skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a car analogy here; let's see if I can do it right, considering I just woke up 20 minutes ago.

Before WWII, the automobile was something a fair amount of people owned, but didn't do much with by way of "hacking". The real automotive hacking was done to just keep the damn thing running and reliable.

Post WWII is when the kids of the day started hacking their cars to build hot rods, and they did it to get girls and show off. Most of them, though, tweaked their hardware and horsepower simply to see how far they could push the machine.

By the '60s, hot rods had evolved into muscle cars. Horsepower purists were applying what they knew about hacking the previous generation of automotive technology to the next generation, and managed to Frankenstein a whole new animal--some of these cars could get you killed if you didn't know what you were doing.

Detroit took notice. Fifteen-plus years of kids hacking their engines defined a trend--a trend which said, "give me more horsepower!" Chrysler, in particular, took this to heart and made the Barracuda barely street legal right off the assembly line. All it took was a few small tweaks to turn your showroom car into a full-blown monster of a muscle car.

Chevys took a little more work, but the replacement parts required were dirt cheap, and remained so for a very long time.

By the 80s (or thereabouts) imports were gaining a foothold in the American market, and the muscle car was slowly being phased out for the Ricer. It didn't help that the cars which used to be so easily modified were now rolling off the assembly line with computers under the hood.

Nowadays, cars aren't nearly as easy to tweak as they once were, partly because of the computers, but mostly because they now come with most of the tweaks pre-installed. So, what you get nowadays are the old, die-hard muscle car enthusiasts (who have been pushed well out of the spotlight), the "I live my life a quarter-mile at a time" Ricer morons (who tweak their car with ridiculous body kits and the occasional nitrous oxide bottle, rather than any meaningful auto hack) and the crazy, wild-eyed guy who lives 20 miles out of town and spends his weekends trying to get his old Accord to give him 100 miles per gallon.

The hot-rod kids are still out there, they're just older, wiser and overshadowed by the Fast and the Furious.
"That's what you've got to figure out"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k1uOqRb0HU
Thanks for the book idea, afraid I'm too poor being a uni student to buy it, but I might check if my state library has a copy.
Indeed. It seems like I trip over one of these "it's easier than ever for the kids to be haxors nowadays! You gotta think like The Bad Guy to stay ahead of them! But we will, so keep giving us security money!" articles about every 18 months or so.
Yes, Community support is very important when one thinks selecting a framework.
A common thread to these Malthusianisms is that you can't understand dynamic phenomena by assuming they're static.

Something like the number of hours in a work week isn't just a fixed number; it's got a history behind it and driving forces on it that are needed to make sense of its current and future values.

Aaronson implies that he thinks about these situations by trying to figure out what Nash equilibrium they might settle to, but I think even that concept's not general enough. In the real world, people don't make their minds up once and then stay the same afterwards -- they'll change their behavior over time, and not always towards any equilibrium state.
Successful Pittsburghers:

Andrew Carnegie sold US Steel to J.P. Morgan and ended up in New York.

Mark Cuban sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo and ended up in Dallas.

Paul Graham sold Viaweb to Yahoo and ended up in Silicon Valley.

I'm determined to be next. Working on it.
Yeap, anything that certifies you spent some effort in sending that mail can whitelist you. This can work!
Some people you just can't reason with.

I see other people advising sitting down and talking. It's probably worth trying. One episode of nutsy behavior isn't enough to write someone off.

But there's a sizable fraction of people out there that are 100% asshole. Talking to them won't produce any lasting results, no matter what they agree to or promise. It took me a long time to get this.

If your roommate is one of these guys it comes down to you moving out, somehow forcing him to move out, or just putting up with periodic episodes of bullshit.

(If you were willing to beat him up every time he acted like a dick, that would probably modify his behavior, but I don't recommend that for reasons of jail.)
I feel as if I've just been tricked into reading a lengthy ad for Twitter here.
Neoformix is great too - http://www.neoformix.com/
India launches Bhuvan, rival to Google Earth
I think one good reason is that HN is ugly: it scares away the people I would want scared away if I were HN. It's also not very user friendly - a couple very clever friends of mine find the UI somewhat confusing. They see bug, I see feature.

But I must confess a tiny little bit of shady conduct: I tried to engineer my karma to get exactly 1337 points (slowing down posts when getting close and, once it passed, trying to lower it through a variety of tactics, from light trolling to plainly asking to be downvoted - without much success, I must add). I couldn't get a screenshot at the right moment and the best I have is a 1338.

Right now, I have 1402, which was a nice card reader made my IBM to accompany its much more interesting 1401 computer. I have a screenshot to prove.

