skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was thinking something similar, that you are taking a complex biological computation device that has over 1000 synapses, each carrying some complex quantity of information, and reducing it to a bit. This is an inefficient use of a neuron.
Kyrgyzstan under cyberattack
It's not a private discussion.

You can see other posts that where up modded. So for the most part you can learn what a good post is by looking at good examples.

So yes you can get down modded for asking but think of it like a Nash Equilibrium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium) the benefit you can from Meta discussion is at the cost of everyone else who needs to read it and understands the guidelines. Even as it benefits others who don't understand.

I expect if people keep trying to make insightful comments then they can learn what people on HN like. Or if you really don't understand take a karma hit and get some feedback. Just don't think Meta Discussions are without cost. A tiny fraction of the time it's probably, OK but it's extremely corrosive.

PS: It's easy to waste peoples time by saying thinks like "My opinion only" or "I don't mind getting down modded for this" but if we post it people can assume that so such things just clogg up the communication channel.
Norvig is head of research at Google and the author of a leading book on AI.
Dell's incredible, once-in-lifetime deal on a laptop: save four bucks
Claws +1, also for stability, configurations, fast response, and fast search.
I'm going to go for Long Division. Yes, I'm serious.
I removed the Reply-All button from my Outlook toolbar so that I have to right-click to use it. It definitely reduces the chance of accidentally replying-all.
> From what I understand they're saying that unit testing isn't "real actual work". You write unit tests to save yourself debugging and regression testing effort later.

This sent off my faulty logical implication detector. Assuming that debugging and regression testing are work, doing something that isn't work right now to avoid having to do something more tedious and time-consuming that is work later on seems like a good trade-off to me. This seems like splitting hairs over the definition of work, and worrying about semantics rather than the end result.

> Joel and Jeff mention that code quality doesn't matter much from a _business_ perspective.

Yikes. This reasoning scares me. I can understand the business not caring directly about the quality of code, in that people working from that perspective would go in and start doing code reviews. But indirectly the implications are huge, and any business man who would claim not to care about the code base is really saying to me they don't care about the longevity of their business. The success of the business is directly tied to the ability of the developers to continue making things that people want, and this is way easier and faster when they aren't consistently confounded by the code.
an "uncornify" bookmarklet might be nice. As much as I "love" the cornification, sometimes it blocks something important.
> Just search for the headline on google, and click through that way. No registration.

No, that's not guaranteed to work. It's a cookie issue.

I have have never registered at nytimes and have seldom been able to read its articles, no matter how I approach the site. Until a few experiments today, that is.

I reject all cookies by default. NYTimes confronts me with the registration page when I have cookies disabled. I discovered today that if I go ahead and allow cookies from www.nytimes.com, I can read the article without registering. Allowing for session does the trick; don't store the cookie indefinitely. And accepting cookies from wt.o.nytimes.com and up.nytimes.com is not necessary to read the article.
Things are only in a death spiral when the economy is shrinking over time. I expect the secret is finding the correct amount of growth and unemployment. If the government only attempted to correct the economy when unemployment get's over 10% it's going to have a lot more tools on the table than if it's tying to keep unemployment at 5%. What's really hard about economics is people quickly assume the way things where last year is the average even if the economy has been unusually good over the last 5 years.

The average auto worker is not producing 100k worth of value and the average banker is not producing 500k of value on wall street. But don't try and tell them that.
You can encrypt Gmail with something like FireGPG, a Firefox plugin:

http://getfiregpg.org

I use Enigmail with Thunderbird, but the number of people I use it with is very small.

The desire to have ubiquitous email access makes the implementation of secure email even more difficult. How do receive encrypted messages on all of your devices? Do you store a copy of your private key on each device? What about when you're away from your devices? Would you trust a server to host your private key?
yeah, it seems kind pointless. I get the idea of wanting to be able to remember what you did and feel accomplished and reflect on where you could have done more work, but it really doesn't do much.

Also, if people are actually going to use the service, you at least need to make it very easy to tell it what things they did. They may not be near a computer or want to fire up a browser, log in, etc. to tell you what they did.

Instead, you need them to be able to tell you via SMS, iphone app, IM, and any other text communication system they want.

Integrating with things that already track things they did, like their github commits, would be cool too.

You either need to scrap this or make it a lot better
I would be more impressed if this did not involve "implicitly statically typed" code as surely one of the joys of high level programming is not having to use implicit typing. However I can totally see the point of prototyping and then adding in the typing and running it through something like this.
Great interview. A couple things struck me. Particularly, two of the major threads in the 37signals new-speak lexicon are almost verbatim from the interview:

I like to think of the Fortune 5,000,000 or 14,000,000. There are 14,000,000 small businesses in this country. I think that the vast group of people who need to be computerized includes that large number of medium and small businesses. We’re going to try to be able to bring some meaningful solutions to them in 1985.

