skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It appears that the first submission had a highly editorialized headline and was submitted by someone who had made no other submissions or comments. Given the gravity of the accusation, I can easily see someone flagging it without even reading it. That would be enough to kill it and then the anti-spam code takes over from there with no conspiracy required, just one or maybe two flags on a story where someone thought the headline was overly editorialized.
I too was born into a stable country but my parents were far from rich or even well-off (they are now, but back then they had almost nothing).

I have no idea if they have a natural inclination to mathematics/logic -- and I doubt it would have matter, my brother studies chemistry one of the subjects I suck most at.

I didn't have access to a computer that early, at least not earlier than my classmates, but they spent all their time gaming, I spent (some) of my time with Delphi.

It is true that my life would have been different if I had been born in Rowanda, but I was no better of than those I grew up with.
> we cannot say that the TSA has never caught a terrorist.

But why? I am sure any such catch would have been paraded in front of media for months. Are you saying they caught a terrorist with a bomb red-handed but hid it and instead shipped the guy secretly to a prison in another country? If not, that then I think we can say most definitely that they have not caught a single terrorist. Would you agree?

> but hijackings were certainly not uncommon prior to 9/11

Obviously hijackings were not that bad. That is the reason the first two planes ended up being used as projectiles, because people thought it was a regular hijacking. Within hours everyone in the country including passengers of the plane that went down in PA learned to not think about hijackings anymore in the same way. So the problems basically "fixed" itself immediately.

You are right the # of hijackings is now lower. TSA presence might have a part to play, that's plausible. But because of the previous paragraph it also becomes irrelevant. So the reasons for having the TSA evaporate away again.
Yes, what trotsky said - the default behavior (on 11.10 at least) is to auto-hide the sidebar launcher, so it doesn't get in the way of anything. And even when it unhides, it doesn't squash open windows, it just superimposes temporarily on top of them, until it hides again.

Did you change the default settings?
There are many dimensions to "how good you are as a programmer".

How you approach a 1000 line project is different from a 100,000 line project.

The best practices for a good solo developer are different from a team developer.

And most importantly, the internal elegance of your code is independent from how useful / cool your product is.
Search visually - open beta - feedback requested
I hope you remember there age, or more specifically what comes with serious experience, when they e.g. look at the symptoms of a bug and say "It's going to be there" (in the code) and are right more often than not. That's something I achieved in C/C++, but only after, say, a decade and a half of working with them. (And this does translate to newer stuff where no one can have that much experience, although of course not as well).

Or take architecture. I know I've done a good job there when mine solves problems I didn't consciously anticipate. Again, that took nearly 2 decades from when I first started programming including a lot of reading on good software design, starting in that first year of programming ('77-8) and never stopping. Heck, the older you are, the more time you've had to read and grok the classics.

Hmmm, to finish with a riff on some other observations in this discussion, the normal, average outcome of a startup is failure. Perhaps one should consider non-normal approaches to staffing, like recruiting one or more grey-beards of the right sort who can save you days, weeks, even man-months of effort on individual things because of their experience. To paraphrase Scott Adams, sometimes you have the option of working harder or smarter. The latter frequently wins.
Fidel’s Cuba and Red China are drilling new oil wells off Florida.
There is a lot of worry in this thread about the curriculum being too narrow. While I do not know how it will work in this new school, let me offer some perspective as a Stuyvesant alum.

Like many have said, it can be possible to have a "normal" school with all the usual subjects in addition to a prominent computer science program.

Take my experience, for example:

Freshman year I learned things like recursion, Scheme, dynamic programming, and cellular automata. Sophomore year, I learned basic data structures and algorithms and wrote a couple of games. Junior year I learned systems programming in C, signals, processes, network communication and wrote a filesharing system. The next semester I wrote a computer graphics engine from scratch --- all the way from line drawing to complex lighting and implementing an animation and scene graph language. I also took the independent research class where I worked on information retrieval research.

I am not bragging. This is typical (in fact, many of the projects, or variations thereof, are things that everybody in those classes does). And yet, I still took tons of math, physics, chemistry, european history, american history, classical literature, modern literature, tech shop, architecture, and many other things. This was also typical! Other kids took the same common stuff but instead of so much computer science and math they took special electives in philosophy, literature, history, economics, and so on.

