skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes. I actually find it really difficult to stop thinking about the implementation (and the usability) of what I'm creating. These are good things to be concerned about, but not when the problem is already too complex.

On another aspect of it: the last couple of days, I've found it very effective to think of a model as just the nouns, not verbs; data structures, not algorithms (as in the Brooks quote). Guess this is implicit in the idea of a constraint, but it's helping.

The other thing is that the model doesn't have to be precisely correct. It only needs to be correct in the important ways (if I don't already know what the important aspects are, a complicated model probably won't enlighten me). This gives me conceptual framework to think in, rather than to be an authoritative definitive description, perfectly correct in every minor details (they can be corrected early or late, if they really are minor). I find it helps to give me a vantage point, to see further. My mind is very fertile with finding solutions - provided I can see where I am.
The key point in Greenspun's sentence is, an "organization of its size." And he's right about that. It's amazing that a $3-4T/yr organization can do anything coherent at all.
In my opinion, gnu screen is one of the best utilities for unix operating systems ever written. Not just because of what it lets you do explicitly, but the way it changes the way a unix system can be used. Using continuously-running apps in multiplexed windows did wonders for my communications and file management.

I even remember my screen windows from high school! (0-user,1-root,2-mutt,3-naim[aim client],4-irssi,5-7-misc) My friends who also used screen had their own window groups. I also remember my keyboard having the 'A' key significantly more worn than others.

I have since switched to GUI chat and email apps, but I instantly feel nostalgic whenever these articles pop up.
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Just had to spell this out to a colleague, so thought I may as well post it. It should be "didn't say", rather than "never said", but the gist is the same ;)

I didn't say she stole my money - someone else said it

I didn't say she stole my money - I didn't say it

I didn't say she stole my money - I only implied it

I didn't say she stole my money - I said someone did, not necessarily her

I didn't say she stole my money - I considered it borrowed, even though she didn't ask

I didn't say she stole my money - only that she stole money

I didn't say she stole my money - she stole stuff which cost me money to replace
I think it's silly of you to say it's "much more helpful" to "focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular" when we've all been over that ad nauseam. Everybody knows it's bad to be mean to people. There's nothing to be learned from it. Plus, it's somebody else's pathology, not ours. Since we already understand it and can't directly fix it, the only possible effect of us dwelling on it is to distance ourselves from responsibility by focusing on the aspect of the problem that isn't under our control. Not only is that behavior pointless and self-serving, it's actually psychologically damaging because it externalizes our locus of control.
Thanks for your answer.

Our page rank is 3. Do ad networks use that to discriminate the quality and/or the payout? Or do you sell ads yourself?
ITunes DRM spat pits EFF against Apple
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You do have a point however. Much like the "recover a disk that has been zeroed out" competition, the prize seems somewhat small for the magnitude of the task.

Admittedly, the prize is more then an order of magnitude higher, (and just requires software), so there might be more takers.
This app opens from a touch gesture, that's one step away from being a key logger. One of the benifits of the App Store is that you "know" the applicatins are safe, in that you can tell whether they are running or not. I'm still open to third party app stores though.
Very nice. How about if the result appeared inline below the "Lookup" button instead of on a new page?
Whats up sh1mmer. Thanks for the tips on dealing with yui. Still love jquery, but at least now I can work in yui.
Numbrosia puzzle is back as an iPhone/iPod Touch app.
Biking seems a lot more dangerous here (Baltimore) than in Palo Alto where it was more culturally acceptable.
I actually got my first solid programming experience by contacting a professor at university and interning with him.
It is perfectly normal (and sane) to hate school. Protest, but don't whine. And do your work anyway.
I guess in my mind there is little difference between "the government", at least at a city level, and a group of people cooperating for their own good.

Your example is a strawman argument, as there is no evidence that government is less efficient than a private enterprise. (The example that comes to mind is Medicare, which as far as I understand it has lower administrative costs than most private plans.) That's not the point of the lawsuit, in any case.

I agree there is a difference between the government providing a service as a nonprofit, self-financing corporation and using taxes to finance a service. But you can't just argue that the market has been "defacto-socialized" without saying why that would be bad.

There are many instances where people who don't use it are paying for it. Roads, for example. A "fair" system would be to have every inch of roadway be toll road, where the toll would be in proportion to the amount of space used and wear inflicted on the roadway. Pedestrians would pay next to nothing, bikes slightly more, then motorcycles, cars and finally SUVs and trucks. Every lane on the freeway should be toll, with an increasing toll for the lower-numbered lanes in case you want to go "faster". Such a system would be ridiculously inefficient and cumbersome, so I'm fine paying my share of the roads even if I use them less than average, because roads are an essential infrastructure.

