skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The server crashed...

(per the site owner's words: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3061633)
Did you send your kids there?
Traditionally, in these cases, you use a test database with sample data (fixtures) to test that the output depends on the db data in the right way.
Boston - Harvard School of Public Health

The Hide Lab at the Harvard School of Public Health is looking for an enthusiastic and talented software developer to join our team. We are building an integrated system to store, manage and analyze stem cell data. This is a great opportunity to be involved in cutting edge stem cell research and the open source bioinformatics community.

The project uses the Galaxy software framework (http://galaxy.psu.edu/) for storing, analyzing, visualizing and sharing genomic data. Galaxy is primarily implemented in Python and makes substantial use of JavaScript for its web-based interface.

Interested? See http://www.researchgate.net/job/26994_Bioinformatics_Softwar... for the complete job description.
But here the founders may be finding an incentive to do the equivalent of not negotiating well, making it dramatically more likely. I'd have even greater reservations about the whole early-employee thing if it were commonplace that nobody at the bargaining table has interests aligned with mine. I don't even think it was a very good idea to allow the vastly different treatment of share classes we do.
GitHub is Anarchy for Programmers
Which, of course, is part of the point of the article (“I'm not saying TDD is a bad thing, but there are more tests than unit tests, and there are more ways to verify software than testing.“)
Good read. I rather like Yaron Minsky's videos on the Jane Street site, too: http://ocaml.janestreet.com/
can you recommend someone? rate info would be good too.
Nobel prizes: Asian scientists set to topple America's run of wins
It's important to note that the VC is not objecting to the founders taking cash off the table. He's objecting to the method (dividends as opposed to a secondary sale). His arguments are convincing to me - and I'm a founder so my bias is naturally for the founders.
I know I'm pulling out raganwald's argument from one of his posts, but I'm honestly curious: is there anything other than anecdotal evidence that “there's huge correlation between testability and maintainability”? In particular, here we're talking about unit testability. I don't agree or disagree—I've done both TDD and not, but I'm still not sure I've created more maintainable code when testing than when not.
You might want to try netvibes.com as an alternative to using Google for its RSS feature. It has some nice features, for example being able to Tweet an RSS headline directly out of the interface.
/not affiliated, just some hardcore user
How to Build a 8 by 10 Feet Storage Shed
> Good luck pasting that into an xterm.

Try Ctrl-Shift-V.
I can't wait to drink this. I wonder if we're going to see more partnerships for advertising purposes between two unrelated businesses.
John's a sweetheart, for sure.
Homebrewing Stack Exchange making progress
if you're at all interested in beer or brewing, I suggest going over to the beer stack exchange on area 51 and signing up

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2377/beer?referrer=ATWStIAU58LswlQtvIZIUg2
I'll agree with you on maglev at present, but monorail has gotten a bad rap from some false assumptions (e.g. switching) and some early problems.
I can confirm the spokesman's story at the end: Google has lots of internal groups of all sorts of interests, and the brewing group thought it would be cool to have a Googley beer. It wasn't for marketing at the Google end, but I'm sure Dogfish think it's pretty neat.
I think there's some confusion in the definitions which makes things a bit muddier.

TDD is traditionally based around unit tests, but nowadays can pragmatically include integration and functional testing practices. The former definition seems to be the one accepted by the article, but the latter definition somewhat solves most of the problems raised.
Hmm, thanks for posting that. I had the same problem. Good to know that I don't have anything malicious on my computer.
From what I hear from my insider friends, the next iPhone has actually been ready for months, they just didn't want to release it so close to the iPhone 4. In fact, they are almost done with the next next version of the phone, but don't expect to see it for at lest a year.

