skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
there's a fun point. If the only way to use it is connected to the internet - how are you going to be allowed to use it in a test/exam scenario?
I think he was implying "and selling real estate". And everyone would choose the completely liquid asset over the one that takes months to sell.
BeatPort dominates the market for non-vinyl sales of electronic dance music.
I share the hope for PySide. It's a shame how poor the options currently are for cross platform gui development. Qt, python, and an LGPL license will be fantastic...
ha, only if millionare = 1M Linden bucks = what, about $2200?
I enjoy Jason's work (although he is an aquired taste) and think he is very smart, but my completely-legally-untrained intuition is that he is wide open for a law suit.

The distinctions he makes between what he does with his conference and what the people he is attacking at doing may not seem so clear to people in a legal setting.

But my opinion isn't worth much on this one.
I replied to you above, but I'll reply to your specific example here. Your example is really not how PL people talk about type inference. However, you're right that you wouldn't call this example type-checking either... it would probably be a fuzzier term such as "reflection" or "introspection". But certainly not type inference. Do you understand what the wikipedia article you linked is about? Because it's NOT about introspecting the type of a contained object within a container. It's about statically making proofs of the type of a variable based on its usage.
foobar2000 requires a little more finagling than winAMP to set up, but it can be very nice when you do. It's also significantly lighter than winamp. They both do things that iTunes won't (in particular play flac and ogg, which is a very important feature for me).
Now that they have the suggested partitions, I think it has one the simplest text installers out there. I wonder what the adoption rate of the new smtpd will be.
Daniel Everett talks about the Pirahã language, a language without recursion
I have not seen anyone who is not weird in some perspective. Working environments are places where collective goal has to be far greater than the individual differences. If management or team members have to bring such discussions, usually the problem is not in weirdness of individuals. Team building and other socializing in non work settings can fix such problem. Non-technical managers tend to approach such things as some serious problems with people and try to fix them. Technical people can see that this manager does not get it and the environment soon turns into a bunch of passion less workers.
There seems to be an inverse relationship between social skills and an interest in technology. It doesn't surprise me that the better a programmer you are, the more likely you are to have social difficulties.

The extreme example of this are those on the autism spectrum; the high functioning ones tend to be very talented in math/tech and extremely "weird."
How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months
Ask HN: dealing with poisonous coworker
I have a coworker with some good qualities. He's smart and driven. He churns out code (working 24 hours a day) in our machine learning niche. But he's an asshat.

When he's not sucking up to senior engineers and management, he's busy trying to replace other junior engineer's code because its "not good enough" (although perfectly functional, fast enough and as bug free as the stuff he replaces it with) or not being done quickly enough. He desperately wants to be seen as the technical lead on our engine and is using lots of asshat tricks to achieve it. I think its his smugness that most grates. Plus his addiction to changing interfaces and replacing things just so he can claim to have written all the code. He also tends to not document anything he does so that he has to ride to our rescue later.

He's incredibly demotivating to work with and really I just want to stay as far away as possible but in this job market..

Any advice from the assembled masses on how to deal with someone like this?
"So what have we really gained here? All we've done is made sure the initial positioning of the coin is random. The bias in the toss itself is still there, but we're hiding it by making sure the caller doesn't know the initial state of the coin."

Assuming the cupped hands shake produces a random starting position, you've evenly distributed the toss bias, so the result of a series of tosses should be evenly distributed.

"If that's the case, then why not:
a) Don't even toss the coin at all. If we're convinced that the act of the ref shaking the coin around in his cupped hands gives a random starting position, then why not use that in place of the coin toss?"

That's an excellent simplification, but it just doesn't feel as dramatic and traditional to decide on shaking cupped hands. You need the toss for effect.
There's something about this that makes me think that a very fast, low level statically typed programming environment that feels like a dynamic high level language is just around the corner. (I guess the OCaml folks would tell me it's already here.)

Java does very nicely, but it doesn't feel like a dynamic HLL. Even if your type metadata is all managed by the IDE, it's still pretty obtrusive. Also, the language has become pretty big. I'd like to see a rather small, minimalist language that enabled monkey-patching (for debugging, not implementation magic) and micro-iterative interactive programming.
I don't know, but I met someone who makes her living setting up banks. Since she was a captive audience and the same lightbulb went off in my head....

I found out that there are a couple of pieces of technology that you need. For each of them, there's a dominant vendor that makes it easy to get approval and some second tiers that make it possible. If your goal is to set up a real bank, you can't save money by rolling your own.
How does biology explain the low numbers of women in computer science?
First, I didn't build the language/compiler myself (it was written in my group before I arrived). It would be embedded in other languages, much as SQL is: you execute queries (first against data on a local disk distributed via version control, later against a web service).

