skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
She's right that if all you need to do is glue stuff together, then she doesn't need to study it. Trivial problems are trivially solved. By very low-paid people. Who are very bored.

But what I've noticed is that there are only so many non-trivial problems, and the formal pieces are the little pieces of distilled wisdom, the 'lego bricks' from which you build anything beyond trivial software. You might find studying graph analysis algorithms, say, to seem utterly academic, but there will be a time when what you're asked to do is to analyse a graph, and you'll be glad that your 'mental index' includes that entry.

I suppose the thing is this; if you've studied enough that ten years down the line, someone can ask you to solve a problem and you can say 'ah, yes, this requires an FSA' or 'I can do it with A*' or 'that's easy with a red-black tree', then you know enough.
I took penmanship in school.I never used it, and now write in all caps when using a pen and paper. It's just as fast, and a lot easier to read. Penmanship is an art, beautiful as an art form, but really inconvenient as a form of communication.
Django was written for a newspaper, where the most important external feature of the CMS was that users be able to mess with html templating without any input from the developers.
"I quibble with the suggestion not to drain the beans"

I was a bit taken aback by that too, I always rinse heavily for the reason you mention, but I wasn't sure what the rationale for not rinsing is. I prefer frozen beans anyway - cheaper when you buy in bulk, and saves having to look for the can opener :-)
Owning an iPhone and a BlackBerry on vzw, I will say that my personal experience from moderate (~ 3 trips/month) random sampling in the US is that VZW kicks ATTs ass in terms of coverage and reliability overall.
>The mechanism proposed is sex-selective abortion. Apparently, women's bodies have the ability to spontaneously abort fetuses of "the wrong" sex early in the pregnancy

Ah, thanks for clarifying. So then this doesn't account for height/beauty/etc. input from the male? I guess that still sort of makes sense.
Regardless, taking down a site without even notifying the administrator is kind of a jerk thing to do.
Isn't the traditional response to post a few blokes with guns, big guns, and attempt to blow any pirates out of the water? Aren't ship's crew using guns for protection?
How is this different from:
http://laserlike.com/2009/07/26/getting-comfortable-with-peo...
A lot of interesting and informative points. For instance, I never knew that the "universal preference" for a 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio was debunked.
Code.Intuit.com: The Partner Platform Gets A Dash of Open Source
Isn't all human behavior is a product of evolution by definition? Humans like to explore because it can improve their mating chances due to prestige, wealth, less competitation (those unsuccessful thin the pack) hence people went to the moon.

I'm not trying to be a troll, but how can we have behavior that wasn't caused by evolution?
Maybe, but more elegant android software would have to be developed. Much as I personally don't like the touchscreen only design, lack of removable battery and lack of expandable storage, I have to admit that it is a very sleek piece of hardware.

All android phones that I have seen are rather clunky and outdated in appearance, IMHO. Put android on something like the palm pre, and you have a real win.
It is completely identical. Should it not be? I mean... that's the URL I submitted...
Sorry PG, but I have to nitpick the recipe in the footnotes. In general this is a healthful meal. I was particularly pleased to see you recommended keeping the heat low when sauteing, as heating oils beyond their tolerance is a common mistake.

However I must take issue with the recommendation of Knorr beef bullion. Ingredients: Salt, Monosodium Glutamate, Beef Fat, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil, Yeast Extract, Caramel Color, Dehydrated Beef Stock, Dehydrated Vegetables (Onion, Carrots, Parsley), Turmeric, Disodium Inosinate and Guanylate, Spices.

Monosodium glutamate should be avoided if you care about your nervous system. Partially hydrogenated anything is no good. "Yeast extract" is just a food industry trick for including more monosodium glutamate.

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

There are healthful choices for beef bullion, so pick one of the alternatives.

Otherwise, bon appetit. :)
In other news, Google yanks Apple iPhone from search results, claiming the built in Safari browser "duplicates functionality" of the Google search engine.
Yes, but do you know the rules for when this is or isn't allowed?

