skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Definitely worth the experience, but not really too useful for most practical programming projects. The big advantages of writing assembler come from understanding the real time nature of a processor (at least for me). Writing code in assembler is truly an art since at that level you can actually interweave code in such a way where blocks of code are both functional in scope as well as globally (such as using a block of code as a delay for a different action, caching the result until later using it, used often in video code). Great assembly will generally beat a compiler significantly especially on embedded systems.

In my experience learning assembly language is not so much an action but more of a process. Build yourself a nice little cheapo MCU circuit (AVR, PIC, ARM) , or get your hands on an emulator, and try to actually program it using assembly language. I'd highly recommend doing this using either a RISC instruction set over making an attempt at a CISC one like x86. Not hating on x86, but my experiences with it did not really teach me much about computers, rather taught me about x86 (if that makes any sense). I'm not a massive fan of how they always teach MIPS in academia, but it's a good place to start since most RISC architectures are very similar if not based on MIPS.

Also, understanding assembler will help you in understanding how CUDA works under the hood. CUDA is C based, but underneath its implementing some interesting SIMD stuff, so at least a basic feel for how instructions are fed into a processor could legitimately aid in optimizing code for CUDA where a 1% difference could be very significant.
The "copy to" and "move to" buttons, seem to be some variation on the old "send to" command, which is currently available via both right-click and menu bar. (For those not familiar with Windows: if I select a file, the "send to" options are: compressed folder, create desktop shortcut, documents, fax, email, burn to DVD, network directory.)

Personally, that's an command that I never use; not sure how popular it is with the Windows userbase in general.
I would like to ask a question.

We have a product. We have beta customers and it seems we will have revenue of about $30K/year (that is according to survey of existing customers). We believe the revenue should be 100M/year :)
But we are not sure if we know what we don't know.

We are old (in 40s) and geeks (never did any business before but we dreamed about).

Does it make sense for us apply to Y combinator? Meaning what path would be the most efficient for us?
The Startup Genome is a phenomenal tool and feedback mechanism for startups in any phase. I've been very impressed by what I've seen in this project. Keep up the work guys, you're off to an amazing start!!!
NC Historically Black Colleges & Universities Stay Active In STEM Efforts
The OP specifically mentioned a MPB, a laptop, which are pretty easy and high value targets for theft. If my laptop was stolen, I would be relieved to know that my personal data was safe.

There are additional reasons for full disk encryption too, like ensuring that important system files have not been tampered with. Whether or not you want to go that far depends entirely on your level of paranoia.

For a home desktop, the cost/benefit may be a bit different, because the computer is exposed to less places and people. As with many things in security, you would need to calculate what is an acceptable risk to you versus the cost of mitigating that risk.
Barnes nobles store
The black box can adapt to new circumstances. A lot of the algorithms used today in speech recognition were established on much smaller data sets (thousands of hours of speech); the tradeoffs made then may not apply when you have 1000x the data. The more automatic the algorithm, the more it can change.

Existing speech recognizers aren't really a "white box". You can't look at a Gaussian Mixture Model and understand what it's doing.

The more you automate the whole training process, the more.
reply here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2938388
Triangle (NC) based Metabolon lands $13.1M round of venture financing
What do you guys (and gals) think about non-technical co-founders? Well at least co-founders who are barely learning to code?
Best beauty products
Nanobiotechnology event highlights NC's growth as nanotechnology center
Startup Genome team: Thanks so much for your contributions and for helping the startup ecosystem evolve. We appreciate it.
[Citation wanted]. That blows me away.
Ask HN: Remotely working for an american company
Hey guys, I'm sure some of you have encountered this scenario: software developer working as an employee (not contract) for an american startup.

I'm assuming there's quite a huge body of tax and legalese that I might have to negotiate?

I'm totally illiterate when it comes to this stuff, so… any help is appreciated :)

PS. I'm canadian.
It is one thing I love to show "normal" people. They can use it to easily copy files to eg USB sticks or even select images to send by mail. These are tremendously useful for those people.
Honest question from an iPhone developer...

I know many people on HN are rooting for walled gardens to fail (App Store) and for openness to triumph. Do these same people willingly use Steam and think it's great? Isn't Steam's delivery platform for games and the App Store's delivery platform for iOS apps pretty much the same concept? If someone is against the App Store on principle, shouldn't they also be against Steam and not use it?
Best TED Talks for Designers and Developers
In Windows 7, Control-double-click on a non-selected folder works (opens the folder in a new window). If the folder you're clicking on is selected when you double click, it will just become un-selected then selected. What a mess.
http://www.napera.com/product-design/pie-charts-considered-h...
I was just amused that someone praised for being so civil and respectful and mature would make a needlessly incendiary comment about the GPL on their website. Particularly as religious debates about open source licenses are quite stereotypical of disrespectful, immature, uncivilized nerds.
If I may wander off topic for a sec on the specifics of this particular article, I have to say that I really love IBM. Often when they hit the tech news for something it's not just an upgrade or an iteration, but frequently it has them attempting to find the next paradigm shift in core computing. Entirely new CPU architectures, inventing or applying never before used technologies, etc. This is innovation and I really take my hat off to them for the amount of effort they put into pure computing research and prototyping.

