skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It was a normal American public school in the south. I was in a group of advanced students in my junior high school (we took classes like algebra and Spanish two years before our peers), and I took a few AP classes in high school, so I suppose I wasn't the average high school student.

The explanation of why there was so much homework: In K-5 I had only one teacher each year who taught all the subjects (math, English, history, etc.), and I received just 1 or 2 hours of homework a night. When I entered sixth grade, I suddenly had a different teacher for each subject, each of whom sent me home with an hour or so of homework for each subject.

Keep in mind that I'm trying to average the number of hours I spent per school night. I might have had one night a week where I had very little homework, but once I was in high school, I would spend two or three nights a week up till 1 or 2 in the morning finishing an English essay or work for some other subject.

I think I can honestly say that I wasn't aiming for any university education in sixth grade ;-) I never had any ambition to go to a prestigious university; I only applied to one state school my senior year which I wound up attending.

I guess I just had a lot of tough teachers.
WaTunes Launches Beta Music Video Distribution + Vidzone
I bet Cnet and the like just have MadLibs-like templates for "journalism" like this. "Does ___ have ___ running scared"?
Patching a Program Without Source Code
It's better to title self-sourced posts as 'Ask HN: help me hack...'. Also, perhaps you could explain briefly what your objectives are. Lots of luck!
Good idea on the CDC for viral memes. What's the inoculation plan though? These kinds of damaging things proliferate specifically because finding out what happened to others and making people think logically about them doesn't work.
Why do you think they would have the Springboard source code? These are people from an effects studio in Sweden ... there is no reason they should have that code I think.

I'm also convinced now it is a good fake.
A CNet article quoting the New York Post quoting an anonymous source who says "Bing seems to be of particular interest to Sergey" (emphasis mine). Quite a dubious chain of trust to back up such a mundane point. On the other hand, I don't think the headline "Does Microsoft's Bing have Google running scared? We have no idea" would not have worked very well.
Bing spikes a single day's numbers above 10% and Google is running scared? I don't think so. Competition is good for all consumers. An astro-turfing article by the Microsoft PR machine is the more likely cause of this article.
Strange Changes in Iranian Internet Transit
Second recommendation for Landau-Lifshitz.

The Mechanics book most closely matched the experience I had with SICP. It uses a small number of powerful, primitive concepts to construct all the major results of mechanics. The book is extremely dense, but the writing is so elegant and lucid that it does not feel forbidding. The only prerequisite is comfort with calculus, though prior knowledge of physics will help, and make the book's achievement that much more impressive.

http://www.amazon.com/Course-Theoretical-Physics-Davidovich-...
Terminal.app can't go full screen. I don't need a scrollbar. I don't need menu bar. I don't need any window decorations.

I really like Terminator on linux; it's a python script that wrapps Gnome Terminal and lets you split the screen horizontally and vertically. I'd love to have that on OSX but don't want to run X/Gnome/etc.
in terms of text editors on Mac, nothing else is really that close

emacs
Sure, the best info is probably here: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html .
This may not be a helpful answer, but the most SICP-like experience in my biology education was probably a paper-reading class.
Bingo. There are people that would happily move to SJ for all those things but don't because it's expensive. If tech died and that part of SJ/SV's economy dried up, plenty of people would move in with other things.
Баян:
http://egland.livejournal.com/93045.html
he doesn't do it free - he has other outcomes in mind

How is this hypocritical, though? Anybody publishing anything for free has access to these benefits.
Is that tap gesture stuff in the hardware, or would Linux have to emulate it itself? My powerbook predates the multitouch stuff, so I've never played with it.
Appreciate it! Any suggestions you might have?
2100 No Network Problem | repairmobiles.saaqi
Let me counter with Fred Brooks' "Build one to throw away."

