skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Summary: The web according to TechCrunch (apparently Twitter, TMZ and Perez Hilton's blog) went down. Everything being talked about on the web (which is full represented by twitter's "trending topics") was Michael Jackson.

This is garbage.

The only redeeming factor was the googlemapsapi tweet. Apparently Google's "don't be evil" motto doesn't extend to their marketing. The tweet: http://twitter.com/googlemapsapi/status/2334341646
That's about as good an explanation as I think anyone could give. Thank you for shedding some light on it. Seriously.
But the logic is valid. He should have loved cleaning chemical reactors in comparison (and he never said he didn't). We should always be trying to improve our lives. But sometimes our current situations aren't ideal, and at those times, I think it is appropriate to mentally establish a context in which that situation is still pretty darn good. You might not find the extreme comparisons intellectually compelling, but someone who adopts this attitude will clearly be happier. So who is the fool?
This is somewhat hacker-relevant: During a 30-minute window, 22% of all tweets mentioned Michael Jackson (with the correct spelling).

http://twist.flaptor.com/trends?gram=michael%20jackson&s...

It's the highest peak we've seen for a person since we started tracking.
> For example, the movement from professionally managed pensions to individually managed (and often choice-limited) 401k plans as a main vehicle for retirement savings.

We've found that the risk of professionally managed pensions is actually borne by taxpayers, not "institutions".
Do you have any suggestions on how to deliver a solid presentation?
I just got out of a thesis defense presentation. Since my own thesis defense is likely going to occur soon, I've started to attend other people's presentations in order to get a sense of what's required/expected. I've already been to three presentations and I can say they all have one thing in common: they were utterly dull! Irrespective of the very interesting nature of the projects (software development and robotics), the presenters not only lacked luster, but they also struggled mightily during the introduction and further explanation of their work. One of them was so nervous, his advisor had to ask him to "take 5 and relax". I've learned two important things already: 1) take it easy, nobody knows your subject better than you do, and 2) focus on the "why" more than the "how".

Since I have the utmost respect for the HN community (I've learned an awful lot from you guys), I'd like to ask you the following: Do you have any presentation hints for hackers? What do you think works best when presenting a project/product/idea/paper to both technical and not technical folks alike?

Thanks for your consideration!
America, too. Not everyone goes to $40k a year private schools. A degree from an in-state school can be had for well within $50k.
correct, both parties have appealed the previous verdict, and there will be at least one other trial. If the court would have found the judge bias they would have had to retake the previous trial.

Edit: The Local is a good source for English news about Sweden: http://www.thelocal.se/20280/20090625/
I would contend that the point of the RFP process is to make it harder to rig. That doesn't mean that the vendors themselves don't try to influence the RFP such that it makes them look better, or that the people issuing the RFP don't do that themselves. But it's overly cynical and a misunderstanding of where the RFP process came from to say it's there to rig the process: it's there because the bidding process has been "rigged" since time immemorial, and it's an attempt to make things more transparent and harder to rig. It's certainly not totally successful at that, but it's unfortunately often better than the other sorts of processes people use for major contracts (like no-bid contracts, handshake deals, etc.).
Our site was hit pretty badly, and we saw the highest-ever number of mentions of a person on Twitter (22% of all tweets over a 30-minute window):

http://twist.flaptor.com/trends?gram=michael%20jackson&s...
US Patent 5255452 (or: Why Michael Jackson was a Hacker)
The incumbents always fought tooth and nail to keep things as they are, and since they had the support of the state they usually succeeded.

Has there ever been a time in recorded history when this was not generally true?
There was some discussion about the relevance of Michael Jackson's death to Hacker News. lyime mentioned the moonwalk as a "dance hack", and this reminded me of the patented anti-gravity lean -- a genuine hack. Look at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/Smooth_crimina... and http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Smooth_cr... to quickly see why this is cool.
tmz was the first/original on this one -- not nytimes, cnn, or anyone else in this case
Wolfram Alpha is right. The use of "kB" to refer to 1024 bytes is incorrect and results from historical issues involving hardware addressing and RAM.

