skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you haven't been paying attention to Tumblr, here's what you need to know: Basically Tumblr is where all the smart kids between 17 and 24ish are hanging out these days. The strength of the platform is that it gives you an individual blog, but it makes it really easy to highlight other people's writing and add commentary. Because of this it forms a pretty good community, and there is a good chance to get a lot of reads if you write well, even if you don't have a lot of direct followers. Because of this it tends to target kids who are smart enough to add intelligent commentary to current events and cultural things, but who haven't really started publishing original ideas yet. Because of the size and influence of the demographic it's addressing, and because of the design strengths of the platform, I have every reason to believe that it will ultimately replace personal blogs for the vast majority of people. So in other words, adults will continue to have a Typepad blog or whatever for their business, but when you just want to write about your ideas you'll do it on Tumblr. The exception is for the people who are talented enough to make it onto the aggregators like Reddit, and committed enough to write every day; these people can rack up RSS readers fairly quickly, but everyone else will probably have a better experience on Tumblr and I expect people to continue to migrate there.
Well, the established fashion is a login form right in the page. I think there are many users who are confused by the standard HTTP auth box (those dialogs being ugly doesn't help, and the Firefox one is the worst-looking of the bunch).
Yes, most phones have internet access, but I strongly doubt most people have that included in their monthly plan - I know I don't.

So do I have to pay extra charges for that? How much data is being sent? Can I view stats on my phone? Can I tether my phone to my computer to look at stats?

I can't find any of these answers on their site. Which is frustrating, because this almost sounds like something that would interest me.
And some guys...

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cof...
What's Surprising about Wikis as a Technical Documentation Medium?
Erlang/OTP now on GitHub
I love pieces of work that are challenging and emotionally engaging. I even think that we have a serious problem in the world when one of the major religions can also be construed as a way to run governments -- Islam can be more like communism in this regard than any of the other major religions.

But this article sucks. It has no direction, no thesis, just a bunch of quotes from the Koran.

I think that wherever there is emotion -- politics, health, religion, sports, etc -- there is a chance for entrepreneurs to help folks. I could have handled the same subject matter with a spin on where startups might be needed, like distributed education or graduated secularization through social networks.

There are all kinds of cool and interesting places an author could go. But this author went nowhere except a rant.

Flagged.

Is it just me, or are we seeing a lot more fluff and smoke than we used to? (rhetorical question) I'm flagging more articles this month than at any other time on HN.
I write "variable == true" occasionally. I must not have any experience though; I developed the habit of being very specific after dealing with quirky languages like, say, PHP.

If you want to know if the first example in that list is a bug or not, all you have to do is click on it and read the linked code. (Hint: it's a bug.)
I've seen one or two Dilbert episodes, and I typically relate it to how large companies are being run where-ever I go. I've been a boss, the last time more than five years ago, it is a frustrating experience when compared with the freedom I've got as an independent. The last time I was actually employed is ages ago and it never was in a 'cube farm', nor did I have to escape (in fact, I had a really nice boss, but he definitely was the exception).

Small businesses and large businesses are completely different beasts, but entrepreneurs are found in all businesses by definition.
Free Isn’t Working…
I was referring to the fact that Wolfram actually understood the input, not that it answered a trivial math question :)
OpenCV has a lot of what you'd need to do this sort of thing and also has pretty decent Python bindings. http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/PythonInterface
There is a lot of pressure on professors to not give F's. Google "grade inflation" and you can read much about it.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls...
The Rule of Three: Anticipating the torpedoes that can sink a deal
Family Dentist
At United Dental Care (Culver City Dentist) all treatments in kids dentistry, general dentistry, cosmetic dentistry and restorative dentistry along with periodontal, orthodontic and braces treatments are offered to all the patients.
Can someone who works on Wall Street explain how pagers are still used? I had no idea that anyone had pagers anymore.
The Erlang team uses ClearCase internally and decided that a full-history conversion to Git would be too difficult to be practical, which is why they are starting with a single commit. According to the official Erlang website:

Beginning with this release we will maintain (and update on a daily basis) a
GIT repository on GitHub. The intention is that this will make it easier for
users to contribute with bugfixes and new functionality and also easier for us
to receive the contributions.

We (GitHub) worked with the Erlang team to make sure we could provide the functionality they desired to make their bidirection Git mirror widely available and to streamline the patch submission process.

I'm sure the team will further discuss exactly how this new Git repository impacts Erlang developers wishing to submit changes. Everything I gathered from our conversation with them makes me believe they are dedicated to making this new process work for the Erlang community and I'm excited to see the development of Erlang/OTP accelerated because of it.
"Apple is the David (relatively speaking) that's got these Goliaths on the run."

