skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Looking back, I realize I must have spent two weeks just writing the Electric Duet player, because the time through the player loop had to be constant. The loop read through the notes to be played, synthesized them, and changed their duty cycle, but had to use the exact same number of machine cycles regardless of what it did, so the music stayed in tune.

Near the end of the project, I had two problems: the music was slightly off-pitch -- middle A wasn't exactly 440 Hz -- and the number of machine cycles wasn't quite constant (it varied between 40 and 41 cycles depending on which branches the code took).

Finally I realized I could insert a single NOP (no-operation) instruction at a critical location. The NOP forced the number of cycles to be a constant, regardless of the path through the loop, and I then realized that it also slightly changed the output frequency to be tuned exactly right.

I will always remember that moment. :)
Please don't buy it
Here's a commentator at Mini-Microsoft explaining why it probably became more toxic over time, and it looks like these changes happened before the author arrived:

http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2013/08/steve-ballmer-is-going-...

Anonymous said...

My memory is really good - [ current head of HR ] is the one who did away with the "life-time performance average" which let people take huge risks and made Microsoft great.

THAT, was huge BillG wisdom. You could look at your score over time and do some really simple math to see what kinds of risks you could take. And then suddenly, a 15-year running average of 4.0 turned into "your current manager doesn't like you, and he's required to fire one of his 10 no matter what, so you're fired".

She also did away with the standing rule that you could take any written standing offer - NO MATTER WHAT (unless you were actually fired for cause) - which was Bill's way of ensuring that great engineers couldn't be tossed out by one horrible ass-kissing manager ... which is pretty much all of them today.

The day that it became possible for a single crappy manager to fire someone for saying "I disagree", or "That's Wrong". Microsoft died.

And when's the last time you saw that lovely deck of laminated cards that started with "a passion for technology" ... and a really logical employee development plan? yea, right, somewhere around 1995.

[ People who need to leave. ]
The torque comes from the object's ability to polarize light, AFAIK, so buckyballs would probably not work with this design.
It looks big from the pictures, but it's not. As I recall, MS' Natural 4000 takes up more space. On my desk, it fits into the space formerly occupied by a Goldtouch V2.
Agreed, the best he could hope for is to become the next Michael Dell.
New Suspension Generates Power From Bumps and Curves
PG hasn't been running a startup, but managing hundreds of them.

A large company is just a large number of small groups.

A startup is a small group.

PG is someone who has proven effective at managing to give a big ROI from managing quite a few small groups. Hence he is eminently suited to running a large corporation.
PiCloud - A simple cloud computing python library
Liability for Texting Driver
As the person whom you are quoting said in an earlier reply in this thread,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6303229

he chose the word "community" precisely to indicate that you don't have to live in an English-speaking country to learn good English (or a Chinese-speaking COUNTRY to learn Chinese, etc.). But massive "real-world" exposure to a language outside required school lessons helps immensely, as many research studies on language acquisition around the world have shown.

English has the network advantage of being the "community" language of people who have no other common language, all over the world.
Good point, how calculators differed from computers. Branding surely helped IBM establish the PC, but against Apple what mattered was its years-later entry to the 16-bit world, with a relatively closed system, with high margins. Apple had a shot at 16-bit dominance but missed. (They came out with the Apple 3 and Lisa first.)
Well, I can remember the coefficients of the Fourier series being a real pain to calculate...
I use a Nokia C3-00, and I get a couple of weeks between charges. I'm highly interested in the promise of 38 days because three or four weeks is still fantastic.
Why does it matter how many levels there are?
What I don't understand is why anyone would bother physically transporting such files at all.

Even if they had a reason to physically transport then, what I don't understand is why he flew through London since there are several daily non-stop flights between Frankfurt and Rio.
I would only say somewhat naive. There is a lot of effort in the EU that points in this direction. Not everyone is a British poudle over here. We started our work in the direction a couple of years ago, where I work. It will take a while, but it will happen.
> Their entire business is predicated on steering you away from using your credit or debit card (better for you) to a direct bank withdrawal (better for them).

You're being hyperbolic, or don't know what predicated means. This defaulting to bank transfers is a relatively recent thing in their history; they've been profitable for more than 10 years without that. Their fees are also sufficient to make a profit on credit card transactions, so their business would not fail should everyone opt-out of paying by ACH.

There are reasons for PayPal to want you to use ACH over a credit card beyond simply increasing profits, too. They're just as much victims of credit card fraud as their merchants. It's the card networks' fault that almost anyone in the world can pick up a Visa/MasterCard card, use it to buy something on eBay, then charge back the payment after they get the item. PayPal's the one getting the chargeback, and they're not exempt from the card networks' requirements on maximum chargeback rates. It's an existential threat to their business, always has been.
He keeps an eye on it, but he’s not working on Haxl directly.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say smoking tobacco is most certainly not a good investment.
Might be a silly question for some reason but why don't you try and get your Australian company to sponsor you for immigration to Australia?
The same criticism applies to wikis and their nonlinear way of presenting information. Despite that, people find wikis tremendously valuable, and a big part of it is the ability to jump around, following your own path through the information.

