skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Web based companies already hire these people. Google, Paypal, Amazon, even "small" startups. I interviewed for a number of these positions in Silicon Valley last year but decided to do something else. Also, I don't really have the right stats background. Most smart businesses already know they have a data problem.

FWIW, the first two: stats and data munging are the most important. There are very few people who really know stats and can also set up a pipeline for ripping data out of log files and databases and get it into an analyzable format. The cool viz stuff, like what Ben Fry does is not so important. You just need to be able to make a couple kinds of graphs and charts.
Great, thanks for the response. It seems that I missed the entire Chart Options section. I guess my main UI feedback then would be to put those options directly beneath the graph and move the background image stuff somewhere else.

Good to know there's more planned. I'll follow up with you on the fantasy points stuff.
Please review my Startup, AppUseful. Submit and rate your favorite apps.
I'm excited too, mostly to see what they did with the PowerSet technology.
> Not sure where the industry is headed, but the limit is fast approaching.

Those types of statements have a short half life in the semiconductor industry.
For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty

Interesting how liberal morality is vague and needs defined (i.e. how do we define what is "fair" and what is "harmful"), while the conservative morality is rooted in unchanging, definitive principles that are intuitively identifiable.

Authority and loyalty aren't something that needs defined, you know them when you see them and instantly recognize it when there's a lack of them. On the other hand, what is "fair" or "least harmful" among a given set of decisions is always up for huge debate.
I guess PHP programmers should never expect anything more than a backhanded compliment. I just love how any topic that just contains the word PHP immediately gets a comment on how awful it is - even if PHP isn't really involved in it.
The article mentions that you can turn off instant update for these messages.
I'm aware of where it comes from. The idea is that people who don't use lisp are so profoundly ignorant, that they don't even know they are ignorant. That's an offensive idea to start with. The second thing is that the word used to denote that concept, blub, is itself offensive, and it's used in an offensive school-yard way ("blub programmer"). It's surprising to see people promoting arc with this approach.

But reading your post closely, you're saying that blub strictly only refers to people who believe their language is the best and others are no good. In the avg.html article, it also says "How can you get anything done in Blub? It doesn't even have y." and talks about people looking down on less powerful languages. Therefore, a person programming in Java (or assembly or whatever) isn't a blub programmer unless he believes that language is the best, that others are no good, and he looks down on less powerful languages (maybe a more accurate word for this attitude is "snob".) My experience is that most programmers don't do that.
Past performance is not a good indicator of the future, especially when you're bumping into basic limit of atoms.
Notes: Peter Thiel & Others at the Ira Sohn Conference
Yes you're right. I was trying to find a way to excuse them, and see them in a kinder light. But you're right. :-(
I had my team start using that at work a while back.

So far, the Xenocode VM browsers have been great for checking CSS and smoke testing, but for troubleshooting more involved issues (particularly those nasty javascript-blows-up-everything-in-IE type of bugs), I find that you really want to have a full blown Windows VM or spare PCs with different version of IE installed.
s/limit/singularity/
It is worth noting that those positions may have reversed, roughly around Jan of this year.

Nowadays, it mostly seems to be liberals promoting authority and loyalty, while conservatives talk about fairness.
Even better idea : write a CPU simulator! Just a while loop that reads assembler
from a file and interprets it on a virtual CPU. I did this in Java a while ago,
I reproduced a few Intel x86 ASM instructions. MOV, CMP and JMP are all you need
for Turing completeness, if I recall correctly.

I actually had to work with one of these for a class in college. My project was to create a compiler for a fictional assembly language, and emit object code for a finctional processor. While I got basic stuff like move, load and add working, I never got branching to work right... /-: (The only C I ever got in a computer related class.)
"Not only will there be an explosion of "This looks cool" font usage, I'm worried what happens when their servers or their network fails. What about when it slows down due to unforeseen spike in traffic? They haven't talked about the backup options, which scares me."

Since they are using CSS font mechanisms (I think), it will depend on what the CSS engine does. If it completely can't get a font, presumably it'll use the same fallback rules it already uses when you call for a font that isn't there. The interesting question is what exactly the browsers do for such fonts, but my guess is that they would be treated exactly like a script tag in the header, adding something that would have to be downloaded before the page will even begin to render. But, further presumably, the JS they provide and the fonts will be properly labeled with cache control headers so they don't hit the host server on every page load.

See how Yahoo serves their YUI stuff: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/hosting/
The iPhone is known by every person who uses tech devices. Everybody who knows about it knows it's touch-based. I'd bet that most people who know about it have had a chance to fiddle around with it, since they've sold 17 million phones and I-don't-know-how-many iPod touches. It's inspired a slew of touch-based competitors from every major phone provider.

