skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It might be a good read if it actually talked about what happened in the book. However, it didn't.
I would say that's because it was created with Russian internet (Runet) in mind.

For example when you enter something in the search box but forget to switch language on your keyboard it will detect it and provide right results with 'did you mean..'.

Also most websites on Runet just sucks. Pages are badly formed with lots of adds and without any SEO and Accessibility in mind. Sometimes when the page does actually contain a relevant information Google will give it a pour pagerank because of pour Signal vs. Noise ratio or because it's far from the top of the page. Poorly formed pages are hard for search engines to deal with but it seems Yandex does a better job (at least in Runet).

Yandex Maps has a Killer feature - you can measure distances with a simple tool. I have no idea why no one else does that!

Another important thing: Google is not faster (if not slower) than Yandex in Russia. That's something which I notice when I compared Yahoo! and Google while I lived there. Yahoo is a little bit slower than Google and when one makes a couple of searches (trying different words and phrases) it becomes really annoying. Yandex doesn't have this problem. Moreover it loaded faster when I used it outside of Moscow in regions with a slower internet connection (may be their datacenter was closer, I don't know).

And if you consider entering the url in the address bar it's even faster to type ya.ru vs. google.com. Of course it's not an issue now when I use browser hotkeys (type 'y search term' or 'g search term') but from my experience there are lots of people who still type the URL.

But the major key to success was a large ad campaign on TV when Runet was really young and small and no one heard about Google yet. I remember the time when I knew about two websites: Yandex and Mail.ru and those two still mean internet to my mom. Yandex became a synonym to 'search' alongside with Rambler. But unlike the later Yandex keeps innovating and it's still ahead of Google which surpassed Rambler last year.

I'm pleased to see that there are countries where Google does not own the market. Unfortunately it’s not the case in Europe where people use it 99% of the time even though there are great local search engines. Competition is great and it’s the only thing that drives the innovation.

It’s really funny when one person says to other 'Just google that' and the other opens Yandex and search but in Russia it’s the usual thing.
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Interesting - I hadn't know about that before.

Agreed on your other points. I don't know the politics of the Egyptian reform, but colonialism still turns this in to a very complex set of issue. Especially when you try and distinguish between social justice and populist politics.

Again, if I recall correctly, in the early days of the land reform the UK pledged funds to allow property to be bought back from land owners. I think they even contributed GBP50 million or something (drop in the ocean admittedly), but the rest of the plan was eventually knocked back.
Objective tests for math and science are a baseline requirement; I wasn't arguing otherwise. So we agree on the value of that. But I think we need to go further than only measuring people based on these academic standards.

If you look at my original list of activities (which included the idea of overcoming a personal challenge), a lot of them are not as easily faked as with your rewrite. Moreover, references can be required.

I took on a variety of extra roles in high school because I wanted to be well-rounded. I admit that part of my motivation was to improve my resume, but if that's what it took to get me out there, I'm glad for it, because I learned a lot and grew as a person.

In the particular case you mention, I'd think that there was a societal value-add from your rewrite of that girl's essay if you got her into a school where she will do better than whoever would have taken her place, had you not been involved.
They actively crack down on those using foreign currency, it's actually illegal to use foreign currency for transactions there - although of course everyone does and there is a massive black market for this.

Mugabe also tried to fix the price of common goods - e.g. Bread, Milk, etc.
Texting a signal of wider trends
Right. But will that race be interplanetary and/or capable of deep space survival?
The classification levels below "top secret" involve a laughable laxity. But spying is a very real problem, and the government needs to screen people who handle actual state secrets.

I'm guessing that they are (in 4 hours) trying to simulate some of the pressures that go on when people are recruited and act as spies, and especially when they are blackmailed into spying. All the pressure tactics probably give testers a fair idea of how quickly people crack.
As a Haskell beginner it's not so easy to see the generalization between State, Maybe, IO, and especially Lists.

This is exactly the problem.
This sounds very similar to my wife's experience with taking a polygraph at the NSA for an internship (and this was before 9/11). They hounded her over the drug use question over and over. She was so upset by the whole experience she nearly flew home right after and I can't say I blame her.
I agree. I was commenting on rms' thought that fashion was potentially a more viable market. I would completely agree that home decor will net you more, and probably more easily.
I'm not proposing we optimize right now for this eventuality. I'm pointing out that the "PR gimmick" is something that actually has to happen at some point. That's just one obvious point at which it has to happen.

