skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Can someone explain this code please:

#define min(x, y) ({	\
typeof(x) _min1 = (x);	\
typeof(y) _min2 = (y);	\
(void) (&_min1 == &_min2);	\
_min1 < _min2 ? _min1 : _min2; })

What does the 4th line do?
Obama's cell phone records breached
No offense, but this brings new meaning to the expression "OH NOES". I mean seriously, who cares?
From the SuperComputing '08 Floor, Part 2 of 4
Ask HN: Automotive Plants?
I am no economist and want to hear how you feel about this. What is better foreign owned companies with plants in America(Hyundai in Tennessee) or American owned companies building plant in other countries(GM in Mexico)?
I read his suicide note and it was pretty clear it was either suicide or an unhappy life on xanax, followed by death by way of cancer/stroke/heart disease.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICiFnQrHOrk

There's always a period after death where people stop being shocked/sad and start telling jokes. This thread is evidence of that. Oh well.

http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/hanging/english/e_hang...
Fireball over Western Canada (amateur footage)
He's saying Ruby needs a better VM, no? I think the real problem is that there are only 10-50 people in the world that know how to make high quality VM's. We probably just need to get more open source people trained up in this.

For my part, I tried reading that Dragon book recently but it just didn't click for me. It seemed way too low level, without teaching me the high level first. Or maybe compiler/interpreter design just isn't an easy thing to teach yourself?

What are your thoughts, HN?
Why do you think I'm not correct?
Fair enough, but we've been launched less than 4 months.

Ticketnews, Boston Herald, ReadWriteWeb, BoyGeniusReport, Techcrunch and MassHighTech have all written about us.

Hacker News isn't exactly our target audience, but they/you are our friends & peers.
Man you got downvoted like anything! I wonder how it was done though, as HN seems to lack any control downvoting in my browser.
I think that the low bandwidth of Internet communication may also be partly to blame here. I make inappropriate comments of this ilk all the time when I'm around friends, in person, but then I can follow up with a smile, a pause, and a half-wink to let the people I'm with know that I'm not really being serious. (And if they've known me for a while, they'd know I wasn't being serious anyway.) Even a winky face doesn't really convey the same amount of information. ;-)

I did downvote the comment in question; actually, I think I was only the 2nd person to do so, as it was at 0 points when I read it. I found it callous and inappropriate. But then, I think I misinterpreted it. Which is easy to do, if you don't personally know the person who made it and don't know what spirit it's intended in.
you're most probably right, I just got pretty pissed at reading such a broad sweeping post by a guy that has no idea what he is talking about.

Guess it shows :-)
We are human and we make mistakes. Just don't get too self-absorbed and move on...you've got important work to do.
I think part of the difference is that robots.txt was established early enough to become a de facto standard way to opt out of automated indexing. There is no equivalent system for print, where the convention is that everything is fully protected by copyright by default.

Another difference is that automated indexing has become inherent to web publishing, so much that people publish with the expection that Google will index their pages. Book authors, on the other hand, publish with the expectation that their works are not indexed in this fashion.
It would also have been in better style. Either use expletives, and spell them out, if you think that best gets your point across; or don't use expletives at all.
Tips for VC Negotiations - 7 startup founders & execs share their strategies
Does anyone know the date this was written?
How car dealers tie Detroit's hands
Free Sitepoint Art and Science of CSS Book
You really have to be on top of your game to raise $$ in this economy, so I thought the advice in this video montage might help. Let me know what you think.
This whole system relies on something that hasn't been demonstrated on the internet; human honesty - I see every web page owner leaving the comments of greatness for their sites; and every competitor doing the opposite.
Amen Mr Hofstadter. And it forces us to think: the universe is so orderly that even deep feeling can be reproduced mathematically! How can we then say that the universe was not designed? There is so much order, so many patterns! When we see this in Apple products, we marvel at Apple's mastery of design. But when we see even greater level of attention to detail in nature, we say it just happened...

As a lover of good music, such as classical and soundtrack music, and traditional Christian hymns, it is troubling. but I say this: No matter how great this program gets, it will NEVER, ever be able to communicate the intricacy of feeling that the human soul produces. It will always be a mechanical analysis of what has already been created - NOT true creation.
That, I imagine is to prevent revenge down-voting. It seems like a good idea to me.
Top 10 Xbox NXE dashboard tips and tricks
With the NXe update creating a stir among Xbox addicts, we thought it was time to share our top 10 list of new things that can be done with the New Xbox Experience (NXE), with a bit of help from Major Nelson.
Slashdot, news.yc, and Reddit don't involve kids broadcasting video out of the bedroom.
This public apology is great and all, but it seems rather forced.

I went back and read your comment, and you obviously lack the compassion, MATURITY, and humanity (and as an entrepeneur, the common sense) to lead TicketStumbler.com.

