skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Woah! Super cool idea. So many ways you can take this to a new level. Also, if anyone is looking to contribute to some open source, this would be a great opportunity as there is lots of epic optimization problems in this algorithm to work on.

For example, whats the fastest data structure/algorithm to make searching for neighbours?
It's also worth noting that the British made a deliberate decision to not challenge America's ascendency to dominance. I think it's fairly obvious how that decision has benefited both nations.

I don't think the same can't be said about Sino-American affairs today. I worry about that.
And yet 23% of MIT international students are from Europe. I think this is the point where I should say that your anecdote doesn't replace data.
At leas here (Central Europe) it has the the image of being bad and expensive.

American tuition is astronomical: $40,000-per-year tuition levels are now the norm. Including room, board, books and expenses, most families cut out $60-70,000 per student, per year, because most of the best universities are in extremely expensive locations.

Educational quality, I think, is actually pretty good in US colleges and universities. If you want to learn a lot, you can. If you want to dive in to cutting-edge research, or to learn an incredible amount about a topic that interests you, the people and resources are available.

The students? Not as much. The focus in a lot of undergraduate colleges (and this goes the whole way to the top) is on networking and partying and drugging and fucking much more than on learning. It's not the professors' fault: they love it when they get good students, but there aren't many of them. (I went to a liberal arts college where many of the students were dedicated, but a lot of my friends, even at prestigious universities, found that real students were a minority: maybe 10 to 30 percent are really good and the rest are just there for the scene and stamp.) Undergraduate college has become a finishing school for the well-to-do, and business school is way worse (the students are terrible and their sense of entitlement is extreme; professors have been chastised for refusing to move classes to accommodate individual students' social lives).

You can learn a hell of a lot in a US university, but no one forces you to do so, and a lot of people squander the opportunity outright.
A spanner is also British English for what North Americans call a wrench.
Can you give me an example of a country that does it "right"?

I'm genuinely curious, but I also suspect that twenty different people here would give twenty different answers to this question.
Alibaba pirated google apps and put them on their appstore. That's different.

Android can be forked just fine.
> Of the remaining 51%, 23% have a college degree leaving 27% without a college education.

Consider that some individuals who are members of households in the top one percent of income earners and have not completed a four year college degree will have married a high income earner who has completed a college or postgraduate education.
Here's a CoffeeScript port of this algorithm I did awhile ago.

https://gist.github.com/3733089

and a demo:

http://wsb.im/flocking/index.html

Definitely fun stuff to play around with.
How do private companies arrange infrastructure-sized projects? Oil companies seem to have substantial arrangements like these. Railroads maintain a lot of infrastructure privately. I'm guessing these companies don't get gouged like the government, but they really have all the same issues, like internal corruption, the bid process, change orders, competing interests in the company, etc.
Project appears dead (no commits for > 2 years). I did go so far as to check out the source in an attempt to actually see if it worked, but there aren't any instructions on how to even build it (or any other documentation at all, for that matter).

While I think PCSX2 could stand some improvement (its Linux port is well behind the Windows one, and even getting it to build is a huge pain due to lack of 64 bit support) I don't think this project is going to be it. I'm pretty dubious on the choice of Java as well; PCSX2 needs a pretty quick CPU as it is, and if it ran at even half the speed that could be the difference between playable FPS and not.
The most common critique of the US system is the lack of focus on testing and measurable results. Bureaucrats and teachers unions have fought this push for decades and only now has it taken hold. Even if you are right that the American educational system now focuses too much on standardized tests, this focus pales in comparison to almost any other industrialized nation. And even then, this focus on testing is hardly even a decade old.

Speak to a student from China, Japan, the UK, or Ireland and get back to me about focuses on standardized testing.
"They would basically have to quit the handset market outside China to make Aliyun phones for the Chinese market. Forking is a fundamental tenet and in many cases the lifeblood of open source. If you don't want that, put that in the license and do not call it "open" instead of artificial after-the-fact restrictions like this. If you make something open, people are going to eventually do something with it that you may not like."

Your point would only be valid if Google stopped Amazon from forking Android.
When the Privacy Button Is Already Pressed
I'm a little confused, all the graphs I see of UK spending are upwards. They have not cut overall spending. The best I can say is the rate of growth of spending declined.
Is it just me, or does that payment box look kind of dodgy? I think there's a reason that so many people use PayPal and services like it—people trust a familiar face. But this one doesn't really have any padlocks or any details like address or zip code or anything, and just looks out of character for a checkout page.

