skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Or Google is just trying to solve a real problem (that few people think about until it's too late) for its users.

GMail is miniscule compared to YouTube. You really think Google is having so much trouble storing a bunch of text that they came up with this whole death justification to start deleting inactive accounts? Please.
Yes. There was even a story posted on HN about this some time ago.
I didn't really think so. I thought GooGoo Fanboy was apt satire myself. The hyperbole of the original poster clearly showed that he/she was already very entrenched anyway.

And considering it's possible that debating someone's strongly held points with logical counter points will only irrationally strengthen the person's original beliefs anyway, I think humor was appropriate:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/10/1...
In this example, yes. But floating point commutativity isn't guaranteed for multiple operations. a + b = b + a, but a * b * c is not guaranteed to equal b * a * c due to the rounding effects in the registers, which means commutativity fails for numbers that are at the rounding edges of floating point dynamic range.
Ask HN: Marketplace transaction processing - server side or client side?
We want to create an online marketplace but none of us had any experience with handling transactions. We are looking to integrate 3rd party tools to do that but wondering what the pros/cons of implementing the calls on the client side (Javascript) vs server side (C#).

The choice of implementation will also influence the 3rd party framework we choose. Brain Tree offers a C# API (I'm more comfortable with the server side, being mostly a desktop developer). On the other hand, we have been highly recommended Stripe (they don't have C# API) but I don't have enough experience to decide whether using Javascript to submit transactions is secure enough and/or proper implementation (we'll need to store some transaction details in our own DB too).

Any thoughts, suggestions, recommendations of other transaction processing frameworks are welcome!
lack of rich media support kept RSS limited to text based reader applications and therefore a less appealing option vs. just bookmarking actual websites and reading them in a browser (or mobile browser).

dependence on aggregation tools running clientside also meant that operating an RSS reader had just as much overhead for the user as just using their browser already does. if its a worse experience than reading in the browser, and is equally complicated to do then there's no good reason to prefer RSS over a browser.

a replacement technology should, in my mind, not be something that competes with the browser experience (as RSS/Atom did). at this moment I don't think there's a compelling use case for a replacement at all which is why we're not actually seeing active development of one. what I expect will happen is that more and more websites will eventually implement RESTful API's and then we'll just have the option of syndicating over REST calls instead of relying on RSS.
Yes but there will be differences that may matter a lot. I suspect that a lot of members of my cohort (I'm 36) still have no idea why we would want to tweet. I spent a lot of time on IRC when I was younger (not any longer) and I suspect that both being young as well as birth year play a part in some of these behavior patterns. This behavior and interests would also be affected by other factors that may correalate with age (such as having a spouse and children).
Apologies, a few teething troubles with the load. Working to resolve it.
But that's my point. Dialects are entirely arbitrary, yet there is overt discrimination against particular ones, combined with classist and or racist overtones. Given that sort of discrimination, one can at least put together a picture of why the French in Quebec are as protective of their language as their historical marginalization.

My family is from Bangladesh, which separated from Pakistan (in an independence war), over language differences. Historically, those language differences were a proxy for the cultural marginalization of Bengalis within the Pakistani state.

So when we hear about the Quebecois requiring the use of French, and we think "oh those silly French Canadians" we have to remember that there is a lot more to language than just how people speak.
Zillow's data is very, very bad. It doesn't reflect the market or the tax assessment records in my area.
Once you "flag" an article the text changes to "unflag" and clicking again changes it back (at least for me).

But downvotes are forever.
"Don't be evil" is equivalent to a guy walking around with a badge tht says "not a rapist"
Absolutely. They are very different. The Django Book is a tutorial--very useful, and I do wish that it got more support. I will have to see what I can do with helping to update it for Django 1.5.

But TSoD is a different animal--it's not a "How to learn Django" guide, it's a "How to use Django in the real world" guide. It's not teaching you how to setup models and forms, it's the step beyond that--once you know how to use it, how do you use it well, in production environments? Things that most decent Django programmers know, but that are very hard for those just getting started to figure out except through trial, error, and hours of Googling. There's a big gap in literature here, and not just for Django. I'm happy to see someone addressing it.
PHP: PSR-0: Pretty Shortsighted, Really
jgrahamc - I think you should introduce the concept of collision here. In the last article when you got to "things", my thought was: there have to be a few words that get to "things". In your reverse lookup table of the dictionary algorithm, there will be a lot of words for, e.g. "the", "or", "and" and so on. This is actually nice - because you start getting to other security concerns from here. For the crossword, you can talk about search spaces: instantly eliminate all words not of length N. For passwords, of course keys with lots of collisions reduce the search space, so that passwords with a high collision probability are less secure. And so on.

