skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is a lot of self-righteous dickishness and schadenfraude in these responses. Proclaiming there to be "NO excuse" to someone who has worked their ass off to create a stellar open-source project really says more about yourself than the person you are attacking.

Most certainly there is some sort of explanation, and whether or not it was a terrible mistake, being a jerk about it doesn't relieve you from the terrible mistakes you've made in your past - we all have them. And in the end, this is really not a big deal.
I spent a few weeks in Europe last month and was really struck by how much room for improvement there is in travel guides. The #1 thing you want to know about travel information is where everything is. If you read a blurb about some attraction and decide it sounds cool, are we talking a five-minute detour from your existing plans or a day-trip? Something that only mildly interests you might be worth a quick stop if it's on the way to something else. Planning a travel itinerary is all about clustering attractions so that you see lots of cool stuff without wasting too much time in transit.

Given this, it amazes me how primitive the location features of travel guides are. When I buy a Lonely Planet guide, even as an eBook, at best I get a small, low-res map with numbers that cross-reference a list of labels that cross-reference the actual blurbs about these places! This is very slow and labor-intensive to scan. What I really want is a way to overlay the travel guide on top of my phone's Google Maps, so I can easily see my current location, any markers I've added like my hotel, and travel guides all in a single map. I want to be able to click a location marker to get the travel guide's blurb. Bonus points if I can easily combine different travel guides onto a single map (Lonely Planet, Wikitravel, etc.)

One awesome thing this would allow is for people to create and curate special-interest travel guides. For example, the Puget Sound Business Journal maintains a list of attractions called "The Geek's Guide to Seattle" (http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2009/08/Th...). I would love to be able to search for these kinds of guides when I visit a new city and combine all of them into a single map. Sort of like Amazon Listmania lists, it would give you an opportunity to find like-minded people and what they think is cool.

This is a lot like what KML allows in Google Earth (and maybe Google Maps too?) but very few people use this format and the workflows for using KML in this way don't seem to be very streamlined (for example, it appears you can "import" a KML file into maps, but you can't subscribe to one by URL).

Established content providers for travel guides might not like this approach because it commoditizes them, but I think it would help the best content to ultimately win out.
This story already made the rounds on wednesday
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4582655

I'm yet to read the paper, but the comment highlighted in the thread from Wednesday raises some points[1]. For ease of access I'll re-replicate it here;

"This is just a PCR study. No evidence that the foreign human DNA even entered host cells, much less that it was expressed. Probably shows only that minute quantities of foreign human DNA can hang around a host body for a while. Most likely explanation is that it gets bound up in the extracellular matrix. Being that the DNA is of human origin, it would not trigger an immune response, but rather, it would just be slowly degraded like the host's own DNA when it is released from dead cells (part of the normal, perpetual turnover of cells). DNA is hardy stuff; people have sequenced DNA from Neanderthal bones.
Study co-author J. Lee Nelson's comments are ridiculous hype. He should be ashamed of himself. That those comments were published in this newspaper uncritically is also an embarrassment.
This work was published in PLoS ONE. PLoS ONE articles are peer reviewed only for the validity of the methods used, not for the importance of the subject matter or the validity of the conclusions drawn. This is where you can publish all sorts of meaningless crap."

I disagree with the extremity of the commentor's view on PLoS ONE articles, and feel they should perhaps have noticed that Dr. Nelson is a lady, not a dude, but still something worth considering.

[1] - http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-women-brai... , comment 2
More powerful in what way?

I don't think there are any PICs with integrated PLD blocks, or GPIOs that are routable to any peripheral. "Best" may be a silly term for it, but that's definitely really useful to have in a development board.
Its built into apt. Unless you are suggesting that most people do:

# apt-get --allow-unauthenticated ...
But it is not entierly true. P=NP means that the set of problems that can be solved in polynomial time on a turing machine is the same set as could be solved on a non-deterministic turing machine. Assuming God exists, I think it would be safe to say that he is capable of using atleast a non-deterministic turing machine, so his ability has no bearing on P=NP.

Similarly, it is possible (theoretically at least) that the market has access to some means of computation not available to a turing machine. Given that most of the market is run by traditional, turing, computers, that does not seem to be the case.
Rephrasing above question.

Building an app, where students in a campus can interact and collaborate

Purpose of app is to ask questions to entire campus to get help with everyday decisions like --which course to choose, which professor is better, sublease apartment, campus jobs and any other question they can think of

thoughts about this app? possibility of scaling this?

Inputs appreciated. Thank you
Actually, it does.

She argues that people are less likely to engage in any type of antisocial behavior when they're in their own neighborhoods, where people know them.
Learning Android Development - Day 29
One of the things that really bugs me about python is how they keep breaking older stuff.

