skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
AI contests like this and the DARPA Grand Challenge Race encourage solutions in a single domain. AFAIK in the DARPA Challenge there was overfitting and I doubt the generalization capability of the systems involved. We need more contests in the spirit of "General Game Playing" contests where the problem domain is unknown to the programmers. http://games.stanford.edu/. You only get a formal description before the game and a small amount of "thinking" time which the system has to use understand the game and formulate a strategy.
The insanity of defense spending, and a lesson about policy illiteracy
Music is a poor example: a field with unusually rigid cultural norms, where true originality is punished far more often than it is rewarded. So, taming one's creativity by exposure to current norms is exactly how you become a successful (permissibly mildly creative) musician.
Marry a native speaker. Failing that get friends who are willing to converse with you exclusively in that language. Since it's Spanish, that shouldn't be very hard.
Then she should not only get her money back, but be compensated for lost time too.
You'd be surprised how easy it is to setup something useful, my in house one is about 250~ lines (ruby) connecting with some of my own API's too for config and reporting.

Previously I used advancedwebranking.com which worked well, but I only needed the rankings reports which I then needed to integrate into my own applications, so there was very little code to produce to get the functionality I needed.
I agree heartily. Native speakers who are willing to correct you---and not default to some better, common language---are the best resource possible.

I've been in a few immersion programs, and they're all okay. The best I've seen was ulpan, in Israel. Recent immigrants are thrown together and taught Hebrew; since they don't necessarily have a common language, their medium of communication must be Hebrew. Since you're all learning together, mistakes are less embarrassing.

In all, nothing beats being there: you have to go somewhere the language is spoken and force yourself to be a part of it.
"out in the wild" approach- I had native friends who were more than willing to help me, by correcting my mistakes, and ofcourse making fun of it as well.. and referring to a book whose lines I would use in everyday activities, like buying groceries, normal chitchat during commutes, etc..

also, this might sound weird, but I sometimes forced myself to "think" in the language I was learning.. this was a good practice as it made me more articulate by mapping words to mental images
I cheated by marrying a Japanese woman and inviting her mother (who speaks no English) to come and stay with us. You pick things up pretty quickly when you're forced to.
So this past year I was working some for LargeCorp and had the same question: how to sign off emails?

I really liked "V/R" or "VR" that the Navy uses, so I decided to go with that. But what about a tag line? A contact card? Some kind of indication of who I was and where I was working?

After some thought, I put together a V-Card with my contact information. Also, just to screw with people, I put a nice little latin quote at the end. I think the first one was "Sona si Latine loqueris"

Or translated, "Honk if you speak Latin"

Nobody spotted it.

Well since I got away with that, I couldn't let the experiment rest, so I changed my latin quote every month or so. I had "Age, catamite - fac mihi hunc diem felicissimum!" -- go ahead punk, make my day. I had "Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure" -- I can't hear you, I have a banana in my ear. One of my favorites was "Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!" -- may faulty logic undermine your entire philosophy! Which, unfortunately, was true for many of my correspondents.

Nobody ever bothered to look this stuff up. I imagine as long as you're not directly insulting to the reader, it's not that big of a deal. (But if you're a bit of a prankster, there's some fun to be had!)
Ask HN: Any thoughts on our site Tweetflix.com
So after about 4 months of hacking away our little web app is ready for some much needed HN dissection.

Any and all thoughts welcome and encouraged.
http://www.tweetflix.com
I'm from Brazil, so Portuguese is my native language.

It's common here for middle-class young people to take English courses for several years. I took one for six years, then one more year of a conversation course. That, along with watching movies and TV (and reading and listening to music, and...) took me far enough.

Then, a couple of years back, I went to California to live there for a whole year and I must say that made a whole lot of difference.
Is comparing the same as copying? Would it be copying if someone tells me whether something I make is the same as their copy or not?
I mean, technically it has meaning even without a restricted time frame. Some nonzero percentage of all businesses ever started have never failed.

That being said, it's nothing like 20% so clearly there is an implicit time frame.
Or Zimbabwe was rich once? You never specified that Taiwan was as poor as Zimbabwe now (or that Zimbabwe was as rich as Taiwan now), just that Zimbabwe was richer than Taiwan.
I think I’d be inclined to move all my apps to Rails as quickly as possible

"as quickly as possible" could be years, even decades. Nothing I've ever done in IT was as difficult as porting existing (ancient) business logic to new technology. It's often easier to just start over.
Any documentation that comes out of a firm like Orrick will be first class (I have done startups for years and know the difference).
Purist - A Python URL shortener
Given perfect information, like from a video game (with access to the object model, etc), the DARPA challenges aren't really that difficult. You just have to plan a path and then stay on it.

