skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
People have it stuck in their minds that cews companies are unchangeable or something???

Newspapers are in or moving to all the new media places as much as anyone. They've been blogging for ages, have facebook pages, use twitter, have reader comments and voting ala /. or reddit, or HN, produce video, host live chat/blogging, etc. Or at least the one I work for does.

Technology and industry is changing. Newspapers are trying to change with it, just as they have with other tech innovations. Unlike say Music Industry who is fighting tooth and nail to keep their broken ass business model.
Bernard Chazelle Talk: Why The Algorithm Might Soon Be The Only Game in Town
Zimbio- Flying Under The RADAR
Putting Obama's energy plan to the test
But why did Common Lisp need to build in at least 3 separate ways to map keys to values (getf, assoc, and hash tables)? The answer is because the language designers wanted all three.

Actually, the answer is that those three do different things. GETF is for property lists which look like '(key1 value1 key2 value2), ASSOC is for association lists which look like '((key1 . value1) (key2 . value2)), and GETHASH is for a hashtable which looks like a vector/array and not a list.

GETF returns the value of the first key that matches. GETHASH will return the value of the hashed key that matches.
ASSOC allows you to return any value for whatever key you're getting or whatever test you're using.

So each one has a different purpose. The trade-off is how you choose to map keys to values. It may be faster to use a hash-table instead of an assoc-list, or it may be easier to interact with an assoc-list rather than a property list. The point is that there's a choice and a reason why the choice is available.

This reminds me of all the newbie Java programmers who use the ArrayList class instead of looking for just the right data structure for what they want to do.
a little whitespace and naming conventions might still be a good idea for us newbies

The culture around K is fanatical about concision. This goes back to APL, though the K people (following the lead of Arthur Whitney, the designer of K and Q) take it further than anybody else. To the unfamiliar, K looks like a bad joke (check out the 40 lines of code at http://www.nsl.com/k/s/s.k, which implement the spreadsheet at http://www.nsl.com/papers/spreadsheet.htm), but these people know what they're doing. Whitney's product includes the language interpreter, a massively scalable RDBMS, a web server, and God knows what else, and the last time I downloaded it, the total size was 380 KB. My experience with that stuff was that the more I looked at it, the more in awe I became. It's a shame it's not more widely available.
1. too much cocaine. really, it makes you feel like you can conquer anything and anyone, but it is totally not worth it.
2. learning any Windows based programming languages. seriously, what a waste of time.
While I love this talk, it's pretty old. it was posted 6 months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=100821
> 16. You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?

Take (any) 6 of the balls, and divide into 2 groups of 3. Weigh the groups of 3 against each other on the balance.

If one group is heavier: The heavier ball is in that group of 3. So take (any) 2 of the 3 balls in that group, and weigh them. If either is heavier, you've found the heavy ball. If those two weigh the same, the 3rd ball is the heavy one

If both groups weigh the same: The heavy ball is one of the remaining 2 balls. Weigh those two to see which is heavier.

Given n weighings you can actually identify the heavy ball out of a group of upto 3^n balls.
We just talked about this problem in the office yesterday. My officemate got asked this for the job he got at Google, and solved it the same way. His boss pointed out only after he accepted the offer that there's no need to make a function call--just allocate two local vars in main...

Also, the same answer basically works to implement "sizeof" for ints.
Why not build and solve a problem you have?
I'll go if you give me a ride.
Advice-as-a-Service, lets see how much they start charging if the beta goes well.. ;)
there was a story this week where one of the senators who is pro-stuff like this in US, was speaking out about how China is an oppressive regime because they plan to monitor internet usage from hotels during the olympics. And this was the same senator who is pro-warrantless wiretapping
Rob Enderle does not know the meaning of surrender. Or disclosure.
For most of the questions, I as an entrepreneur would answer like "does this really matter?". You normally have other problems than that...
Sorry to downvote you, but there are no mistakes below your comment. It was a mistake to think HN comments are statically positioned. :)
While on the topic of password best practices, are there any characters which should not be allowed in passwords?

I've always assumed anything is safe since it's getting hashed anyway before hitting the db, but this got me wondering.
C pointers make sense to me because they represent what's going on in the machine. The syntax and the rules behind it are simple enough that they click, for me.

Perl references seem to carry a lot of historical baggage that leads to the expressions mentioned elsewhere in this thread. The rules behind them always seemed arbitrary and I have never felt like I had a grip on them.

Now that said, I'm still more likely to blow my foot off with C than with Perl, thanks to the do-it-yourself memory management. But at least when it happens it's for the right reasons.
When I arrived at the URL, I got a JavaScript alert thanking me for rating the article (presumably as "best," which is what the radio button was set at). I'm not sure if any vote actually got recorded, but it would be totally bogus if one did, since I certainly didn't choose to rate anything.
Actual questions asked a a building site my dad was at in Israel.

