skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This article motivated me to give FreeBSD a go about a month ago.

I haven't been using it consistently, but so far it's been like using linux, if there wasn't so much insanity surrounding how to do everything outside of the kernel in linux-distro-land.

I found it much easier to start poking around the source of the kernel, and of the various userland utilities, and all of the source that I looked at was pretty damn clean, well commented C.

The man pages are better (or at least more consistent). Actually, the whole OS feels a lot more consistent.

In short, I'm liking it. You probably will to if you're the type that likes to get down and dirty with your OS.
Time, cost, quality, right? Even google can't do miracles.
Ask HN: What would you do with fedexr.com?
From: DNS-LEGAL [mailto:dns-legal@fedex.com]
Subject: Registration of "fedexr.com" as a Domain Name FEC File No.: 39-2641-1666
Importance: High

VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL

Re: Registration of “fedexr.com” as a Domain Name
FEC File No.: 39-2641-1666

Dear Mr. Sanchez:

It has come to our attention that you have registered the above URL as a domain name. The URL "fedexr.com” uses the registered service mark "FedEx" owned by Federal Express Corporation ("FedEx"), which you may not appropriate as part of your URL.
Such use and registration may result in trademark infringement, dilution and unfair competition in violation of federal and state law and in particular the Anti-Cyberquatting Consumer Protection Act signed into law on November 29, 1999. In any event, FedEx requests that you discontinue any and all use of the name, cancel this registration and respond to this letter within 15 days of receipt.
Please reply to this email confirming your agreement to this request, and your agreement that you will not use in the future any mark or name similar to any FedEx trademark, service mark or URL, to conduct any business or activity, or as a URL. FedEx reserves all rights, remedies and causes of action it may have in this matter.
Sincerely,

/W.J. Brown/

FEDEX CORPORATION
William J. Brown
Senior Attorney
3620 Hacks Cross Road
Building B, 3rd Floor
Memphis, TN 38125
PHONE: (901) 434-8600
FAX: (901) 434-9256
WJB/jsc/639957
"Update: It turns out Google didn’t kill the free Standard edition yet, they just made it really hard to find. You can still sign up for it here (quick, before they move it again!)."

Upton Sinclair Michael Arrington ain't.
Exactly - A free standard version of Google Apps For Domains is still available, they've just changed how you get to the sign up page.
And if we want to go New-Testament, we can make some "cheeky" puns about how to respond.
I'm not so sure RMS saying something offensive is unpredictable. WHAT he says, sure, but that he will do it is almost a given.

He came to my college in 1983 or so and evidently his rantings haven't changed since at least then.

(Yeah, yeah; my college, 1983. "You kids get off my yard"...)
Have many HN'ers done the Myers-Briggs personality type test? According to this test, I'm an INTJ.I tend to set very high standards for myself, many times they're impossibly high. When I fail to achieve them, I feel horribly depressed and disappointed in myself. Worse yet, I tend to have very high expectations for the people around me.

I'm that guy who joins your project and reformats your code for consistency, and who relentless refactors your code into something readable and DRY.

I've spent a great deal of time learning how to set manageable goals for myself on a near daily basis. I'm also learning how to let my expectations for others be set by others (versus me setting very high standards for them). So, I can see a bit of myself in this article. I often wish I cared a little less. It seems like an easier life.
And it makes a lot of sense for a lot of small businesses. My old boss/company could have saved a ton of cash had he just migrated to Google Apps instead of paying a part-time IT admin to maintain the MSFT Small Business Server / Exchange server.

I've got a couple domains I use it for, and love the free version.
I just signed up my domain to the free edition this morning.
They're relevant because in practice the W3C is where vendors come together to develop web technologies, and the specification is the end result of that. The fact that vendors have, to some degree, implemented their specifications in the past also give them some weight. The specification should be seen as the end result of vendors coming together rather than something that's dictated to them by a standards body.

