skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
[Unfortunate double post there...]

Point taken, though I do suspect there is a qualitative difference between solving Sudoku puzzles and practicing one's capacity for direct recall. Sudoku is algorithmic--you're focused on how to solve, rather than building up an index of solutions which you would then access by key.

eg, 6x7 is a key, the lookup yields 42, and you could work it out algorithmically, and that might include methods like "type expression into Google", but imagine if that was all you knew. No index of multiplication tables in your head. When you skimmed a text, your eyes would gloss "6x7" as "multiplication product--undetermined". There might be a pointer to a method to get the answer, but the answer itself wouldn't be directly available. It could be quite crippling.

Similarly with language: our facility of direct recall, our capacity for internalization, makes communication possible. If you are consciously working through the grammar that gives meaning to a phase, you have lost the discussion.

In programming, we get so much mileage out of the "how" that the "what" becomes incidental. Our mental map is a map of methods, where return values only persist long enough to call the next method. We know how we got there, but hardly remember any landmarks along the way.

So with phone numbers, we have lost one more opportunity to train and practice our capacity to create mental indexes to actual data. Why remember one number when you can remember how to get all numbers with less effort? Why store multiple keys when a single function will do?

People once developed algorithms to create vast mental indexes, eg. method of loci. One could commit incredible volumes of information to memory with such techniques.

Now compare that to the modern person w/ lazy evaluation in place of memorization. In memorization, lookup costs are zero. Consciousness stays focused on the matter at hand. Supporting data is pulled up as needed. Without memorization, consciousness must make repeated detours to supply the supporting data, or gloss over it all together.

I'd suggest that mastery of a subject occurs when consciousness can stop making these detours. When you know the behavior of various programming constructs by heart, you can stop checking the reference documentation at every turn.

So in aggregate, if you no longer know any phone numbers by heart, you may indeed be getting dumber.
Loopt to Run iPhone Location Service in the Background
Minor correction. The removal of the GIL is not disallowed by fiat. The removal of the GIL was attempted (via granular locking) and destroyed single threaded performance. That's unacceptable for a variety of reasons. In the same thread, Guido has repeatedly stated that the GIL was a tradeoff, and he would welcome anything that helped lessen it's impact/remove it should it be proven not to significantly harm Python's primary function.

If someone showed up with a patch tomorrow which allowed free threading without seriously breaking python, or crippling single threaded performance, or making extension modules impossible to write, I could very well see it getting in. In reality, doing this requires a serious reworking of the interpreter (ala unladen swallow) to make it even feasible. There's a lot of things the GIL actually helps, for example the ease of writing c-based extension module, unfortunately they come with a price.

The price is/was seen as an acceptable tradeoff, and I think it has served it well, even if if it disappeared tomorrow no one would shed a tear.

Also, braces aren't a feature :p
This will be an interesting fight...I interned at an outdoor advertising company while in college, and they made regular appearances at city council meetings, building commission hearings, and court championing the cause of corporate free speech. These companies (especially ClearChannel) have deep pockets, even during the recession.
Here's a group of quizzes with the same idea, but a nicer interface: http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/.
Columbus, Ohio.

22. I lived at home during college to try and save some loot.
The idea of being selfish as something good for society is relatively new, tho.
The extrapolation from 1176 is reasonable (I think the error is roughly +-2% for n=1000) if the sample is not biased..

But the real issues is how the question was asked. From the article:

...11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software

So what question were they asked? If I use Instant Messenger to send a photo to a friend, have I used 'file-sharing software'? Is Skype file sharing software? I used to write surveys that tried to get at issues like this (sw piracy), and I believe it is nigh-on impossible to get good data by asking a direct question in this way. You either make it very pointed (e.g. ".. used file-sharing software to illegal share files"), and then few people say yes, or you make is less specific, and people accidentally say yes because they don't understand it. That's the real problem.
After doing crossfit for a year, I think I knew this semi-consciously but it's interesting to read about it being backed by science. Short, highly intense training sessions lead to very large gains in fitness because most of your training is anaerobic.
This is pretty old -- 2006 -- and has been discussed here in the past: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586114
I think it's an incremental improvement. It won't make or break bit.ly, but a hundred such improvements will make it a success.
Thats funny. I could say the same thing about the perl scripts I write. For that matter I could say the same thing The point is language and syntax for some of us at least has little bearing on how clear the code is. And like jrockway said perl is expressive enough that you can do far more abstraction in it. The only languages I've seen so far that can beat perl for expressive power are lisp and haskell.
It's almost certainly for detecting fraud / money laundering networks.
Poll: Which webmail provider do you use?
Yahoo! Mail
FastMail.FM
Gawab
GMX Mail
Hushmail
LuxSci
Mail.com
Mail2World
O2 Webmail
Wait, there's more than one? ;)
I have had an interesting experience in regard to this. My graduate program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has actually been incredibly flexible with the areas of research that I want to pursue. The program generally consists of just coursework, however I have been able to do pretty much whatever I want on the side (research).

