skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My social and communications skills weren't great when I started my first company. As a science graduate student before that I didn't think they'd need to be. Nor did I like acting like I did.

How much we enjoy something depends on our expectations of success. As you improve your skills and experience success meeting people you enjoy it more. You'll also get better jobs, have better meetings with VCs, etc.

Since I came to improving my communication and social skills later in life through exercises, I shared a few of the most effective exercises on my blog -- http://joshuaspodek.com/communication-skills-exercises-6.

They've become some of my most popular posts. This is just the type of crowd I wrote them for.
Web 2.0 jargon really does sound like a parody of itself. "Microshaft Web 2.0" video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmo1ef7tVso
This is a search game. If your opponent constrains himself to a small subset of legal positions to avoid detection, your strategy is working, not failing.
The key element of yakuza is that it's organized and somewhat predictable. It's violent and illegal, yes, but it's also very formalized and fairly static. Whereas in Western countries criminal cartels are wildly unpredictable, and more often than not involve innocent parties in their squabbles, Yakuza families are very conservative, in a very Eastern way, and value stability above many other things.

Inevitably, in large metropolis, you'll have things like red-light districts. These places will be full of people who don't particularly value the rule of law, which means they're going to be hotbed of instability. Policemen have little incentive to risk their neck for prostitutes and various scumbags. In comes the yakuza, and order is guaranteed; nobody will make trouble, and if they do, yakuza will dispatch of them quickly and reliably. Police are happy, less work for them.
They also provide easy cash, something hard to come by in a very conservative society where banks often lend money depending on your surname rather than your cashflow. They like finance as much as anybody else.

In a society that (in most cases) still values tradition and stability above everything else, yakuza provides these elements to the inevitable "dark underbelly"; as long as they cover that role, rulers are not particularly interested in going after them for a bit of unpaid taxes. Nowadays it's fashionable for mainstream media to bash them because they all need scapegoats for a long-running financial crisis that has no clear culprit (apart from the usual "generalized greed" and "implicit flaws in the capitalist model", but nobody wants to really address those two, of course).
Nobel Prize in Medicine Winner Died 3 Days Before Award
Cool. That hurts my eyes.

ruby -e "print ARGF.readlines.last(10)"
Yep, same here in Germany. Most people use "Bankeinzug" which is pretty similar to credit card, but you actually don't use a card but just your account number.

The EU payment thread some days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3056714 mentioned Adyen. They seem to support all the country-specific stuff.
Does anyone know if you need some minimum revenue? Because I don't see a signup form on their page, only a sales e-mail address.
Yeah, but the syntax and the verbosity hides your aim.

In the obscure years previous to c++11, meta-programming in c++ would have required a language lawyer.

In haskell, the syntax is so nice that is easily readable, and it doesn't get in your way.
Unique Modern House with Natural Lighting in Yokohama, Japan
Are you normalizing the execution time across languages? For example, when they introduced java, the USACO assumed that java code would run 5 times as slow as equivalent C code (so they would give 1 sec for C and 5 secs for java)
Stop Doing Stuff You Hate.
The article says, "There’s No 3G Web Browsing (except on Kindle Fire)" - I was under the impression that the Kindle Fire didn't have 3G connectivity. Am I missing something?
Lego Cuussoo: Design Lego products, get royalties
Why is a Fibonacci sequence used as a benchmark for an argument for concurrent programming? The Fibonacci sequence is a recursive algorithm that inherently has dependencies on previous calculations that prevent effective concurrent execution. The Fibonacci algorithm executed concurrently is going to spend an inordinate amount of time creating tasks that do a trivial calculation (add two numbers together).

If you want to benchmark concurrency, at least pick an benchmark algorithm that exercises concurrency. The FFT comes to mind, but there are probably lots of better examples (that is a challenge to HNers ;-).
I read your benchmarks on Ruby, but you didn't list the implementation or version of Ruby you used.

I'd guess you used MRI 1.8.X.

I decided to benchmark other versions(and implementations) of Ruby.

= jruby 1.6.4 (7.3 seconds)

user system total real
7.388000 0.000000 7.388000 ( 7.349000)

= Rubinius 1.2.4 (Little under 6 seconds)

user system total real
5.940015 0.006878 5.946893 ( 5.842485)

= CRuby 1.9.2 (38 seconds)

user system total real
38.250000 0.090000 38.340000 ( 38.376857)

= CRuby 1.8.7 (Little under 137 seconds)

user system total real
136.960000 0.240000 137.200000 (137.437748)

Thanks!
To someone that want to understand it : "It's a currency that is entirely electronic and works thanks to crypto-magic that experts agree is solid. It has the advantage of not being controlled by any central bank and has a guaranteed scarcity."

