skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's already two weeks into this month, why don't they have a confirmed date?

I mean c'mon microsoft, there's been so many vaporware-esque claims recently, it would be nice if they provided something not just claims.
World Of Warcraft Still Suspended In China Indefinitely
Steve Ballmer Shouts, 'Microsoft Will Keep On Coming'
I started using Emacs because I was interested in learning Lisp (and had been using vim for several years, so I figured it would shake things up). The thing I've seen that best captures how full-on Emacs wizardry looks is Marco Baringer's Slime screencast (http://common-lisp.net/project/movies/movies/slime.mov). It's a sort of IDE for Common Lisp. (Edit: Better link, thanks kirubakaran.)

While really learning the nooks and crannies of Emacs's functionality can suck up a lot of time, it's also not going anywhere. I've only been using Emacs for about three years now, FWIW, but I'm a bit of a toolsmith, and I've learned enough to teach others. (FWIW, I'd also jump ship if a better editor comes around, but Emacs and Vim are each good enough that getting sufficient momentum with a new editor to displace them would be incredibly difficult. The most interesting alternative I've seen is Acme / Wily from Plan9, but I don't like its mouse-y interface.)

The best way to learn Emacs is to start with the tutorial (start Emacs, then press Control-h and then t), and then learn how to use the built-in help system. Everything is meticulously documented, though sometimes with unfamiliar terminology. It helps if you have a focus, like learning how to run make, a Python interpreter, etc. inside it. The Emacs Wiki (http://emacswiki.org) has quite a bit of good advice, as well.

Don't forget to keep your Emacs config under VC. :) Extension recommendations - pabbrev, tagging.el, uniquify, saveplace, recentf, remember, midnight, anything, and emacs-w3m if you're using Unix.
The relative value of a t-shirt (<$10) is completely negligible when compared to the 'normal' wage of most programmers.

It's obviously a personal reaction, and therefore almost completely subjective, but I feel like the t-shirt is not reimbursing you for your work, but another way to say 'thanks', akin to a thank-you email, but that much more personal/sincere.
Once you put in something like 10 hours towards learning Emacs, you'll become productive with it. After this initial investment, for every n minutes per day that you put it, you'll get m back in terms of increased productivity. In my experience |m| >> |n|. And remember that time saved = mt - n, where t is the number of days you have been reaping this productivity boost, and t tends to infinity. You won't "lose" any time after that (however, you can if you want to, by doing obscure fun stuff), and your productivity will continue to go up.

Marco Baringer's is the only good Emacs screencast I've seen so far. Please share if you find any other.

http://common-lisp.net/project/movies/movies/slime.mov [150MB]

I haven't gone through these yet, but you may want to check them out: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsScreencasts

Also, be sure to use this : http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/effective-emacs
You seem young so let me offer some advice: pick an interesting language that will either (a) get you an interesting job, or (b) allow you to develop what is in your brain. C++, Java, C#, Python, Scala, Ruby - it doesn't matter. What is useless is learning a language that you then cannot use to get employment.
That's how my friend's service-based startup died before it even got out of the gate. He tried to outsource way too much overseas, not realizing the extremely low quality of work he would get (e.g. copy writing). He had to have a lot of it redone and burned through all of his cash before he got anywhere. (And he had a pretty weak business plan in the first place.)
Taking a Principled Position on Software Freedom
STS-127 To Launch SpaceX's DragonEye Sensor
I must misunderstand, yes, because I have no idea what the difference between "code" and "software" is supposed to be. Especially for something interpreted like JS. Is jQuery code or software?

Can't argue that most JS examples you'll find on the web are awful, though, or that open source CMSs are typically useless. Or closed source CMSs for that matter.
I realize you said you weren't talking about this article in particular, but really, the fact that this happens to mention Twitter is entirely peripheral to the point.
I wish I could have down-voted this article, all I read is Ballmer bashing.
It marvels me how can psychologists get anything out of that. Most of the cards just look like butterflies.

