skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You posted a comment about your enjoyment of the authors failure, and judged his time management skills due to the fact that he posted his rant about another persons failure on the internet.

Do you not see the hypocrisy?
'The Truth Hurts': Verizon Zings AT&T in Advertising Spat
Worst Business Deals of 2009
Thank you, that's very constructive criticism, I like your 'ruleset' quite a bit.
Note that I never say C is "dead." I say that the record shows: good languages that are actually used don't go away.
+1 This was more of a daydream thought than a careful blog post
You can do bitwise operations in VisualWorks Smalltalk quite efficiently, particularly for encryption applications. Of course, it helps that the encryption library author and the VM engineer at the time collaborated closely. (Hence, the existence of classes like ThirtyTwoBitArray.)

I seem to remember a study someone did with CISC machines like VAX. On average, a C statement resulted in 2.5 machine language instructions.
That's a good suggestion, but I don't have much experience with hypervisors, how much overhead do you think that would give ?
Three Cheers for GCaMP : Optogenetic Brain Reading
I'm in a completely separate group in a completely separate place who happens to have seen this link before. We haven't done anything worth linking to yet, just have a little bit of knowledge about this area since we've been looking at it as well.

What you're saying is close to what we've been looking at trying to turn into code. I think the proxy thing is a non-issue. In fact a proxy in many ways could implement a portion of the server-side smartness and accelerate conforming clients on websites that don't implement this.

These are some larger issues though, I think:

1) Making the server smart enough to actually do this.

2) Sending the resources in the right order (It turns out the order things go down the line can be significant and this is something that can vary depending on which web rendering engine your user has.)

3) This requires changes to HTTP, unlike the linked proposal, so one needs a way to do it right and a compact representation of the cache information.
Is there a date workaround yet? I don't have the phone, but it would be interesting to see if manually setting the date to a certain period fixes the autofocus until the update.

Edit: Answered my own question:

"Just changed the date back to 11/11 and got red boxes. Went back to 11/17 and got green boxes again. Could be something to it." - From the article comments.
Isn't your response to the comment (and my response to yours) guilty of the same fault?

If we keep going like this, we'll meta ourselves up a black hole or something.
"not-new-and-hip" is always a poor metric for an environment. But it's relevant for PR that uses adjectives like "modern." (And this includes quite a bit of Smalltalk PR as well!)
Yes, I'm the organizer of Philly Lambda, feel free to drop me an email if you are interested in speaking.
Letter to Conservatives
Try giving it a read first, then read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
Designing/Laying out fire sprinkler systems:

http://www.sprinklercareer.freewebsitehosting.com/

Found from another site, good details:

Even now jobs are plentiful.

All it takes is two years at a community college at one of three community colleges in the country.

Entry level average wage is low to mid $30's.

Average wage with three years job experience is mid $50's to mid $60's with more available in larger metro areas. To give one example the average annual wage for an entry level technician in Omaha, Nebraska is $36,784.32, with $61,195.93 to someone with five years experience and $73,401.73 to senior level (ten years) technicians.

The majority of companies are union companies and while technicians are considered management most companies offer benefits such as medical, dental and retirement plans.

This is not a pipe fitter or installer job. Installers are suffering unemployment, 40% in some areas of the country, but unemployment does not extend to the technicians.

The work is not physical with 75% to 95% of your time spent in an office environment in front of a computer screen. The work is always challenging and fun, it is not a boring job.

This job is different from about any other in the universe because once fully certified (5 years) you don't get the boss and HR bullshit you hear about in other places of employment because you are not easily replaced.
you might want to consider software development for the film industry.
Never Launch, Just Iterate
Fashion And Beauty Tips
you can't do what you want by doing something else.
Announcing TypePad Micro
Fashion And Beauty Tips: Cleansing, Toning & Moisturizing Face
Half of all low-income students have below average test scores! We need new laws, new taxes, and new government initiatives to fix this problem!
Dhani Harrison on Conan O'Brien, Rock Band, and thenewno2
Nobody is getting locked in to anything but me.

EC2, App Engine are lock-in platforms with a price to switch that force your application in to a certain structure.

Heroku is free if you can make your stuff work with 5MB of storage.
"I was saying that I couldn't taste the difference and according to the article, many other people can't either."

This isn't what the article is talking about. The article is arguing that subjective, linear wine ranking is faulty, that preferences are not objective or static, that it's difficult to distinguish between similar wines and that identifying individual flavors and scents (eg, "lavender, roasted herbs") are tied to the taster's imagination.

If you can tell the difference between grapefruit juice and orange juice, you can tell the difference between a gabbiano, a monticello rioja and a generic merlot. They taste dramatically different and you can't give a merlot to someone who knows what chianti tastes like and have them believe it's a chianti. Different varietals have very distinct flavors.

