skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I hate these “Sid Meier’s Rules” articles, because I love Covert Action. It was like Carmen Sandiego, but with awesome action games and puzzles instead of geography trivia. I’ll admit that I had a little trouble staying focused on the big picture when I was in 7th grade, but at the easier difficulties it didn’t really matter. You always got fed a clue that would lead you in the right direction.

When I play it now, as a grownup, I don’t have any trouble swapping between the action parts and the big picture parts.
Ask HN: Do you have a "Home" link in your main navigation?
I'm considering excluding the "Home" link from a new website to keep the main navigation clean. I plan on using the website logo in the upper left corner in place of the "Home" link, which seems to be a commonly accepted practice these days.

Is the Home link still useful in a modern web ui or is it a relic of the past?

I hope Jakob Nielsen isn't reading this :).
An iPod doesn't help me concentrate, but sometimes music does.

I've noticed lately that listening to music with headphones helps me focus more than listening to it through speakers. I'm assuming this is because the headphones make the music the only thing I hear, where as with speakers the music is just another thing I hear.

(...) but it has to be techno I've heard before (...)

Definitely, you want the music to set the rhythm for what you're doing but not to take center stage. I don't listen to techno, but I find instrumental funk is great for this (Beastie Boys' "The In Sound from Way Out" and Forbidden Ensemble's "Porno Soundtracks" are my favorites, not that anyone asked).
The iPhone doesn't swap because its flash memory is REALLY CRAPPY. It's terribly slow at even the easiest stuff like streaming reads. Swapping to it would cause epic grinding, so they don't do it (the flash wear that people usually trot out is irrelevant).
Summary: company funded studies claim drugs help X% of the population. More rigorous federal studies show they might only help 2/3 * X%. The main difference in the groups was including drug abusers in the federal group.

So what? A drug either helps you or it doesn't. If it helps you, you don't care what fraction of other people it helps.

The value of X mainly determines how many drugs you'll need to try. If they work for 50%, you'll have to try 2 drugs on average before finding one that works. So you want to start with drugs with large values of X, but whether it's 60% or 40% isn't a huge deal.

Furthermore, clever doctors can often guess right and prescribe different drugs for different people. Studies that insist on giving the same drug to everyone with depression are stupid, because they're administered much more intelligently in the real world.
Well... I'd say C++ even with these latest improvements is much easier to grasp than Haskell, for example. The question is if the steep learning curve can be justified.

I'd say that for some it makes sense. Updated C++ will be a fairly high-level language with absolute access to bare metal and near 100% compatibility with C, that's very unique. And the world is in a desperate need for a deterministic (i.e. optionally garbage-collected) bare-metal replacement for C for systems programming. D could be it, but Walter just won't let the community to have some control of it.

Moreover, I suspect some of these improvements around the type system will allow C++ compilers to generate faster code than C compiler could ever achieve because programmer's intentions will be better expressed.

I only wish they expanded the standard library more. As far as I'm concerned, C++ doesn't really have a standard lib: STL is often awkward to use and very limited, for instance std::string is next to useless and iostream is such a pain... Then we have Boost, it comes with insane build times, incomprehensible compile error messages and multi-platform issues, so most C++ programs mostly fall back to C lib for basics like I/O, or to platform-dependent frameworks like MFC.

I also hope that external templates will work as promised. In the current form, templatized C++ works well only in a form of one giant file where everything is included in the correct order. Perhaps this is why every single C++ project in my relatively long C++ career has been using the language in "C with classes" form despite my best attempts to convince people that templates aren't always evil.
Hey, RB. Haven't been there since Amanda threw herself to the floor kicking and screaming. ABC wasn't it?
Find a Tai Chi studio and learn the short form. It is a complete set of exercises for back, legs and shoulders that takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. And it is fun to do.
That's right: our policy (http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/contributing/...) is that, whenever possible, trunk be kept stable. "People should be able to run production sites against the trunk at any time." This isn't hyperbole: I have sites in production that run against trunk and are updated very frequently.

