skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On a related note, suppose I share my music collection with my friends (a ka the internet). How will I then know which is my music? Has that problem been solved to a satisfying degree yet? Forgive my ignorance, I am still struggling with iTunes (MP3 collection not yet fully tagged), so I am not sure how it works these days.
On the New York Times' Ethics Policy: Transparency vs Bias
I wouldn't. Take more AP classes now, and then in three years decide whether you want to graduate college early. Either way you save a year, but in college you'll be older and able to make better decisions. You need to give yourself time to grow. :-)

If your school doesn't have any more AP classes, study for the tests yourself. You seem like you're smart enough. I knocked off a year and a half of college through APs. Two of my friends did the same. One is graduating a year early and taking a full time job in California, one is getting a masters in four years, and I'm getting a second degree in four years. Having an extra year in college means a lot more than having an extra year in HS.

In addition to doing the AP tests next year, see if you can work with a professor at a local college once or twice a week. They'll write you a pretty powerful recommendation for college and you'll get some nice experience to boot.
Keeping open things which I have not wrapped up. This may mean patches, forum threads, news articles, whatever--anything which I may use again soon. Bookmarks are not really a good interface for this.

Also, browsing TVTropes.
In Python, you can easily define methods within methods, so there is little semantic clutter at the toplevel.

def doSomething():
def doSomethingElse():
# Code goes here.
pass

eggs = filter(doSomethingElse, spam)
for cheese in eggs:
# Do something.
pass
At 16 years old? I don't think so. Asking for advice is absolutely the right thing to do.
His point was that the money could be used for things like buying a home. After taxes that 1.5 million turns into a bit more than 1 million (assuming long term equity gains). And if you live in the bay area or Palo Alto, a million doesn't buy you much.
Punypng Benchmarks
Well they are both using WebKit, the GTK port and for Arora the Qt port. They are probably not too far apart in memory.

P.S. How is the startup time for Arora on a 333Mhz machine? I worked hard to make it as quick as possible especially when you set it to open with a blank window.
I dunno, Dijkstra always struck me as a throwback to this "high priesthood" era of computing, where The Computer sat serenely in its pristine temple, attended by the brethren in their white coats, sneering at the users who humbly submitted their programs.

Well guess what, the democratization of computing happened, no putting that genie back in the bottle. Now millions of people use computers and so what if most of them are writing VBA macros and PHP pages and Perl scripts, their lives are materially improved by it, society is wealthier for it, and Dijkstra is nowhere.

GOTO GOTO GOTO
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In this case, they've actually serotyped a bunch of cases, and they're H1N1. They're not merely speculating that this is swine flu.
> I suppose you could find a vulnerability in the app itself, but iPhone apps are themselves sandboxed to prevent installing code without getting an elevation prompt (which is what that "Login with your iTunes account" prompt really is.)

There used to be a site that you browse to in mobile Safari, and it would jailbreak the phone. A potential vulnerability in the app itself is probably what he meant.
I'm trying to compromise by asking for as much information and advice as I can and being as well-informed as possible, then making a decision, and making sure that the people I respect and trust don't disagree. :)
Eigenvectors, eh?
I was looking at prices for a small room in Manhattan storage. The price of a room slightly bigger than a double-size mattress is $150/mo, for a pretty central location. YMCA membership for $40/mo for your running water, and bam, an apartment for < $200/mo in Manhattan. Sure, it won't be cozy, but I wonder whether it'd be feasible to have crazy-cheap housing like this.
"In the grand scale of things, the number of people likely to die from it seems miniscule compared to other threats."

What are other threats are you thinking of?

What other diseases are estimated to cause half the US population to be infected, one million hospitalizations, and 90,000 deaths? Even if most people who get it are fine after a few days, it's a pretty big deal if half the population is going to come down with it; H1N1 sure is going to get a lot of chances to kill even if it's not so deadly for any one individual.
Maybe I misformulated a bit? Perhaps.

