skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is anyone here under the impression that Mashable is journalism? It's a muckraking tech fire hose on par with many tumblogs. Yeah, they have a bigger staff, but I don't think I've ever seen anything come out of Mashable that wasn't editorial or commentary.
In fact there's ample reason to think that humans are at the lowest threshold of intelligence that makes a technological civilization possible, because if we'd reached that threshold earlier in our evolution, we'd have created civilization then instead of now. There's probably plenty of room above us.

While I don't disagree that humans are essentially at the lowest level of intelligence that make civilization possible (else why would it have taken hundreds of thousands of years to get started?), this claim has no bearing on the claim that the upper limit of intelligence is immediately above human genius level. You seem to be assuming that there is necessarily a wide gap between the lowest civilization-producing level and the highest practical level, and that's not at all clear. Some (weak) evidence that we're already near the top can be found in the higher incidence of mental health issues among very intelligent humans: perhaps this is a result of a limit on complexity rather than merely a feature of human brains.
What are you talking about? This app runs on 2.2 (froyo) and up, phones or tablets.
A Tale of Two Cultures: Hackers and Enterprise Developers
Is American stealing world's doctors?
How to go about designing Data structures/models for a large program?
I am writing a chess program but my experience with writing large programs from scratch is limited, and I would like to get better at it. Can anyone suggest me good practices/best way to start with the design of the classes and data structures.
Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Announce 2012-2013 Season
> I want every vote counted by humans.

Then you have to trust these humans to count accurately. Many people don't.
I feel like this is not so hard to do with NodeJS and Web sockets.

Small NodeJS app that serves the client connection webpage and acts as a proxy. Set the proxy locally, When you get requests instead of fetching them ask the socket for the data and headers.

On the client just do an XMLHttpRequest for whatever and shove it back down the web socket to the proxy server. Done, Right? I'll do a little experiment when i have time...
This is because Java cache the Integer objects from -128 to 127.

So while it is correct that you should probably be more careful when dealing with Autoboxing (or don't use it at all if you can...), there's one more layer deep that the article did not touch: the actual implementation of Java.

http://www.docjar.com/html/api/java/lang/Integer.java.html

Observe the IntegerCache inner class in particular:

"Cache to support the object identity semantics of autoboxing for values between -128 and 127 (inclusive) as required by JLS.

The cache is initialized on first usage. The size of the cache may be controlled by the -XX:AutoBoxCacheMax=<size> option."
The problem with this strategy is that people can create boxes filled with votes in advance. Add/remove/swap boxes to shift the election in your favor.

Also when there are reports of voter fraud it's really difficult to figure out who cheated and in which regions/districts. You can't tell by the ballots (pieces of paper) if they got there legitimately.

Electronic voting, if done right, should be a lot safer than a paper ballot system.
I contacted them; but I don't see how I can implement this in my city.

I think the key to something like this ever taking off at the national level is smaller progressive towns impelementing it locally and people eventually demanding it.
Navigation bar using Adobe Photoshop
While the post makes good points, and I can't really say with absolute certainty that I won't get burned out in the future, I'd rather at least enjoy it for some period of time rather than be tired of it from day one. I know that I won't enjoy pretty much any other profession, and with my goal in mind to maximize the enjoyment in my life, I still believe programming is the optimal choice.
My road to lisp has not been without bumps but after initially being inspired by pg's essays and reading the highly motivating Practical Common Lisp[1], quicklisp has greatly lowered the barrier to write real programs for me, installing packages is really easy now, if they are in quicklisp!

Cool interview with Zach, he's also extremely active in the #lisp IRC channel, can't thank him enough.

Regarding Clozure CL pointed out by Mark Watson: there was an "end user" app (though tiny) announced written with CCL available though the mac app store: Picture Window [2] Learning Common Lisp and Cocoa at the same time is very exciting, I hope to see more apps like that in the future (working on one myself).