Edit, yes I do also realize that in the specifics of this article Sun was first to implement this.
Why not? I applied previously not so much for the money but rather the mentorship, advice and relationships that could be built.

Don't sell yourselves short because your "old". Sell the fact that your mature, disciplined and responsible enough to commit to this company and bring tremendous experiences along with you.
The study indicates premature scaling is the number one cause of startup failure. Y-Combinator's results seem to indicate the number one cause of failure among its startups is kind of the opposite: the startup just kind of peters out, and the founders go work on something else.

I assume this is a result of selection bias on both sides: Y Combinator only funds extremely small startups (generally 2-3 people), and this study likely (though I'm having trouble verifying) only includes startups that got beyond this phase. Does this sound reasonable?
"New computer users" ?!

People who use Windows are, for the most part, not new computer users. More and more the new users go to a Mac, tablet or smartphone.

The point of that article is that people already use hotkeys and context menus. So building a bigger menu and toolbar is crazy.
True innovation requires hard math and CS.

Take Shazaam for example, who built an empire on audio data indexing/search, sound recognition = numerical analysis + probabilities + statistics + search algorithms + a lot of knowledge about systems architecture, distributed systems, databases etc.

Of course you can build products a la 37signals but is a lot more to software than that (and also note that 37 guys are not code monkeys/script kiddies/you-name-it, they actually know lots about CS - sample here: https://github.com/rails/acts_as_nested_set/blob/master /lib/active_record/acts/nested_set.rb )

At some point in your career you'll want to: write a parser, search a graph, optimize some storage thingie ...

Epilogue:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-food...
I had a bit of a nightmare with SWIG recently, glad to hear I'm not alone! http://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/ocaml-bindings-for...
“…a miniscule amount of obliteration still obliterates you.”
Yes, instead of the menu bar they have this weird bar with "Organize", "New Folder", and "Burn". Not sure why "Burn" on every single explorer window; maybe they think all users are Napster fiends or something...
age is irrelevant, you should do it.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19789...
Show HN: songspin.fm - Discover, stream and share music
Actually Amazon Tablet will "!" Bury Ipad
You can worry about that once you become big enough to get noticed.
They entered that realm long ago.
Steam is not the only way to distribute Windows games.
Please rate my project finderous
Hello, I have made a location based short QnA website called finderous (http://www.findero.us). I would appreciate if you folks could review it and pass on some feedback and comments. Thanks.
A big problem with the iOS App Store is that it's a monopoly.
I see no mention of "security" or "encryption" on your site. I assume that all files are uploaded as-is? Is there an option to have files encrypted on upload?
Work in support sometime. It is EXTREMELY common to find users that really don't know about right-click. Or that double-click everything. These are not new users either, they have been using computers for decades.

For new users I might agree that they could figure out a right click because everything is new. But for users where everything is familiar ("I've always done it this way"), it gets much harder to break those expected actions.

Second part is about explorer itself. While it might seem like a common utility (even necessary), I find it very rare for a general user to know about it (my wife does not, nor my parents, siblings, their friends,...but my wife's father does). Once they see it, they have no idea what to do. Copy a file? Really, they have no idea.
Online banking does not require customers to read 875 pages of legalese in order to have a chance of noticing and understanding the line that grants a $200,000,000 tax break to Exxon.

I think that the claim that it is now practical to have a direct democracy needs some support. Can you point to a smaller group which is governed in this manner? To a working prototype of transitive voting code? I am prepared to be persuaded, but the practicality seems far from obvious.
Sorry if this has been asked/answered before: is there a disadvantage to applying multiple times? In other words, is it better to wait until you are totally sure you have your strongest application, or is it worth taking the risk, and then applying again when you are further along with your project?
Fair enough. Currently a 3GS iPhoner, but the temptation of LTE and a larger screen may be luring me to (or away from depending on who you ask) the dark side. I've enjoyed your iOS hockey app, but one app won't make my decision on which phone I choose.
That's a big question. Let me attempt to answer it by breaking it down.

> We have a product

Several of the hottest companies in the last batch had been around for years before YC. Also, AirBnB.

> We are old.

I don't think that's an issue. Ever since the announcement of the Start Fund, YC has seen more and more seasoned founders come in. My -favorite- company in the S11 batch is a group of wickedly-smart guys in their 30s who've never started a company before.

> Does it make sense for us to apply to YC?