In any open platform, the fact that vendors are willing to follow specifications created by a standards body is the only thing that makes them relevant, whether the W3C or otherwise. There's no way to force people to implement a specification fully and correctly.
I think they have a very valid complaint.
Man I loathe TechCrunch. FUD. Bitch first, check facts later.
Misunderstanding markup
There's a closed form solution to calculate the Nth Fibonacci number which can be derived from a recurrence relation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_Numbers#Closed_form_e...
I guess in the last 15 hours, they've axed the free offering.

http://www.launchly.com/launches/tiers

To be fair - $40 is nothing if it actually gets you some coverage.
depends on what he wants/wanted to use it for surely.

(my vote is a brand new international shipping congolmerate - at the very least make their complaint worth something :))
It's one thing when we're talking about facebook. It's entirely another matter when we're talking about a large bank. Do you want your bank to use mysql to store your financial data?

Regarding the importance of money, look at the existing infrastructure in financial institutions. They spend millions of dollars a year on mainframes from IBM. The cost of oracle compared to this is relatively low.

We're talking about two entirely different markets and applications of "databases" here. The claim of SQL db's not scaling is not true.
Code Blocks: Ruby's Swiss Army Knife
It depends...

What are you doing with the domain?

It looks like you registered it two years ago and haven't done anything with it.

Barring any use of the domain that shows it is clearly NOT intended to infringe on their trademark, I don't think you have much of a case.
Palm Pre to launch on O2 in the UK, just don’t mention the competition
HackerNews needs to enable downvotes for certain domains.
Much as Miles Davis reworded Thelonius Monk's "'Round Midnight" with simpler, easier to play changes.
I guess our personal identification cards (Personalausweis) do have their advantages in some situations. (Although you need little more than a birth certificate to get such a card in the first place.)

Edit: Don't Americans use their driver's license as a form of ID?
Is there significant quantitative programming involved in what you are doing? If yes, I would recommend using Matlab or R.
These "rules" are a little too shallow to be very useful.

"Build something people need and love. People will talk about it."

People can only talk about it if they know about it. How will they know?

"Release, release and release. Release it before you think it's ready, you're wrong, you don't need that feature."

This would be better said as, "If you're not quite sure, don't be afraid to release. Blindly releasing for the sake of releasing is risky and stupid."

"Your app will probably fail, most of them do."

What is this doing on this list? Worst advice ever. Better would be, "Your app can succeed."

"Build something you want to use. Continue to use it, feel the user's pain."

This can easily be the opposite of #1, "Build something people need and love." You're unnecessarily restricting yourself to the relatively tiny population of things that interest you.

"Be Ballsy, don't follow the herd, make a courageous moves."

Such as...

"Build something you want to use. Continue to use it, feel the user's pain."

Bad advice. Better to ask the user about their own pain. Developers are notorious for having blind spots about their own apps.

"Google Adwords isn't a revenue model."

Not according to Markus Frind, founder of plentyoffish.com.

"Find the cheapest, fastest way to 500 paid users. People will pay for your app, if it's good."

Such as...

"Design is an iterative process, not just development. And you won't get it right the first time, so don't sweat so much."

Sweat a little. Release shit too soon and shoot yourself in the foot. Development must be done with design in mind.

"Don't scale until you actually need to. (The front page of Digg does not count as need.)"

But develop with scaling in mind. (Will you really have enough time to completely redesign your data base schema after 1000 users?)

"Don't spend any money."

What if spending money is more time/cost effective? (Paying someone to do something that would have taken me 5 days to do.)
I've been stuck at number two for MONTHS. Analysis paralysis.
Yes, and the fastest algorithm I know to evaluate that expression takes O(n log n 2^log*(n)) time.
I think it would be pretty straightforward to implement this in an algebraic way without needing to resort to fractional values since you know beforehand that the solution is an integer.

In that case you can keep the value of sqrt(5) as sqrt(5) knowing it will cancel out at some point.
They are unique. So you can use them for identification. Just do not use them for authentication.
There don't seem to be any pertinent facts in that article, so it's a bit of a misnomer.

