skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Hackers And Founders In Boston
Hi everyone, I'm an amateur hacker and aspiring startup founder living and working in the Boston area. I've been lurking at HN for about a year now and I really enjoy reading everyone's comments/discussions, etc. I've started getting into programming and such over the past year or so, learning mainly Python/Django, along with a bit of PHP and Lisp (Scheme) (I'm slowly working through SICP in my free time), so I'm always learning a thing or two from the discussions here!

I've recently decided to take the big jump and leave my corporate job soon to work on some ideas. The main one I've been working on for the past year is related to the music industry, but I'm still working on a few others concurrently.

Since I'll have more "free" time on my hands in about a month, I would like to spend some of it meeting and interacting with some cool people. I was wondering if anyone knows of some good places in/around Boston to meet fellow hackers/startup founders? I didn't go to school around here, so I'm kind of out of the loop (but would love to get back in it!) but I figured since some of you live here or are familiar with the area, you might know of some places to check out. I'm looking more toward informal environments (as opposed to pitch meetings, VC events, and the like, since I don't have an actual product built yet), though I'd give most events a shot anyway. Also, I'm always looking to meet new people and try new things so if anyone would like to get together in person or otherwise to talk tech, startups, music, or basically anything else, definitely feel free to contact me (e-mail in profile).

Thanks!
As much as TDD irks me to think about when I'm in the middle of a program, it's a very useful thing.

Its saved me from making countless mistakes.

JUnit isn't good for beginners though, because you have to define an equals method for each class. Not only is that completely repetitive, but it is also very difficult for beginning programmers to write good tests. If you haven't been programming for very long, how do you know how to define equality? Do you consider two objects that have the same fields (only the fields you're testing) to be equal? Or are you checking whether or not two objects are the same (bit for bit in the stack)? What happens when you have super-classes that have less fields than their subclasses?

Anyway, one of my professors is working on a new tester for java (http://www.ccs.neu.edu/javalib/Tester/index.html). It's very elegant; the syntax is very clean:

"public void testGresterThan(Tester t){

t.checkexpect(7 > 4, true);

}"
Pirate Bay Trial Day 5: Peter’s "Political Trial"
Getting started on pricing theory: Simplistic analysis of optimal pricing
Two Conferences for iPhone and Mac Developers
To unfreeze credit, govt. lends to hedge funds
8 Quick, Hot Reasons You Should Offer an E-mail Course Today
I thought that was off-putting at first too. Then, I tried it on my own blog, and I see why he does it.

The difference in engagement was clear. More on-topic comments, lack of questions already addressed in the post, lower bounce rate, longer time on-site, etc.

You have to write for scanners. The majority of your visitors aren't looking to read essays or blocks of text.
Source: http://www.9to5mac.com/iphone-concepts-10
What, like an average American? Or a median? Or looking at the outliers and why they are there? This is complex.
The trouble with "race" is that it's pretty meaningless biologically; human "races" are a long way from being (e.g.) biological subspecies. What race boundaries do correlate well with is sharp social differences, and therefore with things like wealth and education and social status. So, if IQ tests measure some combination of (1) innate cognitive differences, (2) acquired cognitive differences (quite possibly strongly affected by those socially-governed factors), and (3) purely social things like familiarity with ideas assumed in the test, then looking for connections with "race" is going to exaggerate #3 and #2 in comparison to #1.

On the other hand, any reported result about relationships (or absence of relationships) between "race" and IQ is inevitably going to be interpreted in terms of #1.

So I'm all for scientists studying genetic correlates of intelligence, but anything that's described as a study of "race and IQ" seems likely to generate more heat than light.

And that's even without getting into the fact that racism (on the one hand) and "political correctness" (on the other) seem likely to introduce bias into the research, how it's written up, whether it gets published, and how the published results get reported to the general public. (Despite all the measures that competent and honest scientists take to reduce the effects of bias.)
Web data mining is so due for a renaissance. At big companies, purge rules eliminate old data to save on storage costs. At startups the focus is always on getting a product out, adding features & getting users. When guys start figuring out how to tease real value out of the data, this is going to snowball. And R is the right platform for figuring it out.
Sun's stellar NAS in a can
Sun-powered device converts CO2 into fuel
There has to be willingness to get things wrong if there's going to be any progress. If the fear of getting wrong answers at first prevents research, then we'll never get the right answers.
So do plants....
These lists are always kind of cool to see, but the concepts I like the best are the ones that actually look believable. Very few in this list look anywhere near believable.
Adobe reveals buffer overflow vulnerability in Acrobat 9.0 and earlier
How Will the $7.2 Billion Allotted for Broadband Stimulus Be Spent?
Interesting way to produce a universal, non-browser solution; however, server-side web apps lose some of the functionality of browser extensions, particularly low-level features.

