skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> This is simply prejudice on the part of employers. Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard?

That's a good point for employers, where they can perhaps reasonably ask a new graduate for a copy of his transcript and see how well he actually did, but in a lot of cases someone evaluating a graduate does not have access to such details.

For instance, if I have to choose between two lawyers, or two doctors, and all I know is that they have degrees from the same school, and that one of them is in a group that was significantly under represented at that school before Affirmative Action and was not under represented afterwards, then it is, from a probabilistic point of view, in my interest to pick the one that was not from an Affirmative Action group.

Example: suppose a school has 1000 people in a given class. Before Affirmative action, the breakdown was 950 from group A and 50 from group B. Group B is 10% of the general population, so is under represented at this school. The school institutes an Affirmative Action program that lowers the standards for group B, so that they are able to change their class distribution to 900 A, 100 B.

If I later have to pick, say, a lawyer, and all I know is that they were both in that class, and one is an A and one is a B, if I pick an A then I get someone who I know met the original admission standards for the school. If I pick a B, there is a 50% chance he met those standards, and a 50% chance he was one of the ones who got in under the lower standard.

Without any other information, I'm clearly better off going with the A.

Note that this only applies to school where they lowered standards for group B to increase their numbers. There are other ways a school can try to get more B. Caltech, for instance, wants more females. Rather than lowering standards, they just try really hard to get any qualified women who apply to accept. They will send a representative to visit the woman and her family to pitch the benefits of Caltech, for instance, whereas if you are a man you'll only get that kind of treatment if you one of those once in a decade prodigies like a Peter Shor or an Arthur Rubin.
Why would any sane person want to live in Nevada? I hear it's mostly desert.
I don't agree with you on "they get less competent but demand higher and higher salaries due to their increasing fixed costs (mortgage, etc.)"

I am an 'old guy' and although I may not be typical, I have easily averaged 10 to 15 hours learning new technology every week for the last 20 years. My Dad is another good example of my point: he is 90, still a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in the last 5 years has learned to be an expert an 3D animation and video production - as a hobby.

Also, once people reach a certain age, assuming that they are good at what they do, they are economically very stable, many of us no longer have mortgages, only work because we love it, etc.

Anyway, your comments seem innocent enough, and I don't want to get on your case, but stereotypes and generalizations are sometimes not true :-)
But I agree with you, it's a ux dealbreaker for most situations. Solution: control the hardware. :)
Well, just to be devil's advocate here, Pygments supports a lot of languages very few people care about (Befunge, Dylan, Modula-2 --- for that matter, how many people need to syntax-highlight their ANTLR grammars?) --- and it's also worth pointing out that the language count in Pygments includes a lot of duplicates --- and it does a somewhat poor job with a few important ones (like ObjC).

I'm a fan of Pygments (it's kind of a secret weapon; we don't just use it it to syntax highlight), but that also means I'm acutely aware of how straightforward a syntax highlighting pasteboard is to build on top of it. For that matter, so is Github; Gist is powered by Pygments.

I'm really interested in Clojure (I'm kind of shopping for a next language, I like Lisp, and I'm pretty sure the next thing needs to be a JVM language), so maybe I'm just hoping to get people to make ambitious things I can look at.
I use EasyDNS, but this issue didn't affect me personally.

EasyDNS has built-in integration with Amazon's Route53, which will automatically push your DNS records to Amazon when you change them on the website. What I've done is used the 3 EasyDNS nameservers along with 3 from Route53. When one service is being DoS'ed, the requests will timeout and move to the next nameserver.
I still have the database somewhere. Those days are behind me though so I probably won't put it online.

The best ones really are in the book though.
Mining dark fiber
Interesting, but that font looks terrible in Opera.
Yeah, the Nordic countries seem to be in better shape, likely thanks to their heavy taxation.

The PIIGS countries have recently adopted "austerity measures", but for example here in Finland, our taxes and price-levels are so ridiculously high it's like we're in some kind of permanent austerity mode.

Our VAT was recently raised 1 percent, to 23%. It would be quite an accomplishment in the field of pissing away taxpayer money if Finland was broke. Oh wait.. even Finland can't get by without more debt practically every year. Go figure.

As for the overall shape various countries are in, at least Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark seem to be doing alright.

In Asia, I bet at least Singapore, Hong Kong, and probably South-Korea are in decent/good shape. Australia has a nasty property bubble going on, probably about to deflate. Same thing in China, but they've gone completely overboard what with all those ghost cities etc.
I was just at a kickoff event in NJ as a mentor as well. Do you mind sharing which? I was at the one hosted by Montgomery High School.
Behind Every Great Woman
I don't think it is fair to call somebody a moron for being unfamiliar with a topic that has, in many countries, been "neither seen nor heard" until quite recently.

