skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm sorry, but I have to go on a little rant here. Let me state in advance that it's completely out of proportion to the subject matter and that this is more of chance to drag out my soap box than anything else.

HN is a place where you shouldn't have to spell everything out or restate the context every step of the way. But here's what just happened:

1) panacea posited the idea, perhaps humorously, that the news of another rover on the horizon would diminish interest in Curiosity much like the announcement of a new phone diminishes interest in the current model.

2) I said I didn't think people thought of the rovers the same was as they thought of their phones.

3) You disagree with that in a completely orthogonal way.

Context is everything. If you read panacea's comment and then my comment you should not get the idea that I'm saying there can not be any congruence between rovers and smart phones in the public's thoughts. Obviously, if the pictures were not high res people would complain and the easiest reference point to hand would be a phone camera. That has nothing to do with what I was saying.

Again, this a pet peeve, but carrying on a discussion via medium such as this rewards a little carefulness.
The Root Kit
Back then I preferred Orkut to FB. It was harder deleting my Orkut account. Didn't like FB then, don't like it now. I thought the interface sucked, its probably better now but I'll never know :)
While I can't completely rule it out since I have no inside knowledge, this sounds like a terrible move. T-Mobile is in a commodity business and they aren't particularly successful at it. While the author tries to make the argument that Google needs retail help (recency bias, methinks), Google could put together a vastly better retail experience for far cheaper than it would take to buy T-Mobile. Unlike Moto, I don't think T-Mobile has any significant IP. Lastly, I don't think Verizon, Sprint and AT&T would be thrilled to now be in direct competition with their largest smartphone OS vendor?
To be fair, these are 40 hour a week, 9-5 jobs. Very few $13.50/hour jobs require the kind of extended hours that professionals endure.

As for what kind of parents you'd be not getting home till 7-8... parents like my wife and I? The baby isn't old enough yet to really recognize either of us as anything more than a milk source, but when she gets older that will be her reality. I honestly don't think it's a big deal--my dad never got home till 8 each night, and traveled extensively and work the whole weekend, etc, and my brother and I have a great relationship with him. A lot of the "putting in face time" when it comes to kids is more for the parents than for the kids. Kids are perfectly happy playing with their friends at school/having the nanny take them around so long as they know that you're there and see you everyday.
Take a look at the free online course on Statistical Reasoning from CMU:

http://oli.cmu.edu/courses/free-open/statistical-reasoning-c...

It includes interactive exercises with an option to do them in R.
I worked on an OLAP based product until 3 years ago. The source data was in a lotus notes application that was updated by nearly 100 different researchers. We imported the lotus notes data into our data warehouse every night. I can't tell you how many times we had problems because data had been entered in a different format. Schema-less might have it's place but I definitely wasn't seeing the benefits on that job!
My calculation ignores a whole world of injustices and unfairnesses, because it is about this particular case.
Weak. Even though I know for sure how evil it is, there is this fucking social incentive.
Belgian team develops “LCD” contact-lens display
When I add together my taxes plus the health insurance premium that comes out of my paycheck, my net take home is probably less than what it would be in Canada. Sure I have the choice to not pay for health insurance, but that's an illusory choice. I've got a wife and a kid--I'm not going to opt out of health insurance.
Well, ideally, we would scale to loading wouldn't be an issue. But you're totally right, we need to be giving users more feedback. Any suggestions in terms of particularly painful screens? Thanks for using the site!
I miss Geocities
Nice job VICE magazine
Why does following the McAfee story feel like watching a soap opera?
Awesome suggestion. Thanks!
Any advice for getting a taste of that culture before moving there?
This means the VICE metadata of the image the published was correct, and his "I edited the EXIF data" story was a lie: he was in Guatemala (specifically, along the Rio Dulce in Parque Nacional Rio Dulce).

Also, just yesterday he posted saying that he would be meeting with Guatemalan officials this morning: http://www.whoismcafee.com/guatemala/
I think he went to Guatemala for asylum on purpose
Microsoft was cheating; your strange Randian views are neither the law, nor philosophically defensible. In the real world, abusing monopoly power is cheating, both legally and ethically.
Thanks for the feedback. Is there anything else you think we can do to make it more enticing for you to use?
Great job Vice Magazine! Good Journalism.

(Leak aside, this is probably for the best though.)
Worked at a startup with about 20 or so people. The cofounders decided to bring on a "COO" to, in essence, whip the company into shape for scaling. This person was considerably older than a lot of the staff (but I'm not sure age was relevant).

The person was a terrible cultural fit and was the reason three of our best employees left, dynamically changing the structure of the co. I think this person made some decent operational changes, but the culture value that was lost didn't make up for it.

