skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Want to work with computers. Don't like Coding. What should i pursue? 
Hi,

Im 28 years old. I have loved working with computers my entire life and consider myself very tech savy. However, I never learned to code anything, and I really don't have the will to put myself through an engineering program. I would love to work with technology tho. I guess you could you could say I would like to be involved more in the creative, innovation, idea side of development, more than I would like to code or engineer products.

Im looking for advice on what fields you all think I could pursue to fulfill this passion. Any input is appreciated. Thanks folks.
This reads like brick layer decides to build own wall.

Am I wrong?
Airtel fail (world's 3rd largest carrier)
I did a similar thing for a virtual machine service. Inventory was counted at 2AM on the 15th of the month. We would have a "planned maintenance event" from 1-3AM on the 15th of the month for our 12x5 supported apps. Took two years to get busted ;)
Does anyone know his financial situation, too many authors (two examples, RAW and PKD) seem to end up dying while having to eat dogfood if that, and unable to pay the rent and other bills. Not that its fun to die if you're rich, just that he shouldn't have to eat dogfood in addition to the stress of the disease. If he's in bad financial shape I could easily buy a couple more of his novels in kindle form (not that I need to buy them in yet another form, but if he needs some cash, well now's the time...)
Google Facing Fresh Privacy Investigations in 6 European Countries
Through selling multiple versions of the same song. I presume that he offered the collection of versions for a low price leading to some people who were just going to buy the single to buy the collection instead (which would contribute multiple sales to his total).
Cool, didn't even know about that one. Installed, thanks!
Backbone.js Collection
This comes across as juvenile and shady. At least expand on it a bit.
Concurrent programming with Fork/Join framework in Java 7.0
edit: I'm OP, not the content author. I serve a media website, which is where I noticed and from where my concern stems. Comcast users should also be concerned about this.

Just scanned my logs more fully and have serious concerns.
As people have noted, this really does make requests every 5 seconds. My 404 page is currently 18KB, which means these users (who are being warned about their bandwidth) are being forced by their ISP to download extra web traffic from the site they're sitting on. For me that number is 1/3MB / minute and I'm seing users who sit around a very long time.

Also, this isn't restricted to the two metros Tuscon and Nashville people have mentioned. Here is a sample of hits I'm seeing (removing final octet from IP/hostname):

c-75-65-181-xxx.hsd1.la.comcast.net
West Monroe, LA

c-174-52-141-xxx.hsd1.ut.comcast.net
Provo, UT

c-69-137-179-xxx.hsd1.az.comcast.net
Tuscon, AZ

c-76-109-127-xxx.hsd1.fl.comcast.net
Miami, FL

cpe-72-225-230-xxx.nyc.res.rr.com
New York, NY

c-68-48-154-xxx.hsd1.md.comcast.net
Washington, DC

c-98-224-83-xxx.hsd1.ca.comcast.net
Fresno, CA

c-66-41-214-xxx.hsd1.mn.comcast.net
Minneapolis, MN

So what do we do about this?
How HTML Tables work in Web Development
I don't, the price was good and the amount was tiny. Sure it would have been better today but I needed it yesterday.

That wasn't the point though, the point is yes, you can buy stuff and it's simple. Apart from the hour it takes to confirm the transaction (this is done by the BitCoin network, nothing any user or particular party needs to do) it was much less of a hassle than paying with a credit card... at least if you already have the BitCoins.
How 123-reg almost crippled my business
Building The Polygon Video Player
> Extending it to "generate a random number" was obvious.

I am prepared to bet that the patent was not granted for the concept of a random number generator based on quantum phenomena. You can't patent ideas, you actually need to do some engineering with at least one inventive step.

