skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> That's a big debate! For a lot of people, I would, though, yes. There are serious economists who posit that universities are mostly about signalling, rather than actually learning much. I don't think I agree with that entirely, and believe it depends a lot on what's studied. It also depends on the opportunity costs, which may not be that high for many people that age.

Fair enough. For myself, it was what lead me to my career. I found a large number exams followed a similar format to this very coding competition. Many times on the job I have thought back on exam questions for inspiration for the problems I was solving. In that sense, I most definitely do not classify my education as "dicking around".

It brings be to my original point; when video games were being developed, these admitted benefits were certainly not obvious at the time. We simply wanted to render things faster, and at higher resolutions. Now other applications of the same technology is ubiquitous in many regards.

As a final tangential point, I don't think the code competition is wasteful because it does not have any immediate intrinsic value. See exams example above, and really, the discussion here. Also, perhaps this was his so called "downtime". Many people would argue that not all facets of our life should be strictly geared towards productivity. He may already run a business or hold a day job (maybe his blog gives clues otherwise, I don't know).
I think this story shows a rather low degree of insight into, or observation of, the programmer's abnormal behavior and health. Come on, tell us a little about adjustment disorder, how it builds up and plays out. Or was it acute depression? Phobia? Paranoia? Was the programmer's family involved? Did he voluntarily seek inpatient treatment? Was he placed in psychiatric detention on judge's orders? Tell us how helpful or unhelpful the employer's health insurance was.

Maybe the purpose of the story is to illustrate a point, probably a good point, about workplaces. Maybe although the purpose appears to be to report a difficult event that occurred to an acquaintance, it just isn't.

In other words, I think it's possible that the story is made up.
Yes, but it's very important that anyone with an overdose gets treatment as soon as possible, even if they feel no ill effects at that time.

Death from paracetamol overdose is by liver failure, and that takes a week or so to happen, but after the first 24 hours there's not much you can do to prevent it apart from liver transplant.

Paracetamol overdose is a small number of liver transplants in the UK, but a significant number of the 'super urgent' transplants.
Mastastealth/sass-flex-mixin
Does anyone have any suggestions for books/learning materials related to the pre requisites mentioned in the article, specifically Microprocessor programming? I've tried to find some in the past but having no prior EE experience I find even some of the basics challenging.

I have experience with C, but don't really know where to start with the lower level stuff.

I'm thinking I should start with a simple book like Electrical Engineering 101 (http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Third-Schoo...). Once I have a grasp on some EE basics I might be able to step into the Microprocessor programming a bit better, knowing a bit of what's happening behind the scenes.

Any thoughts/suggestions?
When Do We Get To The "Design" Stage?
Show HN: Better Flat Listings for London
Tim Sweeney predicted that we'd all have 20 core machines with 80 hardware threads by 2009. Not really what happened.
The whole point is that while Ruby is nice, it's just too slow. Someone is better off investing time learning a faster compiled/JIT language.
Dear god, why? That's just cargo culting.
That's Design Patterns code. I'm sure that if I start programming seriously in Java, I can bring all the readability of C with me!
There is nothing about IRC that prevents it from providing those features, and many of them already exist in various clients. Ircle had video support in the 90s, Linkinus supports embedded media, and persistence is simply a matter of using a ZNC proxy (IRCcloud has it built in). P2P file transfers have been in IRC for decades, but it would be a piece of cake to integrate a media host into an IRC client.

The CTCP portion of IRC makes it possible to do just about anything you want, as long as both parties are using clients that support the action.
The laws are frustrating for people like your father.

He could get it added to a prescription, which makes getting the quantity easy but it then becomes more expensive. (Unless he qualifies for free 'scripts.)

Or you could just haggle with a pharmacist.

But, yes, it's an added hassle at a time when you very much don't need the extra hassle.
Twitter?

Seriously though, I'd rather have this built into an email system than relying on people to start understanding and following acronyms.
Building one of those was harder than we expected, Google won't let you frame their results page.
I think the misunderstanding comes from people confusing Rails with Ruby.
They explains this in the article. They cite a study that show that around 50% of people think than mothers are better at recognize their child cries than fathers.
As the submitter of this article, I should stay on-topic, but as an aside — I find it fascinating that this article shows screen shots of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome’s new-tab pages with a “grid of favorite sites” interface, and not Opera’s, even though Opera invented this interface (as “Speed Dial”).

I’m not sure if there is a deeper lesson in this observation than the obvious one about market share yielding mindshare or the truth that good design can make an impact even if it doesn’t lead to “success” for the innovating party (in this case, Opera).