I guess I come from a background of looking at big applications and finding points failure where someone did something that would "probably work" - ie, it works till you allocate 5 megs of memory or....
Skepticism about beautiful people having more daughters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)

Not contradicting you, just saying there are shades of nuance to the verb "to cause".
Worst Cubicle contest - 10 finalist photos from first week
Eyeball Valuation (old, but interesting)
I can only think of two people who came somewhat close to this description

I can think of quite a few of my contemporaries, and some young people a little older than my oldest child, who had to trade down in quality of university among all universities who admitted them because they couldn't afford to go to the best university at which they were admitted.

I can't think of examples of exactly what Jay Mathews is asking about, but I think he biases his question by assuming that poor students with low grades in high school are not "motivated." They may simply be disliked by their teachers.
I really want to like Apple (but they don't like us)
I see <p></p> in the source, not <br/>. I suspect your browser may be to blame.
Poll: At what stage did you get funding?
At what stage did you get funding? Or were you Completely Self Funded?

When I say Funding, I am talking about Outside Funding (not the money put in by Founders).
Funded, Idea, Developed, Launched
Idea, Funded, Developed, Launched
Idea, Developed, Funded, Launched
Idea, Developed, Launched, Funded
No Funding, Self Funded to Launch (Giggity)
Keep in mind that Apple has made a lot of mistakes and missteps with the iPhone since its debut. How many of those mistakes haven't been corrected?

At first there was no 3G support.
There was no GPS.
There was no SDK or store ("Just write web apps!")
Built-in apps like Maps lacked fundamental features like placemarks.
Other core features like landscape keyboards were arbitrarily unavailable in many apps.
You couldn't listen to the iPod on Bluetooth headsets.
You couldn't record video.
The SDK, when it did arrive, came with an obnoxious NDA that kept developers from being able to talk to each other.
There's probably a few dozen other points I could make.

Basically, while I think Apple's SDK licensing requirements and the App Store's approval process are both giant, poorly-thought-out clusterfucks, I have no reason to think their worst shortcomings won't be fixed. My iPhone has received better post-sale support -- for free -- than any other device or software package I've owned. So I'm slow to add my own voice to those of the complaining masses.

Give it a year. If there are still arbitrary goofy rules about no "frameworks" being allowed, and if apps from everybody from Trent Reznor to Google to Joe Nobody are still subject to the approval whims of some random anonymous minimum-wage outsourced troglodyte, then I'll agree that Apple has taken their eye off the ball. But as things stand, they get a lot of slack from me, based on previous willingness to fix their mistakes.
If you do it from home and have a family (unlike a couple of startup roomates working towards ramen mode), you absolutely need a separate room with a door that means "i am at work" and everyone needs to understand that.

My answer to always being available is that in a startup, i work all the time, and you are probably distracting me.
That, plus something to do, something to keep your mind occupied.
This is a good article, but the very first example is perhaps a bit ill-chosen. The mass-energy equivalence formula doesn't assign mc^2 to e, it states that the two sides are always equal. The equality operator (== in C), would probably be more appropriate.
It won't be called the iTablet
But windows software wasn't necessarily better than apple software and yet it became dominant.
Effective IT Project Management: I Know It When I See It
Sure, any behavior is going to be a product of evolution and environment. Of course, sex is actually the mechanism of evolution, so it's doubtful that pretending behaviors associated with it are not strongly related to it will yield sensible results.
i've got my vote on iPad even though it could cause some confusion with "iPod"
gchpaco, could you give an example of a situation where you'd use a real dependency engine, which could not be solved (at least not easily) by using fabricate.py? I know such cases exist in theory, but have never run across a need, so I'm interested.
Sorry I wasn't trying to blame AT&T. I was pointing out that the uproar was due to a vacuum of legit information, so the only noise echoing around the net was that put out by the tin hats.

