skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The explanation of why the police and local government require such powers is, of course, not explained in this fluff piece, as it never is.

The reason? For almost 100 years now, England has had the most powerful right-to-silence of any country in the world, and dating before that there are hundreds of years of well established common law on the subject.

In England and Wales, you don't have to answer any question to anyone. The one proven exception is under tax investigation, however any evidence of criminal acts disclosed is inadmissible in court.

The 2000 R.I.P. Act supposedly made it illegal to withhold a requested key to protected (encrypted) information. However, to my knowledge this is untested in court. Although AFAIK the law is still too broad to be untestable in court, because under common law you can pick and choose when to talk (unlike Canada where if you talk, you have to talk), so I believe it's still unproven that you have to disclose it if you've never had a dialogue with the police, nor has it been tested against the privileged against self-incrimination. So potentially any evidence gained under this law may be inadmissible in court if it incriminates you.
I don't know why this comment was voted down, but I think he could be right -- given the correct resources (time mainly), and assuming the right talent level, I think we could consistently build rock-solid software. The constraint seems to be a (logical and necessary) trade off between total cost and total utility.

As we all know, something that works 95% of the time at 5% the price is very often better than a "perfect" solution. With critical systems like plane navigation, the tradeoff doesn't make sense, so you pay full price for near-perfection... your niche e-commerce site? 95% is sufficient.
Hidden Markov models are serious stuff. If you already understand them, leverage that power and go build an application! No point in learning the theory if you aren't going to apply it.
Do you know if he meant larger as in 'wc -c' larger, or as in number of symbols larger? I'm curious because there are languages (Cobol, Obj-C) that are extremely verbose in terms of characters but not in symbols.
Godzilla crypto tutorial
The change to Drupal 7 that make better http headers (now in Pressflow 5 & 6) will allow, afaik, for any reverse proxy, but varnish is definitely one of the easier to use.

All Drupal 5 and 6 sites can use these features by substituting the Pressflow core.

Now I'm wondering how the US government will contribute back to the Drupal project.
The problem with Twitter is that it’s got a thoroughly shitty user experience
There's also CTM (_Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming_, http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html) by Van Roy and Haridi. It focuses on programming paradigms rather than languages, but covers several along the way.
I can't believe noone mentioned codebase (http://www.codebasehq.com). We use it and it's great!
2 users on Pivotal Tracker. Considering moving to something custom-built and specific to web development. Any recommendations?
Apply to Carnegie Mellon. Do it :)

Seriously though, we're completely separate from the engineers, have a brand new building (The Gates-Hillman Center), and all the professors are working on cool stuff all the time. It's worth the application fee (if there is one?)
Petroleum backed currencies could be a viable alternative, but the countries best placed to float (npi) such a currency are mostly in the cross hairs of the global powers (precisely for that reason?).
I've built some text generators, and a POS tagger. But, for much of the more interesting stuff I want to do, it seems like I need things like time-series, or regression models -- which elude me entirely at the moment.
"The 2000 R.I.P. Act supposedly made it illegal to withhold a requested key to protected (encrypted) information. However, to my knowledge this is untested in court."

Your knowledge is out of date -- see:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/14/ripa_encryption_key_... ("animal rights activist hit with RIPA key disclosure order")

http://www.out-law.com/page-9514 ("Court of Appeal orders men to disclose encryption keys")

Also, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994) allows juries to draw adverse conclusions from a defendant's failure to give evidence or answer questions (and a few other similar matters) -- this was brought in during the aftermath of the Stephen Lawrence affair.
> The net result is less likelihood of experiencing a problem in real life and saying "I can't do this, I didn't take that class!" which happens all the time.

With all due respect that is the kind of attitude I wouldnt expect in an Engineer (and possibly see in a CS graduate). It probably depends largely on the course.

I was taught5, in a very techncal way, how to approach a problem you have no experience in (in fact this was the third lecture of my first semester - and they ground it into use over the course of the following year). I'm perfectly happy being thrown ASP code (for example, never coded in ASP) and told to fix it because of that.

The system architecture stuff is what I am missing; and it's been a bit tough to catch that up. Luckily it;s not been essential so far but I can see where it might become a problem in the future.

At the end of the day I guess it comes down to which approach syncs more with you as an individual - and where you think you can gain the most help/skills.
37signals Launches Haystack
I went to Columbia and am a startup enthusiast. I had several close friends at school that were also starting or working at startups.

As much as I loved my time there, I'd have to say it's a pretty bad school for startups. MIT or Stanford are probably far better in terms of providing resources, a community, student support, etc.

The problem is that the administration is too busy to adopt new technologies, the engineering community is too tied into wall st, finance, consulting, etc., and the students are just sort of averse to supporting startups.