This thing is confusing at first, but it looks like it could be pretty darn slick after spending a few minutes getting used to it.
I always thought that, at least for me, there's a level of cost below which I can just buy something on a whim without worrying about whether I can afford it at all, and above which I need to think about it for a minute. When I was in college, that level was about $10. It was a kinda weird transition when I got my first professional job out of college, and I had to get used to that threshold being closer to $1000 instead. I can see how it can be stressful if you're broke enough that your threshold for this is more like $1.
I read that extra politeness as fake, and indicative of phobic behaviour. If you treat black people as equals, then you don't see anything bad about describing someone as black. Instead, for politeness you have to say "individual of color". Newspeak that tells a lot about the society as a whole.
Thought it was made of raspberry pis, was a little disappointed.
The one that prompted this proposal in the first place?
I am a native English speaker from India (for all practical purposes I am monolingual). I also have what you would probably term as a "neutral" accent, but it's definitely Indian.

The tips above are not unique to non-native speakers, but to anyone who cares about proper public communication. The recommendations might make it easier for non-native speakers, but I feel that PG would put someone like me (who has always spoken English) into a convenient bucket just because I sound different.
Well, active interest helps as well. I started learning English in school at 10 (German native speaker, 29 years old), and starting at the age of 14, I became actively interested in watching US-American movies (well, the usual mainstream) in English (this coincided with the widespread availability of DVD players and DVDs with English-language audio tracks). My perception has been that it immensely helped me with both my listening comprehension and my vocabulary. That turned out to be an advantage when I worked in companies with English-speaking colleagues.

My only imperfections that I and my GF (who is from the UK) recognize are things like my US-centric pronounciation and vocabulary ("boot, not trunk!", "lift, not elevator!", etc.) and my tendency to mispronounce words that I've only ever read but not heard. And when I'm tired, my accent sometimes slips and I suddenly stereotypically sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Probably worth a lot more than $100k once you look at the effect 2 sodas a day has on your health.
Correct, it requires the cache to respond to queries with the recursion bit disabled.

It will also probably behave in "interesting" ways when run against a resolver that's on an anycast IP and doesn't synchronize.
>>From doing it. From watching how DC works, from working next to DC lobbyists and politicians for many years, and watching people be effective and get things done in DC for many many years.

So basically, anecdotal evidence. Got it.

This issue has been discussed on HN before, and we had overwhelming response from people who actually worked for Congresspeople that the vast majority of letters and calls from constituents get either ignored, or given canned responses. This fits my anecdotal experiences with politicians in general as well - for the most part, the politician is paid for by private interests and lobby groups.
I guess you never took Nuclear & Particle and had to type the SEMF into a calculator :)

I have my TI-89 Titanium next to me on my desk as I speak.

I used it a lot in Applied Physics. I used it during thermo, I used it during optics lab, I used it during electronics exams, I occasionally it during Linear Algebra, I used it during Physical Chemistry. I used it a lot during undergraduate lab.

I didn't use it in senior year Classical or E&M.

Sometimes I used my laptop (when I finally bought one 2 years in) for those things, but I'd end up remotely logging into another computer on campus and punching stuff in Maple when that was the case.

It was a speed thing. It's faster (and more explicit) than a scientific calculator, and accurate for what it is.
A little offtopic, but maybe someone can enlighten me.

Right now there are 12 countries that are EU members and who's citizens cannot have Google merchant accounts and therefore cannot sell apps on Google Play. And this isn't even mentioning the countless others that aren't supported.

They promised they'll work on adding more countries, but it's has been years since the Marketplace opened and it hasn't happened.

Their policy also bans other payment processors, so the only way for us to monetize apps is to either serve ads or to start a company in another country, which is a huge PITA.

I do not have problems with either the iTunes Store, or with Amazon. Amazon in particular simply sends cheques by snail mail. What's so hard in doing that?

For a company with the ability to move mountains, all I can understand from this is that Google simply doesn't care about developers like myself.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or just extremely naive and idealistic.

You're still operating under the assumption that you have choices when you're in poverty.

Imagine working two jobs 80 hours a week and pulling in $2000 at minimum wage.

700-rent
200-car note
80-insurance
500-food
200- utilities
200-gas

Where are you going to make 'choices' to get ahead assuming all of your time and money are gone?

