skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"should I buy a small-ish amount of FB stock, as a long-term investment, given how low the price is falling"

No. FB stock is dropping, and it'll still continue to drop, and will continue to drop as long as facebook continues to not make any moves to give investors reasons to buy.

FB stock hasn't hit rock bottom yet, but when it does, it won't be a good long-term investment. What you're thinking of doing isn't investing, it's called gambling.
1.) Screw link shorteners. When they go bankrupt, which they do frequently, they leave behind millions of completely useless URLs.

2.) Antagonizing your userbase seems like an unwise move in a market where changing providers is so trivially easy. (What's the difference between a bit.ly link and a t.co one?)
Some selective parenting may not be a bad idea. Unfortunately, there exists people who contribute to the growing population by reproducing in order to either leave a mark on the world or because it is believed that the purpose of life is to reproduce.
It's true, it's kind of a strange word that I've mainly only seen used in the child-free communities, but is there a better word for the viewpoint that everyone should have kids? "Breeder mentality" just seems too harsh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalism
Scalable Image Processing Using Hosted Cloud Services
The really scary drawback is what happens if the bandit prefers a suboptimal choice at the same time that you make an independent improvement in your website. Then the bandit is going to add a lot of data for that variation, all of which looks really good for reasons that have nothing to do with what it is supposed to be testing.

This type of error (which can happen very easily on a website going through continuous improvement) can take a very long time to recover from.

A/B tests do not have an issue with this because all versions will have similar mixes of data from before and after the improvement.
Website uses basic caching to survive traffic spike, news at 11.
With delicious being totally dead, I think it is worth having at a new bookmarking service (haven't checked this yet myself).
But you don't see the good things done by government?

Yes, and there's an important point about that... being opposed to "government" does not necessarily mean being opposed to all communal / collective action. It's just that governments are unique institutions in that they reserve for themselves a virtual monopoly on the use of force, and most of what they do is not optional. I believe that most of the good part of what comes from government as we know it today can be achieved through people choosing, voluntarily, to work together. The difference would be that the various communes and collectives that libertarians talk about, would not be able to mandate participation at the point of a gun barrel.

And you don't see the damage caused by businesses and private individuals independently from and/or in the absence of government?

I see certain individuals and/or businesses causing harm even in the face of government as we know it today. I'm not convinced that the situation would be considerably worse under a libertarian model, and - more to the point - I believe that freedom is it's own end, and justifies whatever negative consequences arise from it.

I guess it's hard to explain to anybody who isn't a libertarian, but people like us feel the whole "live free or die" thing, and just absolutely recoil at being denied the freedom to live without the constant interjection of coercive force / aggression into our lives. It's probably partly genetic or something...
It seems deeply unfair to me to criticize them for not engaging in baseless speculation beyond simply providing the facts.
Facebook's Login Button
> A killer feature of WT that I think no one should do without is that it shows you what pages on the web are linking to your site.

You can get the same information by simply googling for "link:example.com" (of course with your domain instead of example.com).
Sounds like bayesian probability.

If the symptoms are 30% similar to a disease that 99.999% more common, and 70% similar to a disease that's 0.001% common, the doctor would still be correct most of the time by suggesting that the patient had the common disease, even though the symptoms were a better match to the rare disease.
Bayesian bandits is also a very interesting approach: http://tdunning.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/bayesian-bandits.html
These are startups. IIS may have taken some of the market for more stable companies but it's not really practical for cash-strapped startups to use IIS. Also, college talent typically has greater affinity for Linux.
Delicious isn't completely dead it's owned by the guys who started YouTube and turned into something of a pinterest clone (which is kind of where bookmarking has gone)
Where did you get the ~1800 figure? Is it possible you're thinking of PHP?

To me, that seems to be the marker for the general quality of the code.

