skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lame idea, YT was a wise choice because people KNOW YouTube.

Case in point I was grabbing video of my family riding ATV's one day. At the end I told them I would put them online. The next day they called and said they couldn't find them. I was confused because I didnt' tell them where I put them. They replied "we looked on YouTube but didn't see them".

I not only have my OWN website which they know about, but I also frequently put videos on other video sharing sites. None of that mattered as the default instinct they all had was to search YouTube. To them there is no other video site.

Also, hosting on YouTube exposes your video to a whole host of people who would not see it if it was only hosted on a .gov site.

It's about the audience, not who's hosting it (hint: no one cares)
Right. The JVM implements a virtual instruction set (JVM bytecode); it does not virtualize the operating system.
To be fair, that team has tried to do this with tags. If you want to see a sub view, you can.

I think it's a typical programmer fallacy to look at the technology behind SO and say, "Hey, that could be used to answer anything, like plumbing related questions!". The only reason SO is successful is because of the community that it was incubated with. Much in the same way that this reddit is completely different from reddit.com, and why a lot of the subreddits never have any posts on them.
Importing to me seems like an odd workflow though. Bookmark with delicious, import to markitforlater, read from there, links expire (or not depending on what you do), but are still hanging out in delicious. Again, the only net-positive workflow I could see would be: bookmark with markitforlater, decide you want to keep it around "permanently" so you push it to delicious. As a delicious user, does that sort of thing have any appeal to you?
PG was the first example I could think of that seemed to fit. I agree: there are people who are certainly more renaissance than him. That was just the first name that came to mind.
One of our co-founders doesn't have a college degree, so that's clearly not a barrier to joining the team. I'm sorry to say I don't remember the details of your interview, but I can guarantee it wasn't the degree. That just doesn't come up in discussions or thought behind the interview.

What do I consider? Basically I use three things to try to decide if someone is going to work out at JTV:

1. Codes fluently and happily. I don't care what syntax or language you use, or if you use pseudo-code, but you should be able to do basic things without much thought and you shouldn't be offended or unhappy to spend time coding in an interview.

2. Grasps algorithms. Recursion, trees, lists, big-o notation, etc. I don't care if you can recite the Master Theorem, but you should be able to estimate runtime for a recursive algorithm. I don't care if you know Dijkstra's algorithm, but you should be able to find a shortest path in a graph.

3. Excited to work on the kinds of problems we have at JTV. This is the hardest to judge, obviously. If you don't have any ideas, before or during or after the interview, about something you'd like to do or change at JTV, that's a bad sign. If you don't have any interest in working on our website or on video or on chat, that's a bad sign. If it just doesn't seem like you genuinely want to work at JTV, that's a bad sign. None of these are disqualifying, but they lose a few points. I try not to weight this too highly because it's so easy to read too much into someone's surface personality, but this is the thing I think we've made the most mistakes on in the past.

That's what I go by in hiring, and that's the kind of thing I see discussed when we email about the candidate. So I'm reasonably sure that's what everyone else goes by as well.
What a nice thing to do for the holidays. I've been wanting a shirt that says something like:

self = [[NSCoder alloc] init];

I've gotten a binary watch as a gift and loved it.
Shaq passes GigaOM on Twitter, still behind Obama, Kevin Rose
You'd take him a little more seriously if he reviewed serious books, instead of having his first widely-acknowledged book review be for fellow gadfly and net-personality Clay Shirkey.

When Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker and Moneyball and increasingly famous narrative journalist, reviews the literature on the economic crisis, he digs up, reproduces, and editorializes curated news articles from the 1989 crash; prior to that, he published a 9,382,382,293 page compendium of the fundamental work in economics.

But we pay attention to blog post reviews of blog post books, because... we're fans, I guess? Sorry. I feel compelled to keep questioning why we take this guy so seriously.
McDonald's files patent for making a sandwich (with flowchart)
I don't know all the details of this vulnerability, and won't bother digging them up because Colin can just explain it real quick, but I will point out that this --- the "cold start entropy" problem --- is a hugely common flaw in cryptosystems. If you don't have secure random numbers, you don't have crypto keys.

