skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Gambling addiction operates on the same mechanism as MMO addiction. Given what we know about behavioral psychology, it's not logical to regulate gambling, but not MMOs.
This is such a old news. When i read the heading, was really very curious. Anyway nothing new here. Its been such a long time since i played around with libjingle and xmpp.
I'd disagree... look at flying insects. Occasionally, a bee flies into my house through an open window. It often tries to fly through closed windows afterwards, suggesting that it is unable to perceive a transparent solid.

Also, there's the cliched moth flying into a candle/lightbulb. Birds and bats, however, don't do that.

Speaking of bats -- it might be interesting to see similar experiments studying bats' reasoning abilities. Does "seeing" the world through SONAR make them reason differently from birds (or us)?
Ironic that someone with 26 years of marketing experience had trouble figuring out how to present her resume.
The LARP companies don't have the money for lobbyists.
google checkout is not available outside the us and europe i think, same with amazon
I read the subtext of that article as "take a job that will pay you less than your worth because that is all that is available right now."
Repurpose, A Mini Documentary About Hardware Hacking & Hackerspaces
".. a console version of Diablo III isn’t out of the question."
Haven't they heard of nethack?
Business of Software microISV survey
People said we'd never release Parrot 1.0 either (people said that as recently as November) -- but why speculate when you can measure?

We released Parrot 1.0 in March. We released Parrot 1.1 in April. We released Parrot 1.2 in May. We'll release Parrot 2.0 in January 2010 and Parrot 3.0 in January 2011.

Keep that in mind as you look at the daily Rakudo status reports. As of last week, Rakudo passed 68% of the current spectests. The passing test velocity has only increased this year.
Psystar (Unlicensed Mac clone manufacturer) goes bankrupt
hm. really? I thought that free software was a natural consequence of capitalism and technology. 'in a free market, the price of any commodity will be slightly above the marginal cost of production' - the marginal cost of another copy of Linux is rather close to zero.

I think similar economics push free and ad supported online content. The marginal cost of adding another user to a webapp is so close to zero that charging for it doesn't make a lot of sense.
That's part of a film called "The private universe" (http://www.learner.org/resources/series28.html) about how students can learn stuff in class and then promptly revert to their nonscientific understanding unless they are forced to really confront their prior knowledge in light of what they are being taught. It's a fascinating film.

The importance of explicitly confronting prior knowledge and integrating it into learning is one of the basic principles of learning that came out of the "How People Learn" studies (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6160).
Most of my experience here is NDA'd though.

...security through obscurity never really works.
This is all very old stuff. VMWare is very easy to detect, as it (a) was based on software virtualization, which has a heavy footprint, and (b) made no attempt to be hard to detect.

But the available evidence is that even if you're hardware-virtualizing, there are reliable, millisecond-fast techniques you can use to profile the microarchitecture to detect (say) jumps to hypervisor code in instruction sequences that should run natively. Nate Lawson, Peter Ferrie and I presented some of these at Black Hat a couple years ago.

The gap (in functionality and in performance) between an emulator and a cycle-accurate simulator of an actual chipset is large.
If they have some kind of payment system in the works - they definitely do, they were talking to platform developers about it a year ago (requests for feedback, NDAs, etc.)

I'm surprised they haven't moved faster with it. Sure, it could be vaporware, but given that it's a pretty obvious direction to go in, I really doubt it.
That's only true if it's overvalued. If it's undervalued, the price is determined by the smartest person with access to a checkbook.
Gossip Girl Social Media Experiment
Imagine that. People who have voluntarily infested themselves with parasites are inclined to justify that decision to the press. I am shocked.
This story only works because some of the characters are psychologically "abnormal." It's the same kind of substitute for carefully fleshed-out motivation as certain creatures being "evil" in a fantasy context.

http://badgods.com/orc.html

(In fairness, a part of the "fun" would be wondering about your own professor. And some of the philosophizing about academia is interesting.)
You're right. I was being sloppy.

