skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
People seem to be hell bend on using whatever straw man is available to defend this effort from any criticism.

"They did not de-fund traditional education to bring in this form of education."

No one said they did.

"If you want to do something to teach these kids their native language's written form, knock yourself out. "

Ad homenim attacks are not a legitimate defense to honest criticism of a policy's inadequacies.

"In the meantime, this is a hell of a lot better than nothing."

Who said it wasn't better than nothing? I'm saying it's a hell of a lot worse than teaching them to read in their own language. Are we seriously going to debate something that obvious or are we just going to keep watering down the goalposts?

"Neither are they taking these children away from their family or village. "

No one has claimed this.

"They are introducing a supplemental window into the world."

So is dropping dictionaries out of the sky. Neither program is above criticism from a cost effectiveness or absolute effectiveness standpoint.

"Any knowledge of culture these children could have acquired through verbal communication with their parents will still be transferred. "

Not making kids worse at talking to their parents seems like an extremely low bar to celebrate.

"If elements of a culture are willingly abandoned by people when they are exposed to additional sources of culture, those abandoned fragments of culture are not to be mourned."

This sort of blanket declaration about cultural genocide may sound great but more often is just vacuous bullshit by the people propagating it. Did Soviet Jews "willingly abandon" their heritage to fit in? Are Tibetans doing the same today? Apparently it's all ok as long as a non-profit company is involved.

"Mrs. Jones, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is the Republicans and Libertarians have finally killed public education. The good news is we have some free tablets for your kids. They're all in Chinese but rest assured your children will still learn some English from their many verbal interactions with you. And if they gradually forget our culture it's no big deal after all it was totally voluntary!"
Even a superstorm is no excuse for journalists not to check Twitter trolling
Top notch design and execution! Just love the discovery line/zoom feature, very unique and useful.

Minor issues:

- How are the hearts calculated?

- The graph is too crowded, I would put genres on the left of the graph and allow genre filtering

- I expected selecting a genre will show me the graph with just that genre, it didn't happen, the graph wasn't shown.

- Bug? clicking on one of the films, eg: http://goodfil.ms/film/108266-arthur shows a mini graph, but nothing is highlighted on it, not even the file itself. Nothing happened clicking on any of the circles (using Chrome)

- I want search to be able to indicate the film on the graph

- related films should also include really related films instead of ones by the "line" metric. Eg, Arthur 2011 should show older Arthur film.
Kim Dotcom's new Mega project
It really depends on your definition of decent :). It's built on on VS, so if you're looking for something extremely lightweight (eg editor++) this isn't it. OTOH, it has many advanced features such as really good intellisense, MPI debugging, inline graphics, integrated IPython, Profiling, etc etc. I'd take a look at the videos on the page & decide for yourself. This should give u a basic idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CoGsSlrxKk&hd=1 ; more videos on the project home page at http://pytools.codeplex.com

edit: missing link.
The whole site? The current iteration is around a year old, things were pretty solidly overhauled when we got our first seed funding.

The graph specifically? Was a Glen (founding dev) & Charlie (designer) working for a few days straight.
> ...I dislike the radical change of Go.

Funny, but the common criticism in the days when Go was first released was that it was not radical enough.
Fortunately, the Retina screen also has very good color accuracy, at least so long as you want sRGB.

It's pretty nice.
A Minecraft game would make a hilarious database. The fact that it's probably pretty trivial to CRUD it programmatically outside the Minecraft client by manipulating save files is a great bonus.

Start using the DB. If you get bored enough you can examine the data physically in-game.
Hi Hansi, I'm really thankful for the feedback. We'll work on creating a page with additional information (FAQs).

You're right about one thing -- the service is very much incomplete. Our philosophy is to continue to talk to customers (hackers and companies) and minimize the amount of building we do without their blessing.

In terms of the limiting the network size, we know we're going to encounter problems (we're counting on it!). As a result, we want to make sure we'll have the resources to spend time with each of our customers during early alpha stages.

