skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm getting happy: I'm 70 miles north of
Wall Street and that means really close to
Vassar and not far from Princeton, Yale,
Harvard, and more. So find some bright,
humanities major coeds who otherwise
would have to start in retail or go to
law school or for an MBA and get them
started.

So, they have great SAT
scores, know how to study and learn,
know what high quality work is,
are good at working with people,
are really good at reading comprehension,
can knock out an A+/A+ term paper between
10 PM and 7 AM with just a quart of
coffee, can give a good presentation,
etc.

So, teach them about Volts, Amps,
Watts, Ohm's law, DC, AC, resistors,
capacitors, inductors, basic electronic
signals, the basic conceptual principles
of how a processor core works, a little
on caching and main memory,
data representation 101,
how a
disk drive works, the basics of
an NIC, Ethernet, a LAN switch,
and TCP/IP, and IP router,
a little
on memory protection, an 'embedded'
operating system, virtual memory,
virtual machines, a file system
with locking and security,
console sessions and command lines,
text files and a good text editor,
the Internet from DNS, SMTP, POP3,
to base 64, MIME, HTTP, HTML, and
CSS, the basics of programming languages,
e.g., Visual Basic .NET and its
memory management, classes and instances,
the .NET Framework, relational database,
SQL, SQL Server, how to use Microsoft's
MSDN, about Stack Overflow, HN, and
how to Google/Bing to get answers to
questions, how to use our technical
support account at Microsoft and
Cisco, all in about one afternoon,
with some exercises, and then have
a graduation party.

Then get to
work on some basic stuff, say,
plugging together another 20 servers, repairing
a server with a busted hard disk,
etc.

Clean, indoor work, no heavy lifting,
and better than grass mowing or retailing.
Transactions are accepted if they are signed by private keys, it doesn't matter who broadcasts them. But the reason for fees is to prevent DoS attackers overloading the consensus process with spam transactions. Also, just running a node on an IP address doesn't give you any amount of control. That IP address also has to be other validators' UNL (unique node list).
Five minutes and counting. Edge of the seat stuff. Wishing them all the success !
Fair enough, but the size of the population, and its first derivative, are both serious issues. There are too many people, and the rate of increase isn't zero (it's about 1.1% on average worldwide). Both are problems.
D3 pleasures
Well, I spoke early to be honest, however I don't think bias is the same thing as lying.
Go Testing Toolbox: from Autotest to Vagrant
While not a To-Do list in the traditional sense, for me the Mailbox App[1] works rather well as a To-Do list. Every email is treated as a task, some are immediately finished, some I can "push forward" to e.g. tomorrow or next week and I receive a notice at that very time.

[1]: http://www.mailboxapp.com
While I hope that this force would focus their attention at serious crimes, nation's attacks against nations, and espionage, my inner cynic tells me that the primary target will be 16 year old kids who DDOS the web hosting company of a government website that happens to have been done by the lowest bidder.

Basically sending the army after the nation's own kids.
You do know that this results in a DoS attack?
Actually, in SF many landlords want to see proof of earnings and require you to be earning 3x the rent. They don't give you the option of living frugally to afford the rent.
Are Yahoo Mail users better customers than Gmail users?
> did not motivate or give a good feeling.

I use pen/paper todos. It feels great when I can cross one off.

If something is too large, I break out the task underneath, so I can see the larger goal I'm trying to accomplish but still have workable chunks.
Agreed. I don't know anyone (of many friends in SF) who live in a two-bedroom apt.
Bitcoin, Litecoin, Feathercoin, etc. are all decentralized currencies, and this fact should give you at least one very good reason to trust them.

Ripple has been pre-mined and is not decentralized, but in fact controlled by one entity (regardless of what the creators may claim).

