skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Technically he said that death and starving in Africa are caused by development, not "all problems", but you're right, I should have read the criticism section more closely; my bad. Although I think his comment is a little more nuanced than you made it seem, and I partially agree with him about the destruction (at times intentional) of nature-based cultures, you are correct in pointing out the silliness of some people in pointing to outside factors as the sole cause of Africa's problems. The disappearance of "development" from Africa would not solve the problems, but I think he hits on something by implying a connection between the removal of self-sufficient lifeways and starvation.
Thank you for a civil response.
Hmm. We have people devoting their efforts coding, doing QA, triaging bugs, and probably even some people who are not technically inclined, but follow the philosophy and contribute art. Mabye sales people could be recruited that agree with the philosophy to donate their efforts in the same way.
Ask HN: Video as a background? Are you mad
http://www.whitelies.com/

Im not one for flash nor do I like sound playing in the background when you load a website.

There is something quite captivating about the use of video as a background to this bands website.

Am I having a lapse of judgement or do others who usually frown upon this find themselves strangely drawn to it?

Where else could it work?

Example:
What if it were lots of smaller screens running the top TED shows, like what they do but more video than static.
Argh, why do we vote up this crude sensationalist crap?
In the course of my self-education I've come across a number of interesting books for mathematics. My two favorites:

- Practical Mathematics by C. I. Palmer
- Mathematics for the Nonmathematician by Morris Kline

Practical Mathematics is an old book, first published in the early nineteen hundreds. It covers everything beginning with multiplication to advanced algebra and trig. It uses practical trade problems in gear cutting, cam ratios in engines, &c... The book has only been re-published by the company Lindsay's Technical Books. You can also find it in Google's book repository.

Mathematics for the Nonmathematician is a bit more recent and written by a strong mathematician with a lot of history and background. This book got me hooked on mathematics, no other book has done that; his in-depth scholarly work plus his skill in mathematics makes it both interesting and educating to read.

A large majority of programming problems can be tackled with solid arithmetic or algebra.
Yes, what?
How are they not the same thing but at different time scales?

So maybe GS realizes some loss every day, but surely they hold some positions on longer time frames. They don't wipe the slate after every day.
Database - too many options
I mentioned him in a comment before, but I think the way that the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company has handled PR is a model for any startup. The guy built a fancy trailer and landed on Oprah. I don't say that to put him or his company down. I think his houses are really neat. He found (or made) a niche and put together a campaign that makes him the iPhone of small houses.
I voted it up on the basis that, I agree that people shouldn't be arbitrarily expected to work for free to the benefit of someone making money from the work.

But I am also confused as to what exactly he's talking about.
I may not understand law very well, but why isn't Apple getting sued for anti-trust, or monopoly type practices? They seem to keep EVERYTHING closed and proprietary.

Why the double standard?
My iPhone is great in Boston and the greater Boston area. When I went down to NYC I was getting dropped calls, lack of signal, etc... The issues seem to be location dependent, and are therefore more an issue of AT&T infrastructure and not the iPhone itself.

It's still frustrating, but it's important to realize that the issues you're having in NYC/SF/etc... are not iPhone issues, but AT&T 3G capacity issues.
I do believe you meant what you said, the problem is that your original comment sounds like a backhanded compliment (not sarcastic -- that's a different thing) at best.
Cable modem hacker busted by feds
Wow, apparently I expressed my point poorly, as you guys seem to pick up that I'm advertising how awesome I am and how I kick GS' ass on the markets.

What I wanted to say is that it's hard to find an index that went down during Q3 so those hundreds of traders could actually manage to not lose money but only one day, so that post and the comments really seem to be... subjective and biased.

As your note of my "strategy" being a mistake, I'm actually fine with my results and I'll keep going long, thank you.
Building the World's Most Powerful Laser
This might be behind a paywall, here is another link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/technology/companies/05chi...
The Unofficial Guide To SC09 (Part One)
SURE WAY TO EARN CASH ONLINE.
Conergy nel mondo: fotovoltaico per lo sviluppo
Sounds eerily familiar to the SvN mantra (37signals). I think the point is that momentum can be exhilarating while even the smallest missteps can really set a company back. Which is why, as a startup you need to positively reinforce your staff, remind people of/tout the little successes and mitigate the failures. Momentum is important for morale (and future successes).
I think the fuel is that people here tend to be pragmatic. They talk about technologies because lots of them use them to put food on the table(or plan to start doing that) so they think of them from a different perspective than the usual flamewar style.
I personally like to read comments from people who actually try to use different technologies in the real world(you could say to make money) rather than someone with a motivation to sell or evangelize it for whatever reason.
Who cares? Voice calls are so 80ies.
why would you blame goldman sachs for this stuff? if you were in this position, you would also lobby the government in the same way. you should be angry at the government for caving.

this is also completely unrelated to the topic, that they've only had one down trading day in the last quarter. this most recent quarter had nothing to do with government handouts.
Happy Birthday Trevor!

