skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Introspection is very healthy and worthy, I agree. My response was meant to counteract a little of the alarmism. As for opinions getting mods, that's generally how it works- in a way every post is a poll and you get people agreeing with that opinion or not- everyone understanding that it's really just an opinion. It's certainly rarely meant to be personal.

In short, if someone is modded down for questioning the site's direction, people are indicating that they respectfully disagree for the most part. (Man, I must have reached some kind of zen state today.)
Very small point.

Nowhere does the article state that any Canadians have ever been to the moon.
Are the changes all compatible? Or are some of them incompatible for trivial reasons because "it's a fork, no reason to be compatible"?
The joke goes that a locksmith was arrested for 'going equipped' and he countered they should arrest him for rape as well...
The fact that they're passing the data back with an image tag instead of an XHR request also suggests the same to me.

If this was some leftover debug code, I wouldn't expect it to be that sneaky.
I don't really believe this. I tried running on a treadmill barefoot for a few days and my feet were in a lot of pain. Mainly the joints and arch area hurt.

Also I've noticed walking around the house barefoot for a day or two will make my knees hurt.
"The right to freedom of speech is not short hand for the right to pontificate. We defend speech freedoms for their connection to a deeper underlying concept—the Right to Know. Without understanding the world around us we can not function. Without an informed public, democracy has no meaning and civilization is adrift. Through understanding the truth about ourselves and the world around us, we are able to advance and survive. Ultimately our understanding depends on discovering primary sources. Everything else is speculation. "

I think this is a superbly well phrased summary of my own (and dare I say the proverbial "hackers") beliefs.
"How is a non-hacker end user supposed to run a tarball?"

How about they wait until available through their distribution's package manager?
Sure but getting a decent GPS fix in the metro canyons of big cities isn't a given (even with A-GPS).

You could make a lot of money by solving the problem of how to reliably determine location in major cities indoors and out (and not just relying on known wifi-hotspot triangulation like skyhook does).
I think being in deep and true relationships was discouraged, but shallow stuff like sex/sports/etc was encouraged.

The criticism that this is exactly the shallow type is valid, imho.
Chris, good to see you around. Your tutorials introduced me both to Dylan and Corman Common Lisp :-)
Woobius - a taste of magic
Multiple Firefox Profiles (How To Video)
You should make an Amazon EC2 image and offer an already set-up service (with maintennance and whatnot) for 110% the cost of EC2. That gives me a low barrier to trying it out (it should cost me like 20 bucks for a low usage trial or less) before making the time commitment to install it.
I wonder how they plan to distinguish themselves from hadoop.
Seems like everyone forgot to mention this app has not yet been approved by the App Store.

But yes, rad nonetheless.
Full disclosure: I made this!
Networking site for programmers and projects (Ohloh)
Back in the days: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.11/rocket.science_pr.ht...
You've put your finger on an important issue. The same person isn't dismissing this AND TechCrunch.

But I bet you many people (like me) do dismiss both.

The problem is that different groups value each type of story, the end result being lots of TechCrunch AND this kind of stuff, but very little else.
Dumb question but how does the internal compass of a smartphone actually work?
Would you prefer that the news be a list of facts?

YES!
Yeah, it just sounds like he wanted to have the fun of implementing something, but someone else beat him to it.
But determining what is "significant" is editorializing...
You should really rebase, so as not to clutter up the history with meaningless merge commits.

In the author's case, he said he abandoned the project (or wasn't working on it), so it should just be a fast-forward.
"It doesn't matter how fast your language is, you're just racing to get to wait on I/O faster."

But it does matter how small your runtime (and inner loops) are, if you want to live in the L1 and L2 cache and avoid paying the RAM latency penalty.
Same here. I own a TV but I don't get TV (I voted yes anyways). My TV is used a screen for my media center computer (mostly for music and movies) and video games.
I hate to to have to say this, but could we please have more descriptive titles? You can tell from some of the comments that a lot of people, myself included, are trying to figure out what would is so concerning on that page.