With this freedom, myself and another graduate student began our own laboratory within the department that focuses on medical technology for developing countries. We have been able to convince undergraduate students, as well as graduate students to work within our lab for free. We have also set up an internship program, where students outside of the university can join. Our professor was also happy to put his name on grant applications for our project.

In my experience there are two types of potential professors. First the ones that are interested in their own research - in which case you are required to do something for them. Or the other (old skool) professors who think you should go about getting your degree on your own. The problem is this second type generally does not come with any type of funding.

My overall advice would be to pursue graduate school, especially if you need for time to work on your idea. Graduate schools have excellent resources to help you with your company (especially within this economy).

P.S. I'm actually involved in a start-up company right now while attending school. Perfect opportunity to incubate your idea while you wait to develop.
When you consider that location based services like Loopt can be used to feed Apps like Foursquare.com you realize this technology has broad applications for iphones majority audience. Foursquare is a mobile social media platform that allows users to see what bars their friends are situated at.
That is plain offensive.
The special olympics are an even greater achievement of the human body as a machine, since it must push itself with far lesser degrees of freedom.
Quotes From PG’s FBFund Talk From Today
> I have long felt that...

Your "feelings" are irrelevant on matters of fact. Show your work.
Obtaining press for a new/exciting product is especially easy when its free. Journalists have to write about what people think is interesting, without it they would be out of jobs.

That being said publicity is easy, actually being successful-entirely different story. Dont judge success on publicity.
It's not a bad idea but the scale and defaults are not great. Even IPCC projections -- which Global Warming skeptics assert are pretty liberal in their rise estimations -- forecast less than a 1 meter rise by 2010. I think if it rose 7 meters, flooding would be the least of humanity's concerns.
Charge your iPod with your bike
yeah: aol, hotmail and yahoo
> The QM one is particularly horribly broken -- actual bug rather than mere confusion, I think

Broken link, right? I reported it to them a few hours ago and they/he're apparently working on it.
To know one: poetically, nametaggily
How about a searchable spreadsheet?

http://www.textrar.com/API/SPage.aspx?apk=067539DC-9A47-4BD6...
Doesn't this article show that there seems to be incredibly potential for innovation in healthcare?
Remember when they used to bust CD pirates and claim there were 1000s of copying machines. They counted a 56x drive as 56 copying devices.
I suppose it hasn't occurred to them to just paint them white. You don't have to remove them to remove them.
The dark ages.
Sure, I saw that. Problem is that date is actually date the video was published, not the event date.
This blog article discusses the Atlantic article "How American Healthcare Killed My Father". One of the most thought provoking ideas was that the author felt that the patient should be paying for the majority of their healthcare, rather than the insurance company or government.

Example, auto insurance does pay for maintenance repairs? Home owners insurance does not pay for refinishing your basement?

Making the end customer (the patient) the person who is paying would have tremendous potential for increasing transparency in healthcare. This would in turn drive down cots and increase outcomes.
One comment does not a discussion make...
Minimum wage raised to $7.25 - WHDH-TV -
Speaking as someone who is tangled in a love triangle between Python and PHP. I do agree that PHP does have it's strengths. For the programmer just making a living, it's quite ok to etch out just using it.

In terms of web applications, what you can accomplish in PHP you can pretty much do in Python. But the difference comes in when you do "care" about the tools you're using.

When you want that extra power.
When you want something sane to work with.

Python and friends give provide that for you.

I do love PHP, it's deployment is a snap and the frameworks we have now are kick ass. But Python is such a joy to work with it. And the longer I work with it, it gets harder to come back to PHP.
Five Advantages of Hiring Gen Y Employees
Why aren't there any self-hosted options? There is a rich selection of webmail programs that can be installed on one's own server. For example, many people here have probably used Squirrelmail and Horde (shudder) at some time in their lives.

Zarafa and Atmail also look pretty good and I'd love to hear from anyone who is using either of them.

I use Roundcube when I'm away from my own computer. Usermin is also very useful when testing accounts on my server, but I can't imagine using it as a primary webmail client.
You are displaying very misplaced arrogance. Simulation of all sorts of physical phenomena are intractable. An example I am familiar with is attempting to simulate a large number of sand particles being vibrated. If you think this is trivial, then you seriously underestimate how computationally difficult simulation can be for physics problems with relatively straightforward mechanics. The mechanics of the brain are not yet seen as straightforward.

