skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sigh. OK, let's work on the 'abstraction' thing a bit.

Given almost any mechanical or electrical technology, there exists means of using that technology to control the duty cycles of machines. The 555 was just an example of what you might use to implement an intermittent wiper.

As I understand it, accessories like windshield wipers originally operated from manifold vacuum, so the patent probably describes some sort of vacuum-based contraption which would be as obvious to MEs as a timer circuit is to EEs.

Another point being, even if it were a novel concept when implemented with vacuum lines and valves, it certainly wouldn't be novel or unexpected when cheap solid-state electronics did arrive on the scene. But chances were good that the patent claims were broad enough to hold sway over future implementations. (Disclaimer: I haven't read it.)

So fast-forward your 8-track to the early 70s: windshield wipers are now run from the car's electrical system, and wow, hey, cool, here's the 555... and meanwhile the goofy patent's still in force.
One more thing that you may or may not know is that functional programming languages are a kind of fuzzy concept. There are at least two different categories (well, probably it's more a continuum, but ..), being functional programming languages vs. function-level programming languages. (Note: Someone please correct me, if I'm confusing the terms here). Lisp's belongs in the first category, where Haskell probably belongs in the latter. The first category is more similar to main stream, procedural languages, where the latter is more abstract. Which is a better choice is open for debate; On the one hand, you'll probably grasp Lisp faster than Haskell, on the other hand you might end up writing procedural code in it, instead of function oriented code.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function-level_programming#Cont...
"Why Semantics?" - an excellent intro to semantic data
Holy fucking shit, the guy who made CD Baby wrote this? That blows my mind. Just today I was looking into CD Baby as a means of music publication - never thought the guy who made that would keep a blog, or read Hacker News.

I love this community a little bit.
Why you (probably) won’t be using Firefox a while from now
To expand on what the other posters have said, humans are natural storytellers. We want things to have a narrative, and we are bad at determining if a theory merely fills our desire for a narrative. Starting from a known phenomenon and crafting a theory around what we know should happen has the danger of creating a model that is too specialized or completely contrived.

If, however, the theory is able to make predictions about things we didn't already know, and those predictions agree with experimental data, then there's a higher chance our new model maps to physical reality.
I wish kids were taught this at a young age. I learned it at seventeen; two years later, I'm still struggling with a lot of the things I've needed to unlearn. I have friends my age who still don't believe this, who are forcing themselves on generic career paths because they don't think anything else is an option. I worry for them pretty often.
Videos from Nosql meeting on various scalable data stores
Nah just the interesting ones. The auto-submit makes it easy to do
Agreed, but I am not sure why. A couple of years ago, I would read almost every article / discussion posted on the front page of HN. But now days, I click through at most 10-20% of the content. Dunno if it's a shift in culture, or just the larger community has diluted the quality of content. Regardless, HN is still my favorite source of tech / startup news.
Hell, if the race was the first one to touch the moon we could have just aimed a rocket and ended it at that. I do think it interesting that it took this long for this recording to come to light though. Unfortunately I think it will be all the more fodder for conspiracy theorists.
Has 0 to do with dating tips which I was all too desperate to read.

100% interesting old stuff like the skeleton of an incredibly tall man whose body was stolen from sea and brought to the exhibit.
it's not that flash is bad per se, but rather adobe's stewardship of it. they're doing their best to create another microsoft-like monopoly around it.

and it can't help that the flash plugin on macs has always been abysmal. it uses way too much cpu time. any flash website i go to makes the fans spin on my older powerbook. hardly surprising, then, that the powers that be at apple are not too crazy about it. in fact, flash pretty much sucks on all platforms except windows.
marc has a talent for selling companies for a lot of money that tank after being purchased. Facebook is no different.
Introduction to Message Queues and RabbitMQ
I think you're right that over time, pressure will stop people from publishing quizzes publicly. In my own sphere I've seen almost none in the past two weeks. It's like how "tag-other-people" notes got old half a year ago.

I agree with all the stuff you said, good points all, but I don't know if I agree about Facebook's serverfarmrunning-bandwidthreduction. They offer a lot of services to their millions of users and they're rarely down. I don't know how to compare them outside of that, but I doubt they're at all poor at this.
Ways to get feedback from customers
The world needs more people saying foolhardy things like "I could do that in a weekend", not less.

Actually it occurs to me it would be incredibly interesting to see someone's attempt at cloning justin.tv in a weekend. Sure it's impossible, but I would be fascinated to see what got done if someone actually tried.
We've done 2 of these tests in the last few weeks using a small in-house framework I wrote and its already showing improvements in overall page views. Our initial tests have been small and were done completely client-side with javascript, using an existing internal reporting solution. Its very easy to set this kind of thing up without even needing complicated 3rd party tools.
where can I find publications, how this thing is doing the term selection for the topic description?
Luckily you're still getting better service than us poor Canadians!
This is much like what we've been doing in grid computing by "moving the computation to the data" since in some cases that is the only practical way you can work with petabytes etc.