I discuss this in some more detail on the tarsnap (beta testing) website in explaining why I charge $0.30 per GB-month of storage instead or $0.30 per GiB-month of storage: https://beta.tarsnap.com/GB-why.html
As in, a design goal of many of the AE modes is to allow the encryption key to be reused.
Hacker news is not about hacking, not about news, and not about news about hacking. It's about posting links that apparently have become interesting to the community evolved here recently.

This includes, not limited to:

- iPhone news (if you live outside the US, disregard this as nobody gives a shit).

- Web frameworks (bonus if it uses an esoteric language)

- Anything distributed (CouchDB or MapReduce)

- Functional programming musings bordering on the philosophical by people who are contemplating writing a functional program.

If you are lost for news, but want to build credibility (points), you can consider doing any of the following.

- Go to TED, BBC, NYT or any of the other major feeds and add the newest item to HN.

- Post some course notes from MIT OCW (usually anything with a MIT or Stanford label on it translates into instant cred).

Finally, if you really need points and have exhausted other options, you can post the link to the SICP videos or pdf. This happens quite often but people seem to vote it up out of fear of neglecting their religious duties.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=674621
I agree that some forms of intelligence must be able to be learned, in the sense that it may involve employing the right algorithm (NlogN rather than N^N). There must be a software component involved that can be updated and accelerated through experience. In fact, that seems to be what experience is.
Gemstone has a free version limited to 4 gig, but few if any object databases are language agnostic, that would defeat the purpose. Object systems are language specific, storing them in their native format is thus generally also language specific.

There's an open source one called Magma in Squeak that's like a Gemstone lite, but I'd take the Gemstone version any day because it'll scale to any level you'll ever need, ever. I'm working on a Gemstone project now, and after having used it, nothing else I've seen comes close to the massive productivity it offers.

By the way, databases shouldn't be language agnostic, this leads to the ever present anti pattern of using the database as an integration point between many programs which turns the database into a giant ball of mud global variable that becomes impossible to change.

Integration databases suck. Application should own their own data and integrate with other application via services. That's how the web became so successful and that's how big ass enterprises should be ran as well, many small apps loosely coupled, not one giant global db where every app is bound to a generic schema that isn't suited for what it actually needs.
I'm sorry, but I think that tweet is unbelievably tasteless.

I'll just have to take the down votes.
Also, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=674647 for a mechanical hack of Jackson's.
I clicked the link and now I feel dirty. When will I stop clicking on linkbait headlines?
Maglev will be one soon, and it's just Gemstone under the hood so it'll be bad ass.
Note: "alpha release 1" - sounds like fun for some.
I agree about the commonly understood standards of discourse. With that in mind, it would be left up to the blog author to "opt in" by deciding to routinely grab their hacker news comments and integrate them into their own.

The comments are one of the best parts of HN and I think there must be few blogs that would want (and deserve) these discussions to be included with their original posts.
Just to clarify: The King of Pop died and not the King of Snap, Crackle and Pop.
I agree with this reasoning. I'm just surprised at the event that gets the exception.
Sorry about that last tweet -- it was in bad taste and we apologize.
half a minute ago from web

Heh. PR blunder cycles at Twitter speed! Or as Arrington might say, "in real-time".
See it as an example of the advice to writers: "kill your darlings". :-)

And yes, my best jokes are often downmoded too.

And no, I didn't downmod your bad joke -- out of courtesy. :-)

(Previous was one of my good jokes; I've never downmoded.)
The site has no explanation as to why this was needed.
Are you sure? I thought this, too, but just checked out my home state's University (Minnesota). It's a typical big state school and tuition and fees for 4 years are pushing $45K. I was surprised because I assumed total tuition was closer to $30K.
Add the Farrah poster that was probably on your wall at the time and today is an "interesting" day for those of us who are of a certain age...
A few comments on this quote:

1. There are very different learning curves in different fields, but you have to remember that all of your competition in a given field is on the same curve.