Standardization would be nice. I'm sick of developing for 4 different browsers in 4 different pseudo-languages.
It's be an interesting one to test, although I'd expect the gain in compression is worth it.

eg gzip(concat(A, B)) compresses to a smaller file than gzip(A) + gzip(B)

For example, if I take 20 js files from Mibbit and gzip them individually, total size is 47,890
If I concat then gzip, it's 42,681
You can put me in the downvote column, too. I happen to view TDD as a completely obnoxious and unnecessary exercise.
http://api.jquery.com is up-to-date, though not quite as whiz-bang
I'm not so sure. People who were considering a purchase probably got it during the sale. Now that the sale has established that the game is "worth" $25, perhaps people will wait longer before buying to see if the price drops again. This may hurt their higher-price sales, not only on this game but on all Steam games.

(At least, that's the logic I'd use. I've bought several games on Steam -- including this one -- all on 10%-75% sales.)
There really isn't an interface. Mint uses your login to get the state of your accounts but does not allow you to transfer money or anything else, it is read only. Then it tried to catagorize all the transactions you have based off their database of companies. You can track your spending over time in different categories. It sounds like nothing but unifying all your accounts in one place is very useful.
I don't mean to be rude.. but all of these look awful.

...I guess that's why Jonathan Ive gets paid what he does. ;)
I do that but Mint is immediate
Why the Smart VCs Are Boarding their Jets
Microsoft: Of Course We're Still Hiring H-1B Workers
It's much easier to arrange for your test code to be extremely modular, with different bits not affecting one another, than it is for the actual application code. And for most problems it's much easier to get evidence that you've solved them right than it is to solve them right. (It's a bit like the difference between P and NP.) Therefore, writing good test code is much much easier than writing good application code. This is the answer to your last question, and the reason why the rest of what you said is wrong.
"The trouble with "race" is that it's pretty meaningless biologically"

People say that a lot - but it's not actually true.

Do you think it's socially important for people to believe that, and to blind themself to differences? Fine, I can accept that. But do not delude yourself into thinking it's actually true.
Don't count out vc events / pitch meetings. There are a lot of cool people ie hackers that attend them - I highly recommend going to the next Boston Web Innovators meetup - its March 10th http://www.webinnovatorsgroup.com/

They usually have about 3 formal pitches and then before and after them people mingle and also check out "side dishes" of startups at tables around the room.
Key Quote --

"I’ve found that while I’ve moved on from the Rails scene, the scene has not moved on from me"

The true quality of a community is not just a measure of how forceful or big it is, but how easily it can adapt to change. This quote, plus the fact that the plan for "moving forward" was to pull in another framework wholesale, does not bode well for the Rails community. It by no means indicates that the Rails community is doomed, but it does not bode well.

I'd also like to take this moment to point out that this is yet another indication that the Ruby community != the Rails community. Quite to the contrary, I think you'll find the Ruby community quite flexible and robust when faced with opposition. (Just read some of the recent ruby-talk discussions on 1.8.6 vs. 1.8.7 if you don't believe me...)
From page 2 of the article:

"Clouds indicate that the protocol or system component is working hard, while raindrops indicate that activity is really ramping up. A lightning bolt signifies that the protocol or component is running near capacity."

Talk about dumbing things down...
Django Tutorial: Build an issue tracker [screencast]
The theory of this is almost twelve years old:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

And the data haven't changed much:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html
The trouble with "race" is that it's pretty meaningless biologically

You can find an interesting piece disagreeing with that view here:

http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007
The page at: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Hacker_Groups# lists two "groups" in Boston. One of which is http://betahouse.org/ which seems to be a CoWorking space. Co-Working, I would think would be a great way to meet people. It seems to be at least in Philadelphia at http://www.indyhall.org.

I'm sure there are lots of programming meetups in the area too, which while not startup related per se, probably are attended by some founders to do the same sorts of things--network.
For me, videos on the web should be no longer than a minute. A funny cat, a plane crashing, a meteor shower, etc. concise and to the point.

I can't stand long conversations in video that can be resumed in ten lines of text.
Understanding is also the first step to engineering. People talk about replacement organs, stem cells, and all sorts of enhancements. But intelligence enhancement could be so much more important.

We get around with hacks like coffee, and could do much better. SBUX has a $7B market cap.
Ask HN: Hackers House in Dallas, TX?
I'm in the process of starting my own company and will be leasing some office space soon. The office space is way too much than I need, so I wanted to create a Hacker's House in Dallas, TX.

Let me explain my idea of a Hacker's House: I essentially want a place where high school/college kids can hang out in a technological environment that can provide things they otherwise may not have access to. This would include desktop/servers, computer science library, other developers to shoot ideas off of, etc. Basically, a geek heaven. It's kind of like a Users Group, but can discuss anything technological/just hang out with other geeks. Come and go as they please, etc.