And when it comes to quality, there is a much, much more significant difference between a poorly stored, very low-quality wine and a mainstream ~$10/bottle wine than there is between a $20/bottle wine and a $100/bottle wine. After all, a number of the pricer wines would be simply $20/bottle if it weren't for the ratings systems critiqued by the article.
The burn comes from the alcohol. Smoothness could be due to lack of tannins in the red wine. (Tannins cause the feeling of astringency in your mouth and inner cheeks.)
Try also "Cargo Cult" keywords in wikipedia and/or youtube. It should give you more drums ;)
Couldn't I say the same about your facts? Do you have numbers to show that those companies who do take money are likely to be more successful than those who don't, or who pursue money via alternative means? Most VC deals fail and they don't get their money back or break even. The few that make many multiples are what make their firms.
How many times have we seen Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook agree to something? Awesome result.
This was posted here not too long ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=925847
ShopSavvy Finally Comes To The iPhone
15 ways pr agencies can help companies with social media
"Possibly a little deep for this thread (just considering its not my thread), but my dream isn't a career change, its slightly higher - freedom from money. If money no longer plays a factor in my life, then I don't have to choose one thing to do, I can do whatever I want when I want."

I think this is what most people with businesses hope to achieve. This is also why I love the idea of a software company. You can pretty much run it from anywhere with an Internet connection.
Exploring PHP Frameworks: CodeIgnite
Yaw, that's totally true. This is from the TechStars blog-- the only metric they ultimately care about is return on investment. So this is a big win for them. A huge exit/IPO just about NEVER fails to have a Series A. Given MY tolerance for risk, I'm probably prefer to own Weebly or Wufoo before most other YC companies... But I think it's unlikely that they'll be a HUGE win for YC (9-figure exit, that is).

Entrepreneurs generally (maybe just sometimes?) get into the startup world in the hope that they'll see a multi-million dollar exit (to compensate for the risk and the lack of salary for a chunk of time). For people motivated that way, the Series A is a big deal. Wade through data of $5m+ exits and I think we'd find that the non-funded startup is pretty scarce. Wad through the $20m+ exists and I think they'd be functionally non-existent.

Weebly took $650k according to CrunchBase, so they'd fall into the 6 out of 10 TechStars group, FWIW.
Unix in 14 lines of Ruby (it's trivial)
Forget link Exchanges. Text Link Ads get results.
A Supercomputer That's SuperEfficient
Patrick, excellent post. I'm glad I asked you to do it!
I hope you understand that "getting a Ph.D." and "becoming a professor" are two different things. You need a Ph.D. to become a professor, but it no way guarantees you a position. Professor positions are extremely competitive.
Yes. Hisses even:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxyBxbGF-Qg

That's Roberto Alagna getting booed in Aida at La Scala in Milan in 2006. La Scala has a reputation for this sort of thing.

Boos were also heard (directed at, well, the director) at the premiere of Luc Bondy's new production of Tosca at New York's Metropolitan Opera just a few weeks ago. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/the-boos-for-to...
I promised Andreas to post his picture .... - Ecademy
Probably not. As much as there are long-term benefits to increasing the popularity of the sport (larger purses in the future, etc.), golf tournaments are a zero-sum game. Everyone wants everyone else to do poorly, so they get a larger quantity of the available money.
It wouldn't be interesting if Woods won all the time. In fact I might argue that underdog/Cinderella stories do as much for the sport as superstars.
The Technology Perspective
I thought the call waiting feature on my home ‘land line’ had been dropped so I called the mega telephone company yesterday. After getting trapped in the unhelpful computer voice generated phone tree maze (“okay…let me look at your account…thanks”) I was able to opt out to a live agent and was soon connected with Mary, a pleasant person who immediately came across as sincere and likable.
Find out everything Google knows about you
> I just never quite manage to absorb how clueless the average person is.

Gawrsh, I'm shore glad we have these here science bloggers to help drag us clueless folks out of the mud.
You don't judge a startup in the year it was f(o)unded.
Hmm, the Google graph he shows really does suck. I'm surprised; Google usually knows better than to make a 35 MB flash monstrosity.
You will do many unpaid or very lowly paid internships in studios with a "name" before you do get a job "designing cool buildings".
Free Virtual Puppy App for iPhone | TechJaws.com
Evidence Mount That Free Music is Unfeasible
Because I'm told it's not obvious, I am the author of the originally linked piece. Just to ensure full disclosure.
Earn more with pretty links
Yes it is. It solves problem doesn't it? Maybe those problems don't frequently come up, but I'll be damned if it isn't practical for a niche set of problems.

