skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here is an anecdote from an expat American here living in Sweden. I require immunoglobulin as my body doesn't produce it naturally like it should. In Sweden I'm on a subcutaneous treatment that greatly improves my quality of life. I can take and do the drugs myself without having to at least get an IV line started like in the US. The subcutaneous treatments are starting in America, but slowly and not as widely as they are relied in Sweden. The benefits are increased independence for patients, safer since it is absorbed through the fat instead of straight into the blood stream, and perhaps most importantly it costs less than half of the IV treatment. This subcutaneous treatment was pioneered, tested and deployed in Europe.

That pharmaceuticals in the US are going to stop R&D is BS. I bet there are many 'hacker' scientists that would happily keep doing their job as long as someone employees them. So maybe it won't be Wall St. but there is still money in it, job satisfaction and they aren't going to trade in their lab coats for McDonald's uniforms. Look at stem cell research, private companies could still fund it all they wanted, but once the federal government's teat was shut off research died. Public healthcare wouldn't diminish the government's interest in funding research. Sweden still has many notable things in the field of medical research, and all from a country with a GDP roughly that of North Carolina.
Sure, "most people" probably would. They're not the ones I'm talking about. The people I'm referring to generally look on "membership" with scorn, and react by ... leaving. I know I would.
Geek Weekend: Ann Arbor, Michigan
I'm not sure if you're kidding, so I'll bite:

- Frequently dropped calls
- 3G connection problems
- Delayed SMS and voicemails (sometimes by days)
- App store problems
- Short battery life

Some of these are AT&T's fault, no doubt. But I've had AT&T for the better part of a decade, and I've never had so many "network" problems as when I bought an iPhone. When your phone has dropped an important phone call with the CEO of a public company three times in 5 minutes in Central Park in New York City, it makes you want to break the piece of junk into a million pieces.

But the promise of the phone, and the experience when it does work, is really quite good. It's just not a piece of equipment you can rely on. I struggle with the thought of getting rid of it quite often, yet just can't seem to pull the trigger.
Humans are pattern matching machines. We can always find some mapping from one thing to another thing. Not all such mappings are relevant or useful.
Yes, I also noticed that. In every question the interviewer tries to make Bjarne acknowledge some sensationalistic crap. It looks like the interviewer is more interested in the political side of the story while Bjarne politely tells him he is wrong and then continues with the technical side. The result is a pretty good explanation despite the interviewer's persistent efforts to derail it.
What Works: The Web Way vs. The Wave Way
I know it's fairly difficult, but we can think of a few. You can have a derivative of the 'good' programmer, the hotshot cowboy who productively makes many products quickly that run well, but the code is "unnecessarily clever", disorganized and difficult to change.
Rough EA Sports Active Whips Polished Wii Fit Workout
Your description doesn't quite match the one in the article:

The researcher tells you to keep going, and that the shocks will cause "no permanent tissue damage" to the Learner.
New Use for Your iPhone: Controlling Drones
Heim Theory
Inconsistencies in the crow/vending machine story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/magazine/12letters-t-CORRE...
I see "The Netherlands/Belgium" on the list.

edit: Saw VanL's comment, looks like he meant to reply to this thread. That was a fast fix.
Welcome to the overextended class
And all of your base!
I mean that you should be able to click on a link to the word and pdf versions of your resume. So that you can email it around if you want, or recruiters can download it as a word doc.
On Scala's future
So I gather that in a gold rush, all the money's in selling the shovels. Are there any common technical problems associated with these applications?

(I tried asking this question in its own thread, but it didn't get any traction:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=747882)
A subreddit called hardscience was created just the other day with emphasis on submitting scientific papers. I don't know whether it'll fly or not but it might be worth a look.

http://www.reddit.com/r/hardscience/
In the 1970's I lived in a small town in Oregon. You paid your fire protection fee and they stuck a little sign in your yard. If your house caught fire and you weren't a customer they would allegedly come and protect your neighbor's houses, but not risk anything to save yours.
Software as prose
JCryption - JavaScript data encryption
How awesome would it be if there were exactly one one-developer shop. Then, we would all be living in a one-one-developer-shop universe.
On Language - How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection
Hmm. It is, but right now I can't prove it. I will see if we can get the survey promoted on the PSF blog or on python.org.

