skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A twitter account is a pretty low bar. You don't have to use your real name and you don't have to tell anyone it exists.
I hope their user enjoys it. ;-).
I'm a member, and I just introduced three of my friends to it. I'm more surprised that the number is as low as it is.

The ads are very, very well done: They're intrusive enough to be an incentive to pay, but they're not annoying, like some of the ads that come up on other sites. They're for reputable products from recognized companies, and probably at least half of them are for "Did you know that Spotify does X? Just click ..." or "My name is Artist X, here's a sample of my new album...check it out on Spotify."

To play audio ads in my house, and not get muted (or rather, have the volume turned all the way down - the player detects when you mute it, and pauses the ad), you have to be pretty good. Spotify makes the cut.

If I had a compatible mobile device (my 1st gen iPod Touch doesn't make the cut), I'd definitely pay for it. If my girlfriend had uncapped internet, she'd have it as well.
More than just Programmers
That's a pretty good counterargument.

OK, you've changed my mind, let's not kill the poor.
I think I agree with you. Ubiquitous broadband-speed capable technologies like 4G will be the way to go. It's too expensive for most rural parts (most parts, period) of America to be laying down lines.
I don't think it's all that interesting, and it says nothing about Python 3 itself. The choice to write a book on it didn't match up with the demand for a book, and people extrapolated the "disaster" comment too far.
I think you have that wrong. The virus travels up the nerve into the cell body. It stays there until the nerve (or you) dies. There it hijacks the cell's DNA machinery to create more virus. These new viruses travel back down the axion to be released in the blister. A cold sore on your lip is just the herpes virus shedding new viruses. Once infected, the body develops antibody to that type of the virus so infection doesn't spread but by then it's too late. Usually the site also becomes asymptomatic over time as well, however the virus will chill out in that nerve reproducing itself forever.
You are making the assumption that Swedish law is like US law. US and British law are in some respects not sane on this subject (for example, defendants expressing sorrow or apologizing for personal injury being take as signs of culpability).

That Bethesda has gone as far as to retain a Swedish law firm should point out that 1) they mean business and 2) they know that this is going to play out in mojang's court (literally I guess!).
It's also going to make it pretty hard to get started if you don't have a Facebook profile I would imagine. Thankfully I already have positive reviews through a dozen-ish stays on AirBnB or I would probably be screwed since I'm not on Facebook.
The global economy: Carnage
Reasons why investors steer clear of start-ups
They already do. Incompleteness Theorem ("some logical statements are true but are unprovable", e.g., "this program will terminate" for some arbitrary programs a.k.a. the Halting Problem) is one of the most significant achievements in logic.

Here's philosophers' take on Kurt Godel:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/

I am, however, curious as to how other problems in computational complexity figure in philosophy, e.g., P vs. NP completeness. Wish I had the time to read the essay.
> you're thinking of golds meager utility as a "commodity" and you're right -- but almost non-existent commodity utility is its greatest strength as a reserve and savings asset -- there is no competing usage so it can fully absorb value without disrupting anyone else's business or livelihood. Just ask the central banks of the world, the kings of the past, the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Brazilians... or our grandparents! This stuff is not only virtually undestructable over centuries; neither can it be diluted or produced at will -- the physical kind, that is:

Gold has historically been used as a reserve of wealth because it's malleable (so can be formed and/or split for convenience), abundant enough to be feasible for currency use, relatively simple to purify, and because people wanted it. The only things that are compelling about gold in modern times is that people want it and that it has a limited supply. Unfortunately, gold is also very limited as an investment. As far as assets go, it's historically not done as well as other asset types. Gold has some "intrinsic" value, but it's value doesn't really increase (nor generally does its price over the long term). In comparison, a dollar in a bank account draws interest (though lately that's negligible) and a share in a company may grow in real value as that company's profits increase.