If you think FreeBSD is fun, think about the problem of embedded devices and solid-state network boxes, some of which have very few sources of real entropy, some of which have no simple ability to re-seed nondeterministically after a cold start. This was Gutterman's Black Hat talk 2 years ago, one of the best of the show.
print the help wanted ads on individual cans of Mountain Dew.

Sounds like a startup idea. Built-in revenue model!
I’ve been a rubyist for three weeks now and it’s my turn to rant.

No, it isn't.
Something is happening to our brains
The title is misleading. The blog post author states his estimate is they made $3mm last year and may make $5mm this year, not $8 million / year.
Bailout cost &gt; MarshallPln+ LouisianaPurch+ moonshot+ NewDeal+ Kor Viet Iraq wars+ NASA
Their strategy isn't really very open though. With heavy rate limiting and lack of a decent auth mechanism it's pretty sucky. I really don't like having to store a user's password.

Once twitter have OAuth and XMPP I'll think of them as open.
It says it has founders in common with Weebly... Have some moved on? Or is it a side project?
If you voluntarily left gamedev, could you please tell me.... why?

If you say "long hours, low pay, incompetent management" I'll know you're just a sell-out :)
App Engine: How Index Building Works
For landing pages, I'd recommend Google Website Optimizer. It's a pretty sophisticated multivariate testing tool. https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/splash?hl=en
About us For Advice
This is the solution in other high-reliability systems as well. You develop to as strict standards as are feasible, then provide provisions (e.g. watchdog timers and replication) for when it fails.
Um 37% in this case is 'most' as there were no other choices that met or exceeded that value.

"most: in the greatest quantity, amount, measure, degree, or number: to win the most votes."

I do however hope that when they said "Internets" they were joking.
YouTube Looms Large(r)
Has anyone used this?
Just want to get some feedback before running it!
On the large commercial projects I've worked on, technology hasn't really been the problem with branching; even if you make branch-and-merge seamless, which nothing does, you still have to approve changes. That's harder to do with personal and ad-hoc branches, because there's no assurance that any planning went into the changes.
I'm a compulsive drug user, not an 'addict'

Sounds silly right? That's because defining words is useless, what is actually happening is the most important factor (unless you're trying to get insurance to cover it and/or a hand out)
Yes. Schneier is the Seth Godin of IT security, it's self-marketroid personality cult. I have to admit I usually agree with his positions but more often than not I don't like his reasoning. Also he tends to talk about things out of his sphere of knowledge.
Then again, a friend showed me this when I was in high school (ca. 5 years ago).

With all the memes floating around, I think it's the luck of the draw which you happen to stumble across and when.
Sssshhhhh, people can't be addicted to coffee, sugar or other substances deemed "ok" by society. It's only those 'bad substances' like pot that are ruining society.

4 cups of coffee every morning? No problem, it's 'healthy' for you! Donuts in the morning, candy bar at lunch and soda throughout the day? No problem there either, sugar will only make you fat/diabetic, not fund Mexican drug cartels like that other stuff.
Dude, "sleep" knows PNG! That's the man for the job.
In other news, we buy stuff... they make stuff. We take on debt, they pay their bills. We go broke and stop buying stuff, they stop selling stuff and shortly stop making stuff, which means they stop making money.

The earth is round, the sky is blue and I'm hungry because it's lunch time.
Nintendo DS: Ninendo DS In Red Mario Bros Limited Edition On Black Friday
Book titles: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/11/testing-book-titles-using-go...
Stuff costs more these days, news at 11.
Well Cantor's diagonalization doesn't have anything to do with it either.
I'm not sure he was doing anything other than giving an eg for the top offshoring locations that popped into his head, in the same way people refer to "Kleenex" when discussing tissues. I see the emphasis is placed on complicated which the italics certainly support. As you also stated, sending complicated projects to people far away is a challenge regardless of the particular country involved. Please stop looking for excuses to be offended.
New leaked images of upcoming Nokia E75
It has been argued that we are actually getting more soy than the Japanese, now, due to soy additives in all kinds of processed foods that aren't very tofu like at all. It has also been suggested that fermented soy (like Japanese miso) is different in its effects.