Experiments in a lab are not manufacturable, reliable, productionised products. They're just not.
DATA doesn't represent the company name, similar to the recent RIM change, a marketing/vanity piece.
Object Serialization and Deserialization in Java
I partly mean “moderating” --- deleting spam, disemvowelling incivility, that sort of thing. But also highlighting the better comments (the best comments, if worthy enough, should be highlighted by referring to them in a subsequent post, but the remaining better than average comments should be highlighted somehow), editing comments to correct typos/spelling/grammar/formatting, grouping similar comments together.

Basically, anything that makes it more worth my while as a reader to actually read the comments.
Direnv 2.0 is coming, rewritten in go
I'm just pointing out that your convoluted example of the knife (which I've heard somewhere before...) isn't necessarily a typical experience. There are a variety of ways to transfer money around for a variety of fee structures.

For instance I used a company called moneycorp last year to transfer a few tens of thousands of dollars between Australia and the UK. They had a low conversion fee, used market exchange rates and there was no fee at all between them and the banks involved at either end. Painless and cheap.

BTC may be basically free if BTC are wanted at both ends, otherwise there are conversion fees there too, as well as a variety of delays. And there are transaction fees (though these are small).
Financial Times redesigns its iPad web app
Most physicians that I have talked about all agree that quality of life is more important than the quantity in this types of cases. Every treatment of late stage cancer is very invasive and rarely successful. If he wants to spend a month as healthy as possible with his widow to be instead of two vomiting and feeling miserable that is his choice and the correct one in my opinion.

There are few things that prolong life, most of them prolong the suffering and increase the emotional drain on the loved ones.

I wish him to make the most of what he has left.
Not a bad thing in their book!
Tecfidera's Price
Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive.

As an ex-biologist, I can assure you that horrible cellular damage is being committed to these "preserved" people. I used to flash-freeze all sorts of cells, ranging from bacteria (e. coli) to animal (IMCD3 and MDCK kidney) to human (Human Embryonic Kidney, Primary cortical and hippocampal neurons).

These protocols are pretty simple. Pellet and re-suspend a small vial of cells to dilute out the media, replace with a special preservation media then dunk the entire 5mL vial in a big pot of liquid nitrogen for a few minutes. Then it goes into the deep freezer (-80C).

Sadly, even though this is a tiny aliquot that is frozen almost instantly, cell death on thawing and resuspension is immense. Like, it's a good day if 50% of the cells live. It usually doesn't matter, since these cell lines are immortalized and they just start growing again, but it illustrates the point. Despite the most ideal circumstances, cells hate to be frozen.

Now, imagine you are trying to flash freeze an entire body. They do this by perfusing preservation media through your blood, relying on your body's circulatory system to get the media in all the right places. This takes time. Perfusing a small mouse with formaldehyde takes at least 5-10 minutes. A human body? Practically ages I would guess.

All the while, cells are dieing left and right because they are no longer getting a steady supply of oxygen (and instead a bath of relatively cytotoxic preservation media). When the body is finally perfused fully and dunked into liquid nitrogen...flash freezing isn't immediate. The outer layers freeze much faster than the inner layers.

Ok, so just freeze the brain? Same problem as before, just on a slightly smaller scale.

Ignoring all the cell death that has been happening for the last hour, how about thawing? Well, let's pretend its a "good day" and 50% of your cells live. That might be ok for your skin, liver, or spleen - they are going to be unhappy but still alive. But 50% of your neurons dieing? Hmm. Also take into account that neurons don't regenerate. You just killed half your brain. Even super optimistic numbers, 70%-80% survival rate, still leave a lot of your brain as goo.

This is all just biology. I'm not even touching the morals and ethics of companies that are under no obligation to actually do what you paid them to do (since you are dead).
The one reform this suggests is a requirement to list who else has has licensed a patent, or who has been sent a letter of "offer".
"2. Yes, you can compel people to testify about others (with limited exceptions), assuming it does not also incriminate you."