I'd love to hear your feedback on how we can improve the site. Do you hire contractors or are you looking for opportunities? Let me know how I can help.
Great idea. This is one of the things we have been thinking about. We will circle back in the coming weeks with more specifics around features.
And it's back up: http://samgranger.com/mega.png
Because they're still insuring the rentals, they're presumably taking a loss to do this, not to mention leaving a lot of money on the table due to increased demand. Very cool of them.
Russia Internet blacklist law takes effect
It was really just one side project for me, but my story is similar. I started out planning on doing parallel/distributed supercomputing, but in the middle of my 2nd year I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and spent several months learning to deal with that. During that period I couldn't focus on any "real work", so I allowed myself to get distracted by writing freebsd-update... and by writing bsdiff so that freebsd-update would use less bandwidth.

By the time I started by 3rd year, the fallout from bsdiff -- a new algorithm from matching with mismatches and applications to file synchronization -- was enough that I went to my supervisor and said "so, err, I got a bit side tracked, but I'm wondering if I've just done a thesis worth of research".
Out of interest, why does hosting it at imgur matter?
“I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four
minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-
off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were
using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they
were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five
months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said.

I know we're not supposed to be snarky on this site and all, but I just can't help myself . . .

Compromised by illiterate children. That's a secure OS!
I didn't spend a whole lot of time looking, but the High-DPI settings I played with seemed to provide half-assed results: fonts and some components of the window were scaled appropriately, but other bits (spacing between icons comes to mind; a bunch of text was prematurely truncated or something) were just not quite there. It's a big improvement from previous versions of the OS, but the implementation seemed a bit off compared to iOS and what I've seen on Retina MBPs.
I can't help but question whether some of the higher download volume in 2012 was due to the new rapid release cycle rather than the browser ballot being implemented.
PLUMEGATE USA
An the new URL: http://me.ga
Because that would break every app. But you can zoom the whole screen.
Multiple windows with <= 14 tabs/window.

I don't push 200, but 80 isn't rare for me (going by TooManyTabs extension count). IME, Firefox slows down much faster than Chrome when browsing this way (on Win7-64 w/ 4-8GB of RAM).
I am actually from Ethiopia, and from what my parents who were raised there tell me, the education was in Amharic so they learned to read/speak it early on, alongside their morhertongue Somali. Of course ethnic groups tend to use their language first and Amharic for more official matters. So I don't really see what the problem with using Amharic and English is. You're reaching more kids and like another poster said, there's more resources and apps available in Amharic than Afaan Oromo.
Community Managers – Meet your new best friend
Oh, I dunno. Let's say I run a trucking company. I think I'm benefitting a lot more from the interstates (or state highways) than that guy who's broke who doesn't own a car.
Agreed on Q4 — if understanding race conditions is what Colin was driving at, Q4 was simply a bad question for it.

A better wording might be: "What surprising behavior could occur if `pthread_cond_wait` didn't take a locked mutex?"

(Full disclosure: I also scored a zero on Q4. However, I'm familiar with both pthreads and the necessary atomicity between releasing the lock and waiting on the condition, so this was a surprise. He was obviously fishing for a specific answer, but I couldn't figure out which from the question.)
Chrome and Firefox's URL/omni-bars will pull up partial match results for bookmarks.

As such, the benefit outlined by the grandparent post is available without having to hand that information over to a third party, unless you opt into a cross-device or cross-browser bookmark syncing service.
I have a Korean no-brand 27" 2560x1440 IPS screen that I picked up for 250,000KRW (that should be about £145). I'm in Korea so that makes the big difference on cost plus lower taxes. They will come down in price far more yet.
Hi Zack, this is a really great point. I wouldn't claim to be the best hacker in the world and your insight is spot on as to the problems this introduces. I can say that, like most marketplaces, hackerlist will be ever evolving and dynamic. Our objective and our promise is to increase quality over time.

