skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Since NYU seems to be in the lead (3 points) as I'm typing this, I'll throw something in here.

The introductory cs couse, ie the one I'm in right now, is not very good. I assume it gets a lot better, but the ones teaching those courses are not exactly on the cutting edge of what cs is at the moment. Case in point, my professor likes to speak great volumes of how important UML is and how programmers can spend months just designing the UML before they get to any coding.

That said, research here is pretty good. Jeff Han, one of the main multi-touch developers, worked at NYU. He gave a TED presentation as well: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_han_demos_his_breakth...

Also, it's New York City, so you have a good chance of meeting all kinds of people, not just students and professors. Google's office is only about a 20 minute walk from campus.

Also, it's expensive, very expensive.
I always try to find a library which does what I need before writing one myself. However, I rarely consider proprietary libraries.

With open source or free software libraries I can quickly get some idea of how well-written the library is, and how well it can be extended in the directions I need it it to.

In rare cases I might pick a propietary library for a project at work, but even then I only pick those for which I get the source code. When a client calls with some issue which needs an immediate fix, I can actually dive in and fix things.
I live about 30-40 miles south of the Cities and go canoeing on the lakes nearby. I used to sail when I lived back in CT and I was planning on putting a sail on my canoe this summer, but never got around to it.

There's a pretty strong overlap between (computer) hacking and sailing.
Somehow even your use of the word "force" here still manages to understate the severity of the problem.

The "Performance Management" craze is sweeping corporate management, along with the pernicious use of the "Balanced Scorecard" it advocates. Unable to identify meaningful metrics to build these scorecards with, management delegates to programmers the task of inventing metrics. Programmers, who know very well how any metric can be gamed, know that they're obligated to hand management a loaded gun, and hope they can fill the scorecards with a gun of the least-damaging calibre.

This will continue unabated until a better science appears, and there's a very real possibility that one never will (if programming is more akin to an art and/or craft).

I would love to have seen this presentation.
You can buy it at almost every "hippie" grocery store I've ever been to. (but the loose variety if you can get it).

Beyond that, you can order it from ma-tea.com (this is where I bought it up until a few yeras ago when it became popular enough to start appearing in grocery stores).
This was perhaps the most amazing feat for me, too (esp for it's time)
I appreciate your other comments about chances at Brown and Columbia relative to chances at the other universities

Sure. This NYTimes article is useful in that it gives you the raw numbers behind admissions to Columbia and Brown: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/a-few-more-col.... You can see they're brutally low.

I was also intentionally not mentioning state universities (making the assumption that most applicants will apply to the in-state state university), but that is a category of universities I would like to know more about.

State universities get a bad rap because their public view not exciting. Some examples: in Iron Man Tony Stark was wearing an MIT sweatshirt and in Swordfish, Stanley Jobson was a graduate from CalTech. State universities will never be able to replicate that kind of effect, an effect which is very important to young people.

That being said, once you examine reality, state universities can be quite exciting. Here are some bullets for you (sorry it's from UIUC again, but it's the one I know the most about):

* Paypal's founder and two cofounders of YouTube went to UIUC.

* Awesome speakers pass through regularly (I saw Larry Wall last year, I saw Alan Kay a couple of days ago, and I'm planning to see Stephen Wolfram tomorrow).

* There are a lot of hacker-like places on campus. For example, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications invented the first popular graphical web browser. There's also Wolfram Research with Mathematica and Wolfram alpha.

* The Department of Energy and private utilities are essentially dumping money into the Information Trust Institute for securing the powergrid. In fact, there's a conference next week with tons of interesting speakers on this topic.

* A $30,000 dollar prize (the Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize) is awarded each year to the student who "has created or improved a product or process, applied a technology in a new way, redesigned a system, or demonstrated remarkable inventiveness in other ways."
Bad Working Conditions, part 2
Part one is here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=900809
Of the possible (related to this or something else I changed at the same time) benefits I may have incurred by cutting coffee back to twice a week (one cup, half caf, half-decaf Wednesdays and Sundays): breath not as bad, stopped grinding my teeth at night, my back is less sore/achy, better sleep/more rested, any caffeine has a more pronounced affect.