Is that what happened with those grand jury resistors?
Which Banks book should I start with? I was going to start with the Player of Games after your comment, but it turns out it's part of a series, and Consider Phlebas is the first one. Does it matter?
Totally agree...
Why not? It is always good to make some profit from the amount of work you put in, no?
I don't, and it's a shame we exist in a system where companies can do this
He definitely hacked the system to get so high in the charts by releasing multiple versions of the same song. As for his music, everyone has their own taste but as soon as I heard the song embedded in the article I understood why, even reaching so high in the charts, I'd never heard of him. I don't pay much attention to the charts but I've heard most of the songs in it either on radio or at clubs/bars. That's the first time I've ever heard of him or the song. It's cool that he was able to hack the system in this way (there are other obvious loop holes in the chart system that can be hacked too) but if his goal was to become a successful musician he hasn't achieved it. Definitely an interesting article though.
Mostly I felt that the MSc taught me the language with which to communicate and argue the things I already knew.

That's a fascinating story and a great perspective. One thing that's hard to communicate with those who've decided to pass up on higher education is how many different (and different kinds) of tools it gives you in your field.

It's not just the theoretical bits, or the formalism, but also the language of the field...something which has a surprising number of uses beyond just talking to a peer. A decade after my undergrad, I'll be working on a problem and remember a handful of possible algorithms from my undergrad days that might apply to it, but have no clue about the particulars (they may have not even been covered). But because I learned the language of the subject, I can usually drive into google for an hour or so and quickly triage the algorithms to find the one I want to relearn. It's easy to look things up when you know what they are called -- and more importantly can understand the instructions!

I have a number of friends who decided to focus purely on their development skills and skip school, and they've definitely expressed frustration at finding and understanding the literature, or have spent many hours reinventing the wheel because they didn't realize it had already been built!
April 1st is so two days ago.
A digital heretic decries the spread of "solutionism"
Nice execution. I really like it. Especially that you decided to do both "all time", and "Recent mentions"
I think an interesting experiment would be to create a coin that can't be converted to USD or other currencies. Just to see what happens. (But I can't think of a technical way to make such a coin.)
I don't think there's any value and the differences between BTC and LTC are not substantial (IMO).

But my guess is that being the second immediate P2P currency will give traction to LTC and some people who came late to the BTC party will jump in rising the value for a while.
Ask HN: One way encryption of identifying information
Hi HN:

I've got a question I've been struggling with for a while. I want to build a platform my PhD research where i can ask patients to fill in questionnaires about health and mobility. This would be a great speed up over the usual approach with the questionnaires on paper.

I've designed a system with public key encryption of the data fields but I need a way to identify patients to serve the required questionnaire. This is usually done with patient numbers like this: 88811121, an INT of 7-8 characters. Hashing is easily reversed because of the small number of possibilities.

How can i protect the ID while still identifying patients with this? My approach would be: patient number + calculated salt in a bcrypt/scrypt/PBKDF2 style approach.
Apart from being very prone to cliche, the problem with "X for Y" is that it's got so much potential to be indulgent.

"Linux of online learning" might convey meaning like "platform," "open," :big ecosystem" and "you can build a brand on top of it." But, it sounds like they are saying "Awesome & incredibly successful platform for learning."

That said, I still don't think it's meaningless, though I don't know how much conviction the people saying it have. Think of the different connotations you get if you replace linux with Windows or iOS.

Like mission statements or any other form of cliche it's bullshit & self indulgent 90% of the time. But if it's done with conviction, it can have (useful) meaning.
It's been happening for the last 4 or 5 years but I think it's only been really successful once with Rage Against The Machine. It was one of the first things I thought of when he mentioned Christmas number 1 but I think the power behind those campaigns has really diminished in recent years.
Why would anyone build a content based site with content not showing up in the first 3 seconds? The site loads fine but the text is so delayed. Tried in latest firefox and chrome.
Excellent call-out on Barnes; he's one of the most under-rated authors out there.

If you haven't read his stuff, pick it up.
Hacker News should be available over IPv6 - it's pretty easy to set up (but looking at Softlayer's blog it looks like you may have to pay a couple of dollars a month for a subnet allocation, which is usually free. That information could be outdated though).