It's also similar to trading companies moving their code around the world every day as financial markets go live since the latency back to the home country would put them at a competitive disadvantege.

And it's also obviously quite akin to the application delivery techniques that CDNs have been doing for some time (getting more than simply files closer to the delivery point).

All very interesting stuff. If there was a clean API to "just do it" for us little guys that would be awesome.
Maybe F# acceptance will grow when Visual Studio 2010 comes out, since it will be one of three new native languages: IronPython, IronRuby and F#.
The lack of a full-featured web console means that you're pretty much still right.

They need a way to log into your account and run some of the API operations, like making a Caller token. As it is, you have to script up some kind of kludge. You end up spending several hours just getting off the ground.
Newsvine is a good example of tags making a community more focused and easier to handle.
"Elbow-Grease and Gumption: The Secret That Self-Help Books Don't Want You To Know"
What JS really, really, really, really needs isn't TCO (well that too), but rather call/cc.

Looking over a fairly large project here, a majority of the code is written in CPS because of callbacks to the server or delays for user interaction.

(So far, I've avoided the need to trampoline, since my call stack isn't getting too deep yet before it unwinds on it its own. But, then again, I haven't done any cross-browser testing at all yet.)
Well, the funny thing here is my own career path was not exactly textbook either, and still I worry about my son.

As for yourself keep an open mind, definitely not everything about 'regular' education is bad, but some people have a hard time adapting to the system and the system definitely won't adapt to them, if you are one of these then go ahead and carve your own path, I'm sure we'll be hearing great things about you one of these days.
indeed the original post felt a bit ranty
Reforming American Health Care
I think this has to do a lot with how people expect to think and not being able to reuse the parsers you've built up in your brain.

For example, Ruby goes for the "English" approach. E.g. the "foo.double.addOne" means "take foo, double it, then add one". You can sort of use the parts of your brain that parse natural language to read the code.

Other languages are based on various mathematical construct, such as the more functional languages where a function application is done in the opposite order of natural reading, e.g. in "1 + (2 * foo)" the "1 + " application is actually the last thing you evaluate, though it is the first thing you read. This requires you to store a lot of scope information in your mind as you parse complex expressions.

However, if you have a very strong functional language I believe it can be quite pretty in its own right as you start to think in terms of higher-order operations. For example, point-free function composition frees you from having to read additional and lengthy function declarations with their own variables and scope and lets you simply see that this composition is just a way of applying multiple functions to obtain a higher-order operation.

In short, I think it's largely about how comfortable you are to think with various mathematical abstractions that determine how ugly a language is. Note that it's possible to write ugly code in any language.
Does anyone have feedback on the Google A/B testing tool, Website Optimizer? It looks neat, but I haven't tried it yet.
I posted this because it has some unusually good statistics regarding what is actually the problem vs what is often thought to be a problem, but isn't really.

Also, I always assumed that, while our system is very expensive, it at least was the best in the world. This article mostly dispels that notion. The numbers on infant mortality and death rates after strokes was telling.
This is nothing but typical scaremongering from our good old British press. To the right hand side is a long, scrolling list of, er, job openings. (I've flagged it.)
More like: "Aircraft engineer fixes faulty airliner"... Nothing spectacularly newsworthy in there IMHO.

I guess it just triggers every expert's dream of being able to unexpectedly save the day in a timely manner while off-duty.
Minimum wage increase to $7.25 slated for July 24
It is possible with C.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_interchange

http://gcc.igor.onlinedirect.bg/summit/2004/High%20Level%20L...
I don't think they can be more expensive except because of subsidies for dumb-phones. It doesn't require any extra hardware for a phone to download software from the web-site of your choice, and only two pins routed to the outside for it to download from your computer.
Without having read any docs or patents, I'd say some sort of bimetallic strip: two metals, different resistances/heat expansion constants. It's how they used to make turn signal timers.
Some Insights into Marc Andreessen's New VC Firm, Andreessen Horowitz
First class continuations in Javascript would be a godsend.
I mean this: I know (to some extent atleast) what to expect from languages like Python etc. So if I am trying to choose between say, Ruby and Python, I can use them both for a couple of weeks, and decide which to go with, depending on which I like and am more comfortable with. I also know where these languages are mostly used, job prospects of them etc.

Whereas with functional programming, I am totally new and lost, no clue where to even begin.

No, I didn't hint anything else.
Here's mine:

Double it, add another unit up. So, two days becomes four days + 1 week = 11 days. I've found this (depressingly) accurate over a large sample size.

The only problem is, for each new task, I refuse to accept that such a "ridiculous" estimation could be correct, so I just stick with the original.