I'm not exactly sure what direction you're planning on taking this series, but astute readers, even without a solid grounding in crypto concepts, will notice.
I found myself wondering, "Is OP a US citizen? I doubt it b/c every US citizen knows how foo-bar'ed the CA government is."

Here's a fairly politically-leaning article about how they "lost" almost $1b in tax revenue (projected):

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/dec...

“November’s disappointing revenues stand in stark contrast to recent news that California is leading the nation in job growth, has significantly improved its cash liquidity to pay bills, and even long-distressed home values are starting to inch upward,” Mr. Chiang said in a statement. “This serves as a sobering reminder that, while the economy is expanding, it is doing so at a slow and uneven pace that will require the state to exercise care and discipline in how its fiscal affairs are managed in the coming year.”
I stopped using all of their products about a year and a half, thank you very much. And I never looked back, I feel safer than ever, I'm not being tracked all the time, I own my data, and I will never have to fear again being banned for no reason or having a service shut down overnight and losing all of my data. I can do whatever I want.
Nightless, 2010
by Yuichiro Tamura

http://www.damianoyurkiewich.com/en/nightless/movie.html
Hi everyone! I'm the creator of The Found a Business Book. I'll be around for a while to answer questions if you have any!
Interview your family-story with this android-app.
To your last point, Terretta, my colleagues and I have had lengthy (but unfortunately inconclusive) discussions about how to represent the efficiency dimension that we expect many readers would like to visualize.

The easier dimension--performance--became our first goal and the source code in Github is expected to very loosely fill the role of answering questions of efficiency. But we know that's a barely serviceable solution to the challenge, and that is especially true as pull requests increase the number of frameworks.

The challenge of representing efficiency succinctly remains.

We have considered lines of code and I think that for all its weaknesses, that is the best proxy for efficiency that I am aware of. Nevertheless, I'd like to contend with some of the following specific issues:

1. Many frameworks create boilerplate when you create a new application. Do we count those LOC?

2. Many frameworks on dynamic languages copy their entire corpus of functionality as source files into the application's root. Certainly we don't count those. Check out our Github repo's colored language bar at the top right. :)

3. Do build scripts count as LOC?

4. Do configuration files count as LOC?

Ultimately, I retain (irrational?) fear of contributing to enshrining LOC as a metric because unlike performance--where higher is always definitively better--lower LOC is not always definitively better.

I was asked separately if we had any data about how long it took us to build tests in the various frameworks. We didn't take detailed logs, but we do have rough numbers. Nevertheless, I've been reluctant to share how long it took us to implement the test code because it's a biased sample. Our previous experiences make us well disposed to some platforms and languages while we make silly time-consuming mistakes on others.
This app was created with the idea in mind that in most cases only the grandchildren are interested in the life story of the grandparents.
Sometimes it is too late by then or the options are limited to get the desired information.
"That said, Zillow is a wonderful tool to check price/sales history."

Maybe in your market. Their data is crap in many areas.
Is it really such a bad time to be an author?
It was designed by a woman. Mari Sheibley was responsible for large chunks of the deisgn - http://www.marisheibley.com/
Input and Output (Functional Reactive Programming)
Can anyone explain the advantages of writing unit tests before vs after certain sections of code has been finished?

I use unit tests, but only after the code's finished or there's a good stopping point. Otherwise I have to do too much refactoring every time I change a function's name or signature.

Maybe TDD is forcing you to architect the program in the beginning, but I find it cumbersome because stuff changes so much throughout the course of finishing a project.
Event will be late fall, we'll publish dates in early June when everything is confirmed. Hope that works for you?
"we felt like we had already gone too far to quit" -- the bane of many a startup that should just pack it up / pivot / rethink things the moment this thought crosses their minds. If you're already thinking you've gone too far, you've gone too far.
Much of the DSM is toxic legacy from the dark ages of psychiatry -- an era that we've yet to transcend.

Meanwhile, your conclusion doesn't seem to fit with the text of the article you linked.

You say:

> Asperger's syndrome will be removed from DSM-5 next month.
> So next month, the person won't have the syndrome anymore...
> The syndrome won't even exist anymore...

From the article:

> DSM-V, will come out in May and Asperger’s will be
> notably absent, replaced with the broader definition
> of “autism spectrum disorder.” Previously, Asperger’s
> was thought to be a milder form of autism.

My interpretation is that it's still the generic spectrum disorder that we never really understood, but now the DSM reflects this reality better than it did previously.

Of course, I concede to the prevailing stance of people more experienced in and affected by this decision.
A pretty interesting (if quite long) introductory reading about the subject:

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.ht...
How Mars 3 was found
Really? Really? Has Hacker News become this childish? I'm sorry, but this is getting a little out of hand. I know people are still upset about Reader's cancellation but come on.

