skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because many programmers are not in the website business. I'm a scientist, working with long-term simulation models. My problem is trying to find a good model representation of the data that I observe. I keep my eyes open towards probabilistic relational programming languages (such as http://www.openbugs.info ), but so far I haven't found a way to apply it to my work.

Lisp is useful to me (more useful than ruby or C was), predominantly because I can work with emacs/swank/slime and change and query my program while I'm observing its output.
Solar activity linked to climate change
The "How I did it"[0] section of Kaggle's "No Free Hunch" blog is really great for getting practical insights into solving machine learning problems. All the posts are short, and unless you're an expert in ML, will likely give you leads all a lot of new material to learn. The pragmatic bent is what really makes it such an excellent resource, there's a huge gap between the mathematical foundations of ML and the solving real world problems side of it.

0. http://blog.kaggle.com/category/how-i-did-it/
This.

Many people seem to have this Platonic form in their head for "start-up", complete with brogrammers, X-box, and 70-hour work weeks (okay, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but you get this gist -- there are certain aspects with lots of hype right now). While those do companies exist and some of them are now in the spotlight, they are not actually a majority. Don't be fooled by that myth about start-ups. There are plenty of really good young, small start-ups in between that and big co, including some that are still small but already established in their niche, and these seem to be the sweet spot you're looking for.
That's only true when the cost of failure is low. That's a small, but very important caveat.

That being said, I don't buy the "entrepreneurship is very risky" line. I think it's a lot less risky than many other careers that are commonly considered "safe".
Perhaps slightly OT, but I think its easy for us as adults to thing we'll 'know' what our children will find scary or disturbing. The two film scenes from me being 5-6 that I remember always scaring me were things that most adults wouldn't probably find that scary. They were Bruce Banner turning into the Incredible Hulk and the Jabberwocky scene from Alice in Wonderland.

Children are complex, and I think rarely can we assume to know what they'll think. Its why we laugh so much when they say funny things- we can't predict them.
It's one thing for suppliers to leak info on hardware they are supplying, but I'm sure Apple doesn't give inside information such as pricing strategy to them. It's BS. And the fact that it's coming from Digitimes makes it even more suspect.
HN Weekly Top 50
Please upvote. There would be a certain recursive delight in seeing this site itself in next week's results :).
I'm pretty sure I'd not pick that country to live in:
http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Story/A1S...

Short link:
http://goo.gl/0vEQj
New battery system could reduce buildings' electric bills
Ah very interesting possibility. I have no idea how Chrome OS works, or if it's something we should worry much about right now.
Hmm, an interesting notion! I certainly could see the popularity of encouraging others to do something they already like doing [and who but a monk doesn't enjoy the occasional judge fest?]

Would there be any option down the line to find out what the guilt-weight for a particular action was?
Actually I think you're about a factor 10 off there, hardware sales FY11 was $99bn, compared to $57bn in FY10, which is a growth year over year of about 72%, while content saw growth of about 28% from $4.9bn to $6.3bn. As for total impact on revenue, hardware sales made up 91% of total revenue in '11, compared to 88% in '10.
Buttbuttinate the french ambbuttador!
Research in cognitive development shows that brains are REALLY absorbing a lot at 4 and 6. These are YOUNG kids. A four was pooping his pants 18 months and learning to walk 3 years ago.

They'll have more than enough keyboard and screen time when they are 8 or 10 and I'm sure they'll catch up just fine.

I'm having them focus on social skills, becoming polylingual, talking to people, reading actual dead tree books, going to the library, making mud pies and running in fields.

I believe what I'm teaching them are essential technologies that will help them succeed.
There has been discussion from time to time about the time of posting affecting HN responsiveness... sometimes a good post will die for lack of interest during a down time. The hn4d.com site provides a bit of insight into when the activity level on news.ycombinator.com fluctuates.
If you're looking for a hard class, Probabilistic Graphical Models might suit better. The staff says that other than a small portion of the homeworks which they couldn't auto-grade, it's the same material as the real course at Stanford, where it's one of the hardest classes in the graduate CS department.
Word. I should make that a footnote. You're totally right.
Not totally correct. VC firms often have many concurrent funds. So while they're investing out of fund 1, they're raising for fund 2.

