skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Kids aren't as dumb as adults think they are.

It's more a matter of perceived fragility, both in the physical sense (safety hysteria) and the emotional and psychological sense (provider hysteria). This is constantly reinforced by other people behaving as though their children are fragile, and falling into the hysteria themselves.

No one wants to be at the bottom of this pile. It would be the same, in a coarse sense, as being at the bottom of the pile in a high school or in a clique of society wifes. Social ostracism, harassment with and by child protective services, and honest to goodness psychological damage of everyone involves can result from such petty bullshit. That you have to deal with such pettiness is a sign not that you should try to win harder, but that perhaps you should just stop playing the game.

In all of this squabbling, it is possible that, in an absolute sense, the child's life could be awesome. They could be comfortable, psychologically stable, and totally happy with life. But it doesn't matter, because all of this social in-fighting is a local phenomena, and being on the bottom in any locality makes you a "bad parent" almost by axiom.

BTW, not arguing at you so much as using your thoughts as a basis for my own. :-)
It seems that eventually after a particular programming paradigm (for ex. parallel, functional etc.) establishes itself, only a few programming languages will rise to the top that happen to express the ideas in that paradigm in a more clear and concise way.

For example, imagine describing a sorting algorithm to someone and you decide that it should be done in an imperative and sequential way (not functionally or without any parallelism involved). Describing it in English is too ambiguous and verbose, x86 assembly is probably too presice and too hardware specific, a turing machine program is too theoritical and too rigurous. So then you make something up, and I think eventually it looks similar to Python, Ruby or Pascal.

However, in practice the language itself is not worth much outside academia unless it comes with a solid library. At the end of the day, the user of the language will have to open network connections, render web pages, access databases and draw GUIs. If the language doesn't let them do that, no matter how elegant it is it will remain just a toy language.
I wonder how comparable this agreement will be to the one signed between Microsoft and Apple that ended their legal battles over "look and feel." They signed patent cross-licensing agreements about five years later.

But the agreement came when Apple had all but lost the PC market to Microsoft--the agreement was Apple's way of capitulating and Microsoft allowing Apple to save face.

What does this mean for the Intel monopoly position in the market?
You get to schedule your exams? Lucky you :)
Conspiracy Theory: You have to wonder if maybe they just added those entries so they could claim the name. ;)

Edit: Okay I know it is joke, it just highlights how people trust info on the internet and dates can be made to lie very easily.
Heh. I love how this guy is telling people that are comfortable doing layouts in table tags that converting to CSS-only layouts will ... "save them time".

Suuuuuuure it will.
This is the title of the article:

A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it?

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the first paragraph:

To enter the somewhat formidable Neo-Renaissance building at Boltzmanngasse 3 in Vienna, you must pass through a small door sawed from the original cathedrallike entrance. When I first visited this past March, it was chilly and overcast in the late afternoon. Atop several tall stories of scaffolding there were two men who would hardly have been visible from the street were it not for their sunrise-orange jumpsuits. As I was about to pass through the nested entrance, I heard a sudden rush of wind and felt a mist of winter drizzle. I glanced up. The veiled workers were power-washing away the building’s façade, down to the century-old brick underneath.

No, it doesn't get better from there.

The author's name is apparently Joshua Roebke. WTF, Joshua? Do all science reporters secretly desire to start their opuses with "It was a dark and stormy night", or is it just you? Tell me: do you have a novel stashed in your drawer looking for a publisher? I think you'd better work on making your articles say something, Joshua, because this one didn't actually say a fucking thing. At least that's what I got from a skim, because I couldn't endure reading all your prose in detail.

Oh, and Joshua, read up on the many-worlds interpretation of QM.
A less than statistically significant change reported by a company with inaccurate data, about a traffic source that is of declining importance to the site. This is noise, not news.
Why Twitter Implemented Retweets
Instructions: http://www.dropzap.com

The concept is very simple.
However, once programming languages reach a certain maturity, the marginal benefits of a better language will be dwarfed by the effort it would require to utilize it.
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iPhone Prices provides a free service to compare Apple deals, iPhones and iPod prices in stock on sale from leading UK retailers.
You are right with the notepad near the bed.

Slight modification:

I practice a certain kind of meditation. It has side effect that many things, including hacking solutions, come to mind during a session. I use a notepad to quickly scratch one catch-phrase which will bring back whole idea later, and let that idea go which is the purpose of this particular meditation. Often I'm quite full of fresh ideas after such session. It's amazing and I'm very
thankful to the teacher who gave me this method.
Maybe not right now. But down the line it will save them time.

Using a central stylesheet to manage your layout, as opposed to scattered HTML files containing markup and presentation, can save immense amounts of time in the long run, particularly if the website you're working on is large.

