skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
i agree with you in spirit. for me, the social/political difficulties are even larger obstacles than the technical.

well, you did say obvious vandalism. anything other than nonsense could be a trial by fire to "correct".

there was a satire making the reddit rounds (and presumably hn?) a few months back in which editing wikipedia was extrapolated to time traveling, complete with inane policy discussions.

found it: http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html
Interestingly enough, one of Clojure's selling points is that the basic data structure is not the cons-pair (rather the implementation details of storage are abstracted). It is clearly a lisp, however.
I don't want people to be hurt. You present a situation where people are being hurt. I am not happy with that situation either. Something has gone wrong. A solution is needed. The difference is that I don't take it for granted the solution must or should be unpleasant for the child. Solutions should be good things that all people are glad to have.
Startup Tips for the Early, Early Days
i seem to recall there being a setting in windows xp to make your windows and start menu and other things have a "classic" look. isn't there something similar in windows 7 that offers this? it sounds like such a feature would have eliminated a lot of the problems this guy's colleague was complaining about.

maybe just ask the user at first boot whether they want the new windows 7 look or an old classic view, setting default preferences accordingly. make the new mode look really appealing and tell the user what new features they'll get, and discourage the old "classic" mode and make it seem old and clunky, but let the user decide.
Just like taxes, speed limits, and vaccinations!
Math pastebin with LaTeX math equation rendering
I'm doing exactly that right now. Fortes fortuna adiuvat (fortune favours the brave)! Best of luck... :-)
Violin. Started 3 weeks ago.
Time to turn off the lights
Windows 7 does, amazingly, have the same classic mode. When you switch to it, everything looks exactly like Windows 98.
Lots of costs, risks, benefits... to be weighed.
And certainly a lot of them are NOT about salary and security.
It's worth taking a look at Scott Shane's January 2008 “Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By” - or at least the discussions at Amazon reviews: http://www.amazon.com/isbn/dp/0300113315
It is a huge leap, and this will help you ask a lot of questions about whether you are suited for the startup world, temperamentally as well as otherwise.
I think the definite false part is 'ruby is a[n acceptable] Lisp' - which is false. One could have a language with a ruby like syntax and co-routines and be a Lisp.

One could probably argue that Perl6 is a Lisp with CFGs a first order language primitive (which is in essence what macros allow), c.f. Greenspun's Tenth.
I quit my job to do a startup the day I was promoted. It was awkward/hilarious. I haven't looked back since.

The most important question to ask yourself is: what do I have to lose? I didn't own a house or a car. I didn't have a wife and/or kids to support. So the answer for me was very little. Honestly assess what could go wrong and who will be impacted. But I have a feeling you've already done that.
"... If you build an arduinome, please document the process and put it online somewhere ..."

and if either of you decide to build one consider building them commercially. there is currently a bit of demand for the Monome & possibly the arduinome ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monome
Go for it. And work like you have 3-4 months of savings. Getting comfortable is a very bad thing.
The point of this article is that one of the problems with Vista and now Windows 7 is that people were so used to the XP way of doing things, even if the XP way was stupid or unintuitive. If you take some time to learn the new UI it's a lot better. Same with Office 2007, the old Office menu system was horrible unless you knew exactly where everything was, whereas with the Ribbon/Fluent UI most of the time it adapts for the specific features you are currently using.

XPification is a stupid analogy because XP was just a paint-job on 2k to make it palatable for non-business users. Most of the people who "like" XP are just too used to it; XP was the longest running consumer version of Windows (skipping Server 2k3) and probably the first consumer version that wasn't horribly crash-prone. A few are annoyed at the increased resource usage but don't realize how much hardware specs have increased in the 5 years between XP and Vista; using the Moore's Law rule of thumb specs should have increased by over 8x so it makes sense that it uses more resources as appropriate.
It's not just about classical economical mechanisms.

With Euro there is a large psychological and political component. It is hard to estimate indirect effects on Europe's economy (500M people, combined GDP higher than US).

If you can get Europe to feel and act more as one unit, the effects could be huge, possibly dwarfing effects from differences in maneuvering space for monetary policies.
Neither Andrew Jackson nor anyone else had more than two terms as president except FDR, who took the US off the gold standard by stealing everyone's gold in 1933. (That's where the gold in Fort Knox came from.)

Besides, the US used a gold (and sometimes silver) standard most of the time before 1913, and in that time grew from thirteen largely agrarian colonies to the largest industrial economy in the world, so I can't understand why you say that "a big Ponzi scheme" is "really the only way to manage a monetary system so it allows for economic growth."
Wikimapia.org catching up to twitter in traffic
Only you can answer that question, depending on: What do you want out of life? How much savings do you have? Can you work on the startup in the evenings while keeping your job? How risk-adverse are you?
Source code of the file with the Zune bug (starts on line 249)
Except for the inaccuracies. I find MathWorld to be a safer bet.
Those all contain problems, which can and should be solved.