> That's its strength, it can absorb unlimited nominal "value" -- if houses couldn't be built from the ground up, they'd be almost as "good as gold" -- just not as durable, fungible, divisible, portable and compact. Plus "housing" implies a competing "social" use. "Do not speculate in houses, people need to live in them", some will moan -- "do not speculate in pork bellies, people need to eat", some will moan. Who will complain about physical gold being "overpriced"?

No one will complain about physical gold being "overpriced". They'll complain about the drop afterward. This is what happened with housing as well. Very few were complaining about the price on the way up as they indebted themselves to buy 2x what they could afford and 3x what they needed. But they sure complained when home prices started dropping. If everyone were putting their money into gold, you could be sure they'd start screaming about their "retirement funds" when gold started dropping.

> This is the best part... physical gold is a steal as its current price is still being 'discovered' exclusively on the paper commodity exchanges, where new demand is still largely met with freshly printed certificates. Paper gold, I agree, is highly overvalued. That means, physical gold today is tremendously undervalued! Even gold in the ground, not yet mined, is already being traded in paper by speculators! It will be a spectacle one fine day when they try to collect in specie -- if ever. They're in it for the paper profit and sure enough they will be paid off in nominal terms.

I don't agree with this assessment. Physical gold is by and large priced to match the paper variety. When prices fall on the market, they'll fall for physical gold as well.
I recently visited a farm in rural Saskatchewan, a province of vast areas of farmland and only one million people residing within. Broadband was readily available even way out on the farm. For comparison, the only US state with a lower population density is Alaska.

I hale from rural Ontario and while our density is greater, we are still a long way away from urban centres. Here, they are working on rolling out fibre right to the farms. High speed DSL has been available for over a decade.

It really is difficult to comprehend that people are still using dialup.
Note: this doesn't include The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

> We wrote this book before we created our publishing business, and we do not publish it. It’s owned and published by Addison-Wesley http://pragprog.com/book/tpp/the-pragmatic-programmer
Without touching on your main point at all, it's a shame you got downmodded. I gave you my upmod, for what it's worth.
Exactly, that was what I was saying about "starve the beast".
Have there been companies that were acquired and just shut down/deleted everything? The ones I've seen just said "we're ceasing operations in 90 days, please back your data up".
Mark Cuban:  What Business is Wall Street in?
Its no 'yappd', but still very cool!
Paying one cent less than is due constitutes a default. This is what people don't seem to understand.

The US defaulting doesn't mean all the bonds disappear. It doesn't mean nobody gets any of their money. It means the US doesn't fully meet its contractual obligations.

Scale this back: You only pay half of your mortgage payment one month. That means you're in default. Does your obligation disappear? No.

Were the US to default, the important questions are "By how much?" and "How long will it take to fix this?". Only once those questions are answered can you begin to answer the question of what other entities' debt ratings should be.

EDIT: Not all bonds would go into default at once, either. The US could pay some in full and not others, and could pick and choose which got paid how much. Country X that only has a limited amount of US debt might get shafted, while country Y that depends heavily on US bonds gets paid in full. What's the actual consequence there? Not much. Country X is mildly inconvenienced, Country Y has no problems.

This is way more complicated than 2+2=4.
Looked at the link, and what do you know "Top N things something" is on the third spot of apparently notable news feed. I appreciate digg's efforts to stay relevant, but I'm sorry, this is not a newswire.
Both Kicksend and Snapjoy insist on Real Names, very irritating. (Is it a YC trend?) Will you purge accounts that don't use them G+ style? Will I upload a bunch of files, have them no where else (your average person) and then find out they've disappeared one day because of an inane real name policy with no recourse? How about if I don't have a last name, and have to make one up to fill out your form? You'll get real names with payed accounts, but it's otherwise unwelcome.
The PLT macro system is the result of some of the most advanced research into the core of what code is. It addresses issues of what it means to use a variable name, what exactly scope is, and so on. I'd highly recommend reading this lecture if you want to understand the nitty-gritty low-level details of what exactly a macro is.

