skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Hall, who wasn't involved in Hughes' study, thinks the EROI for oil sands would fall closer to 1:1 if the tar sands' full life cycle—including transportation, refinement into higher quality products, end use efficiency and environmental costs—was taken into account."

If his statement is true and it costs the same amount of fuel it produces, the overall cost would exceed the revenue on a variable basis and it would not be profitable to mine oil at any price.

The exception to this would be if NG is so abundant that we are burning it since it can't be sold (happens in ND), then using it to refine oil makes sense.
My goal at my first startup was to optimize for learning and it served me very well for that. The perks I got:

- Met investors and learned about the entire investing process

- Got immersed in metrics/data-driven product development

- Had a ton of autonomy even as a non-senior developer.

- Made a name for myself in the local ecosystem.

- Got to spend my time developing a product I loved and believed in.
I agree. I've been promoting spotify in word of mouth to my Friends. My co-workers all use it, which means a good chunk of our upstream bandwidth is swallowed by spotify?
In any case they're being completely shady about it. I.e. not making any effort to define Spotify as a P2P service. Understandable in a marketing sense. Ethically questionable and actually upset since well. I pay a monthly fee and all..
The point is that he (with mr. Morris, I suppose) made this site quickly, cheap and are able to evolve it on the go, almost without downtime with help of very few people.

Another point is that this site is the proof of an approach to software development described in the On Lisp book. So, it is not a gratification, it is just a real-world project they have done for themselves to make money. It is not some showcase or a demo, it is real thing.

In case of Django, I think, it will require much more man-hours for building and maintaining and more resources (cost) to run.

This is an example of Less is More principle in action: less code (the core language concept) and, as a consequence, less everything - time, people, money.

Lisp isn't just a language with parenthesis. It is a whole philosophy (a multi-paradigm language). Well, better to read On Lisp.
Depends on your definition of meaningful exits, actual number of meaningful exits, and dilution between rounds.

Indeed if you put a margin of safety on valuing any arbitrary startup before they get traction - EV does hit on or near zero.
I don't really know anyone aside from founders and first hires that take a pay hit to go work at a startup, most of my friends, and myself, make fair market salaries, but the learning opportunities are massive compared to the corporate alternatives.
Hey guys, I wrote this thing. And I know there must be disagreements with the arguments here. Bring it on!
On the same topic: How to sell your company[1]

[1] http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/How+To+Sell+Your+Company
Never wrote javascript before.

http://jsbin.com/ugojoq/267/edit

LinkedList.prototype.reverse = function () {

var start = this.head;
var prev = this.head;
var curr = prev.next;
prev.next = null;
while(curr !== null) {
var next = curr.next;
curr.next = prev;
prev = curr;
curr = next;
}
this.head = prev;

};
The next big thing: a site that schedules Mormon visits to people houses.
Just wanted to share this idea.
Why the nerdy properties in us makes us worse at coding.
Well the OP is about Scala vs Python, so forgive us for assuming you were speaking on-topic.
PG says in several of the Arc essays that HN exists because he found that programming languages turned out better when their creators worked on the language and some problem being solved in that language together. HN exists because he needed an application to force Arc to be better.
FUD.

The ruling [1] [2] draws a bright line between what is copyrightable and what is not. As much as Microsoft would like to kill Wine and ReactOS, independent implementation is always permissible [3].

As for Google's copying of "key source code:" An individual Google engineer copied a nine-line function called rangeCheck(), which validated some numerical parameters in the Java implementation of Timsort [4], from his previous job at Sun. When Google became aware of the code's provenance, it was removed from Android.

[1] http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120531172522...

[2] http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-1202.pdf

[3] As far as copyright is concerned. Patents specifically forbid independent implementation. The problems with software patents are a whole article in themselves.

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timsort
Fair question; I guess petty was the wrong word. Also, after youtubing 'scroogled' to make sure what I'm about to say is accurate I found there are other scroogled ads that don't irk me as much.

The ad I've seen the most criticizes gmail. The guy says "these ads just showed up" and the woman says "ACTUALLY,...", and, personally, when someone corrects a person by starting out with that heavily emphasized "ACTUALLY..." it sounds really smug.
Bigger equity, more significant impact in the product and the learning experience. Those were my reasons.

Also, some people love the idea of being "employee number X". I guess it could be an egobuster, but not really useful unless your company becomes Google or Amazon.
The author works for a company marketing a "a scientifically driven way to quantify the match between a job candidate and an open position" and is making claims derogating another mechanism for matching candidates and position. He's not exactly an unbiased observer.