I will try again on 3278 (the first mainframe terminal I used), 4341 (the mainframe it was attached to) and 6502 (my most beloved micro-processor). Prime palindromes may also interest me, as scaled/rounded physical or math constants. sqrt(2) * 1000 is very close. 2718, 3142... What's the first prime number after 1402?

I will consider other "karma sightseeing" ideas, so, if anyone wants to suggest some, please, feel free.

From time to time I also post my own blog entries here, as the crowd HN attracts a tad more interesting than my regular "oops-wrong-page-get-me-outa-here" readers, and so are the discussions. I will probably touch up one tomorrow and post it here. Maybe a second one (about my karma engineering experiences), if I get to write it. I gather they tend to be of high quality too like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=726922, that generated some interesting discussion.

Other submissions, like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=743423 end up forgotten. And that one is even unfair, because David Alan Grier's podcast is most outstanding.
Weight is a poor measurement of fitness. Body fat percentage, body measurements or VO2 max are better indicators.
Wrong video.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/search-results/m/25897600/funding...

Answer at B4.
With this kind of guy your best bet is to get on their good side. Psychos will not stop at anything.
How about quantifying data mining bias in the technical analysis of oil markets? You can hit maths, comp sci, and finance. I'm currently working on looking at the same bias in equity markets.

Some things you would be exposed to are random number generators, monte carlo, and statistics.
Starbucks: Stay as long as you want
In Search of Antimatter Galaxies
You sound younger than me, so I'm going to clue you in on a secret to life.

> no financial situation to move anywhere else

That doesn't exist. You make decisions first and then figure out how to execute/pay for them later. We're not talking about buying an island here, we're talking about having a really base level of happiness with your entire living situation.

Move out and get your own place. Figure it out, you're smart.

If you're not up to the challenge, then just tell him you'll kill him in his sleep if he does that shit again.
Why Humans and Their Fur Parted Ways
At first I thought this was another silly guide until I looked at it. There's some meat on those bones. Worth a bookmark.
He still has four more years of high school and he's already won an absolute first place at IOI. I don't get what's not very surprising.
You mention nothing about the other 4 roommates. You're probably better off trying to solve this problem with them than trying to alone. It'll probably be 5 against 1. 5 against him or 5 against you. Doesn't matter. Either way, you'll know what to do.
"This author just seems to enjoy going around and around in rhetorical circles with no purpose other than to hear himself speak."

I think that's also one of the purposes of art isn't it?
[Edited to add:

To go through GWO, I had to set up a multivariate test, with multiple js snippets going in multiple places on multiple pages. That was EXACTLY my pain point with their multivariate option. It took me 15 minutes to set up a single test on a single call to action, and then 15 minutes more to tear it down when I was done.

Testing a call to action should look like:

<%= ab_test("call_to_action", ["Buy it today!", "Get it today!"]) %>

And now, it does.

]

Since it's open source, have you thought about setting it up at Github?

Yes, I did think about it. We're all businessmen here, right, so we can discuss the following in a mature fashion:

1) Github gives out free hosting to OSS projects in the hopes of encouraging people to host OSS projects of value on Github. This means Github collects links and mindshare, which they then monetize through selling hosting services.

2) I write OSS (and provide statistics, and write articles, etc) in the hopes that it helps other businesses. This means I collect links and mindshare, which I then monetize through selling software to elementary schoolteachers.

Given that I did the work, I think it is reasonable that I collect the majority of the benefits, rather than giving them away to a hosting provider.

If copy/pasting the git clone line is too much work to see the code, you may wish to reconsider using A/Bingo. I made it easy -- I can't make it THAT easy. But if you really want to see it in Github, it is MIT licensed, upload it to your own account and then you can view it in your browser to your heart's content.
From what I hear he has 3 more years. It's damn impressive when you consider who he had to beat and the problems they were given. He also came into this year's IOI with two golds and one silver from previous years, so he has a lot of experience. Another major feat is that he recently became the youngest TopCoder target (top 20 or so in an open ranking system).
Carnegie was a teenager when his family emigrated to Pittsburgh, do Pittsburghers count him 100% as one of their own?

I'd think the Scots would have something to say about that ;)
Web based show!
I think it would be interesting if they made a little documentary following around 3 months of YC, commercially though I guess it wouldn't be overly viable, would be great to see though.
I would tell him I was fine with it, but that he is responsible for paying the extra heating bill as well as replacing anything which may be damaged or stolen by leaving the door open.

If he agrees to it, then great - turn up the heat.
But you're describing a well-known intractable problem in computability. Finite-length tape doesn't make the problem any easier to solve, especially within the sorts of time limits that would be acceptable to users of static parsers.

