skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First of all, awesome write up Dana. Would love to hear about your current project when we get a chance.

@Tam...seems to me like there were plenty of non tech businesses in there... restaurants, speakers, renting of items, office hours.

My core issue with these businesses, and 90+% of those I hear about in the valley, is that they are so extremely specialized for such an incredibly narrow market segment that they are next to impossible to get either traction or revenue. Usually, this is nothing more than a strategy by start-ups to AVOID competing with established products rather than creating an actually remarkable product of their own.

...and yes, I have many times heard about the people who are making a killing by selling some obscure little piece of software/product or service to an uber narrow market segment thereby facing nearly no competition. Not sure if that was Dan's strategy as well.
Some things that hammered home this understanding for me (in order of reputability): LessWrong.com, Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, PUA.

These days, I mostly understand that there are always many perspectives and try to see wisdom as the art of picking between perspectives. But sometimes I get stuck in my old ways and search in vain for the "right" opinion/perspective/paradigm/whatever. This no-one-true-perspective meta-perspective means that life experience and hard-earned wisdom become much more important factors for the good life.
How do you respect privacy any more than GMail does? Your email isn't hosted in the EU, what extra protection is in place?
"moneyball" in hiring software engineers
Interpol helps arrest journalist over a tweet
If that's the same cJSON I was using a few months ago, I found it a lot more memory-hungry than it needed to be. I was doing some network code with lwIP on an embedded system, so the all-static nature of js0n (with some helper functions) was a better fit for me.
Hey, did he take that from Richard Feynman, or was Feynman first with the quote:
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
what you say is very true. Asking questions in an environment of peers tends to depend on confidence.

Questioning everything and asking questions are often different things in a classroom environment.

A key premise of the Khan Academy is that students learning in the intimacy of their own space enables slower students to learn and excel
Smart people also:

- don't use low-contrast text, which obfuscates their message

- have a comments section for feedback, rather than a 'reblogged' section for desperate popularity
In high school (and I truly hate to be the one to tell you this), it is quite possble that your teacher doesn't know the answer, so he is annoyed at you for asking questions so that you do not expose his/her shortcomings.

A lot of high school teachers know little past what they are actually teaching and even that not in a lot of depth. This is for a lot of reasons, some of them not their fault, but it is a sad fact.

So, keep asking and keep annoying them. Try going and asking during their office hours, but don't be surprised if you do not get a satisfactory answer and if it does not seem satisfactory, I would question its validity.
I think this is more of a worry http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-23/opinion/schneier.google.h... patriot act backdoors. Of course this affects all US companies, Microsoft included
"The people of the Internet - not exactly known for their generosity"
Smart people might ask questions, but I also know a lot of dumb people that ask questions, too.
I lived a block from 3rd and 20th. It's a reasonable place to live, I liked it, and it is indeed next to Caltrain, the T, and the 22 and 48 buses.

But there isn't a lot right there, it always takes at least fifteen minutes go get where the action is (i.e. the Mission). I recommend it for anyone who commutes to Stanford, Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc. but wants to live in the city... but if I didn't have my commute I probably would have lived in the Mission/Castro/Hayes Valley/etc.
I've noticed the pseudo-smart are quite annoyed by questions. RTFM, they reply. That's pseudo-smart for "I don't know".
Yeah, that's going to be a big problem for them. Too many scam/spam "services" have poisoned the well.
i think you wrong. it wasnt about "noticing" and besides if you notice what you are going to do? you can notice Wall street movement but did you and EVERYONE else joined?
during WW2 most countries were busy fighting or preparing to fight with aggressors.
on the other note, if you dont live in US but in one of country where abortion is illegal and assumed a human killing, you can notice 50,000 abortion done in China every day. Thats 15 million abortions a year, more than holocaust claimed. Do you see everyone "noticing" and doing something about it?
I wouldn't put Gladwell down that much, he's simply a contemporary writer of fairy tales to me. Aesoplike, they have lessons and histories that we can potentially relate to, while not attempting to be the last word. Does Gladwell's writing need to be any more than a nudge in whatever direction the reader is already inclined?

That said, I never liked that passage. There are passive and active parents in all walks of life, but I don't think the economics are the point of the quote as much as an admonishment to take a bit more control.
This is the clincher for me. Anyone trying to compete with Google needs to be up front and detailed about how they handle your privacy, and what they'll do to protect you.
Twitter, Facebook and Apps Scams
See also http://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Concatenative%20language/...
There's a lot more there now than there was a year or two ago. Most of the places in the immediate vicinity were started in the past year and a half.
Slightly off-topic, but I'm curious to hear more of what HN thinks about Gladwell. Some writers and scientists I respect, perhaps most notably Steven Pinker, have been vocally opposed to the "shoddy scholarship" of Gladwell's work, while others, including many bloggers I've encountered here, have quoted him with great enthusiasm (I believe Peter Norvig references his "10,000 hours to expertise" figure from Outliers in his famous essay on becoming a programmer in 10 years).
"I think most people, even those who created these policies, would prefer a workplace populated by groups 1 and 2."