How is there a way in which being able to make global changes in one place won't save you time?
I bet Hong Kong was also an influence.
At least in some areas, the glass can be plainly reused, instead of going through a full recycling process. In Canada, the brown glass beer bottles can be washed and refilled over a dozen times before failing quality checks and needing to be ground and remelted.
Agreed. The <b> and <bold> tags are not so great, but tags that only convey meaning rather than style ( like <strong>, <em>, etc...) are definitely far better than using <span class="bold"> for everything.
Cisco Game Become a CEO with myPlanNet :-)
I agree. But I'd also like to add that anyone who has ever compared Compete's numbers to an actual site knows that a 2% change in traffic is well within Compete's margin of error.

So even if you believe these numbers to be an accurate measurement of traffic they still don't mean anything.
> Perhaps the author feels that only <em> should be used to place "emphasis" on the text in question, and that it should also be used instead of <strong> as strong doesn't give as clear an impression of importance as <em>.

That's a pretty weird take on it, given <strong> is supposed to put a stronger emphasis than <em>.

What would be used instead of <strong>, nested <em>s?
The cold war had many elements that you could attribute to an election, lots of places had to choose which party to align with, and the dividing lines were drawn in the 'not-sure' portions of the globe.

Western-Europe was in one camp pretty much by default, and lot of us feared what would happen if world war III would break out. The peace movement had a slogan which doesn't translate very well but which effectively was 'better red than dead'.

States that didn't align themselves openly with either the Soviets or the western block were bullied or bribed in to doing so, one way or the other usually proximity determined the outcome there.

I don't think it was a global election either, but there were definitely elements of an elective process in there, and to this day there are plenty of people in former eastern bloc countries that would gladly return to the former state of affairs simply because life was more certain for them then.

In a true elective process these people would vote for a re-alignment with Moscow in a heartbeat (even today).

They're a minority, but they do exist.

So, even if the analogy is flawed it does have its valid points.
HTML 4.01 Transitional DOCTYPE: Perfectly fine, use STRICT for l33t designz bonus points.

<table> (For layout): ok, we heard that one before.

<td>: that could be handy if you like your table to have cells.

<tr>: same, very useful for tables that need rows.

<IFRAME>: sometime useful, that's why you may want to stick to transitional doctypes.

<frame>: see frameset.

<frameset>: ok, don't use that. It's bad UI/UX.

<hr>: fine to use, but hard to style with css.

<br>: line breaks are fine too, just don't confuse them for paragraph breaks.

<font face=”Arial” size=”1″>: yeah, dont' use that, use CSS.

<bold>: use <strong>.

<strong>: use it, it's good semantic (strong emphasis).

<center>: ok, don't use it. Use CSS for presentation.

<map name="Map">: yeah, rarely useful and bad for accessibily/SEO.

<area>: see map.

<b>: use <strong> instead.
Make something useful, but also make something that you can go back and change easily. Make something that is not quickly deprecated. Making something that scales. Focus on function then form. Make something that works then make something beautiful.

As for the article, after reading it, go down and read the comments. Many people were unhappy with the article.

There are some tags that should never be used. <blink>blinking text</blink> is an example of a tag to never use. This is because such tags are proprietary and only work with specific browsers. However, if the tag represents the functionality you need, it should be used. Divs should not be used for storing tabulated data, for example. Tables were designed for that purpose. There is little harm in doing something such as this, but everyone should have the proper habits.
Avoiding spending more money on litigation has to be a win for everyone, including the customers of these companies.
Django Gotchas
I don't mean to spam, and I'm admittedly very biased, but my product Zen (http://agilezen.com/), helps me stay organized and makes me much more productive and happy. I always have a million things to do, and Zen stops me from being overwhelmed. (That's why I wrote it!)

On a less self-serving note, I'd also suggest (at least) two monitors, a good keyboard, and a good desk chair. Fatigue, RSI, and task-switching are all very real productivity drains.
The interesting things don't happen in a particular paradigm but rather where multiple paradigms meet. Python is imperative and strongly object oriented, but it also has many functional qualities to it. Ruby even more so, with great support for closures. Boo mixes imperative, object-oriented code with thorough metaprogramming, type inference, and a host of functional features. Nemerle is a functional language but mixes object orientation cleanly into the mix. These are the places where you see interesting concepts coming to light, not in the pure-X-paradigm camps.

As for libraries, this is becoming less and less of an issue. With .NET and the JVM, you have a single set of libraries that works with any compatible language and allows language designers to focus on what they're good at: the language. The effects of that can't be understated; it's allowing for a huge amount of innovation with fairly little time investment and ease of adoption.
> Also, if what you need to create is a table of data, then what else would you use beside table.