E.g. from Minsky (1967), referring to a machine with a million parts:

"Even if such a machine were to operate at the frequencies of cosmic rays, the aeons of galactic evolution would be as nothing compared to the time of a journey through such a cycle"

So the conclusion stands. If you presuppose an infinite tape, you get equivalence to the halting problem, and if you presuppose a finite tape beyond any non-trivial size, you get complete intractability.
Wow...this it the first criticism of Django-related anything I've read on HN. Bravo! I welcome more honest critiques.
Tell HN: Hidden website design/usability gems?
Hi All,

I just wanted to share this little unexpected design gem I discovered through a link over at Gizmodo. Go here http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/level-camera-cube/ and click 'add to cart'. Even the shopping cart turns its frown upside down.

It is smooth, well executed and adds to the user experience. I can also imagine this visual touch is a real boost in usability for less techy people.

Have you recently come across any other little unexpected innovative touches in a website which brought a smile to your face and improved usability?
Do you mean "How positive does it have to be for you to not revert it when you end the test?"

I'd collect 2% improvements all day long if they looked statistically significant. That being said, my mental goal is to run one test a week, and to collect 5% improvements on half of my tests. The miracle of compound interest means that, if I sustained that for a year, I'd increase sales by 250%. You can see my stats and tell that I've never had a year over year improvement that good, but now since the cost of A/B testing just got muuuuuuuch cheaper for me, I'm optimistic.
Principal might be good--I've seen that used. I tried googling to figure out what it implies exactly, and wasn't successful. Can define for me what it "means" a little better?
I totally understand what you mean about making a decision and then just working it all out, it's one of the cornerstones of how I live my life, but moving out and into this house was one of those decisions and its going to take a little while to finish dealing with all the financial problems that it caused for me. Do you think writing "I'll Kill You" in blood on the front door would be enough? Heh.
Clearly you can't always run away, can you? You have to be able to face problems and deal with them. If you run away all the time, the choices available for you in life will become pretty limited.
My response:

Okay bob, I understand you have a problem with them. But here is what's going to happen here: You're going to stop doing this tonight. And we're going to talk it over tomorrow with the people you think you have a conflict over.

Now there will be further steps I will take if I find you are doing this tonight, and they will not be Passive In The Slightest. So fucking cut it out tonight, show up tomorrow to the talk we have with the guy who's causing the problem, and don't fuck with my sleep. Or Else.
It will be interesting to see how long the population decline lasts for. At some point, ethnic/cultural/religious segments of the population with the highest birthrates will begin to be a large portion of the population. As that happens, birthrates will bottom out and then start to rise back up again.
Shitty heating only works comfortably at maximum with the door closed, dropped ten degrees when he started with this crap. You can always tell someone that they're responsible, but when it happens how are you meant to enforce that kind of stuff with anything other than intimidation? (not where my skills lay)
The idea of django pluggables in general is a misnomer. There are very few applications out there that can be plugged in without a lot of extra work. I was hoping that pinax would establish a set of conventions for making this not the case, but it sounds as though there is plenty of room for improvement.
My Auroville Diary
Milestone Based Investing
Go Ed, go!
No doubt. Belarussians are very serious about informatics olympiad these days.

Their "Informatics faciltative of the Young Firefighter Club of Mazyr" team is known to beat moscow and saint-petersburg teams in north-east european informatics competition, coming third.
And Mazyr a tiny city in the middle of nowhere, if you're curious.

More on this topic (in russian): http://offline.computerra.ru/2008/730/354607/
Chuck Moore (Inventor of the language FORTH)'s blog
I would disagree on one point, Github isn't just for hosting, it's for collaboration. That's the reason most people use it for OSS project.

I can, and do, host my own git repos on a private server, but when I open source something I like having it on Github where people can fork it and send me pull request for new features and bug fixes.
I found some of the entries (specifically the last) very poignant. Maybe this is what happens to a genius who is too much out of the mainstream?
Chuck is an absolutely amazing guy. Read up on his 'homebrew' cad system to lay out chips, it is quite a lesson in how strongly a user interface can influence a process.

TILs (threaded-interpreted-languages) have a very natural aspect to them, almost as if that is how you are supposed to develop software.

In spite of that, actually doing it is pretty hard, one of the reasons why forth never took off as a mainstream language. Still, in embedded control it is fairly common, mostly because it is one of the easiest to bootstrap high level languages.
Joel Spolsky did something similar, except with a group in interns:

http://www.projectaardvark.com/movie/

There's also a little bit in there with the founders of Reddit and (IIRC) it briefly shows a bit of the first round of YC.
If Pinax is such a pain, can anyone make any recommendations on what to use/do if you did want to build a social-networking site using Django?
It is not easy to be that natural in front of a TV camera. I wonder if pg's had training.
Trash this app as much as you can
I am looking for brutal feedback on this web app (it's a testing sandbox).
I know the video sucks - if you've got 5 spare mins tell me what else does.
Twitter can also be seen as a special case of email where:

- every account is also a mailing list

- messages have no body, only a subject line

- all the messages flow through a single company's servers

It would be technically trivial for a major email provider (say, Google) to create a Twitter clone.
It's a pretty graph, but oh do I ever wish it was just a bar chart or something. Comparing areas accurately is difficult.

