skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's pretty cool. I've shied away from zsh for some time as I'm very comfortable with bash, but a lot of evidence has been coming to me lately that makes me want to give it a go.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715757
CHESS: A systematic testing tool for concurrent software
Awesome Conference Ad! If I was in the area I would have to attend.

Perhaps you could make the conference presentations available online so that I can keep my SkyNet from running rampant in the future.
That was worth clicking through just to learn about Homebrew (http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew). Not sure I'll be leaving MacPorts for it, but it's good to know alternatives exist (and no, fink doesn't count).
Respectfully, I disagree with you. "The Little Engine that Could" says that if you want to do something, and you try hard enough, you will succeed. That's simply wrong. I want to run 100m in 8s, but no matter how hard I try it's not going to happen.

But that's not what he said. He said you have to work hard, and without hard work you're unlikely/not going to succeed. That's pretty much true, and it's certainly better than assuming you can succeed without hard work. The probability of that happening is non-zero, but small.

Who was it that said "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

So I'm interested in which part you disagree with. Let's see the bits I quoted:

But the truth is, being successful is hard.

Yup, I'd agree with that.

You won’t love every subject you study.

That's certainly true.

You won’t click with every teacher.

That's true enough.

Not every homework assignment will seem
completely relevant to your life right
this minute.

Hard to disagree with that.

And you won’t necessarily succeed at
everything the first time you try.

The conditional makes that hard to disagree with, but even so, it's pretty much true.

... you can’t let your failures define
you – you have to let them teach you.

That's a philosophy I agree with through and through. My failures - and there are plenty - are not me, and I have learned from them.

So, let me finish by asking this. Correlation suggests - but does not prove - that the down-modding of my comment was done by you. It happened at pretty much the same time as you comment, and your comment indicates that you disagree with its sentiment. So let me ask: Did you down-mod simply because you disagreed with the sentiment? If so, with which part do you disagree? Help me to understand you.

I thought down-modding was intended to be used when you thought a comment was of negative value. Do you really think that quotation is of negative value? I respect that you have your opinion, but I'd like to know what it is so I can choose to agree or disagree. At the moment you simply seem to be wrong.
I remember fondly an article that made it to the front page, once, that said you specifically shouldn't tell people about your ideas. It purported that, chemically, the pleasure of explaining your great idea to someone is similar to the pleasure of actually accomplishing it. So, it claimed that for every person you tell about your idea, you're less likely to actually do it, since you have already enjoyed the pleasure of telling someone about it. Just thought it was an interesting note that flies in the face of the first point made by the blogger, via Seth Godin. No idea if it's true.
open also takes the -a argument to specify which application to use. It's very handy for things like this:

alias shop="open -a Adobe\ Photoshop\ CS3"
Image search for "motoons" provides some rather haram (yet still SFW) material.
A political startup
Apple yanks C64 emulator from App Store
Suppose as an extreme example that 90% of the users of this site found that this article being listed here was useful for whatever reason (perhaps they're outside the US so it's not big news where they are and certainly not on TV, perhaps they learnt from the rhetoric, perhaps they were encouraged to take the step and apply for a Green Card to follow their start-up dream in the US now that the US seems to be turning back from its perceived hostile and insular attitude that grew up in the Bush years). If that were true would it matter that this article fell outside the 'guidelines'?

There's more to an article than the actual words on the page.
So the iPhone was so great because it was so popular? Isn't that a bit self referential?

Actually the stylus is pretty powerful. I'm considering getting one for my new Magic. Apart from being able to hand write it is quicker to type as well.

> processed bologna and ever-delicious bacon are the same because people call them both meat.

They're both just dead animals to me.
I said almost entirely apolitical, thank you. Please try to capture the relevant context if you're going to quote.

Your whole reply and my whole reply were about the speech in the context of its relevance to HN. So why you thought I was suggesting you opposed the speech itself is beyond me.

