skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I won't upmod this, as I don't want news.yc to become mysteriously full of xkcd comics tomorrow. But I think this incites interesting conversation.

These days I'm investigating computer vision algorithms. I had worked on them for real time interactive apps (games that used webcams for input... ie: your fingers are the mouse) using C++, but for experimentation this was getting very tedious (even if I've always used Lua for the games themselves... but that doesn't help in the CV engine at all).

These days I've been creating an hybrid that lets me play with CV stuff in Python, so that I can experiment with a lot of algorithms and techniques at once and only later see which ones are useful for my purposes for the final real time C++ app. And it became REAL FUN at once. Python is refreshing, and Python as a language is fun. It feels like playing while you should be working.

And on monday, the real test to Python came. My girlfriend wanted me to teach her enough programming to let her program some interesting Boolean Networks stuff she's very intrigued about. In the past, I had been teaching her some other languages, like a little of C++ and Flash, but they were somewhat boring for her as they were always requiring a little more of abstract programming knowledge from her (a curious foreign in the world of CS) to let her do something interesting (structures, pointers, tedious strings stuff, and very stupid and useless stage stuff in Flash). In Python, in a few hours of teaching we could program some Boolean Networks, repeat some results we had got in paper, and get some interesting new results... it even got very interesting both for her and me, as we got some very curious and intriguing results!!

We ended the day talking about how to extend that, about what other elements of programming she'd need to learn to do some other things she wants to learn, and also she's been teaching me some basic biology to understand what's the connection with this strange BN stuff.

Of course, my gf is a very intelligent girl... but anyway I consider the success of this first intent of teaching anything superior to an interactive "hello world" to be an excellent marker of the simplicity and power of Python as a programming language.
6-3 is computer science and 18-C is mathematics with a CS focus, right?

I believe the song said "honor roll", not "honorary". MIT does not have an honor roll.

IIRC it has given out one honorary degree, to Winston Churchill.
wow! it's good! I need to know more about your impressions with SBCL to web development, I'm on it too.
i thought this was going to be web design, like post your site up here and have someone improve the design. kinda like an online version of what wufoo's kevin hale does for yc startups.

that coulda been cool
Israel's Silicon Valley
I started learning Python in a seminar from Mark Lutz, who wrote this great book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=5zYVUIl7F0QC&printsec=f...

He mentioned a list of groups that were using Python in a big way. Google, Weta, ILM, JPL, iRobot, AnyBots, Justin.tv

SciPy is going to switch lots of Matlab users. If there is a good browser-side way to use Python, it will skyrocket. One language that excels at the back end, front end, media processing, signal processing, and scripting.
Can I upmod this twice please??! This video is absolutely fantastic. For a related link, check here: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/
I lover jQuery but like others, I only use the core libary - I've yet to dabble in the UI library.

extJS support jQuery (as well as others) and is by far the best UI library available.
I see an annoying update popup in my future.
"The Humble Programmer", by Edsger W. Dijkstra
Spouse 2.0 Day: For Those That Give To Your Other Startup
It's pretty funny that "being the next Microsoft" is already passe`.
That should help them a little bit on langpop.com :-)
People think they are entitled to continuity. They despise bad faith such as bait-and-switch. Therefore, start as you mean to go on.
i think that jQuery mostly abstracts away the redundancy, not so much the complexity. so, in short, you have nothing to be afraid of :)
it could be if you want - i don't think there's a limitation;
besides what their server can handle performance wise
And this is how you can tell it really is a bubble: people talking about becoming billionaires. It's silly and smacks of a get-rich-quick scheme.

If a bubble is best defined as irrational exuberance taking valuations as multiples of intrinsic value, then the fact that the exit strategies are different and there are fewer IPO's than 10 years ago is irrelevent. Web 2.0 seems to be clearly Dot Com Bubble 2.0.
Why GEB? I read the original Godel paper and I studied on the subject, and I read a lot of related material... so I found GEB to be rather boring when talking about Godel (and pretty repetitive), and when not talking about it, I found it to be almost unscientific: unfocused, always going into unproved conjectures (or shallow theorems), and very little times explaining about stablished and scientific work that has proven to be useful.