Anyway, if the cards are public there is no reason for them not to be at wikipedia. I also didn't know the images were always the same.
I'm surprised your comment has been voted up, it hinges on the assumption that learning the intricacies of a programming tool, in this case an editor, prevents accomplishing anything else with you life.

There may be other people out there that use an editor, or an OS, to impress others; but from personal experience and those of friends, there are plenty of people that learn vi and Emacs because they needed to get things done.

The right tool for any job depends on the person. Someone familiar with the details of HTML and CSS would likely be better off not using a WYSIWYG editor, but for someone unaware of and uninterested in DOMs and stylesheets that editor would be great.
Are you sure your Exchange server had actually been hacked, and wasn't just relaying? That happened to me too, ages ago, but I wouldn't call it a hack - just a bad misconfiguration, got me blacklisted at the time. In fact it was so long ago I can't even remember if it was called Exchange or something else; this is NT 3.51.

Ah, NT, how I don't miss thee. Although, to be fair, I hear the MS toolchain has improved greatly in recent years.
I think it's unlikely that the name is based on password hash salts. That term occurs only very rarely in the cryptographic literature.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, without the conversation ending in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
Beautiful video, a bit jerky in places but I suppose live-transmission from a rocket is rarely done by private companies. If I had it, I'd pay a billion dollars to be able to see the world drop away like that.

Seeing things like this makes me hopeful for the future, but perhaps that's just because I grew up watching Star Wars and became a SF/F writer.
Thanks! It's been quite a few 18 hour days, but we finally redesigned the site after over a year :)
The problem with your second graf is that Nate isn't just talking about library implementation bugs. He's saying that the interfaces to some of these libraries are insecure. For instance, you're using OpenSSL; OpenSSL's crypto primitives do essentially nothing to protect you from a host of implementation failures, from failing to properly MAC your messages to leaking error information to checking parameters.

Keyczar and OpenSSL are not only not on the same playing field, they aren't playing the same sport. Keyczar is saying, "you want to do crypto, you're not a cryptographer, so we'll make all the hard decisions for you and give you a programmer-proof interface". OpenSSL is saying "here are the control rods, try not to blow the reactor up".

As for your first graf, I think it's a bit strange to take a post where a noted, respected expert on crypto is telling you not to use Keyczar, and extract from that the comment that Keyczar seems like the way to go. If Nate says not to use Keyczar, my advice is that picking it right now might be a professional embarassment in the coming year.
There’s always http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs
Yes, there's a very good reason not to use OpenSSL to do your own crypto: the only reliable functionality you get from OpenSSL is the crypto primitives themselves. The actual constructions that use those primitives are extremely error-prone. The point of Keyczar, cryptlib, and NaCl is to prevent those errors.

It is extremely easy to use OpenSSL. That is one of the problems with OpenSSL.
The sad part is that that the arguers against all insist the cards themselves are sacred, rather than the business of studying the patient's process in responding to the cards.

To my mind this is pure pseudoscience. You might as well rely on some automated tarot card reading (versus using the random arrangement of cards as a brainstorming tool to get a new insight into some life situation).

edit: to clarify, I think there's nothing wrong with using inkblots as a diagnostic tool. It's the idea that one can only usefully score these particular inkblots that seems pseudoscientific to me.
He opens with "I spend a lot of time thinking about how to improve user experiences", so where in this are you thinking about the user experience?

Why do I want to be influenced to follow you on Twitter?
True IT Confessions
Wait - what exactly does it mean to "Create Your Own Economy?"
I was expecting to need to flag this but it was actually pretty interesting. I don't know if I agree with everything the guy says, but the rest of the site looks useful too.
Enunciate: convert Java interface to REST, JSON, SOAP, GWT-RPC, and AMF
Is Dirt the New Prozac?
Seeking Fame in Apple's Sea of Apps
The problem with 2.2Mb of data to back-up?

