skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I find your response quite amusing, particularly as your second most recent submission was: 'Don't get sued for libel in the UK ...' That was also nothing to do with technology, from what I could see.

And, this was not link bait. This poor lady was actually put in prison, for contacting her son to say she loved him, in breach of a court order banning her from contacting him. She is now threatened with imprisonment again, because she posted a video on the internet outlining her plight.

So my question remains, what on earth is happening to Britain to allow injustices like this to happen?
Academia needs its army of minions to teach undergrads and do the grunt research work. Fewer and fewer Americans are willing to go through the grind that is grad school in Science or Engineering. Thus, one must find cheap labor abroad.

Why are they kicked out afterwards? Maybe because most of them are no longer necessary? Skills such as writing research papers and grant proposal are not in high demand in industry...
You're way to late, good placements are usually gone by April, relying on the careers office was a massive mistake, it's far better to apply to all the big companies around December time. Any later and people like me have already taken the places. Although, at my my Uni right now (London) there are more places available than good students to fill them. Try applying to something in London and move into the city for a year.
Forget calling her. We're going to the ITP, NYU Spring Show this afternoon.
This is all typical technology-is-killing-society-and-making-you-stupider bombastic drivel. When the mail system was instituted in the US a part of the population claimed it would be the end of modern society. That it would eliminate face to face interaction and increase indecency as a delivery method for porn (it did do the latter). Same with the telephone. But here we are, Twitter isn't going to destroy society, make us stupider or less passionate. It's just another way of receiving information. In 140 characters.
As long as you dont stay in Q&A for too long then you're ok. Otherwise you risked getting labelled as the Q&A guy and that will stick.
There was a T.V. show based on that.
Not to mention pathetic sensationalism (even for the Times). She was jailed for breaching a court order placed on her. If the court order was assigned wrongly, fight the assignation.
Jailing someone who breaches a court order is not injustice. If the court order was wrong, fight that.
Generally good companies give interns real world work in the UK. So much so, the teams you work with may not even know you are an intern.

A year in industry is what secures good jobs for alot of good people. Coming out of Uni without a placement in the UK makes it harder for you to land a good job as you are seen as having no experience, but with a year in indsutry you have real world experience plus a degree, it sounds like you know someone that had a crap placement, dont that that skew your thoughts on placements, there are alot of excellent ones in the UK
The Future of Microsoft, The Future of Technology
More paid placements than good students to take them right now in London, please get your facts right.

The economy is not affected placements much at all, if anything cheap labour is good thing right now. Of course, you have to be the best to land these gigs.
Basics of Compiler Design [pdf]
It does look pretty good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLU34h8SCF4

If they restore search that they damaged with vista it could be a winner.
Incorrect title: It took 130 minutes and even then he never said if he managed to even get things like posting working.
Sandwich years are really beneficial to students. You're far more likely to get a "real" job when you graduate.

If you graduate.

A really common problem (?) with sandwich years is that the student is so good, and enjoying actually working that he doesn't want to return to university to finish his degree. Doing a year at a fun company makes the final year drag like a bitch.
There is the bebook, lbook, hanlin v3. These are all the same system, based on open source components. They read many open formats, plus doc, pdf, chm and even DRM'd mobipocket files. I am surprised that they are not more widely known. They are not exactly cheap if you live in the US, that's because of the low dollar and the high cost of the e-paper screen, I think.
It seems that the wiki page doesn't say anything about the `delete` and `let` operators. Those are very useful operators that should be read about. (just search `delete` or `let` on MDC)
Well, at least as far as the USA is concerned, the founders enumerated the list of natural rights endowed on people by their creator. This was not arbitrary, it was based on thousands of years of western philosophy. What the original poster is worried about is the conflation of entitlements with rights.
Built this for myself and found it pretty useful, so thought I'd release it. This is probably not too attractive to iPhone/Blackberry users, but maybe the rest of us would find some use for it..

Uses Textmarks (http://textmarks.com) to handle the SMS, GAE for the hosting.
There are many, many sites that sell legit ebooks. Check out booksonboard and fictionwise, to name just two. Unfortunately, like Amazon's ebooks, most of these are DRM'd.

The wireless thing is cool, but ereaders existed for a long time without them. I think it would be cool to have whispernet, but it is by no means essential to the enjoyment of my ereader. The next gen bebook will have wifi access to read rss reads etc. as well.
Is your mom on Twitter yet?
Fresh Inspiration From 10 New Twitter-centric Websites Out This Week
Kevin Kelly -- New Rules for the New Economy
If something as simple as a checklist [1] can have a meaningful impact on patient care in hospitals, I think it's worth talking about the equivalent in software.