2. Physics relies on specialized skills, while French Literature relies on generalized skills.

3. The basics of literary skill are reading, writing, and speaking. You practice those every day and have been for all of your adult life. How much time have French Literature PhDs been putting into math skills?
he sets the bar pretty high: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_wor...
As much as I like to distance myself and really not care about the deaths of people I don't know, I do feel myself saddened by this. He contributed a great deal to a huge number of lives and completely changed what people thought of pop and pop stars. Hacker news or not, I feel having this space as a place for discussion is worthwhile imho.
If you let me have this one, I'll happily make some sort of egocentric wiki site out of it.

steve.johnson.public @ that gmail site
Your anecdote is a reason why I shouldn't incorporate in California. It isn't a reason why I should incorporate in Delaware.
I agree with your sentiment overall, but "fucking moron" takes it a bit too far. Most entrepreneurs make far bigger mistakes without it having a significant impact. In most cases, where you incorporate has very little impact down the line, and when it does, you probably should've been taking advice from a business lawyer in the first place.
I want a trackpoint (the red nipple in the middle of IBM laptops) on every keyboard I own.
I wasn't actually looking for the cheaper phone. Before I made the purchase, someone else pointed out to me the hardware difference - lack of 3G, wifi, and screen resolution - I didn't see how they were selling points. Having used a friend's iPhone extensively, I never made use of wifi or really benefited from the screen resolution. And 3G is just higher transfer speed, right? Perhaps the issue is that I don't watch videos on my cellphone? I like to make calls, check email, and use GPS on my phone. To me, the loss of those hardware features didn't seem to be anywhere near worth the loss of the clamshell design and the extra battery.
eastern cultures where they consider intelligence to be more of a skill that can be refined through practice

Which cultures are you referring to? I'm Chinese-American, and the impression I got from my parents is that they believe everything is genetically determined.
WoW gamer runs 36 accounts on 11 PCs
That's really funny. The HP-12C is still extremely popular at work. I could never bring myself to get used to it -- I still use my TI-89 from college -- and I get a lot of flak from the rest of the office.
Also... http://twitter.com/pamelafox/status/2335617763

The people behind corporate Twitter accounts are, well, people too, and they make mistakes like the rest of us. I know Pamela and she actually is a nice person.

Perhaps someone should create a service that allows the PR dept to "approve" tweets before they go live...
My time spent polyphasic was massively productive. The software and systems I developed during that time formed the foundation of my business. But then I acquired customers, resellers, contractors, and other business partnerships, which made incompatibility with the rest of the world more difficult to handle.

The other major downside is a distinct lack of flexibility. In a monophasic sleeping pattern, if you have a situation and need to work and/or be on phone calls for 24 hours straight, you can do it easily. In a polyphasic pattern, tiredness hits you like a brick wall if you put off a scheduled nap just an hour or two.

Still, if I was starting a new business from scratch, I would seriously consider going polyphasic again for a few months to build the initial foundation.
haha, thanks :)

Oh well, sometimes you take a shot and miss.
sigh ... the president really failed, yet it still took and extra four years to get rid of him.

Of course, we're still doing better then Iran.
Ask HN: How do you track time?
Tools & techniques?
sachinag's tweet: Wow, someone's getting fired

Pamela's reply: my personal apologies - that wasnt the intention of the tweet. i retract.

Yes, I'm pretty sure she wasn't trying to get fired...sorry, I just thought it was funny she said it that way.
There are a lot of late bloomers on HN.
Texas at least. tuition at the University of Texas is $4600 a semester full time. Pretty much every public university in Texas is about the same or better.
Well, Thomas Fuchs also created script.aculo.us, so I'm thinking he can rewrite it if he wants. I suppose he and the handful of people he worked with on Scripty2 with thought they could do it better, faster, lighter, whatever if they started over.
also hacked into child processes.

wait, wrong hacker.
Hey,

I just played with the site for a while and really enjoyed it. The design is simple and easy to use.. you did a good job.