When is this ridiculous idea going to die the death it deserves? Apple is not anything even remotely resembling a small, agile, outgunned company up against other giants. It is a Goliath that frequently crushes other Davids.

People point to the iPhone and say how they took over an industry. Yes, much like Microsoft did with the XBOX, when a tech giant decides to go into a new industry, you generally have to watch out. MS played their hands well and now they're a major player in the games industry, likewise Apple did the same with the iPhone
Good analysis at http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/ent...

"It's not clear how they were obtained in the first place. One possibility is that they were illegally compiled from the records of archived messages maintained by pager companies, and then eventually forwarded to WikiLeaks.

The second possibility is more likely: Over-the-air interception. Each digital pager is assigned a unique Channel Access Protocol code, or capcode, that tells it to pay attention to what immediately follows. In what amounts to a gentlemen's agreement, no encryption is used, and properly-designed pagers politely ignore what's not addressed to them. "
Limited filesystem access from JavaScript via File API
The Recession and the Routing Table
So, first he says he only hires people whose work is practical: "Designers aren't artists". Then goes on to say designers must explore. So how exactly do you show in a resume/portfolio that you are a practical person who likes exploring? :)

It looks like everyone has a favorite set of characteristics they hire based on. So the only way to really appeal to an employer is to know what they'll like. No wonder stats say most jobs are filled through personal networking and not job ads.
Learning Japanese for career prospects seems to me like a terribly short-sighted thing to do. Japan is in decline, with a shrinking and aging population and Marshall plan chips cashed in - Korea and China are on the rise.

It's too bad people regard Japan's as a pet culture and refuse to let go of it.
Don’t forget to feed your family while working to build your online audience
This closing line strikes me as complete unsupportable bullshit:

No, but the person with high IQ and high common sense, or Practical Intelligence, is definitely a rarer breed of genius.

Did it occur to the author that there might be bias from both sides?

Many super intelligent people who are socially well-adapted probably conceal their extraordinary intelligence because they are aware of how alienating it would be to cognitively soar past every conversation partner. And from the other side, someone of average intelligence who is more interested in arcane ideas than other people probably puts a lot of time into pursuing those ideas, leading other people to think they are geniuses just because they constantly talk about esoteric things in a very deep manner.
Setup Perfect Python Environment In Emacs
A referral effectively reduces the cost of acquisition, and you can calculate the extent to which it does that.

http://20bits.com/articles/almost-viral-a-hybrid-acquisition...
Yeah, this seems especially excellent for getting initial awareness of a product – in this case, that specific IKEA location, as represented by its manager.

It also seems like a good way to build a mailing list, as the Obama campaign did when they got everyone's phone numbers so they could text them the name of the VP pick. That was some brilliant use of social media for old-fashioned mailing-list-building disguised as a gimmick.
Apple Asks Judge for Permanent Psystar Injunction
Microsoft: The Assassin of Google's Chrome OS
Ha, touché!
Mark Evans Tech: A Canadian Take on the Web and Technology
Sounds very cool. Though the only problem is that if I were to rely on it, I will most likely be late everyday to drop my kid to school :D.

On a different note, if this is bluetooth, whats preventing it from working with a computer etc. Why only phone??
I was kind of hoping this article would have some actual empirical evidence in it rather than just some loose application of psychological theories.
This reads like it's supposed to be comforting to people who feel like they have low IQs, "Well, I may not be smart, but at least I have common sense".

Is it really proper to equate social ineptness with lack of common sense.
Twitter To Make Money In 2010 With ‘Non-Traditional’ Ads: Biz Stone
I'm assuming that Facebook would use data gathered from people being tagged in images to optimize their own shape recognition software.

People tagging themselves as furniture must really mess that up :)
The Fitbit looked very fun, but the site didn't mention an alarm function. I'm already envisioning a long slog toward convergence, because some day I want my phone to do calorie-counting and smart-alarming. After all, I already keep it near me all day and night...
I think it sets a time you will be up by, you just might get woken up earlier. Heck you might even be on time to drop your kid off if you can get that little bugger out of bed as well. :)
Can't speak for the others, but from what I've gathered, Newton was arrogant, vindictive, and disagreeable.
Javascript jpeg encoding
Its like twitter. Except we charge people to use it.
How come you know their IQ scores? Or is it just an assumption that a "genius" has a super-high IQ? BTW most of those "geniuses" have a wealthy/bourgeois familiy background and they had to have some social skills to manage other people that worked for them, to become court mathematician etc.
But, gjm11, seeding has nothing to do with topic we were discussing which was trying to random generate a number between [0,x). So your objection still exists even in the bugs because all examples were using the no-arg constructor (Math.random() uses Random under the covers with a no-arg constructor). This is a very confusing reply you wrote because you're changing the topic!