He is certainly incorrect, but a moron? No, he needs correcting, not insulting.
I'm not a fan of LaunchRock and similar services. If you want to gather email leads just put a MailChimp form on a free heroku instance.

Here's what I am a fan of:

1. Step back and think about your idea real quick. Where did it come from? Is it a blue-sky "you know what might be neat" idea, or a "this is a pain in my (or someone's) a and I'm gonna fix it" idea? If its not the latter, you might reconsider.

2. Build a MVP or some mock-ups. Spend a couple days max.

3. Grab a pen and notebook, get up from your desk, go outside and talk to people who may have the problem you're trying to solve. MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS. Say "I have this idea and I'd love you're feedback but most of all I'd like to know what your biggest issues are."

4. Craigslist is surprisingly effective in finding people that can give feedback.

5. Use ifttt to alert you when people post Craigslist gigs related to your idea.
I was thinking about a database where (co-)founders would enter the data - a drop-down menus, where possible, for data mining. Something like:

1. Here is what I was trying to build
2. Here is the source code (link to GitHub?)
3. Here is a screenshot
4. Here is how I wanted to make money
5. Here are my competitors
6. Here is how much I raised money
7. Here are top 5 reasons why I failed
8. ???

Yes, CrunchBase has some of the above and, yes, some founders will put it on their blog. But wouldn't be it so much nicer to have a centralized database that could spit out some analitycs/trends and give guidance to newcomers? The volume of startups will grow. What if some failures are seasonal or can be pick-up and fixed? I think we have a chance for a data driven approach but only if founders are willing to contribute.

EDIT: I suspected that CrunchBase will have some errors and missing info since ANYONE can edit those entries. Maybe there was NO way to have founders enter such data ...
How about using something like BSON to reduce overhead?
(and writing it in C would help).
http://bsonspec.org/
I was in batch[1] and wrote a startup simultaneously in my non-HS time. One day I did a little work on it during HS hours and it was something of an open secret; we didn't talk about it, but we all knew it was happening, and it was clear to me that the consensus was that it was extremely uncool. Everyone is working together on projects, pairing or openly discussing things, and there I am sitting in the corner all by myself, keeping my work hidden. I wound up having to leave early or taking a day or two off to work on my startup during critical times (during the initial release), which made me feel like I was missing out on some HS time (because I was) and made working on the startup feel like a chore.

Yes we had a talk about a/b testing, but really that was just a talk about how to do interesting things with randomly assigned sessions, how to collect data, how to interpret the data, and how to build a system that takes action based on the data in a way that is both robust and easy to use. a/b testing is a step function for finding a local maxima based on some observable metric of user behavior over time. That's it. It's not some evil capitalist plot about manipulating user psychology with digital parlor tricks, it's an optimization strategy for improving user experience.

I don't recall a single HS discussion focusing on startup equity structures, legal issues, marketing, agile development, or lean startup methodology, but I do recall discussing generators in Python, the proper use of a JavaScript closure, the occasional Ruby vs Python argument, and how Scala's concurrency model differs from Erlang's (now that discussion went right over my head).

When we say shipping, we just mean that we have a show-and-tell every Saturday. During the show-and-tell, your project should be stable, it should show progress from the week before, and the code should be made available to the group. It's something of a weekly ritual at the end of every Saturday where we hang out, have a beer, and discuss our work. That's all we mean by shipping.
A sense of urgency, and a daring can-do-it attitude.
Sadly enough, I've been ask the UDP/TCP question many times, so I have a good answer, though I have never studied either in depth. So, in theory that would be a great question. But, it is asked too often to really be of any use.
Well, I definitely want to point out that we are not trying to claim we've done magic here. If that's how it sounds, I apologize. Believe it or not, we are putting a lot of work into this site. We have some fun ideas we want to play around with, but writing another syntax highlighter just isn't one of them.

On the other hand, I'm happy you're interested in Clojure! I'm sorry that our project might not be the one to put you over the edge on it, but I definitely hope something does. :)
Maybe, but you can easily assume that the ones who can 'stop' (bomb makers and holocaust deniers have to be stopped,) aren't hn readers but govs. Other thing is, a lot of people aren't aware that such embargos not only hurt the regime economically, but directly affect the safety of those innocent citizens for decades. Misunderstood or not, the case is still valid.

ot: it was not about this particular comment exactly, but whatever. I just don't use downvote here to express I don't agree with someone. let's leave it alone, doesn't matter.
Silicon Valley may be too smart for its own good
tl;dr: making money is hard.
One of the things we hope http://TipTheWeb.org/ will be good for is offering a way for creators of open source tools and useful web services to get money from the people who use what they've created, especially for things that would be hard to build a full business around, but which still have significant value.

