skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure you read the whole thing, because I did not get that vibe at all.

I see them trying two different things: using data in class to get the students to engage with and learn from each other; and using data in aggregate to predict how well students will do.

I don't see how your objection applies to getting students to engage with each other, so I'm going to skip it. I think you're objecting to the second thing. But I don't see it as "it's our fault the students are failing," I see it as "this student is in danger of failing, so we should help them." Blame is irrelevant. In small courses, professors already know who is in danger of not doing well. I think they're targeting larger class sizes where the professor is unable to look at a student and immediately recall their past performance.

You're correct that an unmotivated student will not learn. But even motivated students need help sometimes. Some students have not yet learned how to learn.
Why did they drop EFF from the charities? :(
MASS TRAFFIC MATRIX REVIEW
It is definitely more efficient to communicate your point clearly - even if that takes more time - than to have multiple jump in and start working without being on the same page.
Thanks for the response. Will definitely have a second look, now that I have an idea of what to expect. Competition is definitely good in this space… especially now that the trend includes TextMate bundles & themes so it's not too hard to maintain a similar environment.
Isn't most of NASA acting like the answer is "yes"? All the research into earth-like exoplanets, and the expeditions to Mars to look for water etc?
Maybe they could do a humblemediabundle.com type of deal. (humblebundle.com sells indie game packages for whatever you want to pay).
Fiber Optic Shape and Position Sensing
Talk to people in a different time zone :)
Hi all, I'm the main developer behind this and I'll be lurking around for a couple hours in case folks have any questions.
Facebook does use Java (entire Hadoop infrastructure, HBase deployments, likely more), Haskell (AST manipulation, afaik), OCaml (with a fairly interesting library for static analysis: https://github.com/facebook/pfff ), C++, and C (fairly self explanatory).
And it's mighty hard to learn how to program with these hours

Attacking the problem one bite at a time may be a better way to look at it. You don't need to master programming to be valuable. But having an understanding of what goes on in development at any level will make you more valuable. Using your lunch break to do tutorials is a place to start. Learn a language that is used heavily in your field. Start looking at portions of your job that you can automate. Focus on writing solutions for those portions and it will free up time. Some of those solutions may start to look like products that could be marketed in your field. Even if they are not, you have still learned the basics of development and freed more time on your schedule. Both of which are worth the investment to learn.
More drum-beating about this illusory talent shortage, eh? I'm still waiting to see any signs at all that this shortage actually exists, aside from random "I can't find a rockstar!" anecdotes.
This reminds me of http://www.google.com/search?q=+commit+suicide
which returns a help message (generally a phone number to a suicide prevention service in your country).
>And I'd argue stripping DRM (no matter how easy it is) is, is in fact harder than not bothering.

But it's never, ever, necessary, not when gazillions of scene groups strip DRM from a work and upload it as soon as it hits the market, if not before; sometimes they just get hold of the studio version. It might make some obscure video games harder to pirate, since it's much harder to strip DRM from code than from data, but video? No way.

DRM makes it harder for me to put legitimate content on a device I own, but it makes it no harder to pirate that same content.
> When laypersons claim to be victims of spoofing, they are overwhelmingly likely to be full of it. </quote>

What prevents a tracker to mix up some random IP. How do you know that it is not correct unless your torrent client tries to connect to it?
Stop SOPA in 10 seconds
Ask HN: Is Seattle lacking Junior Web dev jobs?
Or am I looking in the wrong places? I am a front-end web developer interested in moving to Seattle and there seems to be no entry-level/junior web developer positions.<p>The few jobs I did come across position that did say Junior they were looking for someone with years experience and advanced skills.<p>I have been looking on...
indeed
craigslist
startuply
seattle20<p>for a couple months and nothing not sure if I need to look somewhere else or Seattle is just not entry level friendly.
It seems like the alternative is some entity using "violence" to force large internet companies to do business with people they don't want to.
I was surprised that he revealed yesterday in the reddit thing that he has never owned a home or had real financial security. I'm enough of a fan to know that he is definitely not rich from comedy, but I somehow figured he had made enough to own a home outright at least.

FTA:
"And a friend of mine who does torrent stuff a lot says that when torrent users do buy something, they act like they're doing the greatest thing ever. ... They're saying, 'I bought something today. I paid for it. And I didn't steal it. I'm the greatest person alive.'"

I've noticed this attitude as well. It's really, really annoying.
Success is an anomaly.
Have you launched yet? Being in different timezones post-launch can be extremely difficult in my experience. Bugs and new code gets really hard to manage when the co-worker you need to talk to is asleep while you are working.
'should mention that the call isn't tracked or whatever.
How to handle spam calls in the office
As an online education teacher, I have noticed that classes with different age groups perform better. I have no way of influencing this outcome however.
Someone has to be first. If this goes well for Louis maybe that will make other comedians do the same. The power balance shifts. There's no reason why he can't sell material from other comedians too.
Thank you for the post, raganwald. It's always good to have a reminder, no matter how many times it may have been said before. I personally really appreciate it.
Wonderful thought and worthwhile effort. And I see that Facebook is also making similar efforts. I'm glad to see that.

