skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Perl is the programming language that's closest to a natural language that I've seen.

It's very aggravating knowing that there are 20+ ways to say the exact same thing, and in order to understand most people you need to learn all 20+ ways and completely memorize them.

Along with immersion, which is crucial, I've found it's useful to color-code as much textual information as you can, and aim for a "lossy" understanding of the language. Read a passage or listen to someone and just try to get some vague meaning from it, don't get caught up on particular words or grammar.

Also, if you are just starting, I find the traditional method of flinging a few phrases and a bunch of completely random vocabulary is inane. Learn those phrases, sure, but try to learn pronouns and modal verbs as soon as possible, followed by the most common form of past tense. Pulling figures out of thin air, I'd say 90% of the time people talk about what they need, want, should do, or can do, or about things that have already occurred.

Some languages are handy in that you get a free "immediate future" tense by learning the present tense; if you ask a question like 'Are you eating?' it's understood as 'Are you about to eat?' in the right context.

Once you have this framework of expressing most of your thoughts, you can start to dump in all the vocabulary and extra grammar. Eventually, after learning all the grammar and other random bits of knowledge, the learning game plateaus and you are basically just learning vocabulary, idioms, and slang.
Looks pretty neat. I'm still trying to find the Emacs keybinding option...More seriously, some basic formatting options may be nice, for actual document production vs., as some others mentioned, a fancy chat system.

My first thought was that a version control repository and editing system could be built on top of this that would actually allow two people to see each others' edits simultaneously but compile only their own revisions until a commit occurred.
I am, admittedly, one of those assholes. I don't characterize myself as rude (I keep my mouth closed when I chew, I stay away from others and doorways when I smoke, I hold doors open for people).

But, if you get in a conversation with me, I will take control. I tend to talk over people to get my point across (although I don't care whether you agree with me or not, not in an attempt to convince) and I tend to talk to much.

Lately, the past 3 months, I have walked away from many conversations thinking, "Damn, I didn't let them say anything. What an asshole."

Working on changing it - guess I just get caught up in the discussion.
Not surprising. This is the same company that gave a substantial portion of its employees a 20% paycut when they were forced to start paying over-time then acted like it was a pay raise because most employees work over 40 hours a week.
This is _awfully_ similar to Google's 'Don't be evil', which has seemed to get harder and harder for them as they've grown. Could it be that one a company reaches a certain size the financial pressures outweigh the desire to be 'good', whatever the cost?
But that in and of itself doesn't mean anything. The content is static. That makes it much easier to prettify. Look for example at the Orchid example that I linked to:

http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/211/211.css&page=0

Look at the headings. They're really beautiful. How do I do that in CSS? I can't. They are images.

To really demonstrate CSS you'd need to take all those style sheets and apply them to a different HTML document and see if they still looked good. No one has done that experiment (and I suspect no one will) but I predict the results would not look nearly as good.
Tendril opening its 'smart grid' to other companies
ML is math heavy. And, in any academic setting that's how it's going to be taught, I'd be interested in practical ML references as well...
Why are they suing? Can't they just kill the account, or block the other users?
I find it useful to think in terms of rates and percentages. Sounds dull, but hear me out.

What % of blogs respond to your product? If you've only emailed 5 or 10 blogs, you don't really know yet - that's a pretty small number, and you might've just had bad luck. The rate of success really depends on a lot of factors unrelated to your site itself (subject matter, the blogs themselves, how you approach them, etc.), but I wouldn't be surprised to get a 10% response rate for an average product. I haven't really done this enough to go into more detail, or to have a winning formula, but I would expect the success rate to be relatively low, which can get discouraging.

What percentage of your visitors are sticking around? Again, if you've only received a few hundred visits, it's hard to tell. The best way to iterate is to have a steady stream of traffic, make changes, and see how they affect stickiness.. but getting the traffic is the tricky part to start with, right? I'm not really counting Digg/Reddit/Stumbleupon traffic here, since those visitors typically have the attention span of a fruitfly.

How much search engine traffic are you getting? How feasible is it to get on the first page of Google or Yahoo for some combinations of relevant keywords? (use the Adwords Keyword Tool to research keywords, see how much traffic they could potentially get you, and how competitive they are). Search engines can bring you thousands of visitors a month who are actively looking for something like your site. Don't ignore them.

Can you think of any other domain-specific promotions? You mentioned game forums and guilds, I don't know how far you took that. Is there any angle under which game developers or publishers might see an advantage to promoting your site or collaborating with you? What about game magazines or review sites?

