skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think it's like dog people and cat people.

Python is like being in the Netherlands. You're surprised that everything seems to work so well but at the same time something feels a bit weird.
+1 for portfolio.
Cal-Tech's been trying to imitate MIT hacks for years: http://hacks.mit.edu/
Tell me why you're not just another dude with a cause who wants to tell other people how to spend their money, because that's what you sound like. Not to be combative, and I want to live for a thousand years as much as the next guy, but this is why I lean libertarian. My naked self interest is my naked self interest.
Someone has been in #iphonedev...
What does that matter? The comment speculates about the ability of an arbitrarily small device to capture an arbitrarily large amount of information in order to crop it to the region of interest later.
Should be: "The Great Rose Bowl Hack of 1961"

Three cheers for hackers!
Not sure what that has to do with the article, but...

Yes, it's pretty common to pay for a master's. A lot of departments will only fund PhD students (automatically). Master's only people usually have to "pay their own way", although that might consist of finding their own research or teaching assistantship, etc.
I was uncomfortable with it when twitter first came out just due to the sheer ridiculousosity of it.
I dived in your site for 2 minutes even though I'm not single and this is how I feel --

1. Too many questions during registration

2. Too little hand-holding for new users

3. The functionality seems pretty limited (upon a
quick glance)

4. How do you differentiate yourself from the
numerous other dating sites?
I love the imitation version at Hilliard, that's pretty close to where I grew up.
To be semantic, isn't this a crack? After all, the key to the whole scheme was breaking into the hotel rooms of the Washington U Cheerleading team. Without burgling their rooms, none of it would have happened.
The logo is sort of heterocentric (it looks like a male rabbit is mounting the female rabbit).
Zoho Artforms
I was all excited about Joost when the first stories about it were circulating on the net. I signed up for the beta. And waited. And waited.

Then I could finally download the client (that's another strike in itself), then discovered it wouldn't run on my older hardware. That's when I gave up.

Hulu had a much shorter private period, much laxer signup rules, and didn't need a dedicated client player.
Uh, a "gadget review" site festooned with BlackBerry sponsorships, where the primary answer to "what's gdgt?" is a Flash video. Gotcha. Did someone famous start this and I missed the memo, or is this simply not news?
What ever happened to exceptions, which were explicitly invented to handle errors
Ask YN: Rate my idea: (britekeys, music learning tool)
The idea is simple: Guitarhero for real instruments. Building this for learning piano. Any feedback appreciated.

http://www.britekeys.com
Why we should reconsider manual labor
I make no accusations. I state facts that may be relevant. You (and others) can decide what they imply.

And "psychotic" is not the same as "sociopathic", "sociopathic" does not mean "anti-social", and just because one can choose to behave in a sociopathic manner does not make one a sociopath.

Having said all that, I observe again that some places on the 'net are deeply unpleasant places to be, despite their possible value, because of "tactics" like these. Clever and effective, but often distasteful.
Apple Prepping iPhone 3.1 Software Update
Bamboo Bikes
I don't know about you, but I often prefer being in pain to spending money or wasting time.
With all due respect, I don't think MIT invented "hacks". MIT invented the name, though.

MIT is older than Caltech. But Cambridge University is older than MIT. At Cambridge, they've been pulling hacks for centuries.
You have a Google ad for "Greater Expectations" (another dating site) on the front page of your site.

You could always look at it as "my competition is paying me", but at first glance it looks like a traffic hemorrhage.
Some very interesting concepts in here, not sure where it would get used or have an advantage. Is it purely a mental exercise?
I think the use of , and or newline to separate statements is a stroke of genius instead of just treating them as optional whitespace. Totally feels like a more concise smalltalk if that makes sense.
Nokia has had some bad p.r. recently thanks to their products that the Iranian government is using.

