skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I disagree, I found it cliche'. It's a good blog-post, but not really world changing. Not to put you down -- I get caught up in these kinds of things too -- but what real evidence does he actually have to support his hypothesis? Sure, I could say that it isn't true because of this and that, but how valid would my argument be? ANgels on the head of a pin, and all that...

What he does is list a couple surprising facts, then invent scenarios to fit the evidence. It's one of the most common rhetorical techniques on blogs and in pop-science speculative books, and whether the author means it or not -- it can turn intellectually dishonest very quickly without adding clear qualification in the text.

I don't find this sort of stuff convincing or useful anymore. It's the same reason I have a natural distaste for Gladwell and his book-selling ilk -- this type of conjecture seems enlightening, and maybe you could get a few interesting ideas out of it.. but it's not supported. And in the end, you end up with stuff that's an interesting thought-experiment, but leaves you none the wiser.
Maximize Website Traffic - Increase Your Site’s Online Relevance with These Simple Steps
Great essay, but I really, really wish the author had some guts and stopped missing opportunities, both online and offline. Even when she finally got some courage at the end, the result was (at best) "awkward."
I know, it's really annoying MySpace do this
This shows all urls on HN including images etc. whereas the original post demonstrates retrieving only linked articles
I remember Encarta to be inaccurate and having few listed sources. I rather see a messy and full of controversy wikipedia article than a short and oversimplified - it gives you a wrong impression on sensitive and complex issues.
I don't have a house - silly argument. I don't use a lot of energy personally. Also you can just use more energy efficient things. I did not want to interfere with your lifestyle.
"Hashing and salting a password removes absolutely ewvery security weakness in terms of directly extracting the password. No need for layered security and potentially complex uneeded encryption/decryption in your app. Safe, secure. end of the matter :)"

It is seriously worrying that you believe this.

Cracking hashed passwords offline is no big deal on a single machine unless you have really strong password policy - you know, the type of password no real regular user would even enter.
Windows-xp-install-guide
Not to discount the skills of Joel and Jeff, but one thing to keep in mind is it's much easier to build a social site for a bunch of hackers, than for example, a bunch of retirees.

The same thing goes for Hacker News. StackOverflow and HN are great, but when you look at their traffic figures, (1600 a day to start for HN, and 30k a day today) keep in mind that websites for computer programmers will just in general perform the best among any sort of website, in terms of market penetration.

What they don't perform very well in is having visitors who don't run adblock. Because of this quirk, you need to have a million-dollar revenue source like Spolsky has on his blog - a job board for programmers.
this is _really_ good advice - I find when I'm coding in a coffee shop then I feel more productive because the internet is a really big distraction.

I have the documentation on my laptop as well as the framework source code, so whenever I need to look someting up it's there. Having to make an effort to look stuff up means that my brain has more of an incentive to memorise it.

And practise, practise, practise. These things come over time.
The whole reason you don't start to eat before everyone has been served is if you have been served the wrong person's food.
Not to language flame, but I think that php has a longer learning curve in this respect. Because of the huge number of functions available, there's a lot to memorise.

Learning an API is the hardest part of any new technology because of all the rote work.

Contrast this with something like python/django or ruby/rails - sure there's a lot to learn in the frameworks, but the language themselves are fairly small.

This means glue code is really quick to write, and you only really have to look at the framework documentation.
I don't know how it is over the States, but at least here in Sweden it's only "national" ads that I ever see on the news papers' websites. I wonder if it's too hard, too expensive or not useful enough for local ads on the web. In the physical papers it's mainly local ads, so the need and market should be there.

Might be interesting to look into this more; if technology is the only problem there's definately money to be made.
i actually worked in the special collection division of michigan state universitys library in the spring and summer of 1997. they were using a commercial device, whose name escapes me, that allowed the book to lay flat and be imaged from above. the software accounted for the curvature of the page for ocr purposes. judging from the posted pictures in the article, the google device seems more elaborate with stereo cameras in the infrared spectrum.

bottom line, though, is that people have been digitizing books for a long time before google came along. sure, google is doing it on a larger scale with more resources at their disposal but it is not new to the dozens and hundreds of academic libraries around the world.

a simple search for overhead book scanners returns a ton of links, including this one to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning.
It's a very good essay about online privacy and our social relations in the virtual world.

It's written by someone who understands it.
These penniless bloggers always know how to do someone else's job. I suppose they expect some internet billionaire to follow their plan and send them roses.

;-)
Also remember that when Microsoft call it Release Candidate, they mean 'Beta'.

This is because when they used to call this phase Beta, they found that corporate IT depts wouldn't try it.
we have that for salary in France. But other gains (rented properties etc.) are not yet accounted for.