I should have said something more like "the standard deviation calculated from a sample set is only generally applicable in so far as one is willing to make assumptions that the sample set is representative of the distribution as a whole". The default assumption in traditional statistics (such as quoting p-values) is that the distribution is normal, and in real world situations often not the case.

Your restatement is right on, although I'd go farther and say that standard deviations (and confidence intervals) are only useful metrics with regard to the particular assumptions one is willing to make about underlying distribution. Yes, you can calculate these measures, but they won't help you if your assumptions are irreparably flawed.
I have heard one entrepreneur who runs 'company x' say that the day I hear about the site 'companyxsucks.com' I've made it!
Calling it Parrot 1.0 doesn't mean its stable. You can call it 10.0, doesn't mean people are gonna switch.

I'm not as well informed as you, but I'm just really skeptical about a 10 year old project shipping 1.0. I'm pissed off that Perl has died in the meanwhile. Something went terribly wrong and the language was mis-managed.
It's just a search engine. It's not science.
A bag of cereal costs $40?
I really, really despise Barney Frank as a politician but i'm with him on this one.
Does the group have the task of somehow saving the world?

Sort of?
Then stats in CS should be a 2nd or 3rd year course. By then, there should be a great deal of material usable as examples.
There are also ergonomical limits to screen height: most sources I know of recommend that the upper edge of the screen be at eye-level or below. My 24" 16:10 wide-screen already reaches that limit (I admit the desk is a bit high).
Will Users Score at the Bing?
Their implementation of all things Jingle came in advance of any specification, so it's not fair to call it NIH. See this comment for more info: http://senko.net/gmail-videochat-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ug...
No. Online collaboration and the open source movement are not political ideologies. They are not anarchism, socialism, communism, or anything else like that.
What else would we call Parrot 1.0? We believe that Parrot 1.0 represents a stable platform on which people can start to build compilers.

It's not a finished platform (which is why we continue to produce new releases), but we have a documented and well-understood deprecation policy.

We'll add new features, but we believe that the current set of features in Parrot 1.0 is sufficient to build a workable language.

(As for the question of "Is Perl dead?", the rate of uploads to the CPAN certainly disagrees. That's a measurable data point. I won't address the question of Perl 5's release policy and backwards compatibility concerns here; I've discussed them at length elsewhere.)
I might be misunderstanding your comment, but women are not a minority.

http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=male+population+in+no...
"London, and the United Kingdom in general, has sort of become ground zero for what is known as libertarian paternalism"

In light of the other Orwell thread, it seems apropos to link to this classic essay of his:

http://langs.eserver.org/politics-english-language.txt
Correct. And for some reason, I am often the only one who ever gets asked about their origins, even though some of my fellow musicians are of Cajun, Hungarian, German, Mexican, and Swedish extraction.

For many, Irish music is tied up in the context of some sort of romanticized Irish Nationalism, and is only appreciated as some sort of ethnic tchotchke. Their imagination fails at the notion that I'm enjoying it in a purely musical context. I associate those people with the ones in the audience who can't clap on the beat.
or can you ?

I never understood this mentality, how is it ok if it's for promoting/marketing purpose ?

how is making money always ok ?
"A Theory of Fun" convincingly argues that the fun in games is all about learning. Of course it is tilted towards learning stuff that was useful a few thousands years ago.

Link: http://www.theoryoffun.com/
Facebook Takes $200 Million Investment from Russian Investment Firm
NYTimes Appoints First Social Media Editor
Amusing ourselves to death - Huxley vs Orwell
Why didn't Perl 6 just use the JVM? Why did you decide to build Parrot?