I hope Nokia starts running a whole lot of Tor relays soon.
I grew up with a BBC Micro... and oh how I envied the Speccy and the C64 for games. The Beeb had a great microcosm of programming languages though: Basic, Assembler, Forth, BCPL, Lisp, Prolog, Pascal, Ample for music programming... even Smalltalk and C with the UNIX co-processor add-on. Not that I got much further than writing knock offs of Spectrum games in Basic.
Absolutely, and I don't think this is bad, just a frame of mind.

Let's face it, it's just easier to know what you want once you have something in your hands to play with. I think instead of resisting this we should adopt tools and processes which make it easier. When I've had the ability to facilitate a project in this way, the result has always been of superior Quality compared to other methods.
Started by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block, the two former editor-in-chiefs of Engadget.
great way to launch -- site's down.

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/gdgt.com

edit: looks like its up and down intermittently now.
wow, I am pretty impressed. I wonder though about the actual cost of the server, and whether it's feasible for companies to start offering subscription services for cloud gaming.

On a side note, I wonder when are they going to use this technology to start offering a complete desktop replacement service on the cloud, and not just offer games, but the full range of productivity software as well as storage capability. My thoughts on this kind of development is on my blog.
http://lchou1.blogspot.com/2008/12/future-of-computing.html
Page views required to generate $1M in ad revenue?
And the relation to HN is?
TC is slow-playing the story. By being incomplete, they get one trumped-up story (with inlinks and comment thread) that makes it looks like Twitter is being aggressive.

A day or two later, they reveal the startup that got the letter, and get a second storyline about how that startup went over the line in its mimicry of Twitter.

Commentary like this in the meantime only heightens the number of contentious angles they can play. Maybe they'll get a third story out of it: "defending our honor!"
Could There Be an AndroidFox?
Robin Wauters, who is making $10 an hour blogging in his underwear

I'm not sure what kind of point you're trying to make with a bitchy statement like that. Are you saying he makes a lot of money for a blogger or more than he should for someone who writes in his briefs? Also, has he in fact admitted to working in his underwear or are you just trying to smear him? Perhaps it's just a popular sport around here to make ad hominem attacks on Techcrunch writers behind their backs.
Well, exactly my point was that other sites tend to show lower prices that sound great but that don't actually exist. Did you actually purchase the fares at that lower price, or just price them out? Every time one of those other sites has shown me a lower price than ITA, actually trying to purchase the airfare at that price always results in the same sort of bait and switch message, 'We're sorry, but that fare is no longer available — displaying the next lowest fare.' And the next fare is always the fare originally found by ITA or higher. From my experience the other sites are highly deceptive, but your mileage may vary.
New Attack on AES
Take two video games and call me in the morning
I hope this was only a brief interruption to an otherwise lush and exotic life.

It's _why's work that makes my life more lush. Thanks you lucky stiff!
I've read it all; it contains good content, but nothing extraordinarily interesting, like a good computer magazine used to do in the 90s.

I think the funniest thing is them bashing ebook publishers for trying to imitate the worst parts of books (i.e. turning pages) and then have them publish the magazine in pdf format.

Otherwise, I like their approach. I think their vision of e-publishing is one of the best in the industry; when I get some more free time, I'll go and see which of their non-DRM-ed books I could use.
The things which are lost with physical death are in constant flux, so they are constantly being lost anyway.

Actually, no. When the Great Flux fluxes and the flux that is you goes away, it is not exactly the same thing as when the flux that is you fluxes and the flux that is some property of you goes away. Let's not interpret Taoism as yet another rationalization of death.
Hasn't happened on my screen yet.
Accessing pic.php with argument s=1 or greater gives much better picture resolution than the original. Is that intentional?

The amount of interaction available without registration is sadly very small, not compelling to me.

Before I invest time in registering, I'd like to evaluate the site much more. At least some sample profiles...
Use of OpenID could also streamline the registration or do away with it altogether.
I love the blatant link buying at the top of the article. The ticket industry is the king of this.
From the article: "The answer is yes and no."