I would bet more people use multitouch every day than use Windows Vista's app switcher that tiles and cycles windows, which Microsoft featured prominently in every Vista ad as an example of advanced technology. I'll further bet that this touch technology takes longer to catch on in the laptop market than you think. Remember that touch screens already do exist in laptops, and they're not that popular because they're bad. I'll add one last bet, which is that, if the reviews of the Surface are accurate, Microsoft is incapable of making a touch screen interface that's enjoyable to use and so people will stick to using mice and touch pads.
The short answer is no. This stuff has been around for 40-50 years and you dont see it in homes. The few things that homeowners do care about have special purpose controllers: heating, irrigation, perimeter lighting. I see no need to fire up my computer to turn on the furnace when I can walk over to the thermostat. If I want really fancy control, I buy a really fancy thermostat. My coffee maker has a timer, so if I want coffee at 7am, I can set it. At the same time I can check the coffee and the water level. Computer control would buy me nothing since I still have to check the coffee and water.

The one time I thought about controls was when I had to replace a leaking skylight in a cathedral ceiling. I could do it myself for $300-400 or I could get one with electrical controls plus a carpenter plus an electrician for $1500-2000. I went with DYI and a long pole to open and close it.
The fact that you threw the word "entrepreneurs" in there makes this an HN-worthy comment.
Some problems that I can think of are that it brings in PHP's namespacing and lack of naming conventions.

That's a part of it, along with some of the kind of weird function semantics, along with just the general idea of "Hey, we should port all the built-in PHP functions to Javascript!" followed by it actually getting done.

If the idea was simply "let's port the useful functions in PHP that makes sense for javascript", that would be one thing. As that idea is actually a subset of this project, no harm done, I guess. Thank goodness we finally have "die" for javascript, right?
Some other points of view here: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8nuhn/my_langua...
This is a great idea! I'm not sure if there is enough info out there to fill this in, but it's definitely worth trying. I'll update the post with your idea and see what we get. Thanks.
Care to suggest a short term that has the same denotational meaning without the connotations you dislike?
Bing video promo/demo
To me the biggest advantage (which Arc shares) is that the core language can change if it is advantageous to do so.

Scheme has the RnRx process, which seems slow moving to me, and lately steeped in a little more drama than I like. I'm not sure when the last time the ANSI spec for Common Lisp was changed.

I know you can change Common Lisp and Scheme via libraries, but that's not the same as everyone having the same functionality when they are on the same versions.
'I never commented in support of "intrinsic value."'

I know, it was part of a larger point. You did seem to imply the existence of some sort of "real market value", though, which would somehow transcend transient fluctuations, but those transient fluctuations are all that exist. Even money doesn't have a real market value; a dollar is only worth what people will give you for it.

My point is that the nebulousness can be fixed by anything I said; my point is that the nebulousness is irreducible, and all attempts to make it less nebulous, no matter how necessary they may be for things like tax law, will inevitably be a leaky abstraction to the underlying chaos. So, complaining that a particular abstraction is leaky isn't very useful, they all will be.
Republican/Democrat != Conservative/Liberal. Regardless, can you name a few examples of what you're talking about?
The HN community is very important to us. We would love to hear your feedback. If you are a web entrepreneur, feel free to submit and write a review promote your web app. Thanks.
How is PHP not really involved? It's all the built-in PHP functions! Do you just mean it's not a PHP Group project?
Read the first paragraph again -- The problem is that pages start breaking when designers make the assumption that things will be pixel perfect. Allowing them to perfectly specify a font, complete with external references, further supports this [incorrect] assumption.
So, the new thing they did is that they combined Chat and Wiki and then threw some API for mashing up. Made it pretty and Ajaxy. Well, mmm, Ok. I guess many people will like it.

I still prefer plain-text emails, though.
Ask HN: Giving Equity to Early Employees/Late Cofounders
A couple of years ago, I began developing a web application with the intent of it becoming a startup when it's ready. It was launched about a year ago. I worked alone on the whole thing, and used the help of a freelancer in some aspects. 4 months ago, I saw that it was time to start getting serious about it. I gathered a team of 6 people to help work on the site (2 developers, 3 to help with moderation and content, and one to undertake publicity). What I proposed to them (since it's a bootstrapped startup with no real funding) is that whoever logs 100 hours of work in the next 6 months will earn a share in the company worth the ratio of their hours of effort to the effort hours of the rest of the team. (I have already logged about 1300 hours working on it, so if they log 100 hours each, the pot will be 1900 hours, so each of them would get about %5, leaving about 70% for me, the founder).

(a possible alternative is to substitute "hours" with "work units" so that things like development would have more value than things like forum moderation...etc)

I came up with this kind of deal because I wanted 1) the dedication of of a team that feels ownership in the venture 2) each of them to prove their dedication to the new company (by passing the the proposed threshold of effort).

