skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think one of the benefits of features, rather than libraries, is that someone can be expected to know what it does.

In C#, ?? should be understood by anyone who knows C#. In Smalltalk, ?? will be understood by the implementer and then need to be explained or learned by every fresh set of eyes. (Yes, they might expect it mirrors C#, but the problem still exists. The eyes know Smalltalk, not C#.)

It is similar to the situation in http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1729-coding-style-helpers....
link_to, easily understood, rss_link, not quite sure.
The OpenSSH security page has more useful information and a link to the advisory (posted last November).

http://www.openssh.com/security.html

Would have been nice for the zdnet article to provide a link to it.
The point of my comment was that there's not really any point in trying to change who you are. In particular, complimenting a woman as an attempt to strike up a conversation is a guaranteed way to make her freak out (unless she is already attracted to you, but if she is then it doesn't matter what you said).

The poster's question was about initiating smalltalk. Why waste time with smalltalk when there are big, fun things to talk about? I used to waste time with smalltalk but then one day it dawned on me that it's a total waste of time -- I typically forget the name of the other person immediately when all I've done is exchange smalltalk which creates its own problems.

I'm not a professional diplomat and I'm not interviewing for a job with you, so if all you can talk about is smalltalk, then I'd rather just be alone. If you're afraid to talk about anything controversial, or can't handle it if I disagree with you, then I don't really respect you.

Sure it's fun now and then to try to click with someone who is totally different (someone who holds traditional values, more average in aspirations and interests), but the most I've ever gotten out of it is a vague sense of flattery if the person is physically attractive, and that's a terrible reason to attempt to repeat the experiment.

Being alone is OK. Cows wander in herds, and the human tug to be around people is a lower instinct. Sure it's fun sometimes, and yes it can even be fun to cheer in unison after someone hits a home run on TV, etc., but it's all an attempt to trick yourself into feeling an artificial sense of belonging with strangers.

If you want a s/o with low self esteem, then make a lot of money and try to act normal. She'll find you.

If you want a s/o who is a unique person with a life, just be yourself (even if you're a geek) and don't try to conform to perceived norms. You probably perceive the norms slightly incorrectly in the first place (or else you wouldn't be a geek) and you're likely to overthink them.

Most importantly, don't try to "find" someone. Just be happy being alone and you'll attract similarly independent people.
So much of this article strikes me as utterly ridiculous. To start with, even if someone where to believe that mathematics was only of value in its application, it would still be ridiculous to say that it was a part of physics and worthless beyond physics.

From there it seems to focus on denegrating the value of pure and axiomatic mathematics focusing almost purely on the need to keep mathematics tied to physics.
well, this is the first I've heard of this project. But looking at the example from the link, it has taken a lot of the wheel that everyone has to make when using [js framework of choice] for ajax and packaged it nicely to let you get on with the important parts of your project.
I guess I meant the question to be read in a more Socratic manner, rather it being a genuine question.
That "30 seconds or less is fair use" does absolutely nothing to stop the idiot RIAA from sending you all kinds of fan mail. That is not a law on the books anywhere. Its one of the problems of fair use, because there aren't many explicit laws defining exactly what fair use it. Its all more or less come about through court decisions and judges opinions over the years.
Hypercubes
Successful Entrepreneurs Are Hopeless
I believe it would be, though it will involve some work. The reason why so many people install OS X on netbooks such as the Dell Mini 9 is that people have gone to the trouble of ensuring there are working drivers etc. You will be alone most likely with your desktop. Look here:

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.hackint0sh.org/
Axono.me is a lightweight open source Javascript isometric pixel art grid library.
I misdescribed it. When you do it well, you rarely say things that are grammatically questions. And you don't ask things you want to know: you ask about whatever seems most important to the other person. You could describe it as maximally unselfish conversation.
I default to being introverted too, and having follow on questions like that typically annoy me. (Probably one of the more annoying one is, "Are you OK?" asked by well-meaning friends).

Having said that, I have happily chatted with random strangers before, both receiving questions and initiating them. The difference is usually in how much the person who is asking the question is genuinely listening. Asking questions for the sake of making noise irritates me. Asking questions because you are really are curious works a lot better. When you are curious, you don't come from the position of "I know everything" or, "You should talk to me because I am awesome" or "You shouldn't talk to me because I am a loser."

As for awkward silences themselves, I think it is better to practice being comfortable with them so that the silence feels natural instead of being awkward. You're rarely going to be somewhere completely silent and most people generally have a running commentary running in the back of their heads. Awkward silences feel awkward due to self-doubt and anxiety. When you shed the anxiety, interacting with people feels more natural; distracting or forcing yourself with smalltalk doesn't really get rid of the anxiety. Being genuinely curious ... like exploratory programming ... tends to shed off the anxiety.
I've been deep in the depths of hacking a new feature into an existing language - adding a reflective/referential data definition language on top of haXe. (It's called XReflect, if curious you can get it off haxelib)

Essentially, the problem I keep running into with referential data structures is that haXe, like most popular languages, will only let you set them up in an imperative fashion, one dependency at a time, which tends to both spread out and bloat application code. What I want is to write my dependencies in any order and let the resolution be sorted for me.

