skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
not at all ... providing support is as essential like providing features ... support must be not outsourced ever
Folding@home. Or other peoples homes.
No, they want attention because they haven't created any buzz in a long time. Here's hoping that the press doesn't pick this up.
HP, Lenovo and Dell get an e-waste penalty point
I just finished reading it. Even though it's tongue in cheek humorous in some places, it's a must read for anyone who deals with systems (programmers/engineers/politicos/the average citizen).

One of the hardest things for a programmer to do is to NOT build a system. But sometimes (everytime?) the avoidance of a system (if possible) is the best option.

An example: Our company just implemented a huge ERP system from a well known vendor. As expected the problems we were trying to solve (resource management, etc) became secondary to keeping the system up and running. The system itself becomes the problem.
Cut-and-paste writing
Introducing The Institute for Viral Marketing Science
How to follow your metrics on iGoogle
Ask and you shall receive: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=541814
This is not a technical issue. This is a structural flaw into the conceptual design of their website, so maybe they meant no harm, but that's not the point at all.

Of course that is the point!

Intention is important, not just actions. It makes a world of difference.

Every business is "flawed" in some sort of way - if only because they all aim to trounce their competition and make money. But there's a whole lot of difference between a business that willfully takes unethical steps that they know are morally wrong, and one that merely makes a mistake.

Until I see proof that the GetSatisfaction team is actually a collection of thugs, I will believe the various reports that indicate they're just like the rest of us - nice, smart guys trying to solve a real problem as well as they can.
>> If you see someone sorting papers and try to figure out why they are doing it inefficiently, that is mathematical inclination.

Not really, I would say it was a logical inclination not necessarily a mathematical one. And therein is the rub I see programming as logic and problem solving with little to no inherent math unless I am dealing with a mathematical problem. Kind of like the way writing books is not an inherently mathematical in nature even if quite a bit of math is involved in writing a mathematics text book.
He is not advocating that you get your great UI to work on IE6. He is advocating that you get a lame UI just for IE6 users.
I suppose oscardelben still uses win 95 aswell?
They aren't equivalent, but are similar. I was offended by their business model (pay to get your competitors ads off your support page - wtf) and would never use them for that very reason.

I must admit it's a pretty impressive model regardless. It's like something Mr Burns would come up with :)
I used to use Blueprint all the time, but found it had many inconsistencies and corner cases -- primarily its vertical pacing of type, but also in its grid. Then, when I'd go to fix these issues manually, I'd always end up befuddled and foiled by its implementation overriding me.

My rules for judging CSS frameworks are: "They should pick something, do it perfectly, stay clear of everything else," because fixing just an aspect of someone else's CSS is such a punishing experience. Blueprint fails all three of these requirements, bundling grid, typesetting, form, print, and templates libraries together, not implementing them all perfectly (well, duh), and not staying out of my way when I don't need one or more of these features.

My current favorite grid implementation (and attendant design philosophy) is OOCSS. I highly recommend everyone check it out and absorb the knowledge presented there: http://wiki.github.com/stubbornella/oocss
Right, because none of their customers came from their blog :/

If I were them, I would have send an email asking for the page to be removed, and moved on.
Is it April 2nd yet? Please...
Replace all copies of IE with a skinned, renamed version of Firefox that calls itself IE 9.
This is bordering on semantics. What's the difference between mathematical inclination and logical inclination? The field of computer programming has made a separation in alot of people's mind that simply didn't exist before. People, especially programmers, view mathematics far too narrowly because they lack historical context.

George Boole was a mathematician. The logic textbooks are full of words that betray their background, e.g. the "lambda calculus". All of these things have their roots in mathematics. And before there was computer science degrees, these things -were- mathematics.

I doubt, very seriously, that Djikstra would draw much of a distinction between "logical inclination" and "mathematical inclination". So while you might, the original context of the quote in question needs to be considered.
Be warned you may lose several IQ points reading this article if you are familiar with the concept of strong AI and the singularity. Short version -

- Strong AI isn't possible because it will require too much power according to Moore's law.

- Even if we could build Strong AI, why bother?
Well i'm not that fluent in clojure, but you gotta get that it's a joke when he talks about removing map and reduce from the language :)
Today is April 1st, right?
I didn't like the sounds of "demyelization" induced by a diet of irradiated food. Although no specifics were mentioned about that diet, one has to wonder about the near constant reassurances that irradiated food is safe:

http://www.fda.gov/opacom/catalog/irradbro.html
Handling Things
Specifically it's operations on sets. Trying to manipulate, in your head, many sets of information - with aggregation and outer joins - to yield a solution set is highly mathematical.
I have not found in practice that programmers need to be mathematically inclined to become great software developers. Quite the opposite, in fact.