This means offering the right tools to help companies and freelancers make educated decisions (rating systems, reviews, programming tests, etc). It having dedicated staff to vett programmers and companies.

Specifically in terms of the Blub paradox, I can say that sabalaba and I have used a myriad of different freelance services and have a pretty good idea of the services they are missing. If we are able to curate and nurture a ecosystem with better hackers than any of our competitors, I'll feel proud that we've been able to at least offer our clients a superior service.

I really appreciate your points and I admit this is something we're going to simply have to prove. That's why we're not earning any commissions for our first batch and are keeping our network small enough that we can resolve problems one at a time.

cheers, Zack!
Thanks, we try! Generally my philosophy is that it is important to make a place that people love to work, and in exchange people who work there take responsibility for getting things done in their domain. Pretty simple.

Also you should check out Airbnb and ZeroCater for companies that have great cultures. When you walk in those places you can tell that people love being there.
Have you checked out the "jobs" section here on HN? http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

It's obviously a one-way tool and what you're describing is two-way, but it's a start.
Oakley's Airwave brings heads-up display to mountain sports
Great essay but I think the point will be lost and the typical HN community member won't get it.
You should name it Madeleine. Ready-made logo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_%28cake%29#Literary_r...
I Cheat At Letterpress
Embracing and communicating uncertainty
This is something that I am struggling with, I am yet to find a MongoDB GUI tool that I personally or the team I am working with are happy with. Personally I would prefer something that can be run locally (so either desktop app, or web app with integrated web server/easy setup). In regards to support for other databases, my personal view is do one thing and do it well, there is enough complexity in getting it right with MongoDB before you worry about any other databases.

This is something that I have personally been planning on building for a while, so if this were an open source project, I would be interested in contributing.
I was reminded of that as well. And when I read through the comments, one of the experiments confirmed that yes, the Diamond Age actually gave them inspiration:

>>
Richard Smith
>>
Exactly. See http://cananian.livejournal.com/tag/nell The Diamond Age was an inspiration for some of the software we developed for the tablet.
Actually we did make something like 40k a piece after taxes. So it wasn't bad (we were 22 at the time, seemed like a lot then!).
Hi Eric, your github account has a link to your website where (only if you've made it public) I will take the initiative to contact you. I don't intend on excluding people just because their github account doesn't have 20 projects on it. Moreso, it's just a selector for the target demographic. Also, feel free to be creative and put your linked in url or email in if you think that's more representative of your background. Last, but not least, I'm happy to hear more about your talents if you send me an email (michael.karpeles@gmail.com). Sabalaba and I will be going through each submission, one at a time.

As suggested before, we're keeping our first batch of acceptances small so we can better understand the challenges which you face and help you overcome them.

cheers!
Interesting concept, but seems like the same underlying principles of the .data() method (or at least how it was originally planned) except for the direct DOM manipulation. eg: A central object store where references are bound to DOM objects and not explicitly set on the object itself. Therefore no type coercion/guessing.

Regardless, if they "fix" the .data() method to your liking, at least then you'll be writing compatible, future-proof code. I've never had the problem myself so can't really weigh in, but replicating core functions has never ended well in my experience.
Am I missing something? It's just a... landing page?

For anyone that can't get through here is the site:

http://i.imgur.com/dGSRk.png

http://i.imgur.com/OQjt9.png

http://i.imgur.com/JZvWD.png

http://i.imgur.com/K5Xst.png

http://i.imgur.com/69pfL.png
Hurricane Sandy Studies, Hoboken NJ comes together
On the other side of this, I've had clients that can't provide needed information, want me to wait for some other contracted individual to finish part of the job or provide information, then can't understand (after the two week project has run to six weeks because of their own delays) why I can't now give them 100% of my attention and blame me for the delays.

