skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
neilk, thanks for the response. I think your metaphor of educational software being analogous to corporate software is right on. Often times, teachers and students are not even consulted on what is purchased and implemented.

I also really like the idea of getting a belt in martial arts. Passing grades has become so expected and boring that there really isn't a differentiation there or a marker that the student has actually achieved something. If you were creating different paths for students to take, how would you organize the content/courses? Would you stay with the curriculum process that is taught in K-12 schools and just allow students to go at their own pace? or would you change it? If you'd change it, what would you use to determine the curriculum path?

Your point about integrating education with real things is perfect. Something we've been thinking about is creating a type of student corp or tutor corp that would match up smart students with struggling students. Peer 2 Peer learning is going to be huge b/c it is really the only thing that scales. (As David Wiley has said, we have limited "teacher bandwidth" so we need to get creative, particularly when you look at things in the context of the entire world. There is just simply not enough educators out there and we are not exactly efficient at turning them out.) So, the question becomes: How do you create an ethos in which students want to help other students? Do you think an open platform that allows this would be sufficient? or, do you think you'd need to be deliberate about creating this culture? If the latter, then how would you go about conscientiously creating this type of atmosphere? One thought is to incentivise it so that students and teachers are rewarded for reaching out. This could come in the form of Karma points, recommendations, a moving up (to stay with your metaphor: yellow belt--> green belt etc.). What else would you recommend?
He lives in Detroit? (I know this has been here recently: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-detroit-h... )
Check out the book Disrupting Education or this blog post for more info on this: http://nixty.com/blog/2008/07/04/disrupting-education-the-ac...
According to their actual website, you can set it up so that it feeds the warmed water back into the water heater, rather than straight back into the shower. Apparently there are thermostatic mixing valves that would probably help with your problem as well (although I just read that in their FAQ and really don't actually know what that even means).
OnLive, a new game-changing technology
From the Game Developers Conference comes word of a new video gaming service that will run on just about any system in your house. The secret? Run the code on their servers, and stream the output to you.
That was pretty interesting, but left me wondering, if you're selling web services, why would one get a merchant account, versus signing up with Amazon Simple Pay or Google Checkout or Paypal? It seems like there, all you need is a bank account to dump funds into, and a little button on your site to send people to give their CC details to A/G/P.

I haven't processed CCs before, but I'd love to hear people's stories about it.
I don't think that the project can be 'subverted' from bringing freedom to users. A fork of it might be made "un-free", as in your Microsoft example. But Microsoft did a lot of their own work, and the original project is still around - completely free.
Twitter is fucking stupid. Anyone who disagrees with me is a douchebag.
Toisanji, nice work! I like the layout of the home site. Tells you what it is and how to use it. You are using a lot of different techniques to promote language learning. Have you found any that are more effective than others?
Next time you turn down someone with a History degree that has become a coding expert in a narrowly defined area, please send them to me so we can collaborate on something that rocks in another narrowly defined area.
The UDP packets are not forged. If they were egress and ingress filtering would block them.
If you don't store CC numbers -- i.e. you use your gateway to store that information -- does it make the merchant account application process any easier?
Paypal, Google Checkout, ASP aren't really professional enough. You can offer them as options, but you need to have a legit merchant service to gain user confidence.
Rhomobile promises: Build once, deploy to any smartphone
Also, even court enforcement of contracts has its limits - you just go outside the borders of a country, and they can't (easily) make you fulfill your contract.

That said, I am all for court enforcement of contracts. In fact, I wish that the courts would respect, if not enforce, far more contracts than they do.
Wastewater heat exchange is not a new concept. Here's a 1986 paper on it. http://www.gfxtechnology.com/Pravda.pdf

The GFX "falling-film counterflow" system is mounted vertically, in-line with the plumbing drain, and has a wide-bore drain pipe. It seems to me that this is inherently less prone to clogging than the horizontally mounted Ecodrain would be.
While I pretty much agree with you, and the water heater advice is great, I suspect that a decent part of that $300 jump in the winter is because the temperature of the water entering your home during the winter is much colder than it is in the summer (a.k.a. it costs significantly more to heat the same amount of water in the winter than it does in the summer).
Both yes and no.

In my experience, the bank will trust you if you say that you've implemented a secure, PCI-DSS way to store credit card details. They'll also trust you if you say that you store the numbers on the gateway.

The important thing is to convey that you're aware of the issues, and you've dealt with them.

