skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I read something just yesterday that claimed there were 11,000 computer science graduates in the US every year so (even if the figure I read was somewhat off) it seems like most of those Michigan engineers are not writing software.

I'd be interested to see more accurate figures if anyone has them handy. Here is the article mentioning the 11,000 figure: http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187
How has online learning changed Education?
The link here has all the pictures: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2644988
I'm not seeing the lazy rhetoric of which you speak. The grandparent made a pretty simple assertion; worded a little differently, our government rejects the justifications used by other governments to censor their people, and at the same time seeks to censor its own people using rather more dubious justifications.

Perhaps you have an actual objection to this statement?

Edit: For the record, I have no problem with my government actively undermining censorship in foreign countries, and in fact I heartily endorse it in this case.
My startups first iOS game, Quotiac, was making ~$7/day within two days of making it on to the App Store. It took me about three months of full time development (programming + asset creation) to get there. My monthly expenses at the time were nil, so every penny earned was considered profit.

http://itunes.com/apps/quotiac
Also, I find it hard to find stuff that I want. You can browse the top hundred titles, or you can browse every damn title in the system, but the in-between ground is iffy.
The lodsys case
It takes about twenty minutes on a Dell (which tend to be among the biggest purveyors of nagware). Forty minutes or so if you just saw screw-it and reinstall the OS, plus whatever time it takes for Windows Update to do it's thing. I get that you're a partisan, but can we not be completely hyperbolic?
Wait, isn't the average ebook just text, rendered by your reader?
Exactly. I've read sources that claim there are only 11,000 computer science graduates nationally per year. Here's the source: http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187
Yes seriously. Ken Thompson's involvement in it is mentored, often exaggerated, in just about every introduction piece I see about it.

And to be brutally honest, its the only reason I initially even gave it a glance.
Uncle Willie's Cookie Cutter: Heat Up The Kitchen: myintimtoys.com
> Anything that I was able to resolve had to be done by opening up an xterm and editing some config file someplace (which usually wasn't in the place pointed to by most of the online help I could find).

The price of flexibility is a lack of conformity. This is fine in the server environment where you have a bunch of machines you control and learning your distro's every intricacy is worthwhile when it's amortised over all the machines you own.

However, for a home user trying to do a specific thing to their one computer, being able to Google their solution and follow the instructions is very important. Fedora and Debian might be G/L but if you only have instructions for one you'll have to know how to translate it to the other, and that's beyond most people's ken. In contrast, Windows is Windows.

The only common affliction is hardware, but Linux still draws the short straw here. But it could be worse, at least you're not making yourself a Hackintosh.
I believe this is related: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toast...
The article on TDD:

it is about giving you a tool to deeply understand your own problem domain

However that's not what TDD actually does: http://devgrind.com/2007/04/25/how-to-not-solve-a-sudoku/
Even easier than the telegraph, but potentially even more dramatic: the phonograph.

Paper diaphragm, wax cylinder, a needle, and viola! You're a god! ;)
A C Heisenbug in the wild
I agree that freedom comes accompanied with responsibilities, but not the simplistic, "don't rock the boat" type of responsibilities that 6th Grade teachers talk about.

Thomas Drake had a responsibility to expose the NSA's massive waste. Elssberg had a responsibility to expose the Pentagon Papers. Assange and company have a responsibility to get the US diplomatic cables out there. Those forsenic economists (http://www.slate.com/id/2203121/, http://www.iies.su.se/~ekaplan/coups.pdf) have a responsibility to figure out who profited from knowledge of US-backed coups in Central America.

Freedom isn't free of cost. We all have a responsibility to spill the beans about immoral actions by secretive organizations.
Agreed. Snap circuits is great. The mechanics are easy enough that my three year old can put together simple circuits.
JavaScript Rutt-Etra Video Synthesizer clone
You submitted this four weeks ago ...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2549609
The linked author claims that TDD is not a good approach to develop algorithms by linking to an article by Peter Norvig in which he writes tests to develop and further prove correctness of his algorithm. Maybe he didn't write the tests first, but none the less it proves the upmost importance of tests.

Btw, Peter Norvig himself has good things to say on TDD[1]. So using him in an argument against TDD whilst he's using tests is kinda self defeating.

1. http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/coders-unit-test...
Anonymous Strikes Back By Attacking Website of Spain Police
Considering that slide could be used verbatim in a Turntable.fm deck (which, btw, is an absolutely amazing product) I'd argue that this is post is doing it wrong.

EDIT: After looking at the actual presentation, http://www.slideshare.net/vgvikas/musicwalla-business-pitch-..., this literally mirrors the idea behind Turntable.fm. It provides all those features (plus others not included in the slide) and is both awesome and innovative. I get the general gist of the advice being given, but the example is horrendous.
Unless you're selling to enterprise or the government.
That's kind of the same thing -- a person from the future would probably not really be able to guide us into the future any faster. He wouldn't even be able to show us how to build a time machine because the technology necessary to build the tools to build a time machine don't exist yet.
I think "Side effect free" in assert() is the biggest takeaway from this.
So, Steve Jobs wasn't always above secretly copying another company's product the way he claims to be now.

