skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why is prompt() ugly? On the contrary, I think that for kids who grew up in GUIs, it is much more familiar and less intimidating than a prompt.
Well, it did get a little crazy this summer with all of the articles and meta-observation about how viable the currency was vs "is HN being used to pump and dump the value".

It still was a fascinating thing to think about from a software point of view, IMO.
I'm surprised he was even let through the checkpoint after that comment.
Call-By-Push-Value
What is your favorite programming/computer-related book?
I need a technical book to read. What do you suggest?
> $major_copyright_holder choosing to take down $third_party_site.

Plus: without any judicial oversight or regard to national sovereignty.
Civil rights legislation was not "widely reviled". People were protesting in the streets for god's sake. It was not universally approved, of course, especially in the southern states. But I don't think there's a really a comparison to be made here.

SOPA was/is bought and paid for for a clearly tiny minority of interests. The civil rights laws emerged as a result of a contentious political process spurred on by protests and resistance by a sizable part of the population. It was certainly democratically motivated --- just not in the sense of counting heads.

SOPA has nothing to do with democracy at all. It's about corporations protecting their interests. This happens all the time, of course, but to say that democracy should be thrown out the window because, well, sometimes you just have to "do the right thing" is garbage.
It's not clear to me where you're going with that observation.
Pirate Bay DMC Response
I upvoted you because I agree that SOPA isn't an irrational response. It is crude, selfish and ham-handed approach but is a rational effort to protect a huge hoard of rent-collecting, nominal "capital".

That said, I utterly disagree that the US has any obligation to protect the "intellectual property" of any group. The music industry has stolen and stolen and stolen from musicians for years and having vast influence now, they want the right to steal services from anyone else based on any possibility, any whiff, that their government-granted-monopoly might be infringed on.

As others have pointed, the era of the fall the music industry gate keepers has been good to musicians.

If the US government is our government (big if there), it does not have the obligation to make its main priority private policing for a variety of falling monopolists. In other words, I don't have an answer to your final question but my comment is "this is not my problem, it is their problem and our response should be to throw it back to them".
Russians embrace a radical vision of nanotechnology
The most successful terrorist attacks against the US did not use bombs, they used commodity weapons and teams that required thousands of dollars and weeks of specialized training.
Automatic to-Object conversion in JSF selectOneMenu & Co.
Cool. You should post your project. I also made a diy web enabled thermostat + a bunch of other home energy gadgets.
http://www.nabiltewolde.com/2011/11/home-energy-prototypes.h...

I think these types of devices need to have a more open approach to the data they collect. Another project that is trying to do this is http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/
I am so looking forward to a huge army of newly-trained programmers who view prototype-based inheritance as the default and classical inheritance as weird.

Similarly, I look forward to a whole set of various modules and libraries to graft prototype-based inheritance onto existing languages like Ruby...

cackle
Rainn Wilson calls on Silicon Valley to give back this holiday season
There were several interesting studies these past years : one from google, one from NetApp, an older one from the CERN:

Google 2007:
http://research.google.com/pubs/pub32774.html

Carnegie Mellon 2005:
http://www.usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/schroeder.html

CERN on data integrity:
http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?contribId=3&sess...

NetApp 2010:
http://synergy-ds.com/netapp/wp-7005.pdf
> However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if you want to, then it shouldn't be a problem...

Something like Google's Data Liberation Front? http://www.dataliberation.org/

I put all my eggs in one basket every time I take the family to the grocery store. It's unclear to me why storing all my information with Google is any worse than piling my wife and kids into the Odyssey.
'Tis the Season to Revitalize the Economy
You've managed to post in nearly every thread related to money changing hands for the past couple months. While I applaud your persistence, the world does not center around you, your startup, your causes, etc. It's incredibly irritating, it's off-topic in effectively every case, and it does nothing to promote healthy conversation.
Swype Learns To Listen Better, Type More Accurately
And I would also hope that his lawyer(s) will get the leaflets entered into evidence, so that the jury can read them.
SOPA Cabana
Learn bugzilla
Simply suggesting if Microsoft want to sell Office they should make it an attractive proposition to part with cash.
I agree that the URL is extremely lengthy and the overall user experience is similar to sites that try to sell you a gimmick. I think if you layered this on top of Facebook you might have a better shot at the virality aspect of things.
Encryption is (mostly) not magic
US asks journals not to publish flu virus research to keep info from terrorists
> I remember my parents buying me a Pentium 3 500 with 128MB of RAM and a CD Burner for $3000 back in the day. For $3000 now, you can get something really amazing.

That setup itself was pretty amazing back in the day :P
The Future of Computer Trading in Financial Markets - 16 Papers
I'm sorry, I was mixed up about this. It's still possible for future iterations of the program, but for this one they've decided "no."
Sorry you feel that way. Obviously I don't think the world revolves around me. As for relevance and usefulness in terms of discussion, I clearly disagree on all counts, otherwise I wouldn't post.

