skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Zed Shaws's Learn Python the Hardway is a wonderful introduction to Python and because it is very concise, it makes for a handy review resource as well. There are a few portions that I recall were a bit confusing but Zed does a great job of monitoring the comments and giving extra help when necessary.

Likewise, the Django tutorial throws you off the deep end but working through it twice gives a good overview of how the different pieces tie together.

I must second JulianWasTaken's dislike of Dive Into Python. I tried working through the book but had trouble integrating the information and recalling code discussed in previous chapters.

All that said, I think the most important thing to remember when learning any subject is to find what works for you. Start with a recommended source but if it isn't working, don't be afraid to try a different source or style.
Persistence often fails, even among smart people, because people don't know how to work productively. They think because they work hard, and are smart, they deserve some particular outcome.

They aren't try to produce, they are trying to earn a result. It isn't until people focus on trying to produce and create things of value to other people, rather than "earning" success, "doing the right things", that they begin to succeed. You have to take responsibility for your failures, no matter how unfair they may seem, look for the lessons in them and learn to be more effective.

Or at least that is how it seems to me.

The distinction here is very subtle, and possible to miss entirely. I think that subtlety may explain a great deal of confusion.
Write failing tests first. You will be amazed by the quality and lean nature of the code you create to make the tests pass.
I can't read this because I'm not logged in to Google Plus. I think that kinda says something.
He is not talking about causation or not. He is talking about using evidence to affect his (subjective) posterior probability of the truth of a statement.
Discovering new "tools" by following users with similar interests to that of your own.
Interesting theory but I'm not sure why the results would be much different than when Google pushed G+ on hundreds of millions of GMail users. It helped them put some numbers on the board but I haven't seen any improvement to the (lack of) content on G+ -- granted that is only my personal experience but I don't think I'm alone there. Maybe G+ will be a weird niche hit like the Okurt of education but it's hard for me to see that being enough to overcome the massive Facebook social lock-in effect.
I think Armstrong's treatment in the media is rather reflective of the relatively low degree of prestige the entire space program currently enjoys.

What I mean by this is that a number of people alive today no longer regard the fact that we landed on the moon with any particular reverence. This, I think, is due in large part to the as-of-yet unrealized potential of space exploration in general.

Had we been at a point in our evolution where space travel had demonstrated more tangible changes in daily life, the reaction would quite likely have been different. This isn't my personal opinion vis a vis Apollo 11, but rather my best guess as to how it is perceived by the public at large.

I for one look forward to the day when we all look back on NASA's early achievements with awe, and note precisely how much our world changed on a July day in 1969.
To those who read the comments before the article, this is really about building a market, not a platform in the sense that the word is usually thrown around here.
Doesn't that also mean that all their data and connections will disappear after they leave the university? How easy is it to migrate the connections and data to a personal account?
Just another reason not to watch the TV Networks. Many of the sites I frequently regularly (such as this one) had great links and discussions on what his contributions have meant to society. Can't think of a better way to memorialise a hero of that calibre.

The network media lost touch with audience members like me a long time ago...
How effective is marketing in these days? I get all my music recommendations from friends.
A slightly more utilitarian approach is to elide the "Who's Hiring" results: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22...
...and the college students most likely already have Facebook accounts.

The author discusses all these things that would be great and engaging if that content the students are going to be posted to G+. The problem is that it isn't. It's going to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and adding more pretty features isn't going to change that.
This misses the mark, as I've said before. Privacy is the #1 problem; just as computers and the internet make it trivially easy to copy other people's IP (agree with the existence of IP or not, it's a fact of the modern marketplace), it also makes it easy for other people to monitor you, whether those others are governments, corporate proxies for governments, corporate proxies for private interests, or private actors. Hyperbolic anxiety attacks over lockdown? GMAFB - the modern world is a hacker's nirvana compared to the functional rigidity that was the norm during the home computer revolution of the 1980s. Back then, electronic devices were much more expensive than today, so that while non-digital things like VCRs were far easier to explore with a soldering iron, they were also engineered to within an inch of their lives and were not easy to repurpose to other tasks.

