skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Actually, that would be a cool crowd sourcing project, and not just encompassing Star Trek. If you spot a possible prior art for a patent in a work of fiction, you could put it on some sort of wiki. It would be a great source of information to fight patents (especially the ridiculous), and show the absurdness of the system.
Apple lisa Demo from 1983
I like the design of the case. I wonder if there's any way to display custom data on the screen, and how they're powering it (apart from the rechargeable battery).

I've always said that in order to get home automation into more people's homes it'll have to be "hidden" in something they already buy, like a TV or in this case a thermostat. I'm doing an automation startup[0] that focuses on building more of the behind-the-scenes technology for early adopters and eventual integration into consumer products, but that technology eventually needs to be packaged into something more consumer-friendly.

It looks like their presence sensing is actually motion sensing (the tech specs list "activity" sensors). I'd like to combine this with a more detailed presence sensor like the Kinect or Xtion Pro for more detailed control of temperature, lighting, etc.

[0] Shameless plug: http://www.nitrogenlogic.com/
Fix Your DVD Drive for Free
MVP for YC'12 application. We've been heads down on this for a month now so it seemed like the right time to gather some feedback!
A GUI interface can include CLI elements because it is technically capable of showing a CLI interface.

If a CLI interface can include a GUI, can you use it over in a SSH terminal? Or on a Linux box without X(or the equivalent) and all it's bloat being installed? Or on Windows 2008 Server Core? You're pretty much redefining CLI at this point and cutting away some of it's advantages too, like being able to run on very low power devices like routers etc.
Hey, I'm the primary creator of AFNetworking.

- As I understand threading and run loop scheduling, the run loop will spin up as needed when an NSURLConnection attaches itself to it, and back down again when no more connections are active. The dedicated network thread is there only to manage that run loop.

- Regarding processing queues, like the JSON one, I thought it would be a good idea to isolate that from the global queue; it could always target another queue if needed. Also, unless I'm mistaken, those queues should be concurrent rather than serial.

- As for dispatching to the main thread, this only happens it after all of the work in the operation is done. This just seems like good default behavior. If you wanted to, you could very easily override this by manually setting the `completionBlock` yourself.
i dig.
They're not winning, they're cheating! So instead of stopping them from cheating, the government should ask for a percentage of the take, and raise their taxes!

Wait a minute.
That's why I like my OmniStat with my OmniPro security/automation system, it can change temp based on security system state (away, night, etc.) And if you still wanted occupancy based learning, it can be done with your security interior motions and Omni programming.

Also the Haiku iPhone app for my Omni just added changing flags in the OmniPro based on iPhone location triggers, this would allow proximity tstat changes if you really wanted that.

http://homeauto.com/Products/Omnistat/Omnistat2Products.asp
I also meant to say that I have ideas for a dozen toy projects that I have little hope of coding (and none of paying to be coded) but which I would use. So let me know if you want a list.
Then they will arrest you for interfering with a law enforcement officer. Not that it will stick, but by the time you get it cleared up you are $100k in the hole from legal expenses and a message has been sent to anyone else thinking of doing the same.
I’m quite confused. Everyone seems to disagree with me by vehemently agreeing with me. As you yourself say: Expression is not reserved for CLIs. GUIs can allow for it, too.

I’m not trying to bring down CLIs here. What I don’t like, though, is how the author of the article tries to bring down GUIs to prop up CLIs. That’s just not necessary. GUIs are used by so many people to express themselves and it’s patently absurd to claim otherwise.
A Eulogy for the Visionaries
Мой чит.rar
Agreed.

Are there people who really want to work at all hours? Maybe eager students right out of college.

Personally, I'm at the point where if I'm going to be working at all hours, I'd better be one of the primary beneficiaries of that work.
Ya, they'll get that just by the volume of Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc. downloads
In Defense of DBaaS (comic)
What kind of monthly revenue are you guys doing now?
I've been using AFNetworking for a month or two, now, and I cannot say enough good things about it. Mattt isn't joking when he describes it as a 'delightful' library; it really is a joy to use, and the community that has sprung up around it is incredibly dedicated and very responsive to suggestions and bug reports.
Yes.

