skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most internet startup wannabes don't realize that "consumer internet" is actually a pretty small little niche which is disproportionally well represented in the media and very vocal/annoying with its self-promoting blogs, rock stars, ninjas and all that childish crap. However, it's only a niche.

There are many more industries where you're selling to other engineers, where technical elegance and performance matters more than you'd think: industrial automation/test, real time data acquisition, finance and banking, aerospace, specialized scientific libraries, specialized compilers (for chips you've never heard of), heavily customized Linux kernels for embedded systems, custom file systems, the list goes on forever. Companies like Sun, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Texas Instruments, Oracle and even Dell - all of them do a lot of this highly technical, lower level work, often in C/C++ and each of these companies has an ecosystem of startups revolving around them.

Your responses are the best illustration of SV echo-chamber effect. Keep on thinking that becoming an AJAXified CRUD htmlizator of MySQL tables is your only way to make money with a CS degree.
I never thought I would be a fan of writing about statistics. But Nate Silver has become a must-read.
First Impressions of the Fortress Language
FreshBooks Allows Freelancers to Network and Collaborate
i'm having trouble wrapping my head around the logistics of this...
I went to the Kennedy Space Center a while ago to watch the Shuttle launch with my dad who works for a rocket propulsion company.

I asked him what he thought about the magnetic launch idea...err "launch loop" as the article says...and surprisingly he said the idea wasn't so far-fetched.

One of the main problems with getting things into space is that you have to pass through a zone called "Max Q" I guess, where the pressure is maximized and can literally flatten you. The Shuttle apparently throttles back when approaching this point.

So propulsion isn't always the limiting factor. There are many different problems that occur when getting things into space.

One interesting side-note. He also thought scraping the Saturn V rocket was a huge mistake. Not only could it carry a massive payload, but it was equipped with numerous abort modes which aren't present on the new launch vehicles. Oh, and it had 100% mission success, which isn't true for the "new" systems they developed.
yeah, 3.0 changes a lot. It does appear that it will not exhibit the same problem.
Top wonderful icon sets for designing your web applications
Some of the best icon sets out there for use in web application designs
Programming visual effects. Some Websites / DVDs are sort of promotion material, which is more like a brochure and less like an "internets". But programming a showcase site for a new car or a music album is a lot of work which the sane graphic designer won't go into. But he could easily, if he had a coder ready.
Edge Competencies
This feature is really curious to me... why would I want to peek when I have a back button on my mouse?
The Paradigm Shift in Web APIs
I just switched to viewing all video either as downloads or live streams. Many downloads are 780p HD. For me this requires about 1GB to 2GB daily. I also upgraded to a 20MBs downstream link from Comcast and typically see download speeds averaging 5Mb/s. Even with the the Comcast cap of 250GB per month current products sold by US ISPs can easily meet a reasonable demand for video.

For an interesting read on how ISPs are addressing the increasing need for high bandwidth demand read http://loosebolts.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/our-vision-for-ge...

I think I have heard this claim every few years since the mid 90's. It is likely as valid now as in the past.
that what it seems like
This is exactly what I said. . . I said it would be an understandable request if I had an employment offer, but since I don't even know the name of the company that is "interested" in my resume, I'm basically helpless.

Now I am worried. The recruiter who called was from this company: (type it in w/out the spaces; please don't tip them off with a link to their site!)
http://www. a t - t e c h . c o m

Do you really think I should be worried?
There are some problems with education (and anything else) everywhere. But has your country arrived at anything like the American situation, where high school is worthless as a credential (e.g. does not guarantee basic literacy) and college is the new high school?
A lengthy section of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php) is devoted to Joel Salatin and his farm, as well.
I work for FreshBooks as Market Intelligence Manager (a data analyst role). This is our latest product dev/marketing push.

I linked to the mashable article because I think it does a pretty good job at describing this release. I would love to hear any feedback you guys have to offer.