And they're using Fund 1 early returns (often paper returns) to make the case for why the LP should invest in Fund 2.

Felix Salmon summed up the phenomena well here:

"In reality, reported returns peak very early on, in month 16 — which just happens to coincide with the point at which the GPs tend to start going out on sales calls, trying to raise their next fund. Of course, at month 16, none of the returns are realized: they’re driven instead by increases in portfolio-company valuations, and those valuations are set by the GPs themselves."

His article here - http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/05/07/how-venture...
Entrenched interests aside, the fact that is costs nothing worries me.

They are asking financial institutions to abandon (or at least partially switch) from the 40-year old ACH to a brand new system that has no means to support itself outside from the host financial institution, namely Dwolla. So, you're asking the banks to make the stability of Dwolla their concern. Is that really a good way to gain confidence?

If they wanted to make this a serious effort, they would have to charge some kind of membership fee, or transaction fee, just to make it an independently viable business. The fees could be as low as possible, but without them, you're left with banks relying on a "free" system. No one is going to take that risk.
One of the pay-fors for the PPACA is a 3.8 additional tax on investment income above a certain level. Successful entrepreneurs looking to take some money out of their business have a good chance of hitting this tax.
Even when all you need is a thin layer over SQL, a language with macros helps you keep your code cleaner, e.g. http://brl.codesimply.net/brl_4.html#SEC31
DCP is de facto standard for a few years now. It is pretty rare to see 35mm copies around except on festivals. It is even rare to see film cameras on set, even on commercials which are usually ripe with, what would one call, 'hipsters'.
The really interesting question (which no doubt some people will think is easily answered as "no one") is, who invented this even earlier than Lincoln?

To reuse Thomas Mann's metaphor, history is like a set of coulisses, walls sliding away to reveal something else behind. Every time you think you've found the bottom of the well, something slides out and reveals another bottomless chasm further on. So it is with ideas.
Taurine
> How do I use the console to interact with my app in the simulator?

Nu builds as a static library. You need to include it in your project and link it into your binary to make it available. Then you'll need to instantiate a NuRemoteHost object after your application has launched.

Once it's running you can launch a Nu interpreter and execute NuRemoteClient to connect to the host you created earlier.
Yeah, look to Bjarne Stroustrup, he gave all of us C++, no questions asked.
Very true. In this case I assumed that burnt bodies of parental figures and traumatic amputations were too much for a 4 year old. It's possible he could have not sweated that at all and been freaked out by the Jawas. Parenting is a gentle balance and a series of judgement calls.
I researched on this a while ago and it is a difficult situation. You can open a company on H1B (not all types though. E.g. Only US citizen/permanent residents can open an S-corp). The problem comes if you actually want to work actively using that company. You are allowed to have equity stake as long as you do not do any work yourself. It is kinda like holding stocks in a company which is allowed to anyone under the sun.
In short, you cannot perform any active duties as part of that corporation. You can perform some volunteer work but that remains in a grey area which only attorneys can help with.
Yep, easy to say failing is cheap on paper. But once you experience it, it feels morally excruciating. Hard to come back from a couple of failures
"I'm unsure of whether the remaining 90% is due to DOM interaction, rendering, or just perceived crappiness but it exists nonetheless."

A mix of all of that. For the DOM part Mozilla is developing new bindings (called Paris bindings) to close the performance gap compared to the competition [1]. Johnny Stenbeck has written two articles which give an interesting insight into past, present and future DOM bindings in Gecko [2][3]. Azure is Mozilla's new rendering API which even in its infancy showed some promising performance improvements [4][5]. Unfortunately work on Azure hasn't been progressing as fast as I had hoped. AFAIK only the canvas element is currently using Azure for rendering, the rest (ui + content) is still based on legacy APIs. On the JavaScript front there's IonMonkey, a brand new JIT compiler developed from scratch [6]. It's still in ongoing development and lacks many optimizations so right now it's slower than Mozilla's current JIT compilers in many tests [7].