"Cupertino, start your photocopiers." (http://www.macnews.com/content/wwdc-apple-blasts-microsofts-...)
Homemade Iron Man Mark I Suit
Creating slick intro videos for startups
I remember seeing a startup that was doing cheapish (cost) but excellent quality videos for startups to explain their company and products.

And can't seem to find them for the life of me. Maybe even it was a YC startup.

Anyone know where to get a video like this done fast with reasonable cost?
Hackers And Clouds: How Secure Is The Web?
Kindle typography
I'm currently reading Facebook's Tornado web server. They have some demo apps included too.

https://github.com/facebook/tornado
If the general topic of boosting your Python-fu interests you, be sure to check out this StackOverflow page: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2573135/python-progressio...

And its HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1890494
For $8 bucks a month I find it to be a great value, even if I only watch 5 to 7 things a month. To use OnDemand I would need Cable TV and have to pay $50 to $60 more.
Couldn't an agent just use a satellite phone? I thought they were worldwide.
Netflix's number one problem is that the companies who own the content don't (for the most part) want them to succeed. They take too much power away from the content owners. Netflix would happily offer EVERYTHING via streaming. The content owners would rather Netflix weren't allowed to send disks out by mail, but there's that pesky problem that it doesn't violate copyright law.

Maybe Congress will create compulsory licensing for streaming like the compulsory licensing that makes radio possible. Or maybe they will allow content owners to license DVDs instead of selling them and Netflix will cease to exist.

I have dealt with cable companies and I have dealt with Netflix, and I know which side I am on.
That article reads like US Magazine.
Yes, that is me.
(Something like) Those are actually real!

My mother taught me that basic strategy for betting on a "horse race" carnival game with the similar design (but the winner was chosen randomply via multiple rolls of a die that represented each "step" along a racetrack)

She taught me to watch the bettors and bet on whichever horse had the least number of shares purchased. If the bets were semi-secret, and we had to engage people ("analysts"?) in conversation about their supposed bets, it would be even more like the real equities marker.
Outside of large conferences and technical meetups, I find if you compare sheer volume of events/meetups, the valley wins hands down every time. In a given month, I might find 5 events that interests me in SF, maybe more if I really tried. In the valley, you can easily find 5 a week. To be fair, the city has better technical meetups and if you have specific ones you prefer in one location or the other, that's mostly what will matter most.
That's a great idea. If things work out then I might even be able to get 3 internships in total (every summer that I'm in university).
Stroustrup: Why I created C++
Do knockoff Prada bags hurt Prada or help the company sell more?
It'd be nice if startup advice wasn't so absolute and instead presented "rules" or suggestions as being situational. "If you’re doing a startup, you should have less features than your competitors" may very well be good advice for certain startups (or Musicwalla in this case) but it should not be considered gospel for all startups.
Avoiding this kind of bug is one of the reasons why Go doesn't have assert().
If you're into sci-fi I urge you to read Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep [1]. It doesn't have a lot to do with this except that it has a fairly primitive society that has high-tech dumped on it in two different camps and what eventuates is an arms race.

In the same vein is CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series [2], which tells the story of human colonists who end up lost, unable to find their way home. They instead find a habitable planet with a native population that roughly has 19th century technology and build their space station above it. The station isn't sustainable though so they end up getting stranded on the planet.

So while not time travel per se, the whole subject of vast technology differentials is a rich vein of sci-fi that I personally really enjoy.

As for someone transported to a medieval era, any person with a high school education would have what is, for the time, a highly advanced knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, physics, possibly chemistry, biology, etc to the point where they would be immensely valuable in the right hands I would think.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreigner_universe
I found the referenced article sort of jumped the shark as it were at the end there but basically makes some good points for would be Linux adapters.

I've always felt that Linux's biggest challenge was a lack of a voice. Linus does a great job of being that voice for the kernel and the closest we come for user land is Canonical. An illustrative example of how that voice might feel to users, if you have a choice between Gnome (MacOS X inspired UI) or KDE (Windows inspired UI) then the set of utilities (calculator, IM client, explorer, etc) might (in a well voiced world) have one implementation and they would change their behavior depending on window system preference. Some do of course, but many don't and it confuses new users when they use the KDE version of a tool on Gnome or vice versa. The concept is that you need one person or group which is speaking toward how things will be done, so that consistency can be achieved across a large number of things. The concept seems somewhat antithetical to some members of the Linux and FOSS communities.

