skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"The one property I really love about UTF8 is that you get a free consistency check as not every arbitrary byte sequence is a valid UTF8 string."

You don't get this at all using UTF-8. You only get it if you attempt to decode the string which even something like strlen doesn't do. Strlen will happily give you wrong answers about how many characters are in a UTF-8 string all day long and never ever attempt to check the validity of the string. Take your valid UTF-8 and change one of the characters to null, now it doesn't work in many circumstances with 'UTF-8' code.

Also, should the free consistency check ever actually work you're in a bigger pickle as you now have to figure out whether the string is wrongly encoded UTF-8 or someone sent you extended ASCII.

I did a lot of work with unicode apps. I used to have a series of about 5 strings that I could paste into a 'UNICODE' application and have it invariably break.

One was an extended ASCII string that happend to be valid UTF-8 sans BOM :)

One was a UTF-8 string with BOM and has 0x00 inside :) (I call this string how to tell if it was written with C)

One was a UTF-8 string with a BOM :)

One UTF-8 string with a some common latin characters, a couple japanese, and a character outside the BMP.

Two UTF-16 strings in LE/BE with and sans BOM.
Your tl;dr is misleading, doesn't represent the thrust of the article, cherry picks nits, and makes assertions that are contradicted with evidence in the article (e.g. UTF-16 is not fixed length).
Richard Stallman Joins Free Network Foundation as an Advisor
PHP is an abbreviation for Pretty Horrible Everything.
12 Funniest ‘Animals Being Dicks’ [GIFS]
On Startups and Starcraft
The debate is caused by the binary term "bubble". Neither answer (yes or no) is correct. A better question might be "how exuberant are we getting?" (anyone around in 1996 wil recognize that term)
Where CISPA’s Going: Everything You Need to Know
David is from CVUT/Open Informatics - http://oi.fel.cvut.cz/en/home. I'm not sure about Tomas. I met him some time ago when they were working on a web app with David. These guys are really passionate about building things on the web, that's for sure :)

Would you mind getting in touch? My mail should be in my profile. It's always nice to meet people from HN in Prague :)
To all the haters
If I were but so lucky. It sounds like he has plans to help the world with his gift too so good on him.
This is horrifying. :-(
> The "shrapnel" would consist of lightweight scraps of carbon fibre and sheet metal

I suspect that people who are concerned about shooting down planes over London are worried less by the debris of the missile, and more by that of the target.
Donate plasma. 50 dollars a week for two 3 hour periods of your time. Plus, you can take a book with you.
UTF-8 is explicitly designed in such way that unix API dont have to care about it and such that lexicographic ordering of utf-8 encoded byte streams is same as lexicographic ordering of unicode code point vectors (which arguably almost never is what you care about when sorting text strings). Both of these features are result of conscious design and not some random coincidence.

As for sorting text strings of any kind (which has mostly nothing to do with unicode), you have to care about what user expects, which is dependent on locale and sometimes even on user's preference. Algorithms to do text sorting are for each separate locale mostly non-trivial, but fortunately can be generalized into one relatively straight-forward algorithm (similar to unicode normalization) involving pretty large database and some special cases.

When you are sorting bit strings you are sorting lexicographically, but that is usually not what you should be doing.
The principle applies elsewhere, too. He's right - tailor your resume.

Also, make sure what you rock at is big and clear and up-front and featured. Because you hope your resume is being read by somebody who doesn't just read resumes all day.

Then put keyword soup at the bottom for recruiters, if you need to.
This is just so they can favor Samsung Galaxy phones. We save their ass in the Korean war and prevent North Korea from using nuclear weapons Seoul. And, this is how they repay us; typical ingrates.
A bit of an oversimplification, no?

There are plenty of startups of the "lots of users, show ads" variety, some of which might actually make viable businesses, most of which probably won't.

