skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The argument is for transparent opt-in updates. It's not for eliminating opt-out. I agree that there should be an opt-out.

The argument about third-party verification is a red herring. I feel somewhat qualified to argue that third parties will "verify" updates no matter how they're disseminated; reversing patches is a bread-and-butter part of security product development.
I did some contracting work at iRobot a few years back, and know a few people who are now at KIVA.

Smart cookies - they deserve the success!
Regex have a juxtapositional operator (for concatenation). Any others in mainstream languages?
The short and to-the-point version of the post went to the Rails-core mailing list. On my blog, I prefer to tell stories.

Bragging about how fast you can serve a request is really meaningless when there's no way to know what's involved in that request. On my personal side projects (also using Rails), I serve requests in a couple milliseconds too. But, there's a vast, vast difference in what those sites do, vs what's involved in running a large-scale e-commerce operation.
As I left my school the IT dept just updated to the latest version of Blackboard. It had a few more gradients and a warning sign saying "we no longer supported Firefox 3 (OSX)".
Still, any of those are far better than Log charts: http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2605/2605120...
I prefer something executable (and therefore automatically verifiable).

I think English is most useful when used to express test cases. Such statements usually convey about the same information as pseudocode, but are a lot easier to follow.

Take one of the pseudocode examples from the article:

set the default status to "fail"
look up the message based on the error code
if the error code is valid
if doing interactive processing, display the error message interactively and declare success
if doing command line processing, log the error message to the command line and declare success
if the error code isn't valid, notify the user that an internal error has been detected
return status information

All this really means is...

for interactive and command line uses:
produce the message for an error code, or raise an internal error

You can still infer a program from this, it's just that a lot of details are implied.
Free Journalism Masters for Hackers (NWU)
I use it to analyze neural signal data. Every now and again I fantasize about giving python and matplotlib a try, but there is too much inertia to overcome.
When I used Seaside about two years ago I was fantastically productive with it. It abstracted away HTTP more than the current popular toolkits like Django and RoR by using continuations. It was also awesome to edit things live without having to recompile anything.

However... when I needed to debug something remote on a running server it was a nightmare. Because everything is based around the Squeak environment it was impossible to SSH in and poke around. The box I was on didn't have a GUI setup so I couldn't use something like VNC (better box would have helped, but still...)

So I found Seaside to be pretty awesome, except the difficult in working with a running server and the lack of docs killed it for me.
I agree that the sales cycle is long, but that could only be the start of bigger problems.

From what I've seen in the news and discussions on e-learning, the biggest problem facing startups is being sued by blackboard

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2006/08/blackboard_...

just for fun:

http://www.google.com/search?q=blackboard+patent+suits.

Please show me otherwise if I'm wrong.
There's a 1:1 steady state ratio of pirated users to pay users for his title. There are, what, 10 people who actually cracked the title? For crackers, it's not about the money. But he has a 0% (ZERO PERCENT) conversion rate for pirate users. For deadbeats, it's clearly about the money.
I actually pointed this out to Rick Segal (quoted in the article) via a tweet as the catch-22 of Canadian Venture Capital.
Kevin Talbot talks about his office at UofT which he expects to be lined-up with students trying to pitch ideas, but the entrepreneurial spirit isn't feeding the system of venture funds.
At the same time, Canada is unable to raise significant VC funds because of the lack of Canadian VC's ability to capitalize on investments in the past.

This is a cycle of lack of funds will result in lack of companies getting funded which results in lack of returns.

So, how do we solve this problem for Canada?
Tell HN: $40,000 College Scholarship for Entrepreneurs
The McKelvey Foundation awards HS seniors $10,000/year for 4 years to help pay for college.

All you high school hackers should apply.

Here's a video of Christine McKelvey (daughter of Andrew McKelvey of Monster.com) who runs the foundation on the Today Show with a couple of the winners.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/26316687#30579629
Did we read the same article? I read that he has a ZERO PERCENT conversion rate for pirates. They're "adopting" the title, but they aren't paying for it.

[Ick, he's right, I misread the comment. Sorry.]
Ask HN: open-source version of Drobo's BeyondRaid?
I'm really interested in setting up a fault-tolerant backup system at the house and I'm about this close -><- to buying a Drobo, but the price is kinda high. Drobo's tech is interesting because its not a traditional RAID solution and is expandable up to 16 terabytes. Does anyone know if there is an open-source version of their "BeyondRaid" tech that could be used to build the same kind of system, but DIY instead of buy?
Anyone know what font the 'fontsquirrel' logo at the top of the page is in? I want it at the top of my apps page!
agreed.
--dhimes_cmprlaw@gmail.com
Star Trek (2009): A Franchise Goes Boldly Backwards
The short and to-the-point version of the post went to the Rails-core mailing list. On my blog, I prefer to tell stories.