For the record, I've been involved in hiring here, and I've never asked candidate who he knows at Google, I've never heard of a candidate being asked such a question, I've never seen anything related to such questions on interview feedback, and so on. If Hardtke's account is true (and that's extremely doubtful), his experience bears no relation whatsoever to mine on the either side of the interview table.
Navigating API Pagination
You may be underrating the designer's desire to eat food, live indoors, and use software that isn't pirated.
People regularly differ in interpretations and see what they want to see, in any great writing or teaching, regardless of what the writer may have been trying to speak to.

In other words, one person's dominant world viewpoint is not everyone elses, and that's perfectly ok.

For example, for me, trying to understand spirituality/meditation with the mind, is like trying to be a know it all about swimming by studying, watching, and discussing swimming without jumping in the water. True teachings of any kind in my mind are meant to teach one to lead themselves through whatever comes up. Then again, I'm pretty anti-dogmatic, ritualistic but still maintain some mindful disciplines to keep my attention where I want.

See how I said something so personal to me but it might not mean anything to anyone until they've done the equivalent in their own way?
Yes, for two reasons. Almost all bad hires come from some exception to the hiring rules. If everyone goes through the same process it limits that risk. I wouldn't want to work at a company that didn't seriously and exhaustively vet candidates.

The second reason is cultural fit. You're going to be spending a lot of time with these people, you want to make sure you're going to get along.
Here is a more modern example of objective-c... Though, this seems more a critique of the APIs?

http://i.imgur.com/XVtUuWH.png
It certainly wouldn't be good advertising for his company, which sells a purported alternative to candidate referrals.
Just wanted to point out that the web player is not US only. I'm from Europe and got it working by following this guide: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-test-spotifys-new-...
Sometimes it just interesting to walk down the datacenter aisle and look at others wiring... can see some where nightmares live, and others which are quite sexy and interesting to study.
Facebook plans three exabyte cold storage data facility in Oregon
> the case for locked phones is that you can get a $600 phone for $200.

Paying $200 instead of $600 is covered by the two year contract you sign with a carrier to get a subsidized phone, during which you pay them back the cost of that subsidization. If you leave early, an early-termination fee ensures that the subsidization is paid for.

At the end of your two year contract, you've paid back the full cost of the phone, and you should be able to treat it as Yours in every sense of the word -- even if that means unlocking it and taking it to another service provider.
Objective C is on the left, C# on the right.
Stop this argument! Regardless of whether you lock or unlock your phone, you're still in a contract with the phone company. The $400 subsidy in this argument was for the value of that contract, which doesn't disappear when you unlock.
You better believe this research was funded by the coal industry. And my god, the way it is written, I would be embarrassed to be an OSU alumni. I realize that all public research universities do this crap, including my alma mater Virginia Tech, but I hate it when they do.

Seriously, the tone of the article reeks of political campaigning. With Virginia and Ohio, two coal producing states that are now both swing states, you can bet that coal will continue to get tons of attention from the Federal government.
I noticed my usage of recursive functions going up and becoming more natural to me after reading The Little Schemer. Check it out, it is a really nice book.
And here's the canonical example in XML: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_laughs
Sorry to hear about your relationship. I've never understood it but wanted to say that sometimes we come together to bear witness to someone else's life for a little, or long while. Have no doubt there is more in your future as hard as it might seem to find yourself after defining yourself as part of a unit. It's doable, you existed before and you will exist again.
yes, usually anything having to do with recursive structures, like threes, is a good fit for recursive algorithms. In fact, the function I wrote had to generate a directory structure out of a template: https://gist.github.com/pvlpenev/4760658 (and i still used loop :)

But keep in mind that some things, although recursively defined, are better computed in other ways, the most obvious example is a Fibonacci sequence, which if I really needed, I would precompute and stick in an array for constant time access or something like that(maybe memoize a recursive function).
It seems I was mistaken about there being much GNU code in Android.

I'm complaining that the software which came with my hardware is not fit for purpose and does not make good use of the horsepower. It would have been easy to include the things I mentioned in Android and a niche market would have been catered for as a result. A different decision was made and some of the customers are unhappy. I'm well within my rights to complain about something I paid for.
Improving Email, Realistically
Football – profession or passion? « Free Books For Kindle
If their excuse is that their servers can't handle it then they are jokers. Plenty of services without paying customers handle more bandwidth than Spotify. Why don't they do what Netflix does and use AWS? Forcing paying customers to participate in a p2p network doesn't make any sort of sense.
Josh; Assuming this is the curated model we were trying earlier this year? We weren't happy with that model, since stylist were curating the products that were being sent out. The model now is totally different ( I hate using the word ... but yes, we have pivoted). Now we are working with designers and manufacturing everything ourselves ... email me at nav[at]seat14a.com and more than happy to hook you up.
The year the Valley embraced sustainable food innovation
Website for my new minimalistic iOS weather app, Conditions. All HTML5 and CSS3.
Roadmap: IPython
Is it better to burn out or to fade away?
How would a person, who doesn't have a CS background, network with people at Google?