I'll definitely be avoiding the TicketStumbler.com website, so congratulations.
Apple updates iPhone with Firmware 2.2
Well done, the 100+ upvotes you've got on this post have totally counteracted the negative votes you got on the other post, and you end the day with a net profit. Goes to show.. when it comes to social networking, any publicity is good publicity!
User-generated video under siege
Does SearchWiki show that Google is running out of good ideas?
Du vil ikke være så vænnlig å hente tellfart og sykle vannrætt inn i hælvette?

He he heee..
If you've ever wondered why every society has so many carefully delineated, formal rituals surrounding death -- the sending of flowers, the publishing of obits, the ritualized expressions of sorrow, the formal funerals -- now you know.

If you've ever wondered why, after every major tragedy that affects a public gathering like a school, the local news reports that teams of grief counselors are being dispatched to the scene -- well, now you know. Grief counselors are trained to listen to people who are in shock. People in shock say strange things. Half of them are oversensitive, the other half tries to whistle past the graveyard, and if you put both halves in the same room and ask them to counsel each other the results can be really ugly, as we appear to have discovered. (I didn't read the original thread myself, though. I see enough pain in the course of life.)

All threads need moderators, but sometimes real life also needs moderators, and that's what grief counselors are for.

I recently had a friend-of-friends die suddenly in an accident. The range of responses was interesting. Some of his friends dissolved into tears. Some took pains to offer expressions of forgiveness and acceptance. Some raged against the cause of the accident. Some raged against the deceased. Some switched from one approach to another on a sentence by sentence basis.

Shock. That's how it works.

Someone with a large amount of intestinal fortitude and an even larger amount of malpractice insurance should start up an online grief counseling service.
Google Lively and SearchWiki: It’s the data, stupid
Well, the thing is, no one knows what way you voted, so you could have your cake and eat it too.
Soon there will be another post on TC saying "this is teh awesomest thing evar!!!11!!".
Uhm, that seems the major point of his "apology" -- to protect his business, which he mentions several times in his "apology".

Though, you did not grasp the points of his apology, it's still substantiated for the rest of us.
Improved stability and performance of Safari, thank god. My MobileSafari has been crashing at an ever-accelerating rate. I can't even load the Apple store, and you know that that has got to be a priority one bug.
Look, Hofstadter is an amateur. He is obviously a music lover, but he's not a music expert by any stretch. This was plainly obvious when he came to my university and gave his little talk.

He assumed that because his talk was at the music school's concert hall, his audience must be comprised of music students and faculty, without actually ever checking if that were the case. Those of us from the music school in the audience were all very aware that the majority of the audience were students from mathematics, physics, computer science, etc. Most music students don't know who Hofstadter is, and don't care.

So when he jumps to his conclusion that he "fooled" 1/3 of the audience with his recording, it's way way off base. After the talk, we all (music faculty & grad students) went out for a drink with Hofstadter and pointed out the errors in his assumptions, but he refused to listen. His methodology is totally bent, and his conclusions are what he wants to think, not the actual data.

I --and all my fellow musicians-- were pretty much all totally nonplussed by his demonstrations, and underwhelmed indeed by the supposed "quality" of the computer compositions. Don't get me wrong, it's impressive that a computer can do what EMI can do. But it ain't Bach, and it sure ain't Chopin.

Also, do not underestimate the human intereference in the process. A human is involved in "tweaking" EMI and "filtering" its output. EMI probably produces 1000 pieces per minute, 999 of which are total crap, and one of which is vaguely interesting. Run it for a few minutes and you'll have a few vaguely interesting pieces. Pick the best one, and say "the computer composed this, isn't it great?". What about the other N-thousand pieces that were shite?
Much better footage of Alberta meteor
I got the update, but how do I download podcasts over the air? I don't see the option. I want this one for example http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/
This is the sort of thing I'd love to see more of, rather than yet another article on the car companies.
So, Tesla Motors spent hundreds of millions of dollars just on safety regulations for the Roadster? I don't buy it.
please watch your line lengths in code blocks... you're making my browser scroll.
Nice article, The litmus test I have always used (with a varying degree of success), is enthusiasm.

How keen are they on programming? Do they read coding blogs in their spare time? Are they involved in any open source projects or any coding projects outside of work?

To me, all of these things scream "This is not just a job, I actually love to code"
Good points, but one of the forces skewing industries toward large players is the large players themselves. They have an economy of scale to lobby new regulations. Removing some of the hundred-million safety regulations might just open the way to innovations that will improve safety.

