skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The calculus books are very good and very interesting, and include books based on nonstandard analysis, such as the Keisler and Stroyan texts. But the list is very sparse on number theory.

Many of these books have lived on the Web as free books for quite a few years, but it is a convenience to have them gathered in one place.
The bad thing about keeping your data in the cloud is that you don't really know 100% if it's secure.

The good thing is that you all get security updates at exactly the same time without doing anything.
Yup, pretty much the info I managed to find on my own. The thing is interesting (being in the EU and all), and I e-mailed him to get some more detail (waiting for a reply) -- I posted it to share and because I wanted to see if anyone in the field knew him more or less directly

Thanks for your reply!
Interrupt? Let the Bastard handle it
:)
Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=398597
Learn Git one commit at a time
Ask YC: Can other investors join the round of funding with YC?
We've applied for YC this round. We've had two [one very prominent angel & one large seed fund] contact us asking if they could (maybe) invest.

We would love their money (small amounts initially - enough for Q2 2010 with growth), and we'd love the YC mentorship, branding and community.

Is there a way to make it work? Or do we just ask to speak to them after YC? Sorry for posting on an alt, with this stuff I'm really paranoid.
Your timing couldn't be any more perfect. On this thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=521298 I wrote about using online textbooks at my daughter's high school. Last night I met with the principal and some faculty who are very interested in starting a pilot program to move at least a couple of classes to online books. My task is to find out what materials to use - e-booksdirectory.com could hardly be more perfect - and how to access them in the classroom.

So how would any of you recommend using online books in the classroom (high school level)? Our budget isn't huge but a new Kindle2 costs about the same as four textbooks. Many students already have laptops but certainly not all. Ideas?
More importantly, it's not a "toxic" subject - something that will get people riled up, like economics or politics. If you don't find it interesting, it's pretty easy to ignore, as long as there aren't too many other 'interesting tidbits' stories.
Bullcrap! Do a search on twitter, any search, and see the results:

sender @receiver babble tinylink tinypic utterblab
Agreed. This might be premature for sites like Twitter.
Integrating lessons with Wikipedia, blogs etc... could be quite useful, however. Chances are that children already use all these tools to complete their homework assignments, so "teaching them" technology probably shows how out of touch education authorities are with the average primary school child. Children certainly don't need to be taught how to use a spell checker!
So the primary reason for moving stuff out of the database in this particular example is not performance, but storage constraints. Relational databases are notorious for being exceedingly difficult to scale beyond a dataset which fits on one server. If you have a giant blob stored in every row, you'll grow out of the database's one-server storage capacity much more quickly than if you take that blob and store it someplace else. If your data row instead includes columns 'server' and 'path', you can easily distribute your blobs across multiple servers.

In the example in the video, the team took the concept a step further and (1) stored the blobs in S3, and (2) served them to the users straight out of S3. That way, they pay for S3 storage, but not for their own machines for storing or serving up those blobs.
Diagramming the PokerTracker 3 Database
I agree, just teaching a child how to use twitter or a blog is not that relevant unless it can be tied to instruction. The proposal seems rather vague on how this will be implemented in the classroom.

Unfortunately, it is rare that teachers are ever trained properly and provided with curriculum ideas for using technology, but rather have to figure out how to do use it themselves. Work has been done on using the different online aspects and cell phones in the classroom to teach about various subjects, but without a teacher getting this instruction they fall back to the simplest activity possible and lose the educational value.
Maybe it is. Putting aside the fact that this is a major change in the business model, the admins still have not responded to the furor.

They gave a 5 day notice, they haven't put it on Last.fm's home page and they haven't assuaged users' fears. That is still a terrible way to treat the community who has basically provided the information the service needed in order to be as good as it is.

I don't think that that is presumptuous to expect of them.
Ask HN: How to handle a large collection of tags?
I was thinking about handling a large number of "items" (for example videos) with quite a lot of tags (let's say 20 tags on average), like for example last.fm or youtube does... where tags are aggregated and used for data mining. The question is: has anyone done this efficiently for millions of "items" and millions of tags and provide us with how it was done?

For example... in a relational database, should I use a unique id for the tag "funny" and every item with this tag is assigned through a middle table with this id... or is it better to save "funny" again and again in the database and get a new tag_id for it?... And then aggregate the tags through counts of the same word (no middle table is used in this case).