That's a fair point, and it applies to a lot more than just programming languages. Operating systems and browsers also come to mind, for example.

On the other hand, if you insist on maintaining strict backward compatibility indefinitely, you have increasing drag on every useful new feature you want to introduce. You also can't remove edge cases that should ideally never have been there, even if they make it easy to introduce a bug.

In programming languages, this is the C++ effect. Building on the familiar foundation of C was a good decision by Stroustrup in the early days, and I'm sure it contributed greatly to C++'s success. On the other hand, today I believe that C++ is holding back large parts of the programming community, by being good enough in its niche that huge numbers of projects stick with it, yet lacking the expressive power, broad standard library functionality, and clean syntax/semantics that we take for granted in numerous modern programming languages.

In general, the goals of stability and progress are always going to be in conflict for any platform-like software. Such software essentially defines a standard for others to program against, and the entire point of standards is to create stability and common ground, but sometimes old standards don't adapt well to incorporate new ideas.

I suspect the best we can ever do is restrict major changes, which in practice means those where the old code cannot be automatically converted to get the same behaviour on the new system, to major releases. Minor changes that can be automatically converted are much less of a problem, as long as the "breaking" version of the platform comes with a simple conversion tool.

To be fair to the Python developers, this is essentially what they've done with the jump from Python 2 to Python 3. There is a tool to deal with converting the trivia, and most of the breaking changes were in the initial jump and acknowledged as such.

There probably is a case for making fewer, if any, breaking changes in minor releases. On the other hand, if you're looking at an estimated period of five years to migrate the bulk of the community from one major version to the next, there is probably a fair case for allowing a few smaller but incompatible changes in minor versions as well, as long as their effects are clear and only within a tightly controlled scope so they don't unduly disrupt everyone they aren't there to help.
Well said. Well said!!
Ah, I'd always wondered what was with all the blocked off roads in California. This explains it.
Actually yes, that's a good example; not sure why I didn't think of it. They run the community well, and the license and data dumps are a sufficient insurance policy against any kind of change in that (which I'd only expect if they were bought out).
Alternative free Apps to Apple Maps
In fact, many of the FSF's own open source projects had closed-off development processes from the start with only periodic source drops available.
With a .tar.gz you can verify a checksum.
Money is not the only benefits a company can provide. Will they be doing meaingful work? Do you have smart people working at the company already that they can learn from on a daily basis? Are you in a new and exciting industry that interns would find any domain knowledge valuable? Do you have other contacts that would be beneficial for them?

If you can't pay market wages for interns, that's fine. Just know that you will have to compensate them in some other way. And at the very least, cover their housing.

*College student who has does unpaid internships before and still found them satisfying. Also, I am looking for development experience, so please contact me!
VideoJS has done a pretty good job at promoting HTML5 video and giving a viable alternative for Flash.

Flowplayer is not just HTML5 video but common API for video - no matter what the backend is: the VIDEO tag or Flash (for older browsers).

This universal API is for both CSS and JavaScript. Same CSS rules or JavaScript methods apply for both backends. Think of implementing plugins or skins that work on all browsers and devices.

That's not all. A lot of features that were only there for Flash are now available for HTML5: cuepoints, playlists, random seeking, fullscreen, keyboard shortucts.. to name a few. For a full list of features please have a look at:

http://flowplayer.org/why/

Demos: http://flowplayer.org/demos/

Make sure you try with various browsers. Note: iPad support is unbeatable.
Yeah, but...

If I get to the point of needing my LLC to become a C-corp, that $10k will be a drop in the ocean.
I know I run into them a lot trying to drive around Berkeley. It's a huge pain in the ass to cars trying to navigate through. Obviously home owners must love them, though. "How would you like if we blocked off your road to traffic so it becomes a quiet cul-de-sac?" "Yes, please!" Forget about hurting everyone else coming through.
You're probably more at liberty to talk about it than you know.
> OSTicket is open-source, which means your contributions are also open-source, which means you cannot prevent others from using your contributed code in any way they please.

To be fair, this really only applies to GPL licensed stuff and similar licenses. For example, if it's MIT licensed, I don't have to release any derivative works.
I think he counting his loss at $100 million is not realistic. I am assuming he calculated this number by the amount of equity he would have vested after Facebook IPO. To cash that amount he probably would have had to keep working till now. And if you are an entrepreneur type its a tall order. He should get rid of this feeling of loss of $100 million which was really nothing more than a promise.
Very cool.

"It’s a set of Bash function that replaces cd and adds b and f commands."