The queries you'd make would be like:
"Give me difference of (union of ( all machines running 64 bit Linux , all machine in cluster "match", all machines in wast coast datacenter )) machines starting "box10" and then show me the vlans these machines are on". Of course this would be in a much more terse (but very easy to learn) language. Perl/Python/C code (and through a CLI tool, shell scripts) would then do operations on returned values (i.e. parallel ssh to execute a command, parallel TCP call).
John Deere and iPhones
Analyse clickstream data to provide implicit feedback
An honest question: in this era of blogs and online content, what is the advantage of being pithy and not getting the full explanation (since this was a blog not a printed article in this case)?
Interesting that it has such a positive spin on IV. I've seen more than a few threads about Myrvhold here, mostly about how awful patent trolls are.
I got around this problem by planning my meals well in advance. I stick to the plan around 90% of the time, which means that my shopping list is easy to generate and my unplanned eating is easy to keep track of.
Statistical Machine Translation for Query Expansion in Answer Retrieval
Use ice and ibuprofen to reduce swelling - once swelling is reduced, things get better. (At least this was my experience.)
I tell my kids that everyone is weird. The people who scare me are the ones who have no visible signs of it.
And don't give up after a few days. It took me a month or so to learn how to get the pixel accuracy that I had with the mouse that was a month without pain. Moving your thumb v.s. moving your wrist really helps.
I'll bet a robust, end-to-end enterprise coffee shop does. None of those dynamically typed, scripting, agile coffee shops for me.
They wrote a chapter on global warming despite knowing nothing about the subject. Their writing contains gross factual errors including the claims that the earth has been cooling for the past few years and that increased levels of atmospheric carbon do not necessarily warm the planet ceteris paribus. Brad Delong's post on the matter is pretty objective, and pretty damning.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/10/sigh-last-post-on-supe...

These guys deserve what they're getting. They should have stuck to small scale sociology in areas no-one else was much familiar with.
It probably goes with being a recently credentialed actuary. It can feel like a job with the government at times, probably because a lot of the work is related to regulatory requirements.

Not to say there aren't entrepreneurial professionals, or entrepreneurial actuaries.
advice in this thread is all over the place. that makes sense i guess, because a lot of different things might work, depending on where the problem originates. so i feel as qualified as anybody to throw my two cents in.

when i was younger, say up to my mid-twenties or so, my wrists were indestructible. i routinely played games of asteroids that would last for eight or nine hours, on one of the original atari stand-up game cabinets circa 1980, that applies just slightly less force than necessary to actually snap your wrists in half. at the time i wasn't even aware that the game was an ergonomic disaster, such was the power of my wrists.

fast-forward to the year 2000. i am now almost 40. i went to california extreme (www.caextreme.org -- great fun if you're into that sort of thing), and they of course had several asteroids machines. i was able to play about five minutes before my wrists were absolutely on fire.

same thing started happening to my mouse wrist, at about the same time. i was all of a sudden acutely aware of all the cables and tendons in there, groaning under the pressure. my wrists would sometimes go numb.

now that my wrists were forcing me to concentrate on them, i noticed that i almost always had my entire forearm really tensed up and cramped while typing and mousing. it had never been a problem before, due to my younger super-wrists, but now it was.

so all i had to do was take it easier on myself. notice when i'm tensing up, and stop it. along with the usual stuff: take a break every few hours. get up and think about something else.
In my experience, yes - it's a huge resource hog. Up until recently, I'd leave iTunes open all the time. After a couple days of being open without a restart, iTunes would have claimed ~1.2GB of memory. Pretty ridiculous. It's even worse if you use coverflow.

That being said, it's still my favorite audio player. It's one of only two programs I miss when I'm working on Linux.
Unwillingness due to what, though?

Because, from what I've seen, a lot of people can be very excellent programmers in one language, but be unable to learn to program in another.

Actually, I don't think it's really "less experienced programmers". Several of my computer science peers (I'm 23) -- inexperienced as professionals, but very smart -- will try the same problem in four or five languages, just to learn the language, and have no fears about jumping into a new language to start a new project. On the other hand, I know some excellent older programmers (late 40s) who know C++ super well, are willing to apply jaw-droppingly complex template metaprogramming, but who only reluctantly use Python and won't touch Ruby or Scala. It's probably more of a cultural thing.
Knowing Verizon, until notified otherwise assume no WiFi and no built-in GPS.
To most people I talk to (and my personal belief), Verizon's commercials are directed squarely at Apple. I was hoping to have a choice in US carriers, but this ad seems to kill that possibility.
On top of regular exercise, I also notice that staying properly hydrated and making sure I get enough B vitamins also helps. I try to drink water 1:1 with the amount of coffee I drink if not more. And some cheap vitamin supplements for the B vitamins work well.

I have similar wrist pain that comes and goes, and when it gets bad I just take it easy and make sure to drink a lot of water and that tends to ease the pain.

Also taking over the counter anti-inflammatories can help in the interim period until you gain some wrist strength. I don't take any drugs regularly, and I notice that 2 ibuprofen in the morning usually takes care of it for 24 hours. Obviously you're not going to want to take them every day for a long time :)

Lastly try to pay attention to what you do with your hands when you sleep. If you tend to curl your fingers under your pillow or something it can make the muscles cramp up overnight and make the pain worse.
The first point hit home big time. When you're doing a startup you feel like every day is precious and the tide of change is racing along impossibly fast. It's healthy to remember that the world doesn't reinvent itself every month. The problem you're working on now will probably still be relevant in 1-2 years.
That could be an interesting business model.

Just mount a big screen on a building and an internet connection so that they can get updated around the clock and then post a few video ads there and there.
I used to use a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard, but found it was bad for me it has a required lots of pressure to push the keys. I can"t use one of them for more than a few minutes now; I can type on a Kinesis keyboard for an entire day (with proper breaks, of course). While I think the Microsoft ergonomic keyboard gets the hand spacing right, I couldn't recommended it in place of something like the Kinesis.
The droid trademark is owned by Lucasfilms??? I had thought it was just a generic word for robot (guess you do learn new things from commercials).
Could someone change the link from j.mp like to http://www.travisswicegood.com/index.php/2009/10/18/john-dee...
How slowly things change.

depends on the context. for huge macro level projects e.g. iPhone reshaping cell phone industry or FB having Google size revenue, ebay's network effects being broken, that all takes time.

but in the same time period (past 2.5 years) a lot of things have completely changed. FB platform has gone from launch to supporting companies that could IPO (and made a whole load of single developers v rich). social gaming has gone from scrabulous to now posing a credible threat to the entire console gaming industry. the wii destroyed the xbox and ps3 within its first year of launch and now sells more than both of them combined.

i'd argue that it's the faster moving trends that impact startups and startup opportunities more than the slower moving macro trends.
Can you elaborate? I didn't encounter this at all.
I thought it was an entertaining and effective way to show something mathematical to the general public, in a way that most people can relate to.

I was especially tickled near the end of the article where they described discussions on changing the overtime rules. When they mentioned the players' reaction, I thought it would turn on something related to winning, and I was surprised to learn that their objection was more playing time and more chance of injury.
Have you heard about Willow Garage?

http://www.willowgarage.com/
Maximising unit sales and maximising profits are two separate things.
"If you are interested in making games for consoles you are pretty much restricted to what the console maker's software development kit supports, which is usually C/C++. "

Unless you want to write a lisp using that c/c++ sdk and then develop with the lisp you wrote. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp). So it certainly can be done. Whether you should is another matter.

Post acquisition (by Sony) Naughty Dog seems to have shifted to c++ but seems to have shifted back partially to lisp (C++/ scheme combo as far as I can make out) for their "Uncharted" games for the PS3.(http://www.naughtydog.com/docs/Naughty-Dog-GDC08-Adventures-... Warning PDF)
If you are like me and prefer the homebrew solutions:

Take a broom handle and just rotate it in your hands for a minute. Add a string on that and a _small_ weight, and continue adding weight slowly (rolling the weight up to the bar and then back down). (edit: slowly being weekly)

Squeeze a stress ball for a solid 5 minute session in the morning.

Pushup type motions focusing on rotating through wrist angles once you are able.

I would recommend these to the healthy - if you are severely injured go to a doctor and get better first.
That is correct, but the game does use it for a lot more than just scripting.

ps: Lua, not LUA -- it's the Portuguese word for moon, not an acronym :)
Ask HN: Summary of HN logic/rules
Hi,

I just posted a bug recently (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=887533) about votes that don't count if they happen as you login, but do count if you are already logged in. People said this was intentional.

As the same time, I noticed that I cannot reply to this thread anymore because it is 1 day old. I swear that I used to be able to come back to something I posted yesterday and contribute to the discussion.

Is there a summary anywhere of the current parameters for these kind of situations, and others that are similar?

How hard would it be to establish a config file that PG uses for this kind of stuff so that he can make tweaks easier and the rest of us can read what the current parameters are?
Electronic Medical Records still look and function like 20 years ago
Ditto.

When I had problems with my wrists, I started to play the piano, a lot. I would bang on the keys fortzando and make a lot of noise (the noise got better over time :).

I also had a small stress ball that I would squeeze as hard as I could several times throughout the day.

After two or three months, the pain, numbness, and swelling were gone, and have never come back these last dozen years.
If Verizon could hold their own with Apple in terms of polish, they could go on to best them with better access to a better network and more liberal policies on how customers can use the hardware they just paid a lot of money for. (Background apps.) By doing this, they could win over the techie and hipster sets who are the trendsetters.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's in Verizon's DNA to do this.
I can't use any of those bench press or overhead press machines because my wrists are seriously ruined from gymnastics in my youth (damn pommel-horse). I have really inflexible wrists that also cannot rotate smoothly.

But I have absolutely no problem doing barbell or dumbbell exercises where I have control over the angles. I would suggest to anyone starting out to avoid machines if at all possible.
Odd. I'm still using FriendFeed, and see no difference pre- or post-Facebook.
Sure, but Verizon demonstrably has the best network overall. The fact that Verizon sucks for some locations that AT&T etc. serve well is only relevant if there are fewer cases for which that's true than when you swap the statement around.
Aeronautics design innovator Richard Whitcomb dies
Roger Lowenstein: Should we save or spend to save the economy?
Ditto. I guess it has to do with what you use FriendFeed for. In my case, news updates, RSS titles, and Twitter-plus-more.
There's a lot going on in that "tiny reptilian brain" for sure. Paleocortex seems to drive 99% of human behavior as well - consciousness may just be along for the ride as an afterthought. (Maybe even when coding, sometimes at least!)
Of course, their graphing calculator comparison neglects the fact that graphing calculators are only priced so high because they have a captive audience, like college textbooks. You can't effectively compete with TI for graphing calculators because school districts outlaw competition.
Thinks that worked for me for wrist pain:

1. Make sure you sleep with your wrists in a neutral position (i.e. straight - neither bent back or bent forward). Use wrist wraps if you absolutely have to, but better if you can manage it by force of will, or changing your sleeping position.

2. I am not sure about the ergonomic gizmos - but I replaced my keyboard with a MUCH smaller keyboard ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Hacking_Keyboard ) - there's nothing gimmicky about the keyboard except that it is short - that means that you have to reach a lot less for the mouse. This helped me enormously.

HOWEVER. It is possible that if you are experiencing wrist pain and numbness that you do not have a problem with your wrists at all but with your shoulders (pinched nerves) or other upstream body part. You really ought to ask for a referral to a specialist. If you are in the US, look for a member of American Association of Electrodiagnostic and Neuromuscular Medicine (AANEM).

What they can do (if they rule out carpal tunnel) is do a nerve test (caveat: it hurts) to pinpoint what nerve or muscle is causing the issue.

It's your livelihood - take it seriously and shake the medical profession tree until you can find someone who can help you.
That is very good advice.
Another example of a profession, in some states: interior designer. I think most of us are scared of the idea of our profession becoming a Profession.
Recently I tried to come up with a theory of developer quirkiness. Three possible explanations:

theory 1) Weird people are attracted to software development because they can interact with machines instead of people.

Theory 2) The traits that make someone a good developer and the traits that make someone quirky are correlated. People who are good at abstract problem solving tend to be less adapt at social interaction.

Theory 3) Developers are actually normal. It's the business people who are weird. They are forced to create an unnatural facade in order to present themselves to external clients and partners. Eventually, that facade becomes them. Developers do not need to interact outside the company, and are judged based on what they get done. Therefore they are free to be their natural selves.

Since I am a developer, of course I believe that Theory 3 is correct :-)
Right. Because who could build a successful company selling soft that can do some math priced at thousands of dollars? Isn't the math free?

People who would buy nice mobile interface for wolfram alpha are not the same people that buy "paper toss".
One of the commenters of the article stated that the G1 cannot run Android 2.0? Is this just a bunch of FUD or is this true?
Thoughts on Design at Google
given the location of the tech press and bloggers, whoever has the best coverage in SF and NYC (maybe Austin TX once a year) has the best coverage as far as reporting is concerned. I think a version of this phenomena was in the Fark book.
j.mp is a url shortener that should be removed - or whatever your policy is for url shorteners. You could just follow the link in the post submission process.
Do you have a way of tracking new comments on this thread?

It would be interesting if you have special tools that let you "follow" stories or even people. If I had to choose, I'd rather see the recent comments from a few select people than the front page.
The aspect I found most interesting - and this was mentioned in passing only - was that there was a second system for displaying what the issues of the day were in a quick fashion. When there was mention of the international community, the UN helmet went up on the roof. When there was something about fuel prices, a bottle of (what was meant to look like) fuel was up there.

The cleverness, I think, lies in how dead-simple symbols that people already associate were used. Doesn't matter if you've just come to Monrovia and don't know what the Daily Talk is - if you saw a UN helmet on the building, you'd think that there was something associated with the UN going on there. If that interested you, you'd walk over and see what it was (in this case, the news) - if not, you'd continue on your way. It almost reminds me of the home-screen notifications on BlackBerrys/iPhones - a simple sentinel indicating the presence of more related information - but much better executed, since the vocabulary used isn't platform-specific (i.e. the Daily Talk didn't make up its own signals to use, they used ones that people already associated).