skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Three of my four grandparents were born (in the United States) in non-English-speaking homes. The huge degree of immigration that the United States has long experienced makes it quite remarkable that the United States today has such unity in using a national language (named after another country, no less) that we are all using here to communicate with one another. I possess the reading textbooks used by two of my grandparents' families (who spoke two different languages in that generation). Alphabetic writing was enormously helpful in making English the main generally understood language in the diverse population of the United States, and lack of it may be one thing that is holding back the always diligent people of China from even greater prosperity and unity in their spoken language.

I'd appreciate a source citation for the statement that China has a higher literacy rate than Brazil, as I'm quite sure that statement is based on a fallacy of equivocation: a different definition of "literacy" in the two countries.
The velocity of money has dropped. I don't have the charts on hand, but you're citing that chart and making the wrong conclusions.
I'm coming to agree with him about Clojure being the best language out currently. I've used both it and SBCL and I prefer the former, because SBCL's lack of up-to-date libraries (compared to the JVM) can be frustrating.

I wouldn't call macros a hard necessity, however. You can accomplish quite a lot, quickly, in Ocaml or Haskell, even though they're statically typed languages with no macros. Functors, type classes, and various cool design patterns (e.g. monads) provide a lot of the abstraction and code reuse that macros provide. Also, I'd rather use a statically-typed language for a project with 4+ developers.

I think that 90% of Lisp's headway over a language like Java comes from the functional paradigm, and 10% from macros.
Or two rounds of YC funding? :-D
UTest Redefines Application Testing by Utilizing the Power of Crowdsourcing
Having an ordered hash is ruby is very useful. I've been using ActiveSupport::OrderedHash with ruby 1.8.7.
IBM moving workers to India
JuicyCampus heads for the deadpool
If testing a bridge were like software: you would put the 1000kg on it. Repaint the 1000kg barrel red instead of green. And the bridge would fall down.

Or it might hold up for every multiple of 1 kg from 0 to 10000 kg, but collapse on 133.7 kg because of some horrible floating-point detail.
How not to do customer service
No Opera :-( why?
HP releases netbook interface for Ubuntu
What possible benefit would there be to a project like that?
When I broke up with my girlfriend, I de-activated from Facebook. Honestly, the experience was incredible. I felt like I had my life back. I ended up calling my friends and talking to them instead of writing stupid wall posts. I felt so self-aware of my free time that I actually started exercising more. I didn't have to fear that I would get in trouble at work for not working, nor did I have to delete inappropriate tags/pictures/comments. AND because I wasn't stalking anyone, I actually developed a healthy relationship with my ex.

I came back to Facebook though...eventually. My friends cried foul. I gave in. But as my social groups dissociate and morph, I'm feeling the need to leave again. Some things in life are just better off forgetting. You keep in touch with the friends you want to see and those that make an actual effort back. Poking doesn't cut it.

Thats how life should be lived. I want it back.
I'd love to see some research on this. I would hypothesize that there is a point of problem complexity where the lack of tests becomes a negative for productivity.
Kent Beck's system is awesome if you want to subjugate a thousand programmers working at a bank. In some sense, it is a very successful way of forcing stupid people to build mediocre products under threat of economic violence.
No No No. All wrong. This is how not to do it (video):

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=1899...
I feel like the anti-tax advocates tend to compare apples and oranges. "Let's look at the real world with politicians, vs. an idealized world that is tax-free," and lo! the idealized tax-free world is better. In real life, cutting taxes means all kinds of things. For instance, low taxes means more corporate profits, and in many corporations, rational behavior for the people at the top is to take that profit as salary and bonuses. Real corporations aren't supernatural investment machines. They're just groups of people. If the people at the top can't manipulate their own salaries, or their interests are aligned with the long term interests of the company, then you might get good outcomes, but in general you have the same guarantee that you do with the government - none.
I used to be pretty slack about it, but then started working in a non-startup environment where it's the only possible way to protect your code from random external breakages. I wouldn't code without unit testing even on my own stuff now, and ideally I'd have continuous integration if I'm working with even one other person.
You probably should.