Some comments:

-The about button at the bottom doesn't work (at least not on FF on Ubuntu). I was trying to figure out how you get the musics/copyrights/privacy policy/etc.

-How are you getting the musics? I see the users can upload, but what about copyright? That can be a pain to deal with..

-There is not many musics yet, which is understandable for a new site.

Good job and good luck.
Cheers! (From the voting, I think I owe you a few upmods! :-P )
This is the modern equivalent of the quarter fed arcade game. Instead of games designed to kill me off not matter what I'm now going to see games designed to limit my progress no matter what? I can't say I'm looking forward to this bold new era of incentives for games designed to try and up sell me.
I am getting this error when I try to access:

"
The Google Maps API server rejected your request. This could be because the API key used on this site was registered for a different web site. You can generate a new key for this web site at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/.
"
I agree with Andrew Sullivan:

There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06...
That's interesting, could you give some examples please?
No relevance whatsoever - I am confused at how the #1 and #2 front page stories (of HN) are about MJ.

I understand exceptions, but aside from relevant science posts, I can't think of too many that would be merited.
StorageMart
If you want to put some of your valuable goods in a StorageMart, you are required to pay a certain rent. Self storage owners generally buy or lease out real estate properties in key locations and construct the storage facilities depending upon the demand of that area.
"Stop copying me" belongs back in elementary school, along with "I'm rubber and you're glue" and "Nanny-nanny boo-boo."

Fortunately US judges seem to have graduated from elementary school, and they have pretty much smacked down look-and-feel lawsuits every time they've come up: Apple versus Microsoft, Lotus versus Borland, etc.
Flag does nothing - I've flagged it too. HN turned to reddit, I'll stick to reddit then, since it is a better choice for this kind of topics. RIP MJ
Here's a direct link to the github page, which gives slightly more insight: http://github.com/madrobby/scripty2/tree/master

"scripty2 is a complete rewrite and reimplementation of script.aculo.us, with are modular structure intended to ease the development of highly customized user interface effects and behaviours."
Podcast interview with Austin Meyer, creator of X-Plane.
Missed the exchange involving the deleted comment but I want to emphasize that the point of my article is to think it through rather than just being reflexive about Delaware. I am not anti-Delaware. Just don't do Delaware unless it really makes sense.

The reason I used the title "why not to incorporate" in Delaware was just to emphasize that those who read the article will hear the other side of the argument as well as the usual pro-Delaware argument.

We incorporate many of our clients in Delaware when they desire it after understanding the trade-offs and issues. We just don't herd them into it without explanation.
Alan Kay's version is punchier: "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points." (Wikiquote says this is from "talk at Creative Think seminar, 20 July 1982" and links to Andy Hertzfeld's notes at http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story... for evidence.)
I think their price is more-or-less reasonable in terms of the value provided and in comparison to application pricing for other mobile platforms:

http://www.berryreview.com/2008/04/22/review-calculator-apps...

http://www.berryreview.com/2008/07/31/calculator-apps-part-5...

iPhone application prices are unsustainably low. I find the $30 price point to be a very encouraging sign.
Ten Helpful User Interface Design Patterns
Ask HN: How do you store credentials to external services?
My current project involves sending e-mail and SMS, and receiving responses from users over the same channel. To connect the external providers, I have accounts with passwords.

Currently those passwords are just stored in plaintext in the source code, which feels slightly unsafe. I tell myself that the fear is completely unfounded and that if someone were to get access to the source code of the app, their ability to look at the passwords of external services will be a very small part of the problem. However, I feel it is prudent to ask before I move on:

Where do you store passwords for external services?

