skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> If you have to scour your spreadsheet each time to make sure your chosen delimiter is not present in the data, this defeats the purpose of an automated approach.

'scour' is a little exaggerated, don't you think?

Most data doesn't have commas in it, if you think it might, use a different delimiter.

> It's not much harder to write a solution that correctly handles all input using the Python library.

Sure, you can use Python, but I'm writing the article for Bash users - people getting into scripting for the first time - and the solution works reliably.

Edit: removed the '99% of cases' as provided there is at least one character that does not appear in your data (eg, %, #, etc) the solution simply works - and otherwise you have an extreme edge-case scenario.
> I would suggest the US software industry is older than other software industries

Is it though?

There were many European computer companies in the early days.
Blogging is a huge market. And it's growing. And the big players are making tons of money. Seems like a great thing for a couple Stanford grads to be doing.

If you want to trivialize creating a successful blog platform, I suggest you try it, and let us know how it's doing in 6 months.
in line with what axod mentions:
as a young field, software engineering is still pretty meritocratic. That is, the only standard a software engineer is held up to is if his code gets the job done. All fields start off this way, but over time formal institutions grow up around them. Eventually, just as there is an American Psychological Association, I expect there to be an American Software Association. When this happens it tends to create new ways in which you can be successful in the field. Just as not all (or even most) of the members of the American Psychological Association are good practicing psychologists.
My theory is that as our brains evolved, many of the complex problems they faced were social. Communicating ideas to somebody else probably uses different parts of the brain than solitary thinking does. It's best when the listener has good ideas, but sometimes just the act of communicating the problem can get you unstuck.

Anthropomorphising parts of a problem ("this object is trying to send this message to this other one, but it isn't getting through") can be useful, for the same reason.
I've written many posts to newsgroups and mailing lists asking for help with my programming problems over the years. I've only actually posted/sent less than 5% of those.

It's amazing how the mind works.
Interesting idea, but I don't think the problem he posits is new. Everything is done along a chain of trust. Even current researchers don't reproduce every experiment that led up to their current body of knowledge. No one has ever understood the entire chain of reasoning.
More to the point, mistaken ideas have always infected lots of people, this was the impetus for science in the first place. This will resolve itself in the usual way- people rely on the results, the results turn out to be wrong, and we search for more answers.
Digg does quite well on "sponsorship" type advertising. I.e. they add a new feature, or a labs thing, and get Cisco or Intel or someone to sponsor it.
"The solution works reliably for 99% of cases" is another way of saying the solution is not reliable. It's the 1% cases that make the problem harder, and that's what the author was referring to.

edit: As a pedagogical exercise it's fine, but I wouldn't rely on it in practice.
Robot assistant gives surgeons a cutting look
Vishay Releases First White Power SMD LEDs
New data: Technorati releases second and third parts of its blogger survey
I would never claim to be a computer scientist or even a computer programmer.

I am a web developer, I work with scripting languages to develop basic web applications. I do not develop complex algorithms or even know the difference between threads and processes (anyone want to enlighten really quick?).

</incomplete_thought>
I'm going to go against some of the other comments here say go for it.

Whether or not to got for it was not the question. The question was how to proceed (lawyer recommendations, etc.)
Overall a very interesting article. Still this line made me chuckle:

"And it would disastrous if erroneous results were to have a major impact on public policy."

This is probably one of the most routine occurrences in creating public policy. Maybe only superseded by misunderstanding scientific results (erroneous or not).
Being degree free myself (and knowing others in the same boat) let me put it this way: with four years of school you may be able to start at $50K a year. With a good head and practice you may be able to get a job at 20 for $50K. With 6 years of school you may be able to start at $60-80. Again, with practice, a good head, and a good company you can be in that range by the time the schooled person is ready for the work force and you don't have the debt.

By and large programmers solve problems. If you can solve problems well enough they'll pay you. They may pay you more when they see that magical degree on your resume, but that doesn't mean you can solve their problem any better than the person without a degree. Likewise if by the time you are 30-35 you can be at or near 6 figures the actual pay difference you could earn matters less and less.

There is a lot of value in a formal education in computer science or software engineering. So much so that I am tempted to go and attempt to get a degree in one or the other. But it isn't so I can work in the field. There are so many lazy people that if you just show up and dig ditches you'll find work and become important to the company. If you think a degree (or even the ability to do things text-book right) means anything to a firm that just needs an apt to store customer contacts than you are fooling yourself. I doubt I could ever work at Google, but I really don't care that much about missing out on that rat race.
There is Planner (which has had other names, including mrproject and once being part of GNOME Office):

http://www.simpleprojectmanagement.com/planner/

I've only dabbled with an ancient version of it installed with RHEL3, and it seemed fine. I'm not sure it is being updated much lately.
I'm still using it, I miss some extensions...but ff is just too buggy and slow.
> "The solution works reliably for 99% of cases" is another way of saying the solution is not reliable.