Now that they've pushed this whole thing so late that it's interfering with other projects, or plans that existed prior to taking Delay Client's project. They had me three weeks ago and chose not to utilize me. Why's that my fault? (not directed at parent - directed at Delay Client)
The fee waiver does not include Port-au-Prince and other affected areas in the Carribean.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/29/caribbean-nation...
You're right about it being very cool of them, but I also suspect that the brand recognition and coverage they'll get from doing this will more than make up for any loss.

Not that I'm saying that is why they are doing it, it's the right thing to do, it's a great thing to do.
EFF Suing DHS Over Drone Use Details
Would be helpful to know a bit more about what you are building?

Can you strip out a lot of the functionality and get something basic up to test whether or not you get any engagement?

I'd completely rule out point 3, you'll get very little angel interest (no chance from VC's) at this stage, especially in the UK.
Super impressed! Great products and great team.
Something irks me about whether or not they consulted any ethics guidelines for this project.
One of the few times I've felt jealous as a Linux user :)

Really cool, I love the

a={2:42}
a.values()[0]. <int completion>

example. What are the limitations of such a system in Python? Are there cases where it can be wrong? Can you reveal some more info on how this stuff works under the hood? Do you execute parts of the code or how do you figure these relationships out?

Thank you, it's pretty inspirational in regards to how programming in Python could look like
cool thnx alot, ill check em out
That's certainly not my experience. After some trial-and-error during the first couple of months, in which I move from Gnome → XFCE → Fluxbox → Awesome and I configured the system to my liking, it's been extremely stable. Four years and two laptops later, I'm using the same setup without having to do anything but the occasional update, and the fact that I'm on a rolling release (Debian Sid) means my software rarely changes a lot at once.
What was that one-line change? That'd be useful for me as well.
Confidence being the one I've noticed throughout following his career.
Fair enough this will no doubt prove to be a costly mistake for Microsoft, but I seriously doubt the drop in Firefox downloads is due to Microsoft not implementing the browser ballot and most likely due to the fact that Chrome is a better browser and Firefox were slow to address plugin memory leak issues (which they only just recently fixed).
Why is it a disaster? As long as there is no feedback on how little exposure one's posts get, I don't see a downside to facebook with this. Being flooded with bad/uninteresting content was a real problem. Filtering one's stream was an important usability addition.
Are you suggesting C++ lacks available libraries? Because for all of its faults, lack of libraries is not one I've run into.

Many desktop and server applications are still written in C or C++, including the Web browser I'm writing this on. Reports of their deaths are exaggerations.
If only you had been around during my first interview when I told the recruiter that I knew C, C+, and C++.
I think maybe he shouldn't have stuck to the Mega brand.

I'm confused to who would subscribe to 'Mega' after the last product called that was raided and everyone lost their data.
Rebuilding vs. Refactoring
This page has autoplaying audio. I navigated off the page immediately. I wonder what they were thinking?
I find Linux to be extremely consistent; almost all programs I use read data from stdin, process it according to some arguments and output the result to stdout ;)
PTVS in VS2012 paired up with ViEmu is probably my favorite setup, although I still use plain-old-vim fairly often.

I've spent a lot of time in Visual Studio over the years and have come to really like it when I'm doing C/C++/C#, so when this first came out I jumped all over it. The recently added feature of creating a project from existing code is pretty sharp, and removes the need for a third-party "explorer" plugin.
Or on the other hand, everyone knows its 'that' product with added security?
I wonder how many development tools (and presumably other products) have been less successful than they could have been because their creators picked "clever" or "catchy" names (not necessarily rude.)

For example I would not look forward to explaining to my boss why I had chosen something called "COWSEL", "MUMPS", "SPITBOL" or "ZOPL" for a new project.

