skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It is not just "my" need that is being satisfied. Clearly, at least 73 (the current number of votes) other hackers find this information (and like yangyang said, a place to converse about it) useful. The "scarce public resource" is being used in the way that would satisfy the needs of the largest number of hackers.

That said, you needn't worry about HN being polluted with release notes. It just so happened that several major pieces of software had releases today. This is most definitely not a daily occurrence.
How to read one book per week
Protective Paintball Gear, Paintball Protection, Paintball Protective Clothing
You protect your head, why not your body? Eliminate the war wounds of paintball. Grab your own protective paintball gear at www.totalpaintballgear.com.
A dozen (or so) ways to start sub-processes in Ruby: Part 1
There is a certain level of functionality available in all relational databases...LINQ to SQL has been designed to be isomorphic to that functionality. The result of that (plus the very powerful reflection classes in .NET) means that the only problem here is that Microsoft hasn't optimized the expression tree to SQL output as much as possible. After another update or two to the .NET framework, the performance should be virtually identical; it may possibly be even better with LINQ to SQL since it may 'think' to optimize queries in ways that you wouldn't think to.

On a side note, the author also neglects to mention that LINQ to SQL is a great way to make your code more portable to other platforms (Mono) or other databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.) so that you don't have to learn the intricacies of each databases' SQL syntax.
No, that just says that a credit default swap is one type a credit derivative contract. Derivatives can have many triggers, default is the one talked about here.
Amazon is the Next Generation's Wal-mart
Friendland also contends that “Amazon’s aggressive investment in search, site content, customer service, digital distribution and third party platform have resulted in a sustainable competitive advantage.”
Not to mention that there's nothing preventing a 3rd party from developing an open source patch implementing support for this very feature.
Pirate Bay Acquired For $7.8 Million
Swedish software company wants to buy Pirate Bay
"Cutting edge medical experimentation does not necessarily equal "best possible care"."

Give me a break. Didn't you read the article? Humans are waiting 2-3 years for a hip replacement; dogs are waiting one week. We're way past "experimentation".

I really don't know what you're imagining with all this talk of "human guinea pigs" etc. We're not talking about some crazy experimentation with live subjects, companies with carte blanche to do what they will. We're talking about new remedies, with high success rates in (genetically very similar) animals, which really need to be investigated.

"Am I correctly understanding your system of ethics where you are saying that choosing to do nothing = doing harm?"

Your examples are all biased. If you really do have the ability to apprehend an armed robber with no risk to yourself, then of course you should. The Africa situation is complex and it's not a matter of money but if you could really press a button and just fix it all, of course you'd be derelict in your duty if you didn't press that button.

The problem is the government isn't doing "nothing", it's actively retarding progress. I wish they would do nothing.

You seem to have this image in your head of some kind of large scale Nazi medical experimentation or something. I assure you that is not the case, and not what I am talking about. It is illegal to even research this shit, even if it works fine in animals, even if the patient is desperate and willing to take the risk.

The government is actively impeding this research and, by extension, medical progress. This is abhorrent and needs to change. Luckily, other countries are picking up the torch and soon you may indeed see sick Americans heading overseas for the treatment they need as America slides further into a complacent abyss of risk-averse stagnation.
I thought their new stats page was really cool:

http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/
TED Talk: Teaching life lessons through tinkering
Friendland also contends that “Amazon’s aggressive investment in search, site content, customer service, digital distribution and third party platform have resulted in a sustainable competitive advantage.”
I can count over 100 tools essential to many hackers.

So can I, but few come to my mind as swiftly as Firefox. It (with the aid of Firebug) is an invaluable tool for hacking on web sites. I know several people (including myself) who use it for that very purpose even if they do not use it as their primary browser.

Firefox definitely stands out among the crowd of myriad hacker tools.
How would gotos clean up your code?
Maybe it's the average programmer that doesn't give a "rat's behonkus" about the graphic designer?

I think most designers I've met know what OSS kinda is and are always looking for tools to improve workflow - they just want tools that work. Last time I checked out Gimp it still didn't support adjustment layers for non-destructible editing, which is pretty much a show-stopper.

Packages get used when they lead the way in a given field, most of the OSS design apps I've seen are just playing catch-up.
You close your web browser?

Edit: Was this downmodded by people who actually close their browser during the day? Those that don't should up-mod it.
Let me get this straight. He has tens of thousands of pages of potential material [1], but he is soliciting tips and help from people who have some actual credulity in the field?

Forgive me if I'm a little suspicious of this one.

[1] "I’ll spare you the 10,000 pages of literature on a
given topic and give you the one unusual 1-2-3 method that
produced unbelievable results."
Margie Profet's Unfinished Symphony
Functional Optimistic Concurrency in C#
No Top-Down Control for Sleep and Wakefulness
I'm primarily a Windows user, having just recently installed Ubuntu onto a netbook. Obviously I'm carrying old habits and baggage, but from my point of view, finding and installing stuff in the repository is a nightmare.