It's a small price to pay to be future proof though.
Some enterprising person will provide that service (for a fee, of course)
Mobile App Deep Linking
I'd like to see Joel Spolsky do online learning. One of the startups in this area should get him as an advisor and do a weekly podcast with him.
No, you do it by taxing gasoline and diesel

You can discriminate between uses in a way similar to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_diesel#reddiesel
Looks great, I like how plain and simple it is.

It would be interesting to include some other data, like top wikipedia links etc.

Also the right hand column can sometimes feel a bit disconnected from the left when there is a long line of text in the left column.

Maybe some shading across both columns under the header text would help?

Keep iterating!
I think the advice in point #1 only makes sense with a caveat: When performance is an issue, if you can calculate or process it at the application layer _without adding load to the database layer_, then take it out of the database layer.

For example, order-by w/ limit/offset? If you do that at the application layer, you've increased the I/O usage on the database server, and clearly this advice doesn't make sense.

On the other hand, group-by (assuming no HAVING)? If you do that at the application layer, you've reduced the load on the database server, increased the load on the network, and you've probably made a justifiable performance vs. scalability trade-off. If you measure it and back it up with data.

I think the advice here in the article is too broad, but I can see a kernel of wisdom in it that is non-intuitive.
100% this is my opinion, I learnt C++ using VS and eclipse; I can't remember when or why but I fairly quickly picked up Vim + compiler and it just felt better suited to native development.

Further more the skills feel more real, I can apply my usage of vim and how the tool chain works to other languages.
I've read in a Amazon review that it is recommended to start with Consider Phlebas, then The Player of Games and finally Use of Weapons (as a first start into the Culture, that is).

I've bought them three myself and will read them in this order.
brainjar! My go to resource for DIV positioning back in 1999.
75% profit within few weeks seems EXTREMELY good to me. I can't really see the problem (yes, I know for a emotional point of view. Just think about 75% in a few weeks)
Indeed; I've re-read it several times. A great book.
But "Synergize the Planet" doesn't really have the same punch.
Google Redeems Itself With Google Universal Analytics
If you don't get any answers here, try Quora. That place seems more likely to give you answers to these sorts of question. Posting questions on HN during US business hours also seems better for getting answers.

I'm not qualified to give anyone advice on anything. However, I remember reading a blog post somewhere on game development career advice: get a degree in English/writing/literature. There is a big demand for people who can write. Hopefully, others can add more details about that. Best of luck.
An interview with Gabe Weinberg, the man behind DuckDuckGo
I'm not totally sure if this is relevant to the original post, but I think Unity also offer a browser plugin which, I assume, can be used interchangeably with the Flash export.
Something not mentioned in the article which I think is important to note is that the song "dropped to number 112 the following week, setting a record for the biggest drop in UK Singles Chart history, falling 108 places". It seems like he used his online fan base to push the single that one week and it gained zero traction with the general public once it got there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_Yours_(Alex_Day_song)
brilliantly put, just what I think too.
I don't know of his situation either, but instead of buying a copy for yourself, it'd be even wiser to gift a copy to good friends or simply spread the word of his great work here and elsewhere.
I will too, thank you.
This seems to have been pulled, because I'm getting a page not found...
Getting rich and improving the economy is almost certainly the best thing you can do to combat disease, pollution, poverty, etc.
What's life like in the Edinburgh TechCube?
Ask HN: Developer tests
Hello HN -
I'm looking for Django / Frontend developers at the moment and devising a test for them to complete as part of the application process. What's a reasonable length of time to ask someone to give up to complete a test? Is 90 mins too much to ask?

The developer will be asked to complete this at home (it's a remote post)

Anyone got experience either being tested or testing potential hires?

It's a 16 week contract position we're talking about.