That said, like all software, Django has bugs. There's a handful (45 right now) left (http://code.djangoproject.com/query?status=!closed&compo...) that are serious enough to prevent calling anything "final" right now.
While I agree with you, I'd like to know why you think flash wear is irrelevant.
Tipjoy.com - possible home for CraigBucks
I think it's possible (although not a foregone conclusion) that in fact much of the filter is from what he terms 'discrete' events. That is, having the right sort of sun, the right-sized planet at the ideal distance from this sun, with a substantial moon to act as a gyroscope, active tectonics to recycle elements that would otherwise get locked up, etc.

I've not, for example, seen any conclusive estimates on how likely it is that an otherwise earth-like planet would get a moon to act as a stabilizer for axial tilt (which itself is probably important for complex life).
This is called 'literate programming'.
I find two interesting things in this post:

They're replacing redundant-controller BlueArc NAS with non-redundant Sun Thumper. This goes against "best practices", but they say in reality they are getting better availability (presumably with a small window of data loss). Worse is better.

The graphics are pretty chartjunky, which is interesting in a post that is supposed to be about "transparency".
The days I forget my iPod are horrible, unproductive days.

I think that has to do with my noisyish work environment more than anything, since I can code at home with or without music. Though it may also be related to the way working at work works (sit at your desk and produce stuff for the next 9 hours)...

But as far as music goes, I'll listen to anything I like and know. Anything new is distracting until I've heard it a few times, but that's about it.
I would say that as long as you have a clickable logo that takes you to the home page everything is allright. Most users will expect to be taken to the home page when clicking it.
What's interesting is that antidepressants such as Prozac have a few established, proven and well-documented side-effects, one of which is orgasm inhibition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ssri#Sexual_side_effects

So I'd imagine that the men who are prescribed antidepressants for things like premature ejaculation find that they very much do live up to (a different kind of) hype.
That's a very good point.

As a side note, my goodness please tell me you're putting more time and effort into S3Stat. I think you are seriously undervaluing it. Dressing it up with something prettier than webstats would, in my mind help you pay for a lot more than rent.

Good work.
You people are such idiots. I lost 40 pounds in two months and it was the easiest thing in the world. But most of you won't ever even see these words because I was rude on here too many times and now (from what I hear) they have me on some kind of auto-delete or auto-obscurity or something like that.

Forty pounds in two months, gone, no effort at all. All you have to do is eat natural vegan foods. No meat, no processed food of any kind, no refined grains, no dried fruit. Just natural vegan. That's it. You'll hit your ideal weight in no time and once you get there you won't lose another pound.
My immediate reaction is that we live in the times of "No Culture". Almost no-one reads any Shakespeare now, and most people don't know the second law of thermodynamic either. But certainly the "abscense of culture among the masses" existed in his time as well, and he was specifically talking about "culture", not the lack thereof.

I would say that no, we are not beyond the two cultures. Kids are shuffled through university, where they are told to "pick a major", either science or arts. The process along kills all love for the chosen faculty, let alone any for the un-chosen other half.
Beside the point. You wouldn't take it upon yourself to change people's clothes on the street, no matter how much better your fashion sense is.
First use of an emoticon in 1862?
3:30 meeting, drive home, maybe get some more hacking in. I need about 4 more hours and it'll be finished. OP's profile doesn't have a email or link so I hope he checks back tomorrow. :)
Ask HN: blog market share
What do you guys think would be a good way to figure out which blog software has what % of the market? I don't think I've seen a good summary of this kind of data out there yet.
if we're talking about a web application, i use a home-type link. the clearly labeled ability to return to the default screen is important, i feel.

if we're talking about a blog or something, i'll usually exclude a home-type link in favor of the logo.
Sadly no

* UGLY FUCKING HACK TO WORK AROUND SKYNET RETARDATION

lines...
This brings back all the sweet memories of my first computer Apple //c (which had a 65C02) and the innumerable hours spent typing code into it from inCider magazine and learning from it.