There's also a module which allows you to program in Latin. Does that mean that every Perl programmer eventually has to live in Europe?
I don't get it. You are saying you don't actually have to go see a doc "in reality" then how are you complaining that you have to see a doctor before getting treated.
The Joys of Christmas in Tuscany
Access websites without a data connection
Are you sure? When a lens claims to be f/2.8 at all zoom levels, it usually means that that the maximum aperture (i.e., minimum f-number) is f/2.8. It can do f/11 etc also.

If it is indeed a lens with just a single aperture setting, can you tell me the model number? I'm quite curious now. Thx.
Its not. Use it correctly and it works fine.
Ubuntu. Ubuntu Unity is designed for tablets, netbooks, etc. One of the biggest complaints right now is that it's too designed for small screens, and lost too much utility on desktops (multimonitor especially).

Especially if you're coming from Mint, an Ubuntu derivative, everything will still work more like what you're used to than Fedora or other non-Ubuntu/Debian derivatives.

I've been using Ubuntu on both my 10" Asus EeePC netbook and newer my 12" HP dm1 4050us for the past two years, no complaints.
Or you could track this flute maker down, learn how to use his flutes and then teach us what was being done wrong originally.

Or maybe you're not interested in doing all that work in return for the expected benefit. Maybe you're just going to give up :)
The only solution is not to add people not already on Google+. You can tell if they are already on it by checking if you can see a profile for them or not.
Just like the priests... when you do not have a good answer, start throwing mud? Wallow in your ignorance...
chrome is essentially a browser, even as an os, so expect chrome browser that is now a part of android to continue to improve alongside chrome os.
True for the high end (where it's worth relocating), but not for any of the jobs I've seen posted on treehouse's site.
I requested an invite (same name as I go by here), would love to check out your service.
"We're not just interested in whether A or B is better; we're interesting in getting better at doing what we do."

Absolutely. That's my biggest objection to bandit methods, but it's also the fuzziest objection, and the one least likely to appeal to hyper-analytical people. There's a strong temptation (as we can see from this article) is to treat bandit optimization as a black box that just spits out an infallible answer (i.e. as a Lazy Button).

It's the same human tendency that has led to "you should follow me on twitter" to be one of the more common n-grams on the interwebs (even though it probably never worked for more than Dustin Curtis, and likely causes a counter-intuitive backlash now).
That would be Epsilon-decreasing strategy or VDBE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit#Semi-uniform...
Can you get a 1-year refillable prescription? I have prescriptions that are refillable X times in Your months.
People win class action suits against big corporations quite frequently.

And the pharma industry's own actions show that they know they're vulnerable to torts. That's why they lobbied for laws like the Vaccine Act of 1986, which limits their liability for damage caused by vaccines.
What people are looking at is the obvious= browser.

I surmise the real reason for Facebook to buy Opera is not that. Opera owns the #1 mobile ad mediation platform : AdMarvel and has augmented it with Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising.

THAT IS THE KEY. MOBILE MONETIZATION VIA ANALYTICS OF FB DATA AND ADMARVEL.
Covering more ground in a way that was more effective at stopping ne'er-do-wells than riding a bicycle? Electric-assisted bicycle if it is hilly?

Segways are not off-road vehicles, nor are they fast or maneuverable enough to be an effective security vehicle.
ill take one, too, over an ipad. i write emails in addition to reading them. ipads are mostly good for consuming content.
More or less your on target, our rev comes from referral fees, which vary, and also monthly subscriptions from local Realtors who would "own" their market, similar to how they can own their market on Zillow or Trulia.

Your are 100% correct that this space is competitive and expensive to catch users, and being creative is key, which is why we are going after strategic partners to help with the acquisition costs.
Sprint Nextel Gets $1 Billion To Go Equipment Shopping
There are some code leaks of Google specifically supporting Exynos 5250, but I don't know whether that's for a Chromebook or an Android tablet.
The social graph is not their moat. It's the ubiquity. It's a Microsoft-angle, to dominate "social" and become a de-facto identity provider.

That the social graph feeds ubiquity and vice-versa is what makes the proposition appealing.

