skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Birds do fly into windows -- once. I've seen it happen sitting inside the sliding glass doors that open onto the patio of my parent's house. They either don't survive the event, or they learn.

Flying insects don't learn as well. They mostly have hardwired programs that work well for them most of the time.
Tons of good engineers come out of Cal Poly. I think it has been ranked "best value in engineering education" for 20 years. It seems to have a very practical engineering oriented bent. I.e. people go there to actually become engineers. When I was a TA at MIT all the engineering majors planned to work in finance or IP law.
From the redis FAQ:

You may try to load a dataset larger than your memory in Redis and see what happens

This is what threw me off when I evaluated redis.

When choosing a database then I really don't want to "try and see what happens". I want defined and documented behaviour, please.
You will never be fluent
So on my main computer I've actually switched to Yahoo.

I've found about the same quality of searches most of the time but occasionally it just fails to give me what I want and I fall back to Google. For general purposes I would say that yahoo might even be slightly better. It seems to give me a bit less junk in my top 10 results.

Even with Yahoo's new interface it still seems messy relative to google.
I think it's the culture. Stanford has long had culture of fostering entrepreneurship. The concentration of smart people helps. You can spout off about your latest harebrained scheme and there is better chance of good criticism or even an eager partner. And as I said the alumni networks are significant. Name recognition helps a lot. Harvard has opened door for me, especially in other countries where people haven't even heard of the lower tier universities.
I'm currently doing a CS masters and I did my undergrad in Physics. I'm really glad that I have the background in mathematics and stats that I have. In our physics classes they really drilled into us that although our theory and homework often used exact numbers, no measurement meant anything without a measurement of the error. "A number without error is meaningless", they would say.

One thing I never fully understood was how to calculate the propagation of error. There are many useful tricks for reducing the impact of error on your final calculation, and a few things you need to watch to make sure it doesn't increase.
Google Code Blog: Transforming Your Calendar with LuckyCal and Google's APIs
That's a really really short term view. Which may be appropriate for some things, but not for others.
If their goal is to bankrupt you, then doesn't starting a lawsuit fulfill that goal, regardless of whether they win?
true... but I do think the stuff I mentioned in my comment is interesting -- and in a sense the same sort of stuff that cults/religions do actually discuss. I guess there is some irony in that.
I'm 24 and I code in Perl 5. Do I count in your poll, or do I have to live in Atlanta?
This reminds me a lot of religion--he's mixing together simple things that no one can really argue with (don't commit noise violations, no one owes you help moving, don't be rude to people, write thank you notes) with bizarre interjections into things that aren't his business (the subjects of your conversations with people other than him, how you stow your trash in your own home) and outright arguable cultural prescriptions (driving is mandatory, and tips have gone up 5%!).

I imagine if you're 25, you should be old enough not to care what this guy thinks of you anyway.
Why would you mock this as a function call and not use __get() so that it shows up as a property:

$config->databaseUrl;

versus

$config->getDatabaseUrl();

?
Just hype up your own search startup and they might spend some of that $100m on you!
If I said nobody whatsoever under 30 codes Perl, you would count in my poll. I said nobody I know. I realize there are some of you, but you must know that there aren't many of you, right?
there are actually several things at play, eccentricity, precession, and obliquity. the net result is that the north gets milder winters and cooler summers.
Digital Water Pavilion
The official website is not very usable.

Watch Video 3 (http://www.dwp.qaop.net/gallery.php?dir=media/videos) to get an idea of how it works.

An explanation of the concept is at http://www.dwp.qaop.net/concept.php?lang=en&dir=concept or you can visit the main project page http://www.dwp.qaop.net/?lang=en
The official website is not very usable.

Watch Video 3 (http://www.dwp.qaop.net/gallery.php?dir=media/videos) to get an idea of how it works.

