skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think that's stretching the point. The Apple II was certainly not closed. Literally the whole design of the thing was cleanly documented, right down the IC selection and the (hand assembled!) firmware. The original Mac was likewise an open book (albeit one without an expansion bus). Take a look at the first edition of Inside Macintosh. Even modern macs aren't "closed" in any meaningful sense. You can develop and deploy software for them using most or all of the tools Apple has internally.

And in any case, it's not the "closedness" that people are complaining about with regard to the iPhone; that's just the practical tool Apple is using. The complaint is about Apple's attempts to use dominance in one sector (smartphones in this case, though I think a similar argument can be made about media players and iTunes) as leverage against competitors or to favor its own products, or those of its allies.

And it is that behavior that seems very Microsoft-like to those of us who remember the 90's.
They should also take a look at self styled 'experts' who write ebooks on topics like weight loss etc, with no formal qualification.
I just checked the book using Amazon's "look inside" feature. It appears that his example is how to use cryptography to hide what cards you have from the other player until it is time to reveal them. I am more interested in how to apply the ideas from this article to involve an open, self enforcing protocol rather than data hiding.
A founder of http://fairsoftware.net : "build your [iPhone|web|desktop] App Together"

Previously co-founder of http://eve-usa.com

PS: not listing projects I launched that never went anywhere...
Look at this:

http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/05/exploiting-spammers-to-m...

"Googlers Rich Gossweiler, Maryam Kamvar, and Shumeet Baluja had a fun paper at WWW 2009, "What's Up CAPTCHA? A CAPTCHA Based On Image Orientation" (PDF), that asks people to rotate images correctly to prove they are human rather than the norm of deciphering distorted text."
Former founder: http://diffle.com, http://bootstrapacitor.com, http://randomicity.net, http://whatshallidonow.net, and GameClay (which never launched). All dead now, my cofounder was the one that paid for the hosting, and he let them lapse when we gave up. I was the technical end of the partnership, writing the software.

Heh, it looks far more impressive when I just list URLs. Most of those "startups" were pretty lame side projects, and the one that wasn't was the one that never launched.
I'm a co-founder -- along with my wife and a friend -- of http://www.genlighten.com, an Etsy-like marketplace for genealogy research services. My role includes pre-code IA/UX design, usability testing, customer development, sales/marketing, and general management.
Automatic tests take too much time to write. I tested it in the browser and it worked fine!
Cedric Buest responds to Next-gen Java Programming Style
If you're working on it, wouldn't that make you the founder of a pre-launch startup?
No. I'm on my H1B visa.
I've had pretty good luck using the MAA recommendations list for libraries: http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/?pa=content&sa=viewDocum...

I recommend reading Theodore Gray and Jerry Glynn's Brain Rot article for some ideas on what math skills are worth intensive study and development and which are less important: http://www.theodoregray.com/BrainRot/

There are several articles and blog postings on the topic of math self study that I found interesting and you might find useful in determining what and how to study:
Developing your intuition for math: http://betterexplained.com/articles/developing-your-intuitio...
Math every day (Steve Yegge): http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/math-every-day
Math for programmers (Steve Yegge): http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers...
How to read mathematics (Shai Simonson and Fernando Gouvea):http://web.stonehill.edu/compsci/History_Math/math-read.htm
Poll: Should Microsoft actively kill IE6?
I think that's stretching the point. The Apple II was certainly not closed.

How many decades ago was that??
You might need to add some cargo/people capacity in there. A tiny electric car will have a hard time beating a diesel MAC truck for efficiency when it's hauling a few tons :)
Grat app. I'm interested because one of my projects include a telemedicine system, and I know the complexity of DICOM protocols.
If he wants to go to graduate school, grades matter as a necessary but not sufficient condition. However, if he's a promising student, he'll have no problem getting the requisite grades (3.5+ in-major) while working on independent projects and doing research.