I'm not having a rough time in high school. You might even say I borderline enjoy it at times. However, I also recognize that a lot of my time is wasted, and that some things and policies are just silly.

What I meant by 'less crap to deal with' wasn't angsty. I meant two things: First of all, many teachers teach as babysitters, not as teachers; second of all, many students act as rowdy, uninterested kids, making class essentially pointless. That's what I meant - not any teenage angst. (Well, maybe, maybe just a teeny bit :P)

Among other things I find important is transportation. I take 1.5 hours on a bus every day to get to and from school.

Thanks for the response, by the way.
Add Quick Search to Google Analytics
For more of a niche:

http://windycitizen.com
http://www.ted.com/
Just tried lazeroids on Chrome again. Vast improvements! No trails. Great frame-rate. Very responsive.
An interesting post, points for bringing interesting discussion!

Taoism seeks to not change world at all; realizing that change is inspired from within first. Also realizing that change within is unnecessary.

Heraclitus had it right that the only constant in the Universe is Change. To realize that change is inevitable and natural will lead one to the conclusion that change is not necessary nor required (implying choice) but inevitable.

Mutability is the fundamental unit, immutable state is only an illusion; it is the act of changing from one thing in one moment to something of similar essence in another moment.

The rose is not trying to be beautiful, it is beautiful.
Now that this conversation is closed up, I'll date myself further. I do not mean Visual Basic (nor Victoria Bitter.)
I thought he was starting a Y Combinator alike venture company in China.

Today they released some documents

http://www.innovation-works.com/Media.asp

I dropped my jaw when I read they will actually HIRE technicians and organize them to teams to work on different ideas (most probably not devised by technicians themselves).

It is not a venture company that invests in others, it is a conventional start-up company itself. Shame on them to call it a venture company.

As a student in China with a promising idea and some code written last year, I was looking forward to this, so disappointed right now.
These seem like pretty obvious questions. I'm pretty sure that if I just wanted to find out if a prospective employee had a basic understanding of the platform or technology I wanted to higher him for, I could think of a question or two myself.

Lisp: What is an s-expression?

Python: Why are tabs verboten?

I'm not sure what you'll prove with them; if he misses one, he is probably incompetent, but if he gets them all, you still don't know if he is any good.
The iPhone isn't a Mac. The iPhone has a higher share of the smartphone market than OS X has of the OS market.
As someone who hated high school in high school, and never went to college, my advice is: stay for senior year.

Yes I thought hs was a waste of time. I think talking to "normal" people is a waste of time. I didn't go to college because I thought it was for normal tool-idiots that accept this spoon-fed idea of universal "success".

Yes, I had a lot of angst in those days! Now on to the point.

High school is not about learning academics. It's about growing up in a social environment. Enjoy senior activities. Enjoy hanging out with your friends, enjoy your prom. Yes, all of those things are over-rated. But its just a part of growing up and you can never go back.

It's funny, we all like to think we can learn from other peoples experiences, and we can, but certain things, you just have to go through. It can't be explained in a way that anyone can truly understand.

Growing up is one of those things. No matter what I or anyone else tells you, you will not truly understand until you just go through it.

But I'll tell you anyway. High school is fun because its high school. You get to be a dumb kid and complain all day about how you want to be free. But that's cool because you get to do it with a bunch of peers that are dumb and want to be free too. You get to love a girl, and then get your heartbroken all in the same week. And as much and as hard as you believe that you are not a dumb kid, well, you are. No offense intended, but you will agree with me when you are older.

College is pretty much the same. Though you actually do get your pseudo-freedom. Above all "college is what you make of it". So even though it can be exactly the same as hs, it does not have to be. But right around your 3rd/4th year of college you'll realize just how much of a kid you still are.
Neither good nor bad, just ...much more growing up to be done.

Then when you get out of college, you realize everything you've done means nothing, adult life sucks and then you crash and then hopefully you reach a level of humility.

