skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Justin Kan on letting go and staying sane when running a startup
In this video interview, Justin.TV and Exec founder, Justin Kan, explains that if you're a founder who's deciding and sweating everything at your startup, you're doing it wrong.
The difference being, Microsoft has a history of slashing prices below cost. Apple does not, and it would be difficult to predict that they would start anytime soon. Apple makes their money on status and luxury, not on volume sales. Microsoft has no problem being a commodity, whereas Apple would never utter that word.
Actually, my comments were towards what Steve said, not what you said. Sorry that that wasn't clear.

Steve says biotech is data mining, and it's not. It's a physics problem. A lot of very, very hard physics problems. On systems that are hard to observe, since observing them tends to kill them and/or otherwise change the way they function.

Andy Grove made an even more egregious example of this a few years ago. In a talk he gave, he spoke at length about how biotech needed to learn from tech. Anybody that knows anything about the complexity of biology would find his comments ... well, calling it naive would be very kind.

Most people, including tech people, don't understand how vastly more complex biology is than tech.

It's not actually clear how tech can help biotech. There was a rush of work in the 90s related to sequence reconstruction that has been very useful in reducing a lot drudgery. But not necessarily much that has been able to move higher up the stack, stuff like systems biology. These systems are so complex and non-linear that analytical tools often get overwhelmed or don't produce meaningful results because the models and observable data are so radically simplified.

It's not that it shouldn't be worked on. It's just that indications of the likelihood of a singularity/inflection point aren't so high as seem to be often spoken of.
I usually try to keep it short and simple at first: "I build education software." If they show further interest by asking a follow up question, I get a little more technical. I don't know why, but it continues to surprise me just how few people know anything about how the internet (or computers) work.
Both seem reasonably plausible - can we get some empirical data?
The "Light Sport Aircraft" designation might very well be a big deal. I'm hoping that this is just the first of many light sport aircraft that make flying more practical for more people.
Ask HN: Good Apps for Macbook Pro
Purchased a new Macbook Pro from Walmart. Need to know some good apps to download on the App Store. Any links will help!!!!!!!!!!!
Can someone explain how they destroyed LendInk? All the website says is "Currently offline
Not due to DMCA complaints." So why is it offline?

Shouldn't an article like this have a quote from the site operator?
Being Funny (Steve Martin)
Sure, but the way it was historically decided by most people was a position of little or no privacy. In a small town, everybody knows everybody's business.

It's only urbanization, which only works because of good transportation, that made that untenable. So those of us who like privacy finally had some.

But information technology is making it possible for people to keep track of basically everybody they care to again. So we're going to go right back to what most people like, which is life as soap opera.
checking prog directory might mean they are looking for specific machin with specific system image
Interesting ideas, but the compiler produces zero-byte executables and crashes trying to build the two-liners in the tutorial.
Conway's Game of Life on Meteor
An open-source implementation of Conway's Game of Life on Meteor.
I guess if LCtrl and their LMod3 were swapped (ie so that capslock is used as Ctrl for shortcut keys), I could see this being an interesting layout. It has all the common keys either on the home row or easily reached from the home row. I can't ever see myself switching from Colemak though, I like how the fingers roll across adjacent keys too much.

(Plus since I don't type much German, I don't need quick access to üöäß, though an English-centric variant of Neo would be.. interesting, maybe using those keys for the most common programming symbols?)
I think Bloom filters would allow offline checking, without pinging Google for each request. They already do this for antimalware notices, iirc.
The secret to Samsung’s massive success: Attack every corner of your home
They don't naturally and automagically take advantage of that, no.
Neolane Taps Into Demand for Mobile and Social Marketing
Talking about procrastination is my favorite form of procrastination :)
Check his history. He posts this on every article that mentions CERN.
Is there a version of DataNitro for Office for Mac?
AFAIK, many authors and publishers sent DMCA notices and other threatening letters to the company hosting LendInk's website. Out of fear of litigation, the hosting company shut down LendInk.
As Apple TV set rumors calm down, new patent shows TV network navigation, DVR
Here is the original panorama image http://goo.gl/8a41M
I think this is original color.
You would actually write an "Increment the total" comment?
I guess I don't understand why somebody would post "Not due to DMCA complaints" on their website if they took it down because of DMCA complaints.
IAmA by Hackerschool student
You make it sound as though the options are either to hold it together with bailing wire or never ship. I think the correct answer is somewhere in the middle: Polish it when possible, hack it when practical.
Humanities aren’t a science. Stop treating them like one.
I've worked with NYT.com on some of their pre-paywall strategies and have several friends who work there currently.

All these points aside, the only significant issue is that Newspapers we're propped up on an ad-based bubble that was based on keeping ad-buyers in the dark.

Real-time analytics proved that advertising was not as effective as it was sold to be, ad-buyers only had (relative to todays) made up metrics that inflated the value.

