skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As a Pythonist looking in at Ruby, I can't help but feel that it is immature both in terms of implementation and design. All languages have their fair share of problems, but Ruby seems to have its issues in the spotlight lately.

Is there any truth to my perception? If not, where is my impression coming from?
Two conflicting takes:

* We don't set a hard and fast date (although we try to keep the time and place regular). NYSEC does a "second Tuesday of the month" thing; there's more security people in NYC, but our attendance is often 2x theirs. What we do instead is a mailing list and a website, and we poll the group members about what the best date is. 8 months in, we switched from Thursdays to Wednesdays, for instance, and got a significant boost in attendance.

* We publicize. Why wouldn't we? Sure, you want good people there, but the idea that there even is a "group filter" is a deterrant to newcomers. And what's more important than a group filter is attendance.

I actually don't think showing up and meeting only two people makes it a good experience for a newcomer; I think it ensures that newcomer isn't coming back next time. Better to skip a month or two than risk new people having that experience.
Herebeforeoprah.com Asks The Important Question
Hm...seeing that he wrote that from prison, I wouldn't be so sure. Either way, check out Soul on Ice if you're interested.
yeah this looks pretty cool. good luck guys!

random question...can i sync pictures to my twitter account (i.e. posterous)?
I agree that the language is not exact. The problem with law and court cases is that two judges with the same contract might come to different conclusions about said contract. This occurs even when the contract is spelled out in legalese.

I think the nature of the article is more for a web developer that either does not have the money for a decent lawyer or who would go and do the project without some kind of protective contract in place because they did not think that a contract was necessary for normal business.

BTW: The patent contract is a good, readable contract and I like it.
Craigslist personals, especially the casual encounters section, seem to be mostly spam and flagged content. You're better off going to a bar around closing time.
What is to stop a bot from just clicking randomly? A 1/6 chance of registering an account is good enough for botting purposes. That's the problem with these multiple-choice solutions. They simply aren't strong enough protection against a flood of tries.
The Year of the Scrappy Start-up (Uservoice blog)
these sex threads have one thing in common: they're all incredibly depressing. if somebody doesn't do something to nip this in the bud, we're going to start seeing links for Ross Jeffries and Mystery Method.

note also the total lack of threads about relationships. :p
Like many have said, Path Finder is probably the best alternative, except it's costy.

I would love to have free time and make a file manager that is as light and useful as windows explorer (imho it's much better than any *nix file manager)
And there is the essence of the need for captchas ;)

You need to scale, so you employ computers instead of people. Now you have to have computers run a reverse turing test. Otherwise, it's much easier for spammers to scale as well.

It's easy to cut down on spam if you don't accept any incoming mail.
You asked a question, and I answered it. I have no idea exactly what you imagine I am "doing" beyond that but you are welcome to share your no-doubt illuminating insights.

The age of your account is irrelevant and I am baffled as to why you might venture it as some kind of point in your favour. Do you make a habit of checking out the profile of anyone you respond to, colouring your argument according to their perceived seniority? Anyway, your attempt at rank-pulling is as misguided as your attempt at language policing - this is not my first account on this site.
Either way is correct. "Have defined" sounds a little more conventional, but it depends on context. If the simple past makes more sense to you, then you should use it.

> Simple past is used when there is a specific time involved.

For instance "although we defined the Riemann Sum in chapter eight..." is correct while "although we have defined the Riemann sum in chapter eight" is probably wrong.
Switch and Bait — How Apple should respond to Microsoft's laptop shopping ads
I attribute mine to the fact that I haven't gotten laid in awhile.
I'm curious about the book, would anyone care to write a review?
P-zombies are bullshit.

Imagine an apple that's really a pear, except it's indistinguishable from an apple.

