skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Or the opposite. Most of what I heard in the article about Europe I think was good, and protected the employees. The guy was mainly complaining about not getting tax breaks for capital gains and about having to pay more to fire people. And he didn't even understand the concept of people being motivated by more than just money.

Perhaps more folks would be more willing to work at startups if they knew they couldn't be fired at the drop of a hat with no or little severance. I also think it's good to have a penalty (or risk) for firing folks. People aren't just a commodity to be disposed of when not needed. Of course it would also be nice to have universal health care, and a culture that didn't glorify monetary gain above all else.
awesome, thanks for replying :)
There is a .dropbox folder in the HOME folder (whatever that is set to). It contains the following files:

$ file *
config.db: SQLite 3.x database
config.dbx: data
dropbox.pid: ASCII text, with no line terminators
filecache.dbx: data
host.db: ASCII text
host.dbx: ASCII text
hostkeys: data
l: directory
photo.dbx: SysEx File -
sigstore.dbx: data
unlink.db: data

config.db doesn't contain any interesting information, the directory "l" is empty, and I can't easily get any information out of the other files. It doesn't seem unlikely that all preferences are stored here, though.

Still, running both instances from a non-default HOME seems like sound advice.
I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." I think he's kind of nutty. [...] There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

-- Richard Feynman

Let's hope science some day may prevent the disease that afflicts his son.
There are many underrated apps which I use in my daily workflow and some of the reviews are actually ridiculous! Since then I've stopped looking at app store reviews. But, what option do we have anyway?
Actually, you get it wrong.

A Kernel function k(x, y) is a function that calculates phi(x)^T phi(y) for some phi. That means, it calculcates the dot product in a higher dimensional space of two data points; it does not do the transformation.

That implies that Kernels do not have to work on the gram matrix. Kernels can be sth completely different, e.g. Fisher Kernels.

(What I wrote is based on Bishop's book and others.)
That's been my guess as well. Probably some developers are ashamed. But if you think about it, sharing real, messy code is much more useful than showing a polished, contrived example.
Hmm..Maybe do something like -
1. Resign
2. Start/Join a startup
I find it outrageous that it takes a story to go public and hit HN for Dropbox support to start doing their job! And so is the pattern for many companies that grow beyond a certain threshold of celebrity. This is a sure indication for me not to trust the company.
+1.
Totally agree on the "not a good backup solution". But we both (obviously) know the difference between redundancy and backup. My poor mum does not. So in the end, that's a problem, and i'm not bashing dropbox either (paid account and all, use it all the time) : their position as it stands, is a bit like the "nobody can presumably be ignorant of the law" article in french civil code (which was suppressed a few years ago), a position no commercial service whose customers are volatile should take for granted.
really trumps me... almost every coder I have ever met who has tried hands on python loves it...(easy to see why) and there isn't any scarcity of em. yet, its proving difficult to find a python guy to hire for our startup...
Just make a hole in the center of one side of the polyhedra. Then stretch out the hole, flattening the polyhedra in the process. Eventually you get a planar map, while retaining the same topology as the original polyhedra.
This is something I've struggled to understand too - how is it that someone who is always nice to everyone isn't high on the popularity list (they are only remembered when needed) whereas someone who only cares about his/her stuff, is popular?
22 new, insanely cool and ingenious resume ideas
Technology is a double edged sword
Nice site. Only I am afraid that I will forget the amount of 'e's at the end :).
I did go a bit over the top there, and to that Im sorry. My tone was unfriendly and below the expected standards for comments.