Lisp and Subversion were lucky enough to reach critical mass, but I reckon the people who picked those names were taking the same risk.
Study finds Social Network use increases self esteem and decreases self control
I'm curious to see an example of one of your questions like this.
That kind of reminds me of the IPython notebook. I really like the variable watching too. Are there any issues using virtualenv with it?
Why not store the fuel on the same floor as the generators?

I understand that this might be a fire-safety issue. In which case I would agree that a winch should have been installed.

(I'm possibly missing something else obvious here!)
Cool idea.

I am confused by the implication of this code

var prices = new(Table, String, Int);
put(prices, $(String, "Apple"), $(Int, 12));

Stack objects are created with "$" so these are on the stack and then placed into the Table? So if this was in a function and the function returned, the Table (lets assume it was global) would now be pointing to destroyed stack variables? Is that the correct interpretation?

Is this all done with header files and the preprocessor? It looks like that is the case - if so, I am impressed at the dances you got it to do ;) Also, have you read http://www.amazon.com/Interfaces-Implementations-Techniques-... which does some "Object Orientation" in C tricks?
"If I have a good spec sheet that details exactly what I need done"
If you have this you are way ahead of most and most.

If you are not technical then the timing should probably be up for discussion rather than being part of the spec. The developer has the expertise there.

Pricing should (imho) always be up for discussion.
Hi citricsquid, you're right -- the website is very plain and not entirely helpful. For our first batch, we will be working directly with accepted engineers, offering them the opportunity to work with several companies who have already expressed interested in the hackerlist network.

In the future, we'll provide an interface which is very similar to oDesk. The main difference will be, we plan on changing the process to remove a lot of the pain points that clients and freelancers currently face (vetting, interviews, payment, and all the other time wasting blockers).

If you'd like to setup a time to chat, I'd be happy to tell you more about our next steps and would love to listen to your suggestions and needs. (michael.karpeles@gmail.com)
Apple Fusion Drive is filesystem agnostic
Looking for programmer to make a customizable Chess game on Facebook with Unity.
now we can all bitch about that friend together digitally.
Are you willing to share more info on your side project? Sounds like it's something meaningful enough to work on for nearly 20 years (minus gaps), and yet it sounds like it's not your startup... very curious as to what it is.
Pure awesomesauce! :) Congrats on name pivot, Circular is a great choice.

With regards to Buffer, a potential friction point I pointed out to the team earlier this year, was the inability to select:

Who? (Friends, Public, <custom list>) and

Where? (private message, private group, wall post) a message should go to.

This is standard functionality in the Facebook sharer app, for example. (http://imgur.com/HPsXU)

Of course, Buffer and Circular adds When? (eg temporal dimension) to the mix, but no app I know of, has implemented all three, leaving you with a tradeoff, if all of those are important to your social workflow.
An interesting problem with making a MongoDB GUI is that a key feature of every SQL GUI -- a rich <table> of your data that you can use to see it and play with it -- won't work as well, because MongoDB doesn't have strict table definitions. (Or 'tables' for that matter). Each item in a collection could have completely different fields. So given a big collection of this irregular data, how do you display it compactly? Listing each element in JSON is inefficient.
"Send to Interactive"[0]

In general, is there a particular reason we don't see this more often in tooling for other (REPL-friendly) languages, outside of the Lisps? Admittedly I haven't spent a significant amount of time in the Python community lately (so not sure if this is common in Python tooling or not), but after becoming addicted to SLIME via Clojure, I'd have killed to be able to dump Ruby blocks from my editor straight to the REPL.

[0] http://pytools.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Features%20Intera...
Kim just misses his money and fame.
I think maybe he shouldn't have stuck to the Mega brand.

I think the idea they're using is that the US government took them down before and now they're building their product to be immune to that and so because they've been victims before they know what they're doing and that is why people should trust them.

I think.
Thats a fast-paced comeback. And he will succeed again this time with a lot more knowledge how to game the gang in hollywood.

Will be hard for them to even win the case they have put on and at the same time fight him again.

And for all who dont believe it TBP is still around too.