These are all the cost of giving your site a chance to succeed. Weigh that against the reward of success - how badly do you want your site to grow, and how much effort are you willing to put in to "give it a fair chance"? (you're the only one who can give it a fair chance, by the way - no one else cares enough).
When you have such a strict control over the press, you can announce pretty much anything. I will believe it when someone else confirms the satellite is alive and well.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<ns1:doubleAnInteger
xmlns:ns1="urn:GOPAPI">
<param1 xsi:type="xsd:int">666</param1>
</ns1:doubleAnInteger>
<getTalkingPoints:string xmlns:getTalkingPoints="urn:RequestTalkingPointsTrue">Give
me my talking points</getTalkingPoints>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
I think it's a shot across the bows of any other companies thinking of doing likewise (which would be a direct hit on FT revenue).
Doesn't look like Hulu is doing anything on purpose to make this happen, see:

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-864
That sounds good in theoretical terms. Sounds just fine.

Live it, though, and you may change your mind. For instance, when that "lifestyle" you speak of means giving your child a decent upbringing in a reasonable neighborhood -- I'll work for an asshole to protect that, sorry.
As others have said, a degree certificate from a US university should come with a green card stapled to it.
Competent + Nice = Best Combination

Competent + Asshole = I'll put up with them

Incompetent + Nice = I'll hold their hand

Incompetent + Asshole = You've got to be kidding
> I mean what is the point of putting <h2> tags below your <p> when it's obvious that the <h2> tag is acting as the heading for the <p> below. I wouldn't be able to read that, so why is CSS @ fault?

Nobody is talking about putting headers after the content they're introducing. The author is talking about a situation where it makes sense to order the markup one way, but CSS demands it to be done a different, not easily readable way. Which does happen sometimes.

> Why the author of the article is using a div container to wrap them all when a body tag exists is beyond me.

This looks like a ridiculous statement to me. But please, explain further what you want him to do.

I find it comical that you go on about "good HTML" and then point to CSS Zen Garden, where the HTML is inextricably bound up with the presentation (ie, adding wrapper elements to allow for flexibility in styling). CSS Zen Garden is an example of HTML as it should not have to be.
Unfortunately not, because

a) the memory manager cannot guarantee a consistent system state in the swap file

b) the kernel has no way of instantiating its own state from an image

These are hard problems, which is why the people working on them usually start from scratch: http://www.eros-os.org/eros.html
Buy one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0019VOPU0?ie=UTF8&tag=...
From him :).
Fake Social Network Profiles: a New Form of Identity Theft in 2009
rich->funnel_money_from_middle_class(hide=[true])

environment->screw(distort_facts=[true])

populus->dictate_christian_lifestyle()

populus->promote_fascism(not_called_fascism_when_we_do_it=[true])
Ask HN: Best format for video download
I want my website visitors to be able to purchase and download videos (without DRM) from my website. These are not technical users and I want to minimize support with videos that won't play for whatever reason. What format should I use for the videos?
How do you know when to give up?

When do you know when to move on to a new project?

Ah, 2 completely different questions.

Moving on to a new project is not giving up. Especially when you use everything you learned from the previous project in the next one (which, of course, all of us hackers always do). Just think of it as Me 2.0 and move on. Never give up.
That's definitely true, but going to grad school or the military as a "backup" is probably a bad idea. There are worse holding patterns, but there are also a lot better ones.

In general, if you don't know what you want to do, making a multi-year commitment is a bad idea.
Knowing Google is involved I expect to see videos of the lectures on youtube similar to what TED does. (please)
that's the ONLY time I do work it seems.
Hard and Soft, Fluffy and Brittle
Wait, to sinter is to roast something that's been tied with cooking twine? 焼 is used for roasting and barbecuing, and 結 gives the image of being tied together by a knot or thread, which is why it's part of 結婚 (marriage)

I'm being a little obtuse, I know, but while it is often possible to guess a general meaning by looking at the kanji for any given compound, there are just too many different ways for the meanings of each character to be combined. Add to that the sheer pile of words that derive their meaning from literature or poetry, and you're probably better off taking a peek at the dictionary when the meaning isn't obvious from context.

English is just as bad for foreign speakers.
To spare you the into ad, animation, and low signal to noise ratio:

Up: business-intelligence skills and expertise in C, C++ and C# programming, temp-to-perm positions

Down: enterprise architects
India's $10 laptop expected to be on the market in 6 months
He isn't a hero coz you say so? He is my hero and I don't care for your definition. He is a "HN Salesmanship Hero" to me. I gained from him because he convinced me that there is a fortune to be made by selling something useful for just $5 a piece (with a brilliant spiel). You don't even have to invent it. I love his lifestyle and attitude. He convinced me that even if I were to lose everything, I could become a 'gentleman grafter' and turn life around.
This includes managers at s/w companies as well. My department at bigCo was just re-organized, and I have a new boss.

At our first one-on-one meeting, he casually mentioned that he was 'not a micro-manager'. This immediately caught my attention - when a manager says this, they invariably turn out to be micro-managers.