The whole kerfuffle about 'general-purpose computing' is a foolish distraction. It's like citing the existence of ready-made wood furniture as evidence of a war on general-purpose carpentry. General-purpose computing is easier than ever because it's accessible at a wider range of scales than ever before, from geek-friendly microcontroller kits to distributed clustering architectures. The issue is privacy, and the fact is that the US doesn't have a well-defined legal standard for it, nor any authority dedicated to its preservation.

On the up side, while this is going to lead to a good deal of conflict I have hope that most of that is going to take place within markets and via legislatures.
40m IR 1/3 Sony CCD View Distance 480TVL Video Surveillance Camera
Read

Dive Into Python Must Die
http://oppugn.us/posts/1272050135.html

I pretty much agree with that. I bought the book and found it quite off-putting and though it was just me.
Or perhaps South Park.
I think you're reading more into my statement than was there.

The carriers in the USA, and their behaviours, are reality. They enforce restrictions. Therefore, phones are restricted. If you root your phone, and use features your carrier don't want used, they can fire you as a customer. Apple enabling features or apps that get you fired won't win them any fans other than hardcore technical folks that want to live on the edge.

The way to change that is... either a) market competition, which is extremely difficult due to capital needs owing to the sheer size of the USA, or b) regulation, as in Europe.
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale
"The hard part was getting the brain out. HAHAHA"

-Professor Hubert J Farnsworth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUZg11EtUP8
That's ES3. You have no reason to choose that way anymore - ES5 loops work everywhere current, can be polyfilled into IE8, and don't require any boilerplate stuff.

var paragraphs = document.getElementsByTagName('p');

paragraphs.forEach(function(paragraph){paragraph.innerHTML = 'Hello.';})
If they lose their .edu address, then yes, it would mean that.
There's an inherent assumption here that $2200 gets you a significantly better machine. It's true, but you can enjoy a massive jump in quality for probably around $150-1600. I believe that's what lubos is alluding to.
Weakest support of bold headline ever. I expected sharp insight into some previously ignored market forces to back it up. Instead his argument is "google is making some small inroads with a couple universities".

Do you not remember that google advertises is google+ on pretty much every page it serves. Remember when google placed a giant arrow on it's home page point to google+ shouting "HEY LOOK AT ME". Nobody cares. This isn't 2000, social networks aren't cool anymore. Google has gone to unprecedented lengths to get people to use G+ and has failed spectacularly. The only way Facebook could lose now is if they self implode, leaving G+ to pick up the pieces. The sooner Google realizes that and gets back to solving real problems that matter to the world, the better.
As another biologist, I like to troll vegetarians by insisting that plants have pain, because what else do you call a signalling system which starts a damage-response-system?
I would add the Python Cookbook.
Technically the book is not free but all the code is available at ActiveState.
I don't understand the logic here. Just because Google (and this guy) THINKS that college kids will use this/that this is going to be huge - does not mean it will be.
NASA to use consumer Android smartphones in new satellites
I think you have problems with abstract concepts...
Don't want to stray too far off topic, but it is a reference to an episode of South Park [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts
The soldered RAM and lack of optical drive are huge turnoffs. Not that I used CDs or DVDs any more but because SSD is still too unreliable not to have a platter backup. And I want to have the option to upgrade my RAM. I'm still rockin my 2010 MBP but may grab a late 2011 MBP from the refurb store...
I think the point most people like to make about Apple or any other company with regards to patents is a little different. Especially in case of Apple fans, most of them act like Ayn Rand fans. Though I agree that a whole lot of hard work is done to take things to the finishing line. And Apple is in fact a innovative company and deserves much credit for its success.

