skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Are there enough good people to hire? Not that many years ago tech companies were hiring every H1B they could because there weren't enough local talent.

The more I think about it, the solution might make the problem worse in the near term but I think the solution is to clean the slate so we can start over with a new playing ground to make our compromises on. Let's make a flat tax for all businesses and then a flat tax for all individuals, price it to balance the budget and put a 5 year holiday on new tax law. Then in 5 years we can start making our compromises again and recomplicate the tax code to let companies game the system and try to coerce culture changes and what have you. In the mean time, all businesses pay x% and all individuals pay y% on all income, period. Perhaps graduate the tax for incomes below $50k, maybe. And perhaps instead of 5 years, we do it until the AAA rating is restored or the debt shrinks to some number or something. Just radically simplify it all.

I'm just tired of all the unintended consequences and how complex the tax code is. I can't see how we can make it better by trying stuff like this and it seems easy to game without some sort of oversight. (Could you hire your 3 year old and give them a salary no the government's dime? Could you hire a bunch of people for really cheap wages and skim?)
Completely right. Didn't want to go into detail meant the anti-virus theory and why. I'll try to explain. You want to use HIV because of a few unique properties specifically the fact that you can split the gene material used in replication from the infection machinery. In addition it actual has most of the genes in place to do all the work you need since it's so well mapped and studied modifying the structure becomes much easier. My idea was to limit the insertion to only the original material (like a seedless watermelon) to remove the danger. And have virus upload the sequence needed to produce the antibodies or receptors required to target the foreign object. Then have the body kill it itself.
Another solution I've seen programmed for the invisibility hack is to fill the game space with characters who are 'invisible' unless you have the hack. (its a variation on authors solution). People who are cheating have their field of view swamped by all these non-characters sitting around.
My grandfather was a mechanical engineer. He never said anything bad about patents, and even got one for himself. One is not automatically biased against patents in one's own field. Software engineers oppose software patents not because of bias, but because they're harmful.

I don't know the value of patents in other fields. There may be areas where patents accomplish the purpose they were designed for.
I used to rent a 1100sq ft 2br for $350 next to Ben Gurion University in Beer-Sheva a couple years back

I have a friend who's currently renting a great 1br right in the middle of Tel Aviv (near Dizengof) for ~$600

Dev salaries are largely in the range mentioned by yuvadam, may be a bit on the high end, many engineers and normal (non-eng) people are making less than 10k NIS/month

There are tons of HW engineering jobs in FPGA, VHDL, ASIC design, telecom, RF, optics, embedded, may be even more than pure software jobs. If you work for IBM, Intel, Cisco R&D in the Wadi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Wadi ) you're likely to make up to ~80-90k/y as a senior (non-managing) engineer with >10y of experience.

It's really a mecca for hardware startups, much more active than Silicon Valley in that domain (historically due to military contracts); if you're looking for top engineers to design a VLSI system-on-chip or some super-smart router, or a smartphone or something, I'd probably search there first.
This is the perfect place to mention one of my favorite websites: http://750words.com/

750 words is really fantastic if you want to practice writing every day, especially if you want to practice writing quickly. The site keeps a live word count and pushes you to write 750 words (roughly three pages) every day by tracking your streaks and awarding badges for hitting certain milestones. On top of that, the site tracks how many interruptions you have while writing your 750 words and how long it takes you each day to write.

I had a 149 day streak broken when I lost track of time and forgot to write until after midnight one day, but I'm back up to a new 40 day streak. I was shocked to learn that I'm usually able to write 750 words in under 15 minutes, and on some days I like to push myself to try to write as quickly as possible (I've gotten as low as 8 minutes one time). Of course, writing quickly sometimes means writing somewhat lower quality, so I don't always "race the clock".

If you have any interest in improving your writing skills, I can't recommend 750words.com enough. I started less than a year ago, and I've written a total of 185,022 words that I probably never would have written otherwise! Of course, by writing so quickly I've spent only 56 hours writing on the site, so I have a long way to go before I reach the 10,000 hour mark.
John Dvorak: Apple Should Pull the Plug on the iPhone (2007)
Documenting The Computer GUI in Cinema
A doubly-linked list generally refers to a bidirectional linked list, where the pointers are next and prev. This type of list allows traversal in both directions, but it's still essentially a single traversal. Multiply-linked lists provide next1, next2, etc. pointers for multiple unrelated traversals, each in a single direction (unless we assume a "multiply-doubly-linked list").

Arguably we could consider a doubly-linked list to be a special case of the multiply-linked list, but it would be a poor choice, as certain key operations (such as insertion) are more expensive with a multiply-linked list.
I programmed quite a lot in both Perl and Python. Both have their ups and downs, but - as mentioned before me - while Python may seem cleaner and better on the surface, it can - and often is - made into as massy as anything else.

