skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The benchmark here http://attractivechaos.github.com/plb/ suggests they are doing much better on performance than they were a while back. Its a straight numeric benchmark so not relevant for everything but its better than V8 which is good work.
I agree, it's totally outrageous that people with "backgrounds in sociology and political philosophy" are preying on our most vulnerable global corporations and infiltrating their most sensitive and secret labor camps!
Slight nitpick, the PIIGS countries (great acronym btw) didn't lose their sovereignty just by being weak.. they lost their sovereignty by being having a bubble blow up without enough background economic strength to withstand it, plus due to some facts of life as an EU member.

Lots of countries are economically weaker than them but didn't blow up a bubble on themselves.
Clickable:
http://bit.ly/ldULC6
http://bit.ly/iXVszi
http://bit.ly/lK0a88
Well, that's pretty ugly anyway―what's wrong with:

reversed(c.most_common())

Although I agree that a least_common function would be more "symmetrical" (don't ask me why c has one and not both), you can create it yourself (and have it not only readable but efficient!) in one line of code.
How about these -
http://appuseful.com http://netwebapp.com http://www.feedmyapp.com http://www.webdevtwopointzero.com http://listio.com
I don't know that they're getting minimum wage, in fact I'd assume they're paid a fair and reasonable wage. Their cars were nice, their clothes not shabby.

All said and done though, my point was that the lunches are an unnecessary and significant cost.
Site needs to introduce itself with a 30 second elevator pitch. Better yet, a 10 second one.

And as others mentioned, screenshots please.
On a volume of 53,896 btc since midnight. For some perspective.
I'm glad you found the AppleCrate interesting. I have always found the Applesoft BASIC programming environment very inviting and satisfying, and the AppleCrate leverages this accessibility into parallel programming.

The NadaNet network is a low-speed "reinvention" of Ethernet that I developed to support simple networking of Apple II computers, like the AppleCrate. It was a very educational project, and has proven to be a robust implementation.

The mechanical compatibility of Apple II boards simplifies construction, and the low power makes it a desktop-friendly device.

It certainly won't win any speed contests with modern hardware, but the fact that it runs at a more nearly human-perceptible speed is actually a benefit--from a "blinkenlights" perspective. ;-)

I should put up some YouTube videos of it in operation. There are already a few AppleCrate/NadaNet videos up, but
they are mostly presentation.
Champ Kind: The bottom line is you've been spending a lot of time with this lady, Ron. You're a member of the Channel Four News Team.

Ron Burgundy: That's a given.

Champ Kind: We need you. Hell, I need you. I'm a mess without you. I miss you so damn much! I miss being with you. I miss being near you. I miss your laugh!

Champ Kind: I miss your scent.

Champ Kind: I miss your musk... When this all gets sorted out, I think you and me should get an apartment together!

Brian Fantana: Take it easy, Champ. Why don't you sit this next one out, stop talking for a while.
We understand you're not a lawyer. (Thanks)
I will never understand why people change the font from the default on their webpages, or why that is even allowed. I set my default font because that's what I like dammit.
I didn't interpret it that way when I read it - perhaps it could be worded better.

I read it to mean that you should not avoid trying to do something because you might fail - you should accept that you might fail and go for it anyway - not an encouragement to actively sabotage yourself and fail. Doing something you KNOW will fail is just stupid.
$4 per bitcoin? Not even the EUR and GBP have ever reached that in my recollection.

Keep in mind that the exchange rate is a function of several inputs, one of which is the rather arbitrary fact of how much total currency is in circulation. There are many fewer BTC than USD, EUR, GBP, etc. (about one million times fewer, to be precise). And conversely, there are many more JPY in circulation, which is part of the reason the yen is much cheaper than the US dollar.

That doesn't mean there's not a BTC bubble. There may very well be. But you can't do the comparison you just did and expect it to be meaningful. If the BTC protocol had specified the decimal point one place to the left, BTC would be trading at 0.40 USD right now, not 4.00 USD. There'd just be 10 times as many.

What you have to do is ask how much total wealth the world will want to store in BTC, and then divide that by how many BTC there are. The answer to the first question is a huge unknown. The answer to the latter is specified by the protocol: 21 million.
OK, I'm an intern at Google, and I'm NDA'd, so I can only tell you what could be deduced from if you were a visitor at Google and walking through the halls.

It's not that stuff is top secret, it's that information access is regulated to those who aren't full-time employees. Interns (green IDs) and contractors (red IDs) are given what they need to perform their job role, and little more than that. This guy was beginning to look at information he wasn't allowed to, and that should have been fairly clear to him. It's not that there is something to "hide", it's that information is limited for temporary employees, and that's just normal information security practice at any company of real size.