Fun fact, you share a birthday with Matthew McConaughey and Puff Daddy - http://www.celebrity-link.com/birthday_day-4_month-11.html
I like the idea, but just a heads up that Pitt plays Notre Dame at home that day too (an 8pm game)
Send me an email and I might be able to help you out.
You should really read his other stuff before You comment; He has specifically addressed most of these issues.
Anti-trust is about avoiding the negative consequences of monopolies, not forcing things to be open. Apple isn't anywhere near a monopoly, except maybe once in the iTunes/iPod sphere, but opened up by removing the iTunes DRM.
"Quickly grok" to "test things out" - it just isn't going to happen like that, even if you know the math behind it (FWIW, for that paper you're going to need a lot about statistics and Markov chains, but you may be able to get pretty far just by Googling the terms you don't know).

Comp sci is notorious for having a huge gap between published work and working implementations. It often takes heroic efforts to put together a working version of the algorithms described, sometimes so much work that nobody has ever done it (Chazelle has some algorithms that have never been implemented in code). Even if it's plausible to do, don't be surprised if it takes weeks to get it working right. The more "on the edge" the algorithms are, the more difficult it tends to be, and it's not really likely that you'll be able to quickly experiment with new methods unless the authors have published code.

This happens far less often than it should, because simple possession of a working algorithm is often enough to squeeze several more papers out of a topic, so authors have no particular incentive to share theirs, or even make it easy to create one from scratch. Computer graphics papers are particularly bad on that front, often omitting so much detail that even with significant study and effort you could never reproduce their results without researching the problem on your own anyways.

Other people have offered good advice: go through it in excruciating detail, think about every equation as its own sub-problem, and make sure you understand what's happening at each step. These papers are meant for detailed study, not quick reading, even if the reader already knows a lot about the field. Google should help you through most of the math stuff, and try going to book search or the papers search if you're not finding anything online, which will give you good keywords to look for books on.
One of the books on his shelf is Suburban Nation (http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-America...) - worth a read. It's interesting because that book is to Urban Planning what tiny houses are to Architecture.
I've been recommending it to everyone I know

Thanks! This is very important to me -- both because such recommendation tells me that I'm doing something right, and because Tarsnap's target user base is a very hard one to reach by any method other than word of mouth.
Against All Odds by James Dyson and Pouring Your Heart Into it (starbucks) are on my list
One of the great things about him is that is work was very readable, even enjoyable even if parts of it are dated.
I've used Basecamp, Trac and Bugzilla. All are easy to use (and we've had some very non-technical users on them). My favorite though was trac, very easy to use, easy to set roadmaps and milestones. The bonus with bugzilla is that its more flexible (we're managing several development initiatives simultaneously). Basecamp is inexpensive, but I didn't find it as useful in managing bugs and support tickets (it was very useful in managing a grant application process though).

http://www.bugzilla.org/
http://trac.edgewall.org/

Personally, I don't think that the mode matters as much as consistency in method. I've successfully managed support tickets for smaller projects on a series of google doc spreadsheets without any problems. It makes for easier sharing with the client as well.

Bugzilla might fit your needs best out of the three I know about. Good luck!
I think it is possible to criticize in a more civilized and conversant manner. Moreover it is expected from users at HN.
Yeah, when I first saw this story somewhere, I thought, "Huh. Maybe you NEED tough pants to do anthropology."
I agree... what he's describing is a sweatshop, and honestly I've never seen code from someone who was working 70+ hour weeks actually work. Every time I've worked with someone like that, I've had to waste a lot of MY time fixing it, making me extremely unproductive... but I was still able to get my work done, because I did it right -- I avoided unnecessary complexity.

And did anyone else notice that he equated "productive" with "works long hours?"
I've never personally used it, but I've heard really good things about ZenDesk (http://www.zendesk.com/).
Imagine the postal system being held responsible for mail bombs.
…which clearly explains the results of the aforementioned fresnel workout (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=921930): McConaughey's chest with Puff Daddy's inflated ego.
that they're doing so unfairly and at the expense of taxpayers and individual mom-pop investors

Untrue. They're doing so at the expense of other day-traders who try to go toe-to-toe with them in timing the markets.
If you're holding long-term positions what GS does in a tenth of a second doesn't affect you.
Ironically, this post's signal (business leaders should focus on fundamental questions of profitability) gets lost in the inevitable noise that accompanies a rant (put-downs, despair, negativity).

To me, this post demonstrates that ranting to make a point is normally counterproductive. As further evidence, I point to the comments (albeit only 4 of them at the time of this response), which deal not with the subject of the post (whatever you make that to be), but with the way it is presented.