My meta-thought about this is how do you make this proactive instead of passive? If you don't visit raganwald or Facebook, how will you get any encouragement this Christmas season?

I've often thought that some corners of the Internet could benefit from a virtual chaplain who could approach members of their online community if they suspected something was wrong. Or they could be a low threat pre-suicide (or other issue) conversation and make themself very approachable for those moving in that direction to try to steer them onto more healthy directions.

Is this a good idea, or is it just my inner pastor thinking out loud?
Can you elaborate on 'treatment'? I'm pretty sure I have delayed phase sleep syndrome or something like it. I also have fibromyalgia syndrome.

I feel like I'm constantly fighting my body's natural cycle. When I had school/a job that required a specific schedule, I used an alarm clock to get up, and had constant fms flareups and frequent insomnia. When I switched to my current job (at a startup, and no longer required to stick to a specific schedule as long as I'm getting my stuff done), I ditched the alarm clock, and my fibromyalgia pain has vastly improved, just from not trying to force my sleep schedule.

But the problem with that, is left to my body's own devices, I tend to want to be awake for about 20 hours, then sleep around 7. Then I start feeling guilty about coming in later and later every day, and there's still a limit to how many hours straight you can work and be productive, and even as flexible as my schedule is, there's still a bit of pressure to work 5 days a week for 8+ hours, not 4 days a week for 10+ hours. And coming into to work between 10pm-4am just never feels right. Once I get to the point where I'm waking up at 8-9pm, I usually have to waste a weekend forcing myself to stay up 24hrs or more to "flip" my schedule back to something reasonable. I hate doing that, because then my entire weekend is spent feeling like a zombie and then it's straight back to work again.

So if you've got some more details on how melatonin and a lightbox worked for you, even just a blog post you could point me at, I'd be really appreciative.
Futures Investment Decisions
From my friend Evan Smith, who's a lawyer and couldn't be bothered to sign up for HN:

I believe the author is slightly incorrect. First off, there is no "optimal" slip angle for all situations. Putting on your physics hat for a second, think about a race car tire at the Indy 500. As the car enters turn 1 at 200 mph, the driver turns the wheel. The tire, due to rotational and centrifugal forces, will slightly change shape under these pressures. As a result, the contact patch of the tire can be pointing in a slightly different direction than the tire itself during the turn. The anglular measurement of that difference is "slip angle." A small amount of slip angle can be good, as it can increase grip up to a certain point. However, beyond that point, grip is no longer improved and you can transition from a slip angle to a slide angle, where the tire has lost grip. Depending on whether you want the back tires lose grip first (oversteer, where the back end comes around) or understeer (where the front tires lose grip first and you lose some steering, think driving in snow) you can use the slip angles to tailor the car's handling to the driver and the racecourse. The optimal slip angle is that angle which maximizes grip without inducing momentum-sapping slide angles or creating too much drag. Optimal slip angle depends on all sorts of things: chassis set up, tires, racetrack temperature, etc. While the author may know more about this than I do, I've never heard of seven degrees of slip being optimal for all situations.

Also, I think the author's metaphor is inelegant: driving beyond the limit means you are not allowing the full power of your engine to be transmitted to the tires. The fastest drivers are those who drive at the limit of available grip. If you drive beyond the limit of available grip, the power of your engine will not be transmitted efficiently to the road because the tires are not gripping it fully.
I'm an Amazon seller. I sell a small ebook. I think my wife sells a few things too.

So you guys are saying if she logs on to her account from my computer suddenly neither one of us can sell on Amazon ever again?

Does this seem a little draconian to anybody besides me? Random rules -- no doubt put in place for good reasons to prevent fraud -- haphazardly applied to people and resulting in a lifetime ban from being a seller?

I have no problem with Amazon running a clean shop. In fact, I wish they'd do more to make it that way. What I have a problem with is systems of rules that are put up without any feedback mechanism in place. So instead of some real, live person listening to complaints and eventually coming to an understanding that this is totally whacked, thousands get dumped in the trash can until somebody finally manages to make a public relations case out of it? Completely unsatisfactory.

This is just poor systems design, Amazon. This is exactly the same systems problem many are having with PayPal, and for exactly the same reason. Be as strict as you like, but always include the possibility that you might be wrong. Because if you have no self-correction mechanisms, people aren't going to like you much. I know I just started thinking very carefully about my relationship with Amazon. I'm sure a lot of other folks did too.
>That's hardly a "factual error". I can email an mp3 to my friend and have them play it. I can't do the same with a DRM'd song. Is that not harder? Instead I have to make extra efforts to strip the DRM or find a non-DRM'd version elsewhere. For non-technical users, it might actually be "hard" to pirate DRM'd content.

