skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, I ran into that in my youth (not from lifting, but cycling combined with allegedly overly broad shoulders for my then-size).
The thing that bothers me most about the #OWS movement is that it isn't the 99% protesting against the 1%. It's the 10% protesting against the 1%.

In principle I agree with the movement, hell, I will always support anyone wanting to stick it to the man. But I wonder how many realize that their freedom and ability to have this opinion is built on the breaking backs of pretty much most of the world?
I'm sorry. It's a sincere question and I simply don't understand. Does pornography also lack social value in your eyes?
Yeah, this is a general theme that I've come to realize in recent years. FML but it is never too late to start. Regret is past-tense decision making.
I'd recommend learning functional programming from the beginning for myself.

In fact, I'd recommend that everyone's first language should be a functional one. It would make my life, convincing everyone that referential transparency and immutable state are good things, so much easier.
Prince of Persia for Commodore 64/128 released
Are union dues that much? I pay around 10€/month.
Tufte is completely overhyped. The quality of his work is meh and his website is a joke. If this is the high priest of design, god help us all.
IModela affordable 3D Printer Creates Figurines
Founder salaries vary wildly depending on amount raised, whether the company is profitable or even generating revenue and the stage of the company. Some people pay themselves $1k/month and some pay themselves $15k/month. I figured $4k/month was a good benchmark based on a pre-series-A seed-financed tech startup that is generating minimal revenue and is not profitable.
"Whether it be the tea party on the right or the #OWS on the left, the citizens of the US are clamoring for change."

The tea party that cheers execution ? Somehow I don't think they'll change things for the best.
I never read anything from sysadmins complaining about the astonishingly low level of knowledge of a lot of devs.

They should be. At my current employer we're pretty good about this, but in previous misadventures I've run into a lot of people who don't even understand HTTP or how a web server works (if I have to explain thread-per-connection to a guy who's been doing web development for five years, there's a problem!).
RescueTime is excellent for finding the things that eat your time. It's especially useful for finding out how much time is spent "just browsing for a few minutes".

I only wish there was better support for the Linux client.
You're right about apple's PR response but they do have a well documented history of enabling worker abuse that suggests that this policy is either ineffective at best or total bs at worst

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/31/environmental-watchdog-repo...
Heh, I have to wonder who drew that diagram of the Platonic solids corresponding to elements. (Kepler? Looking it up, apparently so.) What's funny is not the mysticism of it, but that the mysticism has been done in a blatantly arbitrary fashion -- if it's to be even slightly credible, obviously the tetrahedron and the dodecahedron should be swapped, so that fire is dual to water and so that the ether is self-dual!
I recently ordered a lot of parts for a project I'm working on and the low price of the LaunchPad made adding one to my order pretty much a no-brainer. Ends up this is a very nice little board. It's definitely less 'friendly' than the Arduino but it does allow for interactive debugging with gdb. Being able to step through a program running on the mcu without extra hardware was a nice surprise.

edit: I should also mention the program mspdebug which is a little simpler than gdb. I actually didn't look at this program much after seeing it could let me use gdb but I just looked it over a bit more and it also lets you step, set breakpoints, set registers, and more.
The golden ratio, rule of thirds and other such formulas for creating aesthetically pleasing images probably work because they cause the artist to actually stop & think about composition, kind of like how feng-shui causes you to think harder about the arrangement of your furniture than if you just put it wherever. No mystical forces involved.

As for spirals, well they just look pretty. All swirly & hypnotic...
Personally I'm waiting for Fabrice Bellard to port FFMPEG to javascript so we can do video transcoding client-side.

Shouldn't be long now.
Some of the cash in these mega-rounds never hits the balance sheet and instead goes directly to founders and early investors.
This is beautiful. We did similar stuff using a Flash globe a long while ago. I know that a firm I worked with did this for Bob Dylan's site as well.

If animated, it'd make a good lobby visualization somewhere.
I am referring to Justice Potter Stewart's famous 1964 opinion statement in a Supreme Court case on pornography. Look up "I know it when I see it" on Wikipedia.
Big Data in the Dirt
Yeast could sort of be described as having 3 genders: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mating_of_yea...

praptak's second paragraph seems like a decent explanation why 2 seems to be the typical number.
There's definitely the initial formation of interest, but beyond that I'm conflicted as to whether such computer use is a clear ramp up.

As a gamer (who also went on to develop games), I think I may be one of the few such people that doesn't fly off the handle in a dismissive rage upon coming across a 'games are bad' article or sentiment. I've no doubt that, for example, thousands of rounds of running around Counterstrike maps shooting people was a net negative for intellect and general mental health.
> "If this is the high priest of design, god help us all."

You're confusing Tufte with a graphics designer. He's known for data visualization.