(don't really have much followup to where they're at now, left a while back and haven't heard much from former coworkers).
I think he said that he was planning on meeting with Guatemalan officials. Looks like it was a great plan.
Surface tests are perfectly fine, but they're not enough. prawks was talking about how we're wary of introducing Earth organisms to the planet. We should keep that attitude until we've done proper searching for life all over, not just the easiest tests.
Great link, thanks so much for sharing! Looks like a very complete introduction to working with R.
Although it's more interesting to imagine he was found due to the outing of a VICE photographer's EXIF data[1], it's probably more likely he gave himself up at the advice of his attorney in Guatemala[2].

[1]: http://www.mobileprivacy.org/2012/12/vice-com-publishes-excl...

[2]: http://www.vice.com/read/john-mcafee-is-in-guatemala-city-an...
Serious question: Why do so many people empathise with McAfee's plight?

From where I stand he looks like wealthy man who lost direction, turned to drugs and likely killed a man.
Yeah I don't think thhe VICE screw up was planned...according to McAfee himself

http://www.whoismcafee.com/guatemala/

Vice Magazine reporters are indeed with me in Guatemala. Yesterday was chaotic due to the accidental release of my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at Vice headquarters. We made it to safety in spite of this handicap. I had to cancel numerous interviews with the press yesterday because of this and I apologize to all of those affected
Nicely written blog!

Agree with the author that academia sometimes focusses on a very narrow band of research topics, which might or might not improve end user experience. Also, agree with the author that personalized news has very interesting NLP+Machine Learning problems.

However, I am not convinced that personalized news is what users wants, and whether users want to discover popular news and articles by serendipity, socially, rather than personalization by algorithms. Further, I think personalized news has very limited opportunity for generating significant revenue.
Building a better map of Europe
Besides everything that has been already mentioned, there's another glaring reason Google would be unwise to do this:

Antitrust.

Google is already being considered for an antitrust investigation by the DoJ. This makes sense, given their dominance in search and the tremendous network of complementary products in their massive ecosystem. (Note that I am not asserting that it makes sense for the DoJ to take regulatory action against Google -- merely that it is reasonable for them to take a closer look).

With a carrier on their hands, in addition to a device manufacturer (Motorola), a dominant mobile OS, search, AdSense, Fiber, tons of spectrum, YouTube, etc., it is unlikely they will be able to avoid antitrust regulation.
I was struck by the comment that, slow and plodding as the U.S. court system is, it generally works well when it plays out as it should. This is very true and is for me borne out by over three decades of experience with the courts.

The system works as long as you have unlimited finances and a whole lot of time. This story reminded me of the "Bionic Wrench" fight between Dan Brown and Sears (which is not going as easy).
great ui, super fast compiling, indexing, best java ide ever
Techies read a lot of genre fiction with anti-heroes on the run, and that kind of thing. Maybe even some political sympathy, McAfee as an example of "going Galt".
High School locked down after student brings mercury-filled thermometer to class
So I just finished my submission and wondered what ya'll think. I introduce PunchCard (https://github.com/jhartwell/PunchCard). I like to think of it as the ScanTron of programming languages (minus the #2 pencil requirement). It has one "operator" ('x') and things work by changing the position of that operator.
Once I made a program that was like duck hunt, except you held a webcam at the screen. When you fired, the screen flashed black with a patch of white where the duck was, the camera took a snapshot and looked for how close to the center of the webcam's frame the white was to decide if you had hit it or not. It worked surprisingly well.
Ive got an app in the AppDirect marketplace and think they're a bunch of great people, I just don't see why anyone in their right minds would go for this.

My understanding of the deal:

"If you're qualified, come work for us for 2.5 years. After that, you have a chance to impress us with your idea. If you impress our panel, we'll give you 6 months of partial salary + support to work on your idea, after which point we'll arrange a meeting with VCs"

Or boiled down even further:

"Defer your startup idea for 2.5 years and take a job in return for a chance for ~6 months of partial salary, some help, and a warm intro to VCs"

The only thing I can think of is that they're hiring lesser qualified people in which case they could consider it a 2.5 year paid training program. But aside from that, AppDirect isn't exactly pushing the envelope of technology and it's substantially the same as when I started working with it almost a year ago. I can't imagine working for them is much different than any other startup in the area.

Even if we put aside the "defer your startup idea" and call it "take whichever idea you have in your head in 2.5 years and we'll see if we can help you make a go of it", it still just seems like it's a one sided deal. Is the post 2.5 year stuff they are offering really worth it? It seems like startup incubators would be the much better option there.
Default bookmark is default.
Google doesn't operate this way, this article has no real basis.
> Figuring out if a candidate is a person, rather than a meat robot, isn't "irrelevant crap." I have noticed a strong correlation between people who don't get jazzed over something--hobbies, academics, whatever--are not people I want to work with.