The OP presented the two webservices as replacement tutor software. Even if one is only showcasing a replacement as "more fun", other aspects of the software still matters. If the only aspect one cares about is how fun the software is, there are plenty of games with no tutoring features at all but which has plenty of funness. Thus a replacement tutor software need to be viewed with all its aspects in mind, including customization and always online requirements. Thus while funness is an important factor when selecting which tutor software to use in education, I in my somewhat humble opinion, consider customization as a vast more important feature.
Because being fun to be around, confident, etc is much more desirable to others than being help.
This Scientist Wants Tomorrow's Troops to Be Mutant-Powered
Late edit: "subtle unconscious hints from researchers could be picked by the participants"
The landscape in the UK has changed somewhat in the last 5 years. Some foreigners like to think when we pay 30% in tax we receive unlimited resources whenever we retire and the government will tap in to our pot of "savings" whenever we need medical assistance. This simply isn't true. The "national insurance" payments don't even cover the cost of the NHS (£96.5 billion in 2010-2011 vs NHS budget for 2011-2012 of £106 billion).
trumps me too, We have a similar situation in my team, trying to find someone with even little python experience is becoming a painful task
Six trends startups must cope with in 2013 from Paul Kedrosky
And certainly in the Uk severance packages are not a Q for start ups as.

A The statutory redundancy payment only applies if you have worked for two years (which most failed start-up wont have)

B If a company goes bust badly the state pays the redundancy - some multinationals have abused this by artificially making a subsidiary bankrupt the 100's redundant workers redundancy where paid by the Government when the parent company got of of Scot free.

And don't forget get that IT workers are considered professionals and so don't have the full protection of the working time directive.
Hottest Indian Startups In 2012
This is a nice layout but I'm afraid the blog structure is less than optimal. For a beginner, the priority of lessons is not their chronology of publishing, but of their logical place in the learning process.

Also, the taxonomy needs work...I don't think this is what I have in mind when I see the "basics" category of a beginners reference to Python:

http://www.pythonforbeginners.com/category/basics/

Basics for beginners should include such things as "what is programming?", "how do I install python?", "how do I run a script?" And so forth.
It's sad to see what ubuntu have become.
Android vs. iOS usage
Start by figuring out how to make it better. As in, automate the boring parts and fix the parts that suck. Also, start building something cool. Like, seriously, build something cool. Even if it's just for you.

I've been geeking out about software architecture and engineering lately to make TDD not suck, so I built Obvious to scratch my own itch. It's the most fun I've had building software in years. I don't know if anyone else is going to care, but I've enjoyed it immensely. http://obvious.retromocha.com/ if you're curious.
> Touch screen keyboards lack something essential: feedback.

Not forever:

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/12/24/apples-research-on-tacti...

http://www.macstories.net/news/apple-patents-keyboard-with-a...
So. Your updating your parents to a now obsolete operating system? Why not Windows 8?
Interesting, I know this is a bad idea, but: what if I connect directly to SMTP servers returned from retrieving MX records then send `RCPT TO: <some-email@mailinator.com>` and see if it passed or error with 550? My guess is there will be another whole range of issues involving open relays and servers that happened to not return 550 on nonexistence mailbox?

(I'm not trying to block Mailinator, just some exercise for myself.)
This is an extremely poorly written article. Reads as if no thought was put into writing the blogspam rant.
Great piece of advice!
I've also found Python incredibly easy to pick up, but that may be because it's my nth language and not my 1st, 2nd, etc
What is a vector?
Завзятість – Tenacity: How I Spent A Year One Night in Kiev
It jarred me... and not because the concept of female mechanics is strange to me (it is not any more strange to me than the concept of female programmers or female gamers) but because it really felt forced and I looked and the commenter had a male-sounding name making me feel like it was forced.
I really like the attitude the movie had about the very topic of time travel. It's basically: Let's not waste our time with talking about this. It would take us the whole day.
It's a flawed system.
If I give my email for ex: XXXXXX@receiveee.com to someone..
They can practically view my inbox by going to receiveee.com/XXXXXX
er that's bollocks in the UK the share save schemes are wildly popular - I know people who got £40k tax free out of one years at BT

And one at my current employer that comes out next year will pay out £20k if you maxed out your contributions 4 years ago