According to the article, Bitcoin's significance is that it "allows low-cost and regulation-free transfer of wealth." I am seeking to achieve many of the same objectives in the context of a high-cost and poorly regulated environment, just in a different manner. As it so happens, that manner might impact the legality of some uses of Bitcoin.

Furthermore, behind the shadow of its lobbying group, Western Union is one of the main sponsors of the legislation directly in question that it and other companies use to maintain an oligopoly. No one else seems to be discussing that point, though it seems rather significant, both in terms of Bitcoin and other startups wishing to enter the market.
Disclosure: I work on location products at Facebook.

I think that real world places are an important part of who you are. Where you're from, where you've lived, and where you've travelled to, for instance, all help tell a story about you as a person.

The way that's represented on Facebook today is the Map on your Timeline. These suggestions help you put more photos on your map so you can share experiences with friends. That trip you took to Disney World 5 years ago may be far down in timeline, but it's going to be easy for friends to find it on your Map.

Hope that helps explain the "why" a bit.
Ask HN: Multi-touch CAD Controller (New Menu designs for the iPad) - Feedback?
Genetically Modified HIV Vaccine Approved – Human Tests to Begin Shortly
The answer is obvious: to expand Google Search mindshare and lock-in.
Developing software as if quality matters
As every PHP programmer knows today, and all of us Applesoft BASIC and Apple Pascal programmers knew when we were beginners, OOP and FP are unnecessary stumbling blocks between a new programmer and a very large class of fun computer programs.
SOPA/PIPA Update
I use tl;dr more of for use of being a comedic instrument. It goes in hand very well the the meme pictures throughout my post. I could have written it much more adult like but that's the voice I decided to use in this post. :)
Of course. What's the worst that can happen?
Seven Languages in Seven Weeks[1]

[1] http://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-wee...
Problem is, PayPal et al work in government-backed currencies. You can expect that when someone pays you $1 over PayPal, you'll get $1 worth from it (regardless of how many Euros you'd get for that dollar). However, with Bitcoins you'd be running into the issue of a double exchange. First you'd have to trade your dollars for Bitcoins, transfer the Bitcoins, then trade them back into dollars. You'll always get 1BC when someone sends you 1BC, but from the time that BC is bought to the time it's converted back to dollars, the currency could be worth a lot more (or a lot less).

Dollars are not inherently better, but at least I can immediately spend one and get a soda from the gas station. Until Bitcoin reaches that point, people will be sending dollars over Paypal.
Well-written. But as you said, one will do it, only if something is culturally fitting so there is little friction. Else launching internationally also means managing internationally. How many of us have the bandwidth to do so (with our tiny startup budget)?
I can see LetsLunch is a great fit for Italy.
Hudl office tour, MTV Cribs style
This is why I think "petitions" should have real power, or the gathering of a certain number of people should have the power to veto or at least postpone a certain bill. Clearly the more representative-oriented democracy isn't working too well. We need a democracy with a little bit more "direct democracy" measures thrown in there.

I'm not advocating for 100% direct democracy. I'm just saying there is a scale, and we need to push that scale back a little more towards direct democracy, because right now it's too easy for politicians to do whatever they want when in Office when the only repercussion is not being re-elected (maybe). Getting a lot of funding for the 2nd campaign can help negate that "punishment" too sometimes.
> In the Real World™, a tl;dr is called an "Executive Summary."

Umm, no. "tl,dr" means "I didn't read it, don't think that you should, and now I'm going to tell you how smart I am."

Executive summaries are written by people who bothered to read {whatever}. Some are even written by folks who aren't tooting their own horn.
Yeah I want to see more companies do this that aren't enterprisey. I remember Performable and even went through some video tutorial they had long ago but it definitely seemed to be more oriented towards ecommerce/shopping cart applications?
$1k/hr is not unusual for a good lawyer.
If you were a math major and got into the PhD program, you've made it and I don't think foreign students have any advantage over you. I was rather talking about people who just begin college. What was your experience of the drop-out rate from the introductory math/science classes?
Ask HN: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose -- how does your work give it to you?
Daniel Pink's Drive is frequently cited here for its mantra of "autonomy, mastery, purpose" as the principal motivators for people's work. I've given this some thought and have to say that I've hardly ever been in a situation where any meaningful attention was paid to these.

I'd like to ask for HN's wisdom on this. How have you been able to find autonomy, mastery, and purpose in your work? (I happen to be asking this from an employee perspective, but I won't mind hearing from startup founders as well, especially if you can tie in to how you provide this for your employees.)
I think it would be a good idea to figure out exactly which part bothers you the most.