The trouble here is overvaluation - there are plenty of startups which do sell a product or service for money, but are overvalued and over-hired. I can imagine many startups here that would make viable, profitable, 10-person shops, but instead are swimming around with 100+ engineers. The fact that they have revenue and monetizable product isn't going to save them when the bubble bursts.
How to Leverage Applicant Tracking Systems To Land a Job
Nowhere is safe in EVE Online as Goonswarm suicide-bombs galactic trade hub
"This site is using HTML5 and is compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer"

Oh really? It IS compatible? I guess I will wait for your site to load...

10 minutes later

I guess you lied :(

(Work has IE as default)
I cannot vote you down in my head hard enough simply because you have completely discounted the entire sexual experience of many women by relegating female sexuality to the emotive realm.

Women use and enjoy porn the same as men do - visual to physiological and to release. Period.

Porn is beneficial to women in many ways as consumers. Until people wake up to this, revenue streams and culture (of consent and equality, experience and discourse) alike will be hobbled.

Your heart is in the right place. But you're missing the rest of reality, as is this entire HN discussion.
I'll be your first customer :-)
Also worth reading: http://andrewhy.de/resumes-for-startups/
How Great Entrepreneurs Create Their Own Luck
Imagine if all the stories in your Facebook News Feed were 12 months old. People would be storming the steps of Congress, demanding change.

To play devil's advocate, the time lag forces your conversations to strive to a higher standard of quality, comprehensiveness, correctness, and context than Facebook updates could even be compared to.

Then again, striving for the higher standard also invents pseudosciences, bad stat, and outright fraud.

In short, I don't think the solution is to replace the paper with something instantaneous. I agree that instantaneous (public) communication could be better used in the academic community, but there's a trend that way already as blog posts begin to signal a certain kind of good advisor.

I especially don't agree that search engines have any business replacing peer review.
Right. I want to give others the freedom to use my software in propietary ways, so I put my software under a BSD license. This means I can't use GPL-licensed libraries.
It's still indexing as far as I can tell.
There are some very strong reasons why arcs dominate and they're not all financial.

1) People get bored and need change. This can be partly satisfied by a larger loop that varies the gameplay mechanics, one method being "exotic gameplay" (such as bonus levels).

2) People need closure and the feeling that they've finished a task. A visibly endless task with no goal is a thankless task.

3) People get satisfaction in closed cause-and-effect chains (and have limited working memory space to process them), by which I mean converting a short string of events into a story.
Yes but those two bytes will be in the same order regardless of the endianness of the system.
This infographic is great at putting the fed budget in perspective: http://deathandtaxesposter.com/
tl;dr - mostly "defense"
Sounds like an excellent in-comment writing exercise.

Zack's Resume (ala Justin Kan):

If I could, I would spend all day rolling around in data. I have fond memories of spending a weekend graphing the comments of top posters on Hacker News[0]. In the next week or two, I will be opening a pull request for d3.js for an easy way to do fisheye distortions on geographic maps[1]. I got a beating over winter break trying to convert the R project into JavaScript via emscripten[2].

Hire me so I can make your data beautiful[3].

[0]https://github.com/zmaril/HN-Visual-Comments

[1]http://mbostock.github.com/d3/

[2]https://github.com/zmaril/emscripten/tree/herecomesdrtran

[3]https://www.odesk.com/users/~~80bea7ba2750c34b (Shameless misdirecting plug)
Why games are not art
Arch is not easy, but is my choice (Dell Vostro). Check the you hardware compatibility on the wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Laptops
Your inequality is backwards.
I can't speak generally, but in my case it's not primarily a cultural issue. I also spend a decent amount of time in urban Malaysia, and the cultural gap to that (from the east coast US, where I grew up) is a much further jump than I get coming here to France; but I'm interacting in English there, and I'm more comfortable if confrontation arises than when speaking French.

I've also traveled elsewhere (fairly widely in India), and the need for confrontation does arise (being a tourist in any hugely-trafficked area makes you a nice fat target if you can't stand up for yourself), but I got the hang of it -- again, speaking English. France is ridiculously tame, by comparison... but it's been here where I've had to relearn how not to get scammed.