I just looked at some statistics - I know it's damn lies but - it seems traffic deaths per mile travelled were falling both before and after the US introduced car safety regulations, but before the regulations they were falling faster. Also Wikipedia says the mandating of airbags was controversial because their cost/benefit ratio is extremely high for a safety device. Hope someone more knowledgeable corrects me.
There's always a temptation to say something stupid. And online, when there's really no social barrier that immediately stops you when you've said something you shouldn't, it's incredibly easy to get carried away.

I saw somebody on the other thread saying they were shocked, that it sounded like Reddit rather than Hacker News. And I thought: why wouldn't it sound like Reddit? The same users are crossing over. This is just the next stop for a lot of people. HN has no special checks encouraging better posting; it's up to the users. And a lot of users don't really care about this ideal of Hacker News as enlightened and thoughtful. They just see it as another place to post whatever comes to mind and to find good news stories.

If Hacker News is going to stay high-quality, then it requires every single user's being dedicated to its staying that way. That's not an easy task, especially not when a lot of users are joining right now, as HN is visibly declined. (Not much, but it's certainly not as good now as it was three months ago.) It means somehow convincing every user that this is not only worthwhile but necessary.

That's not likely: it's far too easy to slip up. I'm hoping, and I think Hacker News is a good place to make a stand - it's done incredibly well for the last two years - but I don't have any illusions about what the odds are of it staying like this.
Two relevant Wikipedia links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_directors

Summary of fiduciary duty as I understand it (IANAL):

An agent has a responsibility to act in his or her client's best interest. An example is a trust, which is obligated to act in the financial best interests of the beneficiary. I believe a lawyer's duty to the client and a doctor's duty to the patient are similar. In the case of a board of directors, they have a legal responsibility to act in the best interest of the shareholders.
Submit good links. Vote judiciously. Don't pollute threads by whining.
That's a good point. I'd argue the first way is the wrong way to do it. I guess once you get to multiline statements the philosophy breaks down. I'm just happy there's no string.strip() and string.trim() or something crazy like that which I'm guessing Perl has :-)?
Why are you defending this thread so bad?
Typographical errors aside, I liked the post. A bit confused as to who it's targeting, though.

Is it about the employer, saying he can't find a good hire.

Or the programmer, saying that even if you're good, your interviewer probably won't realize it?
Yep. It also occasionally locks out posts by a user in the same thread as the one in which they reply to you. Same anti-revenge idea, as far as I can see.
Linus Torvalds’ company acquired and gone
I suppose it's irrational because it's so easy to misinterpret, and because it's not always necessary. It's overused in a lot of ways.
The new Xbox experience makes life easier, sells things
Gary Vaynerchuk Speech @ Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference 2008
He has every right to be concerned about his business. It's success impacts not only him, but any co-founders, investors, customers, and family he may have. It's clear from the nature of his apology that what he repents of, is not so much the point he was attempting to make, but the callousness of how he made it and how that overshadowed even what good he had hoped to achieve. This was a mistake, and he has every right to be concerned how this impacts his business and reputation.
Because I have a thing against sheep-like waves of self-righteousness colimating on a single hapless victim. It could have been me - hell, I made a comment just as caustic as tdavis, but somehow I got "lucky" and ignored by the masses of supposedly terribly offended users.
I believe it is to make sure that x and y are of comparable types. Comparing pointers of different types generates a warning with GCC. I can be wrong though..
a billion to kill a brand that costs you money is not that bad. It costs them something like 1-2 billion to bring a car from concept to production, so they'll save that money the first time they avoid having to redesign a new model.

But why kill? Sell it off...you are going to lose all that value anyways, so even if you sell Buick below market price, you still make more than if you just close the doors
There are an incredible number of sites. Chances are, there are enormous ones you've never heard of because they deal with things you're not interested in. I've never heard Justin.tv mentioned anywhere beyond here and Reddit (I don't read tech blogs, as a disclaimer): until a month ago, I thought that Justin.tv was still just the one guy.

HN is great because it has such a concentration of people who know what they're talking about. It means that you can advertise just here, and rely on word-of-mouth to spread the biggest ideas.
The EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) Website: http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm

Some of the music generated: http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm
You know, forget Rails, forget Mongrel. I'll keep using Ruby for a long time because _why is here, making wonderful, beautiful toys.
Verizon employees wrongly accessed Obama phone records
I think it's useful. It gave us a forum to discuss how Hacker News acts in regards to things like that, and that's a very important discussion to have.
Google already has the terrible burden of moderating YOUTUBE COMMENTS. What made them think it would be a good idea to set up a peanut gallery for every unique URL?
BlackBerry Faithful Gather For The Storm
Prophetic != insightful.

"Just ignore them... all this sanctimonious self-righteousness will blow away with the wind if you ignore it." would have been insightful.
How to kill yourself like a man
email me donna (at) genuus (dot) com
But it isn't. It's worse than that: it's fair. People judge you based on how they perceive you, and that's an open standard, and it's completely fair.

