skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I spent some time working with the people at the advanced computation group there. It was a short time, and it was all in the formal systems/automatic analysis area, so this is a summary of what I picked up within my limited view...

The thing is that software's taken at a very different angle from there as in most parts.

First, the ones who know exactly what's supposed to happen aren't software people, they're engineers who don't write code. At least not real-time embedded control code.

Second, there are too many different people who's interests come together in the same codebase. I.E. lots of different engineering disciplines at once. Each one has their own work to do separate from the programming. You can get specifications & equations out of them, but the code's a different group.

Third, the need for high assurance is important. Note the word 'Assurance.' If something bad happens at Nasa, there's a lot of news and possibly a statement by The President. Being that this is a government agency building stuff, it's going to have similar problems to DoD agencies building stuff. That is, an incredible amount of the project will be spent to reduce the variability of the project. Even if the sum cost is many [, many]* times the likely variance.

The main space they have to work with is in mechanized assurance systems. Sadly, the formal systems out there aren't terribly evolved, as most people just test & debug their systems to get it right.

As for contributions to software, or lessons learned, there are some very good experiences & things learned for people who want to build better tools to make this stuff easier. E.g. higher-level languages that look more like Matlab than embedded C (don't get me started on Matlab-C converter). Stuff where you can be sure that no matter what instruction sequences you give to a robotic arm, that it never ends up in a position where one of joints is locked.

When I was there, the attempt was natural language to CSP traces, to be run through a theorem prover there later. We had a total of two grad students working on it over a summer, after an initial prototype was written earlier.

As other posts on HN have mentioned, and as one can surmise from the chatter about Nasa, it's costs are very closely looked at by a lot of people -- many who don't understand/know/care about the specific problems Nasa's got. That creates a whole new set of problems. Being observed under a microscope and then being hit for everything a nontechnical senator can get political points for hitting you for will make you start working in pretty strange ways.
because, you know, OS X is kinda ... cool, just as git seems to be cool nowadays.

But I agree, it's quite easy to declare it an epic fail.
My mobile phone's old and decrepit and often loses its date and time, going back to November 2005 for reasons known only to itself. The first I know of it, Opera Mini is refusing to connect to the web. I always wondered why that should be the case - thanks!
99% percentile on verbal. Didn't really study for it though, just read a lot as a kid and had the fortune to have studied Latin.

Worth mentioning that my life doesn't correlate to success in any meaningful way, except that I keep making decisions which make me happy if poor.
If a 13 year-old can launch a startup you have no excuse
$100,000 for your Startup to Save Lives
Hey Microsoft: The "Apple Tax" doesn't just apply to Apple, and isn't a tax.
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Bow Hunters’ Solitary Quest - Stalking an Elk and a Record
I think it's relevant. There are plenty of people here who develop for the iPhone and it's interesting to know that the cracked application community is so large... And that it's so easy to crack them. (From what I read in the article).
Villu Trailer, Villu Movie Trailer, Villu Film Trailer, Villu Cinema Trailer
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Ask HN: When did FastCompany.com ditch their "web 2.0" redesign?
Several months ago, Fast Company launched a much-heralded redesign of their web site that included user blogs, groups, bookmarking and social networking features.

It was built on Drupal 5. Here's the write-up where the dev team fielded questions and kudos for the work: http://drupal.org/node/221481

But just yesterday I loaded it up and it looks like they've tucked away all the social elements into footer links and are now just featuring articles on the front page. It's a much more conventional presentation.

http://www.fastcompany.com/

When did this happen? I can't find anything on the web announcing, reviewing or explaining the change.

As a web publisher who's always interested in new ways of presenting content and making it interesting to my audience, I'm really curious about the thinking that went into this. Was the redesign a big flop? And if so, shouldn't someone say that?

Over on that Drupal page, people are still congratulating the developers on their success as of November. That strikes me as a bit odd considering the site's done away with much of their handiwork in favor of tried and true "just list the stories" approach.