Do you actually know anyone who doesn't get excited by something? They don't exist. I think what you're perhaps saying is that you prefer working with people who share a passion with you. Makes sense, I also have this preference :)

> If the guy's going to be in a sales role, he should at the least be able to pivot the conversation to something interesting that he can talk about.

I agree... however if the sales guy really is the sort that couldn't smoothly change topics, why did the rest of the Author's team think he'd be a good fit for the job?
Watching that demo on the calculator makes me want to play Portal.
Am I the only one extremely worried about Haskell's future after Marlow's departure?

spj's email is wonderful and a great tribute to a fantastic developer, but I'm having a hard time seeing what exactly there is to rejoice about.

And reading deeper into that email, it's becoming clear to me that spj himself seems to be hinting that he is scaling down his involvement in Haskell as well...
This is t a systems failure, it's a process failure.

Why was the data unavailable? Hardware failure
Why wasn't the most recent version available? The operator didn't manually do a "full" backup
Why did the operator need to manually start a full backup? only some sub directories were periodically backed up
Why was the most recent periodic backup unusable?
The backup system recorded partial contents for an unknown reason.
Why was the backup system recording partial content?
There is no system for restore verification and content checksum comparison.
Why was critical correspondence unacknowledged?
The email reception is system is non redundant.

I'll let you right up the action items here.
I've found Python + Pandas much better in this regard than R. Maybe it's just me, but for grouping, indexing, and manipulating tabular data, Python syntax just makes more sense.

That said, R is better for stats and matrix operations.
Exam: a Python toolkit for writing better tests
How can I view DVD movie on my iPhone 5?
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What a sad situation. Its obvious that McAfee is in a state of mania. Its been widely documented that he has extensive abuse issues with bath salt type of drugs which are about as paranoia-inducing as possible.

Regardless of his guilt in killing his neighbor, he truly needs professional help. Going long periods as he is can have serious long-term effects.

Also, this is not someone to idolize. He fled from the US to avoid a wrongful death lawsuit.
Just curious, what was your startup and what happened?
I was able to use it at the same time I had IDEA 11 up with both using the same project. It was interesting. Every time I'd switch to the other IDE window, each one detected some changes to the project structure and wanted to reload it.

Otherwise, it was very transparent. No pain at all.
Yes, because that's a really awful analogy.

BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, Porsche, etc. These companies/brands are producing great products. You can compare Chrysler to Gateway and get away with it maybe. But there are a lot of innovative car companies out there who are out in front of what people want -- and are actually making money doing it.

It doesn't take a startup to build the next big thing. Take Apple, for instance..
Zynga Makes First Move Towards Gambling In Nevada
wow very weird, I haven't had any issues like this
Looks like it's time to open up another packet of popcorn kernels, this movie is starting to get even more interesting. In all seriousness though, I may have said else-wise earlier but provided John is given a chance to defend himself and isn't killed or framed for the murder before the trial, if he's telling the truth hopefully it all works out in the end.
Fair question. We don't think you can learn from scratch any of these topics in three weeks, let alone all of them, to be employable at any of them. What we're talking about are people who are proficient in a given language or topic already, and who want to see a crash course, and get a taste, before deciding what to do next.

Our candidates are basically already very employable, but there's an extra risk we help employers avoid: that a new hire won't enjoy or become proficient in this new subject quickly (read: cheaply).

Thinkful is all about cost savings for employers, and candidates finding what they're really interested in.

Know java really, really well? Maybe you'll enjoy scala. But perhaps give it a trial run for a few weeks (along with some other cool stuff) before jumping in to a job for several years.
Let me guess, it also takes a few seconds more to untangle the dirty wheel chain ?
He admitted it in that post you linked to:

Yesterday was chaotic due to the accidental release of
my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at
Vice headquarters.
I wouldn't be interested in someone who has a "favourite programming language."

That's just asking for someone who thinks they're clever for figuring out how to drive screws with a hammer.
Ask HN: Is something from your startup a good gift for a CS student?
So, I've been taking CS classes and tutoring at a local community college in the SF Bay Area. As part of the end of the tutor program, we are doing a white elephant thing, 10 dollar max.

Rather then just buy something from fry's or ThinkGeek, I think it would be cool to potentially give them a subscription to a cool web app or two for a year, or a purchase something that would be of interest/be of help/have a geeky appeal to a CS student.

So please, pitch me your product.
I ask the same thing as blhack, I would like a tutorial. I only know how to use the basics, pushing to github and heroku, and I've been using it for a long time.
Had a nice napkin design to hook an old cellphone to an accelerometer to trigger text messages through a cheap plan, unfortunately I'm not an EE nor a hacker so it's only unicorns at this point.