I'm genuinely curious.
I don't want to be too specific, but the the site yields Google more than 10K USD a year -- which I guess is incentive enough. They still keep pestering me about putting more ads up, tho.
Objective-C is a very verbose language. However, the author seems to be intentionally not using any of the features that Apple has built into LLVM that makes it more concise particularly the "dot syntax" which gives Objective-C the ability to call methods and set properties much like C# or Java does.

Additionally, 90% of the code shown here is old C APIs. You will never hear a Cocoa developer defend those. They're particularly frustrating to work with, but have nothing to do with Objective-C the language.
Well, the almost figure comes from a secondary analysis that includes additional energy costs,

"Hall, who wasn't involved in Hughes' study, thinks the EROI for oil sands would fall closer to 1:1 if the tar sands' full life cycle—including transportation, refinement into higher quality products, end use efficiency and environmental costs—was taken into account."

Furthermore, if you structured your whole life around a 15:1 ratio, then a 3:1 ratio could very well be effectively 1:1.
The headline is referring to a (hypothetical) calculation that accounts for things like environmental cost; of course, to make such an apples-apples comparison, you'd have to ding all the other fuel sources equivalently.
I find cabling is a fantastic visual indicator of quality, if the cabling isn't done right then there is a high degree of probability that a lot of other things aren't done right.

If you cant do the simple things, how can you do the complex.
His affiliation is fully disclosed in the article. I don't understand why you're outing someone for "bias" when they describe it in the body of the article. Are you trying to suggest that bias somehow means you're not allowed to have opinions about things related to your work?
"In Lisp, there is substantial fragmentation on how do things like GUI and Networking, and often no clear winner"

Is there a clear winner for GUI in Python? GTK, Qt, etc. Python also has quite a few networking libraries; networking in today's world is more than mere sockets.

"SBCL seems to be the de-facto FOSS implantation"

Meh, GNU Clisp is pretty relevant, and a lot of people are using Clozure. CMUCL also remains relevant, if only because of its useful extensions (SBCL is a fork, and dropped many extensions like Motif support).

I think what CL really needs is an update, a CLtL3 that adds support for modern features. Modern Lisps like Clojure and Racket do not have many of the constructs that make CL great (which is not to say that Clojure or Racket are not great languages, but they are missing some of the nicer CL features).
I've interviewed at Google NY, and though I do seem to recall being asked if I knew anyone that worked there, I never got the impression that my answer influenced the outcome of the interview process. It was just a friendly, casual question asked as a way to break the ice.
I think you are 100% right.

However, in the current job market you really cannot hire without offering market rate. The perks are nice and part of classical negotiation game. The "culture fit crap" is their loss - the job market is very competitive now. So I don't think any reasonable startup is offering salary below market rate.

But, the main point I want to say is that the critical problem now is that all these new companies do not offer anything additional to compensation: no learning, no great mentorship, etc. Their entire secret sauce is in their business model: not in technology or software product. So young engineers will not learn new technologies, algorithms, etc. and have great mentors.

So the first thing I tell to my younger colleges is to find a job in some software company - preferably related to systems, networking, and storage. That where you find very very interesting projects (that you can put on your resume) and have great mentors.
Sometimes we think we have a lot to do with thing going well, or wrong, but the saying of opportunity is a combination of luck and lots of preparation and practice is something I'm finding to be more and more true each year.

It's also something I have heard echoed strongly in pg's recent essays on why/how/what to build as a startup.
What a great case for regulation of the food industry to address the needless harm to people by what they choose to eat.
"Scheme was/is seen as a teaching tool/research platform while CL was/is the language to actually make something in."

Scheme is great for both, and it's very unfortunate that the impression most people have of it is that it's an educational/reasearch tool only.
I wonder what it would take for the EFF to have, in addition to their "Email/Fax my senators now ..." button, a "Create a printable PDF" (or similar) link which would let me print out the letter, and mail it myself? The biggest thing keeping me from writing actual letters is the writing -- if I had a letter that I could just print, I'd be much more likely to find an envelope and stamp and put them to use.

If there were a convenient way to automatically print the letter as well as an envelope that had the mailing information already on it, that would overcome even more friction.
Buddha said that he never taught anything of his own. Socrates also said similarly. In other words, they told people 'what exists' just as it is. Their teachings didn't come from their thoughts or ideas but what exists in the world.

To know what they taught, look at their life activities. Even though people didn't treat him very well while he was alive, Buddha had endless love and mercy for people, and tried repeatedly to awaken them so that they can save themselves.