I know, I know, no citations, but at least wanted to put forth the arguments I've heard as to why the soy the average American is getting is worse and in greater quantities than the average Japanese.
They key to making a good sandwhich I've found is ...wait for it .....lettuce. Also, lots of mayo and go easy on the meats/cheeses.

Most people lay on layer after layer of meat and cheese (because that's the good stuff right?) And then a few pieces of green and a thin layer of mayo/mustard etc.

When in fact they should go easy on the meat/cheese and use lettuce, tomatoes and whatever else to give the sandwich volume and lots of mayo/mustard to give it that tasty rich flavor.

Mmm, I'm hungry, lunch time.
"the average family spent around 20 percent of their rebate in the first month after receipt." Which is not to say the rest was saved for the long term.

"Low wealth households households that reported not having at least two months in savings in case of an emergency also raised their spending more than the average household when the rebate arrived."

"Our findings underscore the potency of the economic stimulus payments in stabilizing consumer spending during recessions."

This would suggest a trickle up vs trickle down economy where a stimulus package targeted at poor people would have the greatest impact.

PS: Poor people spend more of their money than rich people film at 11.
Brooks somewhere notes that the only/best candidate for a 'silver bullet' is reuse -- and I see that as the backbone of the article, or at least the proposed vision. Essential complexity cannot be eliminated, of course, but it can be avoided -- and that can be done more effectively.
The formal study of expertise

http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Handbook-Expertise-Expert-Pe...

suggests that it takes longer than a week to become an expert (by a reasonable definition of "expert") in any domain of significance.
It just so happens that I live in Nashville, and I've done a lot of multithreaded network programming. You haven't provided any contact info, though, and there's nothing in your profile I can see.
Perhaps he's had a bad experience with outsourcing to these countries.

If I go to McDonalds and have a bad burger then I'm sure going to remember it. In fact if the topic comes up I'll probably tell people "Don't eat at McDonalds, they make bad burgers".

How is stating ones past experience in any way racist?
What incentive does Shaq have to whore himself on Twitter?

He's already accomplished so much in his basketball career, made plenty of money and even got to sample music/movies.

Is he one of those "never enough" guys, or does he simply like to hear/see himself talk?

My money is on the latter given his freestyle antics as of late.

/disclaimer: took Kobe's side in the feud, I think the media is in love with big Shaq and overlook his many warts.
Mini Friday, the mobile Habbo Hotel, nears 1M users
CitizenRE's Shitheaddery: Uncov got its first legal threat
They used inflation adjusted numbers. However, they stated the cost of the bailout at 4.6 trillion which is inflated to include loan guarantees which assumes that the value of all mortgages backed up by this are worthless. Which is the same as saying FDIC insurance cost's the government the amount of money it's insuring.
That's not entirely fair; he got famous by writing a big crypto book that everyone read (and I think still reads, though it's kinda dated now) and the blog-based personality cult came later.

Of course, having a broad understanding of cryptographic algorithms doesn't guarantee being a good pundit on security issues.

(Schneier has written some perfectly decent books in his security-pundit role, too, but they aren't definitive in the way that "Practical Cryptography" arguably was.)
A big part of the bailout plan consists of guarantees and investments. It can be expected that a substantial portion of this money is not "lost", but can be freed at a later point. The real cost of the plan is significant lower than he predicts.
I disagree.

In Turing's paper "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem" he makes direct reference to diagonalization arguments (section 8 "Application of the diagonal process") alluding to the proof that the real numbers are not enumerable.

His proof then relies on a diagonal argument.
Good analogy.