Another area where a good leader / communicator would help out would be in things like audio and printing and wireless networks. These things are, to the perspective of someone coming to or trying Linux, horribly horribly broken. They "just work" on Windows or MacOS.

Graphics and windows have gotten better in recent years but anything that drops into the 'modify your .Xdefaults file' or 'Xorg configuration' just mortifies someone who just wants to use the machine they don't want to become a 'nerd' just to do something useful.

The 'edges' of Linux, especially in places where there are on-going personality of philosophical wars (like the Canonical/Gnome/KDE wars or the Wireless vendors vs the world wars) are really yucky places to have a problem.

And there is the point that was made in the article that when you do have a problem you can't really find an answer sometimes. I wish there was the 'redhat for desktop' equivalent one could point those people at. Canonical is closer but having a staff that manages issues rather than a wiki/forums page would make it worth paying for in some circles.
Indeed.
Not speaking about Facebook (no first hand experience to judge from) , but I 'm depressed by the amount of brainpower and wealth that our societies spend on zero-sum games such as high frequency trading and seo (I'm fully aware of there useful byproducts, but can't help to think that we'd be much better off with globally useful activities in the first place).
The original parent said "Java and everything else", leaving an implication that unmanaged memory stuff was marginal. I think that's what the gp is addressing.
The PMA Performance Marketing Association just filed the first law suit to fight the Affiliate Nexus Tax. this is the first action of its kind from the internet marketing industry fighting back..

Performance Marketing Association Sues State of Illinois over Affiliate Nexus Law Lawsuit Aims to Protect 9,000 Illinois Small Businesses;
State Will Lose Estimated $22 Million in Income Taxes if Law Takes Effect
http://performancemarketingassociation.com/pma-vs-state-of-i...

worth while checking out and helping support and spread this info...
Blizzard has a similarly comprehensive questionnaire for canceling a World of Warcraft account.
How To Get Free Wii Points
Free Download Hindu God Wallpapers Hindu Goddes Photogallery Your Mobile And Pc,
In Hollywood.
I like it overall but as any analogy, it must be used with caution as it fails to infer a fundamental principle of the stock market. In a Keynesian beauty contest, contestants cannot lose as long as they pick the most popular face. In the stock market, it is very possible to lose even if you pick the most popular stock, in the event of a bankruptcy for instance.
I'm either not having the problem you described or it's not related to the OS.

- Youtube is horrible for me to watch in Germany, but that's the carrier's problem.

- I'm a ruby user, but not a developer, so I can't tell much about that.

- Documentation depends on what you're searching for. Ubuntu itself provides a great set of documentation and community wikis. The forums are also very helpful, so is askubuntu.com.

- As said: Ubuntu follows a strict release cycle regarding the library versions.

- Printing works perfectly fine for me with any printer I tried so far. If your printer does not work, complain at your printer's manufactorer.

- Minecraft runs perfectly for me.

- Gmail works perfectly for me.
>> I have been pointed that the population I was using for "Ireland" is indeed the population of the entire island, so Republic of Ireland (Eire) plus Northern Ireland (Ulster).

Wonder if it's worth pointing out Northern Ireland != Ulster, he seems keen on correctness
Is the real reason the US is trying to do this is the fact that it wants to remain friendly to the next people in power? If the US helps the dissidents it seems more likely they will be friendly to the US in the future. Since the next regime may or may not be friendly to the United States.
I'm not the biggest fan of the present vision for facebook, but these brilliant people are enabling others through their open source contributions http://developers.facebook.com/opensource/ to make things we find meaningful
Send mails with the Gmail accounts: https://github.com/TheFox/pronz-gmail
The conformity of the geeky echo-chamber on the subject of copyright law worries me. The trouble with echo chambers is not just that extreme opinions (e.g. that media piracy is okay and all intellectual property law should be abolished) start to seem mainstream to those inside them, but that the folks who want to have extreme opinions then have to adopt even more extreme opinions.

Here, for instance, we have the opinion that not only is media piracy okay, but that any government attempt to stop it is not merely as bad as but worse than, say, the Chinese Government's ongoing attempts to censor anyone who dares to say "Hey, the Chinese Government kinda sucks".

I don't think existing IP law is ideal, by any means, nor do I think that it's what I think it should be (and I'm not so arrogant to assume that what I think the law should be and what the law really should be are the same thing, since copyright law is intrinsically a compromise between different types of people, and there's certainly no reason why my personal preferences should take precedence over anyone else's). And I'm happy to engage and argue with people who have extreme opinions, but the correct way to express an extreme opinion starts off with an acknowledgement "OK, this might sound crazy but hear me out..." rather than a bald-faced assertion that "wah wah, enforcing copyright law is like shovelling babies into gas chambers" or whatever.
>This really disappoints me. Sure, somebody needs to work in Finance for the sake of liquidity and other things I don't understand. But, 35% or so of my social group that are pursuing degrees in Physics are headed to Finance instead of research.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and this one is as bright as it gets. Until the rise of e.g. finance and actuarial science, getting a physics or math degree meant just going into academia. Now, with more demand for math or physics majors, there will be more demand for physics or math professors, which ultimately means more money going into math and physics research.