If by piracy you mean the kind of content sharing that everyone has been participating in since the 1970s, then sure. But if by piracy you mean torrenting a hundred albums, then absolutely not. The only kind of 'piracy' DRM hurts is the kind everyone likes and nobody wants to ban.
Ok, that was a little scary as a title considering the URL was raganwald's blog. I had to click it fast to ensure that all was safe. Perhaps a better title, atleast on HN is in order?
I've seen him live a couple times, and he's gotten up on stage and joked about how much more money he has than everyone in the entire room. I don't think he's hurting.
Supposedly the HIB people voted, and the Red Cross came out slightly ahead. I'm kinda bummed. I might go donate a couple dollars to the EFF anyway.
My advice for you is the same as my advice for anyone smart and ambitious without terribly relevant experience.

Take an entry-level non-technical job at a startup that's grown large enough to actually have entry-level non-technical positions. Customer support, inside sales, community management, traffic acquisition, etc. You won't be in charge of that function, you'll be reporting to someone and learning.

Work your ass off, learn everything about the business, contribute ideas, look for opportunities for internal advancement and promotion. Startups, even bigger ones, can be pretty chaotic. At the right startup, you can advance in responsibility reasonably quickly if you're good.

Once you've gotten some startup experience under your belt, and hopefully a promotion or two, you can job-hop to a better role or a smaller 'more startuppy' team. After a few jobs and a few years, you'll be where you want to be.

This is pretty much what I did eight years ago when I dropped out of a Ph.D. program in Russian history. It takes time - you've got to pay your dues - but it doesn't take as much time as starting over in a more traditional career.

I'm in NYC - if you are too and want to chat, feel free to send me an email.
Humble Bundle 4
I never said anything about "lack of access to capabilities". Native applications, in the vast majority of cases, are just better in every way than the similar web versions. They're faster, cleaner, and more capable. If both are being offered, it makes no sense to choose the web version.

My company makes an iOS-compatible web application with no plans for a native client right now. We use some JavaScript[1] to remind users to add us to their homescreen. But if we had the resources, we would build a native client -- it's a no brainer.

[1] http://cubiq.org/add-to-home-screen
I would recommend keeping an eye on vico. It's likely it doesn't do everything you're used to in vim, but there's been constant improvement in this regard over the past 2-3 months.
(You know, the funny thing with downvotes is that you never know if you just made someone uncomfortable, or if there's a credible argument against what you just said. Though one tends to assume that if the later were true it would have been employed along with -- perhaps even in stead of -- the downvote.)
What I Learned About the Web in 2011
>A new artist can't release their own work and achieve these levels of success.

No, but they've never been able to. They've always had to grind it out making no money in open mic nights, or starting for another artist "for the exposure". Between Youtube and the ease of self-distribution, it is now possible for artists to bypass the studio distribution deals that take such a large cut and result in higher prices for consumers and fans.
The Christmas/suicide link is a myth you know.
who would have been popular in a classic promotion environment

wat

Because the time and energy of the world's hackers is best spent on cargo cult business models attempting to mimic successes of yore?

How about developing tools to facilitate discovery of talented acts who will be popular in the current, real world environment where there's an internet, and people use it to find and distribute things?

To borrow a metaphor from Brian Eno, if recorded music (or any other duplicated and widely distributed art) is whale blubber, and we've reached the point of oil refinement, in what universe is the optimum response a sharper harpoon?
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a reference to a meetup that points to a mail list:

https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech

Unfortunately there is no direct link to the message, but here is the pasted header, if someone is interested in looking for it in the archive:

Forwarded message

From: Mitch Altman
Date: Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 12:59 PM
Subject: [Noisebridge-discuss] Geeks & Depression meetup
To: NoiseBridge Discuss
Interesting idea. Seperate from the code and design, have you thought about the financial logistical details (getting and distributing money) as well as the 'deal making' requirements of getting such a project up and running?
Heaven help Amazon if merchants ever had the idea to do an entrepreneurial workshop and had dozens of accounts all logging in from the same area as part of the conference.
What Are Unstructured Data?
Just to be clear: what they've ruled out is the Standard Model version of the Higgs boson. There are actually many possible kinds of Higgs bosons, the SM version being the simplest.
Kudos to raganwald for saying what many think, but never muster the courage to say it.
Well, that pretty much describes bitcoin, plus it has the forgery problem solved.
When a farmer drives his harvester through a field, most ears of corn get profitably harvested. [Work with me, I'm a city boy.] A few ears get trampled and destroyed. The farmer doesn't grieve for the trampled ears, and he does little to nothing to reduce trampled ears, because overall his harvesting method is the most monetarily efficient one available to him. He's happy, and doesn't give the trampled ears a single thought.