Thanks.
They ask people to email them if they know anyone in the pictures.
Mobile uploads to YouTube up 400% after iPhone 3GS launch
I seem to recall there was a similar conflict of interest in the Corley case, and I don't think it resulted in a retrial.
How is a phishing vulnerability based off a singular site? Phishing are just tricks How is a phishing vulnerability based off a singular site? Phishing are just tricks to get the user to give you their credentials in belief you are the site in some way (staff, admin, etc.). It's basically social engineering, how exactly is yours specific to this site? There's nothing you can really do to prevent a phishing attack against your site via defensive programming.to get the user to give you their credentials in belief you are the site in some way (staff, admin, etc.). It's basically social engineering, how exactly is yours specific to this site? There's nothing you can really do to prevent a phishing attack against your site via defensive programming.
I don't think the content industry will disappear. Whilst technology might make it harder to make money from creating content, it also makes it cheaper to create, distribute and market that content. I think we'll see a lot of middlemen go out of business, perhaps a less lucrative movie industry, but I don't think we'll see the end of music or movies, even if copyright disappears entirely.
That example was particularly egregious. PHP uses copy-on-write so the temp variable held a pointer to the 500k of data they mentioned, not a copy.

Had they concatenated a small string to the end then PHP wouldn't copied the data and used the MB of memory they alluded to.

That whole document was half baked at best.

EDIT: I went to look at the document to reference the example and noticed that they changed their example. It used to be:

$description = $_POST['description'];

echo $description;

And now it's:

In the following example, imagine if a malicious user had inserted 512KB worth of characters into a textarea field. This would result in 1MB of memory being used!

$description = strip_tags($_POST['description']);

echo $description;

There's no reason to copy the variable above, you can simply do this operation inline and avoid the extra memory consumption:

echo strip_tags($_POST['description']);

So someone is definitely working on making the examples at least match the description.
Is the putative student "bad at math" or "bad at math the way it's taught in high school, perhaps even by a certain teacher"?

Here is one of my favorite quotations about mathematics teaching, used as my signature tagline on the first online forum where I used the screen name "tokenadult":

"The proper thing for a parent to say is, 'I did badly at mathematics, but I had a very bad teacher. I wish I had had a good one.'" W. W. Sawyer, Vision in Elementary Mathematics (1964), page 5.

Yes, the book from which the quotation comes is very good, and very good for learners with a visual learning style.
Seriously? You've put Michael Jackson in the same category as the Jonas Brothers.
One significantly better feature about Bing is that it doesn't have any "compare to x in another window" boxes checked by default. I switched from Kayak to Mobissimo because of that (despite the fact that their name is so annoyingly hard to remember that I kept inadvertantly going back to Kayak) and unfortunately Mobissimo eventually checked some boxes by default too. So now I'll use Bing.
That's maybe an accurate depiction of what you'd get from the community if you put it to a vote, but it wouldn't be anywhere near unanimous. I personally tend to go the other way. Copying a website is like a band doing a cover version of a song.
I think that can turn into a bit of a slippery slope form of justification, but on its own it's a good argument and you explained it well.

And by the way, when MJ was in his prime, we were all running around elementary school wearing silver gloves on one hand and thought we were the SHIT.
Store them as a file on disk which you read in when necessary. The separation this provides gives you two benefits: First, you don't need to worry about "sanitizing" your source code if you ever want anyone else to look at it; and second, it makes it easy to use separate accounts for development vs. production.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitiligo
Just ask anyone who conducts taste studies for food companies: there's a surprisingly large discrepancy between what people think they enjoy and what they actually enjoy.

This study seems pretty well done, and there were some interesting findings I didn't expect. Still I find the idea of asking people if they would switch kinda dubious. At the end of the day, we just have to look at if they do switch.
Also you can't deny the man was a body-hacker.
Great share!

I didn't realize that Michael Jackson had actually patented his shoe design. I guess he really was a hacker.
Clickable link: http://herdit.org/music/index.html