In regards to the race claim he's fishing for, I think it's rubbish. Regardless of what the make up of the temporary workers at 3.14 are, I see lots of contractors who are non-white (and contractors get access to most perks), lots of full-time employees are Indian and Asian. He's trying to draw out some conclusion that Google has discriminatory hiring practices based on the lower-income, lower-skilled jobs being made up of non-white, but that's just the statistical make-up of that demographic in California.
The average person isn't smart enough to understand what a stock market is, how it works and how to buy/sell stocks, either. That doesn't mean they're not used.
Dropbox could do the same for hashes. For example internet cannot download more than 400MB from a hash (4MB) per day.
In a corporation the size of Google there will be a lot of other low-paid workers, secretaries, post-room, catering, etc.

Are they all yellow badge too?

And do they all steal secrets as you seem to imply every low-paid person is bound to do?

Seriously, just because someone is low paid doesn't mean they're any less trust worthy. That's one fucked up world view you have there. Also it doesn't make much sense as it's the higher paid workers who can do the serious economic damage as they know what's actually valuable.
I've similarly seen simple pattern matching used in high transaction volume processing. Using a DOM based, or even a stream based processor is considered too expensive. So, just look for the relevant tag and grab the next bit, while presuming that the context is correct. (This involved a limited number of trusted partners, in a relatively steady-state environment.)

OTOH, it eliminated discussions/arguments about what format to use. In a corporate environment, that can be a significant win in and of itself. (Yes, "win" should be in quotes.)
Thanks! I also just found: makeuseof.com
Bible Prophecy | Online Bible Studies | Videos | WorldsLastChance.com
We've had cookbook/FAQ style technical books for years. If that was a superior format then the chaptered linear book format would have died out before this discussion took place.

When people talk about the death of a particular genre of books or the publishing industry, I am reminded of books of poetry written by living authors.

The poetry book has been dead from a publishing perspective for a number of years. A large portion of single author poetry books are printed as the result of contests, many of which have an entry or 'reading' fee. Great poems are found easily on the internet, and almost no one speaks of poem piracy because the number of words is often quite small.

Despite the arrival of poetry book doomsday, it's still easy to stuff a bookcase full of little poetry chapbooks. There are poetry books printed at fine art presses with complex bits of vellum, embossing and debossing. It's even a friendlier industry now that large publishers have all but ignored it.

It sucks that it's not so easy to make a job of it anymore. However, lack of a traditional publishing industry is unlikely to kill the technical book.

(edit: repetition)
> Dark pools allow you to trade large quantities without moving the market.
1.5 should be a lot better on these, the Loop Invariant Code Motion really helps on very tight loops, as these benchmarks often have.
I know Matt Haughey bought a database of cars for developing <a href="http://www.fuelly.com/>Fuelly</a>, whose entire purpose is evaluating fuel efficiency of different cars. I'm not sure where he got the database, but I think he wrote about it somewhere. And you could always ask him.

I don't know that they have a public API, but Matt's a great guy, and might have some form of an API available if you connect with him. He's @mathowie on Twitter / everywhere.
It was difficult to find the logout link. It needs to be more prominent.
I disagree with Zed Shaw here. Ignoring the ODBC problem, Dive into Python is written well for its target audience. This book is written for people who already know how to program. Seeing a function with a doctstring, list comprehensions, etc all at once is exactly the way I wanted to get a feel for what python was about. It served its purpose very well. Now I will admit, some of the examples did get tedious to the point where I skimmed them. But overall the book served its purpose well.
No one was forbidden from communicating with other employees. In this case, it seems what happened was the woman correctly decided that the situation was unusual (some guy you don't know asking all kinds of questions about your work), and should be checked out by management.
Request HN: please add your email to your profile
Just a reminder that anything typed into the email field is not publicly visible (edit: not visible to anyone except pg and a few other admins) so please put your email address into the about field of your profile. This way it is visible to other HNers so that they can contact you. Thanks.

Click on your username in the upper-right corner of your browser and add your email address to the about field.
Unfortunately I neither have a blog with big reach nor $4 million. :)
The reason they are used is that there is an entire abstraction layer around it, all you have to do is give your money to the guy whose face is on the billboard. As a crypto currency, bitcoin is fundamentally incompatible with this model.
Yeah, I guess I was overreaching with my argument about bytecode. But, we can probably agree that it's more enjoyable to focus on writing good CoffeeScript than on writing CoffeeScript which will compile to good Javascript. Regarding the libraries, couldn't the same be said about learning Clojure without knowing Java (something which I think would currently be pretty acceptable)?

All I'm getting at is that I'd like to see CS eventually become a language in its own right rather than an extra tool for JS developers. I think this is completely feasible if we start treating it that way and create the tools and documentation to that end. I think it is a serious improvement over JS and could eventually replace JS for the common programmer.