And

Let me compare it with IBM. How come the Mac group produced Mac and the people at IBM produced the PCjr? We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
I use 1Password also, with DropBox to sync passwords across multiple machines. Excellent combination.
Wow. People can be really mean. After almost three hundred skydives, I posted to an online community that I had been a part of for several years that I was quitting for various reasons (the least of which was that I wasn't even close to being coordinated enough to continue to pull it off). I was attacked almost instantaneously by various members of the site. Some saw it as me vying for attention. Others insisted I'd be back. Others still simply called me names. That was four year ago. I haven't jumped again since. I haven't posted again since. It is incredible in a society that has such a high tolerance for social malfeasance, one has such a conniption simply because of a small omittance. Seriously, have a drink. There are two pointless wars going on, there are starving people and people with no place to live... and pandemics like AIDS infiltrating the globe. If Brandon was willing to concede he didn't know PHP, SQL or JavaScript, perhaps he was actually being honest about everything else, too. He could have lied. He didn't. Chill out. Jesus.

-A
It's okay, a little smack on the hand is just what I needed. I have no idea what's brought so many new users (I just came to find talent and advice for my startup), but as long as it's a temporary influx, the new users will settle down as they usually do. A short period of bad behavior from inexperienced users is just a growing pain for any healthy organization, and since the community (and Paul) have dealt with it so well, I have little fear that growth will turn Hacker News into Digg. For instance, I know now not to cheekily mock Paul in his own thread, and probably not to write a single thing after several black-and-tans.

That said, members who wish to preserve a community's original quality should be proactive. They may have to replace the functions of some other original members who have left. We call this "culture."
I wouldn't jump to that conclusion too soon. For example, couldn't changes in diet also be responsible for the rise of autoimmune diseases? At least in "The China Study" some indications seem to be given.

In any case, western diet changed dramatically over the last few hundred years, so it seems at least as likely a candidate as hygiene.
but people think there are. people think of things like income inequity as a flaw.
it's not a bug, it's a feature. You want income allocated to those who show themselves fit to efficiently use resources to produce more things that people want. If someone is 1000 times more productive than me there is some kind of problem if they aren't making 1000 times as much money.

Going with the other issue: unemployment at least has some legs to stand on as it has been suggested that there just aren't enough low skilled jobs for all of the low skilled people to do since most low skill work has been either automated or increased in efficiency to the point where 1 person can do something 1000 used to do.
My brother is starting to learn a bit of programming, and was looking for books to read. I suggested SICP, so he went to Amazon and immediately picked up on the fact that almost all of the review scores were 1 or 5.

Interestingly, he didn't bother reading the favourable reviews--just the unfavourable ones. His argument was that in reading the unfavourable reviews he could better pick up what the book's strengths were: what did it teach that many people weren't ready to learn?
Either I'm not making my point or you're not receiving it.

I got your point. Data and the "communications channel" trumps the individual. The needs of the group win.

But I already had it. I'm just wondering if any of this is sinking in with you. So far, I think the answer is "no" There seems to be a prevalent opinion that the purpose of HN participants is to provide data, the blander the better.

Real world group discussions are interesting mixes of public and private conversations. Ever sit in a crowded conference room? Ever work in a large group that made significant progress towards collecting and analyzing data, coming up with new and interesting conclusions? It's a balance of individuals and group needs. Either you advance the art of synthesis, not just rating, or your "data" will eventually be scraped and fed into just another larger, better data aggregation system.

It's a simple question, really: either you build systems to accommodate people or you try to redefine people to fit your system. You can only get so far trying to make people fit the system. I've been on here for more than a year. To the degree people are providing active negative feedback (how many HN-is-going-to-heck threads have there been? How many people get downmodded to -20 and never work out why?) I'd think it would be cause for a bit of self-reflection.

Subjectivity or opinions, are what it's all about. The whole thing is opinions. You don't get the magic from simple up-down voting and promoting terseness over humanity.

In fact, you want as much subjectivity as possible. The comm channel can handle it. If a reader is getting bored or seeing too much that turns them off, that's a UI issue, not a poster issue. Critiquing users for acting naturally is not-so-smart.
This article is obviously a random snapshot of some impressions the author has. But this line strikes me a grossly unfair.

> The web development community consciously chose to stick with a pathetically crippled technology to avoid having to change.

The JavaScript language has its limitations and crufty (but standardized) aspects. But calling JavaScript pathetically crippled tells me the author has no clue. And saying that the web development community to to stick with it to avoid having to change shows even more ignorance.