And a lot of mainland Europeans give out 1/12 bonuses at year end the "13th Month"
Why move your parents to Windows rather than to some other Linux distribution? (Fedora, Linux Mint, Debian...)
You can sue for unpaid OT in the USA as well.
Here's a longer and more detailed essay Patrick wrote about Java's history:

http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/javaorigin.html
For what I've read Windows 8 flourishes on tablets but can be a bit annoying/split minded when controlled by a mouse. This combined with the fact that most businesses will probably skip Windows 8 and stay with/move to 7 gives me the trust it will be maintained for a while.
My parents are on 12.04 and will be as long as the long term support lasts. I'm pretty sure forcing them to use Windows would mean a lot of telephone support for the next months. If anything, I would migrate them to another distribution.

I also don't really dislike the Amazon ads. I'm not so much concerned about privacy, but I find them very distracting and awfully implemented. However, it's only one ``sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping``. That is not going to make me change my default distribution.
Not new is hardly obsolete. It's an operating system that works and will continue to work for many years to come.
This is funny. When I started learning programming with Python last year I kept reading about the scarcity of python jobs. Did it change so fast?
I would rather say that it is sad to see Ubuntu going in a direction that doesn't align with your tastes/needs. I personally think Ubuntu is better today than ever before (for the most part).
If you want flourishing employees, or want to flourish as an employee, then you need opportunity to learn and grow at work. Everyone needs a mentor, including the members of the executive staff. You can survive a little while running off experience, but that should not be an ingredient in a long-term culture.
Windows 7 will be supported for years (probably past the lifetime of many of the machines it's running on), and is well understood, and builds on years of similar previous versions.

Windows 8 is different enough that it's reasonable to watch from the sidelines for awhile.
That is true, however the article did come off as very strong criticism, some of it unwarranted (I thought your criticism of severance was too strong).

Looking forward to hearing your keynote at Punta Tech :)
It's very possible that "they asked" is part of the back story.
From my experience, there's no difference in terms of regressions, except perhaps for things like RHEL/CentOS which are hardly suitable for the described task.
Show HN: Open source mobile analytics for iOS, Android, Windows & Blackberry
Expedia is (allegedly) lying about one of their “partner” hotels in a way that drives customers away from the hotel. Isn’t this the kind of thing that a lawyer would call “tortious interference with business relationships”?
I'm on Xubuntu 12.04 and don't seem to have any of these problems. Unlike Windows, where you are stuck with the corporate decisions, Ubuntu still provides many options if you don't like the flagship distro.
Be Original
I think he's saying Java is recreating what C made.I don't agree since Java allows writing of code at a higher level. (with a garbage collector etc)

Every programming language sort of recreates the basics. They are the basics after all. The neat programming languages/frameworks are the ones that 'reinvent' something. Do something in a completely new way. On a programminglanguage-level it's difficult. A lot of the practices were already invented in early languages like lisp, eifel & smalltalk.

I like Ruby because it's not ashamed of taking the great parts from other programming languages and putting it together in an easily understandable language.
This is a very serious blunder on my part! That's an important resolution to support.
> And on top of that I'm claiming that the singularity will never happen

You'll get a lot of negative replies about this, after all HN is very pro-Singularity or however you want to call it, but my gut feeling is that you're right.

I can see Moore's law being applied successfully for the next 100 years in one form or another (more processing cores, quantum computing finally taking off etc.), enough for us to reach a state where we could say "Mission accomplished" and let the machines do our job, but I cannot imagine, not even in the remotest of ways, how AI humor would sound like, meaning how would the machines make jokes. In fact, that would be my "personal" Turing-test for deciding that the Singularity has truly arrived: can the machines understand and perpetuate humor?
Not sure id agree with you "old" money will look down on new money. Apparently some old money Sloanes used look down Kate Mideltons parents self made millionaires.

