skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You do not seem to have discussed any of the issues yourself, it might be pointed out. I think most everyone here would agree that the ban on light bulbs is a bad idea, but given some level of consensus that CO2 emissions are a problem, what to do about them?

Doubtless your answer would focus on the fact that there is no problem at all because the existence of an externality of some kind disagrees with your ideology.

You might even be right that there is no problem, because it's not an easy subject, but on the other hand, a number of scientists appear to indicate that there is a problem of some kind.

In any case, you started going off about communists and (in another thread) Nazis, so maybe we can call Godwin's law and leave it at that.

Speaking of voting people down, someone seems to have had a go at everything of mine they could get ahold of, including those completely unrelated to this discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davidw
One way to monetize facebook apps
Seems like a false idealization. When people are poor enough they will welcome a box of used clothes with quite a bit of enthusiasm, and this:

The young man had taken each one out, reverently, and wrapped them in plastic. "But," we say, "these books were sent to be read, surely?" "No," he replies, "they will get dirty, and where will I get any more?"

...tends to suggest a respect for hard assets more than for readin' and writin'.
I'm not sure if I agree. Sometimes what a company really needs is an EXPERT in their field.

Generally smart people can of course learn any subject matter but a) you'll need resources to coach them and b) they'll write mediocre code for a very long time.

Any smart Java developer can learn Ruby but for a long time they'll be writing Java code in Ruby. It takes a while longer to become adept with Ruby and start writing Ruby code like a pro. And sometimes you just don't have the resources or the time so you need to hire candidates that have expertise in the right area.
Gifts for Geeks
2007 Edition
Sure - that was basically my original point - if all else is equal, in some cases, they're going to hire the guy who has more expertise in a given technology.
I assumed the article was a joke. Yea it sounds about right but it draws no meaningful conclusions. Anyway, if you look at something like Metroid Prime you can see most of the assumptions don't really hold up across the FPS spectrum.

PS: Be careful when using "tend to be X" because you often end up saying thinks that are logically equivalent to "blue cars are blue."
... and? Rails forks. It's slow even for a Ruby framework. You could beat both ErlyWeb and Rails handily in C, if your priorities were that far out of whack. Nobody uses Rails for its speed.
Ask for permission to leave?
Kind of an old post, things have changed for both Rails/Django since then.

Though I'd like to comment on part of his article. He says that Django "is not as straightforward as Rails", and then goes on to complain about how Django requires you to pass variables between templates instead of just assigning them as instance variables in the controller and then automatically showing up in the template. I actually like Rails' behavior in this regard, but I think that Django's way of doing it is much more straightforward. You know exactly what is going on. Django as a whole is like that.

He's also trying to code Python in a Ruby or Java style. __methods just don't get used much in Python. Like Guido says, "we are all adults". And come on, having to use parentheses for a function call is bad? That's just lazy. But I've said for some time now, if you are looking for Rails in Python, it isn't Django you are looking for. Pylons is much more similar.
For me, more than I have now. It could be that no matter how much money you make, its always 'more than I have now' (but then again I'm a poor college student so that may just be me).

But anyways, my main problem with your original article was that whenever someone tells people that you can't buy happiness, it seems that person is always well off. Maybe thats because they're the only people who would know for sure, but it seems a bit like me going to some third world country and saying, 'You know, living in America and not working in a factory for 14 hours a day really isn't all its cracked up to be.'
I think you're missing the point. Getting straight A's is a pretty hard thing to achieve. I for one rarely got A's in the gened classes. The amount of work required to go from a B to an A was very high and not worth it in my opinion. I ended up doing better in math, physics, comp sci because it was interesting subject matter.
Web browsers are limiting the benefits of multi-core CPUs
You can't use item numbers as an index of activity. There's also an internal messaging system that uses items for messages.