Until someone provides some real competition to the iPhone, they really have no reason to rapidly release new models.
While testing code is important (and I have tried to do better at writing proper tests for my code), the reason that I have not adopted TDD is because when I write a test and it fails, about half the time it's an actual bug in the code, and half the time it's a bug in the test. I view testing as more akin to going back and checking your work after solving a math problem - not as the definition of what your code is supposed to do, but as a verification that you did it right (and that it continues to work right in the future).
As shadowfiend notes, fixtures are a common approach here.

However, you could also use a mock. What you're really testing here isn't the connection to the database or even that the database contains certain data, so you can rule that out of the equation. What you're testing is that some service (let's just say a 'method' for simplicity's sake) turns an input into an output in some particular way.

What you do, then, is mock the database connection for a particular test case so it returns a guaranteed result to whatever's doing the request in your method. You can then test that the method converts that input into the correct result. You've now unit tested the method rather than the entire service (in a nutshell - it can be more complex than that).
The video really stretches the roll Google and it's products seem to have played in the process. Seemed like a TV crew following the making of a new beer with an occasional Google ad now and again.
Yes, it does. That's what he was saying. Padmapper does this, with multiple settings in the search as well.
As a person in Wall Street who isn't in it just for the money, I resent your remark.
Chromium is open-source just like Firefox is.
"What NASA should be doing is what no private enterprise can do: highly unprofitable risky space pioneering that inspires the human race."

http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112392431/spacex-sets-it...

I do not know if SpaceX will make it; I'd personally bet against that timeframe, though I wouldn't bet against the goal in general. But I will guarantee this: Barring a major political turnaround in the US, SpaceX will make a manned mission to Mars happen before NASA possibly could at this point. They don't have to make sure at least one part is sourced from each Congressional district, they aren't beholden to a Congress that on space exploration time scales blunders about like a drunken sailor, and they aren't a 53-year-old sclerotic bureaucracy.

Unprofitable they can do (and I mean that in both the good (research) and bad (blatant waste of funds) ways); they can not do risky. Unless you mean "risky because politics compromised the engineering process", which they can also still do. (Reading an honest history of the Space Shuttle is an eyeopener. Feynman and the glass of ice water was only the flashy tip of the iceberg. Google "Senate Launch System" for the latest.) It isn't in their genes anymore. You could put it back, but in the time that process would take, SpaceX will be there already.

There is no NASA apart from politicians. They are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Congress. That's not even a political statement, it's simply descriptive. If you can't trust politicians to drive our space policy, then you can't trust NASA to do it.
No download apps. Real? or someone is testing the waters?
Increasing Your Luck Surface Area and Yes, the Big Dogs Read Hacker News
With many banks, you can go to the bank and tell them to simply refuse payment of any overdraft, rather than granting it and charging you. Your card will then get declined if you don't have enough in your account.
I was willing to cut Google slack than other companies. But they exhausted that slack supply when they cut-off their own ex-employees for using well-established pseudonyms.

The concept of an "identity server" is unacceptable for any idea of freedom. I might hate the US government but I do hypothetically have some democratic rights in exchange for the DMV being the current "identity server" in this region. For any private entity to say "you must give me your stuff and I hope to keep it secret" without me having any leverage over them is ... (excuse my repeating)... unacceptable.
The winters can be very, very cold, but you get used to that.

Also, our buildings are very well heated and insulated. Once you're inside, it's almost tropical.

The coldest I've ever been was living in San Diego in January at night, with no heat, and paper thin walls. Never again.
How dare the poor people complain! The wealthy must be protected at all costs!
I can't wait either. I think we will see more.
I'm not seeing this, in latest Safari or Chrome. Anybody else?
Problem is, as the article points out, cul-de-sacs impose substantial externalities on everyone else. It would be "a great environment" for me if everyone else rode bicycles and I drove—after all, I'd be very safe!—but it wouldn't be so great for everyone else.

That's an extreme example, but the principle remains.
But the reason those rules exist is because whenever there is a grade crossing fatality, inevitably the next of kin sue and all too ofter win in court.

