc. in 20 years if you take every opportunity to hone your skills. Think of it like touch typing; might slow you down at first, but you're going to more than make up for it by the end of your career.
Looks like a mild annoyance, like those silica gel packets that are also perfectly safe but that you have to constantly avoid consuming. Also, their cute bean design will just make them harder to clean when cream/sugar is involved.
Surely they'd need to distinguish between what Chris Morris (satirically) referred to as Good AIDS (from blood transfusions and the like) and Bad AIDS (from gay sex or drug abuse)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFNs2mOkKzc
I automate as much as I can. Sometimes I'll even "automate" a one-off task, simply because writing steps down in a shell script makes it easier to review what is about to happen and avoid trashing, say, a big chunk of my digital photo album... :-)

Automation doesn't just save time; it also avoids many mistakes caused by fat-fingering things or forgetting step 6 of an 8 stage process.

Also, once you have automated something, you've (at least potentially) created a tool you can share with someone else, which is good for teamwork, delegation and continuity in a work-place.
I really hoped that they would release a full-text search for the datastore.

Guess I'll have to wait for that and use the improvised solution (http://billkatz.com/2009/6/Simple-Full-Text-Search-for-App-E...).
I only took it seriously after I read that someone at Samsung had confirmed the presence of "auditing software". If it's not StarLogger, what was this person refering to?
Wow thats insane. I get that people can hunt, but the GoDaddy hats, really?
Let me pull on a conspiracy theorists hat here, and give one possible reason:

When you purchase a laptop, at least in my experience, it records the serial number of the laptop purchased. Now, generally you don't purchase a laptop in cash (At least in the states, but that really has to do with overzealous cops who think anything over a hundred dollars is drug money), you use a credit/check card. What this means is at checkout they have an address, and name (From the card) and a serial number.

You go home, and type away, log in to Facebook, do whatever you normally do, all the while keylogger is running away in the background. NSA walks over to Samsung and says "Hey, can we get those keylogger results? Great, here's your million dollars", takes those, then sees that John Doe is searching for poison on Google. They run off, and arrest him.

Basically, that information would be NSA's wetdream.

Is this true? Probably not, but it's one possible motive.
I used to, until I spend a whole day on a vim script that, realistically, only would save me significant amounts of time by the time the work I was automating would bring in 1000's of dollars a day.

Nowadays I only do it after it's been proven (or I'm 100% certain up front) that a certain task will come up more often, and that letting someone else do it is not feasible or cheaper.
The moral of the tale here is that if you're going to be making allegations of this kind you really need to be quite confident about your research, and be able to back it up with detailed information such as the contents of the relevant directory and comparisons of the files therein. Not engaging in a certain amount of diligence leaves the journalist open to both reputational risk and the possibility of libel litigation.
One example that I have seen happening in the UK: take two people with directly comparable excellent university education (same university, same course, same results) - the one who went to the "better" school will be perceived as having more "merit" than someone who achieved the same result from a far less privileged background. To me the latter, having achieved far more, has the more "merit" whereas to others it often the opposite.
I totally missed the the second the.
Agree 100%. Do you (or does anyone else) think that Larry Page is now on the wheel has something to do with this change of direction?
shou,

alain94040 asked what we would change about the way History is taught.
The problem with this is that the first line looks like a standalone JS statement. Python requires you to wrap the whole thing in parens, which solves that problem:

Well, doesn't JS allow you to wrap it in parens if you want?
cdavid,

I am talking about History. Pick up some letters from a soldier. The teacher can still give some context.
PC Manufacturers do add crap, but they have also patched real holes in Windows e.g. better wireless support before XP service pack 2 , out of the box anti-virus, alternative Office apps, better browsers etc. The same is true of Android as early versions were missing some major pieces.