In case this makes anyone hesitate, note that it's not an absolute replacement or reimplentation of cd, it calls the builtin cd and you still get all that. That was my initial concern.
How Scrollbars Have Changed Throughout History
This puts a process boundary between my HTTP stack and the rest of my app. I know some people want to do that, but I've never understood why.
Wasn't euro always higher rated than dolar? Anyway overall I don't think the crisis is over yet, some sources (can't remember which ones) indicate that there is a slight chance of the economic crisis entering a second cycle devastating US/Euro again.
Nobody is talking about spherical moral compasses.
Newry Times 'City Day' competition winner announced
If you consider Noah as a good friend, then by definition you do not have an unbiased opinion.
From the software support Nintendo has lined up in Japan they've pretty much assured the Wii U to be a massive success in that region.

Also their mobile gaming market hasn't been decimated by Apple at all. The 3DS is tracking ahead of the (spectacularly successful) NDS.
We have limited liability in the UK however a small business won't get a loan from a bank without a director personally guaranteeing it. The reality is a failing business can often mean the founders bankruptcy.
Maybe because 95% of the data stream on Twitter is meaningless, random, stream-of-consciousness stuff?
Sony didn't just 'miss the boat', they did what they could to sink it and damage their brand.

Before they had a fantastic reputation, their audio equipment was good to excellent for a small fraction of the price of the competition.

Rootkits, lawsuits and me-too products seems to be what they specialize in nowadays.

Toshiba, Fujitsu, Matsushita and many others (also in other branches than just electronics, for instance Toyota and Honda) have done a lot better and definitely didn't aim the shotgun at their own feet.

Another thing that hit Japan was that they were no longer able to compete on price with China and Korea.
It sounds more like they have a services/big data problem, + maybe a Windows XP-like "good enough" problem (leading to new features and changes being viewed more skeptically)
Would adding a hash check for some-script.sh solve the security issue?
My concerns with using Microsoft services (or Apple, or Facebook, or Google or ...) is that they are a maintained by a single entity for the purpose of profit, and if that entity makes changes I do not like, or cancel a product, it is generally difficult to migrate to an alternative because of intentional technical lock-in. There are many good examples of when this does not happen, and for-profit software is great, but given the potential for it to happen, I feel a lot better using open software, and failing that, software that uses open and standard(ish) protocals and formats.

Note:
I have not looked into SkyDrive, so they might not have any of these concerns.
Folklore.org has a story about Steve Jobs tricking someone into inventing a clone of a Sony disk drive that didn't exist, or something like that.
The original premise was already unrealistic. I made it even more unrealistic. If there is a "Mr. Fusion" device which can produce 1.21 GW, on-demand, safely, and it small and light enough to fit in your car, then there's no need for a grid. You would just have several of those devices in your house.

My hypothetical was to show that there could be cases where it does not make sense to use a Mr. Fusion type device to produce hydrocarbon fuel which is then used as the energy source. Everything I said takes place in the original fantasy world. Under the original premise -- "some grad student gets fusion going at a very low price" -- then it must be using some principle we haven't yet thought of. And with that premise in place, almost anything goes.

Once I put realism into place, then the original hypothetical is not sustainable. The long term solutions for real life are decreased energy use, fission, hypothetical fusion, and renewable. None of the last three can exist without a grid, at least for most people. The only way to be without a grid is greatly reduced power use, a less concentrated population, and switch to local renewable resources. That isn't going to happen.
The entire story about a startup is about money. I hear people saying stuff like "I add value by creating something wonderful", but I consider that a truckload of horseshit. It is always about money and firing people just before equity vesting bolsters that idea.

This is the precise reason I work as an independent contractor for companies and explicitly make an effort not to get into an employment.
I can't come up with any reason why this isn't going to be massive. The password problem is the single most frustrating and alienating issue I can think of for normal users.
This has been a big debate at Flowplayer before the release. At the end of the day it was clear to us. Play/pause button must go. Majority of users find it obvious that pausing happens by clicking on the video. This happens on both YouTube and Vimeo which makes it mainstream.

And when it's possible to remove an UI element we'll certainly do it. We want to make the player as minimal as possible and make the video star of the show. Now more than ever.
Counterpoint: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1725008

Read that whole thread carefully before you decide whether or not you're willing to spend ~$150, the equivalent of a month's Starbucks habit, to do business as an LLC with contract liability protection. That thread is a perfectly ordinary situation that business founders routinely find themselves in.

If you're not going to be entering into contracts and you're not going to be conducting business transactions as a vendor to other businesses and you're not going to be employing people, I don't have a strong opinion about whether you incorporate. On the other hand, those are pretty important things for a business to do.

To that, I will only add that the meme that incorporation harms your chances of being funded is, in a word, horseshit. If your corp structure is simple, as with a Delaware or home state LLC, and your ownership structure is simple, then the cost of converting it to a C Corp is a small constant factor added to the cost of incorporating as a C Corp to begin with. If your structure isn't simple, you clearly didn't have a choice between incorporating or not. There are corporate structures that make it very annoying to get back to the "clean slate" investors want you to be at, and my gut is that this is the concern animating things like "don't incorporate if you don't have to". If your company is amazing, people will invest even if some crazy guy in the woods claims to own 90% of it; if it's not amazing, an LLC isn't going to push you off the bubble.