Imagine some words that are not bullshit, but are indistinguishable from bullshit.
Dismissing "best practices" out of hand, is sort of like slavishly following "best practices."
That was an unusually pleasant and very interesting presentation. Thank you.
That could be the most I've ever seen someone confuse correlation and causation in one article. He doesn't even understand the difference between the amount of money you have, and the amount of satisfaction you have with your financial situation. I know poor people who rarely think of money and rich people who worry about it all the time.

I have to stop clicking these links, they're always among the dumbest here.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/04/zombies.html
MUH: The Universe is a Mathematical Structure
Ngắm ruộng bậc thang trong mùa tuyệt đẹp
It's not at all unusual to see homeless people with mobile phones. Some homeless shelters even provide them to clients, to help them with job hunting. And it's not like anyone is "choosing to be homeless" by spending $5/month on a prepaid cell phone.
Muslims must review, refine and rewrite QURAN now.

* Christians have corrected BIBLE on Slavery.
* Hindus have corrected VEDAS on Untouchability.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=5397035431&topic=7...
With every other site that is releasing their API, I think it's time HN News release it's own API.
Ain't that the American dream?
Banks were destroyed by their greedy and foolish owners and managers.

Piratebay destroyed other people's businesses.

The difference is quite simple.
Conspire to give Windows users the use of a Macbook for less than a week — via misdelivery, a loaner when their hard drive dies, whatever.

Have it taken away from them unexpectedly, just as they were getting to like it.

Some percentage of them go out and buy one with their own money — advertise post-purchase interviews with them.
yeah, if anything, there is more high quality stock photography of food than anything else (except maybe or sunsets and plants.)

he can even dynamically set the background based on the searched recipe. A query for a Thai dish should return in nice page with images of delicious thai dishes, of course, respecting the site's branding.

You can't really ask for premium memberships when the site doesn't do anything to "fence" the user in. I should feel like I'm in an exclusive place different from all others. Right now I have to engage my brain and tell myself "this is a recipe site, this is a recipe site, this is a recipe site ..."
could be due to depression.
I've seen a couple of friends complain about captchas that they're a pain to fill in. They definitely don't make the signup process any simpler. I've seen some sites use simple math questions, like "what is 2 plus 5" or something like that. Don't know how effective they are in stopping spam, though.
Is the real estate market really like what Matt is saying. The last time when I was looking at houses in Silicon Valley, the perception I got was the SV real estate wasn't affected much.

Since we are planning to move to the SF, I've been looking at the rental market at SF and SV. Where do YC startups usually stay? Anyone interested in sharing a rental please email me. Thanks.
This is about how to make your app seductive, not you. It helped me think of my app more as a service AND a videogame.
Uh, where have you been? The Pirate Bay doesn't host any of the files and it's up to the producer of the media to give the consumer a better experience. They aren't doing that, what with the DRM on CDs, DVDs, etc. Don't forget the movie previews or other ads that are included before a movie begins. You also aren't given the option of purchasing just the movie as opposed to the movie + interviews + whatever.

The producers and distributors could be doing a much better job but they aren't, and the consumers don't like it which is why they resort to piracy (of course a lot of them probably do it because it's free).
Wow, this is awesome. Never seen it before. Instant bookmark, tweet and posted to facebook...
when you are shy it helps a lot when you think about everything you do in terms of "what would be the worst outcome of this if I screw up?"

Sounds like a quick trip to panic attack city.
That's exactly what this article is pointing to.

The difficulty caused by introducing 'principles' like justice. Free speech is such a principle.

Principals are compromised by compromise. Preferences are not. Therefore if you think in terms or the right to freedom of speech, compromise is how you lose. If dislike restrictions on your freedom to say what you want, negotiation is how you win.
Who will be The Pirate Bay of the finance industry?
If you go through tracfone.com you can get into a phone and have very minimal service for less than $100 a year. That's slightly less than 1% of gross income, which is probably low for what people in that situation spend on communication.