He might also decide he wants to go to law or business school, in which case undergraduate GPA is a significant selection criterion.
Keep your head on straight and you'll do fine. :)

FWIW, it's been awesome having you around at work, and I wish you the best of luck at Olin.
So what's the appeal of 8-bit music? I don't get it.
Not totally irrelevant, I assume you sometimes enable a flash embed or two. Just because it plays a movie (or whatever) doesn't mean it isn't tracking you, too.
Cambridge, UK.
Yep. Founder of http://rimsystems.com
If I have anything to do with it, in the next month or so :)
I'm the author of Silent Diving Seagulls and I just wanted to say something that I didn't include in the blogpost. I know, some of you probably think that instant Growl-like notifications are really distracting. I completely agree. Personally, I don't use notifications for emails or Twitter because it breaks my train of thought.

But one of the coolest things that could come out of having desktop notification support is this - say you have (1) a notification log and (2) a "Do Not Disturb" feature in your client. Then, if all your social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress start using it, you could easily have a neat log of all the happenings (sort of like mini personal FriendFeed). And we could go back to using email solely for 2-way communications. Email really shouldn't be used as a notification system. Email has been abused because it was the only easy solution in the past.

On a related note, Hacker News ought to notify you when someone replies to your comments or submissions.
Awful rapping + Nintendo songs. Proving once again that familiarity trumps quality.
What Does Google Think of Twitter?
I think Larrabee is a lot more promising than Itanium ever was. At the bare minimum, it's a server-like x86 processor.

I would prefer something with a more elegant ISA than an x86, but that's what we have in front of us now, thanks to the huge mass of non-portable x86 code that's so critical for success on the desktop...
Apple again offers matte screen option for 15-inch MacBook Pro
It takes him all of five sentences to back off from his sensationalistic headline and admit there is another possibility:

or the way they are using concurrency is restricted to nice simple patterns of interaction to which we can apply some simple mental analogy

Actually this possibility covers most programming requirements. I like to think I'm superhumanly smart, and I would love to tackle a hard concurrency problem, but so far I have only needed mundane engineering ingenuity to map my problems to known solutions.
A LOT like Campaign Monitor. The bold white headline and subhead, blue horizontal nav, 4¢ graphic, the location of the screenshot, etc.
This is awesome. We've been searching for a notification system for our users that is NOT e-mail for our product Ask My BrainTrust (http://askmybraintrust.com). For a product that tries to get you away from annoying e-mail threads, using e-mail as a form of notification seemed hypocritical. This would make an awesome alternative, especially since we already have XMPP baked into the backend.
Try to find some good friends in CS (or whatever your major is). I made the mistake my first year of college of being far too standoffish and irritated with most of the people at my first school, and spent most of my time bored and lonely until the middle of my second semester, by which point I'd already made plans to transfer out.

I considered myself a pretty outgoing person before I left for school, but moving away from all of my high school friends had a bigger effect on me than I'd expected.
Seriously, What statistics would you get when to take in to the fact that 90% of the tweets are by bots? And twitter users with large following are either bots or celebrities. All these factors should be considered while building the web app. Anyways it should be an interesting social experiment.

Also, they should consider using facebook statuses instead of tweets. Facebook status messages are more personal than tweets. Any thoughts?
i don't necessarily disagree, but the OP clearly stated his goals as wanting to do well enough to have grad school as an option.
Yep! Founder at http://AskMyBrainTrust.com
I'm one of the founder of http://engineyard.com
I agree with hyperbovine -- Road To Reality is a downright terrible book for the casually-interested nonprofessional, and I don't understand why it gets recommended so frequently. Roger Penrose is a bright fellow and a good writer but this book is not for the person who did OK in high school math and physics and now wants to take it to the next level.
Founder of http://docley.com
Well stated-- thanks.
I find it hard to believe that anyone would accept a multiple liquidation preference. I'd seriously consider it better to shut down than to stay in the game for the benefit of investors I'd end up hating.