I do drink green tea on the other days, a caf green first and then decaf the rest of the day. If I stop entirely, then out comes the aspirin, so I obviously am still "addicted."
Part 2: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=901976
X264's abstraction layer for cross-platform x86 assembly: now free to use
All the people in pilot costumes were the hosts from AirBnB
Who do you think does the studying? Engineers...
Fundamental Laws
What about Cornell?
I'd say first rule of programming is KISS. It kinda includes your rule.
One remarkable attribute of IKEA is its epic success. In fact, its owner is arguably the richest man in the world [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvar_Kamprad#Net_worth
Mu is a lightweight JavaScript library to use Facebook Connect on your site.
If you prefer a smaller school with a very high majority of tech related people (anywhere from CS to ECE to Robotics to Mech), you might like WPI. I can personally testify that the cs education is top notch (I've made a decent attempt to compare to other schools), and it's actually "Computer Science", not "learn java and c++". Almost all the professors are brilliant, and new experimental courses keep popping up every year. From the entrepreneurship point of view, the campus population is small, but a large proportion of people are tech oriented, and they know each other and work on things together, which helps a lot if you want to start up a company after school.

http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/Catalogs/Ugrad/Current/cscourses.htm...

If you google "WPI csxxxx", you'll probably hit course websites for current and past courses, which give some insight in the syllabus and assigned work.

EDIT: List of course websites:

http://www.cs.wpi.edu/Undergraduate/coursepages.html
Not exactly the same thing.

The R3RS that existed in 1989 lacked macros, had t and nil, and even allowed implementations to "call" strings. Even ten years ago, Python, as it existed in 1999 was a very different language than it is today.

Moreover, Python and scheme implementations have code that "worked" only a few years ago that fails to run on the current version of the interpreters, while gcc still happily recompiles my pre-ansi C just fine.
1. Max out investment in yourself first of all - better food, accomodation, time saving stuff...

2. Keep away from anything stock-market related - there are 2 types of people there - those who earn for living there and who feed them.. you are not the former 100%...

3. Get mortgage ( don't pay in cash everything ) apartment and rent it out - pay the reminder with cash and in 20 years you will have it for half price for your children.

4. Put the rest of your money in 2 different banks - hassle free, some %, liquidity when you will need it when you done with #5...

5. Start to learn about investing ( google passive income ) - you are really abnormal person if you got it to 200K and don't know what to do next.
Just for the record, this isn't my site, but a friends'. Posting it here cause it seems in line with common topics.
I have no doubt that it's a great place to raise a family. It feels much more honest than California or New York; there's certainly something to be said about the benefits of midwestern values. I certainly didn't mean to offend. A decade from now I might raise a family here too, for all I know.

However, as a college student, depending on what you're into, you'll end up distributing your social time between frat parties, gatherings at a friend's apartment, campus bars, and Chambana bars (for those unfamiliar with the area, bars let you in at 19 years old). Note that half of those places are filled with frat dudes. Not too much diversity there.

In terms of academics, the isolation is a bit difficult as well. I can't tell you how many security conferences and user group meetings I've wanted to go to in the past year that are all in Chicago. Although for job related stuff, companies will usually fly you out from our airport, so at least you don't have to go to Midway or O'hare.
Is saving really for suckers?
I use Bugzilla at a place that was setup before I got involved. Too much noise for what we need, but too much legacy to change.

Currently trying Lighthouse for a small 2 person project.

I'm actually thinking that Google Wave could be interesting here. We've all got accounts and I'm thinking of giving it a go just to see what happens.
Well, we would love to chat with you about conventional and new media investment opportunities, including purchasing literary rights. Check out www.iwannabeon.com
Yup, you are right. But solve problem your best and as fast as you can :-)
The Seidenberg School of Computer Science at Pace University has a growing population of web-minded hackers and entrepreneurs. A few years ago Ivan Seidenberg(CEO Verizon) established a scholars program for top computer science students that provides nearly a full ride, free laptop, subsidized research projects, meetings with proven entrepreneurs, and internship opportunities.

Essentially if you are considering NYC and don't want to graduate with nearly 100k in loans(which is likely at NYU/Columbia), want small class sizes and a chance to work with a tight nit group of hackers Pace is a good bet.

http://www.pace.edu/seidenberg/

Details on scholarship: http://www.pace.edu/page.cfm?doc_id=25567
Canadian schools all post their tuition on their websites.
Actually, Canadian schools are still cheaper than private, even if you are foreign.
Waterloo Engineering Coop: $28,527.94/year
Waterloo Math/Science Coop: About $20,000/year
NOTE: You will for sure make most of that back with Waterloo's coop program. My friend worked at Google, VMware and others.
Other top Canadian schools with lower international student tuition:

- UBC

- McGill

- McMaster

- Queens *(<- Heard this school is really, really tough)

Don't go here:

- U of Toronto: This is a very UN-entrepreneurial school. Good reputation but trust me, you don't want to go there. It is just too theoretical and math based. I don't mean like studying RSA. I mean like solving the proofs behind every mathematical element of RSA, and proofs are sometimes multiple choice. Really, really only for those with a serious love of theoretical mathematics.
Each link on digg stay on the homepage for approx. 2-5 hours (depending on the time of the day), there are roughly 50-60 links on the frontpage a day. It makes sense that slashdot is likely to send you traffic throughout the day at more or less same pace. In case of digg, even after it gets removed from the front page a story can move to the "top 10 list" for the nest 10+ hours which sends huge amount of traffic.