Now when ad-buyers can see the true value of advertising through real metrics, they are far less willing to pay top dollar for it. Rupert Murdock foresaw this very clearly when he told the founders of Google "... you're going to ruin this for everyone" in reference to allowing ad-buyers to see metrics and bid on performance.

To make a very broad conclusion, marketing divisions were allowed larger budgets when they could tell executives they 'took out full page add in the New York Times' vs far less dramatic and less visible campaigns with targeted online markets, conversions, and engagement ratios.

The market become less useful when the total audience of an ad turned out to be far less than 100% of the distribution.
What is success for App.net?
My source is conversation with Larry Wall at lunch at OSCON in, I believe, 2006.

And yes, I've heard the Pearl claim before. As well as the claim that the original acronym was going to be Practical Extraction And Reporting Language.

All of the claims that I have heard fit together if you assume that the actual sequence of events was this. Larry wanted to name it pearl for whatever combination of reasons. Came up with a nice acronym for it. Decided not to name it pearl for whatever combinations of reasons. Was playing around and came up with the Perfectly Eclectic Rubbish Lister. Preferred that over pearl for various reasons (not in use, greppable, likes puns, etc). And therefore named the language perl. Therefore the language name is not an acronym, but both popular backronyms predate the actual language name.

I was not present. But this is my best guess as to what did happen.
Silent screenshots - get a full page screenshot of a page's live DOM
Is The Silicon Valley Bubble Forcing VC's To Invest Elsewhere?
The top 25 colleges for adventure seekers
If it weren't for the long-running convention of using backslashes as escape characters, postfix backslash would make some kind of sense, at least visually.

Forward slashes are for prefixes, backward slashes are for postfixes. Nice parallel there :)
You made the statement as if to bolster the subreddit as "revolutionary". It's effective, but there's nothing medically or socially revolutionary about fitness support groups. You followed healthy patterns and share your successes with others.
I also have the crank-adjustable desk mentioned and vouch for its coolness. Very nice to be able to switch from sitting to standing on demand.
And yet it makes it to the front page of HackerNews and sparks a discussion on the underlying point... clearly the time-pressed, duct-taped, MacGyver solution was ineffective!
The site author decided to keep it down, even though his ISP gave him a (somewhat work-intensive) way to clear the DMCA trouble and get the site back online.
The script is not getting 'likes,' it's pulling the number of 'shares' for a particular URL.

If you want to get to a brand's like-count, you'll need to feed the Graph API with either the Facebook Username of the account (e.g. "nike", not "http://www.nike.com "), or with the Facebook ID# of the brand (e.g. "15087023444").
Ask HN: Teaching compiler design with python source code
Is there any one willing to take an online class which focuses on compiler design taking python source code as example ? I really find dragon book difficult to grasp and full of theory
This is not true. There was a post in another topic that had a citation...there are a lot of sand storms on Mars and there is actually sound, it is just attenuated.
Definitely agree.

I had a CIS degree (not exactly computer science but some overlap) and I'd say some of the most helpful material I read to get myself on par with day-to-day developers was related to algorithms, data structures, and design patterns (the GOF book is very course-bookish but there are friendlier head start books if you're just getting into it).

To be honest though I'd say the best learning material I experienced was just surrounding myself with people who know more than myself. Ask for code reviews (don't just get forced to do them) from people you know to be excellent developers (not the easiest thing to spot when you're green though).

Also never stop learning whether it's through a degree or online through one of these sort of courses.
Here are some tools you might like! :)

A blog post I wrote on getting Facebook Likes/Shares, Tweets and Google +1s in Google Docs:

http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/3-quick-ways-to-c...

An awesome set of SEO tools for Excel:

http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/

A great new tool for getting competitor backlink data in Excel:

https://seogadget.co.uk/mozscape-api-extension-for-excel/
A working knowledge of algorithms and data structures will benefit you, but you might well be better off reading a book than following this. For the rest I really wouldn't bother; Compilers is an interesting way to learn some things, but not terribly applicable, everything else is stuff you'll pick up yourself or don't really need.
Believe it or not, most Kindle books are lendable.

I have a database of Kindle books that I built last year, but I know that now there are over a million titles. So, year old data:

> db.books.find({'lendable': true}).count();
543519
> db.books.count();
846456
The distinction I like to make is between firefighters and fire marshals. It's not that one is "better" than the other in any general sense.

When your house is on fire, you want the guy with the hoses and axes. To keep the house from catching on fire in the first place, you want the fire marshal to tell you that your kerosene collection might not be a good idea so close to your wood stove.
The ISP got cease and desist orders, plus some hatemail including threats of violence. So they took the site offline. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360626
> This is a fable bad programmers tell to themselves to
> justify their intellectual laziness.

No, actually commenting is easier solution for the lazy ones. Too bad they are to lazy to update the comments when something changes.