To be fair, TFAA does specify that his rule is about <table> for layout.

And yeah, <strong> definitely doesn't belong to the list, TFAA's defense of that in the comment is <weak>.
I'm unsure if the smiley means you're being sarcastic, but if not:

Such determinations are a pretty common thing for an optimizing compiler to attempt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop-invariant_code_motion
Google Go started in 1972 in the same sense as Clojure started in 1960.
Not me. I found good uses for twitter recently - if people talk about relevant keywords I can jump in and offer my product.

After using it for a while I thing the key to being good twitter citizen is is being a) relevant to conversation (I don't use bots and stay away from tangential topics) and b) upfront about your motives. Thus people who use twitter to ask a question into the void get an occasional relevant reply, if commercially motivated. For example, consider this tweet found by my search and the ensuing conversation:

snay2 @googletasks Very nice app, but any plans to make it work on the iPod Touch when it doesn't have WiFi?

memengo @snay2 There is an app to use Google Tasks on iPod touch with sync and offline support - it's called GeeTasks.

snay2 @memengo GeeTasks is a very nice Google Tasks app. Thanks for the recommendation!
So, I actually submitted feedback about this on the site. Their response:

"Thanks for your response to our website.

Depicting the size of atoms definitely has its challenges. We've been
getting a lot of comments and feedback about this.

The radius of a carbon atom is not a measure of the size of its
electron cloud, but rather the distance between the nuclei of two
adjacent atoms.
See http://www.chemguide.co.uk/atoms/properties/atradius.html
The size of the carbon atom in our activity is based on its van der
Waals radius (170 pm), not the covalent or ionic radius (around 77 pm).
See http://www.webelements.com/carbon/atom_sizes.html

The sizes of the atoms in the water molecule have been adjusted to
make them consistent with other atoms depicted in the activity,
although the overall diameter of the molecule is the same.

Sincerely,

Sheila Avery
Genetic Science Learning Center"
Twitter clients are the new "Hello world" of programming. I wrote it to try out and get familiar with the language.

While writing it I found a bug in JSON library (http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=73), which has been fixed quickly by Go developers (in less than an hour).

Currently their http library doesn't support basic authentication, and their http.send method, which allows tweaking headers, is private, so I had to copy and paste three methods from http package and add authentication (see http_auth.go).

The hardest part for me was to get those io things right (I was confused by []byte vs bytes package, and io.Writers/Readers).

I love cross-compilation: both binaries (for Mac OS X and Linux) were compiled on Mac.
Here's a summary of your summary:

Algorithms are cool. Traditional mathematics isn't enough for modern science; in the future there'll be lots of simulations and computer models -- algorithms. But we know how to reason with mathematical formulae, and as yet we have no equally strong "calculus of algorithms". This needs more research.
I don't think we should give up, at the very least because there is nowhere else to go. That, plus YC has monetary resources they use to bring quality traffic here - all the YC members and applicants are by definition people who are at lest trying to build something, .i.e. being constructive.
Extreme Agility at Facebook
Is Python Slow?
Tech Jobs in the Boston area - startups & industry leaders
This is just silly, he is testing more the performance of the http server implementations than that of the languages they are implemented in.

Also, he didn't even set GOMAXPROCS, so the results are completely meaningless.
XHTML is such a load of garbage. Transitional is bad, sure, but strict HTML 4.01 is the very best.
while the Adriod market isn't really open enough, given time it is still going to open a can of whup ass on Apple and their * control everything and lock the user in app prison *strategy.

Given time their will be apps and services (starting with Google Voice) that just cant be in the app-store and are to compelling to live without.

The age of the phone-computer has just begun.
OpenSUSE 11.2 released
I get where you're coming from, but at the same time if you make websites for a living (or earn your living from websites in any way) then the HTML should really be treated you would treat any other source-code. Readability and maintainability are definitely big issues...
I'm looking to do something similar but for various locations in my parents' basement. What did you use for sensors and power? How about communication to the outside world?
There's also potentially some pride to swallow, but it's badly placed pride in the first place. The life-prevalence of perfect mental health is near zero.