Does one need to read this article? I say no.
The graphic design and introduction text on the first page (where you choose a bunny) gives the impression that you want to be different from all the other dating sites..

So ok, I sign up. First questions you're asking when creating a profile is all kinds of stuff I really don't care about.

"Ethnicity", "Religious views", "eye color", "hair color", "height", and whether I am fat or not in some annoyingly gentle politically correct manner. Try to be a bit more creative. A dating site needs to make it easy to find interesting people you are in some way compatible with... and you come up with eye color. EYE COLOR!

I think you really need to think about what you want to accomplish here, start from scratch instead of copying other sites. And most of the other sites suck, so you really have a chance to create something useful and unique if you just do everything opposite from them. (think stackoverflow vs experts-exchange ;).

One more thing, to enter a description you present us with an FCK editor with every feature enabled. Three lines of buttons! WHY? Please, hire an interaction designer or at least read Steve Krug's "Don't make me think".
"Flash runs much slower than native code, even slower than Java (which is interpreted byte code)."

A little part of me just died.

Java hasn't been wholly interpreted for an awfully awfully long time. It's amusing that people still have the perception it's slow, when there are only a handful of things out there that are comparable in terms of performance.
Only partly so. He's exploring various ideas in language and VM desings, which is interresting per se.

But one of the goal of the project is to get a fun, fast and dynamic language to run on embedded processors.

It would allow one of the goals stated in the Little coder's predicament: having an newbie-friendly environment that produces code runable on game consoles (though you'd have to create suitable libraries too for that to happen...).

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think it will be added to Hackety Hack sooner or later (if I remember well, he stated once that more languages would be added. The first lick sample hints to that too).
I do not want to enter a dispute concerning naming, but I'll just point out that many consider a compiler to be anything that you might call translator. What would you call a program that transforms C code in assembler code? Isn't assembler code source code?
Pick And Choose All-Purpose Folders
Your front page needs a serious design reconsideration. Besides that, two minor points - The two bunnies humping each other in the upper left corner - I guess that's supposed to be funny. Didn't really do it for me. Also, why mention "Release 488" on the front page?
On giving Goldman a chance
Gmail’s Labels: Now Even More Like Folders
I have included emitted UML (from running code) into my end documentation (from c#/VS world). But for any work I've ever done, there is a unordered heap of back of envelope artifacts that I fear only make sense to me.

It is hard to capture certain details in prose, and a (nearly zero effort) emitted UML diagram can do the trick. Or at least convincingly make it look like you did the trick...

But start from UML? I think I'd rather spend that time polishing my cv.
I first read about this is The Hacker's Dictionary. It contained an article about the amorphous definition of "hack" that includes this story and other classics: http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_44.html
If you do I hope you can make sure you aren't part of any illegal activity such as the trafficing of child pornography.
Ruby feels like all the misery of Perl mashed into Smalltalk. Which is a shame, because I hear such good things about Smalltalk.
stealing? seriously? Just because they didn’t link to the site they were reporting about? looks like someone is hopelessly desperate for publicity.
The term "hack" is slang, and therefore has several different meanings based on context. Here, "hack" just means a really difficult prank.

If it were computer "hacking", it would definitely be black-hat, since it was illegal, hurtful, and only benefited the hackers.
Cyber-Scare The exaggerated fears over digital warfare
I find the title ambiguous/misleading - summary of the article as I understood it:

* the Airbus A310 is popular with third-world country airlines

* third-world country airports are less well equipped

* the crash was likely due to pilot tiredness and poor airport layout, and had little to do with the A310 design
That should definitely be in the HN headline.
Microsoft to push IE8 at businesses next month
Ask HN: Can one make a decent living from freelancing ?
I recently registered with 8kmiles.com an online ecosystem of verified professionals where freelancers can find work and businesses can outsource their stuff.

I was wondering if it is possible for an individual to make money over web through such freelancing sites. I am skeptical because I see a huge supply but very less demand in there.
I'm wondering if some of the OS X specific Frameworks have made it into the code...
This is interesting news, but even if your software uses AES, there's nothing actionable in it for you.