There's a huge difference between those two professions. Tufte is one of the old guard of information presentation - not pretty, not even good looking, but unambiguous and copiously informative. His displays is what you might find in an airplane cockpit, not a Web 2.0 website.

Data visualization and cognitive ergonomics are fields that existed long before CS, and should not be conflated with "design" as software geeks understand it.
Google's attitude towards services seems much different from Amazon's as well. Google seems to focus almost entirely on ad-supported (with a few for-pay services, like Apps for Domains); Amazon, on the other hand, charges for all of its services (with a few ad-supported things, like cheaper Kindles).

The Google approach would discount something like EC2 or S3 showing up; if your first question about any product is 'how can we use it to serve advertising?' then services like that won't make the cut. If your question is 'Will people pay for it?' then they definitely seem appealing.
Wait till the family arrives... That's when the fun begins - more rewarding than anything - and the fastest way out of retirement u will ever find. Not into kids(?) - time will tell.
I don't believe all of these problems can be reasonably fixed without worries about security and stuff.

However, in my dream, the service becomes so awesome so it inspires new, better standards! :-)
I too disliked Unity at first when it reared its head in 11.04 (didn't help that it still had some obvious bugs), but I gave it a try and have grown to like it a lot. They've polished it up quite a bit in 11.10 and it's even better now. I definitely would not want to go back to the old menu-driven way. (I would add that most people I know that use Ubuntu are of the same opinion)

Fully agree about the config hell, though. One time I wanted to back up my gnome terminal profile settings using gconftool, to discover that the terminal settings are stored in the middle of an XML file that covers a whole slew of gnome settings. So to do the backup/restore, I would either have to back up all of my gnome settings, or write a custom script to patch just the section of the XML file I need changed.
I'm familiar with "I know it when I see it". I just didn't realize it was a reference to that. Okay, presume I am blind (and stupid, if that helps): Why does this lack social value in your eyes?

For reference: I kind of have hopes of eventually doing a simulation (aka "game") to try to teach other people how I got well when doctors say it cannot be done. So I don't agree when people dismiss games and related topics as having no social value. I'm sincerely trying to understand your perspective.

Thanks so much for indulging me. :-)
Time zone database moves to ICANN after lawsuit
I hope this gives rise to a web based platform for open office. I don't see it having a bright future as desktop only.
You mean http://www.android-x86.org/ ?
Money let's you trade things you don't mind doing and stuff you don't need for things you want other people to do and stuff you want to have. Clipping coupons can pay 1000$ an hour or 1.5$ an hour but the important thing is not just ROI but how much you like or dislike doing things. But with stuff there is a third option. I don't listen to music so the cost of a CD or concert ticket is irrelevant to me. I don't like to travel so the cost of a plane ticket is irrelevant, I don't like posters, nick nacks, or buying clothes so most stores simply don't have anything I want to buy.

So, when you see someone that saves most of their money don't assume they are hording it, some people just don't find all that many things they want to trade it for at a price they are willing to pay. Now I like playing video games, but I have several of them unopened new in box so I don't feel the need to buy yet another one that may or may not get played etc. I have cable TV, but I spend far more time playing free flash games not because they are cheap but because I simply enjoy them more. http://www.kongregate.com/games/light_bringer777/learn-to-fl...
IANAL, but....

In the US, per the copyright act, data can't be copyrighted.
Some compilations can be copyrighted, but the Supreme Court has said that the compilation can't just be a collection of data. It needs to posses even a small modicum of creativity in order to deserve protection. Your curated list of "awesome places to eat in NY" can be copyrighted. The yellow pages cannot.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural for details.

My guess is that a world timezone database does not meet this minimum level of creativity.

The descriptions I've read about the lawsuit seem to indicate that the plaintiffs complain that some individual records were copied from their database, and that the database directly indicates that they did so. They would only have a case if they lifted major portions of the database and copied them enmasse, stealing their formatting, and the original was deemed to be more like your "curated ny restaurant list" than it was like the yellow pages.

Taking the information present in the records, and translating them to a different database format is likely not an infringement, per the copyright act. Even if it was though, the material in question likely isn't copyrightable anyways.
It's amazing how big IF has become over the years. I don't recall a single discussion in grad school (in the late 90's) where we ever sat down and discussed the IF of journals we wanted to publish in.

Unfortunately I am not sure all the current altmetrics efforts quite address the problem either.
> But a lot of them were two-person companies last year too, and the year before that.

So what? It takes X years (3? 5?) before you see a real profit.

> At the same time, many of Boston’s most promising companies with 100 or more employees have a tough time hiring. Could too much of Boston’s talent be stuck in start-ups that are going nowhere?

Or could some of $TOWN's most promising companies have toxic work environments, with awful management and horrible structures?