On one hand, I can see how putting it there makes a unified update system possible.

But the system does nothing for me in helping me discover what I need. To learn of the existence of a tool, I still need to stumble across it from a user recommendation or web search. From there, in Windows I just download and install.

But on the Linux platform, I get lost in all the various repositories available, each of which has multiple levels (I forget them specifically, but I remember something about "universal"?). And god forbid that the necessary repository isn't one of the standards (as I had to deal with when installing XBMC); finding and setting up the public keys is like root canal.

The flip side of this, uninstalling software, I haven't figured out at all. It seems that doing so doesn't actually delete the deadwood, but I happened somewhere on a command line way to tell it to clean up. I remain confused about how to specify precisely which packages to uninstall. The way they're built into dependency blocks, with optional recommended pieces, on the installation side is great. But I don't see at all how to determine the root package of something I don't want anymore, so that all the children are removed as well. And I really don't get if or how it determines which shared, possibly optional packages, will stay or go.

So I think that this is precisely what the OP is referring to. As a developer I can appreciate the benefits of the Linux repository system. But as a user of it, It's hideously unfriendly.
In English, however, the noun mathematics takes singular verb forms. It is often shortened to math in English-speaking North America and maths elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics#Etymology

The author goes to Oxford.
To everyone who's bashing, he's just saying that it's not a straightforward relationship under the covers of an abstraction. He's still using Linq2Sql and still returning datasets in one query. He just wants people to be aware that even though you have a good abstraction, there are still complex considerations.
What are you using to arrive at those numbers? SunSpider, Dromaeo, some other benchmark?
For instance, the highest-ranked Ruby "hidden features" are one-liners that aren't faster than their multiline equivalents, but are incomprehensible if you don't understand obscure syntax.

This is why they say Ruby is the new Perl.
> "::" wouldn't work, because it's ambiguous at compile time.

Why is "::" ambiguous at compile time? It seems to me something is rotten here. C++ using :: for both namespaces and static access of classes. Why didn't PHP go the same way?

I never complain about the choice of operator, I complain about it's need to exist in the first place. :: would have done the job just fine, just as it does in C++, which is where they stole it from in the first place.
If you don't clearly understand the implications of "Monkeypatching" (also known as "Ninjapatching") then watch this:

http://rubymanor.org/videos/unobtrusive_metaprogramming/

Slides:
http://seanohalpin.github.com/unobtrusive-metaprogramming/un...

Its a nice little talk explaining in detail whats going on with all this namespace pollution in Ruby.

Here is the direct link to the mp4 btw.:

http://rubymanor.org/videos/unobtrusive_metaprogramming/unob...
iPhone 3GS seems to be have overheating issues (http://theappleblog.com/2009/06/30/iphones-heating-up-anyone...) Strangely I had overheating issues and battery charging problems in iPhone 3G after upgrading to OS 3.0. Managed to solve it (http://www.manu-j.com/blog/fix-iphone-os-30-battery-charging...) but it included a hard reset. On the upside phone now runs ultra cool and battery is lasting longer in 3.0
Please learn to read before you write (kleiner PB Lemming). I didn't say they commited murder. I did just say that it doesn't matter if what they did was under the umbrella of a company or not. It is illegal, as it is illegal to commit murder, to print money if you have not the autorization, or to haress somebody etc...
"Hitler's Stealth Fighter" aired Sunday, June 28 on the National Geographic Channel. Runs again on Sunday 7/5 at 1:00 PM.
Isn't the main problem for OSS adoption advertising?

You can't advertise without doing some marketing work. Free Software projects have to figure out who their target markets are and cater to them. GIMP is the best example because it could be split into a few different versions; one that's suitable for Photo Shop users, and another that's useful for people who haven't been "tainted" by Photo Shop.

There could be tutorials and books that make it easier for Photo Shop users to use GIMP.

If there was some cash, you could do the sleazy thing and pay people to use the GIMP when teaching graphic design classes or whatever. Heck, you may not have to pay them at all if you can convince them that the price of $0 makes the GIMP better than Photo Shop.
For the same reasons that very few non-open projects have the kind of usability you're talking about.
The original story is here with a lot more detail: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090625-hitle...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-49 goes into some of the performance and stability issues of the early flying wings. I suspect that a wooden flying wing at 600 mph would have been uncontrollable or subject to airframe failure.
IDENTITY THEFT PROTECTION Video - Prevent yourself from Identity Theft
http://www.identitytheftprotection.org - Identity theft happens when someone steals someone's identity and use them for their own personal financial gain. They gain access to your personal information, such as your name, social security number or even email address.
The ICFP 2009 Subreddit (with different team reports)
I think, what he is saying is... since he has done most of the reading and experiments, that actually save us having to go through the same amount of literature.