1) Is a regenerative break in an elevator doing work, even if the power is not fed back into the grid? Accepted answer: No, as long as its not fed back, but wasted as heat instead in a large resistor. Solution : A special system was constructed to divert the regenerative power into a large nickel-chromium element and not fed back into the grid for just that day. This heat was vented outside so that it wouldn't accidentally do work by heating the building in winter.

2) Does energy created in the power plant (from burning coal) count if its stored in a battery and then removed during Shabbat? Answer: No, as long as the fire part happened some other day. Solution: Large batteries were installed with inverters to feed critical systems during this day and were only charged during the week.

Of course, as mentioned, non Jews were hired to press buttons, open doors, and perform other actions during this time as well. The moral of the story is that it cost a lot more, and takes a lot longer to build a building like this!

I believe in God, and I don't want to disparage any man's religion but I think personally that God is not overly impressed by storing the energy in a battery so we can use it guilt free on the holy day...
As a science undergrad, I would like to see science-based video games. Though I appreciate being able to rotate computer animations for clarity, or placing electrons in their orbital, I have to imagine a video game that required the upkeep of biochemical/physiological systems would be more effective than rote memorization. I am sure that some of us remember the movie "Innerspace"; why not start young gamers on inner-body adventures based on real science. I hope this idea is already being pursued. It has been a dream of mine to author some anthropomorphic children's books about a whole range of biological topics. However, I hope in the not-so-distant-future parents will be telling there teenagers, "you can't go out with your friends until you pass the influenza level of 'Innerspace Invaders.'"
I´m not really sure we can talk about news as a single entity.

News are made of many different kinds and groupings of information. For example financial, sports, classifieds, tech, auto, regional, local, international, entertainment , ... oh programming and hacking, etc.

I think newspapers have fullfilled diverse roles such as,
Aggregating, Distributing, Reporting, Investigating, Opinion writing

Some of these are now irrelevant, such as aggregation and distribution.
While others are still up for grabs.
> It boggles the mind that a perl programmer, of all people, would think this.

I moderated you up assuming you were about to provide a better way to perform the task then nastily calling an external command to do it.

I should have read your post fully first.
I feel that I've learned an incredible amount since I left my job and started my start-up - and I think that's largely an indication of how little I actually knew when I jumped in.

If I can offer anything for consideration, it's this:

When do you want to make your mistakes? Now, or in a few years? While working for a large company, or while living off your savings? While doing stuff "on the side", or while doing it "for real"?

I am not advocating one choice over the other, but this might be another useful angle to approach the problem.
WWI/II was just the chickens coming home to roost.
Actually, I have two side projects that are exactly that. But I keep ignoring them. That's the problem :) My user is getting upset with me, and about to look to my competitors.
For the military side of that analogy I highly recommend reading Black Hawk Down. It's a moving account of real-life heroes, a remarkable story of of a modern army engagement, but besides that it's also a great analogy to the business world.

The actual 3-way split in the Army is special forces (Delta Force), paratroopers (Army Rangers) and infantry. The developers analogy would be "done, and gets things smart", "smart and gets things done", and the rest. In Somalia we had Rangers and Delta, and the book goes into much detail on the incredible difference in skill and capability between the two. The analogy to developers is uncanny.

The point of course is not that developers are like soldiers, they are not, but rather that there are fundamental reasons that different human activities are structured in similar ways.

BTW, while it reads like fiction, Black Hawk Down is a documentary, and even the dialogue has been reconstructed from recordings. The movie is very faithful to the book, but the distinction between special forces and Rangers, the political side of the conflict, and some other interesting detail is much more clear in the book.
How to Create Ebooks and Avoid Writers Block While Doing So
Cory here this fine Monday with another one of my latest articles for you. As you’ve probably noticed over these last few weeks I’ve been really hitting home on WHY ebooks are the quickest way to make money online and to be known as an authority on the subject you write about.
Perhaps the problem isn't painful enough?
d) A lot of people who like Perl like to troll people who dislike Perl, by telling them they "don't know Perl".
LinkedIn, like Facebook, is letting employees sell some stock early
The solution uses something called common knowledge, which is that everyone knows that everyone knows that every one knows, ad infinitum. Before the queen makes the announcement they may all know that the other husbands are cheating but they don't know if everybody else knows.
To see the difference consider the case where there are only two husbands (H1, H2) and two wives (W1,W2). So, every man has cheated on his wife, and when the queen announces that a man has been unfaithful, then consider the situation from W1's perspective. She knows that H2 has cheated on W2, she doesn't know that H1 has cheated on her, and she can't talk to W2 about it. With the announcement, from her perspective, there are two possibilities (both H1 and H2 are cheaters), or (just H2 is a cheater).
Now, to continue we need to think about what W1 will think about these two possibilities given her incomplete information:
If it were possible world where (just H2 is a cheater) and H1 is honest, then since W2 would know that H1 hasn't cheated then W2 would conclude that (just H2 is a cheater) since at least one husband had cheated. Thus, by the laws of the island W2 would kill H2 the day of the announcement.