You really can fit all that stuff in. Stuyvesant is a great example that you can have a serious, multi-year computer science program and still have more than enough focus on other subjects.
Yeah, this was posted at 10:30 MTV time, so there wasn't enough time for head office in MTV to figure out what's gone on and what to do/say about it yet.
Show HN: Weekend Project: Siri Flight Search and Status
Talk about syntactic sugar :)

RESULT = yield from EXPR

is semantically equivalent to

_i = iter(EXPR)
try:
_y = next(_i)
except StopIteration as _e:
_r = _e.value
else:
while 1:
try:
_s = yield _y
except GeneratorExit as _e:
try:
_m = _i.close
except AttributeError:
pass
else:
_m()
raise _e
except BaseException as _e:
_x = sys.exc_info()
try:
_m = _i.throw
except AttributeError:
raise _e
else:
try:
_y = _m(*_x)
except StopIteration as _e:
_r = _e.value
break
else:
try:
if _s is None:
_y = next(_i)
else:
_y = _i.send(_s)
except StopIteration as _e:
_r = _e.value
break
RESULT = _r
The Rise of the New Groupthink
Not according to Ross Brawn (you know the Best car designer in the world) - He and Mercedes have gone on the record that the CS grads are hopeless as they don't know the mathamatics to do CFD.

Though the last time I used my Mech side was to point out to an engineer in the 4th largest Civil Engineers that he had used the wrong equations for a bridge design.
The problem runs deeper. Google hired a lot of creeps during their huge hiring sprees in the mid/late 2000s. Don't forget that Google has been the #1 job choice for MBA grads since around 2006. Their semi autistic hiring process gets people with high IQs but does nothing to weed out amoral weirdos or even just plain assholes. One reason I have never responded to their recruitment efforts is that every psycho I've worked with over the past decade is now a manager at Google.
It's definitely a possibility! That would mostly just be a matter of removing the default apps and layouts, then cleaning up the configs that pertain to the CMS. Would make a fun weekend project :)

Releasing the framework separately would take care not to add confusion to the documentation side of things. Then again, having a separate 'elefant-core' project that the CMS builds on may even help...
I am not sure why he even needs two paragraphs before coming to the point: Google was basically phishing by pretending that they were partnered with Mocality.

Isn't that what a phishing scam is? I lie and tell hotmail customers, for example, that I am from hotmail or somehow partnered with hotmail and that I need your password(or credit card). That's almost criminal.
well when I did my mech enc Technician day release (in the 70's) we had to be able to design a Victorian era style central belt drive to run machines for a central prime mover.
Watch Instantly essentially killed 99% of video piracy by the people I know (non-technical people). The remaining 1% of piracy is for the items that can't be watched on Hulu or Watch Instantly. There is a lesson there for the distributors, but it is a lesson that many have tried to teach them to no avail.
Tips For Launching Successful Mobile Apps
Does anybody know if Notch is self taught? I thought he had a CS Degree from somewhere?

I can't say with any degree of authority, but based on what I've read of his code, I'd guess he's self-taught.

My bigoted preconception is that when it comes to abstraction in code, people with CS degrees err on the side of doing too much, creating extremely elaborate object frameworks that close down options as much as they help reuse code. Self-taught folks, on the other hand, err on the side of doing too little, relying on cut and paste, util packages, and promiscuous sharing of data.

When it comes to algorithm design, people with CS degrees tend to pull in libraries of esoteric things, sometimes overengineered for the purpose at hand. Self-taught folks tend to write something from scratch that almost, but not quite, does the job right.

Based on what I've read from decompiled Minecraft, I'd guess Notch is self-taught. The abstraction is just barely enough to get the job done, and the algorithms are decidedly homebrew. That's neither praise nor criticism, just a comment on style.
Interesting, what was throwing her off? The way the orange-circle-x close window button is now hidden until you mouse over the window title bar?

http://i.imgur.com/zKgJ0.png
I'm creating a library of design patterns for BS, so ping me if you want to be included.

EDIT: I'm sorry I don't have a signup list yet! Just email me at my HN username at gmail and I'll send out an alert that way.
iPad 3 with LTE, Quad-Core Processor and Retina Display Set for March Launch
And you should take a sample of living bees and see what the insecticide concentration is in those guys. That alone would prove or disprove a link, but would give clues for further investigation.
They're never going to. The former is providing cover for the latter. The latter's where the real money is.
I have no beef with someone getting bored of what they're doing, but then they should say just that. To say "I know everything there is to know about programming" after programming for a year is laughable.

You're right that if you know C++ and you learn Java, you're not really learning all that much. But if you've spent your entire life programming in those types of language, and then learn Lisp, or Forth, or even just assembly language, your entire mental model of computation is turned on its head. Heck, learning C would be an eye-opener for someone who has known only Java.

You can go even further. My own trade is ASIC verification - writing testbenches to test functional correctness of chip designs. I've done a bit of FPGA design, too. I've chatted to software guys far above my humble skill level who don't grok either of those two domains because they're completely foreign to their way of thinking. But I'd file both under the broad umbrella of "programming".