Is this fair way to do things? is it wise? So far it's only a verbal agreement on a vague idea along these lines, but I want to resolve this issue and finalize it now.
Git is Wesley Snipes. Mercurial is Denzel Washington
Touch screen is a very broad concept. It has been applied in numerous devices.

In the meaning of being available in a mobile, yes iPhone may lead currently, but I wouldn't consider a phone that has a price tag 900 euro to be considered mainstream, just because 17 million people (as zimbabwe sais above) have bought it.

My point of view is that in mobile phones, Nokia will be the one to take it mainstream as their strategy has always been various phones models and cheap ones.

However, since Windows will be supporting touch screen and Windows is 90% of the market, obviously Microsoft will put touch screen in a lot more hands than Apple.

Since no one can predict what will happen, this remains just speculation. But my point is you can't consider mainstream something that only few can access, at least currently.
What's supposed to happen when I click on a listing after a search? Right now nothing happens. There's also a blank grey rectangle on the right. I'm using Chrome 1.0.154.65. Do I need flash installed for something to happen?
You're supposed to see a preview of the song that you picked (either a YouTube or iMeem flash embed).

Yes, you need flash installed. But I'm installing Chrome right now to see if there's something else going on.
"If it completely can't get a font, presumably it'll use the same fallback rules it already uses when you call for a font that isn't there."

The question is what defines "can't get a font completely". Is it a timeout? How long is this timeout? If I spend time and resources to optimize the loading time of my site and the JS script times out getting a font, isn't that lost time for me?

This all feels like a workaround for license issues as opposed to a true solution. Type foundries should let web developers purchase fonts that can be published on the web.
No, it's a spectrum. There are no conservatives who believe that authority is always right, and no liberals (at least, very few liberals) who believe that it is never right.

> Authority and loyalty aren't something that needs defined, you know them when you see them and instantly recognize it when there's a lack of them. On the other hand, what is "fair" or "least harmful" among a given set of decisions is always up for huge debate.

It is impossible to base your decisions on authority and loyalty alone, because you might end up being loyal to an authority who enjoys genocide. As noted above, conservatives also take fairness into account. Think about abortion, for instance...
Well that depends on Paul Graham's knowledge of other languages. If Paul Graham knows Lisp and only Lisp, perhaps he's falling into the Blub paradox when it comes to Prolog. But if Paul Graham knows Lisp, C, Smalltalk, and Cobol, and has all the necessary language concepts from those to understand Ruby and Perl even if he hasn't used Ruby and Perl extensively, then he's on decent grounds to claim that Lisp is more powerful than those languages.

The blub paradox comes from someone who only knows Pascal doesn't understand why you'd want classes or functional programming. (We're assuming he only knows classical Pascal, not Delphi.) It accounts for the resistance of C hackers to object oriented languages (as illustrated, rather passive-aggressively, in such books as Object Oriented Programming in ANSI C), the resistance of Java coders to first class functions (we have a design pattern for that! it's called "functor"!) and so forth. It doesn't apply to someone who knows Haskell criticizing Java for OO fetishism, or a Java programmer scoffing at Pascal for not having classes.

And the only place where I've ever read pg as critical of another language's abstractions is his remarks on Prolog. Now, that might be because he's fallen into the blub paradox, or maybe he has a good enough understanding of Prolog to authoritatively say it's only useful for 2% of problems and gets in your way the rest of the time. I can't read minds.
It's worth thinking more about the "Faculty members like to do research" reason.

It reminded me of habits and processes I've seen in non CS departments at my local (large) university. It's extremely common for students to work as TAs or as paid researchers on projects to support their own research.

Contrast this with my experience in grad comp sci studies, where almost everyone was attached to a funded research project and you typically tried to find some funded project that was a decent match for your interests. Very rarely (never?) did a student in my department "work" on a funded project and then do their personal research in an area different than that. Grad students often hacked around on the side, but weren't doing deep research, writing papers, or planning dissertations that weren't part of their funded research project.

So maybe, the idea of professors doing unfunded research is simply a continuation of the normal process - the "day job" that lets you do what you really want to do on the side.

I hope that the "sorting students by using poor teachers" is simply speculation on the parts of the authors. I like to think that the role of a teacher in the classroom is to continue to struggle to best teach the students who show up and show the passion and effort to learn.

I actually skimmed over the section in the paper linked from the article and the paper authors say "Researchers may be poorer teachers to low-ability students and thus better screeners" and are thus providing benefit to employers who can avoid having to screen out lower ability employees in their field. Maybe the real idea is to make sure only those students with passion and are willing to make big efforts to learn show up in the first place and the linked paper talks some about this. I just hate to think teachers abandon well intentioned students as part of some screening process. I'm not suggesting that screening type courses aren't OK (you have to appreciate that some students will have an aptitude and some will not for a specific subject) but rather that it would bug me for a student with the aptitude to not be able to count on an honest teaching effort from a professor.