Google+ is about the only real competition, and it's really designed for a separate purpose.
What's to say those spam websites aren't exactly that?
How I Remade my Deceased Mom in 3D (a hack)
Actually there is. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3037293
RPi is good for video, but I think he meant overall browsing performance. RPi will be pretty slow at that.
I suspect that if someone could come up with a reasonable way to single out confounding variables, there would prove to be an inverse correlation between SLOC per function point and code quality.

My rationales:

- More SLOC means more places for a bug to hide.

- More SLOC means more logic to have to reason about.

- More repetition leads to more SLOC.

- More repetition increases the chance that a bug can be fixed in one spot but not in others.

- More repetition increases the chance for regression bugs resulting from updates not being fully propagated

Anecdotally, on my team it seems that we tend to have the least quality issues in the stuff that's written by folks who produce the most factored code.
1) Support for HTML5 features.

2) JavaScript speed.

When tablets browsers catch up to the desktop on those two things, I'll consider using a tablet for more than just a comic reader (all I use one for now).
not when i can get essentially the same experience for 1/2 as much. all i need my mpb/mba for is consuming media. everything else is done out of my chrome browser anyways.
Oh my god that cat is so much cuter than any of the 3D-rendered assistants. The "GetArtsy" animation makes me so happy to watch with how it plays with the fourth wall.
Everybody seems to be pilling on RA saying they should have known that using the unauthorized AirPlay key would cause problems.

But I think the real issue here is how Apple treats developers. Don't just rationalize what is happening because "RA should have known better". iOS developers need to start standing up for how their platform is run. If somebody doesn't make a stand soon, Apple is just going to keep shitting on you. Once Dev ID launches, and OSX becomes a walled garden just like iOS, the exact same stuff is going to happen. If Apple doesn't like you or wants what you have, they will simply shut you out. The only developers that stand a chance are big companies or loud bloggers.

I know you iOS developers love Apple more than life itself but have some pride in your platform and stand up for your rights for all of our sake.
It's probably using a very old/low-end integrated graphics chip from Intel, so it might run WebGL, but probably not the most advanced demos.
Interview with Zhou Tong (Bitcoinica's Creator)
Java does that, for null checks.
I'm not sure where you are hearing the "everyone should have kids" refrain in 2012. Perhaps this is from your parents or friends?

I'd submit too that perhaps a lot of it is self imposed, as witnessed by your comments in this thread that immediately assumed more than one person was of the opinion that we are somehow insinuating you are a lesser person from not having kids.

Outside of your own family, there's not a heck of a lot of pressure to have kids these days. Your family though is - respectfully - your problem. :-)
This looks extremely useful. We have several EventMachine proxies that I'd love to make redundant and load-balanced with something like this.

I took a couple minutes to try to get one of them "einhorned"; I lost most of my time to trying to satisfy EM gem dependencies (we use em-http-request, which has a fussy gemspec). I got Stripe's EM built, file descriptors passed to my proxy, and EventMachine::start_server set up with the fd instead of the address; I'm getting accept callbacks, but not received data.

Will tinker later. High hopes. Thank you very much for open sourcing this.
Nice site. Well found.

I find it interesting that PHP doesn't have anything in the same league as Perl/Ruby/Python even after all these years.

Any PHP folk out there?
Stripe's suspiciously missing from this list. I think there should be at least one YC company using Stripe at least?
Everything in moderation, even moderation. Sometimes it's good to go balls-deep in to a manic obsession over a problem/task.
How is there not? There's an entire discussion going on about it here, and I don't think the conclusion to be drawn from it anywhere is that it's an entire waste of time. It's just another symptom of how it can be difficult to hire well and how miserably misplaced some efforts are to improve it by cheap metrics that can be both positively and negatively misleading.
I don't think this is an approved drug. It's sold as a reagent to laboratories, but not used for anything medical.
University Information Services with APIs
I am the only one surprised with the Django representation?
Unfortunately, I think you're imagining a fantasy vehicle: your requirements are pretty much in direct conflict with each other.