You are 10,000x more likely to get busted up by a flaw in how you use a cipher than you are by a flaw in what your cipher is. You could use TEA, and it would still be overwhelmingly likely that your code would fail before the algorithm did.

In fact, anything you did to react to news like this would probably make you less secure. That's because AES has overwhelming library support, and whatever "stronger" cipher you might think of adopting won't. That means you'll have more DIY code, and more poorly reviewed library code, all with a bunch of implementation flaws lurking under the surface.
I did a git svn clone with standard layout, and I can switch branches just fine.
Actually those FAQs do not challenge the central point of that blog post, which is that reasonable people can have wildly different estimates of the likelihood of successful preservation and reconstruction, and that most people judge it too much of a long shot to be worth the money.

Cryonics advocates are by and large not very interested in trying to justify estimates that give a reasonable chance of success (I'll make an exception for Robin Hansen), and would rather talk about the importance of participation and securing more funding based on the fact that the probability of success is non-zero, and pro-life-esque ethical arguments about the value of human life.
Just like you ask all manufacturers of photographic equipment to make sure they aren't used for any illegal activities, such as photographing nude children?
Jajah Co-founder Launches Talenthouse Artist Site
Where to talk back to Obama’s town hall
Facebook's New Twitter-Squashing Privacy Settings
Apple Seeding IPhone 3.1 Beta
No because people have had issues because of said reason.
Lets talk about Doug - lessons for financial services startups
The Ridiculous Copyright Situation Faced By Academics
yes. there are plenty of people who make a good living freelancing. you'll likely find a good market if you can connect professionals with a need with quality professional freelancers.

but, its difficult to make a living freelancing via things like elance.com and similar sites, though, because those are typically about bidding the lowest. those lowest bids usually come from foreign outsourcing companies.

the key here that will likely contribute to your success is to avoid the models like elance and connect good freelancers with clients who are willing to pay well for quality work. perhaps something that is more about building longer-term relationships instead of one-off projects.
If you're in the US, it's going to be tough unless you have a solid portfolio and connections.

On the freelancing sites, you're going to be competing with people who live in areas that have a significantly lower cost of living. As such, they are going to be able to underbid what you'd need to make just to feed yourself.

The only way you can counteract this is to turn yourself into a brand - market yourself as a quality alternative instead of being the economical choice.

Good luck!
USAspending.gov: Where Americans Can See Where Their Money Goes
I'd rather be Apple than Microsoft, even if Microsoft makes so much more cash. But that's my opinion.
His first name's Michael. He's not that secretive.
"Ruby presented far more cognitive hurdles for me because it allows you to do things in ways that seem simultaneously mildly more convenient and completely counter-intuitive to everything I've experienced with similar styles of languages over the past 10 years."

Don't use Ruby.

If it presents that much trouble, go find another language. Use Python or C# or Haskell or whatever fits best and gets the job done.

Many of the things you find to be cognitive hurdles and completely counter-intuitive are there on purpose. They are never going away because many other people (and matz in particular) find them to be cognitive enhancements and completely intuitive.

Don't waste time fighting it.
Kindle DX Screensaver Backgrounds
Anecdotally, the place I work has people with wide screen, 19inch monitors that insist on using them at 800x600. It looks awful, but they're used to it being huge, and they refuse to change.
If you're wondering why you're being voted down you should probably check the age of Vint Cerf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Cerf
Howto : Upgrade from Firefox3.x to 3.5 in Linux
TechCrunch spews forth a non-story on a non-issue and folks act as if this isn't business as usual. Next.
While I am sympathetic to the cause, the biggest problem with routing anything tor is that you will almost certainly, rapidly lose control over the traffic and its content. The average geek should really know what sort of repercussions a tor node can unleash if things go wrong. The administrator (you) of the exit node has almost no control over this.