The people that created the policies... sure. Most people? Why? I have no problem with current drug users. Silicon Valley is chock full of semi-regular to regular pot smokers. And who knows how many take a few hits of ecstasy or mushrooms at their annual Burning Man or Coachella outings. You really see this as an issue? To be honest, I actively prefer to work with these people. You wouldn't have hired Carl Sagan?

As long as it's not affecting the quality of their work, why do you even care?
While I'm sure the wrong people can do nasty things with a large back catalogue of e-mails, for marketing purposes knowing what you're up to now is vastly more valuable. Which means that if Google start scaring people and they leave, their current, profitable business model is hurt.
I completely agree with this sentiment. I think this blog post mostly described the characteristics of a skeptic, and many "smart" people are skeptics. However, I don't necessarily correlate skeptics with getting lots of things done, like Steve Jobs did.

Ideally, there is some balance between making assumptions and asking questions that leads to great leadership and innovation. I think this balance occurs when one questions everything within a certain domain they wish to control (for instance, Apple and how people interact with computers), but then just accepts the common views for topics outside of their domain.
Yes they are not tech businesses. Some of them sounded like they needed less techy people, to actually be realistic about sales.
I think you’re really going to like Prog, then. It’s concatenative but focused on ADTs and pattern matching. Abstraction is easy thanks to quotation. I have some neat ideas in mind for an editor, as well, that would do just what you say—display a flow diagram of a program or selection as you edit. Concatenative languages are indeed, as the bland Wikipedia article puts it, “highly amenable to algebraic manipulation” of this sort.
Don't over-edit the vocabulary in the letter or try to get too clever with phrasing. You want to communicate that you can write, so make sure the letter is grammatically correct and well written, but if you find yourself going to the thesaurus to find "the right word" you're taking it too far.

Keep it simple, be polite and use proper grammar and you'll be fine.
I do agree with you, but I think it's a lot harder than you make it out to be.

The issue is domain-specific knowledge. I write tools for developers because I know how developers operate - I am one. Even though there may be a greater need, it would be hard for me to make software for doctors because I don't know what doctors want.

Which isn't to say it can't be done! In fact, it _should_ be done. It just takes a bit more research (of the you-cant-just-google-it kind) than most hackers are used to.
Specification tool for big java program
Hi,

I wonder if someone knows a specification tool for java program. I am a total novice in this topic. I would like to know about tool that is professional and can be used for generating test code automatically.

I heard about Concordion, but don't know if someone ever successfully used it in a big project.

Thanks.
What's wrong with makefiles and why is new Go convention better?
I'd love to hear more about this. What exactly stopping you (or, more precisely, your company) to configure your email sending library and nagios through cfengine, and generate docs from cfengine scripts? (XML is supposed to help with that.)

Also, I don't see the issue with nagios asking apps "you still breathing?". And why does a library know about IPs (if it's strictly a library)?

You raised many interesting points.
I was using the term "smart"/"smartest" largely following the use in the post. You can replace it with the term "relatively competent in the domain being discussed".
Mark, thanks for the post, I really look forward for your nexts posts about negotiation. Don't be discouraged by comments like the one above.

Personally I think negotiation skill is one of career skills that programmers can benefit most of.
Is there a difference (or some way to differentiate) a smart person from a very skilled professional?

I'm asking this question to see if a Smart Person is the byproduct of getting skilled in a different set of areas, and getting very professional and focused in one or two.

I'm certainly not as smart as some fellow HNers here. But, few minutes ago, I have been reading blog posts and emails I wrote 6 years ago. "What a retard I was!"
Same for me. Getting into that type of science in particular.
I assume that the chances for you being sued for your domain are much lower than the chances of Google randomly disabling your account. Which has happened in the past: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=354593 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2798048 - seems that for some of the disabled Google+ account all other Google services have been disabled too. If the registrar steals your domain you would still have the possiblity to go to court to get it back. If Google disables your account you can't do that.

