skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I found this disheartening. Life is complex but its not unknowable.

One of those 'life choices' I faced when I entered college was whether or not I wanted to 'program' computers or to 'build' them. These would guide the choice of EE or CS degree. My father asked if people with EE degrees were allowed to program computers, I said of course they were. Then he asked if people with CS degrees were allowed to build them, and the answer was no they were not generally. So if I didn't know what I wanted to do, I should get an EE degree since then I could do either.

Turned out to be pretty sage advice and knowing how the computer does what it does really helps program it. Especially if you are trying to wring every erg of performance out of it. When I graduated with my EE degree (and a minor in CS) I was proud of the fact that I could write a database in a languge for which I wrote the compiler on a computer architecture that I designed using circuits that I understood down to the physics of the PN junctions that governed the behavior of semiconductors. (It really is math all the way down sadly)

That being said, I firmly believe the human brain has a limit (which may be case by case) of how much stuff it can hold at one time. And the notion of abstraction, especially modularization and testable components, makes complex systems possible.

This comes up in a variety of contexts. Sometimes I interview folks who can draw a nice architecture on the white board with boxes and arrows and such. So I ask them do go into one of the boxes, and lets draw that out in detail. And then those sub boxes I want to go into their detail as well. My goal is to understand that the candidate understands that 'boxes' are only a good way of thinking about something if you understand what the box is really modelling.

A good example of this is that naive people treat a hard disk drive like a box. It has a port you tell it to read logical block A or write logical block B and it does some magic and makes it happen. But really it screws up now and then, and it has very variable performance. So if you can't explain how you have accounted for these properties of your box then you're not thinking deeply enough about it.

Sometimes an 'architect' type (you know the type, Joel called them Architecture Astronauts as I recall) they dismiss your whole area of expertise as a box in their model. This can lead to some pretty dismissive thinking by the 'doers' in the crowd, but it is important to know that without abstracting that thing you're working on, the architect person wouldn't have enough brain capacity left over to see the 'bigger' picture. As long as their picture of your box is accurate, you should cut them some slack.

The bottom line for me is that it can be 'amazing' at how the complex system runs but words like 'mystifying' and 'dizzying' make me nervous. If you're a software developer and its 'mystifying' how your program can do what it does that is a problem you should address. There was an excellent pointer to 'what every programmer should know about memory' and there should be equivalents to 'networks', 'processor architecture', and 'disks'.
Kudos for working on Gameboost over Startup Weekend but the ideas is not new. Google in-app game rewards and you'll find out http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&biw...
Thanks for this... Now I don't have to use clickpass either! Disliked the long login also.
"Apple has always dismissed allegations of human rights violations with the argument that it's basically not their direct responsibility and that it's their suppliers' duty to adher to their supplier code of conduct"

Wrong: http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/

Apple actively monitors their suppliers to ensure compliance with their code conduct, and if violations are found they make the supplier fix them, compensate the workers for the abuse, and in some cases have dropped the supplier if they thought it wasn't acting fast enough or sincerely enough.
We only get one chance at this life, and the thing that bothers me the most is, "What are you missing that you're too frugal to consider?"

And I ask instead, "What are you missing because you have to spend so much time working?"
Zen and the Art of Car Maintenance.
Err, the US doesn't, but some countries explicitly do allow collections of facts to be copyrighted.
It took me a second to understand what he was saying: $2 million invested at a 5% return after tax means that you get ~$100,000 per year income from the investment. That should be enough to live a middle-class lifestyle without having to work.
Great job, but how do you plan to monetize?

KIDDING
I learned a new word today: Idempotence. Thank you.
He knows all the cheat codes.
Take a look at the major US stock market indices from 2000 to present: DJSE, S&P 500, NASDAQ. They're flat or down (markedly so for the NASDAQ from its 2011 peak).

Stock investing for retirement is predicated on a market which rises relative to inflation (investing in this regard is an inflation hedge).

Paul Krugman in The Great Unravelling (2003) noted that a stock market which provides consistent returns is also consistently undervalued. Stocks (or any other investment vehicle) are not an automatic win.