Our CEO (Mike McDerment) highly respects the opinion of the posters here, so any comments will go right to the top. Thanks a bunch guys!
-Zach Aysan
Keep in mind that unemployment figures are not a simple polynomial. Specifically, an _improvement_ in the second derivative (not even necessarily positive) doesn't directly imply that we're going to improve. The article mentions this too:

>----------------------------------------------------

The $787 billion question, of course, is whether a decrease in the rate of job losses indeed portends a recovery, or whether such data is subject to false starts.

>----------------------------------------------------

I'm all for optimism, but there's enough short-term fluctuation in economic statistics that this is like getting the faintest whiff of baked goods and wondering whether we're all getting donuts next week.
Cool, and forgive me if I'm wrong here, but:

CPU usage is a silly stat to measure, unless it's more than 100%. Granted, this will allow PHP5 to scale more before it gets to 100%, so that's a good thing.
Surely the optimum case is to have all your machines pegged at 100% CPU, using them to their maximum capacity.

It'd be useful to compare page latency across PHP4->PHP5 or some metric the user can see.
Can anyone shed some light on the difficulties involved in upgrading a codebase of that size?
Aside from the substitution of editorial viewpoint for any actual reportage (eg, quoting some lawyers who specialize in first Amendment cases on what the implications might be), this article and others seems to depend on ignoring the first paragraph of the proposed legislation:

"(a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

There are legal thresholds for intent and severity which would have to be met before any criminal case would stick. Everyone keeps focusing on the 'electronic means' as if the act of closing a circuit is the focus of the legislation, rather than a sustained campaign of personal attack which a jury would find intolerable.

Those bleating that Sanchez doesn't understand the internet seem to have an extremely poor grasp of the legislative process and the scope and history of the first amendment, which is not invalidated by any given piece of legislation.
The worst part is, with time, you get used to the large portions. The "finish all the food on your plate" habit from childhood turns against you.
String.each is the same as String.each_line in ruby 1.8. This code rewrite seems to be the reason that code breaks on ruby 1.9 if body is a string (this is guarded against in the body setter). (ruby 1.9 removes String.each)

http://github.com/josh/rack/tree/master :

* NOTE: String bodies break in 1.9, use an Array consisting of a single String instead.

p.s. this is definitely worth a 2.3.3 tag and release
Google does the same thing [at least as of my last attempt, ymmv]. Just try an send an .exe or .dll through gmail.
You're right, but the solution is to fix the laws so that they are applicable to the Internet age. If the OP is right, this law would have the effect of removing the "beyond a reasonable doubt" clause, at least for these types of alleged crimes. You seriously don't want things to go that far because this would be far easier to misuse.

In the end, you have to decide whether not letting someone get away with libel is worth potentially putting innocent people in prison.
In case you haven't seen it, we do that for Twitter:
http://twist.flaptor.com/
Just a suggestion: it's a really bad idea to justify arguments on Wikipedia by saying you're trying to memorialize someone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISNOT

Also, while Fravia's own site is a reliable source for raw facts about Fravia, it's not a reliable source that establishes his notability. Nor is there any such thing as a "Google Test" for notability (that argument gets tried and fails in AfD's every day), nor is the "number of people trying to edit the page" a reliable indicator of notability.
My Experience Getting Owned by App Store Pirates
You are not helpless. If they won't tell you anything, don't tell them anything and tell them why. If they insist, tell them to fuck off and find another sucker. You gotta have a little pride here, no matter your situation.

It's not likely that they are going to steal your identity. By "no good use" I mean that they want your SSN for their databases, perhaps running preemptive background and credit checks, matching up your past employment history, etc, etc.

It's done, now. Can't get the water coloring back out of the pool. If you are worried about theft you can do a fraud alert / hold with the three credit agencies: TRW, Experian, and the other one I always forget.

Just don't do that again. :)
Just to offer a different perspective. As a guy currently from Oklahoma(whose just about to fly the coop for even better reasons); if I was still in school and had a weak CV, I would still jump on something like this. In fact, if I wasn't concerned about ethical implications, I would recommend that some of our talented interns take a shot at the much bigger leagues. I'm positive they would learn more there by accident than they could on purpose in Norman, OK.
You can no longer sell at a yard sale:

* Products that have been recalled by CPSC.