The highest (but still small) risk when having your own domain is that some company claims it has a trademark on the name. But you can mitigate this my (1) using your real name or some other nickname as the domainname and (2) using the .name namespace instead of .com.
http://algo2.iti.kit.edu/stxxl/trunk/FAQ.html

"STXXL container types like stxxl::vector can be parameterized only with a value type that is a POD"

Unfortunately this is a significant constraint that limits the usefulness of this library.
+1 for FiDi -- we at Parse are right on California and Market, as are a lot of other new startups. Being right off of BART and having awesome access to the ferry building and downtown is very convenient. Also, lots of lunch options.
How I built a social game in one week: SwarmFight
There's a big difference between your negotiating counterpart quietly alerting Customs to do a special job when you pass through tomorrow, and rooting every laptop your country makes and sells to everyone in the world.
If you really want to mess with those who choose to violate privacy and other laws whether its corporate idiot or your government..you will figure out that you can fake profiles and data attached to them..

You know how easy it is to fake meta data in a camera image?

The possibilities to make the FBI or CIA or some corporate private investigator look very stupid are endless..

Shall we play a game or two with them and expose their own stupidity? Why not?

It would be the perfect hack and best part non-one gets hurt but we do a great public service..
Given the relative timelines, and my own citation in my quote collection to Feynman, I'm happy assigning a very high probability to it being Feynman.
It's cute, and I could see where it could really help some people out, but overall I think people just need to take more responsibility for demonstrating their romantic interest. Even if it doesn't work out, I think it's healthy to air these things out.
If you use Google Apps (as suggested in my post) the "goodness in terms of security and spam filtering" would be EXACTLY THE SAME as when using plain gmail.com.
I had never heard multiculturalism mentioned in reference to Thiel (I'm no expert on him), but apparently he co-wrote a book called "The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford". Looks like there were 1996 and 1998 editions with slightly different titles. [0], [1]

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Diversity-Myth-Multiculturalism-Politi...
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Diversity-Myth-David-Sacks/dp/09459997...
The example they give of randomly changing one coloring and getting a whole bunch of rectangles makes me wonder if there are any points in that coloring that you could change without destroying the solution.

I doubt there are any, but it probably wouldn't take that long to write a program to check...

EDIT: And after reading this, I'm starting to wonder about other ways to use this solution to search for others, such as swapping two colors:

http://bit-player.org/2009/17-x-17-a-nonprogress-report
I visited my family over the holidays, and over dinner my sister told us about how "accurate" the psychic she occasionally sees is. At first, I thought she was trolling, since she went to college, and my family is educated.

Her proof was that the psychic told her that she was going to undergo some kind of career change in the next six months to a year, then she did. My sister is in her mid-20s, so I said, "Of course she said that, she is playing the numbers. A career change could be anything from a promotion, to changing jobs, to a reassignment, to moving locations. It's a safe bet that somebody in their 20s will experience career changes every year." At which point, my sister told me I didn't know what I was talking about, because she had been working for the same company for six years, and only left after that. I was aware that she had changed jobs at the company a number of times, but didn't think it was worth pursuing.

She continued though, and told me that a hypnotist had come to her office Christmas party to put on a show, and explained to her that people like me are not susceptible to hypnotism or the paranormal because engineers aren't able to free their energies or spirit or some such tomfoolery. Secretaries and managers are usually the best at freeing themselves. She went on, explaining that the hypnotist "hypnotized" the audience to select the person they would have on-stage, by convincing them to raise both of their arms, then selecting the person that raised their arms under hypnosis the highest, because they are the one with the greatest connection. Of course, she had the greatest connection to the hypnotist, so was called on stage. At that point, all I could do was laugh and exclaim "Seriously?" Our dad just kind of shook his head. Hold your hands up high if you're a sucker.
So can it be possible that some providers use these terms interchangeably? One says "it's managed because we take care of the hardware", the other says "it's unmanaged because we don't take care of the software." Seems confusing to me.

I definitely understand why you would want to take responsibility for OS upgrades and the like.
My 21-year-old roommate sells security devices on a website he updates in Dreamweaver. Parts of it break on my 9" screen. Makes good money.
Although I think you're right that there is less variation, they are not all binary. -, +, & and * all have unary and binary variants, while !, --, ++, ~, new, delete and delete[] are always unary, and of course the ternary operator is always ternary.
"Yeah me too". Solution: "I'm serious" button after first match a.k.a two-step matching.
So what if it takes a bit more research or even a lot more research? If you want to go into business to make money by building domain-specific software, not knowing the intricacies is not only inexcusable but should very much be frowned upon as downright lazy.
And more relevant - how do you ensure that you will keep this respect?

While I'm very sympathetic to your business model, it's still a loss-leader for your business offering. Can you guarantee that you will never attempt to monetize this (probably) huge and growing dataset? Tomorrow, next year, and (especially) after a private equity manager starts waving cheques with many zeros on them in under your nose?
> A typical Rails application can take about 30 seconds to load

Typical? Wtf kind of codebases have you been working on?