There are also long stretches in which returns have been nil to negative:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/business/20110...
I believe IBM still support OOo.
At the time of the fork, they were (and still are) making Lotus Symphony (free as-in beer, based on OOo code)

OpenOffice.org - Apache License
LibreOffice - LGPLv3
That's awesome! I wasn't aware of these IE behaviors. Thanks once again for the info. Now the effects can work everywhere!
Ask HN: How much you make with investing in stock market?
Please add if you have any suggestions books/videos to become expert in options and stock trading.
I've found the TI MSP-430 fairly good as a cheaper/rawer alternative to Arduino. It comes with Eclipse based tooling to program the microcontrollers in C or assembly.
Based on my experiences in the UK, different start-up's get funding of 30 million etc. but the money is over X years as long as Y objectives are met. In actual fact the company is getting a fraction of that 30 mill each year therefore far less cash rich than the press release indicates.
Relevant: "When we say that a language is expressive, we mean that it is easy to use. When we say that a type system is expressive, we mean that it is not." - Gilad Bracha
What does that mean in practical terms?
No, the problem is arrogant programmers who imagine that sysadmins are people who only know how to configure an apache virtualhost.

Although in the case of SQL, specifically, database administration has historically been a specialized sub-category of system administration.
Yes. I believe they're shown randomly and they're cached so we might see different examples.
What stock should I buy now?
So much for building a Boston startup eco-system.
I'd recommend my younger self to lay off the gaming and latterly web browsing so that the computer could be considered more a tool for creation than an entertainment device.

It's a bit sad that I didn't write a line of code until I started university despite mammoth computer time.
Very true, and awesome quote. It's worth noting though that once you're talking about dependently-typed type systems, it's accepted that you're going to be doing a lot of work with the type system. You're going to be using proof tactics to type your programs. It's almost the point at that point.
No, fats are most likely not the problem, It is much more likely that sugars are.

While it is true that the same amount of calories lead pretty much to the same storage of fat, this fact is irrelevant.

I think that the question that we should ask ourselves is why we eat more calories than necessary, and the answer is not necessary a psychological one, or one that needs to invoke the nebulous concept of willpower.

Intake of sugar (most pronounced with rapid absorption of sugars) leads to high blood sugar concentration, which will need to lead to an insulin response to counteract it. The secretion of insulin will make you end up with a lower blood sugar as before the meal, which will lead to a higher appetite.

Isocalorically, fat will not lead to such a pronounced curve, so you can extend the times between meals. There is no physiological need to eat food every few hours, as you might have been told.

Sugary foodstuffs are also typically binge-foods, like ice-cream, cookies, milkshakes, soda, crisps, fries, or pizza. (I am aware that some of this foodstuffs also contain fats, but my argument is that stuffs high in fat, but low in carbohydrates aren't typical binge-foods).

Additionally, most consumed carbohydrates are empty calories that are, opposed to fats, not necessary.

Low-Fat diets have no positive effects on cardiovascular mortality, so there is no reason not to eat a moderate fat, very low sugar diet, and decrease the physiological effects of overeating.
I switched to this from Command-T for some key reasons:

- Faster.

- Includes a most recently used list.

- Creates files with <c-y>.

- Automatically :cds to the project directory using Git or a dotfile.

However, there were a couple problems I had to fix myself:

- Doesn't follow symlinks, though it did in the older versions. This should be a config variable.

- Breaks on filenames that have spaces.

Those issues aside, this is great. Thanks!
Wow, that's a big list of guys. You have to go down many pages to get to 'bane' before you can find a female.
Most people on here are into early stage startups and it's a very different game than investing in established companies.
Although I'm sure you might get some good response here, I also recommend other communities like Motley Fool.
Ask HN: Where to invest money?
I am earning some extra money that I wish to invest for 3 years. I want to add more on a monthly basis. Can HN suggest best place to watch my money grow?
Milestone-based fundings like this are pretty rare in the US and usually in troubled or very high risk situations. Most vc fundings that you would hear about are straight up equity deals (cash received at closing).
No disagreement there from me. I think the core difference is I have no faith whatsoever in Adobe ever supporting iOS/Android/Whatever other popular mobile platforms may arrive adequately with Flash. They've barely managed it well on the desktop (Flash doesn't work well on OS X or Linux). However, I think there's a fair chance that at least Apple and Google might end up with good Canvas or WebGL implementations on some mobile devices. Further if the platform does gain enough momentum, it's open enough that anyone else interested in building a mobile platform will be able to build decent support into devices on their own without having to rely on Adobe (or any other 3rd party) to get their act together.
It sounds like you're assuming it's a fair game and that everyone gets to participate. The reality is most people don't get to do the things the rich get to do

Anybody can go to ETrade or Fidelity and buy an S&P index fund. (Or individual stocks, but that usually produces worse results).

carrying forward capital losses indefinitely

That may let "the rich" pay a low effective tax rate one year, but if so it means they paid a high effective rate in previous years where they had capital losses but couldn't use it to offset ordinary income. Getting rid of that offset would put an end to virtually all investing: investors would suffer 100% of their losses but keep only 85% or less of their gains, and that's not even accounting for inflation.
That's inspiring to hear. Student loan debt is not the worse debt to have; however, it doesn't go away even if you declare personal bankruptcy (although, there are bills going through the legislative process currently to amend this currently).