Its the noise of the real world that is infinitely challenging. You have to incorporate probabilities into your decision making, which is much more difficult. Jumping a mario around is much more AI intensive because the amount of solutions is much higher. A car is fixed to roads and has a map. Mario might know where everything is, but knowing what to do is much more difficult.
Let me tell you about the best book in the world for learning language:

http://www.amazon.com/Language-Acquisition-Made-Practical-Le...

Language Acquisition Made Practical by Brewster & Brewster

It's from the 70s and way out of print. It's written by these two Christian missionaries who went to many countries where no one could speak their language, and they developed a framework for 'barefoot language learning'. It's excellent way to design your own course. It boils down to find a language partner, and then follow the methods in this book.

I became frustrated with the way a lot of language courses are structured. They are so damn boring and suck the fun of discovery out of the language learning process. From the reading I have done on language acquisition, language classes should more closely mimic how children learn a language naturally. LAMP gets you closer to this model.

Also, this book is an excellent tool:
http://www.lexicarry.com/

There's nothing but a bunch of pictures in the book, describing different nouns, verbs, and adjectives...all with NO English. You can use this with a conversation partner to learn many many useful words in a more organic way than memorizing a list of vocabulary with their english translation counterparts.

Also, basically what everyone has said thus far. You need to live in the culture, and more than anything, make friends who will speak the language with you.
Yep, but bash.org.ru did not give you the option to just see the score without voting. Given how high the trash / not trash ratio is there, I think it's only reasonable that many people wanted to see a quote's score before reading it (and upvoted the quote to see it).
5 months in?

Why not spend some more time fixing the problems of what went wrong?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_in_English gives as an example the one word haiku 'tundra'.
The Second Amendment in Iraq, Combat Robotics, and the Future of Human Liberty
What an obsessive waste of time and ink.
I studied French in Grade 8, 9, 10, 11 and then had 2 more years of it in Uni. None of that helped me become a French speaker. Some friends own a ruin of a chateau in France and I spent a summer there working on it. That didn't seem to be helping much - until I started speaking with the children of the locals who worked on the chateau or lived nearby and visited everyday. It didn't take long doing that to progress to a conversational ability level that I never thought I would have.
A little bit of a tease:

Unfortunately, the right way to deal with the ego dilemma
is tricky and complex and deserves an entire post of it’s
own. It really involves revamping your entire belief
structure into something deeply probabilistic with a much
finer and more nuanced representation of ignorance which
I promise to write at a later date when I’ve fully
processed what I’m actually doing.

But still, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself is always good advice.
Apart from what is mentioned in the article, Twitter also works as a feed reader for content consumers and a publishing platform for producers and it has been working very well on both the sides.
Blogs now report they get as much traffic from twitter as much as they get from Google. And the network effect is making the whole system more valuable to both consumers and producers.
Twitter might or might not stay, but the micro blogging model of directing traffic is here to stay. Any thoughts?
I learned Thai by living with a Thai girl who spoke no English. Took about 6 months to become fluent. My suggestion is get a "long haired dictionary" and you'll pick up the language in no time. :)

The best way to learn is to have no choice but to speak the language. Then don't be afraid to fail. I learned Indonesian by speaking to taxi drivers and any other locals I came in contact with. Same process I used with Javanese.

The trick is to start with a basic vocabulary and set of phrases. Then treat the phrases as templates and swap words in and out. You'll be wrong a lot, but the native speaker might phrase it correctly and repeat it back... just repeat what they said and smile. Repeat this process until you're fluent. :)
Ask HN: anyone else watching with horror/fascination as reddit turns into /b/?
There are almost too many examples to cite (narwhals, 'let me tap that', 'FB girl who loves anal', 'stay hasty' personal army thread, references to pedobear, etc, etc, etc).

Don't get me wrong. I love reddit. I also, in spite of myself, like /b/. It can be brilliantly demonic. But I've seen reddit slowly transform into /b/ over the course of the past 2 years - right around the time Anonymous went after the Scientologists. Amazingly, I have never seen reddit mentioned on /b/, but I see /b/ mentioned on reddit quite a bit. So how did it happen? Did reddit discover /b/ or vice versa? Is /b/ the inevitable end result when a bunch of smart, socially awkward, computer savvy teens and 20-year-olds get together online?
The only problem with Spanish TV is that it is just as boring as American TV. It has a bit more eye candy, but you can enjoy that without devoting any effort to understanding spanish.
Too bad the the programmer is required to perform the optimization, rather than the compiler or runtime.
The Apple-Google Data Center Corridor
Nope... if we all give up meat, there will be so much land, we wont even know what to do with it all:

From this aritcle:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/vegetarian-diet-coul...