In the same vein, a city should be able to decide that a fiber network is an essential infrastructure that should be provided to all inhabitants and that shrinking the digital divide is important enough that low-income people should have subsidized access. And no corporation should be able to argue that this is "illegal".

Private corporations are allowed to exist to serve the needs of the people, not the other way around.
"this seems patently false to me, you hang out with the people who energize and care about you whether you are 16 or 25..."

The sample of such people is MUCH smaller in high school than it is in the real world (easily five orders of magnitude smaller).

"but it really doesn't take up that much time,"

Four years full-time is a lot, especially when you're young. The average job lasts less than three years.

"but I would argue that going to college without at least calculus isn't the best idea if you plan to have a lot of time to learn all the cool math you want/need."

Agreed, but you don't need high school for calculus, and high schools usually do a terrible job of teaching it (how many people know what a derivative is five years later?)
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There are problems with biking (and e-biking) up here in Wisconsin that pretty much eliminate it as a primary mode of transport.

Riding a bike in the rain is dangerous, but riding in snow is downright insane. Also, things tend to be pretty spaced out around here. Several of my friends work ~40 miles from where they live--even at 20mph, two hours to get to work is simply not acceptable (not to mention e-bikes running out of charge).
Is 7 the answer to the first question?
Oh, don't get me wrong: it's pretty dangerous here (Boston) as well. I probably should have included "dangerous" in my list of things an electric doesn't actually help with, though. Most of the danger comes from motorists simply not being accustomed to watching for bicycles.

That's the big benefit of the bicycle lanes (all over in Cambridge) as I see them: the fact that there's a lane reminds motorists that someone might be cycling down it.
I don't see math, CS, or physics scholars giving presentations with the kind of obnoxious 'tude that seems endemic to the rails community. For the most part -- if they're any good -- they let the concepts they're presenting speak for themselves.
The article is really sloppy and poorly explains the underlying ideas. Perhaps I should have down-voted it and posted a link to good information.
zlib with the --rsyncable option sounds very interesting. Do you have any pointers to more info? I'd really like to use it but I can't find any references on http://www.zlib.net/
Meanwhile, in crowded London, a 90-minute commute is far from rare...
I like your advice but I think there is much more potential in college than high school.
In college I have resources available to me that were previously unknown to me, covering every profession, even startups and business.

College was definitely the right choice for me, you should try it and see if it is for you.
If their purpose(s) include only "to drive traffic and interest" -- then they can forget about pretending that "journalism" (i.e., valuable, reliable content) is no longer their business.
Find a side-interest that you can do in class, after completing class work. It'll incentivize you to complete your class work sooner, and prepares you for being able to handle multiple things at the same time...especially if you have interest in that side thing.
At what point is it worth taxing an argument so much that no one can take you seriously?
Cool writeup. Plan to make it to the next one.

>> All those XML “stanzas” (my heart sinks just typing that)

Classic :)
"Plagiarism" usually refers to copying in an academic setting (you download an essay and submit as your own; you cut-and-paste together a journal article from other papers and submit it as your own), rather than copyright infringement. In fact, usually the objection is not the copying per se but the passing it off as your own; ie the lack of attribution.

Skimming the page, they've assumed their audience already knows what they mean. I know of a couple of academics interested in this work; and I believe there's quite a large audience. You can imagine that teachers and lectures would like to be able to automatically check for plagiarism (esp hard with the internet when it could be copied from anyone in the world, not just in the one classroom)
I see what you're saying and agree that it doesn't fix everything, but this quote from the article sums it up for me:

> The ease with which you can slip in and out of traffic, without breaking into a sweat... And there is no battle of wills between pedestrian and cyclist. It is no sweat to restart, so the temptation to zip through a red traffic light, menacing people as you do so, is removed... There are no more scary moments when, as a cyclist, you struggle to gain the necessary speed to cope in busy traffic.

Stopping & starting, dealing with cars & pedestrians all while having to think about conserving your momentum so you don't end up having to balance or dismount with slowed/stopped traffic... these are all things I don't trust myself to do in DC traffic after having just woken up or a long day of work. I applaud those who can, but it's a major impediment for a lot of people (at least in US cities).
Unbelievable. What kind of idiot makes a soft porn presentation in an age when nude calendars are banned from auto shops?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Seriously, not everyone is that hung-up about sex.