If we're at the point where everyone just shits all over whatever Google does, regardless of whether it's a good thing or not, then that really doesn't say much about us as a community. If Google does bad things, let's point that out, but if, on the other hand, they come out with a product that is clearly of benefit to users, respects their wishes, and offers a feature that no other service providers do, then perhaps we should recognize that Google might have done something good for once.
I guess that's more motivation x ability. If you know how to, but don't want to, you're not going to. If you want to, but don't know how to, you're out of luck too.

I don't agree with the large companies are large because they work well hypothesis either. It wouldn't cover disruptive startups gobbling up larger companies market share, nor would it cover companies which are small, but very good at what they are doing. Google did search better than Yahoo, and it dethroned it. Was Yahoo larger than Google when Google started out? Yes. Was it better? Not neccesairily. And no matter how good your flight checking app is, you'll never become as large as Google, which doesn't mean you're doing a worse job than them.

Also, size breeds inefficiency because it averages. If your a 2 person startup, and one of you has no clue at all, you'll fail. If it's a 2000 people corporation, incompetence can and will slip through the pores (Else I honestly can't explain how some programmers got their jobs). The same way a large company can teach you what "being good" looks like, it can also teach you what "being bad" looks like, but they believe it's "being good". Organisational size is no guarantee for quality, the same way popularity isn't. Else Java would be the best language.
Whenever you say, "I think there is a massive market", you don't follow up with "for an open source version" haha. :)
Yes. I mention this in the first PS. I plan to address this in a separate blog post but have been trying to keep these bite-sized.
Show HN: Rivered - River of News RSS Reader built in less than a week
Six Weapons That Love The New Pentagon Budget
10 Surprising Assertions From Elite Entrepreneurs
(-0.) + (+0.) and (+0.) + (-0.) both evaluate to +0., as any compiler should readily confirm.
Google lets you manage your digital life from beyond the grave
5.4% commission !

Are you kidding me. I negotiated hard down last time, outraged at the 2% charge....

No wonder there was a housing crash
That's a useful detail, but can you be a bit more specific, or point me to a paper that describes this effect in more detail? The discussions I've had in the past, and the papers I've read in the past, have left me with the impression that every "odd" effect of this type was an interaction with associativity, and not with commutativity.

I'd like to learn more, but searches are failing to turn up anything specific and detailed. In particular, the usual reference - http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.ht... - doesn't seem to mention commutativity.

Thanks.
It seems they were not aware that AWS exists. They should really consider hiring engineers specialized in scaling.
No Publisher
Why you should forget everything you know, right now (video)
Lists out of lambdas and boxes out of functions
I really like the features offered (especially the realtime updates), and how you can customise it. Would prefer to host it on my own website though.
Should we choose agents based upon whether their significant other is a builder? Why not have an actual trained expert in home construction and maintenance be a part of the buying process, instead or relying upon the random, remote chance that an agent that will earn a five-figure commission may possibly have some value in that realm?

I looked at upwards of 30+ houses. For each one I would have loved to bring in an entire of team of people, but that's simply not feasible. Having a primary person with lots of experience and knowledge to help me while making the large cuts was invaluable (I looked at short sales in various stages of construction, new homes, old homes). I would also hope that any serious RE agent takes time to learn a lot about the construction process. The fact that my agents husband is a builder was a plus, but not a requirement. What is a requirement is that any agent can see potential big issues without my having to spend additional money for experts.

And while you're right that soft skills dominate, my agent absolutely knew her stuff. She was like a walking Trulia anytime I went out with her. Perhaps she just preps well, but who cares if that's all it was. I'm also fine to accept that what I found is rare. I know it is rare and why I recommend her so highly to anyone I know looking to buy a house.
UI Designers Sports Social Media
UI Designers needed for Sports Social Media company in NYC.
2- 3 years exp with Hand Coded HTML5, CSS3, JQuery and Bootstrap.
This paper is referenced in a newsgroup discussion: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=156301.156303

http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Comp/comp.lang.funct...
Anecdotally my impression is that the diversity of stories has increased; we seem to have a wider cross-section of interests than a year ago.

Yes, but that's not necessarily a Good Thing. What we're getting are more and more stories on the front-page that are things that you could read about on CNN, MSNBC, or see on ABC Nightly News. This is "Hacker News" not "World News Tonight".
The url length means I can't test most URLs
Second that. Doesn't work for me
It always bothered me to know that there is no other solution to DDos attacks other than shutting down the systems and wait till it gets back to normal load.
Pitbulls are loving, sweet dogs.

That's just another broken stereotype. Pitbulls run the full spectrum; just like other dogs breeds. Statistically, they are more likely to attack people than average but it's hard to separate their owners from the breed it's self. IMO, the real problem is as a large breed the potential for harm is greater than smaller dogs and far to many people mistreat them.
A free service with no advertising and a very limited business model?