Now you or I would find the service cripplingly limited. But for someone who really needs it. It's there.
Interesting choice. Quoting the milder form opens a seperate discussion.
for someone who's been around computers as long as he has, it's surprising that pg's only reactions around them are either happily surprised or insanely angry.

http://dailybooth.com/tlbtlbtlb/221965
"Alpha Male" would be a better term. It doesn't imply that you should be constantly trailed by a bunch of frat breauxs, but it does mean that you're capable of leadership.
I hate this particular writer's little articles. I've read 4-5 of them and they're so full of buzzwords and an attempt to sound "hip" and "with it" in terms of technology that it's pathetic and sad.

He's as bad as those social media marketing people, those shameless self promoters who don't actually create anything, merely talk themselves up with canned expressions.

Some examples of his article titles:
* IdeaCast: the Zombieconomy
* The Finance 2.0 Manifesto
* Edgeconomy vs Twitter
* Investment 1.0 vs Capitalism 2.0

I can't even list anymore, this guy only recycles phrases imo.
It isn't, but it can still be considered a bad behaviour and discussed as such.
Agree. And Garry is such a nice guy - actually, I use their bookmarklet a lot more. It's quite slick. One of those hidden gems that nobody seems to notice, yet.
I'd be interested in something in the Denver/Boulder area. In fact I'll volunteer to help organize something. I do agree with tptacek's view that the key is to be as casual as you can, while still keeping the cats somewhat slightly herded.
You almost certainly provided a guarantee.
The difference is quite simple.

Not quite so simple. Banks are not like regular companies. Especially those in question. In a way, they are part of the public infrastructure. These banks wove an intricate web reaching into nearly every financial nook of the economy, from old ladies pensions to hospitals operating capital. The leaders of these banks manipulated the ratings systems, hid risk from investors (the public kind), and invented assets with bogus bookkeeping schemes. They stole billions from the public all while paying themselves 100's of millions in bonuses.

In short, bank leaders stole real money from real people using actual fraud. Lots. From lots.

The pirate bay: helped people connect with each other and then maybe trade copyrighted files that might have led to the loss of potential sales of zero marginal cost goods.

The bankers: Literally stalled human progress. The "pirates": Umm... Maybe "Thundercats The Movie" will have a smaller production budget? Even the comparison is obscene.
Dear God, what's wrong with a query like 'allintext:"finding"' ?
I got curious and tried just this query, and sure enough Google said that the query looks like an automated one.
It means it's not the pattern of the queries that you have sent that triggered this 'you are a bot' response from Google. It's just the one query allintext:"finding". Removing quotes allowed it to be processed.

I thought it might have to do with the fact that a single word is enclosed in quotes; i.e., when a person is searching generally there is no reason why one would put a single word in quotes. On the other hand an automated search might enclose search text in quotes by default without parsing the text and figuring out whether it contains multiple words or a single word. But it turns out that is not the reason. A query like allintext:"Google sucks" still elicits the 'you are a bot response'. It looks like they ban all queries that enclose text in quotes for an allintext. Might be a bug.
And global weather patterns are too complex to predict.
Hawala: transferring money without actually moving it
Umair Haque is actually quite brilliant, nothing at all like the stupid social media marketing people. His style kind of rubs people the wrong way, but there's a lot people can learn from him. I recommend this presentation he did a couple months ago: http://vimeo.com/3204792
I could stomach buzzwords if loose ideas were argued. This is very Linda Richman. Topic and talk amongst yourselves. It's hard to discuss something when there is little to discuss other than nitpicking a broad idea. I get what he's suggesting, just wish he'd make more effort to defend the point.
Make sure your client signs a contract

This is sometimes annoying, especially when you think that you can trust the client,

This is such a stupid thing to say. Our society is built on written laws and contracts. They aren't annoying and they're much better than the alternative: having enough firepower to physically threaten someone if they break your verbal agreement :/
This is much, much better than the title suggests.
"I'm a poor student" he doesn't necessarily mean he lives in cardboard box and hunts for his lunch in city park.

