skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
People ask me this question a lot and really, the best way to learn how to program in any language is to figure out something you want your computer or the web to do and make it do it.

You have to want something. Hackers want to solve problems. They'll invent problems just to have a problem to solve. So you are going to have to do that too. Invent a problem you want to solve.

What kinds of things do you do with computers? What do you wish was easier? What do you think is fun? Build an iPhone app. Build a website to help you track your time or productivity. Build something you will use and love for a long time.

what kind of business do you run? Do you have employees? What questions do you spend a lot of time answering because information is all over the place?

The most fun and laid back way is to do it when no one expect anything from you and you are doing it to make your life better.
I too want to be a cyborg, but I wonder when it'll come. One of the things I'm personally interested in (outside of the blue-sky stuff I read about in H+) is better interfaces for the already ubiquitous computers we have. I've been sketching up designs for Eyetap hardware that can be put into mass production and the software to back it, but I don't have the skill or money to make it happen, sadly. That such great technology exists but is solely in academia is just disappointing.
I don't think that's true. I learned how to program in high school and we had a network and it was fun to write computer programs to allow my classmates to send messages over the network to other students. This was back in the Novell messaging days. I also did a lot of graphics programming drawing neat images and a chess game.

It's no more frustrating than losing at poker or some type of competitive game or politics.
The sad part is, they've been saying that since the beginning. Just, no one's bothering to read and instead they go straight to 'Hulu's dead' and all that hyperbole.
My roommate and I pay more than that for our place on Haight st. Getting an apartment isn't hard. We make moderately good income and getting a place wasn't hard at all.
Find someone in SF looking for a roommate? (I just moved back to SOMA from Afghanistan and am moving into a huge commercial space live/work with someone and one empty spot, starting in January)
Yes, it is fun. But see, if you want to dig deep, then you are eventually going to hit topics and discussions that you can't easily warp your mind around. Learning computer science is not always an easy and happy road.
Ask HN: Your favorite Startup School moments?
Here are mine:

- Just about anything out of the mouth of Paul Buchheit. I'm convinced he's actually Bob Newhart. If I had to pick only one quote: "If I work for a long time without releasing, I get bored and I go home and watch 'Dukes of Hazzard'."

- Lots of little gems from Jason Fried: "Planning is guessing", "Funding is like crack", etc.

- Chris Anderson: "I recommend not having crappy products, even free ones."

- Evan Williams: "Trust your instincts - except when they're wrong."

- Scoble asks Mark Zuckerberg: "What management skills are you learning?" Zuckerberg: "...management skills?"

- Tony Hsieh: "We don't think about work/life balance; we think about all of it as life."

It was a fantastic experience. Thanks to YC, UC Berkeley, and everyone else who hosted.
Wow. I remember that back in the day, it was commonly argued that derivatives trading would reduce volatility in the markets. This is no different. Under certain assumptions, insider trading would lead to a more efficient market, and under others, a far less efficient market.

Quick question: which of these scenarios do you think captures the mentality of an inside trader?

A: I NEVER hold shares in companies that I do not fully believe in, and I ALWAYS take a long position. If I get inside information that a company is in trouble, I will immediately liquidate my position-- it may not blow up on me today, or tomorrow, or even this year, but I trust that sooner or later the stock price will take a dive, and I want to be long gone when that happens.

B: I have inside information that a company is in trouble. I don't know when it will blow up, but I do know that I have an edge on everybody else who doesn't know what I know. So, I should ride the stock all the way up, as long as it keeps going up, and short it on the first sign of trouble on the technical indicators. This way, I can make my money on both ends-- the up and the down.

One of these strategies will act to reduce volatility, and the other will enhance it.
Many of these justifications are unrealistic. If insider trading is common, someone without insider knowledge will assume that the counterparty to any trade they make is better-informed; their best option is to find markets where insider trading is difficult.

There's a reason exchanges used to frown on this sort of thing even before it was illegal. It's better to have a market where differences of opinion on publicly-known facts are the only reason to trade -- a difference in available facts will make people reluctant to trade at all.
Doesn't matter - I can't see their content anyways, I'm Canadian...
I've never run into any kind of problem like that here in SF. I do find that landlords say they "need" all of these crazy things but in reality all they care about is a deposit and first month's rent. The first person to hand that to them will get the apartment.

I spent a whole month looking for apartments the old fashioned way when I first moved to SF - filling out applications, sending in credit repots, dealing with the unreasonable requirements landlords put up. Finally got tired, when I was looking at a house said "I can give you a check for the deposit now" -- suddenly all his requirements went away and I had a place.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention, I was self employed up until about a month ago, and have been during all my landlord negotiations here in SF.
The author doesn't seem to consider that legalizing insider trading would provide a huge incentive for insiders to conceal information from the general public, so that they and their cronies can act on it before the general public.