Opera’s implementation is worth looking at for a comparison. Unlike Chrome, Opera allows you to manually set and order pages in Speed Dial. (Less of an echo chamber and more of a designed starting place.) It also literally lets you use numbers on your keyboard to navigate to your favorite sites.
i usually end an email with a multiple choice question. that way, the receiver could just reply with the answer.

did you like my comment?

a) yes

b) no
When sending a VSR that might otherwise be rude, I just add "Sent from my iPhone" at the bottom. Don't tell anyone.
How not to recruit a technical cofounder
Right, it's only a crime if you get caught perpetrating it. </sarcasm>
Mobile email has changed the etiquette of communication already. Even without the "Sent from my phone", people are using short replies from their cell phones and tablets. It's better for both the sender and receiver on a mobile device.

Steve Jobs was famous for his terse replies to customer emails. e.g.

customer: "Will the forthcoming iPad support tethering?"

Jobs reply: "No"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8721493/The...
The trouble with EOM is that you still need to click on the email you received to un-bold it. EOM or not, you are still opening it.
Ruby is uber fast for hipsters..
And as a follow-up to the article, note that IPv4 depletion is not an abstract scenario. If you host a website, or manage a network, or write software that ever touches an IP address, it is quite literally your responsibility to pull out a keyboard and help fix this problem. If you're blocked on a system that isn't ready for IPv6, then you should find out why, or seek alternatives. The Internet is far too useful for us to stand around and watch it rot.
> voters shouldn't be able to prove how they voted

hmm, thats interesting. I never thought about that.
Fail. Learn. Live.
Jabber (or any other IM) carries an implicit expectation of synchronicity though. When i get an IM, i assume it requires an immediate response. A VSRE email would require a short response at your convenience.
Well, we already understand and follow RSVP, and that's not even English.
My collection: 20 years worth of Wired magazine
Despite no direct contributions to modern mathematics, the people she inspired with her skill could have a huge effect. That can be considered a contribution, especially since she actively showed off her talents repeatedly to different audiences.
It is, in a sense. The later rounds only give you 2.5 hours to implement and execute your solution to the problems. Thing is, you are competing against folks who can write complex C++ algos in under 10 minutes!
Try to buy a Amiga or a Spectrum +3 in Ebay, they not are cheap.

I can sell you some old RAM modules.... :)
Bad things about tumblr: the block facility doesn't stop them stalking you or reblogging or you seeing their reblogs indirectly. They keep futzing with the UI in trivial ways that are so far from their major UI annoyances it isn't funny. Why the heck are asks not rebloggable? Why such a consciously limited mechanism for asks? Why are replies broken? And so on.
A general remark first. Your statements are full of hyperbole and it's hard to take you seriously.

All I said was that your hypothesis of a slower rate of medical advancement in the short term might be acceptable if it ensures that (a) more people have access to critical drugs and (b) more human beings have access to basic necessities of life that are taken for granted in most of the western world. Might be good if you respond to this claim instead of setting up a whole bunch of poorly thought out strawmen.

When the patent expires everybody benefits.

You do realize that drug patents are full legal in India, don't you? And the only thing that isn't allowed anymore is evergreening, which is of dubious benefit to society anyway. Further, India has issued exactly ONE compulsory licence (for an expensive cancer drug) ever. There is no evidence for your initial claim that India ignores patents.

I'm now going to ignore the strawman you've put about totalitarianism but I will make one remark about this statement.

Do the "few rich people" that are helped not end up paying for the R&D of the treatment for everyone else in perpetuity?

What is wrong with this? Don't we all benefit from inventions and ideas of many other humans, most of whom aren't rewarded financially from our successes?

If the US stops paying, the drug never gets produced, or gets produced much later because there is no private incentive to produce.

I would like to see citations on your claim that private capital (i.e., not money from the NIH, HHMI etc.) is responsible for the high rate of drug discovery in the US.
> We are hopelessly addicted to using a network protocol that has now run out of addresses.

We... "We"...

Let's see what the situation with germany's Telekom is like:

2010: http://heise.de/-1102458 - At the end of 2011 all DSL connections will be switched to ipv4/ipv6 dual stack

Mid 2012: http://heise.de/-1605061 - At the end of 2012 they will provide ipv4/ipv6 dual stack

End of 2012: http://heise.de/-1763557 - Only customers with VOIP or ISDN are getting ipv6.

It's not "me" who loves it, it's the ISPs.
I did not know you could do that, I always assumed it was full bitcoins, in that case I rescind my original answer due to ignorance.

Thanks. :)
Developers: please don't use your own frameworks
PHP Online Repl
Can you elaborate? Do you pay the average monthly cost of the entire pool, and then any extra charges the hospital bills?
"tout courte réponse" is not correct french, "very short reply expected" would translate to "très courte réponse attendue", but lucky you, it starts with the same letter. "toute courte réponse" would be roughly acceptable, but more familiar language.
Amiga upgrades and other peripheral still being sold, designed, and builded. (http://www.amigakit.com/)
On the contrary, the biggest downside of magic comes in maintainability. So languages with more magic are more appropriate for competitions than for regular code.
I think technology should strive for Zero Learning Curve. If I type "Chicken Chord On Blue" it should figure out that I probably need to know that I spelled it wrong, what it is, and how to make it. A user shouldn't have to know the answer they are looking for in advance.
"But previous studies didn't take into account the amount of time parents typically spent with their children on a daily basis."