Update: See the front page of PyCon.org: http://us.pycon.org/2010/
Interesting, but frankly I need another acting metaphor for application design like I need additional holes in my head.
For an exercise in school we had to draw a postcard. Some of them looked pretty good so we decided to see what would happen if we used them.

100% success, all of them arrived stamped and on time.

So, if you're ever out of stamps but you have an urgent envelope to mail... bring out those crayons, success guaranteed.
Vegas Sucks. Defcon is good.
This makes me very interested to see what happens when my company (all two of us) has a shiny, new product to hit the road later this year.

Admittedly, we're scratching an itch, and very focused on the idea of 'getting money by making our customers really, really happy.', so the idea of 'changing the world' is really way down on the list. Even so, I'm expecting a very, very interesting ride. :)
Really? ...
Wordpress plugin: Track subscriber inbound traffic in Google Analytics
What makes you believe that there's anyone in America that does not have access to a doctor?

Hospital emergency rooms are required to take and treat all comers (at least if they want to participate in the system), and the Medicaid system reimburses those expenses.

A poor, uninsured person might not be able to get a kidney transplant, but they'll get some level of basic care. And what Mr. Kamen argues is that the income generated by those expensive procedures -- not to mention a segment of the population that is willing to pay for it -- is what will lead to the breakthroughs in the future that will make (say) kidney transplants unnecessary in another generation.

What really concerns me is that I know, because I have Crohn's Disease, that I have a much higher risk of colon cancer. Even at forty years old, I'm trying to put myself into a position where I'll be able to deal with that should it happen.

But in the ultimate socialized/rationed model, I'm not allowed to buy myself additional treatment beyond the lowest common denominator. Canada recently fought (and lost, thank %deity%) to prevent citizens from getting better health insurance than the socialist plan. In England and other places you're allowed to get better care, but only if you pay for every bit of it -- you can't take the baseline and then pay for the overage. So that's definitely the direction that "progress" is moving in.

My biggest objection is that this prevents people from having their own values. I'm not to be allowed to make decisions that balance for or against my lifespan. I can only get the mix that the regulators have deemed appropriate for every person, one size fits all.
The IPhone version of Unity Game engine (http://unity3d.com/#iphone) seems to be a "shovel". Not sure how much money they make off it though.
Hey, I can do all of these things with my Android G1, too. And even better as it's got a real keyboard.
Ask HN: You have two ropes.
You have two ropes, each takes 1 hour to burn. However the ropes are not uniform, that is 1/2 the rope doesn't necessarily take 1/2 an hour to burn. How can you measure 45 minutes using these ropes?
Apple tablet prophesied, sales foretold by eager analysts
> He is partially right - the lack of extreme-expense health care drives out extreme high-end solutions such as the article's highlighted "Luke" arm, a prosthetic that is almost as good as the real thing.

But this isn't even a discussion point in most countries with socialized health-care: Only a handful of countries worldwide prevent private treatments and/or private health insurance on top of the government provided options.

In the UK for example, the two work fine side by side. Everyone has access to the NHS, for "free" (i.e. for their portion of taxes, possibly 0), while people who want to pay extra can pay for the fancy extras that are deemed too expensive or unnecessary.

Apart from dental (which is poorly covered) and purely elective procedure, like most cosmetic surgery, most people show little to no interest in going beyond the NHS - only about 10% have private insurance.
There is no way to validate the public key the data is encrypted against, so a man in the middle is possible by injecting a new public key and intercepting the cypher-text on its way back.