An explanation of the concept is at http://www.dwp.qaop.net/concept.php?lang=en&dir=concept or you can visit the main project page http://www.dwp.qaop.net/?lang=en
People in the USA should chill out. Everything is a threat. Always about the "terrorists".
When were you there?

All my cohorts from MIT are building stuff: robots, companies, cars, batteries...
Yes, everyone panic!
Or you could use the excellent VCSCommand plugin (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=90) which provides most of the things this article talks about, plus a common interface that supports CVS, SVN, SVK as well.
Most speakers occasionally have problems expressing themselves, are at a loss for words, or make grammar or usage errors.

By the definitions set forth in this article, the majority of native speakers of english aren't fluent. Unless you're applying for a job as a copy editor, lingual effectiveness should be measured by results, not adherence to standards.

"What does it mean to be x" is generally not that useful a question -- you end up quibbling over arbitrary definitions. For examples, grab any introductory textbook to philosophy.
I had great success generating extra interest in an open position for a senior software / CTO position by advertising that we had a "dog friendly" workplace, and that I, the CEO, would be delighted to walk the dog during the day.
How to hide privacy violations in a privacy disclosure statement
Its a pretty rambling post, but it does address the semantic issue of "fluency". I think fluency is when you can speak with someone in that country comfortably. The rest is just qualification: pretty/reasonably/quite/very fluent. One can also be fluent in speaking, but not so much at reading or writing (mostly writing).
Diabetes.
Nice post, I'm also studying Chinese, albeit I've only studied for one year, so I am a relative neophyte but I have to say that I've thought a lot about the topic he raises in this post. For one thing, I count fluency as the ability to understand culture to the extent that you can play with words and idioms to express nuanced meaning. I think the Eminem example is very well chosen. I think I could spend several years studying Chinese in China and still not achieve that goal. This realization sort of begs the question whether I'll ever be able to reach that level of fluency in a culture that I haven't grown up in. Heck, there are days when I have trouble understanding English, and I frequently mis-hear or misunderstand people in my native tongue, which doesn't bode well for my ability to ever reach fluency with a capital F.
Of course one can become fluent in a language. People do it all the time. It's a function of exposure (time spent practicing, immersion, etc), teacher quality, innate ability, and age.

Chinese is a special (though, I think, not unique) because the language is based on cultural metaphors. But for learning something like Italian, Tagalog, or Hebrew (each of which I've studied in the past) it is definitely possible to become fluent.
On the "grumpy" track: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619739 (now get off my lawn.)
phone in your job

I know the talk you're referring to and he did not say this. He does suggest doing your best and working really hard to make sure your employers get what they want. Do the job you're paid to do and do it well.

What he advises against is going the extra mile for a company that does not trust your judgement and that you have no stake in. Leave work at work. Your job is not your life. You don't owe them anything that they aren't paying for, least of all your creativity.

I don't see how that can be construed as telling them to phone it in.

everyone else is retarded

In fact he points out several times that the people in charge at most companies are not stupid, they're just clueless about technology; not a very contentious statement last I checked. The whole first half of the talk is explaining this to an audience that has has yet to encounter it in the real world, and how to advocate for superior technical solutions in spite of it, with such "team killing, energy sucking" advice as be objective, honest, and prepared for hard technical questions. Truly industry-ruining suggestions.

I strongly suggest you watch the talk again. Even for someone that doesn't like him, you seem to have missed the point of it entirely.
"Being 19 and male is miserable, except for the few who are lucky enough to find a soulmate that early"

I get the impression that you didn't enjoy college. Who wants a soulmate so early? Seriously. Only weak and / or disabled people need someone else to look after them at the age of 19.
Twitter, Prediction Markets and Profits
"Bing" is an okay name, but Google's starting to become a genericized trademark. It'll never legally become one but once your brand has reached genericized trademark status you have a lot of brand power. And that brand power is even more powerful online. It's one thing if you have a store shelf where Kleenex and generic kleenex are right next to each other. It's different if you're sitting at a computer thinking, "what site am I going to use to google for facial tissues?".