Also, the post title seems to be deliberately trying to manipulate readers into clicking through. HN isn't a newspaper that has to grab eyeballs with exciting headlines. Anyone worried about the "decline" of HN should be worried about posts like this.
The porn industry has a lot of early adopters. How they're using a technology is a good leading indicator of how everyone else is going to use it.
This list doesn't count governments as employers. Which is silly, because they are huge ones too. It doesn't matter if you're in favor or against that, but at least mention it.
Kaz took a stab at it recently and found a few surprising features that didn't remain in C:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/...

In Summary:

I didn't say BCPL is better
than its successors. Only that not everything in its successors is strictly an
improvement over its BCPL counterpart.
#1: Definitely agree, I'm surprised I don't hear this more often.

#2: ...Make him code using the same tools he would use in the position he is applying for....

What sort of tools is he referring to? I've always been given free reign on my work box, and I put what I want on it. It has to be interoperable, of course.

#3: Good idea, but why leave and come back? Why not just have them talk you through it? I much prefer interactive interviews.

#4: Make sure their personal website doesn't have a link to their Google Apps verification page.

http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/google50f905a7cdbdd588html...
Oh, I'm definitely not saying that it replaces automated testing. A mixed approach is almost certainly best. I like randomized testing, too. Just, (conservatively) half of the things people write as unit tests could be expressed in the type system in OCaml* . If not correct for all possible input, they prevent the program from compiling, and lead you to everywhere the property doesn't hold. That's arguably a stronger guarantee than passing tests for known input->output at runtime. (In all fairness, much of it can also be done with Java or C++'s type systems, but without type inference it becomes incredibly tedious, and ML type constructors are far more direct than wrapping things in classes all over the place.)

Type systems are also "just another tool", though, and more useful in some cases than others. I wonder how many other properties about a program could be declared, inferred, and verified for the complete domain of input at compile time -- this is safe to use concurrently, that is fully isolated from non-deterministic input, this can have its results memoized, those can fully evaluated once at compile time and don't even need to run in final executable, etc. (Haskell can do some of this, but I don't like lazy evaluation as a default, among other things.) Playing with Prolog and logic programming has gotten me curious about how far that sort of analysis could be pushed.

About the insurance example -- I know exactly where you're coming from. I've done something similar for the architectural industry, and a huge suite of example results helped tremendously.

* And very likely Haskell, SML, Clean, and others, but my "advanced type system" experience is mostly with OCaml.
Couldn't they just .. store it in the damn scale itself? say, an SD card?
Much better that we care about Twitter's admin password or which programming language framework has a cleaner API for handling database abstractions.

We can dress a lot of stuff up in rational clothing, but there is very little on HN that isn't, at its heart, subjective, sentimental, and not grounded in empirical research.

I don't personally care who she is either, but I wouldn't call it nonsense to care or to post it here.
Nmap 5.00 Released - biggest release since 1997
Neither app has been approved yet -- http://www.acrossair.com/apps_newyorknearestsubway.htm
Assuming everyone had this add-on (and we are talking about software, not just a web service here), would every single query anyone made on any website in the entire world have to hit your servers?
Dog food be judged
I prefer "make the candidate estimate some reasonably complex project" to "make the candidate design something". Design is fuzzier than estimation.
I thought Palm specifically said they would not filter out apps based on content. [source needed]
I think the reason for a good bit of that is that BCPL was first stripped to produce 'B', then expanded again to produce 'C'.
Ask HN: What kind of tools does Congress use to author 1,000+ page bills?
Reading through the new 1,018 page healthcare bill got me wondering... What kind of document authoring tool do our lawmakers use to generate these massive bills? Seems like they have to be written in parallel by lots of unnamed lawyers which would make it quite a task to get the final draft together.