I'd be interested in seeing some actual research into the relative usability and other factors of the various approaches. Until such time as someone proves it objectively one way or the other I'll use what I'm familiar with (K&R) in private code and the house style in the day job.
Thank you! This saves me from commenting on the original now.
Thanks for all the Fish
Ask HN: What do you think of this startup idea?
This is a half-baked idea, but it's free! If you like it, go ahead and build it. I haven't decided if I will.

I try to be generally healthy by doing small healthy activities. Really simple stuff. Like doing 25 pushups once in a while. Or running atleast a mile once a day (it might sound like a lot but it takes less than 10 min).

I also try to give myself "wellness" tasks too. Like emailing my parents a snapshot of my day.

The idea I had was to build a game out of this, where I could keep track of my healthy deeds (for lack of a better word) using a dead simple SMS app.

For example, maybe once a day, I'd get a text that suggests I do one healthy task from my pre-submitted list. I can do the task at some point that day, and text in that I completed it (honor system).

It might be neat to see stats for this. I.E. Which tasks I've been doing, how often...It might also be cool to get my family on it as well, so that I could make sure my Dad's staying healthy.

Would you use this? Would it make you more likely to complete your "healthy tasks"? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Open Source is Infiltrating the Enterprise
The comment makes a great point about management fees:

"Well, most venture capitalists have started to optimize for management fees versus carried interest, or sharing in the profits generated. It simply makes sense to raise larger funds every two or three years so that each partner can earn $2 or $3 million a year in guaranteed fees. With exits taking longer and failures rampant, praying to generate personal returns from the carry after paying back your principle is unrealistic."

Which reminds me of a similar observation from the world of hedge funds:

"Typically, hedge-fund managers charge their clients a management fee equal to two per cent of the amount they invest, plus twenty per cent of any profits that the fund generates. (This fee structure is known as 'two and twenty.')"

"If a fund manager does well, he gets to keep a large portion of the profits he makes using his clients’ money; if he does poorly, he still receives the generous management fees, at least until his clients withdraw their money, which isn’t always easy to do."

(http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/07/02/070702fa_fact_...)
Goldman Sachs May Lose Millions From Ex-Worker’s Code Theft
Can we please stop linking to Techcrunch?
Personally, I use K&R BUT add space as appropriate to make things readable. Using BSD format, amongst other things, I find the 3 lines between the leaves of an if/else statment really start to chafe.

Having used python and small amounts of lisp, I also flirted with rolling up all the close parens/braces on the end of lines with no white space.
Flash, Silverlight just Stop-Gaps
The Next Generation Inflation will hurt painfully. | Niche Audience
> So your suggestion amounts to "compute the Nth Fibonacci number... then do a lot of work to use that value to compute the Nth Fibonacci number". :-)

That might just work in a lazy language.
I use K&R style for control structures (loops, if/else), but function braces get their own line. Braces for classes, structs and namespaces go on the same line.

I'm not worried about obsessing about compact code; this style just looks best to me. I'm consistent with my formatting, so I can glance at my code and know what I'm looking at. Actually, I can literally unfocus my eyes and I still know if I'm looking at a function, control structure within a function, or a class definition.

The important part, where taste comes in, is where code gets separated by empty lines. I consider code separated by empty lines akin to paragraphs.

For the reocrd, my indent settings:

-br -brs -nbfda -npsl -npcs
I use Allman exactly because it's more spacious. But I adapt, at work for instance.
I haven't done anything with it. But I certainly do not intend to infringe on any trademark.
Interesting article, but I didn't follow the 'destroying local knowledge' part.

"Since before even the arrival of the car, people have worried that maps sever us from real places, render the world untouchable, reduce it to a bare outline of Cartesian lines and intersections."

I've never heard this before.
Augmented reality app on the iPhone: Nearest tube
You can't be too rich, too thin, or have too many lines of codes visible at any resolution. Whatever indentation style puts the most readable code on my screen is my preference.