As to CPAN uploads: Nobody I know under 30 in Atlanta knows Perl. I'm not exaggerating. Thats the important data point to me.
Thanks for the link. I was wondering where that clip was from. Reminds me of Feynman's bit from his time teaching in Brazil. The students there could stand up in class and recite the textbook description of Polarized Light, but when asked to identify it in the real world in the view out the window, couldn't. (The definition mentioned the example of reflected light, and there was sunlight playing off of water in the bay.)
If you add together all the Solaris or Sparc servers and Java programs in the world, the direct and indirect users would probably dwarf Facebook's. And that's not even considering the value of each application--I use Facebook but it's not especially valuable to me, while a certain Java app in my bank's backend might be more valuable.
Wired For War (Robotics For Warfare)
I like to look at their "financial acrobatics" in a more metaphorical sense. Like driving a 911.

The car is prone to oversteering, so if you push it too hard around a corner, you can lose control and spin out.

Looks like this this is what is happening to Porsche. Quite ironic really, their financial position taking on the characteristics of their signature vehicle.
Does anyone have a link to a similar implementation, library, or paper of the ACL replacement / rules engine Zed talked about?

I'm dying to dive more deeply into this, but have little domain expertise right now. Any pointers are greatly appreciated.
If employers are that worried about someone jumping ship they can always make them a contract employee.

That way they get the smart guy or gal AND the security of knowing they'll be around for a while.

Hiring duds just because they'll stick around for a long time seems self-defeating in a very fundamental way.
strike "maybe" and "probably" and I agree. Your point is a good one, DST is clearly in a better position to assess value than you and me (and say, the media).
A nonstatement. Just because something is obscure doesn't mean that it hasn't also been secured. More importantly, in this setting, obscurity increases cost. DRM is all about cost.
I think that this is probably a good thing, for the reason that the ban is basically unenforceable.

Gambling sites can be legally operated from other countries, and I doubt that law enforcement officers can easily catch gamblers.

In fact this law has protected some gamblers. Cynthia Haines lost over 70k from online gambling and was sued when she refused to pay it. She counter-sued saying that the companies should not have authorized the illegal charges. The suit was settled in her favor.
The problem seems to be the fructose, corn syrup, and caffeine, not the actual "soda."

I drink a brand called Diet Rite which is made with Splenda and has no caffeine or sodium. And, actually, I honestly like the taste of it better than Coke or Pepsi.

I think something like that is fine and if the other soda companies switched to healthier ingredients they would be fine too.
I was surprised when the article mentioned tech people lowering their expectations.

I've had a few friends in my city (Chicago) get laid off only to land higher paying jobs in 2-3 weeks.

Is that just a big-city phenomenon?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627474

which points to

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mt-preview-529311606ce6...

I wonder how many we can collect?
Not so in New York. You have your UBT (over $3,000 per year), your publication requirements (over $1,500 per registration), and more. Considering that generally your clients cannot sue you for more than the contract was worth in the first place (excepting rare cases of willful negligence etc.) it is far from a no-brainer.
And in related anecdotal news...

Arthritis Patients Swear By New Laser Treatment
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/health/4050529/detail.html

The Weed that Cancer Patients Swear by
http://www.naturalbuy.com/the-weed-that-cancer-patients-swea...

Acupuncture popularity soars despite thin evidence
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/HealthandScience/Acupunctur...
I didn't say it's ok, I'm just saying it's not necessarily 'douchebag' behavior, if Twitter is setup in a way that makes it very attractive for marketing/promotion.
Considering that Google basically reinvented SIP using Jabber, I think calling it NIH syndrome is more then fair.

Google needed a robust and open IM protocol, which SIP wasn't in 2004/5. So they picked Jabber/XMPP and then bolted media signaling onto it (which is patterned after SIP).

They should really support SIP by now. But it's pretty clear at this point, that they are not a player in the telco space.
I think you could even narrow it down to the belief (in the religious sense of the word) that technology collectively isn't subject to the law of diminishing returns.