There are quite a few stories of this nature, which could simply be summarized as individuals finding incredibly simple inefficiencies and then fixing them.
... much like rapists, it's not about sex. It has never been.
Thanks a lot. I expanded the article according to the post you provided.
This is a chance to become a full time employee, the first, with equity and a say in the business. But we have now discovered that European students are more than interested in this opportunity; students from the top Universities, but the commenters here are giving the impression that it's too below American kids and that the only thing they find valuable in return for their time is money. Honestly, I love America but people like you embarrass others and tar everyone with your own opinion.

I know this isn't true of all coders, I know there are some good guys out there who would take a risk and would do this to benefit from the greater reward. Working for equity is clearly not something you are interested in. Nor is the environment of a startup. Why are you here then?
Well, if you go back and read the article, they actually offer no useful information or opinions about why Tapbots might have been successful, other than the fact that it's "two guys in a basement" as opposed to some big VC-funded venture.

What gets my goat about this article is that they treat this like it's some novel idea -- as though there are not hundreds and thousands of hackers toiling away after hours and on weekends (yours truly included), to the chagrin of wives and girlfriends everywhere, trying to put together awesome applications without any kind of funding or outside help whatsoever.

Highlighting the fact that one company succeeded with this approach is not merely useless, it probably only solidifies the unfortunate myth that all it takes is a little pluck and a lot of sweat to be successful in an endeavor like this.
No, you're definitely not wrong ... I'm curious what PG's thoughts are on this.

Does YC consider things like potential patent litigation when choosing startups? Have they ever faced issues like this after funding a startup?
The new features announced today are about working with freelances. The new features don't help you find new freelancers, but FreshBooks has been doing some things to make that easier. First, our forum has a gig board (http://community.freshbooks.com/forums/viewforum.php?id=23) where customers frequently hook up. Second, we tend to fly around the country have have dinners to introduce customers to each other.

-- Sunir, Chief Handshaker, FreshBooks
He's talking about the very first sale. His idea of doing a financial DOS on the pirates by releasing thousands of apps intrigues me.

It is mildly surprising to me that Apple hasn't stepped up to help with some form of watermarking embedded in the app, so you could tell who had made the first purchase...
My programming blog is back up
Blog is back up now. Will be making another programming post tomorrow but in the mean time why don't you check and out and possibly subscribe!
Why is amichail treating /newest as if it's his own personal blog?
The misspelling occurs in the blog title too.

Since the blog doesn't add any more information anyway, here's the direct link to the google tech talk on erlang:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpYPKBQhSZ4
> This is a chance to become a full time employee, the first, with equity and a say in the business.

That's different. Equity is a form of payment (although, admittedly, it is a gamble). However, the way that you advertised it here really makes it sound like you are looking for free work, and a naieve student to take advantage of. And working without any sort of compensation is indeed being taken advantage of.

Also, as a side note, I suspect (and Google seems to support) that American students have far higher costs for going to university -- I believe that in Europe, the tuition fees are significantly cheaper thanks to government subsidies. With lower costs, there's less pressure to earn money to cover the costs.
Processing.js gets True Type Font Support for Canvas
Well Processing.js has officially traveled once around the sun. And to celebrate it's birthday, True Type Font support has been added to the library!

Processing.js was written by John Resig, inventor of jQuery, ported from the Java application by Casey Reas and Ben Fry of MIT. Processing.js is an API for creating rich, interactive visual applications on the web, using very streamlined syntax.

The new update to Processing.js allows developers to convert True Type Fonts to render on the HTML5 Canvas. If you are looking for a way to render dynamic web fonts in your web document/app, Processing.js is a library you may want to check out sooner rather than later.
The post made some interesting points about technical success not equating to real world success, but the whole article suffers from a poor definition of the word.
Microsoft announces anti-piracy "tweaks" to Win7
Oh, I see you mean exiting gracefully with an error instead of crashing. That's different, my bad.

But not so different though, because telling a user your game/app can't run anymore because <insert pleasant looking reason here> doesn't help and the user can hardly do anything to help give the app a higher chance to run. Of course they can start Safari, close all the tabs etc, but it is (1) tedious and (2) many users wouldn't know how to do it (3) again destroys the experience.

Also, try to catch the error may not work in practice. It will work sometimes, but there's really no guarantee how much time you have to save the current state, and show a nice error because the app is shutdown.

The irony is that the environment uses reference counting to allow better control of memory yet there is this limitation. Or maybe it had to use reference counting because of this limitation.

Still it's a pretty nice platform to code for, it's just us developers asking for more :)
Mutual friends of mine applied to YC with an app to compete with Blackboard.

This is definitely validation that they should continue to work on their idea!
There is. However, that gets stripped out in the process of cracking an application.

