skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes. I have an Android phone, and have been running around, meetings/interviews, writing emails, browsing the web, maps, etc. non stop. And I never missed my laptop.

I have a desktop at home though, to do real work, but while on the go, the Android has been fantastic. You can do almost everything you can with a normal computer.
No it's for sho making a poor assumption: that github's directly running the site (e.g. by its own employees) instead of a github user running the site.
they should just put them in the full article feed, then
Read what you normally read. If you spend an okay amount of time here you know what's appropriate, probably interesting,etc. Submit it. It's really that simple. I never go link hunting for HN.
On the Concept of Genus in Topology and Complex Analysis
Cool. One tiny nitpick:

Periods as block terminators seems like a Classic Military Blunder to me. You really want something that stands out for something that important, which is why curly braces (and indentation (and "END IF")) work so well.

I have 3 dozen period-sized flecks of dust on my screen right this minute. [pauses to wipe screen]. If this language went mainstream in its current state, I predict lawsuits for squint-blindness.
Not bad tutorial. It's nice to see she had trouble getting a result: all the vids and tutorials from the backroom hackers usually show it working perfectly each time - which in my experience never happens...

Some tips I've picked up from bitter experience

Always use wesside-ng tool to try it first. It's worth the 20 mins or more it can take for this to fail (because often it will work). Or for best use run it in tandem - your faffing about on the network only generates more traffic.

Use Backtrack 3. v4 is horrid and you cant easily install it onto HDD (which I consider essential for easy use).

Pick your wireless card carefully - it's really worth thinking about it hard. We use Ubiquiti cards which can cost up to $100 but are absolutely fantastic. We have gotten much longer range with these cards than any other. Avoid USB adaptors it usually confuses things.

Use a directional antenna: when your doing this in the same room as the router signal should be stonking. But through several walls and a car windscreen things tend to go very quiet :) A directional antenna (we use two 12x12 inch panels) will increase your sensitivity no end.

Spend time plotting the network. I have never got any of the GPS->Kismet->Map tools to work (gpsdump is the closest I got to working). In the end we now use handy little bluetooh GPS devices coupled with Kismet to drive round and plot data for a bit. Then transfer the data to a windows laptop and use KMS2KML to create actual Google Earth plot files. It's a bit of a pain but tends to be pretty accurate.

I've been playing with a way to grab data off of the kismet server and make the KML file automatically - but it's not so much of a pain for it to be worth the investment.
Thanks. If anyone spots an error or something missed out please do say. Calling things "confused" might be an understatement :D
Don't waste your time on this stupid puzzle. #13 is just completely unfair. There are too many combinations (if the answer ends with '0' do add a '5' to form a plural or use a decimal point? Do you use '9' or '8' to represent 'b'?) Trying out all the possibilities is just not fun. And the 4th question is too much of a guessing game.
Grow Yourself a Six-Pack
UnToDos.com I get along with it better I believe because of the looser, and simpler categorization of ->Do right now, ->Sometime soon and ->Whenever. And to a lesser extent the fun!/no-fun flagging of activities.
Waking Up Early
First, someone will have to write Vial, Potion's DB interface or persistence system.
Bypass registration and view the article directly here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/opinion/02kristof.html?_r=...
You know, every couple of weeks an article like this comes up on HN or Slashdot predicting the end of the RDBMS. I don't deny that special purpose data stores can offer great performance improvements in some applications. But there is a reason that RDBMSs are celebrating their 40th birthday (as the article mentions). They are flexible, cheap (except for Oracle and DB2) and easy to manage.

My guess is that we will still be reading about the imminent death of the relational database another 40 years from now.
As much as these guidelines, in general, are good there are a few things that are just a little wrong.

1. Addslashses is not a good solution to SQL Injection. It might be good to invest in a database abstraction layer, or an ORM that will do prepared statements without thinking twice.

2. Strip_Tags is not a solution to XSS. I prefer using something like WMD, Textile, BBCode or Wiki formatting for user input and then kill everything else with fire.