I'm pretty sure a language with AST access and quoting like Lisp makes it relatively easy to write something along these lines, but in haXe, I had to write about 500 dense lines of code, most of it going to parsing and fighting the limitations of the type system. It still has some major bugs that I'm trying to resolve with a refactor at the moment.

The funny thing is, I know I'm not just fighting haXe here, I'm also running into the limitations of the platforms that haXe compiles to. The newest strategy I'm applying to resolve references is to add a "__parent" field to the reference stubs, which refers to the container(an array or record type) of that reference. I use that later, after all references are resolved, to drop the final value into the place of the stub, but as it turns out this causes difficulty printing out the working structure. Neko will recognize the value of __parent as "....", but Flash 9/10 will recurse into the field again and get a stack overflow.

So I had to add more code to write a pretty-printer which is aware of such traps.
If you like that you might also be interested in Benford's Law which points out some really unexpected Digit distributions in a lot of data sets.

Smeed's law is one my favorites. It accurately predicts the traffic fatality rate as a function of motor vehicle registrations per capita. It is accurate almost everywhere it has been tested, for over 50 years.
That's ugly to say the least... You're way better sticking with something like jQuery.
I agree.

Reading that logic - we need to be able to keep all your search data for much longer so that we can, uh, track flu season - sounds strangely reminiscent of the Australian government's logic that they need to be able to filter the internet so that they can keep out child pornography. In both cases, a party is making a huge grab for power using a somewhat innocuous reason that's framed as being hard to oppose.

I'm not sure, but I think this community opined on it slightly differently when they Aussies were doing it...
Unless you deal with very basic circuitry you have to, at some point, use some else's "idiocy." Same with software, if all you do is build console Hello Worlds, well, that's pretty rock solid. As far as the reward system, that's different for everybody; each with his own.
With different sized bills:

* Sorting is O(N) [see spaghetti sort: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_sort]

* Retrieval is O(1).

Further, retrieval is O(1) even in unordered sets, so sorting is irrelevant.

(Also, how is sorting on insertion O(log(N))? For each new bill, finding the correct spot is log(N), so you're still looking at O(N log(N)).)
Data point: I once worked on software for very large retail chains which allows those retailers to group stores by "zones" for pricing purposes. One of the commonly defined pricing zones is "inner-city", which consistently get their prices bumped by, say, 5 or 10% for many items. The reasoning behind this was exactly as laid out in the article: inner-city residents lack transportation options, and so retailers can command higher prices.
Heh. You still have anonymous delegates in C# 2.0, and you can roll your own expression trees if you really want them. Same thing for yield and extension methods. Of course your code will be much more verbose and unnatural, and you won't have as much compiler support.

Yes my friends, we are deep in the Turing Tarpit, where the boundary between language and library is blurred, baroque architecture looms menacingly in the mist, and the bare metal is somewhere far below the fetid surface of the swamp. I hope you brought your safari hat and your elephant shotgun.
I think that's a little extreme, although I understand the points of the articles and acknowledge the problem.

You can recover from your choices at any time in life, although it certainly gets harder the older you get, whether or not you realize it.

The notion however that your future path is set because of your past choices is part of the myth that the poor need to have destroyed through education. Tomorrow is about what you do tomorrow, not about what you did yesterday.
Notice the fine print about how you get the data. You have to have a device installed by the power company. Few power companies do this, and few meters support it.

Wattvision does the whole thing, from your existing meter to your iPhone: http://wattvision.com
VI Arnold has authored some of the best expositional texts on mathematical physics and differential equations on the planet, even if he's being hyperbolic, there is still insight to be gained from his work
And I don't think the blob should have sympathy.

I'm working with matlab currently. It is simultaneously the best engineering tool ever and the worstest, lousiest development environment ever. It has tremendous shortcuts for doing things quickly and powerfully but everything has been added in haphazard, half-cocked, half-assed fashion.

I can see how the two face of matlab have evolved together in the way that Perl has amazing power and horrible maintainability. I don't see that they would have to have evolved together. Ruby, for example, does what Perl does but with more sanity.
It should do more to help its poorest succeed, but I draw the line at "handouts" in the strictest sense. I'm from Canada, so you can guess that my politics are probably a little further down the progression line than most Americans.