And the cycle continues...
Rather than using nested while loops with labels, why not use one big while loop and a switch statement? This seems cleaner and would allow jumping ahead, rather than just behind.

Labels "[lbl] foo" would become "case 'foo':goto_label=false;" and gotos "goto foo;" would become "goto_label='foo'; continue goto_loop;".

Example:

var goto_label='top';
goto_loop: while(goto_label) {
switch(goto_label) {
case 'top': goto_label=false;
...
goto_label='foo'; continue goto_loop;
...
case 'foo': goto_label=false;
...
}}

Not perfect, but better.

edit: scratch that, labels within other control structures won't work, only top level ones.
I'm really curious to see how other people are progressing through the learning process for Haskell (and other HM-based functional languages). I rarely use lambdas, and I feel that Haskell is much easier to read than to write. Clearly there's something different about our approaches. I learned SML back in school, picked up OCaml about 3 years ago, and picking up Haskell was still a bit of a trip.
Most people do not use browsers which support the video tag. Those people that do use a browser that does - well each of those browsers implements it differently.
That's exactly the point though. You're never done with a software project, so define "done" in a way that gives you something maximally useful in a minimum amount of time.

The "I can do it in a weekend" meme is just ruthless application of the 80/20 principle. Pick out the most useful 80% that'll take the shortest amount of time to implement. Then repeat until you've got the time down to a weekend. Chances are that if you've picked well, you've still got something fairly useful. Most decent software ideas have a useful kernel that really can be done in a weekend.

Gall's Law: “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”

Once you've got folks using your system, then you can worry about all the nitty-gritty details. But generally, it doesn't matter.
to put it in context a bit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_countr...
Apple has many competitive products to Adobe. Of course they're not going to try and help Adobe.

It's also why they aren't supporting an open video tag. They have competitive products to it.
I highly recommend The China Study for a more detailed, epidemiological study of nutrition.
How Facebook Poaches From Google, Yahoo and LinkedIn
What are these different circumstances or different kinds of jobs for which an OO language is a better fit than a functional language or vice versa?
my guess was pi :(
Are you saying the book should be called the eight day workmonth?
I think a useful place to begin estimates, before you dive into the detail level and go bottom up from tasks, is estimate by analogy. Look at how long it has actually taken you or your team to deliver a real system. Use that as the baseline for the estimation process.

Unless you have delivered systems in 2 days, you probably don't have a process that supports delivering systems in 2 days. That's why delivering something in 2 days is a good thing to try. I like this post of a team building something in 4 hours.
http://blog.palantirtech.com/2009/07/06/the-multisnake-chall...
The Multisnake Challenge
Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge
make an iPhone app where users can share there karma's with their friends/everyone it might be a successful business. Being a website, I doubt a lot of people are going to use it.
I use Adblock Plus to block Google Analytics, too. I do it because Google Analytics freezes scrolling on my old version of Firefox on my slow computer.
PHP's sigils are superfluous. Perl (from which PHP derives their use) utilizes sigils with respect to typing in order to denote scalar variables ($), arrays (@) and hashes (%). What does PHP use the $ sigil for? Everything but references (&). Why? Because.

PHP's standard library is extremely disorganized. What's the function to put a string into hexadecimal? bin2hex. What's the function to put a string into base64? base64_encode. How do you turn a base64 string back into a "binary" string? base64_decode. How do you turn a hexadecimal string back into a "binary" string? Oh wait... an explicit function doesn't exist for that. Not to mention the various inconsistent ways in which functions are named: afnctn(), afunction(), a_function(), et cetera ad nauseum. Many functions also have an inconsistent order of parameters.

PHP doesn't support integral values larger than that of a signed 32 bit integer. Even better, when you overflow an int, you get a float back! Did you know pack() and unpack() support arguments for the unsigned ints that PHP doesn't support? Genius!

Last I checked, PHP didn't use lexical scoping. Do you know how downright stupid and annoying that is?

PHP's thread support sucks. Period.

According to Cal Henderson at Flickr, PHP "leaks memory like a sieve." (http://www.afup.org/IMG/pdf/flickr_php.pdf) (of course this is an implementation issue)

The downright stupidity of some of the PHP users just baffles me at times. One look on the PHP manual (Especially at any of the pages about the cryptographic functions, such as md5() and sha1() ) is enough to make any seasoned programmer's blood pressure skyrocket.

Cheers.
I'm glad to see that the government (and government run services) are opening up more and more in terms of easily computer readable data sets.

Awesome step forward. I live in LA so I wonder what I can do with this data... hm...
I love the smell of 'Atlas Shrugged' in the morning...
Some of those jobs:

Neurophysiologists: Band 6/7
Location: Southhampton | Salary: On Application

Cardiac Physiologists : Bands 6/7
Location: Southhampton | Salary: On Application

Yes a scrolling list of jobs the beer and soccer (football) crowd isn't qualified to do.

