skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I know smart programmers who are gay. I know smart programmers who are straight. It's foolish to think a sexual orientation would influence one's ability to program well.

Also, just because a discussion has never taken place before doesn't mean it's worth having.
I agree actually. Gays are as intelligent as straights, on average. So are women. But I think it takes a real man to implement a complicated app.
Right click... "Bookmark This Link", at least in Firefox
$99 is hardly expensive for a vacuum cleaner. Besides, that argument doesn't wash. You could say the same thing about dishwashers. Domestic robots are here to stay.

You're one geek with a lot of cords. Most people aren't like you...
Another Jaxer 1.0 Release Candidate with new APIs
Why are we seeing so many mac rumors including completely unsubstantiated and unfounded ones? Please dont convert this site to macrumor or appleinsider.
It'd be a substantial lag, I would guess.

The only way to find out is to actually run a simulation. I don't think a cleaner would have to carry multiple robots, just multiple batteries.
I dunno about the rest of you but mine actually works as advertised. I leave it on before I go to work and it cleans the whole (carpeted) house by the time I get home.

When you say look after them, what do you mean? I clean the brushes out about once a month and that takes a short while. The bin seems to need emptying about as often.
a "real man"? I'm a straight white male and I'm insulted by that statement.

You have to be a troll to say something as ignorant as that.
That's a lot of cords. :)
> I'm a straight white male

I find it interesting that you decided to mention your race.
"The attack relies on a new type of hybrid file that looks like different things to different programs"

Come on, people have been doing this since time began. It's not new to create files that are valid in multiple scenarios.

OK, So how does it steal your account?

I can see that yes, if you can upload an image to a website, and then get it to run as a java applet, your java applet would have the same privileges as any other java applet on that site...

So if you've already given facebook permission to access local files via java applets, then the malicious applet could do bad things to your machine.

But how does it steal your account?
"and most other accounts" - This seems like complete sensationalism to me.

There is a whole java applet security model, and this article just seems to be about spreading FUD.
The problem with coffee shops in my area is not that they are bad, but the people that go there are annoying. Usually people between 12 and 20 who spend more time in front of mirrors than its healthy, and talk mainly about that. You cant help it if your town's retarder. I sometimes enjoy going to coffee shops with friends, but can't imagine working there, im not a regular anywhere, so maybe i just haven't found the wright place, so if i find a good comfortable place, i might consider working there.
There's (in my country) something of a running joke concerning "WASP"s and the archetype I get lumped into.

It's just part of the whole mise en scene concerning my background and about how I'm supposed to be some sort of ignorant rich bastard or something. (FTR, I'm quite poor, an an atheist.)

I find it interesting you decided not to mention the point I was raising.

EDITS: Grammar, additions.
launching it (ties in with the selling and/or marketing part)
Completely irrelevant and flagged. I suggest positive karma for being able to submit.
For the record I've only ever met one gay programmer and he was "bad".

He'd never coded prior to school, and he treated it purely as a "career" in which he thought he could make "good money".

It was his attitude towards the profession and not his actual skill that bothered me. An earnest but poor programmer can be fixed and is respectable, the sort of fuck that floods our profession with these ideas that we make insane money or something is obnoxious.

EDIT: Never gave a shit or a thought at any point to the fact that he was gay.
Good insight.

Have you seen the corollary in practice in YC applications or in general i.e. If a sales guy/gal is good they can convince hackers to be co-founders?
So you are not a WASP. Case closed.
I'm a gay programmer, and I'm not quite sure how my sexual orientation would affect how I code. If it is any help, most of the people around me seem to think I'm competent enough, at least to the point that they don't complain about what I write to my face. Perhaps they'll find this thread and respond.

