skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I once went to a conference that was held on an Arizona college campus during summer session. The school kept having soda and vending machines disappear periodically. It turned out that guys from the local tribe were taking the entire machines back to the reservation in their trucks, using them until they were empty, and then lugging them back to be refilled. I'm not sure what method they were using to get the soda out without paying, but they finally caught some of the guys using video cameras. I think it was all done more for the excitement than the soda...and also maybe to make a statement of some kind. (I can't imagine hauling one of those big machines around for the soda it would hold.)
This page looks like it gives a very nice introduction to "programming" in the pure-untyped lambda calculus. But reading this, one would have no idea that a "meatier" side to lambda calculus existed. Just understanding the Church-Rosser theorem and its consequences, for example, would give a far deeper understanding than anything shown here. One thing that saddens me is that it shows construction of the combinators used to compute partial-recursive functions, but makes no discussion of the significance of this (the partial-recursive functions are an important computational class, and this is essentially a proof that they're lambda computable. Throw in a 6th type of combinator, and you've just proved lambda calculus capable of emulating one of the major models of computation).

It's certainly cool, but there's only so much to be gained from knowing that you can implement the factorial function with (λf .(λx .f (xx ))(λx .f (xx ))) (λfn.((λn.n(λu.λxy .y )(λxy .x ))n)(λfx .fx )
((λmnf .m(nf ))n(f ((λnfx .n(λgh.h(gf ))(λu.x )(λu.u))n)))) .
Words that work: It's not what you say...it's what they hear - by Frank Luntz (awesome book about the power of language and linguistics - a must read for anyone that wants to know the power of communicating)

Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely - haven't finished but pretty interesting so far.

Oh...I have been consumed by life recently and want to start slowing down...looking forward to digging into this book when I get a chance:

In praise of Slowness - http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Slowness-Challenging-Cult-Speed...
Why wouldn't a pure functional language allow you to have an if statement? Haskell certainly has one!

The key is that given the same input you need to produce the same output every time. Which is great as long as you're not doing I/O. (Haskell addresses that with monads - even though it looks like you're giving the same input, you're really giving a different input each time!)
http://www.wingify.com/ (clickable)

http://www.wingify.com/product/tour.php (Tour)

Godspeed Paras! the most hardworking, self-improving, tireless guy I know in online advertising. And it doesn't hurt that you're smart as well :-)

You might need to water-down the technical jargon with descriptive sentences. The biggest hassle I still face today is users who are uneducated about online advertising. E.g:

BEHAVIORAL TARGETING showing your ads only to interested users, based on their previous behavior.

A/B Split-testing and Multivariate testing allows you to run multiple ads on small segment, and then run the highest performing ads on the rest of your user-base.

So on and so forth.

Most of your upcoming work will be on educating the users 1/2 the time, and sourcing clients on the other half.

Good luck.
Recommendation from me: Have your child read a Gerald Durrell book (My Family and Other Animals is one of his best) when they are 12-15. It will be a fantastic read and will make them dream about pursuing something of their own, most likely animals at first, but other things later.

Not so sure HN type adults will enjoy Gerald Durrell as much :).
Also keep in mind, he graduated with a CS degree, not a business degree, and he's in a small business now.

"I was hired soon after college (computer science degree) and rose up the ranks from product development"

So this guy started with a CS degree, hired into product development for a major tech company, and was promoted from there.

I'm not saying that necessarily translates to starting a company, but I think his advice holds a little more knowing that he worked both sides of the equation (Product development and management).
Only true for a narrow spectrum of startups.

There are many highly lucrative niche opportunities (that can still scale to $10mm+ revs) that would be impossible to identify or execute on without an inside industry expert who knows the big players, potential customers, and precise pain points.