You may want to change your definition of "practical" so that's it broader than business applications.
That's actually really good advice. If you do use the press and other media be prepared for a let-down, all that stuff is only a momentary impulse, and unless you are extremely sticky you are not going to get much out of it.

Satisfied, returning users is the only way to really grow a business, it's easy to see why:

Even if everybody in the world came by tomorrow but nobody got stuck you'd be looking at 0 traffic on Friday next week, but if instead of that you'd have 1000 new users each day of which 10% got stuck you'd have at least 2,000 visitors per day by Friday next week.

Now 2,000 visitors per day doesn't sound like it is much but depending on the product you might already be in the 'black' at that level. And if not, wait 90 days...

In practice it is a lot harder to get people to come again to your site than it is to get random individuals to come just once.

I remember coming across google the first time and instantly changing my homepage from 'altavista' to 'google'.

That's all it took, it simply worked and worked so much better that there would have been no reason to draw out the switching process.
I think you should continue writing software.

1) You say you aren't very good at it... In my experience that means you're probably pretty good at it :)

2) Physical and substantial... well, it's easy to get disillusioned with some enterprise app or something. Maybe you just need a change of scenery? Get into web development or something else new to you.

3) I can sympathize with physical pain. Spend some serious mind-share learning new tools that will help you get around this. Try xmonad, vim, or other tools that keep your hands on the home-row. Take lots and lots of little breaks (grab a coffee, stretch, etc).

My 2 cents.
I wish they would call it a notation rather than a language. Language implies that you can read it like a sentence. We call symbols in math "notation" not language for a reason.
Apple Macs no safer than PCs from computer phishing attacks
That's a very misleading title, giving away music from the big labels trying to make money on it through a different route and keeping up your royalty payments is tough.

But 'free music' is definitely feasible, it just won't be 'big label' music.
DocuSign Raises $2 Million For E-Signature Software
Do you have numbers to show that those companies who
do take money are likely to be more successful than those who don't

Sure, just look up the number of companies that have gone public without taking Series A. Not many. Thus, it wouldn't be far fetched to conclude that in order to be successful at that(IPO), you generally have to go through a VC.

None of this means that going through VC route won't result in majority failures. But that point is completely irrelevant. Most startups fail--VC or no VC--so pointing out failure in non-relative terms is insiginificant.
I'm going to his book signing tonight in Seattle. Any other HN people from Seattle going?
His 2 sentence comment likely took up a lot less time than the author's rant.
Too late. http://xkcd.com/386/
This is scary when applied to people: http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/html?query=sarah%20palin (amusingly, a few layers in we end up at http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/html?query=sarah%20palin#4... )
What a confused article, it first goes on to say that 57% of Mac uses vs 27% of windows users feel that they can use their PC safely without anti-virus, which says nothing about phishing, which is a form of social engineering requiring some minimal cooperation of the victim.

Of course it has nothing to do with the platform, so why is it surprising that Macs are 'no safer', it's the human behind the keyboard that is the problem here, not the brand of the software.
NDjango: Django templates in .NET
My mother is also an architect. She does historic renovations, mostly, and still drafts by hand. She spends much of her time at jobs sites, talking to clients/organizations, and researching period styles in actual books (!).

Of course, it takes a long time to develop a reputation for historic architecture, and it is very local unless you develop a national name through the journals.
West Publishing goes back to the 1890s and had a long-time franchise, gained through official channels (the courts), by which it had exclusive rights to publish the "official" versions of virtually all the case law in America.

Mead-Data (Lexis) came in during the 1970s with its Wang-style dedicated workstations and its newly formed databases and had a huge disruptive effect by offering the first system of electronically retrievable legal authorities ever. The system was very clunky when I used it in law school in the 1976-78 era but has since been highly refined and is highly useful for those willing and able to pay the high price associated with the service.

Lexis eventually undercut the West monopoly and sent West scrambling for a competitive response (hence, Westlaw).

The competition between Lexis and Westlaw did lead to far better pricing for some users, from the old "x dollars per minute" model to flat-rate pricing for users in specific categories (e.g., small firms), but this still involved hundreds of dollars per month at minimum (anything beyond the specific categories remained x dollar per minute).

Of late, other services have cropped up (LawNet) that have made a lot of the case law available at much cheaper fixed pricing (e.g., under $100/mo) but their offerings were incomplete.

The trend is unmistakable. For Lexis and Westlaw to compete, they will eventually have to lower their pricing considerably. Even then, there is a serious question whether their resultant margins will leave them with a viable business model. Only time will tell on this.

By the way, the downward trend for Lexis/Westlaw is tied to the vast disruption that has occurred with Big Law, which, in its heyday, was a massive user of such services that paid little attention to the cost aspect (costs were simply passed on to clients). In our cost-conscious era, Big Law is reeling in the short term, as are Lexis and Westlaw.
You could, but that's the difference between anecdotes and data. Can you really look at my 2 bullet points and say, "I think the data would show those to be false?" There've been studies showing this stuff (PG actually mentioned one during YC, if I recall correctly). Don't have 'em handy.