Just my though, if this type of security is needed, why forego SSL?
Now you're just making Max Planck cry.
Psychopaths have faulty brain connections (can lifecasting help?)
Reddit vs. Digg vs. Hacker News vs. Slashdot: http://www.google.com/trends?q=reddit%2C+digg%2C+hacker+news...
Taping the Zeitgeist Via Google Search Suggestions
Light rope 1 on both ends, and rope 2 on 1 end. Once rope 1 is gone, 30 minutes have past, and light the other end of rope 2. Once rope 2 is gone, it has been 45 minutes.
I never heard of it before, but I love it! My girlfriend is going crazy about it too :)
What would you do with people that have these faulty brain connections but have not committed a crime? Put them in jail?

Could technology help? In particular, lifecasting?
[Singapore] UI Designers Needed: Work in Singapore, Make Games
[Singapore] UI Designers Needed: Work in Singapore, Make Games!

Would you like to exercise your creative energies on a tropical island, where the weather is great all year round? Are you interested in discovering new cultures, and working in a multi-cultural workplace brimming with the energy of ideas? Do you have a keen sense of design aesthetics, and great user interface design? Do you get excited by the possibilities offered by a young startup in terms of the wide variety of challenges and responsibilities it offers? If you find yourself getting excited responding to all the above questions, you are a person we would love to work with.

We are Game Ventures, a young start-up company based out of Singapore, which makes online games on social networks, and major mobile platforms, such as the iPhone. Game Ventures is looking to hire a UI Design Associate, who will be responsible for envisioning and executing the design of the websites and user interfaces associated with our games. The ideal candidate should have the following profile:

1.	You should be highly proficient with packages such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Flash. Knowledge of ActionScript, JavaScript, and PHP is a plus.
2.	You should be conversant with W3C Standards-based web design and development.
3.	You should have a keen sense of design and aesthetics.
4.	You should possess a good grasp of user interface design, particularly insofar as it relates to games.
5.	You should have a keen sense for presenting information in useful and interesting ways.
6.	You should have a passion for game design. A passion for sports is a plus.
7.	You should have demonstrated ability to balance a wide variety of tasks, be able to work in both teams and independently, and be able to prioritize effectively.
8.	A comfort with visualizing 3D spaces and figures is a plus.
9.	Aptitude for identity and branding is a plus.

Job description
1.	You will be working closing with the development team, bringing out awesome games.
2.	You will be responsible for designing the major user interfaces within the game, including screens showing game status/information, and elements that users use to engage with the game, and finally design virtual products/gifts inside the game.
3.	You will be responsible for designing websites which will be used to market the game, and provide a portal for users to interact with the game community.
The job will be based out of Game Venture’s headquarters in Singapore. At Game Ventures, we provide a compensation package replete with health insurance, and return air fare once every year to the employee’s home country. We will also take care of all the formalities with respect to processing your paper work to enable you to start working in Singapore.
If you would be interested in joining our exciting startup, please send a resume, a cover letter that describes your interest in our company and its work, and a portfolio of your best work to Ravda@xuqa.com. For more information on Game Ventures, please check out our website at www.gameventures.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Agreed, but this is the very question I'm getting at - does Flemlord want to know the quality of algorithms someone naturally comes up with, or is this just to screen out the total BS artists?

Hence my mention above of how it feels like a trick question. I really don't know whether the interviewer wants the autistic-but-informative answer or the quick of-course-I-know answer. Trying to guess what sort of answer you are seeking induces mild panic in me: I don't know you, but if your response in an interview was 'what a crap algorithm' I'd be thinking 'this guy is a bit Machiavellian...'.

I mean, I can think of a much faster way (than this) to get a given term in the fibonacci series using a loop, but this one recurses, which was what was requested - I had to quickly choose a problem domain in which to demonstrate it. Towers of Hanoi would have been more impressive, but I don't know if I could just rattle that off correctly, verbally. See what I mean?
Escherization
Synapse Project to Make an Artificial Human Brain Gets fundeed by DARPA
You could replace any mention of "iPhone" in this list with "Blackberry" or even "smartphone".