When referring to "business people with an idea" with some degree of derision, it's productive for us to remember this mostly applies to the MBA grads with generic consulting/banking background and little industry-specific expertise.
Thanks Mahmud, it is great to be in touch with people like you who are already in this industry. As I have done in the past, I look forward to learning tons more from you in coming times.
Rands In Repose: The Leaper
What are the good networking events in Seattle? I know plenty of engineers but would like to meet some business and designer folks.
That was the conclusion we came to: either do them all or none of them.

The problem is with the amount of time we spent working on, maintaining, and fielding support requests for rubygems, the last thing we wanted to do was multiply that work supporting additional systems.

This decision wasn't made lightly, but the service and support will be better off with it gone.
Fuqua and Ugly Americans
Badhai ho! Safe sailing, my man :-)

http://www.kockums.se/news/svensknews/Resources/champagne.jp...

Btw, I licensed it to the real specialists as soon as I could. They're tasting it til December 1st or buying it. Seems like I will be coming to you for help :-D
I would love to do something like that, but the weight alone is too much for drywall/normal walls.

Really cool idea though, I'll have to remember this one.
God is not the Creator, claims academic
Do we have data from other cultures on this? Is makeup used to achieve the same effects in "all" cultures, especially ones that haven't been in contact with ours? Kinda hard to find new cultures to compare with, but descriptions from old time explorers etc should be useful.
Yes. If you have about two grand, you can get someone to give you the codes too:
http://www.markwick.eu/getacoder_alant.htm

Use discount code W005HC0M80x2 to get half off your project.
>> If finding useful pieces of information from huge databases was really hard search engines would advertise smaller databases.

Some do. See http://alltop.com for example. But the bigger point (and see Google as the case study for this) -- the fact that it's hard is what makes it valuable.
Francis from Francis and the Lights actually cites this book as his main musical influence.
The news article is about the joint NSF-Google-IBM Cluster Exploratory program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_Exploratory), which grew out of a Google project to bring MapReduce into undergraduate education (see, e.g., http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_52/b40640489...). The goal of that program: train the next generation of Google engineers. Based on the evidence, I think your point is exactly wrong.
Kids battery powered motorbikes
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Windows 7 Can’t View XP Share?…Turn off Simple File Sharing on XP
In literature as in life, it depends entirely on why you did it. Sadism implies enjoying pain for its own sake. Literature that does that is no less sadist than worlds that do. But literature that includes pain is not generally evidence of sadism, and neither are worlds. What you can say about the creator's character is entirely driven by what you can say about his purpose.

A simple motivating example: I spent a while undergoing some martial arts training, and at times it was painful. Injuries weren't intended, but could the class have possibly been conducted with a little more deference to my sore feet, with perhaps one less bruise here or there?

In a philosophical sense, of course it could have. But this is not evidence of sadism on the part of the instructor (or the fellow students who gave me such a beating). In a practical sense, spending too much effort avoiding pain would have undermined one of the purposes of the class: teaching me to fight through it. Teaching me that some things are worth enduring pain to learn.
Business Models For the New Web (Really long but insightful)
Interesting cultural material, thank you.
Sugarsync down for at least 12 hours
> The OP's biggest problem is his unfamiliarity with the OS.

Isn't that true for both Linux and Windows?

I personally didn't like Mac OS X, and I've used it for a whole year. MacPorts is not as properly maintained as the Debian repository, many packages having old versions, and manually compiling packages is just silly.

After a while I discovered that I don't depend on any OS X specific software at all. I used Textmate, but it couldn't make me as happy as Emacs is :) I used Firefox instead of Safary, iTunes was making me cry (I'll never purchase an iPod again), and MacPorts was inferior. So the 2K price-tag wasn't justified for a new laptop when my old one broke.

Ubuntu is doing just fine. The only problem I have is the lack of Adobe Photoshop, but I workaround it with Gimp and Inkscape.
How do you think you'd rate it today, already knowing about all those things? It's sitting on my table in my to read stack but I haven't managed to get to it yet.
If you just want to meet entrepreneurs, I suggest hanging out at the Hacker Dojo (http://www.hackerdojo.com) There's a physical job corkboard in the lobby if you're interested in finding cofounders, however getting the information will require you to be physically present.