For a long while I believe that there could be a way to meld editorial and reader-submitted/rated content on one page. But the more I've thought about it, worked on it and shown it to people, the less it makes sense to me.

I'm now more or less of the mindset that you have to pick one approach and do it well. Either you bring new information to the web and let everyone else rip off the highlights, editorialize and discuss it with their readers, or you aggregate and build community around other people's work. I've not seen a single hybrid approach work yet.
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Interested in Books for Children? This site will definitely give you lots of informations on it.
Btw Flash 9 does run on ARM devices.
The Uno, an electric motorcycle with side-by-side wheels and balances using a gyroscope.
For someone so happy to "[not] have to go back to Windows anymore!!!^69" you're clearly a Mac user. I find it puzzling that you've got such distaste then, for "OSX-style UI for retarded Oklahoma children". If you're so clearly against windows and use OS X and all of the applications it has to offer, aren't you really just saying a bit about yourself here? That or this is purely hypocrisy. For having such hate for "OSX's idiotic idioms", I find it pretty surprising that you use the platform at all.

At least you could have made your frustrations clear in a less vicious manner, and without making yourself look like such a tool.
The port might be via Wine, same as the Linux version.

I wish more Mac OS X application developers would port their software to other platforms, but sadly this is basically unheard of. With continued improvements to WxWidgets, GTK+ and (to a much lesser extent) Qt and XUL hopefully people will start embracing toolkits designed for true cross-platform development rather than developing for each proprietary API individually and considering other platforms as an afterthought.
I think it is relevant. We're developing a couple of iPhone apps, so its useful to see what people are doing in terms of cracking
Why not split it in more files?

Why overcomplicate code? 4GB is a completely arbitrary restriction.

why should I believe OS X wouldn't cause you other kind of frustrating problems?

OS X does have its own set of frustrations, but theirs seem to be easier to work around, in my limited experience. Also, they aren't usually complete roadblocks, like the Windows Large File Support problem.
The irony is, you've got a choice whether to pay the Apple tax or not (i.e don't buy a Mac). On the rest of computers out there (especially laptops), you're forced to pay a Microsoft tax, whether you want to use the operating system or not.

- excluding maybe Dell's Linux offers and low-end netbooks.
The Cost of Net Negative Producing Programmers
Very interesting, although I'm not quite sure if they established a causal link between these two behaviours. The article isn't detailed enough to know this.

It could well be that both behaviours (coming up with excuses - proactively or after-the-fact - and setting yourself up for failure) are driven by something else (e.g. intense distractibility coupled with good creativity and intuition). I'm not saying it is, but that needs to be ruled out before the article's conclusion can be established.
Actually his audience are people who happen to have days jobs as corporate programmers. The difference is both small and large.
(I'm part of the team working on the redesign.) Actually, the site visible (for a few days now as of 2009-01-06) is not our final, polished, presentable site. It is only a working draft that was tossed on in a hurry because of unresolvable technical problems with the old one. Stay tuned for the _real_ new site, which we expect to be up in a Short While.
Dalvik vs Mono
Actually, Linux distros can be the key to a successful non-x86 workstation. RISC workstations more or less failed when Windows did not properly support them - most people didn't care how fast their Alphas or PPCs are if they can't run Office.

Now, if you have an ARM netbook that runs OpenOffice, Evolution and Firefox as well as a x86 in a laptop that costs you $200 for a 8-hour battery life, I say you have a major market changer. You are only bound to the x86 as long as you are bound to Microsoft software.

I work under Linux most of the time (actually, I use Windows for 9-5 work and Linux for the 5-9 stuff). As long as Emacs, PostgreSQL, Python, Plone and Django are available, I really don't care about what architecture I am using. Performance being adequate, it could be an ARM-based chip, an Intel 432 or a zSeries mainframe and I would not notice the difference until I did a "uname -a".

