skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Definitions are kind of problematic.

In our community, "bad idea, well executed" is also a maybe - not a "fail" - on succeeding - as by definition if you're executing well you know when to pivot and aren't afraid to do so, or you are simply succeeding despite a bad idea[1], or are doing what it takes to push it through.

Also I'd like to point out that the definition of executing well is almost begging the question. To answer the question "Was it well-executed?", we apply the heuristic "Did they succeed? get numbers up? generate sales, investment, etc..". Then we are only 'testing' our own definition and every successful company will be "well-executed" and vice versa.

I'm not sure how to improve these definitions, but it's important to realize that asking how well a team is executing is problematic.

You would need a definition of "execution" that lets you point out teams that are executing well and failing, before you had a concept of 'executing well' that is useful and not just a proxy for 'succeeding.'

[1] Plenty of big, multibillion dollar product categories (McDonald's for one, two year mobile phone contracts for another), are a really bad idea. If either category didn't exist, I doubt an investor would think you could convince people to like it, on a national scale.
Not what I mean at all.

I mean, reduce the basic living cost. For example, a homestead that ran on its own power (solar, wind, etc.), can manufacture many basic needs products through microfabs, and grow enough food.

Reducing costs doesn't do away with capital expenditure. But once acquired, the ongoing cost of living approaches zero.

If you give everyone a universal income, you are still making people beholden to the grid of some sort. The red points are still a wage, because ultimately, you have to rely on someone outside your family group to redeem your needs.

Reduce the cost and make that available en mass, and each household would be reasonably resource independent. Luxuries, of course, won't go away. Wants are endless.
I used to get put on a lot of 3:30 shifts because if you worked 4:00 you were entitled to a paid 15min break (worked retail part-time in the UK)
Exploring XSS in depth
The former head of the Toronto District School Board Chris Spence recently had to resign after a spate of criticism over plagiarism in newspaper articles he had written for the local paper. Then plagiarism was found in his University of Toronto doctoral thesis. So it's just not a German thing. Maybe more interesting is how much easier it is now to find plagiarism.
Very slow on Firefox 18.0.2, linux
It's true that first class functions can remove the need for conditionals. Isn't this simply functional programming? He starts with an Erlang example then doesn't talk about FP. I must be missing something.
Years ago, I wrote a very rudimentary tutorial on Mathematica to get undergrad chemistry students started on it. http://www.cem.msu.edu/~cem883/mathematica-instr.html

The good thing is that mathics make very nice plots (at least for simple functions I tested). The bad news is that it stumbled on a simple NIntegrate.(*) It certainly has potential though...

[ Edit: Hmm looks like Integrate[] does what NIntegrate in my example was supposed to do. I take the "bad news" back.]
Fly or Die: BlackBerry Z10
Always keep the end game in mind and put in place a process where you are consistently asking yourself how what you are doing is getting you there. If you decide to go down the rabbit hole anyway, you have to admit to yourself that you are procrastinating rather than solving problems. This works for me, and I am 2-3x more productive. As soon as I get distracted, like right now, I know that I am wasting time writing a post on HN rather than attacking my goal.
Super Hexagon unexpectedly comes to BlackBerry 10
In the 1950s, the researchers William Dement and Nathaniel Kleitman discovered that we sleep in cycles of roughly 90 minutes, moving from light to deep sleep and back out again. They named this pattern the Basic-Rest Activity Cycle or BRAC. A decade later, Professor Kleitman discovered that this cycle recapitulates itself during our waking lives.

...

In each of these fields, Dr. Ericsson found that the best performers typically practice in uninterrupted sessions that last no more than 90 minutes.

Uninterrupted work sessions of 90 minutes are not a cycle, since they don't include a rest phase. It may be that 90 minutes is an optimal number for uninterrupted work, but I don't understand how it relates to a "Basic-Rest Activity Cycle" of 90 minutes.
Apple Testing Watch-Like Device
mind blowing, this is just beautiful :)
Pdf.js - PDF Reader in JavaScript
> Moreover, Sweden can't extradite without the UK's approval in this situation

I don't mean this to sound combative, because I am really just curious about how practical the distinction is: Can't or shouldn't? What would happen to Sweden if it neglected to wait for the UK's approval and just stuck him on a plane to the US a day after he arrived?
Freelance Marketing 101: Creating a “Magnetic” Freelance Business
This problems are no doubt real, but sometimes it helps to change one's perspective from one of constant negativity (which causes you to see more problems, and feel worse about them), to one of positivity and gratitude.

