skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What are you talking about when saying "about to commit genocide"? can you back it with facts? is there a secret message you intercepted? if so please let us all know so we can stop it form happening

Or do you mean a real genocide of Norway's Jewish community that Norwegians stood by and did nothing while most of them were murdered during the Holocaust?

Aren't you risking that someone from FMC Technologies is either Jewish or Israeli? Don't you think making such baseless racist claims is likely to hurt your own career?

Perhaps it's normal and popular to be anti Israeli in Norway, but if you don't provide proof to your claim that Israel is "about to commit genocide", someone might just end up filing a libel suit against you.

But I can't blame you. Reading this from Wikipedia explains things a little:

>"In 2010, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation reported that anti-Semitic attitudes were prevalent at some Norwegian schools. Teachers at schools with large shares of Muslims revealed that Muslim students often "praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of Jews", that "Jew-hate is legitimate within vast groups of Muslim students" and that "Muslims laugh or demand [teachers] to stop when trying to educate about the Holocaust". Additionally that "while some students might protest when some express support for terrorism, none object when students express hate of Jews" and that it says in "the Quran that you shall kill Jews, all true Muslims hate Jews". Most of these students were said to be born and raised in Norway. One Jewish father also told that his child after school had been taken by a Muslim mob (though managed to escape), reportedly "to be taken out to the forest and hanged because he was a Jew".[53][54]"

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Norway#2010_Nor...

And since 7.5% of Oslo is Muslim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Norway#By_county), it's not surprising that you have these opinions.
I don't understand this comment. Why are we looking for one single all-mighty "female computer hero"? Can't we recognize the different women in computer science and appreciate their contributions individually without trying to put one above all others?
Under the if/else:
I kind of prefer the first code sample, then the second, then the third. The first emphasizes to the reader the structure of the function. With one look you can see the function is choosing from three options.

For example, if the insides of the if statements were a touch more complicated, the third could also fit the pattern of a recursive function with two base cases. We would have to read more to figure out the idea.

The first is preferable to the second because I immediately see that only one thing will happen, I don't need to look inside the if's. (Relevant if the inside is more complicated).
One of my mentors is an "A" player. He genuinely looks out for me, and even goes as far as throwing high priority projects at me. At first, I took this for granted, but I'm starting to realize that the things I'm doing right now are rarely done by other folks in my position.

Find an "A"-player and make her your mentor
I would gladly help fund this if money is at all an issue - based on that trailer I think a lot of people would do the same.
Amazon Announces EC2 Spotathon Winners
Responding to top comment, but want to address concerns in several of the replies. FWIW, the event was actually organized by the management of Startup Weekend themselves: Marc Nager, the CEO, and Frank Nouyrigat, the CTO. So I don't think I'm misrepresenting the organization in talking about my experience.

It was the recent one at Stanford, you can read about it here: http://stanford.startupweekend.org/

The online application seemed to imply only technical people would be allowed in, which is what led me to think it was a hackathon. It was also restricted to Stanford students and alums. Only later did it become clear that the Stanford business school was one of the co-organizers, and they had secured a large number of the "slots" for their own students.

They did have a bunch of designers there also, which is nice. But the event still felt like it had a 4:1 ratio of "people who can think about a business plan" to "people who can build something".

More importantly, the judges didn't actually care about whether teams had built anything. Most of them didn't have tech backgrounds - they were there as reps from the sponsors. Startup Weekend is pretty open about the business-ey aspect of their events, so it's my fault for not realizing that in advance. On their website it reads "on average, half of Startup Weekend’s attendees have technical or design backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds."

Still, I think they need to decide what they want to be. If they are going to use judges who could not care less if you actually built something, they need to be open about that up front. Technical people who want to spend a weekend building a product need to know they should stay away. Or, Startup Weekend could require judges to heavily take into account actual product development in their decisions, and try to attract more coders. But as of right now, they are doing the former but still trying to get coders to attend, and for me that was a bad experience.
Ext3 is basically the venerable ext2 plus journaling. It's not a dramatic change.

Ext4 is more or less a rewrite.
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4848569
Nice use of AT&T Park as a product example. Not sure if that was the intention but if you have been to the park you know it.
Regarding 2, remember that you're looking at a turnaround time of hours to try running your program, unless you were in a special situation. Anytime punch cards are involved, response time goes from seconds to minutes or hours.

"Development" would be sitting down, writing your program on sheets of paper (marked out to 80 columns so you know how many characters you get). Then either you'd key it yourself, or you'd send it off to be keyed onto cards. I'm not really familiar with the 390, but that's typically how things would work on a punched-card (i.e. batch) system.
My takeaway is that people copy code and implement it without understanding it, and that retyping it can be a way to learn what one is doing. It actually makes me wonder if splitting a program into lines and reading it line by line with the previous and next lines not showing might be another shortcut.