I said AT&T could have nipped this in the bud by responding sooner or providing a log of blocks/unblocks, not that I honestly expect it to. You're totally right that it was most likely a low level decision, and it would be impossible for some AT&T tech to know that img.4chan.org is not the same as joesblog.nowhereville.com, which no one would notice being blocked for a day.

So yeah, re-reading my comment, I can see how it comes across that I am blaming all this on AT&T. Honestly, when this started, and the only signal was "AT&T was censoring the internet", I was even mad at them for it. But we have since learned otherwise, and I wasn't trying to demonize them here... just pointing out the factors that combined to bring about the overreaction.
I think it's good that the tenets of evo psych are being challenged (they are indeed based on shaky evidence) but these naysayers do little to propose an alternative. The evo psych folks are at least offering some theories, which is still vastly superior than just saying "we'll never know."
Google Sells AOL Stake Back To Time Warner For $283 Million
I wonder - has there ever been a case of an organization that big voluntarily giving up power? I can't think of any, & in fact the opposite situation (eg regulatory capture) is quite common.
Physics is not intuitive for most people. The aircraft problem works for the same reason you can yank a table cloth from under a wineglass without knocking it over. But watch someone do that and it will seem like a magic trick.

Edit: Perhaps a better explication might be how a tail wind increases a modern cars top speed at almost a 1 to 1 ratio.
Why would you need a "decently powerful electric"? It's not getting hotter than the boiling point no matter how many BTUs you throw at it. You're right that an increased cooking time is a bigger concern if you have to chop down the wood, but you should be able to do it just fine on anything that can bring a sufficient quantity of water to a boil.
Sorry for this grammar. Hurts my own forgiving eyes.
Makes it see like Apple wants to make Jail-breaking your phone more appetizing then it already was...

*http://appulo.us/appdb/ - if your tired of apps being pulled that you really liked....
Hows this: (from yesterday)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=725333
$50M later, SearchMe redirects to Google
Perhaps iPADD? http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/PADD

EDIT: Not meant to be a serious suggestion.
"Yet another possibility is that Google’s official application is imminent, and the GV Mobile app was pulled to reduce confusion once that’s out (though this seems less likely)."

My initial thought was, OK, Google is probably prepping their own native app for release...likely or not, I hope its the case. I use the blackberry app almost exclusively for all my calls now and dont see going back to my BB's dialer.

Apple's recent actions at the app store are disconcerting to say the least...What about the skype app? Is that going to be (or has it been) yanked too?

I suppose its another reason to be happy I stuck with my BB ;)
True.

On top of that if you look at the HTC Hero review at TechCrunch (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/07/20/review-htc-hero/), it looks like a pretty sweet device with interface clearly approaching iPhone and Pre and in some cases taking their best elements.

Like Windows, Android doesn't have to invent, just make sure it can follow iPhone & Pre innovations closely.
This makes me want to return the 3G I bought on Saturday, cancel my new AT&T contract and buy a G1. Between this and their growing shitty service (3g reception in SF is for ass), are they now _actively_ trying to turn customers away?
They're saying "We don't know" which is worlds apart from saying "We'll never know" and running around spouting bullshit to the the lay audience is vastly worse than saying "We don't know."
With only $50M, I doubt I could come up with a better search solution than sending folks to Google, either.
The Blue Brain Project is attempting to recreate the brain in a super computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_brain

And Jeff Hawkin's (the founder of Palm Computing) has already put forth a fairly comprehensive theory on how the brain works in his book On Intelligence, and his group Numenta http://www.numenta.com/ are currently working on a simplified computer implementation.

Having read a fair amount into the topic, I'd say there's already enough information there to change how you might look at programming a certain task (especially if Numenta keeps pushing along). But it makes me think of humans more as complex memory machines rather than "compute-ers"
LG KF750 Secret Purple Unlocked
LG KF 750 Secret which can be said as a come back of the slider phones. only phone which have a 5.0 mega pixel camera with a distinct feature of auto focus and also a face tracker is equipped in the camera. 2.4 inches wide screen.
If the world is the Internet, America is Google
Does that logic somehow change when someone says:

"I have an Ace."
(You calculate the probability.)
"Then they say I have an Ace of harts."
(You calculate the probability.)