The truth (supported by data) is that large dollar exits are vanishingly rare without outside funding (but sure-- they've happened). Can you name 1 large exit or IPO that had no Series A round? Can you name 5? Note that I'm NOT saying that outside funding increasing your chance of survival (I'd GUESS that the funding path is a riskier one)

"The few that make many multiples are what make their firms."

Absolutely. For all I know, a Series A REDUCES your chance of business survival... But the data shows that it increases your shot at a big exit (which is what a lot of people are in the game for).
20 minutes to subvert 10 year old minds...
This Friday I am the "mystery reader" for my son's 4th grade class. As the title suggests, I have about 20 minutes to read basically anything of my choosing. I'd love to hear any age appropriate suggestions that are other than what you might imagine parents choose for something like this. Two ideas I've had so far: Dawkins letter to his 10 year old daughter (already vetoed by the teacher - this one I felt compelled to get prior approval), and one of the dialogs from Godel Escher Bach (maybe Contrafactus?) the "geek-by-association" from which would probably fade by high school in time for him still to be able to date...

Anyway, from those two examples, you get the gist of my nefarious intent. Any ideas? Any of PGs essays work for 10 year olds?
Especially considering his evidence is limited to one short article in the opinion section.
Google Labs Image Swirl
I stopped at:

"Anyone under 17 knows that Ruby is so extremely dynamic, that Google's complete Map.Reduce framework can be implemented in one line of code:

data.map.reduce"

That's just too much boosterism (and insanity) for me to stomach.
You can use this for your Views in ASP.NET MVC. I like it a lot better than the default ViewEngine and better than the popular Spark engine, because it separates markup from template constructs better and it also has Django's awesome set of filters. Very cool.
Since when is ruby lacking a while loop that you use a block that ends? I know I would uname more than 10000 times!!!
Also the Common Lisp implementation in a couple of lines he points to seems to be Lisp 1.5.
It's generated if you choose "all time" from "Show stats for" combo box.
This title is misleading. The TechCrunch article is, "Over A Year After Android Launch, ShopSavvy Finally Comes To The iPhone."
It hardly matters. If you have to serve a search warrant on a colo facility in Russia in order to get the evidence to take someone to trial then it's irrelevant whether the site operator lives in the US.

As for Giganews, I believe they are protected by safe harbor provisions. For usenet you'd have to go after all of the individual posters, which is something the RIAA/MPAA/BSA doesn't seem to have any interest in currently.
This isn't correct at least from my personal experience.

I've talked with a few startups that have been burning through cash because they thought they could outsource their entire technical operation to India. Some of them even tried doing it a 2nd time after failing the first time. All of them were on the verge of collapse.

I think there are even more of them that never even get to the VC stage because they often times don't have any demo to show.
Spend 20 minutes reading from Diamond Age, pretty much anywhere in the book that doesn't directly involve sex or violence should work.
Interesting point, more interesting is that trendly.com looks like a cool service.
Horay!
How's thesixtyone.com doing? For indie bands looking to reach an audience, it seems like free music could work out very well.
So my first question was "Why?", Then after some digging "Why not just use R?". The best answer I found to that question was on stack overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1427276/j-programming-lan... .

Which for me said - "Just use R".
very interesting idea. move quickly and choose a good name
It isn't the ability to do efficient bit operations that is a strength of C - it is the ability to easily and succinctly do whatever you want to the bits in memory. Arbitrary pointer/memory operations help greatly in writing things like memory managers, device drivers, and all of the other wonderful parts the make up the guts of an OS.

edit: Added the text "easily and succinctly" as a qualifier on doing things to bits in response to stcredzero's comment. It isn't that C is the only language to allow it, it is that C allows one to do it without obscuring your intent. C# handles this quite well with unsafe blocks, Java not so much.
See also: "The World's Most Mind-Bending Language Has the Best Development Environment" (http://prog21.dadgum.com/48.html)
Oh, what a ridiculously misleading title.

Like hell Macs are "no safer", they talk about all these files that users on Macs open, which don't harm the Mac, and infect a Windows PC.

The only example they can give is a Firefox plugin that supposedly works on a Mac, and yet their links don't actually say anything more about it: they link to the Wikipedia page defining plugins (what?) and a vague article on botnets that doesn't even mention the Mac. I'm not saying the Mac plugin doesn't exist, but the least they could have done is dug up an article that actually specifies how the Mac was affected.
Thank you for posting this related link. I remember reading it a while back and wanted to find it, but it was not in my notes anywhere.