That makes it harder, because it's harder to admit that's how it works when things are down for you.
I think there's more to his apology than that.
Reviewing some of Sphinns Greatest Hits | On.eTi.me
seriously, almost anything else.

try python or perl.
You're not liking the new looks either? When I signed in, I thought: Where did my email go?

I have become quite accustomed to glancing at the UI to figure out what's going on with my email. I was supremely confused for a minute.
There is no incentive for Google to take cases all the way through the court system just so they could set a precedent that helps the rest of us.

The article says that the proposed settlement over book indexing is for $125M. I have no idea if it costs that kind of money to obtain justice.

One thing made me very uncomfortable while reading the article:

the fact that one needs deep pockets to fight it out in the courts. When the amount of money one has significantly affects the outcome of a legal fight, what is the meaning of law?
Isn't it how Microsoft gets away with pretty much anything?
Don't Honda and Toyota have the same problem? They seem to be coping.
Pilotfish smartphone opens like a book and allows the screen to double in size to 5 inches
rumbled! :)
Yeah. That's what I was thinking.

The fact remains that without Chopin, the EMI can't do anything. It can't create, it can only emulate. Rather like a lot of other, lesser composers, for that matter. ;-)
Is Vista Capable? Maybe. Microsoft, not so much.
You might not, but maybe some people would. That's where innovation comes in: finding a mix of features so people choose what is important to them at different price points. What doesn't work doesn't sell, and then back to the drawing board. Many people drive motorcycles, after all.

What would be interesting would be if alt-energy cars were classified as a different type of motor vehicle, with a relaxed set of regulations. This would allow for new companies to make them, and for established companies to make them cheaper. Then after the market is established, and many companies have innovated in the industry, then slowly ratchet up the regulations on them. Just a thought.
It was just much more difficult than anyone would predict. Now - with that roadmap - this is a different game, now you can check if the project is proceeding according to the timeline. I hope it will - and this should be the end of the arguments that it will never end.
Although the events were pretty horrific (if you've read the original bodybuilding thread - now removed), it is worth keeping in mind that this particular individual had attempted this several other times in the same community. After the first many times, it appeared to almost be a running joke- until, of course, it wasn't.
Considering the context it was probably not a wonderfully clever idea to link to that :(

I mean, regardless of the black humor (which I find amusing) the amoung of vitriol [seems to be my word of the day that!] this whole subject is creating you've lined yourself up to be viewed either as:
a) baiting
or
b) completely oblivious to the idea of "approriate" actions.

And that's probably by both camps....
This was my immediate thought. Going half way from search to youtube comments is a drastic step down/back.

Even in his screenshot you can see he gave the up arrow to everybody who gave him a compliment, without regard to merit, and he down-arrowed the only comment that was more than "uh yay blog!".
You aren't worth enough to see a down arrow I believe.

There is some threshold of karma you need before it appears. I guess; I'm not worthy either.
Honda and Toyota aren't wishing they could shed unprofitable brands.
I just had to upvote this as a reaction to certain other, shall we say a little overblown, stories on the front page right now.

Yes I've got karma to burn. Do your best.
If someone hangs themselves from the tree in my front yard, is there an element of fault with me for supplying the tree?

Any effort to shift blame onto j.tv for this is little more than an over-reaction caused by a state of grief...while it is certainly understandable, it is equally indefensible.
The real oddity of this macro is the parentheses around the block, which cause it to behave much like an inline function (but without having to wrestle the type system).
I often wonder how he supports himself. Either he lives on little and spends his time making cool stuff and helping kids program, or he's actually a Rockerfeller.

Alternatively, he holds down a day job, and is just so prolific that it seems like he just makes shoes and hpricot all the time.
That doesn't necessarily make it any more real to the viewers. Do you feel personally connected with celebrities you see on television?
'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' Provides Clue to Efficiency of the Internet
I wonder if there are some "blub" effects at work here. By that I mean when you evaluate another programmer you either see someone who is worse then you, or you don't understand the ways in which they are better.
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Programming can be so wildly varying that it's tough to find any common ground. Try getting a C programmer, a Lisp programmer and a Java programmer (heck throw in a Ruby and PHP too) to agree on common core knowledge. We can't even agree on Text editors!

There's no need to agree on text editors.

For any useful agreement and commonality to exist, it might have to be within a particular problem domain. Philip Greenspun's course for internet applications, for example, makes no demands on language, operating system, or text editor, but does require that a successful student can build a working software system of the type described in the curriculum.

Knowing a language without knowing how to build anything useful seems pointless, and I posit it would be, for all practical purposes, impossible to build a useful system without knowing "enough" about at least one language (and one text editor, and one operating system). The breadth and depth of "enough" varies from domain to domain, and is not consistent across all branches of software engineering.