skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not only in the individual case but also collectively. The holders of these bonds would stand to lose a lot of money if technological breakthroughs increased the longevity of the insured people. This would give them the incentive to stall or block these developments. Furthermore those with ability to stall these developments may be attracted towards buying these securities for this very reason.

The scenarios of unlimited longevity painted by some life extensionists would be their worst nightmare. Given that the prevention death from 'old age' is not currently considered a valid medical goal it would be fairly easy for them stall development in these areas.
I'd argue that the frequency of security updates points to a fairly immature security architecture - it might be ages before they get anywhere near other sufficiently secure open source projects (although comparing it with linux is a bit like comparing apples and bananas).
Of course, not all old media entities are dying. See for example, NPR and the Norwegian Shibsted media group, which is making profits, both from newspapers and online new sites. (Of course, the fact that they started up online in 1995 or so may have something to do with it)
How about this logic? Consider the strides one makes between the ages of 0-5 years old; that's certainly 30% or greater year over year. Or the strides one makes between 15 and 20 years old; maybe 30% or greater year over year. But then consider how little people change beyond say 25 or 30 years old. Someone from 40 to 45 has hardly changed at all, let alone 30% annually. So that's why I don't think one could do it for 60 years. Maybe a for a few in your early and formative years.
Just to expand on this a bit. It reminds me of the distinction Papert makes (e.g., Mindstorms or essays (http://www.papert.org/works.html)) between his vision of how computers could empower education and how they are currently being used.

Instead of becoming a new medium, the computer, for the most part, is used as a facilitator of conventional ways of teaching - it's a better typewriter, a better book, a better way to watch a lecture.
Yeah, I made this point really clumsily. What I meant is that the technology for full distance learning being equally effective isn't there yet. Video is probably as close as you can get, but even in that case, MIT's OCW video offerings are sorely lacking.
Which inevitably leads to a kazaa/napster like escalation of arms where just about everyone disables referer headers, after which content providers lobby to make that illegal.
Seymour Papert's Essays on Computers and Education
Adobe isn't abandoning Photoshop, but reading the financial reports it is pretty easy to figure out where management is steering the boat, devoting time and resources.
Oh computerland, where one person will post a 3 order of magnitude speedup, only to have someone else come along and say "oh thats nothing, here's our 4 OoM speedup".

By the way have I ever told you guys about the time we denormalized this table... :P
For a less practical (but tastier!) version, see CandyFab! http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/candyfab
This kind of thing never seems to change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTz5iwmtkrs#t=1m40s
security will be a cat and mouse game

From a security standpoint Wordpress is a trivial application because it's almost entirely read-only, except for the comments. Making a plugin-architecture bullet proof is a different story, but as I understand it most of these issues affect the very core, i.e. a vanilla wordpress install.

There is no excuse for their sorry state of affairs.
Part of the attack is via XSS using $_GET queries that are very long. Apache defaults to accepting URLS up to 4K long which is insane and allows such attacks to happen. 255 characters is a far better lockdown with very few if any false positives.
Cool stuff, but I can't take paging through 11 pages. Pagination is evil.
Feel like I should mention: For people running a UNIX os with objdump, take a program written in C or C++, compile it with gdb's -g flag, then do:

objdump -S your_program

This will disassemble it and interleave your disassembly with original source code. It's a great way to see what your high-level C gets compiled to, a great way to see how compilers work and a great way to scratch a low-level itch.
This is probably the first technical story I've seen posted where I can definitively say "not hacker news." If you have 3 regular readers, and the 4th causes your site to slow down, then definitely read this article.
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DROP database myapp;

NoSQL! :)
Learning machine code for programmers is what Latin is to people. FTFY.

Knowing machine code isn't an academic endeavor for many programmers, much like knowing Latin isn't an academic endeavor for doctors. Understanding the machine at the lowest level is essential for kernel, compiler, emulator, and embedded development, as well as software reverse-engineering. It may be a good idea for many programmers, but for a subset of us, it's mandatory.
This was how I built my early reverse-engineering skills. I started off compiling my own C to x86 assembly and seeing what it mapped to, then I had some friends write little crypto routines in C and compile them, throwing the binaries over to me to hand-decompile. Can't recommend this enough.

I also have to recommend the book Reversing by Eldad Eilam if you're interested in low-level hacking from a reversing perspective.
I disagree with that strongly.

I'm estimating the size of HN's 'real' userbase (not counting spammers) at around 23000 accounts, there is absolutely no way those are all thinking of applying to YC one day, maybe 10% of them do. Even if the churn is 50% and there are only 10000 accounts left that would still not explain the phenomenon. I think that it has more to do with local culture and indoctrinating newbies through the votes than anything else.

