skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"... As content providers we don't need to figure out better ways to work with the publishing industry. We need to figure out better ways to work without them. ..."

Photocopier.
.each as a concept of "iteration" is transferrable, no?

Also, I think there are some serious consequences when programming is taught in such a "diluted" way.

As a programmer who is constantly learning new concepts/languages, I am continually understanding the very real trade-offs when I write something in Ruby vs. C, not just in functionality, but in the design of the language itself.

By diluting, all languages start to blend in this ball where they become indistinguishable. Besides, if Zed is teaching an introduction to programming, it becomes completely arbitrary what language he chooses, and it therefore means he doesn't need to do variations of his lessons in other languages - unless of course he was going to meaningfully divulge into how these languages propose new ways of approaching a problem, etc. (but this would render this article's arguments moot, to a degree)
There was a rumor about 8,000 servers with only 1,600 simultaneous users; in other words an out-of-control burn rate.
I didn't realize that, good information to know.
Thanks for the post. I found it's very useful when designer talks about the choices for their design such as fonts, coloures etc,. Cheers!
I had a similar user experience with iOS (I admit I bailed out of the ecosystem at the 3GS but it hasn't changed substantially since then).

You're correct with everything you say, however, I feel that while you should always cater for the lowest common denominator (which Apple does, very well with iOS). You should also cater for the power user and the ultimate reason I switched out of the iOS ecosystem the only way I could get all the functionality I wanted was by jailbreaking my iPhone, whereas with an Android it's all native (and am glad to say I haven't had to root my Android).

Further to the above paragraph from what I observe in iOS is that it appears that they do not want to progress towards power users, unless I've missed some key developments recently.

In saying this, I've recently purchased a MacBook and I feel that they've done an incredible job with OSX in the regards, it's very easy to use for the novice but allows for a lot of power user functionality (e.g. multiple finger swipes, access to terminal, keyboard shortcuts for things like spotlight).
> I've been using this iPad 1 for everything (save heavy duty coding) since minutes after it came out. I just switched devices and went about my life. Nice to see people figure it out ... if years late.

Bloody hipster. :P
That is an awesome project. Keep it up!
Honestly, good luck to him but it's just self-help "look at me I live an ascetic life of discipline" blah blah. In my mind, it is a little hard to take. "Here's my algorithm: by waking up early, I have two spare hours at lunch to help 2 people, at a rate of 1 per hour then I go to bed and early promptly but not before my nightly stroll about town." Follow this routine strictly for 20 years and let me know how that works for you.
An excellent summary of what you describe, in comic form

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623
One thing we should ask: Do the people who let themselves be pushed around by data somehow "win" in some way? This would explain why the phenomenon persists even though it has downsides. How would we provide that benefit without the downside?
Nice work. A really great idea, I'm working on something similar for musicians though. Nice niche you've picked, I hope it all works out for you. As someone else has already pointed out, you need to fix that contrast my eyes find it hard to focus between text and backgrounds besides that I would definitely use this.
Some people do not even know the difference between a carrot and a screwdriver.
Please, take a closer look. The concepts have key differences. Bussard IEC has recirculation of electrons, virtual cathode. VASIMR is single phase instead of multiphase.
Sure, they aren't the same, but they ought to be in the same ballpark.
> How could I prove they did that on purpose?

You shouldn't need to.

If their mistake did cause harm to your business, they should pay for it. Having more or less money than the other part should have zero correlation with the result of a justice judgement, because having more or less money do not change the facts that have happened and should be judged.

At least that's how we conceive justice in France (eg "dommages et intérêts"), but after reading the US-DE comparison [1] I understand I am probably wrong.

- [1] http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/us-d.html
"... The area you describe is nowhere near the outer edge. It's not even the edge of the CBD. Keep in mind that Auckland covers a vast area of nearly 5000 square km ..."

When you put it like that, yes. I'm from Melbourne where the metro area is a 50km N/E/W arc from the CDB. What allowed me to get around in the 30-40km distance I was from Uni was a combo of train, car & tram. The rest I walked.
Actually it is Lauder Partners also invests in a Comapny called "Active Video Networks."[1]

Active Video Networks has for years been trying to do the same thing on Cable Set Top Boxes what Onlive has been doing with Games to PCs. Which is basically move all the processing to the cloud with low end thin clients in the home. In the TV Case they'd push interactive apps (via an MPEG frame over your cable infrastructure) to your cable box and basically you could get a whole interactive TV system on crappy old cable boxes.

Looks like Gary Lauder (who's the main guy at Lauder Partners) is doubling down on this strategy.

[1] http://www.activevideo.com/
I particulary found Shawn Achor's ted talk on happiness to be the best http://goodthinkinc.com/speakers/shawn-achor/
I'm mostly interested in how well they play with others.