There is a huge difference here. Not even a comparison.
According to Robert Cringley iOS 7 includes Bluetooth mouse support: http://www.cringely.com/2013/09/19/the-secret-of-ios-7/. However, I haven't seen this confirmed anywhere. I would like to know where he heard this and hear more about how it works. Any links on this would be great!
I prefer to think of it as that SpaceX gets the right amount of publicity, and their competitors get too little.
lift off. still get excited as I did as a kid when watching something like this.
From my own struggle to learn something each day I can tell you that - at least for me - what you said is wrong. There are many "workflows" I tried and am still using, but generally speaking even 15 minutes is enough to gain something valuable. For example, when reading a technical book 15 minutes is enough to read a descriptions of a (sub)problem and to understand high-level concepts used in it's solution (if it's not, you're reading wrong book). I then go to work and think about the details of the solution during the lunch break and commute. Another 15-30 minutes in the evening is enough to check what I thought up with a book and realize where my thinking was incorrect. Then the next day I can code up whatever I was reading about in an hour max, but frequently less (if not, then I was reading wrong book - that is one which I was not prepared to read yet). Then in the next days I can deepen my understanding with 30-45 minutes sessions, and at the end of the week I have the problem internalized and I can move on.

That being said, when I'm not under extreme time constraints, I'm using other approaches. For example, for a whole week I'm reading and gathering bits of information I will need to build something. I have a large file, where I paste links, paragraphs of text from articles and write tiny little snippets of code, either mine or borrowed from somewhere. All this takes an hour or a little more each day (but it's nice that it can be divided into pieces). Then over the weekend I try to make this amorphous mass of data into understanding, in one or a few coding sessions.

There are other ways to make the best use of what little time we get, too. They'd better be, because otherwise we'd be royally screwed as working programmers :)
Both of these policies drive up the cost of living causing families to move out[1]:

Rent control makes apartment rentals more expensive (and lower quality).

Overpaid municipal workers must be supported with higher taxes and/or higher fees.

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Families-exodus-leaves...
The Interactive Periodic Table
I thought it would be much higher.

I'm a socialist. I believe in Universal Housing (that is every one should be guaranteed/given shelter (also healthcare, education, and sustenance)). But, I definitely don't believe in Universal Housing for whereever you want to live.

I'm thoroughly unconcerned that it requires 4-8x times minimum wage to live in of the best / most popular cities in the world.

Around 1991 my self and 3 other 20-21 yr old college dropouts moved to SF, rented a two bedroom. Can't remember wages, doubt minimum wage cause most jobs pay more than that in SF. I did temp work, two waitresses, and I don't remember what 4th did. There were trade-offs. But we wanted to live in the city even when everyone else our income bracket was being forced out to Oakland. I lived all over SF for 14 years with increasing income and decreasing roomates. It'd doable, if you want it bad enough.
Infamous Tech Predictions
Thanks and an interesting idea, I can see where you're coming from. I have tried it with a bolder font on the tar, it does hint more as to how to pronounce it.

http://dev.bitmono.com/tarsnap/tarsnap-variation.png
slightly OT: for anybody interested in rockets i greatly recommend ignition!: http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf - a story of liquid rocket propellants. foreword by asimov, should i say more?
All of the "problems" that he listed of to do lists are solved by using the "Getting things done" method from David Allen.

I personally hate the method of blocking off tasks in a calendar because it is:
a) Not agile (can't adjust your priorities quickly). So you get sick one day then you have to adjust your entire calendar for the next month?
b) Very cumbersome and totally not suited to the concept of lists of things to do.

To do lists are perfect for storing information about what you might do in the future. You can create various lists to hold information, so that you don't have to constantly try and remember it. Then each day you prioritize and figure out which tasks you are actually going to work on. The point of the to do list is not to create a list of tasks that you are absolutely going to work on necessarily. Instead it's a way to store information and then jog your memory when you decide what you are going to prioritize and actually work on.