Letting people work from home would improve hiring. Having sensible expectations for working hours and vacation wouldn't hurt either.
The trouble with average karma is that it penalizes people for carrying on conversations. I often post something that has 10, 20, or even 50 points. Then someone replies, and I reply to that. This deeper reply will almost always get only half the karma of the original. Possibly because it is less interesting, possibly because it is posted later in the life-cyle of a submission.

If average karma was a goal of mine, I would never follow up to my own posts, I don’t think that I’ve ever had as much karma for a follow-up comment as for an original.
Understand maths, algorithms and game theory.
For what it's worth:

I try to use the mouse only when necessary (even when browsing the web), and I like to launch my applications through text search. Actually I don't need the Unity sidebar at all, unless perhaps when I want to see what hidden apps are running. I arrange my windows using ctrl-alt + numpad and I switch between workspaces with ctrl-alt + arrow keys. The new active window switching with alt-tab and alt-shift-arrow keys is nice. All in all I'm happy with Unity and it got better with 11.10. Being 50% on Ubuntu and 50% on OSX I have to say that I wish OSX had a little bit more of Ubuntu-UI in it.

Just writing this to offer a counter-point to all the anti-Unity posting. Perhaps everyone should try to play around with Unity shortcuts and see if it's really that bad.

Here's a post detailing some of them: http://blog.sudobits.com/2011/09/04/ubuntu-11-10-oneiric-oce...
I'd love to hear his wife's take on this frugality.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/25/having-the-talk-wi...
URDU SEX STORIES: Airhostess Ka Maza
> And I’d be the last person to discourage someone who feels compelled to start a start-up.

…Yet, you (the author) just spent two pages doing exactly that.
I agree about Unity being terrible, I just hope the Ubuntu dev's are going to realize this and relegate it to an "experimental" UI and then go back to the classic as default
progress requires some kind of encapsulation. I dont need to make fire to boil eggs… or even understand how the power gets to my house.
Thats a rather bizarre way to store config data I can't see any architectural reason why this would be desirable, does anyone have any insight into this?
This whole thing was a fuck-you move by Oracle and I am surprised that Apache would be a part of this. They should defer to Libre Office and donate everything to them.
Online Banking Keeps Customers on Hook for Fees
The only really valid criticism I see here is the binary blob problem-- clearly this is a poor way to store user configuration data, and completely antithetical to the kinds of philosophies that undergird Linux and Ubuntu.

But really, the core of the issue that's been raised by Unity is that Ubuntu seems to be moving away from catering to power users to cutting features essential to them in favor of appealing to more amateur users. One can lament that decision, and even disagree with it, but I don't know how fair I think it is to criticize Unity for lacking those kind of power user features.

After all, it isn't like power users are exactly wanting when it comes to replacement options in the Linux space.
At this point, investing capital in real estate and stock markets is a fool's errand. They're done.

Absolutely ridiculous. When I hear a lot of people spouting nonsense like this, I know it's time to buy. American corporations are making a killing right now; why exactly would I not want to buy a piece of that business? Especially when it's on sale? Similarly, real estate is dirt cheap right now. Have people decided they no longer need housing?

Think what you want, but I'm actually doing it, right now, as are many shrewd investors I know. And I'm doing quite well.
The average computer user spends most of their time playing simple 2d games on facebook while streaming low resolution videos from youtube. The type of content they consume doesn't justify the purchase of a high-end monitor.

What I would consider stupid is when a person spends an exorbitant amount of money on something that they won't use.
It would be stupid for consumers to spend a ton of money on an expensive monitor when the cheaper solutions will get the job done in nearly all situations.
Offsite Backup and Server Data Loss Issues Explained
D'oh; all I get is the puts statement with 15 lines of comments.

Apologies.
I'd like to do what I can do to help make sure that change is intelligent progressive change taking us forward to a new prosperity, not backward into a false hope for a time that has passed and is not coming back. And I'm wondering if the #OWS movement is interested in that conversation.

My assumption would be "not". Light one small candle rather than curse the dark. Talk with the people who will discuss it, regardless of their affiliation (with #OWS or not). Dark times are a time when the future gestates. Decide what you want born of it and become the (gentle) midwife to it's (probably bloody) birth.

Peace.
The 10%, really? Wouldn't that be in the neighborhood of 130k?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/us-househo...
"But he says graduating students ought to be more aware of the benefits of gaining a few years of experience at a small- or medium-sized company before going off to start their own."

This depends highly on where you end up working. If you find yourself just maintaining someone else's crappy code, and/or working with people who can't serve as great mentors, I see joining a company as a potentially bad career-risk relative to either:

a) spending a couple months working on an open-source project used by a company/group of hackers you really want to work for/be mentored by

b) starting a business.