The existence of the medical and legal professions contributes vastly to the funding of schools of medicine and law, and this is no different. It's good, not bad, that there are other things you can do with a degree in advanced mathematics besides "teach grad students advanced mathematics and vie for increasingly-scarce federal grant money".

>I'd much rather seem them expand human knowledge than profit and live an easy life.

It's too bad we don't live in a country full of self-sacrificing saints, huh?
Is there anything cheaper than the ikea one?
The polite way of saying that is "view C++ as a federation of languages" ;-) Meyers, Scott. 1997. Effective C++. Addison-Wesley.
I was interviewed for that article (The quote re: The best people are already working"... was me).

We tend to prefer people who are
1- Open source contributors to projects that are related to what our project is about
2- Have active Github profiles.
3- Have a deep interest in learning and education
4- Are willing to put up with some experimentation (aren't afraid to rip out features and add new ones quickly)
5- Have worked for other startups

Finally, we start with contract positions before deciding to bring people on full time. Do you have any other suggestions to reach out to devs who fit the bill who are currently still employed? Much harder to find out details about if they're not on github contributing to open source stuff.
Mega list of Jtag patches - XPG
I'm curious as to what easy advances there were in cooking. Do you mean something along the lines of better heat sources or do you mean recipes?
Python is multi-paradigm; it's not dominantly OO. Comparing python libraries to java libraries, functional composition is used just as frequently as OO composition (if not more so).

If you're building a website, in Python/Django, you pass in your request handler function using first class functions. In java, you inherit from the request handler class, and override the method.

JsonTools loads and dumps are pure functions. In java, josn.org, there's a class for each JSON type that you interact with.

That being said, I can also think of many Python libraries that use classes.
The Hipster-type examples of the world which gets all sorts of coverage on TC are the occasional winners and make everyone feel it's easy (success bias). You don't hear about the hundreds of other folks who put up a coming soon page and got no love.

And so if you assume that you're site will not get tens of thousands of visitors like Hipster, Joel's suggestions for a landing page that yields conversations and validated learning is smart and pragmatic. If you're site gets the more likely 10 or 100 visitors and you present what your product does, you'll be getting real "leads" and not just be attracting "promiscuous" folks who will give their email but who will ultimately never be customers/users.

Great post Joel.
Send mails with the Gmail accounts released by LulzSec (pron.com)
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we're so slow in making progress in fighting against the genuinely oppressive regimes in the world -- because when we should be helping those who really suffer from oppressive regimes we're too busy complaining and finding false equivalence with our own.

"Oh yeah, it's a big problem that the house across the street is on fire. But it's also at least three degrees warmer in here than I'd like! It's important that we go get some hoses for the people across the street. But it's also important that we stop my housemate from turning the thermostat up so high. Let me tell you more about my annoying housemate..."
I'm already a Prime customer -- and a Netflix subscriber. Amazon's "free" category for Prime movies is thin - very thin.

And I'm afraid Netflix warped my brain with subscription fee -- it seems exorbitant now to pay $3.00 to watch a single streaming movie. So personally, I don't find the promise of a few free shows, designed to lure me into paying a la carte for the premium ones, very compelling.
I agree, and he got his ore from the Ceramic store, no pick and hammer breaking down rocks from the quarry.
Hm interesting. Where I come from, the aerial power cables go down pretty regularly due to wind/trees from storms. I haven't heard of similar issues with the underground lines, but I don't know anyone at the utilities. I would have thought that glass fiber would be impervious to all but backhoes, though.
5 months for my iPhone app. I broke ground in May 2009, released in Sept, and the money became ramenable around Nov, after I fixed the glaring bugs.
A C compiler could warn on large classes of side-effecting code inside assert(), as he suggests, but it'd be tricky to decide exactly which kinds of side effects to warn on to avoid too much noise. At the very least, I/O stuff would probably have to be excluded, or else you'd spuriously warn on the common pattern of dumping some debugging info to stderr within a call like assert(everything_ok()).
The concepts would be invaluable though. If he/she were able to give of some of the base concepts for how those things worked, we could direct all of our energy towards those concepts rather than stumbling in the dark to increase our understanding.
Amazon primes selection seems so bad that its more of a nice bonus to people that want to subscribe to Prime anyway rather than a standalone Netflix/Hulu competitor.
The Internet Is My Religion
That something is valuable to someone does not mean that it is useful for society as a whole cf. zero sum games or worse:
Think about the guy whose job was to hide defects in nuclear power plant : certainly valuable for tepco, but for society as a whole?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/fukushima-engineer-...