* Do they contribute to other projects?
* Will they follow "upstream" coding standards?
* Are their commits descriptive?
* Can they work with maintainers to get the patches right?
* Was an effort made to split larger patchsets into smaller bits?

It's also nice to see folks who attempt to isolate the occasionally necessary hacky bits from the rest of the
code base.
> To me, happiness is the peaks from the "norm"

What you consider the "norm" doesn't have to be the real norm of your own life. What you consider the peak doesn't actually have to be actual peak, either. It's partly your ability to perceive it so.

People who suffer depression don't necessarily have more shitty life than others. The similar question can be asked: "why would they feel sad, doesn't sadness becomes the 'norm' for them?".

> To me, happiness is ...

If you are happy with your definition of happiness, then it's cool. But if you are not happy that you don't satisfy "your own" definition of happiness, then you should consider re-define it. Happiness exists to make you happy, not to make you suffer.
Early stage startup are just not worth the risk anymoe.
Does the education sector need a website naming and shaming classes/professors doing this, or proclaiming those that make efforts to keep learning accessible?
7 months ago. 192 comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3416777
I'm curious. Zed Shaw writes that forcing beginners to learn these things without having them critically approach the alternatives is equivalent to indoctrination. IE. Python coders "must" write explicit code (although they have the means to write something more implicit/magical), Ruby "must" write .each (when they can do for, while, etc).

To me it seems like there are two consequences.

1) It's a huge burden on the beginner to be effectively aware of all the possibilities of doing things (like looping) in a language, and why one should be used where. In general, when a beginner picks up a language, he should be doing stuff and recognizing the trade-offs of what he's doing. Thus, he culminates critical awareness through choices and reflection of those choices.

I just can't imagine myself learning Python and hearing about doing things in a hundred different non-Pythonic ways. Unless I were to do it one way, and then later discover of my own accord that there is another way I can do it which has its associated cost/benefits.

2) If these "social mores" are indoctrination, and indoctrination is taboo, what if beginners stop writing .each loops? What if Python programmers start writing "magical" code? etc.

Wouldn't these Python programmers fragment the community and alienate/isolated themselves from a community which has firmly established conventions (for good reasons).

Either way, I love that this point has been raised. I've been looking into Ruby especially, and am always fascinated about how different the conventions and styles are.
Whammy: A Real Time Javascript WebM Encoder
A Faculty Address
Hackers & the endless search for self-improvement
Have a look at Real Studio <http://www.realsoftware.com/realstudio/>. I've used it for several cross platform projects and it's reasonably inexpensive and produces decent apps.
In other words, everything has already been invented...
> I still don't really understand why US places don't include sales tax like we include VAT.

A lot of people seem to be under the impression (false as far as I can tell, in every jurisdiction that I know of) that businesses are legally required to list only the price excluding tax. I have had many, many people give me this explanation when I've complained about this. (They often follow it up with a disparaging comment about the nanny-state government.)

I suppose it's possible that that's true someplace, although I think it's unlikely as 1st Amendment provisions should at least make it possible to list both. But true or not, it's at least a widely held belief.
I agree that computers will soon (< 3 years) be able to beat most human drivers and as someone else said, getting rid of 70kg of driver is a huge advantage. For closed circuit courses like those used by Formula 1, the teams already have almost perfect topographic maps and models of the circuit, including measurements of the grip characteristics of the surface at various points on the circuit. Formula 1 teams run endless simulations and already know what the best possible lap should be.

But that's just qualifying. Racing is about so much more. Driving software will have to integrate considerably more inputs in order to avoid crashing into other cars. Let's say cars have to share telemetry. Development could probably happen in parallel with other improvements but I'd still stay 3-5 years.

Even if we assume software that can drive in a pack of cars, and algorithms for attacking and defending, there's that drive to win that makes some drivers do things that, if we're honest, aren't fair, safe or even right. The rules are different when nobody's life is at stake.

I would love to see Formula 0. No worries about driver safety. No artificial design limits to reduce cornering speed. In fact, the only design rule I would impose is the maximum height above ground and perhaps something about no laser cannons.

Does anyone remember Rogue and then Rog-O-Matic? It would be fun to create an online competition using an existing racing simulator.
A lot of people have recommended this but I'm not sure the best way to really go about doing this... do you have any ideas?
HandBrake Tutorial – How to Solve HandBrake No Valid Source Found Error
How to solve Handbrake No Valid Source Found error on Windows or Mac? What to do when error message appears when transcoding and ripping DVD with HandBrake? This HandBrake tutorial will help you solve HandBrake Error No Valid Source Found.
The comment is still on-topic. I've begun to have the same realization halfway into college.
I think people decided to support it because they wanted to see what the team will come up with. I believe the curiosity factor is the reason.
Some businesses include tax in the price. Vending machines, for example. Bars often do too. Movie tickets.