My philosophy professor in school once said (and this was years ago, so I recognize that this is paraphrased and maybe even misremembered) that he wouldn't ignore spelling and grammar mistakes in essays, because substance is inseparable from style. I tend to agree. If you want people to listen to you and engage in meaningful discussion with you (and if you're writing a blog, I assume this is what you want), you have to present your substance in a style which is conducive to this end. Ranting is rarely this style.
Ask HN: Technologies created by (evil) hackers
I got asked an off the wall question by a technology journalist today. Are there any technologies that we use today that were created by (evil) hackers? i.e. is there anything that's come out of the computer underground that is now considered mainstream.

Would love to hear this group's suggestions.
Speaking as a customer, please don't take this as a sign that you should raise your prices.

Don't worry, I have no intention of raising prices. Tarsnap is not wildly profitable, but it is profitable -- and the most feasible way to make more money is to get more customers, not to increase prices and probably lose customers.

Speaking as a fellow entrepreneur, how can you not raise your prices? ;)

As I said above: Raising my prices would probably be a bad business move. That said, I make no guarantees that my prices will come down every time that my costs come down (as they inevitably will over time), so my profit margin might increase in that way.
When looking at S&P 500 returns etc, I think you're missing the fact that GS's Fixed Income business is far larger than their equity business.
Given the huge amount of government borrowing going on around the world etc, the bond markets are probably quite active. Given that much of the big competition in the bond markets has collapsed, GS is having a field day there.
You can read more about the anti-trust law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Trust_Law.

From what I understand, Microsoft was sued because of its anti-competitive behavior with Netscape. It lost the case because there was enough evidence against Microsoft - in that it tried to squeeze Netscape out of the consumer market by deliberate force, leveraging the power they had over the OS market.

Apple hasn't done anything like that. If Apple tries to engage in any anti-competitive behavior, then it may become target of the Anti-Trust division of US DoJ.
Interview: The Space Station's IT guys
What's wrong with being young? I feel old at 27, but because I have 5 less years now to think of, develop, and launch new projects compared to a 22 year old.

There's nothing wrong with being young and a CEO. In fact, you'll probably have to step up to the plate because no old fart will work for free and helm you startup (not that you'd want them to anyway).
are you targeting only programmers?

No. I haven't extensively interviewed Tarsnap users, but my impression is that most fall more into the category of "sysadmin" than "programmer".
Ask HN: Why is Wordpress getting slower and slower with each version
I have realised that wordress is getting slower and slower with every new version.
The New Post use case takes around 29 seconds to fully load. And I have one of the fastest INTERNET connections.

What is the cause?
And pairwise, too.
Probably because they don't use their proprietary stuff to lock people into their products.

Making something proprietary isn't, on it's own, illegal, it's a business decision.

Using your proprietary technology to crush competition is, well, anti-competitive behavior and is illegal.

For instance, Apple owning the lions share of the digital music player market with their proprietary iPod isn't illegal. However, making it so all iPods can only play Apple's proprietary song format and offering only that format in the iTunes store, effectively rendering any other digital music player on the market useless, would be illegal.
Efficiency is the enemy of effectiveness
Agreed, however they rarely pull punches at the SvN blog. This is not the first time they make comments about the "others" (even if they're successful "others").
Tell me more about the Marines.
If you valued your job that little, you might as well have quit, IMO.

You aren't going to change policy with nose thumbing pranks. I have a decent win/lose record by engaging the decision makers over policy issues like this. When you don't win, you can't cry about it. You find a new job or live with it and wait for an opportunity to bring it up again. Playing tricks or willfully circumventing restrictions just makes it worse for everyone when you are caught.
Agreed, I have many problems with the UN. I think that it should be broken up into two main bodies.

1. All the traditional non profit work: WHO, UNICEF, etc -- focus on that and leave the politics out.
2. Political function -- it votes on nothing, and merely serves a forum for countries to discuss issues; all treaties are then signed between those countries the UN is not involved.
Problem is they had us by the balls while they were asking "nicely" for money...
I've heard good things about TenderApp - http://tenderapp.com/
On the other hand, I switched to an iPhone being a previous AT&T customer in Arizona. I have had more issues with dropped calls and unreceived calls than I had with my previous phone. In fact, people have started to call me multiple times just in case the first time I didn't answer was a fluke.
Anti-trust laws basically says that if you have a practical monopoly on one area, you are not allowed to tie your products in that area with products in other areas.

Its not that simple. Monopolies are not inherently illegal, they only become illegal when they are maintained artificially. Also, the Sherman Antitrust act is usually applied more subjectively than most statutes, with the final decision turning on whether or not the alleged violation is "harmful" (to the consumer or the market as a whole).