Much of what's great about the Web is exactly that: valuable, published for free access, not the basis of a full-time business, yet definitely worth supporting.
It must have exceeded some kind of limit. We don't know which IP address is doing queries for which service. In cases like this, people should just email me.
A whites only restaurant in a racist town doesn't seem very disadvantageous, in fact that would probably be the selling point.

True, but we are not postulating an employer who's customers prefer not to be served by a pregnant woman. We are merely postulating an employer who wants his employees to show up for work.

I would imagine that those who don't discriminate would continue to not discriminate while those who do discriminate would continue to do so.

In that case, why bother with any laws on the topic at all? After all, those who do discriminate would continue to do so.

Removing the law doesn't make women less likely to get pregnant.

No, but it does mitigate the harm that her pregnancy causes for her employer. If she chooses to vanish from the workforce as a result of becoming pregnant, her employer can permanently replace her and is not obligated to take her back 3 years later after her skills have stagnated.

This in turn gives the employer a greater incentive to hire her, since she poses less of a risk to the business.
actually a great interview question is what happens when you click a link in the browser. All the steps down to how deep you understand it: through the kernel calls, DNS packets, ARP, Ethernet frames, IP routing, TCP acknowledgements, HTTP headers, MIME types, and so on.
Python 3 wall of praise
The link takes you to a mobile version of Amazon.

Here's a regular link:

http://www.amazon.com/Fd-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-com-Flame...
Scientific breakthrough: Remove CO2 from pollution...
> But if you get rich and I find out that you were using my code, of course, I am gonna sue you

Maybe you should put a license on your code then. No one is going to use this or take it seriously until you do.
Individuals (whether man, woman, or 'family') receive tax breaks for having children (ie. dependents) in the United States.
I couldn't access HN for a while because of it (all good now obviously)
2012 Predictions: Interview with Designers, Developers and Bloggers
Today we have decided to publish the biggest article on DesignModo. These past days we have worked on an ample research – giving some simple questions to some of the best designers, developers and bloggers from around the world. They have answered these questions their own ways and you will have the chance to read their answers below.
Frankly, that's silly.

It costs £18 to register a company online directly. You will be sent all the appropriate forms and documentation in the post/mail. If you are at all concerned, simply fill in the form that declares the company as dormant until you are ready to trade.

That's all you need to do.

Once you trade, then there are a few things to take into account. However, at that point you are a director, and the folk you deal with at HMRC are a whole different bunch to the folk you deal with as a "mere" employee. They will be informed, and bend over backwards to assist you.

Contrary to your belief, trading as a limited company without an accountant is easily accomplished. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it, since an accountant can usually pay for himself in the saving he brings. But that doesn't negate the fact that it can be done without too much pain.
Done.
Hardest part - picking a name.

Thanks swombat, I've held registering for a fair while now. As you say, simply because I wasn't 100% sure how to do it.
Why, what's wrong with it?
Here's a compilation of 32 startup failure post-mortems which means 32 biz models to take a look at.

http://www.chubbybrain.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/
My business partner and I I just opened a startup using nothing but our own research time and a few hundred dollars. We filed for a corporation in Delaware, simply because we were accepting institutional investing. We paid , maybe, 200 for the incorporation fees, and another 400 for a lawyer to fill in our stock purchase agreement and vesting schedules (which was, in retrospect, probably unncessary, because It will be restructured when we accept the capital infusion, but it suffices for now. as always, seek your own legal advice. But the basics are openly available.
This isn't right:

fib_val = fib_mem(n-1) + fib_val(n-2)

The second term on the rhs should be fib_mem(n-2) or perhaps even fib_list[n-2].
Cool idea. You should consider adding Kindle support-- Amazon makes it really easy to send out documents to a Kindle via email so it would not take much time to implement since you're already sending the texts through (inline) email.
since you use sequential document names, people can (and will) scan through / search / index what is posted. maybe that's what you want, but it might be more useful if the names were random and sufficiently long to be sparse, so that they are "invisible" unless you know the url.
Upon doing some more research and compiling a list of things to go through I've found the following:

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

http://manwithcode.com/299/making-games-with-ruby-ep-1-intro...

http://learn.knockoutjs.com/#/?tutorial=intro

http://peepcode.com/

http://railsforzombies.org/

http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

http://citizen428.net/blog/2010/08/12/30-free-programming-eb...

http://www.trybloc.com/courses/ruby-warrior/chapters/beginne...

and I've completed: http://tryruby.org/levels/1/challenges/1

- just for those interested in the progress I've made so far
Affirmative action starts with a premise different from yours: that college admissions shouldn't be about past performance but about future potential.

Why do you believe a black applicant has higher future potential than an equally or more qualified white applicant?

At university of michigan, blacks were given 20 extra points on the admission point system, equivalent to 1 full point of GPA. A black student with a 2.6 GPA would be more likely to be admitted than a white or asian student with a 3.5. Why do you believe that this hypothetical black student has more future potential than the white or asian student?