With humility comes patience and understanding.

It is after this point that you realize as much as you thought high school sucked ass, it didn't, it was fun. You realize as much as you hated (or liked college) it really didn't matter, because it was necessary to help you get to where you are now:

humble

patient

appreciative

understanding.

So slow down. That's the best advice I would give my teenage self. And hell, I probably would never listen either. But there is such happiness and beauty in slowing down. I am going to cry now.

Appreciate things as they come, be happy,
and enjoy your life.

Oh yeah, and as for girls, they are the key to happiness. But boy does it take a lot of work to get to that level of happiness.

Good luck!

Go out with your gf. If you don't have one, put down the keyboard, and go get one.

F productivity.
Oh, I do not think the problem would be that the users are unaware of upvoting. Surely, about everyone (some excluded because everything is not always valid for everyone) would notice there's a clickable triangle next to the story title (Especially since there's just one(!)) - and most users should be coming from, or have visited another "social news board" with similar features previously.

Sometimes you simply do not like a story, article, linkpassing nearly enough to actually be thinking: "Hey, this was so interesting, that I am going to tell a really good friend about it - so he/she could enjoy it aswell!".

You bet half of the regular Hacker News readership does not know the frontpage is powered by voting.

I bet most of the fellow users have fairly or very high standards. Especially since there's so much quality content.

Just my two minutes of thinking and other eight minutes of editorial process. Cheers fellow reader.
>>a lot of my time is wasted

Your time is only wasted if you allow it to be. If they are really doing the babysitting thing then quietly doing your own thing ought to be possible. Especially if you are good enough to keep up with class while doing it. I used to work nights in HS, slept through classes and would be periodically woken up to answer questions get them right and go back to sleep.
I love Dijkstra. I share his valuing of things that make sense, and the dream that all things can be understood - and his humble acceptance that we have to break down problems to fit inside his, mine and your human brains.

But you can see where Alan Kay's "nano-Dijkstras" joke comes from, e.g. "the horrendous mess produced by a group of incompetent, unorganized programmers", referring to your complex project.

Industry - and you - and me - have accepted that things don't always work perfectly. Industry pays people to fix things, rather than make them perfect in the first place. Partly it's an acceptance of human error; though it's also an acceptance that you'll need to change it even if it's perfect, because the world keeps changing. "Iterative development" elevates this to a dogma.

Here's a thought experiment: imagine you need a library (e.g. for network protocols; or a fancy GUI; or to parse a EDI transactions). You have a choice of two libraries. Both have been used extensively by others, and both work well when you try them out. One is proven (in Dijsktra's sense) and one is not.

1. How much more will you pay for the proven one? 10%? x2? x10? x100?

2. Now consider how much extra work was required to rigorously build the proven one. (Of course, if the builder of the component also had access to proven sub-components, this would be easier).

[You can imagine doing this by building it yourself if you like - using dollars just makes it clearer.]
Besides, isn't the idea to do the simplest thing possible that works ?
I would recommend pyparsing for this. There was an excellent article on it in Python Magazine a few months ago.

Some links:

1. O'Reilly mini-book on pyparsing (probably best single ref)
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514235/

2. Quick example of pyparsing
http://eikke.com/pyparsing-introduction-bnf-to-code/

3. Main pyparsing page (i know it's not very aesthetically pleasing. The code is much better, I promise)
http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/

4. Links to more on pyparsing here
http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/Publications

Python Magazine is excellent, by the way. Definitely worth the purchase price as they include a zip file with code. (Mandatory disclaimer: I have no stake in it at all. Just found it very useful, that's all).
Ex-Google China Chief on his New China Startup Incubator
BTW: it's not so odd if you think of a hacker as an expert tinkerer. Tinkering is the opposite of upfront design.
I don't think they're defending the system, simple pointing out that the situation isn't as dire as people seem to suggest. Sure, it sucks that you can't run BASIC code, but how many people buying the app would actually make any use out of it?