The whole point is nothing today exists in isolation. The ecosystem around you and other people's innovation play a huge role and are in many ways are responsible for your own innovations. Its a little like social security and taxes. Objectivists may argue that they must get all the pie they earn without giving anything back, because they earned it. But for them to earn it, the society and ecosystem around you- Stuff like roads, national/internal security, education, schools, industries, infrastructure ..<the list is endless>.. was already built for you. The ecosystem was conducive for you to 'earn' your pie. Without all that you would spend much of your life solving those problems first, leaving your actual accomplishments very little. Therefore if each person goes through the same thing, we go no where as a society or as a ecosystem. That is why 'giving back' is so important. Because that creates a feed back loop to achieve more as a society/ecosystem yet offering room for individual growth.

For Apple to be so successful. They had to stand on the shoulder of many giants. Even their design philosophy rests on the shoulder of a giant called Dieter Rams.

That is why their claims 'to carry the innovation burden of world' are not false but are ridiculous.

I agree that they had the what it takes to take risks. But to claim that they are responsible for all the innovation that exists out there and that they are innovating for the whole world is just ridiculous.
I'm glad you love your macbook, but would a similar-enough computer _really_ not do it for you? When I upgraded from a netbook as my main machine to my Toshiba Z830, it was amazing, but then again, that is comparing a $200 machine to a $700 machine.

I can't really see that same $500 difference in price making something like the $1200 MBP so much better than what I've got, with marginal utility and all that going.

I don't by any means think that getting a high end machine is a bad idea, but I do think that once you get something that is a high quality item, you definitely reach the "good enough for me" stage.
Interesting that the media types find tasteful humility to be so strange. Greatness just is. It doesn't need sound bites.
US Congress gave themselves $100 Million for their convention security
I write Android apps (in Java), which is consumer-focused, non-server. But the target isn't exactly desktops either.
How to extract PDF form data to CSV with PDF form data extractor
PDF form data Extractor can extract form data from PDF files, then you can save these data to CSV for reusing.
Build quality is generally not considered in terms of specs, it is hard to quantify. Also if we are talking Macs there is a lot around interoperability and software.
256Gb flash, quad-core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M. ASUS has some slightly better models for a similar price, without the retina display.

If you are buying a premium laptol from any big manufacturer, it will be more expensive. Apple just doesn't offer a "value" line.
> The only way Facebook could lose now is if they self implode, leaving G+ to pick up the pieces.

...
What would you say about a zenbook prime UX32 [11.6in 1080p] sporting a noob friendly Linux distro [Ubuntu/Mint]. Similar (possibly better) performance, aluminium body, lighter form factor, bleeding edge OS, access to most developer tools available on the OSX (bar textmate and xcode). Pricetag - $1300.
The mind can justify whatever it wants...its called human nature
Then you're a rarity.

Marketing is important, even more so than before in my opinion. Look at artists like One Direction, a group of talented boys but nothing special... then look at the hysteria that surrounds them, Justin Bieber is another good example.

The song "Call Me Maybe" is a perfect example. That song was released almost one year ago, but how many people had heard of it? Maybe a few thousand. Then Carly Rae Jepsen signs to the label ran by Justin Biebers manager earlier this year... now it has over 220,000,000 youtube views and almost everyone that pays attention to popular culture can recite the lyrics.

Marketing is everything. Sure it's not always traditional marketing -- billboards, tv spots -- but using existing artists too. Carly Rae Jepsen is famous because of Justin Biebers marketing power.
Your marketing ideas are great start. But to get things rolling don't underestimate the power of actually talking to people. You should consider some feet on the street marketing where you reach out to local landlord associations or apartment managers.
rereading LPTHW now. Thanks a million, it is the only thing that has worked for me, looking forward to starting SQL!
Do you mean Java in the browser? If so, what do you think is happening when your JavaScript code hits your server's REST code returning JSON?
Every month, your card company sends you a list of charges. If any of them are illegitimate, you tell the company, and don't pay, and they investigate. That's basically the same as your proposal. Your credit card number is like a public key, if you will.
Checks are worse. They pay out immediately without asking for approval.
It is worth noting that there was no direct detection of dark matter. It comes from a measurement of gravitational lensing, which has been going on for awhile˟˟.