I'm fairly sure that Karma does not enter in to it in the mind of the posters once they reach that stage.

And I'm not sure if it would be a factor in applying to YC even though I read that 'making thoughtful comments' would make a difference (as opposed to making inane ones I guess).

I know for a fact I'll never apply to YC, and with me probably many others. On any other forum I would not behave much different than from how I behave here, as long as the culture stays the way it is there will be a lot of 'happy hackers' hanging out here, the majority of them will probably never apply to YC.
Like most essays of philosophy, this seems to stop at the formation of the hypothesis. And while the model is interesting, it's still important to ask "does it reflect reality?". To answer that, we need to quantify "discipline", "determination" and its sub-components. And then, see if they really are good predictors of successful founders?
Well the Primer will certainly not be a kindle...an apple tablet maybe :-) . All kidding aside, Stephenson's book more focuses on kids without easy access to education getting the power of education. Its more along the OLPC route.
I don't think that's it. I have no intention of ever applying to YC. There are other communities like HN online. My favorite example is Perlmonks.org. It has a remarkably similar atmosphere. No one is applying to anything there.
Neal Stephenson offered a tantalizing look at where the potential lies with his the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Exactly. Although the nanotech stuff remains distant, a present day Kindle or tablet system could easily incorporate synchronized interaction
between children like Nell and actors like Miranda.
Cool, that works pretty well, actually. Except that it doesn't index quite a few blogs. I did create my own RSS feeds for a couple of people, though. Double excellent that if the entries are dupes in Google Reader, reading an entry in one section causes it to disappear from the other.
Not my idea of great coding music, but I listen to http://ipartyradio.com/ (top 40/club mixes/strong beat)
For what it's worth, Drupal is only more vulnerable if you install third-party modules that are vulnerable and don't update those, as well. If you happen to be interested (which I hope you are, since you brought up the subject of Drupal security), see http://www.lullabot.com/node/383 for a thoughtful take on the open security model.
I'm sure there was a day when people said similar things about other industries ... "blogs and craigslist won't hurt the newspaper industry for a long time ..."

Regarding your points:

1. MIT is MIT–most college students don't go there. Heck, most don't even try to get in. If you combine the online resources of all institutions, things like iTunesU, and other resources (Wikipedia), there is enough content to create alternative learning programs for most people.

Yes, I've used Blackboard. Yes, it's terrible. That is a software nice ripe for innovation–unfortuantely BB has some ridiculous web 1 patents. Hopefully those will get overturned soon.

2. The concept of a 4 year degree might simply be outdated. Personally, I envision more compressed, career-focused programs. I understand the need to be well-rounded and have a baseline competency in English and math, but I think you can easily shave 18+ months off a 4 year degree program without the final product changing.

3. He also got a 1600 on his SAT IIRC. And again, MIT is somewhat of an outlier in this regard. If you're going to severly shake up the edu space, MIT isn't where you aim IMO.

4.1 Lower costs and a faster track to their child having a job and moving out
4.2 Productivity/economic gains. Eventually, a smaller edu budget (just guessing here)
4.3 That's the tough one as they stand to lose the most ... but that's what disruptive technologies do ... they will have to adapt
4.4 Any Edu 2.0 should still have some sort of co-op/internship component, so hopefully these graduates will still come out with work experience ... perhaps even more than graduates now ... I think degree requirements are already becoming softer, anyway

5. I agree schools can serve as a childhood->adulthood bridge. But, more on a social level than an intelligence level. If raw intelligence is just that (raw), what does being on a campus change? Furthermore, doesn't completing a degree on one's own show more determination than going through the motions/schedule of a 4-year program?

I had a small edu startup before my current company. I'd love to be back there soon and be part of this change.
Agreed! Most of my real ah-ha insights came after struggling for many hours of doing physics problem sets with a small group of classmates. I think that this is one of the most difficult-to-recreate parts of college.
That's a very good point. I went to a state university - for the first 2 years I was a commuter and the last 2 years I stayed at a dorm. It was 2 different worlds. For the first 2 years, I felt it was more a continuation of high school (i.e. when you get your driver's license and you don't need to get on the yellow bus). The last 2 years were a partial step into the "real world" - deal with an annoying roommate who has the TV on all the time and negotiate, chat with professors after class without hurrying home, socialize beyond interaction in class.
I think LIKE keyword in MySQL is totally a mess. It provide functionalities like regular expression search which is very useful and unlikely to be indexed. But many programmers abuse this and take it to do full-text search which is a disaster.
Your comparison to Drupal is invalid.

That list lumps in security vulnerabilities from over 4000 third-party plug-ins.
A Dream Interrupted At Boeing
Seriously great coding music
ORMs are dangerous abstraction layers. SQLObject literally cost a previous employer of mine tens of thousands of dollars due to an obscure bug (needless to say we switched to SQLAlchemy posthaste). Use them at your own risk.