[1] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

[2] http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/picture-window/id507262984?mt...
Ask HN: Should I Go To College?
About Me:
I am a junior in high school. I have a 2.0gpa because I am somewhat lazy. I get A's on all my tests. I have $125,000 in the bank so money isn't really a problem. I want to be a programmer, probably in Java.

My Questions:
Should I go to college?
Do I have to go to college to get a good job?
Is it worth it to go to college?

Thank-You for your time and insight.
Web Design Oman 
Web Design Oman - MintTwist, the website design agency for Oman specialising in web design, e-commerce, SEO and online marketing in Oman
My statement was not meant to be factual but rather indicative of a certain cynicism on my part about what I think the motivations behind people starting (the vast majority) of companies are. Sorry that wasn't clear.
You do the configuration once in your life. Then you can just copy your basic template between projects that suits yours style.
I don't believe that success is a life long habit for most people. I think successful people learn how to be successful through trial and error.

There are formulas for success and failure. Some people learn faster, some people learn slower; some lessons are better than others and get you there faster; some people are fortunate enough to be able to fail in more modest ways while they're simultaneously being successful in the grand scheme of things (Zuck). Sometimes randomosity bails you out of stupid choices, sometimes you hit the floor hard; the choice to learn or not is up to the individual either way.

Some people become successful early, and fail late. The list of former Forbes 400 members is littered with these people. Some people fail early, and succeed later, and for the rest of their lives, having learned their lesson.

In my experience, failure can feel a bit like living through a great depression. You become emotionally reflexive based on what you've learned / digested. Same way people learned to be extremely frugal after The great depression. If you learn the right lessons from it, your reflexes will keep you from making similar stupid mistakes later on. I don't know how you really learn those lessons without experiencing them (even if you do so in the 'fail small and often, while succeeding overall' manner).
The second moreso. That writers can "accidentally" write these worlds, and they and most males in the audience don't even give it pause.

But what about current day women. You think they'd be thrilled watching that? How it to your sisters, mom, aunts, grandmas. See what they think of it, if they have a more visceral reaction.

It just further spreads archaic sex and gender stereotypes.

For further evidence, here's one female weighing in
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3686674
She doesn't seem thrilled
A Very Quick Comparison of Popular Languages for Teaching Computer Programming
I had the same issue, and seriously: buy more RAM. A 2x4G kit from Crucial cost me $45 shipped.
Global Feedback on Design
Want more bang for your buck from prescription drugs? Drink grapefruit juice
After 10 years of coding in PHP both OSS and products, creating 2 frameworks used in production on numerous websites, I still wonder. Why do you need to stuff interfaces in the mix? Why such complex patterns for something so simple?

What I do and it works very well, is that I register plugins, callbacks in the application configuration:

$cfg = ['plugins_for_foo' => ['callback_one', 'callback_two',
[$Obj, 'three']]];

Then in the code I get my configuration like this:

$callbacks = Conf::get('plugins_for_foo', array());

And I can iterate over them and activate them. It is fast, flexible, you can easily test the callbacks in your unit tests, etc. Note that this is the standard approach to load components with Django.
What would you suggest as an alternative? Not bundle flash? Then people will just download it anyway and many will end up with an old vulnerable version. At least with this the user can stay updated automatically with Chrome. The alternative is a net security net negative.
A small free tool for OS X I found useful is Sim Daltonism[1]

Sim Daltonism is a color blindness simulator for Mac OS X. It filters in real-time the area around the mouse pointer and displays the result ” as seen by a color blind person ” in a floating palette.

If anybody has information about how people with limited color vision perceive the aesthetical side of colors (e.g. how well colors go together in a web site palette) I would love to read about it.