Compare:
(downloaded from appulous to make a point :P) http://img.skitch.com/20090508-amctwf48bn1ng7mhexbsjbtdg.jpg

with
(purchased) http://img.skitch.com/20090508-xt1m8rqwrm96wedr8rn9s5mie6.jp...
I'm in the market too. In my searching I've not found anything that looks as appealing in the easy-of-use department as the drobo solution.
Charging for web content: is Murdoch losing it?
Funny, at Toastmasters last night our table topic was "what if you had a different mother?" and we got to pick moms from a random list. My random mom was Angelina Jolie, and I think I made a well-reasoned case that I would have fucked myself to death.

My point is that parent's success probably outdoes your own success.
Anyone else made the switch recently and had any problems with it?
“Unless they have been given permission to use that, we are asking them not to use it,” said Ken Fiori, director of computing services at the college. Fiori created the policy to make it easy for people to distinguish between official college e-mails and ones from people who were simply using its acronym. While he has not received any complaints about people trying to use the acronym maliciously to trick people, the possibility existed for that to happen, Fiori said.

Looks like someone has too much time on his hands.
“I could see how misuse of the SRJC name might be used ... to misrepresent the college or worse yet solicit funds, fees, or money,” he said in an e-mail Thursday."

I think if they really wanted to do that they would just spoof the email address, no?
It's true; as a recent graduate, I can tell you that Blackboard (still) looks and feels like a rush job from 1995.

I'm not an expert on the markets, but one thing that has amazed me is that Blackboard has maintained a P/E ratio in the hundreds for quite some time. Today, BBBB's P/E ratio is 367: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ABBBB
Seriously. Three-hundred-sixty-seven. Am I missing something? Are they really set up for that much growth, especially with a product like that?
Lisp Machines weren't that successful. I was their target user, and I ditched Symbolics to use Lucid on Suns at the first opportunity.

The Lisp Machine software was appallingly baroque. Everything had every possible feature. There was no design, just implementation, and lots of it. The manuals took up a whole shelf, and it was generally faster to write something yourself than to find the predefined function that did it.

A lot of (arguably most of) the badness of Common Lisp is Lisp Machine culture showing through.
Google Execs: Twitter-like Functionality Could Be Added to Search
For crackers, it's not about the money. For people who download cracked games, it's probably about the money.
Note how the robots are lined up and waiting most of the time, meaning that the bottleneck is in human workers. I'm guessing it's not long till they are completely eliminated from the order assembly.
As far as I know, there are no limitations to how many applications you can submit to the app store, but getting them all through the approval process is another thing.
Infinitesimal is pretty large when considered in the context of infinity.
A reality-TV show about pitching to VCs
This is true. I used to work for a company that would assign coupons to shoppers based on their shopping history. One of our biggest hurdles was avoiding people who would, in a sense, reverse engineer our coupon dispersion so that they could purchase large quantities of various products.

In the end we ended up having an employee become a member of the sites and forums where these people hung out and to attempt to cutoff these types of scams before they got out of hand. But it was normal for someone to have store managers orders cases of non-perishable items that were bought on a buy-one-get-one deal. People would also purchase items on coupons and then return them at a later time for full value or store credit. It was amazing to see. Many of these people would resell these items at garage/yard sales or on ebay.
The Grid, Our Cars and the Net: One Idea to Link Them All
ori_b, please don't take this all so personally. We are trying to keep costs as low as possible in our startup. Is there such harm in asking? If we get someone, great, if we don't there is no damage done.

You make a valid point above. We are not looking to screw people out of money. We were hoping to offer someone a good experience, and begin line up future employees for when we could afford to pay them.

We apologies, we appear to be poorer than the students :)
Reminds me of the scifi story Manna, by Marshall Brain: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Looks like he was off by a year on the robotic revolution, and he got the wrong industry where it starts.
Back in the dialup days, waiting for a web page to load for over 1 minute was about it. More than that, and one would either move on or treat the medium different: for example, instead of interacting with the webpage, one would set it to load and go do something else, and come back later. Or give up. There was an alternative, though: going down to the internet cafe to get fast access.

The existence of the alternative affected one's perception of the "slowness", just as being stuck in traffic in LA made me wish for a proper subway system.

No quantification, just anecdotal observations.
Hacker News | Profile: magyno
Marshall has a lot more wrong than the year. I think his ideas are pretty ludicrous. He thinks that in the next decade or so robots will replace humans as construction workers. Does he have any idea how hard of a challenge that is? More likely is that robots will complement humans in construction, just as they are in warehousing, long before they completely replace humans.
If they do they need to be careful blackboard likes to sue their competitors
Cheap Custom Stickers Printing Services
high degrees of optimization lead to fragility. look at the current financial situation for an example.
If you like Nethack at all, though it's been a few years since I've played them, I highly recommend Angband (http://www.thangorodrim.net/, somewhat outdated website, but I'm not sure what the current one is) and its variants. ToME (http://t-o-m-e.net/main.php?tome_current=0) is one I know of that's in active development these days.
He basically says that the goal of both whole language and phonics is to teach phonics, but whole language teaches phonics differently. That is, if students can figure out what the word is by looking at the picture then they then can learn the sounds of the phonemes that make up this word. Some phonemes still have to be taught by rote, but kids can learn most of them by actually reading. He compares this to phonics, where he says kids memorize sounds on flash cards and then read workbooks filled with sentences like "mat hit the cat." He says that if students start by reading real books then they retain much more of their intrinsic motivation to read, rather than learning to read the way we learn to type.

