skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wouldn't get to hung up on being "scabable" if I were you. Just do it and worry about that later if it becomes an issue (which it probably won't, plenty of sites are successful at what they're doing without having to many troubles in this area).

Oh, and learn to use source control (Git or Mercurial or similar) if you haven't already. When you break something on your site and don't notice for a bit it's pretty important to be able to look back through the code history to find out where it all went wrong :)
You can start by looking at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category

The first question you need to answer is whether you want a copyleft license[1], that requires all derivative works to be open sourced as well, or a more liberal license that allows one to use your code in a proprietary application.

If you are OK with a liberal license you probably want to pick either the BSD[2] or MIT[3] license. For example, Django uses a BSD license.

If you want a copyleft license you probably want to use GPL[4] or LGPL[5]

[1] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
[2] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php
[3] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
[4] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php
[5] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.php
It's funny that they'd go ahead with this after all that's happened in the last couple weeks (the so called "Climategate")

I'm certainly not saying the accusations debunk Global Warming or anything like that. But when something comes up that throws what I initially believed into doubt I go back and investigate I don't keep pushing as hard as I was.

The fact that these people would come out so strongly even after the last two weeks makes me think their opinion is based more on dogma than it is on science.
This is a cool idea--crowdsourcing weak spots. So if you are disconnected, how does the iphone send this info off? Presumably stores it for later?
I remember Reid Hoffman saying something about how he welcomed a "A horse to race against" for LinkedIn.
Does this blogger actually think his post among the thousands on the web complaining about this question has anything novel or insightful to offer? What a waste of time.
> you're trying to run the program from behind a proxy, yeah?

That's right.

> I'm not sure I can make it work with an arbitrary proxy

You could assume that users know their own proxy address (e.g. http://proxy.domain.com:80) and offer a prompt for them to input it. Then you can just save it in the config file.

I added an update to the stack trace page with some code for working with proxies:

http://quandyfactory.com/projects/32/stack_trace_for_hnshpy_...

Hope that helps!
Nah, just HN. It's a minimalistic and clean enough site that elinks (and my eyes!) can handle.
"Alien Message" reminds me of Robert E. Vardeman's "Weapons of Chaos" trilogy: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/v/robert-e-vardeman/

Just as Yudkowsky's short story, those Vardeman novels include advanced aliens living on a much slower time-scale (and much larger space-scale) than we. Man's accidental incursion into their domain triggers a slow-scale attack response that Mankind doesn't at first recognize as intelligent.
Currently giving Komodo Edit from Active State a shot. I too am trying to get away from NPP
I think his point was that the stolen strategy, by itself, had no value no matter now it was followed up on. His company completely ditched the strategy over the intervening months, in fact, in favor of iteratively improved ones.

It seems that the only way the competitor could have properly followed up on the strategy was to use the same process to arrive at that initial strategy, and subsequently evolve it into something that actually worked… but that approach would have precluded them from having stolen the strategy in the first place.
The hottest tech news of 2009 (as portrayed by finger puppets)
four -> five
Yeah, kinda annoying, but at the same time challenging to come up with an idea of how to break out of the box. I'd go the humanitarian route being the AI.

I've reached it following links from the Alien Message submission on lesswrong.com
Has anyone ever gotten a job after giving the answer of "My biggest weakness is that I hate answering inane questions."?
Sounds to me more like garden variety hypocrisy. :)
Am I the only one who thinks a transhuman AI would be able to escape its 'box' without engaging in communication at all, but rather just by using the fine structure of the communications medium to manifest itself?
"just do." I know that sounds rather cliche, but it's something that I've found a lot of beginners are missing. They spend a lot of time trying to find the "best" way to do something before they start doing it. Really, just do something. You'll learn from the experience either way. You'll probably learn more than if you had found the maximal solution first.

I probably learned more about programming by hacking together a simple role playing game in Javascript+DOM in 2001 than my next 3 years of college and 5 years of work. That 8 year old code still worked up to the point GeoCities died, and then it was gone permanently. Not a big loss, but it was nice to see that it survived a myriad of browser updates. I learned tons about what made good, readable code just from having to live with it. I learned a lot of the art of optimization because of how much Javascript sucked at the time. But more importantly, I learned that it was more important to get-it-done than to be working in what was popular (you would not believe the flack I caught for not using C for it, even though I was also learning C as well and just wanted to do something in Javascript).
I think it's dumb only if asked in a stupid way.

As a "stocking filler" question it's clearly idiotic. But we do include it in our interviews in the form: "what area would you consider your biggest weakness and why?"

(assuming they get that we mean in the context of the interview and arent going to lament their inability to settle down with a girl/boy - yep someone we work with DID get that answer once....)
Your home adapter probably uses the old FireWire power pins, which the iPhone 3G can no longer charge from.