I know personally, when i do those type of reading, they all give a very conflicting opinion. Example: Vitamin C. Some say 250mg, another say you need 3000mg/day (or even as far as 20000mg/day). Almost every piece of medical advice that i read always have counter-argument. It's so hard to know which one is working without experiment. Even then, i'm not sure how long u need to carry the experiment.
As a dude who just tried Ubuntu for the first time in 5 years to see how far they've come, but couldn't because the fucking liveCD didn't have a driver for my cdrom, this rings true.

But for what it's worth, after a few grueling days getting the p.o.s. up and running, I was shocked to have all the UI fluff my macbook has, plus the infinite list of other great stuff that's inherent to Linux.

The moral? Just shrinkwrap all OSS with a CS degree holding nerd who has a couple days of free time.
I was hoping for some actual content here, and sadly, there wasn't really any to be had. The author (who appears to be our submitter) just says he plans to read 1 book per week between now and the end of the year.

The closest it comes to "how" is saying that he'll spend an hour a day working on it.
Blind reliance on models killed Lehman Brothers. Math was just the tool they used to inflict lethal injury on themselves.

I have also seen strong arguments (but no concrete evidence yet) which suggest the government officials involved were pro-Goldman and anti-Lehman.
Ask HN: learning Basic Math, Reading Math
Lately after couple of posts including the latest http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=666407 , I gathered the courage to ask this:

problem description : I want to finish "Introductions to Algorithms" (Cormen et al) and the math is holding me back. I have been trying and am too impatient. Previous comments from (do you buy books for long term) and a couple more helped me understand that this is normal to spend couple of hours on a single paragraph/page. But sometimes I don't get it for the lack of basics (it's been a while away from academics). I know I should work hard at going back, but however back I go, it feels like I don't know it. the longer it takes, more depressing it is. Sometimes, I feel my whole life is going to be depressed in this pursuit.

My problem in one line: I want to READ Maths like I read english (when i read the word mountain- i visualize a mountain, when i read an equation i see greek letters with an equals sign... you get the idea?)

my self analysis - too impatient, want to code the pseudo-code eagerly, hate (or lazy?) to take the pen/paper, look for solutions without trying hard = typing/reading the solution rather than understanding, have no big picture of implementing math - project to work on (people reading math that helps in their work vs me doing math with no implementation makes my brain go to sleep.)

I have been trying to get into about math for a while. I have done my research and read few excellent blogs (including from atleast one member of HN) for know-hows.
Books I know I should have to cover the basics:

*Discrete Mathematics with Applications by Susanna S. Epp
*How to prove it?
*Concrete Mathematics - Knuth

(I got along well with Knuth for the first chapter and after a while my lack of basics >> depression >> stop and do something else.)

Which books have helped you? which one should I pick first? How can I achieve my goal?

I need books basic enough to teach me discrete math (to achieve my goal of finishing introduction to algorithms) and in the long run read math like english.

I am looking for your experiences - obstacles you faced... something like this [ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=666615 ; i can't relate to few points - eg: not qualified to decide if a book is badly written]- anything i can relate to, any anecdotes? perhaps..my sub conscious will probably hold back my depression! Everyone of you have truly enchanting stories.
I know I am taking your time, but I HAVE to do this.

disclaimer: i am not a comp sci student. <cough>my experience has been as an enterprise developer</cough>. pls don't be hard on me.

...and thanks for your precious time
I think that this explanation is pretty useless.

If you want to have a good idea why, what, and how DNS attacks can be a very dangerous thing please watch this Conference video from Dan Kaminsky about the DNS bug which he (resp. DJB) found.

What:
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2906.en.h...

Mp4:
http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25...

MD5:
http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25...
That's true, but are there enough niches to absorb the millions of people graduating from college every single year?
Only one problem there. Microsoft has pretty much EOL'd LINQ-to-SQL in favour of Entity Framework.

So, the performance improvements and code improvements that you speak of will never get done.
Warning: Guest SMP only works if you have a cpu with Intel VT-x or AMD-V.

Damn, why did I buy a Pentium Dual-Core instead of a regular Core 2 Duo? :/
Well, sort of. They're now called "Blended wing" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_wing
Yeah, but at the same time, he's being misleading about the effects of N+1 query problem. It's a problem for a reason.

Anyone experienced enough in web development will maybe get his point, but the newbies who read his blog will not and will fight more senior developers on this topic, all because "Jeff Atwood said it".

That's where the bashing is centered on.
This is important in that it highlights the problem with sharing your password and account info with third party sites that have dubious security practices. All that was needed to gain access what brute forcing a 4 digit pin number.
You picked a really strange counter-example with the V2 / Saturn V comparison. If there were ever a set of rockets that shared a lineage would be those. Von Braun was brought to the US specifically for his rocketry expertise and he designed the Saturn V. It's ludicrous to claim that the similarities were only skin deep.