To anyone unsure about the above quote. Jeff is full of shit. Often he dances on the edge of wrong advice, today he has leaped over it.

You don't need to be a math whiz, but you damn sure need to be math inclined. At the very least you need logic. Any kind of graphics programming - math.

But if like Jeff your career consists of simplistic apps in VB, well then I still wouldn't call you a great software developer without math.

Don't aim to be at best average in your career, it makes for a shitty professional life, which is a big chunk of your whole life.
Why do they make iTunes for Windows?
People known as the father or mother or something
Proof-of-concept Smalltalk implemented using Factor as a host VM
I know great coders, who quit their CS college program because they were bored. That doesn't mean they don't know a SHIT TONE of math.
Your copy and design need a little work.

One big block of text is hard to read, try breaking it up into bullet points or something similar. The actual text needs work as well; you could pay 40 bucks to hire a copywriter

The blue highlights don't work, hard for eyes to follow.

Put a subtitle below your logo that explains exactly what you are doing. Something like: Dead Simple Server Monitoring

Your FAQ needs formatting, but I'm guessing you are iterating as we speak

The bit about you being in the EU is not needed, unless it's there for legal reasons.

Instead of putting the text explaining you use paypal, just use a paypal icon as well as credit card icons
Would the code for the simplified equation be commented so that a business type who wondered why it was represented that way would understand what underlying expression went into the code?

I heard a scary story from a professor of economics who teaches business students. She said she talked about multiplying some value by 20 percent, and wrote on the blackboard "* .2," and then had students ask her why she wrote ".2" on the board when she had just said "20 percent." It probably avoids business logic mistakes to make the steps VERY explicit, so that the businessperson doesn't try to "correct" some error in the formula.
> FWIW, most people who are dropping IE6 support are doing so when it hits the 6-8% usage range.

I know - I want to know where these people get their audience from so that I can swap ;)
I like the name, and the robot :-)

Not a bad service either, but I too think you should offer it on a per-call basis. That way there is very little reason not to buy it.

/Ragnar
"Specifically it's operations on sets"

more specifically on relations, though most database schema in the wild are not really relational. I've personally found knowing relational algebra a great help in designing db s, formulating queries and so on.
I think jokes about death and retirement should not be allowed on April fools...
From crazy Jeff's own comments, and his own mouth:

> I was writing an Asteroids clone in Flash a few years back, I wrote my own insanely complicated functions for calculating directional velocity instead of using SIN and COS

fantastic, LOL! This supports Steve's position -- it illustrates that you'd need enough math background to at least know in what general direction you should be looking. And save yourself some coding time and pain to boot.
Jeff Atwood on April 1, 2009 06:17 AM
I'm sort of surprised there hasn't been that many attacks in human history on April 1st. Noone would believe it, until it was too late.

"Sir we are under attack!"

"Real funny, Johnson"

"I'm serious!"

"Yeah, yeah...let me just call up the president on my imaginary phone"

"Look at the radar, sir"

"I'm calling...I'm calling...yeah sir? we are under attack by Canadians, unicorns and mermaids...its a bloodbath!"
"Would the code for the simplified equation be commented so that a business type who wondered why it was represented that way would understand what underlying expression went into the code?"

Why would a "business type" be looking at raw source code? (unless maybe said code is in COBOL)? I am not being sarcastic, but I've found even good business folks, being lost in (what to my eyes was) very clean code.
Looks great, works great, can't think of anything to nitpick right now :) (edit: oh maybe the categories menu is a bit messy, but its very very minor)
It was a good enough read that I submitted it here too:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=541831

Paul also writes in his startup FAQ:

"The one book we encourage startup founders to read is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's critically important for anyone in business."

If you read that (or listen to it as an audio book, as I did) you get that one of the central points is: don't put people on the defensive.

Guy Kawasaki in Art of the Start has a paragraph labeled "Wait When You Hate":

"Although you should always answer e-mail in under twenty-four hours, there is one case where you should wait at least twenty-four hours before responding: when you're angry, offended or argumentative. E-mail written when you're in these moods tends to exacerbate problems, so delay your response."

The reason this advice keeps recurring is because it's good advice.
I have done this via writing my own system.

At one workplace I had perl scripts that ran on every Unix machine there at night (about 60 Sun's on engineer's desktops) that checked with a central repository, locked a task, and downloaded it and ran it and filed the results. I have since done the same with a mysql "task" database, and the client checked in and picked up a task and ran it.

In both cases the system was not general and specialized to the particular jobs at hand.