It's a complex area with many shades of grey. The real problem is poor software engineer practice regarding Android and Linux at these manufacturers which leads to unnecessary delays and wheel re-invention. They seem to be learning and getting much better at this though e.g. Sony Ericsson announcing that they'd restrict their additions to the app level and make them easy to turn off and replace in future, and announcing they'd do an extra update for the X10 because they'd already done most of the work for the new phones that share the same platform.
Fuzzy hashing / shingling
I've spent a good long time studying coffee prep. I'm not a pro, but I am a mildly obsessive foodie geek, so that may inform how many pinches of salt you take this with.

In non-pressurised or Turkish coffee (French Press, pour-over, other filter) the optimal extraction temperature varies between 93C and 89C - above that you'll start to "scorch" the brew, which means you'll be over-extracting caffine amongst other things, causing that bitter taste.

(I'm fairly sure those are the figures that Harold McGee quotes in "On Food And Cooking", although my copy is buried below a stack of books at the moment whilst we redo our kitchen.)

However, yes, 93C is definitely hot enough that it'll be no fun to drink.
Well he did graduate from the Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSIA) program at Norwich University in 2009.
Even assuming that the conversation took place and was accurately recorded, I don't put a lot of credence in it. It's front-line tech support we're talking about here after all. Some guy has called them up and is trying to find out something about a Windows\SL directory and monitoring software and so forth and they just want him off the phone.

I've had plenty of nonsense spouted to me when a tech support person doesn't understand my problem or how to deal with it.
Yeah, but how quickly can you do it? It is a 'rapid' customization resource. Plus I'm planning to add custom word dictionaries, profile pictures etc in the future.
Monte Carlo, por ejemplo. FEM, por ejemplo.

And once you've struggled to solve the problems that can't be brute forced away, you start wondering if maybe a little linear algebra wouldn't do you good...
Yeah... Poor choice to tie it in with the company.
Cross-platorm decent quality video conferencing with ease of set-up.
I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of primary sources, and of studying mathematics historically in general.

The Elements of Euclid is a model of clear, concise, beautiful mathematics which is easily accessible. Archimedes as well. Follow that up with Apollonius, Ptolemy, some Descartes, and then Newton, and you have a junior high and high school curriculum in mathematics that would give students a real advantage over the rote "here is what Disembodied Authority says you should know" learning.

Note -- I am not advocating the study of mathematical history in junior and high school, but rather the study of mathematics historically. It gives access to mathematics as a branch of the humanities, less focused on the answers, and much more focus on the questions and how some really smart people have addressed those questions in the past, which gives a good guide on how to address new problems that will come up in the future.

When it comes to history specifically, as the OP asked, I would still agree with going with some of the great works of history. Historiography can be left for college, but give the kids access to the letters and diaries and personal accounts of people who were at the scene of history, as well as the great works of history that have been written (Thucydides, Herodotus, all the way to Toynbee, Gibbon, and, hell, even Spengler). Drop the mundane and milquetoast textbooks.
From what I recall of working in academia while the "pure maths" vs "applied maths" is certainly a false dichotomy, there were certainly mathematicians who made it very clear as to which side of that dividing line they were located!
I've found that pairing with interviewees on real(ish) problems usually helps to detect useful traits (I am not advocating pair-programing here FYI; rather working with them in front of a machine during the interview). Your mileage may vary.

Some of the things I look for are (in no particular order):

1. Knowing where to look for help when stuck

2. Systematically looking up the man pages/docs/API when stuck as opposed to making multiple wild guesses

3. Indenting code and saving files with proper names (you would be surprised how many people don't intend code even when it spills over 15-20 lines)

4. Instinctive eye for usability - for e.g. parsing command line arguments when appropriate rather than doing it blindly (`if sys.argv[n]: foo elif sys.argv[n-1]: bar`)

5. Inclination to iterate, even during an interview. Many people are happy to produce a working answer and leave it at that. Some iterate and tidy up without being asked to.
I've thought about what would be the opposite of ice cubes, I guess this is it. Only it's kind of better since it solves two problems, some initial cooling so you can start drinking and then maintaining the temperature. A hacker's product, if there was ever one.
why replace

I'm just trying to be charitable to people who don't want music, drama, driver's ed, health class, ........ cut out.