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=580070
[2] http://jstenback.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/history-of-mozilla...
[3] http://jstenback.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/new-dom-bindings/
[4] http://blog.mozilla.org/joe/2011/04/26/introducing-the-azure...
[5] http://www.basschouten.com/blog1.php/comparing-performance-a...
[6] https://wiki.mozilla.org/IonMonkey
[7] http://arewefastyet.com/?a=b&view=regress
I'm counting on that.
blogspam - original article:

http://natestpierre.me/2012/05/08/abraham-lincoln-patent-fac...
Doesn't Fair Use cover "commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship."? This site seems non-profit and educational in nature, so I would imagine it would pass the balancing test if push came to shove.
That's true, you only need to be right once. But you may end up being right zero times.
> It still hurts everybody, because it bloats your files with unnecessary opcodes

After compression, what do you figure the cost is? I mean, that looks like a lot of text, but as opcodes it's a few bytes at most before compression. Improving video codecs provides way larger gains than fixing things like this.

> forces the JIT to sift through it and optimize it away

That code is already going to be there, isn't going to burn up a measurable amount of CPU, and only imposes a cost once per load. There are better places to work on improving the product.

> It might only seem like a little turd on the sideway that you can easily step over, but quite evidently in the case of flash little things like these have added up and its performance is now -- in the metaphorical sense -- up to its neck in shit.

That's actually far from clear. I think another way to look at it is that Flash has so many other problems that focusing on this BS clearly isn't worth their (or anyone else's) time. Heck, for all we know some of this has been caused by fixes to other performance problems they've been working on.
Links back to a blog post wherein P.T.Barnum and his "there's a sucker born every minute" line is discussed, but no hint of the number or other identification/content for the alleged patent application[1] is. Intriguing, but dubious.

[1] - ETA.
I can't seem to find discussion of it being done, so perhaps there's some barrier I'm not aware of, but I believe Sweden should be a plausible route for that. A Dane who lives in Sweden for at least two years is eligible for Swedish citizenship under a special citizens-of-other-Nordic-countries fast track, and, since 2001, Sweden permits dual citizenship. In addition, since 2000, the Øresund Bridge makes it possible to live in Malmö, Sweden, while working in Copenhagen across the strait, so you don't even have to fully move to Sweden, just sleep there.
I just tested the vulnerability on one of my websites and successfully managed to get the source of my index.php.

However, I then also tried to run remote code execution and couldn't. The only differences to my stack is that it's running Nginx and hops accross a few proxies (nginx -> varnish -> nginx (for SSL and SSI)) in between. I'm not sure why I can't run -d or -n, but any other options seems to always return the source.

Anyone else running nginx in fastcgi noticing similar? It seems like it's vulernable to the source download, however not remote execution. I'm about to work on a rewrite rule now just in case.

(Not sure why it's vulnerable to the source download, as comment below says, it's set up to not be vulnerable?)

Edit: Not sure what part of my comment deserved the down vote. I trust that what you say is true, in that fastcgi is explicitly set up to negate this vulnerability, but the truth remains that I am experiencing it. If anything I'd have wanted to reach out to other nginx users...

The only way I could ever show that fastcgi under nginx is vulnerable, would be by linking to my live vulnerable server running nginx.. and the wiseman inside of me knows that to be a bad idea! Ha.
There is the Check 21 Act[1] which does not need ACH and is not subject to any of NACHA rules, regulations or fees. Banks already use it and if it is integrated well, it brings down the payment time to 24hr.

Check 21 describes a file format that is used by banks and service providers to upload payment information to FRB.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_21_Act
Then the US finally has as good a banking system as Europe. (About time)
Outbox Replaces Snail Mail With a Digital Mailbox
This is a consequence of attempting to make every piece of new legislation revenue neutral. If the main purpose of the bill will cost money, Congress will look elsewhere to find new revenue. That is how a bill about patient data portability ends up having tax implications for expats.