AskHN : Accidentally got some dust in my eye. What do I do?
What does your audience think about the subject?

For non-savvy users that aren't aware of home/logo navigation, a home link is essential to avoid confusion.
"they may be able to look back on their practical experience tagging along with Dad on his experiment and it may make more sense."

I can say that has been the case for me personally. I was shown lots of cool stuff when I was a kid, I didn't completely understand it then, but I have been able to look back on past experiences to help me make sense of concepts I ran across again later.
I have both the logo, as is indeed expected by most users these days, and a text link. I like Jakob Nielsen for issues like this.
Healthy habits for developers - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/330446/healthy-habits-for...
LiftMaster Garage Door and Gate Openers from Chamberlain
LiftMaster Garage Door Openers, Gate Operators and access control systems for home and commercial use.
Chasing the Money: Stop Trying to Raise. Start Trying to Sell
This highlights a problem, which is that if I want to ask about cars, I know people who like cars, and if I want to know about recipes I know people who can cook.

And if I want useless help, I ask someone who gives me a completely confident reply that may have been made up on the spot.

If Wolfram Alpha tells me an answer about cars, should I trust it? If it then tells me another answer about cars, I can't build on my feeling of trust because it may have used a different source. If I ask it about constellations, then what? Is it bluffing me? Is it pulling irrelevant information? Without knowing the answer already, I can't know.

At least a classic search engine can point me to a source, and I can decide on a source-by-source basis how much trust to give, and with lots of results I can compare answers between them.
>"Your position is predicated on the idea that other's speech and property rights trump speech rights"

That's typically how it works. Paul can ban people from his site. The New York Times can prevent you from publishing an article on its pages. Neither infringes on your free speech rights, as understood by law and Western intellectual tradition.
That's typically how it works. Paul can ban people from his site. The New York Times can prevent you from publishing an article on its pages. Neither infringes on your free speech rights, as understood by law and Western intellectual tradition.

Yes. However, I can also choose to not read Hacker News, or The New York Times.
My (admittedly limited) understanding is that corporate personhood conflates individual, corporate and commercial speech. Attempting to treat them as separate things might work philosophically, but seems like a legal dead-end. (If you were attempting to speak from a philosophic rather than legal perspective, ignore this paragraph.)

I don't see why a corporation should have any less right to free speech than an individual: governments can step on the toes of a company just as easily as a person. Nor do I see why commercial speech should not be protected: I could argue that nearly everything is tied to making money. (Painting a billboard may not be explicitly commercial, but the more exposure people have to such art, the more likely they are to buy it. It's another form of advertising, even if that's not the artist's intent.)

Property rights trump speech rights. If you are on my property, I can tell you to shut up and go away. If I own a wall, you do not have the right to draw on it.

Nobody is forcing anyone to look at a public billboard. It may be hard not to - but it's also hard not to listen to people preaching on street corners. These preachers are probably just as emotionally manipulative. I wish they weren't there, but I'm glad they have the choice.

Edit: I don't think I was very clear. My main point is that if you draw a line between what speech should and shouldn't be protected, I think you will always end up with some speech which needs protecting but is on the wrong side of that line. It will be the kind of speech which a lot of people don't like, but I think that's the most important kind of speech to protect.
The Arc of Complexity (Not the language)
There has to be a name for that condition. I've had it as well, though it started in me in my early teen years practicing piano and got progressively worse throughout my 20s (marathon coding sessions...and I never did give up piano)
The exercise you mentioned was the fix. In my case, my Chiropractor was the one who recommended it.

I'm not a big Chiropractic fan, I went to various practitioners and have received various pieces of advice ranging from "non-exercises" to goofy expensive vitimins.
I started getting regular adjustments with this guy only after I noticed the pain in my neck was going away due to the exercises he recommended.