"An area the size of Russia and Canada combined could be freed from use as pasture or cropland used to grow animal feed, if people switched from current levels of meat consumption common in Europe and the United States to a diet based on plant-based protein."
For an example implementation, see the web site I made for Audacity (an open-source audio editor):

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

By default it uses the Accept-Language header, but the user can override this by clicking a link in the footer. Clicking the link sets a cookie, so that the user's preference is remembered on subsequent visits. The link also acts as a permalink to the page in that language, so that they can be bookmarked or indexed separately. Localization is done with gettext. (Sadly, most of the translations have gotten out of date in the four years since the site launched.)

The PHP source code is CC-licensed. Here's the most relevant file:
http://audacity.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/audacity/htdocs/i...
That's one of the problems with going solo -- it's way too easy to chalk it all up as a good experience and move on to the next "killer idea," armed with what you supposedly learned last time.

I can say this because I'm just as guilty of doing this as this guy -- if not more so. And that's one of the reasons I'm now no longer going solo.
Bombs don't do a good job of discriminating between soldiers and civilians, so that's bad.

Bombs which don't so much explode as burn you alive are even worse.
I use the open source version: http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

brilliant tool. I highly recommend it. I use it constantly.
Clickable http://www.tweetflix.com .

IMO I think this is neat, but that being said, I don't know if I would actually use your service. I think maybe I am distrustful of the review algorithm. I looked at the reviews for "Orphan" and it had "reviews" like

"gah. boredom. havent tweeted in a while. no school more yay. watching orphan double yay :d"

and "excited to see orphan tonight! :d"
and "@questlove some teens brought not one but two babies to see orphan. i got mgmt to escort out. enough is enough."

none of which are actually reviews, so how do you use data from that to tell me whether I would like it?

Maybe you are not using those to calculate your result, but if you are not, why show it in the "reviews" section.

I'm not trying to be overly critical, I like the idea, I think the site itself looks great, but I think the implementation might need some work if its going to be useful.
I moved to America and went to elementary school.

Total immersion is the fastest and best way to learn a language. Arguably, it's the only way you will ever be fluent.

If you want to learn Spanish but can't move to a Spanish speaking country, see if you can find a local Spanish-speaking family to "foster" you - offer to pay them rent to live with them for awhile, on the condition that they only speak Spanish to/around you.
There is a difference between fighter pilots and drone pilots but not between drone pilots and who's ever job it is to push the launch button on any one of many missile types we'd had much, much longer then we've had drones. So war = bad, drones = red herring.
The end of the article was amazing. Nothing better than bitching about your work being stolen and then finding out that your communications director endorses the process by tipping off Gawker. Oh the irony..
This is just mind blowing!
I learned an unfamiliar language while spending two years in the Peace Corps. They have had many years to refine their language teaching materials. Still, I only learned the basics after 2 months of very intensive training.

Once I knew the basics, I was able to learn a bit more from friends and neighbors, especially children.
Eventually I ended up dating and marrying a local. Even though she spoke fluent English, we would try to use the local language for anything not too detailed. This increased my vocabulary and comprehension.

Once I was able to use and understand words, a book that described some of the theory and formalities of the grammar really helped improve my ability to express myself. I went from "cargo cult speaking" to actually knowing why I was using the structures I used.

I still don't know as much as I'd like, and for more complicated statements, I have to use English.

For your situation, I wouldn't expect to get too much out of a "101" course, but if you really want to learn, you'll have many opportunities, especially with Spanish. Try to talk to the staff at Mexican restaurants, and write down any words or phrases you don't know, to look up later.

There is no substitute for hours speaking (and listening). That will give you plenty of opportunities to learn new words, new idioms used by different people, provide plenty of opportunities for people to politely correct you, and most importantly, improve your confidence in your abilities.
The Sorry State of Our Database State
SFTL -- Suitable For The Lab
Most companies do endorse fluid working hours.

It's just a balancing act between wanting everyone to be accessible when you need then and wanting employees to have flexibility in their schedules.
One word: Grails
I agree that this isn't a solid case for Rails "being better" than Java. I do think it's telling that big business has been using and trusting Rails more and more.
I'm currently working on a python web project; the lack of a mature, battle-hardened payment library kills me.

Ruby's ActiveMerchant is a well-crafted bit of code. The handful of python contenders I've discovered are (1) immature and often poorly coded, and (2) unable to touch ActiveMerchant in terms of number of supported gateways and features supported per gateway.
Quality of education. You're far from the only American I've heard say: I took x years of y and can't even say 'hi' in y.