Depends. YC gives you exposure, business and investment contacts, operational help, and focus. For many companies, those things move the needle. If you're willing to give up a minuscule slice of your company to open up growth opportunities, then do it.
As long as y-axis starts at 0%, its fine for me.
Ask HN: Accepting online payments from South Asia
I work for a company that provides cheap international calls. To date the bulk of our customers are from the West, calling Africa and Asia.

Now that we offer services to enable our customers’ contacts to call them back we’ve found one major barrier to adoption there is the difficulty of receiving payments from countries like Bangladesh. Credit/debit cards and PayPal accounts aren’t readily available.

I’ll be asking our users if they have any suggestions, but I was wondering if any of you have any experience accepting payments from these markets?
I knew this would happen. I bought a Thinkpad T420s which has a non-standard (or new standard?) 7mm hard drive caddy instead of the much more common 9.5mm. I bought a 64GB Crucial M4 because it could be modded to 7mm and the price was right. I'm happy with the performance. It feels noticeably faster than a standard magnetic drive, but the 64GB is in tier 10 on this comparison. I guess as long as I'm happy with the performance it doesn't really matter. I wish this article was around 2 weeks ago.
...was trying to say not bury but HN won't take a bare "!".
Built v1.0 in a week. The idea is stumbleupon meets hypemachine. Currently using soundcloud as the data source. Any and all feedback is appreciated!
Everyone I know loves managing their files, so it's great that Microsoft is finally improving Windows Explorer!

WRONG!

For the hundreds of nerds complaining that they don't have access to the file system on their iPads, there are millions of normal people who are delighted by a computer that they can use rather than manage.

How much longer can Microsoft keep making a 20th century operating system? What's going to be the great innovation of Windows 9? Yet another reshuffled toolbar driven by all of their wonderful data?
Oracle has demonstrated a certain eagerness to sue alternative implementations, so I'm not sure those really get around the issue
> High-end users report a loss of productivity.

I agree with this but I think the effect is only temporary. Moving from the menus to the ribbon is a change and you lose your muscle memory and your sense of the "logical" place for things. But when you get used the new system, you're equally effective. After a while I came to appreciate the ribbon in Office because everything you could do in the current context is right there -- nothing is hidden deeper down. If it's not in the ribbon, you can't do it.
I have founded it important mostly as a confidence builder.

To use and program a computer without having at least seen how it all works at a lower level felt wrong to me. I felt like I had no foundation to really understand what I was doing. I'm not claiming that I know which opcodes are being executed as I run my django dev server - that's not the point. But it's about having a clue.

Some day, if I have to dig down that deeply into my machine, I will not fear. I have seen what it looks like down there and I know which tools to bring with me.
> SIMD assembly can give performance improvements of 10-20x or even higher for many types of real-world code.

Using SIMD intrinsics is often preferable. For set-in-stone inner loops, the extra performance you can wring out by hand-writing in assembly may be worth it, especially on compilers with shitty support for intrinsics. For SIMD-based leaf functions that are going to be inlined in many contexts, intrinsics have the advantage since the compiler can schedule and register allocate the instructions piecewise rather than treating them as an indivisible block with hard-wired registers (GCC-style clobber lists are supposed to help the compiler do that with inline assembly, but it sucks in practice).

My opinion is that every programmer should learn enough assembly to fluently read the code generated by their compiler, but most of them should not be writing it. Debugging is the number one pay-off, but keeping tabs on what the compiler's optimizer does with your C code is a close second.

There was a good illustration of this last week on Hacker News. Someone submitted a StackOverflow thread where they were competitively coding a fast fixed-size sort based on sorting networks. The tentative winner at the time was using some god awful hand-cooked branchless code for min/max that was completely defeating the compiler's attempts at generating the simple and optimal cmp r0, r1; mov r2, r1; cmovg r1, r0; cmovg r0, r2 instruction sequence. That would have instantly obvious if they had the habit of reading their compiler's assembly. The result is that they were leaving a ~3x performance gain on the floor.
First feedback - redesign the front page to make the "sign up/sign in" form much more prominent. See tumblr's front page (http://www.tumblr.com/) for a good example of how to do this; I'm sure there are other very good examples.
I've never, ever used the ribbon, it's just a waste of space as far as I'm concerned. The fact that Microsoft still insists, to this day, on pushing it everywhere just screams that they don't get computers. No wonder they're struggling in innovating outside the enterprise.
Telling people what they want to hear is a valuable skill, as we are seeing.
I actually went through and removed the reddit homepage and most of the other default reddit stuff from my account, so now it just shows AskScience and a few other niche areas. It's awesome.
Third time's a charm. Good luck. For what it's worth keep the focus on you. YC companies have changed ideas mid-term many times from what I've noticed and it seems they're entirely interested in the individual members of the team.
The writer of this blog uses a picture of the Golden Gate bridge as the background image on the page. As someone who lives near the bridge, I can affirm that at any given time, more than 50% of the bridge is empty; that is, less than half of the bridge's surface is covered by cars or pedestrians. Clearly this is a complete waste of resources, and we should just get rid of the empty half.