The more interesting question, at least to me, would be about the experiences of gay programmers (I guess I'm biased). I can't speak for all gay programmers, but I know that my sexual orientation would certainly affect the people I choose to work for (e.g.: I'd like to work for someone who provided benefits for a same-sex partner, or who donated money to gay rights causes, while I'd probably not ever work for a company with a history of opposing (with policies or money) gay rights). It probably also affects the atmosphere of the place that I do work: perhaps co-workers deal with a gay colleague differently (not necessarily on a good/bad continuum: only differently) than they would a straight colleague. I could go on, but you probably get the idea.

Most of the replies present when I started this comment were skeptical of the possibility of a correlation between sexual orientation and code quality. I happen to agree. What about the correlation between sexual orientation and employment in certain industries (affecting what code we write)? What about sexual orientation and choosing to be a programmer at all?

I'm kind of hoping that this doesn't get downvoted to oblivion: it might make for an interesting discussion (or flame war).
news.yc needs a report button.
"TwinLisp is a language with C/Java - like syntax, but with internals and abilities of a Common Lisp"

Um...C/Java syntax <i>and</i> the abilities of Common Lisp....and the webpage says s-expressions aren't needed to build macros....ummm...ok, could the author show us a few TwinLisp macros?
But you are not skeptical about correlations between programming talent and gender, are you?
แลกลิงค์
Homeland Security: We can seize laptops..forever
... Do you find it too far-fetched to think of wanting to kiss a fireman as a girlish quality?
I'm white and anglo saxon, the stereotype is created when someone sees me in person. That's the point.

You're a semantic troll. Bugger off YC, seriously.
Check your numbers.
Have you seen the last season of the sopranos where the fat guy goes into an antique store, and he is told that he is a "natural" (w.r.t. appreciating art). So it's OK to stereotype gays as being better at artsy stuff, but not OK to think of straights as being better at, well, some other things?
I'm not really familiar enough with the subject to know whether I should be. If there are any serious studies out there about gender and code quality, I'd love to read them. While gender itself may well be irrelevant when it comes to programming aptitude, the way that a society treats girls and women (and the fact that it may be (is, for mine) different than the way it treats boys and men) could influence how many/which women go into the world of programming, which might in turn influence the quality of what they produce.

I can't remember ever meeting a female programmer that I didn't later come to respect for their skill. Anecdotal evidence isn't really useful, though.

edit: Good point. I guess that if a correlation may exist for women by this logic, it may well also exist for non-mainstream sexual orientations.
Find Out About Scrapbooking
Get some really good scrapbooking ideas by visiting this site. They really helped me out.
for a nice take on Lumpenprogrammmers read "Cube Farm" by Bill Blunden
You suck at trolling.
Here's one:

mac &infinite-loop (body) {

`do () { $@body }}

S-expressions are permissible, so maybe it would be best to stick to those until you wrap your head around this crazy infix notation.
Security Matters for you
As much as I appreciate the latest technological improvements of this digital era, I dread the same technological growth because in the hands of the wrong people technology which is considered to be a blessing of this era can turnout to be a curse. Today conservationists are striving hard to achieve paperless offices to save trees that are cut ruthlessly for the benefit of this generation without taking into consideration what we are leaving behind for the generations to come after us. On the one hand their efforts are to be appreciated and supported but on the other hand we need to be concerned or should I say be worried about our own security and confidentiality issues.
Obama Campaign Launches Document Archive On Scribd
Botox side effects  A major concern?
Is there any medicine that has no side effects? I think to the best of my knowledge, the answer is a resounding, “No”. All medicines have some sort of side effects, we notice some and we do not notice others because of the nature and the intensity of the side effects. It is rally funny if you take a closer look at the terms that we use; you will realize that all these boil down to the interpretation of the words that we use.
Mostly plugins and shoddy code. But yeah, I wouldn't necessarily call it an 'inherent' problem, just a difficult one. I've often wondered if it were feasible to run every browser tab in a separate (fork()ed) and chrooted OS process as an unprivileged user. Browsers generally already run plugins in separate processes because they have a habit of crashing or deadlocking. What about distrusting major parts of the browser itself that way?
I guess we're losing touch with nature because 97% of us don't have to touch it any longer to feed ourselves. Good thing if you ask me. I'd rather kids (and adults for that matter) knew a little bit about taxes, law or how to calculate compound interest of their debt.