Critical response: http://www.scilogs.eu/en/blog/the-dark-matter-crisis/2012-07...

Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7406/full/nature1...

˟˟ http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2006/aug/25/gravity...
This is why, as annoying as those facebook "shares" on your stream are, they allow for some bias correction in the news that propagates.

Then again, the funny/catchy/ironic ones seem to be favored so it probably is equally worse.
You have to love libertarians and their utopian fantasies. It is often a surprise that any of them have become (or remain) wealthy without government support, regulations or laws. Oh wait.

Seriously though, someone must see the irony in libertarians starting an ocean commune.
It's worth mentioning the GAPS diet here I think: http://www.gaps.me/. It seems that autoimmune/inflammatory problems are being associated with more and more diseases.
Case for a "Django-like framework in Clojure"
Absolutely! I've been in contact with two face to face already.
for Beats there's always /r/audiojerk lol
You seem to be under the impression that phones once were free & loose, and then Apple locked them down. Phones never were free - carriers controlled what went on them, and what features were used. Apple opened devices up to a level never before seen - no more carrier crap pre-loaded, and a serious push to improve data pipes and 3G availability throughout North America. Not to mention an app marketplace NOT controlled by the carriers, and an web browsing experience that doesn't require you to be snooped on by WAP gateways.

Do you not still see the (baseless) grief Apple gets from carriers about how their phones are "data hogs"? Or how the media breathlessly claims the retina display is going to clog up all of our bandwidth from higher resolution video and pictures?

Phones were always locked down heavily, Apple blew up that up to a large extent, but not completely, of course, as they are in business.... But today's variety of walled gardens are mostly untouchable by the carriers.

> Apple's restrictions are all about controlling device owners to make Apple more money. (Otherwise they would be "suggestions".)

No, the restrictions are all about curating an experience. Suggestions require choice. Most people don't want to make choices on how their phones work, they want to be handed experience with most decisions made for them, and for popular variations to be tweakable. "Opinionated software".

> You may not install apps that don't pay Apple 30% of their revenues.

Well, yes, they are capitalists, shame on them.

> You may not install apps that compete with Apple's favored apps.

That sucked, I agree, but that's changing. Chrome is out for iOS. Alternative Email clients are out. Apple generally is known for good customer service according to most customer satisfaction surveys, and presuming these people are semi-rational beings, that usually implies Apple actually listens to them (eventually).

> I'm saying freedom doesn't what you think it means, and I don't think even Frank Luntz could make it mean that.

You seem to be confusing political freedom with freedom to violate others' property.

Firstly, you do realize that you have political freedom -- people are completely free to jailbreak their phones, no police will come after you. If you violate your carrier's T&Cs they can fire you as a customer, but that's due to years of historically poor regulation of telecom in the USA.

Secondly, none of the software you use, that you haven't written, is owned by you. All owners of that software have a restriction on your behaviour with that software, including free or open source software. You have never been completely free when you use software. Thus, degree of openness is just a feature. Apple is trying to find a balance that people care about. Naturally developers & technical folks don't like losing the freedom to tinker, while most people couldn't care less. Apple needs to maintain a developer community that tinkers, though. So it's a balancing act.
It's not a completely new anything, it's a password on your phone.
There are lots of attempts to write new Wikipedia parsers that just do "the useful stuff", like getting the text. They all fail, for the simple reason that some of the text comes from MediaWiki templates.