In other words: if your product is simply better and you have a de facto monopoly as a result, that's legal. If you protect your monopoly by making competition itself impossible, that's illegal (but hard to prove).
SEC Seeks To Ban High-Frequency Trading
I like your thinking. And there's nothing stopping you from delivering on that idea (because it's open!)
Interesting market to be in, but very tough for a startup I think. Xbox 360 already has Netflix streaming support. TV companies are offering more sophisticated set-top boxes all the time. Amazon / Netflix could easily release their own set-top box.

Are you planning something which you think will be really disruptive?
Sound (and sobering!) advice, thanks.
Kohting - Avaleht - tutvumine - kirjasobrad
I think the reasoning in this article also applies to programming languages. By that reasoning, it's by far better to have a crappy programming language that panders to mainstream expectations than to have something innovative that gives you a more powerful paradigm.

I also think that sometimes the more powerful paradigm still trumps sheer numbers.
The "masturbating monkeys" reference is what Linus called OpenBSD developers not that long ago:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/706950
We use ZenDesk, and it's been fantastic. Their API is also first-class, which helped us integrate it more cleanly with our app.
Ask HN: I want to implement a network fuzzer in a VNC server. Is it possible?
i want to implement a network fuzzer in a vnc server . How far is it possible to code it from scratch and any good ebooks or links on it?
Let's look at a cross section of typical HN topics:

-Startups

-Web applications

-High-level, often functional programming languages with sometimes fringe appeal

Looks like almost a complete overlap with the topics PG writes about. I never used Digg or Reddit heavily, but on Slashdot the emphasis was more towards open source, science fiction, privacy, and YRO.
proprietary formats are evil.

Microsoft's "proprietary" formats are just the in-memory COM/OLE objects representing your document serialized onto the disk. They change in every release because the code changes. It's not a conspiracy (and you have a very odd definition of "evil").
One down day over the course a fiscal quarter hardly equates to "zero-risk" trading. The market has been on a 6 month trend up, and when trending it is relatively easy to make assumptions that can pay off everyday. Judging from last week's volatility I would be willing to bet we'll see something of an increase in down days for GS.

Buying down and selling on a down day does not mean a loss is guaranteed. There could have been up days in between, and with the plethora of derivatives available who knows exactly how they took advantage of the strongly trending market.

And don't think for a second that the SEC doesn't have a tent setup at the Jersey office watching every move. GS is the most profitable, and therefore most envied and suspect, financial institution in an economy that was decimated, almost single-handedly, by the finance industry.
Just out of curiosity... have you tried turning off 3G?
I want to throw it out, because I don't believe it matters. I think it is a bad document, and it all it does is cheapen the notion of human rights. Of course I agree that some of the rights it outlines are correct, but the document on the whole is a mess.

Here are some examples:
Article 23, Article 24, Article 25, Article 26, Article 27, Article 30.

I think it's goals are good, I think they overreached.
That's like asking, why is my car slow when I am near one of the fastest highways...

Most likely reason is where you are hosting the wordpress app or the DB is slow and overloaded (guessing shared hosting?)
I loved it when they zoomed in on the book case (watch it on Youtube in HD). Instant ideas for further reading!
Beyond the page view in web analytics
Surely the whole point is to make the most of everything, take every opportunity. Learn everything you can (that's relevant, and sometimes even if not!) all the time. Your aim is to succeed and learn from that, but sometimes you don't have the choice.

If you succeed - learn from it.

If you fail - learn from it.

Try to succeed. (insert gratuitous Yoda quotation)
It is also worth noting that GS has more cash on hand right now than ever before.
Tender or zendesk are both great products, and they each have different use cases. We use both of them for our support ticketing for engineyard. We use tender for our community support/forum/faq type of stuff d we use zendesk for our paid 24/7 support needs.

Both of these platforms have great API's and good email integration and they are both highly recommended.
Whatever it is, it must be better than this:

http://www.roku.com/
You fail many times before you succeed once. In this case you learn more from failure.
Much of Europe shies away from a lot of genetic manipulation.
Announcing the Great American Hackathon
This is just a hack, nothing more.

Well, it is the cornerstone of Apple's highly successful and entirely transparent transition from PPC to x86, including drag-and-drop application installation/uninstallation. Couple it with Apple's compiler drivers and well-designed multi-architecture SDKs, and it becomes dead-simple to support multiple architectures and OS releases. Just build your binaries with -arch i386 -arch ppc -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk

It also supports Apple's transparent selection of armv7/armv6 binaries on the iPhone 3GS.

I'd say it's pretty useful, and not really a hack at all.

The only arguments I've heard against it involve package managers and shell scripts, which demonstrates such a remarkable lack of understanding of ease of use and user behavior that I don't even know where to start, other than to say: This is why popular adoption of Linux on the desktop is not going to happen any time soon.
You say that, but research the history of EDS and Accenture... Repeated fuckups haven't cost them any business with the UK govt.