So I could never understand this... why all the hype with GEB? What's the big thing with it?
iPhone on Rails - Creating an iPhone optimised version of your Rails site using iUI and Rails 2
Continental Airlines Turns Mobile Phones Into Boarding Passes for Houston Travelers
Airline travelers leaving from Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport can now use their cell phones as boarding passes.
JQuery also fixes the memory leaks if you remember to call .empty() or .remove() on any dynamically created elements on unLoad(). It nulls out all event handlers and DOM references, recursively, breaking the cycles that make IE hang onto memory.

Also, plugins use $.data rather than directly attaching information to DOM elements, which was added to fix memory leak problems.
You guys keep going like this and I'm going to be able to read rot13 without needing the translator...
The Seven Point Scale
Joel Spolsky's Talk at Yale, Part 3
Debuting FoundWatch:"The Art of the Startlet" with Guy Kawasaki
I'm not so sure that Marcus's claim is entirely invalid. I think what he is trying to propose is that in the long run the competition that Google will be facing by having another ad publisher like Microsoft, will make things better for site owners as it will give more competition in the ad space.

As we know Google is cash filled with money made from their ads program. If Microsoft is willing to give more of that money back to the site owners to gain market share, Google will have to react.
Amazon adds value compared to a physical bookstore because they have many times more titles, including many obscure books that aren't profitable to house in a retail bookstore (the long tail). Unless there are desirable, differentiated pet products that aren't profitable to stock in a store, then the internet model doesn't add value. Are there really a million different kinds of pet food that people could tell the difference between, let alone want to buy? That's the difference between Pets and Amazon.
Um, no. MIT didn't grant Phil Greenspun a PhD for writing a textbook. He did a little something called grad school.
Antidiscrimination Law (or, the Dropout Anti-Employment Act)
"Thus, any possible anti-discrimination law will strongly discourage employers from hiring people without the requisite credentials, regardless of whether they are capable of doing the job. In the case of the actual anti-discrimination law that we are saddled with, subsequent judgements have even eliminated IQ tests as admissible documentary evidence, except insofar as applicants take, at their own expense, a substitute IQ test (never, of course, called by that name) costing many thousands of dollars and requiring four years to complete (also known as a college curriculum). Thus we see situations where employers who offer jobs that no existing college curriculum covers any aspect of will still sometimes require a college degree, so that they can convince a jury if needed that they had a good reason for choosing the individual they end up choosing."
And don't forget that most of the "ridiculous valuations" come from acquisition or investment by a few companies that make huge piles of real money in the real economy. If Google, eBay, Amazon, or Microsoft want a company, it might be worth $50 million. If two or more of them want it to compete with the others, then it might be worth $1 billion. If none of them want it, it might be worth $1 million or less. Note that the product, founders, revenue, profit, technology was not one of factors I listed. Just the potential acquirers makes a 1000x difference. And it's ok for these companies to spend money like that because it's money they've already earned from their primary business. That's why it isn't a bubble. Call me when a "pointless revenue-free Web 2.0" company goes public - then we might be in a bubble.
I've used Python for everything I've done so far at Justin.tv (next week I'm learning ruby so that I can start doing web stuff too).

Just my opinion of course but I'd say while Python has some excellent libraries, the language itself feels quite poorly thought-out compared to something like Common Lisp. It could be worse, but it certainly could be a lot better.
Yup, 6-3 is EECS with a CS focus (you still learn basic EE) and 18-C is math with a CS focus. And you're right, MIT does not have an honor roll, though the professors of certain computer science classes have awarded letters of distinction for outstanding performance during a particular class. This is by no means a standard thing.

MIT has never given an honorary degree. This tradition is so deeply rooted in the Institute's culture that I would bet a year's salary that it won't ever happen.