Perhaps I am not as risk-taking as you are, but having to worry about paying student loan debt versus startup concerns seems like a mental battle I am not prepared to fight. I'd rather do the debt repayment independent of the startup so I can focus on each individually with undivided financial attention. On the other hand, the argument can be made that having debt repayment while you're running a startup makes you hungrier. Although, I predict that would make me rather short-sighted to live hand to mouth.
we have actually a much simpler hack: we just send file into an iframe

we don't need anything back, because we generate uuid on the client
Sure, but that's just a matter of how the terminology is used. Setting aside natural logs for a moment, consider that log10(1000) is 3, where 3 is simultaneously the "exponent" to which 10 must be raised to equal 1000, and the "logarithm," in the sense that it's the result of the log10 function, as might be found by looking in a table of logarithms.
the jab at PHP wasn't really necessary...
Well yes, that question applies to every design decision ever made.

It's pointless to speculate without knowing the context, so why would you ask it?
IMO it has to do with the fact that Quora forces you to state your real name and credentials when creating an account. Although certain people will feel this is the way to ensure answers are given by the best possible authority on a subject, it actually hinders the meritocracy of user-driven content. Uneducated but well-informed Quora users may feel it's not worth their time to contribute, because they'll just be overshadowed by someone with better credentials. In essence, it's like paying for a game's DLC instead of putting in the time to earn it on your own, cheapening the experience for all.
The best way I found to see past the parens is to simply start writing some lisp. I recently started teaching myself by working through the problems on 4clojure.com, reading pg's _On Lisp_, and books like _Land of Lisp_, _Programming Clojure_, _Joy of Clojure_, etc., and even within a day or two of learning I found I no longer saw the syntax at all. In fact, one of the great beauties of Lisp and s-expressions is that the syntax is so so minimal and so consistent that it all but disappears. (Clojure is a bit more complicated, in that it introduces additional special forms for java interop, metadata, vectors and maps, but you get used to that quickly, too.)

A much trickier thing for me personally has been memorizing what all of the standard functions do, particularly bouncing back and forth between common lisp and clojure like I've been. Clojuredocs.org and the clojure source code itself have been essential companions in this journey.

So the only thing holding you back is the parens, then have no fear, you'll actually grow to love them (especially if you're an emacs user, thanks to show-paren-mode and electric-pair-mode and the like).
Thanks for submitting this. After seeing the article that claimed the design of the iCloud icon was brilliant because it included Fibonacci ratios, I desperately wanted to nail this article to the (other) author's monitor.

Whenever I see that kind of unjustifiable Fibonacci-worship, I get the same feeling I do when I read creation myths or just-so stories. It honestly hurt the first time I read the truth, and realized I was taught many of the outlandish claims this author points out as fact in grade school math classes.
And then robo sells it on Amazon. (in reference to the guys selling Wikipedia entries as books.)
it would just do a,b,c,d -- the rest was meta
I don't really understand why fat people are so... well, upset at being fat.

I'm not sure I can help you any with this question. I used to be 245 and I'm female. If the OP is male/taller than me, that may be comparable. Like the OP, I worked on getting my life back and that had the unintended consequence of also leading to significant weight loss. (I had zero goal to "lose weight" and was fine with how I looked.) I can't tell you how much weight I have lost because I haven't weighed myself in over 5 years.

I kind of think that excess weight is not The Problem per se but perhaps a proxy? I mean, I got myself healthier and that's why I lost weight. I think a lot of very heavy people don't know how to live right and that's a) the real reason they are miserable and b) also, coincidentally, the cause of their excess weight. Maybe they don't know how to clearly distinguish the two things and perhaps think "all would be right with the world if only I could lose the weight" when it might be more accurate to say it runs the other direction (ie if all were right in their world, they would probably also lose the weight).

I actually have mixed feelings about losing the weight. I like my body more because it no longer tortures me (I stopped having chronic pain about 2.5 weeks ago) but I'm not entirely comfortable with total strangers taking so much notice of me these days.
Very nice! I've looked for such a guide in the past but could only find outdated or messier approaches.
In the beginning, people costs are where most of your money goes, by far. Whether you have employees or contractors, human capital will cost you the most.

For a typical $500K seed round, here is my breakdown for 12 months of expenses. Feedback welcome.