Speaking from personal experience, I have seen digg send traffic from 5k to 60k in a day. Here is a recent example: http://imgur.com/NWAWG.png google analytic roughly shows the same traffic numbers.
Get more spend less
Get more spend less
FusionCash is a loyalty program. which rewards surfers for trying offers, taking surveys, and more.
1) pay off your debt
2) buy a 2 - 4 unit apt. live in 1 unit. rent out the rest.
3) invest in your self (certification/training/mba/etc)
A thesis never written..
That was a Simpsons joke.

http://www.snpp.com/guides/flanders.file.html
Then they should open the search to more places than just one campus. Capable co-founders do not just exist in universities, many did not even attend university, or at least left there recently.
Also: 9 times out of 10 you can do something faster by hand even if you think that a shell script, regex/sed command, or custom emacs extension would do the job better.
I hate to say it, but most of the valley is just cubefarms in nondescript office parks. A tour heading south on 101 of the more interesting bits could be:

Oracle campus - one of the more eye pleasing campuses from the outside (the inside of the buildings is awful - don't bother going in). Off of 101.

Palo Alto (downtown + Stanford) - take 101 exit to University Ave, drive through University Ave (slowly) to Palm Drive, park in the Oval at Stanford and check out the old courtyard. Stanford is a beautiful campus (at least the old part). In Palo Alto downtown a large number of deal meetings happen at University Cafe (on your right). The original Google offices and the former Facebook offices are all within 2 blocks of the Romona/University ave intersection. Special trivia note: the Persian rug dealers also run an investment group (Amidzad) and the Plug-and-Play Tech Centers (startup friendly office spaces). They got stock in Google when GOOG wanted to rent some of their space on Univ Ave.

Googleplex - take Rengstorff exit off of 101. Buildings 41/42/43 are the core Google campus and the old Silicon Graphics campus as well. You may be able to walk through the center of the campus without being hassled by security. Much better if you can get someone to invite you in for lunch. LinkedIn is at the end of Sterlin Ct (right near the Googleplex). Formerly buildings #7 and #8 of Silicon Graphics campus (the whole Sterlin Ct area was SGI for 10+ years).
*) Lion and Compass Restaurant in Sunnyvale (Fair Oaks Ave exit North). http://www.lionandcompass.com/ The building is the original headquarters for Atari. (underwhelming, but a nice bit of trivia)

Apple campus - cupertino (off of 280 near De Anza) - not all that interesting, but at least you'll know where it is.

Sand Hill Road - on the way back up from Apple stay on 280N and exit onto Sand Hill Road. This nondescript road is home to Stanford Linear Accelerator and across the street (left side as you go downhill) most of the more famous VC firms all have their headquarters (Sequoia, etc). It's not much to see, but if you're there around lunchtime, head over to the Quadrus Cafe and have a bite surrounded by whatever VCs aren't doing lunch meetings that day. (warning: boring).

However, I besides Stanford Campus, I might suggest skipping all of this and just heading down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (if they're open), the 17-mile drive, Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz and maybe swing by Bonny Doon to get some wine on the way back up. During sundown, the ridge above the valley on Skyline Blvd is beautiful.
Because they can "legally" commit fraud by lending 9x more (in the US) than they have and the central bank will print money (devaluing everyone elses money) in order to cover their losses if needed.
Ask HN: Windows 7 worth the upgrade from XP?
Hi,

my PC died recently and I bought a new one, installed SP2 on it and it's working fine now. With the release of Windows 7 I'm wondering whether it would make sense to upgrade, now that I have a PC fast enough? I use a Macbook Pro for work and keep a PC around not to lose touch with the rest of the computing world (and for the occasional Word file). I use it as a "fun" multimedia PC, eg. I play music on it, watch movies, browse the web, no games or Visual Studio right now.

Over the years I (like most other "power users" I'm sure) have arrived at a sensible pattern of minimalistic Windows usage (which results in a problem-free system for me): I use the classic Windows look, don't install crap or bloatware, don't run AV software, run it as a non-admin user to keep viruses out, use Firefox instead of IE, use Foxit instead of Adobe, use Total Commander instead of iexplore.exe, occasionaly run sysinternals to clean it out, etc.

The question is, does it make sense to upgrade to Windows 7? I don't care about glitter-like features like a redrawn X button. But XP does have annoyances such as user management: I often have to explicitly run programs "as administrator" because the program doens't seem to be aware of different (types of) users.