No, it's a way of saying the solution does not work in extreme edge case scenarios, specifically where there is no single character that in usused in your content and therefore no delimiter available.
Except I think that situation is more likely than you think.
Find yourself a spouse who is not only a good cook, but enjoys it too.
Sorry, I think I came across too aggressively. I honestly read your comments as "wouldn't it be nice if Knol did X", and when I went to look at the site it already was doing X, so I had assumed that you were just throwing out comments without actually having touched the site at all. The site loads pretty fast for me, but I'm sitting a few miles away from Google HQ, so things may just be different for me.

So in summary: I thought you were being silly but it turns out this was just a big understanding. I hope this doesn't make you hate me or HN.
MSFT does not get enough credit for its peripherals. The keyboards aren't pretty, but they are some of the most comfortable I've ever worked on.
If you ever wonder why that is, get a degree in CS and a degree in another engineering. I am a senior double majoring in CS and mechanical engineering, there is just no comparison. My mechanical engineering gpa is a 2.8, my computer science gpa is a 3.9.

Why is that? Because programming is to CS as being a mechanic is to mechanical engineering. I started rebuilding cars with my dad as a kid, and I started programming in middle school. All my CS assignments tap those skills I learned but none of the mechanical engineering assignments tap my mechanical skills.

That said, I will probably be doing more CS than ME after college.
I'm not in Mexico, but it's good to see tech startups in countries other than the US and Europe. Best of luck!
Most software developers want that - or, more specifically, all the benefits of Linux with mainstream hardware and application support. What's wrong with that?
I explained this to my fiancee, who is a counselor with a masters in social work. I don't think it's made a difference, other then allowing me to occasionally quack for a response (to get a laugh) when she's taking to me.

She prefers for me to take the place of the rubber duck anyway, because I'll "quack" out a valuable suggestion that she hadn't considered maybe a 3rd of the time. Apparently I'm just too helpful.

I suspect it works far better with computers and programming because we're trying to solve a specific issue that doesn't involve feelings and group politics. Further more, it seems to make a psychological difference when a person is listening, as opposed to just talking to an object. On the other hand, it could just be because of her career.
> If you looked at something like MacPorts or Fink, you would see that installing $randomPackage is as simple as "sudo (fink/port) install packagename"

We both know the amount of packages available in Fink pales in comparison to the average Linux distribution. To state otherwise is disingenuous.
Perhaps an initial understanding that OS X could do everything Linux could. Otherwise, an appreciation of Johnathan Ive's industrial design.
The methane time bomb
There was a ton of media coverage behind Google Chrome, a lot of non-techie people knew about it.
I'm reminded of a surprisingly profound exchange in the otherwise zany classic, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World":

"Now take it easy, honey. These things happen, ya know."

"Now what kind of an attitude is that, 'these things happen?' They only happen because this whole country is just full of people who, when these things happen, they just say 'these things happen,' and that's why they happen! We gotta have control of what happens to us."

(I'm not saying you aren't taking action, or that you would be able to change this. Please don't take this as an accusation. I might have posted exactly the same thing as you, if I'd seen it earlier. I don't actually have a point. Maybe I just like imagining Ethel Merman responding to your comment.)
The plans seem reasonable, but I hope they're profitable by now. I'm assuming this was a case of cash flow from operations not being able to finance their aggressive expansion plans.
I must admit I went back to Firefox 3, which for the record is awesome, after less than 4 hours.

Haven't really used Chrome since. Might prefer that over Safari for CSS-testing, but that's it.
Ritual Coffee Roasters: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/business/smallbusiness/04v...
T Mobile G1 Phone: a new buzzword or a real improvement?
T-Mobile G1 phone was finally launched!
The real difference is that it allows you to cut all the paperwork out of your life. There are many people who want the perceived safety of W2 and/or don't want the hassle of running their own business. Umbrella Companies make it very easy to do so.

The umbrella company basically deducts payroll taxes, benefits expenses and any other benefits and pays the employee.

For the majority of contractors this model would be easier. However granted it's not for everyone, and it isn't supposed to be either.

An interesting side effect of having one or two good umbrella companies, could be that people who don't normally contract might start preferring working through them.

These wouldn't necessarily have to work on regular hourly contracts either, but could do monthly fixed invoices that would map to a regular salary.

SF for example has lots of people who move from one job to the other several times a year. Why not take control of your own benefits program.

As an entrepreneur myself I would probably prefer working with employees through something like this than having to deal with it myself. Paying an invoice is a hell of a lot simpler than having an employee.

There are other unexplored issues. How do you deal with stock options and vesting for example. I'm not too familiar with the legalities of that.
If you're interested, there's a lot of good research that's been done on this topic:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Self-explanation%22+learni...