Every day I'm amazed that computers, some of the most complex non-biological processes on this planet, work at all, or as well as they do. I'm thankful that so many wonders are available to me, like the Internet and mobile phones.
Then why does my German national id card have the text "Dr. Hars" (short form, without the "rer. nat.") in the field with the label "Name/Surname/Nom"?
So what happens if you're out of town for a few months and it snows hard in front of your property? How are you supposed to deal with that, or even know how badly it's snowed, while you're away?
The truth is that you have yet to provide any facts to back up your smearing of Ed Bott and ZDNet.

> "His views are not partisan"

As I pointed out before, you have problems understanding and/or using the English language. Partisan means "an adherent or supporter of a person, group, party, or cause, especially a person who shows a biased, emotional allegiance."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/partisan

Now, the gist of your unsupported attack on Bott is that he is partisan, but you keep saying he is "not partisan".

See what I did there? I pointed out your mistake, and I supported it with independent factual evidence. If you want to take part in a grown up conversation, you should learn to do the same.

> "I really don't care what you think because so far you've done nothing but troll me."

Again, you obviously don't have a clue what trolling is. However, I reckon you can probably use Google to figure it out. Calling you out for bullshit is not trolling.

I have previously pointed out that you are attacking someone without producing any evidence, but you continually resort to ad hominem attacks (calling me a troll is another ad hominem attack, following your ad hominem attack on Bott).

You claim to be against ad hominem attacks and name calling (see above) but this is exactly what you are doing! This fits perfectly with the strategy of using the word "honest" when you are being dishonest.

Still, you can prove you are honest pretty easily, as follows....

Show us some evidence that you have a clue what you are talking about. Bott posts evidence of his expertise and (very high) professional standing, and I linked to that above. Where is yours?

Next, produce the evidence that Bott was "paid by Microsoft", and under what circumstances.

If you can't support your claim with evidence then, sadly, nobody has any alternative but to decide that you are a liar. It's not just me. Rational people want to hear rational arguments based on checkable facts. That's not too much to ask of you, is it?

> "The truth is that you are not really interested in actually discussing the facts."

Another ad hominem attack on me that attempts to divert the discussion away from the point. The truth is that I keep asking you for facts and you have not provided any. None.

So, are you going to keep posting bullshit replies? It might not be a wisest approach. As it is (and this is a factual observation) you're just making yourself look stupid.
Hi Mz,

I think the true test is to go to an educational institution and observe first hand what is happening. Is it a or b and to what extent either of the two:

a) Education that helps people leverage their innate curiosity to become free and intelligent individuals capable of independent investigation and thought.

b) Schooling that trains people to be obedient to authority, conform to standards of thought and behavior, distrustful of their own abilities and reliant upon experts.

The evidence I have seen shows the state ( any state, anywhere ) to be delivering to children today much more of b than a. JTG lived this for 30 years as a distinguished and awarded public school teacher in NYC. If you look at the incentives of those in power and actively controlling the government and it's apparatus, it is easy to understand why it would be this way and not get too judgmental about it. Lets imagine that you are a general in battle, which would you prefer: Obedient soldiers who follow orders or free-thinkers with their own agenda?

http://www.cantrip.org/againstschool.html
I wonder if it's because it's too easy to use the bits and pieces to cobble together anything you want without having to understand completely how they work.
I write a ticket for someone else to take care of it. Even if someone else is only future me, it's enough for my mind to accept that it is taken care of and I can proceed with the really important stuff.

Most of these tickets get resolved as "doesn't matter / won't fix" two or three weeks later - but myself.
Personally I'd model a state machine in Go as

type State int
type Transition int

func (s State) Next(t Transition) (State, error) {
/* doubly nested switch goes here */
}
Two wrongs do not make a right. And public works typically need to serve multiple agendas in order to serve the common good.

You are hardly of average intelligence. I see zero reason to believe your ancestors were either. Your remarks remind me that the publishing house founder routinely said "literacy was quite high where it mattered". A way to hedge his bets and justify the many folks who were illiterate and signed their name with an X. I guess that also completely justifies the average 2nd to 4th grade education typical of American women during Abe Lincoln's life. God knows women don't need an education. They just need to cook and clean and do as they are told.

(To everyone about to flame me: Please note that is sarcasm. I am a college educated woman.)
I doubt a day goes by without someone embarking on an email replacement. No doubt there are many things that could be improved but I've always felt that viewing email as a todo list is symptomatic of the reactive mindset that generates a lot of stress.

In many work environments email is used to shuttle the responsibility for tasks between people. We've all felt that relief on sending an email. You feel like you've performed a valuable task, made some progress in work that may have very few visible milestones. As the recipient we tend to take the same view and feel as if each email adds to our list of work. Some imaginary clock starts ticking when you receive the email and stops only when you reply.