The web development community has chosen to go with JavaScript in the ECMA-262 form because it is open, standardized and runs in every browser. The alternative would have been (and still is) choosing a language on a proprietary runtime. Because, yeah, that would have been good for the open web, standards and end-users, right?

JavaScript is actually quite powerful. I do a lot of JS programming and have built sophisticated systems in it. What's hard about JS programming is interacting with the host environment (primarily the DOM and loading structures). Building complex and powerful pieces of code in JS is much, much easier than doing the same in Java or C#, both of which have been shoehorned into the browser (though comparing these languages with JS is not fair or even very relevant).

JS is a standard and it's in every browser. This means we can program complex client-side applications that will run even an ancient browser like IE6 (which is, unfortunately still standard for business). And we do. I've loaded our main application into Opera on the Wii and Safari on the iPhone without modifications. I've even had it running on the OLPC candy box.

Good luck trying that with Silverlight, AIR, or what have you.

I'm all for having multiple languages for platform-independent development. But I currently don't see any other language than JS as an option.

If you're going to moan and whine about how JS sucks, please provide other reasons than some arbitrary aspect of the language while ignoring all the positive aspects. And if you're going to accuse web developers in general of laziness, please provide alternatives.

Money, you know where to put it, right?
AAAI Opens Access to Digital Library of Conference Papers (KDD, KR, ICML, etc..)
Some browsers will google search a term typed into the address bar if it is not a fully specified URL. On my system, if I just type "google" into an address bar, it directs me to the google search for "google".
I've always wondered why those things were so popular. Desktop search is enough for me...
> First-class functions - great.

The author magnificently understates how useful closures can be.

Besides this, the author has posted a single complaint about the language (one that I don't find particularly important) and then seems to act as though the language is completely unusable.
Jimmy Wales quietly launches Wikianswers
Of course there are alternatives to capitalism. Or, more accurately, there will be something that will succeed it, sometime in the future.

If history has taught anyone anything, it should be that civilizations are not static. I very seriously doubt that democracy and capitalism will be the predominant foundations of society 1,000 years in the future.

When will the "next big thing" come? I have no idea, nor does anyone else. But to say that there are no alternatives to capitalism, and to imply that there never will be, is shortsighted.
I'm totally going to use this.

Seriously. I just added it to my personal website (down at the bottom): http://tlrobinson.net/
A couple of points here:

> Quality matters, but there are other things that also matter, such as actually getting working code written.

"Working code written" is setting a quality bar. Really. I've seen enough code that has omitted the "working" qualifier that I think it is worth making that point. Many developers spend far too much time erring on the side of too little quality. Not developers here, mind you; I suspect that we care enough to tend to err the other direction. I mean the type that Jeff and Joel repeatedly point out who will never visit sites like this or StackOverflow.

> Joel focuses on dogmatic adherence to development methodologies/principles as an example, specifically testing.

And I think Bob is focusing on people with a complete lack of methodologies and principles. The problem is that they are both talking in greater extremes than are necessary for the sake of emphasizing their point. For what it is worth, I think they are both right, and are violently agreeing on the same gray area.

FWIW, Jeff and Joel strike me as intelligent enough developers that they likely keep their code sufficiently clean without having to consciously remind themselves, or have someone else remind them. Their subconscious quality bar is sufficiently high that they don't have to consciously think about that either. They both seem to have a sense of design that most developers just don't. So does Bob.

I suspect that Bob has worked with or heard of enough developers who don't that he feels compelled to advocate his position with a little more gusto. But both took the other's position as an attack against their own ability or philosophies; this wasn't the point. I think Joel/Jeff were addressing the people who have the tendency to care about what they do, perhaps a little too much at times, and convince them to let go a little bit; Bob is address the people who don't give a crap, and trying to give them a least somewhat of a mental framework to make things that at least kind of work most of the time. The problem is that these people need things told to them dogmatically, to get them out of their comfort zone. That kind of dogmatic advice tends to rub those who think about what we do to begin with the wrong way.
Same here. I've written up my methods here, which are similar in spirit, but not the same in execution.

Basic level password example: "pi975315703"
-> alpha-numeric, easy to remember because I have typed it a billion times.

Medium strength:
"C0caC0la1s<3pt14159"
-> Coca Cola (upper case because it is a company) is not as good as pie always use 0 for o and 1 for i.

High Strength:
"9T&11E:ttttttttteeeeeeeeeee+pi975315703" -> all I have to remember is "nine 't's and eleven 'e's plus weak password" but someone trying to hack it with a hash table or whatever would be significantly slowed.