* Toys and other articles intended for use by children, and any furniture, with paint or other surface coatings containing lead over specified amounts.

* Products primarily intended for children age 12 or younger with lead content over a specific amount.

* Certain toys or child care articles that contain any one of six prohibited chemicals known as phthalates, which are primarily used as plasticizers.

* Other products that violate CPSC’s safety standards, bans, rules or regulations or otherwise present a substantial product hazard.

It's hard for me to get worked up about this. Even harder with the bait-y title.
If someone can't convincingly articulate why they need a piece of my personal information, I tell them to get bent.

To me, the most suspicious part is that they couldn't give you a straight answer.

I've had to deal with a handful of job searches in the last decade and I know why they -might- legitimately want it (background and credit checks).

But this guy who places people -professionally- can't tell you?
College threatens to sue students over personal email addresses
Do you just throw your hands in the air and say "Stupid PC!!!!" when your program won't compile?

No, you debug.

This is about debugging a broken program.

Government is a broken program.

It has bad inputs and malformed syntax.

Immediately running for your existing label and attempting to label me achieves nothing.
I dislike lists like this. It takes forever, and a zillion mouseclicks, to sift through them all and follow the interesting ones. "Handpicking" 100 people is still a lot of effort for the end user - there must be a better way.
Here's a source (german):
http://events.ccc.de/2009/05/06/sigint-2009-fravia/

Somewhat skinny on details, but it's a start and mentions several other potential sources.

Google translation:
http://bit.ly/qNv0K

I have neither the time nor inclination to aid in creating the Wikipedia page, but am very interested in seeing it done well.

-R
Well...I think globeandmail's audience is probably more general and therefore more interested in character stuff more than academic papers. If someone gets interviewed on G4 they get asked what video games they play, whether or not they are known as gamers, and he's not asked that here either.

Also, it seems Eric needs to work on communication/social skills:

“Dude, you won a space station contest!” one girl said. “That's huge!”
“Space colony,” Mr. Yam corrected.

By Thursday, the news had sunk in. “It's great,” he said. “Finally some recognition.”

Sounds like a smart guy though.
Next thing you know they'll be asking for your email password so they can hire all your contacts, too.
Also wanted to credit where I found this entry: http://secretenemyhideout.com/post/105060819/its-not-the-inf...
Or how little high school calculus people have taken. At my high school not even precalculus was a requirement. Of a graduating class of around 300, I'd say 30-45 students had taken a calculus course.

I agree that acceleration would be a much clearer term.
Blackboard to Buy Rival Angel Learning for $95 million
I understood what people meant by "the second derivative" before I'd taken any calculus. It's intuitive; you hear it in context once and you get it.
Being too successful is one of life's biggest risks (2004)
OK, I'll bite... I'm a co-founder of a software consultancy and we've actively marketed PHP4->PHP5 upgrades after we did a couple large, successful projects that just happened to include upgrading from 4 to 5.

We wrote a Compiler that does 95% of the work for us. Took a few weeks to write and it's made our 4->5 upgrade jobs a very profitable part of the business.

To the best of my knowledge, there was no changes to function parameters order. It's nearly all object-model stuff.

Some might find this interesting.. The 1.0 of the Compiler introduced bugs into the compiled (5.0 version) of the codebase in cases where the orginal dev relied on the Assign-By-Copy behavior of v4.

In most cases by-ref behavior is what was wanted, and many probably didn't notice the distinction. But there is a situation where the dev may have taken advantage of the fact that eh was getting a copy, eg:

function x($o) {
$o->foo = 'bar';
$o->save();
unset($o);
}

$y = new o();
$y->foo = 'baz';
x($y);
$y->save();

This code in PHP4 works as the developer intended. In PHP5 it throws an error on the $y->save line because the object was passed by reference to x() and it was garbage collected inside x.

It's rare, but it exists, and it was a little tough to fix because we're running a single-pass Compiler.

The nice thing is that it's also able to introduce optimizations in the code, as well as use a Static Analysis approach to detecting probably bugs and security holes (for example, unfiltered use of $_REQUEST values, or assigning to $this) and it fixes them as well.