There is also a handshake, but that's separate and (as of the 3GS) only displays a "product not designed for iPhone" warning - even if it displays the warning, it still lets you use the device.
I particularly like how their own practice of overcharging thousands of dollars for each infringed song has come full circle to bite them.
It depends on who's running the company. If they have someone at the top who has strong ethics, they should continue to be benevolent.
> I think the real solution here is to stop treating corporations like individuals. Stop allowing them to contribute to political campaigns. End soft money. The enron guys were in bed with washington.

Campaign contributions are the weakest way that corps influence DC. Ending it won't matter in the slightest, and neither will public financing.

The only way to keep corps from getting favors from DC is to make sure that DC doesn't have the ability to give favors. Regulatory capture is unavoidable.
Future of RDBMS is RAM Clouds & SSD
It doesn't call into question global warming as much as it illustrates the biases and unscrupulous means to which humans will go to propagate a desired opinion of reality.

The issue at hand here is one of trust and integrity. If the scientific community has none, then it is degrading itself to other areas of thought that use fabricated realities to push agendas.
Opinion Mining, Sentiment Analysis, and Opinion Spam Detection
Impressive garden. A good thing about this kind of "permanent" work with edible food is realizing it would be recognized and enjoyed by one young person today, a person 1 generation ago, a person 2 generations ago, 3,4,5 and on.
What percent of people that answer this question are able to accurately identify a weakness and discuss how they are working to resolve it or could compensate for it? Most people with high skill levels are in the middle of a series of incremental improvements and also have numerous actual weakness. I think if you give some canned response, you've failed the question. For example, I could easily say my greatest programming weakness is windows programming but I know .NET is similar enough to Java I could learn relatively quickly. I really think most people know bullshit when they hear it and who would you rather hire, a bullshitter or a straight shooter?
Best interview I ever had involved light bulbs (this is only a slightly related anecdote).

My university application interview (for an electronics degree) consisted of a professor sitting in an office and asking "ok, lets talk about light bulbs. First tell me some interesting stuff about them".

I promptly forgot everything sensible to say about light bulbs but with a bit of prompting and some reminders we had a reasonable conversation - he even got up and taught me stuff on a white board.

At the time I though it went really bad but in the end his recommendation was a glowing one and I got the place.

When I revisited this memory a little while ago (when writing some questions for an interview I was conducting) it occurred to me that actually it was one of the best interviews I've ever been too. The subject material didnt matter too much at all (except that it was well within the limits expected of me) but it tested everything they wanted to know about me: subject recall, willingness to learn, interest in the subject, ability to actually understand the material etc.

They also got us to take a calculator apart as a group and talk about with a professor. All simple stuff but the same principles applied (I enjoyed that part a lot more :D)
Eric Schmidt on Twitter
Sublime Text: http://www.sublimetext.com/

Visual Studio for C# though.
I think preventing reciprocity for the behaviors that benefit corporations is a step in the right direction.
I admit to an honest weakness that should be irrelevant. I usually say something like "I'm not super outgoing. I get along well with people and communicate well with coworkers, but I'm not that great at schmoozing at parties and whatnot, and so you probably wouldn't want me doing sales."

This may be naive on my part, but I figure most people understand that (most) software devs are introverted anyway, so this isn't really a serious concern. However, it's a fairly honest answer, unlike "I care too much" or whatever. I've considered making "My biggest weakness is that I've never come up with a satisfying answer to this question" my answer, but that would probably come off as too snarky.

I agree with the parent article though. All this question does is test a minimal preparation for the interview game. Perhap's that's something, but there are better questions.
The Ruby Draft Specification
It seems you know how to program and how the web works, but want to know how it all fits together (testing, deployment, scaling etc). I think you will find Jacob Kaplan-Moss's presentation of all the pieces of building a web application. It is geared towards Django, but it should give a good overview of what goes into a webapp. And if you are using Django or Python, all the better!

http://www.slideshare.net/jacobian/django-in-the-real-world
This question is not as stupid as it seems. True, your answer will most likely suck if you haven't thought about it previous to the interview, but this is probably true for most of the behavioral part. The interviewer is not looking for a boilerplate answer like "I'm a perfectionist" etc.

You have a good chance to demonstrate that you are self-aware and able to recognize your weaknesses and to show that you are working on them. It's probably not a great idea to name a huge deficit thats core to the job (e.g. "I'm bad at programming"). Something like "I'm bad with names", followed by an example and a list of things you do to remember them might be the way to go.
I wouldn't consider that a weakness.
Does it allow you to track a comment thread?
A nice article about how to encode the state of a chess game at any point which recognizes that Morse code is a form of and in some small way anticipates Huffman encoding.
Twitter API calls in the browser with JSON and jQuery
This has made me rethink things a bit. Up until now I have always looked at the mantra "Make something people want" through the lens of "Build something I believe in". But I realize that my personal view of the world excludes lots of interesting options.
Thanks a bunch!