Some of the python stuff also makes me want to go to a corner and cry (significant whitespace being very high on that list, the GIL being another pain in the backside at times, and some of the python modules are so very poor it's not even funny).

In my opinion, the horribility of Perl is greatly exaggerated. As for good perl coders out there - I have no about that. I'm on the opinion that a good programmer is mostly language agnostic, and can pick up a new language very fast. If you look for those, it won't be too hard to find a few that's willing to speak perl.
"Memory is cheap."

Please leave this field.
I got downvoted pretty hard but no counter-arguments?
10 bulletproof steps to 1000 visitors a day.
Let's take another ride then!
That's awesome, hold onto that! Most of the time you have to play the domination game in order to have anything of meaning with a woman - but if you have a girl that's on the same plane with you, that will reduce the amount "drama" in the relationship and also become a much more long term and productive relationship too.

Sorry for misinterpreting what you wrote.
An airbag for your smartphone
Fair enough, but at least one person thinks that it could destroy neural ganglia in those who have the herpes virus: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/jekip/new_drug_coul...

Granted, the odds of this translating to a plague of aggressive carnivores rather than dead quadraplegics are low, but if I were a novelist, I'd sequester myself in the attic and bang out a best-seller.
stay tuned =) We have a lot of awesome product features in the pipeline that will be released in the next few weeks.
Have you considered rendering your CSS using the templating system? That way {% static .. %} Just Works, and you can also roll extra template tags for repetitive stuff like rounded corners. You can pre-render for the live site, of course.
I don't have a definitive answer to how to fix patents or software patents but I'm pretty sure that patents must somehow be coupled to economical counterweights. What I do know is that it's way too cheap to obtain patents and walk waving them around.

There should be a cost of ownership involved that is somehow relative to the gains from the patent and its value. Patent troll companies exist because it's too cheap and easy.

I can't imagine the details but ideally this cost would direct companies to only consider patenting ideas that would exhibit an actual novelty and also a reasonable profitability expectations. This would validate both the new and useful aspects.

Filing patents the conveyor belt way would be too expensive and even if given the money, filing patents without merit wouldn't yield profits. I don't know how to link merit and money, and I don't know how to not exclude small players from the market but cost has notoriously a pretty good chance of keeping things in some control.
Agreed. The older a PHP application is, the more likely it is to have incredibly serious security vulnerabilities. But I've looked at and broken plenty of vulnerable applications that were written within the past couple years.
His presidency has been centrist

isn't this the only thing that matters? After all we're talking about President Obama, not Senator Obama (which is a totally different topic)
Interesting. Thanks for the info. We obviously need better information about this though - anecdotes only go so far.
How was something written in the book a spoiler when you're reading the pages in order?
One of the things that Reto Meier talked about at Google I/O this year is building apps that are "Psychic," e.g., using things like Contacts on the phone to make the user experience less painful. However, he cautioned against being too psychic because it might make users uneasy about what else is being accessed.

One of the things I like about the Facebook Android app (and by extension any Android app) is that you can go to the settings and see what permissions you granted the app when you installed it. In contrast, you can't tell whether an iOS app can access your contacts list.

Given the recent history of Facebook with respect to privacy, I'm not surprised that this bit of software magic was considered by the user base as something nefarious.
I'm sure there are tons of people who would be grateful to be in a position to be able to pay such a price.

I think a company would be hard-pressed to have a pill that cures cancer -- letting millions die each year, because the pill costs $100k. I think there's a non-trivial possibility that the gov't would take that drug for its own uses.
Google Plus API: Is it Intentionally Late?
I can't help but feel that the original list skews a little "nerdy" and aren't really a draw for most people. Some of the arguments are just specious and/or dubious. Privacy & trust? Facebook's privacy controls are actually more fine grained than Google+'s and Google's track record with respect to privacy is just as mottled as Facebook's and includes some higher profile incidents as well. Did we all forget about the Buzz release? Google ecosystem and a "blended experience"? There is absolutely no evidence that there is demand for that and my gut feeling is that there isn't.

The rest of the arguments are just as spurious and the article is, in my opinion, representative of the tech world's flawed and narrow take on Google+. It seems like most commentators have let their analyses be skewed by either an irrational dislike of Facebook or a love of new technology. Neither of these will drive people away from Facebook or towards Google+. Furthermore, a lot of these arguments seem, sometimes implicitly, predicated on the idea that Facebook is just going to stand by and let themselves be steam-rolled by Google. Google is the underdog here, they have a lot of failures under their belt in this area and at the end of the day, despite the novelty involved in binning friends into circles, Google+ is just a Facebook clone.
they respond with 1001 reasons why they can't update, you come back with "well that's too bad". the only way to change people's attitudes toward browser updates is to not tolerate outdated software. if we keep accommodating crappy IT departments, things will never change.
Most really strong systems lock an account after a couple of incorrect guesses. I assume this is all for systems that may not be secured to prevent brute force.
I understand that argument when it comes to "see through walls" cheating. The server can't do real-time line of sight calculations for every player and only send them information on other players who they have line of sight on.