How often are you polling our server?
Just Leave.
Meet Alex: New York's Youngest Hustler
Facebook App:  Numbrosia Puzzle (looking for first 5 users and feedback)
One complaint I've always had that no one else seems to bring up: I can't take a flat array of bytes and map a struct over it. You have to fake that out in the most lamentable way...

I guess most people don't need to do that anymore.
Modding stuff down without commenting is perfectly ok. That's why there are separate arrows and reply forms.
U.S. intelligence ignores completely Iranian Nuclear Threat
Way to stick your head deeper into the sand!
"Why I regret getting straight A's in college"

Drop that apostrophe!
For geeks, you can even do those gifts where it's a good thing but you still feel left out, like when my grandpa planted a tree in my name for Christmas once. For example, making a donation to Richard Stallman's beard trimming fund.
What you might consider doing, if you don't agree with the economics, is point out the errors in my logic rather than continue to attack my understanding of economics (which is an awfully broad conclusion to reach from a few comments in any case, I might add). And included in that, for the sake of discussing the economics, is that CO2 emissions are in some way harmful, even if you don't happen to believe that.
Pretty cool puzzle. I've never seen this game before. Its a nice procrastination tool while studying for finals. The only comment I have is that if you change the value of a row/column, it changes the row/column's size, and in turn changes the size of the puzzle. You should make row and column size universal regardless of what number is in it.
If Zuckerberg sold Facebook to Yahoo! for 1 billion he would have around 300 million dollars. Right now all he has is a fictitious valuation. On the other hand he does have the freedom to go around creating crap like Beacon which Yahoo probably would never have allowed them to do.
So if "happy" == "completely happy", it's somewhere around $2E6 for me. Enough interest to cover the basics so I can work on anything I like. Anything after that is just icing on the cake, and it's still fun whether I win or lose (the bills are already taken care of).

I imagine answers to this question vary wildly, but tend to cluster around 3 points: $0, something like my rough calculation, and some large-ish percentage of the GDP.
I can't speak for the downmodders, but I can speak as someone who didn't supply counter arguments.

No counter argument is needed when someone claims that to say CO2 emissions are bad is to reject the very foundations of science.

No counter argument is needed when someone says employers don't pay payroll taxes.

No counter argument is needed when someone says taxes paid by employees don't affect employer costs.

These are obviously false. The down arrow is a perfectly good response.
How about code blocks and yield? I recently started learning Ruby, and this has been one of the first major transitions in how I write code (after programming in Java for several years).
Yahoo! Answers, Where 120 Million Users Can Be Wrong...
Jaw-Dropping Compensation: College Professors vs. College Football Coaches
Considering how Dan Weinreb is one of the designers of Common Lisp, perhaps it is not he who is narrow minded.
It's just about speed as much as how much abuse your server can take before it stops serving.
I have been programming with Java for several years now, I have professional experience with C, C++, Smalltalk and Perl.

From this list I would like to have this:
- A short cut syntax to declare getters and setters.
- A shorter syntax to use "functions as objects".
- Easier to use stream classes.
Not doing it can lead to email hijacking:

Consider someone signing up with my email address: foo@bar.com. Now I'm not going to be able to use that email address, because it is already taken. Worse, if messages to that account, such as invitations, the attacker can accept them, since they typically see the invitations on the site in addition to it being sent to the email address.

As the legit user, I might see the invites, but won't be able to log in at all. Worse things can happen: once the attacker signs up, they could make this email address secondary and add another, primary address so that they see all of the messages.
Incidentally, Wal-Mart doubled sales of compact fluorescent bulbs in one month by moving them to eye level.
Does "per minute" imply once a minute?
He's going to go back to ASP.NET again once ScottGu releases MVC framework. Wait and see.
Brings Maslow's theory comes to mind.
If anyone wants to learn more about how energy use can be cut drastically in a profitable way, listen to these presentations at Stanford by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Insitute. He is basically the foremost expert in the world on this kind of stuff. Best few hours I've spent in the last while:

http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/series/si-energy.html
[SF/London] Join a Kickass Winter YC Company and come to YC with us
What are we doing and who are we looking for?