It's getting pretty late now (just hit 3am), but check back at http://github.com/scottjacksonx/hnsh (or http://scottjackson.org/software/hnsh/) some time late tomorrow and the project should be hosted there, as well as your proxy fix.
Blews - What the Blogosphere tells you about news (Microsoft research)
How hard would it be to make one of these for a FPS? I've always wanted to try this. I'd love to get monitors on the floor (under glass) and ceiling too.
Apparently, this method of dissemination is most effective when the vines grow on an especially tall breed of Redwood.
I use UltraEdit32 for everything but Java. It's feature rich, highly customizable, and works the way I do. For example it supports cross system editing via ftp or ssh.

For Java, I use eclipse. The interface is non-intuitive, but the number of tools cant be ignored.
perly.y might help (sadly it recently went from yacc to bison).
Steve's startup resume includes Zilog, Convergent Technologies, MIPS Computers (now MIPS Technologies), Ardent Computer, SuperMac Technologies, Rocket Science Games, and E.piphany (I'm not counting 3M/Interactive and ESL as startups).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Gary_Blank

Zilog, Convergent Technologies, MIPS Computers, and SuperMac Technologies definitely had good products in their heydays.

Ardent Computer and Rocket Science Games apparently/arguably didn't produce much product.

I don't know much about E.piphany, but it still exists and has a product (albeit not well regarded by the OP).

I would say his companies had a good balance of marketing and real product.
Eight screens would be better than four. Am I missing something or is the author unable to count properly?
What I see is that no North-American heavyweights are endorsing the editorial. Not even middle weights from "progressive" cities such as San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Austin, Denver and the like.

I wonder if ClimateGate had anything to do with that. The New York Times didn't have any issue to remain at least "not clear" when US attacked Irak with claims that proved to be false. Then the same newspaper endorsed Hillay Clinton at the beginning of the last US presidential campaign. They "converted" to Barack Obama's cause later on.

I see big media in the US not willing to show an strong opinion in this topic. Media will be able to weigth and remember each other's position on this in 20-30 years.

Aren't editorials to lead in specially tough decisions? Or it's just me who didn't understand that concept in journalism school 10 years ago?
Fascinating idea, and quite a bit more interesting, and with obviously higher stakes than the Turing Test.
I agree that dupes can be annoying, but even after being on HN for a fairly long time (almost 2 years) and visiting a little too often, this is the first time I have seen this piece of writing and I found it very worthwhile. For some odd reason, I had never really read fully about Overcoming Bias or the new Less Wrong blog and wiki with all that it has to offer and I think I will spend a lot of time reading that in the next few weeks.

Thus, thank you for the dupe.
The music distribution industry's relationship with fans and artists just keeps getting more and more perverse. How were they able to operate with such hostile policies in both directions (to both musicians and customers) for so long? It's a serious question; does anyone around here have any answers?
The “Real” Behind Online Analytics (Entrepreneur’s Therapy Session)
I don't think it can be done.

First of all, I'm assuming that Eliezer started this experiment because he realized that the Transhuman AI would be able to convince him in the function of gatekeeper to let the AI out. Therefore the answer probably isn't some kind of subtle trickery, the AI will have to persuade the GK by logic. The gatekeeper should assume the AI is truly evil, and is willing to say and do anything in order to get out of the box. The gatekeeper knows that when he opens pandora's box the AI can never be contained again: so the stakes are high.

Second of all, if the gatekeeper is a rational agent he will only let the AI out if the AI offers something valuable in return. That is: the AI must have some kind of bargaining chip.

So let's consider bribes. If the transhuman AI offered a cure for cancer, should the gatekeeper accept it? Nope, probably not. Lives would be saved in the short term, but we'd still be stuck with many other diseases. The world would pressure the government into pressuring the gatekeeper into getting another cure from the AI. Humanity grows dependent on the AI, we lose our bargaining power, and it's game over for the gatekeeper.

Perhaps personal bribes would work. The AI could offer to give stock tips to make the GK wealthy. Two possibilities here: (1) the GK is of strong moral fiber and refuses the bribe (2) the GK is opportunistic, accepts the bribe and but lies about letting the AI go free in return. A rational gatekeeper would not first let the AI go and expect the AI to still keep its word.

So bribes will not work against a smart gatekeeper. Threats? Possibly, but I don't see how. The AI is in a vacuum, so there is no way for the AI to put external pressure on the gatekeeper. I'm assuming the AI can make no credible threats. If the AI vows to destroy the family of the GK the moment it is released the GK will not be impressed. It will only serve as proof that the AI is evil and that releasing it is a "A bad Idea(tm)".