It would certainly be within the rules for Congress to just pass spending and revenue bills separately, but it would be politically difficult.
I wrote a little post about why I'm so excited about Tributary here: http://ejfox.tumblr.com/post/22615208842

What I think is really cool is how many applications it could potentially have, from education to performance.
"Why are we getting signups but nobody willing to beta test?"

Cool != useful. Maybe nobody wants what you have to offer - it's not compelling enough.
Abraham Lincoln Filed A Patent For Facebook In 1845
Apologies, the original site was having some difficulties which is why I submitted a link to the blog post instead.
Somewhat OT :

I'm a Norwegian-American dual citizen and have often thought of spending a few years working in Norway. I would like to establish rapport with with interesting people and companies, particularly in the startup community.

Would you have any thoughts as to how I could go about getting introduced and involved?

FWIW I'm fully bilingual, although having never actually lived in Norway or attended school there, my writing is probably slightly below college level.
For those keeping score at home:

* argumentum ad verecundiam
* ad hominem
He knows what it means. That's why there is a 'should' in that sentence. GP indicates that using functional in this manner is a poor choice.
This has been one of the top ideas in my list of startup ideas for a while. I feel a bit bummed for not doing it, but I'm glad someone else is doing it. I should really trust my instincts more and just build things I think should exist.

Edit: I'm trying it out now, but keep getting 500 errors. You're probably getting a lot of traffic right now.
the other thing is that norwegian startup community is more or less closed to outsiders who do not speak Norwegian. If you go and look around the majority of communication is in Norwegian in Norwegian startup scene, so Norwegians are left to boil in their juices, without little outside influence. I am sorry guys, but having landing pages translated to Norwegian is not gonna cut it, folks. Any kind of outing will be in Norwegian unless there is some damn foreigner, who does not understand Norwegian, than we will smirk a little and start speaking in English(for the damn foreigner). Oh yeah, and the oil. That too.
Fatuous.

A cam'd version of The Avengers is not a market substitute for seeing the movie in a theater. Of the movies you could possibly consider this way, The Avengers is among the least amenable to substitution via cam'd copies.

All the widely-available torrents of The Avengers are cam'd or equivalent. There aren't screeners circulating.

A DVD rip is a near-perfect substitute for a DVD (or a streamed version of the movie, or whatever).

Nearly 50% of the revenue from motion pictures happens after the theater release, most of it DVDs.

Think what you want to think about torrenting movies, but it should bother you when sites like Torrentfreak insult your intelligence.
> On top of that, Swiftype also allows site owners to pin and unpin different items to the top of their search results.

Obviously a great feature for the site owner. But I'm sure if that's a useful feature for the users. At least Google's results are objective, and wouldn't give me the page generates the most revenue as the first link.
Yeah, we're getting a lot of that from HNers, we're working on a new layout and will talk to some teachers before we push it up. Thanks!
It should. It depends on which reducing function you choose -- the map step doesn't consume the stream, it just set up the mapped function to be called as you reduce. If your reducing function is lazy, then it works on infinite streams.
There are very few standardized systems in the automotive industry, especially for "luxury items". Recently, that's changed with some manufacturers using the same undercarriage to build different cars. It would take a huge change in the mindset of a car manufacturer to buy something like this that could be a competitive advantage.
Why No One will Beat Apple at their Game
Signature Line & Import/Export of MathML in ODT Format in .NET & Java Apps
The long awaited version of Aspose.Words for .NET & Java (11.3.0) has been released. The release of Aspose.Words 11.3.0 provides 127 fixes and new features. A signature line is a special object found in Microsoft Word documents in the drawing layer. The signature line can be interacted with and provides an easy way for the end user to add a digital signature to the document. Signature lines are now fully supported in the model and this feature is retained when converting between flow formats such as DOCX, RTF, and WML with the exception of DOC format which will follow shortly. MathML is the language used to describe mathematical and scientific equations in OpenOffice documents. Aspose.Words now supports import and export of MathML in ODT format and preserves almost all equations during round-trip.
Isn't that the whole point of Lean Startup? Lower the cost of trying which means you get more swings of the bat for a given amount of capital.
I tested the Parse.com documentation (https://www.parse.com/docs/search#stq=xcode) and found some problems with swiftype.