Clearly it's not illegal.
I'm particularly fond of the "solder" item.
This article resonates with me on so many levels. When I started working on Semantics3 early this year, I spent many a day frustrated that I was barely achieving 50% of the productivity that I was capable of and I felt quite miserable about it. Here are a few things I did to get things back on track:

1) Moved Closer to Work: Daily long journeys are massive downers. When I awake in the morning, I often feel the urge to hit my laptop right away and channel all the early morning enthusiasm towards work. College years were ideal on this front because there was never anywhere to be (I wasn't too inclined towards attending classes ;)). Anyway, now, I live 20 mins away from work.

2) Stopped Listening to Music (especially during the few hours after I awake): I'm a music buff and perennially have music in my ears. But I find that music often blocks useful thoughts; letting the mind wander leads me down interesting channels, be it more ideas for my startup or even bugs in my code that I discover by merely thinking about the previous day's work (Rob Pike's "Best Programming Advice" comes to mind). Few things are more satisfying than stumbling on these nuggets! These days, I restrict music to certain times of day, such as my ride home or during certain phases during the work day.

3) Found Time at Work Alone: I like getting to work a couple of hours before everyone else, before any distractions kick in. For some of you, staying at work an hour after everyone leaves, lunchtime, or even spending an hour at home to finish things up might do the trick. Those power-charged hours make me feel like I've given that extra bit to my day. On a related note, check out PGs "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" (www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)
That rumor was reportedly a rhetorical question asked by Perlman during the last company meeting. Anybody know why they didn't use a flexible virtual server solution like Amazon EC2?

"There's no way to exactly estimate how many servers we'd need. So we literally bought thousands of them, and all the equipment and networks to go with it," Perlman told employees. Those servers, he said, came with lengthy contracts -- contracts that tied OnLive's capital up in maintaining servers that few (if any) users were actually using. "If you've got 8,000 servers and 1,600 users, how could we ever get to cash flow positive, right?"

-- http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/18/documenting-the-death-of-o...
"this setup helps universities keep their teaching costs low — they can pay instructors a lower base wage"

It's a cost increase for students that's not as easily noticed as a "base" price increase in tuition. Which paying more to professors would require. As well as payroll taxes on the salary increase. So getting $1500 directly from publishers the same $1500 from the University costs extra in additional payroll costs (and then gets multiplied by any salary percentage increase in future years as well).

This is also somewhat analogous to what some elementary schools are doing (sorry no citation) with requiring parents to buy school supplies that were previously provided by the schools. It's a way of cost shifting that allows you to pass a tax that isn't recognized as a tax increase.

Other example may be an auto mfg. only raising the price of a new model slightly but removing and making certain features options, options that the majority of buyers will end up adding on anyway. (If the price of the car were higher many people wouldn't enter the showroom at all.)
Huh? The weather has been pretty damn good for the last 2 weeks. Heaps of sunshine and I've noticed it's actually getting really warm lately so some days you can walk around outside with just a Tshirt, which is pretty cool for Winter.

Hit me up if you wanna meet up.
Why jerks get ahead
Similar sentiments were expressed here (I can't find tbe HN discussion though):

http://mattogle.com/archivefever/
Exactly. When I go buy my Big Mac, at least I know it's going to be that final price + state sales tax. The intention of my post was not the price, but how the price was conveyed.

Does Ticketmaster know what percentage of people click "Buy Tickets" and leave during their three steps of fees:

1. Convenience Charge
2. Delivery Charge
3. Processing Charge

What would the percentages be if there was just:

1. Total Charge

As a consumer, I am deciding if the total price is worth seeing the content I want to consume. In Ticketmaster's current checkout process, they give me three opportunities to change my mind.
I feel like Marc and David are arguing two slightly different points.

David is arguing that the rate of creation of immensely large tech companies has slowed down. Ten years ago every other companies was becoming a billion dollar behemoth but these days you get acquired for immense outlays.

Marc is saying that we'll keep on having companies successfully getting bought out for years to come.

I think they're both right. It sounds like David is arguing a bit about The Great Stagnation at work [0] combined with how much easier it is to get $5 mil than $15+ mil. There might be a lot of $15 mil left, but we might be exhausting this generation's $5 mil ideas.

In terms of the overheated climate we're living in as a whole, I think the party will keep going on as long as interest rates and inflation keep being so low.

All of these companies have piled up immense reverses because the penalty from keeping it liquid is so minimal. In turn there's a lot of space to keep paying people these million dollar bonuses while generating the occasional cool new innovative feature.