He's since also helped me with wrist and finger pain not uncommon to those in my profession.

The only thing I'd add to your recommendations (haven't tried the standing desk) is to take "second hand smoke breaks". I get up from my desk twice a day and walk around the building outside when the weather is tolerable. That tends to get the blood flowing. I've also found when debugging or troubleshooting a problem, stepping away and getting some fresh air tends to result in better solutions.
I started having pretty severe back pain in my early 20s - in my youth I really abused my body in some serious sports training.

The only thing that has helped is exercise. Strengthening your back (especially lower) is probably going to help more than anything else. Squats and deadlifts in particular.
Thoughts on eBay vs Sitepoint?
Ask HN: How Much Equity to Offer First Employee?
Hello everyone,

My first potential employee is a good friend of mine. I've been bootstrapping from his basement for a while now and he has been very helpful to me in general administrative terms. He is also a very good sales man (in his day job) so I've decided to bring him on board formally.

He raised a question recently about knowing how much equity is coming to him. Apparently his wife has been stressing and complaining about the amount of time he spends helping me out. :)

His role is principally going to be sales related. Cold calling, meeting clients, and hopefully closing sales of our software.

On my part, as the Founder, I wrote the software, invested over $10000 of my cash, and raised over $40000 in debt from family to build the business and run the SaaS platform.

If you put yourself in my shoes. What would you think is an appropriate amount of equity is appropriate to offer him? Naturally, it will vest over 3-5 years.

Assuming the "employee pool" is 20%, and you still plan to hire more people and the business builds momentum, what would you offer? Or perhaps would you just offer him a commission on sales? or both?
Haskell is way more consistent for me, it's easier to understand and debug if comparing it to a template heavy C++ code.
That line doesn't appear to go there.
I actually remember reading about this in old issues of Nibble Magazine I was reading in the late 80s/early 90s. The first time I watched the movie I was looking for it.

My first computer was an Apple //c as well - I learned BASIC and assembly on it out of nibble magazine. I still have everything and I have dreams of setting it up as a terminal and using it to code in emacs.

I miss the days of magazines with code in them and computer with BASIC and assemblers/disassemblers in the ROM.
New Irish Internet Tax?
Global Crisis ‘Vastly Worse’ Than 1930s, Taleb Says
wow, awesome! :)

my email is iphonedot@gmail.com
Rupert Murdoch: 'The current days of the Internet will soon be over'
I would have assumed that the reverse would be true: people who mostly sit all day should have less back pain. In my personal (apparently anomalous, given the posts here) experience, this is the case. When I worked in manufacturing 12 years ago, putting commercial refrigerators together, I had back pain quite a lot, even to missing some work due to it, but since I switched to desk jobs, it just went away.
Spelling and punctuation were much less standardized in the 19th century than they are today. We look at those symbols with a modern eye and we recognize patterns that we use today. But the way we interpret those symbols would likely be nothing similar to the way a person from 1862 would.
Apple Reconsiders and Approves Nine Inch Nails' App Update
The 2008 Google Founders' Letter (by Sergey Brin)
I don't know whether it is a reading issue. It might be a write issue, however. Flash can only allow so many write-cycles, and thrashing is a good way to guarantee flash running out of write-cycles.
Yes! I like this.

One problem, from the VC's perspective, is that if the startup starts selling successfully, they may not NEED VC.
A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education
"The modern 9-to-5 treadmill way of life is often the cause, rather than any "disease" in the traditional sense of the word. Your brain is responding correctly to external stimuli."

Definitely true. Has anyone written a book about this yet? I know there are books that tangentially touch on it, like bowling alone, but I wonder if there is enough research to do the subject justice.
Kind of annoying how the url never changes because of the frames (hence no good way to bookmark).

If you start from this page you'll get the exact same page without the frame and be able to bookmark: http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/
Umm?

Give kids a little bit more credit than that...