PS: I suspect the actual answer relates to how you talk about your hand in bridge.
good one, but actually, it brings up a good point: apple has all sorts of trademark issues to consider, so they are not as free to choose as speculators are.
Regardless of whether politicians "support" it, I expect that most of them know that it's really good for the country in the long term. That's why I said that I hope Obama, who's been all about change, will have the brains (and the balls) to actually do the right thing.
Ask HN: Ethics of Offering Promotion for Users who Dump Competitor
I am weighing if this is a good business practice or not. For example, if a hypothetical start-up called ACME decided to waive the first year price for anyone who migrate their contents from a competitor site to the ACME site.

This seems like a very good way to make company enemies. But also a good way to gain market share.

Thoughts?
With little notice and no planning, Cerberus literally
abandoned the engineering library at the Chrysler
Technical Center. The library was shuttered and the
librarian laid off. And then the real crime: all the
library’s books and materials were offered to anyone
who could carry them away.

not destroyed exactly, but just as bad
but most users aren't going to do that

Most users also don't require a persistent desktop between multiple locations. This discussion naturally leads itself to a unique set of users. :)
I was once chased by a crow for a good hundred yards, if not more. It cawed at me aggressively, and as I would get farther away, it fly to a new position so it could keep cawing at me. Several times it buzzed me from behind a few feet from my head. Finally I went around a corner where I was completely obscured from the crow and the place where it originally started harassing me (there was a 12 or 14 story building in the way). I thought I had finally escaped. Then the crow buzzed me one last time, flying past me from behind so close that it hit me on the shoulder.
Where I Program - Independent Developer's Cribs
A minimal profitability trajectory seems to imply minimized costs. A family and mortgage means added costs, so I imagine you'd have to offset that with added revenues. Wives are capable of earning an income, for instance, while mortgages are usually tied to property ownership, which in itself has income opportunities (renting unused bedrooms, or in extreme cases, moving to a place where you're paying less rent than you're collecting from the house) and, once the mortgage is paid off, the potential to reduce recurring housing costs.

Being single and without financial obligations is an optimal situation, but not the only survivable situation. As you can see from some of my ideas though, being single also gives you the latitude to make crazy lifestyle changes without anyone else having to be happy with it :)
Ask HN: What do you drink?
I find I code better with a drink nearby. I can't have snacks or food near me but having a soda or something is great.

Right now I drink 2-4 coke zeros per day, which is better than my former habit of a couple cokes a day, which was better than the even earlier habit of a couple of Rockstars per day.

What do you drink?

Just looking for some (hopefully healthier) ideas.
Suppose today that someone has skills that provide "utility gained by the [prospective] employer" (what I'd call "true worth") of $4 per hour (and it's not for a restaurant position). Is that person, today, able to get a job paying that $4/hour? No, they aren't, at least not legally.

Why is that? Because the minimum wage law takes that option away from them, increasing unemployment and increasing the underground, untaxed, unregulated, no worker protection or benefits economy.

I am perfectly able to find people today who cannot find a job, who are neither psych nor substance impaired. Convenienently, you say that temporary unemployment during the economic downswing "doesn't count, obviously." I am more inclined to find that statement disingenious rather than obvious. When times are tough, one would expect that wages might come down. When the natural market wage would be lower than the minimum wage, some of those jobs will naturally vanish. How is that to the advantage of a job-seeker?
No you don't.

Yes, I do. I need a 1/2" frame around the edge of the machine but beyond that, I just want screen real estate. Take a look at the Sony PRS-700BC. That would be the ideal machine if it worked with the Amazon book store (ignoring the 1984-ocalypse)
Django templates are very flexible, so I like them. I have no need to insert real programming logic within my templates, but as a designer, I love to break everything down to the nth degree, which Django templates encourage. I prefer chainable filters to any other transformation style I've seen.
Actually, there will always be behaviours that are not the product of evolution (as in natural selection of desirable qualities). There's always a chance of randomness in gene reproduction, and so we live in a world where a few people are afflicted with genetic diseases (like down syndrome).