> No real world code is simple and elegant enough that you don't
> need to think through the complex invariants of the code

Oh, please…
Firstly, I see "This account has been suspended. Either the domain has been overused, or the reseller ran out of resources." on http://lendink.com.

Secondly, even if it did say that, it could somewhat be construed as true. The DMCA process wasn't necessarily followed since I don't think the hosting company gave the website owner the opportunity to refute them. Again, if I remember correctly, the website owner does not blame the host and did not see it as a fight worth fighting since there was little (or no) revenue involved.

Edit: the last paragraph may be incorrect; the hosting company may have given him an out. Regardless, he decided it was not worth the effort.
And it you watch it in your iPad 2, you will be holding the viewport in your hands.
Southwest employees participate in a profit-share program which allocates a substantial amount of profits to an employee pool. Thus, the better the airline does, the better they do (financially).
How is restricting investment to qualified investors "crowdfunding"? To me, this just sounds like appropriation of a sexy word to sound good.
Or, more charitably, "Get a free CS education".
LendInk was more of a matchmaker. All the actual lending happened on Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites.
None of these "hacks" are adjustable height. I don't get the point of this page. Sure you can buy a table and make it taller, that's not why the standing desks are expensive. Can we have a hack for getting the adjustable part right?
I don't see how a flying car makes any sense. Instead of accidents on the ground (which are fatal enough), now you'll have them falling out of the sky.

Granted, I was just in an accident a few weeks ago, and it dramatically changed my view on driving altogether. Crashes aren't just something that happens "to someone else". People are very irresponsible, reckless, and impatient when it comes to moving vehicles.
This is worth checking out also, a web based app built by Autodesk (warning: uses flash): http://www.homestyler.com/
Samsung: Whether or not we ripped off Apple’s tech, Apple stole it to begin with
Along a similar line, the first thing I thought when I heard about App.net is how everyone who can afford it will now be cut off from the people who can't. No more news about uprisings in Syria straight from the source, no Occupy news straight from the source, no news from basically anywhere but NYC, SF and random other towns around the US but basically no input from anyone who doesn't have extra expendable income. Pretty sad really.
App.net users will probably solve more than a few things, not all of which involve talking. Isn't this a bit presumptive?
BTW: Payleven is also a Samwer (Rocket Internet) incubated company. Payleven is obviously a Square clone.
True that. It's so visceral and so real that for a moment I worried about what would happen to all of those connectors and wires when it rained. Then, "oh. Mars. Right."
So you could have an emacs that... wasn't extensible. Seems pointless. Not that this hack has a lot of point either (a world class editor on a platform without a development toolchain?). Still, more pointless I guess.
Is it just me or is the recent surge of DataNitro scripts just proof of concepts? I don't really want to do get Facebook Likes in Excel or play Blackjack. They added a Python handler in Excel to do this, it isn't native.

My question is, why is this interesting?
I assume (and hope) that this will be opened up to all the newly-qualified investors once the JOBS act takes effect.
Is crime predictable?
Online Education is a Prestige Problem
A bad comment can waste a lot more time than the absence of a comment or a useless one (like x += n; //add n to x).
Hitting Above the Security Mendoza Line
You can now use Risk I/O to get information on the ways that hackers can break into your organizational data using a specific vulnerability. Our development team has made it possible for Risk I/O to match attack vectors from databases of quality assured exploits, such as Metasploit and ExploitB, to applicable vulnerabilities. This information, paired with the data from the connectors that give us vulnerabilities, allows you to understand how your organizational data is vulnerable to attacks.
Propaganda meets reality: none of the statements below are actually true:

"Message from the Director-General

CERN is an Equal Opportunities employer. Our Equal Opportunities policy is founded on four main pillars:

in recruitment and career development, the Organization will not discriminate against any applicant or employee on the grounds of sex, ethnic origin, disability, sexual orientation, religion, nationality or age; respect and dignity for all in the workplace; support for working parents; work-life balance." --

http://equal-opportunities.web.cern.ch/equal-opportunities/W...
I was actually talking to the Stripe president about this. He was talking about the difficulties in expanding to new monetary markets and how they have to partner with banks and such. However, They are expanding to Canada, UK, & Germany very soon.
It seems premature to say if they are getting it right or not given that the first investment hasn't even settled yet. Getting enough investors is part of the equation, but so are working with the investors and the company after the investment is made.
They do it for kitchens: http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_CA/rooms_ideas/kitchen_howto/NA/pl...
If you have ideas, comments or suggestions let me know!
For those who aren't aware of this tool:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.pocketwork...

It's really shockingly great. It turns dealing with terminal access from your touchscreen from a complete hair-pulling disaster into something that I am merely disinclined to do.