Well if you're a sociology student or something... :P
Why Your Programming Language Is “Too Academic”
Mistake #1: Distributing your presentation via Slideshare. Just about the "least seductive" Web presentation interface around.
cool service. i signed up! btw isight is not working on an older mbp + firefox 3.0.8
When journalism and twitter collide.
Haque doesn't accuse the bankers of fraud, just of "economically damaging actions." Reading that as "massive fraud" makes the article's point much clearer. (It's probably impossible to criminalize "economically damaging actions" in general.)
"If I had my way, I’d destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more", the detective said. "At least they’re not sectarian".

LOLOL, now that's a bombastic statement! Funniest thing I've read today...
Rental prices are still pretty absurd.
Hmmm... PHP and web design is not going to be enough to compete in the open freelance market. Most people have college degrees and use LOCAL contacts from school, work or friends to get jobs.

I mean what do you expect - you're 18 years old! To get this right - if you DO have the technical skill to do this (and I know people that were working as TA's in math at University at the tender age of 20) then age doesn't matter.

As mentioned previously on here - you should probably go to school first and at first try to get local jobs in your town... if you can. Good luck to you!
Actually, I think its a great idea. You were talking about this at the last H&F meetup I think.
The title is a bit suggestive, but it fits in nicely with the strategy the author provides. Really nicely designed as well.
I don't get it. Why would anyone register for a topic-specific search site?

What features are there aside from searching?
That's the same statement I noticed, after reading the earlier part of the article in fascination, that prompted me to submit the link. If people are thinking like that in Iraq, there is some possibility of big social change there.
(It's probably impossible to criminalize "economically damaging actions" in general.)

That might be an extremely succinct way of expressing that point. The trackers didn't host any actual copyright infringing content. They did however engage in behavior that was likely "economically damaging" is some sense of the term. They still got jail time.
There is a damping effect at work also. At some point too many articles about a given topic brings a backlash and the topic is 'done' at least for a while.
Now, granted early 1.8's tests were sparse. RubySpec is a by-product of the alternative implementations and a couple of test attempts (http://blog.headius.com/2008/05/rubyspec-bringing-ruby-test-...).

A lot of developers continue to use MRI 1.8 despite 1.9.1 being out due to API changes. So you could still make the case that the main interpreter being used was at one point not well tested. However, forward progress in the language is tested, so there's nothing really to be remedied.
The PC Doesn’t Have to Be an Anchor
Thank god. I thought this was another #1 link about getting laid.
The "Sexification" of HackerNews
Sorry, too late.
Jewish legacy inscribed on genes?
Thank you, kind sir or madam!
Shift+Command+G
That's how people think after being exposed to the consequences of religion.
Innovation: Harnessing spammers to advance AI
That doesn't contradict my assertion that generally some things will sound natural and others won't.

When we was imitating the instructor he was speaking English in a Japanese accent right? I am talking about whether his Japanese is native-sounding.
Actually, the problem is that people--even hackers--are too romantic. And the ones that aren't too romantic are often just too scared to really try.

If you are willing to let go of romanticism and fear, you can find algorithms for getting laid by searching Google. I personally know a few people that have implemented those algorithms and they all succeed frequently. I know a guy whose marriage was founded (unknowingly to his wife) on such Google-found advice.

There is a reason "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is one of the best-selling books of all time. Reading just that one book will get most people all the sex and "friends" they want if they follow its advice. I recommend everybody to try it if they are feeling really down on themselves or really frustrated. It can be a life-changing experience.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of downsides to reading an (e-)book about getting laid or making friends too. Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.
Sure will. BTW, any good erlang tutorials/references?
All I know is if I were bartending, or working at starbucks, Id be getting laid far more often. As a hacker/entrepreneur, women don't play a significant role in my life.
Wrong. You just have to be good at marketing yourself. It also helps to go for a niche area which you can stand out from the crowd. I have landed nearly every Odesk and Elance job I have applied for with zero rating (just started and haven't completed anything yet.)
Research Suggests Growing Antarctic Ice
Criminals are important for the software industry as well.