Your somewhat glib response reminds me this:

But I should remember, Krauss said, that the long run is a very long time. He told me about a meeting he attended at the Vatican a few years back on the future of the universe: "There were about 15 people, theologians, a few cosmologists, some biologists. The idea was to find common ground, but after three days it was clear that we had nothing to say to one another. When theologians talk about the 'long term,' raising questions about resurrection and such, they're really thinking about the short term. We weren't even on the same plane. When you talk about 10^50 years, the theologians' eyes glaze over.

http://www.slate.com/id/2096491/entry/2096507/
How do you find (decent) part-time work in technology? That may be what I have to do, but I have no idea how to go about it.
People made that assumption because your opinions do not match their experiences as iPhone users. I assumed the same thing. With regard to your first three points:

1. My call quality is excellent in NYC. I get a dropped call maybe once a week. It's not even something I think about much. I see Verizon customers around me dealing with more dropped calls.
2. Email and SMS are fantastic. Better than my work-issued Blackberry.
3. Network. I have 3G almost everywhere I go, but I understand that this varies widely by geographical area. People without coverage obviously won't benefit much from an iPhone.

With regard to the Blackberry comparison, I'll flat out say this: I prefer the iPhone keyboard to the Blackberry keyboard. Plain and simple. Maybe I figured out the right places to touch the screen, but I type faster and more efficiently on the iPhone. I didn't make any scientific comparisons, but every time I'm forced to compose something on the Blackberry, I inwardly groan. My fingers and hands are not particularly small.

If you heavily use Exchange, I imagine iPhone's integration leaves something to be desired. I haven't tried it. However, IMO, Blackberry's Exchange integration through the Blackberry server leaves something to be desired, too. For example, I have rules set up in Exchange so that my sent mail goes into the same folder as the folder which contains the message I have replied to. Doesn't work on on the Blackberry.
Chrome for Mac and Linux in first half of 2009
Like if you open IE and it has MSN Live Search as the default.
3. Supervolcano
We're not really quite up to the task of "allowing" this or that to evolve just yet. (See drug-resistant strains of bacteria, the annual flu-shot crapshoot, etc)
Yes, Jive Software did this. I was working for another company at the time and a colleague and I provided several enhancements to their codebase. However, before they would accept them we needed to get our boss to sign a document assigning all our work on their code back to them.

A few months later, they announced they were taking their code in-house and leaving the open-source stuff for anyone to fork.

BTW, above colleague also left to work for Jive - I believe he's still with them several years later.
Surely the botnet operators and the authors of the original infection program knew about the risks of not using any authentication for communication between clients and servers? If anything, they are probably surprised they got away with that flaw for so long.

Maybe the people writing botnet apps have the same pressures as legitimate companies, where the "bizdev" guys tells the techies to ship unfinished garbage just to have the next version out the door, and the bugs and security holes be damned. :)
the technologizer.com article is incorrect - it uses the dimensions and weight of the iPod Touch rather than the iPhone 3G.
I could tell you with considerably greater confidence whether or not it will snow in Boston ten years from today.
Then don't do web-apps. There's nothing wrong with starting doing GUI apps with PyGame or something
Ask HN: Why is SICP generally preferred over HtDP?
Hi all,

New member, longtime lurker here. As someone who knows almost nothing about programming, I've recently decided to rectify that by starting out with HtDP. I'm just curious why many people seem to recommend SICP over HtDP, not only for newbies, but in general. The impression I've gotten from various sources is that HtDP is a better starting point. (Of course, this is probably relative to the viewer.)

Any comments on why you've chosen SICP over HtDP would be appreciated and enlightening.
Seems to be just a shiny wrapper around this blog post: http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2009/01/07/...
I think they're also voting down my News.YC comments.
But they still reap the benefits of living in a country where most people pay taxes, do they not?
Okay, if your problem is with the benefits, say so. It's not clear to me that there are any benefits that are actually exclusive to taxed funds. I'd be willing to consider defense against invasion, but I'm not even sure, there.
I'm in. rod at ennobleit dot com
An astute observation, but you could generalize this as:

Geeks seem to have this funny blindspot when it comes to premature optimization if the premature optimization makes for an interesting problem.

Even if the death of the sun is not imminent, it's still an amusing scenario to toss around.
His conclusion is that computer science is more rigorous than mathematics. His argument is that programs written for computers are more explicit than proofs written for humans. The conclusion and the argument don't match up at all. Computer science, as a subject, is no more rigorous than mathematics.
> I don't have any contacts that could lead into consulting projects

This is the problem! You need to do some networking; and I don't mean in some sleazy marketroid way.

Go to barcamps, meetups, language groups, hacker groups, photo meetups, or whatever floats your boat. Get people's twitter names and keep up conversations with them. Go to the bar with them occasionally. Make friends.

If you do this for 5-7 months I guarantee you'll have plenty of connections by the time you need to get a job, and you won't have to spend any of your work time doing it.
We could probably telecommute from LEO, but anything further out starts to become annoying if you need anything in real time.