How do you distinguish between the build source and artifacts now? It's not difficult to specify (via filename regexes) whath should and shouldn't be examined by Mercurial as potential VC files, beyond whether or not you explicitly add them: look at the .hgignore file. (Not sure that's directly helpful, but for the archives.)
This speaks more to the quality of the author than the reviewers. If the author can't effectively communicate his point to people not steeped in the culture and conventions being examined then this book is not as good as you think it is.
Serializing JS Objects into Cookies
You probably can't know everything, but you can work in several separate and not very closely related fields.
Basic addition is not interesting. Can anyone find out how exactly the $4.6 trillion number is calculated?

Even the boingboing source glosses over this:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/11/big-bailouts-bigger-buc...
Ask HN: Top universities in the world?
I remember seeing a post here before that had a ranking of the worlds universities but I can't find the right one. Or maybe it wasn't here but somewhere else.

Anyway: here are some links if anyone is interested.
I'm mainly interested in finding out the quality of universities in Australia and New Zealand.

Top european unis:
* http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2008/regional_rankings/top_european_universities/

Top in the world ranked by peer reviews
* http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2008/indicators/academic_peer_review/

Top tech:
* http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2008/subject_rankings/technology/
so... it's a patent for method to use a special spatula that they use to build the "fixins" on, which they later invert onto the bun.

sounds very scientific, i doubt anyone would have ever come up with this, let alone put it to significant commercial use other than mcdonalds. i for one welcome our new mcoverlords.
The gur "AlanT" is obviously nuts. The halting problem is one that can never be solved.
Google Maps has the same scroll wheel interface. It's a bit confusing at first.

It uses many sliced-up images, just like everything else. It looks like they just have much better JavaScript logic.
Silicon Valley’s airline: XOJET takes off as corporate jets lose favor
Illme, a company that promises to get rid of the common cold
Cisco To Shut Down For 4 Days At Year End
They don't actually. Ad agencies have people who do this stuff for a living (generating what they feel will be the optimal ads). Agencies have been held back by these people in a way, because they are naturally very resistive to someone telling them that a computer might be able to do their job better than they can, even if the end result may not be as aesthetically pleasing to them.
Web Suicide Viewed Live and Reaction Spur a Debate
It's a good point but only time will tell. However when you consider the lack of transparency and accompanying oversight (theoretically the treasury sec can just shove it into his private offshore account) and not to mention some sketchiness (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081110/greider2/print - I could list more not including the more public ones like AIG) - it doesn't bode well

It was only yesterday that many people thought that the bailout would only be a one time 700 billion dollar infusion...
Who's Getting Hired in Tech? Last Week's Jobwire Graphs
Maybe he uses it for the same reason everyone else does? For fun and socializing? From what I've seen, Shaq is a pretty gregarious fellow.
'Wiring' in the brain influences personality
have you ever applied for COMET funding from AusIndustry?
It Died: a list of web services that are gone (fuckedcompany 2.0?)
You might sing a different tune if you have children...
Black-White IQ Differences
It is an open secret in our society today that blacks are less intelligent than whites. Blacks almost consistently perform bad in field requiring intellect such as math, computer science, e.t.c. It is undeniable reality that their race is not going to contribute productively to society. Many respected people have emphasized this (Watson, Shockley, esr, e.t.c.). It is a wakeupp call for our nation. rime is maximal in areas with higher black populations. One need look no further than the present condition of Africa to understand the level of dexterity of the black brain. All of this calls for eugenics, for if there is no eugenics; the future of our planet is doomed.
http://www.diveintopython.org/ and http://swaroopch.info/text/Byte_of_Python:Main_Page are great, i also like the PLT Scheme's documentation http://docs.plt-scheme.org/
err what?