Fun fact though, CU Community, an early Facebook competitor, was actually building a strong following before Facebook even existed.
Did anyone else think the beginning was much stronger than the end? Paul Graham, Jason Fried, and Chris Anderson were great but I didn't care for the Q&A sessions at all. What happened to actually preparing a talk for a big event you've been invited to? I wanted more on startups and advice, not just more pandering to twitter and facebook.
If it helps, the sort of questions that interest me are: what types of sounds are pleasing to the ear, or, what rules do I have to constrain randomness within before I can generate music that sounds like _____, or (presumably with a factor model) what team is most like to win the world cup =P
As a recently graduated senior, this was great to see but we've still got a long way to go. What else can we do on this side of the bay?
Correct, really good tea can be cheap. I am a fanatical tea drinker -- something like a gallon a day. And I find a 100 gm supply (3.5 oz) to go for about a month. At teaspring.com, that much of a geniunely good Taiwanese oolong (my favorite) costs about $20.

I don't know how much a month's supply of really good coffee costs for the fanatical drinker, but I know my monthly budget sure wouldn't get you far at Starbuck's . . .
That's really neat Jason, what with all the 'assembly is dead' stuff that gets bandied around it's nice to see people keeping the art alive and collaborating at this level.
Yes, the most interesting thing about the offices of highly successful geniuses is that they look a lot like the offices of everyone else.

Indeed, the geniuses themselves also look a lot like everyone else, unless your definition of "everyone else" doesn't include geeks.

It's kind of like the rule that you have to judge a restaurant by the food rather than the decor: You judge a software company by the software, not the offices.
The print version if it helps:

http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/09_44/b41...

I don't like the paginated version on my phone.
I was there on Friday. They have a working Difference Engine. Ooooooooh.
I believe this is actually a much better rule.

There is the other knee jerk (and a dangerous one) to do the reverse and just use off the shelf kit for large swathes of functionality.

We have one contractor who did just this and it currently the project is 3 months overdue as he is reworking large portions and sections so that it can do the things we originally asked of the program ;)

Formulate your approach then decide what can use pre-built packages and what needs to be hand coded.

"Dont program" can be as dangerous as "knee jerk" programming.
Collectible plates from the Franklin Mint. They're not guaranteed to go up in value, but all the other ones have.
I kind of agree: however I think if you only spend 3 hours learning the proprietary API and reviewing the code in the package your going to end up in almost as bad a place.

I'd factor it at anything from 8-24 hours at least.
This blog post has a shitty user experience. I got so bored reading all the paragraphs explaining what wasn't the problem that I never got to the part explaining what is.
A 32" 1080p HDTV is about $500-$700 at the moment depending on the brand. Nobody looking for a TV is going to spend 3x as much on an iMac that has a smaller screen and a single input that can't even be used with most consoles/dvd/bluray players - good luck finding an HDMI/Component to Mini DisplayPort adapter.

Apple may one day get into the TV market with some TV/AppleTV hybrid, but when they do it'll either need to be a lot cheaper or a lot bigger than the 27" iMac to stand a chance.

In the meantine, if you're desperate for a TV that runs some version of OSX then buy a Mac Mini and a 40" HDTV. Not only do you get more for your money but it's better suited for any non-computing purpose.
"filesystem performance"

Although performance is a nice feature, the most important things in ZFS are the zero-cost snapshots (very nice for backups, versioning etc) and redundancy and data corruption prevention. I love each and every file on my drive and I want their contents correct.
> The 2000 R.I.P. Act supposedly made it illegal to withhold a requested key to protected (encrypted) information. However, to my knowledge this is untested in court.

To add a data point; we have seen this used several times, always successfully admissible.

Being somewhat on the firing line and seeing the results I find it quite hard to find it a bad law.

I love the UK's inherent right to silence; it's one of the things I still find truly wonderful about my country. But in the case of RIPA my opinion is in reverse :)
You should write a book, statistics for hackers. I would buy it. Make sure it explains things really well. The best person to teach someone is a beginner, because they understand the beginner's perspective. So you are in a unique position to create this.

O'Reillys statistics in a nutshell is a good reference* book, but not quite a textbook. Here you go. Including my refid. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596510497?ie=UTF8&tag=...

*True masters have beginner perspectives, so they are good teachers as well.
What this man is looking for is a Slashdot thread when everyone else is used to picking up a conversation midstream. The idea of Twitter is that you're not trying to follow every piece of every conversation. The idea is that you dip in, you say something interesting, you see something interesting, and then you move on.

Twitter is not a chat room. It's not a forum. It's a stream. It's not thoroughly shitty. You're just looking at it with a set of expectations it shouldn't have.

