skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Three guys are in a car, a programmer, a systems analyst and an electronics guy.

Halfway down a mountain side the brakes fail, and the car starts to accelerate, completely out of control.

At the foot of the mountain there is a busy intersection, and the car is reaching it just as the lights are red and traffic from the other road is crossing.

As by a miracle they pass between two 18 wheeler tractor-trailers and make it to the other side, where after a while they run out of momentum and coast to a stop.

Wow, that was close, says the systems analyst. I think the master brake cylinder must have failed...

So, says the electronics dude, let me see if I can fix it.

No, says the programmer, let's just do that again and see if it fails again...
What's Wrong With E=MC^2?
I used to think this, until I moved to SF and actually ran the numbers. And running the numbers for rent vs. buy is complicated when you do it right, because you're forecasting things like inflation, interest rates, how long you intend to stay, etc. Here's the best calculator I've seen:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAP...
Looks like it doesn't include support for taking screenshots…
I think this is the guy who from 2005 - 2008, was constantly predicting a 50% collapse in property values in SF within the next few months. Not saying he was wrong about overvaluation (though it wasn't rocket science), but I wouldn't try to time the market based on his advice.
There's a company called AggData that scrapes and sells location datasets: http://aggdata.com

Geocommons Finder http://finder.geocommons.com/ has quite a lot of free location data.
How big business can be brought down by some angry hackers
How to use math to choose a spouse
I'm pretty sure that Starbucks does do some things to discourage people from staying there a long time. One thing noted in this and other threads is the availability of outlets. In some larger SBXs, there are tables with power strips; in smaller ones, there may only be one or two tables where you can plug something in.

But where things get more interesting are the subtleties. Before I got an office share, I did a lot of tutoring in SBXs, meaning I'd be there for sometimes 6-8 hours at a stretch. One thing I noticed in multiple locations was that the music would change--dramatically--every so often. (Maybe every hour, I don't know.)

People think of SBX as having pretty standard cool jazz, laid-back r&b...the genre that might as well be referred to as "coffeehouse." But when it changes up, it can be jarring. Go from Norah Jones to an old Charlie Parker recording, and it is at least subconsciously disturbing. It's never blatant, never music that says "don't stay!" to someone just walking in, but enough to say, "time to change gears" to someone who settled in to one type of music.

Of course this is all supposition on my part. But there has been tons of research done by Musak and others to determine buying patterns based on volume/music type/etc., and if it makes it easy for SBX to say one thing while ever-so-gently nudging people out the door, it seems like a great way to get the desired effect.
You could at least make some personal comment about what Philip had to say instead of merely quoting him. Otherwise what's the point?

In any case, I learned about 10 years ago to disregard anything philg had to say unless it was about photography or building websites!
A frequent offender is Alley Insider and the entire Business Insider set of blogs. Henry Blodget's Internet Outsider blog used to be great, and SAI started nicely, but now it has devolved into a trolling + link-baiting mess. A search for 'killer site:businessinsider.com' shows how many titles they have that are -killer such as 'wikipedia-killer' 'google-killer' etc. They frequently take a poor claim or projection based on little to no evidence that is likely to be controversial, assume it is incontrovertible and publish a litany of bad arguments, stupid opinions and ridiculous forecasts.

The comments on these posts reflect the type of people to enjoy such a blog.

Peter Kafka used to blog for SAI and during his tenure there his posts were as bad as any other on that site and since he's moved to AllthingsD his posts have improved wholesale and are now informative, interesting and frequently make headlines on memetrackers such as Techmeme. I think it's some kind of policy, and I don't think it works given the greater exposure Kafka gets now than before when he was with SAI.

/rant
Google Helped Twitter Deal With Attacks (GOOG)
Arduino- Open Source Electronics Prototyping
From the actual article linked to by the submitted post:

"Schwartz saw the error in the announcement timing as more than a technicality, citing the false assertion of Police Chief Paul Walters that motorists would be given 4.4 seconds of yellow time at enforced intersections. Records show that seventeen of the city’s eighteen camera intersections had yellow times of 4.0 seconds or less. The vast majority of red light tickets in the city were mailed to vehicle accused of entering an intersection less than half-a-second after the light had turned red."