I notice that with big chunks of code, my eyes do tend to glaze over. I expect typing the text helps one chunk it into meaningful segments.
How nostalgic for me, reminds me of my days as a junior Data General field engineer - Nova 3, Eclipse S/130, S/140, S/200'S + Phoenix and Gemini 10+10 and 5+5 toploaders.

Admittedly this was their Dasher D200 (current loop) and LP2 era, but we did sometimes bootstrap DTOS (Diagnostic Tape Operating System) from paper tape if all else failed. We even had a couple of ancient punched card readers in stock for certain oddball customers, just in case.

I used to have a rig that looked like this in my parents dining room:

http://www.chookfest.net/nova3/ebay.html

They made me send it back after a couple of quarters of abnormal electricity bills.
Brrr, reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis

(A novel by Franz Kafka, in which a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes to find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin.)
I thoroughly believe that doing just about anything with radiantx's Space Beacon in the background makes you feel like a l33t h4x0r.[0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFGFKL20kqA
Every time I read the name I think about Ice Cube, hacking away on his "two-tone Ford Esplora"
Grace Hopper is a computer hero, period. Gender and sex have very little to do with her accomplishments, and she is a perfect example to show that women are just as capable as men are, even in an unwelcome environment.
Before anyone gets too excited, I would caution that there there is a long history of failed attempts at this problem, and an equally long history of premature announcements. On the surface, here is what is encouraging about this one:

- The author is a theory professional and not an amateur or a crank

- The author frames this as a possible proof where he's seeking feedback on the method, rather than declaring a solution up front

- The author builds on existing theory in a formerly mainstream approach that has been shown to have problems (circuit lower bounds)

- Looks like a serious and well-considered proof effort

Here is why HN should hold off on any excitement:

- This style of proof was found to be unworkable in the past. In particular, approaches to proving circuit lower bounds in this manner were shown by Razborov and Rudich to be "natural proofs" in the 1990s, which is a category of proof strategy that cannot demonstrate P/NP. It's not explained why this strategy does not succumb to the same problem -- though the author surely has some reasoning around it. (see point 6 of Scott Aaronson's "8 signs a proposed P/NP proof is wrong": http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=458. You might also see this comment from /r/math: http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/comments/14mqqt/anyone_have_...)
).

- There is a very good community framework for evaluating proposed solutions when the author's ready. Possibly the author has already submitted the work to a journal, but it's not clear that he's confident enough yet to invite more active discussion on his effort from the theory community. I can't find any discussion of it online. It's likely he's pursuing these on his own, and conceivably flaws have been found since the summer.

- The author does not declare this as a completed solution in the same way that Deolikar did two years ago. In that case, his announcement led to an analysis by the theory community online that led to discovery of core errors. We can wait here 'til the author gives a bit more information.

- This proof joins dozens of other announced solutions to P/NP in both directions (see, for example, http://www.win.tue.nl/~gwoegi/P-versus-NP.htm) which emerge quite regularly, and close attention paid to each will leave no time for original research :)
A Classical Musician's Game Theory
Ludum Dare 48 hour game coding compo this weekend
Please see my comment above. The event was run by the CEO of Startup Weekend, so I don't think I'm misrepresenting the organization.
I see that you disagreed with my comment. If you had silently downvoted me (as is "ok" to do), the discussion goes nowhere. Instead you did the noble thing and responded to my comment with an counterpoint.

So, I ask you, which makes for a better HN? One where people downvote to disagree, or where people respond explaining why they disagree?

In my mind it is the latter behavior that makes HN a good place to be.

So regardless of what pg has stated I will continue to believe that it is far better (for HN) to respond to comments I disagree with than to downvote them, for down-voting (aka punishing) someone for saying something I don't agree with doesn't help me, it doesn't help the commenter, it doesn't help HN. So what's the point?
I'd argue that it's a bad practice to leave out the last else if condition even when it seems redundant. What happens if NaN is passed to your function? It will return 'big' when you probably want to throw an exception or something more meaningful.
Agreed (assuming you meant point #2). Having multiple returns in a function is a huge code smell to me. It looks great at this size, but can get unwieldy very fast. The second half of this article looks like a typical refactor cycle for me - but in reverse.

As for exactly why: Having multiple returns means multiple points of exit from a function, which complicates the flow of control and requires you to follow more paths backwards to find state changes and final values. In general it is easiest to read and most maintainable to have a function flow from top to bottom.
This research may be of interest to Toyota due to its implications for traveling salesmen.
I do hope Jason's able to find the crew that was working on this. Jason does great work and I'd love to see their powers combined.
In most RTS games, an arbitrary Resource Mine generates resource X at a fixed rate, but the resource is delivered into your resource pool in fixed-rate chunks. 100 units of X per minute, delivered at the top of the minute (for example). You can't purchase Unit Y until you have all 300 units of Resource X, so you wait 3 minutes.