You don't want to find ways to reduce (or eliminate) taxes, without any negative side effects?

You wouldn't approve of a way to deliver vaccinations that hurts less than a needle? (Personally I don't mind it, but some people do.)

You wouldn't approve of finding a way to let people travel faster? One without negative side effects, of course.

You seem to be advocating for the status quo, and denying improvement is possible.
Quick write an "Ow my balls!" app and you'll make millions!
How do the resource requirements compare?

There isn't anything for Windows 7 in the relevent section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Microsoft_Windows...
IE market share drops below 70% for the first time in 8 years
Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Says
1, Get a solid foundation on statistical learning theory and machine learning. I'm currently working my way through the cs229 course online on the stanford site

2, Learn how to network with people and start a company and apply to Ycombinator for the summer 09 cycle.
The title should be "if you fear change, you will hate Windows 7". Holy shit, no Run command (which barely anybody uses) and no default Desktop icons (which are just superfluous next to the start menu)?! WHATEVER WILL I DO!??!

It's people like this Jason character, who feel all change is either (a) bad or (b) simply for the sake of change, who completely hinder innovation. If he wants Windows to "not change anything" then he should keep using XP and stop trying to provide any sort of analysis of something he is so entirely biased against.

At least the author of the actual article gave some relevant information.
dupe http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=407674
Ask HN: What's the difference between a Startup and a Small Business?
So I've never been really clear on this.

What's the difference between starting a startup and starting a small business?

Is it just what you call it? Or is there some definable criteria? Does a startup have to have investors and a plan to sell the company? I don't think so. But then what's the difference?
not so much being a pessimist, but being a realist. hope is nice and all, but are you seriously going to invent a new vaccination mechanism before your child needs her MMR shots? you may not mind injections, but I've never seen an infant or toddler that was much of a fan. given that, will you spare your child the discomfort of the needle and expose her to the risk of catching an easily preventable (and dangerous) infection? measles are far less pleasant than an injection. life is punctuated by the occasional unpleasantness and protecting your child from that entirely until adulthood does her a great disservice.
My daughter is 7 and she will take your eyes out before she lets you poke her with a needle --- and that's after the inevitable well-reasoned, polite, non-patronizing conversation about why vaccinations are important, which she of course understands and appreciates.
Today there are all sorts of simple solutions, such as anesthetic, or just the doctor being nice is usually good enough. Why did you bring up vaccinations? They are easy!
What's this, you say? A novel, ideologically extreme child rearing philosophy that's so rarely applied that I couldn't conceivably know someone raised under it? Sold!
Vaccinations are easy. just offer topical anesthetic and be nice about it. the reason people have problems with them is they don't think about the kids at all, and don't give the kid any control over the situation, and scare them.
Of these I found Sam Harris's "True Lie Detection" essay to be the most intriguing.
What UI changes aren't in Vista? The stuff he highlights is a lot of why I prefer it to XP.

And the thought of Vista's UI with XP's responsiveness makes me pretty excited for 7.
Each of your three reasons is presumptive, mildly insulting, and ultimately incorrect --- is what I'd say if I was insisting on being a message board geek.
well that's great that you know how to get rid of bad doctors and find nice ones, and consider that worth the effort just to help your kid be happier! what do you disagree about then?
A startup is a small business that has recently started up (duh), especially in a technology sector, that is capable of scaling into something big.
the term startup tends to refer to growth-oriented new businesses. they can be small businesses, but they're small businesses actively trying to become not small.
The difference between a shrub and a redwood seedling. A startup is a company that is just passing through small.
Your attitude would reject all new ideas about parenting without any regard for their merit.

The reason the things I'm advocating are especially worth consideration is that they are in line with long standing traditions our society already places very high value on, such as individual freedom and happiness, and control over one's own life.
This thread seems like a big ponzi scheme.
Manipulative Extraterrestrials and the true nature of International Conflict
A lot depends on your level of savings and your spending habits. How long can you live on your savings at your current spending level? If the answer is "not long", are you in a position to cut back on spending to give yourself a longer runway? If you can't count on your saving for at least six months to a year, staying at your job is probably the wiser course of action.
I believe Paul Graham once defined the difference as: a startup wants to (but doesn't necessarily) have "a significant exit," it either goes public, or gets acquired for a large amount.
A new small business that aims to be sustainable, profitable, grow, etc, isn't a "startup," without the significant exit. Unfortunately I remember hearing this in a video or audio interview, so it's hard for me to search for this attribution.
You must be doing something else wrong then. Because in fact vaccinations are good, and not very painful especially with anesthetic.