We're attacking a really interesting (and lucrative) area related to online advertising. We're looking for an exceptional hacker to join the founding team. Someone hungry not just to achieve something, but to achieve something really signficant. Someone whose talent and drive can be a major part of a Winter YC team and beyond.

About you

Skills

- Fluent in Python (we use django) & comfortable in whatever language it takes

- Ability to architect web apps to scale

- Linux Sys-Admin and MySQL DBA Skills

- Experience in mining large datasets/machine learning/collaborative filtering,

Attitudes

- Interested in redefining an age old market in a refreshing new way

- Willing to attempt anything (this is a startup after all!), tough,with a never say die attitude

- Anal attention to detail

- Fun and Intellectually curious

- Willing to push the limits, always learning, can jam with team members

- Gets stuff done, fast

- Intrigued by online advertising, analytics, viral marketing, and other stuff you like

- Has the drive & talent to achieve noteworthy things

- Energetic & visibly enthusiastic.

- Can make original contributions, be a leader at times & spur on teammates to achieve even more than expected.

- Has some work experience/startup experience

Benefits

- Experience the excitement & intensity of YC including dinners with leading figures, demo day, investor day and the other teams

- Work on really interesting problems that you like

- Be part of a peer group that truly wants to achieve great things

- Work with ridiculously ambitious, fun and talented colleagues

- Hang around English accents & internationally minded colleagues

- Get a significant equity stake before our next funding round

Sounds like you? Questions? Email us with a resume and a description of how you, as an individual, show a high level of ability.

Sumon [dot] Sadhu [at] Gmail [dot] com,
Timjdavey [at] gmail [dot] com,
Jamiequint [at] gmail [dot] com
I am polling the server every 30 minutes.
Any smart Java developer can learn Ruby but for a long time they'll be writing Java code in Ruby. It takes a while longer to become adept with Ruby and start writing Ruby code like a pro.

I'm not talking about "any smart Java developer," I'm talking about a top-quality hacker that really understands computers. From a hiring perspective, it may be hard to tell the difference between a great hacker who solves big problems and a Ruby Pro who can only write effectively in Ruby. But it's the truth. A programmer who really understands the inner workings of a system and the point of high-level languages shouldn't have any problem learning to use Ruby effectively in a very short period of time with minimal coaching(No more coaching than you'd likely need to do anyway, if you're planning to actually integrate his code).

If you're trying to plan your own career, "should I become a niche developer?" is the wrong question to be asking, unless you have failed an attempt to become a great hacker and aren't interested in trying again.
No. Network activity is often graphed in kilobits per second, but is polled rather less frequently than once per second.
can't see it (using IE 7)
I guess you are right, because I don't even understand what you mean?
The comment is always lost if you also submit an URL.
To be fair, languages are far more complicated than hammers. It's a log harder to become good at learning new languages than it is to become good at learning new woodworking tools.

It is true that in both cases, the better you understand the nature of the problem the easier it is to see the purpose of a given tool and learn to use it effectively.
Great parenting skills.
German battery could jump-start electric car production - Yahoo! News
Although from a strict, computer-like grammar perspective you'd be right; stylistically it is more effective to use an apostrophe in this case in order to avoid confusion with the word "As." I suspect if you asked a hundred random people about "Straight As" a goodly number would feel weird reading it, or would actually mistake the meaning. Conversely, "Straight A's" is only going to bother people who have memorized the rules.
DIY Multi-touch Displays using the Wiimote
My Facebook App: iGot, what Beacon should have been. (Let me know what you think)
it's better to regret something you did than something you didn't do. go for it.
Getting Your Executive Summary Distributed To Other VCs
If a VC does not think your venture is an attractive business, he will not distribute your business plan. He won't want to waste the time of other VCs. Similarly, if the investment return is not aligned with the requirements of other investors a VC may not circulate the opportunity. It's worth noting that...
struct MyStruct
{
int a;
} ;

char bytes[]={0,1,0,0};

MyStruct *myStruct=((MyStruct [asterisk] )bytes);

...myStruct->a is now 256.