According to 1.4.2 docs, and this hasn't changed. If you want a distribution of numbers, say int, from 0-x you should do the following:

new Random().nextInt( x )

Don't do what the bug pointed out (this is wrong and ugly quite frankly!):

(int)new Random() * x

If you follow the first example then you avoid the bug this post was about.

If you find objection similar to gjm11, aka same seed problem, then I'd say you need to graduate out of Random to SecureRandom. But, in case you just can't let go here's how you fix that:

new Random( seed ).nextInt( x );

But, if you feel like now is the time to take off the training wheels here's SecureRandom:

SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG").nextInt(x);

That source has more randomness which is suitable for things like cryptography, and places where gjm11 statement, aka same seed problem, matters.
Silverlight multi-platform support is falling apart
Dilbert:  One of the prime drivers for entrepreneurship
Be careful who you call sloppy! You have been warned: http://www.schneierfacts.com/facts/top

Seriously, people, would you have preferred Bruce Schneier have not posted the excerpt at all to his personal blog? Because it seems that way.

ps. I got the schneierfacts.com link from Schneier's own blog: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/bruce_schneier...
A Data-parallel Virtual Machine
Mike Cassidy: Speed as the primary business strategy
Or having it require continual Herculean effort to keep it limping along for years?

Perhaps "Sisyphean" would be a more evocative adjective, in that particular situation.
For one bit entropy go with:

new Random().nextBoolean()

Never mind gjm11's response unless your doing things with crypto and such where same seed problem matters.

Java's Random api is quite nice, but people screw it up by not understanding the options.
Cloud Computing Wars
I like Inkscape. It is certainly not as fancy as Illustrator but it gets the job done for making wireframes.
Sorry about that pmichaud, I honestly intended to pass on a interview that I thought would be useful to the readers of my blog. I did not intend to offend you or anyone else by posting this.
't really help any, but employers that find out their employees are looking for another job and fire those employees because of it, are cutting their nose off to spite their face.*

Sorry, but that is not necessarily true.

If an employee is actively looking for a new job, then the employer should assume that that employee will find a new job at some point. At that point it becomes a question of whose terms that happens on.

If it happens on the employee's terms then the employer is suddenly out an employee and starting the hiring process. Which leaves the employer with a hole in their organizational structure, and stresses the people who remain. By contrast if it happens on the employer's terms then the employer hires a new employee to replace the old, trains that employee, then gets rid of the old. The employer now no longer suffers that painful gap.

From the employer's point of view happening on the employer's terms is much better than happening on the employee's. So if an employer discovers that an employee is unhappy enough to be actively searching, they should start the replacement process immediately. And once the replacement is ready, let go of the redundant dissatisfied employee.

That is how the employer, acting rationally out of their own best interest, will usually behave.

If they were smart about it, they would provide you, in writing before you even accepted their job offer, an agreement that they won't penalize you in any way for looking for a better job for yourself. Things change. Jobs get less fun/interesting. Your interests change. If your employer can no longer provide you with the things you're looking for, you have every right to find one who can. They would certainly let you go if you could no longer provide them with the things they're looking for.

Why are workplaces run like prisons? This kind of stuff really bothers me.

You're drawing the wrong analogy. Employee-employer is a type of relationship. Compare with other kinds of relationships and life is much more reasonable. If you're dating someone seriously and you find that they are actively looking for another relationship, what is your reaction going to be?

People change, relationships get less fun/interesting. Your interests change. You have a right to try to find someone who meets your needs. This is all absolutely true. But if your current significant other finds out that you're looking for a replacement, can you blame them for rethinking the existing relationship?
Reread the docs! The API hasn't changed from 1.4 to 1.6. nextInt(x)'s is used to generate numbers from [0,x) Maybe in 1.6 they started using a better seeding source for randomness since they added System.nanoTime(). But, your original objection is a wrong interpretation of the API docs.
Sometimes I wish these bloggers could just say what they mean without throwing in tortured analogies and pop culture references.
Facebook | Download audio Atif's Bakhuda Tumhi Ho (Kismat Konnection OST)
Exploration and being practical aren’t mutually exclusive. A good designer concentrates on facilitating a solution. Doing so often requires digging, snooping, and looking around. At the end, though, the resulting solution has to work.