I urge anyone who plans to run a tor node to please take the necessary steps, if possible to avoid a situation like http://calumog.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/why-you-need-balls-o...
Co-Working Space: Building Cities & Communities That Attract Entrepreneurs
Pingdom adds free website monitoring
how's so?
A fireside chat with Apple’s Jonathan Ive - Apple 2.0
Google Open Source Blog: Introducing Apache Commons Math SimplexSolver
This is good advice, but don't let it talk you out of upgrading a library. System administration is still actionable in these cases.
Story of the guy behind the original As Seen on TV business
Poll: Are entrepreneur-types unemployable?
Suppose you are interviewing someone and it is clear that his/her goal in life is to pursue entrepreneurship.

Would you consider hiring him/her?
yes I would consider hiring this person
no I would not consider hiring this person
yes if he/she is significantly better than the other candidates
yes if he/she has not attempted any startups
yes if he/she has failed in startups
yes if he/she has succeeded in startups
Official Google Enterprise Blog: Q2 2009 Spam Trends
Choice quote: "An enormous amount of luck is not something I want to invest in."

I can't help notice a similar trend across startups in recent times. More and more startups are becoming very metric and bottom line focused.

Also, it's amazing how the guy was able to build back after having to declare bankruptcy in 2000.
I've seen a few people like that before myself. I think that at least some of them know they can increase the resolution, and they try it, but they switch back before their eyes can adjust.
Amitu, is it possible that tweetknots is more than just your 'friends'?

Not saying that you are, mind you. Simply asking for clarification. Because if you're part of the team that founded the site and you don't disclose it, that would be really unethical.
I'm not telling others how to spend their money, I'm wondering aloud why they don't do what seems to be best for them. Sorry if I implied otherwise.

If your net worth ran into the hundreds of millions and you'd expressed the heartfelt desire to live longer, as Mr. Felix has, then upon noticing you hadn't taken any action in furtherance of that desire I'd suggest your investment in life extension research, too. But it's just a suggestion, of course.

That said, sometimes compulsion is reasonable. I would not argue with tax money going towards SENS research. A better use than guns and foreign bases, certainly.
Give Only One Responsibility to Each Class
depends on the hiring situation, in my opinion.

there are some jobs that would be great for an entrepreneur-type, and there are some times when you need to hire someone who's best while ignoring the longer-term
_why is silly and fun, Zed is analytical and blunt.
Control YouTube start/stop times in blogs with Apture
Berkun Dissects Social Media
Don't projects like Lucene make full text search really easy?
Entrepreneur types are the ones that don't want to be employed. If they are looking for a job, he/she is not of that type.
Isn't this more of an age thing? Mathematicians start out as problem solvers and later become theory developers?

As you age, it becomes harder to solve difficult problems but easier to develop theories due to greater experience.
I've spent many an hour on that and related sites, I've also found that Flickr is a good source for inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/contextfree/interesting/
"Python is far more mature"

How so? It's mot like Python is 10 or 20 years older, so how do you determine the "far more" part?

And of what value would this difference in maturity be? COBOL is "far more" mature than Python. Is that a big win for COBOL?

Once a language reaches some reasonable age and general wide-spread usage, points about maturity seem silly.

(On reflection, I suspect you're just trolling.)
Maybe I'm not interpreting the results correctly, but does this mean that published attacks place AES-256 in a weaker position than AES-128?
That's not necessarily true.

The people I work for right now know that I'm not going to be here forever, because one of the many things I'm working on will end up working out well for me.

I came to work here because the last project I was working on didn't work out very well and I spent my time consulting.

For now, the stability allows me to work on every weird idea I've got until I have something fleshed out enough to go work on it with more dedication.
It's interesting to see video game dev vets like Carmack and Perry still hanging out at the edge after all of these years
I have no idea what why does for a living but apparently not having a day job or at least having a flexible enough schedule that allows one to write code for fun helps. The punch card view is one of the best visualizations I've seen yet.