Of course enforcement is imperfect, but is a price change due to insider trades really more informative than an earnings announcement heard by just-about-everyone and just-about-the-same-time?
It links to netflix for me.

And yes, you're confused, because a wrong search result in google does not mean that 'Netflix site hacked right now?'.
I would recommend R (http://www.r-project.org) since you mentioned your business background. R's strength is in statistics and might prove useful. As for a learning resource, Quick-R (http://www.statmethods.net) was an excellent guide for me.

I feel bad saying this, but also try learning Visual Basic for Applications with Excel.
You can always tell when a person is from Harvard, but you can't tell them much.
congrats to the team that will kill the biz card.
Most surprisingly good speaker: Chris Anderson

I have to admit, I wasn't particularly excited about hearing him speak. I read his Long Tail book, so I knew he wasn't just any journalist, but I couldn't help thinking "what does Wired know about startups"? By the end I was enthralled, and rather sad he couldn't speak for longer.

Best repeat performance: Paul Buchheit

I was fortunate enough to see him last year, so I kind of knew what to expect. One of the most honest and amusing talks of the day. It seems like he'd be fun to work with/for.

Amusing scheduling decision: Jason Fried after Greg McAdoo

For second year in a row, someone from 37signals comes on directly after Greg McAdoo from Sequoia. The contrast is kind of stark. The 37signals guys like to poo-poo on what they see as the pompous funding scene, and advocate bootstrapping, so hope Greg doesn't take it personally. ;) I thought Greg had some great points regarding how a 'bad economy' (for whatever value of 'bad' you choose) makes you focus on the important stuff. Jason's angle was that charging money forces you to make something people are willing to pay for (ie - something useful). I think in the end they were both kind of saying the same thing... focus on making something people want... just through their own lenses of experience.

Best stories: Mark Pincus

I had no idea what to expect from this guy, and he was a lot of fun. Before he started I was kind of ready to get out of there (because the room was becoming a sauna) but by the end of his talk, I was actually sad we ran out of time. Jessica was right: he made an excellent closer.

Other random amusements/thoughts:

PG: "You have to have a liquidity event before you can have a liquidity event."

A lot of the talks this year seemed to be about company culture. I wonder if that was a coincidence, or if it had to do with 'the economy' and some soul searching on the part of founders that is going around. Last year the common topic seemed to be 'raising money'. I wasn't at the 2007 one, so I'd be curious if there was also a theme that year.

Berkeley was a far superior venue as far as lunch and other travel logistics were concerned, although their mic system seemed haphazard.

Also, it was a blast to meet up with some of my fellow HN'ers... both those I was meeting for the first time and those I knew from last year. PG, JL, TLB, and the rest of the YC companies that hosted pre/post parties... thanks! Best of luck to everyone on their endeavours once we all head home!
In context, lionhearted doesn't want to 'dig deep'. Rather, he 'just thinks it'd be a neat thing to spend some hours in.' He doesn't have to learn hard topics if he doesn't want to. Plus, if he does, then it should/would be for his own enjoyment.
I'm not sure if posting instructions here will help anyone in XinJiang much...
I kind of agree with both of the above thoughts. I've made very drastic lifestyle and dietary changes to get myself well. I am not particularly prone to depression. If I am "depressed" for more than three days, it is usually bad anemia. I had no idea how bad my anemia was until it got better and my body just worked differently. Being anemic was my norm and I just didn't know one's body could feel different and work different.

On the one hand, I think that if one goes far enough with dietary and lifestyle changes, more can be done to address the underlying physiological problems than most people realize. On the other hand, I am aware that depression can be a response to feeling helpless about your life. Drugs won't fix that. Making different choices does more for that kind of depression.

Again: I'm not very prone to depression. I am prone to getting angry in the face of stuff like that. But the same principle applies: Stewing about things isn't healthy and doesn't make one feel better. I have found that the best antidote to my tendency get angry about stuff is to DO something, no matter how small. Since I tend to be the "bounce off the walls" type, I tend to make good friends with folks who are prone to depression. (Two bounce off the walls types can be a very destructive combination whereas depressed folks find I liven things up and I find they help ground me.) So I have assisted a couple of people with both the behavioral and dietary stuff the promotes their depression.

For me, getting healthier has been a fascinating study in using negative outcomes of life as feedback for what I need to correct in my own thought processes and behavior. I don't even know how to adequately put it into words. I think the best I can do is the explanation I once gave my son when he was younger: That life is like a video game and you either learn from your mistakes or Game Over, only we don't have a reset button. So life-threatening events are a big wake-up call that "hey, stupid, you can't keep doing that". The trick is to figure out what things you can't keep doing.

I think I have dug my grave deep enough and should probably just clam up now. :-D
I'm not confused. Paste the above url in your browser and click the sponsored Netflix link. I guess you are right that there is nothing wrong with Netflix but surely Google cant permit a sponsored link to display one domain and actually be another one entirely. I took a video of it and am in the process of posting it to YouTube.
This is great news.