So overall I think the idea of forcing yourself to plan ahead of time exactly what you are going to do several days in advance is a horrible idea and very ineffective. What if something more important comes up on the day? You get a call from Techcrunch that they would like to feature your app. Sorry Techcrunch you're not on my calendar.
The Plan-9 Effect or why you should not fix it if it ain't broken
Specialized labor, specialized materials. Teams wanting "cool factor" for support infrastructure. And driver salaries.
Any chance you looked at Mind Meister (www.mindmeister.com)?

If so, was wondering if you found any big differences in functionality/features over mindmup.
Aside from using my inbox like a traditional "inbox" (things stay there until they done and/or are no longer relevant) I started using a pen and paper and a bullet journal (http://www.bulletjournal.com/) and it works amazingly well. I organize my month, week, day (every morning) keep track of appointments and write meeting notes all there. It's helped me keep track of the little things and make sure they don't fall though the cracks.
Rockstar: 'GTA 5' Cops Not Racist
Good example of resque/redis ecosystem usage. It could be great to have more info about your failover and monitoring strategies.
I find Evernote works well enough for lightweight GTD. I don't really want anything more than a bunch of lists I can see anywhere, and Evernote does that. It would be better if it natively supported the concept of a "task", but that's not necessary.
A larger, more efficiently priced unit can be shared by multiple people, reducing the distinction between "most efficient price" and "lowest cost".
"Awaiting Vehicle Downlink" is that a cute way of saying buffering? Because the flight control audio and mission clock disappear when that pops up.
This isn't backed up by evidence or a sound argument, and comparing the capability of women to have babies with the productivity of programmers nicely sums up the intelligence of the argument.

Teams follow the 80/20 rule as well. 20% of the developers do 80% of the work (there is actually evidence in support of this, but I'm not going to look it up now)

Rockstar developers are a real thing. I work with some. I like to think I am one. I'm not talking about loud developers which the author seems to conflate with rockstar developers. I'm talking about the quiet thoughtful guys who have an amazing grasp of how everything fits together. They see the problem in amazing detail with all it's hairiness and then devise a simple, elegant solution for it.

Rockstar developers are the guys who solve the right problems. And there's an infinite gap between them and the bottom guys, because for some problems, the worst developers will never solve them. They tend to be around 10x as productive as above-average developers on the hardest problems. On easy problems there's a much smaller difference.

In my free time I work on a multi-threaded high-performance ACID relational database with concurrent algorithms, custom memory allocation and layout, hybrid index data structures and garbage collection algorithms. I don't know too many developers who can solve those kinds of problems, so I like to think I'm special. But all humans like to think that, so maybe I'm not actually a rockstar developer and I'm really just average-delusional. Who knows.
Ask HN: Any HNers Based in Dubai?
About me: 26, Irish, sociable, easy-going, sporty.

I'm moving to Dubai at the end of October, and I'd really like to get to know people as soon as possible. If there's any Dubai-based or Dubai-bound HNers on here, I'd love to meet for a chat. Thanks guys.
> newest, coolest language

I'm sure you meant "newest and/or coolest", or "recently become coolest", but it's worth noting that Haskell is about as old as Python, and OCaml is not much younger.
Musk's private jet is also in the area.

http://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/N887XF
Yeah...I don't see how any engineer in any field can be effective without ongoing task documentation. Let's say that you have an eidetic memory and you don't need any to-do lists..I bet you also have problems letting go at night which may be interrupting your sleep. One way I've found to fix this is to-do lists! Not huge ones. Not complicated ones. Just one small page by your bedside. Each night, think of everything you need to get done tomorrow and put it on paper. Then excuse yourself from having to worry about it and go to sleep.
Nope. That just means, they totally lost video down. I'm guessing they're dedicating a more robust connection for actual telemetry. To be fair, the video is mostly eyecandy. The actual meat is sensor data.
Hogwash.

What about the higher productivity of Scandinavians? They shift back and forth on "time-zones" due to the constant change of amount of light because of the very hash winter. Sometimes with as few as 3 hours of light, not sun, but still maintain the same level of productivity.

Currently, Spanish primetime stretches until after midnight <- Well what about making less time for primetime? Or less siestas?
Awesome! Thanks for this.
I don't want to trust a food supply chain that is crowd sourced.