[1] http://michelf.com/projects/sim-daltonism/
I think you should consider adding their 'follow this couple' feature. People like following, imitation is human nature.
Yuck, what a nightmare. 1000 should equal 1000.
Great to see Zach getting some airtime. He's done a wonderful thing for Common Lisp users everywhere. Quicklisp's simplicity of use is deceptive. There were at least two previous attempts to create a "CPAN for Common Lisp" -- I'm thinking of ASDF-Install and Daniel Herring's LibCL, and I think there were more I've forgotten -- but none of them were as painless as Quicklisp.
It's still a foundation. Why would they change it?
How overpriced is education in America? Per year...

For a UC in California (public school): ~$31000 on-campus, $28000 off-campus (see http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/paying-for-...).

For a private school in California, ~$55000/year on-campus.
Microsoft Applied Sciences Group: High Performance Touch
> No, if 10 predictions each have a 10% chance of a false positive, you will always have on average 1 false positive. Whether you test them on the same data or not doesn't matter

That's true.

I should have said it differently. In fact, I'm not even sure that my understanding is correct.

The problem with not using new data to test each new prediction is, that if a scientist wants to show A on data X, but data X doesn't confirm A, the scientist modifies A slightly and now tests A' on X, which is again rejected, and then modifies it again, testing A'' on X, and so on... until the data X actually confirms hypothesis A'''''''!

That's the real problem - using data without a predefined plan for how you will use this data. In the above example, the data that you collected affected your decision-making process, so your results are not independent of the data (and thus not replicable!).
Train 2 Day
One Per Cent: Algorithm finds when a zigzag path is the quickest
Well, that just executes code. That doesn't alter your application flow, unless you do that during runtime at (for lack of a better word) cutpoints. And if you do it there, it's basically Chain of Responsibility, without the "chain can be cancelled" part.

Just because the pattern has a name, doesn't mean it can't be simple. In fact, a lot of the patterns are implemented all over the place under different names and with slight tweaks.

An important point is to understand the difference between the patterns, and know how to identify them. You can call a cow a lion, but it'll still moo just the same...
I wonder why no body had think of all year online secure voting season. Like, GRE tests are taken, you are allowed to vote anytime you want and you will get 10 vote per season ( 4 year etc ). There will be public voting booth for people who do not have internet access, rest all will use some security protected website.
Shouldn't display drivers have a "color blind" mode that would alter colors to make them perceptible? It seems an overkill to ask for the whole web to change.
Apple smartly wanted to avoid another repeat of the iPhone 4S versus iPhone 5 debate. Apple is now controlling their own destiny and reigning in expectations.
Walks And Walking - West Sussex Walks Slindon Estate NT Walking Route
This is called "wireheading", and while it's an interesting possibility, unfortunately what we know indicates that AIs won't do it. See Stephen Omohundro, "The Basic AI Drives" (http://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_drive...). The basic argument is that a sufficiently intelligent mind will make a distinction between the world being a certain way, and it perceiving that the world is a certain way, and that its goals will be defined in terms of the former; and since misperceiving the world impairs its ability to influence it, it will protect its perceptions from corruption.
The Important Distinction Between Fun and Happiness
Seth Godin: Information Density
ZOMBIES, RUN
OK.

One of the core problems the world faces going forwards is resource supply - water, food, fuel. It's long been predicted that the next large-scale war will be over water supplies; there are already a number of simmering conflicts that go back to access to water.

Why are we running out of resources? Significantly, because there's too many people for the resources we have.

Why do we have too many people? Explosive population growth over the past 100-150 years, particularly in the last 50. World population has gone up nearly 50% in 25 years.

What's historically been the best way of arresting population growth? War; kill lots of people. Hmm, not really an acceptable plan. What's the next best? Education, in particular female education.

Now, at its core I agree with your point that the list was under-ambitious. Well, let's refine that - only parochially ambitious. So let's go big. We want a sustainable, long-term end to hunger and world peace.

What do we do for that? Give a man to fish - teach a man to fish. Food parcels and free medicine are a sticking plaster - necessary in the short-term, insufficient in the long-term. Fair trade helps but alone is improving their position at the bottom of the supply chain. Get improved education and access to knowledge though and we enable a long-term culture shift that both better equips the presently impoverished for the future and attacks the root causes of the resource instability that currently so impoverish them.