Anyway, it is amazing how much damage the community is doing to itself over a 20 minute presentation by one guy. If you resign your positions and spend pages and pages talking about it, you're just going to encourage others to do the same. This guy has power now.
Having been to a bunch of conferences in the past two years, this conference was second only to RubyFringe in terms of sheer awesomeness. JSConf scores extra points for showcasing so many different new and ridiculously nifty technologies in one place.
You crossed a line here. A woman who annoys her husband and is beaten as a result is guilty of being annoying. She is not guilty of domestic assault, not even a little bit. A woman who leads a man on and is then raped by him is not a little bit guilty of rape. She is guilty of leading a man on. I agree it's important to focus on things under our control, but there's a difference between taking active control over one's life and taking moral responsibility for other people's actions. The fact that we use the word "responsibility" to refer to both these things -- the common aspect being an attitude of initiative and self-reliance as opposed to helplessness and blaming -- confuses rather than clarifies the issue.

Using the dual nature of the word "responsibility" is a common ploy to distribute blame to everybody equally when discussions of blame become counterproductive. That can be appropriate in some situations, especially team situations, but applying it to rape and domestic abuse is way over the line. It's repellant.
If people tweet about it, it must be good!
I left HS after 10th grade to go to Bard College at Simon's Rock:

http://simons-rock.edu/

Simon's Rock is unusualy in that the entire entering class has left high school early. You're treated like an adult there, allowed to make your own decisions and mistakes. If you're chomping at the bit to get on with your life, Simon's Rock is a great way to do it.

It's a mostly liberal arts school, but the technical classes were phenomenal. I was able to transfer to Carnegie Mellon for my junior year, no problem--all credits transferred, and I was just as well prepared as the other Physics juniors.
I think the point is that a policy that dissuades the rich in Iowa will just push rich people out of Iowa to a much greater rate than a national policy that dissuades the rich in America will push rich people out of Iowa.
The punch line of the post: "ask a simple question: can I find the same economics, ease of maintenance, and pace of innovation that is inherent in the cloud?"

I wonder why he declined to add "... and security" ? ;)
If that sort of thing is a big deal to you, then an electric makes sense, certainly. I bought a bicycle last year, counting on the fact that my commute could mostly consist of a single, long bike path, and quickly discovered that these things didn't matter as much as I expected them to, but to each his own. If you do get an electric, though, I'd suggest you try doing it with the pedals once in a while -- it's actually fairly enjoyable.
Jerry Weinberg uses this technique in "Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design" as a technique for exploring vague requirements. When you get a short verbal requirement thrown at you, repeat it back with different words stressed, and ask whether that's the right meaning or what information might be missing. It's a great technique for flushing out extra information and avoiding misunderstandings.
They got renamed to hypervisors. One of my coworkers is still being funded by DOE to do libOSes for HPC.
If something feels like a massive waste of time, then it probably is. Find a way out.

California had a "general competency exam", that supposedly proved you were sufficiently educated. You could take the exam in your Junior year and exit school early. I really wish I had done this. Some of my friends passed the exam (supposedly it was easy; "Which of these shapes is a triangle?" etc.) and started college and/or working earlier. They ended up quite successful.
Looking for hacker on YC funded startup this summer
We're a team of 3 looking for 1 more hacker. We've already got 2.3, but there's a lot of work to be done, so we'd like to offer founders' equity to a devoted, passionate hacker who wants to make a difference in the online shopping world. Other than equity, this position offers no compensation so you'll have to support yourself until our product is ready for launch.

You'll get to experience YC like the rest of us starting June 2.

Please be local to sf/bay area so that we can meet up and chat. (or be willing to move if we like you)

Required skills: Java, Ruby, Javascript (if you're a good hacker, specific requirements aren't always necessary)

Send inquiries to catch23.yc@gmail.com

(this is a repost from the jobs list, someone in #startups recommended I post normally so that I could potentially answer questions in comments)
For those who wish their window manager was more like screen I recommend strongly recommend the ratposion WM.
They should make journalists take classes in critical thinking before they write stuff like this.

Of course shoe manufacturers aren't going to respond with injury data. Because as soon as they do then somebody is going to sue them as a result of this data being taken to be a product claim. It's the same reason manufacturers sell devices and then say right on the box that the device isn't supposed to be used for what it is intended.

Also, just because injury rates haven't gone down doesn't mean the shoes aren't helping. What the shoes may well be doing is allowing people to run harder and longer on hard surfaces. Of course those Mexicans can run barefoot: they're running on dirt. Also, these cushioned shoes are also allowing people who aren't full-time runners be able run where otherwise their unconditioned feet might not be able to.