There is a liability issue with storing card numbers on your own servers, which, iirc, is that if you are breached, the numbers are stolen, and you are subsequently investigated and found not to be in compliance with PCI-DSS, you could lose your merchant account.
I agree the Chinese are in a bit of a pickle what with holding so many US dollars. The fact that they are prepared to risk their investment by saying this is suggestive. In the end I think the US would still like to hold onto the USD as the defacto world currency and the Chinese move is more a warning that that this can be lost if the value drops too much.

Either way I'm not sure how much it matters who's 'fault' it was now.

But I'm not an expert in international finance either. The startup I'm a part of does very well when the USD is strong but that is about it.
In past I've applied for merchant account through a middle party(there are tonnes across the web) that deals with the bank and authorize.net. It hasn't been a problem.

I wonder what the process is like if you directly go through a bank.
IP Address Geolocation database
Vaksel, I like what you are saying here. So, for example, let's say I've got a course in Algebra Level I. I can then create a test in which they pass at 80% and gain proficiency at 90%.80% = basic knowledge; 90% = proficiency; 98% = mastery. Their level could then show up on their profile. Is that accurate? If not through a test, then how would you assess the knowledge level?

Also, would you embed these tests/levels in courses or would you make them separate? I guess you could do both. One person could work through the course if they wanted a more comprehensive understanding and another person could simply test-out of it by passing the test.
For me it was a matter of efficiency. I have a natural dislike for inefficiency. Why would I go to university for 4 years to learn something I believe I can learn on my own in 1. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but the educational resources available outside of institutions nowadays are incredible.

I also learn so much faster by doing. For me personally, there's not enough doing in university. I imagine there's quite a few similarly minded coders out there. Maybe it says were arrogant? Too cool for school? Most likely. But I get along with most people socially, and also have no problem buckling down to get a job down. In fact I get very focused when I work. I just never learned very well in the typical school environment.

That said, I think programs with internships could be extremely valuable though. A mix of theory and practical has win written all over it.
An easy way around not having to get an SSL certificate and the problems that storing CC data is to apply to someone like Paypal or Moneybookers for their merchant facilities. These are not normal Paypal or Moneybookers gateways but Merchant gateways, they will handle the transactions in a secure iFrame and handle all the security, fraud and data storage issues you would otherwise encounter. Additionally to note the rates will be significantly lower than other payment gateways (unless of course you are able to get hold of a typical bank merchant account)
By "doing everything ourselves", we also learn how it works and we are in control. Accounting is a good example. It could cost us hundreds and we would not know that much about our finance. Until the day we have more money and we found a accoutant that we can really trust, we'll do it ourselves.
I don't think you would gain any day to day stability from doing so. You would still have all the instability in the USD multiplied by the instability in your commodities index. The advantage would be a hedge vs. inflation but that's got limited value relative to stability when talking about small amounts of money.
Worth reading:

Sexual selection was Darwin’s solution to a problem posed by the cumbersome weapons sported by many species, and the baroque ornaments developed by others. They seemed positive handicaps in the struggle for survival, and therefore contrary to his theory of natural selection. To account for these extravagances, Darwin proposed that both armaments and ornaments must have been shaped by competition for mates.
By sanding down their corners until they're smooth?
Buugs, thanks for the review of BB. Yeah, it definitely has some major limitations. I'm with you on the ability to convert documents into Web pages. I think that'd be a great addition.
Gold is highly unstable which is bad. It's value fluctuates even faster than the USD.
OpenOffice was already borked before it was opened.

Abiword seems to work just fine in contrast.
Online Monoculture and the End of the Niche
I've been trying to obtain a merchant account for a US business I've started. Problem is, I'm a UK citizen, not a US one. Although I've got a US company and bank account, I've found every merchant requires a Social Security number (because of the Patriot act). I'm wondering what to do next - and whether I have to set up a UK company just to do the payment processing!
The term firewall has been completely diluted. If the same thing had happened to anti-virus software we'd be calling file extension based blockers anti-virus agents.

Now, Skype's technique is quite interesting and clearly well executed. But it underlines a fundamental problem with trying to glean protocol information from port numbers and SYN packets. Similarly you can "reverse" SSH connections to bypass incoming connection blockers on firewalls.

Besides, philosophically speaking, trying to allow one form of communication but not another is a losing battle. Any communication channel can be used for any purpose. People have been hiding small messages in bigger ones through steganography for a long time. As long as I have friendly server on the outside to reroute my traffic, there's very little you can actually do (Tor anyone?).