1. The Blackberry changes your brain chemistry. For better and for worse it makes you feel good and want more (mechanism of action be damned).

2. The Blackberry gives you an excuse to step outside and fiddle with something when you feel like not working for fifteen minutes.

3. The Blackberry gives you something to do in boring interstitial situations, like waiting in line at the store, or waiting for the bathroom, or waiting in line for the bathroom at the store.

4. The Blackberry gives you something to do with your hands in awkward situations.

5. In really awkward situations the Blackberry gives you a way to check out entirely (granted, that’s a slightly different type of cigarette).

6. When you’re using your Blackberry in public, some people will think you look sophisticated. Others will think you’re annoying.

This article seems like an annoying attempt to get some attention / linkbait.
And it's more distracting and it feels like it's wasting time with its excessive visual effects.
interesting: "Wrapped brick. Wrapped in brown paper; posted in street corner box with same amount of postage as was strapped to unwrapped brick. Extreme weight for size made package seem suspicious. Notice of attempted delivery received, 16 days. Upon pickup at station, our mailing specialist received a plastic bag containing broken and pulverized remnants of brick. Inside was a small piece of paper with a number code on it. Our research indicates that this was some type of US Drug Enforcement Agency release slip. The clerk made our mailing specialist sign a form for receipt. "
You missed his whole point. Because the US has such high costs we can't afford to give it to everyone. These exorbitant costs also create incentives for innovation. No other countries produce the medical breakthroughs that the US does.

This quote sums-up his thinking:
"Every drug that's made is a gift from one generation to the next because, while it may be expensive now, it goes off patent and your kids will have it essentially for free."

You could say the same thing about the US vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Every drug/treatment/device that is developed in the US is a gift to the rest of the world
I watched Pratchett give his views on this on the BBC Breakfast show this week. You can see that he's fabulously passionate about it... it's just a shame that here is a man with an amazing sense of humour and a talent for writing, that feels he will sooner or later have to choose to take his own life.

It's probably selfish, very selfish, but I do hope we get a number of books out of him first!
That is exactly the problem. They give the impression they're writing about startups; they may even believe it themselves; but this data is based on a random cross-section of new small businesses. They explicitly mention "coffee shops" as an example.
If you put some contact information in your profile (or contact me at my username at my username dot net) I can put you in touch with someone who can at least get you some quotes from a bunch of different carriers at no cost to you. (i.e. a broker)
Yeah very true. The providers that are doing are doing constrained things like Rails CI. I think thats fine, I just need a place for my smaller client projects that can run Rails or Flex unit tests without me setting up a dedicated slice and having to manage that.
The author claims SSL is neither supported by every webhost nor it’s easy to install/apply sometimes.

Not sure if I totally buy that - if you are collecting data you want to protect, surely it's worth it for you to use a host that's capable of installing SSL. It's a pretty simple operation.
Forget the ropes, use a clock.
Heck, I can do all of that and I'm nowhere near a "senior developer"
Thanks for the link... and yes, launchly is run on Heroku and yes they rock! :-)
I like the way they went an extra mile to treated the employees with decency. Kudos.

"We sought out as many of the USPS employees who had (involuntarily) been involved in the experiment as we could identify, and gave them each a small box of chocolate"
I didn't mean to snipe: the "funny" I'm using is in a "cite original sources" mode, which has little/nothing to do with the non-academic world. :)
Shareholder value and revenue aren't necessarily the same thing at very early stage companies. Shareholder value can be built through brand recognition and integrity, and sacrificing that for short term revenue is destroying long term shareholder value.

Shareholder value should never be at odds with the goals of the company in the ways you described. It could, on the other hand, be at odds with your personal goals (i.e., blocking a small exit), but that's very different.
If the founders care about not being forced to "maximize shareholder value", simply don't give out any controlling equity to non-founders. Consider how the NY Times or Washington Post, and WSJ operated for a long time. The controlling interest was held by a single family and not by all of the common shareholders.