The largest Rails app I've worked on had 250 models and 200 controllers. It took 12 seconds to load the Rails environment on Ruby 1.8.

Rails 3.1+ on 1.9.3 is pretty darn fast, even for medium-sized apps (50+ models).
That's fair. I suppose I just wanted to point out that they are by no means required. There are plenty of people who go above and beyond and yet eschew the more "social" aspects of coding.
Richard Feynman said something to the effect of your first paragraph which stuck with me:

"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing — that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."
Yep, that's exactly right. I remember at the time Dave Perry seemed to be everywhere 24/7 pumping Messiah as something that would change gaming forever. Back then the developer fights were common, with tech arguments between id Software (Paul Steed instigating) / Epic / Shiny / whomever.

In the end, it didn't sell particularly well, it cost a lot to make, and it had a lot of performance problems.

Have to wonder who thought a game about a cherub named "bob" would sell like crazy.
Cool, thanks for the replies.
The people who get things done in this world are often, but not always, cocksure bastards who never second-guess themselves. They may live their entire lives in epistemological error but they don't give a rat's ass since they succeed at laying wenches, closing sales, advancing up the corpolitical greasepole, etc. Hell, they don't even actively not-care about the truth. The thought that they may be wrong doesn't even enter their minds in the first place. They are at philosophical unconscious incompetence. They just don't care.

We can learn from this. Smart people should be winning! at life, after all. Maybe a combo of strategical luminosity and tactical cocksurity can be found? :)

As a matter of fact, this struggle to avoid the extremes of reckless delusion on one hand and self-sabotage on the other, is one of my major life motifs.
One important point not raised in the article is that this is not only a security decision.

Yes, from a security standpoint each single one of us might be better off with using Gmail, instead of using their own mailserver or a service provided by a local company.

But when looking at the society as a whole the worst that could happen is giving a few companies a monopoly on our communication. Especially when we don't need to do this, because we already use a distributed and decentralized network.

For me the second argument is at least as important as the first one. But I fully understand when people don't look at the wider implications of their decisions and just use the easiest route.
I remember having a similar realization.

When most people say that something is true, they don't mean, "I think that's an accurate reflection of reality." -- what they really mean is, "It is in my interest to accept that as true."

A lot of things made sense after that.
Asking questions of yourself is a good way, in my opinion, to counter the Dunning-Kruger effect, should you unknowingly suffer from it.
I don’t think of myself as the HN mainstream, but probably few do.

I synthesize these positions on Gladwell.

#1, he’s not a scientist and not a science journalist. He doesn’t apply any rigor to speak of: at best, he’s telling suggestive and insightful stories, not proving or really getting to the bottom of anything. He leaves out huge amounts of important information, especially when it would get in the way of making a catchy point. This is extremely irritating when it’s implied – usually by his readers, not by him – that he’s doing something more.

But #2, he’s good at what he does. If you approach it as engaging stories that highlight quirky research, it’s entertaining and thought-provoking. I’ve learned very little from Gladwell per se, but I’ve learned a lot from following up on the actual science that he refers to. That’s valuable.

So I think it’s fair to say that Gladwell’s scholarship is shoddy, and his writing is shallow and over-popularized and mostly anecdotal. But if you take him as a good storyteller rather than a bad scientist, it can still be worth reading.

If you want to like Gladwell but don’t, you might prefer John McPhee. He’s a little more on the hard journalism side of the science popularizer spectrum.
This is an example of a rule that is intertwined within the fabric of American society - Never take the blame.

At least not in a public place or where it will go on record. Even if its your fault, you regret what happened and want to make amends. Even in that case its better to push off all blame and then go ahead and make amends.

This goes for everything from car insurance to dealing with any government body to dealing with corporate workplace issues to dealing with Americans in general.

Recently I was struck by this thought when Rex Ryan took the blame for the JETS awful season and in doing so a lot of sports writers questioned whether that was wise because it could mean that another losing season would mean the end of his tenure. A lot of writers mentioned casting the blame on others was a better action for the coach to have followed. Or even to have said nothing at all.
This seems like a weekend project building on top of twilio.
\u is utf16 so you should be able to append two characters to get something in the extended unicode set outside ucs16. You dont seem to handle this; not sure how many parsers do.

Also not sure you handle the case where the json invalidly terminates in the middle of a \u sequence.

Just from a quick glance though, may be wrong.
I can really recommend Iran Rowland's book "The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading" to anyone who wishes to arm themselves against psychics and other charlatans.
http://www.thecoldreadingbook.com/
If you can do arbitrary manufacturing, why not just build fiber trunks that are completely open?

It would probably only work if the manufacturing could be done in place, and it might get exciting if things started growing defense systems.