TA employed a continuous economy system where you were more concerned with your resource Bandwidth rather than total quantity available. Energy or Metal mines added +X of their respective resource to your pool, but it was continuous and if your pool was full, excess resources just vanished.

The unique aspect to this system was that the player could begin constructing any building whether or not he had the resources available to finish it. The player didn't need 300 units of Resources X to start constructing Unit Y -- he just started building it. The construction units would open up and start taking in Resources at their fixed rate. If the resource pool ran out of resources, aka your construction needs outstripped your gathering capabilities, all construction slowed to the maximum rate at which you were able to gather resources.

A liquid economy, still one of the most fun I've ever played.
Disk drives with battery backed write caches are a requirement for any system where data corruption is considered a system failure. We use these at my job for things other than just our data bases. It doesn't need to be just SSD's either; traditional platter-based hard drives have this feature as well.
Much appreciated and thanks for joining to answer.
Migrating to NoSQL: The Process
The fact that Windows 7 has sold well is completely irrelevant for the Microsoft store developers, right now, especially if Windows 8 continues selling very poorly.

Also right now Android is selling faster than Windows has ever sold, and growing. The reason it hasn't sold as many as Windows "in the past 2 years" is because its growth rate was much slower back then, and so it was for iOS. But both iOS and Android EASILY beat Windows 8 in sales right now. It's not even a contest.
How about a picture of twins?
A Long Time Ago
Agreed about LSN and FS, as being interesting.

Crossbow too late to matter (you said "in the West", and my comments are likewise restricted), though... whatchu talkin' 'bout? Crossbows in Europe are over 2000 years old, so "too late" seems a little improbable. And they were the dominant ranged weapon in most of Europe for hundreds of years (roughly 1100-1500), so they totally mattered.
For everyone else reading this, if you live in the bay area, you should seriously visit the Computer History Museum. It's absolutely fascinating to see how far we've come in such a short time. I had assumed I wouldn't get much value from the trip, but I was blown away.
I'm amazed that this post has proven to be controversial. Let me relate my perspective as a profoundly deaf person working in an open-plan office space.

When I bring up the fact that the environment is too noisy, the number one suggestion people make is "why don't you turn off your hearing aids?" This is not practical for a number of reasons.

With my hearing aids off, I will not hear you. Which you might argue is kind of the point, but the moment you want to engage me in conversation, you'll wish that I somehow "just knew" when to make an exception, and respond, rather than (unintentionally, I assure you) treat you rudely by ignoring you. I've been ignored before, and I know other (hearing) people who have been ignored. I know how it feels and wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Then there's the isolation. This may sound familiar to you: there was a link on HN pointing to David Peter's "Being Deaf" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4001727). If you haven't done so, be sure to check it out. The big takeaway is the feeling of isolation he feels in the workplace. That isolation is real. I have to fight it too. Turning off my hearing aids makes this worse, not better.

Turning off the aids is unsafe too. With my aids off, I will not hear a fire alarm. I speak from experience -- I had someone come to fetch me because I didn't have my hearing aids in when the alarm went off.

Some of you may have read Mike Mackenzie's "My journey to a cochlear implant" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4883252) The big takeaway here is how much effort is needed by someone who is deaf in order to 'signal process' their way through a conversation. Even with my aids on, I have to make a strong effort just to get through conversations.

Hearing isn't a skill I could get better at if I just practice. The signal I hear is garbled; if I can't ungarble it, then my choices are to get you to repeat what you said clearly (not loudly), or give up.

So. If I should ever get the opportunity to work with any of you noisy, chatty, extremely talented people, I hope you won't mind so much if I ask you to follow ‘library rules’.
This looks totally up my alley. I would have gladly paid for this had it been available. Heck I just dropped some cash on the soundtrack album (and I seldom pay for music) and its wonderful. Hopefully this hitting HN and the resulting websites will get enough attention to finish this off.
Same question I have, but on your comment, not on the topic.
Strongly recommend giving this a go if it even vaguely sounds interesting to you. I got into it several contests ago, first lurking and watching other people code, and now taking part myself. It has been a great experience and there are some lovely people involved with LD.
Steve Jobs Building NEXT - 20 min. 1986 PBS Documentary
They should've given the ARM ones for free.
Replace Nested Conditional With Guard Clauses
Color me surprised that instagram gets to build a web property that is outside of the Facebook ecosystem. I didn't expect their mobile app to go anywhere but actually staffing to build their own web presence is a bit of a surprise.