The person you refer to is not a child and displayed much more sophistication on these issues than any 'rapture of the nerds' advocates I have ever seen.
YikeBike: Segway Alternative
Ask HN: How do I explain copyright to 11-year olds?
My son and two other 11-year olds joined us for dinner tonight. One of my son's friends held up his iTouch and asked:

"What's Jailbreaking?"

After a few minutes discussion, they all started piping in...

"Isn't it legal to copy music from my Mac to your iPod? How come I am allowed to copy it to 5 different iPods?"

"Doesn't apple make the music?"

"I heard it is illegal to make a copy of a house key?"

Oh, brother. Where to begin?

Any tips?

I figured starting with "ignorance of the law is no excuse" was a bad idea...
How to Stay Safe When Getting Pulled Over by the Police.
How to Stay Safe When Getting Pulled Over Many women – and men – have expressed concern about being pulled overby a police car at night in a location where there is no one else around and the safety concerns this type of situation holds, especially in light of the rash of police-impersonator crimes that were committed in 2004, which many of you may remember, and in light of the recent police beating that happened here in Minneapolis last month.
I know an even better way to save US lives in Afghanistan: get out of Afghanistan.
As long as Python continues to not utilize multi-line lambdas. Then Perl and Ruby will continue to be a usable Lisp. But I don't think that's a bad thing. Python is Python and that's that.
Does EXPERIENCE mean everything? I am going to answer my own question, but I am eager to see what all of you think as well because I think that EXPERIENCE is most certainly a critical component to success, but without energy, passion, and a drive to make something extraordinary happen, experience means nothing. Generation Y is eager to have an impact and to innovate in a way that the world has never seen. Due to the fact that I am a proud member of Gen Y, I am also an advocate of recruiting people who fit into this generation and have an insatiable drive to make a difference!
Roadee is $2.

It uses OpenStreetMap instead of the proprietary map databases, but hey, I'll take 90% as good for 2% of the price any day.
AT&T Network 101 & MMS Availability Update
I spend a lot of time blogging about things I don't like about other companies
Yeah, there is little that annoys me more than finding a product that advertises neat, helpful features and I think it is free, download/install/sign-up for it and come to find out they charge way more than I'm willing to pay for it!

Evernote is a great example of this, too.
It's a totally bogus claim. The only people that can't read their own Perl after 6 months are the people that don't really know Perl. And by "know" I just mean they read and understood most of Programming Perl/Objected Oriented Perl.

Anyone who has studied those two books can understand 99%+ of the code on the CPAN.

A lot of people have made a few halfhearted attempts at using Perl and were so put off by the scary looking sigils that they gave up. Then they blame Perl to comfort themselves. It's not them that's too lazy to look past a new kind of syntax, it's the language's fault!
This is not rocket science: People want SOMETHING in front of them when riding. Otherwise, it's just freaking scary.
Am I the only one that's never understood a single "gen *" term?
Just from reading that article it seems Alex and Eran, as founders, seem to really complement each other well. And their persistence, wow!

The company was on the rocks. We had zero revenue. We had been trying for four years to make something work. We were out of ideas. Those first four years had been a graveyard of misstarts and product concepts that never made it anywhere.
Put it in terms they understand, like this:

Copyright is kinda like, the "right to copy" something. When you type a book report for school, you can print as many copies as you want, because it's yours. Maybe you want to print extra just in case you lose one before you hand it in. Maybe you want to print a copy to give to your uncle Joe the English professor to proofread. The sky's the limit for you because you wrote it. But other people can't pick up a copy from Joe's desk and make a hundred photocopies or scan it and place it online for every 5th grader to hand in as his own work, and your teacher can't copy it and publish it in the school newspaper...without your permission...for which you should charge...and give me a percentage!
Your wish is my command: http://friendpaste.com/Zl54q3hYb9t42A3r73LrI

Scroll to the bottom and hit "raw format" for easiest copy/paste.
"The only people that can't read their own Perl after 6 months are the people that don't really know Perl."

again replace "perl" with "APL" or "BrainFuck" (or any language with baroque syntax) and the above sentence is as (in)valid. This comes close to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. If you really knew perl you would have no problems with reading it. Sure, but that applies to anything, no matter how convoluted.

It doesn't matter whether you think their claims are "bogus" or not, or whether they meet your standards of "really" knowing perl.

Some people find that they can read their own code in other languages easier than their own code in perl after 6 months. You might think this "bogus", that doesn't matter. For them, that is a reality they have to deal with. And many deal with it by shifting to other languages and leaving perl to its aficionados. This is as it should be. Everyone should use the language they like and not use languages they dislike (irrespective of my or your stances on what they should like or whether their claimed reasons for dislike is "bogus").