I think the real problems were mentioned in other comments: added latency, and lack of gut emotional connection to the words. (Interestingly, the cultural-gap-doubt I mentioned -- "is this normal behavior?" -- applies to travel in places where I don't speak the language at all, like eastern Europe, but the latency doesn't, since I'm just sticking with English in my head).

Side note #1. I really bristle at the arguments (and terminology) about "feminization" of men; there uglier terms for this idea, but in any form it's offensive. The idea that any trend of men being less aggressive, dominating, and verbally or physically violent is NEGATIVE just blows my mind. There's a huge difference between calmly standing up for yourself (an admirable action in a man or woman) and strutting around with your fists always at the ready and a sneer on your mouth.

Societies in general are better places with fewer of the latter wandering around and breaking each others' noses. And most folks who are succeeding in life according to my definitions have far more social sophistication.

Side note #2: It's not that hard to cross a road in any country. If you've never been there before, just spend a few minutes observing people and cars, and do what works locally. Dunno how this has anything to do with gender or culture, though I do see Americans overseas who seem to think they haven't left America -- that may apply as a cultural failure.
Am I correct in interpreting this post as saying that generalists don't get hired at startups, and that you should optimize your resume to look like a specialist? That seems pretty counter-intuitive, since at an early stage startup, employees end up wearing many hats.
In some cases, it's even worse. Low end netbooks running Chrome will load the page and then the entire machine locks up as the WebGL starts rendering and takes over the weak GPU. Easy way of DOSing someone is to send them a WebGL link if they're on a weak computer.
On a somewhat related note: Why do 99% of the things that are packaged by Ubuntu (or any distribution) need to be packaged at all, let alone by the distribution?

A lot of the lack of focus (and fragmentation) in Linux comes from people duplicating each others' work. There is absolutely no need to have hundreds - thousands? - of developers spending their valuable time packaging up software when the app developers could do it just as well - or better, on account of knowing the software that they are packaging. People who work or volunteer for the OS developer should instead be writing new features for (and generally improving) the user experience of their respective distributions, not taking other peoples' software and making it work like it should already.

Two words: app bundle. Developers handle their own packaging. Bundles include dependencies. The end.
What do you do when your "Great Idea" gets implemented by someone else?  
I am sure a lot of app-developers have been through this problem. You work your ass off on an idea for 6 months, and get the product almost ready to be shown off to investors and work on your value proposition and start working on your elevator pitch... And then, all of a sudden, you have an "FML" moment, when you see new app on the app-store, which uses the same idea as the one you had been working on (it may have a few differences, but it will core-value & working being similar to yours).<p>Now it makes me feel like an idiot on why I had not thought of this sooner (like 2 years back & be the one to introduce this idea first), and you kind of start losing motivation and focus and decide to work on a different idea. And Half-way across any new idea, I am pretty sure, another person would have already implemented. I might be a bit pessimistic with this post, but this is the third time that I had started working an idea and mid-way I see the idea already out there... and I don't plan on quitting ! I really want to launch the application and prove my value proposition to investors and pitch - but like I had explained before - its been already implemented ! My application (I strongly believe) has a better value proposition than the competitor, but it will take me at least 8 more months to get the product out. By that time, the competitor might also bring in newer ideas and grow further ...<p>What do you guys do when something like this happens to your application ? By now you all would know the "value of time", and how important it is that you work on something worth-while and innovative ! How do you guys cope up when a competitor emerges with a full-fledged product when you have been working your ass-off on the prototype ? Would you guys continue working on the product or start working on newer ideas (back to square 1) ?? Any suggestion or experiences on your part would definitely help me, and everyone else who faces the same problem !
Apple is a company, not a mind reader. How are they to know where to funnel the money except where the law tells them?
Hiya! Sorry it took a bit. (I've been fighting with taxes.) So...

- Signup: I was a little surprised when it sent me directly to Dropbox to signin. I thought it was an error, but realized it was asking me to signin so I could authenticate your service. Then I authenticated and was faced with your price. I don't think this is the right way to do it. I know you're trying to test the viability of your product (separate from your price) but I think there's more going on here.