I'm not so sure that applies to players who are invisible due to a stealth ability. The check there would not involve a lot of intense geometry calculation, but rather just a simple check to see if a given player can see through stealth.

My guess is that for stealth players the reason you have to still send their data to everyone is for AoE effect checks. In many games, AoE effects still hit stealth players. AoE effects are still subject to line of sight checks in many games, so you'd want the client calculating the potential targets for the same reason you use the client for line of sight visibility checks.

I wonder if any game companies have tried a statistical approach to catching cheaters? For instance, suppose on an AoE attack, the caster's client calculates which targets are hit and informs the server. Why not have the server randomly pick a small fraction of these attacks and verify them? This doesn't even have to be real time. The server could just log the relevant information (locations of both players, the spell that was cast), and a modified version of the client software could be used in a batch mode to go through these and verify that the user's client reported accurate results.

Anyone who fails the random test gets flagged for more random tests.
Damn our Canadian transportation system! My friend and I are planning on sleddogging down. Haha, we're actually planning a road trip for this if you don't mind driving with strangers and are in the lower AB/BC province we might be able to drive you--if you don't carry around an axe and stuff that is.
I kinda get what you are doing, but I think you haven't defined the end user, and therefore your product MIGHT lack focus.

In your products page, you talk about 3 different customers. People who want to try hadoop, advanced hadoop developers, and CFOs and analysts who want the resulting analysis.

It is very difficult to serve 3 customers with a first release product. Think about what the market need really is AND what you are best positioned to serve.

I don't think you're best poised to serve beginner hadoop developers simply because you start with them having to set-up an ec2 instance, and bring their own data source. If you really want to service beginners, why not provide a one-button start-up your hadoop server, and you start up an ec2 instance for them, loaded with some data that they can play around with and learn. Or let them upload data somehow.

I'm not an advanced hadoop developer, so I don't know the needs of this group, but they are VERY different from the needs of the beginner group.

Analysts and CFOs is where the money is at. They don't care about hadoop or ec2 or what, they want the results, and are likely willing to pay for it. If you have a solution that lets you quickly and easily build tools to slice and dice financial information, I suspect that is a great product to sell. You can do customer work to meet specific needs, and if they want their own developers to create custom functionality, well have you got a product for them. Look at this great hadoop tool we've got that lets your developers work with our systems....

You've got something, you just need to work on figuring out your target market and sales channels. Work through an elevator pitch, and you'll realize that the best way to go is to focus on one customer, and everything follows from that.
A skip list is also part of the "linked list" genre, but it would be misleading to say that William Pugh patented "linked lists" if he actually patented the skip list. (I don't believe he actually patented the skip list, just to be clear.)

The term "linked list" refers to singly and doubly-linked lists, which may be circular and/or sorted. This is from Intro to Algorithms (2nd ed). It's not just my personal association here.
The two agents of interest here are the person paying for the cure and the person buying it.

The person paying for the cure, usually and insurance company, wants it to be as cheap as possible.

The person selling the cure is probably not the same between the two treatment scenarios.

The hospital administering the treatments might have a motive, but they aren't involved in the decisions about whether to go ahead with research.
Nice to see that not everybody is a greedy asshole :)

A commenter on Slashdot gave another good point on why the industry HAS a reason to develop a cure for cancer:

If any "Big Pharma" company invented a cure for cancer tomorrow, you can bet your ass that they'd be all over it in a heartbeat.

Why? Because, then that company would forever be known as the company that cured cancer. Every new product they make would be a pot of gold. Every ad they put out would be "Muhdikard, a new treatment for erectile dysfunction, from Drugco. We cured cancer.". Every drug company on the face of the planet would kill for that kind of marketing, not to mention the money from selling the cancer cure.

Source: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2375188&cid=...
Jersey Shore Season 4 Episode 2
Ask HN: Lean Startup - ContactSpot - Marketing Startup -  Feedback Desired
Hi - I am getting ready to start our alpha of ContactSpot.com -

It addresses multichannel and multistep market - basically across the channels (mobile, text, fax, voice, email, direct mail) based on user behavior.

ContactSpot provides a visual designer where you can drag and drop various components and build a workflow - eg: cart abandonment emails, send a second email or tweet based on their click behavior, send a different email to male or female segment, build 2 way mobile apps etc.