And again, yellow doesn't mean stop. It means "stop if it's safe". If yellow meant unequivocally stop, then everyone would be slamming on the brakes - a recipe for accidents.
You kids! His persona is often troll... however, his operandi is journalism. Remember that? You know, telling the ugly truth (as you saw it), without fear or hinder?
No, he was a German guy living in the Netherlands, originally he worked for 'NikHef', the nuclear physics lab in Amsterdam, then he founded his own company and I was one of their coders (originally co-founder but there were some 'issues' so I declined).
As a renter, I am living someplace at the sufferance of someone else. Yes, in some jurisdictions there are legal issues if they want to kick me out, and mostly they wouldn't want to anyway, as long as I pay my rent on time and don't annoy the other tenants too much, but the difference is that if you own a house, it's yours. There's always someplace you can go where no one has the right to make you leave. There's an added level of security to that, even if most renters don't care.
In my opinion Malthus is getting way too much credit considering real life proved him wrong.

The examples provided in the article are actually pretty good and clever examples, but they are accurate because they do not apply to the one thing Malthus talked about -- human populations. If you actually consider human populations, you will quickly discover that all these Malthuisms fall apart pretty quickly. Which makes sense considering humans are complicated beings and not simple autonomons like mice that will breed at any opportunity.

According to Malthus, the richer a population is the more it will grow and it will get poorer, so please do not bother helping poor countries, or poor people. Instead let them be poor so they automatically limit their populations. Oh and also we cannot achieve a great society where there is no poverty, because when there is no poverty people will just starts breeding like rabbits until everyone is poor again.

But of course in real life everything is backwards. The poorer a country is the more its population grows. In a country with income disparity the poor income groups grow much faster than the rich, and sometimes the rich ones do not grow at all.

This planet suffers from population overload but most of it is caused from poor populations (poor countries, or poor groups of rich countries).

If a poor country becomes richer relatively quickly it does not suffer a population explosion. On the contrary, population growth rates plummet and may even go negative. See Japan and South Korea.

So yes, Malthus is not really correct, and yes we can improve society and helping the poor is not a waste of time.
Chuck Moore is one of very few people on the planet that can say that he built his whole platform, chips included from the ground up. There ought to be a statue somewhere in name of the guys achievements.

I very much hope that somebody will get to document his legacy before it gets lost. That would be a worthwhile undertaking.

I'd gladly volunteer for the job :)
"supported on more platforms" is relatively bogus when the libraries are open source. And I'm sure that all currently in use languages and platforms, even enterprise ones, have JSON parsers. I'd venture to say that one needs the ability to transform XML into other formats using tools like XSLT because XML is often so hard to work with, and I don't think this limitation is necessarily a serious problem with JSON, since the format is so simple and there are fewer serious ambiguities as to how things should be serialized in JSON, not having the concept of child nodes vs attributes (as one example).
With karma like yours I would be comfortable buying the plane ticket ahead of time.
Back in the day you could finger Linus Torvalds to check for the most recent linux kernel version:

"8. Keeping track of current releases

Important new releases, programs, and ports are usually announced in comp.os.linux.announce. finger torvalds@klaava.helsinki.fi or finger @linux.cs.helsinki.fi to get some information about the current kernel."
Video boils down to an old skiing saying: A skier says to another - "Hey, did you fall today?" the other skier responds - "No." Then the first skiers says "You didn't go fast enough or went down slopes that were way to easy."

If you aren't failing, you aren't challenging yourself enough.
It's not cheap, and that, at least, is good. But in Europe you won't find free Wifi and power outlets, and you'll probably look stupid with a laptop in a coffee frequented by lots of tourists.

But there's no other place to stay with your laptop, so... nothing to do there.
I rebuild classic minis from the ground up, it's my way of regaining sanity after a coding bout.

That includes all the body work and so on, nothing gets outsourced.
I've never understood the point that people who say that sort of thing are trying to make. Unbridled capitalism (which, as noted, this wasn't an example of) has problems. What are they suggesting we do about it? It seems like the idea must be more than just a small increase in regulation. That's already being done, so the point wouldn't be worth the breath.
Is Dvorak our only hope?
Is he propagating a business model that rolls a thin wafer of sensationalism over an important, under-reported, honest-to-god fact, right under our noses?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=765301
I think it was the ozone layer that was disappearing ;)

You're a busy bee, nice to see you active in so many different fields!
Mike Arrington is a troll. Dvorak just rocks.
Curious that there is no wikipedia entry for her. Rather amazing stuff.
I listen to No Agenda (JCD & Adam Curry) primarily for entertainment value. My gf and I spend quite a few minutes every week mocking their ignorance. The political stuff is blatantly biased and the faux naive outrage is annoying to the point that I skip most of it, especially the clips. The H1N1 coverage is actually rather an antidote to hysteria - they don't think it's as serious as all that - the hysteria more relates to untested vaccine.