Transparency is one more arrow in the quiver of the NoSQL camp. Throwing a SQL query at a black box and hoping that it figures out the most efficient way to execute that query is a scary way to access your data in a real-time application, especially when the query plan can change drastically based on what data is in the database.

I hope to never have to sleep with my hand on my phone waiting for Nagios text messages again. I'll take consistent data access performance characteristics, thank you very much.
So...how do you pull it apart? Is this effectively a permanent fastener? If so, how is better than welding or something?
This reminds me of my old XP 150: http://www.isoaker.com/Armoury/Analysis/1998/xp150c.html

An unassuming Super Soaker by modern standards, it actually houses a deadly hack which makes it, by far, the strongest Super Soaker every produced.

The nozzle was removable to allow for a filter screen to be replaced. However, one was still able to fire with the nozzle removed. This revealed it's hidden power: The Super Soaker Shotgun. The lines feeding water up to the nozzle were exceptionally large, so it was merely the nozzle that regulated the flow. With it removed, the output capacity was massively increased. A fully compressed tank would empty in approximately 2-3 seconds. It didn't go far (10 feet tops) and required a bit of luck, but anything caught in front of it at the right time was instantly drenched in water. It was devastating. There is no modern equal and I don't know if any other guns have been produced with the capacity that this one had. I had won many a water battle with this little trick in mind. Oh, how I miss it!

Dammit, now I'm going to spend a ton of money on eBay when I really shouldn't...
Misleading title. How they fixed their web app. Summary: profile your queries/stored procedures.
Wow - as the guy who wrote that email, i'm honored by the praise on this thread!

In the case of this autoresponder- the people who get this actually were trying to send a message to a friend. So, we really wanted to handle this with care and make sure folks knew we anticipated what they were trying to do.

feel free to reach out to me directly at john@groupcard.com
There's a startup for that: http://www.feedscrub.com

I originally built it for Digg and Reddit, but HN is now one of my primary uses. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.
Not having much knowledge of the fashion industry, I can't say if this seems probable or not. But presuming you've done this for a week or two already why would you as an intern continue to stay at what seems to be a horrible position? Further, surely you would also recognize that this isn't indicative of the fashion industry?
Another source, then:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6129185/Telepathi...
I'll take consistent data access performance characteristics, thank you very much.

And if the distribution of your data changes, or you move the application to a new machine? Hard-coding a particular data access strategy into your application logic is like hard-coding assumptions about the distribution of your data and the relative costs of various operations. That's not necessarily the wrong choice, but it isn't a panacea, either.

(If you're that concerned about query plan stability, many DBs give you the ability to force the optimizer to choose a particular query plan.)
Are you assuming that the company would create a paid position if they couldn't have an unpaid internship position?

I look at it on a pricing continuum. On the extremes, would you pay nothing to get work done that you considered to be important for your business? I mean I employ a number of people and I'm pretty sure I don't pay in the lowest quartile or even half of comparable skilled positions. It's almost the same as buying any product or service, price is just one factor. For most people it's about the overall value. I think this also applies to hiring (at least for me). (I didn't realize that unpaid internships were possible - and like you probably, coming from Canada it's a foreign concept that I hadn't heard of until working in the US - but it seems like a reasonable idea to pay as little as possible during a probationary period before hiring someone for good only given the high costs of training involved with entry level positions?)
Ouch. Not even the non-free version works around these flaws so? It looked promising...
Some of these are pretty cool. One piece of experience I'd like to offer:

Don't ever use ">" in your prompts, particularly as root.

A coworker had spent several days working on* an important script with a tight deadline that was almost upon him, and with a quick slip of the right mouse button, pasted what he had selected before (several lines of window scrollback) into the window to be executed, including:

/tmp/foo> ./blah.pl

and just like that, blah.pl ended up zero length. We hard killed the machine and scanned the disk for the contents of the script and recovered most of it, but had the specifics been different we could have been a lot less lucky.

For this reason it's probably also a good idea to avoid question marks, asterisks, and anything else the shell could expand, as well.

* While the story plays just as well, it's not meant to be an argument for source control. It could have just as easily been full paths to system binaries and have ended up trashing the system.
Quit posting this crap.

Every single reader of this site is perfectly capable of finding their own music if they want.
Test your beliefs constantly. Believe them only to the extent that they anticipate experiences.

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/07/making-beliefs.html
Yes - but the point being presumably you wouldn't stay at that dead end unpaid position forever. As for the huge payoff in the end, that's sort of what entrepreneurship is as well - there's absolutely no certainty of a payoff but one does hope for it. Why would you take an unpaid internship though if there wasn't some expectation of "more"? If there is then yes, there's a value to that "option".