Please comment - still getting ready for beta.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adtWZAtH7Ug
>must not consist solely of lowercase letters

Which is exactly the sort of terrible restriction xkcd is criticizing.
Is that really true? I'm looking forward to pretty much every phase of my life (except the death part, I could happily skip that).
The problem here is one of sampling bias. You're seeing an example of one "outside the box" idea that worked out of thousands that didn't. The NIH and pharmas are constantly getting pitched on (and funding) ideas for innovative new therapies. The problem is that cancer therapies under development fail at a rate >95% in the clinic. Therefore, most new approaches to cancer treatment turn out to be abject failures. The fact that funding agencies and pharmas passed on this specific one isn't surprising. They just can't fund everything.

The good news is, these guys should have no trouble getting funding now.
Firstly, while there's still time you might want to fix the typo in your title.

Secondly, clickable:
http://www.strax-data.com/demo

Thirdly, I hate videos - consider writing at least some text.

Fourthly, just doing it gives no motivation, no structure, and no sense of where it's going.

I suspect this is something I'd actually want to know, but you'd be better placed with three, much shorter videos, and some text to give it structure.
Epic troll too subtly epic?
Boo! Disagree. JunkDNA gave you a perspective from the Pharmaceutical company side. Here's a perspective from the finance side:

I worked for 2.5 years in a finance firm which specialized primarily in biotech stocks. (We were on the "sell side", meaning our clients were hedge funds and mutual funds, and our product was research reports advising whether to buy or sell the stock of certain biotech companies.)

Without fail, the biggest catalysts for moving the stock price were study results, and the better the results, the bigger the jump. Every company absolutely wants that blockbuster drug that cures a disease.

With CLL, for instance, as in the article, there are a number of treatments, in 1st line and 2nd line after relapse, 3rd line, and so on. And doctors prescribe this one or that one, depending on context and what side effects you can tolerate, etc. If your drug is a complete cure and you can jump straight to first line and everyone prescribes your treatment, then that's a gold mine.

A recent example is Cougar Biotechnology, whose cancer drug abiraterone was so insanely successful the company's stock price rocketed and then was acquired shortly thereafter by Johnson & Johnson.

Lastly, if you finished reading the article, you'd see this part:

"With results for the three patients published Wednesday simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine, money for further studies -- not just in this one type of leukemia, but in other cancers -- will likely pour in from both the government and drug companies."
Indeed, read-eval-print-loop is also crucial to flow.
Better web font loading with JavaScript
Stream Dialog demo is very interesting. They are changing video experience in a way that is useful for companies.

However, do they really deliver value for that 9$ subscription?
54, the title, at least in UK (and IIRC in Europe) has no bearing on the field or scope of the invention. I've the vaguest recollection of a case in the UK facing this issue and being judged that the title was not allowed to be used in determining the scope.

If the title could be used for such purposes then you need the title to be as broad as possible to avoid reducing the scope of the patent unnecessarily. Suppose you patent "an improvement to a automobile engine" and it's later seen that the same improvement is good for boat engines, rocket engines maybe, etc.. This would be equivalent to file wrapper estoppel¹.

However, the claims define the invention and the title (again at least in the UK) must only signify the field of the invention. If you improve "linked lists" in your invention then you don't make up a new field you call it that. Simply "Linked Lists" is broad, it could easily be shorthand for "Linked Lists used in non-traditional fields" or "An alternative to linked lists", etc., and so is highly unlikely to limit the patent but still meets the regulatory obligation to provide a relevant title.

There I said it. Titles don't matter. Granted claims matter, in this case the claims in the B2, http://www.google.com/patents?id=Szh4AAAAEBAJ&printsec=c... (which don't look modified but I didn't really check).

--

¹ Firefox spellcheck says it's "estoppal" but I think I'm right (for a change ;0)>)
ICloud iPhone rumored to join iPhone 5 Release
Falcon HTV-2 is lost
What so many folks never get is that the joy of John C. Dvorak is that he's a curmudgeon -- and in a world full of tech bloggers who fall under the spell the newest shinny object that's always a bit refreshing. Sort of having slightly bitter coffee with your sugar filled pastry. He makes a perfect foil for sunny Leo Laporte (which is why he is always a great guest on TWiT).
Chinese Authorities Find 22 More Fake Apple Stores
Show HN: First Weekend Project: CougarReport.com
Chill's Response to Mark Zuckerberg
In about:config, change browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash.
The underscore.js source (http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/) also serves as a great primer on the effective use of 'this'. My rule of thumb is to never rely on 'this' unless 1) the function is already bound to an object or 2) I have explicitly set the binding via bind, call or apply. When in doubt favor explicit argument passing.