It's pretty impressive that Hulu was put together not just through a big company, but through a collaboration of four giant media conglomerates. Not the outcome that we might have expected. Kudos to the team that navigated that deal . . .

Here's hoping that the book publishers take the lessons to heart for their transition and record labels realize what they've missed and get back on track.
My dad is an avid sailor, with a lake-sailing boat in the backyard (Flying Scot) who invites me to multi-day trips on the North Carolina coast on a cruiser he rents. This means I get to sail without ever really having to take care / pay for the boat.

There are three experiences on a sea-going sailboat that I particularly like:

a) Not quite being in control. You can set your sails to carry you any which way, but the wind and seas will only allow so much. You have to cooperate, but you do have quite a bit more control than a layperson might think.

b) Being "alone". Sailing on the open seas (or even within a particularly big bay or sound) means all you can see around you is water. Even if you're sailing with a crew, the disconnect from the outer world feels even more intense than going camping or some other disconnection from civilization.

c) Having to stick through foul weather. The first time you find yourself 5 hours from shore when it's raining and the seas are rough (not rough enough for small craft advisory, though) you realize there is no possible way to bypass those 5 hours; you just have to sail through it. The things that normally bother you just do not matter when you are completely drenched and trying to keep the waves from bashing you off course enough to lose the wind and get forced into an unplanned tack/jibe.
Icahn to Yahoo’s Board: My Work Here is Done
A hack of netflix implies that netflix' servers have been compromised.
Choosing Who Survives in a Flu Epidemic
I think the implied criticism is valid. This book is the "Reader's Digest" version of learning seven languages and four programming paradigms. You won't learn a new programming paradigm in a week.
Recently took the plunge and went from 7 cups coffee plus 5 tea per day.. to around 1 coffee and 2 tea per day.

First few days were very surreal.. equivalent to slight hangover. Drinking lots of water seemed to help.

For me it was more some kind of subconscious routine habit that was too addictive, rather than the actual caffeine fix.

I think I enjoy coffee more now I drink less of it. More of a treat, and I make sure its a really good one, plunged or in an Italian pot (not instant).
That's supposing everyone has an Iphone or Ipod Touch. You guys need to get out of the valley, heck, even take a trip out of the USA.

I love the idea, love the product. But will they kill the business card? Not in 10 years...not even 20.

I do see it happening if they become the standard. Not clear on how that can happen.
Surprisingly drinking chocolate has a few mg of caffeine also.
The body adjusts to a large degree.. I could drink a coffee and easily fall asleep, when I was drinking 6 cups per day.
Broadersheet is a startup trying to solve this sort of problem. They have an iPhone app which serves up an electronic newspaper personalised to your interests. (Sadly they don't yet cater to iPhone denialists like me, so I can't report from direct experience how good it is.)
I changed the title from "Is Netflix site hacked right now?" to "Google supports false advertising?" to be more accurate. Let me know if you can think of a better description my scrupulous friend.
Ask HN: Good product sites?
I'm in the starting stages of getting some design work done for an application written, and I'm not really sure where to start. I'm wondering what neat designs you've seen on single product pages, what you like about them and what you don't like about them?
I really wish someone would come out with a BSD/MIT licensed filesystem, so anyone could use it. It wouldn't have to be the one with the most features, mainly simple and good at storing typical users' files. Currently, it seems FAT32 is the only thing out there that is able to be implemented without having to worry too much about patents, licenses etc (with some exceptions). The only issue is, FAT32 sucks! I have a Canon Rebel camera that can record videos, but they can only be up to 4GB because of crappy FAT32. It doesn't matter if I have a 32GB flash/CF card in there, they can still only be 4GB.
While I wholeheartedly agree with fnid (see his sibling post) that you won't actually learn anything until you are scratching your own itch, the most fun way I can think of to learn to program is to make a game.

Flash (and actionscript, which is akin to Javascript) would allow you to do that with graphics... but if you don't want to mess with that, just make a text-based game. Something simple like two player tic-tac-toe with an AI, just displaying a new board after every move, would get you a long way. Python and Ruby are good languages for things like this... as is Scheme or Javascript.
The video proof:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_797XSpj9k

Don't you get the vulnerabilities implied by this? Read my YouTube description.
Although title makes me skeptical (why 7 languages? why 7 weeks?), this sounds interesting since I don't know those languages. I hope it does more then repackage what I could otherwise easily find.
Also, this blog post (which did the rounds on HN a while back) was excellent for understanding it:

http://funcall.blogspot.com/2009/04/you-knew-id-say-somethin...