Jobs are still available for physicians, engineers and programmers but not widget assemblers.

I live in a city which is noted for it's low unemployment, high quality of living, etc. However, the layoffs are beginning.

Even government (funded) jobs like Head Start are in trouble. The stimulus money promised to state and local organisations just isn't there.

I know this is anecdotal and we won't know how bad it is for several months.
May be, don't die on Jan 1st as well. People are in hangover, and party mood in general. They don't want a party-pooper! However, if you want to be born (again!) on Jan 1st, you are most welcome ... join the party!
Thomas Edison once said “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. If that’s true, then out of the 99%, 45% of that time should be spent talking and listening to your customers.

I smell a maths fail.

Other than that, this article provides a decent list, though all of these tools should be familiar to everyone here.
This looks promising. I spent a few minutes clicking around and reading the wiki and about page and I couldn't seem to find the answer to this question: Case studies of any sites using this filesystem.

I did find this:

"A word of caution: Ceph is under heavy development and should not yet be trusted to reliably store data. That said, wider testing is the fastest way to stabilize the system and bring it closer to maturity."

But are there any real example cases of this FS in use? (in beta software or otherwise)
Population Density
Which just so happens to be one of the main points of the article. What are our governments going to do with the masses of unemployed blue collar workers?

There's no quickie solution for this. We believe here that you can't just scale a tech industry (i.e. churn out massive numbers of CS degrees a la India or China and hope some magic happens). Then how can you similarly retrain that entire blue collar workforce?

Now I'm not suggesting that a massive government intervention is going to work. Whatever solution we find that works in the end is going to have to be more deep and creative than anything on the table right now.
Lean Startup fbFund slides and video
I think the difference is more that the people on HN have a lot more shared culture and shared values, meaning many are willing to make the same assumptions and see the same outcomes; while the people at reddit are more diverse and many are starting with totally different assumptions which would make your argument invalid.

Also, I think people tend to link their HN profiles more with their real lives. They shed a little more anonymity to gain a little more credibility. On Reddit people are a lot more anonymous, which makes it easier to brutally attack someone because there aren't many repercussions.

In general I am happy that there is almost always a dissenting opinion in the comments on HN, pointing out flaws in the argument that I might have been too complacent to catch.
It was time well spent if I could help a fellow HackerNewsian.
Not to piss on LA transit, but the API would much more compelling if the services were much more frequent.

Here is London's high-frequency services, trains running >4 per hour:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/high-frequency-servic...

(Almost all of the busses in zones 1, 2, and 3 run at 15 minute headways or better.)

Here is LA's high-frequency services, both trains AND busses running every 12 minutes or better:

http://www.metro.net/riding_metro/maps/images/12_min_map.pdf (see the last page)

An API for the Metro becomes much more compelling when trains start whooshing along, for example, an elevated right of way down 8-lane Wilshire or Santa Monica, and you don't need 45-second timers for crossing streets.
the advantage would be 0 overhead on the machine serving up the data.
Isn't this the British English version of code? I think I've seen it elsewhere in British press.
What, they're running this? http://www.marketcetera.com/site/
Eh? Submitters routinely submit a different title than the original article (eg. to give more context) - if that makes you do a double take, you must be doing it a lot. I don't even notice.

The N in "N ways to" is usually noise, so I can see why the guideline is there.
Do you believe that we will find a solution? What brought us out of the Depression? WWII?

I don't know and nobody knows how to "fix" this. I'm not arguing with you, just making the point that no one can wave a wand or pass a law to make jobs.

Yes, you can employ a percentage of the population with make work jobs (WPA jobs like my grandfathers had). But that only keeps people from starving and rioting. It doesn't fix the problem.
I largely agree. I think most will agree that unemployment is a major concern, and I think all but the most optimistic think it will be a major concern for some time.

But this article tries to border on the apocalyptic with little justification.
Reminds me of the recent story about the airman spotting a massive fuel leak from his seat over the wing. http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123149266
LG KU990 Viewty Pink Unlocked
LG KE9990 Viewty Pink is the new and latest updated phone of LG Company with many new features. It has an excellent camera. Its features and functions are superior to any other digital camera that I have ever used in a phone.
Where is the boundary between sales and customer service?
it jumps out right away that:

1+1+1+1+1 = 5

2+2+2+2+2 = 10 and 1+0 = 1

3+3+3+3+3 = 15 and 1+5 = 6

(whenever it's sums of digits you think mod 9)

since there are 5 numbers, the sum of the coefficients mod 9 = 5 (ie, 5, 14, 23...)

that's as far as I went before giving up

anyone got the rest without brute force?

----------------------------------------------

Oh and what's with the author's justification of random guessing?
Commenting that you've flagged is considered bad form at HN (it's in the rules). I have trouble resisting sometimes myself.