For instance, comparing the Chinese gov't stimulus package versus the New Deal. The two squares look just about equivalent despite one being a full 14% larger. Other methods of comparison could make that pretty clear.
Is it pluggable like a Drupal module, no. But I wouldn't say adding a line to your installed apps, adding a line to your urls, and then creating your template files is a lot of extra work.

I do agree it would be nice if there was a convention for template names and block names from within those templates. Which would reduce the work on the previously mentioned creating of your template files.
As much as I have seen PG talking, he's always calm and natural. So I am thinking no.
s/war/invasion/g

Calling it a "war" is misleading.

Malthusianism? They invade to secure the extraction of the oil they need for the invasion army.
http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/level-camera-cube/

Clickable link.
We have one. It's extremely scalable and stable. It's well-tested, having been in use for 40 years, with a user base that has grown to around a billion worldwide. It's called email. See my comment above...
Yahoo Know Your Mojo
Is this playing for folks outside the US?
A New Approach to Aid: How a Basic Income Program Saved a Namibian Village
Dependencies are the exact reason a plain tarball isn't good enough. They're why package management was invented.

For http://kutoken.com/, our Django hosting service, we've spent quite a while packaging Django apps into .deb format, so our users can for example just 'apt-get install python-django-tagging' to have tagging support in their app (for a really simple example). Now I've got used to working with a system like that, I really couldn't go back to individual tarballs and setup.py and the like.
4 cents per message is rather expensive.
My mother's old trick for situations like these is to be on their side without saying anything bad about anyone else in the house. Instead of "Whatever, I'm freezing my ass off", try something like "I can't believe they'd do that to you! That's awful, man. It's effing cold when this door is left open. ::closes door:: I'll get them to close it tomorrow."

The premise is that it's hard for the righteous to disagree with someone who they think is on their side.
Yeah, another interesting point about Mazyr: it's situated on Pripyat river, not far from Chernobyl.
and fluffy!
With regard to US copyright law, one important point not mentioned is statutory damages for infringement. Generally, if you are found liable for infringement, you owe "actual damages," that is, the amount of harm you did or profit you gained from the infringement. However, if the copyrighted work was registered, then statutory damages may be available, meaning that you could be liable for up to $200,000, even if you caused no actual damages.

My personal opinion is that this leads to a strange imbalance in the copyright law. If an individual makes a creative work (e.g., a blog post) and makes it available for free, the individual is never going to pay the $60 to register the work. So when someone else comes along and rips off the blog post, the individual only wins actual damages, which the other person argues are minimal because the blog post was up for free anyway.

But if a big corporation makes a creative work for profit, it expects to make more than $60 off the work, so it registers it. So someone who copies the work is suddenly liable for hundreds or thousands of dollars in statutory damages, regardless of the harm actually done.

This seems, to me, to create an unbalanced incentive: works created for profit receive greater protection than works created for free. There are a number of legislative options to fix this, which I will leave to the rest of you to devise.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=761359
Yes. I'm in Singapore.
Great report -- thanks.

Sorry if the word "interesting" sounded suspicious to you. I made a concentrated effort to try to find an adjective that was non-pejorative. PG's comment DID interest me, so that's the one I used.

Speaking of terms, we must have some problem with definitions here. The report you cite actually makes the opposite point than you desire: The U. S. population continues to show signs of becoming less religious, with one out of every five Americans failing to indicate a religious identity in 2008. If you count whatever they define as just evangelicals, it IS growing, but that's just a default category and a very,very small slice for people unaffiliated with other major branches -- and it's surely not the folks you mean. Not if you're bringing up GWB (who wouldn't fit there)

GWB, once you get the demonization out of your system, is certainly no example of evangelical political power. He's just another religious person who became president. there's a long line of them: Jimmy Carter taught Sunday School in a Baptist church (and still teaches there). Reagan was supported by the Moral Majority. Kennedy was a practicing Catholic. Indeed, every president that's ever sent troops into battle has heavily used religious rhetoric as part of that, no matter what their religious personal beliefs. And it's all been televised and covered copiously by the media.

Evangelicals, if they're the ones in your study, are like .8 percent of the population. That's hardly a base to exercise an "unprecedented 8-year run of political power"
Why don't you ask him if he'll stop propping the door open if the other people stop leaving the door open in the morning and then ask them if they can do that?

Or get up in the morning and close the door after them.