3. Removing JS and Flash from output using an RE is not a solution. If you're blacklisting, it probably won't work. These exploits have been around forever. Maybe Anti-Samy can help.

4. Referers can be spoofed. Although, this is a good "honesty first" check.

5. If you are using crypt, you are doing it wrong. Very, very wrong. After 8 characters, you're practically in plain text.
Firefox 3.5: 7 million downloads
This is just a brief summary of the Michael Stonebraker's piece "The End of a DBMS Era (Might be Upon Us)" which appeared on HN a few days ago. As far as I can tell it adds nothing new, am I missing something?
Yeah, I stopped reading when I realized that his Minimalism criteria (nothing he didn't want) was so completely confounded by his Completeness criteria (everything he did want). Although it was nice to see a list of web based task managers all in one place.
that removes pretty much all the fun :)
It would be more relevant if everyone here commenting would indicate whether they are personally involved in the hiring process, and in what role.

Otherwise, we may as well be discussing the purchase of a new car with folks who have never and will never buy one. Their perspective must be discounted accordingly.

I am not involved in hiring. But I sure wish the companies I apply to were like Fog Creek; openly publishing their hiring philosophy and requirements check-list.
If you're posting the link for the karma, please don't bother.
I don't understand, I thought relational DBMS were left for the dogs many years ago. . .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dbms#End_1970s_SQL_DBMS
The whois entry for thepiratebay.org points to it being controlled by Fredrik Neij who is apparently this person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_Neij

Perhaps he's the 'he'.
Well, ofcourse I have but hey, I like it.

Broken download links tell me: This project is abandoned, nobody even cares enough to update the links, stay away, don't waste your time.

This didn't ever happen with google code and the ilk to me, mind you, but only during those desperate "feeling lucky" google searches. Yes the sourceforge links may still work, but who wants a tarball from 2001?
You could be right. But Stonebraker is not "just another guy" predicting the end of the era of the RDBMS. He's one of the guys who invented the RDBMS. If he thinks he's seen something better, well, I think it's worth at least taking a look.
Understood, this reads like anti-Oracle linkbait.
Poll: Would you pay to back up data from your online accounts?
I store a lot of information in hosted apps, and I want that data to be backed up just like my local files. Aside from email, there are no standard APIs or protocols to backup/export from most of these services, so I've cobbled together some scripts for my own use. If I turned this into an easy-to-use service or product, could it be a viable business? I'm asking here because HN readers are some of the early customers I'd hope for.

This poll is biased towards services that I know and use (best to be your own customer, right?) but you can suggest others in the comments.

I would pay $50-100/year for a program or service that created regular, automated backups of my...
Google Docs and Spreadsheets
address book (GMail contacts, Yahoo contacts, etc.)
weblog (Wordpress, LiveJournal, Blogger, etc.)
Google Reader subscription list, starred/shared items, notes, etc.
shared photos (Flickr, SmugMug, Picasa)
shared bookmarks (Delicious, Ma.gnolia)
AWS storage (S3, SimpleDB)
...if it let me quickly search and access my data even when the hosted service had a
brief outage.
...if it let me view and compare previous snapshots, to see what changed when.
...if it was an online service that did not require me to install any
software.
...if I could run it on my own computer, without sending any passwords or data through a third party.
...if it helped me take my data with me when I switch to a different service.
Hundreds of entrepreneurs on Twitter (including founders of YC companies)
Ghostery - Top Widgets on the Web
Earlids (John McCarthy)
I want to believe that, but assume that the number of applicants is a hundred-fold more than the number of interesting positions available.

You need to survive that first sift through the pile, especially if it's done by non-techies.
Did you click through to "Next Step"? He did write a tutorial.
I want Sandy back. :)

No really, anything like it out there, or will I have to make my own?
Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Share Genetic Roots
Well you're entitled to your opinion of course, but #4 is not a guessing game - the answer is given to you, you just have to work out how to find it.