An onsite interview is 4-hour sell meeting: sell your coworkers on the candidate, and sell the candidate on the coworkers and office and etc.

If you aren't pretty confident in a hire before the onsite, the onsite won't help.
MySQL vs Clustrix (Percona tests)
Tablet takeover: Study shows how tablets are changing our behavior [infographic]
This is the first time I've deployed on Heroku so any advice would be brilliant. If you get any errors, please email us on support@listofthingsforsale.com.
> They're acting within the bounds of the law.

This strikes me as a non-sequitur.

There's a lot of bad stuff you can do without actually committing a crime. Especially if you have enough money to influence the law.

I like that the final defense of the financial sector's misdeeds is to stammer "Well, it's not strictly illegal!"
That said, Netflix does have the content and the media companies presumably didn't license it out of the goodness of their hearts.
I had a call from a recruiter once, asking if I would be interested in a Ruby on Rails position. I said no, that's not what I'm looking for.

She then asked me to explain what Ruby on Rails was, how it related to other technologies and was it popular because a lot of people seemed to be asking for it.

Of course I explained the best I could, to make the world a better place and all that, but it seems (as other commenters have pointed out) that there could be a real niche for techies to run a recruiting firm that know what they're talking about.
Does anyone have another source for this information?
Why is everyone blaming the lobbyists?

If someone offers you a lot of money to do something unethical and you accept it, how is it the fault of the other person? You're the one doing something unethical.

Lobbyists are just doing their job. If people don't like politicians who are swayed by lobbyists, vote them out of office and elect someone who won't accept lobbyist money. That's one of the benefits of a democratic republic.
John McCarthy-pioneer of AI dies
Mabye the title is a little off, but from my experience we have an inhouse recruiter and she is worth her salary and more.

I'd be interested in wow do other companies hire without a recruiter.
Your back of the envelope is dubious. Where are they paying 22-year-olds $80k? Only at soul-sucking corporations and over-funded startups with no fiscal responsibility.

Also, the person with the capability to get a CS/Math/Science degree (from a respectable program) will likely have other potential that fall somewhere between the typical dropout and Gatesian success.

I think the strongest argument to stay in school is that most 18-year-olds don't have the discipline to fulfill that potential, so they'll get more out of a structured environment. I know I was certainly this way. However if you are the exceptional 18-year-old that is driven in some way (whether it be code, art, music, business, whatever), then you probably won't regret jumping.
XNA doesn't even have a generational GC, which makes writing games feel like a constant exercise in tricking the GC.

The GC's marking phase is very slow because it has to traverse the whole object graph each time, meaning you want to make the object graph as simple as possible.
Arrays of structs are very efficient for the GC to scan (it can either collect the whole array or not), but working with structs is a nightmare because there's no polymorphism.

For Fluffy[1] we just used classes and tried to optimize the hotspots as an afterthought. I'm not quite satisfied with how it turned out, there's still a periodical 20-40ms lag in the game.

There is a great article about keeping heap complexity low: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2007/07/02/twin-pat...

[1] http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Fluffy-Operation-O...
And on a related note: The obvious alternative is regulation. Consider this amusing/depressing look at why Wall Street regulation (as it stands) is a spectacular failure, consider this article in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020448530457664...

Select quotes:

"In 298 pages, rather than sketching out simple, clear rules for banks to follow, regulators essentially wonder out loud how they can possibly write this rule. Officially there are 383 questions posed in the document, but many of these questions have multiple parts... Bank lobbyists are certainly eager to provide some hand-holding."

"Dodd and Frank punted this one to the executive branch, invested federal agencies with new authority, and expected the same regulators who failed to prevent the last crisis to somehow avert the next one."