I fail to see why anybody would want to build a community on a service that will disappear in a few months.
(a * b) * c is equal to (b * a) * c. And floating-point arithmetic is commutative, according to Eric Lippert (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2005/01/20/fun-w... ) and an university professor (http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/class/fa07/cs498mjg/notes/floating-po... ). Also according to IEEE 754, which I can't seem to find online.
Yes, it is definitely a test of resourcefulness to persevere in the face of challenge, but you have to also know when you're doing the wrong thing or going down the right path. Persevering in the face of clear, direct evidence that what you are doing is not going to pan out is stubbornness. But persevering and LEARNING from what is working when other things are not is a best practice. The key is realizing when something is not working and then iterating to find the success. Or knowing that perhaps what you are doing will work, but the timing or market circumstances are not optimal, and then just biding your time until the market changes. This is not as obvious as one might think.
My grandfather bought a home PC when he retired in 1986, and he was in his mid-sixties then. He kept up with new PC technology for many years after that. So there are always outliers!
Hey! Looks interesting. Who did the interviews, you?
Open Source Campus Management
Non-exhaustive list:
Anything to do with plumbing, electrical, networking and audio cabling. Essentially if you ever think that you may one day want an in home audio system, security system, LAN, it is cheap as hell to put the cables in the wall now and just not terminate the ends. I also put some empty PVC in the walls in case I ever want to run any other cabling, it'll be easier to fish the line. FWIW, I put all my own cat6 cabling in and didn't have the electrician do it. 2 cables to all rooms, 4 to my office, 4 to the entertainment center. Plus cables to all four corner roof soffits if I want to put in security cameras.

I also took pictures of everything before the drywall went up so if I have to get into the walls, I know where electrical and plumbing sits.

We didn't finish our basement because we can always spend more money later, it is harder/more expensive to build more space. So we maximized how big the house was at the expense of not having a finished basement.

However, we did finish the stairwell down to the basement and didn't hide that stairwell with a door and wall. It is all open with railing and carpet and lighting. It really opens up the first floor and looks really nice.

We also plumbed the basement for a bathroom. There is nothing there, but the pipes are there sitting in the concrete foundation. (again, much cheaper to put the $50 worth of PVC in the foundation when it is poured instead of using a jackhammer when you finish the basement.

If you want any built in shelving, it is a lot cheaper to have it done while the trim guy is already there instead of waiting until later.

We spent an extra couple grand on spray foam insulation, my heating/cooling bills are about 30% lower than my neighbors .

That is all I can think of right now.
It'll just be rolled into the general 'autism spectrum' definition.
That's not the behaviour I'm seeing on my machine. (http://codepad.org/rlLuB5VF) ... but, if you subtract zero from zero the sign depends on the order: http://codepad.org/g9LzZWPd .
Earlier discussion of a similar article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4184317
We just blogged something about infrastructure where Redis plays a key role. It has nothing to do with our product proposition. Expect to see various topics about design and technology.
Heh, I am ten years younger than you, and I was happy to be in a 26-30 group too. :)
the average commission paid to the buying and selling brokers was 5.4 percent of the price of a home in 2011, up from 5 percent in 2008. (The seller’s agent collects the commission from the seller and then splits it evenly with the buyer’s agent.) That’s considerably higher than the median rate in markets abroad, where there may only be one agent involved in the transaction, such as the U.K. (a 1 percent to 2 percent fee), Germany (3 percent to 6 percent), Israel (4 percent), and the Netherlands (1.5 percent to 2 percent), according to a 2007 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

<snip>

They found that there’s ... collusion in real estate that separates it from industries like stock trading and air travel.

So the most "consumer-friendly" solution to this problem is obvious. Make the collusion illegal. Make it a LAW that buyers and sellers are not obligated to pay any agents any specific percent of anything. (6 percent is hard-coded into most real estate transaction paperwork, and never fully explained to consumers.) Draw consumers' attention to the fact that Realtors should be competing with each other based on their service, not coercing consumers into signing contracts that write their percent commission in stone. The problem is that consumers don't know these things should be negotiable.

Collusion should always be illegal, but the lobbying forces of the NAR are pretty evil and powerful; it's going to be tough (but not impossible) to change.
One of the Stackful.io devs here.

I'm all for server tweaking and I do it all the time, but sometimes it gets boring. I could probably do something better than configure php5-fpm for the thousandth time.

Right now, Stackful.io takes the pain from that when it comes to Node.js development. You just pick a server size and hit a button. 2 minutes later your machine is ready to rock and you can deploy your app with a simple Git push.

We are planning on doing the same for the other major web technologies. We have some pretty good progress with a Python stack and a PHP one is in our queue.