Since then, I have had to report my status 3 times a week, and he writes detailed emails laying out how I should do my job. As far as I can tell, he is like this with all of his reports.

Needless to say, I'm seriously considering quitting. I recently got my green card, so freelance work is now an option....
$25 + Homeles Shelter + Hard Work = American Dream
If I believed first impressions, I wouldn't have found many of my closest friends.
* that doesn't mean they wouldn't be much more productive using something better suited to layout*

What would you suggest is better suited to layouts than CSS?
But no K. Eric Drexler?
Some commentary here http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2114
Yea I have learned this lesson myself, it's true. I think a lot of the time it costs you more to do the work than to walk away.
Nice move.
Someone should make a "Co-Worker Punnett Square" with these options. But which traits are dominant and which are recessive? ;)
The content is a rip of the National Geographical article from few months back; and not a hint of a credit.
Going to the gym does give you some incredible new skills, though, just not in the way you would think. How useful is it to be able to properly pick up very heavy objects, or to be able to outrun 70% of the population? What about the benefit of being more attractive, which does lead itself to more opportunities?

You're definitely right about choosing your own path, though -- as long as you do something to stay in shape, you'll be alright. Any sport can bring useful new skills to the table.
A good percentage of those are scams, eg: "Spanish tutor wanted." They advertise for some lessons from someone likely to be semi-desperate but with a bank account. Then they kite a check from a stolen bank account for twice the amount to the sucker, and ask them to pass the rest to the "nanny". The child of course never appears.. and they say "oh, keep the money." They play on greed and fear to rope the sucker into doing the most dangerous part of the fraud and to keep quiet later.

Seriously. Answer ten teacher wanted ads and 2-3 will be scams of some sort.
I was thanks.
Mark Cuban Gets Legal-Defense Dream Team
"Full subscribers pay £199 per year" is $285 USD at current market rates, a bit higher based on last year's rates. The Financial Times is huge - that whole finance thing has never been my cup of tea, but this is England's Wall Street Journal. Very prestigious, and probably a bit more recession-proof than papers for the masses.

So I'm scratching my head, thinking why they're suing for relative peanuts. Certainly a couple phone calls and Blackstone cuts them a check, no?

So I can only come up with two ideas on why they'd sue: Deterrence or publicity. Probably both. I suppose you're not likely to have the sort of backlash that anti-piracy measures generate from consumers, and the kind of institutions that subscribe to the FT are unlikely to leave in protest. I guess it's a good business play, though it did surprise me and seem a bit strange at first.
Javascript analysis tools? IDE?
Does anybody have any favorite Javascript analysis tools, scripts, or an IDE that they find really helpful? Yeah, I know, "emacs and Venkman"--but is there something better to tackle the complexity when the source gets above 10,000 lines (!?!).

I have to deal with a mountain of inherited, undocumented javascript. Any hints? Any Javascript best practices/documentation approaches that have worked for you?
Deadlines vs. Estimates
Thousands Of MySpace Sex Offender Refugees Found On Facebook
It can't be solved without additional software (like a browser plugin).

The best you can do is logout the previous computer where an account was used. That means you can prevent simultaneous access but not multiple people using the same account on different times.

That's the problem with the stateless part of HTTP. The server doesn't know much about the connection with the client. Once a document is delivered, it's done.

And like you said, filtering by IP doesn't work. What if the costumer is using a desktop PC, 5 minutes later his laptop, a mobile in the afternoon? What if his OS crashes? So many problems. And that's the stateless nature... the server can't send to the client an "are you there?" message.
I wonder if you could develop behavioral tracking software that would flag accounts that exhibited symptoms of being used by multiple people, based on click patterns, reading habits, etc.
I agree with you.
(Although I've just had a chat-like experience on it.)
(And somehow it reminds me of the unix talk command)
FTP Considered Harmful: The Challenges of an FTP Filesystem
Weerl, off the top of my head, I suppose you could replace password with a 'something you know' challenge. Ask for 5 personal pieces of information (name of your first love, first school, etc.) then challenge for one of them at log-in.

I suspect people would be less succeptable to share 5 pieces of such information with their colleagues, than a single password.
Bike Valets at Santa Monica Farmers' Market
CSS doesn't demand it to be done differently though. If the HTML is written with a different flow the CSS will need to be written to accompany that.

I won't say it's perfect, but if you wrote
div col 1
div col 2

and then you wanted col 2 to be on the left of col 1, you'd write the css differently then you would the forward method.

>This looks like a ridiculous statement to me. But please, explain further what you want him to do.

Well look at it this way
<html><body><div container><stuff><div container></body></html>

What is it that div container is doing so well that body isn't already doing as a binding tag?

> I find it comical that you go on about "good HTML" and then point to CSS Zen Garden.