In particular, people creating viruses scare away many users from pirating software.

Moreover, people pirating software are essentially giving software companies free advertisement.
you're right, hashing is overkill.
Most of the higher level math text books I've read present theorems and their proofs , but not much on strategies for actually solving problems (a notable exception: Wilf's Generatingfunctionology), so this seems like it should become a very nice resource.

As one would expect from a brand new site, it's rather short on content. The content that's there right now, though is pretty good.
Mug someone on the street for $72 and loose change, go to jail for 3 years.

Join a bank and wreck the economy for tens of millions of people, retire with a golden parachute.

Where, I ask, is the justice?
Umair Haque is actually quite brilliant

Could you defend that by pointing out some articles where he makes a clear point without resorting to buzzwords or the latest fad/trend?

there's a lot people can learn from him

Such as?
Journalism, this is not.
Ask HN: Why 8aweek (YC Startup) redirects to Google's homepage?
Venture Capital Investing Hits 11-Year Low In 1st Quarter
If you want to fork it, it's <a href="http://tinyurl.com/c6mbpy">here</a>.
"it's up to the producer of the media to give the consumer a better experience"?

Yeah, but don't forget it's also up to the consumer not to steal the producer's creation. This kind of mentality pervades society today. "It's the job of someone else to entertain me. If not, I'm going to kick and scream until they do." Bread and circuses, right?
I've began reading this book to patch any holes in my knowledge of ruby. My only suggestion so far is that a new typeface for the code excerpts is needed. Perhaps not necessarily courier (after reading his post on reddit) but ANY other font. I mean really - anything but comic sans. It is widely abused in the world to point where reading it gives me a head ache. Surprisingly enough, I'm not the only one!
That reminds me of the old line about how killing one person makes you a murderer and killing a million makes you a great leader.
Topical: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BORDER/Complete/Bor...
The switched their idea to SocialBrowse. You should check it out: http://socialbrowse.com/

And they should redirect to RescueTime instead. ;-)
Let me know if you get something together; I'd be interested in a Denver meet.
Ask HN: What upcoming technological development interests you the most?
What (prospective) technological development are you most looking forward to over the next few years? Your answer could be anything from an improvement in an existing technology (e.g. better web apps, cell phones), to mass adoption/commercialization of an emerging technology.

Just curious what other people on HN are most excited about.
Carrying letters is rivalrous. As more people send letters, the bag will fill up and more mail carriers will be needed.

Compare this to a real public good, e.g. national defense. National defense is non-rivalrous because me enjoying living in a non-communist country does not hinder you enjoying the same thing.

As for the postman being a romantic figure, not sure how that fits into the question of whether mail delivery is a public good or not.
The Novel is a bit like Google Street View
The font bugged me too, it looks like Comic Sans MS, oh the horror.
This is almost assuredly out of my league, but shouldn't it be fundamentally simple to have the compiler explain the optimizations and why it made them on the code, regardless of the deepness of the magic?

I mean, I suppose the onus then lies on the programmer to understand the why or how the optimizations work but (and again, going out of my league here) don't compilers fundamentally just perform state transformations once they're gotten the AST ready? Is it really that hard to have them, as an artifact of the compilation process, produce a plan showing the source and generated byte code or intermediate representation and the steps taken in getting from one to the other?

Not that any of this makes the SSC easier to build. But maybe some of the concern in relying on one could be relieved.
In Grim Job Market, Student Loans Are a Costly Burden
More like, when a lack of effort and the Internet collide. Which, interestingly, also accurately describes twitter.
Uh, I'm 100% not going to resort to ad-hominem attacks, but I don't think that, knowing that you are aware of the current state of taxes and fail to plan for them, I don't think you'll find a person on this board who thinks you're anything but a poor planner.