Neither claims to be any kind of science, but both can save the day by compensating for the natural human foibles of the practitioner.

[1]: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...
"As long as there is internet, there will be free content. And as long as there is free content, sites trying to grow on a paid-content business model are not going to survive. It is as simple as that," said Syeed Ali.

That's like saying that as long as there is drinkable water available from taps, wine-makers won't make any profit charging for wine. (We won't even mention Desani water... )
one worker as "something frightful and infernal", and although the rooms were hot, windows were often kept closed during the summer so that conditions for thread work remained optimal. The air, meanwhile, was filled with particles of thread and cloth.

Keep in mind that the source for this comes from a labor union organizer, and that this seems to be the worst they could find. From the original source, the quality of the air did not seem bad enough for the factory girls to be noticeably bothered by it.

You might want to balance your view with the writing of a woman who actually worked in the mill (http://books.google.com/books?id=RgwCAAAAYAAJ&printsec=f...): "I do not recall any particular hardship connected with this life, except getting up so early in the morning, and to this habit, I never was, and never shall be, reconciled, for it has taken nearly a lifetime for me to make up the sleep lost at that early age. But in every other respect it was a pleasant life. We were not hurried any more than was for our good, and no more work was required of us than we were able easily to do."

I suggest you read the book, it's a very different picture than you'll get from Chomsky or the labor organizers.

I'm not arguing that factory life didn't suck by our standards. But it wasn't some plot to keep the foot on the neck of woman or laborers. Life was hard because they simply weren't as wealthy back then, and so they had to work hard at whatever they did. The factory life was better than the alternatives, or else the woman would not have worked their.
Sharpen the Saw for Developers
I gave up and used Matlab to generate C++ libraries.
Unfortunately the EU Parliament has no legislative power. The Council of Ministers, which according to the article seems to contest that resolution is the final arbiter. However it seems quite a nice move and perhaps if it gets publicity and support the council of ministers might find their hands tightened.
Yes, and not just design.

I think data mining and presenting the insights you get from that is the next big thing. I can't say this enough: it's not just about the visualization but also the way you store data and how you analyze it to produce the info you want to visualize. It's the whole stack from raw data to pretty pixels on the screen.
I thought I was the only one who needed books. I can't read long articles/tutorials online and always take a print or get a book.
I don't even use it at all
thinkpad x60s is my weapon of choice
Dowd on Barack Spock, beam me up
Startup book turning into thriller with light dose of sci-fi and compelling characters: "Press Send" by John McLaren (http://www.amazon.com/Press-Send-John-McLaren/dp/0671015702)

To me, "Press Send" run circles around "Microserfs".

Good luck finding it in the US (It's a UK book for some reason).
Well the mail did change society at the time and so did the telephone, the internet has certainly changed society and perhaps if everyone started talking in 140 characters that would also change society. Perhaps not completely, but surely to some extent. I mean some might argue that we as people are no different than the ancient Greeks, we still have the same passions for love and hate and drama etc, but surely on a functioning level our society is much different.
BlackBerry Billionaire Has the N.H.L. Buzzing
> That was also nothing to do with technology, from what I could see.

No, that was to do with science. It's a case in which a scientist is claiming that an organisation is making claims with no scientific basis, and that organisation is responding not by presenting evidence, but by bringing a libel action. Science and rationality, I think, is of interest to hackers.

And did you read the account of why the court orders were made? They seem perfectly reasonable to me.

Still, one person's "link-bait" is another person's burning issue of social justice. I responded, and contribute, in a way I think adds value to this site given its aims and audience.
Seconded. Besides telling a familiar story in a very compelling way, Kidder has a genius for quotability:

One engineer, Josh Rosen, who burned out fighting nanosecond-level timing bugs was seduced by the attraction of commune living and left to live in the country. His resignation note declared, I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.

Gems like this one appear about once every two pages, give or take.
Link to print version... alas nyt hijacks it with advertising. woe is them, woe is them.

Unfortunately newspapers are an endangered species. Dowd writes:

David Simon, the creator of “The Wire,” who worked for 13 years as a Baltimore Sun reporter, testified that “high-end journalism is dying,” and when that happens, and no one is manning the cop shops and zoning boards, America will enter “a halcyon era for state and local political corruption.”

IMHO, high-end journalism is takin' a beating. But they aint dead and never will be. What is dying is the newspaper medium. That will most likely go the way of the horse and buggy, only to be seen on trips to central park and amish country. What news publishers need is a new business model. Oddly enough, it is coming from places like the NYT. Go figure. Check out http://developer.nytimes.com to see what I'm talking about.
Although not a book, I recommend watching "August" - a movie I discovered last summer on HN about the startup-scene in NYC during the boom. A fun watch for sure.
Although not a book, I recommend watching "August" - a movie I discovered last summer on HN about the startup-scene in NYC during the boom. An interesting story and journey for sure.
Identity in the Age of Cloud Computing [scribd]
Any article that relates programming to accounting is pretty suspect.
You're so wrong. And even if you weren't wrong,writing off the huge B2B market is pretty silly.

In any event, MySpace and PlentyOfFish both run off of .NET

So the largest dating site in the world, and the second largest social network. I'd say that's pretty relevant.
I'd argue that jailing someone for breaching a court order that was morally wrong was an injustice, but maybe that's me. Certainly, if I ever was banned from seeing my kids, i would be severely tempted to break the court order.

You say that she should just fight the court order. However, the order was made by the Family Court system, not the civil court system. Family Courts operate in secrecy and it virtually impossible to appeal their decisions. Moreover, defendants are liable for contempt of court if they talk to journalists about their case, or attempt to publicise what went on in court.

Indeed, the poor lady in this case is currently being threatened with prison for publishing a video on the web highlighting her plight. If she ends up in prison for this, she won't be alone - more than 200 people were locked up in 2005 for contempt of the UK's family courts. See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_... for further information.
Tr.im URLs (trimurls) on Twitter
The Case Against Free
Duke Nukem Forever gameplay Leaked
erm, no. The USA Bill of Rights is a list of restrictions on government which attempts to explicitly protect some natural rights, _NOT_ an enumeration of all natural rights.

As long as the "right to internet access" is a specialization of the right to freely associate (preemptively ruling out three strike laws and whatnot), I don't see how it's impinging upon anyone's right to be left alone.
"In this case, the French spend enough money on public health and social benefits that there's reason to believe that the relationship is more than coincidental."

Why?

Because it is common sense! If you spend money on public health you are making people healthier. Why do you think they call it public health? More money, more health. It's really very simple, don't you understand basic arithmetic?

Here's an interesting link (from 2000, sorry about that):

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_pub_per_ca...
Well Cooliris is rather designed and it is a hell of a service many million times better than google images for instance.

But of course google is in the data business they are not in the design business so you can't really blame them.
Here is Crockford's 4 part series, concatenated: http://s3.amazonaws.com/2008/09/javascript.mp4 (178 MB).
It's good to know that the old gray lady is upholding the fine traditions of reasoned, coherent argument supported by the facts in it's editorial content.

Maureen Dowd turns in another excellent performance that doesn't at all read like it was written after a pitcher of Margaritas consumed while watching the latest hit movie. Not at all.
Thanks. I was hoping someone would point out my same thoughts after reading Marco's post. Also +1 to the individual who posted relevant stats about MSFT to paint a more holistic and objective picture.
Okay, maybe that one was about science. But what about your following posts:

"Ask HN: where are your favorite places?"

And even better:
"The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord"

It's okay for you to post these kind of issues but you don't have the graciousness to let me post about what I consider a serious injustice without you in turn posting a snide comment.

It's so blatantly hypocritical that it's hilarious.
This sort of thing happens every day when people break restraining orders or don't comply with visitation rights. Not sure why it is considered news, much less hacker news.
I was taught by this book while at DIKU. It's pretty 'dry' with its LaTex typesetting and all, but thorough and pretty comprehensive within the scope.
The point I was trying to make, which for whatever reason seems to escape you, is that a regulation need not be an unnecessary creation of a malevolent government, as dictated by your original quote. Nor is the power of enforcement of such regulation with imprisonment necessarily bad, as you allude in the gp of this post. Indeed, if it cannot be enforced there is no reason to create it.

Hope that clears things up a bit for you.
"hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble", by Tom Evslin (pub. 2007).

Tom is a software hacker himself and a very well known serial startup entrepreneur, with successes in comm and graphics apps (both Mac and PC) and then a huge IPO for his company ITXC during the internet bubble. His fictional murder mystery is based on his insider view of startups, both the both technical and financial sides.

Go to http://hackoff.com (note that the fictional domain which is the title of the book is also a real domain to promote the book). You can read the entire book or listen to Tom read the entire book free, or receive all the text episodes by RSS or email, or receive all the audio episodes by RSS or podcast. You can order the hardback book edition from Amazon, or buy a Kindle edition.
I've read it as a part of the introductory compiler course at DIKU (Computer Science dept. of University of Copenhagen).

It's good for exactly what the title says: Basics of Compiler Design. It won't make you a compiler guru, but it will give you a good grasp of the fundamentals.

If anyone is interested, I could share the weekly assignments and the exam project from the course.

The advanced compiler course at DIKU uses Modern Compiler Implementation in ML: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/modern/ml/.
Or read javascript: the good parts, it's one of the two reasons I'm a happy javascripter. (The other is that I can restrict myself to ff3.5 which not many people will be able to)
That's precisely what I was going to point out.

"Your left brain is logical, linear, by-the-numbers; the right side is creative, artistic, empathetic (...) our country is entering a new era -- the so-called conceptual age -- during which right-brained skills such as design and storytelling will become far more crucial than traditionally left-brained skills such as accounting and computer programming."

That implies that computer programming is "linear" and non-creative. Draw your own conclusions. Why is design right-brained, but not programming? All in all, here's a prime example of bad journalism: an orgy of labels, and absolutely no content.

Moreover, even accounting can be creative. Just ask Andy Fastow, Enron's former CFO...
Even though that is something guaranteed by something called the 'Bill of Rights' it's really more of an implementation detail of the general mission of the government. A speedy trial just ensures that the government must treat like things the same and different things differently. Without the 'speedy' provision then an innocent person could conceivably be treated as a guilty one by delaying trial. Similarly, the right to an impartial jury ('a jury of one's peers' isn't in the Constitution) is a check on arbitrariness on the part of the courts. So the first principle is that we're innocent until proven guilty and that like things should be treated alike and different things should be treated differently.
Thanks for all suggestions! Looking forward to some good reading this summer.

I have read Microserfs and JPod. Really enjoyed both of them. Also, the TV version of JPod is not that bad.
99 Lisp Problems:

http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~meidanis/courses/mc336/2006s2/func...
Interesting topic, but hard to read ... is there a pyramid of good writing/grammar?
Title doesn't say he managed it. He tried, and failed.
Did you miss the part where it says that she was turning the children against her father and making them enter into a difficult contradictory allergens of loyalties which is causing these children harm. I would doubt if the judge made the decision based on some law stating you can't say I love you to your children. I am sure it was a sane decision based on the facts of the case and you know sometimes it is right and just that the mother is prevented from saying I love you to her child.
"I also point out statical rates: Microsoft shares in IM, web-email, console market, developer tools market, web-server market etc. are all growing and aren't declining."

Depends on how you measure it. For instance, apparently in terms of monthly uniques hotmail is declining and will be overtaken by gmail this year:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArti...
11. Commodore +4.
Right, but the point is that the "right to a trial" (at all):

- is a positive right (to have a jury trial at all implies judge, jury, etc., all of whom have better things to do with their time than listen to two losers argue back and forth, and thus somehow someone is going to be compelled to provide for the trial, either directly -- jury duty -- or indirectly -- via taxation)

- that a positive right makes it into the bill of rights means positive rights as such are not verboten, or somehow anathema to the founders' sensibilities

- or it's an entitlement (which is closer to the truth), but then again there's no problem with entitlements being enshrined in the bill of rights

I've got a special place in my heart for people who use the positive/negative distinction as a kind of club; cf my other post in this thread to see the origin of the notion in modern discourse.
Hacking, as performed by an Orangutan
I agree with most of what this article says. TDD still seems like a lot of busywork to me, which is exactly what I try to avoid as a programmer. If something is tedious, I do my best to write a script to do it for me (sometimes even if the script takes longer to write than the tedious task).

That said, I really like looking to tests/specs for instructions on how to use a new API (especially if it's undocumented). Tests are definitely nice to have, even if they're a pain to write.

Also, I like Uncle Bob's idea of making the code cleaner with every commit (though I would of course separate any refactoring into its own commit).
The Intel Math Kernel Library is decent, and very fast. It has disadvantages - not optimized for AMD processors, not free (but the student version is cheap, and the free trial does not really expire).
The 2 things we do:

1. Create signatures in Mac Mail with answers to common email questions.

2. Use a help ticket system. Ours is simple and works great. It includes an FAQ system. FAQs are displayed when the customer chooses the category of their help ticket (in an effort to answer common questions in that category).

Also, we open-sourced it (its a Rails app):

http://github.com/bigfolio/big-help/tree/master
Unless you're British, because then you'll look like a dick for forgetting to do it two months ago ;-)