skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It is due by the end of next year

Ouch. I guess the end of 2013 is sooner than never.
While we're on the subject, I'm curious if you've played with matrix-toolkits-java / netlib-java. I'm considering switching to it. I've had good experiences with the Lawson-Hanson non-negative least squares that comes with netlib.
Girl Attaches Camera to Hula-Hoop
The model came from Prussia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

It is amazing that our delivery of education hasn't changed much. I'm sure it would be up for debate as to what country has a better model. I certainly do not have a comprehensive grasp of non US school systems. I believe that ours will take many, many years to unwind...
I do wonder how hard it is to debug literate programs
I'm not sure why you're viewing GumRoad's funding as a negative.

I look at this as even more validation for my payments startup http://merchee.com, which has similar basic functionality to GumRoad, but focuses on subscription billing, offers affiliate marketing and checkout pages that match your website.

A bunch of really smart people, who see a lot of different products, teams, deals- They are betting that there is a market that will deliver ROI for innovation in the payments space, and they're putting their money behind Sahil, who has done a great job earning their backing. Please consider, he hasn't come out of no where, this isn't a sudden "overnight success". Even more validating is that lot of seasoned investors are doubling down on innovations in the payments space- look at stripe's 1st and 2nd round of funding for example (now with a valuation of $100 Million!).

Your competitor's ability to gain market adoption, traction and to raise funds should motivate you to raise the bar and build a great product, now that you "know" that it's a market that can reward your efforts.
The connection between frustration and aggressiveness is largely false (1) , unless you can point to a reliable source. The nerds that I know are not at all as you describe, and I wonder why you choose such derisive words.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/349577
Bring it up on es-discuss https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss

But please, search the archives first and be aware of what discussions have already taken place on this subject. =]
M-Pulse Episode #5: The Super Bomb, yes to BlackBerry + Bill Meisel
Perhaps -- unless you're writing professionally, in which case there's an implied responsibility not to waste the reader's time.
He makes a product geared toward teachers. He made a comment about busywork in the classroom and, what appeared to me, to be against this and against activities that hold brighter students back. I find it interesting because using bingo cards in the classroom can easily fall into this category. My comment addressed this apparent disparity. There was nothing uncivil about making an inquiry into this.

It's too bad you don't see something interesting in this. I do and hence made the comment I made. I strongly disagree with your view that my post was inappropriate or should not have been made. I'm not planning to change.
Ask HN: terms of software / SaaS sales agreements?
Hi all,

I'm a small startup founder coming up against a big problem. I've been working on my software and have come across a big customer who wants to use it. This would be my first sale (yay!) and would make the company. If we don't make the sale, we'll still be good for a while, thankfully.

For those of you doing software or SaaS sales, do you have any advice on terms? Specifically, anything I should worry about or think about? Non-compete, non-solicitation, long-term support, etc. clauses are all on the table and to be honest, it's getting a little scary.

- Anonymous, for likely obvious reasons
Dunning-Kruger ?
Shutting down the borders in advance of military action. They don't want sensitive data getting out.
"Companies don't spend through all their money because a VC makes them."

Not sure about your experience, but from what I've seen that's exactly the case. I was director of finance of a startup that raised (and burned) $30M+ from several 'tier A' VCs. I was in the board meetings where the VC partners and board members wanted that money spent. You don't hit home runs without swinging.
"I Think I Need to Lick it First..."
All the companies who provide censorship knows hows to Iran should be banned for ever.

To download Hotspot Shield, TOR or Ultrasurft

Visit http://www.unblocker.co.nr or http://www.proxysoftwares.co.nr
> (Caveat: Iteration over collections is not yet specified)

Is this a joke? Is not iterating over dictionaries and arrays javascript's most glaring weakness?

How hard would it be to agree on something like foreach, that, you know, actually works the way you think it should work.
Monopoloy Maker, Hasbro, Filed Lawsuit Over Google Buzz Logo
instapaper -- saving articles for when I truly have time to read them (as opposed to when I first see them -- while browsing HN during a mini work break) has been a huge timesaver for me.
Is Tribler "better" than Oneswarm and AllianceP2P? And if so, why?

http://www.oneswarm.org/
http://alliancep2p.com/

Is it because Tribler is more focused on having everything public, while the other 2 are more focused on "friend sharing" networks, so it's easier to find files on Tribler?? From what I can tell they have more security/anonymization than Tribler, and it's not just because of the limited access between friends.
Mobile is What’s Next (for me)
Would there be any possibility for the addition of native Long numbers to JavaScript, or is this, due to some nature of the language, something that can't, or shouldn't, be included?
I am going to write a long post about it soon b/c so many people have asked.

I would say polishing your video and articulating your widget well are the most important things you can do - you don't want to waste anyone's time. I did a million revisions to our video over the course of a year to get to where I thought it was launch worthy. Double Fine's is exceptional. I also found I am horrible in front of a camera unless I am the only one in the room.