This last bit is speculation on my part ofc.

[0] http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/01/growth_2
True. I lived in Melbourne last year, and although the transport has way better compared to Auckland, I don't really miss it. I live in Ponsonby and I still find I can get around pretty easily without a car. You still sorta need one if you got friends who aren't that close to the CBD but I'm quite lucky that the majority of my friends are in the same area, so its usually a 5-15 min walk to anywhere.

I can walk from Queen St to my house in 25mins usually (and vice versa) which is I find is usually faster then catching a bus. Parking is a pain and a rip in town so walking is fine by me. Also you save $10 taxing home from town on a Fri/Sat night.

One thing I don't miss about Melbourne is that is actually easy to get home on a Friday/Saturday night from the City. Your more likely to win Lotto then get a cab, so your only option is to wait till 5am to get the first train of the day or if your lucky find a bus which drops you miles away from home but at least you can get home.
It's interesting how Bitcoin is now becoming exactly what Bitcoin was always against: a centralized bank. A bad and unreliable one at that.

It kind of shows you the evolution of our banking systems and why we need one.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk now supports Python
I just finished The Geography of Bliss, another wonderful book combining the science of happiness along with a fun travel story of a miserable reporter trying to find it.
Typical people understand the file/folder paradigm just fine. It's just a myth, pure FUD, that people have trouble with this idea. Things like the problem copying between computers is really about the issue of connectivity, not about the concept of copying object foo onto computer bar.

Naives quite happily understand of their files as moveable objects, similar to apples in a basket. In all the hand-holding I've done of naive users, even those people who get thoroughly confused that there's 'left' and 'right' 'clicks' still firmly grasp the basic idea of files.
Union-Find and Disjoint-Set Forests (implemented in Shen)
What do you mean can't import/export? Most editors integrate with Dropbox, iCloud, FTP, webdav, some even have a server you can use over a local network, and you can always use vi(m)/nano/whatever over ssh. (are you thinking of Codea? that is a toy).

> You can't delete content on the tablet unless you do a sync on your computer

No idea what you're talking about, I manage all content on the iPad/iPhone without touching iTunes, and import photos directly from my dslr using an SD adapter.

I'm not American, where I live most cars are manual. To turn over your argument: 99.9% of the people aren't race drivers.

Anyway, I was just pointing out that there are options, you already have your opinion.
There are EC2 instances with beefy consumer graphics cards?

(How do the GPU clusters even work? And, at $2 it seems way more expensive.)
Millions of paid subscribers or millions of (mostly free) accounts? I suspect the latter is closer to the truth.
Digital textbooks are a pain.
There was a lot of optimism, 20+ years ago. Read up some. If you have lots of time on your hands, peruse the early sci.physics.fusion archives.
From the article:

Key point:

"The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.... The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad."

Evidence:

"Like Finland, Norway is small and not especially diverse overall, but unlike Finland it has taken an approach to education that is more American than Finnish. The result? Mediocre performance in the PISA survey. Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup."
Until recently you could do it on the Anybots website. It's like a video call mixed with an R/C robot: you can really explore spaces and interact with people.

However, talking with a telepresence robot from the other side is a completely different experience. You get a terrific sense of being with another entity. It's fantastic.
I suspect EC2 is not good for games, since the only GPU they offer is pretty high-end. Also, I think OnLive has more data centers than EC2 to reduce latency.
Utah is about to try out open textbooks for huge savings: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2134
For most idealistic -isms, I doubt any implementation could exist that would satisfy the -ism's true believers (particularly since those implementations would have flaws that would need to be disclaimed).
I've preordered one, and am looking forward to ordering more.

As a longtime follower of this space, this price point enables many more possibilities than previous robots, and using off-the-shelf computing hardware is the right solution.
Mobile is just getting started
How could the data not be lost? Especially when this equation involved an FM broadcast, a commodity FM receiver, and then a microphone to record the FM output to a cassette tape. Can someone with a better understanding of these things explain to me why this didn't come out as nonsense?
What's the fallacy?
I agree with with philmv on the point that the rate at which "immensely large companies" are being created has slowed down, but I also think that's just a natural filling up of the silicon valley pyramid. However, considering the rate at which startups are still being created, the middle and lower end of the sv pyramid still leaves plenty of room before we reach saturation. In fact, I'm more inclined to agree with Andresseen on that human creativity is an infinite resource.
I think you rather misunderstood the post.

Adjuncts do not generally write textbooks and get kickbacks for them. They choose one of the 'standard' textbooks, and use the online problem set for that book. They do this not because they get compensation for it, but because it's the path of least resistance.

I find it kind of sad that you would speculate like this, without any specific examples (let alone proof of a general trend!) about the motives of the adjuncts. :(