There are things about natural systems that affect us and things that are interesting, but identifying and classifying plants outside of any context is not one of them.
Cuil confesses 'serious file corruption'
> More experienced, hungrier, stable founders who are highly motivated not to return to their cubes because they already know how much it sucks.

I conjecture that these kinds of people will tend to be more risk averse and that the group will have a better median result (and higher success rate).

But startup successes can be massive and a better strategy might be to chase the blockbusters with younger people.
Cheap web hosting
Quality cheap web hosting plan from topwebhostingreviews.org the hosting review site.
There is nothing inherently insecure in browsers. But they do have lots of security problems, mostly they come from trying to support lots of different formats, plugins, programming languages and hence acquiring every security flaw of each and every one of them used (see the vulnerability in pnglib for example) and their sand-boxing is currently very very poor.
A Roomba is much easier to pick up and stash.
Darn. I was hoping for tips on how to actually trap smart people.
I agree, the best of both worlds is still an option.

Get to a level when you can afford to not be working for a client all the time, and then plan your time to spend, say, a fortnight a month doing client work, then the subsequent fortnight working on your own flux capacitor.

That way, you might even avoid needing to source funding, too.
Why don't 99%+ of developers use emacs or vi? Because they are too dumb to realize that their life can be improved. I assume a similar principle applies here.

mattmaroon (see blog post above) appears to be unable to follow the instructions included with the Roomba, so he doesn't like his. This is interesting because this is the same argument ("it's too hard") you hear about other cool things, like emacs, vi, CL, etc.

Anyway, I like mine. I start it when I shower and I emerge to have a clean apartment. I have a small apartment, though. Yes, it needs to be emptied every few days (and the cat hair removed from the brushes), but that takes all of 5 minutes -- much less time than vacuuming manually would have required. (The reality is that when I didn't have a Roomba, I just never vacuumed. Gross.)
It'd be a crackhead's paradise -- find the nearest hotel, break two room windows in, and score a cool $600 worth of electronics in a few minutes. Score!

I think the hotels that would use this first would not be the motel in the drug district, but rather a high-rise in some city. If you can break into a 10th story window, I guess you can have the Roomba.

Currently, theft of this variety doesn't appear to be a real problem; there is tons of expensive stuff in hotel rooms right now. Video game systems, flat-screen TVs, mattresses, etc. The Roomba would be easier to steal, but I doubt it would become a common occurrence.

Besides, in my imagined version of how this would work, the door to the room would be open while the Roomba is doing its thing, and the maid would probably hear the window breaking. (There wouldn't be a Roomba in each room, the maid would just carry some when doing their cleaning, set them loose in a few rooms, wait for them to finish, repeat.)

Anyway, this just won't happen. I should have just written that initially and saved the bits used to represent this reply ;)
Mine needs more care than that, but basically I agree with you. I couldn't be happier with my Roomba. Just because a loud-but-irrelevant blogger says something doesn't mean it's true or that you have to agree. :)
Blog web hosting
The best blog web hosting plan, read the real blog web hosting reviews.
I like to powernap between problems (and mull them over while I rest my eyes).

Coffeshops are not good for this, but I have found libraries often are. Quiet environments, often excellent views (most libraries seem to be in the best parts of town) and some even have areas you can lie down (meant more for people to read than nap, but many people do it) or big grassy areas surrounding them.
SEO Services
Search24online is a Professional SEO Firm, delivers results to diverse businesses worldwide.
When I saw the operator precedence table, I stopped reading and said to myself, "congratulations, you just missed the whole point of lisp."

And actually, SBCL is nearly as fast as C in many cases. So there's really no reason to not use CL, unless of course you don't like CL.
I wonder what the Lisp world would be like if people wrote libraries for CL or Scheme instead of inventing their own weird-ass "lisp" dialect.