Don't even get me started on NATs. Those things make IPv6 look like god's gift to network engineers.
We got our merchant account from Chase Paymentech, and I wish we'd have just gotten it through PayPal directly. It's a two-step process. First, sign up for Website Payments Pro: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overvie... That comes with something that looks like an internet merchant account. Then sign up for Payflow Pro (the former VeriSign gateway): https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_payflow-pro-ov...

Here's their FAQ on the matter: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_payflow-pro-fa...

PayPal won't support you against chargebacks, and they cost more, but if you want to get set up without the headaches of applying to a bank, they're a great option.
How many users did you retain after the spike relative to before the reddit submission?
Mid-30s here, and I'm with you completely. I remember when I was in school I was pretty bored with what was being taught, however a couple things (specifically database theory) got me revved up and I kinda took off on my own. Acing my classes without attending them because I was busy building the department's intranet (none of the professors knew what an Intranet was until I explained it to them).

I dropped out one year before completing my program. Which is kind of funny because it really wouldn't have taken any effort. Instead I was chomping at the bit to work on this new and exciting back-end web stuff, so I went and got a contract job with a small webshop who didn't really understand what I was doing either at first, but we did some great work and had some great success.

My profs were great because they realized I was on to something pretty nifty and tried to make it easy for me to pursue it. They also tried to learn some of the stuff I was learning (I was teaching them in a way). In the end I think both sides benefitted from it.
The actual statement doesn't make any sense: "China’s central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.

In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency 'that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies'."

"controlled by the IMF" does not imply stable. While the IMF is somewhat disconnected from individual nations, it is gamed.

I suspect that this is China's way of saying that it wants to play too. Since it's big enough to break the IMF, it may just be a public announcement of China's new role.
I guess once you get three stores, You will grow like wild fire.
Have a go with merchantplus.com. They're in the process of getting me one (I am pretty sure it's with Chase Bank); I am in the same position as you (non-US citizen with a US company) and I have already been pre-approved.

We're likely to end up with a worse rate then US citizens would, but it's still better then no merchant account.
That's a good point, but I think RMS' insight was that software exists in an ecosystem. No program is an island.

Let's say I develop a very useful system under a free software model. Work that undercuts the monopoly of the unfree software producers, who fight you tooth and nail for years. They lose, but then they do the standard countermove -- taking the work and doing an Embrace & Extend. They provide a system which is subtly incompatible to all their users, which aims to capture all the benefits of your new idea while wresting control of its future development.

This is the situation that RMS was fighting in the 80s and 90s. It wasn't just Microsoft; most users of any computing platform were in thrall to one dominant company or the other, be it Sun or IBM or what have you, who pulled similar tricks.

Linus Torvalds has said over and over that GPLing Linux was the smartest move he ever made. It created a situation where rival companies could trust each other, since each contribution would always go towards growing the Linux ecosystem for everyone. No one company would ever capture all the benefits for themselves. This has worked so well that Linus continues to use GPL for his newer projects like git.

Personally, I trust Linus more than ESR when it comes to understanding software. Linus is a true pragmatist with real experience running major software projects that are disruptive to the existing order.

ESR portrays himself as both a great programmer and a pragmatist, but the evidence is largely confined to his own writings. I leave it up to others to decide if fetchmail is on the same level as git or emacs. And if you look at his other writings, he's explicitly political. He is the sort of libertarian who is actively against the idea that freedom should come with responsibilities to other citizens. (As the featured speaker at a gathering of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, he ridiculed their name.) I say this not to imply he has some evil agenda - he's trying to describe the world how he sees it, and he regards appeals to "responsibility" as an Atlas-Shruggy tyranny of the mediocre. However, much like Ayn Rand, he overstates the case when he alludes to his own work as being definitive, or even academically significant. I don't know of any empirical studies that back up his political ideas, and in this excerpt at least he is not citing any.
> you don't have to be "smart", you have to fit in. economics is a self-referential discipline. there is no real standard of truth or verity or validity of a theory and hence a lot of bickering even about fundamental questions.

The closer a theory fit to practice (e.g. economic modelling) the better it is.

> those who arguably understand economics very well (say a soros)

There is a difference between understanding macro economics and a person doing dubious and unethical things to get money (e.g. Soros). Soros was involved in many dubious financial transactions and was found guilty of insider trading in France. What he did in Hong Kong may not be entirely illegal but it certainly is completely unethical.

Also - their is a difference between macro-economics and things such as stock trading or currency speculation.