Belgium and Germany for example removes the taxes "at the source", which means that when you get your salary you don't have anything else to pay on it, your employer already sent the money to the State. I don't know how they do on other taxable revenues.
I hope you're wrong, but I suspect you're not.
People don't need to like food to live, and yet they do.
If money isn't particularly tight, or if the family already has a licensed copy, Flash and ActionScript make a particularly good start. Like Logo, the kid can make things happen nearly immediately, but since ActionScript has a syntax that is similar to "real" languages in common use, the habits gained are more directly transferable to other projects later on. I'll refer you to Ned Batchelder's site for a better argument:

http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200711/best_computer_language_...
I saw a really good and somewhat disturbing play by Neil Labute called "The Shape of Things" that you might find of interest to watch (it was made into a movie) if you like this essay.

> In a modern version of Adam's seduction by Eve, The Shape of Things pits gentle, awkward, overweight Adam against experienced, analytical, amoral Evelyn, a graduate student in art...The Shape of Things challenges society's most deeply entrenched ideas about art, manipulation, and love.

http://us.macmillan.com/theshapeofthings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shape_of_Things
35 Mobile applications for Twitter
I couldn't disagree more with the central point of the article: that newbies should only ask for help from expert programmers as a last resort.

An expert may be able to solve an issue in seconds that a might stump a newbie for weeks. Moreover, a newbie will learn much quicker if given guidance from an expert than if left to their own devices.

I have been in both situations, learning from experts and sharing my expertise with newbies. I have always been happy to help out others and have certainly been shown the same helpfulness by people more expert than me.
That would be an SR flop, which -like the JK one- is taught in academia but hardly (if ever) used in industry. I was referring to the edge-triggered D flop; it can also be built from gates but it should be a primitive element. If the object was to have the minimum number of primitive elements in the library, you'd need only a NAND or a NOR gate.
in python it would be like this (get BeautifulSoup first):

--

import urllib2

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

ychtml = urllib2.urlopen('http://news.ycombinator.com/).read()

for tdtitle in BeautifulSoup(ychtml).findAll("td", "title"):

print tdtitle.a
At that age I had started programming BASIC on my C64 a year earlier, copying the examples from a book targeted at adults and written in a language I did not know (english). [Only slightly bragging, but here is what i want to say:]

The teaching material does not have to be all that pedagogical, but the motivation make the computer do something needs to be there.

In this day and age, I think that the absolutely best environment is to make dynamic web pages. By just outputting a few rows of text you can see a result page and imagine having it online for friends to use. One can also create dynamic pictures.

I used my knowledge of BASIC around that time to write training programs in multiplication, addition, and when English classes started, word translations. That is, I made semi-realistic solutions to problems I had, and the resulting program was used by me (and also friends once you could compete in score points).
No, but I'd rather have a fast ugly car than a slow pretty one.

I think I disagree with you on two points. I place a higher emphasis on efficiency than I do aesthetics; I want a language that allows me to do things quickly. I also have a slightly different idea of programming language beauty than you do. I like languages that have an small but expressive syntax and a concise core library. Clojure fits that definition better than any other Lisp I've found, so from my point of view, it's the most beautiful Lisp as well as the most practical.

But aesthetics are subjective, which is why I dislike arguments about them. I don't particularly care what language a library function is written in, just so long as it integrates elegantly with the language I'm working in. You might think that using external libraries is aesthetically displeasing, but that's a subjective opinion.

What I am interested in discussing are technical details about a language, as they are entirely objective. We can discuss whether a particular language produces more concise code than another, and come up with examples to prove it. I like those sorts of discussions, because even if I don't agree, I'll always come away with a better understanding of the favoured language of the other guy.

By contrast, arguments over aesthetics just seem pointless, as neither participant will learn anything or change their view.
Ask HN: real world examples of numbers with 3 decimal places
sorry this is off-topic but there seem to be a lot of mathematicians here. I'm an elementary teacher and currently teaching children about decimal places and place value. I try to use real world examples to teach maths whenever possible but I can't think of any using 3 decimal places that would be relevant to such young children (aged 8-9).

any ideas?
Good coders copy, great coders steal.

Google is your best weapon.

Always wear your balaclava while coding.

http://www.thermalshop.co.uk/balaclava-season-pi-135.html
I'm going to go against the grain a bit here and recommend that the parents try to pick up an old 8-bit micro for the kid.

When I was a young'un, I also had a major fascination with computers (guess it didn't wear off...) and managed to badger my mum into getting me a ZX Spectrum 128 from a car boot sale in the run up to a birthday (perhaps my 10th?). This was already old technology, then - we had a Windows 95 machine at home - but I didn't care. It was MY computer and, with the help of a few yellowed books and the first two volumes of INPUT magazine, I could make it do what I wanted!