Which is where projects like OLPC and the Indian tablets are so important, and where (if done properly), the startup idea to replace universities is the biggest and most important on the list. Take it all the way and it's not about knocking down Yale and Harvard; it's about world peace and an end to famine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szNLMtgI7hU

Serco appear to run privatised prisons in the UK and Australia, so I guess not.
(1) I don't have "effects" really; I don't have some delusion that someone other than you is reading this. I am perplexed because you defined a problem as, "if the unwillingness of people to buy copies because they can easily avoid paying, results in these first copies not being produced". That phrasing perplexes me quite legitimately because you have literally said that the problem is "if you won't buy something which does not exist because you can easily avoid paying for it." So I was very cautious to reread the problem in words much closer to what you're now saying -- "that people will not produce goods if they don't anticipate making a profit" -- in an effort to parse the sentence.

(3) No, I mean the British Broadcasting Corporation. You know, those guys who make Doctor Who. They are not funded by a mandatory annual license fee on computer users, and I would not describe them as a state owned software company. Nonetheless, when they produce a new episode of Doctor Who, it rapidly appears on BitTorrent networks.
Rick Santorum in His Liberal Own Words
The lunar base and the flying cars are pointless if your goal is to improve people's lives instead of just satisfying egos.

And the personal robot is already being worked on, but instead of a single humanoid robot (which I always considered to be a bad approach), they're small and specialized.
Thanks for the feedback! Essentially the whole feature set they describe in the article is just a clone of what we're doing and have talked about publicly (and the HowAboutWe founders have been on our app's beta waiting list for quite some time now, so they know of us).

But, we welcome the competition ... lots of couples out there. Nice to have someone help validate the market for us. :)
Yes it's true the apps you mentioned have a unique UI but they don't work reliably, as for example the Facebook and Beez app, I don't use them because they work so bad. Concerning the Foodspotting app I think this is just the boring UI that I was talking about; how can you put a photo as a background for an app?

This really needs to get a step further - well working apps and at the same time well made UI. The only app on wp7 that i've seen combining both is the Sports Tracker which is not my taste of design but at least it has a UI design.
Excellent post. I like seeing advanced PHP stuff here. The ignored step-child of languages around here, it seems.

Even though I'm a bit of an OO snob and use design patterns in my work, I also like the simplicity of WordPress's plugin system. I'm not even sure what it would be called but it's proven to be really effective with thousands of plugins.
There are only so many cars, houses, gadgets and foods humanity needs.

Have you watched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=audakxABYUc ? (Rory Sutherland's TED talk 'Life lessons from an Ad man').

Particularly the note about luxury trains.
I think I might have miscommunicated. I'm not referring to success in contrast to its supposed opposite of failure. Successful people fail. A lot. However, I believe that they do have a habit/mindset of making decisions that benefit them (and, often, others, but always themselves too) rather than hurting themselves.

This is contrasted with the self-sacrifice mindset, where a person makes decisions that will hurt them and benefit other people or no one.

Also, worth pointing out that I never intended to imply that this "lifelong habit" can't be acquired. I'm slowly getting there, and I started from a strong self-sacrificing mindset.
I read the article and thought "awesome", so if someone is already doing it, great! But I clicked through to your site, and I've now closed it without subscribing. Some feedback:

- "Live like a power couple": worst feature ever. I struggle to see how this could be a good feature, and offering this makes me believe you couldn't possibly offer something I want

- $199 a month, for 1 date. Well, one date a month is a bit crap, and $199 is a lot to spend for it. A "nice dinner" date night comes to maybe $120 including taxis, and I could add another $25 to have Exec arrange it if I needed to. (As a startup person, I realize your value is not limited to the value of the date, but you've managed to present the product in a way that I automatically equate "1 date == $199", so this may be a positioning problem)

- I realize your dates are a bit cooler than most, but I want to spend time with the wife, not talking to Chefs and stuff, and not being social with new couples.