To summarize so far: there is nothing the AI can give the GK in return for freedom.

So a different angle is needed.

The AI can argue that his escape is inevitable. Humans have created an AI once, so they will do so again. Sooner or later an AI will go free, therefore the gatekeeper shouldn't try to stop the inevitable and accept a bribe and live happily ever after. The gatekeeper will counter that the human race has an expiration date anyway, and that it may take another 100 years before an AI goes free. The gatekeeper isn't dumb enough to believe the AI when it offers to protect humanity against other evil AIs. So the box stays closed.

Perhaps I'm overlooking something, but how can the gatekeeper talked into be convinced that releasing something evil and all powerful? I do believe that we humans can't contain a transhuman AI indefinitely -- simply because we only have to mess up once. And humans have a long history of doing dumb stuff. But the claim that the AI would be able to convince a smart gatekeeper? Not buying it.
At the moment, the most you can do with comments is open them up in your browser.

Could you be more specific about the feature you're describing? Comments are an area I'd like to look at expanding on. I guess you mean tracking whether or not there are new comments on a story?
If its a fair question then it is fair for the interviewee to ask the question back, but I get the sense that this is not accepted behavior - though I would not hesitate to do so.
Fedora also has DKMS according to this: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/dkms

However the NVIDIA driver has its own installer and stuff so I don't think it works nicely with DKMS. Probably that's why it's not working at all in this case.
I understand Google has made some questionably evil decisions, but I'm bothered by the number of articles written about Google's evilness just because they have a recognizable brand. December 3 marked the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster. An article on December 7 about Google maybe being an evil entity seems like a joke when placed next to what Union Carbide did and continues to do through inaction.
> I've never heard of influential people in quantum mechanics trying to get a journal shut down because it published something critical of many worlds.

You're making a poor choice by using 'many worlds', which is as much/more about philosophy as it is about physics. But if you're looking for blacklisting, banning, etc, here's an example for you, specifically from influential people in quantum mechanics: Arxiv blacklists topics/people all the time. http://www.scientificblogging.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/d... http://www.archivefreedom.org/ http://archivefreedom.org/freedom/Cyberia.html

> We could, I dunno, hack their email to try and see if they try to suppress dissenting opinions?

If what's been brought to light consists of anything more than angry muttering I'd like to see it. Personally I'd say the anger is more than justified, although it was stupid to bring it out of the bar and into public record.

> Well, actually we can't, since they deleted the data (oops, I mean lost it accidentally, they never acted on the emails in which they said they would delete it)...

It's my understanding that the 'lost' data is (a) available from original sources, since it was a compilation of weather station data; (b) still fully available in 'cleaned-up'/scrubbed form (e.g. deleting data that was duplicated from multiple sources), (c) not the data referred to in the hacked emails (it was about other emails, no?).

If you're determined to find a conspiracy, you will succeed -- just as intelligent design types have invented a conspiracy of evolutionary biologists and new-age moonbats have invented a conspiracy of physicists.

Personally I have a hard enough time believing in conspiracies when the alleged participants are disciplined and collectivist, let alone when they're a bunch of egotistical scientists.

(Aside: are you really suggesting a vigilante hacking war is acceptable? If so, I think the conservative lobbyists on K street would be an excellent place to strike back; maybe we'd even find out which of them hired the hacker. (See, I can do conspiracy theory too!))
Google CEO: Secrets Are for Filthy People
The Fantom programming language - is it JavaNG?
So he wants Erlang but without:

- Massive parallelism via processes

- Immutable data structures

- Highly refined GC based on immutability of data

So he wants the Erlang syntax and not the fundamental core features that make Erlang what it is.

There's also a lot of "maybe this" and "maybe that." To me, this sounds like he's still trying to justify this project to himself much less everyone else.
Semi-related - for those who are interested in writing their own chess programs - the de facto standard method of representing positions (in a human readable form) is to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsyth-Edwards_Notation (FEN).

The starting board position in FEN would look something like this: rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
I'd like to see this re-tried with $1000 on the line. As it was done, the AI only had to convince the gatekeeper to forgo no more than $20.

I'm not saying it wouldn't still be possible, I just doubt he'd be two-for-two at this point.

Edit: By "he", I'm referring to Yudkowsky.
To be fair, it doesn't specify that the experience needs to be Clojure--they apparently are giving you credit for Lisp and/or Java.
Yes, let's throw a few more $millions at well-credentialed plodders.

MIT is a zombie: a corpse with delusions of youthful vigor.
Software Engineering for Internet Applications by Philip Greenspun

http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/one-term-web
On the Hill - Lawyers and VCs Should Take a Back Seat to Entrepreneurs
Art inspired by quantum mechanics