There seems to be a huge number of anti-Apple reactionaries who condemn every little mistake Apple makes, without acknowledging the positive things it has brought to the industry. It used to be impossible for a single person or a small team to make any money out of the mobile market. Apple changed that. Of course, that doesn't justify its app store policies.
Your final project is today's automotive hackery. :)

It might be "woefully obsolete", but a derivative of the HC11 is in an engine control unit (ECU) from a 90's-era Mitsubishi model that quite a few folks, myself included, take a hobby interest in as means to making our cars go a little faster than is reasonable or was intended, on the cheap.

Another platform (that I have a much stronger personal interest in) is SH4-based. 256k of ROM (1M on newer versions of the car), 256k of RAM (512k on the newer version), and that's all you get to control a modern fuel-injected, variable-timing four-cylinder engine in real time.

This "old stuff" is still very applicable, depending on the field; the automotive industry is wrapped tightly in a time distortion field. ;)
Wait - you mean you can have swine flu and not have a high fever? I've been in bed for like 8 days with a cough, waterfall mucus production, bronchitis, and feeling terrible. I'm leaking out my right ear and have lost hearing on that side. The doctor said it wasn't H1N1 because I have no fever.

You're saying it could be? Going back to the doctor tomorrow, but I'm surprised to hear your description of the symptoms - it is not what my doctor suggested, and it fits with what I've had.
It's worth mentioning conkeror as well -- it's basically Firefox with emacs keybindings. You can use the mouse if you want (as training wheels) and a lot of FF plugins still work.

Moreover, the .conkerorrc is in javascript rather than emacs lisp. Very cool.
Nokia E72 Themes : Falling Star V.2
Solar Panels
Solargain are the solar energy specialists for solar hot water heaters and solar power panels.
or how not to hire someone.
It also creates an opportunity for iPhone competitors. Competitors seem inevitable, given that the basic technology is available to everyone. But until those competitors get their act together, why shouldn't Apple do whatever it likes?

There's a compelling point here: Mr Jobs knows all about this issue (he and Woz created the PC category... and today a "PC" means a non-Apple computer. That's a comparable ouch to getting sacked from your own company.) It superficially looks like he is repeating the same mistake, as when the IBM-PC beat the Apple. But I seriously doubt that, and I wonder, "what's his strategy this time around?"
I was thinking the exact same thing. This is a rare example of an appropriate use of the PowerPoint medium.
About bloody time. It's been 10 days since Apple approved the application.

While it's cool that Apple did approve the app, having to wait 10 days from approval to something as sexy as this reaches the AppStore makes me dislike Apple and definitely more open towards more open mobile platforms.
You have already started your inevitable downmodding, but I think you have a lot of truth to your comment. When people assail the change from Futura to Verdana, most give only their personal aesthetic preference for Verdana -- a pure assertion of its superiority.
you might want to open source your installation details ala-Backblaze? :)
I don't think you should leave early. Think of it this way, you'll be in the "real world" from approximately age 25 through the rest of your life, getting there one year sooner doesn't really do anything for you, and in the big picture senior year of high school is a really unique time in your life. Enjoy it.
Also, can anyone point me in the direction of how to do Erlang style distributed messaging? Is there a standard solution for inter-machine RPC in Haskell implementations?
Lucene 2.9 and Solr 1.4 Imminent
A very interesting DSL for network packet manipulation is Scapy(http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/).