To someone that just wants to use it : "it charges transfers from and to dollars but unlike paypal charges zero for transactions."
That point falls short. There are companies (such as ours) that provide fully integrated NoSQL software and you don't have to worry about any details.

In addition, I'd say that any reasonably-sized database requires full-time engineers to get decent performances (DBA in the case of Oracle).
Sony Ericsson CEO Bert Nordberg claims Windows Phone is not as good as Android
Hiring A Product Lead: Process Managers vs. UX Savants
Congrats guys! TechZing is one of my favorite tech startup podcasts. If you haven't heard it before check it out.
We trying to provide consolidated data on dashboard not separated reports. Also we provide performance timing data and soon will be ready event notification system where you can setup alerts as (max on site records, site availability, response time, e.t.c.)
About SBIC, Part 2
my local hookah bar
This sounds like a perfect problem for Bayesian nets.

IIRC, Bayes prof was very similar to the concept of the game, by throwing pebbles on a table and trying to predict where they land.
Git-dude: desktop notifications for git
the right development process that allows for rapid development, well rapid development is the reason people write webapps in python/ruby/node and not C++. We have to stop pretending that language choice is immaterial, hadn't it for C we would still be typing in our single and double mouse clicks into an OS written in assembly.
"Where there's muck, there's brass."
Mercado gourmet
The Button Color A/B Test: Red Beats Green
FXCC Blog Updated: Daily Market Roundup - China Whispers..then SHOUTS
Passive income ideas
What should we do to start generating passive income? There are numerous passive income ideas, but all are based on the following two responses
I've don't believe that there should be a specific category for computing. I believe many of these categories should be consolidated into one. In many years there hasn't been enough advancements to warrant an award. Mankind's process has not been rapid enough where it is necessary to have a category for separate scientific fields. This also includes computing.
Didn't see that advice, and don't know much about EFF, but yes, anything that puts him in touch with a lawyer who actually knows what he's doing is good advice.

I might also note that when hiring an attorney, you want to shop around, even if you're getting pro bono work. Check references and ask around (you can ask the lawyers you're interviewing about the other lawyers you've interviewed). Don't just settle on the first guy you come across that has a diploma hanging on his wall.
I want Stripe for my startup. Paypal has caused huge problems for us, as we sell in 24 hour periods we get an influx in sales and our Paypal is constantly locked for a few days meaning we can't pay any merchants and it all becomes a lot of work for something which doesn't have too. There's a whole list of other reasons but Stripe seems much better. We're a UK startup though.
Last time I checked, the price separator that other monitoring sites used -- in particular between free and paid accounts -- is frequency of checks. E.g., free accounts include checks every half hour (or 15 min), and paid accounts could be as often as every 30 seconds.

With that in mind, the frequency of checks (or: "how long will my site be down before you tell me?") is an important thing to mention; I couldn't find that info, scanning through.

The pale grey text costs some effort to read, as well, so I'd also suggest increasing the contrast there.

Looks like a good site, and simple, though it may prove a bit too easy for the major existing monitoring sites to copy your distinguishing feature. Good luck!
I care about cancer; but not node.js
"While in theory, NoSQL databases can be deployed on hundreds or thousands of
machines, in practice the deployments are much smaller and can typically easily fit within a
single Oracle database with fewer and more reliable components. The largest production
Cassandra cluster has over 100 TB of data in over 150 machines."

I find this interesting. I wonder if there any real TCO comparisons have been done to this point.

Sure, this paper is full of FUD. But it does raise a valid question for me: What's the difference between paying for Oracle and paying for MySQL, Datastax, or Cloudera support/enterprise to get the added features needed to run my business and keep away from reinventing the wheel?
Next up: why Shakespeare never wrote a play about the Internet.

Now, if you want to discuss why there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics...
Learn from Your Mistakes – Or Don’t
Just so you read it right they say specifically - no 3G support for the standard Kindle Web Browser. I've had my kindle for a year now and have never used the (experimental) web browser.
More like wiring or integration code. Not everything is a framework. At some point you have to write code that works with and inside of the framework.
I tend to agree on this pricing comment -- being new means no one will have much faith you'll still be online a year from now. But you're cheap enough that if you look interesting enough, lots of folks will add you as a backup monitor.

From that point your foot is in the door, and it's up to you how to find the leverage to become their primary monitoring service. You can raise the price (possibly for new fancy features only) as you develop more features and get some history of reliability behind you (which is a feature in and of itself, of course...).
Too Many Books… Not Enough Time
For every application there is a language best suited... Let's stop trying to force every language to be good at everything and then compare them as though they were all the same, shall we?
"In fact, I wrote a little code to generate random Battleship boards, and counted where each of the ships appeared."

A knowledgeable opponent will have a tendency to place ships such that they're not touching each other, else the second ship might be hit while trying to sink the first ship.

A full analysis of the problem would also generate optimized search patterns, and explore possible countermeasures.