Even just the fact that TextMate is a one-man project is good reason to think that Odgaard knows best whether a rewrite was appropriate.
All text editors are subsets of emacs... that doesn't make emacs more usable or productive though.
openbsd

yesterday, i needed to install new os to my amd64 box. alas, my bro borrowed my dvd rom and i didn't feel like installing from floppies (mine are all dusty)

i have 256mb flash disk lying around, then i googled how to boot openbsd from flash

it turned out that the flash disk must be skipped by 32 sectors, have partition sd0a for boot and sd0i for MSDOS (so ubuntu and osx can mount it as normal flash disk)

after that, the pc booted successfuly from flash disk. untar all tgz from sd0i

the whole openbsd45 fits in 256 mb flash disk :d now i don't need to burn blank dvdrw everytime there's new release

it's quite educational for me since i've been spoiled by always installing openbsd solely from cd (easiest) or floppy+ftp (trickier, for older system like thinkpad x360d no less)

it's lightweight, with dwm. firefox3 with dozens of tabs+addons, vncviewer, xterms, inkscape open take like 200+mb.

my 1GB ram is not exhausted yet, my 2GB swap isn't even used at all. similar setup would exhaust my ubuntu (i migrate back from ubuntu to openbsd and osx)
The problem with GPUs is that I/O latency is very high compared to your average supercomputer. You can do a crazy amount of computation locally on one card, but for problems that aren't "embarrassingly parallel", i.e. those that require a lot of low-latency inter-node communication, you'll immediately be limited by latency.

If nVidia or AMD release GPU based stream processors with onboard or daughterboard-based interconnects directly accessible from the code running on the GPU, THAT's when they'll start eating into CPU market share.

If you're buying a supercomputer, you'll want to make sure to spend at least 50% on the interconnect or you're in for a big disappointment.
Ask YC: Best practice for Python module imports?
Im torn between two general module import styles. The import-everything-at-the-top approach where the beginning of each python file/module imports every module potentially needed later in the file OR the import-as-needed approach.

I know what I dont like; a file starting w/ 20+ import lines, that just seems ugly and java-y (no-flame, just sayin) to me. OTOH, the as-needed-approach seems perhaps a little too, uhm, disorganized? Although Id guess Im probably more partial to that approach.

This is a pretty minor stylistic issue but I havent settled on one approach and I'd like some feedback to come to some conclusion once and for all.

For example,

import foo
import baz
import bar
import quux
import django.foo
# etc

vs.

import sys

def some_os_thing():
import os
print os.getcwd()

def some_http_thing():
import urllib
print urllib.urlopen('http://...').read()
More likely:
s = "something < other"
s = s.replace("<", "&lt;")
Even more likely:
import cgi
s = cgi.escape(s)

In Python, much string manipulation is done with builtins (especially string methods) and library functions. The latter work especially well when you target a specific domain (such as HTML) and will often be implemented in regexps. Writing one's own regexps are for when you actually need a small custom state machine. Many problems are too small or too large to justify the effort.
I wonder sometimes if Silicon Valley really counts as a hyper-specialized region. True, much of the money in the area comes from businesses that are somehow attached to computer hardware or software, but within that sector, there's an incredible amount of variety in terms of tools, technologies, and client base.

Detroit is failing not just because its economy was driven by the automotive industry -- it was also dependent on a small number of employers (basically the Big Three automakers) who failed to compete with more agile, innovative foreign competitors.

There are certainly bigger players in the SV/Bay area whose disappearance would be felt painfully (Google, Apple, Oracle, etc.), but the business culture in the area also seems fairly able to turn collapses (SGI, AltaVista, Netscape, Sun) into opportunities, or at least mitigate the damage done.
openbsd tends to do its own way tho, so it's kinda hard to google for common unix problems (its faq+man pages are more reliable because they are more specific)

i started freebsd (5.3 iirc) like 5+ years ago and abandoned it for openbsd 3.6. do i miss anything?
Being quarantined by the Chinese government sounds pretty ominous...
1. What languages and tools are you using?