Why should recreational mathematics replace calculus, either? Ideally math would be taught well and written so that people could engage with it throughout life. (But how many adults do you see reading those yellow spiney Kluwer books at coffee shops?)

slippery slope

Thought Vi Hart was talking about high school. Maybe I was wrong. I agree that calculus is the right kind of brain-stretching for college.
My guess is that Mr Hassan is an independent consultant, and NetSec Consulting is his contracting vehicle.

To be fair to him, Samsung did turn around and say, "Yeah we're keylogging, problem?" or words to that effect. If he's not a technical security consultant then that might be enough for him to go to the press (especially if he felt stiffed by Samsung).

Not all security roles are technical, not all consultants are either, it's entirely possible that he's a policy or risk kind of guy.
I suspect they are more ethical because there are more consequences.
Even meritocracy based on IQ would likely be correlated to privilege. IQ is highly heritable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

An article posted on HN had an interesting quote on merit (this time in the context of college admissions):

...the dark little secret about [merit-based] grants. They do not create access to higher education for students who otherwise could not go [for financial reasons]. Merit-based price discounts only help determine which school a student attends. A fully funded need-based aid system is what would create real access for students who would otherwise be shut out or have to trade down to lower quality alternatives.

If correct, this means that at the college level, merit is also highly correlated to privilege.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/why-does-colleg...
It is sad though, that we can automate software hassles with such ease, but we can't automate real world tasks yet.
Hilarious 'Share the Air' Presentation Pranks a Venture Capital Event
In my opinion(I'm not a lawyer) it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. So market the app. Then, if the train company tries to harass you, take the app down and open source it. That way, you'll make money between the time you launch, and the time the train co notices you, and you'll have a great reference for your next project. And if they choose not to do anything, even better! Just make sure you back down when their C&D comes. No need spending all your profits on attorney's fees.
Even technical/niche startups should be able to find 5 friends who will visit and vote for them. Last year we had finalists working on airborne wind turbines (altaeros energies) and on desalination systems powered entirely by renewable energy (Resolute Marine Energies) and many other technical/niche plays. The public doesn't need to understand the depths of the technology to decide if it's a good idea or if it's well expressed.

Regarding driving traffic - sure, there is at least a minor "viral" impact from the system. Keep in mind, MassChallenge is a community. Driving traffic to our website helps the whole community, i.e. there are spillover benefits for other startups when one startup convinces their supporters to visit and browse the site. There's no profit at the center of the system -- so this isn't a selfish motive -- it's designed to benefit everyone.

We are still a relatively young startup ourselves and continue to refine our approach ... so there is definitely room for improvement in areas. On balance, though, we are confident that our processes work. We'll continue to refine and definitely appreciate the feedback.
Google has cluttered its search results page with Preview button, Social search results and now the +1 button making it difficult to locate content.
The argument presented in the article blames MySpace's decline on "staff, architecture, and business plan".

While I agree that these things are contributing to the decline in MySpace's influence and traffic, the underlying problem is the engagement of the community. MySpace is a Social Networking site that rely on a community of users.

People want to be at "the coolest party". They want to talk to the coolest people and engage in the coolest party games. In a separate, but similar example, musicians need to reinvent themselves in order to maintain their mass-market appeal.

MySpace's failure is that it hasn't re-invented itself to stay cool. Their recent design change was too little, too late and relied far too much on the past. The redesign was like "the old guy at the party" trying to make conversation - everyone feels a bit odd that he's there.

Facebook will suffer the same fate unless they eventually reinvent themselves or truly transition into becoming a Social Network Platform. Something new will come along that has slightly cooler tech but more importantly, draws the coolest collection of people.
That's probably exactly what happened. They may have been thinking of the Samsung software updater that came installed on my NC10.
Samsung 'keylogger' is a GFI VIPRE antivirus false-positive
This situation reminds me of the HBGary incident. This guy is actually paid to know what he's talking about, and he has no clue what he's talking about. And this isn't cake-making, it's security! Preposterous.
''' In this case I didn't explain my choice of style because most people in the JS community would consent with it, and there has been lots of discussion about this in the past. '''

Then link to the discussions, explain why it is obviously right, etc. Some items like where to put braces can just be a community thing, but "don't use prototype-based features of a prototype language" might warrant more explanations, even if they are obvious.