I think the first thing you need to do is remove the implied hand-over that comes with and email. Remind yourself that just because the sender sent an email, it doesn't mean you must do anything about it. Take a step back and think about what it is you need to achieve and then look to your email to support those activities.
The most useful thing is the coloring of the branching. Neat.
I'll agree I could be a little less demeaning. The point is though that cryptography more then anything else is about its practicality, and so by ignoring the difficult parts of it you render any statement you make pointless. Also, although you are correct about noting that under infinite resources RSA et al is breakable, again, practicality. If it takes longer then the previous amount of time elapsed in the universe to break (assuming proper implementation etc.) then it is, for all intents and purposes, unbreakable.
Dropping out is only acceptable if a student has a realistic plan for what to do afterwards. A drop-out who has no plan of action is a worthless bum.

If this kid has a plan -- say, to get a GED, go to a trade school, and secure a decent salary, then it may not be so bad. Equally viable is if the kid has an apprenticeship lined up, with the promise of a career afterwards. On the other hand, "I am bored with school so can't I just play Halo until I can find work as a janitor" is a useless plan that will lead to a miserable life.

Nothing is black-and-white. As Sun Tzu said,

"The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom."
Or, remaining a "fugitive" is an excellent PR strategy for himself and wikileaks.
I love the Erlang example, I've been curious about Erlang and that's a powerful demonstration of conditional-free programming, contrary to the author's intent.

Sorry, but "n < 2" is a conditional, whether you're using an if statement, the "?" operator, or to reference an array of function pointers (at least from this old-school C/assembler programmer's perspective). Whereas that Erlang code looks elegantly conditional-free. Clearly branching will appear behind the scenes, but the Erlang code has no conditionals.
Here are a couple of random suggestions:

1) Try the pomodoro technique, or some other form of time tracking. When you're about to take a side path which may or may not be a distraction, you can decide how long it'd be worth investing in it. Once the timer dings, you can stop and evaluate if it was worth it.

2) A few years ago I started repeating in my head the phrase "real artists ship". Embrace imperfect or partially finished solutions that are viable.

3) Keep a list of things that you'd like to investigate more. I've found that the act of writing down the idea lets me stop obsessing over it. Later when you revisit the list you'll be able to cross off the things that you thought were important, but turned out not to be. By delaying work on these items, you're able to better explore the most important parts of the problem you're solving, and so your future self will be in a better position to evaluate which areas need deep research.
I'm not sure if it's "begging the question" so much as just over-generalizing. That is, I'm not sure there's an easy, binary distinction between "good idea" and "bad idea". It may be that ideas are on a continuum from "really bad" ---> "ok" ----> "really awesome" or whatever. And a slightly dodgy, but not great, idea may succeed if coupled with sufficiently awesome execution. OTOH, a kinda good idea, with dodgy execution, can fail out.

And, this is skipping the issue of refining the actual idea itself as you learn, which may not be quite as dramatic a shift as an actual "pivot".

Your point is definitely valid though, that there is a some semantic confusion around this whole discussion.
part of what makes Mathematica notebooks particularly powerful is that they are Mathematica expressions themselves (Mathematica expressions are M-expressions), thus they can be thoroughly manipulated in all sorts of ways.

then there's Dynamic[1], which is the most straightforward event mechanism you're going to find in any language

[1] http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/Dynamic.html
An art student I know did this at my school (U of Calgary) about three years ago. The design is invisible unless it rains or you splash a bucket of water on the wall. It's also in a low-traffic area, so I don't think very many people know about it.
Why Do Internet Trolls Exist?
This isn't a new inbox or a new email. It's a personal assistant designed with the constraints of software in mind, similar to harmonia.io. Maybe you'll get the Four Hour Work Week folks to buy in. Good job!
I have several orders of magnitude fewer problems with Windows than most anyone I know.

When I share what I do with savvy folks who are having issues, I find that NONE of them do all of the things I consider essential, that can be done with little knowledge.

My easy-to-do essentials, In order of priority, from years of experience are:

• I restart Windows frequently, at least daily, and anytime things seem "off" (rarely). I of course also restart any application(s) that seem(s) to be working poorly. I rarely need to do either.

• I use an online backup service that archives changes (dropbox) so I can restore old versions of files in case I screw something up (about once every other month).

• If I have a problem that repeats, I restart Windows in safe mode, and then turn off, unplug the POWER cord, and then hold the power button in with the power cord UNPLUGGED (fixes some electrical static issues. Works on other appliances as well)

• I hide all services under Msconfig > services tab to see what is starting up that I might not need, and then uncheck some or even click "Disable all." You can generally turn anything off here without causing noticeable issues. Turn stuff back on and restart if concerns.

• If one browser gives me a problem I switch to another (I have four installed).

