skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The basic tools may be free, but the more advanced things aren't. Many assignments require the use of packages like Matlab, Maple, and Pro/E - the idea being that we'll use these things in industry so we may as well get used to them in university. There are also a series of packages that are used that are free, but hard to find/maintain individually.

It also comes down to standardization - if I'm marking circuit layouts, I want everyone to use the same version of Electric that I did, so it's easy for me to deal with fifty submissions. I want everyone to compile their code using the same environment, so that I can simply recreate that environment and know that the code should compile.
yes I guess I made the assumption of some level of maths - but perhaps its not common for people starting out now (I know it took me years before I appreciated all the mathematical stuff).
The difference is that banks are free to ignore free cocaine. They're not free to ignore regulators.

It appears that much of AIG's financial insurance was actually regulator driven, as in regulators insisted that banks buy it.

More to the point, regulation is being proposed as a solution. Since they're the common element in all of the failures, this is a curious approach.
That is funny. "Browser-dependent scripting language" isn't too bad for JavaScript. But "stand-alone program" for Java? That's kind of like calling English a "stand-alone dictionary".

Sure, I'm a programmer. But why is it so easy for a journalist to get a definition this wrong? Wikipedia immediately tells one that "Java is a programming language" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)
This is why I love this site :-)
Scary stuff. However, as a decompiler author (ie, turn machine code into C-like code), I think you could plug this into a decompiler and make legible code (control-flow structured, not inline assembly).
> My point was that if we are looking for people to blame, whether we chose to point the finger at Wall St or at "regulators," it turns out it will be the exact same group.

Actually, it's not. Unregulated Wall St has fared far better.

>> And they were hedged by contracts that were of comparable size.

> Not at AIG they weren't

Yes, they were - that's how regulated insurance works.

> which is why so much of our taxpayer money is flowing through them to the counter-parties of their CDS contracts -- e.g., Goldman Sachs.

The money is flowing because the assets backing up the liabilities weren't actually worth enough and the risk was underestimated.

> Regulators have made it possible for me to drink, does that mean it is their fault when I contract alcohol poisoning?

It means that you can't say that regulation solves alcohol poisoning.
They've detected all of them, but they are only going to talk about 82% of them until they get more money. "Freemium research", I'll call it...
Scout Project Models Town for Google Earth
> fvwm2, it's turning away the students in droves. This needs to be stopped.

Why ? Is the school losing any good computer scientists ?
I like /opt for one big reason: the default path for a lot of packages is /usr/local, so putting things in /opt can help protect them from being accidentally overwritten.
Term Papers into Textbooks: the Global Text Project
That's an interesting point. I suspect it depends a lot upon their concrete programming skills as demonstrated in the interview. It's funny how my first reaction - even as someone who always says "Your degree doesn't define you, and talent will find jobs no matter where you went to school" - was to assume that the Stanford history major is much smarter than the CSU Chico CS major, and just happened to pick the wrong major. But that's not necessarily true: maybe the guy from Chico is a Zawinski-class programming genius that happened to grow up in a family with no money and no college expectations. The point of the interview is to tease out circumstances like that so talented people from bad situations can rise to the top anyway.

It's also interesting because I know some Amherst history majors that I could never imagine getting a job at Google. But I also know an Amherst Asian Languages & Civ major who does work at Google, albeit in a non-technical position. Yet I don't know anyone at Google from a CSU: my friends here are from Rice/Brown/Brown/Amherst/Stanford/Berkeley/ Stanford/UChic/Cornell/Berkeley/Berkeley/ CMU/Duke/UCSD.
I had to use the computer lab for many of my comp sci courses. If the lab had had an unusable window manager, then I wouldn't have taken nearly as many comp sci classes. Undergrad CS course aren't just for CS majors.
For the social aspect.