We did no PR or anything before hand. A friend sent a link to Gruber a half hour after launch, he wrote one nice sentence about it, then it exploded around the web.

It also helped that Apple makes crappy docks and few people challenge Apple on anything. And that's a testament to Apple because they do usually kill at design. Marco Arment says it concisely here - http://www.marco.org/2012/02/09/elevation-dock
> It is all about effeciency. I find when I am not using vim I am less effecient. [emphasis added]

That was great. Someone searching the Web for remarks about efficiency will certainly miss your bons mots.

On this basis I must conclude that Vim doesn't have an integrated spell-checker.
Don't forget the additional step of "Find a new career", for doing that will get you blacklisted just as the much milder actions of Boisjoly did.
You just explained what s wrong with unsubstantiated groupthink and bullying. I won't buy your book.
You have to start with at least one well-known host.
Is the money raised through Kickstarter seen as income, and therefore, taxable (meaning that 20-30% of the final amount raised is lopped off)?
Could it just be that now that they've finished building Basecamp Next they have more time to write?
Create Google Chrome Profiles - Step By Step Guide
> he doesn't mention Basecamp Next anywhere in the post

He doesn't need to; it would undermine the credibility of his message, and given 37signals' business principles, he stands to gain more by spreading FUD towards VC-backed startups in general than by plugging any one particular product.
> Consider ignoring all the literal misappropriations you encounter daily and simply listen to people.

How about both? People have no hesitation about correcting a person's programming syntax, and are usually thanked. Why not apply the same rules to English syntax? Both are important to one's effectiveness.
Ben Barry actually released a number of these posters under Creative Commons: http://www.designforfun.com/facebookposters/
The Fake Replying to Email Prank
It doesn't matter whether VC's motivate the moon-shot business model or simply enable companies to try it. Either way: a VC investment usually implies a moon-shot.

We've had numerous articles, many of them by VC's, explaining the economics here. VC's need their investments to wrap up within a specific time frame. Near the beginning of the time frame, VC's resist liquidity. Near the end of the time frame, VC's push for liquidity. The companies that hit the moon pay for the ones that don't.

Nobody is taking VC at gunpoint, so bickering over whether the founders are the ones begging to get to the moon or the VC's are pushing them to go there is besides the point.

Either way, customers are strapping themselves in alongside the company for the ride.
I got banned from adsense a couple of years ago. I had an app I was writing and I had the ads in the corner. I made sure to not click my own ads, but because I was refreshing many times from the same IP, it somehow triggered a perma-ban.

I've tried to sign-up since and I don't get any errors, but I never get my acceptance email and Google won't ever respond to my queries.

Adsense is mostly a ripoff anyway. There are much better ways to monetize your traffic.
Why LinkedIn is winning the Platform Game
I think that the word "photorealistic" should be considered in a more philosophical way.

The goal of games is to create an immersive and convincing environment but that does NOT necessarily mean that it would (or should) be indistinguishable from what a camera/eyeball would see if the environment were "real".

If you talk with computer game artists, you will find out that they deliberately manipulate features, textures, geometry, distances, and colors in a way that is decidedly different from what would exist in reality. The purpose of this, ironically, is to make the environment more convincing (real-looking) to the player when the game is on. It is all about perception.

I think that by looking at what is happening with computer animated films, one can get an idea of what will happen soon with computer games. It will certainly be possible to render an image at high fps such that it simulates with stunning accuracy what would appear on a CCD sensor if a camera were placed in a "real" scene. But then there will be deeper problems. Instead of worrying about the nitty-gritty of ray-tracing fidelity, game makers will be concerned with the same problems that photographers and filmmakers worry about: lighting, focus, focal length, lenses, scene layout. And then there are the well-known problems of "uncanniness" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley).

In other words, when you watch a great scene in a film with actors, it looks "realistic", but that "photoreality" is actually a very careful and deliberate fabrication-- it is not real.
Feel Good Friday: Reasons to Believe in a Better World
Having met DHH a few years back, I think it's safe to say that he's being honest in his feelings towards SV, in the same way that when he rants against the enterprise he's being honest about that too.

The difference between DHH and others is that he's actually practicing what he preaches more often than not.

While 37Signals are brilliant marketers, not every opinion is marketing speak. They actually believe this stuff and don't mind sharing what they think.
In the late '90s I was a founder at a company that raised VC; the VC-led board changed us from a multicast software product company to competing with Akamai (heh). Go big or ("and", really) go home.
My guess would be bikeshedding.
The bias I perceive in you is not based solely on two comments you've made. It's just two comments that I've responded to.