Keyword: self-explanation

Of course, involving other people in the self-explanation provides feedback that you don't get from the rubber duck!
Infrequently, in extreme cases, I've actually written out a full dialog with myself. It can get confusing, but occasionally is a good trick to expose hidden assumptions or lack of perspective in a particulalry vexing quandry.

More commonly, I try to write a statement of the problem to myself, kind of emulating the process of writing to a newsgroup.
Ritual (21st & Valencia) used to be the place to be, but they removed all the power plugs because laptop lurkers overran the place. They also replaced most of the tables in the back with a coffee roaster, so there aren't as many places to sit. It is still probably the epicenter of hipsters, coffee and nerds in the Mission. However, it may be easier to get work done elsewhere.

Mission Creek Cafe (20th & Valencia) has power, but the coffee is terrible.

SugarLump (24th near Bryant) also has power with slightly better coffee. Cool space.

Personally I am a big fan of Philz coffee (24th & Folsom) but I wouldn't want to work there.

If you want someplace quiet where you can get work done, Que Tal on 22nd & Guerrero is nice, sunny, decent coffee.

Cafe Revolution on 22nd between Valencia and Mission is a fun hangout. Lots of hackers (and non hackers) are there at night for music, coffee, and beer - but definitely not doing any work. Theoretically you could get some work done there during the day.
No.

Unless you absolutely, positively need it and as a last-resort-tried-everything-else option. I've seen too many of my friends & family ruin their closest relationships by having similar arrangements.
- Technicians implement others' designs using skills

- Engineers create new designs using knowledge

- Scientists create new knowledge

"Pure" programmers are technicians. Computer scientists are engineers or scientists.

Plumbing, like programming, offers immediate feedback, is cheap to try on your own, and is useful even if you're not an expert. But plumbers aren't the same as hydraulic engineers or fluid dynamics experts.

Faraday taught himself physics by reading the books he was binding as a journeyman, but he was a rare specimen. I'm sure engineering Faradays must exist, but as an electrical engineer I've never seen one.
I used to have the poster:

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/posters/mac-groening/ind...

Various sites seem to be claiming that this was some sort of rare poster created only for Apple employees. Which comes as a surprise to me, since I somehow acquired one in college without any insider contacts whatsoever...
The funny thing was how I had everything crash much more in Chrome (which was supposed to be crash proof), compared to Firefox 3 which to date has yet to hang on me once.

That whole "multiple processes" hype sure was cute though.
Did you ask yourself that before posting that comment?

People have different interpretations of what they consider meaningful.
83 Percent of Employers Don’t Trust Employees, Use Facebook for Spying
PG talked about this in his essay "Hackers & Painters": http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

The general idea is that for the most part, programming and hacking are nothing like a science. They are much more like painting, etc. You learn by doing.

4 years of school isn't going to impart upon you the magical ability to paint a masterpiece, just as it isn't going to teach you to be a good coder. You might get the fundamentals out of it necessary to make it easier to do either, but that's about it.

It entirely depends upon your approach, but my experience has been that the best programmers I've worked with don't have compsci degrees. They are self taught - they learned by doing, acquired gobs of hands on experience, brain dumps from smarter peers and sucked up content online and in books.

And going toe to toe against the "Degreed" programmers there was no contest. They were smarter, more focused and better able to handle the task because they learned what they NEEDED, rather than what the school taught them.

That's not to say people with degrees are useless, or by definition have been fleeced or anything else.

The majority of software development doesn't require anything special that you magically acquire with a degree. Business logic can be acquired on-the-job, but it's the core skillset that's important.

I am also an undegreed person, and what I found was that school bored me - I could be out coding, and getting my hands dirty instead. A lot of the others I've spoken to had similar experiences.
If it's for real, I respect him for the decision. But the truth is that he's leading in most polls and so his suspending the campaign will force Obama to do so as well and thus lessen the time for Obama to campaign to garner more voters.
Audi detects when lights will turn red
37signals has a high noise to signal ratio for me. A lot of what they post is repackaging of stuff I hear elsewhere, or vacuous self referencing about how awesome they are.

Some of their blog posts are high signal, but I unsubscribed from their feed and wait to see what gets high on HN or the other social news sites.
From the article: Safari, the only browser to escape Chrome's impact

Translation: Despite Apple's very annoying efforts to shove Safari down everyone's throat through "iTunes updates", there is not a single Windows user out there using Safari, so Chrome could not steal any market share. Since, you know, there weren't any to steal in the first place.
'scour' is a little exaggerated, don't you think?

Maybe a little, but it is an extra manual step you'd need to take each time you export CSV data, simply because the bash parser isn't equipped to handle it. And, as I said, you'd also need to check for quotation marks in the data -- Excel escapes them by doubling them up -- which the bash parser also won't handle as expected. These are not exactly uncommon characters in text data -- hardly extreme edge cases.