And, again, I'm agreeing with you that the quantity of US political material on HN is unfortunate and the 'US affects the world' argument is not justification.

As to your points:
Should we reject every 'how to make your startup work' article for repeating common themes?
Should we reject every author for having an ulterior motive of self-aggrandizement? (i.e. reject every attributed article)
Should we reject every article that might have been improved by contributors, ghostwriters, editors, etc?

I still think you're trying too hard to find fault with this as a submission to HN.
Why Your Metrics Suck
grep -l textregex fileregex

print the names of all the files satisfying fileregex with text satisfying textregex. Nice if you need to find out where a function is defined.
You have a simulation that will take either four days to run or five. That's not tiny. And that's not so rare a problem. Not everyone is doing web apps.

I remain skeptical of these micro benchmarks. Almost every time I've messed around with porting pieces of C++ to Java or C# and benchmarking it I get a large difference in favor of C++.
I'm just commenting on a post about economics/politics. So don't SHOUT at me. Flag it or something if you can't cope with that post.

I perfectly conform with the HN system and guidelines and already have more 1000 karma points in around a month I'm actively contributing here. You contribute far less so don't teach me about HN.

Also you're very funny. How can I bring you proof that a theory (btw. which one exactly?) can do this or that in future? Time travel?

Last but not least, the current system is killing millions. 50k children dying daily so think twice before offending me and suggesting I somehow speak in favor of genocide.
Yes, like all previous years, we'll have the conference presentations online.
Look for earlier presentations here.
http://singinst.org/media/singularitysummit2007
I'm going to go ahead and predict this same problem: http://paulgraham.com/segway.html
Word of mouth. Especially with the net these days that is pretty easy.

Ever seen an ad for google search ? Do you know it exists ? Do you use it ?
I will reference a different thread from earlier this week.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=809840

BFS is the Brain Fuck Scheduler which is a new scheduler for Linux thats designed for single plug machines and very low latency.

This guy used it in one of his custom Android builds and its very fast.
I can only count one. Can you point the others out?
Cracking The 'Founder's Dilemma'
" said almost entirely apolitical"

And this is where we disagree. I am saying it is "almost entirely" political. Not the content, but the making of the speech. And as I said before there is nothing wrong in anything being entirely or semi political. There is a place for politics in the world. Not on HN!

"I'm agreeing with you that the quantity of US political material on HN is unfortunate and the 'US affects the world' argument is not justification."

I got that. I never said you were saying something else.

" Should we reject every 'how to make your startup work' article for repeating common themes?"

When it is a politican, (no matter how talented a politican he is), making a speech very tenuously connected to startups, certainly.

When an article is just re-warmed bits and pieces from various pre published articles, certainly.

"I still think you're trying too hard to find fault with this as a submission to HN."

I completely support your right to think so.

That's what the downvote/upvote/flag buttons are for. And with that I leave the field to you. I have a "thread depth" trigger which just tripped. Adios.
Yah homebrew looks really cool. I'm pretty happy with MacPorts (except for its lack of speed sometimes), but will be keeping my eye on homebrew for sure.
Sikuli: Using GUI Screenshots for Search and Automation
> Just because it specifically says the "president" shouldn't be a detractor in this regard considering the president is generally considered to be the leader of your country.

Actually, it should be "a detractor" because "the leader of your country" in the US is both extremely transient and somewhat weak.

This cultural difference is communicated in a standard American story. This story involves a non-American who is looking for the boss/owner. He comes across someone who is clearly a worker and asks "please tell me where to find your master". The worker says "that person hasn't been born yet".

In short, "do for president" and "do for country" are very different things in the US.

It's okay if non-Americans don't understand, but don't lecture us on how we're wrong. Eating at McDonald's and watching Bay Watch doesn't mean that you understand US culture. (Folks who actually know US culture are now screaming "there are multiple US cultures".)
I'm no fan of Obama, but I agree this is a pretty agenda-free speech and probably designed to prop up his popularity with the "independents" and center-right where he has lost a lot of support.