I'm not playing

"you're only allowed to have opinions on pedagogy if you're a real teacher" game

as you put it. Anyone is allowed to have opinions about anything. Some opinions have more merit than others. Some people have worthy opinions on topics that they don't have direct involved with.

I've met lots of people with strong opinions on teaching. I've found that what superficially seems obvious to non-teachers often times miserably fails when you've got a class of 30 students with varying abilities and interest in learning. Anecdotally I'd say a majority of opinions from non-teachers about what would be great in the classroom only holds true if the classroom contains people desiring to learn.

Well, I asked about your experience in the classroom because I wanted to know if the thoughts and ideas you've expressed about what is not useful in the classroom is based on your teaching experiences on your student experiences.

I used to have strong feelings about k-12 teaching. Two years ago I was in a project that paired a college teacher with an 8th grade teacher at a local school. It took one day in the 8th grade class to realize that I don't know squat about k-12 teaching.
Doodling in Math: Spirals, Fibonacci and Being a Plant [video]
CouchDB on the Blackberry PlayBook
It's unlikely that the absence of projects like this would cause them to refrain from pushing repressive legislation.
>> Have you taught much? When was the last time you were in a classroom?

I have spend at least 20 years in classrooms as a student. I think this qualifies me to have an opinion on what teaching methods I found effective, and observed to be effective with others.

I don't believe that having been a teacher is a requirement in order to have come to valid conclusions.
Ports are good, sure. I'm not saying it's the ONLY strategy. Just that it's a major bit of strategy that happens before the game even starts. You can certainly choose a spot near a port at the start, though I wouldn't recommend putting an initial settlement on a port. You need the most resource production you can manage early on.

Already got the deck of dice. I don't actually have any extra old packs of cards -- I have a couple, but I'm not a big card game player. Well, I used to play Magic, but writing on Magic cards just seems wrong. ;)
So-called "corporate governance experts" didn't invent the future. Facebook did.
It's a web app. Pretty OS agnostic.
I’m not entirely sure. But just looking at Cafe au Life, I’d like to be able to look at the “tangled” code where all of the code for a Square is in the Square class, and a ‘cross-cutting-concern’ view where all the code for something like import and export is kept together, whether it applies to Cell or Square.

Comes down to traditional OOP being a tree formed by belongs-to relationships between entities and responsibilities, but Cafe au Life having a many-to-many relationship.

p.s. What are your thoughts on Cafe au Life? Is this (In Your Humble Opinion) idiomatic CoffeeScript? Is this how you envisioned Docco being used? Feedback most welcome...
Remember that the spec won't come out for a while, after a pile of additional development. Also remember that we have to live with it for a long time, so taking the time to get it right seems preferable.
I'd settle for integers. :)
The usefulness of versioning and other successful models in other fields/contexts is an interesting thing to think about. It could be that some applications of these models are not solving existing problems so much as creating new opportunities. Versioning for art and design could create new opportunities for collaborative creation even if it doesn't solve the problems of existing artists and designers. I don't know how well this can work, though.
New Error-Correcting Codes Say "When", results in faster wireless data transfer.
Data Visualization on Yahoo
It does make sense. Why would they give you lots of money if you're going to keep it in the bank?
Right, I think we're in agreement. VC backed companies are usually shooting for fast growth. If you hitch your wagon to a VC backed company, you might be getting in early on the very first Google ad buys when they were underpriced. Then again, it might fail.

But "Keep in mind that VC companies tend to go big or bust, with large rewards in success and none in failure" wouldn't make such an eye-catching headline.
Who Really Engaged in Misinformation?
While there are (sometimes) better ways to monetize your traffic, Adsense is an easy to deploy, set-and-forget solution. So I wouldn't call it a ripoff :-)
If you're not familiar with Ben Barry's work, you should definitely check out his portfolio. Really excellent stuff. http://designforfun.com

Another great example of print design making its way into the digital space is Metro, Microsoft's UI for Windows Phone 7 (and probably Windows 8, Xbox+, etc.) It's fundamentally based on typography and space, which are core to timeless and pervasive print design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_%28design_language%29

There are lots of lessons about visual language that have been figured out in the hundreds of years since print was invented. Pixels are relatively new, but form, weight, space, typography, readability, color, contrast, and aesthetics tend to transfer over quite well. (Until you add interaction, which is certainly a new discipline of design.)

Also, even if you're an engineering-driven company, having good design on the walls helps people develop an intuition for your company's culture and brand. More than anything else, these projects at FB seem to be about internal communication, which is essentially marketing your mission and goals to your team. As an organisation grows rapidly, this is one of the most effective (and subtle) ways to keep your goals aligned.
So do you have any example of an education system that performs better than the US that doesn't also have:

* compulsory attendance
* specific training for teachers
* national testing for all students
* curriculum set for each grade
* kindergarten.