On the other hand, with the lack of distractions, I imagine the Moon would be an incredibly productive locale.
I just finished chapter 1, but would love to join you guys.
If they continue to be a private company, they can add automation as they scale up without adding so many employees, and achieve the same. Reducing (the percentage of) employees in favor of automation seems like something to do after launches are so routine that all the decisions have been made multiple times.
Sure, even in the US, a superstructure of mutually-reinforcing interests, in the government, media, and education establishments, works to make certain true and good ideas almost unthinkable. (See also: PG's 'What You Can't Say'.)

Still, we should prefer such 'soft censorship' to the hard, real censorship where dissenting voices wind up in 'Re-education Through Labor' detention camps, or are 'disappeared' entirely. If China moves more to the subtle control we know and love in the West, everyone wins.
Bill Gates Behind Bars
If humans evolved into in silico entities, then human bodies would not need eventually to be in space, would they?
Since many HN readers are in the CA Bay Area, would it make sense to add a bi-weekly or monthly physical meeting to this as well?
Yes, but I only hear of this particular amusing scenario in the context of "Why you should be forced to give your money to support a government agency which I approve of".
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Speaker slides from CodeMash 2009
I'm happy to entertain outrageous claims, what about outrageous claims #1 and #3?
I agree, especially about the 'private' part. Going public (I think) tends to have value by having a lot of employees. Staying private won't affect the market cap if they lay people off.

I'm not saying slash and burn, just that the lowest launch cost is made possible.
I've never had a dropped call with my iPhone either. The only person complaining about call quality in this thread is Matt.

It's a bit disingenuous to make declarations about how poor a product is when you don't even own one. It seems to be a common theme when he writes about Apple.
It's not the claim that mathematics sometimes lacks rigour that's bothering anyone. It's the claim that computer science, as a subject, is somehow more rigorous than mathematics. It's the false equivalence of programs with computer science that's wrong.
“My dad always says, ‘Back in Somalia, when I was 14, I could see myself running my own business, having my own children. You’re 14, you can’t get your studies done.’ ”

I can think of a very effective solution to this stupefyingly (but unsurprisingly) ungrateful person's attitude, and it doesn't involve stealing money from the taxpayer.

No, really, what's the proper response to a group of people's disgust for their new country who (in certain cases) were delivered here against the wishes of the people? What should we say to this? How about, umm, "Go fuck yourself. Seriously. Fuck yourself." That's the reasonable response, but the nytimes rather sings a paean to the unquestionably superior culture and people of Somalia, in deep contrast with the allegedly "American" culture that involves saggy pants.

It's a great example of media framing. When I hear of people who come to a country and immediately:

1. Spit on the ground.

2. Demand extra services.

3. Demand segregation from the natives.

...there are serious social/political questions to be raised. Not fuzzy, where's-your-sandal-I-want-to-lick-it bullcrap.

I didn't submit the article so don't blame me for writing an appropriate response.
What's the show called? Or for that matter, what's his Chinese name? I get HK here and I've never seen him.
After an initial download, and about 10 minutes worth of testing, I have concluded that the Android Market "Shopping List" app sucks. It's a decent first attempt at a shopping list app, but it has (basically) two features -- add items to the list, and check items as done. The checking of items as done doesn't throw them to the bottom of the list or do anything other than put a check next to them.
thanks for posting this. I read his double-book "Dream Machines / Computer Lib" when it came out: it changed my perspective on the future of computing from numbers and mathematics to narrative and media.

I heard him speak perhaps 15 years ago now at a Computer Literacy bookstore event and he was a little cranky but extremely insightful. I remember two key points he made that I still value:

1. We need to shift our thinking from an "educational curriculum" to a reticulum (or network) that emphasizes the connectedness of topics and concepts and teach students to learn how to learn through exploration as much as rote and replay.

2. Read Mark Twain's "Roughing It" for insights into Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

EDIT: more info including a summary of "pre-history chapters" available at http://geeks-bearing-gifts.com/
I got SICP as a christmas present, I'm in.
Their point in SICM was that traditional notation was not as ambiguous as their computational notation. That's because traditional notation is designed to be convenient rather than explicit. They are right, but this does not mean that physics lacks rigour. More explicit notations were always available and physicists, being more intelligent than computers, were capable of resolving the ambiguities to reveal the fully rigorous structure underneath.

There's a difference between using a convenient notation and lacking rigour. If you are always capable of discerning the true formal equations behind a convenient notation then everything is OK. If you can't, or people can't agree on what the formal meaning should be, then there is indeed a problem. The fact that the authors could derive a computational notation that no physicist would disagree with is proof that a lack of rigour never existed in the first place.
5-7 months savings is above average I would guess.
Here's what I recommend:

1 - Get out of NYC fast!! Find the cheapest place you find comfortable and your 5-7 months savings will get you 12+ months. This does not need to be in the U.S.