By the way, thanks for all your work, I'll definitely be picking up the book.
You would think an electronic badge would still prevent access no matter the color. But then it would be too difficult to feel special or discriminate.
Why would bitcoin stays hard to use and hard to learn?
You could use any of the tools I mentioned outside the browser, the latter two (plugins and JavaScript-targeting compilers) with something like Chromeless or Adobe Air. The whole idea of those is to remove browser chrome but leave the engine, keeping development mostly the same. Anything you can do to script without JavaScript in the browser will work just as well in these non-browser environments.
It is also harder to flip back and forth between 2 or more screens to check related details than it is between multiple pages. Unless you are just checking a fairly specific, narrow detail, books are just more efficient in time and effort.
The author skipped about his working hard to promote his blog, mainly using the guest posts for other blogs.
What about the Apps from the App Store? How many of them have good design?
You are absolutely right about my poor tone and I apologize. I should have taken a deep breath, counted to 10 and wrote when I was calmer. While I stand by the substance of what I wrote, on reflection, my tone was rather poor. Thanks for calling me out on it. It was unbecoming of the kind of discussion we want to see on HN even if I did find the entire OP wildly offensive on numerous fronts.

Chalk it up to an embarrassing lesson learned.
its ridiculous to even entertain the "seperate building where people of color work". The Googleplex itself is filled with "non-Anglos".

Lets all be honest with what we're talking about, and in America what "people of color" really means (in most cases, and probably this one). It means black people. This guy noticed a lot of black people with yellow badges. The yellow badges had a high percentage of African Americans. Much higher than in the Googleplex proper (which probably tracks much closer to their % of the US population). And they (apparently) get less perks. This pushes all sorts of historical hot buttons in the American psyche.

What's left up to us to determine (assuming the veracity of the OP) is WHY this is. The most logical reason why is that the yellow badge jobs are low paying jobs, and the company that is contracting for these low paying jobs draws heavily from the African American community in the surrounding areas.

What is possibly interesting in all of this is the original issue of why low paying jobs potentially are filled by a much higher percentage of blacks than high paying jobs, which unfortunately has very little to do with Google, and a lot more to do with educational opportunities and the breakdown of the family structure in some African American communities, imo, which leads to a skewing of the potential job opportunities from urban American African Americans to be lower paying than anyone would like.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/quotes?qt=qt0386867
Given the current valuation though of $3.5 and the fact that there are approximately 6M bitcoin in circulation, that gives quite a large valuation on what seems to be a very limited market at the moment. You are right though, my initial simple comparison of numbers leads only to inaccuracies
That's a good point, although I would argue that he is in fact extremely creative. However, his creativity isn't physically manifest. It lies in his ability to translate abstract ideas about UX paradigms into devices. You're right though, LSD could have / may have given him a new conception of what is "perfect" that led to a his particular brand of perfectionism.
Thank you for your response.

Your fourth paragraph touches on what I see as a deep seated problem in American society and a problem that will happen in Europe if current trends continue. Your use of the word 'rich' is synonymous with money and material things. This focus on money has lead to what I call the "I've got mine, fuck you" attitude.

Is the U.S. rich in happiness? contentment? My perception is no. The nation is getting fatter, more lethargic, less able to cope with problems, and is focused on acquiring more stuff. Not everyone in the world can live the American lifestyle because there aren't enough resources.

This is not a problem just with America but, as in many things, America is in the lead. Our consumption has led to a giant plastic garbage patch in the Pacific ocean. Our focus on money and getting the best deal has to led to us importing items made with child labor, slave labor, and in oppressive conditions. This is not unique to Americans, it's a human trait. We need better regulation to mitigate these bad traits but it isn't going to happen in the U.S. (at current trends) because the focus is on money. Money and the preservation of it is trumping decency and morality. (Again, as I see things.)

Your example of Dutch voyages in the 1500s is an excellent one. Your point appears to be that financial innovation (money pursuits) can and sometimes do lead to benefits for society. I'll have to think about this for a while before knowing whether or not I agree with it. It sounds plausible.

As a counter, I'll offer this up. The great scientific discoveries of the world were not done for money. Newton would not have been a better mathematician had he been paid more. Human progress, largely, comes from people who like to solve problems. Who are curious about the world and want to understand it. A society that gives such people the means to pursue their intellectual passions is one that progresses.

That natural conclusion from your examples and what you've written is that capitalism (pursuit of money) is a great way to accomplish this. I would argue that a better system needs to be developed because the downsides to the pursuit of money are quite bad and will lead to a world with it's resources plundered.