Do you think you should get more money?

Are you feeling like you have too much work to do and wish you could relax more?

Is it more about being jealous that your friend isn't working as much?

Those are three separate motivations with different answers.

Personally, I think I'd be pretty darned satisfied with the situation that you're in. But we live in different worlds and that's besides the point.

$250k seems like a lot of money to me. I make less than half of that and it's not my own projects working with my best friend. Realistically, I don't imagine you're going to feel the difference of the extra money you'd make from future projects between if you kept the money yourself and if you split it.

If you're feeling too busy, I would guess that giving him direction probably takes less energy than doing the work yourself. So you have to keep telling him what to do. Make it part of your routine and you'll be fine. If it's the same stuff every month, set up a script to automatically email him once a month.

If you're just jealous that he isn't working without being told what to do, you're going to have to decide whether that's a deal-breaker for your friendship. Some people don't innately have a built-in drive to do things on their own. He may grow out of that trait with time, but until then you can either put up with it or don't. For a best friend, I'd put up with it.

So, I'd say figure out which part is the root of your dissatisfaction and see if you can come to terms with that one thing.
The 439 organizations SOPA opponents should worry about
anytime you make it easier to do a thing, or lower the bar a person must meet, there are consequences, not all of them good.
A billion dollars a year to run Facebook... sure beats Eduardo's initial investment.
Yet Another Task Application - org mode style tasks in the browser
Yup! It was tuesday, so dinner was being prepared. Bigger picture: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/vmeh.png
Innovative Ideas to Watch in 2012
I'm a little disappointed with the article when compared to my expectations given the title.

Besides using a fraudulent boarding pass, the journo didn't "test" the TSA in any meaningful way. This wasn't like the experiment where a guy got a gun on a plane using his wheelchair, for example. While the article has great information and I agree with almost all of it, I would like to see people demonstrating the uselessness of the TSA rather than just talking about it.
I'm a little disappointed that the article doesn't mention a serious practical impediment to nullification - the "voir dire" process of juror selection. They ask you a series of questions, one of them usually being "Will you apply the law as I explain it to you?" You are 100% within your rights to answer no - they'll excuse you from the jury. If you say "yes", however, but you mean "no", then you have committed perjury. You won't get caught if you're crafty about it, but it's still a relevant detail. A more accurate title might have been: "People can do whatever they want as long as they're OK going to jail if they get caught"
Ask HN: How important is UI design for your first app?
Me and buddy always have constant arguments on how important the UI is for an application. As a normal user (of any application), UI is fairly important for me to trust and start using it. But my friend thinks that if we can't have a great UI design then going with minimal or no UI is better.
I personally hate to show my app to my users (even beta) with just text and links.
What do you guys think?
Getting China/Iran like powers over the Internet is exactly the kind of power they want (they've said it in public). They want to have total control over any kind of infringement happening on the web, no matter how trivial. But don't be fool'ed into thinking that would be enough. They would take down "little guy" competition, too. They've already proved it with the Megaupload video.
> Read the language there, it's all about burdens on illegal immigrants and prerequisites, after which they can get in the back of the line to apply for citizenship.

"back of the line"? They're starting in front of everyone who applied to immigrate, didn't get accepted, and waited until they did.

Are you really arguing that it isn't amnesty because there are some conditions?
This is a great book. I've read it a couple of times.
"I've never worked out whether I was, in American terms, an assistant professor or an associate professor."

Generally speaking, British lecturers are equiv. to associate professors, and assistant professors are untenured.

Most post-docs in proper academic departments are assistant professors, but this is not a hard and fast rule; post-docs in tenure-track programs nearly always are assistant professors.
Ron Paul wants to shut it down.
These are all reasons why I've adopted CoffeeScript over JS. Sure, you can accomplish the same exact things in JS, but they are far more natural with CS and with far less typing. Less typing is less chance for mistakes and bugs and makes an easier learning experience.

One other line item is the encapsulation of classes in CS. Doing that in CS is natural and easy to explain to a first year programmer. Accomplishing the same thing in JS is far more boilerplate and much harder to explain why you have to fight the language to accomplish something as simple as a class.

Sure, you probably shouldn't learn CS without at least a general understanding of JS, but I definitely think that CS is the next logical step for the second semester.
Ask HN: I Need a Data Structures & Algorithms Mentor/Tutor
Background: I'm a recent MIS graduate with a software dev internship under my belt. I've been able to land a few interviews (most notably with Microsoft's IT/Operations group), but my curriculum didn't cover any data structures/algorithms material. I'd like to increase my chances of getting hired and not embarrass myself during the interviews, so I'm looking for some help.