2 - So you like coding? Ok, but what if for the next 5 years the world won't pay too well for coding? Are you prepared to get into other things?

3 - Don't Panic! Seriously. This is life, stuff happens. Find other things that allow you to be happy. Be positive and start living CHEAP!!!
As an occasional reader of The Daily WTF, I don't think it's fair to say that this sort of thing never hurt anyone.

Every language that has been around for a while has its own culture and traditions. The culture of PHP is a better reason to avoid it than the language itself. I spent a lot of time un-learning habits I picked up from languages like PHP and BASIC. I suspect I would know a lot more now if I had started with Smalltalk[0] and not had to waste as much time un-learning bad habits.

[0] Python wasn't around then
Seems like fun in a sick kind of way. I wonder if there's a way you could turn this into a novelty game and charge for the experience. The biggest problem would be capturing the authenticity I think. Is there a market for doing NSA quality interrogations? :-)
Your point references the correlation between capitalism and democracy.

One downside of a democracy is that special interests can gain power and distort the system to the benefit of the few rather than the many.

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand shows how corporate interests run amok can lead to very bad outcomes, and she creates a moral argument for capitalism -- as compared with crony capitalism.
Hm. I actually was referring to not becoming bound too tightly to the government (that is, "public sector"), when I said "private". I do agree that not becoming a publicly-traded company may help them stay small and lean, but I'm not sure that's a major risk anytime soon anyway.
Every time I read one of these accounts, or watch a police interrogation on TV, part of me feels a bit curious. How I would perform in that sort of situation? We (i.e., even hackers) have ways of testing our intelligence and athletic stamina, but what about various forms of psychological fortitude?

It sounds odd, but maybe a mutual interrogation club could be a rewarding way to try this out. Like, person A tells you a secret and then locks you in a room with person B, who knows part but not all of the story and must try to extract an additional detail from you. One either side of the interrogation, you could learn a lot about high-stress psychological situations, and their impact on you and other people.
well Microsoft never really cared about user experience
No. A rich executive loses a whole bunch of money. He "lost a lot for himself", but he was acting from selfish motives, like the search for more money.

"Selfish" goes to motivation, not consequences. Depending on the amount of pessimism in your dogma, you can always interpret actions as selfish or altruistic after the fact.

Reasoning that can create two equal and opposite arguments like this doesn't mean anything.
You say you don't have any control over the funding, and you didn't mention how large the start-up is, but maybe this is somewhere you could take some initiative. Would the founders let you get involved in the funding?

The reason I ask is that I assume from your experience with the Hedge Fund, that you probably have more financial expertise and contacts than the founders. Maybe they even cut you in for more.
Yes unless there is some reason why that can't work (ie AI is impossible, or similar) then flinging meat around space doesn't make any sense.
Another Richter Scales song
It would make the datetime class look more like other class names, but I'd strongly recommend against doing this. The Python community values consistency in the way that code is written (TOOWTDI) and this would be a sharp departure from that.
For the claim about Zimbabwe, see here: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/country...

I don't have a one stop source for the claims about FDR and the New Deal. But these three are a good start: John Flynn's The Roosevelt Myth ( http://mises.org/books/rooseveltmyth.pdf ), this podcast on the New Deal ( http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2008/Higgsgreatdepres... ), and this book on the origins of World War II: ( http://mises.org/books/perpetual.pdf ).
Excellent. I just started with SICP. So doing it together with HN folks sounds nice!
I wonder how much better people would take it high or drunk. Maybe that's why they make you wait 4 hours, to let anything you may have taken to relax you wear off.
I could see humans taking rockets while all non-perishable cargo takes the elevator.
Great advice.

Actually, it doesn't even take 5-7 months. Just start e-mailing people working on stuff you like. Go to a bar camp and be above average socially, get a speaking gig there if possible. You'll be good to go.
pretty gay if I say so myself....the only good one was the here comes another bubble
Not when they were two guys writing Altair Basic. They survived off sales to hobbyists. Being ruthless wouldn't have go them very far.
Courtesy: Robert Mugabe!!!!!

This is what this idiot is capable of, after all!!!!!
1 - Get out of NYC fast!!

How is he supposed to get funding, if he does that?

http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

2. Bad Location

Startups prosper in some places and not others. [...] It's an interesting question why cities become startup hubs, but the reason startups prosper in them is probably the same as it is for any industry: that's where the experts are. Standards are higher; people are more sympathetic to what you're doing; the kind of people you want to hire want to live there; supporting industries are there; the people you run into in chance meetings are in the same business.

-

http://paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html

In addition to the concentration that comes from specialization, startup hubs are also markets. And markets are usually centralized. Even now, when traders could be anywhere, they cluster in a few cities. It's hard to say exactly what it is about face to face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology.