skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the implication is that any languages built into Visual Studio get an automatic stamp of approval from corporate management, which is why we get millions of lines of code written in C# and VB.net and not, say, Boo or IronPython. Thus, F# will have something previous ML dialects do not: mainstream credibility.

Of course, one could make the same argument for J# -- which shipped in Visual Studio but is now being discontinued for lack of popularity.
I really think through the concepts. Usually dont go as far as the coding. Lots of mockups, design, specs, and sometime even database design.
Which is/was the same philosophy behind Symbian and Windows Mobile.

Suffice to say, that flexibility comes at non-trivial cost.
'rally' ? :)

oops. It seems that I am unable to actually edit it!
"WSJ: How do you plan to make money?

Mr. Wheatley: Scaling is the most important thing at the moment."

This is not criticism on DailyBooth but the answer above is basically a "we have no idea" and it amazes me that I and everyone here on HN kill themselves to build in legitimate business models into their apps and there are still folks who get funding who (seemingly) have no plan at all.

Or is the revenue idea super secret?
this is the 2nd posthumous short story collection of his released, i think. the first was one was a far cry from 'bagambo snuff box' and 'welcome to the monkey house', but it offered an interesting window into his development as a writer. i'll definitely pick this up when it's released
The last figure I saw for the average speed of crosstown traffic was 6MPH.

The crosstown M23 bus is scheduled to travel the two miles between 11th Avenue and 1st Avenue in 24 minutes.
Dammit ;P
A more apt title might be 'How to Learn Enough Japanese to get the Basic Gist of a Martial Arts Book in 90 Days'

This article is all kinds of wrong. You don't learn language by making lists of words. Think of a word like 'but'. In Japanese, there could be 5 different words that 'translate' into 'but'. But you can also use tone of voice or draw out the end of a sentence to convey the meaning of 'but'. In other contexts, you might not want to say 'but' at all.

This all boils down to the author's definition of 'learn' and indeed 'knowing'. If after 90 days, the author is able to say that he 'knows' Japanese, then his bar for 'knowing' is a lot lower than mine.
Historically the climate has always changed it hasn't shown any evidence of stopping. As far as it being a human driven event, we have made massive changes to the environment to say that we have caused zero impact would be incredibly foolish. On the other hand the current climate change models can't predict known data (the past) so their future predictions are highly suspect as well.
Facebook business pages may need DMCA copyright take-down contact info
Hops
Bing Is Not Gaining.
most stated reasons for college/education in general serve as justification for the existing system.

That sounds right to me. What would you suggest as reasonable goals for after-high-school schooling that would make for a better system?
Trains/Fare/Accommodation Availability Between Important Stations
For me, right now, this is pretty bad. I do switch tasks: my IDE (real work), my email client (not real work), and HN (not work at all).

Another pernicious effect of GUI, for me is the mess I do of my file hierarchy when I have it. Even I knew the command line.
Dell Fail - When Customer Service screws up
Undergraduate major sequences can work that way too. Depending on how frequently classes are offered, and with what other conflicts with other classes, it can be impossible to complete a major sequence in less than four years from college entry even for a student who has advanced courses in the major and a year or more of AP credit upon college entrance. Some colleges make that four-year experience worthwhile, but at other colleges that is mostly marking time.
I think its better to do whatever the A/B test says works better for your particular users.

I burned two hours a week ago trying to test that but my CSS and lightbox implementation did not play well with each other and I eventually scrapped it. I'll take another stab at it in November -- no killing the magic pumpkin before Halloween.

I have compelling evidence that using a lightbox to "pre-sell" the form/download increases conversion rates, at least among my users. Try clicking on the giant image in the middle of my home page -- it works beautifully.
I consider the act of flipping the coin part of the process.
I've been a Dvorak user for over a decade, and have never turned back. However, I think the only reasons to switch are (one of): physical problems, and geek factor. I didn't get much of a speed boost, and I didn't have any pain or anything. For most normal people, it is not practical to switch, because you'll have too many days of horribly slow typing while you learn.

I just learned it for the same reason geeks generally use cutting edge stuff: Because I'm willing to try cool things out, and pay an initial learning curve cost on the chance that I might find something better to adopt and use.

I wrote more extensively on the Dvorak layout here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-437068.html#437068

I agree that using Dvorak is something you do for long-term benefit or prevention. Switching now probably isn't going to help the immediate physical problems of the OP.
The difference was Spanish at 14, German at 21. From a language learning perspective 14 is already past the age where there's much innate.
I'm available Oct 22 to Oct 29 and Nov 2 to meet up.

EDIT: I'm available Oct 22 to Oct 29 and Nov 2 for meetups.
World University rankings for 2008 - http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-uni...

Seems the US does indeed have a lot of the top-ranking universities up there
On purpose?! By a company that chooses pink as the color for special edition Zune, to just name one example of demonstrable lack of taste? I don't think they are more subtle than, er, Yahoo or what about Tumblr... need I go on?
Maybe in the head of one single advertising guy who wanted to.. but then again, how many advertising people know that GNU even exists? Let alone iterational humour.
> We only have vague understandings of the macroeconomics of finance, so that stuff isn't really worthwhile to people not interested in economics.

Maybe that is precisely why the Great Depression, this current mild depression/steep recession, and other financial messes throughout history catch people who "only have vague understandings of the macroeconomics of finance" by surprise.
Sector/Sphere is significantly faster than Hadoop
An item from a dead HN thread

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=632022

commented on plausible interpretations of "bing" as a Chinese word. Without tone markings, it's hard to know whether joking that it means "ice" makes more sense than joking that it means "sick," and in any event the official Microsoft rendering of "Bing" in Chinese turns the pronunciation into "bi ying," as indicated in the link above.
College doesn't take four years now. I finished in 3. AP credit from high school, 2 summer sessions, and a few extra courses was all it took.

Anyone ambitious enough can do it. The first thing to do is stop thinking like the crowd.

Default thinking is for most people, but not everyone. I suspect most people here already know that.
The VC gender gap - Are VCs sexist?
What was your major? Can any entering freshman with no previous courses in the major department finish in three years? (That was barely possible for my major at my alma mater, back in the 1970s.)

Were you working to pay your bills while going to college? That makes a difference for a lot of students too.

Props to you for doing something besides the default.
Tool of the Day:  Drag and Drop Your Photos With Dropico
Not really. Placebos are cheap to make, and require the user to believe -- i.e. benefit from marketing.

In our society, I could see the following: the $10 sexily-marketed placebo pill / treatment must be better than the $2 knock-off, so people buy the $10 pill. Okay, they likely won't be buying $50k / year treatments, but all of a sudden the meds only cost cents to produce.

Pharma => Apple
I got hired away from college and in some ways I still kind of regret not finishing. I'm glad that in my career, you don't really need a degree to succeed. A lot of my peers are degree-less, but having at least a Bachelor's does seem to give people an edge in the hiring process. For that, I usually blame HR.

I did complete 4 years of high school in 3 years, though, by hitting college classes at night for high school credit, taking one or two credit classes through the school district each summer and by limiting the number of non-credit or decreased-credit school-day options such as study hall or teacher aide. I do wish that it was as easy to buck the college system. Usually, though, pre-reqs are structured so you have to push though no fewer than eight semesters in order to accomplish everything to get your Bachelor's.
It depends if you're willing to take classes over the summer as well, it's certainly possible.
It probably shouldn't, however colleges have a monetary incentive to extend your duration as a student.
I agree with the proposition that documentation for available libraries is extremely important. However--isn't there always a "however..." when someone starts by agreeing with the thesis?--anyways, however...

Before I start saying "The most important," I think of a story allegedly about Winston Churchill. At a party, a dowager rebuked him for his inebriation: "Winston , you are disgracefully drunk!"

He steadied himself and glared at her: "And you, Madam, are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober."

My clumsy point being, you can write libraries for a good language. You can document them. If the documentation is missing, someone can and eventually will write it. And anyone can write documentation, just like anyone can write a library. No committees. No endless blog posts debating how the fourth paragraph's third word should be capitalized.

But fundamental language features simply cannot be bolted on. Even if they fit with the language's philosophy and implementation, it is a tremendous investment to get a new feature added to a language.

Some languages do not admit new features easily. Type erasure, anyone? Some cultures do not admit new features easily. Closures, anyone? Both are examples of places where Java couldn't or wouldn't add features cleanly.

There is no such issue with documentation. Anyone can document something, and everyone should. You don't need to make it official, either. Blog about a feature or library, and thanks to Google your blog post becomes an ipso facto part of the library's documentation.

For my money, the measure of a library's documentation is whether I can type the name of a library into Google and find the answer to my questions on the top half of the first page.
Willingness to take classes during the summer can be constrained by the necessity of working for expenses during the summer.
> I could easily play the other side, but the sentiment for a dollar "collapse" is a little strong in the short term.

That is a huge point. It's unfortunate that the value assigned to non-backed currency like the dollar is largely psychological. If enough people believe its value is going down they will shed it and the domino effect makes that outcome a self-fulfilling prophecy. For that reason I think we need to focus, as you have done, on reasons the dollar remains a safe bet.
But the limitations on Nintendo are less than on the NSS (naked short seller), the NSS can know that they are selling someone else's shares that have already been borrowed by someone else, indeed they can sell more shares than exist as they're not actually required to locate the shares before they sell them.

Theoretically Nintendo could sell more than they can ever manufacture, but they at least are able to manufacture the product at the point at which they pre-sell it.

The NSS is more like Nintendo now pre-selling a Star Trek holo-deck - they'd know it's almost certainly not achievable.
./copying.lib 100666 0 0 62222 7270115236 11631 0 ustar user group
A blog post on "Get visitors to read and remember your home page"
I think the most amazing thing about this article is that it was written (or at least bylined) by a sitting senator. I don't agree with many of Sen. Alexander's political positions generally, but wow! That's a policy paper right there and a rare thing for a politician to do, generally. Basically, this piece seems intended to 'pull' the average student back towards a four-year average by giving them opportunities to graduate early. However, I feel it doesn't actually incentivize them to graduate unless they're already driven to do so.

@yummyfajitas, tokenadult, It would definitely be interesting to graduate in three years, but I think the better option is to regear the fourth year as a transition year, with few classes and geared towards internships, externships, coops, and on-campus research. It should propel you to grad school, your vocation, or even give you a chance to meet co-founders and enter startupdom.
Bing is not good?
Yankee Welfare
I'll be spending some time on this.

Glusterfs, Hadoop, Pohmelfs, there are a lot of interesting developments in this sphere.
7 deadly sins of Microsoft Windows 7
Actually WebQL is pretty amazing. A simple program like select * from links within http://www.cnn.com to an advanced 10 page script to pull and merge multiple sources. The code is real easy to read and if you have any kind of SQL background very easy to learn. We're just always keeping our eyes out for something better/cheaper (ie free) :)
This reminds me of the 'Peter Principle" which states that

* In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence
Also by what classes are offered during the summer. In the computer science departments I've been in, junior and senior level classes aren't offered during the summer.
Despite the purple prose, I generally agree with Aaron's sentiments about great programming ("the best", I can't say, but definitely "great"). He is, however, also very rude, at least in his online persona. Having "a forceful, uncompromising vision" is an orthogonal issue to how you choose to communicate.
It's incredible really that this was allowed to happen - if you've enough money then you're allowed to sell shares in a company you don't have any interest in (ie don't own shares of). Idiocy.

Anyone want to buy Manhattan, ... the title deeds, oh I'll show you them next week.
Not to forget daemontools.
I have dealt with qmail for ten years. It is a complete joy once you have it up and running. You literally can stop thinking about it because it always works. However, getting it up and running requires adding in antispam, antivirus, virtual mailboxes, some additional protective and administrative patches, some extra stuff for SMTP-AUTH, SSL/TLS, reporting, and perhaps a few more patches for fun.

Patches, you say? Well, I'm glad you really like source code, because that's exactly what you'll be dealing with to get all of this up and running. I've done it many times before manually and it takes around ten hours to do it.

While Aaron's point is that djb's code, vision and discipline are possibly unmatched (I concur on all counts), the software (principally qmail) is antiquated in the sense that nobody needs just that one part in order to run a semi-modern email system.

So, as you start downloading the .tgz for qmail and begin studying it like good campers, remember that this wonderful code is, by itself, not up to the job that it purports to serve.

-- Lots of love,

Someone who currently runs two qmail systems and will never go to the trouble of setting one up again
Software Peter principle
can someone post if the user that posted this link uses a Mac ?

Seriously, could this article exhibit any more of a bias ?
As noted in something I posted yesterday, hadoop is about being able to scale linearly, not raw performance so it's no surprise that they underperform.

The really interesting question is how Sector/Sphere scales and how well it deals with outages.
What Mother never told you about SVN Branching and Merging
Hacker. News. Is. Sooo. Slow. It. Is. The. Slowest. Site. Ever. Yawn.
Yes, it is a different link...

But it just lists more detailed statements of opinion, mainly based on predictions made using computer models.

I was never any good at science because I've only got two heads (most Martian scientists have at least three heads). But even two headed martians know that computer models are about as useful as catwalk models for predicting the future.
One of the comments after the original article caught my eye, so I'll post it here as well:

"It has been my experience that people who read books like this are an immediate no-hire. They're the one who have time to read books about programming in their free time, but never actually program in their free time. The worst programmers we've hired have the largest programming book collections.

Perhaps I'm in an odd part of the industry. I've also found that having a CS degree correlates strongly with no-hire as well. Our best hires have been those who've had to write a lot of software in the pursuit of some unrelated degree."

--above comment by mpbk on original article page

I hate to see comments like this. Partially because I'm a book rat and partially because I have a CS degree. I speculate that it reflects experience with hiring people who picked up a CS degree from an average program simply when it was a "hot" degree rather than actually being interested in software development.

Don't great hackers like to read about hacking as well as actually hacking? I go through periods of struggling through tech books followed by attempting to apply what I've just read in working code.

Re: the no-hire function of being able to talk about one of the people interviewed in the book: Everybody wants to have the "one filter to sort them" interview question for candidates. Guess what. It ain't that easy. You want to bring on only great candidates? You need to look at several things. I would argue that one really good filter is the examination of previously produced code by a candidate by more than one person on your team and then, horrors, a discussion of that code during an actual face-to-face interview with the candidate.

Atwood is probably exaggerating a bit in his no-hire flag comment, but a PHB out on the net is going to read this, pick one of the names at random, and spit it out at a candidate sometime soon. And a whole new class of stupid interview questions is born . . .
At least a few consumers think location-based ads are useful (survey)
I recently read an article (or maybe it was 60 min) that highlighted the distressing (to drug makers) increase in placebo effectiveness over the last couple decades. Big pharma's best drugs are now having trouble beating out placebos. Anyone have the source?
The range of temperatures over which water is a liquid (assuming reasonable pressures) is well within the range of temperatures that sustain life on this planet.
I was surprised and looked him up on wikipedia -- he did indeed write daemontools.
The Best Marketers Are Engineers
> since my last name begins with "W", I had trouble getting classes in almost every other department.

Why on earth would that be a factor ?
The costs are far higher than people realize to start a regulated finance business. While the author mentions making money from the "get-go", one cannot do that in the banking industry.

First off, you need a very large capital deposit to start a new bank (millions), depending upon charter type and domicile. That money is necessary just to meet the absolute and relative (eg Risk-Based Capital) capital ratios. You don't get to spend it.

Second, plan on spending $100,000 or more just on the application process. Oh, and plan on the application review taking at least 6 months.

Third, you have to invest in the appropriate infrastructure (software, systems, office, etc) before you even open for business.

Fourth, you have to market/advertise to attract deposits.

All of these items (and probably more) most occur PRIOR TO the opportunity to make any revenue. And even if you are successful on the revenue side, banking is a game of narrow margins.
Yeah its not terribly accurate, but for us, more accurate than the others.
College shouldn't take four years, but it shouldn't take three years either.

Everyone works differently, and everyone has a different rythm. Some people know what they want to do for the rest of their lives at 13, some don't know into their twenties. Everyone should be able to adapt their college experience to their own needs and wants.
I can't read anything Aaron writes without my mind flying back to his seminal essay on the unanticipated softness of the human breast:

http://them.ws/post/1736/testing_something
Proposal: Hack Free CSS with the @unsupported Directive
I think that's for different reasons though. Facebook is about communication with friends, and allowing for quick and easy photo blogging fits well with that.

Personally, I don't want to look at classifieds on facebook, because it's not really a 'community' type of thing to do.
Why you need a proper and fundamental education to be successful in life [2007]
A better answer would have been:

"Exactly the same way twitter plan to make money!"
Functional Programming with Clojure (pay per view, has anyone used this ?)
Shouldn't your major play a factor in how many years it takes?
the traditional (if time-consuming) direct outreach to the intended audience may still be better

If by better you mean something involving a smaller ROI, then I guess you're right.
Interesting business model, screen casts pay-per-view.
Bing is not kayak, eventhough it looks like it?
I agree with your last point. It's too bad the Apple brand has been reduced to that of a designer fashion by the masses, or some kind of status symbol.

It's like some people want a BMW just to impress the neighbors with a badge, while others can appreciate the level of engineering and the minds that went into the precision you can feel when you are driving it.

I like to make purchasing decisions based on the competency of the company in making what they make, but unfortunately most people don't think that way so a phone like this doesn't even get a chance.
Some people know what they want to do for the rest of their lives at 13, some don't know into their twenties.

In general, when considering a big ticket (e.g. $100,000) purchase, I usually wait until I know what I want to buy before writing a check. Maybe these twenty-somethings should do the same.
Danny Sullivan: How Link Spammers Killed My Wife’s Web Site
As I work at a good sized institution I gotta disagree. The effect I actually see is that students who spend more time at our university take up disproportional resources and end up costing the university money - Since students who take >4 years typically fill up required courses then drop out - the courses aren't filled efficiently. There are many other reasons as well for a University to want "graduate in 4", but that's the first ones to come to mind.

It's a major program here and the administration has been researching and passing new tuition policies. You can read a report done by the Office of Institutional Research and Planning here at KU: http://www2.ku.edu/~oirp/GIF/GIF_TaskForceReport_090205.pdf