It really depends on what type of tasks you have, and what resources you have in terms of computers. Without those details, the best I can say is that rolling your own is not that hard, and you should not be intimidated by it.
What about Austin or Northern Virginia?
fair use

The concept of "fair use" applies to copyright law, but it doesn't apply to trademark law at all. And if GetSatisfaction doesn't have anyone on staff who knows the difference between copyright law and trademark law, while they are copying business corporation trademarks to display on their site, they are acting in a seriously unprofessional and legally dangerous manner. The lesson for employees of GetSatisfaction would be to not accept stock options as compensation, and to start sending around resumes to a company that is more legally prudent in its business model.
Synchronize the system clock, set the volume to maximum, and then, at the right moment, and with perfect synchronicity, each computer would play back a prerecorded speech claiming to be a message from God...
Before you submit that April 1st link...
...please review the submission guidelines definition of "on-topic" (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer
might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual
curiosity.
fix the economy :)
While I agree with Jeff that Calculus isn't always necessary for programming, other areas of math definitely are.

Basic algebra, linear algebra, abstract algebra, discrete math... I apply concepts from these areas constantly.
What does malice have to do with it?

Here's part of Jason Fried's description of the problem:

Can you believe that language? “37signals has not yet committed to open conversations about its products or services.” WHAT?! We haven’t committed to open conversations about our products or services because we haven’t signed Get Satisfaction’s pact on Get Satisfaction’s site which generates Get Satisfaction’s income? That’s awfully close to blackmail (or a shakedown or a mafioso protection scheme).

It doesn't matter whether Get Satisfaction wrote the false and insulting phrase about "open conversations" by accident or on purpose. It was insulting, and false, and if Jason's response came off as a bit angry nobody should be the least bit surprised. They asked for it; they got it.

It also doesn't matter whether Get Satisfaction was committing a shakedown through "ignorance" or out of "malice". A shakedown is a shakedown. Get Satisfaction created a problem [1], and then asked for something of value to make the problem go away [2]. That's a shakedown.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that Get Satisfaction didn't mean to wake up one day and discover themselves in a dubiously ethical line of work. [3] But they did. To their credit, they seem to be reacting with appropriate public displays of horror and remorse.

---

[1] The problem: A site that fooled me, and apparently more than a handful of other people, into thinking it was an official 37signals support site. One that was full of questions, but no answers.

[2] The value: A public endorsement from 37signals, in the form of a publicly visible signature on a "Company-Customer pact". Endorsements are valuable. (The pact itself seems to be a bunch of legally meaningless pledges, but then again I'm not a lawyer; if it contains any legally actionable language, then the mere act of signing it is a cost.)

Also: A public notice, on the Get Satisfaction page, that 37signals employees visit that page -- a notice which, once it is up, will tend to obligate 37signals to devote valuable employee time to answering questions on a third-party support system that's incompatible with their standard support system.
The cost of having to do tech support on two -- or three, or four, or seventeen -- different public sites is nontrivial. (Copying and pasting support tickets from site to site is inefficient. Hacking up RSS feeds to integrate trouble reports from n different sites is inefficient. Answering the FAQs 2n times per week, rather than just n times per week, is inefficient.) More importantly, splitting your support effort across multiple venues dilutes your brand, dilutes your customer base, and confuses your customers ("where should I report this problem, again"?), and that's even more costly.

[3] I've had the experience of suddenly realizing that I'm working on an unethical project. It's not uncommon -- just ask the people who've been working on Wall Street. It's amazing how such things can sneak up on you.
Skynet. Self-awareness is only a few million more bots away...
I think the question is a good one, and I think it's clear you did a fair amount of research before writing your post. There are several other philosophies you could have included but didn't, and the three you chose are the only ones that I believe make sense.

I suggest a broader approach to "The Warren Buffet Berkshire Hathaway model." Buffett is a value investor, and frequently cites other value investors who have started with similar assumptions (based on Benjamin Graham's work) but who don't necessarily place few bets (Buffett credits Philip Fisher, and also Munger, with making him a believer in concentrated portfolios).

The value investors I recommend reading, in addition to Buffett, Graham, Fisher, and Munger, are Martin Whitman, Seth Klarman, and Christopher Browne. Browne's letters and studies are available for free on the Tweedy, Browne website, Klarman's book (Margin of Safety) can be found as a pirated PDF, and Whitman's books are relatively inexpensive (and his letters to shareholders are free). Also, in addition to reading shareholder letters by Buffett and Munger, be sure to check out Lowenstein's Buffett biography (and The Snowball, though it's not nearly as good; Janet Lowe's Munger bio is a waste of paper).
I thought CADIE was nice, in fact I'd preferred that on the front page over this, but I agree with you.

Also, as QWANTZ points out today, they should all it disappointment Wednesday - TopGear on Hulu is sadly not real.
Well i believe someone said "With great power comes great responsibilities"

I'm not saying intentions are not important. I'm saying what you get as an outside observer is the facts, not the intentions.