No... we just can't afford to waste our time with people that would rather discuss esoterically the merits of x vs y than actually get work done.
There is a difference between a loan guarantee and an expenditure on a government program. Tax payers will likely get at least some of those loans back.
timr: The difference between this and normal outsourcing is that I'm not outsourcing the design aspect of it, merely the algorithmic development. Think of it as a netflix challenge style problem. The problem would be specced roughly as:

"Here is an input vector, here is an output vector, write an algorithm that can translate input -> output with 98%+ accuracy". Of course, there would be validation data as well which they never get to see.

scott_s: Of course, lots of research is by necessity vague but a lot of it can be tightly scoped as well. Handwriting recognition, for example, simply involves trying to improve an accuracy measure.

sireat: There's what? 1000 universities in China and I don't read Chinese. Such an approach seems really hit or miss to me.
We don't distinguish between them. The test programs were built and all the resulting files were checked in. Unfortunately some of the build artifacts share extensions and directories with build source, and some of the build artifacts have no extension. The only way we could add the build artifacts to .hgignore (or .gitignore) would be to manually add them one at a time, and that would be a huge task.
I thought it was Twitter that made XMPP a popular topic?

And can't you just use Gnip? http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/18/twitter-plays-nice-xmpp...
our Manila, Philippines base is hiring people who know RoR and if you're a Merbist ... better :)
Am I missing something? This phone doesn't look particularly attractive.
Bettors Beat Pundits
I still cant figure out why we are bailing out financial companies instead of bailing out consumers directly. I realize Obama is going to do some sort of tax rebate again, but it seems like it would be more straightforward to take all of this money and use it to pay off American taxpayers credit cards, mortgages, student loans, etc. And it could be done in a fair way, capping the payments at the amount of taxes you paid in the last couple years, and capping payments for people above 100k income or something.

This would solve the financial problems of the companies because, ideally, less consumers would be defaulting on loans and would continue their normal business. On the other hand, leaving consumers out of this whole deal doesn't help the taxpayers and continues to burden them to pay both debts and higher taxes.

I'm no economist, but knowing that I'll be paying for these bailouts later on regardless (through taxes), I'd rather skip the filtering through a few handfuls of failing companies and just go straight to the source. If there is some solid reasoning for this, I'd love to read about it. Everything I've read seems to just assume that bailing out the corporations is the only way, but doesnt really provide any critical discussion of why.

Brian
Hack Lets Students View Standardized ACT Test Scores Early
I don't agree with you that branches are unimportant, but I do agree that the emphasis on branching was a bit of a red herring.

Apparently a lot of Git users haven't heard, but you can branch in Subversion, too. That's why "svn merge" exists -- it's a core feature! Yes, you have to remember the branch point and change directories to do it (and I grant that this is slightly annoying), but in my experience, the results are equivalent. You still have to resolve conflicts at about the same rate as with any other revision-control system. And the annoyance that Git saves you (by remembering the branch point and saving a 'cd'), is more than offset by the extra complexity of multiple masters, obtuse commands, non-local branches, and the oddball, multi-stage commit process.

To me, the extra complexity of Git is only justified when you're working on a project that has multiple, far-flung contributors who frequently work offline. Otherwise, to extend the author's metaphor, using Git is a lot like having a good set of work pants -- but wet, with sand in the crotch.
#elinux and #linuxchix
That's not all, he has not mentioned what language the programs will be in.
In the original article most of the bids are from firms located in India.
quick! someone register itdieddied.com so that there can be a site that makes note of the exact date and time that itdied.com dies!
Google Gains U.S. Search Market Share In October, But Growth Slows
Here's a Radiohead cover using a similar idea: http://www.vimeo.com/1109226?pg=embed&sec=1109226

To me, his use of the scanner is most interesting.
I'm not a finance geek so someone can prove me wrong:

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/126117/Bailout-...

here's details of the pledged amount of money (7.4 trillion - there's a chance the post's title may not be true now but it may become reality soon): http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/data?pid=avimage&iid=i0YrU...

(it's good to note that the FDIC has a bunch of IOU notes http://seekingalpha.com/article/95129-fdic-insurance-fund-it... and money from the fed reserve is loaned to the gov with interest)