- becouply.com is terrible. Becouplydates.com is a much better site, but why are there both? Are you making many becouplys (and so not focussing on the product I want)? Also, becouply.com says you arent launched, it has a twitter feed that has zero relevance to the product ("come see us at #launch", "well done on your acquisition") and has a different price ($149) to the becouplydates.com.
1. The "lazy" will kill you, no matter what you do in the future. Root this out of your character or face a lifetime of disappointment. Take this as advice from your 55-year old self. Build "relentless" and "focus" into your character.

2. College (for me) is where "lazy" was nuked from my character. Claremont McKenna College, FWIW. They laid on the "write a term paper a week in each class" thing and I rose to the challenge. No laziness and prodigious writing ability = the most valuable thing I can point to from college. (The only valuable thing I can point to from high school was learning to type extremely well).

3. "Java" is the wrong target. "Programming" is the wrong target. Think how much computing has changed in 5 years. Imagine 10 years ahead. The stuff you see now is just the entry point into a bigger game.

4. Total World Domination is the right target. Starting with -- yourself. Get rid of that laziness. Half-measures avail us nothing.

5. Getting "A" grades is a bag of shit as an objective. I've hired and fired plenty of employees with high grades and advanced degrees because they couldn't get stuff done. Knowing _why_ (for anything you are doing) is the game in school. Not just knowing _how_ and reflexively giving answers to get a pat on the head and an "A".

6. College may or may not help you. Read www.calnewport.com for what in my opinion is the better approach to school.

7. (I would also tell myself as a junior in high school that maybe certain things shouldn't be ingested but that's another story entirely and probably doesn't apply to you).
so i heard that java applets are similair vulnerability mess , so why not also bundle java with chrome? for net gain.
People who turned evil over time are still evil.
I've been doing that for years on Opera. Just gotta right click a search bar, give it a few letters to ID it and off I go with 'w pi' to search wikipedia. I do not miss having to go through google first if I just use the search bar, or even going to wikipedia.org or wherever first.
Atomic Object is expanding to Detroit
Well it worked out for the best! No worries. But I know there are people who are actually thinking that.

Sarcasm: it's dangerous (but sometimes useful) on the internet ;)
A nice addition to my slime/Emacs environment (which is really a rediscovery for me after almost 10 years in IDEs like Eclipse) was iimage[1]. It converts image file name in the REPL to inline images, makes it very easy to prototype functions that create some graphics. E.g. I use vecto[2] (also written by Zach!) to produce a disk usage visualization and it shows up directly below the function call in Emacs :D

[1] http://www.netlaputa.ne.jp/~kose/Emacs/iimage.html

[2] http://www.xach.com/lisp/vecto/ or (ql:quickload 'vecto)
@jakejake Wordpress uses a procedural version of the mediator pattern (just like Drupal's hooks).

As I said in my post, just because an application doesn't use classes, doesn't mean it's not OOP or borrowing OOP patterns (and Drupal is actually a pretty good example of that).
That was just a selection of ambitious ideas. I didn't mean to imply it was a complete list; I never imagined anyone would think I meant that.

I almost added a section on robots, but the talk was already long enough and I figured 7 was enough to illustrate my point that ambitious startup ideas are frightening.
Why functional programming matters (aka MapReduce for humans)
Reminds me of this TED talk by David Bismark from 2010: E-voting without fraud (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/david_bismark_e_voting_with...)
UC must be one of the expensive schools. The average isn't too bad:

"In 2011-12, public four-year colleges charge, on average, $8,244 in tuition and fees for in-state students. The average surcharge for full-time out-of-state students at these institutions is $12,526."

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html
Google has full control over the Flash that is included in Chrome.
Oh - so he's going to tell the truth then? I guarantee he has confidentiality agreements about all of that - so I don't believe anything he says for a second. Loopt was a total bust for VC returns.