There are people there from 10am to 5am daily (yes, we are open that late). There are around 8 YC companies that frequent the hangout. I've also met 4 other mini teams there who are applying for the next YC round.

I suggest anyone in Silicon Valley looking for cofounders to come to the Founder Institute mixer meetup event held at the Hacker Dojo this Tuesday. Details here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158007268648
1. The Count of Monte Cristo
2. The Great Gatsby

And yet I read mostly non-fiction... :)

It's hard to say these are my absolute top two (that's probably an eight-way tie in reality), but Gatsby definitely hit me at a pivotal time and became a subtle but big influence, and Monte Cristo was just a brilliantly entertaining yet very deep and touching story.
I don't recall anyone promising that, but I apologize if you feel mislead.
A Story of Bold Risk Paying Off (Cirque du Soleil Founder)
In Today's News:
The Canadian billionaire arrived in Kazakhstan on Sunday aboard a Russian spacecraft, along with Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and American astronaut Michael Barratt, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

Where it all began...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Laliberté
Guy Laliberté was born into middle-class family in Québec City, Canada in 1959, the son of a nurse and a public relations executive for the Alcan Aluminum Corporation.[3] By the time he was sixteen, he had decided to pursue a career in the performing arts after producing several high school events. After graduating, he became involved with a folk music group called "La Gueule du loup", playing the accordion andharmonica. His work on the folk music scene was what introduced him to the art of street performance. After quitting college, Laliberté toured Europe as a folk musician and busker. He had learned the art of fire breathing by the time he returned home to Quebec in 1979. Although he became employed at a hydroelectric power plant in James Bay, his job ended after only three days due to a labour strike. Supported by his unemployment insurance, he decided not to look for another job. Instead, he joined the stilt-walking troupe "Les Échassiers de Baie-Saint-Paul" that was led by Gilles Ste-Croix. Shortly afterward, Laliberté and Ste-Croix organized a summer fair in Baie-Saint-Paul with the help of Laliberté's soon-to-be business partner Daniel Gauthier.[4][5]
This festival, called the "La Fête Foraine", first took place in July 1982 touring Quebec. Ironically, the event was barred from its host town shortly thereafter because of complaints by local citizens. Laliberté managed and produced the fair over the next couple years, nurturing it into a moderate financial success.[4] But it was during 1983 that the government of Quebec gave him a 1.5 million dollar grant to host a production the following year as part of Quebec's 450th anniversary celebration of the French explorer Jacques Cartier's discovery of Canada. Laliberté named his creation "Le Grand Tour du Cirque du Soleil."[6][7] The celebration turned out to be a critical and commercial success. Although the first tour of Cirque only netted a forty-thousand dollar profit, it allowed him to sign almost 1.5 million dollars in contracts. They had been performing exclusively for Canadian audiences until 1987 when Laliberté risked everything and took his circus to the Los Angeles Arts Festival. It cost the production's entire cash reserve to make the move. Had it not been successful, he would not have had the money to move the troupe back home to Québec.[8]

In Today's News
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/10/11/space.clown.lands/index.html

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, sporting a foam clown nose, landed back on Earth after a $35 million working vacation at the international space station.

Guy Laliberte, wearing a foam clown nose, smiles after landing Sunday in Kazakhstan.
OSX has definitely won me over. My background is primarily in Linux. About 5 or 6 years of exclusive Linux use on my personal machines. Most of my needs are mostly online or a terminal window so I can adapt to new platforms pretty quickly. I don't really care what OS I use for the most part. Linux lost me on good power management support. I really need to be able to sleep a machine and have it wake-up quickly and properly 99% of the time. OSX is the only OS out there today I've found can do that reliability. The system is back up with networking in the time it takes to open the lid and put your hands on the keyboard. I still run a Linux VM though because macports & fink are not all that fantastic. I still want the safety of a familiar Linux environment from time to time.
http://imgur.com/wPIfm

So now the left is also the masculine image, but the lips have had their contrast increased.