I'm saying the new finding that "more time -> better able to recognize" is also not surprising.
... or when the wrong tools become the de facto standard people are expected to use.
That developed organically over many years. RSVP is an now a valid (if peculiar) English word.
I quite like the idea of using the OP's original phrasing of 'welcome' as I find that pleasingly polite

VSRW - Very short reply welcome
Tumblr is about picking the "what" by picking the "who". Unfollow the jerks, follow the people who post interesting things, and soon enough you will be plugged into a community of people who share your values, including about trigger warnings.
Not for the qualification rounds, but in later rounds, the winner is the person who gets the most number of points first. It won't come to any surprise that the finals tend to be dominated by C++.
Private Cloud utilizing your own HW?
Is there any point?
Would anyone be interested in managing their own KVM servers this way?
http://cloudiff.com/demo
Thanks,
Jan
Isn't it obvious that there must be a better solution to the problem then your solution? You shouldn't try to find the palindromes, but rather generate them.
Very exciting and empowering article. Makes me want to learn c, or at least believe that c is possible, straightforward easy and useful.
I suppose I meant new acronyms. It's certainly not impossible, as you have pointed out, but I don't have high hopes for people. Hell, most people can't understand how REPLY ALL works. On the other hand, if they were using an email client and it literally would not let them type a long response, that would be foolproof.
That's my default signature in all my email clients. If the email is actually really long and comprehensive, I just remove the signature. So far, I've gotten away with it.
"Instead of execution time, coding time is much more precious in such competitions"

Unfortunately, in such competitions you'll be competing against people who write C++ algos faster than normal people writing Python.
Annnnnnd this is why geeks have a reputation for social awkwardness.
I saw the font and closed my browser.
I feel as though a much more exciting thing you guys are doing is Codea - http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/. It looks so cool and something a lot of people could relate to, given the major shift to tablets.
Reblogging is commenting - and it makes your blog an entry point into the conversation, and gives it a more public and permanent home than a comment thread on somebody else's blog.
Because, honestly, that's the least uninteresting post as of this minute. At least it beats the umpteenth post about EmberJS/AngularJS/EmberJS-vs-AngularJS/. IMHO FWIW YMMV etc.
At code review one hacker guy
Was asked to relax, or to try.
"I'm not naming names,
But all's fun and games
Until someone loses an i!"

(I felt like responding this way just because Asimov wrote limericks.)
>the author's pics are pretty awful but he doesn't have the eye to see it. //

But that's the authors point, or so it seems to me. That the majority of people can't see it. If you're showing your pics as a non pro to a pro then they'll probably find them terrible even if you used a large-format Hasselbad.

My interpretation is that it's about the essence of the image in most cases and not the actual technical detail of the image. The images we capture as novices are aide-memoires primarily and in the main. To a non-photog it rarely matters if the dynamic range is poor or there's a little aberration or a slight lack of focus or a bit of extra noise.

That said I often bemoan the lack of a faster camera, better flash, adjustable aperture, better lens ...
That's my favorite one for the moment.
Others have asserted that they aren't doing the same processing and the GO program is not correct.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5586152
In addition to reading a book on basic EE, buy an AVR-based Arduino. From a perspective of professional EE/embedded developer Arduino may seem limited, but there is loads of information on "how to connect X to Arduino".

If you are specially interested in embedded programming, try to start using avr-gcc directly- you'll be forced to learn lot of low level stuff which is hidden by Arduino IDE.
Recordings for Someone
Microsoft has a tool called Checkv4 that scans code for things that have to be changed for IPv6 compatibility. Is there any equivalent for Linux?
Would the best solution be a web-based client? I have XChat on all my Windows machines and use Colloquy on my Macbook so I never worry about IRC support. But it's obvious that not everybody uses IRC on a daily basis.

I would wonder if it's possible to support people using their own desktop client, while others alternatively use a webpage on the site which connects into the same IRC channel.
very good point, you literally get what you pay for (and are stuck with it).

I am really liking my x1 carbon and it performs very well with linux.

I do wish I had stretched for the 8gb of ram but the 4gb has never been an issue (despite me sometimes running windows in a VM), however my general toolset is quite light (mostly command line based) so YMMV.
Real TL;DR: I compared a computer without an SSD, but with an Intel Core i7 clocked at 2 GHZ (quad-core, 8 threads) with a unix-like OS often cited as comparable to Linux to a 7 year old Core2Duo (2 threads) machine with 7 year old RAM and an SSD running Ubuntu (an OS not known as efficient).