It sounds to me like we need a law saying that if a driver drives on to the tracks when a crossing arm is down or the red lights are flashing, that's prima facie evidence that any resulting crash is the fault of the driver. Don't play chicken with a train.
> what in your opinion is the worst issue that set has faced?

Well the crappy infrastructure (shared ROW, lots of stops, lots of crossings, 100-year old catanary south of NYC, etc) is by far the most detrimental issue to Acela performance.

With regard to the actual Acela vehicles itself: from what the insiders have told me, the worst issue the set has faced was, frankly, the selection of Bombardier/Alstom in the first place. I was told that when FRA auditioned the various HSR vehicles on the NEC (they actually paid to bring over a bunch of European trainsets to the NEC for testing back in the late 80's or early 90's), Siemens told them that their vehicle (ICE) could meet most of FRA/Amtrak's spec with a little work but not everything. Bombardier/Alstom said they could meet all of the performance requirements with no problems. After getting the vehicle contract, Bombardier/Alstom started to agitate about not being able to meet large parts of the specs which led to compromises in the design and delays. By the time FRA/Amtrak realized they made the wrong choice, they were in too deep.

Again from what I've heard, if Amtrak/FRA had it to do over again, they would have gone with Siemens. It will be interesting to see what happens when it's time to replace the Acela.
No, it doesn't although it does have an option to show a walk score (which you might be thinking of). Note that a "walk score" is different than commute time: a walk score is how generally walkable an area is for everyone while a commute time is dependent on another location.

Can you tell me where one can find the option to limit matches based on mass transit distance from some location? (In general, when you say "yes it does" offer some feature, it would be helpful to describe where in the UI it can be accessed, otherwise we'll have a long "yes it does", "no it doesn't" conversation. The burden of proof is on the person claiming something exists rather than the one claiming it does not. :))
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=boston+to+los+angeles

I can confirm the 3d button's not showing up for me in Safari 5 but its working in Chrome 16 and FF 8. (Windows versions)
Zeek Rewards Party Tonight
Why are you/we trying to force density when it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite?

The problem is that the playing field isn't level: as Edward Glaeser points out in his book, The Triumph of the City (highly recommended; http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Health...), there are numerous institutional barriers to urban living, including, in no particular order:

1) Mortgage interest tax deduction; since urban life favors multi-unit dwellings but condos have externalities single-family houses don't (it's hard to deal with a noisy upstairs neighbor when you both own), this favors suburbs.

2) Substantial car-based infrastructure investment that means car owners pay around half of the "total" or social cost of their driving.

3) Barriers to entry in urban areas, especially in the form of zoning height limits.

4) Tying education and education funding to geographic location.

I believe there are a couple others I've forgotten.

It's pretty obvious that a lot of people want density—if they didn't, housing prices in NYC, DC, Seattle, San Francisco, and others wouldn't be so high. Hold supply relatively constant while demand increases, and you get prices that zoom up. I would, in many ways, draw the opposite conclusion from yours.
Why I decided to take the money and sell my startup
Yes, Padmapper does this general kind of thing but it doesn't offer the ability to limit a search based on commute times (which is the title of the post.)
This reminds me so much of the UNIX Hater's Handbook, which argues that this attitude ("it's just a rite of passage", "it is better now anyway") is a result of growing up in a world where the design errors of UNIX are seen as features. I don't know yet, but it is an inspiring read nonetheless: http://www.simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
Anything that is not a train that is on railroad tracks is prima facie evidence that fault doesn't lie with the train since trains are the only thing supposed to be on the tracks.

But it doesn't matter. You then get into questions like "were the lights flashing?" "Were the gates down?" "Did the train operator blow his horn? Was it loud enough? Was it long enough?" "Where there sight-line issues between the car and the gates/lights/trains?"

In essence the question is usually "did the railroad do absolutely everything in it's power to prevent the train from hitting something that is trespassing on the tracks" and the mere existence of the grade crossing is evidence that the answer is "no" since the railroad could have spent a million dollars and grade-separated the crossing. And there is your liability.
jpetrosky, welcome to HN.