One might think this is very gently setting kids up to want to work "for your country" in the literal sense: as government employees, or for government controlled organizations.

A conservative could give nearly the same speech but there would be more emphasis on individual achievement and entrepreneurial spirit in an environment of freedom that the country provides and defends; the main motivator being personal success and reaching one's potential, not contributing one's success to "the country".
Yup, politicians sure are good at platitudes.
How to Talk to Seniors about Credit Card Debt
Before Apple introduced the iPhone, some software manufacturers thought it was OK to wipe out everything on your mobile device when upgrading the OS.

"NOTE: Before proceeding please ensure that all data on your Wing is backed up, and the e-mail settings for each of your e-mail accounts are known or are written down. Installing the new software will erase all the data on the device.

NOTE: All third party applications and data that remain on the device prior to downloading the new software will be deleted and un-retrievable. Third party applications will need to be re-downloaded after the new software has been installed."

https://support.t-mobile.com/doc/tm52082.xml
Number 14: Why are intelligent people from serious news sites fooled into thinking newscientist.com is a reputable news source?
Every person in that video seems to be thinking "Ha ha. Look at that moron!" though I'm sure that's not what I'm supposed to be thinking.
This is a classic case of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".
This guide is very "SQL Server"-centric, which I would imagine won't be of too much interest to many Rails devs.

Still, for those working with SQL Server, it is very good.
Yikebike: How much: €3700~ ($5400) | How far: 9-10 km (5.5 miles) | How fast: 20 kph (12 mph)

For comparison...

Segway: How much: $2-7000? | How far: 38km (24 miles) | How fast: 20 kph (12 mph)
Now you're _really_ drifting into politics there. Please don't.
"I agree this is a pretty agenda-free speech"

It supports the status quo and its assumptions, and that's the worst agenda of all.
I was quite awful at cursive handwriting in school, and as soon as it wasn't required, I switched back to block lettering... something similar to this article (in-air joins) when I need to write faster.

Cursive has always struck me as being illegible and archaic. If we're going to appreciate hand-written text, I'd much rather advocate calligraphy and/or explorations of old-style fountain pen writing. What I was taught as a kid ("new"-style cursive text) just seems like an unnecessary distraction.

Granted, I'd much rather type. Handwriting really tires out my wrist.
Take a penny-farthing, shrink it down, put a motor in it.
I was buing computer a few years ago (was a student then, so money/time coefficient was a lot bigger :)) , and tried to make it likewise - I've choosed components and went to trip over all computer shops near my flat.

But every single shop I've been didn't have a few components that I've choosen, so I couldn't simplify decision to only one variable.

I've even thought that they may do it so I can't compare prices.
Appreciate your thoughts. We have seen evidence that raising your profile and brand on Twitter does lead to sales of products, books, services. An element of it is establishing yourself as an expert in your niche but there is a thin line between actually being an authority figure and positioning yourself as one with no substance to back it up.
Is this meant only for YC startups or people who have started up things that are news.YC members?
If I have an obligation in the morning my girlfriend wakes me up, since she is the one who hears my alarm. I am a really heavy sleeper and usually require something around 200 dB to wake me up. I used to have my speakers do the job but the risk of breaking up one morning grew daily so I stopped.. Plus, I think she'd hate CPR with morning breath :P.

Afterwards comes my ritual, 1 cup of coffee, breakfast, another cup of coffee with my pipe, all while reading emails/news etc. If I skip any of that, especially coffee, I'm grumpy all day long (and with a headache for some reason).

Although I live like a night person I've found that if I get used to waking up around 5-6 am I'm much more energetic and feel like I'm really seizing my day. The problem is that it's really easy for me to break the habit of rising early so I've only accomplished that for month long periods followed by trimesters of sleeping to noon and more.
That didn't take very long.

High time for a competing app distribution network for the iphone.