I know I have the unpopular view that services that do ride sharing are scary, as are many of the AirBNB's that are in random people's house.

And I know we don't do background checks on everyone who touches the produce... But we do require vaccines for people who touch our food in most places.

There isn't a nice way to say it, so I'll just say it. The Crowd that shops at Trader Joe's, or work at a service that is crowd sourced is more likely to be the crowd that doesn't get vaccinated.

Hepatitis being the most likely vector for something to go wrong which is why so many places require employees to have the HAV Vaccine.

EDIT: The comment about Trader Joe's Stems from an interview which is discussed here (making it easier to see the reference)
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2008/12/29/pandagon-anti_vaccinat...

Here is the interview:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/370/r...
The fixed point is, of course, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann‎
Is AngelList Syndicates Really Such a Big Deal?
It seems that sometimes flight control audio cuts when that happens, sometimes it doesn't.
No, it that case you will check your calendar and decide based on your priorities in life do you want to reschedule a task you have planned with the new task. With calendar-based systems you usually only plan the current day and for other days you have rough outline how time will be spent.
> since when are we willing to settle for good enough?

Ever since we decided to get shit done, ship, finish our weekend project, etc. Ever since we first read "premature optimization is the root of all evil" and understood it as wide, abstract truism.
That's another thing I've found funny...often the very same people who say measuring programmer productivity is difficult are the ones saying some devs are ten times more productive than others.
Are they not going to cover the first stage re-entry/landing? Or am I mistaken about what this flight was actually testing?
> There is a chance that FE, if run and marketed right could be made to appeal to the Need for Speed generation.

My god, that entire paragraph is genius, I am not particularly NSF but even I have fond memories of a few of those games and you could certainly turn it into a travelling festival of racing / gamer culture.
Well aware of that. But given the fact that the Mission Clock and Flight Control audio were disappearing as well.
> But, more generally, Go has very little to commend itself and--compared to the other options--quite a few shortcomings.

By what standard of measure? I personally appreciate the simplicity that Go brings to the table, usually at the cost of features we've come to expect in other programming language environments. Do I miss those features? Sure. But do I like simplicity and straight-forwardness? Definitely. Do I believe there is a way to combine them? I'm not sure. Rust is probably the closest contender. But certainly, languages like Haskell or Java don't do it for me (as frequently as Go does, anyway).

What I'm trying to say is that I won't tell you which side of the trade-off you should take in every instance, and maybe you shouldn't either.
Ah, I should probably give more detail there. We operate on a kind of tiering system, technicians, sysadmins, and engineers. Sysadmins and engineers are generally the ones entering tickets, and the technicians the ones working them. Generally, but not always. It works as a good reminder system too for all kinds of assorted tasks that would be easily forgotten.

I think you've made a bad assumption in that only one or two people are breaking down projects into smaller tasks - that's not the way the software is set up, and it's not the way it works in practice for us. Anyone can assign subjobs to any main job, and this happens on a pretty regular basis.

The major bonus is that it allows management to see who has the least amount of stuff they're working on and allocate time effectively. When you've got north of 20 people being managed by 2, and you can tell at a glance who has more free time, I don't think the utility of this can be overstated. It definitely makes our lives easier, and I'd like to think it helps the company make money, but I don't have a good way to quantify that.
It only did that the first couple times.
Kanye West Isn't Joking Anymore
It's starting to. Having been here since ~2008 - there was literally no new construction until about last year. And now there are about a dozen high-density apartment buildings going up (on Divis, Market, Duboce, 3rd, etc.). Likely that the greater housing crisis coupled with an explosion of local jobs at the same time greatly increased the burden.
> However, it's in the interest of any company to protect its' customers.

Its also in the interest of any company to protect its suppliers -- which is what consumers of free web-services that provide the views that are sold to advertisers are.