Perhaps you are using a broader definition of "evolution"?
Iced peppermint Tea. The most refreshing drink in the galaxy. Much easier on the head than the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster too.
Reminds me of the 'desktop pictures' from the LD48 contests. :)

(http://ludumdare.com)

The more ambitious folks record time-lapses of themselves (and their monitors).
Well it all depends on the wife/husband. If s/he is earning, and agrees to give you a runway (say 3 years of you not having to pull your financial weight), you essentially get 3 years in which to get to a higher level of profitability. Of course, this all depends on your spouse's career and willingness to enter this, but I know of many marriages that have gone through intertemporal sharing of financial responsibilities.
The cable nightmare should be enough to open up anyone's eyes. There's a line somewhere that companies should not cross in their willingness to protect their investments.. Apple trying to disallow other gadgets from using iTunes is one thing. You may or may not agree with it but it does not sound too weird. Standard cables are far, far beyond that line that should not be crossed.
Apologies for the hyperbole, but I believe your position is that we should adjust the inputs -- control gas emissions -- and then see what happens. If I've misunderstood you please explain. Assigning that kind of political power isn't something one does lightly.

The science and politics thing is indeed dicey. I would suggest that a set of ethical guidelines be established to keep both parties honest, much like we have with the doctor-patient relationship in psychoanalysis. There's simply too much temptation for each side to use the other for their advantage. We don't want to end up with one party "scientifically" proving the other party is a bunch of morons (substitute much more PC adjectives here). We certainly don't want politicians announcing that scientific or political debate is "over" for a particular topic. E-gads man, that's a travesty.

Last time I had a AGW discussion on HN (several months back), somebody pointed out that we've actually been seeing a cooling trend, not a warming one. If the current year continues that trend, the original models will have been invalidated -- the actual observed data will fall outside of the 95% confidence range. I know this sounds like stalling for time, but since I'm not in a hurry anyway, I'd like to see the current year's data.

I'm not a climatologist, and of course it's not incumbent on me to put forth any alternatives. I am, however, aware of several. (I've spent some time researching this issue). There's the 1500-year cycle theory, that since the last great ice age we've seen regular 1500-year cycles. There's the average-global-temperature-is-primarily-a-result-of-solar-radiation crowd. I think those guys, Russians if I recall, made a bet back in 2000 that the next decade would see cooling, not warming. Perhaps they'll get paid? I don't know. There are theories that cosmic radiation is responsible for cloud coverage and that cloud coverage is the primary ingredient in climate. My personal half-baked theory is that since we are talking about a mixed chemical and biological system, with hundreds of thousands of variables, the climate is probably a chaotic system with an attractor based around solar input. This means that small inputs could have large effects, but it also means that large inputs may have no effect at all. With a little more research I'm sure we could find a lot of other ideas out there.

The smoking gun in current model application is the fact that all of them have runaway conditions at the end. This has been interpreted as portraying some pending doom, but any computer science nerd who has played around with chaotic and CA systems can observe that the default behavior is runaway systems. So on general principle I'm skeptical that we're not seeing much more than experimentation noise.
This article is poorly written and questionably accurate. Also, the HTC Hero and HTC Dream are released Android devices. So is the Magic in some parts of the world, iirc.

Too bad you can't downvote submissions.
I get a kick outta people who think about time like it really exists.

Time "exists" as a result of measurements of the Earth's rotation. That's how 'universal' it is.
Hmmm. Maybe it's speeding up, like a film. Maybe that's why the 'universe' is accelerating. Or maybe it's moving with a sine-wave motion ... which explains why I'm feeling dizzy.
Google Sells Back Its Stake in AOL. There Goes $700 Million.
You've set up a bit of an unfortunate dichotomy; the ratio of downvotes is no different than usual.