I don't say this to insult you. I say it because problems have solutions. That is what you seem to be trying to deny. You want to say this thing went wrong, and therefore children must be hurt, it's inevitable, and trying to prevent it is crazy. I take the view that when people are hurt, someone has made a mistake, and we can try to do better.
How to start with testing, instantly
No, in fact most new ideas about parenting are not ideologically extreme. Uncomfortable, perhaps --- like attachment parenting, which put our kids in our bed for a year --- but not extreme.
The point about scaling is key. If the business can't easily expand to handle more than a limited number of customers, and/or can't meaningfully be sold to someone else who can carry it on while the original owners lounge around on a beach in Argentina, it's not a startup.

That helps us to see why my consulting company, the (independent) pizza place on the corner, and your dentist's LLC are not considered "startups" -- and, indeed, why the majority of small businesses are not startups. On the other hand, once the pizza place starts selling franchises without limit, it becomes much harder to distinguish it from a startup (although people probably wouldn't use the word, because it's a tech sector word).
I like privacy, and consider peoples' personal lives to be irrelevant to discussions of ideas.
Back to On Lisp (printed out) this year.
Most monetary economists would agree that a central bank's first and foremost job is price stability, after which subordinate goals like managing economic shocks can be pursued. Former Fed board member Frederic Mishkin wrote a paper outlining objectives for his perfect central bank, and price stability was his central tenet [1].

And the ECB has been following this. It's actually even in the ECB charter Article 105(1) - (paraphrased by the ECB website [2]) - "Without prejudice to the objective of price stability", the Eurosystem will also "support the general economic policies in the Community with a view to contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the Community". These include a "high level of employment" and "sustainable and non-inflationary growth".

On the other hand, the Federal Reserve doesn't have a charter explicitly stating price stability as the foremost goal. In fact the 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act basically legislates dual goals - full employment and price stability - which could be seen as conflicting (in the context of monetary policy). [3]

In any case, the Fed has a lot of discretion regarding their policy direction, whereas the ECB's charter is more or less unambiguous.

[1] Mishkin's paper - What Should Central Banks Do? http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/00/11/001...

[2] ECB Websit talking about the "Objective of Monetary Policy" - http://www.ecb.int/mopo/intro/html/objective.en.html

[3] Discussion about the goals of US monetary policy - http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/wklyltr99/el99-04.htm...
8 really, really scary predictions - Nouriel Roubini (1) - FORTUNE
Source? (journalism, not code)

Do you have the rights to this code?

Some context would be nice...
To read (at least phonetically) and write in Armenian.
6 figure: no.

7 figure: yes.
This is what I don't get. Why should I have to retrain my fingers to justify Microsoft's UI designers' salaries? I don't mind for myself, but I dread having to teach my parents every time, especially when I don't use the operating system myself.
You have 3-4 years socked away and you're wringing your hands over this decision? I think the answer is no, you shouldn't. That kind of runway should make the decision an absolute no-brainer if you really want to strike out on your own.
Took me a minute to figure out what was wrong. If IsLeapYear() returns true, and "days" equals 366, you get stuck in an infinite loop (you don't modify "days" at all).

This was the first leap year since Zune was released, and yesterday was the 366th day of the year, sooooo....

Also spotted in this code: several "goto"s.
Beloved Pets Everlasting?
Clearly what's missing is MORE ARROWS: http://i44.tinypic.com/zilyqo.gif
If thats the case(sounds like a good runway), my opinion would be to go for it.
Read the lifehacker article which actually makes this make sense: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr...

Clever.
thanks qqq. thanks for inflicting yet another monster on society, who thinks the world needs to justify itself to her.
Hopefully the creature's teenage years will be a punishment enough for you.
Because the money that would be paid out as dividends is instead reinvested in the company, increasing its ability to produce profits in the future. Assuming that managers can find investment opportunities that exceed the return on capital that a shareholder would otherwise get, this is a good trade.

This is a fairly big assumption. It tends to be true in younger, high growth companies, or companies where management is good at identifying other profitable markets to enter. This is why Google, Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, etc. never pay dividends, and why Microsoft didn't until recently.

Unfortunately, managers tend to be pretty poor at realizing when their market is no longer growing. So they'll think they can buy growth by acquiring companies or hiring more people, but end up destroying shareholder value when the exorbitant purchase prices don't pan out. Good for entrepreneurs, but bad for investors.

It's not as simple as "dividends = good, stock price appreciation = bad". There's been a fair amount of academic mathematical finance devoted to dividends, and it showed that investors should be ambivalent about dividend yields, as long as management was economically rational (i.e. would only undertake investments if the expected return was greater than the cost of capital). A reduced dividend just means that more money stays within the company, which increases its future value.
Lockheed, Boeing Tap $11 Billion Cybersecurity Market
er whut?
It's allegedly from a Freescale clock driver (see the comments at the top). I'm trying to find the original on Freescale's site, unsuccessfully thus far.