If you want to take outside investment, part of the deal is that the company no longer just belongs to the founder. You no have other parties. If you don't like it, don't take the money.
Ah, 5 years too late! I used to live 3 blocks from there (in the Honeyman building.)

You forgot to mention the two best perquisites of working there: Powell's books a few blocks one direction, and the Low Brow Lounge a few blocks the other. I don't thing YC or Techstars can beat that!
Where did you get that? Multiple hedge funds collapsed. Their collapses weren't as public because hedgefunds tend to be very secretive but many, actually most of them closed their doors.

Also, hedgefunds like banks were the main cause of the meltdown because they were so leveraged when the market prices of their assets decreased even slightly they had to sell large chunks of their assets to cover their losses, which caused further decrease in prices, which caused further sales, which caused the death spiral of the entire economy.

Again the banks were more vocally criticized for this than the hedgefunds because the banks are insured by the federal government, but the hedgefunds were doing it just the same, and they are just as much to blame.

The only thing that you said that is true is that the hedge funds did not really take tax payer money. That is true because they had absolutely no possible argument to ask for taxpayer money. The federal government was already on the hook for the banks because it ensured them.
Alternatives for rejected iPhone apps developpers
"So if I am going to spend my time developing something, I want it to never go away. Facebook will go away. The iPhone will go away. These are fads."

How many people do you think said the same thing about the web in the early days? Lots of people passed on the opportunity to invest. Plenty of people said "$25 for a domain name? What a ridiculous way to spend money".

Both Facebook and the iPhone are platforms and people are betting that they will be huge. Some platforms won't get huge and most will wither (Amiga, anyone?), but the people who bet on the right platform EARLY win big. They win big, they can benefit humanity in a big way, and their shit does not go away.
Windows 7 Upgrade Chart
what's wrong is its a lame article. It's uninteresting, makes no sense and encourages no worthwhile discussion. It just makes this site look dumb basically. I'm encouraging everyone I can to flag it, sadly it's over that 10 votes limit for automatic killing so hopefully a mod will take note.
This is just blog spam!

"I update this blog a few times a month. Don't worry -- I'm worth waiting for."

User gsteph22 has only submitted two articles, both from this crappy blog.
It probably would have been sexier if the images in the article were shown with the sexier lightbox
"The only concern I have with giving programming puzzles for hiring"

That is really not what the author is advocating. A paid trial period is more in line with his approach. I can personally vouch for its efficacy.
Sorry you feel that way. My comment about linkbait was tongue-in-cheek. Others have found it interesting and thought-provoking.
There is academic hacker news:
http://www.cs.toronto.edu:40106/
No, that's a previous study which reached different conclusions from the study which is the primary focus of the article.
This comment seems like an annoying attempt to get some attention / dickbait.
The True Value Of Social Media
See also http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/ for (what I find) a more interesting kind of Escherization.

(The UWaterloo one is about taking an arbitrary shape and tweaking it to make a plane tessellation, and some generalizations of that. The Leiden one is about the sort of nonlinear self-containment found in (e.g.) Escher's "Print Gallery".)

[EDITED to fix an error -- gjm]
Replace the word Blackberry/iPhone with the word penis, I think it's just as accurate.
The way to escape it is to:

1) Stop thinking that

2) Research the industry heavily. That means reading everything you can, that means contacting everyone you can in the industry to pick their brains, and it sometimes means actually getting a job in the industry for a while to get a feel for the issues they have.

3) When you figure out the pain point or disruption, go do it. Build the product, sell the service, whatever -- just go sell something to someone. Start making money and worry about the details later.
Oh I think your idea is entirely reasonable - but reason doesn't stop lawyers from making illogical or counterfactual arguments on behalf of their clients. You might find this very interesting - a (serious) discussion of bullshit promises in legal contracts: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262477