Cheers
I'm assuming that as an author of fairly hard sci-fi Banks would not mind overmuch if he was resurrected as a "mere" upload. The point of cryo is once the initial damage is done, no additional information loss to entropy occurs, so you can afford waiting for far-distance supertech to see if your neural behavior is at all reconstructable.
How a B-School Grad Got Technical (And How You Can Too)
Reads like an advert.
Prime Minister's tech advisor Rohan Silva resigns
What I want to see is a bitcoin-like currency with a fairer generation curve, one that would follow traditional inflation and not disproportionately reward early adopters. E.g. mining could have constant difficulty, so that the cost of a million CPU cycles in this currency would be more-or-less constant. Are there any efforts in this direction?
The title sounded very interesting, I'm highly interested in Unity and Indoor positioning. But .. that's not part of that article. This is just a tiny C# class for network operations in Unity, it seems?

Disclaimer: C#'s what I earn my money with. That article confuses the hell out of me.

Why would you ever yield return a single value?

Why is the class name in lowercase/camelCase for 'networkSocket'?

Why are the method names following the (.Net standard) PascalCase convention in 'networkSocket', but using the (Java et al) camelCase in the samples below?

In my opinion this doesn't show a thing about the stack from the title and the C# is (arguably of course) a little messy. Even ignoring the inconsistent style (catching "Exception" comes to mind, public fields instead of properties, etc).
I certainly don't see any problem with it at all, though I didn't understand the dust-up when pinterest was re-writing links to include their affiliate code either.. so maybe there's an argument there that I'm unaware of.
Hackers breach The War Z personal-info databases; publisher shuts down servers
In what way is self-destruction a viable defense? This kills the startup.
You're probably right about not being gentle enough. The "area of Django" I was referring to had been mentioned in the email's subject, though.

As you might have guessed, that was my first and last try to contribute to this particular open source project. I won't do it again. Maybe this attitude is unusual in the subset of Django users who at some point want to contribute something back to the community. Or maybe the core developers have the wrong approach to encouraging new members of the community and instead of making sure the process works they spend the time writing codes of conduct.
I suck at grammar :p
Google Gives Developers More Ways to Incorporate Google+
> The exact cycle value will vary significantly between different types of hardware (older hardware was observed to take significantly more cycles)

This makes me think it uses the CPU itself. Microcode updates are not an everyday thing and don't need to be fast, they have no reason to update the circuitry for that. They still might have changed it, but this makes it seems lightly less likely.
Litecoin makes use of Colin Percival's (cperciva) excellent scrypt hashing library to make mining on commodity CPU/GPU's feasible and therefore non-competitive with BitCoin mining (you can mine both at the same time).

That's its primary plus; other plusses are quicker confirmation times and a larger number of coins to be generated (the reward is halved every 840,000 blocks).
He lives in a country with socialised health care. What that effectively means for someone with an aggressive/incurable disease is that instead of leaving your family bankrupted by heroic but statistically futile treatments you get high quality palliative care courtesy of the state. Amongst developed countries I think sick people resorting to dogfood is extremely rare.
Hackers guide to building a consumer electronics company, lessons learned.
Greenfield Linux growth is fertile growth area
It is quite rare for me to wish that I had a downvote button for stories... but this is that unusual exception. It is not technically "spam", so not appropriate for flagging, but this is an AWFUL excuse for a story which somehow manages to be FAR less useful than saying nothing at all.
Thanks for your feedback! I'm very bad at design so I kept UI as minimal as possible. But I will try to iterate on it. I like your idea about shading.
Site hasn't worked for me since it first appeared here. I've tried from several different ISPs. What's up with that?
Yes, I think it is possible, in the long run, to figure out who's behind a wallet, assuming that the Bitcoin use is frequent and convenient (meaning no-super-high-inconvenient-counter-measures are used, but a regular use of currency)

In that case, my concern is that I think it will be possible to determine ALL the transactions of that wallet. Making it even less anonymous than regular currencies.

I could be missing something, but if confirmed, that could be a problem for using Bitcoin as a regular currency
'Has To'