The smaller the vehicle, the less it can rely on passive safety (crashing better), and the more it has to rely on its advantages at active safety (avoiding crashing). You can't cheat physics: a tiny personal vehicle is never going to have passive safety as good as a midsize car. Even relatively safe compact cars like the Toyota Yaris don't have 5-star crash ratings, so I don't see how a 2-wheeler ever will.

Motorcycles are dangerous primarily because (a) small fast vehicles tend to attract more than their share of irresponsible people (which, not uncommonly, includes alcohol), and (b) car drivers have trouble seeing tiny vehicles. I don't see how this vehicle proposes to change either of these factors.
NATO says Al Qaeda's No. 2 in Afghanistan killed in airstrike
I assume they make back-ups all the time, so yes. Definitely more reliable for most people.
Dealing with "Big Idea" people
Why I Take Angel Funding over VCs
Ironic though that if the IT department is handing out Chrome-things they are basically writing their own pink slips.
The p/e ratio is still in the 90's if they don't show generous increases in their profit or revenue then the price has a lot further to fall.
No problem! Feel free to ping me (gdb@stripe.com) if you run into issues.
N-Glycanase is responsible for removing N-linked glycans from misfolded glycoproteins.
The Simple Planner has a very similar setup to Pivotal but also allows you to then switch to your task on an online card wall or a filterable task list view. So the new tool appears to be similar but with much more functionality depending upon what your workflows are.
The top rated answer main point is also funny as well. It reminds me of my town. They are more than willing to vote for more services and while also more than willing to pay less taxes. In the short term, it's a party but in the long term it's a disaster waiting to happen.

People want everything for free. Or in this case, people want all the success without any of the failures which lead to that success.
One thing I like about Fast Company's article is that it's not revealed (name aside, for those familiar with it) that the student in question is female until the last paragraph or so.

You can just imagine a TV reporter, breathlessly:

"It's a new space invention, from a student. And a female as well!"
Bitly is dead, long live goo.gl. +1 for Google.
Autodesk test implanting electronics in cadavers
I think they've already given over control to their volunteers. Yes they could wrest it back, but I think their profit depends on not too much paid involvement. So it is what the senior members want it to be.
http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook $200.

It's not very good when you're running Ubuntu, but then again even my nice i7 laptop can really suck under Linux sometimes. ChromeOS might help.
Are enhanced e-books bad for kids’ reading skills?
>In my mind, you don't start a company to create jobs. Its a nice economic goal, but it should be a side effect of need internally, not the stated goal of the company.

Indeed. The objective of all businesses is to create (or otherwise obtain) wealth. Jobs are a side effect, fringe benefit of that.

This is common knowledge to people wired into the startup scene, but these days you hear so much about "Creating jobs" all over the airwaves, from Washington to local politics, to non-profits, to even frickin Starbucks (they have these gift cards you can buy at checkout where the proceeds go to 'creating jobs').

For a while I've wondered if it is generally understood where jobs come from, or is "Creating Jobs" a cargo-cult meme.

Eg do most people know that job creation comes from wealth creation? Is that the general unstated assumption behind the "Create Jobs" meme in the US right now?

Or, are lots of people who've never actually created jobs (politicians, professional athletes, etc) reciting it but most not really understanding how it fundamentally works?

What I wouldn't give to see a politician run on a platform of "Create Wealth, and Jobs Will Follow!", and have that chanted from every rooftop and town hall in the country.
And the beautiful thing is that we can see actual results of Bill Atkinson's philosophy. You can download the source of both MacPaint and QuickDraw from http://www.computerhistory.org/highlights/macpaint/.

It's in Pascal and 68k assembly, and I find it quite beautiful. Especially the Pascal code, as it is broken up into clear, concise functions so it is easy to understand what is going on.
Possibly pedantic - but it would only show the loser 5% of the time. 10% of the time it picks a random design, including the winner.
Salesforce.com Set to Buy Buddy Media for $800M+
I actually noticed that Google was doing this with my Adwords account a couple of weeks ago.