If it is indeed a Freescale-supplied driver issue, it makes me wonder how many other devices failed yesterday...
Please stop guys.
Review My New Home Page: TrailBehind.com
Part of the what led me to this new home page is the feedback I got last time on Hacker News. I hope this page is more intuitive to use now.

Please let me know what you think, and Happy New Year!
Not if you are doing business in American. You would have to convert those Euros into dollars anyways and you then have the added risk of being exposed to the currency markets.
I like the new search, though I'm not sure about the division of functionality between the two boxes. Also, the explore the map button is way too low-rez. But the transition to the map is very fast! Looks good, keep at it!
In my experience, startups simply cannot focus on the onerous paperwork and the twists and turns of the legal process. Sometimes circumstances change even from month to month; new interpretations of the law come down, and so on.

I've been through the visa merry-go-round three times. Once with a startup, once with an ultra-cool company growing at light speed, and once with a relatively uncool company that just has lots of experience with this. The third one wins hands down. This is one of the few advantages, in my opinion, to working for an established company.
Thanks for giving me a message board thread to geek out on while waiting for dinner to cook, and, I suppose, for inducing me to consider TCS; have a happy new year.
Go read Shakespeare...it's filled with fart jokes and much worse. Society isn't going anywhere.
Moto renew shows itself, T-mobile going green
The main thing I want to learn more about is cryptology, and in particular cryptanalysis. I've been collecting papers that I want to read but I'm still missing a lot of the mathematical background that I need to understand them.

I'm currently working through a new book called Applied Cryptanalysis - Breaking Ciphers in the Real World and plan to fill in the math as needed from other sources.

Like many other people I also have SICP on my list and it will remain there until I have finished it including most of the exercises.

I have also been learning Haskell over the last year and plan to continue using it as much as possible, especially for mathematical oriented projects such as implementing attacks from the cryptanalysis book.
With 2008, Let’s Say Good-bye to Mediocrity
I predict you're in for an unpleasant surprise.
i hate posts where you have to login to see the full article
Poor regulation of blood sugar can negatively affect memory.
As we age, regulation of blood sugar gets worse possibly explaining the correlation between age and cognitive decline
Exercise helps regulate blood sugar.
Recommendation - you should exercise.
Wow, that's a lot of code.

def main(iter=100000):
stay_win = 0.0
switch_win = 0.0
for i in xrange(iter):
win_door = int(numpy.random.uniform()*3)
pick_door = int(numpy.random.uniform()*3)
if pick_door == win_door:
stay_win += 1.0
else:
switch_win += 1.0
print 'stay: ', stay_win/float(iter)
print 'switch: ', switch_win/float(iter)
return
OGDL - an incredibly lightweight markup language
Ask YC: Gap year ideas?
I am graduating high school early and am looking for cool ways to spend my time before college. I am looking to do some combination work/intern, travel and educational programs. What activities do you think I can get the most out of during a gap year?
> Line #263: if (days > 366)

This should work if that was a >= sign. And people at work don't believe me when I say how insanely careful I have to be when I write any code, especially code that deals with people's payroll and vacation time. One missing equals symbol and every Zune in the world froze. One missing equals symbol and every employee could lose 1/12 of their accumulated vacation time.

The ability to pay attention to "mundane details" is just as important as the ability to envision the whole software application from the project manager point-of-view, especially when working in smaller companies without additional oversight.
i have never used win Vista but I like the description of Windows 7, especially the fact that you launch programs with text commands.

it's very quicksliver-like, with minimalistic ui. hope this isn't just a skin over vista, but a real overhaul/decrapifying process by MS
Ask HN: How will web annotation services evolve in 2009
What's your vision of the web annotation service?

Thanks for your comment!
37signals considers itself a small business, and has the scalability thing licked.
Startups grow for the sake of growing.
Social Media 2009
That's a cool idea. So cool that I was thinking of writing it myself.

I really like the code-creating buttons and reference page. They make it faster and easier.

The equations seem to be displayed a bit small though. My test paste (http://mathbin.net/4315) doesn't go that deep into fractionage and the like, but it's already a little hard to read some of it.

Then I did a deeply-fractioned 1 (but not so deep as to be ridiculous) and the e is barely legible.
I second MathWorld. Sometimes I spend hours reading it.
You didn't mention where you are from, you might be able to mix a few of these things together.
If you're from the US, how about work/intern at a start-up (assuming you're into that since you're on HN) in Europe or Asia?

There are 'working holiday visas' which will allow you to work while you are traveling in certain countries.
A lesson in code smell and good style: I took one look at the code and (before noticing the bug) thought, “why is there an inner if instead of just using a single conditional with a logical AND?”

That is to say, I could have fixed the bug without knowing what it was. (I'm a hs student and don't do much bug-shooting in code that wasn't written by me or my close friends, so I don't know if this is common.)