Corollary: if you don't know the difference between a C Corp and an LLC, then your default position should be "get an LLC ASAP", because you don't know enough to be making this decision based on some dude's blog post.

Late edit: I went and looked for LLC->C conversion costs and found a Quora post from a startup lawyer suggesting ~$1000, and, as I expected, that the costs mostly involve working around the need for unanimous consent from all the members of the LLC, which in small new LLCs where all the members are still active, unanimous consent isn't a big deal.
IOS6 – Video encoding issue & Solution
such that many correct trades become essentially insolvent before the market becomes rational again

Keynes was quoted as saying "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
Always better to ask unsolved problems with than solved problems in an interview. I wish Google still interviewed this way, instead of toy textbook homework problems.
Well sure, but maybe he has genuine and interesting issues with Python 3, and maybe he just had a bad day, hasn't had his coffee yet or whatever and went with a quip rather than a complete comment. That happens.
Money is never smart ex-ante, it is only such in hindsight (ie, ex-post). So this formulation is ~non-sensical. But to answer your question, the 'winning' strategy shifts from (measuring) "value" to (playing) "momentum".[1] This is not "dumb", but neither is it inconsequential from the perspective of political economy. Until you are in a position to explain this micro-analytically, you are left with vol expansion, which is arguably transparent and/or benign.[2,3]

_________________

[1] NB: information assymetries. By introducing and/or leveraging them, zero sum games can be more profitable than "fair games".

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteroscedasticity Heteroscedasticity does not cause...estimates to be biased, although it can cause...estimates of the variance (and, thus, standard errors) of the coefficients to be biased, possibly above or below the true or population variance. Thus, regression analysis using heteroscedastic data will still provide an <unbiased estimate> for the relationship between the predictor variable and the outcome, but standard errors and therefore inferences obtained from data analysis are suspect.

The maintenance of <unbiased estimate> preserves EMH.

[3] The arguments here are not trivial. But they are beyond the scope of many (if not most) professional "economists".
If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. Having been through this a couple times now I'd be happy to help.
Not exciting, but virtualenv in core is nice.
Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know - Old School Computer Remix
dude, I would say at least the takeaway from the whole episode was "Personal Life should always have higher priority than work". Your employer can be replaced, your personal life can't.

Even I learnt it the hard way :)
The best Microcontroller is the one that works for you and does what you need. In my case I bought a few of these and they rock:

http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/353

(I also don't have to piss around with C+RTOS for what I need - it's just a C# program!)
Looks that way. The basic architecture is ARM, which is quite well-supported by GCC and binutils. I managed to find a Technical Reference Manual on Cypress' website, which seems to have plenty of information on the hardware peripherals: http://www.cypress.com/?docID=36586

This thing seems to occupy an interesting point in the hobbyist ecosystem. The processor is several times more expensive than other chips with similar raw processing power (like TI's Stellaris LaunchPad, which sells for $5) but the I/O peripherals are vastly more flexible. It looks like a fantastic device for prototyping and experimenting.
Show HN: SignalWire – Plumbing your Data Store + C# and LINQ in your HTML pages
Yes, that probably means you are done, the rest of your life. It takes away your spirit to try again and the bank (at least here) forces you to get a job to be able to regularly pay back the agreed amount. You are in prison without the bars when that happens.
It remains the case that a compass points both north and south by nature; which is a matter of convention.
You have hit on the exact reason why I almost never look at Hacker News any more, except when someone explicitly asks me to respond to something.

This site appeals to the absolute worst in everyone. I find myself becoming an asshole every time I come here, and I don't like that feeling.
Why the Social Media Revolution Is About to Get a Little Less Awesome
This is usually good advice but it can be tricky with incorporation. Company founders meeting a lawyer for the first time over incorporation issues often find themselves convinced to pay thousands of dollars to establish a C Corporation structure. Most new startups do not want C Corps; at least, not until they have investors and thus multiple share classes.

You can get an LLC from Delaware almost as easily as taking a ticket at a butcher shop. It's a commodity product. That cheap-o Delaware LLC isn't a miracle cure for investment or employee equity or vesting issues, but it solves the core problem that incorporation is meant to solve: making it absolutely clear to your external business partners that they are dealing with a company, and not with someone and their home mortgage.
Is there a LINT for Python? It looks like there was a question about them on Stack Overflow, but it was closed. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5611776/what-are-the-comp...
It actually pronounced "Schadenfreude" ;-)