I hardly ever read EULA's (which this in some ways is), and I'm probably not alone in this behaviour.
Working from Home Part 2: Why It’s Great
If interviewers would like potential employees to bring their own (built/customized/configured) laptops to interviews in order to demonstrate competence in a specific area, they should specifically state so.

Edit: recruiters tend to mess up the communication process.
Copy, Paste, get Acquired.
Does that mean they dont have to earn money?
not sure if you've seen the wovel (wovel.com) combining a wheelbarow and a shovel. No longer original, but something you might want to work into your design as it seems a very effective tool.
Do you not see how there just might be a few unintended social consequences with people living forever?
A brief description would be helpful since different companies tend to be better at certain aspects.

You can shoot me an email (ejschmitt at gmail) if you would rather not disclose it here.
Why is the doubly linked list circular?
ES: an ECMAScript (JavaScript) friendly, pure component operating system
I'm sorry. I don't follow you here.

They're just groups of people. If the people at the top can't manipulate their own salaries, or their interests are aligned with the long term interests of the company, then you might get good outcomes

So, assuming for a moment that no taxes just affects corporations, if corporate executives can't manipulate their salaries that's good, because why? Because the extra money would go to shareholders instead of just one schmuck?

How much money do you think the average CEO of a company with less than 50 employees makes? I'll give you a hint: these guys aren't riding around in $50 Million jets. And at that level, for every buck you pull out of the biz for your salary, that's one less dollar to fund the money machine. A lot of the startup essays and books talk about that, it's basic startup economics. When young and growing, take as little away from the business as possible.

If I have 100,000 CEOs with an average extra $5K to spend next year, doesn't that stimulate the economy? And that's assuming they took the money out. In reality, for those companies to be where they are, most all of any extra money is going towards growth: jobs, products, marketing, media, etc. Let's not forget that for them to have any extra corporate money at all, they have to have earned it. It's not like it appears by magic. That means they already know how to make money given the right resources. It's their money really, not ours. Why not let the engine run a little faster? Wouldn't that create more jobs in more diverse industries? Jobs that were based on sound, proven business models? What kind of job is based on a one-time government expenditure? Sounds like a job where it goes away once the money runs out. The other guy, the guy that got the job at the growing company, he's hooked into an already-increasing slot that's proven to work during a recession: it only gets better with time.
Why Windows Must Go Open Source
Thank you capitalism. You make it tough for terrible ideas to survive. Goodbye JuicyCampus. You made some of my friends cry.
Before my son was born, I just backed up everything on my local server, as well as one of my webservers. Since a few of my close friends now have children, we all host local backups of each other's photos. We started that after a friend had a house fire and lost all their photos stored on a local server.

I also do a yearly photobook with DVD(s) for my son. The photo book has the best pictures, with the back story for each. The DVD(s) has all our family pictures and videos worth saving for that year. I send out copies to my son's grandparents and great grandparents.
If It’s Not Broke, Doesn’t Mean It’s Optimal. Even in the NBA
OpenSourceFood.com acquired
From an email I got:

Dear Open Source Foodie,

Jon here. I'm the creator of Open Source Food and today I have an exciting announcement to make.

Open Source Food was launched as a personal project in March 2007 and has grown from a little recipe site inhabited by me and my friends, to a popular social network for foodies where thousands of people browse a beautifully-photographed collection of thousands of recipes every day.

I started Open Source Food at the same time as I started experimenting with cooking and I can honestly say that without a doubt, my cooking skills have improved by being constantly inspired by the OSF community and my friends on there. It has been a most wonderful and delicious journey :)

My intention with managing OSF was always to grow it into something big, bright and beautiful. Even if that meant I could no longer handle everything by myself. I have huge aspirations for the OSF community and I think that the time has come where you all deserve more attention and more resources than I can offer alone!