Or... Has anyone done something similar with a NON-relational database? For example in google App engine. Any way to assign tags to "items" ... and aggregate them (count, group by, sum...) efficiently? I'm trying to avoid running too soon in scaling problems... How far can I go with simple hardware? Thx.
We may adjust the period, but I do not think people are suggesting that we're making an irreversible change to the planet? Planet heats up, various complex mechanisms kick in, planet cools. The million-year average temperature of this planet is mostly governed by distance to the closest star. Is there much discussion about our planet getting closer to the sun? I don't pay much attention. If it was, I would very much listen to Dr. Dyson. Our fear and panic is about an irreversible change to the planet as we know it -- those complex mechanisms may not be pleasant for current life on the planet (ask the Dinosaurs, or anything living through an Ice Age). Environmentalism is mostly about conservation and continuity of the present biosphere. The planet will be fine, the planet will continue to have a climate, the climate will continue to cycle.
Of the embedded databases I'm familiar with, Berkeley DB with its transaction layer does support multi-process access. It requires some careful coding but does work and detects deadlocks of the type you describe (http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/berkeley-db/d...). No idea if this works with language bindings other than the officially-supported C, C++, and Java.
Very basic explanation of the pros and cons. It assumes a total beginner audience.

I think that the lack of foreign key constraints and transaction support needs to be emphasized more, especially considering who the audience is.
i use dropbox all the time, it's great. glad to see them doing well.
Tag Soup: Crazy parsing adventures
Quite frankly, I think that a traditional textbook is still best for actual coursework. Online is great for later reference, refresher study, and research, but no digital format has yet reached the level of usability and robustness as a printed textbook.
I don't like the way that life is controlled by money, id much rather live life freely, and that's what I intend to achieve in part, by either selling my startup or just making it so automated that I can earn a living without working 40 hours a week.

Then id probably go and see the world and all of its wonders.
Relational databases are notorious for being exceedingly difficult to scale beyond a dataset which fits on one server.

Factually incorrect. This may apply to MySQL, but that doesn't translate to the rest of the RDBMS-world.

I wonder if I should start calling this point of view "MySQLism", as it seems to be a theological dogma, with no basis in reality whatsoever, echoed endlessly in the MySQL world.

For instance: I've managed database servers with mere 8GB of RAM, with hundreds of concurrent connections handling datasets of several hundred gigabytes, and they ran just fine. The load wasn't even particularly nasty, with CPU hovering at around 10% and no disk-queueing at all.

Ofcourse I chose to use something better than MySQL, which might explain my success.
Yeah, I'll be reading through those as well. I like nothing better than reading a paper out of my depth and then learning as much as I can about the subject in order to understand what I've read.
The disturbing point about this is that the developer may have to pay back more than they received. That is unfair, Evil even, whether or not a developer goes bankrupt. And notwithstanding the fact that Apple incurs a cost to provide the service.

The only extra cost I can conceive of as fair is paying for 70% of the payment processing. Remember, free apps get all the rest of the App Store services at no cost.
'First economical process' for making biodiesel fuel from algae
I'd buy my parents house from them, and let them finally retire. I'd travel a bit, then setup a small office and start working on my list of ideas.
I suspect the uproar is coming at this time because someone actually took the time to read the agreement, rather than automatically clicking through it. Those agreements might say that I have to give up my first-born child and I'd never know it. I just click through.
Or they will subcontract that to a firm that specializes in dealing with government bureaucracy. Two hundred might be a bit small, but I don't think the sub-1000 range is untenable.
Definitely! They deserve it, works better than any of the other solutions I've tried
Same here. I set up a dropbox for every team I work with. I think the idea of using a dropbox rather than focusing on syncing computer folders like what sugarsync does will reduce the fear of some people in uploading their folder contents. Dropbox being a folder by itself give people that sense of security and also it's a lot easier to explain!
Well this whole thing started with the RIAA stating they are no longer actively searching for users illegal downloading music. So if they are no longer actively searching for them, where are these cease and desist orders originating from? The ISP's say they are not actively seeking the users dling music nor should they, they are just forwarding the notices. The original drama started when the RIAA basically told the ISPs its their job to find the users and notify them of their doings, of which is what the ISPs "hadn't responded to yet".

"Comcast adds via spokesperson that nothing's changed"
So did the RIAA lie and they are still actively seeking out and reporting to ISPs to report to the user or is this article misinformed?
We should join forces and prove both.
Yeah, I have to say that even though a Mac Pro is my dream machine, this article is ridiculously over-enthusiastic.
We already do. Forget the synthetic pharmaceuticals, nothing is quite so effective as a cigarette, a strong cup of coffee, or a chocolate bar. You have to wonder why it is that most (if not all) ancient civilizations had some sort of drug tradition, whether it was smoking opium or eating mushrooms. If being straight-laced was such a good idea, how come the straight-laced societies didn't overrun all those drug-addled societies?