I can't even imagine MLP benefiting investors. It'd be a huge morale-buster. Also, a company that needs to accept those sorts of terms is in severe trouble and, as I'd see it, although I may be wrong, not likely to be a good investment at all.
yes, Im working on blipea.com tubabel.com latino based startups
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_flipping

See the section "Coin flipping in telecommunications" for a cryptographic scheme for verifiable coin flipping across the internet. This is a specific example from the category of commitment schemes.
What You Wear to a $50 Million Deal Closing in Silicon Valley
>2. Sniff packets from the air or wire of the computer or server

From your home connection, maybe. Anywhere else I wouldn't trust it.
> The validity of this here depends on how much blindness you think Gimp actually induces.

Perhaps you've mistyped, but how much blindness do you actually think it may induce? Perhaps you could specify a range of blindness which you find plausible.
"As an aside, my totally unscientific examinations suggest that people grow more after a year of travelling than they do after 4 of college."

As a corollary to that - study abroad while in college! It will never be cheaper, easier, or more socially acceptable. The semester I spent in New Zealand cost my parents about 1/3 as much as a semester at Amherst (mostly because tuition + room & board at New Zealand universities was around $7000/NZ, while tuition + room & board at Amherst was $20k+). It massively broadened my perspective - not just because I was in a different country in a different hemisphere, but because I was living on my own, with a 14-hour time difference from my parents, studying at a different school in a different university system. And if I hadn't gone, I'd have to have stayed back on campus while all my friends were abroad...

I think I probably would've gotten even more out of the experience had I been brave enough to go to a country with a different language and vastly different culture, eg. Nepal or Ghana or Madagascar. But there's a limit to how many variables in my life I can change at once. If you're more adventurous, go for it.
11 things an angel investor will never say
Currently cofounder of http://github.com, previously founder of http://gravatar.com.
My advice is two fold.

1) Have fun, you think 4 years of college is long...but trust me, it'll go by in a blink of an eye.

2) Start thinking ahead from day one.

GPA: don't slack off early on, early on all your classes are bullshit, you might think they are hard, but you have no idea. Get those easy As early on.

Startup/Projects: start working on them from day one. Even if it goes slow, you'll be much better of. Startups start off very slowly, so college is the best time to start, since you can have the 4 years for it to grow big enough, while you have no real expenses.
WP Zoom Giveaway – 3 Uber Premium Wordpress Themes
I think that languages like Erlang, and many of the functional lanugages, show that you don't actually need shared ownership and shared mutation for a large proportion of the problems out there. (Shared constant values, of course, are not a problem.)

Linear typing can also help by enforcing ownership transfers between workers operating on data, allowing efficient data transfer without sharing.
Since those articles are throughout the year (March, January, & September respectively) then no, it's not seasonal :)
Came here to post this. Also, if you're interested in a subject (even if the class seems boring) ask the teacher for outside reading material. Chances are, if they've been around for any length of time, they know where the good stuff is.
Why We Need Big Organizations
A little bit of perspective from someone five years further down the river:

I'm grateful for my honours ticket to the thrill ride that is my job. I see the joy I find in what I do every day reflect in the others I work with. I'm privileged in this regard and I respect that.

I regret the plethora of mis-spent hours that I lost in the pursuit of irrelevance and perfection in assignments; it took me five years to learn to ensure effort is concominent with benefit.

I'm grateful for the friends I met. They took me to places I'd never have gone alone.

I'm sad that now I see so little of them. My job might be great but I scarificed proximity to other pleasures for it.

I'm grateful that I can arrive at a roaring party, find one of those illusive corner jam-sessions going on with borrowed guitars and some drums from a gap year in Kenya and join in without hesitation.

I'm sad that I spent five months playing only World of Warcraft.

I'm grateful that I spent only five months playing World of Warcraft.

I'm sad that I only discovered I could write after I was too far down the arithmetic creek. Paddles came at too steep a price.