If the wells in question are "well below drinking water aquifers," can you comment on the water contamination shown in the documentary, Gasland?
Interesting, didn't know about Siemens bid being much closer to the mark. While we can't say that they wouldn't have had problems, I always figured that Bombardier/Alstom really had botched it, especially with the issue where the carbody was too wide for full-tilt.
Nonsense. In the previous decade we had gone from the introduction of LED watches to personal computers - by 1985 we had the Apple IIE, which is a bigger leap from what was available in 1975 than the IIE to the iPad. Kubrick included iPad-like devices in 2001 because he thought we would have them. I would have been surprised to see them earlier than 1995, but 2010? Late.

Stephenson is right, but he doesn't go far enough. It's not just the big things - since 1970 the pace of progress has been slowing down across the board.
GiftZip is one of the first companies to graduate from the City of East Lansing's technology innovation center (TIC). The TIC also houses The Hatch which is a student incubator run by Michigan State University.
The Eye of BRIC: Top India Stocks
Intel returns to Ireland
Good point. Other sites such as Google maps mass transit search will show walking results instead of mass transit results in such situations.
But what will complaining do? Protests are effective at shaping government policy, but they seem to be protesting some nebulous inequality, not anything concrete that the government can do. OK, we all have our opinions on why the government is screwing up, but I doubt there is enough coherence within the protesters' opinions'.

You can stop a war by protesting, as all it takes is an executive order from the President. It's a concrete measure. If they were protesting for a bill to stop bailouts, and give the bailout money directly to tax payers (which can filter up to banks), then it might be worth protesting for. If they wanted some specific legislation passed, it could work. But unless there is some step that Congress feels pressured to do, they are just a disorganized and unplacatable rabble, which can only be ignored, or contained by force.
The interesting thing about that disaster is that rail safety folks from both the US and Europe I've spoken to have all said that if it had been the Acela in that accident there would have been far fewer fatalities due to FRA crashworithness requirements.
From the article:

The arrests took place when a large group of
marchers, participating in a second week of
protests by the Occupy Wall Street movement, broke
off from others on the bridge's pedestrian walkway
and headed across the Brooklyn-bound lanes.

"More than 500 were arrested on the Brooklyn
Bridge late this afternoon after multiple warnings
by police were given to protesters to stay on the
pedestrian walkway," a police spokesman said.

"Some complied and took the walkway without being
arrested. Others locked arms and proceeded on the
Brooklyn-bound vehicular roadway and were
arrested," he added

How exactly does this have anything to do with stopping poor people from complaining or protecting the wealthy?
indeed, thank you Mike. you've been an inspiration to me.
It's not a changelog but the documentation has been updated.

http://raphaeljs.com/reference.html
Los Gatos, CA
Netflix

Looking for Senior SREs.

Basically, we're starting a new company to take streaming global and make it so convient that it is better than the free options.

I'm looking for people to help make sure that any time someone wants to find and play a movie, they can.

You can get more info here: http://jobs.usethesource.com/item?id=166

Or here: http://www.reddit.com/comments/jyaqd/

Or here: http://www.netflix.com/Jobs?id=7563&jvi=olLGVfwr
The Police Device used to steal your Cell Phone Data during Traffic Stops
I did google it already (and found some of those links, though I appreciate you passing them along). I know a fair amount about the subject matter, I was just looking for a real expert (maybe an electric/chemical/industrial engineer that worked in the area) here, in case my conclusions were incorrect.

The internet is great and all, but it breeds altogether too many fake wikipedia SMEs :)
Protesting on public land is perfectly fine. Doing it on private land, with the owner's permission, is hunkey-dory too. I am completely against requiring a permit to do it. You should be able to speak your mind without government interference.