I think that this was a very powerful introduction to programming - a good few years of PEEKing and POKEing and dipping into assembly every now and again is perhaps the most natural way to develop intuitive ideas as to how computers work and, although BASIC is frowned upon, it's always good to find out why the hard way! A lot of these ideas sound scary now, but on a small machine a kid can really go wild with them, and that freedom can be the best learning tool of them all.

And another plus with this plan - the kid gets a cool new gizmo. ;)
A challenge for hackers - C++ Robots ...
I absolutely agree with the article on this matter.

While what you're saying is 100% correct, I'm now seeing first-hand (we're dealing with a bunch of new hires at our company, and I'm the most senior developer on the floor) the reasons behind this.

The biggest reason is this: 9 out of 10 hires haven't yet cultivated the art of researching for themselves (we're speaking entry level programming jobs). If you give them an easy way out, yes, they do benefit more in the programming aspect in that they now have an answer and have gained a jewel of information; but they're missing out on researching for themselves. The art of looking for an answer. Cultivation of the persistence that is required of good programmers, both in searching for and implementing any given solution.

These talents are worth more than the coding knowledge itself. The coding is propositional knowledge, but getting the solutions and doing it right is propositional knowledge and worth the wasted weeks.
baseball batting averages.
Jailbreak iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 4: QuickPWN 3.0 Beta 4
Jailbreak iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 4: QuickPWN 3.0 Beta 4
for that matter, slugging percentage, on base percentage etc etc. many baseball stats use 3 decimal places. baseball drew me into statistics when i was that age.
"Not capable" can have two meanings. First, you could mean that Microsoft engineers lack the skill and ability to make a better calculator or text editor. Second, you could mean that Microsoft's hands are tied by a variety of reasons (legacy support, antitrust concerns, etc).

I know it's popular to assume Microsoft's incompetency, but that's not the case here.

Many engineers internally have proposed changes and provided patches that could drastically improve the functionality. However, the gatekeepers are incredibly conservative. Not only do they have to consider the legacy issues, but they also have to consider all of the ISVs who would kick and scream about anti-trust. The subset of the customer base who would truly appreciate a better notepad do not justify the risks.
The key in asking someone else is to avoid the disturbance effect. Hence, email: a delayed questions & answers session.
Sales taxes could be tracked by credit-card companies, which could provide a year-end report of total sales taxes paid, for use in computing federal income tax liability.

(Sales taxes were deductible this year, but there's always the question whether Congress will renew the deduction or better yet make it permanent.)

I've suggested this to AmEx, but have never gotten a response.
Representing complex numbers as 2×2 matrices
Research of the sort we are talking here is easy, in that it isn't mentally challenging. Doing a google search and then sifting through all the articles does not require any skills other than patience, just as searching through a 1,000 page book to find the page you want doesn't require anything more than patience.

You don't learn anything by these actions. You learn by understanding the solution, and the sooner you can find an explanation for the solution the better, and in my opinion there is no quicker way of getting to the solution than by asking an expert.
You can filter that with another grep for example:

wget -O- news.ycombinator.com | grep -o 'title"><a href="[^"]*' | grep -o http.*
How the heck does anyone meet for coffee at 3pm on a Wednesday? I love OCC, but it would help if these events were 8am/lunch/evening to at least give those with real jobs a chance to make them.

That being said, hope to make it.
Code less.

Or a better way of putting it — just DO less.

Start out with a plan, and spend as little time as you can in the prototype/experiment stage. Write down what you need to do to create a "minimum viable product".

A minimum viable product model is what all "coded in X hours" web-apps create. Quite literally, just launch as soon as physically possible; if you expect not-required-but-cool-feature-1 to take an extra 2 hours to create, and you really think would add quality to the product without adding unnecessary bulk, then just add it to the 'post-launch to-do list'. You have a massive advantage creating a web-app — the ability to instantly add features after 'launch'. Don't waste it!

And to help with creating a minimum viable product, always do Test Driven Development. While this actually adds to the amount of code you have to write, generally you will get the app finished quicker, or at the very least, it'll help you stay on track.
He means ethnography, not anthropology. To notice that a bunch of backpackers sit on the steps is ethnography. To study an entire culture's way of life is anthropology.

Moreover, the argument is crap. It's a true statement at face value, but what he says is not really what he means, and his supporting observations don't actually support the statement.

This is the same guy who wrote about how design is just decoration, and drew a comparison to the flowery bits on NYC brownstones to prove it -- the architect wouldn't bother with the flowery bits, he'd pay some menial laborer to just stick shit on there. (I don't even believe that assertion, but it's a very poor supportive argument.)

Sigh.
Why waiting for microsoft to build these things? Use GNU/Linux.
Playing for Change
No, revealing people's passwords is pathetic. They are a multi-million dollar company, it's about time they Get Real.
Steve Yegge talk at Stanford
Why home values may takes decades to recover
The Case for Kitsch
Actually, I think the biggest problem with this dialog box is not that it's present, it's that the question makes no sense.