#17 has me totally stumped though, anyone offer any clues? I've tried naming the computer, the institute, the museum... no luck :-(
Possible. But highly doubtful.

As further background,.. Neij is one of the 4 recently on trial. The trial itself relates to the 2006 raid - it was after this that the site was signed over to the holding company.

Whilst any of the 4 put on trial could, theoretically, be the "mysterious" owner I am not convinced. The intention in signing over the site was to take the heat off of these individuals - knowing their motivations and their MO I would imagine it is someone very unlikely.
A very detailed one for that matter.

Very nice design..
Data Processing -- Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
Oh, personally, I don't. (check my posting history and you'll see I rarely post links.)

I'm just thinking from the point of view of a value-reward system. The only quantitative reward on HN is karma, hence an optimisation strategy to post new links is surely best based around said reward.
Don't agree. Oh well, each to his own.
> I hardly think this example can be characterized as a flaw.

If there's a such a thing as a tipping point, then yes, it's a flaw because your brain won't signal real danger until it's too late to do anything about it.
I don't mean the 4th task, I mean the 4th question in task #13
I don't know where you're getting this idea that equality only makes sense on numbers. In set theory for example, {a,b} equals {a} union {b}, we don't say it is "identical to" or "equivalent to", it IS the same thing. But we don't necessarily need to define an ordering on sets; the equality makes sense without the notion of sorting.
As much as I want to be a keyboard-snob, I find this feature to aid my productivity due to the sheer number of labels I have.
This release is nothing short of a revolution for the Google Maps API. What once took 15 JS function calls now only takes one or two with a json string describing your point/polygon/etc. Thanks Google!
#2 is interesting - hadn't thought of that approach - are you aware of examples of where this has happened?
"Now"? I had some of those 15 years ago. And yes, very handy.
"Self-esteem has gone up in the United States; achievement has not."
I fail to see how using a proven solution like relational databases involves hassles with scaling.
I was looking for something along these lines, but I really just want the h, j, k, l movement keys. Those combined with the / (search in page) and ' (search links in page) shortcuts would dramatically cut down my use of the mouse when browsing.
I think data independence all but implies a reductionist data model (uniform probably isn't a very clear term). And when I say data model I don't mean a particular schema but the primitives that are used to model the data, like relations and attributes in the relational model or key value pairs in Berkeley DB.

I cannot say anything useful about CouchDB as I don't know it nearly well enough. What I think doesn't work is to hide data behind a procedural API when it comes to read access (write access is a different matter).

A procedural API is a black box that you cannot reason about and has a very application specific purpose that doesn't lend itself to analytics apps. Analytics apps should know as little as possible about particular applications. They cannot easily call arbitrary functions.

My experience with data centric apps is that it's a good thing to have that situation where everything is a table and each of the few operations you have creates another table. Tables in, tables out. The same thing works with lists, key/value pairs, etc.

My battle cry would be "No applications specific APIs" (for data access)
Well... You can use Zope and Plone. I have done so for a very long time (in fact, I started using Python because of Zope).

Zope 3.x (Plone runs on top of Zope 2.x) is a very nice application server. I wonder if it would be possible to make it work seamlessly with things like Hadoop instead of ZODB.
BillFLO turns one today. What have we learned?
It's a flaw if we are short-sighted most of the time and not using our power of reason, foresight to prevent threats in the not-so-immediate future. Also, we react to future threats differently depending on the type of threat. We react more strongly to the threat of WMDs in Iraq than we do to climate change. The article is suggesting that there is a hard-wired reason for this and we are not being completely rational when evaluating both of those threats.
Just for starters, your ORM will model an object for a row of data, how many times do you get the whole row when you're really interested in just a column or two? Does your ORM let you just specify the parts of the row you're interested in or does it hydrate an object and populate all of the columns?

I don't know about (n)hibernate or other ORMs, but Linq for SQL let's you specify exactly what you want, and when you inspect the SQL generated, it is usually quite efficient, although not 100% optimal for complex queries.