Which may or may not be irrational based on historical observation.
Welfare recipients train as computer programmers (1998)
That's true. I'd forgotten about insects. There's been some interesting work done on their visual system (google 'optic flow' insect).
Or that intelligence has untapped economies of scale. The Singularity doesn't usually call for indefinite growth, just growth so rapid that it makes predictions meaningless.
There are also renaissances, such as functional languages are experiencing now.

If someone builds something phenomenally cool with perl6 there's no reason it won't have a resurgence as well.
I guess the dumbest optimist, then. If all the idiots are pessimists, too, your case is valid. And that does happen.
Anyone here go from having your own LLC to dissolving it and going sole proprietership?

Yes. I still don't know what the advantages of a one person LLC are, even after doing it myself. On the other hand I didn't find it a pain in the neck. I still keep separate bank accounts, have a tax ID, etc. I dissolved the LLC because I moved to another state. I think the LLC makes more sense if you have more than one person. Maybe it helps you not seem like a temp employee if you're a consultant and only have one client. However, that seems like more of an advantage to the client, not the LLC owner...
Either this list is an average between the east and west coast or I need to go talk to management. ;)

Definitely going to ask for a title change next review period, that's for sure. Sheesh!
I'm wondering when we're going to see the corresponding drop in punishment severity as the deterrence portion of the equation approaches nil.
It's been primarily speculative, but many people have suggested that Facebook's Ad platform works because American companies can easily target Americans because they know something about the market they're trying to hit.

I'm probably wrong in my assumptions, but I would think it would be pretty difficult for some targeted ads to work in foreign countries. I don't have a bias or anything, I'm just summarizing the feeling I've gotten from reading numerous reports online.

Here's a thread about how Facebook's costs are growing:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=445630
Huh, is this actually true? I had been under the impression that the orbital difference was insignificant from a climate standpoint.
If they're only going to "sort-of" save the world, and their plans don't involve the use of WMDs and the instigation of financial catastrophe, then they may not qualify as a full-on "cult."

How about "motley crew of goofballs?" Or MCoG status, for short.
"Sadly, one German investor was so badly hit by Porsche's aggressive financial strategy that he committed suicide after losing billions of Euro"

I just can't understand this kind of thing. If someone has enough money to be making bets in the billions, you'd expect them to have at least a few million put away somewhere for a rainy day. Why not just take that and run off to the Carribean or somewhere, start a new life? It's not exactly hard to get out of Europe.

Killing yourself!? Geeze, it's only money.
Yeah, edited my comment to clarify what I meant. Note that
the voice interop has been working nicely for a long time,
it's the video where the things got confusing.
What? How does this show zero respect for computer programmers?

What it sounds like to me are very motivated people working very hard to get an education that they really value.

I don't read any disrespect anywhere...
I think the problem here is that there are still people who think that a 1-5% performance difference on a webapp means anything at all. I would trade 5% of my app performance for 5% more code out of developers any day of the week. jQuery and other libraries my an inefficient "crutch", but if lets a coder get the job done in one or two lines instead of 50 the crutch is worth the cost.
PayPal support leaves a lot to be desired. They lock accounts without reason and don't offer much support as to why.

That's an understatement, I had my account locked (for no reason, it just randomly got locked one day) and spent about 45 minutes trying to get through the phone system (being hung up on by the phone system around 15-20 times, because it seemed at the time those options were unavailable).

It gets a little overblown when you start actually drawing tree maps to try and map out what options end up with hangups, what ends up with reroutes (and eventual hangups) and what gets you to speak to an operator, who redirects your call, which ended up in a hangup.

In the end, it took about an hour to sort through, but only about 5 minutes of talk time.
Extrapolating from other contexts is one of the most powerful exercises. Especially useful if you are in what appears to be an entirely novel context.
Here in New York we're having a miserable time hiring new grads for IT, worse than last year. We recently signed on with a headhunter, just for the sake of trying something else.
By "intro to stats" do you mean the calc-based stats class that most people in CS take? I'd hardly call that an intro class considering you need to complete Calc I & II before enrolling.
IBM used to do things like this, turning clerks into COBOL programmers. Large organizations, be they corporations or governments, have tried many times to commoditize programming - with limited success.
"I think you could even narrow it down to the belief (in the religious sense of the word) that technology collectively isn't subject to the law of diminishing returns."