I would probably find the zSeries somewhat bulky...
Setting Up A High-Availability Load Balancer With HAProxy/Wackamole/Spread On Debian Etch
"The idea is based on the undeniably-true proposition that you can buy Windows PCs with better specs than Macs for a lot less money."

That was true a decade and more ago, but hasn't been true for a long time. Match a Mac with a Dell spec-for-spec and the Mac is the same price or a bit cheaper, but the reputation still lingers.
Honestly, I am not very sure if meta-discussion is HN material.
Short version is "I pirated it to gain status with people who think a buck is too much damn money to spend on software which runs on a six hundred dollar phone "
Renewable Energy From The Earth's Core
Geothermal energy is heat from within the earth. We can use the steam and hot water produced inside the earth to heat buildings or generate electricity. Geothermal energy is a renewable energy source because the water is replenished by rainfall and the heat is continuously produced inside the earth.
Hungry black bears have a pretty neat aura as well.
heh if you wrote code that used a 16-bit time data type, it would be broken by the next day
Tape is a long way from being dead. We have tape libraries directly attached to our SAN and they backup 160 GB per tape. Because of data retention laws (we are a government agency) we need to archive backups for years, which we do off-site in a data vault. For SOHO use though, disk-to-disk backups generally are cheaper and faster, but it's still important to store backups off-site.
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Apple Announces MacBook Wheel (joke)
The albums downloads included more than just music in this case. The Ghosts download included FLACs (as well as multiple encoding of mp3s) of all the songs and high quality art that was created for the release (I think it was $10 for everything, and more money for a limited-release vinyl). So had you known about the download, there would have been even more of an incentive to get it from nin.com

I definitely agree about supporting the band through merchandise and concerts. I ended up seeing NIN four times in 2008, dragging my parents to one of their shows. I can't say I did this because of purely wanting to support the band, but due to the Lights In The Sky tour being so jaw-droppingly amazing.
Online video viewing jumps 34 percent
There's an infinite variety of problems that can exist with backups. Back in the early eighties I had to restore a file from a backup that was more than a year old, but couldn't read the tape (even though it was the same drive that created the backup). We called in our Field Engineer and he hooked an oscilloscope up to the tape drive and adjusted it until we were finally able to read the tape. It took most of a day.
The prices are generally competitive but far from always the same or cheaper. For instance, there's a $600 (AUD) advantage Dell's way on a recent comparison I did.
Maybe trying to regain their preferred status among the top talent looking for work

Have they lost it? Whom have they lost it to?
cough cough eeebuntu cough cough
>> So, if all goes normally, 19-January-2038 will suddenly become 13-December-1901 in every time_t across the globe, and every date calculation based on this figure will go haywire.

Good thing we have 28+ years to sort this out..
Dohn't you unduhsstahnd? Ohl ur daytuh veel bee losst!

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,317553,00.html
Mine too. You take a single sheet and fold it. No tape. No paperclips.
Semantics in HTML 5
I still have the first computer I bought: an Apple ][+. I haven't booted it up in over fifteen years. If it still works it could be useful for some things, but without a TCP/IP stack, it can never connect to the Internet or even a LAN which severely limits its usefulness to me. Even if hardware lasts 25 years, who can say what the needs of the user will be in that time and whether the hardware will support the software needed to support those needs?

For simpler tools, such as knives, hammers and wrenches, I always buy top quality and have many hand tools that are more than a quarter century old and in perfect working condition. Some of the hand tools I have were my grandfather's first, then my father's before coming to me.
Ask YC: Is an IPO Alternative Needed?
I've seen this idea going around for the past six months and I was curious about the feasibility/need for it. Currently there are barriers for companies to reach IPO (Sarbox, etc.) which in turn makes it much more difficult for a clean exit for early-stage investors.

So what has been suggested is to create a secondary market (see here: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/08/a-secondary-mar.html) to help fill the widening gap between startup and IPO. This would in turn create some liquidity that would lead to less risk for founders and early investors.

