skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Unions in America are broken; no one has problems with a group of people organizing as long as they don't get special rights. For instance, being able to fire a person when they don't show up for work, e.g. firing strikers. Or look at what the NLRB is doing to Boeing as they try to open up a new plant in SC. It's unfortunate, but unions are a cancer - they enshrine an us vs them attitude, they demand special rights, they encourage bad management, and in general act as a parasite sucking as much benefit as they can from their host.
Thank you! It's so refreshing to talk with coders about this stuff; non-computery types so often assume it's a solved problem, because they don't realize how lossy a format spoken language actually is.
Democracy is not simply "the rule of majority".
I think it is a difficult problem. Much of the difficulty is just framing the question in a philosophical sense.

The article talks about music recommendations based on a user's previous music-listening habits but what about recommendations based NOT on previous listening habits? I guess it depends on if the point of music recommendations is to "drill down" on a particular genre or related sub-genre.

In general music recommendations can also be made based on interests in literature or aesthetics or even historical topics. They can also be based on absence of experience-- how do you know if you've optimized globally if you haven't seen the spectrum of possibilities?

Finally, there's the question of what constitutes "success". Is it possible for someone to appreciate a recommendation even if they don't like it (as in "thumbs up" like it)? Aesthetic tastes are far more complex than like/dis-like.

I realize that these considerations aren't necessarily amenable to a pure computational approach. Perhaps the answer lies in using human decisions and computation together, like last.fm scrobbling?
"Send your visitors on the 18th to this link [http://americancensorship.org/] to contact congress and ask them to tweet #SOPASTRIKE all day."

So maybe:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://americancensorship.org/ [L]
i guess im abit overboard trying to make my point. but you are right, no error, just warnings.
... to the 420k image of a 306k document. Firebug shows it as 1.1m, but headers say 420k. Oh, and the image is 'no-cache' so it'll reload on every page request from a server apparently running on a 64k ISDN line.

Yes, that's a pretty bad site. :/
Don't think of switching to part-time as giving up, its a viable strategy. One, in brings money in the door. Two, it gives you time to step back and get your mind working on other things. Both of those are invaluable. Also, if you can support yourself and work on your start-up part time, that's a recipe for success. It might be slower, but at least you won't go all out and then run out of money and fail because of a lack of capital.
I think the overall community needs this sort of tutorial to really garner value out of the vast sums of data that we as a community collect. Everyone needs a place to start.
Fair enough. I'm new to posting here and being up-/downvoted; I usually just lurk.
Source: http://research.gallaudet.edu/Demographics/deaf-US.php

http://www.hearingconnection.org/hearing_loss_statistics.htm...

2% is actually a little generous based on this data, but I like to round up. 35 to 36 million people report some degree of hearing loss, out of around 311 million people in the US, or about 10% of the population. In 1972, an estimated 642,000 people signed ASL at home, and about 375,000 of those were deaf. It's somewhat likely that the number of signers has gone down since then, due to the decrease in rubella (a significant cause of childhood deafness), the oral deaf and cochlear implant movements, et cetera. It's unlikely that the number of signers has increased. So assuming there are still around 375,000 deaf/HoH signers in the country, that's 375,000 out of 35 million people with hearing loss, or just about 1%. I put the extra percent in there for wiggle room.
Their theory courses are one of the only good resources on the web on the topic (though I found it quicker to just read the textbook).
Not a bad intro to ObjC message syntax. Even though the article has few mistakes.

Most notably ObjC syntax does not have functions that are called, it has messages that are sent to objects and classes. In the end all messages are "translated" to C function calls to objc_msgSend().

Everything makes sense after you read the proper documentation. Which in this case is http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/R...
You can't design for the 99%. There is no average user, so no matter what, you can't please everyone.

Despite the title of this post, the author is actually arguing that we design for ourselves. Put a little of yourself into your design. That's a great way to ensure that you will put together quality & work into something.
I hope you understood the very fundamental reason why Objective-C syntax has to be the way it is.

It does not need to be like this in a statically typed language. Most statically typed languages don't require you to pass the parameter name. Some have this optionally so you can mix and match or have default values (C# for example http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264739.aspx).

If you'd written other statically typed language the Obj-C syntax would probably still be surprising to you.

Brilliant design by Apple it is not, it's the nature of statically typed languages. For example your comment:

Now, which one is the recipient? What is the subject?

Shows a lack of experience with statically typed languages. IDEs will tell you if you hover over the method with your mouse as well as when you're creating the method (including all the variations).

On the other hand it's quite fun to see someone naturally find out some of the reasons why some people prefer statically typed languages.
haha thanks @dqminh i didnt post this coz its not really technical, i thought HN crowd would prefer the other post
Spot on. ASL is a really beautiful language, but it's incredibly difficult to learn, partly because its grammar is spacial rather than linear, which can be a real mindbending experience for speakers of oral languages. I've been learning it for three years, and I'm still only conversational; nowhere near fluent.
Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help
How large is this code base?

If you guys plan out enough, a complete overhaul might be the best solution.

During your development you will have learnt so much that as a team you couldn't of had the forsight to know you were doing it wrong when starting out.

If your startup can maybe spare 3 of your best developers for the development of your new platform that might be a better way to go. There comes a limit in the evolution and growth cycle when you realise that you can't keep adding and you need a new clean slate.

A Second option might be to create your own DBAL. What is it about your data base calls that is innefficient. If possible, you might want to create your own DBAL with something like memcache paired with it in order to have frequent caching where possible.

If the developers are dragging their heels and really don't like their development environment, you could think of it as a nice overhaul to boost team efficiency.
Here is a crazy theory that I don't necessarily subscribe to, but perhaps it is what you are looking for: They are doing this to crush the smallest players in the education business.
My wife and I were were struck by something recently while standing at the checkout line at a Nike store, looking at a display case full of specialized, expensive, pedometers.

Not a one was a useful as the jogging app I have on my phone.

And when we're out jogging, I listen to music, or streaming radio...on my phone. And oh yeah, if it's late and I'm going through the local woods, my phone has an app that turns it into a flashlight.

And now suddenly a bit of enlightenment hit us. A modern smartphone replaces a great many discrete devices that we used to have to carry around, or at least store someplace:

Common uses for our phones:

1) A portable phone

2) A small portable computer

3) An address book (yes, I used to carry one around with my old non-smart phone)

4) A map book

5) A GPS

6) An mp3/music player

7) A radio (fm tuner, but more importantly streaming radio, flipping through global stations on my phone reminded my of being 9 with a shortwave receiver and picking up broadcasts of Voice of America going into Europe)

8) A flashlight

9) A pedometer

10) A portable book (actually a library)

11) A thumb drive

12) A portable translator

13) A portable gaming device

14) A camera

15) A videocamera

16) Alarm clock

17) Portable calculator

18) Barcode scanner

19) A wifi signal scanner

20) Portable movie player

21) Starbucks card

And a few others...

And suddenly all that junk is in one device, a backpack full of stuff.

Coming up this year they're going to be useful as credit cards, business cards, some have projectors on them, better optics and I can junk my binoculars, a decent way to hook up a keyboard and monitor (it can already act as it's own trackpad, oh I forgot to mention that, I can use it as a trackpad on my computer) and I can junk my laptop for 85% of what I do.

These aren't phones, these are some kind of sci-fi multi-tool. We're ending up in a measure of minimalism de facto just by having more versatile stuff.

So yeah, looking around my house, I could probably ditch a ton of stuff (I mean literally, I have several full bookshelves I could potentially replace) and not miss it.
There are significant differences though:

1. It's not possible to mandate the usage of keyword attributes in Python 2, this function could be called with

do_send_mail("some@email.com", "another@email.com", "Hello!", "hi!")

JS/Ruby's low-fi version of using hashes actually helps there as you have to provide hash arguments via the hash.

Python 3 lets you fix this issue (a great reason to switch, by the way) by using a ⭑[0] argument (not a ⭑-arg, which you can use in Python 2 but which will simply make your stuff fall into a black hole unless the creator of the function asserts no positional argument was passed via e.g. `assert not arg`; furthermore Python 2 would require that a default value — to check for — be given for each keyword argument):

>>> def foo(*, a, b):
... print(a, b)
...
>>> foo()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: foo() needs keyword-only argument a
>>> foo(1, 2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: foo() takes exactly 0 positional arguments (2 given)
>>> foo(a=1, b=2)
1 2

2. the arguments are separate from the method name in Python, in your example the method is `do_send_mail`, in Smalltalk and Objective-C it's `doSendMailToRecipient:cc:subject:body:` which has advantages and inconvenients. Python is easier for default values (you need a new method in Smalltalk or Obj-C), but the Smalltalk/Obj-C method is simpler for behavioral differences (as the dispatch is done at callsite, Python will need internal soup)

3. There is no order in Python's argument (whereas changing the order in Smalltalk/Obj-C changes the method called), which means callers can lower the call's readability by swapping arguments around in... less than sensible ways.

(nb: I love Python, don't interpret my comment as a put down of it, just pointing out fundamental and important difference between Python's keyword arguments and Smalltalk's keyword messages)

[0] I hate HN's markup.
This, along with copying a character from the clipboard, won't defeat most keyloggers. The only kind you would be fooling would be a hardware keylogger. Your best bet is two step authentication.
It takes students in vocational steno schools six months to a year. As of now, they're our only source of hard data, because steno has been financially inaccessible to people not pursuing it as a career. My hunch is that a steno tutorial game will produce significantly quicker results than the current steno school dictation model, and that programmers (and other technical types) will likely pick up steno skills at a much faster rate than the average person currently attending a steno school.
Some of their videos are available on this YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/coderisland
Another alternative is to simply use jquery like framework to create a modal dialog window and display the message. Hide all the close buttons. You can put this script in the wordpress header and then all pages will show the dialog when the document is done loading. This has the least impact on your domain and content wise.
Also the GNU utilities, Apache and nginx, and the odd interpreter (Perl, Python, Ruby) or runtime system (Haskell), OpenSSL, qmail, Emacs' and vim's core, etc.

But yeah, apart from that stuff, C is hardly used.
Linux won't be locked out of Windows 8 PCs, but FUD continues
Would subdomains even help with posts form +? Google has been using +Pages to communicate lately so even if it was an article from Google it still likely would have said plus.google.com.
Making Love to Webkit
In the long run, your approach to business is unhealthy.
Trust me, it won't end with your co-founder. You'll end up resenting the employee who wants to go home to see their family or the employee who stops at 50 hours a week because that's their limit.

I suggest a bit of a step back. Reevaluate your life and try and slow things down. Don't let your business become what defines you. Business is business, its not your life. Don't get them confused.
Compiling is quick in many languages, but you're mostly right about debugging and thinking. However, the key to productivity is to stay in flow, and having to type the same boring boilerplate over and over again tends to take me out of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
Wow - how did it get that badly screwed up? Thanks for pointing that out.
A Tour of My Brain | Dustin Curtis
I'm sorry, but all of your comment is nonsense.

1. Static typing does not help with writability when you're passing 4 strings to a method (now that can be made into a debate over good usage of types, language cultures and many other things, point is when your arguments are "untyped" having a stricter type checking of nothing will not help you)

2. Static typing does not help with readability when you end up with

do_send_mail("some@email.com", "another@email.com", "Hello!", "hi!")

anyway, there are many cases where keyword arguments significantly enhance the reading experience

3. IDEs are perfectly able to "tell you if you hover over the method with your mouse as well as when you're creating the method" for dynamically languages.

The only thing a statically typed language will help you with TFA's example is if you have extraneous or missing arguments, and there even a good IDE will do it in a dynamically typed language (Jetbrains's IDEs do, for instance).
Innovation's Dirty Little Secret
Downgrading PHPUnit from 3.6 to 3.5 [PHPUnit][Linux][HowTo]
This list is primarily directed to iOs websites, but when I was going through it for our app I noticed a lot of the sites also had Android review sections. Warning, a few of the links are old.

http://maniacdev.com/2011/08/ios-app-review-sites/
Why don't you simply port the user accounts to your system (including passwords, stored hashed this time) and be done with it? "Plaintext passwords bad", of course, but I don't even see what you hope to gain - don't you already have a password recovery system for your current subscribers? (And a one-click-from-email login may be nice, but again - why not for current subscribers?)
This was useful. In my case I have a million articles that I want to group related ones together. Similar to Google News. I'm guessing I can use one of the algorithms (Cosine Similarity) to calculate the similarity of every two article and group the close numbers together. Any recommendations on how I should go about it? I'm trying to find Python libraries that can make this easier.
Google is a ghetto. People always talk about the free food and laundry service but you get that in jail too. Early Googlers might live in mansions and drive luxury cars, but they don’t get to build anything meaningful. From scratch. That matters. It’s all about the AdDollars, baby.

None of the Googlers are building anything meaningful? I find that hard to believe.

Also, what is "meaningful" in terms of a start-up? Building another "social networking" app? (This type of talk reminds me of Steve Yegge's "rant"[1][2].)

1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811818

2. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires-st...
“8. Toiletry kit”
I don't think people are after "a challenge" with this minimalist urban life style.

It just feels good to be free of stuff. At least for me it was one of the greatest periods of my life. Around 10 years ago, after a breakup with a girl I was living with, I got rid of most of my stuff, mainly kept a few clothes and things that I couldn't replace somehow like letters from my friends and photographs. But furniture, utensils, books, CDs, vinyls, all that I sold to thrift stores.

The feeling was awesome, being free from stuff and relationship. There was nothing challenging living that way. Only challenge was a decision to get rid of stuff (and her).
You said "Other institutions in the 'diploma business' will surely peek and try to keep up and I do not see or understand the benefit for Harvard, Stanford et al. if we are not talking altruistic purposes."

My response was on the point of whether other institutions in the "diploma business" would peek to keep up. I was merely stating why Harvard, Stanford, MIT and the like have nothing to fear by opening their courseware. My intentions were merely to diffuse the notion that replicating instruction would suffice to compete with Harvard.

As to why they do it, I think other comments have covered that.
I just expereienced this a few days ago. I had some domains registered with an old shared hosting company that were up for renewal. I the few years since I last logged in, the company had been bought by a new company, so when I went to the website, I was redirected to the new site. I clicked the forgot password link and got an email with my password in plain text. It was so jarring to know that a web host and domain registrar would hold the keys to several domains (including the one that houses my email domain) in plain text. I transferred all of my domains to a new registrar who encrypts passwords.

I would advise sending anyone a plain text password, because when you do, they will realize that not only did the old company store them that way, they also transferred them to a new company in plain text.
But why they actually do it? Why they enforce such laws (or do they?) They're net losers from doing so.

You could not force them to if they didn't want, I argue, so why they bother?
>> Not blindly aiming to own 10 or 20 objects

That is the essence of what is really wrong with this effort. By focusing so much on living with just a few items, your life is still being ruled by materialism, just in a different end of the spectrum.

Someone mentioned monks, so take their teaching and aim for the middle road.
Cool. Not sure if you're still watching this thread, but I'm thinking of putting together some kind of tech group for Denton, maybe through meetup. Ping me at davsims at gmail if you want. Do you work out of Denton? I set up @ Jupiter House most days.
I wonder if this IR35 issue also extends to other european citizens working as freelancers. I know nothing on UK law, but common sense dictates it does not forbid hiring other europeans.