I don't know what American schools do wrong, but Europeans have little trouble teaching kids to have a working knowledge of foreign languages in the same number of years.

The brute force approach would be to live in a place where the language you're trying to learn is native. English is my 3rd language but I didn't get really fluent in it until moving to the US.
Good, but a little outdated. For general systems overview, as well as introduction to UNIX architecture, I'd actually recommend my textbook, which is the CMU intro systems book, Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective[1]. For OS theory, our OS/advanced OS textbooks are fine, but for actual implementation my coworkers recommended The Design of the UNIX Operating System[2], Linux System Programming[3], and Understanding the Linux Kernel[4].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Systems-Programmers-Randal-Br...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Design-Operating-System-Prentice-Softw...

[3] http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596009588/

[4] http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005658/
One suggestion: post your project on HN and see if someone contacts you about taking over, with a fresh perspective.

Definitely doing it alone is a recipe for failure. Two people are way better than one. When you get discouraged (which you are right now), it's the end because you have no moral support.

Any takers?
Bell Canada starts hijacking non-existent domain queries
The conclusion isn't wrong, but the content is weak for the evaluation.

At this point in the Ruby VS Python conversation, my expectations for an evaluation are benchmarks of code that is algorithmically identical. If one language provides for a better algorithm than the other, I'd like to see those differences as well.
I find it pretty funny to be reading all these complaints about "IP Geolocation" in ENGLISH. Really these are all variations on: "Why serving non-English pages is bad for users who only understand English."
I've had to write 100% legal Matlab, Java and C++ in tests (I study Computer Engineering). All of our exams are on paper only.

Actually, I even had a multiple choice question which asked whether in Matlab it was legal to start a variable name with a number. Not the most important thing to know, IMHO, but introductory programming classes here tend to focus on syntax so that the engineering students can get something done quickly.
Does Obama want to tap your computer?
GHC's optimization of intermediate structures
The Obama plan to own your PC, part deux
Google Analytics Data Feed Explorer
Spend your next one-month vacation in the country whose language you want to learn. It's that simple.

In the meantime, read all the books you can so you don't start from zero when you get there (although it will feel like you are starting from zero the first few days).
This sounds really good. Like to see what kind of change this make on our voting habits.
Time and time again Hans Roslings talk about statistics is posted here on HN. (http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...)

His message is clear.
...this one time...at iPhone Dev Camp...
recommended books to learn about marketing
http://personalmba.com/recommended-business-books/
JVM Notebook: Basic Clojure, Java and JVM Language performance
Facebook does this. I was in Costa Rica on vacation, and went to Facebook once just to accept a friend request, and all friend requests started showing up in my email as Spanish. I know I could have changed the default, but the internet was slow, and I didn't have time. It was on an internet cafe Ubuntu machine that I checked was set to American English
well to me by admitting he was using smoke and mirrors, doesn't seem like he had a compelling product in the first place. After looking at his product objectively, he should of carried out his own evaluation, of moving it to a service or facebook app, rather than abandoning it. As others have pointed out, he gave up to early
I learned "Kung Fu" mandarin when I trained with fresh off the boat professional martial artists who didn't speak a lick of English. The only way to communicate was for me to start learning mandarin.

That said, I believe there's no better way to learn a language than to live in the country and not speak English.

I was a diplomat brat and at various points in my life I could speak Bahasa Malay, Italian, and Hokien (does anyone even know what that is). However they all fell into disuse when I moved. But the reason I became fluent was because I was immersed in the people, all the kids, TV, everything.

I know many American teachers in Thailand who live in American neighborhoods and eat where foreigners eat. As a result they never learn any Thai.
Cern has some nice looking women working there.
Debian News launched
Sorry I am a Mechanical Engineer.

You are right that is similiar to a Domain Specific language without any Domain dependency. It is basically a simple language of assembly which can be used to build complex software as long as you have components.

Regarding my analogy of a Car which i illustrated to show having assembly as part of product development is how they have handled complexity of the car manufacture and this has been followed by every industry other than software.

When a specific product is development, specifically to handle complexity and productivity, other industries separate manufacturing of components from assembly and assemble to create a finished product. Here assembly and manufacture is different and can be done by separate teams/companies without any problem even when both are clearly dependent.

In software this is still not the case. I have handled Outsources teams/Insourced teams for development of enterprise software and allways found it is not easy even when my projects have been very successfull. Basically it involved too tight control and sleepless nights. That is why I have to still learn and code instead of concentrating on managing projects like typical project managers.

If we split software development into software assembly and software coding, i thought i should have higher order of productivity and separate domain from code. Any way i will try this on a new project and find out whether it works. May be or May be not.

Anyway thanks for your comments.