MIT has allowed certain people to serve as "honorary lecturers." That's what Winston Churchill did.
I wouldn't say it's silly, I'd just say it's a difference in culture. No need to be defensive. :P

MIT was started as a reaction to other universities whose graduates couldn't do anything "useful." (That is William Barton's word, not mine.) At that time, supposedly prestigious colleges were accepting and graduating rich and powerful students who could talk the talk, but couldn't make any real contributions when it came to math, economics, physics, or any other hard science or engineering discipline.

So, MIT was founded to be a utopia of meritocracy where no one cared where you were from or who your father is, all anyone wanted to know is "can you do the work?" Furthermore, MIT was founded on the principle that if you've graduated from MIT, you are guaranteed to be capable of useful contributions to society. This was considered to be a binary question -- either you're an MIT graduate or you aren't. That's why honor rolls are anathema to the Institute.

At the end of the day, this means that honorary degrees, athletic scholarships, and status-based admissions were out from the beginning because they are diametrically opposed to the mission of the Institute. What was (and is) in? Rigorous math, physics, chemistry, biology for every single graduate, no matter if they are mechanical engineers or music majors.
I don't even know where to begin.

Any app that attempts to masquerade as something other than what it genuinely is earns immediate blocking and deletion from my page. I am hesitant enough to add any application unless I can see its source code, and one that actively purports to deceive its users will garner nothing but dislike from me.

Further, it is my belief that people who study CS will do so because they like it, not because of coercion or "deception" from a facebook app. My programming experiences in high school are precisely what led me to pursue CS.
I think there are certain aspects of Web startups that require iteration - it's not easy to figure out exactly what customers want on the first try. Even the customers might not (usually won't?) know until they've started to use your product.

OTOH, there is no excuse for sloppy programming under the mantra of iterative development. Code is usually better when you've taken a little time to think about how to solve the problem at hand.

I do think that Dijkstra's expectations are a bit lofty for the general population of programmers, though. For a large class of us, the biggest problem is just getting started. For me, it's a lot easier to get into flow by tinkering with some part of a program than to try to put the whole thing together in my mind. By the end, I usually have a large chunk of the app in my head. The expectation that every keystroke must be perfect from the outset would be enough to discourage me from even starting.
Just cause he included billionaire in that sentence, does not safely support the inference that he's thinking of a get rich quick scheme, or prove that we are in a bubble.

People will always look to the achievement's of Bill Gates and Larry Page regardless of the cycles the industry maybe in. In a recession or depression, investors will still always quote Warren Buffett.
Microsoft is proud of IE7's first year (and many commenters are outraged)
Michael Bay: Microsoft fueling HD wars
Usually I'm not a big fan of "<some city/country>'s Silicon Valley" headlines, but I enjoyed this article.
Of course... I haven't programmed in Lisp so much, so it makes me miss Haskell. But anyway, it's a very interesting language.
The Moors!
My friend had the opportunity to go to a meeting at a tech company in Israel and he was very impressed by what he saw there.
How'd you meet Dr. Ousterhout?

For something like a job candidate, a 7 point scale might be a good idea, however, it's often sensible to use an even-numbered scale for polls, as otherwise, people tend to flock to the neutral option. Making them choose between 'a little good' or 'a little bad' makes them think about it a bit more.
Simon Willison: Comet works, and it's easier than you think (server push, instead of Ajax polling)
BlogNation Falling Apart? - Open Letter to Sam Sethi
John hired me as VP of Engineering at Scriptics and then he and I founded Electric Cloud together.

I like the 7 point scale because there is a definite ambivalent option. In practice most people have a definite opinion and 4 is not often used.
I was starting to freak out when I thought they were ranking ASP/VBscript ahead of Javascript.

Then I realized the list was in alphabetical order.
Lisp Club
A friend of mine, mixing Fight Club and Lisp during a hacking night.