(for a&b, be aware of your financial situation before considering the above options)

I work with plenty of "industry" programmers who make much more money than me, but are afraid of developing new things or learning new languages, calling them "oh, that's one of those academic things" even after citing something cool being used with them in production.
It is essentially a SLAPP lawsuit.
Somewhat depending on the business. Mining is different from social networks is different from clean tech :-)
For software, something like:

1. Salary/Benefits.
2. Marketing/PR/Sales.
3. Rent/Utilities/Facilities.

Everything else is likely a variable cost you can pay with customer money, aka "revenue." (Anything from direct sales to ad-based monetization)
Once you can in addition pay the above three from revenues, you should probably stop taking investor money and look for liquidity.
I started as a Powerbuilder programmer at 30K/yr and since then I have gotten Java and Sybase and Six Sigma certification, Toastmasters for public speaking, and almost finished my CFA exams. It's been 15 years and I'm still not at his Year 3 salary. FML.(in Canada BTW)
Not welcoming at all: http://universitypost.dk/article/new-internationals-angered-...

As I am not a student, my main problem is not so much the cost as (1) the scarcity and the inane "competition" it promotes and (2) the sad state of the apartments condition, at least compared to modern housing in other first-world countries.
LOC (Lines of Code) is not a good characterization of the quality of code

Actually it is. Or at least it's the best we have. When it comes to anything you can measure, the evidence points to program length as the best predictor of quality of code. And LOC is, for better or worse, the standard metric for code size.

We had a whole thread on HN about this a month ago. Specific studies are cited there. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3037293

Speaking of which, someone later told me that Chapter 27 of McConnell's Code Complete cites studies according to which bug count grows as a mild exponential function of code size. I don't have that book handy. If anyone does, can they look at Chapter 27 and tell us what it says?
Using SystemTap
I think a big part of BM culture is bringing BM home with you. Building "local burns" and building local networks. I don't think this behavior is unique to BM though. Watching documentaries on hippies flooding California you see stands for free food, clothes, etc...
I'm of the exact same opinion, but I'd wager it's even less than 10%.
According to http://www.globalrichlist.com/ if you make over $50,000 you're part of the wealthiest 1% in the world. It's a fact that's largely glossed over.

I can relate to many of the concerns of the OWS movement (corporate political donations, loose banking regulations), but there's a lot of problems with the movement as well.
Founders And VCs Reveal 21 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read
Still, if you ignore the facts of this specific case, which I agree is extremely weak, what do you think about my questions?

Also: This is a copyright case, not trademark. 'Use it or lose it' does not apply to whether copyright violations have occurred; it can, at most, modify the damages involved.
Simple Script to Filter Hacker News by Keywords, run as cron job
http://www.stat.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_tyoelama_en.html

The education sector in Finland employs a disproportionately large number of professionals compared to many other countries. In comparison a male graduate in the uk chosen at random is more likely to be a software developer than a teacher.
The financial sector is by far the most heavily regulated and protected across the entire western world. There is nothing "conventional" about that brand of "capitalism".

Show me a corporation that's "TOO good at extracting wealth out of citizens and leaving them with less and less ability to gain wealth of their own" and I'll show you a corporation that's in bed with the political system.
If you're in silicon valley, and want senior/lead engineers who can make a difference, expect to pay >>$10k per month per head for salary, benefits and payroll taxes. Plus give away a chunk of equity. Competition for good people is always fierce at all times.
I would look into this if there was any info about how its going to work, but that is the least helpful landing page I've ever seen. Not even worth giving away my email address.
Has anybody seen a comparison of actual speech-to-text capabilities, preferably done in a proper manner (using speech recordings of different accents, etc)?
The number one reason a certain kind of software developer doesn't want to work at a company with 100 employees is that a company like that has a 'glass ceiling'. At some level you're still the inferior of a salesman who can't sell.

In organizations like that I've frequently seen a critical risk that would endanger the success of a project, took every chance I could to warn people of it and only got people to believe I was right after a year and a half of wasted opportunity.

I tried improving my social skills, I tried wearing a suit, I tried everything... But if you're one person in 100, it's very hard to change the system. At some point I realized I had to go on strike and not work for that kind of company.
Saying that real estate and stock markets are "done" is ridiculous. I don't know where you got the 2-3% return expectation from, but outperforming professional investors need not be the goal. Independent (retail) investors can generate sufficient market returns to live a very comfortable retirement without having to be disappointed that they're not the next Warren Buffett.

To your point, investing in human capital (yourself) is valuable -- but it's not enough. The problem is it doesn't scale. If your biggest asset is yourself, your biggest income is going to be from each additional hour you work. If you invest in other assets (real estate, companies, whatever) you can generate passive income without having to work.

I agree with your controversial statement about 401K's, not just from the future tax prediction standpoint, but also from the perspective of limiting your investment options.