That is why I am pleased to announce that from today, OSF will be owned and operated by Tsavo Media who will be integrating it into the Daymix network (www.daymix.com). Don't worry, they aren't some big, grey corporation - they are a group of highly talented people, and I have friends there. OSF is in good hands.

I'm not going anywhere though. Remember - I still like cooking and eating :) I'm still going to be on the site, posting my recipes and writing comments as usual. I'm also going to be staying around to help take OSF to the next level, and with that will come some changes to the site, which I'll tell you about now.

Tsavo are smart folks and they see the huge potential in the site but we both agree that the name might be holding us back a bit. Open Source Food... It's a little too "techy" - even a little bit cold, when you consider how bright and beautiful the community is. For that reason we will be changing the name. Same great site, same great community - but new name and brand new horizons.

The new name will be... www.nibbledish.com!

I think it's cute. I like it.

The name change will not affect service. The transition will happen in the background and one day when you visit the site you will simply be forwarded to the new name automatically - we anticipate this will happen within the next few days. This means it is business as usual, so don't stop posting recipes!

Thank you to all of you for coming together and creating this community. I thank you for your continuing support of me, the Tsavo team and the rest of the Daymix network as we launch nibbledish and take it to new heights!

Happy Eating,
Jon Yongfook Cockle
BackType specializes in searching "the conversation," people (YC S08)
Could you answer a question for me? When I went to Ghana, I noticed it had far more volunteers (especially from the US) than any other country I've ever been to. Do you know why this is?
Unfortunately this idea isn't going to increase the quality of commenting, it is just going to encourage stupid people to pad out their nonsense, Steve Yegge style. It's also going to punish people whose witty remarks are actually witty.
We're trying! I'm using machine learning to detect explosives. It's a difficult problem, but it works quite well.
Microsoft Has PMS
This is the wrong question.
Exactly. It doesn't create value. Well, much value; I suppose some people might simply enjoy the work.
Congrats Immad and Jude -- I knew you guys were on to something when I tried it and ended up spending a few hours playing an RPG game just totally randomly.
Ok. I didn't see the Unsafe Reload option. That works.
I am against youth-related processes (eg, birth), because younger people generally tend to be less wise, and not as mature.

More seriously, I find it dubious that proponents of 'longer, better life' don't focus on the low hanging fruit: how to get people to eat better, eat less, and live a less sedentary lifestyle. Many of the ailments of aging could be 'cured' in this way.
Opera is barfing on asynchronous loading of the javascript when clicking the bookmarklet. I get "Script not loaded" errors with no way to better understand what's happening.

If I load my bookmarklet.js file directly in cache, it works fine.

Definitely looking for advice, but googling around has yielded me no breadcrumbs in the search for solving this issue.
This is a complete breath of fresh air, and certainly very different from what we normally hear about here.

I never realised that you could get jellyfish in tanks, and I want one!. It's a very cool concept.

But as the other posters have pointed out, the site definitely needs some work. For this particular niche it probably doesn't need to be all flashy and ajax-like, but if you follow some of the advice in the other posts it will definitely help your sales.

The one thing I would add to the conversation is: More pictures, videos and information. I want to see more jellyfish, what kind I can get, what colors they are, where they live, how they breed, how I keep them alive. Some wikipedia articles and names.
Is it facebook that is the problem or the use of facebook?

I log into facebook about once a week (slightly more recently but hey I'm inbetween jobs). I check my messages respond, see if there is anything of intrest. Beyond that the only time I respond on facebook is when I get an email about it.

I do find facebook useful to send a message to that girl I was best friends with in Middle School, or that dude that I hung out with in High School.