First, you didn't warn me about a price with the exception of mentioning a "subscription" and a 7-day guarantee. Waiting until after authorization frustrates me because if I didn't want to signup, now I have to go back to dropbox and cancel my authorization there (instead of just closing the page and moving on with my life).

And even though you're using an inverted pricing model (subscription price grows with wide-spread use), you should use that to create a sense of urgency to signup faster instead of hiding it after authorization. Use demand to compel them to try sooner by showing the raising price up-front before they authorize Dropbox.

- Then there's the issue of permissions. Because the first experience with your service via Dropbox is "Give this random app FULL access to your ENTIRE dropbox." I think it's a lot to ask someone when they just want to edit their text files with your service. It could help if you prepare them before sending them to the authorization funnel with a warning/explanation screen.

+ The app is incredibly snappy and a pleasure to use.

+ The search bar is helpful even if it wasn't immediately obvious that it was search. I think it was easy to discover though. Maybe make it robust enough to support fuzzy search (a path of app/js/main.js could be found by searching for "appjmain") and masking (*? characters).

- PLEASE put some basic file handling functionality. (Delete, rename, move would be helpful...) Anyone editing dropbox text files will probably want these functions as well. (If they're there, I couldn't find them.) It also wasn't clear how to "close" a file aside from switching away from it.

+ Refund seemed to be cake. I'll let you know if I have trouble getting the funds back. (Big fan of stripe.js, too!)

Hope this feedback helped. And again, sorry for the delay.
Juegosjuegos
Juegosjuegos es el mejor sitio para poder jugar online, hay muchos juegos y juegos, los juegos juegos son todos de accion, estrategia,juegos de animaciones y muchos mas
Redis - Open Source from Microsoft
sorry all, 'Memory Quota Exceeded.' On a bus, will have to fix this when I've got real Internet.
I wouldn't be surprised if he were one of the many kids hacking since his early teens, and has already covered a lot of that before college.
How To Disable Or Bypass The Facebook Social Reader
Never heard of HelenOS till now. Reminds me of Minix. Is that about right?
Twitter’s secret bid for Instagram led Facebook to pay up
"When you are sorting bit strings you are sorting lexicographically, but that is usually not what you should be doing."

That's my point about it being bullshit, it sounds like a feature you might want, but honestly it's useful to very few people.
If viewing a web page crashes your OS, seriously, you need to take that crap back and get a refund.
You can come to whatever conclusion you like, but the fact is Zynga has earnings. Read Fred Wilson's comments in this thread if you're still confused.
Excuse me, I said?

Where? Provide me a link.

Here is a hint. The point about creation myths was brought up at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3901527 by someone named ars. I registered an objection. You then told me that virtually every religion in the world is an example and gave an extensive list. I demonstrated that the Catholic faith stands as an example of a religion with a creation myth that is not really core to the religion.

As for qualifications, anyone can talk about religion, it is up to you whether you discuss it intelligently. I would suggest that you start with developing the skill of being able to correctly note who said what, then work up to the skill of being able to give references backing up claims that you choose to make. (It helps when you don't make sweeping claims.)
Essential Tools for Web Administrators
How Billionaire Asteroid Miners Make Money -- Without Mining Asteroids
Shame. It's not working on Safari 5.2 beta (Lion 10.7.3); nor does it work in Opera, or any of iOS browsers. But is fine on both Chrome and Firefox...

I'm sure Safari supported WebGL...
> Overall, startups are looking for employees who are exceptional in the one key thing that they will be doing

Key - in my opinion - being the operative word. In other words, you may be doing many things, but how good you are at those things aren't as relevant as how good you are at this key thing.
NSFW: Reddit Women Are Getting Naked for Bitcoins
This is the resume that has gotten me at least a call-back from every startup I have ever sent it to: [paraphrased since I type the email every time anew]

Hi,

I'm a coder from Slovenia.