There's a marketing concept--I've forgotten what it's called--where people will think of a small number of brands for a given category. If a brand gets in your brain this way it's viable. That's why we see so many silly commercials that just say things like "Nike" with some sort of vaguely inspiring imagery, or irrelevant things like polar bears advertising Coca-Cola. It's not a matter of actually convincing anyone to buy the product, it's just to get their attention and get the brand name in their working memory, so the next time they think "I need to get new sneakers" or "I want a fizzy drink", their brain will enumerate the possible brands and something constantly shoved into their mental attentions like Coke will come up instead of RC Cola, even though they're next to each other on the same shelf.

With search engines, Google is in the enviable position of being the only search engine that comes to mind. No one thinks anymore, "I need to go to a website that will help me find fizzy drinks on the internet. Which sites do that? Ask Jeeves? Google? Windows Live Search?". They just think, "I'm gonna google me some fizzy drinks".
I found his presentation inspiring.... I would recommend you all to attend the next event..

Leon
Promotional items, gifts and products
This page helped me a lot chasing my market strategy.
This videos are great :)

Keywords: Promotional key chains, Business Gifts, Promotional products, Promotional items, Promotional Gifts, Corporate Gifts, promotional flash drives, Promotional Umbrellas, Promotional T-shirts
Dang kids!

I like pontificating as much as the next guy. But there's this pattern that keeps repeating: person asks question. People speculate on what they might have meant and offer answers. Person comes on and says no, that's not it at all. Then people spin off on that piece of information and speculated on what the situation is. Repeat and rinse.

Should I study C++ or Java? Well gee, what's important to you? Picking up complex concepts? Learning to work in large shops? Becoming an all-round nerd? Without context -- and a lot of it, including your life situation and priorities -- it's just an invitation to bullshit. Even then there's plenty of room for disagreement. It's like asking, What kind of music should I learn to like?
Startup Idea: A butler for your idle computer
How does one "ask HN" to find a co-founder in a way that is acceptable to this community? Can I really make a post saying something like "My early-stage, pre-funding, revenue-generating startup is looking for a technical co-founder"? I thought that sort of post wasn't allowed here, except by Y Combinator companies?
There are well-defined standards for language learning that go beyond the subjective notion of "fluency":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Re...

I realize that not everyone is going to know about this kind of thing, but I found the premise of the essay (questioning the validity of a subjective description) to be fairly inane, when a couple of seconds of Google searching would reveal that there's a more sophisticated discussion to be had about the subject.
http://www.c-base.org/cv50f/

(in German but still interesting to get an impression I think even for non-German speakers)
well, I do make some mistakes in english. Still, sometimes I express myself better in english than in portuguese (My native language) rather than the other way around, and I can understand the Eminem songs (although haven't heard many of them to be honest). I don't really think that, for a language as easy as english, its a stretch to say that you can be fluent (that is, speak english as good as an native american fellow) in 1 year. Chinese may probably be though, since its so much harder.
My dad has had some amusing moments being a Korean-born doctor living in a fairly small western Pennsylvania town. He's been working on his English since his early teens, and speaks fluently and without an accent. In fact, he speaks "better" English than many native speakers in the area. One time, preparing for a conference, he wrote in his talk that a certain paper was "seminal." One of his (North American born) nurses read his presentation ahead of time and commented that maybe it wasn't proper to use that word at a conference. (She only knew of the word in the context of "seminal vesicles.")
If you take all out the HFCS and caffeine, you have (mostly) flavored seltzer.
I would argue dirty terms are good for test purposes as they are heavily gamed, because there is so much money at stake. The "boobs" searches mentioned in the article might not be solely for the obvious reason.

"Mesothelioma" results would be worth testing.
I don't know about practical, but I think an Apollo style investment in tokamak's could have a useful power plant up an running inside of 15 years. However, I have no idea if it would end up being cheaper than spending that much cash on say wind or solar.

JET was close to break even and it's an old and small design. They have steady state tokamak's by not operating at the outer limits of the device. So IMO the only real challenge is building a sufficiently large scale device. And getting a steady supply of Tritium.

So scale it up to 3 or 4 times the size of ITER and build 4 of the things and I expect we would have at least one fusion power plant. Granted, 4 plants at 4 times 6 billion a pop = ~100billion which is stupid amounts of cash, but it would get it done IMO.

PS: The real question is how much less than that can you spend and build a working system.
Yes, Chinese is an extremely special case. You just can't really understand it without knowing having a deep knowledge of the history and culture. I think Japanese is similar.
Why Accountants are Dull and Guitarists are Glamorous
Anybody remember Bonzi Buddy? Haha.
That's not how anyone producing a search engine treats it. Data and feedback from users is rigorously analyzed in a statically consistent way that is as scientific as we can afford to make it.

Go do some mechanical turking for us, please. :)
2000. There were tons of people building stuff but still something like 40% of them went into Finance. I was TAing in EECS and almost everyone wanted to work on wall street. It looks like it's trended down a bit but still 29% of MIT grads go into finance. Also 13% go into "consulting" and 3 of the top 5 employers are McKinsey, BCG and Booz-Allen. http://web.mit.edu/facts/graduation.html
Adam Gopnik, in his series of essays on living in France (for the New Yorker, and later collected in "From Paris to the Moon"), makes a distinction between understanding when people are serious, when people are joking, and when people are joking-but-not-joking.

His example of the last: doctors would ask when his wife got pregnant. Technically it was a joke (they didn't really need to know), but at the same time it was not a joke (they really wanted to know).
That's a very silly data point for several reasons.

First, the age of 30 is arbitrary, unless there's some reason that only the experiences of people under 30 matters. Perhaps everyone over 30 stops coding, or dies, or fails to create anything interesting -- but you haven't demonstrated that.

Second, the choice of Atlanta is arbitrary. Is Atlanta a sufficient statistical representative of all of the locations of programmers in the world?

Third, your choice of "people I know" is arbitrary. Can you demonstrate that you know a representative sample of available programmers in the Atlanta area? (What happens if you expand the definition of "programmers" to include "people who occasionally write a program"?)

Fourth, your experience doesn't compare. An anecdote is not a piece of data.

The rate of change on the CPAN is not the sole determinant of Perl's viability, but there is a single, well-understood place to share reusable code with other Perl programmers. It's measurable data, and it's normative for certain types of Perl usage.

What you provided isn't data. It's just noise.
"he speaks "better" English than many native speakers in the area"

Being from western Pennsylvania myself, I can attest that this really isn't that big of an accomplishment. How come yinz aint pounden owrens an watchin de game? De Picksburg Stillers er playin.
Twitter OAuth Library in Twisted Python
Chinese is a special (though, I think, not unique) because the language is based on cultural metaphors.

I hear similar things about Japanese all the time. It grates on me, so allow me to reproduce a quote from a famous American translator of the language whose name I can never recall:

"People ask me all the time how I can possibly capture the nuance of Japanese in English, as if there were no nuance in English, or as if there no significance to the fact that the word nuance is French."

A language with cultural metaphors? Wow. Stop the presses. (Oh, I see what I did there.)
No more than anything else. Can't comment on Chinese, but I'm well into studying Japanese (and living in Japan now) and it doesn't strike me as fundamentally more difficult than English. It's really easier in a lot of ways. Languages are just different from each other. You don't have to know history to really understand a language, as I expect most speakers don't know all that much history. You simply have to learn a bunch of new stuff.
I choose to interpret this as a lovely ironic statement. Well done!
This presentation is amazing. As a budding entrepreneur, the PR tips provided give me a different perspective on how to get my product and brand out to the world.

Great stuff,

Peter
Not many '0' queries--that term's ranking is about #2000 in this data set.

We're planning on removing IP addresses from our logs after a year, but keeping them in some form indefinitely, as per our privacy policy: http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html. However, we're very open to suggestions on this front. Right now, as it has been less than a year since we went public, we have everything.

We don't use cookies at the moment because simply there hasn't been a pressing need to use them. We may start using them, however, to store things like language/region preferences.
Contenture Launches. Micropayment-Based Freemium Model
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....

What about that noise? This is pretty typical Perl thinking: pretend everything is ok, nothing to see here. Lots of CPAN commits, we have one metric to cling to. Everything is ok.
I've always liked the 'seinfeld' definition of fluency:

If you can watch a local sitcom on TV and laugh at the jokes, then you're fluent.

That may be a bit harder to test for, but it adds an element of cultural understanding that goes beyond textbook skills.
Bloody genius with the blue wig idea! Whenever someone says blue wig, I automatically think of 1-800-got-junk. I'd hire him and his team if I had the budget.
5 real life soldiers who make Rambo look like a pussy
Then again, Zed Shaw isn't exactly known for being PC.
"I'd never feel comfortable putting a really high-level candidate into a lower level position," says Ms. Eilbes, who recruits for Manpower and other clients."

This is why headhunters would fuck up the whole world if given half the chance.

It's also exactly the opposite of what real achievers know to be true. Real progress begins once people are bigger than their jobs.
In my experience, the best method for finding out if you're fluent or not is the speed test: if native speakers slow down (or suddenly start to pronounce waaay to well) when speaking to you, you're not fluent.

Second best is to try to overhear a conversation between native speakers in a really noisy bar. If you understand every detail of it, you can consider yourself fluent (and a little creepy).
The US Government also has a standardized rubric for language proficiency, going so far as to break it down between reading/writing/hearing/speaking/translating

http://www.govtilr.org/
I hear this all the time from english speakers who study foreign languages. However the same attitude is not usually found in people for whom english is a 2nd language. My grandparents for instance weren't native english speakers yet they certainly became fluent. I didn't even know they knew how to speak a language other than english until I was in my late teens.

Language learning isn't really a deep intellectual exercise, it's more a matter of logging hours of practice. For many native English speakers, Americans in particular, there is no pressing reason to learn a foreign language. It's a hobby. Thus, people think they are hardcore if they spend more than 2 hours a day with language study. However for many non-native speakers, learning English is almost an economic necessity, or at least a vital step towards a much better financial lifestyle. People are more serious about it and there are millions of Mexican, Indian, German, Dutch, Norwegian, etc people who are fluent in english...
I've heard more than one person say no one from North America can play proper Irish music. Always struck me as completely insane -- if nothing else, there were enough emigrant Irish musicians in NYC and Chicago to form their own styles of the music!

Liz Carroll has that story about sitting in a session in Ireland, playing tunes for hours, when someone says "Let's play some of your music!" and launches into Turkey in the Straw....
None actually.
I feel 1984 is the weakest of the classic distopia triumvirate (We, BNW, 1984). We and BNW are both scarier because they are plausible. Many people read BNW in particular and say "that doesn't seem so bad".
> The gap (in functionality and in performance) between an emulator and a cycle-accurate simulator of an actual chipset is large

On the other hand, there is a large degree of fuzziness in the behavior (between individual machines) of the features within this gap. For example, profiling and high-resolution timing instructions are not equally available on all x86 CPUs. As for the chipset, most of the interesting features are very poorly (if at all) standardized. I hypothesize that a thorough emulator detector written today will have many false alarms on actual bare hardware.

Let's also not forget that not a single emulator has yet been written with the explicit goal of being undetectable by hostile code. High-resolution timers could always be fudged, a tick table consulted for spoofing the requisite intervals, etc. if we know what to expect from the raw hardware.

And if one day emulator-writers fall far behind anti-debugger trick specialists, the hardware ICE could make a come-back.