There was a famous story about some University's computer lab (I forget the details) where they got fed up of the coffee machine. There was a perfectly good cafeteria close by where the students could get coffee. Plus they had to keep the machine stocked, service it, etc. It was just a pain in the ass, so they got rid of it.

Within about a week, their TAs were swamped with demands on their time from students. They had to take on like 2 extra people to meet the demand.

Turned out, that coffee machine was a social hub, and people would chat about their problems, ask each other for tips and advice, and solve a large percentage of their problems on their own.

So they bought a replacement coffee machine.

Now I'm imagining those students doing all the work on their computers in their dorm rooms on their own. Hmm.

Sure, there's lots more connectivity these days and places you can ask for help, but when learning/starting out that sort of personal contact etc is quite useful.
But comonads are so much more fun!
I'd go so far as to say unix command line tools work much better than the window-based alternatives. Or at least I use them more as time goes on, and use nautilus less.
I'll be there. I invited some other companies from AlphaLab (a local seed-stage investment organization), but the invite went out a little late, so we'll see how many actually make it.
Well, I'm in an interesting situation here.

24, married, no kids, 1 dog. We're both planning on quitting our jobs in the summer with no direct plans for seeking employment. Quite an interesting situation.

I've got my products released and am working on some bizdev leads that have a high probability to go through.

We have been looking for jobs in our new location; however, it's been our experience that it's a much higher probability of success to start a business than go kissing ass and submitting resumes.

So we're at a big inflection point. We're either going to be living with one set of parents (which we have discussed and are prepared for) or we won't have to worry about money for the next several years.

I've always thrived on volatility, and my wife and dog are just along for the ride.
Breast Cancer Facts: Knowing These 3 Breast Cancer Facts Can Save Your Life
Tapinko.com Enters The Advertising Arena - Aims To Save Traditional Media
No problems at back at my undergrad at Bath Uni either. You could have graduated using just the Uni machines. Plenty of desktops spread around campus, good wifi accessible with a username and password.
This was already posted...
Youth Bloggers Network Acquired By Teens in Tech
On that note, it's interesting that pandora.com, the website, serves ads but the Windows Sidebar gadget does not. Does the iPhone app serve ads? Those might be an interesting place to wander into...
My thinking is that the CSU grad won't even get an interview unless he or she knows someone at Google. Whereas the Stanford history grad will get an interview just on virtue of being a Stanford grad. However, I have no idea and wasn't trying to make a point - was genuinely curious about their filtering process.
It's too bad to hear this.

I am very satisfied with our computer labs. We're having 7 labs with about 10 PCs each, all of them equipped with recent Intel CPUs and quite a lot of RAM. Windows or Linux (Debian or SuSE I think) on all machines. Possibly all apps that you're ever gonna need installed (ranging from python+IDEs to MS Visual Studio, Qt, Gimp, MS Office, Open Office, ...). No hard disk quotas are enforced, instead there's a fair use policy. Admins are very friendly and talkable to about anything...

And if you don't like the machines in the lab, grab an ethernet cable or use the WiFi available all over the campus.

The labs are used by many students, even though I'm not aware of anyone without a laptop or a machine at home. It's just too comfortable... sit down, have all the apps, all compilers you need for your studies ready for use.

In my opinion, this is how you should run a computer lab - user friendly policies that encourage the use of the public machines. After all that helps the students to get to know each other better and help each other.

For the record, I study at Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam, Germany.
I went to UT cs also.

While its not ideal, I thought the cs computer lab was fine. It's not meant to replace your main computer, as a CS major you should probably have your own computer. Its meant more as a place to hang out and work on class projects together and for that I think it does fine.

Also, if you are a cs major you can probably figure out how to 'startx gnome'

Also, for many research groups they have their own computer labs that are not restricted like the main cs lab. I know at least that in the robotics lab they gave out root passwords to their ubuntu machines and you could pretty much do as you like.
Dabo Desktop Application Framework
I have a friend that works at Google Pittsburgh that was a CS major from the University of Pittsburgh. I think Google will interview people from state schools as like as they have a 3.75 GPA.
I had this installed, but it freaked me out when the camera-light on my macbook went on at random times. Hasn't happened again since I uninstalled it.
Why is there a video of Cramer on the side?
> The difference is that banks are free to ignore free cocaine. They're not free to ignore regulators.