The point of Lisp is that you don't need to invent your own language. Just "defmacro" and get back to solving your real problem.
Inertia. Getting started is the first fail point as too many worry about too much and hence never start.

Make a start, and just keep iterating. Each time you will find the "hardest part" changes.
I am guilty of marking some of the legitimate newsletters I receive as Spam, but that's because:

1.) It's difficult to unsubscribe or takes more than 3/4 steps

2.) Unsubscribe requests are not honored

3.) I have run out of filters to directly move that email to trash (was a problem in Yahoo. not in gmail)
I am beginning to think there might be a business model for email in this, that helps the larger providers and senders.

If you leave out Spam, who accounts for 80% of emails -- it's probably the large newsletters (guessing here.). The larger email providers can charge these newsletters, and the newsletters are assured of guaranteed delivery.

That said, I am sure I am not the first one to come up with this, anyone doing this already?
That's not a headline you see too often
If you want to like to freeze you in a Lisp newbie state, please go for it!
Get Printable Sudoku Puzzles
Great site. They have printable sudoku puzzles.
silviakarki414@gmail.com
What I can't tell, from the website and the PDF overview, is what it's for? Logical programming?
Nokia Injects $150 Million Into Mobile Software and Services
What will be in Apple’s next laptops?
1. No ergonomic keyboard (or my 22 in. monitor) to help prevent carpel tunnel.

I sort of have this problem. I use a model M keyboard at home, and my laptop keyboard just doesn't compare. So I find it hard to type.

But it really doesn't matter, since there isn't all that much typing involved when programming; only when writing replies to Hacker News comments ;)
I would say find a problem you want to solve and build for that rather than worrying about mobile languages.

If you alreay have an iPhone, go with that, if you use a HTC/Nokia smartphone, build for that.

After you have built a few initial apps, you'll find things become much clearer and be better able to find the answers you seek.
Interesting; I was just in Seattle a few weeks ago, and noticed the different kinds of coffee shops. Some were clearly designed for buying a coffee and working (Online Coffee), whereas others were designed for drinking coffee. In the part of Chicago where I live, everything is a chain coffee shop, so none of them are really conducive for getting work done. They all cater to the "I need my coffee before my 8am meeting" crowd. It's kind of sad, really.
"... Many people agreed on proggit and here that there is such a thing as "programming like a girl" ..."

Why couldn't it be "programming like a prat?"

"... What was your experience with FOO programmers? ..."

I know about these kind of questions except I care less about the labels someone gives them than the quality of their ideas and code.
There is a website that you can post photos of something and ask what it is though.. Sadly I can't remember the address!
40billion.com: Get funded by friends, family & fools
The 3 F’s stand for friends, family and of course: fools. The FFF fund is often overlooked as a viable option for getting funding. There are some drawbacks to getting money from these groups of people and one of them is getting everybody organized.
The usefulness is being paid for writing your blog without having ads.

The Twitter integration is just a marketing thing; your followers will see you talking about Tipjoy and immediately sign up (hopefully, anyway). Plus, social news sites love the word "Twitter", so this feature will get Tipjoy to the top of those sites. It even worked here.
I can't believe I'm the only one to upmod your comment. Detailed feedback like this is the most valuable thing on HN and should be encouraged.

I made the front page less wordy. Adding some animated feature to it is something I'll have to mull over. Flickr showcases individual photos; I showcase stories. I have to think about how it would work.

Importing from flickr is now 2nd on my list after Picturesync support. Picturesync is probably the best plugin for Mac people, and a lot of early-adopter types are on Macs.
"the company... seems to possess only object code and that code is broken and undecipherable. Nobody... understands it well enough to change the code or add new features..."