[FWIW, both examples suck. Use a case or switch statement.]
So you're saying you want something for nothing? How about you let us poach your clients? I have no money for marketing or for sales, but I want the fruits of your hard earned labor just because I asked for it.
This summed up exactly what I thought of the original article. I have to wonder what the result of this will be on his credibility as a professor and how it will reflect on Loyola University in the long run.

Reporting on common sense that is akin to running into a lion den and hitting one with a stick only to result in a mauling should not be newsworthy, let alone require the writing of a book.

Edit -> Link to the original article in case you missed it.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/loyola_university...
I like this idea alot, it's something I could use.

Would be particularly interesting if you could tie it in to other inputs... IE: when the weather is bad outside (and you're likely to be stuck indoors) it would suggest something you can do to break up the day (pushups for example). If the weather was really nice, it might suggest you go take and submit a scenic pic from your cellphone.

If you had a browser plug-in, it might suggest that you get up and walk for 5 minutes if you've been browsing for X consecutive minutes/hours.

I could see this evolving into a combination of a wellness app and a mental stimulus app.
You can get them with the Continuation Monad. (But of course that needs TOC to work well.)
I don't get it.

How many clients do you have that you would require something with the features of SO (voting, karma, etc.)? How do you have so many clients with such sophisticated needs, and not be able to afford $129/month?
Interesting jargon. Is a $programmer a PHP (etc) programmer?
This is about bracing styles and your comment is about Python. That is almost a non sequitur ;)
Because if you think of it as assignment, the fact that

a <- [2]

binds a to 2, rather than [2], makes no sense.

edit:

a better example (because it is more useful) would be:

a <- Just 2

which, again, binds a to 2, unwrapping the Maybe monad in the process. (I forget what happens if you try to do a <- Nothing)
The queue jumping sounds like Kate Fox, she talks about it in _Watching the English_ but I wouldn't be surprised to see it written up elsewhere too.

http://archive.thenorthernecho.co.uk/2004/5/3/53732.html is the best link I could find quickly.
Well, what IS your intention for it?

I'm at a loss to come up with a concept that does not likely infringe. "Fedex" is a unique enough term that it's not likely you were intending to do something unrelated to shipping. But, I don't want to jump to too many conclusions, so please provide some more background info if you don't mind.
I can code perfectly fine (and mind-blowing) spaghetti code with call/cc, too.
I used to use K&R, but then I discovered a useful fact that in Allman, you can comment out blocks very easily. This lets you play around with control flow in a simpler way than is possible in K&R et al.
One of the authors responded, so I'm guessing this will be fixed soon.
And fork threads whenever you hit multiple COME FROMs for the same label.
The memcached Economy
I think this is an interface design problem, not something intrinsic to GPS navigation.

Provided that I set the unit to show my position on an always-north-facing map, I arrive at my destination knowing exactly where I am. If, by contrast, I leave it in its default mode of rotating the map around an always-up-pointing car, then I get completely confused.

I also never use the spoken directions, precisely because I want to know where I'm to go, not when to perform atomic actions like turning; and the map shows me where to go. If I need to get on I-93 N, and the map shows me as being near I-93 N, then I'm smart enough to follow the signs and to reckon when to be in which lane, which are more likely to be correct than the map in the GPS unit.

A constantly changing, map-like rendering of what I see out the windshield accompanied by context-free commands is not helpful. A map that magically shows me my current position and direction is.
Ask HN: Social Media Developer Skills
I am a web developer in ASP.NET from last 6 years, but new to social media.

1. What all skills, technology should have a developer to develop the applications on social media sites.

2. What is the role of developer in social media.

3. Any book, RSS feeds, twitter, blog etc for further reference.
"The first is that when I use SatNav I arrive at my destination having no real idea where I am."

Then you're doing it wrong. Using a SatNav system has taught me a lot about my local area. Since my wife got her system, I've found three or four new routes just in my city. (Well, city-let, it's no New York.) They aren't all great, but they work and I didn't know that. (And it's not even my device; I don't drive with it all the time.)