Regarding the flying wing, I note that the replica was built by engineers at Northrop, who as it happens also designed the B-2 bomber. So it seems Northrop was at least aware of the plane, and they probably did not discover it recently. The lag between WW2 and the introduction of the B-2 (wikipedia claims a first flight in 1989) can be explained by the need for advances in control for the flying wing design (thrust vectoring, fly-by-wire, etc).

Edit. Compare also the YB-49, designed by Northrop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-49) and first flown in 1947 and the YB-35 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35). Given Jack Northrop's interest in flying wing designs, I'd be very surprised if he was not aware and perhaps influenced by this plane.
Yes I am the author of the post. Thanks for feedback. The "how" I intended to point out, is to read one hour per week, but to plan in advance on what to read, and to dedicate extra time every week for books such as SICP. Some time ago I couldn't believe that reading one hour per week would eventually translate to 50 books per year, so maybe it is still useful for someone.
I run FF on Debian (iceweasel), and it is acceptably snappy, but there is a bit of a trick to this:

1. Every extension you add seems to decrease performance by 30-50% (rough numbers) [1]. So live with a bare essential set of extensions. For me that is Firebug and FlashBlock.

2. Keeping very many bookmarks or history items seems to destroy performance, particularly with the "awesome bar." I disable history completely and have it clear everything else on browser close.

Before I settled on this FF usage technique, FF would degrade in performance over the course of months as it built up data in the profile. Eventually it would become unusable [2] until I deleted the profile and started fresh. Now I just prevent it from building up any data.

[1] As much as I used to like this extension, my experience has been that ForecastFox in particular hammers browser performance.

[2] It would take seconds, sometimes 10 or more, to open a new tab to about:blank. With this technique though, I currently have ~ 25 tabs open, and new tab creation is instantaneous.
It feels a lot faster, at least on Mac OS X. The interface seems to be much more responsive as well. It's nice to see they have focused on performance :)
I was not talking about the usage 'math' or 'maths'. I was saying, it is not the fault of math/maths when we make wrong assumptions like 'house prices can't go down' or 'prices will always increase' etc. GIGO.
Anyone know what SQLStream (the software Mozilla is using for the stats page) costs? Their web site doesn't say and it looks very "enterprise-y" so I'm guessing lots.
I think that's a better way to convey the point. Maybe you have to be more obvious for slow thinkers like me ;)
While I make no claim of knowing Ferris personally, I've read his book and blog.

He reads like an Infomercial. I'd trust his advice about as much. Do be careful, particularly when your health is on the line.
I read this book a couple of years ago and it wasn't quite what I expected - it was better.

Felix drags you in with the "how to be rich" message but actually ends up convincing you that you really don't want to be megarich at all and that there are far more important things in life to focus on or give priority to. He says he'd give anything to be young again and that no matter how much money he has, he'll never get time back.
Amazon has it nailed for books, but I find that it is only middling for other products. More often I purchase elsewhere. Amazon Prime is great but it often doesn't apply to heavier products. Anything carried by a third-party Amazon store probably has a cost disadvantage compared to a standalone web site. That being said, Amazon probably does have a significant advantage due to its infrastructure.

EDIT: I've looked at things recently that Prime didnt apply to, Torani syrups for example. These were from third party stores. It may be the individual stores option whether it participates in Prime.
No. Way too many people go to college. They'd be freed from the debt & infantilizing lifestyle and generally would better off if they didn't go to college.

"Everyone should go to college" is like a giant, farcical real-world existential play about the Lake Wobegon fallacy.
I just want a nice browser, and FF delivers. I don't need the internet reinvented. I like the awesome bar enhancements, too.
I'm going to update the article based on your suggestion. Thank you :)
For some reason the PHP developers think it should be Ok to have a class in your code with the same name as a namespace you're using. I just tested this out with Python and it seems that doing the same thing simply gives you what was last defined, so if you have import lib and then class lib you will just end up with lib as being the class.

Frankly, it's insulting to me that the PHP team doesn't think I have the skills needed to not name my classes after namespace I imported.
"Nazi engineers"

Does the writer actually know the engineers were party members?
This guy's fifteen minutes is way up.
Price deflation is the normal state of affairs when the Government isn't inflating the currency. It isn't a problem to be solved. A financial bubble is the problem. Japan is trying to create a bubble in its economy. Even if they succeed it will deflate at some point in the future. The bigger the bubble, the deeper and longer the recession/depression that follows the bubble.
I strongly agree with your second paragraph. It just seems like a disconnect to me where he spends 3/4s of his post talking about how much he knows about this topic; and then follows it up with a solicitation for people who know about this topic.
The scope resolution operator :: comes directly from C++ world which is standard practice...