Well if they only have object code, it would be undecipherable (to a human) - and if it's broken, how come this unnamed photo-sharing site is 'running smoothly'?
They are bolted down.
So maybe the iPhone is an opportunity for Mobile Opera to make some inroads? I guess every smartphone needs a really good web browser now.
The most misunderstood book in CS
Drug research needs serendipity
From "My Coffee House Nightmare" (http://www.slate.com/id/2132576/)

"The failure of a small cafe is not a question of competence. It is a sad given. The logistics of a food establishment that seats between 20 and 25 people (which roughly corresponds to the definition of "cozy") are such that the place will stay afloat—barely—as long as its owners spend all of their time on the job."
I just came across this topic - not only is it irrelevant to HN, but it is plain to see this was designed to be an inflammatory topic.

I find it offensive that you would judge someone's coding ability on their sexual orientation (or for that matter, sex, skin colour, nationality, political preference or shoe size) as opposed to actual talent.

It's a pathetic attempt at trolling and I find it sad you feel the need to feed your (probably unfounded) superiority complex in such an immature way.

Before you respond with a "lol you're gay" comment rtfa, I'm straight - but this kind of crap is still unacceptable.
Forget about the maids having to carry them at all. Build a kind of auto-recharge/clean/de-hair/emptying station into the base of the bed and have one each room. Also build an electronic "Do Not Disturb/Please Clean the Room" sign into the door which notifies the Roomba when it might be okay to activate. The Roomba would be programmed to start the cycle one hour after the guests leave in the morning.

Alternatively, have a cart-sized Mothership robot with the above facilities. It could go down the hall and dispatch Roombas, which would enter through a "Robot-door" disguised as a kickplate and equipped with a wireless lock. The Mothership could implement battery-swap to maximize the duty cycle of the Roombas.
Going with the flow could hardly be called "wisdom".
The month of no startups
CSS Frameworks
Flowchart Of A Geek's Life
Right, native S60 apps are C++. You can use use java as well but there are tons of limitations.
This is such a classic troll. I'm surprised you all fell for it. Maybe it's a good sign, though. Maybe it was because trolling is so rare here that you've lost your resistance.
Interview Techniques or Interrogation Tactics?
C++ with just a couple added limitations. Exceptions and static data are only now (in v9) starting to be supported. Assume that you'll use Symbian's app frameworks exclusively and not Boost, STL, etc.
Learn to Be a Medial Administrative Assistant
If you want to be a medical assistant, you have to visit this site.
Get funded by friends, family & fools
This author's title is misleading. Getting a product out there quickly is still the most important, the author just advocates testing the concept amongst a geographic region to see if the business will work instead of trying to tackle every market. This already occurs with most companies because we release in the US, and not Munich.

The examples from other industries don't necessarily apply because a lot of the startups are consumer-facing, but even so, limiting yourself to a target market (e.g. political people) may miss the unintended market (e.g. eduators), so just getting the thing out there helps you figure out who else wants your product.

The more important question is whether you have released with the minimal feature set that will test your questions about the product.
http://www.4hoursearch.com/search?q=%E7%99%BE%E5%BA%A6

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/base/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/__init__.py", line 499, in __call__
handler.get(*groups)
File "/base/data/home/apps/yoolsearch/1.209/search.py", line 37, in get
result = search(query, count=10)
File "/base/data/home/apps/yoolsearch/1.209/yos/boss/ysearch.py", line 41, in search
url = SEARCH_API_URL % (vertical, version, quote_plus(command), start, count, lang, region, filter, dimensions) + params(more)
File "/base/python_dist/lib/python2.5/urllib.py", line 1213, in quote_plus
return quote(s, safe)
File "/base/python_dist/lib/python2.5/urllib.py", line 1205, in quote
res = map(safe_map.__getitem__, s)
KeyError: u'\u767e'
Already covered by Monty Python years ago.

...The LARCH... ...The LARCH...
Interesting to see Nokia get involved more deeply into the software and services. Also good to to understand the movement in investment focus of large incumbents. Might not be a prefect fit for early seed stage startups that much as Nokia Growth Partners focus is on companies that:

1. Have a commercially available product or service

2. Are ramping revenues in large, growing markets

3. Are beginning to experience adoption by major industry participants such as Nokia.

Especially 2 and 3 will be harder for YC style companies like ours.