Is this something developers would enjoy? I know when I was in high school and college, I'd love to have a place where I could go hang out with other developers other than school. It would be a place for kids to do CS research, develop their own ideas, work on their own startups, etc. I wouldn't ask for anything in exchange, if someone develops the next million dollar idea while hanging out there, best for them.

Initially, I would provide as many computers as I could afford (probably 5 or so) and a server. I would look for angel investors to invest in other aspects (I've estimated I'll need about $12,000 to start and my business would continue to pay for the continuation of the Hacker's House).

Any feedback is appreciated it. You're more than welcome to contact me at vmc@leftnode.com if you have other questions/ideas.

Thanks!
If you're wondering about the credit card-bag trick, here's a basic explanation: After extended use, the oxide (written information) will "smear"and produce lower-level mag fields. These will give a false value and effectively not be approved by the checksum. By increasing the distance (via bag, tape, etc) between the read head and the strip, the sensitivity falls and only the original data (higher-level mag fields) will be read.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225752.500-money-bag...
Ask HN: please review our online load testing service - loadimpact.com
God that's ugly.
Yes, "begs the question" is misused all the time.

"Now, that being said, it begs the question of <whatever>" -- the sentence was tongue-in-cheek. I was illustrating, in a mocking way, the style I don't like.

Sorry for the troll.
not that ugly... the keyboard seems a bit small/cramped to be useful, though.
One of the Nano designs on that url is also very interesting
"A good speaker can really amplify the meaning and memorability of information."
I think a lot of the TED talks prove this point!

(still - i'd love to see transcripts)
People that can develop working, maintainable software that makes users happy seem to always be in demand.

Omit "working,maintainable" and we're good. It needn't be either, but it must make someone happy. Whether this is a pointy haired boss or an end user is irrelevant to how much the developer is paid.
Indeed. They should have produced e.g. 400 productivity units (lines of code <gd&r>?), but lost 30%, i.e. 120 units. 100 are due to the bad apple, the remainig due to lost productivity of the other three. So each if them only produced 93.333 units, for a loss of 6.667% of individual productivity. Which is 233% more than 2%.
One problem is when someone in the USA is 75% white 25% black people label them black. It's not that ethnic groups don't share common traits it's just the borders are so fuzzy it's going to be hard to narrow down specifics.
hackrtrackr.com
Computer Science Core = Algorithms + Compilers + Operating Systems

After all, N. Wirth wrote a book titled:
Data Structures + Algorithms = Programs
They have a land line at the monastery, though no network. Some people use satellite connections.
You passed the first test: I asked myself "wait, how is this not a one-stop-shopping service for aspiring, technically incompetent DOS attackers"? And I found your FAQ and answered that question inside of 45 seconds:

http://loadimpact.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7
Rustica Hardware
Specializing in luxury, rustic designer door and cabinet hardware, rustic plumbing fixtures, lodge style lighting, and GREEN eco-friendly door knobs and cabinet knobs. Rocky Mountain Door and Cabinet Hardware,
How to undelete any open file on Linux
Homo Evolutis: Juan Enriquez's TED talk on economy, robots, and evolution
A drawing of an iPhone with a keyboard! Now that simply must be seen!
Well, I haven't heard of any other accommodation that cheap, but you're right, there are options in the same ballpark. Don't forget that prices have gone up substantially since the last 4 years.
Yes, this seems to be fixed. Thanks!

I can't yet report on how useful it is, because I haven't used it for more than 60 seconds yet, but it looks good. I'm looking forward to using it.
Adobe flaw heightens risk of encountering malicious PDFs
The lack of access to care is the real mental health “epidemic” affecting children today.
I've often wondered if there's a user-visible way of doing that. (the file only disappears after the refcount hits 0 after all) Great find!
The fact that a guy who's been known to be somewhat of a troll states, anecdotally, that an entire community is still "consumed" by him proves that the community must therefore be in trouble? Don't agree.
Still the basic test uses up some good bandwidth. What about the impact on shared hosts who sometimes severely limit the number of connections?
Ok, but what if a number of people all try the free test with some site?
It was parody.
They'll count them as sold copies as soon as the money is in.

Buyer != user
http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Startup-Poker/

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you (aspiring founder), but the event is hosted by Ivan Kirigin of Tipjoy (YCW08 I believe) and there's been a number of other local startup founders at the games, YC and otherwise. Really fun time.

Also, I've got good things to say about the Betahouse meetups. I've been for Django and Plone. Interesting group of people, and great hacker space.

FYI your email is not in your profile.
Sure; I'm assuming you're asking about my assertion that "R is the right platform ... " I've used S-PLUS fairly extensively, and I think there's a lot in common between R and S-PLUS. But R doesn't have the licensing constraints, which makes all of the difference in the world. To me, R represents a good high-level prototyping language with a very extensive native statistical library.