I don't know any serious "singularitarian" who believes that. Maybe this belief is common amongst poorly informed fanboys, but I haven't seen any evidence of that either. (BTW, I know quite a few singularitarians.)
Wedding 2.0: When weddings go geek
Coffee can have its own issues; I've found tea (green or black, hot or cold) and carbonated water the easiest glide-path down from periods of cola and coffee overconsumption.
organization is politics. If someone is so obnoxious that they can only contribute in a manner as poisonous as this, then what the hell is the point of including them?

It's not worth the collective psychic grief. There's enough fighting amongst people who mean well and are trying to steer projects in the best manner they can. If someone is choosing the be an asshole, then they can get lost.

There's no excuse for the abuse.
I was wondering where they went after I polished them.
Interesting, thanks. I've have to look into those.
Ask HN: What big discoveries can be attributed to Elite schools?
Since I know this is an educated bunch, I thought it would be interesting to see what you all thought about how big discoveries in the world could be attributed to Elite education.

Are elite schools really significant to truly disruptive innovation?

Do they just attract smart people, and smart people tend to have good ideas and execute them well?

What is it specifically about these schools that cultivates disruptive innovations that lacks at other "non-elite" schools?

Please leave your honest evaluations below. They will be useful in my ongoing side-project on graduate admissions.
I had no idea there was any controversy about it, but there are a LOT of other beliefs that are logical consequences of a belief in the singularity. I describe the most notable of these below:

* when I say "belief" in the singularity, I of course mean the provisional (falsifiable but currently un-falsified) idea that the concept of the singularity is plausible, even inevitable

The key logical consequence is the idea that it is possible that your own life is simply an experiment being run on a computer at some point in the future, as an attempt to understand the past or even to test some hardware or software.

If you believe that it will be possible for a human to exist in silico, then there will inevitably be millions of experiments in which entire lives (or even civilizations, etc.) are carried out for no purpose other than the whims of the experimentor.

The scale of the inevitable (to the singulatarian) experimentation is so mind boggling that it's hard to even consider what it means, much less its impact on the probability that your own life -- your very existence -- is taking place inside such a simulation.

Consider, for example, that upon reaching the singularity it wil be possible to simulate the entire history of humanity on earth (and every moment of consciousness of every conscious being). Now suppose it's possible to do this once per year or once per second. This means that the probability that your own conscious state is actually taking place in one of those simulations (rather than in reality) approaches 1.
In other news: home appraisers are much better at judging the value of your home than common sense is.

This is why your 2 bedroom shack on the wrong side of town can be worth $500,000

/bitter Phoenician
I have to agree with this, C++ isn't error ridden, maybe you friend has run in to some bad C++ code. (If this is true, for example Adobe Products should be failing miserably, their mostly C++).

I would say learn both, once you learn one it's not far off the learn the other. Knowing straight C ways including manual memory management, and learning C++ along with STL/Boost is a powerful combination.

C has a huge number of libraries already out there to do everything and anything. C++ has STL/boost which makes life very easy by giving your a lot of high level algorithms at your fingertips. Now wrap your C libraries in classes and use them in mix with STL/Boost. Now that's a powerful combination, best of both worlds.
That's not the way I understood it. You can't sell your idea, or your team, with a list of keywords.

(Anybody who actually got accepted want to back me up? :-) )
What do liberal and conservative attitudes signal?
What People Search First at Duck Duck Go (with an HN subset)
pat on the back for you -- you understand intro college statistics... maybe you just work with shitty programmers that don't understand statistics????? i dunno but most of my colleagues know stats pretty damn well. but maybe thats just because i'm in school
We're talking about startup school, not funding.