2. Where are you located?

3. Which features do you want to include?
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." - Adam Smith
Ok, so this may come as a surprise to you, but technology startups are not the only way that people make money. Weird, I know. But true.

These folks -- http://www.sportscanholder.com/ -- could sell their business for more than a million dollars.
Give your interface purpose
it's truer in osx. i never booted my iBookG4 except for updates.

the more important is the sleeping wake up time. in mac, you can just close it, travel half the world, open it and instantly everything works(tm) just like nothing happened

it seems ubuntu again is copying the wrong model. reboot is sooooo microsoftie, solving it is like premature optimization.
The recommended convention in Python's own documentation is to import everything at the top, and on separate lines.

While technically Python doesn't import anything twice, it still takes nonzero time to check the module registry (a dictionary lookup). So if this happens every time your functions are called, it's unnecessary work, even if it's fast.

I personally tend to do all imports in one place, with the exception of test routines: I figure that a user of a module shouldn't really "depend" on modules that are only needed in test mode, so e.g. I would do a local "import" inside a _test() function.
That's a shame.

It'd be an almost perfect way to make the cyber-nanny types shut up: all the naughty bits of the Internet could be tagged, and a client-side solution would be trivial for parents, libraries, etc.

Additionally, employers could save themselves quite a few sexual harassment problems.

And frankly, the NSFW tag could be argued for both sides of the content vs presentation debate.
I'm just hoping MacRuby will enable the Ruby world to build our own open source Textmate clone so we'll be able to ditch this abandonware piece of crap.
Anecdotes are still data.

You have 2 verified MBP users with a total of 4 problematic MBPs. That's raw data right there.

Do not confuse data with statistics.
My preference is to use

from x import y

inside any function that needs y.

OTOH I think there are good reasons to go with the official Python recommendation, which another poster says states that all imports should be at the top on separate lines.
Eliminate copyright laws and books should soon become available at about cost.
Ah ok, I wasnt aware that Python had an opinion, thats certainly (in my book anyway) a considerable argument for that approach then!

I think I might be converging on a reasonable practice of doing all imports in one place while including basic comments and/or just insuring at least that imports are grouped by category / 'package'.

# Sys imports
import os, sys, urllib

# django imports
import django.foo
...

# google apps imports
import gdata.foo
...
Limits of populist technologies: Iranian crackdown
As the recent Iranian elections and the crackdown that follows is showing, autocractic governments seem to have the upper hand in simply blocking sites like Facebook and bringing down text messaging during times when they could be of most use in organizing the opposition. Are we seeing the real limits of democratizing technologies vs oppressive regimes or are these limits just waiting to be hacked?
Semantic and useful.
Yes but what is at issue is a specific timeframe. Now even CNN is covering it as Iran has opened the floodgates for his own victory parade. But what's at issue is yestereday

As far as calling things a fact I did not, anywhere, speculate on the motive behind the tech blogosphere's actions. Only what they did (malign CNN unfairly) and the effect it had (to slam CNN while bolstering Twitter). The fact I referred to is the twisting of facts in reporting and that did in fact happen (and I linked several times to back myself up on that)
I guess that the desktops of the future will tend to follow a similar trend.

They won't, because desktop software is quite different from HPC software.
Excellent idea, but should be an attribute, so that pages can make statements about links and images.
Because the majority of the piece covers tech blogs, tech media vs tv media, and so on.

P.S. For the record I'm the guy who upvoted you back to 1 not the guy who downvoted you to zero. No one should be punished for expressing an opinion.
If you have the same 20 modules coming in over and over, consider bundling them all up in a single module of yours that does nothing but load those 20 modules, then other modules simply import that module. There's nothing wrong with that. Imports are as eligible for refactoring as anything else.

If you have a different set of 20 modules coming in over and over, you probably need to break up your modules more finely.
A good counterpoint: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06...
Same exact thing I said when I saw the base of the monitor. And notice his head is extremely still (to the point of being odd), which is probably to make the keying (removing the 'green screen') more accurate. I noticed some spots in his hair that did not reflect reality. In addition, the real iPhone OS uses the accelerometer to detect orientation. I'm not aware of any monitor having this feature.