Maybe you need to switch to map view and zoom out a step or two. It's like having psychic knowledge of roads you can't see and never would have normally gone down.
despite his accomplishments, Liu teeters on a mental precipice: "It feels shameful, like, hey, I’m in my early 30s, I should have had a Yahoo by now or I should at least have had a company I sold for tons of money."

Sounds familiar.
I think the point here is to protect end developers: if you want to be safe from future patent issues, they are making it easier to opt out of even installing any of .NET besides the ECMA core on your development systems, thus providing a decent guarantee that even if the rug gets pulled out from under Windows.Forms or ADO.NET, your app won't be impacted.
Agreed, though SS stands out by including a full-page photograph of Alonzo Church. :-)
Still on the fence as to how useful this will be, given that you either need:

a) A Growl-enabled computer running and connected to the Internet; or
b) Your own server somewhere making API calls to create the push notifications.

It might work for iTunes Store developers to get cheap pushes to their customers, but other than server notifications (i.e "Server A is down, please ring so and so"), I'm not sure how useful this would be to the general public.
I'm glad you would find it useful. I like the weather and plugin ideas.

Come to think of it, would be great to have an iphone app too for subway rides and such.
If there was a single PDF with the entire book, I might take a look at it, but this 'one pdf per chapter' stuff is annoying as hell. I'll stick with my PDF of SICP until I get sick of it and decide to order it.
Then release today!
Paying Per Action instead of Per Click in Google Adwords
A test comparing real world results of Cost Per Action (CPA) vs Cost Per Click (CPC) in Google Adwords.
Well it looks like Intel is coming out with 32nm chips soon which is .032 microns. I guess we beat that barrier by a lot? I wonder how. Mr. Kaku seemed to think it would be very difficult in 1997 (http://www.amazon.com/Visions-Michio-Kaku/dp/0385484984)
I don't believe the prosecutor that this represents a U.S. national security risk. It takes a lot more than a trading algorithm to throw off markets. It takes a lot of money, and U.S. traders with a lot of money are already doing this. It's called arbitrage.

This is definitely an IP loss for Goldman, but it is not as big of a deal as they are making it out to be. Chances are the U.S. Attorney's office has access to Goldman's pockets.
It's actually even smaller than that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number#Structur...

There are odd and even rules and no number starts out higher than 772.
From the site: "The first time you get back a book, video, tool, etc. - Lent pays for itself."

This seems like a questionable remark to me. Who's to say you would have forgotten you lent the item out without Lent? I nearly feel offended as my memory is quite good.

I could see myself using this if I lived in a dorm with a lot of random people who enjoyed mingling in my room and I was a collector of material goods.
For a proof of concept, I would second that. Though actually Matlab is significantly more powerful in Machine Learning than R due to its fantastic libraries. (R is still young).
Is the Drupal community a cult?
Is this a Feature or a Company?
Microsoft promises no patent prosecution of open-source .NET
Open source's double standard on government bias
We can all trust they will behave and not break their promises.

Right?
Ah my mistake then. I didn't realize the closed form solution takes that long to evaluate.

Couldn't there be a faster way to evaluate it using an algebraic rather than a computational way? I just find the bound you give too high but I may be completely wrong.
Speaking of that, marketing it towards certain people could make it more attractive. Maybe you could release different versions - Lent: Dorm edition. Lent Classic. Lent: Family edition...
The initial idea was to setup a forex site.

fedexr.com = fede (short for federiko, my nickname in Spanish) + xr (for eXchange rates - I trade currency pairs).
Probably since you are starting from scratch and because first iterations of software if you are new to this tend to be more practice than usable I would say, stick first with the language which makes your life easiest. Later when e.g. speed becomes an issue, you will have to rewrite things anyway I suspect.
Coding Horror: Code: It's Trivial
Google Finally Peels The Beta Label Off Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and GTalk
> No, I don't take this claim seriously. Not enough to write a response.

Uhhh, isn't the post his response? Just saying.