Any insights and Windows 7 experiences are welcome.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are unlikely
to allow their currency to appreciate in value

Why? Seems like a completely baseless assumption. When US consumption is on the rocks, the only engine of growth for China is its own huge domestic market. Strengthening domestic currency will stimulate consumer boom and turn China from pure exporter into a most attractive market in the world, similar to what US has been for most of 20th century. This turnaround will not happen overnight, but it will eventually happen.
At what point are you not using your entire brain?
http://www.barackobama.com/ is run on Movable Type Pro, which is essentially the supported commercial version of the open source Movable Type. I don't recall the hoopla surrounding that choice. Buytaert's company Acquia helped develop whitehouse.gov. Perhaps some of the development that went into whitehouse.gov may end up back in open source, but I wouldn't bet on it.
If you are interested in surveys of paradigms and older languages (1998), there is the 4 volume "Handbook of Programming Languages" edited by Peter Salus - they are cheap used from Amazon.

Volume One Object-Oriented Programming Languages : Smalltalk, C++, Eiffel, Ada 95, Modula-3, Java

Volume Two Imperative Programming Languages : Fortran, C, Pascal, Icon

Volume Three Little Tools and Languages : EQN, Domain Specific Languages, awk, sed, SQL, Tcl and Tk, Perl, Python, Music languages

Volume Four Functional and Logic Programming Languages : Lisp, Scheme, Guile, Prolog
The past, present and future of AI
Have yet to see anyone mention Duke or any of the public uni's in North Carolina... Research Triangle seems like an interesting hub, what's the general consensus there?
Well of course they make it illegal, it's certain death over the American Falls, and there's immigration issues as the actual good falls to go over a wholly Canadian territory.
The iPhone app industry
Cuprins - Documentatia Ubuntu Romania
What Comes After Hard Drives?
I'll second that. I found Tech's program to be both practical and "humble". The program may have changed, but there was rampant grade DEflation and general hardassery that lead to poor GPAs but excellent work ethic. I used to take offense to that, since the MIT and Stanford kids had more opportunities, but if you plan to work for by yourself, for yourself, being a productive, dedicated, no-nonsense engineer is exactly what you need.
I agree with the analysis. The only thing I'd add (that they don't mention) is that the Earth's temperature will fluctuate wildly on it's own regardless of our CO2 output. We know this. The Earth dropped into an Ice Age and then got hot enough to thaw that ice age out all before we were even here. So the issue really has to do with finding ways to manipulate the Earth's temperature both ways, not just cool it down.
Faster, Better, Cheaper Search Engines
Seattle expected to be key market for electric cars
I don't think it's a matter of complexity so much as a matter of difficulty defining the problem.
#1 Rule of programming ist. Don't talk about programming.

#2 Rule of programming ist. Don't talk about programming.

Was intendet to be funny, but I just realised it makes a lot of sense.
I go to Northwestern. The CS department is a little smaller than it might be at some other schools, but if you're looking to get a good background in a school close to Chicago, I'd recommend it. You'll meet a lot of different people with a lot of different interests. Also, having Chicago next door can't hurt. I have nothing bad to say about my degree/my professors (except one) at all. The classes are great and there are fewer students so it is very easy to talk to the professors.

As a side note, I know of at least one group of econ/math/cs students who are building a startup now. I'm not sure how smart it is to start it in the school year because the class schedule can be extremely rigorous, but to each his/her own.

P.S. I can't argue with the person pushing UIUC. They just won the ACM ICPC yesterday ;)
Why the Nook will top the Kindle
I have. My office leather chair was bought in IKEA more than ten years ago. It was cheaper than alternatives, I bought the alternative because I wanted something good that last. It lasted 6 months of use, I had used a lot of chairs in my life,and all broke fast(I'm tall, maybe that's it) I think my IKEA is way way better in terms of quality, not only price.

I have lived in places with old mahogany furniture(from Congo), strong, beautiful, heavy wood, I prefer IKEA furniture for living, I don't need to care if I broke it, is lightweight, and I don't feel bad about the environment.

Having someone do something using his own hands doesn't mean is better, in fact, it uses to be worse, compare a Toyota manufactured with robots to a handmade car and tell me.
Link to paper on which article is based: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?tp=&arnum.... Sweet paywall.
> This will continue unabated until a better science appears

. . . or until a better theory of management appears and gains widespread acceptance.
Most likely Varnish, which is made possible by the Pressflow Drupal distro, which among other things, cleans up the http header problems in Drupal 6: http://fourkitchens.com/pressflow-makes-drupal-scale

Much of Pressflow's codebase was backported from Drupal 7, so its advantages will be available to all Drupal sites after the stable release of version 7 sometime early next year.