There's a lot more I could say, but it's not worth the effort.
Agreed. Of course, talking to the creator of Lisp would be tricky.

I wonder why Javascript was not included. It is the native language of the largest and most relevant software platform in the world.
I suggest reading the essay by Joseph Brodsky "Listening to Boredom":

http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/paleopsych/2005-May/00325...

Also this quote by Thomas Henry Huxley seems apt here:

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly."
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On reading the title, I expected this to be about persistent multiplexed sessions in the window server. Adding window-dressing to gnu screen is a strange idea - does the target audience for screen really want this?
Though I'm not looking for this kind of opportunity myself, I'd like to point out that it'd be good to mention something exciting about the actual start-up idea.

Most hackers, like yourselves, have plenty of exciting ideas to work on, and probably don't struggle to find work, so you need more than just "we're yc-funded" to snag them - though that's certainly a plus!
Read Ayn Rand.
"In this case, I'm pretty sure you can't dismiss it without reading all of it."

I can and do on a regular basis: books that don't have sufficient merit within a relatively small number of pages aren't going to keep me till the end, and I'm not masochistic enough to read through every single book I start in the hopes of "understanding" it.
An acquaintance of mine is building a rocket of roughly the same size. But with two important differences:

1) It will go into space (defined as 100 kilometers above the surface of the Earth)

2) He will be aboard

He recently finished building the worldst largest amateur submarine, so I think there's a pretty good chance he's going to pull it off. They plan to launch from a barge in the North Sea, and have apparently just gotten the official go-ahead from various agencies. The boosters will run on pure oxygen and epoxy, and they have had multiple successful booster tests.

http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/
on the other hand, i'm not sure how much one could say without giving the idea away...(yes ideas are cheap but this is a site for capable hackers after all =)
46% of Americans used the Internet 9 years ago, only 16% of Americans knew what the Internet was 9 years ago. And I'd like to see what question they were asked before concluding that Americans were ignorant.
JSConf was a blast.I walked away with the feeling that JavaScript was going somewhere beyond the web. With Canvas, Server Side, DBs, etc it feels like JavaScript is slowly and irresistibly going to take over everything.
"Demonstrates a good understanding of common use cases" is another way of saying it "gives the people what they want".

I understand giving people what they want is in fashion right now in user interface design (mostly with people who refer to it as "user experience" instead and like to a/b 500 options instead of studying to learn the right one), but here's a tip. People want everything and your UI cannot be a rave. A successful interface has to do much more not giving than giving.

As to your specific example, if "quitting" your current application to tweet something causes you to lose any state, said application is broken. The end.
Rich Hickey discussed his using the trampoline pattern in the clojure implementation a while ago: http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/...
Tufte makes many good insights, but I always struggle to get over the incredible ego in his presentations. He has a tendency to make sweeping aesthetic judgments based upon what, in my opinion, are simply his personal tastes, which he then passes off as arguments about "information density."

Many of the interfaces he criticizes for being "cartoony" are quite reasonably designed for the typical end-user, and probably more effective at communicating the basic information. People typically use the Weather app to find out what the temperature is outside right now. Adding "detail to clarify" is not helpful when no clarification is needed. It's 62 degrees out. Got it. We're done.

Similarly, I highly doubt many people are using the Stocks app on an iPhone to attempt to analyze thousands of points worth of historical data.

It also bears considering that many of the freebie apps bundled with the iPhone have a design goal of helping to sell iPhones.
Definitely watch out for 'missed opportunities'!

My mother _forced_ me to try out for drama. She said 'all you have to do is audition.. then I'll never bring it up again'. I can't tell you how much the thought of even going to the audition repulsed me, much less performing on stage.

At the audition, while waiting, I was hanging around the most friendly people I had ever encountered (ok, it was a bunch of girls that were actually talking to me). Suddenly the fear of being onstage was less than the fear of being lonely.

I went from being scared of walking down the hallway to being able to talk in front of large crowds. My Friday nights of soldering and programming turned into a different kind of fun.. a chance to socialize with others.

(btw I can't sing for the life of me.. the trick is to stand in front or next to people with a similar voice. If you have a decent director they'll do this automatically)
find me on irc at #startups and I'll explain :-)

Well I guess the cool part is that the summer YC session hasn't actually begun, so you'd get the experience the full YC session without having to go through the typical application process. We didn't create this product to apply to YC -- in fact I was initially against applying to YC simply because I didn't think we'd need it. Technically it started 7 months before the summer YC application process.
whats the jist in a sentence?