I'm grateful that I spent a summer crafting a computer game with four great friends and that there was an organisation with the generosity and skill to pay for me to make such an ambitious mistake.

I'm sad that I didn't understand what asynchronous development was and how it was, and still is, affecting me.

I'm grateful that I was drawn to learn how to cook.

I'm sad that, on balance, when given the option, I didn't take it.

I love the memory of Maria sharing how she felt about me.

I'm sad that I was cowardly and replied with too many words and too little care.
Maybe, I won't consider myself a founder until it actually launches. Its not really a startup if you aren't funded and you haven't launched anything, its kind of just an idea that you are working on at that point. So that is where I feel I am at, I am trying to get something off the ground while keeping my dayjob.
The Mancession
Take advantage of the school whenever possible. If tuition covers up to 20 credits, take 20 credits a semester (assuming you can handle the course load of course). If there are discounted summer courses and you are available, why not?

Take interesting and challenging electives. A lot of students just take the easiest electives they can, but in my opinion they are wasting their time and money.

Use the library. It will probably have access to all sorts of expensive journals and publications.

Become friends with your professors. Most of them are interesting, intelligent people.

Find clubs with like minded people or just hang out with people who are in college to learn (you will find that the majority of people in college are there because it's what you do after high school).

Finally, enjoy yourself. If you are not enjoying yourself than why are you putting yourself through all of this?
Thanks for correcting about law/business school; I had overlooked that. Medical school too I think.
What do you mean it didn't work when you tried it? It works on my machine just fine, you must be doing something wrong. Noob.
Yup.

Product: http://freebooksapp.com
Company blog: http://spreadsong.com
But 1 Joule of one energy does not cost the same as 1 Joule of another, which is why MPG gasoline and MPG diesel are not directly comparable
These lecture notes give a decent description of several different ways for three people to share (including non-"moving knife" solutions):

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15451-f05/www/le...
Quoting the article: "Fluent interfaces
Now that's an interesting recommendation since it contradicts directly Stephan's suggestion of not using setters, because make no mistakes: fluent interfaces are setters in disguise. So, Stephan, which one is it? :-)"

Functions are just goto in desguise. switch/case is just an if/elif/else in diguise. Objects are just structs with some fancy function calling semantics. So which one will you use? Fluent interfaces may just be setters in disguise, but they add quite a bit of value.
Nothing wrong with being inspired by another site, IMHO.
Well yeah, but in absolute terms only.

Car 1: instead of needing 5 gallons you only need 4 gallons. Saved: 1 gallon (20%)
Car 2: instead of needing 2 gallons you only need 1 gallon. Saved: 1 gallon (50%)

But who makes comparisons like this in absolute terms? I rather save 50% than 20%, but maybe that's just me.
Seconding #1 (well, #2 too, but mostly #1). I was sure I wanted to be a physics major when I entered college. I continued being a physics major despite doing terribly in most of the upper-level classes. One of my biggest regrets about college was not switching to CS earlier, because I could've gotten much more out of my classes if I'd taken courses I was really interested in rather than taking courses I thought I had to to complete the major and then doing the stuff I was really interested in in my spare time.

Your perspective in high school is really narrow. It has to be; most of the things you might find are exciting aren't even taught in high school. (Similarly, many of the exciting parts of the working world aren't taught in college unless you got to a specialized college.) Be willing to accept all the new avenues that open up for you in college, and don't stick to your plans from high school just because they're your plans.
I was in a small coffee shop attached to a train station the other day and I made a comment about the sound system which was playing the radio. How if she listened to it all day - why not get a better system. And the owner, matter-of-factly, told me its better if the sound system is lackluster and unremarkable - otherwise they (the recording/music industry) can go after you for performance fees.
Since you're already focused on hacking and academics, my advice is to balance that by developing your social skills:

1. Read (and practice) How To Win Friends and Influence People

2. Go to parties and have fun at them

3. Cultivate a group of close friends whom you can count on

If you can graduate with great hacking skills, good grades, good social skills, and trusted friends, then you will be in a good position for the next phase after college. If entrepreneurship is on your mind, think of it as hacking+friends and start laying that foundation.