What does Facebook end up getting out of having instagram in it's own ecosystem?
My university has a rule: the higher the floor, the quieter it gets. The 3rd floor is so quiet, if your laptop fan turns on, people give you death stares.
Ask HN: What will come first?
A robot that's able to coexist with human culture

or

Self-sustaining human life on Mars?

...I have intentionally put the question in layman's terms. For what sounds like a ridiculous question, I'm seriously proposing it. I'm not interested in what the majority thinks, but the reasoning for how your decision came to be.
The last refactoring is not equivalent to the previous versions. The behavior of the function is changed when it is passed a non-number like an object reference or NaN (before it would return undefined; after it returns 'big').
Who is the real entrepreneur? The investor who makes a decision to risk his capital to capture a market's demand, or the founder who asks for money but doesn't make the decision? Ultimately it's the investor that evaluates and takes a risk on the model, not the founder.

I associate entrepreneurship with risking your own capital, and with risk in general. Investors seem far more entrepreneurial than founders when evaluated in that context. I think investors should be considered the real entrepreneurs - it's ultimately their decision.

Founders seem more like managers, not entrepreneurs. I'm talking about founders who don't risk their own capital and take investment, of course.
EasyProjects has a lot of those features, plus its web-based.
All Hail Britannia
>What does Facebook end up getting out of having instagram in it's own ecosystem?

A good sleep at night thinking it can pull the cord on instagram at any moment.
For a popular treatment of the subject and the consequences, see this film (I assume the first film ever made about P=NP and it was released just this year): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_Salesman_(2012_film)

I just finished a section on NPC problems in my algorithms class (working on a masters). For years, I've been confused about the true meaning of P, NP, and NPC. Feels weird saying it, but I am so glad I've finally got a good grasp on at least the definitions. One of the most gratifying moments in the class was doing homework problems that required proving various problems were in NPC.
That's because a large portion of the system runs on JS/HTML.
This is a great angle. I can imagine a lot of people in cubicle land that would look forward to a daily escape. And then forward it to their friends. Or save the email to read when they actually go to Vienna.

If you're focused mostly on email, then make sure you have archived newsletters online. Good for SEO, another point of engagement, and conversion source.
Psy Makes $8.1 Million By Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style
I don't dispute that your argument has merit, but I disagree. An early exit from a function is an instance of "flat is better than nested" -- that is, it's often easier on the brain to not have to keep track of different layers of nesting. I often use early exits just to get rid off edge cases so the rest of my (non-nested) function can just deal with the "normal" case.
Makes you realize in 1000 years there will be museums where people will go to see the early ipad and android devices and wonder how anyone got anything done with them, and stare at 3.5" and 2.5" hard drives with their ridiculously tiny 1TB capacities. Hmm, maybe even in just 100 years.
Blogging with Medium, the odd new product from Twitter's founders
There is an enormous pipeline of econ majors to consulting from lac's.
Those caught in the middle on DB size needs and performance would be well off to take a look at Bcache. http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/ It's a block write-back cache and seems to perform really nicely. Here's some benchmarks. http://www.accelcloud.com/2012/04/18/linux-flashcache-and-bc...
Libraries are struggling to maintain perceived relevance.

I'd like to slap people who say they aren't relevant or useful, but I don't have that much slap in me. As physical books become more of an out-of-date phenomenon (thanks to the Kindles and nooks and tablets and Wikipedias and such,) people are going to see the necessity of libraries as silly.

It's why you see "libraries should be hackerspaces!" make the rounds in blogs (and at least one library in the northeast is doing this.) I went to a new library up the road recently that had as much floorspace dedicated to audiobooks, DVDs, and CDs as it did to physical books.

I've recently read someone say that libraries provide one thing that no other building does: a place where anyone can work or study with zero pressure to spend money. That addresses your comment about "coffee shop rules."

While I still want to slap people who think libraries are irrelevant, they absolutely can't stay as just a place to check out books. Owning an internet-capable device is a lot more affordable than owning a recent encyclopedia, so computer courses are a natural thing for libraries to provide. I definitely like hackerspaces in adjacent floorspace. Chicago libraries allow residents to check out museum passes (though, access to this has dwindled quite a bit.) I believe some libraries allow patrons to check out iPads; I'd love to see an extensive ereader loaning program, though it'd require publishing companies to be less of a sack of assholes about ebook ToS.
The problem is though that this observation is often used as an excuse to ignore data or avoid doing small iterative experiments. In most cases, this is a mistake. In other words, you could do a lot worse than reproducing Amazon.com.
Interesting that they dont have a message like "This page brought to you by archive.org Donate here to keep this page alive" on the archived pages.

I dont think people would mind seeing that on the recovered sites. (Unless they do and I cant see it for some reason?)
Does anyone know what the story with file systems and SSD's is?

Google did made it clear that some tuning makes sense for SSD's, but did not make it clear whether the various file systems are more or less suited to SSD's.