I will have to disagree. CSS Zen Garden reads perfectly and logically without css. It's something that 90% of sites are missing out there. And although the HTML is inextricably bound up with the presentation as you write, it is 100% readable by Netscape 1.0.

He uses HTML to describe the data that is being wrapped in the tags, and the information that is grouped by divs are grouped by the fact that the content is related, not by the fact that the data should be visually sitting beside each other.

While there is excessive usage of <span> tags written throughout, it was a design decision to enable css artists to replace text with images, or allow them to get around browser quirks that are challenges that CSS still face today.
Harvard Study on Entrepreneurship: Persistence and Experience Pay Off
You can use Javascript to keep pinging the server and then log people out if someone else logs into that act. Granted several people can still use the same act, but the annoyance is going to prompt them to want to get a full subscription. On the plus side the psychological push of "I want this data if only we had another act" would increase peoples perception of value.

Edit: I am suggesting you let people use the service like this. Tell them your logging them out because someone else logged in but don't ban the account even if they do this 10 times a day.

PS: I would also make it vary permissive so if the network is down they can still read the information etc. The idea is to promote your brand though exclusivity not annoy your users.
Especially if it was personal stuff ...
Didn't someone write some kind of code to detect when a given text might be a flame? Not sure what it was based on. It'd be cool if the site said "your message looks kind of flame-y. Are you sure you want to post it?"
def agree, I prefer Target because they seem to have better designed products and a sense of style. However, I'm fully aware that both companies operate a ruthlessly efficient business focused on maximum volume to drive down costs, and beneath the marketing they are very similar.
I think you can easily make mistakes judging people in both directions. It's just that making a false negative error (not identifying an asshole) can turn out a lot worse than a false positive (judging somebody as an asshole who really isn't) so it's prudent to be sensitive to bad first impressions.
Have you considered telling your new boss how you feel about his management style? It may be possible to improve the situation.
Already posted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=462786
One trick I found to get myself to the gym was to pick a TV show I liked (Doctor Who or whatever floats your boat) where I was several seasons behind, and I would ONLY watch that show on my iPhone while at the gym doing cardio.

Obviously when you move to the weight machines you can't keep watching the show, but it solved several problems for me:

1) It kept me from getting bored while doing cardio, which is a big issue for me.

2) It made me push for a 40 minute session doing cardio, so I could finish the episode.

3) It made me MUCH more likely to come to the gym the next day, because I wanted to see what happened next (it's good to pick a show with long story arc and end-of-episode cliff-hangers).
As long as it's relatively unobtrusive and has a prominent "remove frame" button, I don't see what the big deal is. If it weren't for their link to you (framed or not), that user would not have found your content in the first place. I would be grateful for them driving traffic to your site and move on to more important issues.
I suppose the title of this should be "grad school doesn't make you money". You can make excellent cases for and against this, especially for the IT crowd. As a high school dropout, I certainly had no issues with making money in the tech sector. Going to collage expressly to increase my market value would be a silly idea.

That's not why I went back to school. I went seeking a new challenge, and found that I could do (most of) it alongside a nice IT salary. I picked a major completely unrelated to IT. I studied abroad in Holland (and helped an NGO with their IT needs). I came back to the US, worked for another year in IT, and then opted to return to Amsterdam for an accelerated masters program.

I have no idea what is going to happen next. I may stay in Europe, I may move back. I may work in IT, but I may be doing it in a new context. Soon I will have two degrees, and tons of writing/planning/speaking/collaborating experience (both from my work experience and in an academic setting). Add to that a new language, global friend network, and the ability to easily live and work on two continents, and that's not too bad.

A cost/benefit analysis on grad school can never be representative, because the experiences, skills, and research can't be quantified. You might become interested in a new field, create an operating system (see Linus Torvalds' masters thesis), or meet your future wife.

So yes, I agree with some of the points in the article, but I disagree with the premise.
I recommend to get license for a hand gun if you are moving to India.
I'm not worried about NK and their missiles merely because launching an object into orbit does mean you can land an object anywhere on the planet. However, there's only a handful of countries that have successfully reentered objects.

There's going to be lots of time to deal with NK before anyone has to worry about a nuke being launched. The biggest worry for any country is if NK or similar rogue country produced a Davy Crockett size nuclear device. I mean a few Davy Crocketts and you could turn a Cessna into a city eradicating weapon.

IMO we don't need to be worried about 'rogue states' with nuclear weapons. I mean there was a big ideological difference between the USA and the USSR with a lot more nuclear weapons; there's possibly a bigger ideological difference between the USA and NK, but there's potentially a single nuke in the NK arsenal, IIRC the US doubted the NK test was actually a nuclear detonation and not simply a multi-tonne load of HE to fake it, so there might not even be a single nuke in NK.