OTOH, this general interest in protecting "suppliers" or "customers" doesn't imply that it is in the interest of the company to protect the interests of any individual or small minority of either its paying customers or suppliers when it has a very, very large number of either, and the cost of protecting the individual or small minority would be high compared to the revenue produced directly from them (in the case of customers) or from resale of what they supply (in the case of suppliers.)

So, the web service operator isn't much motivated to be concerned about you, personally, no matter whether you are one of a very large number of paying customers or one of a very large number of suppliers of views to be sold to advertisers. It's an inherent feature of long-tail services whether they are monetized by directly or via advertising.

And, in either case, there is little in the interest of the company of protecting abstract interests of either suppliers or customers, only those interests which are likely to impact their ability or willingness to continue to purchase/supply the way they have been.
I actually began work on that at one point, but decided to stop as "no-one needs another To-do app" -- that said, I'm yet to come across a truly cross-platform GTD app that actually works nicely...
I wasn't saying that you thought it was ok to rip off employees.

But I was talking about the how people will perceive your comment - you came a cross as taking a hardline "Caveat emptor" line.

How you "present" to your employees and the public (to use a some HR jargon) is key - and if your misunderstood it can can have serious consequences - Quiet how Eric Schmidt still has a job I dont know given his propensity for gaffes that makes Prince Phillip seem diplomatic.

I have worked for a boss who was a FSTE 100 director and he was very good at explaining that he couldn't always tell us every thing that he knew.
The Economics of Anti-Viral Anti-Social Networks
Show HN: HandsOnOpenCL - open source lectures and examples in C, C++ and Python
Because the product isn't ad space, its advertising views, which are supplied by people.

People are the supplier, not the product.
I think you nailed it. I've noticed this a prevalent opinion in SF.
The Only Six Things You Should Be Doing
some of it is due to the really harsh climate. But I guess most of it might be lifestyle.. but then again, wouldn't that be due to climate in the first place?
At a guess, two different failure modes. One the "ground server problems" case, and one the "I wish we could hang a giant directional antenna off the side of the rocket" case.
If they are, then it makes GTA5 all the more realistic.
SpaceX Falcon 9 blasts off from California
What do you tell people who ask how your startup is doing?
I missed take off by a few minutes. Is there a recording up yet?
That just means whoever does the video merge for the live stream decided (inconsistently) that the video downlink should coincide with control room chatter... cut out and all.
Well the 5 year share save for BT due next year will return about £60k (tax free) and I know there will be a lot of people taking redundancy after that.
That was a surprisingly smooth ride up.

Congratulations to the SpaceX team on another massive milestone. Looking forward to more from the Falcon 9 and Merlin 1D.
I noticed the logic gates are mislabeled - "or" is called "exclusive or" and "and" is called "or".
From what I see on the front page, the course seems to be based on the notion of refinement, i.e. transforming a high-level specification into a concrete implementation by refining the specification in several steps.
There is a recent example [1] of a software development process based on refinement. The authors build a fully verified model-checker using Isabelle/HOL. The code has a non-trivial size (4900 lines of ML) and implements complex functionality (model-checking algorithms) in an efficient way. Roughly speaking, it is proved that the model-checker reports the violation of a property if and only if the system under scrutiny does violate the property.

[1] http://cava.in.tum.de/templates/publications/CAV2013.pdf
I don't see what your connection is between people shopping at Trader Joes and people who don't get vaccinated.

I can understand being concerned about such "crowd services" (although I personally use Airbnb and other such services regularly) but I don't see a basis or reason for that particular association between people who shop at a Trader Joes and people who don't get vaccinated.
"Picture perfect launch". Congratulations Spacex!
From the video stream, it looks like it reached orbit (?) without any problems.
I lived in Spain for about a year. Blame it on the time zone, but inherently the culture is "work to live" not "live to work".

I miss it and sincerely cherish that country and all the great people in it.
Do you really notice that though?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf-T3KeLbuM
Process Small Files on Hadoop Using CombineFileInputFormat