I like writing JavaScript and Python. I'm learning Haskell.

Here is my github: http://github.com/Swizec

I have a blog at http://swizec.com

Most recently I did cool thing X <relevant link, this changes every couple of months>

Cheers,
~Swizec
I'm not an SEO expert and have no familiarity with Google's page rank algo, but if I had to take an educated guess:

100k of content from one domain would probably never just spring up overnight. It would probably be best to publish your content from most linked to least linked over a period of time that makes sense. This way, the content that is gradually posted is not likely to have dead links (while the target is still waiting in the queue to be published). You're still probably going to have some negative impact if all the content links to itself and nothing from the outside linking in. And I understand Google's crawlers now detect organic content generation (comments, likes, linkbacks, etc) so if that sort of interaction makes sense in your content, you might get negatively affected if it's not there as expected.

Just some thoughts and take it with a grain of salt, of course! :)
Unrealized potential earnings translate into a higher P/E, they do not make the entire concept of P/E invalid.

Your flawed way of thinking is exactly what prevails in a bubble.
Yet another Brazilian here and you mean white collar thieves.
All the damn time I'm using several languages.

Then UTF (and EUC's) are the way to go.

It's not like you have to use the same encoding all the time.
The time you put in is a sunk cost & you can't get it back, so don't feel bad about it. You can either outcompete your competitor, or you can pivot into a new method on the same idea.
> The strangest thing about Unicode (any flavor) is that NULL, aka \0, aka "all zeros" is a valid character.

This is either false or misleading, depending on what you're talking about.

In UTF-8, '\0' is all-bits-zero, one byte, and means the same thing as it does in ASCII. It cannot occur in the encoding of any other character.

In UTF-16, the byte 0x00 may validly occur within the encoding of a character that is not '\0'. The same is true for UCS-4.

This is a big reason UTF-8 is as popular as it is.
Thank you. I've been quite sceptical of 10000 hours of Deliberate Practice, etc; esp. after seeing Tiger Woods play golf at the age of two : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxPmzIKBris

It's been a long standing tradition to oversell the power of hard work. I believe the word for it is "hopium".
I want to install it on my EEE pc netbook, it seems perfect for a system with low resources
The generalist is the CTO, if they're bothering to hire somebody, they're looking for something in particular you're strong at that they need even if you'll be wearing multiple hats.
"Sniffing is a terrible way to tell what encoding a file is in."

In theory yes, in practice it's an awesome way to find out because the sniffer is more accurate then the webserver/mail client,human etc. Just about every piece of software I've written that has to deal with multiple encodings uses a sniffer, even if the format specifies it it's a good idea to check with a sniffer.
Meet The Startup That's Going To Make Programming A Thing Of The Past
Sorry to not be clear. I meant that I figured out how to get myself well, in part by intentionally avoiding the conventional views of my condition. My son was enormously helpful and my academic record is reasonably respectable. But it was very much a conscious choice on my part to find another answer in part by intentionally putting on blinders.
When you start measuring things, people start gaming them, so for github's sake I hope your project disappears into oblivion.

Klout is the latest major sad example of this phenomenon. People are modifying their Twitter behavior in some fascinating ways to game their Klout score.

However, people love shortcuts, so I'm sure you can refine your service and subscribe clueless HR folks to it.
Yes, most countries try to do this according to local tax/finance laws. The problem with repatriating the funds back into the US is that the capital can be allocated in other countries for better long term effect. Why would any manufacturer pay taxes on income, then taxes on repatriation (into a low-growth economy), just to then export that money the next quarter or year in order to build a new factory somewhere. Just leave the money overseas until you need it.
Cycle Wheels
I'm happy with Bodhi Linux on my netbook. The initial install is ascetic (which I guess is appropriate), but one can easily pull in other apps. E17 provides a beautiful desktop with low overhead, and Bodhi configures it so that things just work. It's based on Ubuntu LTS releases--a 12.04-based version isn't out yet, but when it is I guess you'll have to decide whether it exceeds your comfort level.