Because Buddha tried to help awaken people non-stop for 45 years and because his teaching is still accurate by today's view, I know that he would never lie and tell people to practice something wrong. That's why whatever is true or not true, among what Buddhist monks claim is Buddha's teaching, can be proven by the facts. If it's Buddha's teaching, it will have all the evidence and no falsehood.

I've also met many Buddhist monks, so if you're still not convinced, I can show you as much evidence as you need that they don't realize anything about the true teachings of Buddha. As long as you give me questions I can give answers. One simple fact is that if monks know Buddha's teaching then they should have some evidence that they learned directly from the master. But that is impossible since Gautama Buddha died 3000 years ago. So I'm not claiming I know Gautama's teachings but my reasoning and experiences as explained here are only that which I've seen with my own eyes and verified with substantial proof.
Or use Rdio? I've never been impressed with Spotify. The experience on Rdio has been great for me.
That's what the contract is for. You're either paying for the 2 years of service, or the early termination fee will cover the remaining $(400 - amount paid).

Locking the phone doesn't affect the subsidy payback one way or the other.
What kind of effect were you expecting? The president promises to do whatever you want as long as you get N "signatures" on a weakly authenticated website? Even if you got those N people to all show up in person at the White House door, wrapping policy around the desires of a vocal minority is not a valid or just way to structure a government.

They promised to respond, which is about all they can promise. And this gives them a reasonable metric for how many voters care about an issue, which is a good thing. And they can probably even infer some demographic data from the results, which is another good thing.

Basically this is a tool to better inform policy decisions, and the evidence is that it's "working". If you were expecting more then I think your hopes were a little unfounded.
I'm actually just finishing "How the world was One" by Arthur C. Clarke. It's an absolutely fascinating look at undersea cabling.

So in 1858, the wire that was laid across the Atlantic by Cyrus W. Field was essentially just that, not a cable at all. It was a few strands of copper coated in gutta-percha, and it was destroyed by an overzealous engineer jamming WAY too much voltage into the wire (he would later lose his job to Lord Kelvin of Degrees Kelvin fame).

In 1865 they attempted to lay the cable again, but the cable snapped during the trip. It would snap 3 more times before they would finally connect Europe to North America. The Times of London had an amazing quote from the 1858 endeavor:

"The Atlantic is dried up, and we become in reality as well as in wish one country.... The Atlantic Telegraph has half undone the Declaration of 1776, and has gone far to make us once again, in spite of ourselves, one people...."

On another really interesting point: there were no telephone cables crossing the atlantic until 1957. So how did folks make calls to Europe? The answer was the Heaviside layer of the atmosphere and radio transmissions. Yes up until 1957, all calls to Europe were made by bouncing waves off of the ionosphere.

I <3 Telecom.
LivingSocial's response is extremely damning of "PrivCo".
The Purloined Menu
Well, you are kinda meant to read them. If you say you've read and agreed to something you don't have much scope for whinging.
That's where molly-guard[1] comes in; stops (or at least confirms) shutdown on protected hosts. Named after the Big Red Button Cover of hacker-lore[2].

I've heard of people doing things like having a terminal background colour escape sequence in their login scripts as well, so it's immediately obvious if you're on a production host.

[1] http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man8/molly-guard.8...

[2] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/molly-guard.html
Yep. Unfortunately you can't counter voices with fat checks and campaign contributions. That's a shame, to be honest.
Since you went to the trouble of putting "GNU" in front of "Linux" I think you should know that Android is not GNU/Linux. http://www.gnu.org/gnu//gnu-linux-faq.html#linuxsyswithoutgn...
I'm not sure either, but decided to ask the question on Programmers.SE: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/187915/3270.
There are alternative's in the Python world, but they are not mutually exclusive.

Where-as in the lisp world stuff like the socket interface is DIFFERENT depending on the implementation. So you don't get to pick and choose.
I don't want to reveal specific (and perhaps confidential) information about Heroku's architecture, but I can tell you a few things about working in AWS in general.

One: routing traffic in AWS typically means ELB. ELB doesn't necessarily give you fine-grained control over per-application routing.

Two: Proxies don't always send a single HTTP request per TCP connection.

Three: In streaming-data startups, I think it's pretty common that a customer does something inefficient, scales rapidly over the course of a week or two, and then realizes too late that their initial design is no longer suitable for their traffic load. Sometimes a single customer makes up a shockingly large proportion of your traffic load--and this load is hard to predict.

Four: The routing infrastructure for any given app still requires multiple load balancers in multiple availability zones. That means shards are more expensive--in terms of nodes and cost.

Five: Big systems come with lots of moving parts. It might be impractical to create an isolated, fault-tolerant copy of two hundred services for each reasonably-sized customer. There are... all sorts of issues with distributing state.