Since W1 considers it a possibility that her husband, H1, was faithful, she won't do anything the first day; instead she'll just wait to see whether W2 kills H2.

By symmetry W2 will go through the same line of reasoning about W1. Thus, both will do nothing the first day. So then on the second day, W1 will realize that (just H2 is a cheater) must be false, since W2 didn't kill H2. So, she'll go ahead and kill W1. (Apply the same reason symmetrically to W2). Therefore, they'll both kill their husbands on the second day.

The rest of the details are pretty easy to establish. The point is that 99 days later all the men are killed.
Your post is a troll.

He's not complaining about using modules. He's complaining about using one hundred and fifty modules, and you're attacking him on an argument he's not making.

Your last statement is especially childish. See 'be civil' at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If the choices are: 1) get funding, and do it now, and give up even 1% of my company, or 2) wait a year or two, and do it on my own dime, but own it 100%, I'm leaning towards #2.
I took the following assumptions:

1) The women can't tell each other anything

2) Every woman knows the following fact: "every woman knows when a husband other than her own cheated".

Now, let's simplify the problem and say that there are only 3 women as opposed to 100, and assign numbers to them and their respective husbands.

Woman #3 thinks "I know that husband #1 and husband #2 cheated. Woman #2 knows that husband #1 cheated. Woman #1 sees that woman #2 and I (woman #3) are not killing our husbands, which logically would mean that her husband is the cheater. However, she (Woman #1) is capable of going through this thought process, and is yet not killing her husband. That means that she is thinking of either husband #2 or my husband (#3) as the cheater. Yet, woman #2 is capable of going through this thought process as well, and if my (#3) husband was not a cheater, then woman #2 would've killed her husband. Yet she hasn't, which means that my husband (#3) is the cheater. So, I have to go kill him".

Now, there was nothing special about woman #3 - every woman goes through this thought process simultaneously, and all arrive at the same conclusion. Now, expand to 100.

Maybe my explanation is a little muddy, and I am not giving enough justification to the last step of "simultaneous thought process", but I am pretty sure that this is the right method for solving the problem.
$4b is an awful lot. Especially since any potential business model is still to be really proven. The sort of targeted advertising they are aiming for is not necessarily easy to pull off. And I think it will take a couple of years to prove it either way.

I wonder what this does to their runway?
Interesting information. So it can work once. He obviously had a significant reputation before this and I'll bet people were a lot more suspicious of his moves in the future.
its not the law, its bureaucratic bullshit for most industries you need permission to do anything. The web is the latest bastion standing where you can be as creative as you want.
If there's there are string methods in Perl, great - I'll check this out next time I'm working on some Perl.

Unfortunately - and this is a cultural problem more than a technical one - nobody ever seems to use them, instead favoring RegExs for everything.
Having a bit of a runway is good, and real-world job experience can pay dividends. Some suggest that you'd get the same out of a failed startup, but both routes have their advantages.

One thing I learned, sadly later than I wish I had -- before starting a startup practice living cheap. Start really considering if you really need that iPhone or that new monitor, buy nothing but generic stuff, have one beer at the bar instead of three, get a house-mate. Cook!

As I was building towards going full-time on the startup I managed to get my cost of living down to less than half of what it was, with no major lifestyle changes. That'll give you a nice pad and the skills to stretch it when you do go full-time.

You can also spend the time learning; nothing teaches like experience, but you can spend time building up your contacts, researching your field, learning as much as possible about startups, setting up infrastructure, searching out good co-founders -- so that when you're ready to run you can go at it full speed.
His reputation suffered in one respect, but he made so much money and gained so much power, it was worth it. In the eyes of many, his reputation as a shrewd and canny operator was confirmed.
I think maybe you're categorizing me in group "d". ;-)

I've never said there aren't valid criticisms of Perl...just agreeing with msluyter's very astute meta-comment, and adding one more option. I believe that people exist in both groups "b" and "c"...I wasn't overloading method "b" to actually mean something else. Some people in "b" probably even have valid reasons for hating Perl...but, I think we can all agree that the majority of flames in any language thread come from a place of ignorance about the language. After all, if you really don't like a language, odds are good you don't do much work in it, and so don't actually know a lot about it.