I too am 99.9999% positive it's fake. Nevertheless, fun to disprove. ;)
Covered in the article:

A tag is preferred to an attribute since it could then also be used around content and not just links.
My own preference is on a case-by-case basis, and typically depends on whether I'm importing a module specific to my application, like a model or logic library, and whether I only need it for one specific method.

Standard libraries I'm more likely to import globally, since I'm more likely to want to use them several times.

The most important thing is to figure out what works for you, and then be consistent about it.
A list of Facebook cybersquatters
There isn't much the US can do now to produce a 'color revolution' in Iran
If you're looking at 20+ imports, it may also be an indicator that there is too much going on in the file. With small, focused modules the question is moot.
I reluctantly use textmate. If you can show me any open source editor that just works on OSX, I'll gladly use it (Closest I've found is jedit).

I just want a simple, easy to use, easy to learn, UI based editor with syntax highlighting.
Yeah Ive thought of that (lets call it the meta-import) approach as well (tho never tried it). I dont know why I hesitated but Im glad to hear that it seems sound.
Software does not have a sense of elegance, and short of a strong AI, it cannot ever have a sense of elegance. The kind of technical debt that matters is mismatches between program abstractions and target domain abstractions. What this does is more like using a spell checker to determine how close a book is to being ready to publish - fundamentally misguided at best.
Someone pointed out that this:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/763323/data-execution-preven...

Is the bug they were trying to prevent by editing boot.ini, which apparently went wrong. So this is a bug in the code that's there to try to disable a piece of buggy code by editing boot.ini facepalm
I agree. The mouse speed has to be altered. It's frankly horrible. I've been using osx now for about 5 years and I'm still not friends with the mouse pointer on my laptop. (On my iMac I don't have the same issues for some reason) I hate using the trackpad, it actually weariers my wrists.

I think I use USB overdrive on my iMac which might explain why I don't have the same problem with it. Or it might just be that I use a Razor-mouse.
How about just stop wasting your company's money looking at inappropriate material on the clock?

The chances that a site contains inappropriate material relevant to your job is slim to none, IMO.
Latest on iran protests via twitter
> since the Windows stack is so closed in general

Huh? What about NetBeans or Eclipse? There is tons of open software for Windows.
That's not the algorithm I'm referring to.
> I'm just hoping MacRuby will enable the Ruby world to build our own open source Textmate clone so we'll be able to ditch this abandonware piece of crap.

Thanks for reminding me why I don't want to do Ruby.
[FN] and [CTRL] need to change places!

Why does't toggle full screen work in stock X11?

Why is it so hard to get plan9/wmii to work properly :(

Binary package managent for common tools, like subversion etc.
I don't get that bit. I can add an attribute to a div tag quite easily to wrap content, but wrapping each link in a tag seems excessive.
I don't think a NSFW tag belongs in an international standard. "NSFW" is a concept which is limited in scope to a small number of cultures, particularly English-speaking ones.

I have a site that is community-translated, and the phrase "NSFW" is usually left untranslated. It even sparked several discussions in which people were genuinely confused about why content would be considered "not safe," and why it would be unacceptable at work but acceptable at home, etc..
If Your Job’s Just a Job
What does the other co-designer, Al Gore, think?
If my professor had mandated that I see a certain sports team play, I probably wouldn't have taken the class.

As a free-market type would say or as Stephen Covey would say, take responsibility for your decisions. If you don't like the mandates that come with a certain class, don't take that class.
I don't think that's a good idea: The social network market is mostly satiated and teen entrepreneurs are quite rare. They also tend to have rather small budgets, so it would be quite hard to get any money out of it.
You should use Immunity Debugger, not OllyDbg; Immunity bought OllyDbg and hooked Python up to it, and now it's where all the action is at.
I think you should drop this paranoid fear that someone will steal your idea, you'll get a lot more information coming your way. You can use this feedback to really build something people want.