When searching via Chrome, I kept getting a blank content area with no search results. I did some digging (thinking that the issue might be that I reject 3rd party cookies) and I found the problem:

https://swiftype.com/embed.js wasn't loading. I went to view this script in my browser and got an error which was preventing the script from executing: "The identity of this website has not been verified. Server's certificate is not trusted." I clicked "proceed" to view the script in the browser, and when I went back to the search page, it worked as intended.
Unfortunately I would recommend against all of these (except /r/compscipapers, only because I've never checked it out).

/r/compsci is, in my experience, mostly lower level undergrads who really want to show how much they know, there's a lot of misinformation in comments that gets voted up, and a lot of missing nuance in any of the discussions.

/r/semanticweb is very inactive, almost no discussion

/r/machinelearning is pretty poor as well, better choices are
http://metaoptimize.com/qa
http://blog.kaggle.com/category/how-i-did-it/
and following ml topics on quora
Engineers at Amazon. Seriously.
Please.

Although I am not a fan of the word, calling this article unabashed support for sexism is a bit much.

If you break out the pitchforks and torches at even minor infractions more moderate people will grow tried of it.

There is real sexism out there, and it should be addressed. This isn't it.
Yup, that's more about the brand issue. You have to shut it down eventually, and they've been awfully patient (likely because of the incoming capital).
Jules's point is that the map is done twice, which it is. If you don't want that, you can reduce into a collection and then reduce the collection twice.
I've lived this. I'm learning programming now, but LSAT prep is my field. Last year I wrote LSAT explanations which should earn me $15,000-$20,000 annually, and I havent even made a physical book on amazon yet.

No publisher would have touched that, but it's more than enough for me, given the one-time effort required.

In fact, the books that I'm writing explanations for are hardly publishable. Every LSAT student has one, but often bookstores don't stock them because it's such a niche market. But inventory is not an issue online.

Let a million niches bloom.
fastcgi setups are explicitly not vulnerable to this attack (http://eindbazen.net/2012/05/php-cgi-advisory-cve-2012-1823/)

Edit: Are you proxying to an Apache server that runs PHP-CGI?
You can just do both, though. Use interfaces for polymorphism, to define the interactions between your objects -- and then, if you want, use inheritance as one possible strategy for code reuse.
Everything except for some of the Google X Labs projects, of which this is one.

I'm going to take an optimistic tack and say they're doing this for the PR benefits of being seen as creating new technology that gives people tools they never thought they could have, somewhat like Microsoft has done with the Kinect.
Unless you run out of liquidity before you are right once.
Why You Should Talk To Investors (Even If You’re Not Raising Money)
Every country has requirements of its citizens. A lot force you to serve in the Armed Forces. The US doesn't do that.

While I agree that the US isn't as welcoming as it once was and has always had an onerous tax code, for foreigners it is still a huge benefit to work and do business there.

The funny thing is that Citizenship in the US has been essentially devalued by non-citizen working categories that have been developed in order to make the economy function. Unlike Europe or Canada, the US as a country doesn't really provide anything substantial to its citizens that make moving from a green card to a full citizen really worthwhile unless you care that much about voting.

Green Cards (or equivalent legal status) are gold though. Save the passports for EU countries or CAN/AUS. :-)
I write assembly for microcontrollers constantly. If you require reliable timing at the cycle level, you have absolutely no choice in the matter.
"maybe to test, maybe as actual customers"

There's a huge difference between the 2. You do know you can talk to some mommy bloggers and hold a giveaway, and give 1 iPad in exchange for a few hundred users...