Lastly, I'll point out that Warren Buffet stopped talking to one of his granddaughters because she talked about wealth to a guy making a documentary on wealth and what it does to people. I don't think I'm better than Warren Buffet and so I think I'd probably do the same thing he did if I was in his shoes. So I think money would change me and my perception of right and wrong. Presently I'd never disown a relative because they talked about wealth and what it does to people.
Yeah, I definitely get the pain part. Actually, I should be pretty thankful because it's my aversion to handwriting that made me spend a lot of time on the computer, leading to my entire career. :)
Labor camps?! the fuck! they are being paid regular salary.

The author doesn't quite understand the concept of social injustice (nor do you) and so he tries to apply it on patterns he'd found with disastrous consequences.

He thinks that if you're gonna give your employees Google type perks you have to give these to everyone who steps inside the plex?! security personnel and cleaning ladies?! contract workers?! that doesn't make sense. Google engineers get these perks to be happy and make cool stuff, manual workers get a paycheck! that how the world works, that is why people go to college.

Giving everyone these perks would hugely increase operation costs.

This whole post and the attention it’s getting don't make any sense.

News flash: not all employees get paid the same and not everyone is the CEO.
"Ubuntu AppStore"?
Any chance you could update your Ubuntu PPAs soon?
What in the DMCA covers offensive or obscene material? I thought that it only covered copyright.
Show HN: Made a FB Application to find new programming books.
I recently was playing around with ruby and wanted to try to make a application, so that I can easily find new programming books to read.

This is what I came up with, I would love some feedback and suggestions.

http://apps.facebook.com/newprogrammingbooks/
PyVows - Asynchronous behaviour driven development for Python.
This sub-thread, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2500758, to a request for a book on learning python, makes several general good points for why books are still useful and important.
I'm not sure why you think I'm screwing over employees; I don't have any, I am one. This is true that someone has to make the first offer, but I stand by my argument that it's always to your advantage to nudge the other party to go first. If they ask what you need or are expecting, just say "above market rate."
Mature title...
Great summary, thanks!

look to the likes of Warren Buffett ... Or Elon Musk ... Or Bill Gates

To put things into perspective: Stanford, Carnegie Technical Schools and Mellon Institute of Industrial Research (merged into CMU), Duke, Cornell and I think some other of the best American universities were founded by the donations of wealthy industrialists.
> Well actually there has not been any real need for that for years now.

Really. You think OCR technology is at the point of sophistication or expense such that it would be economically beneficial for Google to deploy such technology over hiring humans but they don't do so to maintain our "capitalistic system"?

You think there's some conspiracy of corporations to waste money on unskilled labor to maintain capitalism?
I'm the creator of the tool. Registered just to comment.

That the sentence is a little bit deceiving. Gross sales were 3k$, my revenue was 2.1k$. It was FIRST five days, not just any five days. It changes the nature of the story a little bit imo.

Anyways, thanks to dirtyaura for posting.
Let's not forget that Google's innovation in search has had (and will continue to have) the most profound impact on the world's poorest people... the people for whom information is least accessible via other means.
Changing a contract is unethical, but that's not the technique described here. The strategy is with clarifying the contract. For example, if you agree on a price, that price should be set in stone, but that's only part of the contract. What about payment terms? That's when you write a contract that says payment is due upon receipt, and not net 30 or longer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex#Composition

> According to glass supplier Pulles and Hannique, borosilicate Pyrex is made of Corning 7741 glass, and is equivalent in formulation to Schott Glass 8830 glass sold under the "Duran" brand name.
The parent URL contains the anchor "#comments". Perhaps the intent was to direct the viewer to the first (at this time) comment, which is by Kathy Sierra:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/04/gamification-purpose-market...

And boy, is it a pleasure to read something by Kathy -- it's been a while. Even through today's food allergy induced haze, her words cut incisively to thoughts and feeling I suspect many of us harbor regarding "gamification". Well worth the read.

My own thoughts on the same: If your work/task/request sucks to the point where it requires gamification, well, fuck you. I may do something I don't enjoy if it fits into a larger context that I do want, but the world's far to interesting to waste time pulling a slot machine lever.

The worst is when a channel is monopolized (e.g IP "rights"), leaving you no choice but to sit there "pulling that lever".
Takes balls to admit it. Group hug!
The graphic on the about page is not correct because parts of groups can overlap as well. For example, some of my surfing buddies can be my closest friends.
1) I don't think Ubuntu's UI is any better than Apples UI. If anything it's the same bad copy of the Windows 98/2000/XP/7 lineage of program management tools in control panel that linux has beed copying all the way back to RedHat's RPM package management GUI in the early 2000's.

2) The title of the article is "Ubuntu’s app management better than Apple’s" not "Like Apple AppStore, but with less Suck."
Here's a quick realtime view of the markets Mt. Gox included.

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

There's pretty decent volume and the bid/ask spread is gradually tightening. Just for some perspctive, the US Dollar index futures trade about 15,000 contracts a day, (granted they are much easier to convert).

I'll keep an eye on this...