And if there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges.

Ignoring for the moment that we have little good data on whether or not there are relevant genetic differences between blacks and non-blacks, why would there need to be something genetically wrong for blacks to be underrepresented? Why couldn't (for example) cultural factors cause blacks to be less likely to perform well in school?
That had nothing to do with tech, but I did find it inspiring — "you are what you eat" is old school but very true on so many levels...
Morgan Stanley Discloses Stakes in Zynga and LinkedIn
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/reddit ?
Sure.

What I meant (and what I believe paganel meant) is not that most people won't get such questions wrong, statistically. They probably will, and the original research probably shows that conclusively.

It's the part of this quiz/post that is supposed to explain why that irks scientifically inclined folks (as manifested many times in this thread :) Here the author missed crucial bits that made the question+explanation originally work, and all that's left is some well-meaning cargo cult nonsense.

Whether it appeared in a sidebar or not is no excuse for getting it wrong imo -- they could have stuck with the original questions if they didn't understand the implications of modifying their premises.
You can make pastes private (which gives them a non-sequential URL) if you're logged in. We're considering allowing for anonymous users to have private pastes as well, perhaps with a time to live on them.
I've always found Hacker News to be, on average moderately libertarian. Californian libertarian if that makes sense. When I first got here most posts were fairly left of center, which greatly surprised me.
On the Relationship Between Python and Lisp
"What's anti-government interventionist?"

Some flavors of crypto-anarchism. For instance, I believe that with the development of certain technologies the approval of the general population will be irrelevant.

To be fair though, things that I would consider "anti-government interventionist" are quite rare and almost without exception theoretical.
With Nook Plan, Barnes & Noble Readies Another Shake-Up
For instance, if I have to choose between two...doctors...

Just to give some hard numbers:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080801022539/http://www.aamc.or...

In terms of grades/mcats, black medical students are about 1 standard deviation below white/asian students. There is little good data on how this gap evolves as medical students become doctors.
I was a member of FIRST Robotics during high school. It was a very defining time in my life. I learned how powerful engineering could be. I would not be the person I am today with FIRST. Go Team 33!
On testers and testing
Attention All Traders and Investors: How Are You Getting Pimped? Here’s How…
The blog seems to have gone down. It's just a blog entry that says:

> We are currently experiencing an Denial of Service Attack against DNS1, DNS2 and DNS3 anycast strands.

> We are working on mitigation and will post updates as they become available.
I try to counter the inappropriate down votes. I use a user style sheet to change the color of down voted comments from the hard to read grays to an easy to see red. This makes down voted comments really stand out.

Then, unless they are offensive or just plain stupid, I up vote them even if don't agree with them or think they are particularly noteworthy, just to try to counter the down votes.
is there anything we can do right now, to fix this problem while the attack is under way?
Sorry that was joke. Maybe a bad joke :) Maybe I should put a license...
" Roads?"*

This particular item has always bugged me. Why is it that this particular type of construction project is so often considered to be something we need a government for? It's like planting flowers in your garden with an excavator.

My theory is the attitude is largely historic. The Romans excelled at road building, but the manpower needed at the time to pull of projects of that scale was only available to governments.
I only wish I'd known about it for the last 1.5 years — that's exactly the kind of interface to HN I'd always wanted.
Yeah - I have just been able to mitigate by exporting to route53 (via their system) and then adding the additional route53 dns servers to the root chain. Ugh :(

Fortunately for me I had the aws identity already setup and just had to do a new "export" to update the records.
This is interesting, I feel like I'm starting to detect a pattern. It seems like every time Microsoft makes a product that is generally accepted to be good, they start spreading some of the team behind that product around the company as a way to try and infuse the rest of the machine with some of the new magic juice.

It makes sense, but I've never really heard of it being done much in the past.
I thought this was going to be about hispter rube goldberg machines, and it's kind of about that, but still, the guy travels to build rube goldberg devices, and was inspired by Pythagoras's Switch (a Japanese children's television show that was posted on youtube for some time, and became a bit of a phenomenon).

So yeah, a little bit hipster, but a guy who actually seems to care about doing something neat (albeit useless).
This thread just reminded me of t - http://stevelosh.com/projects/t/ - which turned out to be rather powerful (if needed) with bash in vi mode.

The simplicity is astounding, although now I'm curious to look at the code...
Knowing the margins on marijuana from dispensaries in California, this would be useful in their watering schemes.

I believe 1 oz. is around $150 for average weed there. So if this setup costs a tiny bit extra in energy costs (after artificial sunlight) and an arduino per 8 plants, it'd be awesome.

Of course, this tech could be used in other non-quasiillegal plants as well. Some things are just hard to grow.
By the way, it's a pallet of cash, not a "palette".

</petpeeve>
Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life
The last part of the video was hilarious
EC2 is basically one big rip-off