However, when you walk into oncoming lanes of traffic, you are breaking a shitload of laws, endangering yourself AND the people in the vehicles, impeding the flow of traffic (which might include emergency vehicles), and of course, your behavior would be the definition of disorderly conduct. Your ass deserves to be thrown in jail.

Also, why is this happening on Saturday? All the financial institutions are closed for the weekend. Sounds to me like a bunch of hipsters from Brooklyn getting hammered and going out to have some fun.
Update: TO date, one of my kids loves this. The others are kind of 'meh'.

I love it though.
> If your team is avoiding a tool with a 1 in 16,000 chance of failure then they'd probably also want to avoid flying (1 in 20,000 chance of death by failure), large bodies of water (1 in 8,942) and run terrified from cars (1 in 100) (source: http://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html.

That's not how probability works. That assumes a uniform distribution, but it's not uniform at all: if you run the affected versions of git and run a particular sequence of commands, you will hit this problem every time. Assuming that the Linux community's workflow doesn't change that often, the Linux devs would likely never have hit this because they don't run that sequence commands. Because it's not actually random, we do have control over it, and your suggestion that we all just "get over" the fact that an important tool lost user data seems pretty cavalier.
They should spray the protestors with firehouses and have them attacked by police dogs.

Oh wait...
Also a lot of Apples "cash" is overseas, where it would lose a lot to be bought back in.
Rugby World Cup Ireland vs Italy Live 02 october 2011 | News Just Now
Not sure how true it is, but the full story as claimed by many of the commenters:

> This article is misleading. It makes the protesters seem like they caused the incident by blocking traffic. The group was led onto the bridge where police kettled them in and arrested them 1 by 1.
Have you ever read about the Argentine crisis, or is your knowledge limited to Wolfram Alpha's graphs and Googleable factoids?

The fact is that this was a thread about how Argentina's crisis provides evidence supporting the positive benefits of allowing economic collapse. The initial post was intensely stupid in that it reduced the complex effects of economic collapse to a simple if-this-then-that causation. The only relevant point is causation, which I argued was not the case, and which you conceded -- despite you neither having made the original point, nor any attempt whatsoever to defend it.

You don't seem to be arguing the initial point, or the counter point. You only want to talk about Argentina, without taking a moment to understand the context in which it was mentioned. So congratulations on nailing me for reversing the order of the austerity program and the default -- great job, I feel really dumb for failing to correctly order a sequence of events related to a tangential point.

Here's what you have been:

Two guys are arguing on the street, and during that argument one of the guys mentions the name of a sports team. A drunk, walking by, happens to be a fan of that team. Despite not knowing in what context that team was mentioned, or whether it was mentioned positively or negatively, the drunk gets in a fight with one of the men. And not necessarily the one who uttered the team's name.

You're the drunk.
I would like to think that YC mostly funds ethical people, but that makes AirBnB the worst exception so far. After http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2603844 I would expect them to stoop to anything not likely to lead to prison time (and unfortunately the CAN-SPAM act is is pretty useless).
I know a guy that can do them for 250-300 bucks:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/babysteps/id443281751?mt=8

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/santa-strike/id408068783?mt=8

Email in my profile if you'd like me to connect you.
What happens when you want to rename and/or split your consequence_method? How many tests do you have to rewrite?
"Safe" or otherwise, it's (IMO) never a good idea to merge uncommitted files.

You're losing history that way: If the merge doesn't actually work, then you've got a screwed up file and no way to roll it back.

It's one of the great strengths of git that you can commit files even if someone else has changed them. It's a bad idea to merge when you have anything significant checked out (I'll leave temporary debugging changes checked out, or very small changes, but that's it). Heck, it's a good idea to check in every few hours, to track changes your making.
Genuine question: doesn't such thing as "design by contract" make for the same bloat as checked exceptions in java?
Sure, and I've seen it, too; but for both of us, it's just anecdotal. It'll obviously depend on a lot of geo- and demo- and chronographic factors which one is worse.