"Until the government is willing to create a durable financial system that allows failure, the best policy response is to make the rules so simple that even Washington can enforce them."
Enronitis: Why Good Corporations Go Bad by Daniel Greenwood
Robot Solves Rubik's Cube in 5 Seconds
Tor-friendly service providers, from their wiki:

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISP...
Video: Pinterest co-founder shares founding story
The Slack Wire: Selfish Masters, Selfless Servants
It was probably tested only in Lynx+Hurd.

/joke
What amazes me about a great deal of the recruiters I've dealt with is their inability to do basic word-matching.

Recruiter "I have a great role for you as a Ruby developer!"

Me: "Do you have a copy of my CV?"

Recruiter: "Yes indeed, I have it on my screen right now!"

The word "Ruby" does not appear on my CV, at all. This has happened to me more times than I can remember; with Ruby, C++, C# and a whole bunch of other things not mentioned anywhere on my CV.

You don't even need to have heard of a technology (never-mind understand it) to narrow candidates down more than this.
IMO, that's super myopic. When intelligence agencies do something visible to the American public that causes any sort of discussion, it forces what they are doing (which is usually supposed to be secret) into the spotlight, which makes them generally more accountable. They do not like to do their job with people looking over their shoulder; they typically avoid this wherever possible. Besides that:

* Even on a very good day, the government is demonstrably bad at deploying new technology, especially at scale.

* Especially when that scale involves training any personnel at all.

* Especially when people are wary of that technology anyway.

* Especially when they are deploying suspicious technology in a visible arena.

* Especially when this technology will be observing US persons.

It doesn't look like it from the outside, but there is a lot of politics and bureaucracy in deploying a system like this, not just internally, but also from places like politicians.

In my experience, people who have never been around an organization like the FBI seem to have a naive view of what is possible. My recommendation is to critically evaluate anything that anyone tells you about what goes on in such places.
We live in a democracy with free speech. This means that people are permitted to go to elected officials and ask for whatever they want. It's the job of the politicians to say no.

Incidentally, I don't know if you realize this, but the biggest lobbyists are primarily labor unions (e.g., the NEA, who donate more money than Goldman Sachs) and professional groups (realtors, trial lawyers), not corporations.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A
Interviewing is a tricky thing. I have been on both sides of the court, and it is very difficult to get a good idea about a candidate's potential simply from the resume/cover letter.

If you keep getting contacted by companies for interviews, but fail to get past that stage, I would recommend two things.
1. Make absolutely sure that your resume is accurate. If, in the interview, it looks like you 'embellished' your qualifications on your resume a bit too much, it is guaranteed to get you tossed into the 'no' pile.
2. Work on your interview skills. It is surprising how bad some people interview. It took me a couple practice tries before I really became comfortable with the process.
Maybe it's not as hopeless as you think. (Sorry, couldn't resist, what with a name like that!) I could imagine many young children being astonished at seeing their 2d pictures come alive. Perhaps as a reward for good behavior, you could actively solicit drawings from your daughter to be made into a toy.

On an unrelated note, how about adding a rapid prototyping lab so that you can create plastic as well as plush toys from kids' drawings?
Good question, I guess I simply assumed there would be an audience for it because people always ask me a lot of questions about it in events, etc. I thought it would be nice to have an article to refer them too instead of telling the same stories over and over.

So, is there interest? :)
All of these things can be automated. Since the Nest is connected via Wifi and Zigbee, a future firmware upgrade (or an external controller) could add support for a Zigbee-connected fan controller. If the outside temperature is in the direction of the target temperature, turn on the fan.

It sounds like you're in a desert-like area with wide temperature swings. The learning system when integrated with your zone system could figure out how cold you're willing to get at night to store cold air for the day, or even use unoccupied rooms to store very cold air to be released into the house throughout the day.