As a person that knows about Aaron, I know it can be trusted, but it might not be the same for others. Just a reaction that the folks supporting Aaron might want to be aware of.
Eye color Predicts Disagreeableness in North Europeans
Is Aaron incarcerated?
BaseCamp is Awesome For Your Startup
and with IPv6, each light bulb can have its own globally unique address!
GoAccess - Visual Web Log Analyzer
It'll be a bit costlier, but as long as it comes in one piece (with separate parts screwed into each other), then it'll look exactly the same to the typical person.

Except that those who bother to read the manual will find out they can save some money by not chucking away the whole thing.
What are we defending Aaron Swartz against? (Sorry for being a boob)
Why would you link me to that? There is no discussion there that is of any value above what's in this thread (there are no comments). Please don't do that; I realize it was only a couple seconds of my life wasted (plus the 30 seconds to write this comment), but I would really appreciate it if this didn't become a trend.
I get what you're saying.

One company who got around this hurdle was App.net(piggybacking on the Stripe/Visa/Mastercard brand). I'm assuming this is another implementation of Stripe.
Drawing, Watercolor pencil, and pen and ink, as a relaxant. :)
Thank you for a very thoughtful critique. The nature piece talks about number of students, not percent. The US has 300 people people, so we have a lot more high performing students, as a result.
I'm not willing to donate. Aaron's goal may have been noble, but his actions are indefensible.
Pinterest’s Clear Friendship / Follower Emails
Here is a PARTIAL list of Hacker News users whose comments I actively look for, by seeking their recent comments from the comment link on each of their user profiles. I should make clear that this list is far from exhaustive, and many other good comments are posted regularly by many other users. Not being on this list does not at all mean that I don't like your comments. And the other obligatory disclaimer is that listing here does not imply that I agree with all the opinions expressed by these HN users, and even less does it imply that they agree with me. Some of these fellow users of HN have disagreed quite openly with me, but because they do so in a thoughtful manner, with sources, I learn from them, and I acknowledge their contribution to the community. I'd love to hear other suggestions of users like that.

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patio11

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=raganwald

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ColinWright

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=grellas

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jgrahamc

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mechanical_fish

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=cperciva

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jerf

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=_delirium

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bootload

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=scott_s

On past occasions the site founder, pg, has written about what makes a good comment

http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

"The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: both civil and substantial.

"The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more information about the topic, perhaps from personal experience."

He has also written about what makes a good comment by negative implication, when he has described bad comments.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696

The bestcomments view of recent comments on Hacker News

http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments

provides a glimpse at an automated summary of user comment karma voting, which may or may not reflect the guidelines announced by the site founder.
They really should include some sort of background or link on this page. For anyone else that has little idea who he is or why he needs money: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#JSTOR

More complete background: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-ar...
Firefox results are amazing, "wicked" is over 20x faster then any other method ...
I cannot reproduce it with a 20110222 version of fontforge.

Would you mind send me the pdf file, for me to debug?

Does it always crash, with other pdf files?
I beg your pardon? This kind of language is prevalent in the writing of US/English teens and young people. Absolutely nothing "Russian" specific about it.
I think everyone would agree that it's pointless to send children into a public education system and then act like it doesn't matter what the outcome is for the majority of them. Unless you are totally indifferent to the wastage of tax revenue.
>It's 3 three meme pictures. And "hater" or "motherfucker" are words that I expect from children, but not from a grown-up writing a blog post.

If you are over 60 or new to this Information Superhighway, maybe...
I agree. He was extremely foolish and arrogant at best. I don't think this belongs on HN.

Also didn't he make a ton of money selling Reddit?! :/
That is really disappointing. We have been talking about setting up a Ceph pilot at work, but now I'm not so sure.
Hi! This is an incredible project. I'm just curious, you mention that crocodoc has been "consulted" for this project.

Did you ask them how they do their HTML5 conversion or what exactly do you mean by that?

Anyway, a big Thanks for creating this project!
It is the official Stripe payment tag. https://stripe.com/docs/payment_tag
Money spent != quality

For example, the US also spends more healthcare (per capita and percentage of GDP) than any other country, yet our healthcare is not noticeably better. That's putting it politely - many would argue that it is in fact much worse than comparable countries.