I think you can learn constantly for a lot longer than a year or two without learning any new languages or tools, just working on different project, in different domains, using different paradigms. [EDIT:clarification]
Twitter Denied Data To Google And Bet On Itself
The kind of worry you have is exactly the reason for heavy handed crackdown. The theory goes that such approach discourages further protest.

If you care about the internet AND/OR you want to show that such tactics don't work, do show up. Otherwise, sit back, relax and get ready for an internet that looks like network television.
I'd expect you to be, lol!
The Four Horsemen of the General Computing Apocalypse
well in the Uk he/she is - apparently the no2 at Martelsham ( The place where Tommy Flowers the design the first computer)

One day his wife was asked what he did and when she said "oh hes an engineer" they reply was "that's nice dear what sort of cars does he work on"
"we are past the point where the internet should be considered a stand-alone industry."

I agree.. but it should be more than an industry. I spend more time on the internet than I do with my girlfriend. The internet is beyond a place where I work. It is a nation in a new dimension of space. As such it needs it's own regulation isolated from any individual land based nation-state.
"In Java, it's considered best to just go ahead and add the getters and setters first"

I don't think this is true. I'll concede that it may be a requirement for certain things like an ORM API, but in the general case, it's bad practice. The mere act of adding a getter violates immutability.
I also used Companies Made Simple. Everything was fine with them, except that if you have non-ASCII characters in your name they will look scrambled in some of the official documents. Use an ASCII transliteration for your name instead of using non-ASCII characters.
Is Zynga different in this regard? They design their product so that people want to keep playing it , in the same way that a TV serial will end an episode on a cliffhanger in order to get you to watch the next one. Sports also encourage you to emotionally invest yourself in a particular team and create long term stories (leagues etc) so that you will continue spending money.
Actually, I like hiring one or so nearly green college grads of the right sort, who are willing to be mentored. As long as they are self-directed, can start working given basic directions and then ask you the right questions (my favorite example from a guy who'd only done C++: "where is new in C?" "ah, in C we malloc...."), they can be very productive and follow your vision. And as they learn, help to refine it.

I believe in trying to balance your team. A very few green apprentices (too many take too much time), enough seriously experienced masters (you're not likely to get many) and then journeymen in the middle, all of these aspiring to reach higher levels.
SAGE: Whitebox Fuzzing for Security Testing
I watched "Colony" also on Netflix which related the problem as well. But dramatized a bit too much by focusing on this one family.

Regardless, it was interesting to see how beekeepers were basically positioned against the legal team and the lobbyists of the chemical companies. The position of the chemical companies was basically to answer the problem with a question "Why would we knowingly damage agriculture in this country, we want agriculture to do well long term as well, right?". A very clever PR trick. They also said they conducted their experiments but found no positive results that links honeybee deaths to their insecticides (big surprise there).
Not again, please. When will this general topic die?

I do admire the cajones of anyone who thinks they have an answer to the question.
Do you have a public repo?
My first client project was through an internship for a small firm that leant me out to a company called OpenMarket, in 1997 - located in Cambridge. Was this Viawebs only competitor? Were they competitors at all?
I know I couldn't come up with $2000 in 30 days (I might come close if I sold everything I own). Does that make me poor? It certainly doesn't stop me from chasing my dream.
I think that's a good definition, and that's my whole point -- passion is so extreme that, almost by definition, it means your whole life balance is out of whack, and other things are suffering as a result.

And sure, I might be missing out on the full depth of human experience, but I also don't know what it's like to be insane, or be manic, or addicted to cocaine, nor do I think it's worth the price to pay.

I'd rather forego all those "extreme" things, whether they be manias or "passion" about a cause, and just stick to normal, balanced human happiness. And this cultural norm which is very prevalent in the US, which says you're supposed to be passionate about things, frankly just annoys me. I don't think it's healthy, and I don't think it's something we should be encouraging in people.

I guess "follow a nice balance of things in your life, and be happy" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "follow your passion".
Browser/Client caching policies have caused me to develop OCD
I never really knew much about what Obsessive Compulsive Disorder was or how it can affect people until I was doing a little research about it.

I found out that client/browser caching policies (either self imposed on my own web servers or by default depending on the client) has caused me to develop a mild case of OCD.

After reading signs and symptoms I see now that I have several compulsions when I'm working on any given project. Everytime I make a minor change (whether its CSS/HTML or back-end stuff) I tend to refresh my FTP client several times rapid fire (Filezilla is Fn + F5), before uploading any change (for fear of the FTP client not having an updated tree listing with updated file info, which has happened many times before)...then when using one of many clients/browsers I tend to do several hard page refreshes before checking to see my change (for fear of the browser still having a cached version, and causing me to spend more time tinkering with a change that might have already solved an issue I was having, when the issue could be something as simple as an element slightly overlapping another element).