Clearly there are some legal risks in actually creating a market. The only people that could participate would be accredited investors, and there would be some muddling with the SEC and possibly the CTFC.

I'm asking YC because the discussion doesn't seem to hit this demographic. What do you think?
I'm too old.
I appreciate all of the leads, but does anyone have performance numbers?
Only if you're inside one of the Mac product ranges.

e.g. I want a desktop Mac without an integrated LCD (i.e. not an iMac), and without putting up with laptop class components which compromise performance (i.e. not a Mac mini or laptop).

So my choice is a Mac Pro: starting at $2799(!)

Fair enough, it's an awesome machine (8 cores, great case design, etc), but it's still nearly 3 thousand dollars.

(Aside: I own PCs and Macs, I just feel there's a bit of a gap in Apple's product range there. It's quite possible Apple are right though, and that most people will want to buy a laptop or iMac).
Actually, it wouldn't change anything since add/sub are the same for signed (2s comp) and unsigned ints and C will happily let you assign a signed literal to an unsigned variable.

You would just get some compiler warnings and maybe break the rare piece of code that multiplies negative time deltas.

What you have to fix are the operations that convert between time_t and some other representation and those are not going care about the data type.
In Silicon Valley, VCs Turn Cautious and Focus on the Short Term
The Dysfunctional State of Bug Tracking
I think "vi foo" works just fine with vim-tiny. If it didn't, it would be vim-empty.
you make it sound like an episode of 'The West Wing,' I think that they will spend more time trying to solve their actual security issues than trying to distract from the problem
Frighteningly accurate description of behavior I've caught myself engaging in. It's a vicious cycle best defeated by working on things with people who know you well and won't put up with it.
Ask HN: ad driven iPhone apps?
I don't have an iPhone or a Mac yet, so I wonder how ad driven iPhone apps work. I have heard they exist (or existed, in the beginning), but how do they work (not only technically, but from a UI perspective)? Do iPhone users really accept ads in the apps? I thought they would expect perfect, flawless design, which doesn't seem to align well with in-app ads.
Signs Of Evolution In Modern Man
It's nicer to be a "could have" than a "cannot."
How many band t-shirts vs "free albums" do you own?
Tim O'Reilly: The Biggest Ponzi Scheme of Them All
Single page version: http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print
Do you know why they changed? Seems like the previous version would be better than the writing section. While most score 5-6, the older scores look like more of a differentiator.

People are moving standardized tests away from being iq tests, for some reason. Why don't they just replace the SAT and GRE with a real IQ test?
I thought this too but I'm not sure I see it as much different. If the reasons for requiring the excuses are different, but the excuses are still being made and success not being achieved, why is the distinction interesting?
Student Startup: MySpace meets American Idol
Ask HN: Using SBA Line Of Credit For Startup Costs?
I am looking at different options to finance costs such as bandwidth costs, in the beginning stages. Has anyone gotten an SBA line of credit and how did it work for you. Are the rates good, and would you do it again or go another route.
And if you want another (false) ego boost, calculate your iq from your gre:

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/GREIQ.aspx
Yeah, I do this too. I do it so intensely that it's practically the story of my life. High praise and expectations from parents in youth led me to be afraid I'd never reach them. Oh shit, did I just do it again?

Seriously, I think years of sabotaging myself has led to a real effect on my work ethic, and I'm only just beginning to restructure my emotional schema.
Makes sense, philosophers are more interested in analyzing the nuances of words than writers. Writers focus more on the effect of words and philosophers focus more on the meaning of words.
And most embedded code does not care about dates anyway.
2009: Products we can't live without
Performance of URL shorteners
Hiya. I'm answering my own question. Being disappointed with how slowly TinyURL ran, I asked HN about the performance of others:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=421552

I just spent a few minutes timing alternatives:

TinyURL: 0.44s/req

bit.ly: 0.19s/req

is.gd: 0.07s/req

That's a pretty big spread!
We still have Cobol and Fortran (and Lisp).
How did you make your time tests?
Emacs tagging mode
Same story. School came so incredibly easy for me that I decided I was a genius or something in 4th grade. Anything that would clash with this self assessment was something to avoid.