So I agree with your point, that it isn't the amount of "attention paid" that determines quality, but throwing money at the problem is also not the solution.
Could either one of you please explain how "his actions were indefensible" or how "he was extremely foolish and arrogant at beast"? Appreciated.
Communication Process
Sounds like what Oracle wanted Google to do with Java/Dalvik/Android. Can you explain why you think this is different or if you thought Oracle should have got their way?
It's not just B-trees (and really, it would be simpler in a binary tree instead of a B-tree). In general, you can get those same asymptotic times with any balanced tree that stores at each node its number of children and their sum. The term for this kind of data structure is a monoid-cached tree, and it's a broadly useful pattern for doing fast incremental updates in a lot of different situations. Guy Steele has a few good examples in this talk (slides linked below the video):

http://vimeo.com/6624203
WEST ARMADA SET READY TO ATTACK IN MID EAST
> check written out for your price you wouldn't light the servers on fire

> I'd rather just sit on a happy customer base

So everyone else is just in it for the money, but not you? If you can believe it about yourself, perhaps you'd be willing to extend some of that credulity to others?
our universities are better
Do we really compare better?
Recommend any references?
in case anyone else is confused, the issue seems to be this:

* there is a group called the open handset alliance (OHA), formed by google and others, that gives certain benefits to hardware makers. to be a member of that group you have to commit to not release incompatible versions of android.

* alibaba have created software for a smartphone that acer were going to release, called aliyun.

* everyone seems to agree that aliyun is not compatible with android (in the sense required by the OHA agreement). it can, however, run some android applications.

* the disagreement is about whether or not aliyum is a "version of android". if it is, then google can kick acer out of the OHA (which acer does not want; hence the phone would be blocked). alibaba is arguing that it is not (in particular, it does not use the dalvik vm), so acer should be free to release the phone and remain in the OHA.
This article fails to specify exactly to what end "it has never mattered." Assuming that the reasoning of the article is correct (the other comments have sufficiently questioned this issue), it still "matters" that the U.S. public education is subject glaring inequalities, that low-income schools often fail to graduate the majority of their students, that income level is so positively correlated to academic achievement, that students can be trapped in classrooms with 40+ students with no hope of individual attention. Addressing and reforming these problems is independent of the privilege and success of elite students.
If it helps or anything, this is what Chrome is reporting specifically to me:
https://img.skitch.com/20120916-erdbdjn5w9dqp4rr8feu7f4ygm.j...

Might just be because they're on sbnation, but there ya go.
Definitely check for any unusual included content and then request a malware review. I emailed the malware team to make sure that this is on their radar.

More info is at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&... and by doing a [site:google.com malware review] search, but it looks like you've requested the malware review correctly. In the mean time, I'd just double-check for any way that malware could have been included/downloaded on the pages.
Free education is out there for anyone who wants it and has the motivation to get it.

I think you're oversimplifying.

Thanks to the Internet, today we have the best virtual reference library available in the history of humanity. That solves one problem, but it introduces another: information overload.

Quality of teaching has always been a big influence on the quality of learning, but the emphasis is changing. Teaching has always been valuable because those with more knowledge/experience and the ability to convey that knowledge/experience effectively to someone else can help that other person to learn. Today, with better access to raw information, there is less need for teachers to play that role, but it is more valuable than ever to have a knowledgeable guide who can help the student to navigate the mass of information available and to choose which aspects to prioritise for best results at that stage in their personal development.
This is a hardware project, not a software one. In virtual world we can talk about keeping features to the minimum and iterating the product as fast as we can. But we don't live in post-scarcity world where energy is free. Designing products for more-less planned obsolescence, while maybe good from marketing point of view, strikes me as wrong and harmful to the global society.
Come on. If you download millions of files that obviously aren't supposed to be downloaded en masse, and then release them publicly, you're going to get in trouble. Common sense.

He knew what he was doing, and hew knew what he was doing was wrong. Doesn't seem terribly smart to make enemies high up.
What to do now? What is a viable replacement for Grove.io?
> enterprise-costs support, with all that entails, [...] Provide enterprise-friendly DBA training, certifications, and other related materials.

Most of those things are basically a scam (and often also a racket).

> Have your sales reps schmooze the C-level office, and the IT leadership.

And there you got your answer: basically, bribery.
> The stats they post are laughable - last time I checked it was a few thousand messages a day - which is pretty minuscule

That is laughable - as in it can't possibly be right. Can you provide a link to this?

From campfirenow.com: "Over 100,000 people have used Campfire to send more than 60,000,000 chat messages"
Don't forget the very important fact that in the US companies are allowed to get massive (modulo a few antitrust cases) and keep their profits, of which there is no artificial limit. Both the companies and the citizens are, to a large extent, left unmolested by the government. This is not the case everywhere. There are many other factors as well.
I know Techcrunch posted this...but why is it on HN?

This has nothing to do with technology, hacking, or really anything that is remotely interesting.

This thread is just going to turn a giant shitfest about government vs free market, why collegiate education is the root of all evil, etc etc. Same tired old debates.