Anyone have experience here?
Most likely a solid-state compass: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Solid_state_compasses
The Future for Investors
Ask HN: How would you build a high performance, semi-real-time stats service?
Many sites can benefit from showing real-time stats about their visitors - bit.ly have practically built their entire product around it - but doing so requires persisting data on every page request in a way that allows for near-real-time queries. How would you go about building something like this - regular MySQL, memcached counters or something more exotic like MongoDB?
Those guys are out there.

Anton Krupika, who has absolutely dominated ultra-running events over the past few years nearly always wears minimalist shoes, if any at all.

In fact, he ran one of the toughest and most competitive trail races in the world in 10 ounce racing shoes a couple of years ago... and won by over 3 hours! It was the Leadville 100, a 100 mile trail run on hilly terrain at an elevation averaging over 10,000 feet:

http://coachjoeenglish.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/races-leadvi...

http://correrxmuntanya.blogspot.com/2007/10/athlete-spotligh...
Damn, maybe I am getting oldDamn, maybe I am getting old

You're not getting old. This has happened to many sites. And it will happen here as well. If you go way back in time you see me politely disagree with pg that soft policing is doomed to failure and the redditization of hn. Oh well. C'est la vie.
Should YouTube Charge a Fee to Upload Video?
Because this can take up to six months or longer, and people want to use the software they're being asked by Firefox's marketing to use.

Most people don't wait 6 months. They use articles like the one mentioned, and are more likely to encounter poor-quality Firefox as a result.
>> What sort of tools is he referring to?

I assumed he meant languages, frameworks and other things in a project that can't be swapped out as easily as, say, text editors.
What? There have been third party packages for Linux distros for years. As long as they're of suitable quality, there's no problem.

Not every piece of software comes is Ubuntu or Fedora's default repositories.
I think 'LOL memory' could become a new meme.
Looks awesome! I once built the dutch Juan with a bunch of friends. It was so much fun to build and to ride. Keep up the good work.
I wish everyone was that careful when infecting others with memes.
I think Schneier's making a very dangerous and ignorant suggestion with his latest post. He's not a lawyer, and yet he's dispensing advice that deals more with legal issues than security ones.

There are two things that can happen when they ask to search your encrypted laptop - you can decline, or you can give them the key. If you decline, no matter what cockamamie reason you give, you're going to be dealing with a legal matter, most likely seizure and possibly detainment.

Think about it, you get the same result by politely declining and asking for a lawyer.

Bruce's 'solution' doesn't solve anything. The outcome is the same, only now you have on record how you went to great lengths to prevent the border agents from reading what was on your laptop. Whereas, if you just shut the fuck up and wait for a lawyer, you can get legal advice before you say something really stupid.

As for privileged communications, does he really believe that if they could legally compel you to divulge the key, that they couldn't do the same to your wife?

The legal system is not a logical system like your computer. Clever hacks don't always work.
A great suggestion, it's super robust and powerful and has some very cool features for tracking the sorts of issues or work you do, where you end up spending time, etc.
The drug does almost exactly the same thing as the one in the book. I cannot imagine that this was done just out of pure, random chance.
Look on the bright side - newmogul (HN clone for finance) still gets many interesting posts but community discussion there has almost completely dried up.
HTML5 drag and drop in Firefox 3.5
Cloudkick now supports Rackspace Cloud Servers (YC W09)
Develop Video Games for the Eldery
10 Studios That Find Clients Easier Because They Have Funny Websites
Build Online Properties to Build Wealth
Look, this site is what you make it.

Yes, that's why a lot more people will make it into something that's DIFFERENT from what it was when there were a lot fewer people.

You've been here almost 2 years, in that time you have not made a single submission

Red herring.

If you don't like it then take action

He can not do diddlysquat. Only pg and the mods could take action by viciously removing any article which even remotely strays from a pre-determined core character.

There is an awful lot of 'oh, I really don't like the direction HN is going in' here, as well as 'it used to be so nice'. I don't get that, it's pretty good right now

That's because we've seen this movie before. You may not have had a front row seat for the downfall of your favorite social news site, but many of us have seen it happen many times.