There's a reason why Friendfeed doesn't have as many users as Twitter even though it offers some of the functionality you're suggesting. It's because it over-complicates the structure for end users.

Think about it this way. if you're in a bar, you don't get threaded, overly contextual conversations, either. You hear about something that somebody else said later. The world isn't made of threaded conversations. In that regard, Twitter is MORE like the real world than what you're asking for.

Twitter is simple. What you want is complicated. This isn't a design flaw.
You don't have a site design for a site that you're launching tomorrow?
Since you later say that you travel/live out of the country, stay FAR away from rental real estate. No way on earth that an individual piece of rental real estate is less risky than a basket of stocks in my mind.

If I were you, I'd stay away from any store of value that is dollar denominated (other than perhaps TIPS), as I believe that the US will have to devalue the dollar to pay its debt. That means oil/metals/commodities, or perhaps easier/safer, profitable companies whose profits are not predominantly made in US dollars. (It's fine or even good if they are repatriated into weakening US dollars.) Ideal would be a company with revenues in foreign currencies and expenses in US dollars.

If you were staying put, I'd agree with the buy real estate to live in as a anti-dollar hedge and if you wanted to live in the 2-4 unit type of housing, that would be even better. But leaving the country for long periods of time: forget about it.
I'm tempted. Though might a blog be better? Also, it might be nice to have someone to do it with, as then I could get explanations for things that befoggle me.
Assembly has never been dead in the realm of multimedia processing, or for that matter, anywhere that you have to do an enormous amount of SIMD-able number crunching.

Find a video (en|de)coder without SIMD and you've found an unusable piece of software.

There's a reason that Intel focuses so much on SIMD instructions and arithmetic units with each new chip release: if not for SIMD or dedicated hardware, it would be physically impossible to decode 1080p video on almost any modern machine.
Product Review: Evoluent Vertical Mouse
I had a very fun midnight visit to the Dojo after the HN party in the YC offices ended last night. Was greeted by hackers who were celebrating the publication of their new book on Xen. Was offered pizza and brownies and silly conversation.
"It's also GPL — never going to happen for that reason alone"

If SGI has the copyright, they can still relicense it for use under OSX. I don't think Rackable would block this idea.
Oh yes, it really is beautiful. And the more I understand and see of it the more beautiful it becomes.
Furthermore, the caffeine content in tea is quite easy to manage while making it.

A nice tea is good for three to seven brewings, depending the type and your brewing preferences. I understand that the amount of caffeine in the pot falls by roughly an order of magnitude with each brewing. Thus if you like the tea but are concerned about the caffeine, just throw the first pot away. Many folks think the second has the best flavor anyway . . .
Introduction to Tilings and Tesselations
Singularity Summit - Michael Nielsen's Quantum Computing 101
It doesn't seem like you are getting anything out of the PC. Why not access the music/web/movies on the Mac too (which also has 10 different ways to open your Word files), and either ditch the PC or buy one of the virtualization programs for the rare need to use Windows?
The Topology of Crystallographic Groups
Besides the obvious choices, here's what I've heard from my friends:

- UIUC has a pretty solid CS program, but it's cooold out there.
- University of Michigan is solid too.
- NYU isn't the best CS education, but the amazing location will open a lot of doors for you.
- Columbia's CS program isn't that great. If you could get into Columbia, you might as well go to one of the top 5 CS programs instead.
- My next door neighbor here at Berkeley went to Brown for his undergrad, and spoke highly of his education there.

Just my two cents :)
A Tiling Database
New computer paradigm has the potential to speed up computer operations by 100x
Is there any reason why one should not be told that one was secretly monitored after the fact?

If you are guilty, well there we go - if not, then there is a path for review if the powers given to government are abused. And because it's after the fact no investigation gets hurt.
Try this:

http://www.bmj.com/collections/statsbk/index.dtl

The examples you gave make me think you've done some applied things with those specific techniques, but haven't covered the theory and related areas in depth. That's fine; the Square One series is simpler but comprehensive, so you'll be in good shape after that to investigate more on your own.
Video: Symbian Executive Rips into Google’s Android
The Ice Age and thawing were on a geological time scale. Global warming caused by human pollution, not so much.
Prosecutors Turn Tables on Student Journalists
Prosecutors have supoenaed detailed records, including grades and grading methodologies as well as notes and other material, pertaining to the student journalists. Amongst other things, the article raises the question of whether this is in essence an attempt to suppress their efforts.