Does anyone else have this strange compulsion, or is it just me? I think it's getting worse and I'm just beginning to recognize it now (probably because it's getting worse) so I'm hoping that I can find a way to change this behavior since I think it's causing me to be less productive than I could or should be

I think it may stem from attempting to be a perfectionist when it comes to minor details (not sure if that's a good or bad thing)

How do others work on projects, do you tend to upload/view changes frequently while working, or do you do more of a lump of changes before checking them out?
You might find you'd like to change the "edge reveal timeout" which is actually the time it waits before the launcher reveals. The default is set to 150ms, but I like it much better at 300ms. You can also change the launcher edge to the right, but that probably has more issues with scrolling. All of that is set in CompizConfig Settings Manager.
Running such a lean startup you can't afford a function invocation?

This actually isn't as wildly hypothetical a situation as one might guess. At least in the Android world, "Avoid getters and setters" is on the short list of performance suggestions.

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/design/performa...
Don't use software that generates your pages dynamically... Currently, all search engine crawlers ignore dynamically generated pages...[1]

Alas, I am too young to remember fascinating parts of Internet history like this one.

But I do remember the hesitancy to use personal names on the public Internet. If we could tell our 1998 selves about the modern "personal branding" craze our old selves would never believe it.

[1]http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/se.html
I know it sounds crazy but ycombinator is based on the valley. Barbara Boxer is a co-sponsor of PIPA and Dianne Feinstein supports it too.

Does the New York tech scene have to do all the heavy lifting or could we have similar protest in California on the 18th?

Office of U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer
70 Washington Street, Suite 203
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 286-8537

or

Office of U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein
One Post Street, Suite 2450
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone: (415) 393-0707

Hopefully, people in the valley can join New Yorkers in their opposition of this bill.
Parse competes with Urban Airship in being a push notification service provider, so this isn't just a lifeline, it's competitive:

https://www.parse.com/pricing

http://urbanairship.com/pricing/
Google admits bad behavior in Kenya
It seems like most of the commenters here are treating the evidence of Google's wrongdoing as conclusive. It isn't. A comment on the post by Richard Wooding demonstrated how Joe Random can make requests from a Google IP address:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&...
So, this is a great example of the system failing us.

Idea:

1. Run for official office (senator, rep., pres., whatever).

2. Put up website with list of issues, allow people to vote if they add a comment per vote.

3. Put up link to opencongress or whatever to track your record on the bill.

4. Vote in office according to the trends on the website. If you vote against prevailing opinion, you are trivially found out.

5. On banner of website, post the number of votes you did following the polls on the site versus the number of times you dissented.

6. Enjoy making history.

~

This seems to me to be a great way of matching the existing system interface without actually giving up a democracy.
I wouldn't say Google is ditching search, I would say search is evolving. The wealth of information that we have is getting far too large for an algorithm alone to do the trick. Google sees it, Facebook sees it. Socialization of search and the internet is the next "step" forward and they're all trying to become the new de facto. It'll be interesting to see how Google's changes will affect our searches and vice verse to say the least. I look forward to the end of 2012 to see their Zeitgeist.
Well the main page is good but the search results are still overcrowded. The hover-effect on the search results is distracting. It just diverts attention from the results. I doubt many people really read like this: "hover mouse over first result: Not it. Ok, up to the next one: Hover mouse over second result. Not it. Ok next one."

Then of course, it bothers me that I have to pay attention to where I click, and if I want to copy paste text, I have to be exact about it, otherwise I accidentally click on whitespace that will direct me to a result page.

It's just too much "cognitive work" associated with the UI.
HTHS'er (1999) & startup founder here -- I think this will be good for NYC but naming the school after such a focused discipline seems a bit shortsighted. "Software engineering" is likely going to be a phrase that looks quite silly a few decades from now. At the very least it should be a Computer Science academy.
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Thanks HN!
AznHisoka: What did AirBnB do with CraigsList?
The story of a GMail account hacked, deleted and recovered.
I've theorized that if you set the filesystem block size equivalent to the erasure block size of the drive, then you could eliminate write amplification. Thoughts?
Musicians are given the same choice. If you do not want others to use your work, you can keep it private or not create it at all.*

Wrong. Musicians can choose to distribute the music themselves or through a variety other third parties. iOS developers have no other meaningful choice.
Yeah, I mean, I don't even mind the Hulu ads when I get to watch it.