(It's part of a 5 part series... but you don't have to necessarily read all of them... it kind of wanders.)
There are some great BSD/MIT licensed filesystems. The BSD's UFS is as good if not better than NTFS/EXT3/HFS+. It isn't cross platform due to a combination of being complicated, each systems being slightly different and lack of market share.
John Dvorak reverses entire career, says Microsoft should copy Apple
Battle Buggy
Evan Williams: "Trust your instincts - except when they're wrong."

It's more like a Zen proverb/koan.
In Praise of Slow Thinking
anyone got a good use case for laptop use?

I may be in the minority but I would have liked the opportunity to use the same filesystem on my OSX laptop that I do on my database server.
Python and a game library, PyGame, might give you enough kicks per effort to keep going. Python is one of the easiest languages to learn.

http://www.pygame.org/screenshots.html
A truly riveting summary. :/

I really liked how Hsieh talked about positive psychology and different ways to conceptualize, and attain, happiness.

Specifically, the major sources of happiness in a job or career, or alternatively things that the company itself should seek to have, come in three tiers of increasing value and longevity: "Pleasure / Profits", "Flow / Passion", and "Meaning / Purpose". A rock star lives a life of fleeting pleasure; a passionate worker experiences flow and gets in the "zone"; a truly fulfilled entrepreneur or employee feels they are working toward a higher purpose.
This is already the case and happens all day every day, although it goes by the name "high-frequency trading". The information that HFT systems trade on is "concealed" via the latency differences between multiple systems interacting with a given exchange(s). This "latency arbitrage" can be understood to be an extremely high-speed version of insider trading.
This was pretty amazing to read:

> It's a long story. But the first thing is, there was one moment where there was fruit on the tree, and I'm climbing on the tree, and there was a snake on the branch, and I want the fruit. So, the snake is in trouble. So, I manage to hit the snake off the branch, and it's a deadly snake. And before I know it, I'm flying off the tree after the snake, grabbing his tail, killing that snake, peeling its skin and chewing it alive. And I feel the best I've ever felt in my life. And then I'm coming back to my senses, and I recall that just minutes ago, I was miserable. I cannot handle the situation.

> So, wow. And that's a very important thing that I have realized. There are a few important things. First of all, we don't need to learn survival. We know it. Nobody needs any course, any kit, any book. It's completely nonsense. We know survival very well, that's what we know best.
I sure hope their email is done a physically different server and hard drive.
I'll let you know. Neither I or my kids are vaccinated.
UN Youtube Channel
Wow I love this. I really love this. And I'm convinced that this is the simple truth.

And you forgive me for expressing my totally personal ideas, "The essence of his story is connected with the essence of Buddhism". (Any religion is great. But I just see with the lenses in front of my mind.)
There is a technical term for this phenomenon: an Akerlof market. Where there is a large information asymmetry in favor of the sellers, the price of items in said market is driven down since buyers will not pay the sellers' requested prices due to high variances in quality. "Lemon laws" are an example of a countermeasure against an Akerlof market developing for used cars.

More to your point, if insider trading were common, as you propose, then the prices of these transactions (and therefore the profit gained from them) would begin to fall as buyers would increasingly begin to distrust said transactions. Therefore. it would be in the best interest of traders with inside information to not act in the manner in which you suggest lest they significantly deflate the market from which they are looking to extract profit.
Most surprisingly good speaker: Chris Anderson

Really? I'd be curious to hear what you got out of his talk. I thought most of the discussion of Freemium business models was pretty rudimentary.
The problem with your assessment is that it proves Don's point in the article. The B trader will reveal his inside information much more rapidly than if he were not able to act on it, thus increasing the amount of information available to the market as a whole, enabling better decisions by others regarding the security in question.

I agree, the "B" traders are more likely, but that's a good thing.
Agreed. I just used that floating-point variable as a simple example.
It would certainly be useful to have some concept of units built into the language. I'm actually working on handling units in Java right now, as part of a larger library for healthcare data.
http://www.hl7.org/v3ballot/html/infrastructure/datatypes/da...
It is this kind of ad-hominem attack that turns great conversation forums into immature wastelands. Let's not allow that to happen here.
Well I meant that he was an entertaining speaker, and kept me interested. The only thing that stands out in my mind that I hadn't really distilled out before was the slide about the half dozen things people will pay for, and how your freemium model has to work around one of those things. But then again, I haven't spent much time thinking about Freemium, so I suppose this wasn't exactly mind-blowing for those that have.

The format doesn't really allow anyone time to go very deep on a topic, so I wasn't expecting anything too rigorous... although Peter Norvig came kind of close last year with his word segmentation problem.
I think we've already had this discussion.
Couldn't get a job elsewhere eh?
Is this free? You don't need an account with the local ISP?
And in other news, botanists like plants and fish like water.
So then all things being equal, you're better off with the coffee. You get to enjoy the delicious taste of coffee and yet be 'normal' like a non-coffee drinker afterwards :)