It's also not clear whether to dedicate your turns to sinking ships that have been hit, or searching for new ships. If and when turns can accomplish both, an advantage is gained.

Another interesting aspect would be to look a dataset of ship placement and search strategies from human games.
Three tips to build rapport and open a meeting
In other news, the barber thinks you need a haircut.
Just an illusion: Mathematician uses Lego to recreate Escher's images
A friend of mine has a Kindle w/Special Offers. He actually bought two, having lost one on an airplane. Apparently the special offers were good enough that he easily paid for both.

At this point, I'm wishing I could opt in my Kindle 3.
I think most of us felt that way in highschool. It gets better. I mean, no, you are not a precious snowflake, and yes, nobody cares about how 'unique' you are, and you will have to get over that. We all do. Society won't shape itself to you. But that truth becomes easier to swallow as you get older, and as an adult there is a huge variety of different sub-societies you can choose to live among; exempting service personnel, I can go weeks without talking to, say, non-linux users if I so choose (yes, not just work and home. It's not at all unusual for me to go to a party and find that I am the least technical person in the room.) so while you do need to shape yourself to something that fits into a society, you have a great deal of choice as to which societies you want to fit in to.

This is the new thing about 'fitting in' ; I know this is going to sound weird to anyone just coming out of high school, but trying to impress my peers? now actually makes me a better person- because my peers are no longer other highschool students. The things my peers are impressed by, generally speaking, are things that I also value. I can choose my peers; It's amazing, really. It took me a while to figure this out after I finished highschool, as I didn't go to college, I went straight from highschool to a .com job, so it was a bit before I got the hang of all the adult social stuff. (As far as I can tell, most people learn that sort of thing in College.)

Also, as you are now an adult, and there are far fewer situations where you can be told to perform some arbitrary and boring task where you can't quit. If you have the ability to make money, you can make almost all boring rote tasks that you actually want to get done go away by paying various fees, if you like.

I mean, yeah, you still don't have total control over your life, and you do need to fill out certain forms and pay certain fees at certain times of the year, but man, compared to being under 18? it sure feels like total control. If you have the skills to get a good job and you don't have children, you will have an incredible amount of freedom to make your life be exactly what you want your life to be.

Figure out what you want, and then figure out how to arrange your life so you can have it. As an adult, yeah, nobody is going to go out of their way to help you, but you know what? as long as you don't disturb others, they also aren't going to stop you from taking what you want.

People get better, too. Most people are horrible people when they are teenagers. I know I was. I mean, I'm not great now, but I'm vastly easier to get along with. Most people are significantly easier to be around at 25 than at 17.

Go, make your life what you want it to be. The bitterness will fade.
صور افيال صغيرة - الصور
maybe just adding a basic feed aggregator, so that you can easily see your friends' updates, pulling in their disqus comment threads (I have no idea whether this is feasible, i've never implemented disqus).
The "make some money" part is only $1, unless I'm missing something, and currently there's only 1 contest paying. So that's not really going to be incentive to participate.

It sounds like Project Euler except code size, code speed, and code submission time matter. Neat idea but how's this significantly different? Project Euler already has a huge number of challenges, a leader board, and a vibrant community. What differentiates amebopost?
Watch Your Mouth: Can You Patent a Sandwich?
I guess you could, but you'd be making life harder for yourself, and other developers. Consider a website mockup by a designer with html/css experience and one without: the one with no html/css experience may be designing a total headache, and be completely oblivious to that fact.
The Python example is completely broken. It'd be something like:

import os
if 'vmware' in os.popen('dmidecode').upper():
print 'this is a vmware vm'
else:
print 'this is not a vmware vm'

I like regexps as much as the next ex-Perl hacker, but sometimes a little string manipulation is a lot better.
EDIT: got confused between "Kindle" and "Kindle Touch". To me it is obvious that "Kindle" has no touch screen and that keyboard input must be via the D-pad. Consequently I assumed the complaint re:keyboard not being touch would apply to a product that actually had a touchscreen.

In short: I agree with my parent comment. neither unexpected or noteworthy.
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OTCBB:SAGE Sagebrush Gold  Gains Trading Coverage
Correlation between today's market and 2008
So I was messing around on Microsoft Excel, and I noticed something eerie: http://i.imgur.com/JSkfk.png

The bottom image is the 5 months of DJIA data leading up to the crash, and the top image is the past 5 months. The numbers are startlingly similar. Now, obviously the DJIA isn't a predictive measure, but in a systemic, gradual crisis, where investor sentiment rapidly changes on a day-to-day basis, it can point to certain trends.