I'm submitting this as I've noticed from past comments that several regulars here are either in journalism or have journalism in their background. Also, with the decreasing dominance of "traditional" journalism as the source of most news (something strongly associated with the the Internet), actions like the prosecutors' raise questions about how other sources of news will be viewed and how they will participate in public discourse (although one might view the student journalism program as more "traditional" than many other sources).
Prosecutors have supoenaed detailed records, including grades and grading methodologies as well as notes and other material, pertaining to the student journalists. Amongst other things, the article raises the question of whether this is in essence an attempt to suppress their efforts.

I'm submitting this as I've noticed from past comments that several regulars here are either in journalism or have journalism in their background. Also, with the decreasing dominance of "traditional" journalism as the source of most news (something strongly associated with the the Internet), actions like the prosecutors' raise questions about how other sources of news will be viewed and how they will participate in public discourse (although one might view the student journalism program as more "traditional" than many other sources).

P.S. The query string parameter "partner=MYWAY" appears to eliminate the need for a NYT account to view this article.
I've been pretty impressed by the O'Reilly book on statistic: http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Nutshell-Desktop-Reference-...
A 2% drop in world gdp in one year would be bad. But a 2% drop compared to what we could have done over 10 years would be 0.2% per year, which would be minor inconvenience in any given year and is (as you noted) far outweighed by the ongoing growth. Furthermore if we don't do it, the eventual costs from the environmental disasters are so much higher that we would come out worse in the long run.
What Startups Are Really Like
Reworking Python's Global Interpreter Lock
Non-programming books for Programmers: The Superorganism, Hölldobler & Wilson
Art Inspired by Polynomiography
unless you are programing in Lua or Ada. Counting from 1 makes sense.
It seemed really awkward, and judging from the stare he gave you just before he walked off the stage, I would say he got a little offended.
I would love to go to Harvey Mudd. I've heard nothing but good things about that school.
That's what it says doesn't it :) ?

Trust me, not everything can be planned, in this particular case the question whether or not the thing was doable was only apparent today, and six days ago I didn't know I was going to do this at all.

All will be revealed tomorrow.

It's going to be a long night.
"tangible"?
It was something that generated ad revenue and was later acquired.
Why?

If they let the dollar go, it won't just slide, it'll collapse. It'll be game over for the dollar. The leadership will lose staggering amounts face over all these savings they've accrued in this rotten dollar. This will undermine their attempts to push further towards a market economy but - something they can be more fearful of - it will threaten the stability of the state.

In the west we can have an economic collapse, and the government is thrown out, and things shake but we swap in a new political class and get back to work. China doesn't have pressure valves, and they're an already unwieldy nation - lots of ethnic groups, many of which don't want to be part of China, a culture of corruption, a huge wealth gap. They have a further problem in that there are examples of small nations of Chinese doing very well without being part of a juggernaut state - Taiwan, but Singapore and the legacy of Hong Kong/Macau in their own way also.

As in the west, the Chinese leaders are using stimulus to procrastinate. But the stakes are much higher. The USD situation is like cancer for the Chinese. The only play I can see out of their situation will be to force an arrangement where they could get their holdings of USD reinterpreted into a more trustworthy store of value.
It entirely depends on how that money is diverted. Most people would be shocked to realize exactly how poor a return on investment money spent on medicine is. Removing most SUVs from the road would improve car safety substantially. (SUVs are a hazard for every other vehicle because of their size and poor handling in adverse conditions. They are a hazard to their drivers because an illusion of safety encourages risky driving while the high center of gravity makes them prone to rolling over.) 2% of GDP fades into noise compared with projected future growth in GDP.

OTOH it is hard to overestimate how prone politicians are to make stupid politically motivated decisions. But if they do that then I blame the politicians, and not the cause.
Good interview. Mark really is a great interviewee - except when he's on Oprah.
If you are considering Washington University St. Louis, then you should definitely also consider UCSB College of Creative Studies (in terms of CS dept rankings). The academic structure* is extremely similar to that of Brown University, and the CS students form almost a brotherhood. It's pretty awesome. Awesome enough that the guy who made the Cydia store still hangs out there because he likes the atmosphere.

* Super amounts of academic freedom, drop/add anytime, take grad student courses, have keys to buildings, special access to CS professors both within UCSB CCS and UCSB at large, and more :)

Disclaimer: if I hadn't chosen Brown, I would have chosen UCSB CCS. UCSB would have been way more expensive for me than Washington University St. Louis, but if Brown hadn't been an option I would have chosen UCSB CCS. (In case it wasn't clear, I had a choice between the three places and also had visited them all)
Very fresh perspective on the real time web
It'd be better to have it with a table of contents. You could probably get sufficient explanations through a combination of research on wikipedia and then probing #math on freenode.
Plane navigation is in someways easier to e-commerce sites as well. The environment that the plane is in, isn't actively malicious. You can collect accurate statistics on weather, where as the attacks and usage (with bots/scraping etc) consistently change.