Misdirection. The toxic, risky, highly over-leveraged speculation they engaged in was certainly voluntary.
This appears to be Flex based, which seems to be an instant ~300k SWF baseline.

Anyone have a read on how much space this framework takes up?
Good question. Definitely something I 'note'
> Actually, it's not. Unregulated Wall St has fared far better.

Like Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs?

> It means that you can't say that regulation solves alcohol poisoning.

I never claimed this. What it does mean is that you cannot say that regulation causes alcohol poisoning.
If you are creating a product that will be installed by your customers on their own web hosting accounts, PHP is a no brainer due to it's large install base, and you'll want to be sure your product works with PHP 5.3. If you are simply picking a language for your own internal use, go with what you like and know.
Computer Security: Browser Wars are Back
From Economist.com

This time the battle is over security rather than features
Tell HN: Its analog sunday...get off the computer.
Ask HN: Anyone used Lua Kepler?
I've been looking at Lua for some time now, mostly because it's supposedly very lean and can be used with quite low tech hardware requirements. Recently I heard about Kepler (http://www.keplerproject.org/) - a Lua web framework - and I'm curious about the experiences people have using this. So if you are or have used Kepler could you tell me about your experience. Questions that come to mind are:
What webserver would be a good fit? Are there any real-world examples (the ones on Kepler.org seem to be pretty old)? Any benchmarks (only if it's more than 'hello World' please) and what are the pro's and cons aka when would you recommend using it?
Advertising is a large part but not the sole income source of healthy news organizations(It's silly to continue to call them newspapers when they've been online for years with websites/email/forums/blogs/video/twitters and almost every other electronic "innovation")

Companies that rely solely on advertising (and a higher percentage of startups and other supposedly "hot" companies fall into that category than news organizations) are fucked. It's gonna be really tough.
Upvoted for agreement. It is extremely difficult to get fully grown adults to reconsider any wild opinion they've heard from a teacher. But if one must get an undergraduate education, at least get it in a research university environment where not all the professors agree with one another, even in the same department, and where the enrolled students are diverse enough to bring on campus a lot of different points of view.

The concern you have about most educational environments is why I'm an "unschooling"-leaning eclectic homeschooler for my own children. There are at least biological drives ensuring that my children will disagree with me [smile], so they all learn to question one teacher.
Hmm. To me this illustrates that we should be more skeptical of who we consider to be "experts" not that we should not seek counsel of those with subject matter expertise.

Hint, someone with a TV show is probably NOT who you should be listening to.
I went there, its true
I was about to reply in a different manner, but let me start by asking you what you mean by "successful people." What kind of people would be in that group?
Hey, Dropbox (and similar services): good optional feature to bundle in.

Rationale: I, and a few million others, may be too ignorant or lazy to separately install this 'just-in-case' application. But since I'm putting Dropbox on a few machines, I might as well enable this feature on the ones liable to grow legs and walk away.

Plus, besides making Dropbox/etc. more attractive, this might tie-in nicely for security - I think that, if my laptop were stolen, the thief would have my cookies, i.e automatic web access. It would be acceptable to have Dropbox demand new logins for new access IPs. Or even 'go dark' (have to be manually launched).
Web of Trust: Firefox add-on for increased security
Essentially, the way Google Checkout can afford to be cheaper than PayPal is by relying on their much-vaunted algorithms to take as many human beings out of the loop as possible. That's why there's almost no way to talk to a human being in AdSense, AdWords or Checkout: human beings are slow and expensive.