Regarding the opposite sex, don't fret them but absolutely do chase the ones you like! That's a wonderful part of life, and there is much to learn. :)
I'm pretty sure my karma will take a hit here.

Apple is hardly the new Microsoft. Microsoft's developer relations are bar none the best for any commercial entity or platform I've ever developed for. That's not saying their API's or SDK's are well designed, what it is saying is their developer support simply cannot be beaten.

Now, I've been entirely Apple based for the last three years and - in terms of hand holding tool chain support - it's a relative ghetto in contrast to what MS provides.

MS is definitely more open than Apple is, specifically when it comes to the iPhone, so I'm not sure how Apple is the new Microsoft in the slightest sense. Now, I don't mean open in terms of open source and all that, but I mean open in terms of what, when, where you develop and deploy.

In many ways, I wish they were the new Microsoft. That would mean that iPhone is an open landscape with API's that aren't encumbered with a "father knows best" mentality, which, as a developer, is frightening if it's a picture of what's to come. Can you imagine a future where Apple dictates what you install on your laptop or desktop? Why is the iPhone/iPod Touch any different? Because it has a GSM chip?

The problem is that if consumers accept this scenario, which they've readily done with the App Store, then the next logical conclusion is that the next device from Cupertino that isn't a laptop or desktop will come with the same closed, crippled, handicapped (from a developer's perspective) ecosystem. Then the next iteration after that will move it closer to the reality that your desktop will be locked down in the same fashion.

No, Apple is not the next Microsoft. They've become their own brand of monster.
If you pass, grad school is an option. Maybe not the top echelon, maybe not right away, but it's always an option.
Sharp, clean sounds with a bit of nostalgia. It appeals to a certain demographic; if it's not for you, then so it goes.
This looks amazing. We've been waiting for something like this that we can directly plug Fluther notifications into, without having to build and maintain our own desktop notification client.

Keep up the great work.
Pricing Car Repairs, Before the Repairs
Violet (Nabaztag, Mirror RFID reader) file for bankruptcy
my point was that this person wants to do grad school, so they're not going to follow the "college isn't worth it" path and drop out or not go.
Here’s a self-enforcing protocol for determining property tax: the homeowner decides the value of the property and calculates the resultant tax, and the government can either accept the tax or buy the home for that price. Sounds unrealistic, but the Greek government implemented exactly that system for the taxation of antiquities. It was the easiest way to motivate people to accurately report the value of antiquities.

Yeah, it does sound unrealistic. What if the homeowner truthfully and in good faith reports an accurate value for their home, and the government decides to purchase it anyways? I would not like the government to have the ability to instantly render me homeless.
The Nabaztag and Mirror devices they sell won't work without the violet webservice running behind them. This will increasingly become a problem when more "Internet of Things" devices are sold
Give me these with no voice and they'll be great.
SAP transport now available for Mule
That's a great idea actually. Most people "go away to college" but just exchange one set of people for another within the same culture.

While you hit New Zealand, I'd add that for many of us of European decent, not only is that avenue open it may also be super low cost if you can obtain EU citizenship via ancestry.
Microsoft defends Internet Explorer 6, says it’s all about “user choice”
Hackers in the Heat | Houston Meetup
Enjoy some good conversation and some cold beers @ The West Alabama Ice House.
Yes, I am a co-founder of http://www.pagerduty.com.
No. Companies taking the initiative with user's stuff is how we ended up with 1984 being deleted from Kindles without warning. If you're a company (or in fact if you're anyone but me), keep your hands off my computer. Period.
UI friendliness on the scale of perfect vision to blind. The more unfriendly Gimp seems, the more natural the hyperbole.