As best I can tell, it's actually two questions merged into one, though the answers are still separated out, except the answer to the second question seems to depend on the first; but the first question isn't simply yes/no, it's yes/no(A)/no(B)/no(C), and by the time I've finished trying to parse the question and the proffered answers I've given up caring.

I can guess at what it's asking, but I'm a software developer. How is a normal end-user supposed to make an even halfway-informed choice?

If Windows is going to push these choices out in front of me, it needs to ask questions users can understand.
My mind's eye is blind. I find it basically impossible to mentally visualize things, except for when I'm dreaming. And even then, everything I see in my dreams is "blurry", and often times monochrome. I wish there was a way to acquire the ability to visualize.
He had an excellent hook, but unfortunately there was not much of an article afterwards.
Something very similar to this called Robocode has been around for some time. The language is Java though:

http://robocode.sourceforge.net/
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alternative_energy_revolution.jp...
Ubuntu Tips and Tricks
Having already made a review on the newly released Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, I would like to express a number of basic Ubuntu tips, which many of you may have heard of before but for the sake of the Ubuntu beginners, bear with me! These tips and tricks which I am going to explain will work practically on most Ubuntu distro’s, but not on all of them.

Alter the colour of your Ubuntu

In order to change the colour of your Ubuntu, use the following command

sudo apt-get install gnome-color-chooser

In future you can then discover the colours, under System >> Preferences.

How to convert Ext2/Ext3 file system to Ext4 (in 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope)

- Make sure you have Ubuntu 9.04 installed so that you have an Ext3 file-system.

- Back-up all of your valued data.

- To convert the partition, reboot from the real CD, and run this code,

sudo bash

tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/sda1

e2fsck -pf /dev/sda1

In this case, the partiton you need to convert is /dev/sda1....
I think they may be overestimating the value of a Microsoft stack. I think it's reasonable to get 16 million pageviews with no load on almost any popular open source stack if you are using 2 dedicated boxes each with 8-core Xeons.

If they were having almost no load on low-end virtualized hardware running a Microsoft stack, that would be noteworthy.
Although to a large extent I agree with you when you say "[Resaerching] talents are worth more than the coding knowledge itself.", I'm not sure you're accurately representing the author's position.

Particularly his last acceptable answer is "If you have a friend who is knowledgeable on the subject... I don't care if you bother someone outside the organization with endless questions."

What the author is interested in is not having new employees disturb old employees with questions, although having new employees understand researching is a solution, it isn't his goal.
( link to web page was for context )

Very good factors you've provided here. My main concern is lack of portability of my dead-tree library. If I could save even /half/ the # of boxes to move I'd be much happier.
Just to clarify, to the best of my knowledge, they are private, not profitable and sharing code/knowledge. This amazes me.

I never said they were amazing; a different distinction. I'm in total agreement with you.
"Hacker News Disease" has been around since USENET. Computer folks think they can figure out anything they have "good documentation" for. While their experience with Python libraries bears this out, it really doesn't extend to other fields in depth. The result: lots of physicists, chemists, astronomers, and engineers of all stripes have cause to roll their eyes at us all the time!

Example: "What if we launched an orbital rocket from a balloon? Do the math, guy, what that saves you isn't worth the effort. You're not open to my ingenious new idea!"

^_^

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=444608
Real jobs? So you have a Real Job?

This site isn't that entrepreneurial anymore.
Why doesn't they use javascript, or something that could be safely run in browser? Then they could make a simulator and editor all in the browser.
your second question doesn't make sense to me.
I've never heard of anyone who became an expert in Quantum Field Theory in a couple of years without having a background in Physics

An anecdote, FWIW ;)

Once Pierre Deligne, and few fellow mathematicians, annoyed at their utter lack of understanding of QFT and involved physics, decided to sit down for a year and learn some. Notes they've took during that year of effort are now a standard reference (http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Fields-Strings-Course-Mathemat...)
Security hole: only the first 8 characters in password matter
Same thing here in Sweden. Since I have nothing to add to the "tax proposal" all I have to do is to SMS in a code as my acceptance.

To some degree I think it has been made this simple so that I shouldn't spend much time thinking about how much of my salary goes away in taxes. :)
I believe it depends on the situation. Most cases, a little bit of research beforehand almost always helps.

When you go to the expert, you can talk about what you've found so far and how you think you should proceed. This tells the expert that he is not spoon feeding you.

It also makes the discussion more interesting since you are coming to the table with your ideas and trying to refine them using the expert's knowledge, which, I have found, is the best way of learning: finding out what an expert would do if he were in your shoes.