...Not that I mean to harp on the issue, but you did describe O'Reilly's statement that parsing CSV is "harder than it sounds" as "complete and utter horseshit". In light of the article's oversights, that strikes me as a little exaggerated. ;)
Good question. I work with a team where a degree in CS "or equivalent experience" is considered a requirement. The other day someone asked me what Kernel#returning does in RubyOnRails. "It's the K Combinator" I replied.

Do you think they instantly knew what I meant? And would it have helped if they had?
I use putty on vista, so your statement worries me. What exactly didn't work? Should I be afraid that my SSH IS SUBTLY BROKEN?!
Long Term Data Archiving Formats, Storage, and Architecture (by Jeremy Zawodny)
Good to see that McCain, which publicly has admitted he knows next to nothing about economy, now is going to fix it.

Time to exchange those dollars for pesos before it's too late.
Or maybe humans just have a tendency to seek and recognize logical patterns in random occurences and then confirmation bias does the rest.
It seems to me that most of what programmers do is more like a craft than a science. By analogy, a carpenter doesn't need a degree to make beautiful or useful things -- but knowing some engineering can't hurt.
I like Chrome, it's just annoying to have to pop open Firefox every time I want to run some Flash content.
Latest polls actually show Obama with a pretty good lead after last weekend. The main reason for that is because Economy has moved up as the pivotal issue and Obama polls better when it comes to that issue.

So, I think he's doing this to generate some more credibility on the economy and shrink Obama's overall lead by appearing more concerned about the economy. McCain is hoping this concern will translate into becoming more respected in the economic arena, thus leading to better polling.
Because it sucked.

The UI was nothing earth shattering, in fact it confused a lot of people. The results were short of impressive in terms of relevance and usefulness.

If you're going to beat Google, you're going to have to be better, easier and faster.

Cuil didn't just fall short in all three, it was abysmal in all three.
politics.reddit is this way, new HN reader:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics

Don't mod me up for this; just please don't mod this story up.
If it's for real...

As if McCain/Obama can take a breath right now without considering the implications on the election...
I'm in the process of writing a book. One thing that's very hard is to reread each chapter to make sure it flows. Once you've been over the text again and again it's hard to get a fresh perspective.

What's working for me is to read the text out loud. I don't actually read it to someone, but clearly speaking out loud has helped.
Did HBOLabs' New Social Network Rip Off MySpace's Logo?
Once a problem is described in sufficient detail, its solution is obvious.

True more times than I care to admit. Specifically in enterprise and business applications.
FTA:

Efficient Frontier, a search engine marketing firm, has used Mturk.com to accomplish tens of thousands of tasks since early 2006. Efficient Frontier helps companies figure out which keywords will bring Web surfers to their sites. With Mturk.com, Efficient Frontier can afford to pay three different people to look at each potential keyword, and vote whether those words are relevant to a given site. It costs the company just 4.5 cents to test each keyword, paying 1.5 cents to Amazon, and 1 cent each to three turkers.

That is sheer genius.
Cause its groovy? It says don't yell at me for something that's not done yet. Its like delivering not finished pizza, you got issues, well duh, of course you do, its not finished yet.
I think I know what you mean.
One thing I've noticed living in many countries, is that every culture has a different level of BS it is willing to put up with.

I guess that's the bright side.

The other side is that culture changes slooooooooooowly.
We're talking Unix config options and command line parameters. Having a quote in the middle of such a thing is, for me, unheard of.

Having a quite around them is common, and shown inside the second example for this reason.

I think O'Reilly should provide a solution that works for their audience (primarily system administrators, judging from the books other contents) if they have a chapter on the topic. Preferably in Bash, as that's what the book is focused on.

Mentioning specific parsing tools built into Python would also also be of use (other chapters in the same book do pull out other languages if deemed necessary).

This chapter stands out as it exists in the TOC and has no code at all, when a very simple solution will handle common admin tasks easily.
Appreciate the link. I'll be sure to use it next time.
Twitter to McCain: Suspend this
I think this works because when we don't have to formalize (through speech or writing) our concept of the problem, our thinking is allowed to be less rigorous. We think we understand something, so we skip over it in our mind. Only when we formalize our thoughts do we realize our understanding isn't as complete as we thought.

Also, since we have to make sure our audience (duck) knows everything we know, we have to revisit concepts that perhaps we haven't thought about for a while.
ReCaptcha: Stopping Spam While Transcribing Books
Not to be "I don't have that problem" guy, but if anything I was annoyed with how much stuff worked. Java and Flash both worked fine for me.

I wonder if that's some kind of bug.
thx dude
State of The Blogosphere: The More You Post, The Higher You Rank
We try to iterate fast on Posterous... really with everything. =)
UK's IR35 tax tightened in court.
Uh.. Yeah. My point exactly.