How do you format code here?
Exactly what point am I missing?

What's the cube root of 9? What is the minimum number of points needed to determine a plane? What happens in your app if you divide by zero?

On the other hand, what motif did Browning employ in the last stanza? Is man basically good or evil? Which economic theory works best in the third world?

Maybe you're missing the point. If there's no right answer, what's the point of grades?
Discrete Math Course on Google Video
I'm not surprised, and I disagree with the writer that these levels of compensation are unfair. I think that a good university is one that promotes several spheres of self improvement - academic, athletic, artistic, and the like. As a university student myself, I would be disappointed with my school if it shunned athletics as a lesser endeavor. If a university can promote great academics while also fielding a winning football team, that shows real accomplishment.

A large university might have several hundred professors, but it only has one head football coach. Even if you consider a coaching staff (none of which individually make as much as the head coach), you're only talking about a dozen or two individuals at most. However, a university gains a lot more notoriety by having a winning football team than it does by having a well published professor. If you were in charge, who would you pay more? Don't answer before considering all the alumni that you have to keep happy if you want to keep your job.

Edit: Also consider that once a professor is tenured, it takes a lot for him/her to mess up and get fired. However, as soon as a football coach has a losing season, his future employment is up for reconsideration. The bigger paycheck also means a lot less job security.
I see - I am glad that Java does not support that ;-)

Presumably what you want can be achieved with ByteArrayInputStream and DataInputStream.

byte[] bytes = {0,1,0,0};
DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream(bytes));
int a = in.readInt();
in.close();

untested, but something like that... There is also object serialization. I never had a use case for what you describe.

(format code with 4 leading spaces)
Get the kids up and fed, drop them off, hot tar that roof in 100 degree weather for 8 hours, fight traffic, get to the supermarket, fix dinner for the kids, and pay the bills after you put them to bed, only to do it all over again tomorrow, with a smile on your face the whole time (because others depend on you to smile so they know everything's ok).

Or hang out in the lounge with your latte discussing the merits of Marxism while someone pays your bills.

Please, please, please don't confuse hard work with anything that happens in college. You make the rest of us wish we were still there.
Guess how many CPU cycles my C code requires.
You're assuming a 32-bit little-endian system.

Indent at least two spaces for code.
Airlines will soon offer WiFi. Is this a good thing?
Nokia wants W3C to remove Ogg from upcoming HTML5 standard
He wants fine control over memory allocation.

Most people who want that much control use C or C++.
I'd like to see the numbers that prove that the stars/CEOs/whatever are not worth their money. Like, take two identical companies, but have a CEO run one and a random guy from the street run the other, and show that they both are equally successful?

Isn't the typical CEO salary being decided on by the vote of the shareholders? Why would they vote for paying so much, if it wasn't worth it?

I remember reading an article by Greenspun who says that the CEOs rip off the shareholders, though. Just not sure how they pull it off.
Error: no information in your comment!
He's like a tiny Paris Hilton. Except even more worthless, if that's even possible.
Chrysalis - A Ruby and Rake-based Dependency Manager
Or just tax the energy?
Twitter's Bankroll Revealed
LinkedIn's Young & Rich Demographic - Does Today's Announcement Do Enough For Them?
What time sensitive operation requires you to transform byte arrays into objects? I assumed something like reading from disk or network, and then CPU cycles are usually not the bottleneck.

Anyway, no doubt that you can write faster code in C, but I am glad that I did not have to look at pointer arithmetic for the last 8 years. Using your array->struct technique would be a major headache if the struct get's more complex.
"Meetings are not always about the efficient exchange of information..."