I have 2 ads in an Ad Group, and the wording between the two is different by a single word. One ad had over double the clickthru rate than the other one, just because of that single word difference.

I noticed that Google was serving the two ads about 50% of the time, and was going to shut off the one ad that had the lower CTR, but then I let it go, and the next day, I saw that the more successful ad had almost all the views, and the less successful one was barely being served.
Using tips of USB Flash Drive
USB flash drive has already become a common accessory in our daily life. Although it's easy to use, we should also pay attention to the ways of using it to make sure a better service for us.

1. For the USB flash drive with indicator lights, the lights flicker while the USB flash drive is reading or writing data. In this case, you can't pull out the USB flash drive, or it will cause the loss of data and damage of the USB flash drive. For disks without indicators, remove the USB flash drive in the correct way in several seconds after the progress bar disappearance.
Hack and / - Password Cracking with GPUs, Part II: Get Cracking
Mad late reply but i use epoch when my time needs don't matter. Aka: I can get by without worrying about epoch not being second precise and I don't need to worry about dates except to display them in non UTC.

For my needs 90% of the time iso8601 is overkill and unnecessary.

But dates in what I do don't need to be complicated. Which is rare. Also I never said working with times and dates is easy, evaluate your needs for the situation. Going full tilt with timezones and full date parsing for some general server logs for example doesn't always make sense is all I'm saying. Tschuss!
> One problem is that there are only so many punctuation characters in ASCII

You can use sequences of punctuation characters, e.g. <:= and =:> for brackets, or =>> for an operator, or :*; for a separator. Or use punctuation characters not in ASCII: there's hundreds of them in the symbols blocks of Unicode.
Years of experience is an easy way for a company to justify not hiring you. If you have the skills, you likely need to improve your skill at effectively educating people of your ability.

I recently went through something like this. I wound up getting the job, but only after my recruiter pulled a few strings. As an applicant, you can't do that so it's best you improve your communication so that after that first meeting they see your spark.
Your car analogy made me chuckle. However, I think there are other items that it describes better than the Windows registry. For example, I remember using Ubuntu a few years back and discovering that the only way to change some system font setting (don't recall exactly which one) was to recompile a package from source.
It's not that hard:

- Put yourself in the user's shoes

- Ask yourself whether your design is consistent with what we know about social science

If you do those two things you'll get it right 99% of the time.
Thanks I've added a link to a CSV with the domains and technologies found in the run (Which was a few months ago now).

http://trends.builtwith.com/Y-Combinator.txt
(91) Facebook
Clojure does have more sugar than Scheme, but imho some of it improves readability; for example, using brackets for grouping instead of overloading lists like Scheme does can make code easier to scan, because when you see parens in Clojure there are fewer meanings to choose from (usually only function application or a list literal). Example:

Scheme

(let ((x 2) (y 3))
(let ((x 7) (z (+ x y)))
(* z x)))

Clojure

(let [x 2 y 3]
(let [x 7 z (+ x y)]
(* z x)))

I think the Clojure version is easier to read without a paren-matching editor, though Scheme's rigorous minimalism does have its charm.
The original delicious is completely dead for sure.
Ask HN: Good Android UI Design Tools?
Hello, a group of friends and I have been working on an app for a Software Engineering class for about a month or two and we are close of being finished. We are not graded on the UI, just the functionality and over all OO Design of our code. However, I just wanted to do how would I go about making a pretty UI, do most people just do it using the xml and pre-built Android UI functions?

So far all of our pages just use all the Android built in tools and we have just been writing xmls since the UI design tools for Android that are built into Eclipse are pretty bad. I was wondering if anyone has any links on maybe tutorials or some tools that can make designing a nice and pretty UI? So far most tutorial I have found just make the same kind of pages we have made for our app. I have seen how the iOS UI design tools look like and they look like heaven compared to what Eclipse + ADK offers.

Any insight from Android developers would be greatly appreciated