It's important though that we teach people to fish along with simply feeding them.
Humble apologies, I didn't read the article properly and mistook the argument for a (much less sophisticated) one that's a pet peeve.
Mariah Carey Disses Eminem....We Guess | Hip Hop MVP
Panasonic and Verizon Make the Home Phone Smart
Ask HN: Classifieds VS Realtor: Whats the best way to find a home?
I am looking to rent and I just want to know if anyone has some input on whether I should go through classifieds or hire a realtor. The home will be the base of a startup out of Jersey if that factors in.
Sorry if my wording wasn't clear - I interpreted my comment's parent as a generalization, actually. I should have said something like:

>I really think you're being unrealistic if you think most women don't care about getting married before having children with someone
This is really great, parsing out locations isn't the easiest problem to roll yourself. This should open up a lot of interesting mashups.
Is there a language other than basic that you can actually use without libraries?

(edit)

Without eventually making your own?
New SimpleDB Goodies: Enhanced Select, Larger Result Sets, Mandatory HTTPS
This looks interesting. Now if somebody could explain how I was supposed to realize there was something interesting behind that crappy New York Times article (short of already knowing?) My original post got modded into oblivion, but I stand by it. The article looks like press material provided by IBM and lightly worked over by the Times writer whose name appears on it.
To say that mathematics only serves physics, seems wrong. Mathematics provides a basis and guarantees for every science. Physics, Biology, Computer Science... name it- I bet it uses tons of mathematics to justify its models.

In my opinion the beauty of the mathematics is that if you prove something- it is TRUE, or your assumptions are wrong.
does anyone have experience with something like this (or SproutCore, GWT) versus a heavier javascript solutions that uses the backend purely to get data? i'm thinking extjs on the frontend with an api on the backend (probably django for the admin). any feedback?
ps: i expect to write js most of the time as opposed to (in this case) python. extjs is rich enough that i don't have to muck with html/css either and i can throw google gears for good measure.

sorry, too long.

appreciate any comments.
I am always astounded by those who don't have very good "people skills." I guess I take mine for granted.

As much I'd like to say that these tips should be common sense, I have begun to recognize that for many people, social skills need to be practiced.

I'd like to add a Tip 0: Be brave. Recognize that both parties feel an unease and that ultimately someone has to make the first move. I promise you will be happy it was you.
This article has further fueled my interest to learn Haskell.
Might not be obviously relevant but this is good advice on a similar problem: http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/wiki/Singularity_Writing_A...

Besides the problem you described (inferential distance), I find the other problem in explaining or writing things is signaling social status incongruently. Like sometimes my tone strays from friendly toward lecturely.
As sort of a related tip, one thing that I like to do (and which usually works) is to treat the person like someone I've known for a while. In other words, say some things that most people would only say with a friend. There's a limit to what's appropriate, obviously, but I find that gently pushing the boundaries really helps the person you're talking with feel comfortable and start treating you like an old friend.
Maybe. I think if you give someone a tool, they will eventually learn how to use it. If you give them the possibility to make a tool, though, they might not ever figure out how to make the tool. There are two different levels of thinking involved; more people can do the former than can do the latter. Some people can do neither, though, I will give you that :)
Do you mean a language where you just copy and paste code around instead of building libraries?
Arnold's article is highly satirical. If I wrote such an article, it would be, indeed, utterly ridiculous. Arnold is such a great mathematician that he has earned the right to poke fun at his own field. His books on differential equations and classical mechanics are simply the best.

Moreover, Arnold is more of a geometer than an analyst. His article is also a not-so-subtle attack on the French fanatics (i.e., "bourbakists"), who tried to axiomatize all math and remove any geometrical and intuitive aspects from it. On the value of pure and axiomatic mathematics, I would like to quote Jacques Hadamard (who was french!):

"The object of mathematical rigor is to sanction and legitimize the conquests of intuition, and there was never any other object for it."

Rigor should follow intuition, not vice versa.
While your comment is a little inflammatory, it's a shame to see it down-modded. That threshold has certainly changed as Hacker News has, and we're losing some good discussion because of it.

The thing is, you are in a way correct. Intelligence, ignorance and effort combine into defining a person's success level. We have done a relatively good job at neutralizing all other factors by making them illegal (not that they still don't exist mind you.)

Ignorance lessens with experience, as does effort. Intelligence however is the only uncontrollable trait that we still actively discriminate against, and joyfully so.

I'm not suggesting this shouldn't be, as I'd hate to imagine that world, but it does mean that a disproportionate amount of the "losers" in life tend to be of below average intelligence.
I think it's more a difference of opinion, which isn't exactly something that needs correction.
Twitter Surges Past Digg, LinkedIn, And NYTimes.com With 32 Million Global Visitors
I agree with the tptacek's "no". I had a brief membership during school, which allowed me to attend workshops and read research papers, but neither seem relevant now. There are networking events, but I've never been so I can't comment.
A lot of people in the US seem to believe this - it's the essence of the American dream after all.