I haven't been here nearly as long as you have, and I concur there are some 'growing pains' but on the whole it is pretty good.

And as much as I like this place, I predict it is doomed, and before long even you will abandon it.
I like the comparison though I also like the wave pattern. For example, weekends are definitely worse than weekdays.
Possibly - but don't deny that this stuff doesn't happen. You may have been around for Reddit, and that's most definitely changed for the worse since when I started there (I've since quit). Turning into Digg and all that.
Oh dear gods no.

I first encountered BCPL when I was at Cambridge University, the home of the language and its designer, Martin Richards.

Same. I was taught this during my undergrad (in the ancient times of 2002-3ish). A course on "Comparative Programming Languages" ended up as 7 lectures on BCPL and 1 on everything else (Lisp, Smalltalk, stuff like that. I think.) It was terrible.

I now have an in-built knee-jerk reaction to hate BCPL. Especially since he (Martin Richards, who should never be allowed to lecture, ever) spent at least one lecture teaching us how to implement types in BCPL.

Yeah. Typed BCPL. Last time I checked, that was called "C".
RubyTrends.com hot topics in the Ruby community
RubyTrends is a community driven resource to keep everyone up to date with the latest technology, books and other useful information resources in the Ruby community
Sure, if they want to lose 99.9999999999999999999999% of their uploaders.
>begin implementation in a walled garden

Why don't you start experimenting with your own blog?
Great site for finding up-and-coming Ruby related tools and techniques. I use often.
A Culture for Innovation - Liberate the Innovative Spirit
Lua embedded inside Nmap? That looks like fun:

http://nmap.org/book/nse.html
Ask HN: Programming Curriculum for Non-Geeks?
My sister works in HR. Yes, evil HR. However, the programmer types actually get along with her because she actually tries to get to know them (apparently, this is unusual in her field).

Anyway, I'm trying to come up with a basic study plan for her so that she can get familiarized with the skillsets that programmers use. The purpose is for her to be able to evaluate people better and get beyond the simple checklist of skills.

Can anyone suggest some things that she can read up on to help with this? I believe some type of primer document in programming and/or design would be best. I don't think she needs to get into heavy coding in order to achieve this goal.
Taibbi: The real price of Goldman’s giganto-profits
I can see how that's ambiguous. I mean this in a totally good way. Moving to a new implementation of a language interpreter should not have any exciting surprises, it should just behave in the same way as any other implementation.

JRuby succeeds remarkably well in working exactly as the MRI implementation. Therefore I consider "boring" to be high praise.

What's exciting is what it enables, which is real threading and java integration. But that's another story, and I do intend to write a blog post on it soon.
Interns. Lots and lots of interns.
Since you guys have been using these for so long, maybe you could answer this question for me.

How thick are the soles? If I step on a nail or broken glass, will it penetrate the sole?
These are all excellent suggestions.

Potential interviewers please note that leaving the candidate in a conference room with blank paper and pencil potentially filters excellent developers who are just not used to literally writing code on paper.
Great tool for sorting out whats what in the ruby community
It wouldn't be hard to make baloons draggable and you have overcome the obstacle.
"apple is freakin stupid. i bought a mid line HP laptop about 5 months ago for $450 on sale at best buy (with vista and the full office suite). it's faster and has power than the macbook, which is about $1200."

Somehow I doubt that...
So will WikiLeaks be hosting leaked celebrity sex videos now? Frankly, I've always found their collection of politically themed documents a tad... highbrow.

While I do fear privacy controls, there's quite a difference between public interest and "shagging stories" (as an ex-NotW staffer referred to them when interviewed on Newsnight).
Some interesting and good ideas. However, I don't think there is a recipe for finding good software engineers. If you always use the same method you're going to end up with a team of people with the same strengths. Know your teams strengths and weaknesses and find candidates that balance things out.
"Remind me to stay on your good side."

:)

I sold the site earlier this year, but the subdomain I set up is still live, so the "hack" (if you could really call it that) is still live.