Actually just playing with it, I can't turn the whole male image into the female one or vice versa. The GIMP tools probably have a subtly different effect than the ones the paper used.
EC2 - what  next
DNA sequencing in a holey new way
I've never understood the purpose of co-founders. If you are a hacker, create your product. Then figure out were you need help and find it.

It's hard to overstate the amount that one additional person can dilute the efficiency of a one-person business.
Ask HN: Fios or Optimum Online Boost?
Hey guys,

I'm in NYC and about to move. It looks like I can either get Fios 20/15 or Optimum's Boost 30/5. Any one have experience with both? Or even if you have either I'd love to hear what you think of it.
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Ulysses - James Joyce (keep going back to it - to understand it better)
Dostoevsky, The Double

Keith Johnstone, Impro
really? many lucrative niche opportunities? Then surely we'd have heard at least some examples of that on techcrunch. Hell if their other coverage is any indication, they would have made it seem like the norm by now. But hey if your version is correct, then you can find plenty of success stories where a niche business guy, got a programmer partner without having to pay thousands of dollars in the process.

I just don't buy that. Looking for a programmer partner as a biz guy with just an idea, is the equivalent of looking for VC funding with an idea...it might happen, but chances are it's a huge waste of time.
It was the last year of college, my student card had only 2 months left before it expired. I deliberately lost it and got a replacement which extended the expiration date to 3 years more since new cards were in for next years batch of students. Needless to say I've enjoyed the student discounts all this time.

Hacking Bus Tickets: I was a poor student at the time and 'all day' bus tickets were expensive for me. After 1 week of paying full prices, I had collected enough tickets to duplicate the fonts using photoshop and print my own tickets :D

Coke Machine: At school there was a vending machine where if you pressed the coke button multiple times and fast enough, it would give u 2 cokes for the price of 1.

School Passwords: I was 14 I think, coded up a basic popup box in VB saying 'Please verify your username and password', the input was sent to a txt file and there was a nice little Netscape Navigator icon to make it seem legit lol. I had the .exe running on startup on maybe 2-3 computers. Over 1 week I had hundreds of passwords including the network administrator pass. :D
I'll venture a guess you've never heard of the git hosts that only offer private plans. Allowing people to post public code for free is fundamental to our business model and a major reason why we're successful.
I see that the title was changed back to how it appeared on the site. I actually meant this as a starting point for thoughts on programs such as YC supporting social causes to some extent. Access to a program where people makes things, access to the YC alumni community.

It is a resource that can be used for other purposes.
If you can save 1-1.5k in purchase price than over the life of the computer you've saved 1-1.5k, especially if you can't perceive or don't feel any difference in quality. For most people that's a significant chunk of change.
Partnerships have a good track record. I think they add some consistency to the performance.
neat, but using wine to run the windows telnet client just to get ansi fonts and colors is a bit silly.
I was lucky enough to write software for government supercomputers and work with government scientists. From these experiences, I've come to the realization that "science has turned into data management" is completely the wrong conclusion. In 99% of scientific supercomputing studies, if you do not know what you are looking for (or at least have a very good guess) before you start looking, then you will not find anything in your data -- you only have time to code and wait for a few analyses.

Unfortunately, the systems that scientists study with supercomputing are often beyond our understanding. Even with the supercomputers, we can not form good hypotheses and therefore we learn very little.
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Lessons Learned: Innovation inside the box
Ask HN: Voting Do Over?
I confess. I have a quick trigger finger. On more than one occasion, somebody on HN has said something that caused me to vote them down, sometimes, even before I finished reading their comment. On other occasions, I've read the comment, but hadn't parsed it properly. OK, and a few times, too much coffee has made me actually miss the up arrow, and hit the down arrow instead.