And sports did NOT come easily for me, so I decided I was terrible at them wouldn't ever be any good. Anything that would clash with this self assessment was something to avoid. I was ok with letting a ball get through into the goal every once in a while. It confirmed my self image.

The truth, that maybe I wasn't that smart but also wasn't that terrible at soccer, would have been a lot harder to swallow. Still is probably.

The New Yorker recently published a profile of Alec Baldwin that describes this phenomenon very well.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/08/080908fa_fact_...

The writer observes that Baldwin has an excuse for every bad performance. And that his life narrative, as he describes it, consists only of triumphs and miserable failures.

"Baldwin is perhaps too easily seduced by a narrative of grand failure, rather than accepting a quieter story of qualified success; but by his account, one that hurries past some fine performances, almost everything he did in film from that point on (post-Hunt for Red October) was, at best, dissatisfying."

----------------------

I think that "quieter story" is what scared me as a kid and what scares me sometimes still, the fear of being just another average person with some successes and stumbles, rather than someone "special."

This is narcissism right?
Because if

A -> B

then B can be fixed by fixing A. (i.e. if coming up with excuses proactively is a direct cause of failure, if you can cure your habit of coming up with excuses you can reduce your failure chances).

On the other hand, if:

C -> A

and

C -> B

Then there is no causal link between A and B, even though they occur together, and so fixing A (the excuses) won't fix B (the increased rate of failure), and instead you must find out what C is.
A few notes:

1) This idea has been explored before, there were a few services in the first dot-com bubble that tried this idea.

2) Conversion would be horribly low. This would draw people who would click through as quickly as possible to make the maximum ROI for their time. Oh sure if you make it necessary for the user to click through, you'll see conversions in terms of clicks / impressions, but the advertisers will see very little in terms of conversions into sales.

3) Most ad systems, Google Ads etc. actively disallow this sort of system. So any ads would have to be in house and thus fully funded by the financial backing of the person posting the ad.
Thought it was just me.
Well that's universal. You can't exactly protect against someone who's also supposed to hold the keys to the system. Its more a feature than a bug.
Jobs' Health Message Makes Little Sense, Experts Say
It's strikes me that his advice on how to avoid getting burnt out at work is advice that is precisely designed to ensure that your day job is boring, unfulfilling and that you never get given any tasks that are interesting or designed to let you stretch your intellectual wings.
Compare these two senerio.

Suppose the whole world needs a treatment for a virus. A medicine has been released. The world will still need a doctor per 1000 patient to diagnose and pescribe it. That translates to hundread million active jobs.

Now suppose a new computer virus is in the wild. One man codes the solution and releases it, say for free. The world will not need a second man for this solution, ever. Zero job created.

Once a software has been built and finished, it's a done job. How many cycles can one run enhancing it, or find a better solution? For a software to be used by 5 billion people, how many programmers do we need? Compare it back with the doctors.
"# We spent a lot of time getting our offices right.
We think it's important to have a high density of people. People are packed together everywhere. We all share offices. We like this set of buildings because it's more like a densely packed university campus than a typical suburban office park."

I work at Carnegie Mellon, and Google Pittsburgh is literally right next to the building I work in. I visited a friend there, and there really isn't much distinction between their office layout and the way the rest of the campus looks (except they have better food). Googlers attend and give talks on campus and in their offices all the time, right alongside the faculty and students.

So, yes, I would say they have succeeded in recreating the grad school environment, assuming their offices are anything like the Pittsburgh one.
Following The Twitter Hack Trail To DigitalGangster