On the other hand, if you're not an experienced macrologist, I'd recommend reading Graham's On Lisp first; it uses a much simpler macro system (that of CL) to introduce the practical aspects of macros: why and how you'd use them. This lecture is closer to the theory --- low-level nitty-gritty theory at that.
I'm in my flat in NW2 and I can hear police cars going down the Edgware Road. Fucking terrifying. The police can't keep up, according to the news they're showing up hours late to everything and they don't have any water cannons. Bad times.

Edit: #riotcleanup tomorrow morning all over town: http://twitter.com/#!/search/riotcleanup
Show HN: Book Recommendations From Successful Founders
Amazon’s tablet innovation will be the price
So what was the trigger that started the riots?
Short Term Vision
Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have all made rumblings at cloud-backed file storage recently -- Dropbox could lose a lot of paying subscribers overnight if one of these companies got a few dozen engineers to build a client on par with the Dropbox client. A $10B valuation for Dropbox is way too high. I'd sell for a couple billion now if I was in their shoes.
PloobsEngine Features Video
That is a solution for these companies, but still leads to distrust. You use a backup service so you can leave your files on the site and not worry about it. This is the problem yc companies now face.
My old legal studies professor is now teaching gamification
I'm looking forward to using this. I hope it exposes a certain insurance companies practice of underinsuring people to make it appear they are cheaper and get the sale. Save 15 minutes to get less insurance than you need, for more than it would cost elsewhere...
I heard some bloke was shot by the police.
Patent specifically mentions BIOS. Apple uses EFI.
Taxpayers pay $3.2 million for SharePoint site
The city I live in recently unveiled the new website it has been working on (http://preview.calgary.ca). As a contractor who worked for the City on projects that had touched on this one, I know quite a bit about the background of this project. To sum it up, it was built on SharePoint 2010 and had about 5 people from the development company working in-house on this project and hit numerous snags and difficulties along the way. I'm curious if other developers think we got totally scammed here? I know they have a decent relationship with Microsoft on licensing and also have some pretty heavy infrastructure to manage these sites (Meaning, they probably) didn't buy anything new most likely (assumption but still, how much of that would factor into 3.2m?)

Any thoughts? Just trying to decide if my logic of being outraged is correct :)
Nope. Works for me. ... but I've had an account there for a while.
Announcing Git Support for Google Code Project Hosting
I'm not very technical but I've been a reader of hacker news for a while. After wanting to start something, for what seems like forever, I finally made this site last weekend. The goal is to provide high quality book recommendations from successful founders. First month's featured entrepreneur is Andrew Warner.
The trie check contains the maximum-dictionary-word-length check as an obvious special case and therefore its worst case is the same order of magnitude efficiency as the other check.

You do have the cost of descending a level in the trie. But that can be made constant (with a jump table) or else the log of the size of the alphabet (which is a constant for all intents and purposes).
Originally there was a peaceful protest over the shooting of a young man during a police operation. that seems to have been hijacked by mobs intent purely on violence.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14450248

The initial areas are fairly poor and have a history of tension with the police, but the disturbances tonight seem simply to be youths intent on causing damage and looting.

I'm not in London, these are my impressions to give you a quick answer. They may not hold up to future scrutiny.

Also: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14442935
The joke in the name of this project makes me really uncomfortable.
What gets broadband out that far, regulation or business motivation?
I agree with you. Moreover, the eye has a fantastic ability to filter out differences in illumination. If you could design an experiment where someone who had been illuminated by different color temperature lights could be asked what color temperature the light was without remembering what it was from when they were first exposed to it, I bet that people would have difficulty doing so.
This is what triggered it off, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/05/man-shot-police-...

and here's a little background context http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/08/context-...
On The Average IV: Class Size (.PDF)
Sort of. Most computer science departments actually came out of philosophy departments. In terms of implementing algorithms (sorting etc.), yes there is a lot of math involved in that. But there is a lot of computer science (and programming) that is involved in epistemologically describing and modeling objects that does not involve math as directly. Ultimately, though, you're right: it's all math at its base.
DiP3 is not a very good book. (Neither was DiP.) I don't know how relevant that is to sales, though, but considering that some of the bigger Python groups actively recommend against it, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an impact on sales from that alone.

Edit: I don't recommend learning Python from a book. I recommend http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ if you know a programming language already, or http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ if you don't. (Yes, I know there are dead-trees of both of these.)
It's probably a terrific service and I look forward to using it, but wow, just to get a quote I have to give out enough information to own me good, not just in cyberspace but IRL.

Name
DOB
Address
Make, model, year of car
Drivers License
Optional Social Security
Sex
Marital Status
Student/military affiliation
Optional Employer
Optional Professional/Alumni Associations
That's even scarier. When we had our (ridiculous) riots here in Vancouver a couple months back, it was all in one area. Many will argue that the cops didn't do a great job keeping it under control, but at least they kept everything in a relatively small zone away from residential areas, and it petered out over the night. Doesn't the fact that they're springing up all over London point to there being a systemic problem that is provoking people to more violence? How many days has this been going on now, three? Is there an end in sight?
Would sqlite be suitable for such a mini database?
We have terrible news, felching may be bad for your health
"I don't think these ratings are intended to still hold true in a global meltdown type scenario."

That was Vlad's point. The US debt is, for the time being, 'too big to fail' in the sense that things like oil is priced in dollars. So almost by definition, the US debt is AAA and everything else is the same or less risky than that. (Talking strictly about soverign debt here, corporate debt is a different kettle of fish)

"Your point does show though how ridiculous the current situation is. A country that is up to its eyeballs in debt really should not be the measuring stick."

This seems to be a common misperception, which is where our 'eyeballs' are, relative to the amount of debt we are carrying as a country. Compared to the GDP and size of the economy, we're not in bad shape at all. Further, even at the anemic growth rates of 2%, if the Government cut nothing, which is to say kept the same budget this year (in terms of dollar expenditure) as they had last year (basically actually made the budgeting process 'net zero' so any new spending was matched by an equivalent cut) the country would be running a surplus in slightly more than 15 years. With 3 trillion in current revenue, 2% growth compounded over 15 years gets us to 4 trillion in annual revenue. Even running a half trillion dollar defict we 'win' by not spending any more. But it does depend on us having the discipline to do that.
We hear ya. Building trust takes time. If it means anything though, we built Snapjoy to scratch our own itch, not to flip.
SQL Server 2008 R2 PDW To Get Hadoop Support
It's the same information you'd have to give out to any insurance provider...
Implementing the Copy Feature for Yahoo Mail Contact
I'm wondering how they are going to reach users. Given that PPC for "insurance" can cost $50++ per click, how to reach users?
So they get paid once for every affiliate they refer. Seems like a site someone will visit once or twice in their lifetime.. and not a "sticky" site like Reddit. What are they going to do if Google penalizes their site (even by mistake) for something incredibly dumb, and they lose all their traffic, and all their income because it's not recurring revenue?
If we're still talking iOS, the Game Center APIs allow me to do all of what you're describing, which means even less server-side code to write, and with the added benefit of leveraging a Game Center halo effect.
our fleshed out desktop experience is highly visual and is something many consumers find very, very appealing.

This is only because I'm obsessed with such things, not to sway your audience one way or another, or suggest you're wrong but...