This is the cycle of poverty that unskilled people live under if you weren't born into a middle class family that can help you get ahead or if you don't get lucky.

So barring 'lucky opportunities' impossible is a pretty accurate way to describe poverty in America.
Having lived abroad for 17 years as an American, I have found a very strong correlation between those who can not understand a thick accent, and those who can not communicate well with non-native English speakers.
No idea if this is the case with Paul, but if you have actually spent the time communicating with a wide range of non-native speakers, you are much better at understanding and making yourself understood. I think all you non-native English speakers know exactly what I mean.

Communication - a two-way street. That is why Paul's comments strike many as tone deaf!
There's another problem.

When you have a thick accent, poor grammar, and generally have trouble expressing your thoughts in English, people will perceive you as less smart - no matter how eloquent you sound in your native language.
It is ironic that a statement about the importance of being understood clearly by others , was itself not understood clearly by others, although the conversation was presumably between native speakers with no accents. My point is that foreign accents are just one manifestation of the larger problem of communication that occurs far more frequently than any of us supposes. My favorite quote about this problem is from George Bernard Shaw : "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Shows how much we've declined. Kids nowadays use graphing calculators in JHS algebra. We had no calculators, and calculus in my JHS by the 10th grade.
Forbes has him at number two, with Carlos Slim from Mexico still as number one.

Regardless, I think it is pretty apparent that money is not his bottleneck.
> Why mention this opt-in dialog at all if it's optional?

But you might ask why mention anything that isn't required. I suspect that Google is trying to get voluntary compliance for behaviors it can't require. The reason it can't require them might be that there are practices that violate the guidelines in Google's own advertisement activities. I don't know this for a fact, but it might be a reason to be less than demanding toward the Google Play app submitters.

For me, this is academic -- I have a number of Android apps at the Google Play store, but they're free and they don't show ads. Which means everybody else hates me. :)

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=paul%20lutus&hl=en
Cosmic ray finding: Researchers take a step closer to finding cosmic ray origins
Why not rent a car on your own dime? A low-end one can be cheap, on the order of $20-25/day, which is pretty reasonable to save you a lot of time on the bus until you find a new car. Obviously not an option for poorer people, which is your whole point, but it could be a good option for you.
Diane Ravitch is the person who thinks a high school diploma is credible even if the possessor of the diploma doesn't know beginning algebra. Her argument is that she, a professor of history, was not required to know algebra in her generation (I would hope she at least took a course in the subject as part of secondary education), so it's asking too much that young people in the United States ought to be able to pass test that includes algebra item content as part of graduating from high school. Having seen countries that do otherwise in secondary education from how the United States does things, I have to respectfully disagree with Ravitch on that point and on many other points.
Friends sue each other. That's a show for their enemy. I'm supprised some of us are still thinking tech companies and their government are against each other in this case.
Web development in the 90s and early 00s was not a practical substitute for learning how to program. Now, it is.

You make a claim that the low-level nature of the calculator programming was an enticement to you. That may be, but I would hestitate to generalize based on your own experiences. I would suspect that the ability to come up with something that actually does something conventionally interesting trumps the benefits of working close to the metal, ESPECIALLY with young, novice programmers. A few hours of hacking in assembler and you may get to hello world, whereas the same amount of effort in javascript might net you the ability to drag and drop objects around a UI. Which is more impressive to a kid?
It sounds more like an admonition than a suggestion or recommendation, but the wording is unclear. They certainly don't explicitly say it's optional.
I agree that "asking a friend" is not legit and would be cheating, but using google to find something is more like open book testing.

The closest thing I could think of would be to set the iPad into Guided Access mode where you can't exit an app at all, but having teachers do that to every kid's iPad would take a while...
Annone testen what happens when you use it as a computername? Could be a problem as well, since machines with fileshares are listed in the finders sidebar. When the SSID already produces such a screwup, that would be even worst.
Why Chicago is 'Stink Onions' in the Atlas of True Names
"It has been argued that the word Chicago, for example, is actually a French version of the word shikaakwa - or Stink Onions - named after the plants that were once common along the Chicago River."
"Communication skills is an strong indicator of education and class." is probably what you meant to say - though I'd disagree, and say it's more experienced based. You last sentence suggests that the non-native English speakers were accepted only because they had good educations, though again I'd imagine that someone could have a strong accent - and still be highly educated.
At the time of the C5 I worked for one of the then government owned utility companies which had shops selling the C5. Was able to get a staff discount but was told of of the 2 seater version with a roof that was planned for release and saw pictures and spec etc, so I waited.