This could be a nice national/college project, anyone coming with a cheap design could help a lot of people.
I like an anecdote of his [1] about trying to perform in the South: ended up having to cancel 23 of the 25 performances, but did manage to push two through, which in his view only ran up against official opposition enforcing the rules they thought they were supposed to enforce, not opposition from anyone who actually attended the performance on purpose.

Occasionally interesting to think that I'm the first generation where it was normal for a jazz band to have both white and black musicians. Very recent that the racists were beaten back.

[1] http://cordjefferson.tumblr.com/post/37269121387/all-these-r...
The resolution in question is House Concurrent Resolution 127: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2012/roll555.xml
Yeah, though targeting iOS 5 and up is really a non issue these days.

UIAppearance actually supports any property on any UIView, including your own custom classes. The UI_APPEARANCE_SELECTOR declaration on the UIKit properties is little more than for the purpose of documentation to make it clear what is officially supported and tested for.
If you found the lack of direction and/or the "you as a team" frustating, wait until you work on a startup. Megacorp will seem like a dream come true...
You know what? Me too. I miss Geocities and I never realized until just now.

That was a great internet. The people's internet. I was 13 years old but I was allowed to make a website for free, with no help or direction from parents or teachers or anyone, with barely anything to learn.

And when I was done it was there. It was a thing I made on the internet and I could show anyone. And I did, and it was probably embarrassingly bad, but that's not the point.

I think more than anything in my career, services like Geocities inspired me.

See the internet? You can make it. You can do this stuff. It's not that hard.

Nobody else in my life told me that. Nobody explained to me that creating things on a computer wasn't magic, and if I wasn't enticed with such an easy website creator I may have never known.

What do I give my kids? What do I give my little cousins, right now, at the age of 10, that even comes close?

---

Looking around there seem to be a few, but they're all so template-centric that I wonder if I'd feel the same way if I had them back then.
I don't know if the list shows who your bigger stalker is, but rather more like who you interact with frequently. Not sure how it's ordered but it makes sense and shouldn't come as much surprise, since it's basically your buddy list on chat.

Technically, it has to do with the chat sidebar and who's in your buddy list. It's within the bracketed section of code entitled, "ChatConfigInitialData." Also, the little piece of code next to that list is "require"[["ChatSidebar","init"

I signed out of chat and the list of people grayed out on my offline chat list were all the top users. Just food for thought.
How about not-beginners looking to refresh / deepen their intuitions?

I've recently been working with the Python toolset in this space -- pandas, numpy, matplotlib -- and run smack dab into my rusty regression analysis. In particular I need to better understand the distribution assumptions underlying the error distributions and the variances around the coefficient and intercept values.

Any suggestions for some deeper study / refresher?
numpy is the best!
I'm sorry, I meant the Structural Search & Replace in IntelliJ. It looks really handy but the one time I opened it I couldn't figure it out (I was busy so I didn't spend more than 5 or 10 minutes on it).

I used Eclipse at my previous job. I do kind of miss the perspectives thing, that was a nice organizational tool once you got used to it.
Time of day effects on problem solving: When the non-optimal is optimal
Are you sure about that? I do not have the tool installed (or anything like it, since I use command-line git), but I see the "Clone in Mac" button on every single github repo I view in my browser.
The study is from 2011, but seems to address in a more scientific way the "what's the best time to work" question.
Thanks for mentioning. That does actually make it useful.
IntelliJ used to look quite a bit like a Swing app. At least on OS X, going from 10 to 11 was a major visual improvement. You can tell it's not native, but it's MUCH closer than it used to be.
My suspicion about personalized news is that entrepreneurs are building things they know how to build rather than building something people want.
There's nothing to rejoice about, it's simply a fact. The question now is who is going to step up. If the right people step up in the right way then it could be a net positive.
> is it possible that now would be a good time to simplify / clean up haskell?

No, that is usually the worst time. Don't pile change on change. That doesn't make it easier.
Calacanis Vs Obvious Engineering
This isn't just interface design, or product design. It's brand design, if you will. This is especially true if you're in the business of mostly consumer-facing software. The experience absolutely matters, and if you can consistently provide that experience in press releases, on the website, on the app, in customer service emails, in tweets... you see where I'm going. It's your voice. What you put on the button matters. What you say over the phone does too. Be sincere, and have a voice. It's Writing 101.
I don't see it as "single point of failure", at least not when your using Dropbox syncing - I've got versions of Dropbox running on two phones, an iPad, two laptops, my iMac, and my home theatre box. I've also got a copy of the data available from Dropbox's servers if I even need. (And there is a risk of a corruption to the synced-everywhere datafile propagating to all those places before it's noticed, but 4 of those copies are backed up with Time Machine (in two different physical locations), and Dropbox stores archived versions for me as well).