I'd actually like to see the data on this. As it stands, opening up my dropbox folder and getting access to the functions I need to share files through the OS native context menu I'm already familiar with (copy public link, for example) seems like it'd be a no brainer. Why add layers of complexity and abstraction through excessive visuals?
Heads up guys: I am getting 500 errors when I enter a zip code on your site.
I got a 500 error after entering my ZIP code. So much for that.
Widespread default was a scenario built into their models. In that scenario they predicted a generous federal bailout because some "too big to fail" banks would be at risk. They were free to pursue strategies that would otherwise be too risky.
Apple adamant about intervening in Lodsys lawsuits against iOS developers
Female Tech Founders To Watch
After 21 Years: Goodbye Microsoft
Why do you think it was bad? (DiP, not 3). No snark.

I have both DiP and PtHW on my Kindle, and I can't straddle both to the end.
That could be -- it's been awhile since I checked.

There does seem to be a bit of chicken and egg barrier though. I may be willing to give out this information to allstate.com or statefarm.com or progressive.com but I am not sure I or others will be as willing to give it out to leaky.com.

Maybe they are awesome, and maybe it's just me, but if you want me to give this information out on the spur of the moment, I guess I would like a site that somehow exudes a bit more trust.
Some percentage of the worlds "wealth" has been standing on a foundation of bad debt which is, as it always eventually does, working its way out of the system. Sad that it's going to be painful, but it has to happen, and really the sooner the better.
Seems like a site someone will visit once or twice in their lifetime

If you're smart, you'll visit every six months and see whether someone else is cheaper. At the very least you should visit every time you get a new car.

If they're smart they'll send you a reminder email every six months to get you to try again every time your insurance is up for renewal. Heck, they could recalculate everything for you (based on the new set of assumptions) and email you a set of quotes -- that's one semi-spammy email I wouldn't mind getting at all.

However, I can't get the site to work. Maybe it's getting hammered, maybe it doesn't work yet, maybe there's something iffy about my input (I did put in a fake licence number because I was too lazy to find my real one). All I'm getting is a bunch of "N/A"s. Never mind, I renewed my car insurance last month anyway, so they've got four months to fix it.
This is totally awesome in just about every way. I am also a recently re-located member of San Francisco and this is really interesting stuff.
I'm not a lawyer, but I have to wonder if EFI (especially with the BIOS compatibility layer) is considered to be a BIOS in a legal sense. The only way I can imagine this would be is if they somehow convinced a judge that BIOS = firmware. This unfortunately isn't too far out of the realms of possibility as it would most likely be a jury trial (uninformed masses) and even a lot of Techs I know call any firmware a BIOS.

I do have to wonder how much they are asking for this patent, if they are looking for a small amount apple is likely to just pay them off as they have done in the past. No use spending $250k in legal expenses if they are just looking for $100k for a perpetual license.
Great idea, but I think you should differentiate a little bit more from Square, design-wise:

http://www.leaky.com/ vs. https://squareup.com/

EDIT: I realize they say "until we can hire a designer of our own." — but don't they have the Start Fund + YC + SV Angel money?
How is that different than esurance.com, a close competitor?
Are you speaking from your perspective, or from the perspective of Random Joe User? The fact that they're YC backed at earns my trust, at least to the extent that they're not planning anything malicious with my data (not necessarily trust that their security is competent).
I think onemoreact meant that after relying on a good IDE for awhile you can easily forget whether the method is named table.keys() or table.getKeys(), hasElements() or hasMoreElements(), stuff like that. Forgetting such things doesn't impair your ability to understand or debug the code.
Escaping From Shawshank For A Startup (best job ad ever)
And with the invocation of Godwin's Law [1] we can now close this part of the discussion.

[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Godwin%27s_la...
Warn HN: Lots of Launches Coming
Every cycle we warn startups not to wait
till 2 weeks before Demo Day to launch if they can
avoid it, because there's always a glut of startups
launching then. Every cycle they do anyway.

It's now 2 weeks before Demo Day, so there are
going to be a lot of new startups launching in the
coming week.

Please be nice to them. For you their launch may be
"yet another YC startup," but for each individual startup
this is their big moment.
I’m Quitting Breathing