Her Mum as an ex Air hostess was refered to as ‘doors to manual'
There were also all these other complaints like "I've got this book about photo editing from a friend of mine, can you install that software for me?" where I have to say, no, sorry mom, that only works on Windows.

Same with watching video's of a certain TV-channel (Silverlight 4, not supported by Monolight yet) and a dozen other things. Like I said, I always had faith one day all (most) will be good. But now that I've lost this trust, I feel all I can do is give in and no longer ask patience from them (with yet another Linux distro).
A lot of people subconsciously define stupidity as "not knowing what I know" and I'm afraid you've succumbed to the same illness.

Why should you know how an internal combustion engine works in order to drive a car? What's the point in knowing the effects of compiled and interpreted code on portability when so many other factors could make that basic knowledge irrelevant?

You save your actual argument for your last paragraph (you can't use it if you don't know how it works) but you never give any examples or explain why that'd even be plausible.
Out of curiosity: you gave Windows 7 to your parents, what are you using right now? Another flavour of linux?

I find apt-get and the huge amount of troubleshooting information available the main reasons I'm still using (K)ubuntu. I have tried other distros but always came back...
A lot of people doing this will quickly learn that Windows is not perfect either. On my Windows box, Chrome regularly crashes, the NVIDIA driver control software has a memory leak that causes it to balloon to using 3+ GB of memory, and DirectX 10 didn't work at all (games crashed) until a recent update. There are also intermittent problems with the screen going blank, requiring me to Remote Desktop in and reboot the machine.

I would much rather have a bug in Ubuntu than in Windows. I had no way to fix that DX 10 bug or communicate with the developers. I was just lucky that it got fixed.
The underlying principle in this article is the same one that underlies the advice at http://marriedmansexlife.com. mmsl helps husbands who endlessly say "yes" to all of their wives' requests, but who are frustrated by a lack of sex in their marriages. If you found the OP interesting and your marital relations are lacking, you need to read mmsl.
I think the basis for your counter argument here is flawed.

The statement 'The payouts are the same regardless of what you do' is in the context of a person's state of mind; someone can either 'behave as if there is or behave as if there isn't' free will.

We are for our purposes only concerned about the situation where there is no free will.

The main issue is what not having free will entails. The parent didn't specify 'libertarian' or some other form of free will, and it's hard to specify what it means without resorting to handwaving.

The implied meaning I read was that if a person has no free will, there is no opportunity for them to change what they do. In truth, they are not free to change what they do, or even free to change what they will. Any appearance of such is an illusion.

If we accept that this is what not having a free will means, then it should be clear that, given we have no free will (our assumption from before), whether a person thinks that they have a free will or thinks that they do not have a free will makes no difference, as someone with no free will has no opportunity to change what they do.

Regardless of all that, I think kernel of the idea is a good one. Even if we are deterministic machines with no free will of any kind, we still experience out lives and should enjoy them. Thinking about if we have any oversight of our brain, able to determine the direction we want it to take is a foolish one, driven by the disconnect between what we experience and what we know about the mechanics of our minds. We are our brain, and everything else around it, and what it does is exactly what we are doing. We have the capacity to shape what we think and do as much as any other learning machine, but we are not an outside entity looking in.

My favourite quote about these ideas is this, and I have no idea where it comes from: "If nothing matters, then the statement 'nothing matters' doesn't matter, so you might as well forget about it and enjoy yourself."
Review of the Seiz Urbanpack U01
Calling it the next eCommerce might sound almost sinister if you are only considering it as a money-making opportunity.

However, working at kenHub (kenhub.com), a very small startup which aims to help medical students learn anatomy online, I personally find it very refreshing. It feels good helping the next generation of doctors and nurses. It's not really that much about money as it is about making a positive impact, and making student's lives easier.