I modified barely more than a stub of a wiki entries summary from:

"The Prussian system instituted compulsory attendance, specific training for teachers, national testing for all students (used to classify children for potential job training), national curriculum set for each grade and mandatory kindergarten."

The US doesn't do job classification based on testing, have a national curriculum, or enforce mandatory kindergarten (but some states might). Pointing at the Prussian "System" is a really weak commentary.

Education critiques on HN are laughably bad. Most people here post as if they are experts even though their only experience is spending their childhood on the receiving end of the system.
Thank you for the explanation. I'll update the post.

Is it possible in Python to have a fixed size dictionary? I thought about the repercussions of the size exploding, but I couldn't find anything readily available to restrict the size.
[comic] What is it like to fix bugs in legacy software?
Let’s Make a 3D Game with HTML5: 00
I doubt that would work. A system like that would have to be able to predict where saccadic land. Otherwise, you would, for a short time after every saccade, look at a part of the screen that is low in detail. Short saccades take about 20ms. So, if the graphics pipeline has higher latency, it would mean that we would have to be able to predict saccades.

I am not familiar Witt the date of the art here, but I do not think that is possible.
I think that's a problem we'd all like to have.
Jimmy Wales RE: Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley
I just tested and it looks like it works in SquirrelFish/Nitro and SpiderMonkey as well. Cool trick — I didn't know about that.

But I don't think it quite solves the problem jashkenas is talking about, which is that JavaScript automatically calls certain properties of your object behind the scenes in many situations, so you aren't completely free to use any key you want. You might be able to use a no-proto object like this as the internal datastore for a map, but by itself an object with arbitrarily assigned keys would cause a lot of problems unless you were very careful with it.
You could add a 64-bit int type, sure, but since implementations use pointer-sized data that has to represent other types as well, making it as efficient as a long long in C isn't as easy. Seems unlikely to muster enough priority. (I haven't been following their work, though.)
Site is down; Any cached version?
You don't appear to understand how Bingo Card Creator works. Go visit the website. I'll wait.

Back? Did you notice, on the website, the near total absence of advocacy for using bingo cards in lesson plans? Or even how classroom bingo works? Patrick sells BCC passively. His entire marketing system presumes a continuous feed of people who already wanted bingo cards.

The pain point he solves isn't "how to automate classrooms with bingo cards".

It's "how to automate the bingo cards for your classroom bingo day".

There's exactly one argument you can make about Patrick's business that would even be germane to your argument: that classroom bingo is so radioactively evil that simply enabling teachers to do it is harmful. I don't think you believe that. Instead: you didn't like something someone said on a message board, so you went looking for reasons to discredit them. In this case, you failed.

You should have more confidence in your own opinions. You have actual K-12 educational experience; it should be easy for you to use actual logic to refute things people say about it.
Why would it be harder?
i haven't looked at the code, but i have dabbled in some performance coding... if you can stream things in and out quickly, and in operations that themselves take as little as possible memory, then you can operate on very large files in mostly directly linear time with relation to the size of the file... so while the packet in the stream might be in memory at the time your code runs against it, it must seem to be saying that not only can you do that, but we can also stream files through this thing without having to read the file all at once into memory (which works great and fast on very small files, but can downright non functional for large files) .... just a guess... a lot of performance stuff i've been around is a hot-potato situation, so maybe they're trying to describe that.
Are they trying to demonstrate that the only way to enforce copyright law really is to monitor everyone's communications 24/7, assume that anyone who uses encryption to an unrecognised/unauthorised host an infringer, and ruthlessly cut off Internet access to any such person?

Yes. Because it's true. You can't legislate morality, and you can't prop up business models that require people to behave contrary to their nature. Even if you take the internet away, people will still trade CDs full of MP3s. If you take away all digital technology, people will trade mixtapes. If you cut people's hands off, they'll still sing "Happy Birthday" to each other. You can't stop it. Copyright enforcement is completely infeasible.
This makes me wonder if we are hearing the whole story. Did he have multiple adwords accounts, or only just the one?
JavaScript proxies tutorial
Byt anyone with even a basic tutorial understanding of the language wouldn't do that. Is it really necessary to try and make it absolutely impossible to get unexpected results? The downside is even more complexity and uncertainty. Now you have to know the old way, the new way, and the idiosynchracies of both.
Awesome Stuff !!
Wolfram Alpha Pro: Launching a democratization of data science
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I'm not an expert of PR at all, and when it comes to PR and press, it sounds more like a dark-art than science. So it's good to know that you can obtain these infos through other means than purchasing an expensive db.

If these infos are publicly available, what can benefit more startups people is to have a free db which crawled all the public listings. I'll do some more research into this.
Venture Capital for the 99%
The Jawbone UP Fails, Teaches 3 Golden Rules For Experience Design
As Iran Cracks Down Online, Tor Tests Undetectable Encrypted Connections