The boys look like they're in 5th grade or so...the girl looks like she is probably in 3rd? They aren't infants, and their dad obviously works in this field. This was a great opportunity for them to see what dad does beyond sitting in a lab all day.

When I was that age I would have been ecstatic to see what my dad did, doubly so if it had had something to do with science.
Do you have a ballpark figure? Is your decision to sell based on the work load or is it financial?

Thanks!
I think this shows (and I'm probably wording this poorly) that all scientific facts can be verified. We (mankind) have built up this body of knowledge, and if you are determined enough you can validate each link of knowledge in that chain to determine the truth.

Knowing that a plane flies vs. knowing how it flies is a valuable thing indeed.

Kudos to this dad for encouraging curiosity in his children. All too often this trait is squelched.
I think this blog post (linked from the original article) is more interesting than the article itself:

Antidepressants, Placebos and the Failure of Psychiatry

http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/03/antidepressants-pla...
chances are...they don't

if you spend the same amount of effort chasing paying customers, as you do chasing VCs, you'll be able to pay all your bills and then some with your revenue.

And hey if you end up needing a ton of cash later, you'll have a much easier time finding VCs to invest in you, seeing as how you'll have some real data to back up your claims
Also, his assumption that life could spread at nearly the speed of light may be overly optimistic. If, by contrast, one assumes that light can spread at only 1/10th the speed of light, and that the earliest star-faring life could have arisen was a billion years ago (due to as the time needed for a second-generation yellow star to brighten enough to keep an earth-like planet warm after its conversion to an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere), then one only needs to explain why star-faring life has not yet arisen in relatively nearby galaxies, rather than why it has not yet arisen anywhere in the visible universe. This is a much less daunting hurdle.
When It Comes To URL Shorteners, bit.ly Is Now The Biggest
Three Reasons Why Twitter Will Not Index the Links You Share
We're a Rails shop, with some C extensions for Rails and a handful of internal java webservices running on top of Tomcat. There's probably a bit of lisp/clojure somewhere or other, but that's about it.

Search has variously been powered by lucene and/or sphinx.

The ipaper viewer was built with the Adobe flash authoring tools.
Kind of like how very religious people see images of the Virgin Mary in rotten pieces of cheese.
Nice overview of everything Google does today.
The 2008 Founders' Letter
The iPhone Ad You'll Never See
New from Garmin: nuvi 885T | shan.biz
ASCII Fighter II Super Hyper Text-Based Championship Edition
Well, not exactly book-length, but:

"The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race" (Jared Diamond)

http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/m...

The problem cannot be solved by returning to the past: going back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle would doom 95+% of everyone currently living to starvation. But before a problem can be solved, people have to admit that it exists.
Optimizing websites with genetic algorithms comes with a few pitfalls.
Feet offer clues about tiny (extinct) hominids commonly known as "Hobbits"
I know we've become generally smarter over the years, but people weren't dumb back then, surely people noticed : and ; look like eyes, and ) looks like a smile from the very beginning of standardized punctuation...
The pyramid of code quality, the 5 characteristics of good code.
"Hell-Fire" and "The Dead Past"
If this is in fact an emoticon (which I doubt), it makes for interesting precedent in the how-do-you-end-emoticons-within-parenthesis debate.
"zappos" is an online retailer whose distinction from every other online retailer is indiscernible, to my eyes. Maybe their call center employees are friendlier than the norm, but that's not innovation. Journalists really need to throttle back the superlatives.
Awesome, we look forward to it.

I just created a quick Rack app that uses curb and deployed it to Heroku, no problem:
http://gist.github.com/108315

If you keep having trouble with your app, please shoot me an email or open a support ticket, and we'll get you sorted out.
MiFi: Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed
I mean, next year will surely be too late for an '0x' standard? Actually the C-plus-plusers point out it could be delayed until 200A, or indeed until 200F.

Yick. Arc may be a "hundred-year language", but if the C++ committee delays to 200A, that would make C++ a six-thousand-year language (8202 in decimal).