We need to make more soap :-)
Python gives you wings!
Please Don't Steal My Focus
The Portable Risk of High Capacity USB Drives
56 Geeks Poster
Avast from the Pirate Lab
Although the latest book you can buy is one version behind (1.6), there is a reference at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html.
One Fourth of Internet Usage at Work is Spent on Personal Tasks; Would You Allow It?
Blind Hacker Says He's No Friend of Convicted SWATters
December's coolest gadgets
The First Circle (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

LOTR

Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)

The Odyssey (Homer)

The Dilbert Principle (Scott Adams) -- Alright, not literature! But come on, it's Dilbert :)
The Ego and its Own, by Max Stirner.
The Open Society and its Enemies, by Karl Popper.
The Illuminatus! trilogy.

Robin Hobb books (with special mention of the farseer trilogy), Neal Stephenson, Alan Moore, Terry Pratchett.
Microsoft's definition of progress is having less bugs than their previous version, but still more than all other competitors.
Evolution knows only iterative programming and it has produced not only elegance but an appreciation of it.
1984 (George Orwell)

Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C Clarke, Space Elevator SciFi)

Dune Series (Herbert)

Ender Series (Orson Scott Card)

2001 Series (Arthur C Clarke)
I've got to say it, sorry - weak ending.

I was really looking forward to this after part one and two, which were really interesting. Part 3 makes a great point - the importance of being able to communicate in the written form - but could have been fleshed out a lot more.

Oh well.
Yeah... And nearly everybody (as always) complain about "stupid windows unable to stop apps from stealing focus". Actually this stuff is configurable, there isn't a standard UI for it, but little freeware "Tweak UI" tool lets you do just that, see the screenshot: http://kontsevoy.com/tweakui.gif
Be careful not to compare the Amazon of 2007 with the pets.com of 2000.

Amazon barely made it through those bleak years. There was a lot of luck involved in their survival. Their business model of "a store for everything" wasn't much better than pets.com that's for sure.
I've been reading too much Bruce Schneier: When I hear the phrase "the Google of personal information" my first thought is "omigod, their target market is the NSA -- I'd better turn off the cookies before I go over there."

Fortunately, the actual product seems to have nothing to do with Googling other people's personal information. From what I can see on the home page, it's about Googling people's public personas, as encoded in their email headers -- which is actually rather useful and interesting.
Point taken, but make sure you get mine as well. Facebook isn't exactly a proven model by any means.

Given that most ads are clicked by new or casual site visitors, and that facebook basically destroys this notion by forcing login, they are certainly not a success - yet.
Seesmic: Blogging the launch of a company
I agree with you. I guess the whole series was simply a reflection on how a CS degree may or may not contribute to your success. And, oh yeah, come work for us 'cause we'll teach you what you REALLY need to know.
Yeah, Joel never seems to stop marketing - I wonder where he learned that!

I usually don't mind it in his articles, but at a speech to a university crowd, it comes off as a little arrogant.
His reason for not going to grad school is silly. There's more to CS research than proving correctness in a formal way.
It did took quite a few iterations though.
An Introduction to the Theory of Computation
Those who can write properly own the future. What other ending do you need?
Look, if I know anything about Lisp, it's that the real rules for Lisp Club start off like this:

(list
(do-not '(talk-about 'Lisp-Club))
(do-not '(do-not '(do-not '(talk-about 'Lisp-Club))))
... )
An Everywhere Continuous Nowhere Differentiable Function, interesting proof by John McCarthy
This Year's Best Open Source Gift
Guarding Your Social Security Number
Thinkpad Accelerometer
Using his laptop's accelerometer (and some android anticipatory glee) Nikolaj Baer shares some Python code to create a pendulum that dangles as the laptop moves.
Zuckerberg apologizes for Beacon -- announces a full opt-out
Evolve
VCs use the due diligence process for more than collecting information and learning about your company. VCs want to back entrepreneurs that can solve problems by evolving when necessary. Fortunately...
Ask YC: what laptop to buy?
I am thinking of buying a laptop and would love to get your advice on this topic.

Some info:

- Price is not that much of an issue, I see this as an investment that will pay itself off.