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/01...
AGLOCO Doesn't Pay To Surf, Joins Deadpool
just curious--anyone know what LED bulbs are like, vis a vis warm glowing warming glow? If they're similar enough to incandescents, we won't have to turn our homes into cold fluorescent ice palaces to save the whales.
Well, it's not really the shareholders who vote on it, it's the board's compensation committee, if I'm not mistaken. The shareholders do vote on the board's composition... but even that is subject to some control by the company:

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...
Many people often try to shoehorn Django into whatever app they're writing and come away with less than ideal experiences. I've always looked at Django as a great app for what it's designed for, which is basically a CMS for trusted users. Sure, it can be used to make almost anything, but anytime I move beyond the trusted-user-CMS area, I avoid it.
NYT traffic surges after removal of paywall
Online lending attracts big fish
Forget notoriety. University football generates a ton of money, and since we live in a capitalist society, the people in profit centers tend to get paid a lot than people in cost centers.
Interesting. It always hurts my eye each time I come across it and I am far from a grammar-nazi.
Yup.

The good developer may not know all the idioms in ruby. But that will have negligible impact on his productivity or the quality of the code he writes.
Ask YC: Why aren't job posts open for comments?
Seems like a good forum for public questions.
I read about a condition recently that was like the opposite of autism: people with it were extremely socially adept. Sounds like this kid has it.

Can't find a link at the moment; maybe someone else has read about it?
It doesn't really matter what the purpose of the meeting is, it costs the organization money in lost time & productivity, so someone needs to be billed for it.

You want a display of power, great - float the damn bill for your show.
I agree that a car is nice for getting out of the city, and I miss my car for exactly that reason. However, parking + parking tickets is going to run you about $300/m. Add in gas + insurance and even the worst car that is fully paid for (like my old car) will cost $500/m.

I switched to City Car Share (www.citycarshare.org) and spend maybe $60 every three months on a car. They have a new plan where you can rent a car for an entire day for $40, which is a good deal. Especially since a 19 year old cannot rent a car from one of the standard car rental places (usually have to be 25+).
Understanding Geeks: A field guide to your tech staff.
Did you get to the end of the article? The author was employing sarcasm. So you are really in agreement with the author.
Gee, didn't see that coming at all.

So, are they going to try a third time?
Maybe the right way to write it is: "A"s?
If the average university has more than 10 professors, they are paying more in wages to professors than head football coaches. And if you figure the total amount paid in tuition in a year across the country, I'm guessing that will be a much larger number than the amount spent on tickets and television rights and merchandising for college football.

So, I disagree that professors are a cost center for a university and that, as a society, we invest more overall in head football coaches than in educators.
If it is always just "more than I have now", why do you think money contribute to your happiness at all?
So you're saying there's no use trying to measure the goodness of anything that isn't either clearly right or wrong?

On a semi-related note, you should understand that answering a question well is different from giving the objectively correct answer. Especially when there is no objectively correct answer.
And the board's compensation committee is mainly executives from other companies, who want the executives on their board to also vote them a large pay raise...

It is simple collusion among the executive class, insulated from market forces, that determines executive compensation today. Shareholders are largely cut out of the loop.
I also get tired of auto-generating getter/setters all the time. I think annotations to designate getters/setters would be easy and fit in nicely. No need to invent new class "properties" to complicate things.
Er, yea.

This is hacker news. You better be precise, accurate, and correct. Or it won't work. And you're toast.

Don't like it? Go watch figure skating. And let me know who wins. If you can.
This is slightly offtopic, but why in the world do developers make their sites resize my browser window? Not the blog post, but the USA Today coach salary database- is there a legitimate reason for this or do they just enjoy pissing off users?
"though I've considered living in a van and traveling the country (which really cuts down on rent--campgrounds run $6-$20/night, with discounted weekly rates)...I might even still do that at some point."

Kinda like this guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhTsZGK-d0A