There is also the issue with nested objects (relations) and if they should be prefetched or not (to avoid in effect nested-loop type SQL), but that is perfectly controllable.

My biggest issue with ORM layers is transaction-handling when you are doing some things in the DB, some things with data from this query and some data from this other query. This can quickly promote to what would in DB be a simple transaction to a distributed transaction.

When used correctly ORMs are very nice tools indeed, but to use them efficiently, you have to know how they work and how the underlying DB they interface with works as well.
I'd like to see the wording of the question, and the survey delivery method. I can't imagine almost a quarter of people who're able to feed and clothe themselves not having heard of Einstein or Pasteur.
I wonder if users actually want this.
Previously:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=169149,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=170373 (video)

It would be nice to add year to the title if the article is old.
Like a frog in water slowly brought to a boil.
MySQL can hardly be called representative for good relational databases. That MySQL is underfeatured and performs like shit for any non-trivial query is hardly news.
What I will blame Python for is the lack of even the most basic time conversion features that even C has. If all they did was give me the exact same POSIX C API I’d be happy. Instead, I got some half-assed library and some half-assed rationale about why this is a better way to do it.

Ermm, datetime.strptime and datetime.strftime?
Protip: Host your own blog.
Software Engineering would progress a lot farther as a discipline if we weren't so preoccupied with throwing out the "old" to make room for the "new".

My definition of "legacy" code: code that is field-tested, has a low defect rate, and generally works.
The last option is creative, but would it run afoul of securities regulations?

http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm
I strongly agree. There's a license fee in Ireland too (where I'm from) and they do the same thing, one sentence news feeds. If you're getting funded by mandatory public contributions, then you don't really own your content, the public does.

I don't care if the BBC's management wants to drive people to their website. In fact, I don't care about the wants of the BBC management at all. Besides, the textual news content even on the website is pretty shallow. People will still visit the website to get more information by watching a video.
Oh, my mistake; #13 certainly is a pain, although as it happens, my first guess for part 4 was correct because I happen to fit that stereotype :-)
I don't know that it's worth linking here, but unlike some of the other folks here, I don't see the horrible sin in pointing out Hacker News to people.

How many of us got here by waking up from a dead sleep, finding our fingers mysteriously typing "news.ycombinator.com", and then going, "Huh, this is pretty cool."? (Presumably following this with, "Help! My fingers are typing strange URLs by themselves!")
good idea, no doubt about it ... crowdsourcing is the best way to go ... though i have few queries (especially the last one)if someone can answer:

1. how is lobsterback going to make money? OR are they planning for no profit and no loss endeavor?

2. Is there any contract paperwork done? and can an investor see that beforehand?

3. How lobsterback is committed for ROI when you're investing in "Natalie queen of stock - LLC"?

4. Personally I want to know how SEC won't object to such financing? as investors are also shareholders!!??!! Because if this can be done (legally) then angel investing (thru crowdsourcing) can go off the roof to help so many different kind of startups. So if you know a trick/loop-hole/idea/grey-area of how one can arrange this kind of financing then reply here right away.

I TRULY SEE THIS IDEA A REVOLUTIONARY !!! I'm saying this because i know people who have done research (on this kind of financing) and spoke to several lawyers but with no help ...
not sure, but it might avoid it. I mean you as a company are just selling your company to another company.

The other company just happens to have 400 co-founders, who each threw in $250
What I hate are these teaser articles about folks with unpublished dissertations. There are some articles on Citeseer and at stanford, but nothing about his dissertation. Is this the next holy grail? Or is it just marketing fluff? We can't tell without reading it.
Sounds like OP gives a free pass to those who only use the reptilian third of their brain because of "evolution".
An enviable work schedule
Part of TrevorJ's point is that there's a very good case to be made that when people declare our level of concern about global warming is irrational, that they are in fact being irrational about that claim. Future fears are discounted, and they should be, because the alternative is paralysis. It's easy to spout off about how we "should" be as concerned about global warming as a snake ten feet away when you don't realize just how thoroughly infeasible that approach would be.