Further, he says that whole language is not currently used in more than 1% of classrooms, so it's impossible that whole language has caused the decline in reading skills.
Your guess would be wrong. Dynamically perceiving, picking and placing irregular objects is really hard and completely unsolved. Obstacle avoidance via sonar & lasers and reliable bar code reading have been solved for a decade.

They didn't create an advanced robot. They created an advanced system that works really well in whole.
Manna is fun, but junk. What about wealth creation from robotics implies society would be enslaved? It makes no sense at any scale.
As a developer, I really don't mind the pirates, as long as theirs is a marginal activitiy. Most of them would probably never pay for the apps they download anyway, so they don't make a significant difference in my sales. In fact, they kind of act like reviewers and may help popularize good apps.

Good thing to keep it illegal, tho, or else it wouldn't be a marginal activity anymore.
Although they are pretty slow right now, gemtools which is used with gemstone to interact with the always headless server is nice. you can use it to login and work with the smalltalk environment.

The stuff I'm using seaside for, is much easier to do when running on GLASS ( gemstone + seaside ) compared to running on squeak. I haven't used Cincom's web velocity which is also a Seaside environment, but it would be worth checking out as well.

The lack of docs is a little hard, but I've found the mailing list and irc channels very helpful ( even if you just lurk ). Is it a substitute for good documentation that exists outside the code and helps you ramp up? No. But it isn't the barren wilderness it would first appear to be.
Twitter's Big News has Huge Implications for Search
How many times can the exact same stupid article be written? Congratulations, you use a Mac. This is hacker news?
So, should we get something coordinated where many of us get free email accounts with SRJC as part of the address and then email the college telling them to kiss off?
If this post is OK, there are a hundred others just like it waiting in the wings.
Between the lot of these, the only message I'm getting is "ruby and rails authors happily dump speed in favor of not thinking terribly hard."

Seriously, is it that hard to pull up dtrace and do a little analysis? They even have dtrace-ruby bindings on MacOS! http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/10/ruby-leopard
So Long Federated Media, And Thanks For All The Fish
I looked for 'E' both for the Amiga language, and Mark Miller's language.

Neither was there! Bizarre...
fyi

Blackboard's #6,988,138 patent has begun the process of being overturned by the PTO (not yet finalized), but they have a revised patent #7,493,396.

I agree with buugs: Blackboard has been suing left and right - they even tried to sue the PTO.
GLASS is aimed at making multi-vm/remote-vm development easier.

GLASS uses continuations for debugging stacks from remote servers...when an error is encountered, a continuation is snapped off and stashed in an ObjectLog (a persistent collection). At the developer's leisure, she can bring up a debugger on the error stack in her development vm.

If you are debugging in a development environment you can proceed from the 'remote continuation' and the newly rendered page will show up in the browser...
I'm not taking it personally, but really, you need to make it clear that the student's time is valued. Equity is perfectly fine compensation, especially if it's clear that the student is going to be considered for a full-time job.

Just put it into the ad next time, and it might look less like you're trying to screw the students over.
" Pitching on a PC sends a subtle signal of dowdiness and "unsexy"."

I know this is just this guy's opinion, but does anyone else here share it? I don't.
Ask HN: How to detect if app is pirated?
I'm building a MMORPG for the iPhone.

The iPhone app connects to server to join the world. Between the app & the server, I can't figure out how to detect if the particular instance of the app is legit or if it's pirated. Is there a way to do this?

I know that I can grab the UUID off the phone ... but unless apple sends me a list of every UUID that purchased my app, I see no way to check for this.

Thanks!
The photo of the wide corridor of KIVA's bustling past each other struck me as beautiful. Maybe I should get some sleep ;)

Like the Roomba, these guys found a way to use tech that we already have to do something magical.
Backup your Database in Git
We need a two-way jobs section IMHO. Companies could offer jobs and hackers can announce their availability. Two-way markets are usually more efficient.

OP, I find your post disenginous. You could say it's the best thing ever if you were to start your own company. If you get laid off just to start looking for another job, it probably was not "the best". Just my 2 cents.
So who is going to setup the Senior-Junior Communities of Canada (srjc.ca) free email service?
Customer Service Matters