Just imagine, Commodore Basic on your Iphone... the dangers!

"Apple's logic was that this tool could allow users to run illegal copies of games, holding it open to a charge of contributory copyright infringement."

That's what you get for trying to control a platform.

Imagine:

IBM Built the PC well before the Internet era, what would the world look like if they had had the possibility to have all of us under their thumb the way Apple does with the Iphone.
Apple App Store Alternative
If you have a site that is being read by FriendFeed just look at the latest request. It should be in the user agent string
(stored in your server logs). I've never been a FriendFeed user and can't see how to add an RSS feed or I'd do it myself.
>>How can I bring you proof that a theory (btw. which one exactly?) can do this or that

So you don't have an alternative, but are only complaining that the present system isn't perfect and countries do realpolitik?

>>the current system is killing millions. 50k children dying daily so think twice before offending me and suggesting I somehow speak in favor of genocide.

Which, counted as percentages, is arguably better than ever in history. And is getting better ever decade. [Historically, where I grew up, the child mortality was around 20-30%... and large families.]

As you wrote, you don't have an alternative, either.

I am all for attempts to try other economic systems, but not inside 10000 km of where I live. Continue writing your political faith then, if it is so important to preach...
I set several alarms (alternating cell phone and clock): 0645, 0650, 0655, 0700, 0715, 0730, 0750. All of which I'm nearly immune to now. I've started setting my phone alarm as my actual ringer so I can trick myself into thinking someone is calling me.

If my wife wakes up before me, she usually kicks me out of bed. I get up, shower, make sure my bag is packed, get dressed, maybe inhale a quick breakfast, ride my bike to work (usually quite late and still in zombie mode), have a cup of coffee, check feeds+email, and then finally start working on real work by 1000hrs.

I'm a slacker, I dislike my job, and I'm a heavy sleeper. I have a little trouble getting to sleep, but once I'm there, it's over.
The Curious Case of the Failing Connections
I'm not sure that's an inherently "design" focused activity.

The point is, that design factors other than good can come into play with regards to popularity. C syntax and "normal" operator precedence have nothing to do with a language being good. (Unless the language is C.) They have everything to do with a language being familiar.
I don't hate US political discussions because I'm not interested in US politics. I hate US political discussions because I am interested in US politics.

Politics produces bad discussion, pure and simple. People express poorly-supported opinions, use lousy arguments, and attack each other personally. And yet, since I'm interested in politics, I'll usually wind up reading them, and find myself annoyed every time someone whose opinions differ from mine uses a bad argument. It sets off my "Oh no, someone is wrong on the internet!" reflexes, and generally is a drag.

Like it or not, this is a political thread. Democrat sympathisers will invaribly think this speech is anywhere from "pretty good" to "brilliant" while Republican sympathisers will think it's anything from "so-so hokey platitudes" to "awful". And if it had been given by a Republican president the opinions would almost certainly be reversed, making the entire thing a waste of time for everybody.
> I never knew this but it will definitely come in handy.

It's also pretty dangerous if you don't have a very good test coverage (and good tests), because it hides potential bugs. And it can break code which relies on the default behavior of `nil` (or other built-in objects).

That's one of the biggest issues I have with monkey patching of builtin classes in Ruby or Smalltalk: it's not scoped/namespaced.

edit: by comparison, Haskell's operators redefinition is scoped, so though you can redefine `+` as `-`:

Prelude> let (+) = (-) in print (3+5)
-2

this redefinition will only span your module and won't affect third-party library (unless you export the change and they import it for course).
I'm the "tech guy" (ie, code monkey) at Givology, and boy could we use some of your givers. We don't have a fancy website (since it's basically composed of my spare time), but the concept is to allocate money to specific students or projects (similar to Kiva and Global Giving). This is the first I've heard of Urbantastic, and it sounds like you've got the opposite problem we have; we have a lot of students and projects that we can put up on the site, but not a lot of donors.
maybe your browser is prefetching the result url?
I expect consciousness to emerge from my AI-based spellchecker startup. Do I get a free pass?
It's a lot of work to store this much data too. 2TB would take weeks/months to fill up on almost everyone's internet connection (5 megabits up = 39 days).
If you click on a data point it goes to the comments. (I'd personally rather see it as a parenthetical link on the right of the story)
iPhone alarm set for 6:30am.