The end result is an app that always runs faster, sometimes significantly so.

IMO, the real reason 4->5 was a slow process is because it's biggest selling point was a "real-ish" object model and most PHP developers are Morts and just don't need to care about that.
Balancing Marriage and Business
you sir, is a genious.
What's particular about the ssn ? Why is it used so widely ? (I'm European)
Thanks for finding these details. I subscribed to Reason for a while, and ended my subscription because of their tendency to sensationalize things by leaving out details like these.
magyno
I agree with both you and Dan Cook.

You have reminded me of a talk that Jonathan Blow (of Braid fame) gave on the importance game prototyping back in 2007 that is vastly relevant to this comment, and a pretty interesting watch as well:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3727092195323329487&...
GLASS/Seaside Success Story
IBM pays a bonus for and often promotes engineers based on the number of patents they file. The natural result is a very large number of patents, often of dubious value, that may never be implemented.

Having said that, I bet my colleagues at work would agree to pool in money and license this patent if our boss agreed to abide by it :D
Zorbid talking here, actually :-).

I know all of that, and, for the best of me, I try to play by the rules, and to give proper arguments for my views.
Those comments on perfectly obvious code look horrible.
If you need range scan queries (selecting objects and their associations that match certain prefixes), the only DBs that can readily handle this are Bigtable (which is originally designed to store crawldbs) clones like HBase or Hypertable, the latter can do >1M inserts/scans/s sustained on cheap Dell nodes with 16GB ram and 7.2KRPM SATAs. Most KVs based on DHT _cannot_ do efficient scanning. They typically cannot do fast inserts when RAM to DB size ratio is less than 1, either.
What if GPS worked like Here & There?
As a programmer I've accumulated quite a bit of hardware/software knowledge which I find that people will readily take in exchange for things. Upgrading machines with new memory (RAM or HDs), faster video cards, removing malware/viruses, things of that nature. A lot of people are leery of digging into the internals of their machines.
First of all, what is with the recent deluge of poorly written trite?

Leadership, evidently.
Nope. Many black kids were going to black schools, which did not have equal resources. (Not all schools were segregated.)

However, I was writing about results. For economic reasons, black kids couldn't afford to stay in school as long, but while they were there, they did pretty well.

This shouldn't be surprising. The players and teams in Negro Baseball League was every bit as good as those in "the majors" even though they played on very different fields.
Ask HN: Examples of Excellent Python Code?
Are there open source projects or other applications that are held to be excellent examples of Python coding (both in style and in function)? I'm going to have some time after finals in a week and I want to give some good code a close reading.
As far as I understand it (my dad worked for the labor union for decades) it's absolutely illegal to use SSN for anything other than taxes - a law that is regularly broken in this country. If some recruiter asked me for my SSN over the phone I'd laugh at him and if he pushed the issue, I'd walk away or try to get hold of his boss depending on my mood. Certainly a recruiter has no business knowing your SSN!
Something I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet:
I believe that the primary reason that we get on whacked out diets is that we're using huge numbers of substitutes for natural foods which screw up our bodies natural calibration. The craving you have for "sweets"? yeah, there wasn't any readily available source of processed sugar in the ancestral environment. That craving is actually for fruit.

This is a low tech version of wireheading. You're short circuiting the built in reward mechanisms of the brain by giving it an overload of the things it considers positive. You crave fat and sugar because these things are rich in nutrients and energy. We're built for scarcity and can't cope when we have unlimited access to these things.

Try reducing your intake of junk food and after 2 months you'll find normal cravings start to return and normal foods tasting better.
New site up
Would love some feedback and spreading of the word

www.sxwrds.com for short
I'm not disputing your point at all. Here we are in the early experimenting stage. Now that I've checked your profile, I recognize you from a group to which we both subscribe (I lurk mainly, because my interests are commercial, but occasionally I'll contact someone off-line if I think I can help).
ssn = social security number, the # we use to pay our taxes into our social security fund. It's the only unique identifier every person qualified to work in the US is guaranteed to have and many times many systems are keyed off it.