On the other hand - most people have a problem with a lot of economists because of what their results are (i.e. not progressive).
I'd be hesitant to click on a link expecting a reload if I thought that it would take me away from the main page of the site, while the hover-activated nav is no commitment.
I like SQLAlchemy as my DB abstraction. Then you aren't tied to a web app. However, for starting I use pylons, and have been playing with FormAlchemy. It gives you a simple admin interface, but you can customize all you want.
Are you guys actually arguing that CatB was better sourced than this article? It wasn't. It was just one relatively unknown guy's impression of what he thought made free software work, with a similarly self-congratulatory tone.

If you thought fame went to ESR's head, you're wrong; he was always like that.
Microsoft has not became dominant because they got a freebee or two from BSD. This is exactly the point - try imagine some evil company today grabbing Apache code-base and starting a commercial branch of it. So what? They will fail against Apache proper, as ESR points out.

Let me try to argue not from ideological (closed source being immoral etc.) but from the economic point of view. We are talking about commoditization of software here.

There are two types of software - one that contains competitive advantage for the business, and one that is a commodity. And software has a tendency to migrate from the first bucket to the second very fast. And by the way, 'commodity' is not a bad word. Software may be very smart and complicated, but it would not be unique in what it does.

For example, if you have written the first social network software -- you have something unique and you'd be mad to open source it straight away (or you'd be very passionate about software freedom, like RMS :) . But when there appear tens of social network apps floating around, you should act like ning and give away your software for free. Why?

This seems to be the rational choice for commodity software. To become king of commodities you have to compete on price. 'Free' is the ultimate winner price. And MIT license is the ultimate free license (less restrictions than GPL).

When your free application grabs large enough slice of market share (mind share) it will start paying for itself in many ways. It 'develops and tests itself', it provides free marketing for you etc. And you are free to build another unique value-adding application on top of this commodity layer.

So, for example, 37signals are very happy with RoR being free and under MIT license. They are using it for their in-house proprietary webapps, while it is being developed and tested now to the large extend by the community. I am sure 37signals would be ecstatic if Microsoft decided to 'grab' Ruby on Rails and integrate it into their next OS.
A federal tax id can usually be used in place of SSN.
I am not yet using Redis for anything. Nor TokyoCabinet, actually.
HELOCs are one of the issues that got us into this mess.
Three Keys to SaaS Success
A couple more articles like this and I'll start looking to buy a home.
..additionally to losing your merchant account, you may also pay heavy fine to visa and mastercard from what I've read

I've been looking at those things lately since I'm working on an ecommerce platform and it will be my server dealing with the my customers (who sell on my platform)' gateway... It's rather complicated..
It's Ada Lovelace Day: Mashup map of today's posts about women in tech
"Dishonesty is a losing strategy in the long run, and no one is likely to try it."

Erm... Microsoft?
Their FAQ at http://www.alphalab.org/faqs.aspx suggests you have to stay in Pittsburgh, which is smaller than Pennsylvania. Even the option to move to Philadelphia would make this more attractive.
I've got a EIN - and it's no substitute to a SS# to the people I've talked to.
10 Signs Your Marriage is Heading for Disaster
When marriages go through the rough patches, it can be hard to tell if it's just normal or if it's a signal of the imminent end. You might not have thought about it for awhile, and then suddenly woke to a marital mess. Or maybe you're suspicious, but aren't sure how to confirm it.
I get a sense of emptiness when I realize that what an author was trying to tell me in some dreadfully long, dreary and depressing book could have been summed up in a page or two, and been much clearer to boot. But that's just how my brain works. I'm still proud, though, of telling my high school literature teacher the same thing and getting a bad grade for it.
I would argue that USD and the rest of currncs are unstable vs. gold.

Supply of gold is fixed. Supply of paper money is at the whim of greenspans.
Zappos v. Whole Foods on Twitter - Who's Better?
Why Does Whole Foods Have Such a Huge Following?

I think there are a number of reasons: sure they’re very often a featured twitter user, they’ve garnered a lot of buzz about their strategy and success (which feeds on itself), they’ve always been very proactive and aggressive online. But I believe the single reason that Whole Foods is more successful online is because Whole Foods has great content!
The most interesting part IMO was:

One of the strains most likely arrived in colonies flown in from Australia in 2005 after the U.S. government lifted a ban on honeybee importation that had been in effect since 1922. (The almond industry lobbied to lift the ban to prevent a critical shortage of pollinators at blossom time.) The other strain probably showed up earlier and is quite different.
PuTTY Tunnel Manager
On the other hand, their About page at http://www.alphalab.org/about.aspx says "As Innovation Works utilizes funds from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, each company receiving funding is expected to maintain a significant presence in Pennsylvania after the program." I guess you would have to ask them for a clearer response, but perhaps they would be OK with anywhere in PA.