Can't fit it all on a single floppy disk. No wonder he didn't back up for 20 years.
"Finally"? He must have abused it somehow...mine is still running fine. So are my SE and SE/30. I just wish new equipment had the same lifespan.
condolences, man...

bummer.

My Apple ][c is still kicking!
I have not but I would imagine that it is safe for the seller only if the escrow service is legit and takes measures to protect you.

I have been reading this blog for a while and it seems like the guy has had experience buying and selling website so I would suggest trying to get into contact with him:

http://selfmademinds.com/
In Nielsen's "Designing Web Usability" I remember him frowning on the use of "here" and "click here" as links. Since around 2000, when I first read the book, I heeded his advice.

For more information: click here
To sign up, go here

were cardinal no-nos, if I remember correctly.

But it looks like everybody else uses this technique, and the average web surfer is more likely to click give the redundant area to click on.

Maybe people are just more comfortable with "click here" when the links lead to an undefined word, like Twitter. Would it be true to say that most people on the web don't know what Twitter is? Do most of Curtis's visitors know what it is? If most of his visitors don't know, are they clicking on "here" because it's a more comfortable link given Twitter is undefined? While each of his test cases vary in wording, the first 3 are all alike in that twitter is the only word hyperlinked.

My theory is that people are less likely to click on hyperlinks if the hyperlinked text or word is something they don't know about. If you're talking about a brand name, service, or anything not general knowledge than you're better off with "click here."
From my view, the argument behind the article is not very strong. His best data point is that he talked to an entrepreneur who didn't know what to do with $20 million.

The argument that technology start ups don't create value seems to be disproven by the current valuations of Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Tips From Venture Capitalists On Creating a Good Pitch
Arnie to close California State Parks
My condolences to the man and his family. We all know how it feels to lose a beloved machine. An evil conspiracy of an ex-girlfriend and, hopefully soon, ex-mother, have sent my collection of Apple IIe's to the dumpster. All that scaped were the manuals.
Thinking in C++ by Bruce Eckels is good, and freely available online http://www.mindviewinc.com/Books/

The Stroustroup book is a good reference.

I agree that you should start by learning Python, and then C (read K&R) and then worry about C++
"There's nothing scientific about this data, despite the fact that it's been dressed up with words like "correlate""

it hasn't.
4 leads with 11 people might be too much. You only have to change things a little bit at a time. Maybe turn 3 or 4 of your employees into a group reporting to one lead, and see how that works out.

Don't be afraid to make your best developers into leads. If you think they would be the best leads, do it. You will lose direct contribution, but you need to make this decision for the long term. You want an atmosphere of performance being rewarded, rather than promoting long-time less-competent people. Your other employees will see what you do.
I think he needs to differentiate between Schwag and Swag, or at the very least, ask for Chronic.
Tennis or Ancient Greece
Last time I checked a homosexual couple weren't going to be having any baby martians while they were there.
I wrote an awesome enterprise open source software, and instead of cashing up on support contracts, all I get are the bottom of the barrel IT tech support guys asking for free help.

That's gotta be the most gut wrenching, IME.
I stand corrected.

I believe NaCl stands for Networking and Cryptographic Library.

http://secappdev.org/handouts/2009/cryptography%20in%20DNS.p...
I don't see how any sector of the economy is responsible for the inevitable bust that follows an inflationary boom. We had massive inflation over the last 8 years and when that inflation started to be curbed the bust that followed is no one's fault but the people who started the inflation in the first place. California's budget woes are the result of spending too much during a boom not realizing that we were all living in a fantasy world.

The article doesn't address the fact that intellectual property is a form of wealth that is perfectly fine to invest in. Yes there was a lot of errors made during the boom but that's true of all of the booms including our most recent stock and housing bubbles.