It's not just a matter of pride; for my sake is a certain amount of skepticism in what all has been pathologized. Regardless of what motives, or who's, you might believe is a result of this, we seem hasty in pinning on conditions and prescribing meds. That behaviors may be off the norm seems a priori evidence that they are bad behaviors, and need to be corrected, and our triggering deviation from the norm seems to be narrowing. But then, this could be because I tend to become friends with all of the outliers, and I have a sampling bias. :-)

I have thought about chatting with one or two mental professionals myself, but more out of a sense of curiosity than a sense that I need to be chemically renormalized. I'd like to first figure out what I might potentially be diagnosed with, and then begin the much more interesting discussion of where it becomes a problem, and whether it matters as more than just a label I could potentially exploit for preferential treatment.
Meant "Android". Doh.
I recommend http://www.adafruit.com
I bought the usb boarduino kit for $25 which is the cheapest way to get into arduino if you already have a breadboard and a soldering iron. Great tutorials on the adafruit site too.

http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&...
Do you have a specific issue with XHTML? Personally I would say that it's so good that they should probably do away with any non-xml serializations of the DOM...
Yeah, and Mozilla should re-rename Firefox to Firebird.
It is very good that Venkat(author) is introducing all these words and giving them solid definitions. It brings conversation to this new plane because we now have these words in our vocabulary. Great job, worth a careful read.
I don't think this relates to the "Go" vs "Go!" situation, I think it's just meant to represent the evolution of Google Go as a language.
PhD Comics : Brain Saver
or need the $1,000 in cash for some emergency

But that's exactly the point! If you are so poor you don't have the extra $1000 to carry you through you will have to pay more, just for being poor.
That's why I don't use a screen saver.
On a practical note, in case anyone can help you out concretely on the job front: Where do you live, and what's your specialty?
Relax -- it's just a metaphor. The iTunes App Store may not be under tyranny, but that's like saying it's not an ecosystem because binaries are nothing like living creatures (nor is it a platform because it's not a flat physical object, etc. ad absurdum).
Yes, the point of using a library is to save time. Spending an hour searching for a particular function reference is certainly a bother. I have seen instances where I discovered that I could have written the raw code myself faster than finding the answer to use the 'easy to use' interface. An example of this was a program library I was using that handled graphics. I wanted to used graphics that were compressed within one file instead of having separate bitmaps for each. I searched for hours for a solution using the library, and I never got it to work. So, instead, I wrote something that would decompress the files into memory and let the library simply pull the images from memory. I then had difficulty with this so I made something that loaded the images from memory instead. I still used the library for its other features, but this part was a complete pain, and I could have saved time simply by writing these parts by myself. Documentation is important! (However, I am guilty of not writing documentation. The fun is always in the process of creating not the process of explaining.)
Eat mistakes, not people
Announcing the RateMyStartup.com site launch
That's a cruel way to look at it. If the guy is more interested in spending time with his family than working, and he's able to find someone who values his 8 hours enough to provide stable employment, then he's found a working arrangement that suits his values. As long as he believes in those values -- and isn't just accepting them by societal default -- there's no reason he should feel guilty.
A Political Junkie's Foray Into the Ad Wars
I was in a similar situation; while I can't blame it all on my job, but it was the complacency that got me. I ended up separated from my wife and seeing my kids only a few days a week. When you feel like that do something about it. But speak to your family, prepare them for a while where they will have to live financially reduced and then make a change. Change is the first order of the universe, resistance to it will bite you in the end; embrace it and ride the wave instead.
> Real Information Theory, as opposed to Data Transmission Theory, has to take into account the receiver. The transmitter has to have a model of the receiver, and then devise the data that will transform the receiver according to the intent of the transmitter.

It seems that in general, for any two entities the level of the abstraction used for communication between them, should be the highest common level of abstraction that both of the two entities can operate in.

Take your example of the mathematician. If he is using an application that understands what a topological space or a mobius strip is, it seems then he can use those terms in the language that he uses to communicate to the computer.

Some computers understand what a Vector is. One can refer to vectors in the language used to communicate with that machine. For example a command like "multiply vector a and vector b" would seem reasonable. However if the machine is just a bare x86 box without any operating system, it will not "understand" what a vector is so one has to "talk" to it in terms of registers, memory and IO ports and so on.

This idea of course leads into DSLs. A machine can rise very high on the abstraction level scale today but the abstraction will be confined to a very narrow domain usually.
"But that is the point. HN isn't the place for religious discussion or proselytizing, no matter how heartfelt or (subjectively) genuine the belief in its tenets is."

You keep saying this, but on what authority?

(I honestly can't seem to find the site discussion guidelines, is there such a thing?)

Has religious discussion been permanently banned on HN? This discussion naturally led in to questions about "the meaning of it all," and it is pretty much impossible for a religious person to honestly address those questions without invoking their religion at some point.

"I have my beliefs about the nature of the Universe (it is irrelevant whether I am agnostic, atheist or religious), but I don't proselytize them here or try to gain converts by pivoting off peoples misery."

I do think that some of the discussion has already veered into "beliefs about the universe" in some ways, and I do not see clearly where that line is drawn.
The Most Intriguing Concept In Google's Go Language
My hometown turned off its free public Internet because of the MPAA
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