All the ASCII keys are where you expect them to be. And switching between the keyboards at runtime is as simple as launching the included app. Definitely recommended to anyone who ever needs to (occasionally!) ssh from their phone or tablet.
I see your point but when the text was produced, the app store was already going at full steam. The app store locks in the consumer when there isn't another clear path to that sort of content. The sort of content they pushed out of the plat by referencing the lack of capacity to use "touch"... give me a break, stuff like that was repeated ad infinitum. That and the other stuff on there doesn't qualify as "real" either, does it.

To the downvoter, you are a pitiful fanboy.
The issue I have with commenting is some people enforce it for the sake of having comments in place, which would most of the time describe the "what" and the "how" of the code, rather than the "why", which in my opinion, where most of the value lies. In Java, the usual offenders would be the getter and setters in POJOs, like:

* Returns the name
* @return the name
*/
public String getName();
> I can't think of one instance where I've thought "man, I wish I (or someone else) hadn't spent time explaining what this does".

There are good uses of comments, but there are also bad ones. From Coding Horror [1] an example:

'*************************************************
' Name: CopyString
'
' Purpose: This routine copies a string from the source
' string (source) to the target string (target).
'
' Algorithm: It gets the length of "source" and then copies each
' character, one at a time, into "target". It uses
' the loop index as an array index into both "source"
' and "target" and increments the loop/array index
' after each character is copied.
'
' Inputs: input The string to be copied
'
' Outputs: output The string to receive the copy of "input"
'
' Interface Assumptions: None
'
' Modification History: None
'
' Author: Dwight K. Coder
' Date Created: 10/1/04
' Phone: (555) 222-2255
' SSN: 111-22-3333
' Eye Color: Green
' Maiden Name: None
' Blood Type: AB-
' Mother's Maiden Name: None
' Favorite Car: Pontiac Aztek
' Personalized License Plate: "Tek-ie"
'*************************************************

Now imagine something like this exists for every function and you're reading the source code... Annoying.

Others are less extreme of course, but repeating the code in comments is bad and even harmful if you forget to update the comment as well as the code. DRY is a good principle to have.

Of course "all comments are bad" is simply wrong, comments are essential to explain decisions or non-obvious snippets or gotchas.
One of the draw backs that typically gets mentioned about current distributed systems is the lack of locking which makes managing un-merge-able (binary) files impossible to manage correctly. This is why you will not hear of many game dev studios using git, version controlling art assets is fairly common in such situations and perforce handles it like a champ. DVCSs in general tend to have performance issues with large files, I know mercurial warns you about the performance implications of storing anything over 10MB.

A bit old(2009) so it may have changed, but here is a rant about the scalability of git vs perforce.
http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=50
and a little newer post on git scalability issues:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3548824
Not everyone is sophisticated enough to build a mobile app from source, or wealthy enough to pay Apple $99/yr for the privilege of running your own code.
Honestly, that's one of the better outcomes. Imagine an oligarchy where the elite knows your genetic profile, your social activity, your daily habits, and your deviations from normal behavior. They may know before you do when you're starting to get restive, and will certainly be able to defuse or destroy any resistance.

A fun novel relating to this is Daniel Suarez's "Kill Decision".
Checklist for disaster first-responders: food, blankets – and wi-fi
Doesn't this have to be open-sourced? Emacs is GPL'd. I might want to help out with the development.
Years ago, I was eating dinner at a restaurant one evening, at a table by myself, and overheard a conversation at another table. "It's my N - 1 theory of work," someone was saying. "You always do the second most important thing." It was so true I burst out laughing.
صور نرمين محسن
Photos of Abandoned Olympic Sites Around the World
After reading the article twice, I'm unable to see how the authors 'took the site down,' other than by griping about it.
Just curious... what do you see as the use cases for this service?
The full implications of this code are that the attacker already has another channel to access your machine.

It's not much consolation that you now know that you're being targeted by the Program Files entries (they're a major pain to rename). It's likely there are one or more plants inside your operation and they have physical access to the machine, which is considered game over.
OWC Announces Retina MBP SSD Upgrade
To hack that part, I've seen people mount the monitor on an adjustable stand and the keyboard on an adjustable tray.
I really liked this line:

"Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the circumstances."
Klout Unveils Redesign And A Scoring System That Looks At Real World Influence
> Don't be afraid to break code.

Just not in production :)
This is all correct. Suitable is a spin-off from Willow Garage, with many of the same people involved. Suitable's first product is based off the Texai project from Willow.
The Texai was featured on the Big Bang Theory in one episode.
It's quite a lot easier to mess up C memory management than to somehow accidentally manually specify a ridiculous Typeable instance.
I don't think the article's wrong, exactly (though I'm more sympathetic to the authors than the, er, author is), but it's definitely written in a decidedly editorialized way.

I guess another way to say what I'm trying to say is: he didn't need to add any spin of his own (like the RIAA line) considering the quotes and screenshots.