But presumably this isn't the case in some job like telemarketing or other really marginal menial tasks that you might realize within the first couple weeks if not month of doing it?
I wonder if the 80/20 rule is really just a misunderstanding of what Jeff Atwood talks about here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001284.html

Apparently, writing working code ISN'T 80% of the job.
This got #1??
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. [...]"

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Honestly, I have no idea where most of newspaper revenues come from, but so far it seems most (all?) of the major ones are failing to make enough money by selling online ads. It's not a matter of theory or opinion, it's something that's been tested for about 8-9 years now, and just doesn't seem to work.
Like regular velcro, shear load capacity is probably much, much higher than the force it takes to pull apart.

Think about the most common application of velcro - shoes - you're keeping the two sides of the shoe together. Velcro prevents the two surfaces from sliding around, not from coming apart.
I especially like the bash history number in the prompt, makes it much easier to use the history effectively. Perhaps if I used jobs rather than tabs I'd throw the job count in there too. But multi-line prompts? that seems a bit excessive.
You mean to tell me that you don't have a 35.1 ton weight sitting around anywhere?
Getting to Know Iyengar Yoga
Kindle Academy? Prep school ditches library for e-readers
LIKE is not a MySQL keyword, it's a required keyword from the SQL spec, it's part of all SQL databases.

Good SQL programmers know to only use it for prefix-matching, where it is very fast.

Bad ones (like the author of this post), don't know SQL, and use some query builder tool.

NEVER use an SQL query builder!
How to really keep WordPress secure
My hat's in -- Radio Paradise
Put it in a chroot jail on a dedicated server with SELinux, GRSec, and AppArmor all running at the same time, behind at least four layers of firewalls. Store the server in a lead-lined room with no net connection, and a good sturdy lock on the door whose opening requires a smart card, fingerprint and iris scans, and presidential orders filed in triplicate. Erase the smart card, spread acid on your fingertips, gouge your eyes out, and impeach the president. Pass HTTP correspondence in and out on floppy disks doused in holy water. Keep the server powered off at all times.
I bet his uses the same password on Posterous as on Wordpress.
Really, not many people even think about what's in any level lower than the one they're working on.

Case in point: I once had a C++ program in which replacing malloc() with a wrapper that rounded up all allocations over 1kb to multiples of 1kb actually increased execution speed by 20%. Those may not have been the exact numbers, but that's the general idea. Guess why.

.
.
.

The program was allocating many large objects with small variations in size. The system default malloc/free implementation would work efficiently for small objects, but would store large allocations in a linked list, bucketed by size. In the worst-case (all objects are large and of different sizes), freeing n objects would take O(n^2) time. This program came very close to that ideal. The rounding prevented that worst case by using fewer buckets.

Of course, that version never saw production use. It was just used to demonstrate the nature of this particular performance problem.
There's no such thing as a secure WordPress installation -- the best you can do is one without any known issues.
I know it must hurt. Peace brother.
For the last 11 years, I spent most waking hours thinking about how to sell and distribute music. I'm completely unobjective.

I wish this reasoning was more common. At least in my experience, argument-by-authority seems to be the plague on the insecurities in our industry. In reality, being labeled "an expert in X" more often than not does nothing but completely disqualify someone from being able to fairly compare X with the alternatives.
AFAIK wordpress.com never got broken into...
Oh, believe me, my next app will most certainly have a built-in recurring revenue component. I convinced 2,000 people to pay me money -- if a fraction of them were paying me even $5 a month...
I think it's good to know. However I use it very rarely.
The video really is good, one of the best elementary explanations I've seen of the problems of CDOs.
Some people are smart because they push on in the face of great opposition. Others win plaudits for "knowing when to quit" and changing direction. It's all a bit wishy washy,

Its not that its wishy washy, its that one of the great keys to success is knowing the difference between the two. On the one hand, if you are on the right track you probably need to be ready to persevere in the face of enormous opposition, but if you are on the wrong track, no matter how far you have gone, change directions. Telling the difference can be quite challenging though, at least in some cases.
If you're particularly worried about this sort of thing, you can wrap your prompt in : and ;
i.e.
: user@host $ ;

Source is http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO.html#...
Seems like that advice is applicable to any software.
Since around 2.7 upgrades are as easy as clicking a button - both for plugins and wordpress core updates.

Which is, in itself, a fruitful source of potential security holes: To accomplish this feature, Wordpress has to have permission to overwrite its own executables.
Actually, Stanford recently redesigned their computer science curriculum. Intro programming (CS106) does Java and C++, and then the notoriously difficult CS107 does low level C, Assembly, and some machine code
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