Max strength (where life or my job hangs in the balance):
get university text book and ruler, goto page 314
hold ruler along 3rd column of paragraph text, read each letter downwards
write on bottom left corner of page in very light pencil "3X5%"

"WdeAdehaeeadyej.dR35Tyismdy+3X&5%:xxx%%%%%+pi97531570"
-> I think you should get the idea here.

I'm also super paranoid about key loggers. One of my friends did this to the whole school when I was 16, so ever since then I have never entered high or max on a public computer, just in case. All told I think I have about 35 active passwords that I can easily remember (or obtain in the textbook one).
For me it's lastpass.com.
They do it right: they remove the passwords they (easily) find on my HD. The problem is still the master password, I agree.
the guy running the site.
Baddeley's model of working memory
This is great: a bunch of free, high-quality papers on data mining, machine learning, and AI.
"Is that really significant or is it simply a novelty? The Macintosh has been called "the world’s most expensive Etch A Sketch" by at least one critic."

"Aside from some of the recurrent criticisms—that the mouse is inefficient..."

I'd say an important take away from this interview is to ignore (most) criticism, no matter what. Just imagine how silly some of the criticism for advancing technology today will look in 2040 :-).
Let me use it without having to login. If I want to save my list, then allow me to do so through registering.
You mean you sell them yourself?
I didn't realize until this moment that there was a mechanical_fish and a robotrout... am I missing out on a joke or something?

Next I'll see a reply from cyberguppy.
I made a bookmarklet:

javascript:if(typeof cornify_add==="undefined"){document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('script')).src='http://www.cornify.com/js/cornify.js';}else{cornify_add()};

First click loads it, subsequent clicks add a new image.

Now you can Cornify Hacker News too! http://skitch.com/tlrobinson/bddmx/hacker-news-cornified
I think Javascript has gotten a bad rap because of early implementations and its association with bad experiences of coding in web browsers. Here's a link on learning Javascript from the command line:

http://www.thefrontside.net/blog/learning_javascript_from_th...
I thought it was Al Jabar (or Al Jabbar) from whence we get the name.
Hilarious stuff. I know a lot of people who would enjoy this if it also dropped Hello Kitty all over the page. :)
or maybe u mean spirit.
"He is an engaging pitchman and never loses an opportunity to sell his products, eloquently describing a time when computers will be as common as kitchen appliances and as revolutionary in their impact as the telephone or the internal-combustion engine."

Well, he got that one right.
Normally I'd agree with you, but this is a 10 second diversion, and you have to be a robot not to find the concept cute and unique.
That's not it. It's not about the money - it's about the interest. There is just no reason to colonize the moon, so no one did.
First real-world test? Look at Japan in the 1990s. How soon we forget history...and repeat it.
Leading != canonical.
Well just to chime in as someone that has been here for quite a long time, a 'slap on the hands' (as far as I have witnessed) tends to be dropping a comment to -1 or so.

Piling on someone like that should be genuinely rare, and only because they are spamming links to goatse or streaming curse words at someone.

Hopefully this little portion of our 'culture' doesn't change, as it seems like a civil way to deal with this sort of thing.
So would the barrier to making things like adders, latches, etc. (in other words, everything you need to build a Von Neumann computer) be that they don't have a way to make NOT gates? Or would making NOT gates out what they have not be a big deal?
Little Known Microsoft Jewels #1
A little known jewel of Microsoft that allows one to sync and share folders between computers. You need a windows live id to use it. Very useful tool coming out of the Microsoft Live offerings.
Sweet. Can we have Jurassic Park now? Why or why not?
I remember hearing about a Japanese researcher that was experimenting with giving people parasitic worms as a treatment for asthma.
I got corned. Damn.
I ro-bot. Still find joke fu-nny.
You can hide data fairly selectively on Quantcast, FYI. (As of one of our more recent releases people can ask you for access to your hidden data, which is nice if you sell ads.)

Full disclosure: I work for 'em so obviously I'd encourage you to go for it. :)
who said anything about democracy? If democracy was an efficient form of governing a large complex system you would have seen corporations adopt it and become more competitive.

like I said before, the alternative to a free exchange of goods is a forced exchange of goods. I don't see how to improve on this. capitalism isn't a system in the same way socialism is. It's just what naturally happens when violence is made less profitable than free exchange.
Reading at Work, A Clever Flash Program
On a related note, the Rabin-Miller primality test is needed just to find the primes for RSA to work.
The full text of SICP from MIT Press
This is the entire book, hosted by the publishers (MIT Press). I find it much more convenient to read it here than the scribd PDF or even the hard copy itself because when they reference earlier problems and sections in the book, they usually link to it for easy navigation.