However, algorithms are not foolproof, and in the case of Checkout the desire to never have merchants talking to real people means that when the algorithm gets it wrong, these merchants have nobody to talk to, no phone number to reach, nothing. It seems pretty evil, and unless Google want to raise their rates on Checkout to match PayPal, it seems pretty unavoidable.

This is just another case of You Get What You Pay For, except in this case nobody thought Google would have a shitty product.
Good point. To be fair, however, he's probably just being intellectually curious -- that is, "hacking". There's no way you'd test a number for evenness in real life by either recursion or iteration. You'd always do either (n&1)==0 or n%2==0.
...I don't know, but a more serious idea would be that the mass of everything they found so far is 82% of the mass they'd expect to find according to simulations. Like all those planets they discovered because their mass had an influence on nearby bodies.

Not saying this is the actual reason, just that there are reasonable ways to get a number like this...
Thats because it was taking your picture, they say on their website that there is no way to take a picture without turning the light on. Rest assured, the picture and other data are encrypted with the credentials.ost file.
Let the students run their own machines?

Considering the difficulty of the entry-level classes (weed out) and the fact that students often have 3-4 extra classes just like it, having them spend hours upon hours of admin work. They're training to be computer scientists not admins.

My school runs RHEL/gnome on some beefy quad-core machines. Whatever is needed for a class is installed immediately and just works. No need to spend hours hunting down packages and installing them, and then no need for the professors/TAs to spend hours upon hours of duplicating configurations in order to make sure that everything can be graded.

Students will acquire enough Unix knowledge throughout their 4 years by using a well-maintained system. Most of them spend about 10-20 hrs/week using it for development -- no need to add another 30 for sysadmin work.
appears to be april 20th... 4/20... hmmm
Do you mean to spread the idea of Analog Sunday so we'll know about it when it actually happens? Or do you mean to say that some Sunday (tomorrow?) is going to be Analog Sunday?

Also, 4/20 is a Monday this year.

Where does reading a book on a Kindle fall? Its a computer-like device, but focused on books and reading.
I put it in quotes to leave it intentionally undefined.

You could run several experiments with differing variable group selection criteria to find out what kinds of people are more or less easily influenced. However, in particular, I was thinking of people who are considered to be strong leaders.
That's nothing. We had to use MACS.
My brain doesn't "shut down". I tend to question everything even ideas that are widely held by people around me.
sessions are in contrib, not part of the framework.

Some of the testing stuff is "in-house".

It's not even close to true that everyone's deployment is (or should be) very similar. It's a bit more arguable that everyone's testing should be similar. But forcing one way is not the Django way and one of the big reasons it is loved.
Yo I'm here where is everyone
How is this an application of that rule?

Both theories are excuses for being lazy.

It seems to be more of an application of rule "if I say something that's appealing to the majority of people on YC I'll get upvoted."
Google Checkout was cheaper than PayPal as a subsidy.

At the beginning of May they're eliminating the Adsense subsidy, and changing the rates to mirror PayPal's exactly. It's over.
Yes, it's kind of counterintuitive when you consider how gloomy Pittsburgh winters are. What is there to do on CMU campus besides hack?
Haven't they noticed that people spend all of their formative years in schools were they are taught to never question authority? After so many years of "behavioral training" it seems quite normal to me that people's brains shut down when listening to an expert.
Is it just my ISP (or, more likely, my machines), or can anyone else get to the report? infowar-monitor.net seems to be managed by The SecDev Group, with an email address pointing to a domain that claims it's mission/project is over.

I am curious to read more of the report...

Or maybe I am jumping the gun: "researchers' findings... due to be released this weeekend."
He works for the Daily Mail. It's a wonder he could even string sentences together let alone understand something as "complex" as that.
I've never understood the view that computers and technology are some how "outside" what it means to be human and the human condition, that there is some kind of artificialness to the experiences you have when you are using them to communicate (email, blog, chat, which doesn't necessarily mean typing these days) that makes it less than the experience you have "in person" and "outside in the real world".