It is an uphill struggle, against big publishers and the academic establishment, but students deserve better tools that are more agile, and fit with their existing lifestyles and habits.
Doesn't seem to have learned much in 15 years then.
Ask HN: Best TV series you watched in 2012?
For me, Game of Throne.
Why would he register it to an Iranian address if he's living in the US legally? I highly doubt that they have any interest in stealing his domain, they probably just had to register it to someone rather than leave it in limbo. I think that contacting them, explaining the situation and waiting a reasonable amount of time will probably suffice. No mass hysteria and hate toward GoDaddy is (probably) needed.
Personally I think Linux on the desktop is in a far worse shape than it was 12 years ago. Sure, Linux works much better on laptops then it used to, but what good is that since the software provided by distributions is less stable and of a lower quality then it was 12 years ago. It's all anecdotal evidence, but I've had far more success 10 years ago introducing Linux to non-so-technical users, previously exposed only to Windows 95/98, by using a default Gnome/KDE environment then I'm having now introducing them to recent versions of Unity/KDE/Gnome.

Linux became worse when the commercial alternatives only got better.

This website under Chrome under Ubuntu 12.10 (Unity): http://i.imgur.com/oUTwi.png

This website under Chrome under Mac OS X 10.8.2: http://i.imgur.com/UwTl8.png

This is completely unacceptable as a default experience.

(edit: grammar; screenshots)
EDIT: mis-read post.
Not necessarily. It's not uncommon (for myself) to disable styles to make the page load faster, or respond faster on my device.
I have only basic theoretical knowledge about networks but I guess not because:
1. Adding more nodes/routes = shorter physical path
2. Processing speed of nodes has improved over years (?)
Entrepreneurs Learn New Rules for Real Influence
Code analogy time: "But you don't have to have a list of sample code and examples, just the language reference." :)
Ask HN: Dealing with things you don't excel at?
As a founder, how do you deal with things you know you aren't great at? For example something which needs to be done, but you yourself can do it mediocre at best - there's no money to hire someone to make it great for you.

Do you try and work on it for hours or days hoping to sharpen your skills and attain a better version, or do you give it your best shot on the first try and move on to the next thing?

I'm worried about spending too much time on something that's futile, but I'm also worried about having something that doesn't look great representing my company.
Bye bye Linux! Hello viruses, trojans, and ever-increasing bloat!
Facebook India: Predictions For 2013 By Jan Rezab
I guess you're right, but not having to say "sorry, you're not on Windows so that's why I can't make this software work for you (software from friends etc.)" saves me a lot of explanations that an end-user isn't really interested in.
Because to be popular is to be admired, and nobody admires someone who's desperate for approval.
Seven Social Media Trends For 2013 By Preetham Venkky
I recall trying to use this in 2003 to automatically click on some car website to collect points so I could get a free flatscreen TV.

I ended up using AppleScript when Sikuli didn't work to automatically click the mouse every X number of seconds and only ended up with a free T-shirt. :(
No. Ubuntu 12.10 breaks a great many things. And I don't mean "this doesn't work like it used to!"-broke. I mean, "this doesn't work! It used to!"

see: wifi; hdmi out; webcam.

I hate Unity 3D but whatever, that's the direction they're going. I don't care about the search "lenses". But just breaking shit from 12.04 to 12.10 is ridiculous. Whoever/whatever is in charge of Canonical needs to be fired. They're ruining the reputation of the brand, not to mention making many consumers absolutely dread the idea of new releases.
People have to live with the fact that not all software works for all OSs. Android vs iOS, Windows vs Mac vs *nix etc.

If your mom got a book about photo editing for Mac-only software, would you be so sad to tell her "sorry mom, that only works on MacOS"?

For the purpose intended, I'd install a Debian distro and leave it be for the whole lifetime of the computer. Their support lasts a lot (but so does Ubuntu's for long-term support releases and other distros).
It's always been the same story. Of course you shouldn't give Linux to your parents...
Can this library be used for users who viewed/bought this product also viewed/bought these other products? If not, do you know of a python library?

Thanks