If you limit your use of facebook then it does not control your life. This sounds more like a case of an addiction than something wrong with the platform (though there are things wrong with the platform imho).
Police pursue crime suspect by Wii avatar
So your argument is "Let's not fix a horrible problem, because fixing it might expose other problems with our civilization"?
Not everyone lives in a physical community with enough (or any) potential co-founders. So, the next place to turn is one's virtual community.

You can at least get the same initial trust of a HN user the way PG does: by their submissions, comments, profile, and karma.
named after another country, no less

Actually, both the language and kingdom were named after the Germanic tribe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#History

The names 'England' (or 'Aenglaland') and English are derived from the name of this tribe.

Descendants of that Germanic tribe, until recently, composed the majority of Americans. http://www.vdare.com/pb/time_to_rethink.htm

After the turmoil of the Revolutionary War, there was a Great Lull remarkably similar to the one earlier this century. For nearly fifty years, there was practically no immigration at all. The U.S. grew rapidly through natural increase. But the make-up of the white population remained about what it had been in the 1790 Census: largely (60 per cent) English, heavily (80 per cent) British, and overwhelmingly (98 per cent) Protestant. This was the nation Alexis de Tocqueville described in Democracy in America (1835)
India 	 	 Govt's much-awaited $10 laptop turns out be a joke
It's considered the most stable country in Western Africa and one of the most stable in all of Africa. Simply put, it's safe.
What's the problem with pico?
This is just a request to inform my brain from people who know better. What's wrong with using pico for editing? Everyone and their hacker grandmother talks about the advantages of emacs. I've never actually used it so I have nothing negative to say. I've just used pico for my command line editing because I've found it works pretty well and I like the editing commands. Why emacs over pico?
Are you using an anecdote to refute statistics?
Hacked electronic road signs warn of zombie attack
Well, I guess drive-by is an improvement over drive-through, so this might have merit after all.
I'm pretty sure one exists already. I remember someone posting a link on HN to it.
If I reinvented a Patricia tree I would be pretty pleased with myself.
That's right: I wasn't implying it's wrong to use POST, merely that GET is clearer, since using it would make it more obvious that the query isn't changing the state of the server.
Viral marketing attempt by Nintendo?
Iuno. I use nano/pico on most unixy systems I'm on.

Vi and Emacs just slow me down, and I've tried/used both more than you might think.

Frankly, I'm just a lot faster at moving text around in a graphical environment. I prefer terminals for other things.
Squaring an aging curve is not the same thing as extending maximum lifespan. Simply because, after substantial squaring of the aging curve, the average 100-year-old might be as healthy as -- and physically indistinguishable-from -- the average 20-year-old, does not imply that any 100-year-old will live past the age of 120. It could be the case instead that biologically youthful 100-year-olds tend, from around that age, to decline rapidly.
Random thoughts:

1) Pulling is generally easier than pushing. Perhaps this could be helpful in designing a variation.

2) Turn shoveling into a game. Perhaps a small lcd display that keeps track of how many pounds you shoveled, how many calories burned, time spent.
Or you could have challenges - eg, shovel 10 times in the next 20 seconds. etc.

3) Could you use an accelerometer to determine if the shoveler had bad posture?
Many of the ailments of aging could be 'cured' in this way.

How does one cure glycation and mitochondrial decay? http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2008/apr2008_Protecting-Again...
Startup Co-working In Mountain View Looking For More
Hi!

I am one of the founders of PlayMesh and we're trying to start a startup co-working space in Mountain View. We know how hard it is to do a startup, we're working 100+ hours a week on our own. We feel that it is in the benefit of all startup entrepreneurs to be in the company of other startup entrepreneurs. That is why we opened up this startup coworking so that startups could have a cheap office space to work and concentrate on changing the world!