Usually try to get some fresh air, eat some breakfast, go through RSS reader, then get to work.
re #11 (Existence of monopoles): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163725.ht... (second result on Google News)
I think :w !sudo dd of=% is better. Can't remember why, though.
Twitter User Survey: Demographics and Statistics
My point is that often the customers can measure the results. The article is worded as if this applies to all non-profits.
C-x C-e to open up the current command in $EDITOR. For previous commands, fc N M where N and M are numbers or search strings (opens the range of commands in your editor).
Yeah, who would do serious crunching using Java? Those Hadoop idiots!
By "straightforward" to you mean "theoretically possible?" If that were the case, nearly everything would be written in Python. Maybe there is a specific case you're thinking of because in the general case it's non-trivial and possibly impossible. You're not getting near-C performance by simply dropping to C are you? That's not a terribly acceptable answer.

I don't know why these things come up all the time. Java is pretty fast for a managed language, certainly faster than a lot of people think but it's not C. Python, Ruby, etc? They're way far behind in performance, particularly tight loop number crunching type stuff. That doesn't make them bad choices for things though. There isn't a subjective answer, I think it was Top Gear 2 weeks ago that said "You don't buy a supercar with your mind because it doesn't make sense, you buy them with your heart because you love them." The same thing is true here. If you want to be subjective there are all sorts of other variables you'd have to factor in, tooling, libraries, dev time, availability of quality developers, maturity, likelihood of future support (you laugh, I wonder with Ruby and Python and Perl all going through these giant shifts, they may never be the same and as unified) Can you actually compile your code or do you distribute source code? All those things in play and it gives Java a fairly compelling story even though a lot of people want to hate it.

The better discussion, at least to me, is with so many compelling options that perform as well as they do, why does anyone bother with C? With various buffer overflows being so prevalent and it being so easy to have a bug that poses a real security risk, is it worth that?
The percentage is so low because it's not shown on much of the site. Paying subscribers don't ever see ads. It only shows for the free account and for some long tail SEO pages we have. We probably should remove them and just put up-sell copy there though...
I find several of these interesting:
Dark flow, high-energy photons travelling more slowly, and the lack of gravitational waves are especially intriguing (moreso than the others for no particularly deep reason other than these are the ones I prefer to think about). However, the pop-science nature of the article is a bit annoying.
M-. also takes a numeric argument (M-number or ESC number) to yank the nth word instead of the last.
I use ctrl-_ (aka ctrl-7).
For what it's worth, the kind of analysis dfranke expects is required in the academic community. If you provide no evidence that what you've created is better than the status-quo, then no one will care. I don't consider this an "additional burden."
Here is a working example of doing diff patches on PSDs.

http://www.codediesel.com/tools/transferring-psd-files-quick...

I've never tried it.
Google's Pagerank used to model ecosystems
You make arguments such as But it does not mean that you could see the page looking exactly like it did on desktop. Not to mention JS and CSS support, which is false. Opera Mobile rendered websites properly.

Furthermore, your tone is very combative. It's obvious that you're not actually reading what I write, but rather, just pushing your preconceived notions. It's not necessary for me to make a list for you. I was merely pointing out how many of the items that were supposedly introduced or unique to the iPhone wasn't, and in fact was worked on and implemented by many talented engineers years before the iPhone was released.

As a long time HN user, dialogs such as these really turn me off to the current community.
I'm not sure that C-z is a great choice as it's often used for job control. I use C-o myself. I suppose you could always use C-z C-z if you wanted to suspend your current foreground process.