Either way, an interesting result.
The way that I read the term "randomized strategies" in the original comment is that you opponent sometimes uses the clustering approach, and sometimes doesn't. Your search algorithm doesn't know whether the opponent has chosen to cluster or not. Or to partially cluster. And this decision will likely change each time the game is played.
True, but that's true of most data mining and search algorithms. You are in danger of over-fitting the sample data. You can take steps to avoid this by giving more consideration to correct solutions that are shorter, in the hope that brevity avoids an exhaustive case statement.

I don't want to come off as if I disagree with you, the evolved programs will only be as good/complete as the unit tests they are evolved against.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_strategy#Pure_and_mixed_st...
That sounds bogus. A 100 TiB Oracle database is doable but incredibly expensive. 1 TiB with the appropriate redundancy will cost you around 10,000 € if you go Oracle. Perhaps you can get a good discount if you order a large cluster right away. So we're looking at 1,000,000 € just for disks here.

Then you would have to pay for the CPUs, the licenses and the consulting (lots of it, tuning a 100 TiB system is a huge task). Add another million or two...

How much would it cost with a NoSQL solution? Don't want to turn this answer into self promotion, but I'm confident it's well under the million with better performance (assuming you don't need a relational database).
Not really. It's like saying "this ferrari doesn't need fuel!". Which is just bullshit.
EDIT: Mea Culpa. The article was complaining that the "Kindle" (non-touch) didn't have a touchscreen and had the tedious d-pad interface instead. That revelation doesn't bother me at all (and hardly is a revelation.

Original post follows:

It is called the "Kindle Touch".

It is advertised thus: "now with multi-touch".

Their longer blurb says this: "Simple To Use Touchscreen Kindle Touch features an easy-to-use touch interface. Turn pages, search, shop books and take notes quickly and easily."

To learn now that the "touch" screen borders on being useless and that amazon has a very poor concept of "quick and easy" leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Opera brings back the bookmark star
Google loses out on G.co.uk as 12 single-letter UK domains sell for £39000 each
The unstated premise of this article is that all sysadmins will very soon be using puppet or chef, thus programming in some subset or DSL that looks a lot like ruby (puppet).

However, that's a separate article that I need to get around to writing.
"NoSQL databases are not free to operate. Each NoSQL Databases come with the cost of hardware, administration of the hardware, and support of the software."

Hey Oracle, if you want to bring this point up, please at least pretend to compare the above costs between NoSQL and your own solution. Otherwise it is just pure FUD: "NoSQL databases eat your CPU cycles, disk and network badndwith! Booooo!"
A sale doesn't save you money if you weren't planning on buying it in the first place.
You're assuming that the phrase "crypto-magic" is reassuring instead of off-putting. 'The general public' and 'readers of HN' are basically non-overlapping sets.

My mom has a credit card. Would she use Bitcoins? Not in a million years.
If you're laundering money, you might want to consider in-house legal expertise, as well as in-house payments processing expertise.

If you're not laundering money, then (all other things being the same), you should prefer Stripe over PayPal, since it would be quite hard for someone to use Stripe for this purpose, hence they will have fewer money-launderers to deal with, hence you have less risk that you'll set off some obscure alarm and they'll lock up your account for months.

In any case, if you sell anything (online or off) you may want to learn a bit about the various risks and liabilities. Fraud does happen, and some businesses are at far higher risk.

I'm not sure the average lawyer will help much, though. They can tell you "yup, if someone buys a diamond from you with a stolen credit card and you ship it, you will not get to keep that money even if the diamond isn't recovered" (but don't you know that already?).

The more important advice is technical, and it's about all of the things you can do to reduce the risk of that ever happening to you.
Ask HN: MBP 13" or MBP 15"?
My current laptop is Dell with 17" screen (1920x1200). I'm switching to MBP but I can't decide MBP 13" or MBP 15". Is it comfortable to work on MBP 13" (mostly web development)? Or it would be better to buy 15"?

Another options are:
iMac (21", 27")
MBP 17"
MBA 13"

Any thoughts?
IMHO code size and code speed is already a great and welcome difference in making this more geared towards programmers than mathematicians.
Hmm, hey Oracle Google got away with not buying your solution..I think others will wise up to..
As someone who deals with eye strain daily due to vision problems that can't be corrected, some days, it just wear me out and leave my physically exhausted. It's unbelievable how physically tiring it can be.

To combat this, I do a few things:

- Try to take frequent breaks, even if it's just closing my eyes for a couple of minutes

- Keep the room lighting at the right level - not too bright, not too dark

- Use larger fonts and good contrast - a black background on my text editor, where I spend the majority of my time and light grey, almost white, but not quite as stark, text seems to be the best balance.

- Try and get plenty of sleep - If I start the day tired, then my ability to focus on what I'm looking at and my visual stamina are both going to be shot by noon.
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The $79 one isn't the Kindle Touch, it's just the Kindle.
Again, another article that has a lot of talk about CM systems (CFEngine, puppet, chef, etc) and no love for bcfg2.. which happens to be Python based.