I agree that a thermostat alone isn't enough to save significant amounts of energy, but this does have the potential to get get some smart technology into more homes, where it can be expanded later to include everything you describe.
Considering many of the top grossing apps on Android (and iOS as well) are free with in app purchasing, I am starting to believe paid app downloads are going to increasingly become a niche market for apps.
Santa's List using Twitter and NLP — are you naughty or nice?
Don't forget some people get free rides through college (I did), so they only have to pay for food for 4 years. Also, 25k a year seems a bit optimistic, IMO.
New capacitive touchscreen works with a gloved hand
I also wonder how ad-supported apps affect these numbers. If apps are free but ad-supported, there's more incentive to download and try them out, even if you only ever use them once and then delete them.
The point is that because conversions from characters to ints aren't free, similar things can't be done cheaply.
I would say the best way to get to know Australian startups and (virtually) meet relevant people would be by participating in the Silicon Beach mailing lists (http://siliconbeachaustralia.org/ )

Regarding immigration visa, if you qualify for a point based point based independent visa (175 in your case) I would go for it any day over a sponsored visa.

Email me if you have any specific questions. (obtained 175 without an agent while being in the US)
Ask HN: Review my startup, GroupMo
The Pitch: GroupMo provides an easy way of organizing your facebook friends to see a movie. You can peruse movie content and see which facebook friends expressed an interest in seeing each movie. Then, you can round them up by creating a group, invite individuals, and broadcast your movie-going plans on facebook.

GroupMo could help people learn about friends' tastes and discover new friends to see a movie.

http://www.groupmo.com

We're interested in feedback on your experience, suggested improvements, and the concept generally.
As an Android developer, I love this trend. It's amazing to be able to reach such a large and growing audience in the mobile world without having to live inside Apple's ecosystem. It's also exciting that the high-end Android phones out now are increasingly awesome. I hope this translates into an increase in paid apps' success, given that more users with more money seem to be using Android.
Ask HN: Who are some unknown but growing startups with a lot of potential?
Who are some startups that haven't been on Techcrunch or maybe haven't even launched yet?
It's been a few days. Anybody care to report where you are? I'm happy to say I'm still doing all the exercises, not so happy to say I've only just finished the ones for 1.4. I thought exercises 29, 52, and 54 were interesting, among others.

Finding time continues to be an issue, but actually working through the material is fine. Many of the exercises are rather fun, as they mostly have some non-mechanical twist. Occasionally (as in 1.4.23) Strang's informality goes a little too far and I have no idea what he's asking.
Lots of function calls in the worst case made it seem unlikely to be a general solution. So I held off on testing that before I'd explored other paths.
Follow a region of an image frame by frame
Or... it taught you to deal with procrastination head on?

Anyway, this is not universal. My CS program (University of Minnesota) tended to be about 50% assignments / 50% tests. It varied by class of course, theoretical stuff has to go by tests (numerical computing, discrete math, etc). The programming classes sometimes had competitions for bonus points, optimizing a C program in machine architecture, or a head-to-head game competition between programs (that was super fun, and really cut my cleverness down to size).
Well, you can enjoy getting busy with Clojure...
Wow! That is so simplistic and minimal; it just works like you would imagine! Great idea, great work and great result.

I'd see this text field becoming more and more intelligent over time with other functions!
Netflix Shares Sink, 800000 Subscribers Lost
By the end the primary overhead was dictionary lookup or iteration overhead, so I doubt this would have mattered
Los Angeles Locksmith
Los Angeles Locksmith: Barak Lock & Security provides professional locksmith services in Los Angeles area. 24 hour emergency locksmith services in Los Angeles.
Ask HN: Is there an open-source clone of Metafilter.com?
Basically, a site that allows multiple authors to log in and make posts, and other users to comment on the same.

No karma system necessary.

I am especially interested in Django-based projects that come close to Metafilter.com
It seems the number of Android ad impressions has doubled over iOS ad impressions, too:

http://phandroid.com/2011/10/25/millennial-android-doubles-i...
Video on How to Recycle Tapes
That's effectively what the cache is. Dictionary lookups are slow enough that we want to fast-path the case of English letters.
Pmscully72
Really nice interface. Kudos there.