The older machine with the slower CPU was faster.

It wasn't about the comparison, actually. It was about my surprise at how slow such an impressively spec'd machine can be -- and my regret that I didn't get the XPS 13.
illumos kernel is known to scale better.
This is not social awkwardness. This is social efficiency.
"your name, your vote"

Then your boss threatens to fire you unless you give him/her a copy of this paper such that he/she can verify that you voted how he/she told you to.
Highlight the part you want to summarize. Like the part with out the Notes.

Also Paul's writing is pretty poor. The ideas are good, but he jumps around and uses short sentences with far too many pronouns.

Garbage in Garbage out.

Here is the 25% version, which I think is Readable:

The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. And yet by far the most common mistake startups make is to solve problems no one has.

I made it myself. But galleries didn't want to be online. Because I didn't pay attention to users. Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few good ideas; it yields bad ideas that sound plausible enough to fool you into working on them.

At YC we call these "made-up" or "sitcom" startup ideas. But coming up with good startup ideas is hard.

For example, a social network for pet owners. Millions of people have pets. Choose the latter. Not all ideas of that type are good startup ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas are of that type.

Made-up startup ideas are usually of the first type.

Nearly all good startup ideas are of the second type. If you can't answer that, the idea is probably bad. But you almost always do get it.

But while demand shaped like a well is almost a necessary condition for a good startup idea, it's not a sufficient one. If Mark Zuckerberg had built something that could only ever have appealed to Harvard students, it would not have been a good startup idea. Facebook was a good idea because it started with a small market there was a fast path out of. So you spread rapidly through all the colleges. Often you can't.
Speaking of 2006, is it still a releveant article? I'm sure that internal Linux structure didn't changed that much?
I don't know how much I can really say to be honest, but I do think Flowdock will compete more in the future.
I have not gotten to that part yet but will perhaps notify you when I get around to it.

Angular made a tutorial video on building a Twitter search app that may be helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRelx4-ISbs
Where do you live? May I bring you some tea and massage your feet while I rewrite my post to please you?

I linked to an exhaustive review of the XPS, if you read my entire post: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/it-just-works-dell-xp...
Not building something that matters
Great question.

It's been a few months, but I remember being confused by "compile" vs "link". I had a hell of a time figuring out which one I needed to use. I also was confused by the passing in of parameters, with weird syntax like "@", and "=" prepending the parameters.

One thing that I tried doing, that I figured would be common, was to access a model specified by ng-model, and to access the controller's scope. But even that was really confusing.
AdWords Energize consultation notes
Different ways for different people, I'm just talking about my own experience
That's great! I just found Grove in this comments thread and it does look very promising. Best of luck with the service.
The other side of "academic freedom"
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This makes sense. To me this shows we're a well adapted species capable of filling the shoes of another when need be. This fact can't be more evident by the fact when my partner does night shifts she makes sure everything is ready to go as I am hopeless at cooking. I step up to the plate and adapt to the situation I wouldn't usually be in charge of handling.

I used to always think it was only mothers who could recognise the cries of their child, but it does make sense if you spend enough time that you develop a maternal instinct. We are firm believers we're free to live our lives how we choose, but can't ignore the fact we're programmed from the beginning to be a certain way already.
I find it reprehensible to ignore the fact that the federal government spends so little on education in relation to other expenditures.

There is no "gross and stupid distortion of reality" in believing that our federal government should be doing more to facilitate education.

Why is there a federal Department of Education?
To fund education!
When the federal government reduces education allotments to the states, the entire nation suffers as a result.

http://www.economist.com/node/15330604

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe_as_per_of_tot_...
Right...but I don't want to fill my blog with someone else's content just to comment on it...also, I don't think there's a way to comment on my own post, because it is technically reblogging my own post, which seems to be blocked.

I may be missing the obvious reply feature here...but it's never been intuitive, which is exacerbated by the different interfaces presented by the dashboard and blog interface...not saying this is necessary a bad feature of Tumblr, but it's definitely an important quirk
When they were ordering it, all I knew was it would be MBP 15-inch. I didn't know they would go to the low end on the HDD and RAM. I was a little hands-off to be polite with coming into a new job.
I'm glad you suggested what you did because that's exactly my current setup.

I have an ISP and Arduino. I yanked the AVR chip off the Arduino and stuck it on a breadboard. I just found it difficult to do anything due to my lack of EE knowledge. I could understand the programming basics due to past experience, but had no clue what was going on under the hood.

I think I'll read that EE book and then continue on the path I'm on.
When Everyone is an Eye-Witness, What is a Journalist?
Even a 10 year old machine with an SSD would be faster than a machine with a 5400rpm disk. Other things just don't matter when comparing operating system performance.