But if you actually take a look at the Wikipedia article, you'll see this:
"France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway, and Denmark all have more relative mobility than the US, while only the United Kingdom is shown to have less mobility [1]"
[1] http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP%20American%2...

It's still possible that the majority of millionaires in the US be self-made (although I'd argue that a middle-class born Web entrepreneur cashing out is far from self-made - see other comments about the importance of a middle-class upbringing).

But that doesn't necessarily give the US a very high economic mobility: here, like often, it's easy to only look at a few extreme cases and forget the averages.

The way I see it, the American dream is but a myth perpetuated by the wealthiest: if I believe I'll strike it rich someday, I won't want more high-income taxation or estate taxes... even though there's actually very little chance it'll happen.
Nice observation (and diagram) about the greater value contrast on the right side.

Note also there is greater saturation contrast on the left side. (I'm not sure how this effects aesthetics.) You've inspired me to create a corresponding diagram:)

http://peoplesign.com/content/colorSaturationHN.png
Because geography matters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMm-OwKy5t4

What's wrong with recognizing the winner of a geography bee? "Rewarding rote memorization" would be handing out prizes for reciting digits of pi, not for answering geography questions.
The Instant Social Media Marketing Toolkit
"We have very low economic mobility here"
There. Fixed that for you.

http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_American_Dre...
Last year I built an application that aimed to integrate existing utility information. At first I just scrapped the info from a utility-login, but they weren't too happy about it.

I eventually met with the IT department of our local utility to strike some kind of agreement. I learned that energy history is extremely hard to come by with lots of federal laws protecting its dissemination.

I often wonder about the barriers placed on consumers in having their consumption measured. Even with Google pushing for open access, the utilities (and the government) have steadfastly refused innovation in this space. Right now there seems to be lots of niche solutions, but all of them are work-arounds because of the restrictions in place. When these chains are lifted, you'll see some rapid changes.
1)There have always been black hipsters.
2) I have observed them in the wild for the last 20 years.
3)The real HN question is when did they go viral?
4)??????
5) Profit!!!!!
On:
http://www.cpni.gov.uk/Docs/Vulnerability_Advisory_SSH.txt

It says:
"The most straightforward solution is to use CTR mode instead
of CBC mode, since this renders SSH resistant to the attack."

there is also this page:
http://www.openssh.com/txt/cbc.adv

both one level down from that one.
"...without shooting ourselves in the foot, head, or other parts of our anatomy."

I hear macros are useful for shooting yourself in the gun.
I used to belong to ACM but dropped my membership, because it wasnt worth the $250 to get the journals I was interested in.
Is Kevin Rose Suggesting Digg's Real Time Design Will Be Like Twitter?
Good idea, I had totally forgotten about Sinatra.
Not sure if I could make that work. I envision to make the book as hands on/getting things done as possible.
It is more of an Ajax framework than library. It allows you to write Python code in your Django apps to support Ajax requests. On the client-side, requests are made through a wrapper which can use the Prototype or jQuery JS libraries.

I believe it is closer to Pyjamas (http://code.google.com/p/pyjamas/) than jQuery.
I feel bad for the people mentioned ... however, just by virtue of being in the US/Canada/Western Europe etc. you have already "won life's lottery".

Is it also expensive to be a flea-bitten, hungry, malnourished baby in Africa and with only a 50% chance (or whatever the number is) of making it to 25 years old?

No matter which country has higher mobility, the reality is, you can in fact improve your lot in life if you are poor and in the USA.
Google Launches Maps Data API
cool, thanks for the link!
That is kind of the point of the article. Part of being poor is not knowing ways of saving money. That is why they are stuck in this vicious circle.
wow, that's very impressive.
Of course Math serves many fields, but have you ever found a research paper that applied Math to, say, Biology and didn't use a bit too much hand-waving? Of all fields of application of mathematical ideas, Physics has been (by far) the most successful. Wigner wrote all about it.
Even taking into account the fact that its is "parable" and not recount of the history of Git (which you can find in some detail on Git Wiki, by the way), one point stays: it is IMVHO bad practice to explain staging area in the terms of splitting changes into more than one commit and/or comitting with dity tree, i.e. with some changes uncomitted. Staging area main strength (besides being explicit version of other SCMs implicit to-be-added area) is dealing with CONFLICTED MERGE, and that is how it should be explained, I think.
<i>...Jacob Carter finds himself standing in a checkout line at the Giant on Alabama Avenue SE...The clerk suggests that he use his "bonus card" for savings...Carter tells the clerk he has no such card.</i>

The way I understand the paragraph is that Carter doesn't even ask because he thinks it is something beyond his possibilities. Just one of the many things he cannot get because he is poor.
Is Wattvision's gadget going to be free? That's the big advantage of Google.
It's nice that Microsoft, OpenBSD, and GNU all have their own incompatible versions of safe string manipulation functions. We wouldn't want anyone to write portable code...