Flagged.
Who uploaded them? Has anyone sent takedown requests?

I've no idea of the process for their store but without more information that doesn't prove them bad anymore than pirate content on YouTube makes Google the bad guys.
Why people are so keen on micro-optimizing their code? The bottleneck lies on DOM, not on your conversions.
My understanding is that the civil/copyright matter has been settled, and he's now still facing criminal prosecution for (mis)using MIT's network infrastructure. So it's not actually the downloading itself he's in trouble for at the moment I think, just how he did it. That is, unless there's been some new development, of course.
>Your point would only be valid if Google stopped Amazon from forking Android.

They couldn't, because they didn't have someone like Acer making those phones. Microsoft couldn't and did not stop VA Linux from shipping Linux boxes so I am not sure what point you're trying to make.

I wonder if the OHA rules would prohibit someone like Acer from shipping phones running Amazon's fork of Android. Are the details of the OHA rules public, or are they secret like the Microsoft OEM agreements?
Most of the educated do not agree with the reasons we don't have universal healthcare. Most of the proponents of federalism don't understand economics well enough to realize the huge conflict between federalist policies and economic reality.
> Because I enjoy all the radio signal pollution and I want more.

Unless you're operating some sensitive specialized radio equipment, is it really a problem?

> But then you have the problem that every lightbulb is a "computer" on the power network and I don't know how that would work.

IPv6.
> "Feeds are now full of relevant engaging posts because LinkedIn user’s post stuff they think will be relevant to their audience"

My 200+ connections must be very quiet - all I see in my feed are job title and skill changes.

That being said, if LinkedIn enabled folks to follow without connecting, that could be very interesting indeed.
Offer HN: I want to do QA/testing for your web app
Hey HN! I've wanted to do QA for a while now but have had some problems getting into the field. I never finished my degree and don't live in a big city, so there aren't that many opportunities for me. I've decided to teach myself selenium recently since it seems popular for testing. I'm still a novice at it, but I'd like to have the opportunity to learn/use it in a more realistic setting.

If you have a web app or open source project that needs testing please send me an email. Alternatively, if you work in QA and have any advice for me I'd also love to hear from you too. This is a no strings attached offer. I'd just like to volunteer for you in my spare time for several weeks or possibly longer if we're a good fit.
Part of legitimate civil disobedience (which may be a stretch of terminology in this case) is facing the consequences. A legal defense fund could be viewed as a part of that (allowing those donating to join in), or as an attempt to avoid the consequences.

So much depends on specifics of the situation that I'm not really comfortable making any type of judgement on anyone involved.
not a chance in hell. Moreover, if I was paul Graham, the last thing I'd want is people who are paying to email me, have their emails plague the top of my inbox.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/21/aaron-swart...
Yes, they can take Aliyun to court for that, but why are they threatening Acer here?
If you want people to donate to your cause you need to do a couple things:

1. Include some background on why I should care.
2. Provide some level of assurance that this page is actually linked to the issue at hand and isn't just a phishing scheme.
> Now, here's a question: How similar is Go to Sean Dorward's Limbo? If we put them side-by-side how many similarities would we see? If no one answers, I may just do this myself. I think it would be interesting.

Quite a few, and you might note that Sean Dorward is now also at Google working on Spanner.

And for details on Limbo, see this paper by Dennis Ritchie: http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/limbo_language/limb... and this one by Kernighan: http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/limbo_language/desc...

And as others pointed out, is also worth checking Alef: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/2nd_edition/papers/alef/
It's misleading to look at Google and Apple and decide things are fine. These companies are being run by top-of-the curve people who would have succeeded no matter what the education system was. Instead, look at the middle 90% of the curve. What is the state of a 25th %-ile person in the US versus say Germany? That's just as important to look at.

And no, the internet does not solve everything. It doesn't even begin to solve many of the problems that plague Americans who aren't already privileged in some way. Here in Chicago, the internet doesn't help all the black kids who don't even have safe schools to go to, much less good ones.
I don't want to try to start an argument or be insulting, but I don't believe you really grasp the question or the concepts you are talking about. Have you read the Bible to get a picture of who Christians think God is? That picture is rather incompatible with a "series of forces."
>would you pay for the email you sent to him to rank at the top of his inbox which would guarantee a reply?

Nope.

I'm sure pg gets a lof of email, but I'm also sure pg doesn't reply to his emails according to their order in his inbox. No one does.*

* I mean, nobody thinks Hey, this email is the latest I receive : its ranking in my inbox is 1, it means I must reply to this one as it's the most important one, before reading my other emails !