Amazon, Google et al. have discovered that millions of ears of corn will line up to be harvested. Virtually none leaves voluntarily.

Welcome to the produce section.
Very hard to find experienced Ruby devs in Vancouver, Canada. Have had open positions for months at my company with only junior people applying.
SOPA supporters don't want to compromise
Digi-Comp Revival : Computing with Billiard Balls
for me it doesn't http://i.imgur.com/1d8pK.png
I agree and plan to build a company in which distributed is the norm.
The guy being allied about is Panupol Sujjayakorn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panupol_Sujjayakorn). He is Thai. In Thailand, scrabble is used to learn English.

Unlike with Chinese, it is not impossible to make a Thai scrabble, but I doubt there is one, given the size of its alphabet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_alphabet)
This is a good little post, but you actually are branded in the US if you seek paid treatment for depression. See this: http://behavioral.kaiserpapers.org/prozacharm.html
The "fatigue" implied by the parent has to do with how much people are willing to pay for subsequent bundles, not how many developers are interested in getting in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue#In_charitabl...

The fact that they won't be going away any time soon is precisely the problem.
I don't really think it is worth generating these mnemonics. A lot of the words in that list are really common words so you're making it harder for yourself by re-remembering them in mnemonic form.

I think you should remove all the words you know first, as this will make it much easier to remember. After that if you want to use the mnemonic approach, then if that works for you then great.

Although, I learned most of the weird ones by just playing against a computer which used them a lot. Eventually you remember them all. Incidentally, this way you actually learn a couple interesting new words. Three-toed sloth anyone?
If you start doing automated requests to their search engine, very soon they start serving captchas. They detect it using machine learning on features like number of requests coming from an IP, etc.
As detailed in:

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/suicide.asp
TextMate 1 was my first "programming" editor, one year ago I faced the truth and said to myself that v2.0 is not coming.(!!) I switched over to vim and I'm very happy. I now can use it very fast and I'm very productive. Yes, TextMate 2.0 is late and maybe all of those features are now all over other editors, but I'll definitely give it a try and I'll keep it installed on my computer for the old times' sake.
> Having said that however, how many other comedians can pull this off?

Quite a few, really. The golden example I think is Jimmy Pardo's podcast, which has been turning a tidy profit for a while now. He was pretty niche-y and not nationally known, unlike Louis, but has still created a successful business on comedy, self-production and self-distribution.
yep, that's what I did!
Charity in China; Reforming China's Non-Profit Sector
There's not much to see, it's an editor, but here you go:
http://i.imgur.com/ZyIP5.png

Blackboard theme and the font is DejaVu Sans Mono... I think TextMate 2 just uses the font I set in version 1.
he's also done the opposite the "I don't even have 'no money'" routine.
Neither does it for me (I'm in the UK)
Perhaps its my background in Mathematics, but I have a bit of a problem with the idea of 'putting thinking time on my schedule'.

I find that the thoughts come along when they want to and think themselves anyway. They laugh at my (paper) diary. I suspect that this is related to me being on the 'maker' schedule rather than the 'manager' schedule.

http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Ask Slashdot: Working As an IT Contractor In a War Zone?
This is important, and startup founders are especially vulnerable.

The expectations, both from the world and founders themselves, are often impossibly high - afterall there can be only one facebook and one Google. Failure in startups isn't the same as failure in a corporate job. Startups are so much harder that if you make it to the first line of code you've already beat 90% of the people that want to do a startup. If you launch you've beat 99%. If you actually become ramen profitable you're a superstar in my eyes.

The problem of suicide and depression among startup founders is more pronounced than you might think, both because of the high expectations, but also because the founder is the one who needs to always be positive, egg others on, and never show weakness. Often while constantly doubting his (or her) own abilities and chances of success. This is incredibly hard and can end in catastrophe if you don't talk to someone about it. It even happened for a ycombinator company (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=859117).

Remember to enjoy the journey - it's fun, and if you fail you'll be held in extremely high regard amongst fellow entrepreneurs and HN'ers for having tried. Most people just dream, the people that actually try are stars.

If you have any questions, or just want to talk please contact me. My mail is in my profile.
Yes it is:

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/suicide.asp

Snopes suggest it falls slightly over the holiday from 34 per million people to 30 per million people and then rises to 41 per million people at New Year’s.
You start by spending years on the club circuit, developing your material, honing your craft, and building an audience by releasing content that your fans can share. In the short term, you make money from performing. In the longer term, you reach a point where you can make money from selling recordings.
AdWords come from google.com. You'd think this service is not limited to adsense...

They could enforce it by technical means, by just blocking your IP.