I would also add that I'm much more attached to the idea that web data mining is the future, than I am attached to the idea that R is the best platform. We'll see what happens!
On the free results page at the bottom there are some FAQ graphs, but they all link to the same place.
Also - apologies, I was in a rush to class earlier - there's a difference between a social network and a social news site, as you said. Facebook's killer idea works because Facebook is a social network. There're other situations where using Facebook for comments would be really nice. Commenting on essays and academic papers, for instance, because when you're writing about intellectual work it's useful to talk with the weight of your name rather than anonymity.
Although supposedly the BitKeeper protocol was documented, and to find it, Andrew Tridgell connected to a BK server via telnet and typed "help". No idea how much the truth has been romanticised, but I suspect that it at least helped the reverse engineering effort, even if the documentation was incomplete.

I'm currently reverse engineering a USB VoIP handset in my spare time, as the only driver that exists for it is for 32-bit Windows. I'd recommend the experience to any hacker. I'll try and write up my findings when I'm done - there are a bunch of HOWTOs out there but I found them woefully incomplete.
to tell the truth I liked the old design better, this one is kinda boring
Anonymity on the internet: an argument
Shortest. Seth. Post. Ever.

PUNCHLINE:

>>The question shouldn’t be, “do you deserve it.” I think it should be, “what are you going to do with it now that you've got it?”

Is his self-imposed requirement to post daily dulling Seth's impact?
No kidding. What would be a "must see" is the hobbit who's small enough to use such a keyboard.
Image Manipulation Plugins for jQuery
Launch Applications By Shortcuts
Let´s say you want to open notepad. To do it, you need to do 4 steps like start-All program-Accesories-Notepad, it´s annoying and the loss of time. Here is a simple and fast windows trick which will allow you to launch any application at the touch of a button. For example, you can launch Notepad every time you press CTRL+ALT+N ( or whatever key you choose).
About the graphs, we're going to add more info about different graph types but for now we just have one help text explaining "strange" graphs.
Because a failure in your test code means some application code isn't tested as well as it should be. It doesn't mean the application code will fail.

A failure in your application code can be much more serious.

Hence, in general, you test your application code, but not your test code.
We have a ton of security features to limit abuse of the system. A site that cannot handle the impact of a single basic (free) test can be DOS:ed once, yes. But we have a limit on how often we will generate load to (or from, really) individual IP addresses, so the second or third time in a day someone tries to "load test" the same site, they will be denied their test. This means you can at most DOS-attack a small site a few minutes per day. We hope it will be enough to make would-be abusers go somewhere else - i.e. not worth their time.
Dive in to C++ and survive
Starting from scratch is the only cure for malware
The email field in your profile is invisible to other users. Put it up in your about me.
There's also OpenCoffee, but I never manage to trek out there. http://boston.going.com/event-122245;OpenCoffee_Club
I think your pricing is pretty much way off.

Why would I want to pay you $40/mo, if I'm paying $3/mo for shared hosting that I know can handle 250 users?

And its the same way through out. Even at the highest level, it'd be cheaper for me to lease a second dedicated server to spread the load, than it is to pay you for your service.

And I don't think this is something that should be a monthly service. I only want to check my load once in a while to see if its doing fine, so I think by asking so much money on a monthly basis, you are driving users away. I think you'll be better off doing it as one off results. i.e. the $499/mo option, should be a $29.99 one time fee for 3 reports
The curve has changed, but the overall range appears to have remained the same. For the people at the low and top ends of the spectrum, its basically business as usual.

It does seem as though the middle has fallen out some though. We recently had an opening for a short-term junior level position and we got a ton of responses from overqualified people who would ordinarily fall in the mid-range classification.
Oh, my comment was more directed at the fear expressed in:

"(Well, you can do buy-and-hold, but you have to wait for the price to bottom out, and pray that the fund manager doesn't burn up all the money with failed trading strategies.)"

With index investing at least you won't have to rely on a fund manager too much.
God, that persona's much better. It's like the neighbours turned the 3am rap music down.
Business Words to Ban
What would happen if I tried load testing loadimpact.com?
Wifi Cat is wiiiiiiiifi.
You may want to put a per-domain-per-day limit in there somewhere, otherwise you are going to have a very stressful day the first time someone on SomethingAwful hears of this wonderful new toy.

(Its a DDOS in a can if you have a few dozen people capable of reading directions.)
I tried it, and it wouldn't let me as it had been tested too much in the last 24 hours
Ah, guess I don't know the source well enough.
So, what can I learn about these results:

http://loadimpact.com/result/www.improvingtheweb.com-b75533d...
The comments here are interesting. They either breath a sigh of relief and welcome the change in persona with open arms, or they let out a "pfft," uninteresting and wish for the old Zed. Any mediators out there?