What I'm Looking for: Someone to point me to some good DS&A resources (I've looked at a number of Open Courseware lectures, but I've found the quality of the video makes it difficult to follow the slides/code). Also, some good practice problems and answers to the occasional question. Any general insight into the interview process would be greatly appreciated.

What you get: A bright, eager pupil, the satisfaction of helping your fellow hacker and an unlimited supply of gratitude. Or I could do some free web dev work for you. Your choice :)

I would also be willing to write up and share the process with the community, for anyone else that might be in this situation in the future.

Thanks in advance.
I made this app because I wanted to do emacs org mode stuff in the browser. There are other things on the web that do this sort of stuff (workflowy, for example), but they didn't do quite what I wanted

You can share documents you create with a other yata users, or with the entire world, even people who don't have yata accounts

You can email items which will be automatically added to your outline

If multiple people are editing a yata document, changes will instantly appear on everyones copy of the document. This is useful for working collaboratively.

simple keyboard interface allows you to search your document, compact parts of it, and mark items TODO, INPROGRESS, or DONE.

left to do:

doesn't really work on touch interfaces

make it attractive

hashtags don't work very well

profit! (would be nice, but haven't really thought much about that)

any feedback is greatly appreciated, and I can be reached at hugo.r.shi@gmail.com
how does Modern Information Retrieval compare? I've read the intro to IR book, is it worth reading Modern Information Retrieval as well?
"If you can muddle along with glacially inefficient frameworks (often with APIs that make core PHP seem not all that terrible for a time) and ORMs (personally, I don't use an ORM for anything, and credit where credit's due, PDO is actually a very reasonable solution), more power to you, but some of us (hi) have already been to that dance and realized it wasn't going to work for us."

Count me in as someone who took a look at the frameworks and said "no thanks". I think where the frameworks fail is that they always feel the need to go OO. PHP's design is pretty procedural in essence, because it's not a lot more than an HTTP wrapper with some useful procedures you can call. If you wrap that in an OO layer, by necessity you have to complicate things. I've found the best use of objects in PHP is in support of procedural request handler code. The only framework I use is ZF, because you can easily use it without buying into the whole MVC and routing paradigm.
The main reason we love Buffer, that's surprising, is that it allows you to be more efficient on twitter. Rather than having to set aside 20 minute blocks throughout the day to find articles and tweet, you can do a week's worth in an hour's time and be good to go.
this would be really trick UX-wise, but it'd be cool if one could "follow" updates of a list.
That's really well done. The Windows 7 demo not running on WP7 was a little funny, but hey, I guess they don't have to.
Well VBprogrammer is a moniker I've used since I was 14. I now work for a company building websites which have thousands of hits a minute, require PCI compliance and use a variety of tools, none of which are Visual Basic.

Given that you resorted to ad hominem I assume you have no other reasonable arguments against what I said.
Understanding Spatial Locality of Reference
If you want a longer, elaborate article, NY Books has a great article on the current problems plaguing higher education: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/our-uni....
Yes I understand that.

The laws need to be changed to better promote freedom, innovation and diversity instead of creating time-constrained monopolies.

Everything which is not in public domain explicitly, the copyleft is assigned to the author, where the rights to distribute the art and make derivatives is guaranteed by the law/judiciary office, just like it guarantees that copyright will be enforced today.
My preferred quip is that Bitcoin isn't a pyramid scheme. Technically, it's a 'pump-and-dump'. ;)
You could always try Amazon Mechanical Turk.
> teams that required thousands of dollars and weeks of specialized training.

The folks who ran that training are still alive.
Wouldn't it only be perjury if you had already decided to nullify when you were asked the question?
Open is just part of the equation. ODF is also an international standard: ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0

The point is, in the distant future, someone will be able to use the specification for ODF and read a document that complies with the standard. All aspects of the file will be reproducible, including metadata, tables, etc.

And as I said, open formats are just one approach. The approach that the US Courts and the State of Washington takes (conversion to PDF/A or TIFF) is a valid approach too.
I think the argument is more along the lines of "javascript is ubiquitous, therefore learning javascript is likely to be useful (despite drawbacks created by its idiosyncrasies)."
I kept waiting for the author to mention the Fully Informed Jury Association. I somehow stumbled upon their website over ten years ago and first heard of jury nullification. It's awesome they're still at it.

http://fija.org/
Probably. If they charge you, are you comfortable with that as your defense?
I don't understand. The agents at the gate always check the boarding pass validity (with the code scanner) and check the name on it against my ID. I haven't tried it but i can imagine that the system wouldn't allow two boarding passes with the same code. Is it that here in Europe we do things properly or did I misunderstood the faking of the boarding pass?
Computer related:

The Cuckoo's Egg, Clifford Stoll. A really nice description of his process to understand the system, and why something was wrong, and the progress to catching hackers.
Good choice! I am hoping to get this for Christmas :-)