- I will be spending 99% of my time on this laptop, and it will pretty much be a desktop replacement for me. I will not be playing games on it, but will be doing most of my development there. OS is no problem since I use linux.

- Screen resolution is very important to me.

- I think a 15" would be good, not much smaller and bigger

- It must be light, I will have to be able to take it around easily and all the time
must have long battery life

- the rest is simple, 1G+ RAM, 150GB+ hard drive, good graphic card ...

Questions:

- is there anything else I should care about?

- what are your suggestions, i.e. what brand and models?

- should I wait for something that is coming out soon?

- when is the best time to buy, b/f chirsmass, after it ...?

- I was looking at the MacBook Pro? what do you think?

- where are the best places to check for reviews and suggestions? (I have looked at PC mag and CNET)

- what do you have and are you happy with it?

Thanks a lot in advance for all the suggestions.
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/x-series

my friend just got a job at Google, and that's the laptop they gave him. it's pretty amazing. super lightweight, very snazzy dock thing. this laptop is incredibly tiny, well built, and just about perfect. like 8 hours of battery life, and you can even get a fingerprint scanner on it for like $30!

dont get a macbook pro. they are so expensive for the hardware, especially if you want to run linux.
Lijit: search tools and stats for your blog
Project Euler - Fun Math and Programming Problems
Britney Spears iPhone Launched
Awesome business model!
Google Mac Developer Playground
Starting cluster of Erlang nodes on EC2
Microsoft brags about IE7's first year success and gets reamed in the comments
"full opt-out" in the title is very misleading. They are disabling the mini-feed and newsfeed stories only! FB still gets the info on your browsing/buying habits by default, unless you would click the link to not share the info with facebook every time you make a purchase.
How is this different from savvy PR? E.g. how much of a competitive advantage can you glean from just watching the videos? Just curious to hear other people's take...
I think his point was that it's tedious, and most graduate CS stuff requires a ton of work and time with diminishing benefit.
I used to LOVE the Thinkpads, but ever since they became Lenovo, the quality seems to have suffered.

What was once a nice rugged feeling case, now feels like cheap plastic.

We've had a rash of Lenovo issues lately. Failed hard drives, weird hangs, randmonly blank screens, etc.

Myself, I use a MacBook. I had an MBP before this, and will probably get another one soon. I went from a 17" MBP to the MB, but I miss the more powerful MBP graphics.
Yeah, this series was really inspirational and interesting, and the first time he mentioned Fog Creek it was funny. But at the end, that was just tacky. I like his stuff, he's an intelligent guy, but he pushes his company/products into his insightful articles/speeches almost to a fault.

But then, I wont stop reading his articles and I guess that means I wont stop hearing about his company. Does that mean he's marketing successfully?
Neat, I like the philosophy. I wonder if they still stick to it, or if they've also become a robot factory over time.
Any proof or evidence of that?
Beacon Saga Comes to an End: Facebook Adds Global Opt-Out and Apologizes
I was going to suggest MBP until I saw that you'll use linux on it. I have one, but I wouldn't suggest buying it just for the hardware. But then, all your other constraints call for a MBP. So I'd say either a thinkpad or a MBP.
Wow, thanks. That's sweet. The Windows XP link is about halfway down this page:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppow...
From the article: "If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook."
Another funny excercise: Find a function which is continuous at all irrational numbers and non-continuous at all rational numbers.
Nice - the proof that almost all Brownian motion paths have this property is much uglier
A Future So Bright You'll Need to Wear Sunglasses
I'd just like to say that, implemented poorly or not, I respect the idea behind Beacon and understand what they were trying to do. Many people are angry over the privacy issues; few people seem to acknowledge that the root idea is actually pretty good and somewhat revolutionary.

Just like the news feed was, maybe Beacon is just ahead of its time.
If you're so paranoid, why do you shop at places that would willfully send your information to a site like Facebook?

Don't the partner sites have to reach out and send the information to Facebook, rather the the other way around?