...of course, that's not to say modern medicine isn't useful. It's the reason that we know coffee + chocolate == good, cigarettes == bad. Still, there's something to be learned from history...
You can start a small seed funding VC group, and name it after a cool trick in mathematics which defines recursion.
nice. the best sushi i've ever had was sushi for breakfast at Tsukiji. fresh as you can get it. which would've probably only been made better if i had a friendly, mmorpg-playing chef. was too busy to chat him up.
"30 tables. 1000+ columns."

That sounds like a denormalized schema to me...
Infoworld is in my opinion below the level of this website. Or at least, it used to be.
I remember watching one of Norvig's Tech Talks where he was asked specifically about the semantic web and his response: "the semantic web is the future of the web... and always will be"
http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion88.html
1) I would start all over again. If I was successful once I feel I could be successful again.
2) I have an idea for a non profit I want to start and knowing that I could financially support myself and have money to start this I would get it rolling
3)Invest. I may not have the next big thing but I'm sure other people out there do and I would like to help them out because I will have known what they are going through.
Dropbox is tremendous. I use it for backup and for sharing files and pretty much for everything else that I can.

I've never heard of SugarSync. And Dropbox is still a lot below a site like Box.net: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/getdropbox.com+sugarsync.co...
I am a believer in "if you're relentlessly resourceful, you can make it work :)". I honestly never considered/thought moving to a part time H1 especially in this economy. It was always evenings/weekends in my mind. But now that you mention about Part time, it seems a pretty descent option :)

BTW what/who are the "IIRC , The buxfers" ?
I could imagine a race of egghead hyper-rationalists who would feel depressed at the thought of the absence of determinism. They would be horrified at the thought of living in an unpredictable, chaotic universe.
Thanks for the awesome suggestions. Just to add to Enrique's comment, there is no commitment. You can cancel your plan at any time.
How to become a "Death of Newspapers" blogger
> Cnet's Greg Sandoval reports that a Comcast executive said that they've sent customers two million warning notices about infringement.

One would think the RIAA would realize that two million notices means their tactics aren't working.
Do these issues really warrant such an article? That closing statement was pretty silly
Most time management is rubbish
"Planet heats up, various complex mechanisms kick in, planet cools."

The "various complex mechanisms" are precisely what people are discussing and might not be well enough understood.

But sure, eventually the planet will cool again - at the latest when the sun dies.
There was a point where Dropbox was our very own SVN =)
Fashionable childhood: American designers have launched stiletto shoes for babies
These exploits sound similar to the recent Facebook photo exploit. Google keeps information in redundant server farms so they can continue to server billions of pages a day. Complex permissions usually do not mesh well with this method of keeping data because it is impractical and maybe impossible to use sessions or cookies to see if the user attempting to access a file has permissions to do so. A (startup?) company could do a lot to solve these problems by rethinking the way permissions work with distributed data. I think the space is wide open and the market needs a better solution.
Microsoft flatly says "no" to the "manifesto" and throws down the gauntlet to its creators, demanding that the process to determine any open standard be debated openly, whether via wiki, conference, or some other method.

Even me, which works with and actually likes Microsoft's development tools and server platform, expected the complete opposite when reading that headline.

Not going to let bias or prejudice throw me off, all I'll say is that this could turn out to be interesting. I'd very much like to see the manifesto, and once published, Microsoft's reason for rejecting it.
Undergrad improves CERN supercollider algorithm
I agree with everything you wrote, but I'd like to emphasize a minor point.

MBAs, Lawyers, etc, all have a bad image because, as you point out, they are chiefly a community of - make big bucks/whatever is legal is ethical - people.

And while it is unquestionable that a lot of people do NOT belong to that group, a majority do.

Therefore the public's perception is accurate.

Sad, especially unfortunate for the good lawyers and MBAs, but true.
Hacking poo poo
I like Twitter, but I disagree. If you focus on practice and improvement then it will, but it has little to do with the service or its restrictions.
You must be talking to the wrong people. In my experience, when given the liberty, people tend to approach problems with either "let's solve this!" and "how can we solve this?". The former focuses on getting it done, the latter - on what the best process of getting it done is. Neither is superior, but the latter is who is interested in this stuff.
Used Video Games Are Good For The Industry (It's Just GameStop That's Bad)
I would argue that compete.com stats for something like dropbox are pretty inaccurate. However, that being said, the website traffic is probably much less than the actual growth. I've been to the dropbox site only a handful of times, but I use it every day with the file system integration.

I'd love to see a graph of their bandwidth and storage growth. I'll bet that would be a site to behold.

It's a great idea, and congrats to all involved!
Ask HN: Joint venture negotiation advice..?
Some context: I took the plunge and left my programming job last September to build something useful: a simple yet easy to customize web-application for the HR/recruitment market.