Nobody is compelling you to abandon perl. So what's your problem with them not using perl?

A language is a UI for programmers. Some people find some UIs hard. Telling them that their discomfort is "bogus" is not very useful.

I use a lot of Haskell. Many people say they find its type system, monads etc "too hard". That isn't a "bogus claim". And "If they really knew Haskell they wouldn't find it hard" (where I define the "really knew") is a useless statement.

I use Haskell, they don't. Everyone is happy.

Live and let live. There are enough languages for all of us.
I agree that it depends, however I don't think that it is that easy. Even if you have a good, open relationship with your parents what about your wife/girlfriend or friends? Will they be comfortable to get drunk at your place with your mom around or to have sex with you when your mom is sleeping in the next room?
To that site's developers: it's great that you provide a version of your site formatted for the iPhone. The fact that when following a link it redirects you to the front page instead of the article you were trying to view and gives you no way to find it... It makes me want to stab things with forks. Please don't.
What do you not understand? Does it have to do with the ages of people in each of the GEN's? Take a look at this article...I found this to be extremely useful when it came to my research of the GEN's....

http://www.fdu.edu/newspubs/magazine/05ws/generations.htm

What I find to be interesting is that understanding the GEN's and what makes each group "tick" will behoove you in business. Whether you are starting a company, working in corporate America, or simply communicating with people on a daily basis, this research will indeed serve you well...

ENJOY!
It looks like an interesting tool that might help against the fight against cancer. My mayor concern comes from the intrusiveness of the catheter, and towards what kind of cancer patients this instrument is oriented to? I really hope Doctors would use this new instrument in the best way possible for the patient, which in my opinion would be to to use it on only patients whose cancer is on the right place and not on patients that have undergone intensive sessions of chemotherapy.
I'm using Google Apps, but I picked Gmail since you don't have that option
> The only people that can't read their own Perl after 6 months are the people that don't really know Perl. And by "know" I just mean they read and understood most of Programming Perl/Objected Oriented Perl.

Python taught me that there's no excuse for a language to have a learning curve like Perl's.
There's a complexity ceiling that you hit fairly quickly in PHP. Since there's no consistency in any of the libraries, you have to cram a massive amount of information into your head (or sit there with the reference manual open and look up every function call). If you're doing a quick one-week project, PHP is probably the tool of choice, but there's a large middle ground where PHP apps become way too spaghetti-ish and yet you don't want to shell out the upfront cost for a C++ or Java webapp.
Perils of C++ debugging: Petrifying functions
I've found Claros InTouch to be better than (better interface than) Squirrelmail and (less buggy than) Roundcube.
Well, http://www.copyrightkids.org might be a starting point. It seems a bit hokey, but might give you some ideas.

It's put together by the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. I really don't know anything about the organization.
Freshwater Pearl Necklace
Perl requires that you learn a bit before you can be comfortable reading/writing it naturally. Like Japanese Katakana characters or the Cyrillic alphabet, a little investment goes a very long way. It's not nearly as alien as it appears at first glance.

Some people think Perl is a good deal more expressive and powerful for them. A whole lot more people would if they managed to get past their initial reaction.

Python probably owes most of its success to its simplistic syntax. That is definitely a feature when you're learning. When you're going to spend years with a tool though it's often worth investing some time into new concepts.

More people should probably learn Haskell if they want to be better programmers. I think more should learn Perl too.
Shaping Technology for the Classroom
Tumors that you can find don't kill people with cancer, its the millions of metastases all over the body (or a specific organ) which actually cause cancer to be deadly.

There are a fair number of drugs which "treat tumors" (i.e. shrink tumors or stop their growth), but very few drugs actually extend the life of a cancer patient due to the metastatic issue mentioned above.
Sometimes taking out features is more important than having them. Python fans usually like it because every feature is exceptionally well-thought-out, not because there are a lot of features.
I didn't get that far. There was a question about whether souls(!) can affect the world. It could easily be argued either that if you don't believe in souls you should answer either 'disagree' or 'neutral', which suggests that we're supposed to treat it as a counterfactual, but in that case, we don't know anything about what "soul" means for the purposes of the question.

Basically, this was an interesting idea, but I don't know if it's possible to write questions that reflect a broad enough range of worldviews to actually categorize them. There are probably hundreds of distinct views of "soul", including both people who believe in them and people who don't.
Mysterious Google tweet
That sounds like a job for a Github fork.
So no language should use any syntax/concepts that aren't familiar to someone who only knows Java/C?
British society; living in the U.S. I find my American colleagues don't grok the fortnight.