Otherwise, we might as well chuck the college/university system period and learn on our own or by finding a solid mentor/apprentice setup. Come to think of it, maybe that's what we should do anyway. The PG essay "After Credentials" expresses the logical conclusion of that idea pretty well. It's why I think more about my portfolio of work more than my degree collection and sometimes wish I had spent more time on that portfolio instead of working from a very grade-focused viewpoint during my undergrad and grad school time.
No kidding, this is just the traditional Usenet version of threading being made part of the protocol. (Modern web and e-mail threading custom all suck compared to what is the norm now.) While I can see the reasoning for making the system aware of threading from the start, it doesn't seem to solve any of the real problems e-mail and IM suffer from. (All related to signal-to-noise...)
That is the direction AOL always wanted to go with their browser/client.

The key difference being the openness of wave.
Scala is definitely a rara avis, a serious engineering attempt by a PL academic. This doesn't happen often enough, though the effort involved makes it easy to understand why. Odersky should be applauded for his work, which is a contribution to both academia and industry.

What we did in Scala was try to be more complete and
orthogonal.

These are two of the most important contributions of PL academia: orthogonality and completeness. (I would say that soundness is the third.) Separating out designs into their atomic parts paves the way for better implementations and improved programmer understanding.

I believe one of the things we have to work on is better
tool support. Right now when you get a type error, we try
to give you a nice error message. Sometimes it spans
multiple lines to be able to explain more. We try to do a
good job, but I think we could do much better if we could
be more interactive.

Type inference research has spent a lot of time trying to infer types in more complicated settings (GADTs in Haskell, etc.). More time, I think, should be spent on understanding failure to infer types. The Damas-Milner inference algorithm for the Hindley-Milner type system is a good starting point -- few would argue that Ocaml and SML type errors are sufficient!
Non-toxic hull coating resists barnacles, may save ship owners millions
I tried uploading a track, tweeted it to all my followers, then was told that the track wasn't ready to play yet...grrrrr....
There's some cool nib2cib demos (using interface builder to make web apps) near the end
Robert Martin@RailsConf 09: What Killed Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby, Too [video]
Sorry about that...looks like it's up now.

I'm using iMeem's API to handle MP3 uploads and it takes a few seconds for them to process everything. I don't think there's anything I could do about that. If you could think of an alternative I'd love to try it out as I find this annoying too.

Thanks for the blog post, too, by the way.
It's official: Microsoft's new search engine is named Bing
Rate My FOSS: smarty-lint
Rewriting the arc login code
You just made me nostalgic for talk.
Back in my day, we didn't have any of these fancy real-time-mashups. If you wanted to mash up, you'd show up at the person's front door, pull out a map, and point at things.
I was actually trying to make a point about how the one-dimensional nature of most political discourse (Us!, Them!!) ignores most of the complexity that actually matters. And also acknowledge the reality that our political structures are corrupt, counterproductive and irrational. This may be one of those things you just can't say in polite society.
I guess it depends on your doctor, but we usually get an appointment the same day if someone is actually sick. Also, the in-between option is "urgent care", which is open at least 8 hours or so on Saturday and Sunday.
I'm doubtful. Looks like something that a few people will think is really cool and 99.9% of the population will ignore.
> How do we know they aren't communicating concepts as complicated as "Be careful there is a human approaching and it looks dangerous." with one syllable?

You can look at the number of different calls an animal makes. If each different call stands alone as a meaning (i.e. no multi-syllable words) then that gives an idea of how specific the meaning of a call is.

> I don't know any animal, other than humans, that will kill another animal just for the sheer pleasure of it.

You haven't met my cat. He loves killing mice and birds.

> Even when fighting for mates, the loser of a battle is allowed to escape with its life. Sometimes accidents happen and the animals die of injuries, but death is not the intent.

Nonsense. You have too romantic a conception of the niceness of nature. Nature isn't nice, it's red in tooth and claw. For example, when male lions take over a pride, they routinely kill offspring by other males.

Intraspecific killing is the cause of maybe 4% of human deaths (average over the 20th century), which I imagine is higher than most mammalian species, but I expect there are species where the number is higher.
ADC doesn't prohibit you from selling apps submitted to the contest (though you need to have a free trial for judges). Granted, there is less of a market for Android apps at the moment, but you are also less likely to have your app lost in a sea of lighter and fart sound apps.
This is great. Not entirely surprising since world of goo started out as an app built in a week as part of a series of rapid prototypes built by competing graduate students [http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_pfv.htm]
Indeed. Try this one I threw together:

http://arantius.com/misc/greasemonkey/hacker-news-new-commen...