2 founders + health insurance + taxes = $10k/month

2 engineers + health insurance + taxes = $20k/month

1 p/t designer = $5k/month

...and you've burned through $420,000 of your $500,000 in 12 months.

As for the other $80K?

Legal Fees: $10K (or $800/month);
Space: $30K (depending on where...around $2500/month);
Accounting/Finance: $10K ($800/month);
Server Costs + Hardware: $12k ($1k/month);
Miscellaneous Expenses including random contractors here and there, marketing expenses, SWAG, a party if you want, some travel to a few conferences, food, etc.: $18k ($1500/month)

Hope this helps.
The biggest problem for OpenOffice.org as an Apache project, especially given the existence of a vibrant LibreOffice, is what companies are going to fund OpenOffice.org development and why? IBM will because they have a commercial product, sure, but who else? If there are no other companies funding significant development efforts (which in practice means they have to have a commercial product), then the rationale for a company to do all of their development in the open (and possibly risk a competitor taking their code and using it in a competing product with little or no effort contributed) tends to destroy the value of the Apache project.

With Libreoffice taking away a large number of the community developers, it's not clear there will be enough non-IBM corporately funded developers to make OpenOffice.org successful.
Modiikasi Yamaha Scorpio Retro CR
Repairing a dented tuba with magnets
The commits to the kernel were to make it run in their VM, even if you consider that a good thing (I'd say it's neither good nor bad) the patents they're claiming to hold on Linux, and the patronising language they use in connection with that, about people making use of their innovation is as evil as anything they used to get up to.
Just to clarify my point: I pay a lot of atention to typography, and I believe it's exactly one of those invisible but crucial design choices.

There are tons of fonts that are very legible, but each of them conveys a different message. And choosing a slab serif font in 2011 just says: I'm going for the no-brainer choice, because slab-serif fonts are cool and trendy in 2011. And the same goes for drop shadows.

I was expecting more creativity from people that warn you not to fall in the trends trap.

But yes, it's perfectly legible and does the job. Just not creative in 2011.
> The only part of education where the language matters is when it comes to spelling

What about differences between languages in their ability to convey ideas.
As much as I find myself disliking wearing clothes as I get older, I'm not particularly exhibitionistic either. So I prefer wearing at least putatively conventional clothing.

Still, a fair point.
I interpreted that to mean that you need $2M+ to not be concerned that a feasible series of negative events could wipe you out. For example, thanks to the idiotic linkage of health insurance and employment, most Americans would be financially destroyed by the combination of an expensive illness and losing their job, the former making the latter much more likely.
For me tipping point was having gym right in the next building - when I started to work for the company that has gym on site (you can guess which company is that), I was just so easy tongo and exercise after work without extra hassle. I alway had gym membership, but proximity really makes it low barrier to actually exercise regularly. I now workout at least 2 times a week, often 3.

When we were discussing gym choice for my wife, my suggestion was "the one right across from your office, walking distance makes all the difference".
I've worked on a few cloud icons and I can tell you it's a tough problem. The two things that most describe the concept of a cloud in an image are color (white on blue) and shading to suggest 3D form. Both of those are unavailable when working to create a simple b/w icon. You're left with describing the shape, something that's very fluid and doesn't have telling details like the ears, tail, and feet of a cat, for example. It's not surprising to me that we're working to agree on a common representation. Circles on top, flat bottom to suggest something above us.

Deviate too much from the agreed upon shape, and you're likely to get a lot of "What's that?"
I'm not sure what the benefit would be to LibreOffice if they merged under the ASF. It's already a large project with lots of contributors (and an excellent 'how to get involved' section which more OSS projects should emulate), infrastructure, mailing lists etc., so what would be the benefit of being an Apache project?

In my opinion, the best solution would be to leave OpenOffice.org to bitrot and ask developers to contribute to LibreOffice, given that it is the preferred suite of nearly every distribution already.
If you are serious about learning set up a trading account with a small sum of money. If you are worried about losers then a paper trading scenario works too. Then just learn the basics and keep learning from doing. You can read all the books and watch all the videos but as with most things in life actually getting involved and hands on will be more valuable than anything.
I loved that "well designed" example, because the mug in the photo looked to me rather poorly designed. It's very pretty, but the handle looks uncomfortable.

When I hold a mug with that handle shape, I heck of a time holding it steady. I have to use a very firm grip on the handle which is a bit tiring.
Text particle android
I worked as an intern for the SQL server project. If you can explain accurately how to optimally structure SQL queries, you can probably write database code yourself.
i made a code for android similar to previous web text particle was submitted here, what should i do next ?
Original PDF here: http://elliscave.com/APL_J/tool.pdf