It uses python itself as a DSL to make things like packet forging easy:

>>> Ether()/IP()/TCP()/"GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n"
<Ether type=0x800 |IP frag=0 proto=TCP |<TCP |<Raw load='GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n' |>>>>

Here the / operator was overloaded to stack layers.
I had swine flu this winter (July as I live in the southern hemisphere). I was bedridden for some days but the hype far too high. It had a strange upside. While delirious I had the most pleasant dreams...
Can you spend the night at the storage place? Are you worried about having the door locked behind you?
Half of me loves the idea of a redesign, while the other half hates it.
Scary, huh? Makes me rethink my current "cold".
<PSA>...and boost your vitamin D level! 60% of the US population is deficient and it gets worse in the winter (which is one reason flu cases increase seasonally.) Your body will make vitamin D on its own in response to direct sunlight (but not through glass.) You can also buy inexpensive D3 supplements. Many high end multivitamins already include it.</PSA>

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/pos...
http://www.newspond.com/

Some may argue that it isn't efficient enough, though.
Does anyone else find these terminally unattractive? They're super-ellipsoids with the occasional meaningless chunk cut out.

What happened to my sixties future, where the supercomputers were shiny slick hospital white or the nineties when desktops were okudagrams, or at least the 80's when computers surrounded you with information and controls? Or how about the streamlined future of the thirties, when things at least looked fast.

Sexy design of racks ought to make me trust that the machine will run until the year 5421, possibly in zero-g while tended by a woman in Velcro booties and a spherical hat.

Sexy design of user machines ought to make me feel like a genius because of the obvious power at my disposal, to be used with bravado because it's clearly too smart to be broken. I won't want to let it out of my sight because I'm afraid it will find a new user. Withdrawal symptoms probable.
I don't see what's so surprising about this.

"Clean Tech" is one giant taxpayer-funded ponzi scheme.

Madoff would be proud.
Just so you know, access is "premium" (monthly payment) only. And not available in the US yet.
The Gates Foundation pays close attention to this consensus when it is released. Expect Gates' priorities to align well with this list.

The methodology is complex, but the concept isn't: for each issue, how many lives can we save per dollar spent? Rank those higher.
Since a couple aggregators were listed--the thing that troubles design for aggregators in my mind is that they are all just lists. You can put some color, some thumbnails on a list, but in the end, it's still a list.

What I find much more attractive and intuitive, when it comes to news, is a real front page, that echoes the old print newspaper front page, but pulls in extra real-time information boxes from other parts of the paper. There is a clear idea of a headline story, the size of each summary is varied, and it's full use of 2D space, instead of just going linear straight from top to bottom.

What I'm thinking of in particular is the New York Times http://nytimes.com ; since its last major redesign it has become very attractive and I have found myself spending more time clicking around within the site whenever I read it.

For comparsion, check out this old twin-list front page version of NYT: http://web.archive.org/web/20031203020804/http://www.nytimes...

This does also have to do with their strategy for fighting the aggregators (so it's not just a design question): 1) writing their own blogs and 2) syndicating blogs where they are short. Sort of out-aggregating the aggregators.
Q & A with Kai-Fu Lee on building Innovation Works, Google China
As a high school senior, I'm jealous of your opportunity (though no doubt you earned it.)
I would probably leap at the opportunity to skip this year.
I share your opinion on wasted time, but more with classes I don't feel that I need than with other students who hold me back.

Part of my distress is my graduating class of 46 people. I don't have peers, and it pisses me off sometimes. But that may not be the case for you.
If I had a group of like-minded, intelligent, and ambitious people to hang out with, I would probably be looking forward to this year.

And surely there's something to be said for learning how to do things before you're expected to do them right... I think, in my case, that's especially true of relationships. I need this year for social development, even if my intellectual development will suffer a little.

You, however, would appear to be more motivated than I am. If you can seek out a college course load in high school, in whatever area you're interested in (that is, without too many fluff courses), then gaining the extra year of social development would likely be beneficial in the long run -- no downside.

Putting myself in your situation, I would want to skip the year. What I should do, however, is NOT skip the year.
(I had a similar debate about skipping 2nd grade, except that I didn't really know how to weigh the possibilities back then. (I didn't go for it.))

As tsally suggested, I would definitely try and find a college professor to work with. Do research in your field of choice. It's more interesting than lit homework, neh?

So I'm not really sure why I would be qualified to give you advice. Feel free to ignore. =)