You ask how to show in a resume/portfolio that you like exploring. That’s easy—it’s in the evidence. A portfolio that highlights diverse approaches instead of derivative ones is a clear indicator. I receive oodles of portfolios from folks who parrot a style repeatedly. That’s not design, that’s plain mimicry.

Frankly, I’m most “wowed” by those who can take an uninteresting seeming client/project, and craft an effective solution to the challenge at hand. Part of this can be evidenced in how they talk about the approach they took, and how they came to it. A smart applicant might even choose to provide this rationale in their portfolio. (Given that most studios do the same, this shouldn’t be a big leap.)

You note that, “everyone has a favorite set of characteristics they hire based on” and you’re right. Where your argument falls apart is in the implied notion that one should just try to show an employer what you think they want to see.

I’d ask you to consider it more like dating. You’re trying to find a good fit—not trick someone into liking you. Be clear about who you are, present yourself well, and then try to find someone to work with who needs those skills.
> Remember that google indexes PAGES not DOMAINS.

Pages on .edu domains used to get a huge boost, and it's possible that they still do.
10 sweet GOOGLE WAVE invites
This type of comment has always bothered me. I'll admit it, I don't really understand what the guy has against spell check. However, is it really THAT big of a deal that this guy's work may contain some misspellings? Furthermore, neither his lack of a willingness to use spell check nor the mistakes contained within the message (as long as it is still coherent) says anything about the quality of the actual content. It just seems dismissive for the most trivial of reasons.

EDIT: With all that said, I'm not vouching for the quality of the post one way or another. I'm just saying, judge the content by the content and nothing else.
#9 is so true. I wish I could stab whoever came up with the expression "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Bing would probably underwrite a fork in return for exclusivity.
What that refers to is the trick of transforming "int a;" to "final int[] a = {0}" and then referring to a[0] everywhere. This adds about 20 bytes of overhead on Sun's 32-bit JVM and memory pressure for almost no benefit whatsoever.
Original Post
http://howsoftwareisbuilt.com/2009/11/18/interview-with-greg...
Why you should build an application (even if it already exists)
Original article:

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/09/clever-sillies...

One problem with this source, another article from which I have studied with a group of psychologists a few weeks ago,

http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall09/mcguem/psy8935/defau...

is that the source itself is notorious for lack of empirical back-up or peer review for anything submitted to it. (The Medical Hypotheses blog is associated with the journal Medical Hypotheses, edited by the same person who posted the blog post I link above, and he runs the journal, and evidently the blog as well, to post ideas of his own that cannot obtain peer-reviewed publication elsewhere.) I have read several of the articles he cites in his blog post, and most have nothing to do with what he is writing about in the blog article, but are simply there to pad his reference list.
Eeee. I didn't mean serious devs. If one is serious about an idea I am sure he or she would be able to find $6 a month. I was talking about the casual person who has other expenses and doesn't want to spend $72 a year on hosting to work on an idea that possibly will never turn into a reality- or end up making that money back.

^That's the kind of person I was talking about. Someone not completely serious about getting the programming done.

On a side note, however, I did find your story slightly inspiring.
This was eight years ago...
Shedding Light on Cyber Monday
A Central Nervous System for Earth: HP's Ambitious Sensor Network
How come you know their IQ scores?

A very good question. In fact we cannot possibly know the IQ test score of any person who lived before the era of the first IQ test, which was only a century ago. But it gets worse than this. Lewis Terman's longitudinal study of high-IQ elementary-age pupils showed that many of those young people did not qualify as "gifted" on a subsequent test that Terman gave them at high school age. But he kept them in the study group anyway.

Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown.

An especially odd result of the Terman study is that Terman tested and rejected for inclusion in his study two children whose IQ scores were below his cut-off line who later went on to win Nobel prizes: William Shockley, who co-invented the transistor, and physicist Luis Alvarez. None of the children included in the study ever won a Nobel prize. The book by Shurkin I have just cited here is a good corrective on many misconceptions about IQ, and has an excellent section on attempts by one of Terman's study associates to estimate--by extremely dubious methods that have never been validated--the IQ scores of historical persons.
First comment:

> "If you allow players in an online world to penalize each other", um without cost to themselves, "you open the door to extortion."
> the biggest thing missing from Haskell is a fast Mutable Map (like Python's)

Data.HashTable is part of the core library and has improved a lot over the last few years.
I used to love posts like this, but now I see them for what they are: something to read so you feel good about being an entrepreneur, instead of actually starting or building your business.

Here's my own version:

Are you an entrepreneur? Do you have a business? