skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
pft i know how to stop bleeding. use a simple tourniquet.

remind me not to go to Australia and get into a situation where i need medical attention...
It's scary, but despite being written down for ages, and having parents and elders who have some sort of duty in imparting their "wisdom," people still make stupid choices for one reason or another, and commonly excusing themselves with "because they were young." It's not just scary on an individual level; it's scary on an organism level; it's scary how so many humans can be so resistant to self evolution: who is responsible for this?

The other scary thing is, poverty in an unequal society is a downward spiral, despite all the pop meritocratic sentiment that is especially rampant in the USA. Rich people are more educated, healthier, more emotionally stable, and... generally more attractive. This becomes a positive feedback loop down the generations.

The sickness is the widespread misattribution of the sum of all of these traits as the result of effort, rather than what is very largely a product of chance: you have no control over what environment you are born into. Essentially, people are credit hogs.
Ask HN: IEEE membership. Is it worth it?
Hi, I attended a conference which was much less for an IEEE member, so I joined some years ago.

They send those fancy newsletters talking about myIEEE, I like some of the magazine’s content. They also talk about IEEE member meetings which I never saw in my vicinity. To me it looks like another dull association.

But I hesitate to cancel my membership, yet. Is there some advantage which I miss?
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll incorporate it into the recipe.
AppCraver's Numbrosia Review:  How can I address the issues raised?
Most animals don't have sex for very long at a time; I wouldn't be surprised if the pleasure wiring overrides any ability to feel any other urges, because of the rarity (and importance) of its activation. I imagine it would be quite different in the human case; things frequently "interrupt" people.
My trick for when I'm in one of these conversations: after answering, ask "and what about you?". That is of course assuming the question is applicable to them (eg. "do you play any sports", but not "where did you get that shirt").

That way, you show that you are interested in the conversation and the other person. And often with these open-ended questions, people ask them because they have a good answer. (I know it seems narcissistic, but asking yourself "what question would I like asked of me" can be a good way to come up with questions.)
Or to be true to the actual researcher "Turmeric helps mice to lose weight - applicability to humans unknown".
I suspect, like the reports of lab-animal drug self-administration, this bit of pseudoscientific folklore is exaggerated.

For details on how studies of rats and cocaine have been misrepresented, see http://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=2696 .
http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placemaker/

Yahoo! Placemaker is a freely available geoparsing Web service. It helps developers make their applications location-aware by identifying places in unstructured and atomic content – feeds, web pages, news, status updates – and returning geographic metadata for geographic indexing and markup.

Placemaker provides geo-enrichment for the hugely significant proportion of Web content that is geographically relevant but not geographically discoverable. Provided with free-form text, the service identifies places mentioned in text, disambiguates those places, and returns unique identifiers (WOEIDs) for each, as well as information about how many times the place was found in the text, and where in the text it was found. The WOEIDs returned by the service can be passed to Yahoo!'s GeoPlanet™ API for further geographic enrichment and discovery.

Placemaker is not a geocoder and does not perform street-level address recognition; it is however a geo-extraction and indexing tool designed to help determine the 'whereness' of a document or atomic unit of text. It provides the geographic developer community with the means to mark-up and index their content geographically in a globally-aware, locally-relevant, and language-neutral manner, and assists with geographic discovery and aggregation across the Internet.
oh man this site is too funny
They do. http://www.google.com/history/
If you're picking... please don't confuse shy with introverted. Some people may be both, but it's definitely not the rule. It took me a while to realize I'm a bold introverted... I'm not afraid of interactions, I just prefer books to parties. Once the confusion was cleared I felt much better in my skin.
It's not ironic, the research, in fact, didn't actually involve curry or chilli peppers, only turmeric (one of the ingredients of curry).
I totally agree with these guys that getting out the soldering iron and working on real hardware is satisfying as hell.

But ironically, many hardware engineers like me spend all day writing what's essentially software (Verilog code) and running it in a simulator (VCS). Eventually we send a binary file (GDSII) that represents the chip layout off to the fab, and though we do get real chips back from Taiwan, most of us never lay hands on them.
About Compass not being the solution: "The problem is simply that most designers and CSS authors aren’t programmers."

Well, they don’t have to anymore. Who needs a "CSS author" or a designer who writes code? Thanks to solutions like Compass, I, as a programmer, gladly do this myself and let the designer, well, design.
Seems like you're taking lala.com head on. I happened to think they are really innovative in the cloud music service space.

What is different about your site?
On the contrary, there are lots of reasons to use the popular languages. The reasons mostly have to do with straightforwardness, lots of well-tested libraries (even if they do things in a way that's not the most clever), lots of people who've already had any problem you're likely to encounter, as long as you're doing things in the obvious way, etc.

These things together mean that using a popular language in the way that most people use it is easy -- it's the path of least resistance in a lot of instances. Using languages that are cool, have neat features (or the ability to build them), and/or have higher abstractions is fun for play, but it turns out to feel like you're swimming upstream when you have to do the boring requirements-laden task that you've been handed.

There's more than one reason for that, but collectively they add up to why I use PHP for things I just want to get working quickly, or for job-like things, and lisps or other small-community languages when I'm doing something just for fun.
The poor tend to be the stupid (plenty of studies to back this up), and hence the poverty. Since they are more stupid, they fall for stupid payday loan schemes, credit card idiocy, etc., at rates greater than the rich do.

Please do not reply if you read "tend to" as "always." I'm not going to bother responding.
You sort of contradict yourself there. You decry people who think the poor are "lazy and shiftless", then go on to explain why the poor are shiftless. Explaining why someone is shiftless doesn't make them not shiftless. It may help you figure out a better way to address the problem, but merely explaining the problem doesn't change it.

Note I dropped the "lazy" qualifier. I'm not convinced that doesn't cut across social classes pretty freely, nor did you talk about it at all.

I do broadly agree, though. Many programs to "help the poor" amount to throwing money at them, but that doesn't strike at the root causes at all, which I think you're largely correct about. Pouring water into a leaky bucket doesn't help; you need to fix the leaks.
Yahoo Placemaker - free geoparsing Web service
V.I. Arnold: On teaching mathematics
Heh, I like that article...the description of "i=j*5" in C++ should probably be on the first slide of any C++ programming class. :)
Languages are a way to communicating both to other humans and to your compiler, and doing both well is really hard. Sometimes syntactic sugar makes it easier for humans even in powerful and dense languages: think of the "do" notation in Haskell.

And no, you can not put every language "feature" in a library: what about features like static typing, isolation of side-effects... Even features like threads can be a library, but the compiler has to know about this library and its particular semantics...

So yeah, we all know languages like Lisp or Smalltalk are very expressive. But current C# is also quite powerful and relatively pleasant to work in, and it's goal is rather to bring more features to programmers and to evolve this "blub". And of course I hope someday the average programmer will write in a Haskell-like-but-even-better language :)
Is that sarcasm? I thought that the Internet is for Porn, and the late 20th century was the start of the biggest explosion of...bothers! How the heck do you talk about this stuff without sounding like a /b/tard?

In any case, Internet Porn as it is now is close enough to a button to induce sexual pleasure. The dangerous thing is not producing raw pleasure. It's producing quality sexual experiences. If you could record and replay the experience of having sex with a very desirable partner, in the words of Dennis Miller, this will make Crack look like Sanka.

Given that the promise of sex is such a strong compulsion (there's a reason why advertisers and gangsters gravitate to it) is there any hope of resistance?
Microsoft receives patent for restricting Windows functionality
Google Rolls Out Home Energy Software
MBDA Community Exchange: View topic - A Great and Free Online Business Resource
Another article goes to #1, and a couple people flag it. Something is wrong with this system.
"The effective annual percentage rate is 806 percent"

A ridiculous metric for a week long loan.
Leil Lowndes' "How to Talk to Anyone" is an excellent primer.
There is a great Frontline documentary that addresses this on PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/

Basically, the widespread distribution of porn through emerging technologies has caused a huge cultural shift in the US and around the world.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but why do we need AJAX libraries? The methods in current JavaScript frameworks like Prototype, jQuery, et. al. make AJAX dead simple to begin with.
I think we programmers become so used to thinking about things abstractly that we forget the metaphors we were using when we first learned to program. When I write C I'm often thinking about how the operation changes memory locations and registers, but I barely knew those when I started.

This topic is also very interesting to me because my wife has shown an interest in programming which I'd like to nurture, but we have communication problems because I regularly use terms she doesn't fully understand yet and it is hard for me to put myself in the shoes of someone just starting out.
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
—Matthew 25:29, King James Version.
antirez' visitors is pretty good:

http://www.hping.org/visitors/

It's still fairly basic, but you get the code and can hack it to produce whatever kind of reports you want.
Does anybody else find it interesting that this question has generated so many responses here?

Suppose you are standing in line for a drink, and some HN person is in front of you. How to make small talk? Ask them, "how to make small talk," and you'll make small talk in no time.
You almost never have to walk to the courtesy counter; you can fill it out while standing at the checkout. But people typically don't know this, in my experience, and the cashier is unlikely to enlighten them, since then he'll have to wait for them to fill it out while there are people in line, etc.

Things like this are important to know, and if you don't already just know, you have to ask about them constantly. If you don't know that, though, and you're poor, it feels as though you're asking for handouts or special help whenever you aggressively inquire about this sort of thing.
I flagged this as a good-faith failed submission. =)
I think this comment (by the original post's author), succinctly answers this whole post:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619320
I voted you up so now we can have another meta-vote on what voting is for.
Sodas a Tempting Tax Target
I'm not claiming all foreigners display these traits. I'm merely claiming that "above average" is not incompatible with them. Nice snip job, however.

The fact is, some smart and productive foreigners display values which are incompatible with ours. I've met a few. Maybe their numbers are few enough so that it doesn't matter. But such a claim requires evidence beyond vague handwaving.

Note: I'm not arguing against immigration. I'm only arguing for evaluating immigration on all possible dimensions (including cultural and political), not simply economics.
I think his point is when you have to use parts of other projects. Unless you are operating in a complete vacuum, this will still be an issue when using other libraries, etc. Also, the "coding practices, constraints, and code review" can be used to hand wave absolutely every language shortcoming aside.
I agree with you here. Some of the things that the article dismisses as impossible are quite possible, like getting a bank account. You have to waste an hour waiting in line to get an ID, and then you can save $15 every time you get paid. That sounds like a good deal to me. These people should do that, and stop letting the check cashing places take advantage of them. They can also go to the public library and pay their bills online, saving the the cost of either postage or the fee on the money order. None of this costs money or much time, but it will save money.

Also, why are people with a 10 minute drive not riding a bicycle? If you can't afford a car, and the bus route isn't convenient enough, it's time to get a bicycle.

I also don't buy the article's premise that having a car is mandatory. I live in a big city (Chicago), and I have never owned a car. I ride my bike to the grocery store (even in the winter), take the CTA to other stores I need to visit, or just order what I need online. All of these things save me money, and don't cost me much time. (It would take as long to drive to the grocery store ad it takes to ride my bike.)

Don't get me wrong, I know the poor have a hard life. But some of their problems are easily fixed, if they are willing to invest time now to save time later.
What's the advantage over a simple GEO microformat?
http://microformats.org/wiki/geo
I'll just throw Codebase into the mix: http://www.codebasehq.com/

It's my friend Adam's app (he's an admin at Rails Forum). I've never used it personally, but from what I have seen it is pretty nice and I know anything Adam is involved with must be solid. So, just presenting it as another option.

It's sort of like Basecamp + Git with a little Lighthouse thrown in for good measure (or something like that). ;)
How the heck do you talk about this stuff without sounding like a /b/tard?

With sarcasm.
At most stores I've been in, the cashier will enter the store "bonus card" number if you ask them to. In fact, they often enter the number before I can even get my card out.

I'm surprised they don't do this in DC. It must be a Chicago thing.
Is there really a problem with people streaming across the border in that direction? Could be, for all I know.
I think this speaks to the value of the "local dialects" that you have had a chance to learn. In Smalltalk and languages of similar capability, it's possible for a project to develop domain-specific "local dialect" that has prodigious power. Any project that's really worth its salt develops these. Most just develop their own way of doing the same inefficient stuff.

Meta-programming is much more powerful than just plain programming. It's also not as widely understood.
It would be worthwhile to read Human Relations on Ask MetaFilter (http://ask.metafilter.com/human-relations).
>I think this must be a mental barrier for those who are not comfortable with both the internals of their language and with the internals of their editor, and that's why users rely on The Language Designer Gods to give them features.

But programmers who have that mentality probably should wait for The Language Designer Gods to give them features. These are the same people who should not be allowed to write frameworks and should not be allowed CPP macros and the use of #doesNotUnderstand: in Smalltalk.
NetApp Buys Data Domain for $1.5 Billion
you dont need statistics. if a worker contributes less in taxes than we spend on him it is a net drain on the economy.
Computer Science 222: A Discussion
Why should Google be forced to follow European law? Last I heard, Google was a US company and (to my knowledge) the US doesn't have much in the way of data retention laws.
I've had IEEE/ACM memberships in the past, and while I liked getting printed journal articles, I never got any real value out of it; every paper I've ever wanted to read has been available online, and I generally wouldn't attend an academic conference unless I was presenting at it. So I'd be a "No" vote.

Also bear in mind that funding the IEEE is not an entirely politically neutral act. For instance:

http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html
NOVA episode on Richard Feynman
You as a publisher or a consumer don't have to actually DO anything, you give it a chunk of text and it figures out what place you're talking about.

(This is awesome.)
>> "Free WiFi is a pipe dream"

Huh? It's already a ton of places :/

I was meaning once it's in all airplanes, buses, subway, trains, etc etc
I always find this interesting on Hacker News that a post like this, which appears witty, has so many upvotes, and that 'thwarted' just posted this response to another post:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619028

with virtually the same ranking. I guess it's very subjective what constitutes as "contributing to the discussion" or not.
An inspiring interview. I feel interviews/articles like these rightly belong to the HN community.
Um, what? This parses geoinformation from data. If your data has microformatted geoinformation, it will probably find that, too.
I'm having trouble finding the article, but AFAIK this was done at least once on a human volunteer (wiring the pleasure center). The experiment revolved around using positive reinforcement to "cure" homosexuality. Needless to say it was shut down when it became clear just how strong the induced feelings were (the subject became obsessed with the remote).
The central issue for me is that I don't like getting bogged down in the meta. I hate the idea that a lot of what programmers do is program around programming, as opposed to actually solving real world problems with their programs. Of course the end goal is solving said problem, but you have to do a lot of meta to get there. Its unfortunate how much of our libraries and so forth are just pure architecture.

I like language features because they provide a clear distinction between the meta (things that I have to do due to the limitations of my execution environment) vs. the actual steps I'm taking to calculate some result or provide some service. When I see a language keyword or operator its clear to me that this is glue/implementation, and when I see a function call its clear to me that this is an actual step related to the algorithm. Classes and modules and templates and all these "objects" ideas have little to nothing to do with algorithms, they are simply the way we choose to implement those algorithms.

This varies language to language of course. Smalltalk has the advantage that I can create library features that "look" like language features. This is a big plus in my book. I think if I were using Smalltalk I would probably not have a problem with this at all. However, taking an example like JavaScript, I very much dislike this style (which many js frameworks currently use):

classCreate("MyClass", mySuperClass, properties);
//...
cosine(angle);

In a cursory view, the actual work (calculating cosine), looks exactly the same as creating a class, there's no visual distinction. Additionally, this encourages every library under the sun to make their own slightly different version of the class create/subclass method which makes it difficult for IDE writers to be able to pick up on these semantic elements of your program, since it really just is a function call and nothing more.
I apologize for being unable to completely enumerate all the possibilities of inane comments.

Are we approaching Reddity levels of snarkiness already?

You're right in that there's no need to enumerate all possible offenses, but still, I think the comment was not harmful enough to warrant such a strong negative response.

Inane comments aside, are you sure we're not taking things too seriously?

Is it really absolutely certain that by not sending a strong message, "condemning" any comments that are not dressed up in fancy words and complicated sentences, Hacker News would just totally fall apart?

I can say not much at all in a complicated sentence, and still get no downvotes for not contributing to a conversation.

Is there really no middle ground worth exploring, between the circle-jerk of witticisms with a few insightful and informative comments sprinkled in between that is Reddit, and the rigid, enforced seriousness of HN?
Oh, they do that around here at some stores, too (not the more upscale ones, interestingly). Around the Columbus, GA area, though, where I used to live (in east AL), I don't remember that happening. Of course, I shopped mostly at the super Walmart, then, and they don't have a card.
The article wasn't really about C at all.

The author was making a joke about how Haskell uses monads to remain pure.

"cpp" is Haskell, "C" is the way IO monad is used.
Its hard for me to tell, but is this sarcasm? Playing on peoples fears of death by disease in order to promote archival of personal data reminds me more of the Bush administration and less of Google.

Google is going to be in for a rude awakening when a ambitious politician comes along who makes it his personal crusade to reign in the aggregation and data mining of personal data (right or wrong, it will happen.)
Actually, the majority of millionaires in the US are self-made, first-generation wealth. We have very high economic mobility here, which seems to invalidate your theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility
What about from scratch?

How to make a Smalltalk VM.

1) Implement a loop containing a 256 case case-statement. Get ahold of documentation of the Smalltalk bytecodes, then start implmenting each one.

2) Code up method loookup. (Really, you've done this if you've done step 1, but it deserves mention.)

3) Add code for loading and saving an image.

4) Add a library for Garbage Collection: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/

Done! You don't need a Smalltalk compiler in your VM. It's all Smalltalk objects in the image!
Entertaining...but another example of how most TED talkers spend their time on trivial stuff. Then they go on TED and congratulate each other on how smart they are.

I would like to see more talks such as Bill G's on solving the world's biggest problem such as education and malaria.
Unless you take one out (almost) every week.
> The reasons mostly have to do with ... lots of well-tested libraries ... lots of people who've already had any problem you're likely to encounter, as long as you're doing things in the obvious way, etc.

Economics has given us the wonderfully pretentious sounding term "positive network externalities" to describe products that become more valuable, the more people who use them. Simple concept, big, impressive term.

http://www.welton.it/articles/programming_language_economics
Argh - too late to edit. I meant to write that Watergate doesn't look journalists look GOOD.