I recently demonstrated an early version (about 60% complete) to the founder/CEO and technical director of a well established HR consultancy that also provide bespoke recruitment software to large organizations. The meeting was very positive:

* It confirmed my application was doing the right things as far as HR people are concerned

* We "got" each other's outlook

* We had similar visions of how technology might shape HR/recruitment in the future

They recently got back to me and have proposed a joint venture based on my product: they pay me whilst I complete the product, I would retain ownership of the product so long as they have some sort of exclusivity in a revenue sharing deal.

This is a good opportunity: I'd get a route to market, a pool of HR expertise to draw from and an established partner.

However, I'm a software developer (among other things) and this is my first "venture". My biggest concern is my naivete so I'd like to ask the HN community for advice:

* I'll register a new company through which I'll do this work (rather than just being "that guy hacking away on stuff"). Any tips on how best to do/structure this? Or is it as easy as it looks (in the UK)?

* Exclusivity contract: I'm assuming it will be for version X of product Y in location L for duration D in market M. Currently, M=Govt/public sector/"third" sector and doesn't include the private sector. What should I expect for L and D and what else might one typically negotiate (I was thinking in terms of sales targets)?

* Revenue sharing: I'm (again) assuming we'll be negotiating on % of sale price. What are typical percentages for the split between software developer / reseller?

* Any legal gotchas I should know of / avoid?

* Anything else I might need to know when getting into a situation like this..?

My personal long term aim is serial entrepreneurship.

Thanks in advance... :-)
Does this include traffic to the web interface?
AOL never should have tried to be Yahoo
How did you transition? Do you hire programmers now to build stuff, instead of doing it yourself? Or is the nature of your business just much more content/marketing oriented now, so you don't need much (new) technology?
I traveled for a couple of years, then went back to get a PhD in mathematics.
My immediate reaction, having never heard of Dropbox, was "why not just use SVN".
Ok, I'm gonna try to address each of these "loopholes" one by one, because this whole thing smells like fishy PR stunt (I'd say FUD, but HN ain't slashdot right?):

1. Non-private uploaded images: This is the image URL http://docs.google.com/File?id=dczjts34_227g3234gdg_b. That looks like a pretty secure random UUID to me. You have as much chance of guessing that as guessing an account password. So the only problem here is revoking view access for someone to the document after they have viewed it. They can keep accessing the Document, if they have a copy of it. Which will always be true unless you want to start serving DRMed PDF files or something. I wouldn't put that past this particular security researcher.

2. User can view earlier revisions of a diagram: Fair enough. Once again, it doesn't seem like a complete breakdown of security if your collaborators can view earlier versions of a document or a diagram within a document. Personally, when I share a versioned document with someone, I expect they will be able access the versioning information. I don't know if Google makes any express guarantees about earlier versions being blocked off from viewers, maybe they should, but it's worth making it explicit.

3. Someone somewhere may be able to grant herself access to your documents: I am not even going to address this one. Without an actual account of the vulnerability, this is just irresponsible insinuation.
Why Wall Stree Professionals Are Overpaid
You have to admire Dyson's blunt honesty:

If what he says were obviously wrong, he wouldn’t have achieved what he has. But Hansen has turned his science into ideology. He’s a very persuasive fellow and has the air of knowing everything. He has all the credentials. I have none. I don’t have a Ph.D. He’s published hundreds of papers on climate. I haven’t. By the public standard he’s qualified to talk and I’m not. But I do because I think I’m right. I think I have a broad view of the subject, which Hansen does not. I think it’s true my career doesn’t depend on it, whereas his does. I never claim to be an expert on climate. I think it’s more a matter of judgement than knowledge.

I especially love the point about Hansen's career hinging on his theory being borne out which seems to be a general issue with science which crosses over into the mainstream consciousness.
It's sad that an article with such an asinine title, and such poor analysis and content, makes it close to the top of hacker news.

Can we have ONE day without a ritualistic bashing of the music industry and the RIAA, please?
It's the difference between a supergoal and a supergoal.
I certainly didn't mean to write off climate science or scientists. My point was that I don't know how to distinguish the science from the propaganda, except in obvious cases. I find it hard to believe that other armchair scientists can be so sure of themselves. They could be right, but to me its mostly a sign of propaganda.

So I don't know who the climate scientists are. Lots of parties are making wild claims and saying science is on their side. Take http://realclimate.org/ for instance. Is this real climate science? I mean, anyone could put up a website with the words "climate science from climate scientists". How does one tell?

Though I think you're right that peer-reviewed literature gives an indication.
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