Great idea, ahead of it's time engineering and attitude wise as well. Did not even have rare earth magnets, seen C5's with rare earth magnet motors instead of the stock motor and they are dangerously fast. Today we are slowly getting there, though cars still designed for everybody with a 4-5 member family with a boot of shopping all the time and the other end is a motorbike. Still a car/bike electric combinations do appear, albeit not mainstream and most put of from the safety of getting hit by others as you are smaller on the road effect. Which makes you think about the limitations of a vehicle that is surrounded by taller and larger ones, why we now start to believe in bike lanes.
Which was a factor back then and why the C5 never kicked off enough to make the C10 and C15 go into production beyond the prototypes sadly and C5's started coming with a flag pole akin to a football/soccer corner post style pole and flag.
What's happening in Go tip (2013-08-30)
FlyLogic used to do some awesome teardowns too: http://www.flylogic.net/blog/

If you go back through their blog posts, they have some cool techniques for bypassing "security" metal meshes to read out the secure FLASH/ROM sections of chips.

IIRC, one of the guys behind FlyLogic was involved in the high-profile reverse engineering of satellite receivers (ie. satellite pirating).
I'm gonna make a wallpaper right now with his name on it.
More generally, in Facebook's social graph, connections can be of different types. For e.g., for a user, 'likes' can be one type of an edge and 'followers'(people he follows) is of a different type, 'followed by'(people who follow him) is yet another type, so on. Many of these types can only be uni directional(e.g., all the above three examples). So, the social graph is a directed graph. Of course, the well known 'friends' connection is a bi-directional type of edge.
> I can't even imagine how I would go from having an iPad as a high school student to stumbling into programming.

I'm not so sure. I remember programming in high school. I wrote one or two programs for my TI calculator but mostly stayed away from it because the experience was so bad, and I wasn't that sad when it was lost/stolen (I preferred the HP anyway).

On the other hand, you could do a lot on a computer, share source code on floppy disks, use a nice debugger, use a nice language like C or Pascal. It took a bunch of code to set up a window and a proper event loop but you could type that in from a book or (later) a web page. It's been getting easier every year.

Graphing calculators are little more than terrible computers these days. Given how irrelevant they are now, imagine how irrelevant they will be when today's high school students finish their MSEEs and enter the workforce.

I'm not really commenting on the viability of iPads here, just on the (non-)viability of graphing calculators.
There's a very relevant episode of Freakonomics Radio that discusses obsession with predictions and their actual value: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/freakonomics-podcast/2013/aug/2...
They can document it all they want, still seems like Angular is easier to get started with.
Looks like you have not experienced racism in your life.
This area of astronomy still contains a lot of conjecture, as far as I can tell, and it could change. A recent Scientific American article made a case that black holes might not exist, but, instead, quantum mechanical effects would intervene and prevent a star from collapsing past the radius of the event horizon. They called the resulting not-quite-a-black-hole a black star (N.B., not the hip hop act featuring Mos Def and Talib Kweli).

Black holes themselves are considered to have a spin, so since their radii are infinitesimal, they are the rotation champs.
Here's a thought. We don't need them and they do much more harm than good. They didn't protect us against 9/11, mislead us into Iraq, took 10 years to capture Osama Bin Laden, didn't foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union, and now are mucking about with Syrian "rebels" (and indirectly supporting Al-Qaeda) fomenting the start of WWIII.

If they just didn't exist we would all be safer and we'd get to keep more money. By falsely leading us into war in Iraq for absolutely nothing, they effectively cost the US over $10^12. The cost of the CIA and other agencies is much higher than their yearly cost. They can't even manage their sys admins, why should we trusting them so much?
The defacto web framework. :) Congrats to the Ember Team.
I grew up watching the Connections series on VHS from my local library.

More than a decade later Netflix recommended the DVD set to me based on my preferences—It was like running into an old flame. Watching them as an adult, they are even more amazing than I originally remember.
I acquired this link from the Amazon icon used for sharing via email. I thought it would be looked upon more favorably than the long Amazon link in my address bar. Sorry for giving offense.
I'm sure I've missed one but I can't think of a dominant force in any of them fields that YC have invested in. I don't know about every investment, and like I said I've surely missed one, and I'm sure their portfolio has come closer than Microsoft to them markets, but if I were looking to find someone capitalising on them I can't think of any YC company immediately. Any ideas?

Edit: To be fair, Dropbox beat Microsoft to making cloud services popular. Microsoft do have a successful web services sector now though. Also I guess Reddit count for social, they have a very solid niche - but they wouldn't benefit under a company like Microsoft. They admitted it was a miracle Conde Nast didn't destroy their brand.
I'm well aware of the mechanics, thank you.

The state has already satisfied itself sufficiently to reverse a murder conviction. If the investigation that led to that course of action was causally descended from an article written by a journalist - what of it?

If you believe that the actions taken by the state up to this point were unwarranted, say so explicitly. Otherwise, please recognize that I am not talking about journalists here.