''' That's still a work in progress. I didn't choose nohup because I feel screen is conceptually slightly simpler. However, a real deployment section is coming in the future. '''

I can understand choosing the conceptually simpler option. If it's not the right one, at least provide a resource pointing you towards the right one.

This might be a bit much to ask, but try to consider the cost of it to the people reading. Will they have to learn a better way on their own? Are you spreading misinformation or just incomplete one? The idea here is to save work to your readers, not you. Readers don't really care what is hard or not; most of the time, they just want great docs. This is a principle I try to apply in Learn You Some Erlang, and so far it has worked well to me. YMMV.

''' That will be the subject of a guide by itself as well. '''

Good to know :)
This is really good article, probably one of the best I've seen come out of Mashable. The exercise of determining what are the clichés of any industry seems something you'd want to tackle with a group - maybe a good geek-out exercise for entrepreneur meetups?
They killed the elephants because they were damaging crops...
My problem is they show up in my newsfeed without any context. One of my FB friends replied to a TC story with "first" I saw it in my iPhone app and replied "second" which was pushed back to TC. So then I look stupid(they didn't put my comment as a reply, instead it was at the bottom of the thread) and TC is getting more comments that it needs. I really think the implementation of this is horrible and they need to fire the engineers who created it.
I think there's huge potential for computer games to influence how history is taught.

Imagine an RPG set in a slice of medieval Europe, where you experience daily life (in a variety of roles, from peasant to king) and hear about events occurring around you and confront choices, with every detail as accurate as we know it. Imagine that this game is actually fun to play, and that it's not teaching information via walls of text or memorization games, but making real information an integral part of the game world.

That's the future, IMO. Or part of it, anyway. Talk about the topics after the students have experienced it first-hand.
I wish Google would make a statement about this. I feel like I'm getting less than no actual info once it's been through a chain of journalists, each with zero technical understanding, all trying to understand it through an Apple-based frame ("Fragmentation!!!!!111").

I like fragmentation. For all the talk, it doesn't seem to have held Android phones back at all. And I get cheered up every time I see some random device with two screens or a stylus or that transforms into a laptop or whatever. And Android is moving ever wider. The guy they hired from Palm was excited to talk at the launch of Honeycomb about how they were making Android more and more modular (e.g. hardware keys no longer a requirement) to fit more and more niches like car computers. He didn't say but he was certainly talking as if they saw Android as the next Linux or Windows, not just a phone or tablet OS.

I'd be very disappointed if this move was designed to appease the tech media that seem to think running Android 2.1 is a horrible fate far worse than death and that the world only needs one phone and one tablet.

At the moment though, until I get some more info, I think it's just a bunch of companies who suddenly all realised that Android sold an absolutely ridiculous number of phones in the last 6 months and are trying to strategically position themselves to get the maximum benefit for themselves from an Android dominated future.
I automate all the small, repetitive tasks I can. Even when I'm heavy into coding (where I'm working with JS/php/db all day long every day), I'll have a script which opens my terminal and editors and the db etc. so that my day starts with a ./startEd.sh command.

Right now I'm setting up a staging server for my new webapp (I'm frantically working towards a private beta). This is new learning for me- and I'm writing a script for everything I do (that I can). This not only sets up a way for me to do setup/config tasks automatically, so I don't make typos, etc.), but also documents what I'm doing. I hadn't considered that aspect of it before I started writing these scripts.
The damage done to Samsung via this false accusation will far outweigh the costs borne by NetSec. I'm against frivolous lawsuits, but I wouldn't mind if Samsung delivered one his way.
I also had an "erm, are you sure?" reaction. I think it was the mention of the mysterious melting chemical - I know it's in a stainless steel shell, but that didn't make me feel safe from ending up with it in my coffee.
Yeah, that’s how things work, unfortunately.