Redesigning the human body is an old hobby, but a complete understanding of how evolution works and the complexity of the human body (including the brain) should make one hesitate. I've seen numerous things that could be "better" (for example, "let's just get rid of the appendix"), but I've never seen such a redesign that I could actually guarantee was a certainly-better thing. The tradeoffs are ignored.

There's no guarantee that "just" allowing the prefrontal cortex to induce a larger fear response will have anything like the desired effect. You might just end up with a population with widespread, crippling phobias, or, given that the prefrontal cortex is hardly invincible, widespread coordinated responses to non-threats. I think this went by on HN a few days ago and can serve as an example of an excessively-powerful prefrontal cortex overriding survival instincts to terrible, terrible effect: http://lewrockwell.com/orig9/deming2.html (or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse ) (Just take the initial story bit.)

It's just not trivial to re-engineer the brain, and those who are making political points while doing so should be flat-out ignored.
What If I'm Wrong About Peak Oil?
imho, selling for $100k is harder than selling for a few million. Ask yourself why a company would buy you:

- are you accretive to existing biz models?

- are you disruptive to existing biz models?

- do you have amazing technology? <-- i hope not for you, this is always the hardest to sell.

In short, I think selling a startup for 100k is like selling a vintage, pristine '71 Ford Pinto. To the exact right buyer, somehere, it might be worth 100k - but to the general population it's worth about the same as a tall latte.

Best of luck!
The paper is here: http://ideas.repec.org/p/sba/wpaper/05bwmk.html

He's generalizing from banking industry data from 1984-1997, which seems like a tenuous proposition. Recent events suggest the risk in the banking industry was not properly understood during that period.

Further, when examining risk tolerance, it might be good idea to look at an industry where expected returns can't be accurately forecast in advance. Banking seems like an exception to the rule here.

There are a couple of subtle misdirections in the paper. In one place he says: "This risk of failure is considerable. Approximately 10% of all firms in the United States fail each year (U.S. Small Business Administration 1999)." Actually, the risk of failure of banking institutions is in Table 3, which he doesn't textually mention is 1%.

He also mentions "Furthermore, even though the banking is one of the oldest industries, it has been growing at 6.5% rate over the past ten years (roughly three times GDP growth)." which is irrelevant as it's over a different time period than his data and analysis. Further, the chart he inserts directly after this sentence shows a decreasing rate of entry over his studied period. Also, notice the numbers: this whole paper is premised on the entry of between 50 and 400 new companies per year.
That's quite true. I like the idea (since I'm in film myself and I hate begging people for money), but yes, it does seem like something the SEC would disapprove of, which is why most internet film fundraising requests non-refundable donations in exchange for collector's editions and stuff like that.

Edit: well I guess their lawyers are sure of what they're at. I hope they write about or open source their process, as I'd far rather raiser cash in micro-amounts based on the strength of the script etc. than sit in investor meetings.
Actually my point was that there are a lot of people out there who maybe liked one of his songs pre-iTunes but weren't inclined to buy the whole album so they just forgot about it. Then when he died they realized they could now buy just that one song which is why he's getting these monster sales numbers.

From that I extrapolated that you can make a lot of money if not more money from a bunch of micro purchases.
the more emacs-y solution would have been to embed the browser in the editor.
If had to condense what HN likes to a phrase it'd be: actionable ideas.
MySpace now a digital ghetto
How many information devices does a person really need?
See my comment elsewhere in the thread, but the paper can be found here: http://ideas.repec.org/p/sba/wpaper/05bwmk.html
See also: http://philip.greenspun.com/business/mobile-phone-as-home-co...
There's some speculation[1] at metafilter that the prices and stock percentages involved might make TPB a majority stakeholder in GGF.

[1] http://www.metafilter.com/82889/Pirate-AB#2629173