But, if you think we need one more option, I won't argue. There probably are people in category "d" (in addition to me, it seems), as well.
There is a prohibition on floating cities? So adherents cannot live on "seasteads?" Can they work on oil rigs? What about Geoffrey Landis' proposal to colonize the upper atmosphere of Venus by building aerostat habitats there? What about ocean liners with shopping malls and ferris wheels in them?
15 Year Old Entrepreneur Launches Teens In Tech
This is really helpful. Thanks.
Now that said, I'm still more likely to blow my foot off with C than with Perl, thanks to the do-it-yourself memory management. But at least when it happens it's for the right reasons.

You're my hero, and I mean that.

I'm glad we cleared that up, and I'll readily agree that complex data structures via references is among the most glaring warts in Perl. It's obviously more complicated and error-prone than it ought to be, and moreso than other similar languages.

I've got this theory that the thing that people talk about most in any language or technology is the thing that is actually most broken about the language. People talk a lot about references in Perl, and I know they're broken by design. Similarly, I've got my suspicions about monads in Haskell, since people spend so much time trying to explain them...seems like there must be some fire under all that smoke. But I could be just imagining it, and I think I probably need to spend a lot more time with Haskell before I can accurately detect bogosities.
Here's a potentially interesting angle: Digital print isn't killing newspapers.

One major barrier to entry (bottleneck) was printing. You needed a certain volume & a certain infrastructure to print papers.

Digital print really lowered that barrier. You can now get in at a fraction of the distribution volume. But we haven't seen a proliferation of papers. What does that mean? Could this mean that they are already dead in the air?

What're the other options? That the bottleneck they used to control is not something they've been leaning on? That seems unlikely.
A good few are not as hot as they used to be. The 'cream' areas, mostly classified ads, are drying up. And they were the areas with big margins.
Why would it change their runway?
Do you contend that this is why there is so much attention given to web startups?
or like this:

require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'

get '/:name' do
"Your name is #{param[:name]}"
end
>There is a prohibition on floating cities?

What? Hu? Where in the world did I say that? Or even anything close? I said the "implications".

Just so it's clear: there is no prohibition for floating cities.

The issues discussed were pretty technical, but had to do with public vs. private land on the city.
That sounds dangerously like pedantry to me. The point is not that the mathematical expressiveness of the network model is as powerful or more powerful than what you can do with relational stuff. The point is that the network model maps nearly 1:1 with the actual programming model used to implement the application logic.

All that relational goodness does you no good if you want to architect your application using an OO data model in a web application server. Maybe you're trying to argue that that's the wrong way to do web applications? But if you accept that people want to use Rails/Django/etc... then you have to also admit the argument that RDBMS's are the wrong tool for the job. This is true for the same reason that a Dremel is the wrong tool for framing a house, despite the greater expressive power of the Dremel's cutting tools.
Larrabee: A Many Core x86 Architecture for Visual Computing (and servers?) [pdf]
AdSense Versus Just Begging Your Users For Money
Actually, it's a pretty good test I think.

To work it out in your head (in decimal you cheater! :D ) you need to know a bit about dealing with powers of two.

<Spoiler alert!>

So for example, if you happen to know that 2^32 is roughly 4 billion, then you can figure out that 2^64 is 2^32 squared.

4 billion is 4x10^9 .. so 2^64 is roughly 16x10^18.
The surprising thing is that AdSense has so far only made a few more dollars than begging. Begging has gotten me $120 in the last 10 months

Maybe TipJoy is on to something.
I'd tell jokes, stories, tap dance, something to entertain whoever threw me in, because frankly, if you've been shrunk to a nickle, picked up by some entity, and thrown into a blender, you've got more than just some blender blade to worry about. You need a champion among the big ones.
> But if you have want some metric of "fairness", then looking at free time is better than looking at hours worked - because that way you measure sacrifice, and a relation between sacrifice and compensation is seen by many as fair.

A better metric of fairness would be, how equal were the opportunities to become profession X?

If being a banker is so great, and being a teacher is so (comparatively) awful, then wouldn't it be fairer to simply equalize the opportunities, and let a glut of bankers and a shortage of teachers balance out the wage difference?
Zappos tries computers on for size
> Facebook has said it’s not planning to IPO anytime soon

Exactly how do they plan to let employees sell stock without accidentally becoming a public company?

Is this stock being sold back to the company itself?
Down here (Australia), 'Fairfax Digital' the online version(s) of 'Fairfax Media' - the 1 ton gorrila of Aussie media, probably has kept it's market share of the key areas online. The have the #1 job site, real estate & they are doing ok with cars, personals, buy/sell and other traditional media cash cows.

In terms of market share, I wouldn't be surprised if the (society's) move to online media has not been a net gain for them.

However, they were in a pretty cushy position before. They had to compete with 2-3 other media giants. Now they are in constant danger of assault from under the radar. Google maps may make real estate sites useless.

It seems improbable that 5 more years will pass & noone will figure out an online dating or car selling or something that will take out their sites.

Basically, if I were them I'd feel like it's almost impossible for them to hang on to dominance for long.