Also, what is up with those suspension towers and all those cables? Does anyone actually cross the bridge at those great heights? I say cut them up and stick them underneath as support piers, so that they're not obstructing the view or (more likely) sticking out of a fog bank and creating a hazard to passing aircraft.
One reason is simply that some tests can be very hard to write -- or outright impossible.
I was talking about Facebook the tool, i.e. how it is actually being used by people. Not Facebook the business model, which I agree with you is exactly as you describe, but is something completely different and separate from how it is perceived and used by ordinary people.
Invisible actions are harder to discover than visible ones, not that illogical really, and one of the key ways in which the Mac is more user friendly as it depends on context menus to a lesser degree.
He has worked hard to torch the bridges between Mojang and the open-source communities surrounding Minecraft. He doesn't like people hacking his code, or creating tools which interoperate with his releases. You might have noticed that some mods have been pulled into the main Minecraft tree; the person doing that pulling is always jeb, another Mojang employee. Notch himself isn't very happy about it.

Projects like Bravo and Bukkit don't have any official endorsement or acknowledgement. Our channels of communication keep getting narrower and narrower. It's to the point where I've personally given up on actually talking to Mojang at all.
Comex partakes in a Q&A about his future in Jailbreaking
Presume that he was only saying that to string along the people that would not have been otherwise interested, like the burgeoning community of open-source hackers working on various Minecraft tools.
Sorry for an off-topic post but what a terrible website. With Javascript disabled I got a black window (with the article already available in the HTML source). With Javascript enabled it loaded for 14 seconds (yeah, I started counting). And the result was really not worth it for reading a simply article.
According to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2937671 - I think yes.
Yes but people don't WANT to learn things like this. My mother doesn't want to remember what mouse button to click or that CTRL or ALT is a modifier on this command.

I would argue that THIS is what made Apple's OS hang on all those years it was in the severe minority. There is a segment of the population that wants only one mouse button to click, not 3, not 3 plus CTRL or ALT or etc. Apple did end up having to rely heavily on their option key to extend functionality but at its root the UI was designed so that the average user could do things in a simple, straightforward way. MS sees visually exposing commands to the user as their way to do it and while I may not entirely agree, I don't think it's without merit. My kudos to them for also letting me as a "power user" collapse the "newbie visual noise" off my screen and drop what I want on a custom quick access bar.

Remember: don't let your status as a power user cloud your view of how your grandmother might want to use her computer. There are FAR more 'grandmother' grade users than there are us.
I applied for Summer 11 and didn't get in and I'm still serious about what I'm doing so I'm applying again. If nothing else maybe they'll remember me and if I dont get in there's always the next session. It doesn't hurt to keep putting yourself out there. Good luck.
there are lots of icons and words in an arbitrary layout (not rows or a grid)

They actually use a containment metaphor vs. a list or grid metaphor for orgnaization. Though I have to agree that once they're in the container it all goes to hell. And I can't for the life of me reliably remember which container contains what.
I have no idea if it's the most inflammatory thing he's said. I don't know much about him other than he wrote a video game I've never played. I just saw http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2938141 reference "openness" and was wondering if Minecraft was actually open source, as I didn't think it was. So I googled for license info, and the first thing I found was a quote that wouldn't be out of place in any typical Linux nerd flamewar.

And then I saw the comment about Notch being so respectful and civil and whatnot, and I luled and posted the flame inducing quote.

Not surprisingly, flames ensued.
Point well taken. I can't seriously argue against Tufte or actual research, but I still like pie charts for some things.
Found a pastebin with slightly more info: http://pastebin.com/SwCZqskV
For the "do I need...", "is it worth it...", "should I buy..." type of question, I usually rely on my stock answer. "If you have to ask, then no."

There are many things like this in technology. Things that are rewarding, things that enhance your ability to understand a problem, things that give you new skills and abilities, great tools, or high powered technology. But, if you don't know you need it, then chances are, you don't need it.

On the other hand, perhaps the fact that you are asking is a sign that you are ready to need it. Are you becoming curious with how things work? Do you run up against an assembly wall when you try to debug or get tasks done? Do you need to eek out performance that you can't otherwise get? Only you can answer that question.

Fortunately, assembly programming will always be there for you, and learning the underlying way things work will always make you a better programmer. It's best learned as a passion and a means to understand, not as a magic bullet to get a better job, or to instantly get awesome performance.
Blu Ray Copy Software
How do you copy a bunch of documents and pictures from and to a USB drive without a filesystem?