I guess it's okay to say "no TV" when "going analog" now because television is now digital?
But then I would have less time to pore over HN!
That's a good long-term measure. But we also need something more cheap and quick to set up right now.
37 marketing tips twitter start-ups networking blogs
Drexel University had decent labs of every variety: Linux, Mac and Windows. The Linux labs -- used by the computer science and software engineering students -- had reasonably modern single-core machines with 4:3 LCDs approximately 20 inches in size. There was often a shortage of available machines around project deadlines. However, the digital media students, just one floor below us (in the basement), had beefy Windows machines with larger dual monitors and access to powerful render farms! They had plenty of machines to spare, but CS and SE students couldn't even get onto that floor with our key card access. I have no idea who had access to the Mac labs. It certainly wasn't us or the digital media students.

I'm pretty sure the reasoning for this is as follows:

1) Computer science and software engineering students prefer to use their own computers

2) Digital media students can't afford the expensive licenses for the software they need to use (Maya, Max, Photoshop, etc)

3) Typical personal laptops aren't powerful enough to do proper rendering work

4) You can always SSH in, use VIM, and compile from your personal laptop
Agree! My C.S. undergrad program did not even cover specific languages. There were no courses such as "The 'Foo trendy du-jour' Programming Language" -- the language was incidental to the subject matter, and you were expected to learn the language, editor, OS utilities, compilers, debuggers, etc. on your own time.
I'm curious, as you seemed to have brought up being bilingual several times -- are multilingual (human lingual) programmers rare? I have the impression that they're exceedingly easy to find.

Or, are you only talking about "foreigners" (who look foreign) who speak the host language?
well, no takers yet . . .
There's no supposing about it. All major IDEs do incremental builds and no one needs "actual, regular, compile processes" as with a command line compiler.
I once attended what must have been the minimal possible Orthodox Jewish wedding; bride, groom, ten men including a rabbi, a ring, a cup of wine, and a prayer shawl that four men held aloft to make a chuppah. No dinner, no DJ, no videographer.

There was, however, a bottle of Scotch.
There is some old classic paper titled The Programmers Stone. In the first chapter there is very good description of two different states of the mind - Packers and Mappers.
This study is about packer's brain, because mappers will try to combine expert's opinion with their own map, alter or update it when necessary, or even create a model which fills both opinions.
The rest of this Programmers Stone is some kind of nonsense, but this first chapter is a must read.
A scenario where you might want to upvote comments that you don't like.
Consider a comment that appears at the very bottom. Such a comment probably has higher visibility than comments that are somewhere in the middle.

Consequently, if there is a comment at the bottom that you don't like, you might want to upvote it!

The choice is between penalizing the person's karma vs penalizing the visiblity of that person's comment.
There's a lot of heretical (good) advice in there, so I wonder if that was the reason.
Post graduation of course, it does help to be making double what your peers are making.
Would it really be much less expensive and take less time to build asteroid defense systems (I almost typed "missile defense systems") which require us to deal with space than just to start getting better at getting into space anyway? Especially since most, if not all, of the technologies listed in the article would be put to better use for transportation (of either humans or goods) rather than as destructive ends (but such is the folly of human nature, I suppose).

Planning for an asteroid strike strikes me as fear mongering, especially without being able to do anything "unless people see the asteroid in time to plan for it". Being resigned to a fate of having to continuously defend doesn't sound good either. I'd rather consider the possibilities for mankind's future as provided by getting off this rock than wallow in the status quo that merely deflecting an asteroid would provide.
There are two kinds of books and movies (in very simplified example) - which are the art, and which are just a stuff for sale. The first ones are good for you, because they are altering you in good way. The second are annoying and damaging you like primitive direct advertisements (some kind of hypnosis). The first ones is the fresh food for your imagination, the second one is some kind of poison.
Just make your choice what to see, read, eat, or drink. =)