GS business is directly built upon the existence of other societies, particularly internet related ones. It's actually the whole purpose of the site. So , as nice as they may be, they DO have a responsability about what they do with the image of theses societies, and a way bigger one than anyone's else site wich is not making added value with the society's technical support, or lack thereof.

This responsability is real, and they failed at assuming it. That doesn't make them thugs, or mafia or anything, unless we have proof of such things ;)

But it does make them pretty irresponsible people, since they failed on the particular point that is supposed to be the key of their business !

Now i'm not saying it's dramatic or anything. They're probably nice people. I'm just saying than saying sorry, even with the nicest of attitudes,and changing this banner, isn't gonna cut it until they make all the changes needed to adress every point made on 37s.

Also i don't think it's particularly nice to play the card of "We're a nice little harmless startup, we're struggling, don't throw bad words at us".

They did real harm. In what proportions, that is difficult to estimate. I probably would have thought along the same lines as the guys from 37s, wich do not have a duty to play nicely with people that , besides all you could say about their niceness, still potentially harmed their business.
Downvote non-HN type stories at HN.
Stealing Music: Is It Wrong Or Isn’t It?
Put up fake april fool's day websites in place of popular sites. Oh, wait... nevermind.
This is why I think this is an April Fools joke. Perhaps they are playing on the general public's fear of radiation.
"Knowing even a little of the right kinds of math can enable you do write some pretty interesting programs that would otherwise be too hard."

(one of the Yegge quotes in the article)

I think this nails it.

It's a Blub thing. Jeff sees little use for Math because he does not know of any mathematical solutions for the problems he encounters. But...how can he think of a mathematical solution for a problem if he doesn't know very much Math?

Google, of course, relentlessly applies Math to everything they possibly can. I think that has worked out rather well for them. The flip side is that they might lose a good designer occasionally with good subjective judgment about hard to quantify things.
I don't know if you're serious I don't have 3D glasses lying around so I can't check. But I would imagine given the right data google chrome could be made to render, lets say specially an noted maps, so that they work with 3D glasses.
It could be real, and I hope it is.
I don't think that Conficker is going to be making an impact on world hunger very soon.
Thanks a lot for this feedback. All very good points. Since everything is still very non-final (see points on pricing etc.) the copy isn't as polished as it should be.
A lot of useful programming tools are mathematical. Bloom filters, machine learning, and big-O analysis (especially with amortization) come to mind. A competent programmer should be able to dive into those things if needed. (Needing to study up on Wikipedia first is fine, of course.)
Thanks Ragnar :) There seems to be consensus that per-call is the way to go, going to work on this soon.
I remember working in a bank and a colleague having to explain operator precedence (multiplication over addition) to a "programmer" who did not understand why his program did not work. Scary to think about people like that writing software to handle people's money.
Your best bet is to set up several virtual trading portfolios and see which strategy actually works for you. You will learn much quicker and make your first mistakes with fake instead of real money.

Google virtual stock portfolios or virtual investments - there are lots of websites that offer fantasy trading. One of your goals should be to simply find out how much time you can devote to your portfolio... most people find that its' a job and go back to index/mutual fund investments.
Your criticisms are fair, but:

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain

2) How long do you think we'll need? "At some point in the future" is an awfully long time scale, especially relative to how long it took natural selection to create the human brain.

3) I don't think they'd deny that augmentation is already happening. But that piecemeal progress is still a long way from The Singularity.
From PG's article "Ideas for Startups" [http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html]

"...to attack hard problems you need powerful solvents. I find math is a good source of metaphors good enough that it's worth studying just for that..."
FBI's Google Mashup for catching bank robbers
Agree fully with lbrandy's point. Just to add a little more, people seem to get confused between the expression of mathematical thoughts and having mathematical thoughts. Mathematical symbols are abbreviations for ideas that, if expressed in natural language, would become tedious. Mathematical thinking is something people do everyday. For example, parents have to use combinatorial optimization everyday to figure out a best strategy for running errands. Few parents are schooled to a formal expression of the mental processes they go through in determining a solution but they weigh different goals and optimize nonetheless.

Oddly, a study that is all about exploration of ideas and abstraction has been narrowly defined in many people's minds. Hopefully mathematics educators can break these limited views in years to come.
For tech and non-tech:

http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/
http://twitter.com/AprFoolsDay
To those who might have missed what the parent is talking about, in 1995 a formula was discovered that lets you calculate the n'th bit of pi without calculating the previous n-1 bits. This surprised everyone.

The consequence is that you can compute the n'th bit in essentially linear time, and essentially constant memory. By traditional methods, computing the quintillionth bit would be unthinkable.

However, I doesn't look like the algorithm is parallelizable in a meaningful way. Any thoughts?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe_formula
If you're honestly not getting the programming joke, you might want to read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_combinator#Y_combinator

The other possibility is, it's just not that funny. :)