Mostly, though, I just listen for the anecdotes that are actually grounded in personal experience. I don't take either of them seriously in the least. I'd be willing to bet that a significant fraction of their audience is similar (though no doubt there's a larger than average loony fringe too).
A little while, back, I subleased a room from a couple of people who had been renting a house for something like ten years. They had made changes similar to the ones you mention (painting, planting produce, raising chickens). You just have to ask, although the answer is probably no more often than not.

Some people have particular tastes that are worth owning a home to satisfy. I doubt ~60% of people do.
You're right; it was assigning an index, on line 11 of the migration. Changing it to "created_at" works fine.
I don't think he's faking data. I think it's more a very strong case of bias confirmation, lazy thinking and lazy sourcing.
Yes he is.

He also speaks his mind like every fat-mouthed, intelligent American from Franklin to Vidal did. So shut your trap and get on with life. lol.
For sure - I'd bait Mac users too, were I in the same situation, as fanboy fealty to any corporate entity is worthy of little more than mockery.
Post is -2. This is one of those times when a disagreement should be followed by a reason. He cited his reasons, what are yours? Is Psychology Today full of propaganda? Is UCLA a right leaning university? Why do you disagree?
A to Z of programming languages:  Clojure
kinda wish this was on github. :)
If the market were so perfect, why wouldn't it cope with distortions perfectly? In other words, why wouldn't it predict the effects of mortgage tax etc., and still come out OK in the end?
One I've always liked, but it wasn't on the first couple pages:

A doctor, a priest, and an engineer are all out golfing when suddenly they start getting hit by golf balls. They complain to the marshall and he says, "Oh yeah, thats a group of blind golfers". The doctor says, "I will develop a procedure to help these golfers regain their sight". The priest says, "I will pray for these golfers so that God may heal them". The engineer says, "Why can't these guys just play at night?"
Not really true. I think Gears is a clear indicator of how Google sees the post-HTML5 world. Given that I think one of the driving ideas behind a ChromeOS is that programs and data will be cached to some extent on the desktop (a view that seems to be shared with Adobe (AIR) and Microsoft (Silverlight))

Web apps that are cached should be both light weight and responsive
NASA Drone Uses Radar to Map Quake Faults in 3-D
Of course. Most journalists are a mix of troll & entertainer. In this case Dvorak is using the classic tactic of an opinion framed into a factual context. The truth of the situation is the vast majority of government appointments, at all levels, are political in nature. Agenda & policy comes from the top -- these people just go out and work on the President's behalf using political skill, personal connections, reputation, etc, etc. That's how the game works.
In some places in India, you -can- will get killed (or, if you are lucky, your dick cut off) for saying "Your sister is hot".

That's not the brightest thing to say to any guy, even in the United States.
I was in the audience for this talk. Great job guys!
I think the idea shows a lot of promise. It would be good to move away from a third party such as Facebook owning all of your social connections, even if this is a small step.
You're mistaking customer unfriendly with laptop-unfriendly.

Most of the time, I prefer to not feel like I stepped into a laptop-geek-chic convention when I visit a cafe.

Sometimes I want a place where I can just use my laptop -- on those occasions, I visit a cafe where I'm welcome to destroy the ambience (such as any exists) by staring glass-eyed into my laptop screen.
The beginning of the end of Justin.tv (as tv about Justin) was when he turned the camera off midway through a date. It was a noble experiment.
Yeah, I hear you. It is rather scary because people that have bought into a particular diet theory are very adamant in supporting it. You would not want to admit that years of suffering to get onto some type of diet were in vain.

My personal ethos is the caveman diet. Which means just try to eat what a caveman would have eaten. If one looks at the evolutionary development of man, most of it was spent as a hunter and gatherer. So you can be sure that our digestive system has more or less evolved for the hunter gatherer lifestyle and/or primitive farmer lifestyle. The time humans started modern farming has been far too little to cause any changes.

So my theory is to try to eat what a hunter gatherer would have eaten. I guess that means a lot of vegetables and fruits, starch is ok, whole grain bread, and some meat but not a lot in comparison with everything else, and of course little/no fat.

Of course there are people that treat nutrition like a science, and you can see a lot of scientific articles, but it is very uncertain because it is very difficult to run experiments on humans.
You mean how it doesn't reduce illness in a real way?
Most of us have heard Cuban pretty much say he duped his investors and acquirers. Perhaps the host knows this too, but he didn't actually say that. He simply referred to "getting out in time" or "knowing when to sell". I think to the mass audience, pg came off looking real good.
I find it very interesting that when this argument is presented, people don't post a counterargument - they downvote instead?
I'n not sure you are aware of the irony of telling someone "shut your trap" while defending Dvorak’s freedom of speech.