Here are the specs:
- $250/month for each seat, completely furnished (or you can bring in your own furniture)
- 5 rooms, bullpen, 2 bathrooms (whole rooms can be rented too)
- ALL utilities and amenities included in the price
- No contracts, month to month payment
- Conference Room (just sign up)
- Direct TV (got to play hard too)
- Internet
- Gas, water and electricity

You can see the video tour of our space here: http://www.vimeo.com/3082764

E-mail me at charlesju[at]playmesh[dot]com if you're interested.
Maybe give people a downmod quota
That's the cover story. But how much of the $819 billion in the stimulus bill is set to automatically expire in 2 years, or when the economy reaches certain growth targets? Roughly: none. A lot of the spending won't even get flowing until 2010 or 2011, when the economy may be recovering just fine on its own.
Except for basic editing tasks they aren't really comparable. Pico (or it's clone nano) are basic text editors designed to be easy for beginners to learn and use. Emacs is a text editor that is so extensible (and so extended!) that it's often compared to an operating system.

I used Emacs continuously for two years and vi on-and-off over five years. What do I use now when I need to do a bit of text-editing on a CLI...I use pico or nano. The problem is that I don't use Emacs or vi all the time, and can't remember the key bindings well enough to use them effectively. That's not a problem with pico.

So to answer your question: as long as you're doing relatively small programs (hundreds of lines and only a few files) pico should be fine. You might want to look into nano though, it looks the same but allows syntax highlighting and is more configurable.
You've got it. I made the same point a few weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=421617. It doesn't seem like rocket science, but maybe it is; the vast majority of economists, including Nobelists like Krugman, just don't seem to get it.
I'm always extremely impressed with NYTimes' Developer Tools (http://developer.nytimes.com/) – especially when they are going through the (apparent) decline of newspapers.

I'm expecting a lot of interesting stuff to be built with this new API. Looks like lots and lots of search points ("An article comprises ~35 searchable fields")
Why and how is aging a "horrible problem"?
This is fairly typical of holy wars: Once a holy war has become entrenched, those of us who are atheists tend to get ignored by both sides because we're not "the enemy".

Personally, I use nano when I need to edit files from a text console (and kwrite when I'm in front of my usual KDE desktop and am editing local files). I've never seen any point to learning either emacs or vi.
I think it depends on whether your users can write programs for your program.

I work on a web browser, and every test is worth something. To some degree, we don't care what the test is testing. We want to be sure we don't change it unintentionally, thus breaking the web.
Ruby based Telephony Framework
$10 Laptop is Huge Disappointment ($30 and not a laptop)
(on twitter @wilshipley) Chris Anderson to Gates: We're titling your talk 'Bill Gates releases more bugs into the world.'
From Wikipedia:
From time to time, the term "cargo cult" is invoked as an English language idiom to mean any group of people who imitate the superficial exterior of a process or system without having any understanding of the underlying substance. The error of logic made by the islanders consisted of mistaking a necessary condition (i.e., building airstrips, control towers, etc.) for cargo to come flying in, for a sufficient condition for cargo to come flying in, thereby reversing the causation. On a lower level, they repeated the same error by e.g. mistaking the necessary condition (i.e. build something that looks like a control tower) for building a control tower, for a sufficient condition for building a control tower.
Treasury in plans for record debt sale
I think that one of the things that holds people to very high standards here is their respect for the community and the many members that have something interesting or insightful to say.

I have (almost) never experienced a comment that was an obvious digg-user unwittingly passing by, but many comments from new users that want to join the conversation but haven't been here long enough to get a feel for the unwritten rules, and thus post comments that may not go well with the rest of the community.

These users will definitely be helped by a small reminder that they should contribute in a meaningful way. The challenge, as you hint at, is of course what this reminder should be.

Maybe something short and witty like "Remember: if it isn't worht reading it isn't worth posting"
Why and how is aging a "horrible problem"?

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22cost+of+aging%22

http://news.google.com/news?q=cost+aging

People do not retire (become unproductive members of society) because they simply want to. People retire because they become physically degraded. Many nations outlaw old car-drivers. Many professions force retirement at threshold ages. This loss of productivity hurts everyone.
DSL Migration