On all these occasions, I have felt a little guilty. Not enough to lose sleep, but still, if I had the ability to go back in time those two seconds and undo the vote, I would do so.

My thought is that, if I down vote somebody, I should lose my down arrow, but my up-arrow should remain, in case I have a change of heart. Similarly, I suppose, I may change my mind about an up-vote, so the reverse logic would also apply.

This would save me the trouble of actually carefully digesting what my fellow HN readers have written before voting, while still preserving my guilt free state of mind.
Self-posting is cool. Self-posting and then finding 10 of your friends to up-mod is uncool.
Certainly, I have no trouble believing that - especially with commercial software in the domain that has traditionally been Mac's strength, such as video and graphics stuff.

What I am really curious about are the motivations for using Macs by highly technical developers who are not otherwise into that kind of stuff. This means people whose use of a machine consists, at least 90% of the time, of basic things like a web browser, command-line terminal and/or SSH, an IM client, an MP3 player, maybe an IDE, and so on. It seems to me that if they wanted pretty aesthetics they could do a contemporary Linux desktop environment and reap the benefits, but they insist that their productivity is greatly enhanced by Mac's basic UI features and the sort of environmental/ecosystem integration to which you allude. I personally cannot see how, although I'm a huge fan of the magnetic power clip as much as the next guy -- power sockets that go bad due to the cable being jerked around at weird angles are my #1 problem with laptops, period.
Quantum Psychology, Robert Anton Wilson
Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
American Gods is awesome. One of Neil Gaiman's best works, along with the Sandman series.
Spell checkers don't help with this level of poor language. And these people do use me as an editor when doing presentations and the like. But I get to see the full gory disaster that is their initial version, and what I'm saying is, I've learned not to discount their intelligence based on that.
I'd actually like to be able to unselect either up or down arrow, returning my vote to its neutral state. I end up clicking on one of them by accident disturbingly often.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (shame on you if you don't know it)

and Shogun, by James Clavell
You might consider the Lenovo netbooks - also virtuous for their sturdy construction. Although they may be a little underpowered for your tastes, depending on what you're doing, my friend has 6-7 hours of battery life on his.
I don't know that that's true. There are a lot of open-source projects that still use CVS because they always have, and it works for them.
The point is not whether or not he's right (which is an incredibly tricky question, actually, when you stop generalizing in a cartoonish way), it's that he's presenting something as fact which is definitely not provable.
This article reminded me about a recent conversation I had with someone who asked me about difference between an excuse and a legitimate reason.

My response: Excuses are reasons that you didn't do something that you were supposed to be able to do.
Canon HV 10 HDV Camcorder
The name Canon has always meant photographic and broadcast television cameras with optical excellence, advanced image processing, superb performance, and the latest in technological advancements. Canon's new High Definition video camcorder is no exception.
+1 for Shogun. It's one hell of a book.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of the few books I've ever read where I practically celebrated when I finished because I didn't have to read it anymore. I read it (and forced myself to finish it) because so many people seem to absolutely love it, but I found myself having to force myself to pick it back up like a job.

So, if I may ask someone who cites it as his/her favorite book: would you mind writing up a comment with why you found it so profound and enjoyable?

I'm really curious because I feel like I'm in the minority for not appreciating it.
Sometimes a work is best appreciated as a meditation on a particular feeling, and the evolution thereof. Catch-22 was like that for me.

It is the same humor, told over and over, but at the beginning of the book you're laughing while at the end of the book you're crying because the humor in the situation has turned to horror at the inhumanity of it.
Right, if there's no difference, that's obvious. I'm mostly referring to those who say something to the effect of "Mac's are better, but I can't pay the 1.5K difference".

If you aim to be the best at your field, it's imperative you're using the best tools - or at least the best you can afford. If you're using your computer to make a living, you can afford it.