E.g.

about {{convert|55|km|0|abbr=on}} east of

will turn into

about 55 km (34 mi) east of

and

{{As of|2010|7|5}}

will turn into

As of 5 July 2010

and so on (there are thousands of relevant templates). It's simply not possible to get the full plain text without processing the templates, and the only system that can correctly and completely parse the templates is MediaWiki itself.

Yes it's a huge system entirely written in PHP, but you can make a simple command line parser with it pretty easily (though it took me quite a while to figure out how). The key points are to put something like

$IP = strval(getenv('MW_INSTALL_PATH')) !== ''
? getenv('MW_INSTALL_PATH')
: '/usr/share/mediawiki';
require_once("$IP/maintenance/commandLine.inc");

at the start of it, and then use the Parser class. You get HTML out, but it's simple and well-formed (to get text, start with the top level p tags).

To get it to process templates, get a Wikipedia dump, extract the templates, and use the mwdumper tool to import them into your local MediaWiki database.

I don't know if this is the best or "right" way to do it, but it's the only way I've found that actually works.
This Warrior of a Dead World: Gene Wolfe's literary portrait of Neil Armstrong
Android devices run Dalvik, not JVM. Does stuff like this issue affect Android?
JFK's Application to Harvard
Not just the capybara, but beavers and muskrats too! It actually makes some sense when you consider that Thomas Aquinas' Aristotelianist classification of animals more to do with habitat as anatomy.
> Pre-birth genetic testing

What exactly will that do? Unless it is fragile-X or something that can be proven using genetic testing, it won't help at all.
Why hasn’t commercial air travel gotten any faster since the 1960s?
I would say starting your own startup is the better decision.
This Warrior of a Dead World: Gene Wolfe's literary portrait of Neil Armstrong http://silkandhornheresy.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-warrior-o...
> Looks like the Internet owes Jenny McCarthy an apology.

The woman that is responsible for promoting actions (lack of actions) that killed lots of children?

http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny_McCarthy_Body_Co...
Very enlightening and informative.
I think over time they have been building many escape hatches. If enough users want it, they'll build one big one. So far, though, I don't think there's a lot of evidence that users really care, other than technical folks.

Carrier restrictions, on the other hand, will always be there to some degree, unless Apple decides to buy a US or Global carrier, and upend the market. That will suck in some ways (more concentration of power) but not in others (they'd change practices in favour of a better user experience, to move people to them).
>> to this day - find audio/video support (among other things) lagging

So somehow the small gang at Mojang pulled off the impossible with Minecraft? Or the excellent apps NASA used to make with Java before the past 3 years or so like WorldWind? Or FusionCharts? or IBM Symphony, or OpenOffice, or SameTime, or HP Virtual Rooms (the last few heavy, heavy media), Apache Directory Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans, soapUI, SQL Developer?
Delete your Google cookies and it won't ask. I agree it is completely lame.
I choose to vote with my feet and not get a Spotify account at all. I don't want to support a company that strongarms their customers like htat.
Avoiding social bankruptcy
This is not news. There were talks on swarm intelligence when I was in college over a decade ago, and it wasn't new then, either.
What was youtualfunds.com?
How were these words applied to walls? Did vandals have to walk around with a paint bucket and brush? Was it carved out? Or perhaps walls were finished with some sort of wet plaster and people had a short window of time to write in it with their fingers?
its a market. all the gyms in the market use slimey tactics. you can start your own gym if you like. good luck competing though. TLDR: don't ever start a business that competes on price.
So wait nobody gets paid for anything? Where does the music come from?
Most gyms charge attractively low fees because they are typically a year or more contract, with an auto-renew clause, and they know that the vast majority of the members will use the gym a few times and then stop coming. If all their members used the gym regularly, they'd be packed to overflowing.

There are gyms that charge per use, the fees may appear higher but if your dedication to exercise doesn't turn out the way you planned you will be money ahead.

For the best chance at getting a payment plan that doesn't count on you having low motivation to exercise, look for locally-owned independent gyms, avoid the Bally's and other franchise/chain operations.