What's the added value you are providing?
Why is it a startup and not a website?
Why not use ning.com or lovdbyless.com?
What is the revenue model?
How will you attract people?
There are not many of people in that category, especially that age (congrats to you!), so that monetizing on ads would make sense, so you really need a strong business model.

Anyway, I encourage you to pursue whatever you got going on, but I really think you can build a prototype on your own, creating more grip at the beginning.
There's truthyness in that statement... but I've re-written code from years before that I wrote myself; it's easy to forget all corner cases you handled in old code. It forces you to take a step back from your new, clean, way to solve the problem and make sure it really does cover those forgotten cases too. The added uncertainty really hurts the predictability of a re-write.
and nobody forces you to attend any particular class either. You're always free to drop out.
This is a terrible idea. HTML5 (and friends) is a standard for markup, presentation and logic. It is certainly not a system that should contain value judgments.

Put this into a standard and you'll end up with a giant crazy mess. I can just imagine the idiotic lawsuits now.

Example. Some doofus somewhere looks at naked people on the web, on company time, against company policy and gets fired. Realizes that the webmaster didn't put up NSFW tags and sues the webmaster, the hosting provider and probably the upstream ISP as well. Before you know it we have yet another pointless, fruitless and unconstructive series of internationally televised debates on personal responsibility, provider accountability, etc. And because there's usually a bit of flesh involved somewhere, two thirds of the population will happily knee-jerk their way against common sense.

Yeah, brilliant idea this is.
I remember that Textmate 1.0 was partially driven by DHH - I wonder to what extent that external influence had on Odgaard.
I'd have to say that at this scale, talking about the "United States" as some sort of monolithic entity will lead to weak thinking. Some parts think the mullahs should be lined up and shot, some are pretty comfortable with their control, and there's everything in between, including a lot of opinions that don't show up on this axis. Some are pretty tied into a line about Iran being no threat, some are pretty tied into Iran (and what it represents) being a mortal threat to all civilization.
I wish you could flesh that out a little and forward it on to the folks ensuring the software we write at work is "high quality." I keep telling them that metrics and unit tests don't make a quality system, a good design and bug fixing does.
What a spiteful post about a bug. Flagged.
Does America Need to Make Things?
If you have a list of quality Twitter users you should add them here: http://almost.at/#iran (click the person icon with a "+")
Emil, I know what your motivation is here, but I have to agree with some people commenting on the feasibility here. Sounds to me you have something like FairSoftware with a purely teen focus in mind. The problem with that demographic though is that they a)have no money and b) are few and far in between. I believe you have a slight disadvantage being located in Bosnia, but it wouldn't be a bad idea looking a bit closer to home for your partner.
Weasled?

A programming language is what it's developers and users make of it. Python people have worked very very hard in the last 2 years to be ahead when everybody and their uncle were going ga-ga over Rails.
With Japanese, you risk ending up speaking fluent Japanese-girlfriend, rather than what you would be expected to speak as a Japanese-speaking male.
Multiple versions of Windows are a good thing.
It was my first read on the topic sometime last year. I enjoyed his style, even though I disagreed with some of his conclusions (i.e. I don't think it's necessary to life like a hermit and be isolated if you're rich, you can always live a reasonably comfortable life and keep your social channels open)
This is the HTML variant of the Evil Bit.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt
Ah ok, I wasnt aware that Python had an opinion

See: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/
About Addiction-Based Design, Part 2.
Well, I can't give you 200 years with 10 seconds on Google, but how does 102 years sound?

http://www.archive.org/details/differentialinte00osborich

You'd have to come to your own conclusions on the differences though, analyzing math books can take a while. :) The form is quite different.

(I searched "project gutenberg calculus" with no quotes and that was hit #1. The second result appears to come from 1865, so maybe I should have spent just a bit longer with that page.)