I'm still long on the technology industry as a whole. I think there's a lot of good work still to come and I'm looking forward to seeing it. I just hope that the next time inflation comes our way we identify it sooner and act accordingly.
Will you read every application all the way through?
I really thought someone was handing out baggies for code. As an average programmer, I am happy with KB and middies.
Or perhaps people thought they really were going to get the Twitter home page, but then thought "eh, may as well since I'm already here..."
I've never used this site or UStream because I don't understand what I'm looking at.

I just clicked on a video on Justin.tv's front page. I was shown a 3-second intro, and then a woman appeared, introduced herself and started talking.

Internal monologue: "Is this live? pre-recorded? I have no clue. The site seems to be about live video, but if so, how did I manage to tune in right as she was introducing herself?"

I refresh the page. See the intro again, and the video starts from the same point as before.

So it's not live. It's pre-recorded video...

Why wouldn't I just watch this on Youtube?

What am I missing here? The user experience on both of these sites seems really bizarre. They tell me I'm going to watch some live video...and link me to a bunch of pre-recorded stuff. It's bewildering.
I agree that the gem mentioned might not be suitable, but Ruby could still have a part to play, especially as it allows direct use of native libraries, or just managing processes running on the OS.

Someone doing this should probably write the fast-spinning cogs in C, but it might be worth using Ruby to manage threads, processes, data segments, etc - indeed, maybe prototype the C code there first too. You'd gain an awful lot of convenience for very little overhead.
I would rather have 6 or 7 more companies funded than drop 100k having someone sort through applications.
5,000-Year-Old Artificial Eye Found on Iran-Afghan Border (2007)
Vimeo has 'fired their users' in the past -- they banned/deleted all game videos last year: http://www.vimeo.com/blog:140
True, but there is still a namespace conflict within the security world. Google's Native Client (http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/) is called NaCl by the developers, and more and more externally as well :P
Does this mean we have to kidnap some German rocket scientists again?
Your company makes worse decisions for choosing one library over another for worse reasons than mine does.
Releasing software into the public domain is tricky.

I don't know a good way to do that, without running the risk that big company M will take the software, get a patent on it, and then sue me for writing my own software. Disclaimer: this is an over-simplification.

I wanted to point out that simply releasing code into the public domain can bite back. I use the MIT license because it's as close as possible. The BSD license has too much baggage due to that stupid advertising clause in the old 4-clause version.
Another exercise to completely learn a language is to write a compiler for it. This will flush out the corners of the language for you.

Warning, there is a strong tendency to write a compiler for the language as you understand it, not as it is. The surface structure of the language, it's syntax, can be mastered by reading its grammar, and the kinks ironed out by actually implementing a lexer/parser for it.

However, it's deep structure, the semantics and evaluation are only understood through rigorous mathematical semantic models, or at least through implicit understanding after 10 years of use. At least for sophisticated languages.

A previous knowledge of other superior languages will corrupt your current attempt to understand an inferiour language. To give you an example, I think any Scheme programmer will have a difficult time implementing Pascal as it's specified. He will see the language lacking in drastic ways that can improved with little effort.
Everything featured on the top half of the front page on http://ustream.tv/ is live. Below that there are highlights, and upcoming events, both clearly marked. When watching a live stream, the watermark in the top right corner says Live, if it's a recorded video it says Pre-Recorded. The thing is, you are not going to find this content on youtube, as it was all captured live on either service.
I'd like to add ipython, ido, magit and escreen to the .el list.

And org-mode rocks :-)
As for your first graf, I think it's a bit strange to take a post where a noted, respected expert on crypto is telling you not to use Keyczar, and extract from that the comment that Keyczar seems like the way to go. If Nate says not to use Keyczar, my advice is that picking it right now might be a professional embarassment in the coming year.

I read his comments as being "there is nothing good; here's why all of these things suck, but I grudgingly guess Keyczar works for some people". The only alternatives under discussion are cryptlib, which only has C bindings currently, and djb's new thing which uses brand new (well, four year old) ciphers that nobody other than djb really understands or knows to be secure. Given that Keyczar has some major corporate backing, and a reasonable level of community support, it seems a pretty solid choice...despite its imperfections. djb's thing might be an awesome choice...but we don't know and I'm definitely not qualified to figure it out.