Who are your target users, people using Etsy or eBay? Are you competing with other services like those on ease of use alone? For people looking to buy things, will you provide some search across all users or are you just giving your sellers a link they can promote?
OT: we moved our unsub link to the top of our mailers and complaints have dropped to almost zero.
If the politicians are responsible, that doesn’t mean Wall Street isn’t also responsible. Blame is a non-zero-sum concept. If I lobby for the right to dump toxic waste in a river, do we really say “lobbying is legal, blame the politicians for the toxic waste?” No, we ought to blame me for dumping toxic waste whether it’s legal or not, and blame me again for making it legal by lobbying.

Summary: Yes, it’s great to find fault with the political system, but that doesn’t absolve Wall Street or anybody else of the obligation to act ethically. In fact, the definition of ethics is pretty much Doing the right thing when not compelled to do so by consequences, legal or otherwise.
You're right. Last I checked free apps were like 2/3 of the total number of apps in the Apple Appstore. Now it could be higher.
I've worked with third-party recruiters for many jobs I had while contracting. The pitch you mentioned can work, but only in the high-turnover world of contract consulting for big companies. This is NOT going to work for startups, or anything even close.

Contract programmers often switch jobs once a year. That's driven my duration limits set by companies, layoffs and the wanderlust that contractors often have. Big companies don't seem to want to be bothered with in-house recruiters, so they pay third-party companies to do the work. In the midst of that shuffle, a job requirement is handed from a hiring manager (who may not know how to code) to a company HR rep (who may edit it) to the recruiter. What you end up with looks like this:

Req: JAVA Developer
REQUIRED:
- 5-7 Years Java Experience
- 3-5 Years J2EE Experience
- 1 Year JDBC
- 3-5 Years Oracle
- MUST HAVE WEBLOGIC 10.3.5
PLUSSES:
- C/C++
- Perl

Of course, this may or may not have anything to do with what the job actually requires. They may have a taped-together C/C++ and Perl system they're trying to move to JEE/Weblogic They probably haven't really ordered (or gotten approval for) Weblogic, but it's what all the other companies seem to use.

So, the recruiter goes around spamming folks, and manages to find someone who's just hit their 12-month limit at BigCo and is open to find another position. The recruiter gets paid, the contractor may or may not like the position (but gets paid, anyway), and the hiring manager gets bagels brought in, courtesy of the recruiter's firm. Everyone wins, so to speak. That's why the cycle persists.

I'm describing this as someone who played that game successfully for many years. To someone who's working in startup circles it may seem like madness, and it would be if applied to startups. But it's how Fortune 500 companies, for better or worse, find talent.

To put it in startup terms, the third-party recruiter model seems to work well for companies who've found their business model and need people to execute it. For companies who are in a race to iterate and find a product-market fit, it's the kiss of death. Skip the free bagels, delete the emails and find people on your own or with internal recruiters who really know your company well.
I agree, but I was referring to lobbying in particular.

The phrase "if you have enough money to influence the law" indicates not that the corporations did something illegal/unethical (why wouldn't they spend money to get their input heard?), but rather indicates corrupt politicians who would make decisions and laws based on who spent the most money.
> It's one of the biggest reasons why ...

One person having limited experience with professional PHP development doesn't make it the overall state of PHP development.

The majority of PHP development I've see use these community frameworks like Zend and Symfony. They also use a lot of other well established tools. Things like CodeCoverage and PHPUnit, xdebug, and countless other solid, well written tools.

I'm sorry, but when people refer to PHP development and relate to WordPress or Drupal, I can't help but shake my head. If that's your idea of professional level PHP, I'd hate to see what you think professional level code in your language looks like.

The overall state of PHP development is doing well. We have a lot of professionals writing solid code. Yes, we have a lot of people that flock to WordPress and Drupal, or pick up CI and think they are following best practices in PHP. Many move off to a framework in another language, thankful to get away from PHP and the horrible code it forced them to write.