Gives me a giggle, everytime - I know it was malicious, but it was damn funny.

Another thing I did to this person was embed a flash banner on her forums using google's adwords that would loop an 8 bit rickroll. She ended up disabling advertising on her site for a short while, instead of blocking the ad itself. It drove her users nuts. Among the best 80 cents I ever spent.

Good times.
I might sound a bit hypersensitive here, but couldn't the author easily avoid using "he" and "him" when referring to potential candidates for software programming positions?
Well I think the interest has more to do with how cool the underlying technology is, the specific application is a little beyond the point.
Oh, come on. Reading a book's as active as watching TV or YouTube. You're still being fed substance by somebody else. All of these have the potential to teach you, but none of them truly involve you.
SLAs: refund not insurance
I think "surfing the net" for hours on end is a step above channel surfing, but still definitely a step below purposeful action on a project you're working on.
/dev/random

Maybe with some Markov chains thrown in for good measure.
Student uses national grid to predict crime rates
Ask HN: Help with Hard Disk Recovery?
Hi guys, I'm sorry this is a bit of a selfish thing to post on HN, but I desperately need some help.

I blew up my hard disk last night. I booted my Dell inspiron laptop with the Asus eee pc recovery DVD by mistake. It launched straight into an install. I realised within 5 secs and powered down. Apparently, that was enough to hose the hard drive and it wouldn't boot (I had a dual install WinXP/Ubuntu with grub). I booted with an old cd to get a dos prompt and tried fdisk/mbr but that didn't work either.

Googling around brings up loads of shady looking shareware software.

Does anyone know of a good solid software to retrieve lost partitions/data?*

Thanks.

*If not, maybe there's a business idea right there :p
It's not Java? It's under rapid, active development? It's embeddable?

I think it looks very interesting. I've learned to always pay attention to what Danga is doing - they have a knack for taking a task, cutting out all the bloat and crap and yak-shaving, and delivering just what you need; see memcached, perlbal, mogileFS.

And Hadoop is an utter pig. It might work great, fine, but it is way, WAY too complex IMO. It doesn't have that elegance and efficiency that is the hallmark of excellent software. Plus did I mention it's in Java? Hope you like XML.

Disclaimer: This is just my opinion and I have not used Hadoop extensively, although I do work with the M/R pattern elsewhere. It's just my impression of the software from not-very-thorough investigations.
which part do you doubt? Its certainly true that PC laptops are much less expensive that apple laptops (upon which this comment is being written). And its definitely true that $450 is not an unrealistic price to spend. As for which is 'faster' thats so nebulous that it would require further clarification to establish. PC's are faster for somethings, and Mac's for others. The main reason (for me) to buy a Mac is that I like OSX better than XP or Vista. 7, I haven't tried yet.
Before I "re-invent the wheel" I look for solutions that are out there already. This site is cool because I can see which one of those tools are the most popular (hence probably actively supported) BEFORE I start playing with them.
The worst thing about the ads is that at the end, they pay for the PC. If Lauren knew they were going to give her $1,000 -- she probably would have bought the Mac. That part of the ad makes no sense.
That's absolutely amazing, I thought BCPL was long dead.

Or rather, it seems that it is long dead but that this particular lecturer can't get off his hobby horse.

That's archaeology, not 'comparative programming languages'.

It's a bit like going somewhere to study French and getting a course in Latin instead.
I guess it was inevitable: botnets of smart phones.

?Perhaps an opening for new security startups to compete with the PC/"security" powers that be?
Great. We'll have that as soon as people agree what the facts are.
It's you, not the ad. The setup is 'I want X features at $Y','Yeah? OK, you find we'll reimburse you.' There is a Mac available at $Y, but not with the features she's committed to.
The RubyTrends search also allows you to not only see what project matches your keyword, but also if there is a screencast or book with the same keyword.
It's interesting to see what is popular over time. Suprisingly, Ruby on Rails is #1. :)