Again, I'm just some guy, you know? I don't understand the nuances of security very well, but I read what I can and try to make some sense out of the kinds of answers security experts provide (which, for some reason, always seem to be qualified into being no-op statements; I guess because committing to recommending something means you can be proven wrong later when that recommendation proves insecure).

So, my reading comprehension I guess is as weak as my crypto knowledge, since I came away thinking, "Well, there's nothing good to use. But maybe Keyczar or cryptlib is better than what we're doing now; djb's might be awesome in the future. cryptlib has an annoying deployment aspect and would require me to write bindings that would probably be insecure, so Keyczar seems maybe the best of a bad lot."
I disagree, but voted it up for the interesting counterpoint.
Twitter’s @Ev Confirms Hacker Targeted Personal Accounts
Buckminsterfullerene: documentary about the discovery of carbon-60
Sun tussles with de-duplication startup
I would buy the .corn tld.
I would argue that if your company has 50 people, you should already be budgeting for infrastructure, and the sudden jump in costs shouldn't take you by surprise. And $50/user/yr is still a hard-to-beat price if you're making good use of the package.
Your imaginary place starts out sounding like a Mac User's world then drifts off into Lake Wobegon territory.
Mars Science Laboratory: Send Your Name to Mars
They're not omniscient, but I wouldn't count on that. It wouldn't be all that hard to collect a unique list of URL's and have an intern go through a bunch of them per day. The list could probably be augmented pretty easily with some analysis of the page content to detect fee related text, and they certainly have the technology to make that happen. They can narrow it down pretty quickly too based on what key your using to access the API.

The terms are pretty clear. Better to pay it if your using it and charging for it up front rather than try to get clever and get caught later and potentially have legal fees to pay on top of it IMHO.
Software Development and the Pink Pony Backpack
Clearly we should just throw nondeterminism at our data. Then, as long as we have a good metric, the algorithm will have maxed the metric. Where's my prize?
The only computer I've ever worn out was my first "real" box, a Mac Plus that I acquired in 1993. After a few years of faithful service, a design flaw reared its head (no fan => hot computer) and killed the power supply. Fortunately, replacement power supplies were easy to come by back then, so a quick swap made everything good as new. That computer continues to function even today, albeit more as a curiosity than a workhorse.
IPage.me - Create web pages just by sending e-mails
I've heard of this Rasmus fellow doing a few other things as well.
An Easy Guide to Home Renovations in Toronto
A renovation contractor will be of immense help to you whether you want to add a new room to your house, renovate a few rooms, or even remodel your entire house.
Unladen Swallow  can now compile all Python code to native code using LLVM
If someone had come up with something like you suggested it would have been a lot bigger news and this "contest" really wouldn't have happened.
Seeking CTO in Boston for Healthcare IT startup
So... it's a cloud, but the database has to fit in one machine's RAM. Wow, Microsoft. Wow.

Too bad. I was hoping they'd make a decent attempt at cloud hosting, so the Google App Engine sees some competition, and we get better pricing overall.
http://posterous.com
I recommend trying Gnus. The several weeks you waste trying to figure out how to point Gnus at your mail server more than pays for itself by the amount you learn while driving yourself mad.

I have a hard time agreeing with this statement, especially since I experienced just that. The only thing I learned was that the documentation for the process was awful.

Furthermore, the statement is some curious attempt at irony that undermines his argument. I don't want to spend 10 years setting up a development environment, I want to spend 10 years learning a development environment. Such a line can be very fine, indeed.

(This being said as a regular Emacs user.)
Of course what is lost is lost, but can't you buy one? I bought an Apple //c for $10 off eBay, as a "temporary replacement" for the one that I grew up with but had to leave at home in India.