Also, from the guidelines: Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
First, read this if you haven't. http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html

If you email me specifics I can give you some specific feedback as you start writing your application. However, (A) is probably the right answer: it is good to demonstrate to YC that you have multiple paths to success, especially because the ideas for these startups tend to change over the course of the Y Combinator program and behind. Just be very, very specific about what you're going to do.

Not being an obvious acquisition target for Big Internet absolutely does not disqualify you or even hurt you. Your basic idea is a good one that will make you money -- and if you have real revenue you can always sell a company.

Wufoo is the canonical example of a YC company going strong as an independent. So, my universal suggestion, would be to apply with your biggest picture vision, while focusing on that big picture as a specific, well-defined product rather than as services for individual clients.
co-working places and coffee shops might hook up better in the future. It could even be a source of revenue, it could even go further, small co-working malls.
Belief that your students can learn to excel, with enough disciplined effort.

Coupled with the ability to convince them of the same thing
That's a cool trick. Very usable. What are you using for the shopping cart? Is it homebrew or something off the shelf like Satchmo or magento?
My theory is that programmers choose to use languages like Python and Ruby for their personal projects, despite their weaknesses, because these languages are more fun to program in.

This sentence betrays the writer's lack of understanding of what Python and Ruby are for.

Hint: they're not just weaker-but-"more fun" versions of C# and Java.
Do they include some sort of userID on each question? I'd be interested to see those same results but only including people who asked a question for a language in each group. One commenter hypothesized the difference you're seeing is because "employed" and "weekend" programmers are two different groups of people.

I'm trying to download the data myself now, but the torrent isn't getting anywhere.
Well, I focused on the laptop factors, but it's really remarkable how much Starbucks' processes have sped up the process of getting coffee...

First, someone asks what you want then writes on the cup and passes it to the barista to get started... They can do this a few people ahead and often do, so that by the time you are paying your drink is almost ready.

Contrast this to the independent coffee shops which usually have a frazzled hipster avoiding eye contact with all but the first person in the line, and then spending most of his/her time trying to make your drink while the other person working there is chilling out also avoiding eye contact... based on what seems like some arrangement between the workers to take alternate customers.

Don't get me wrong, I love coffee shops and often it's worth dealing with a bit of frustration or lack of professionalism... it's just crazy how much Starbucks has innovated in this area... something that probably makes a huge difference in how much coffee gets sold when the line gets long.
Don't underestimate the power of simplicity.

Simplicity is worth a LOT of fuss.
Could Wordpress Be the Natural Successor to Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook?
Although this paper didn't know it at the time, this was one of the first statements of what would eventually be called the Byzantine Generals Problem (there is a paper of that name by the same authors which has similar content, just expanded on a bit).

I like Lamport's opinion of his own contribution:

"My other contribution to this paper was getting it written. Writing is hard work, and without the threat of perishing, researchers outside academia generally do less publishing than their colleagues at universities. I wrote an initial draft, which displeased Shostak so much that he completely rewrote it to produce the final version."

This is one of two great fundamental results in consensus protocols; the other being the later FLP result which shows the impossibility of consensus with failures in an asynchronous network. Byzantine fault tolerance was a hot topic in systems for the last roughly ten years thanks to Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov's work with Miguel Castro on Practical BFT that sparked a bit of a resurgence; the two most notable other papers IMHO in the field since that are 'Separating Agreement From Execution' paper from UT Austin and the SOSP '07 paper on Zyzzyva. Both of these take apart the 3f+1 bound and show exactly how many processors you need for various parts of the protocol.
Am I the only one who's been reading this as "malthusiasms", i.e. anti-enthusiasms?
I don't see the big deal. First of all, the fee has been reduced to about $35 for online registration. So if copyright infringement is that important to you, then just register your blog posts. The registration requirement is not there to help big corporations but to create proof that you had control of a the thing that is allegedly copyrighted at a certain date.

The US legislature decided that in order to fairly charge statutory damages, it should at least have some evidentiary certainty to when something was copyrighted. So the registration requirement was created to provide some certainty.

The fee seems proportional to the costs of running the whole registration scheme by the library of congress. So it is not there to punish you for being poor.

If you really care about your blogs being registered I can suggest a couple of tricks:

- register a bunch of blog entries together. For example you can register a whole year of blogging as a single work.

- You can not register all your blog posts, but if you see someone stealing something from you, register the thing they stole. They will probably continue the copyright violation after your registration.

(PS while I am a lawyer, none of the above is legal advice and no client attorney relationship is created.)
You know what struck me about this? It was really well written. Not the greatest of ideas or observations, but I can't recall the last time I red something on the internet that was this well written!