• I upgrade or reinstall Windows at least every 4-5 years or so.

• I auto-install software updates and use anti-virus software.

These basic practices give me many almost entirely headache-free years.

Of course, I'm also fairly savvy about not installing extras with software, and avoiding clicking suspicious links or giving information to suspect websites, but these practices rely much more on experience, and can't really be considered "easy-to-do" in the same way the others can.

Also, I used to use Apple products. I had so many problems, and couldn't figure out best practices to avoid them, that I stopped using Apple. Of course, YMMV, all I'm saying is that I'm not qualified to speak to stabilizing Apple setups, but I would expect that there are best practices that make a difference.
Depends on the purpose of your side projects.
Is the main aim to explore things that interest you or is it to "ship" something specific?

If it is the former then perhaps you shouldn't worry and just let the rabbit hole lead you where it may.

If it is the latter then perhaps it would help to produce some sort of roadmap. Ideally share this and get other people involved (either people who will work with you on it or who want to use the finished product) and they will perhaps keep you somewhat accountable.

If your side project involves multiple difficult problems then perhaps you need to accept that it is not going to be a 1 person job to get it done too the quality standard that you aspire too.
This can't be understated, and I'm glad you see that. Also, about the programming languages-- you may think you can program well in them, but you most certainly can't. By virtue of the the fact that knowing a syntax (or idioms) is far different from having domain knowledge, not to mention your age. The fact that you can type the correct syntax for those languages is irrelevant--You have no real-world knowledge about how this is used, which greatly impacts how you build software. That's one of the many reasons why young, "bright" developers will never surpass experienced developers-- it's more than "coding."
Since this is the second time you mention it: The noble savage trope is about the innate goodness of indigenous peoples, particularly in their connection to nature and the spiritual. It's a pretty weak analogy here— may I suggest you instead reference the cult of childhood, a trope that idealizes and idolizes the youthful innocence of children?
Do Gifted Kids Want To Be Zuckerberg Rather Than Einstein?
Brython - Browser Python - Google Project Hosting
Battling College Costs, a Paycheck at a Time
As an avid user of Mathematica, I have been also partly annoyed by the language. I find that getting something (complex) to work takes much longer than ideally needed due to complex syntax. It would take still longer with other tools for mathematical problems, so I cannot really be complaining.

I "may" have discovered a language that seems better Mathematica: Modelica [1]. It turns out that Wolfram itself recently purchased a Modelica add-on to Mathematica, which it now markets as its new SystemModeler product [2].

Note that while the Modelica language is not intended towards general-purpose computations, I find the core concepts behind the language to be valid beyond its intended purposes.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modelica
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_SystemModeler
A Vim and ViEmu mapping you really can’t miss - never type :noh again
Wouldn't you learn it organically as you used it? Why memorize the whole thing at once and not just learn through actual use?
Something similar was attempted:
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/class-acti...
If your problem is one of performance, specially if it's related to dynamic content, I think nginx is a very good option in terms of flexibility, lighthttpd performs better than Apache in some cases but if your requirements are specific you may need some configuration with ngnix and a high-performace server like FastCGI or Starman.

perhaps you don't know but this is part of a common problem for large implementations, it's usually known as the c10k problem, you may want searching that term to find more detailed information
How to test your iOS mobile app
I'm curious whether you looked at "selling" it to another team? Something like "run this product as your startup, we'll keep 20%" or similar. When I see folks shut down products or pivot to something else, I wonder if this approach is workable. WDYT?
You don't fix the security state with hero worship and self-promotion.

True, but I think that is is often very strong/odd characters, who are willing to dedicate their life for "big" fights. Those causes need someone who is willing to go out, and promote the hell out of a leak. Otherwise it goes down as just another internet-only phenomenon.

If you are leaking information to a 3rd party, you want the information out there and create the biggest possible effect. Otherwise you could just post it on your blog. So far only Assange has shown repeatedly, that he can deliver this exposure - and to withstand the heat.

Case and point: Not a single relevant leak has reached my attention from all the split-up groups that aimed to do better than Wikileaks. The only acceptable alternative seems Cryptome who benefit for their long-time legacy.
JTG also emphasizes active literacy (writing, speaking) versus passive literacy (reading, listening). One without the other is as a table with half it's legs.
I lost respect for Wikileaks when they started editorializing their releases. Most notably the "Collateral Murder" video. I want to be able to form conclusions for myself without being told what I should think every step of the way. Assange admitted that they spun it in such a way to maximize the political impact.
AMD Plans To Stick With The HD 7000 Series For The Bulk of 2013
Django-stronghold - Login required middleware
Impossible for me to join the opscode website. Maybe HN has crashed the web server due to the number of users? :)