It might be possible to hire remote freelancers based on other european startup hubs without being affected by IR35.
G-Day

This quite lacking in logic. America has three times the people of the comparison nations.

How many people immigrate to America? Many, many more than those other nations.

Cheers
Time Is Running Out Enter To Win An iPad Or iPhone 4 From Business Insider
Apparently this sort of debugging exists for emacs now (didn't the last time I looked).

http://code.google.com/p/geben-on-emacs/
Critical hole in McAfee products still open after more than 180 days
Would you deliver candy toy cooking sets?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr-qewC-4gY
While I'm no fan of SOPA I think people that are outraged enough to blackout their site but and at the same time are concerned with SEO implications remind me of protesters that don't want their pictures taken. You want to show up and feel good but don't want anyone to know about it later.

Why not set the page titles and meta descriptions for all your pages so that "This site was blacked out in protest to SOPA" shows up in your search results for a while? That would honestly probably have more impact and Google will get around to indexing you again.
> One thing though, if you spell a method name wrong, it will still compile. It's only a warning that "the object may not respond to that selector".

And it's important to understand that: while Objective-C's "C" part is statically typed, Objective-C's objective model comes from Smalltalk and remains essentially dynamically typed. That's in fact what `id` is: a purely dynamic type. This is quite unlike Java or OCaml.
Or, to put it another way, non-Windows OSs will be locked out of these ARM-based devices, and that's ok because Linux isn't available for these devices yet.

If Windows had anywhere near the dominance in tablets that it has in PCs, that would not be ok.

As it is, Windows doesn't have a presence in ARM devices. Do Android tablets generally let you install a different OS? What about ipads?
Thanks for pointing that out, nevertheless I guess using the similar concept to PHP/JS makes the user relate to the transition better.

I did read that Apple doc when I first starting out but it was overwhelming to me at that time and it backfired. I was more discourage to learn Objective C after seeing the doc.
Best Downloads of the Year
Why you cannot outsource technology if you are not technical
In one word: reputation. These schools want to be seen as social-responsibility leaders, etc. I don't want to sound so negative about it, but there's some element of publicity these institutions are seeking.

Think of this: how many people criticized Steve Jobs for not getting involved in charity, although he had billions in the bank? Do you think it looks good for Harvard University, with over $15bn in endowment to not do any good will project?

Lastly, some of these schools already offer remote learning via video. Putting the videos on iTunes is a sunk cost.

Disclosure: I went to one of those "big name" institutions as an undergrad, grad student, and I also worked there. Few are the projects that are TRULY out of the goodness of somebody's heart
That's why I like to type my responses, because they don't see it anyway until I press enter or whatever.
Having a web front-end makes it much easier to raise VC money in the Valley.

Related, regarding Uber: "It always surprises me how easy it is to wrap an existing product in a smartphone and persuade young people that it's something new. Manhattan bankers and lawyers have been taking black cars home from those perilous downtown dinners for decades, a necessity since the city has fewer yellow cabs today than in 1937 and important men in suits can't ride the subway after 8:00. I guess the current batch of clueless nouveau riche yuppies was terrified by the prospect of calling for a car and is very excited that they can now text for one." - from http://felixsalmon.tumblr.com/post/15253035246/it-always-sur...
The new era of corporate gigantism
If, by leveraging Starbucks convenience, he can save/make more than $100/mo then it is minimalism. High mobility comes to mind; a traveling consultant might not be home enough to warrant owning a coffeemaker, and [in]convenience of a portable set (AeroPress + Hairo MiniMill) may be problematic.

While minimalism and survivalism have a great deal in common, they are not equals. Try living in a city with what a 3rd worlder does and it's a punishable offense (possession/use of large knife, firestarter, chickens, etc.).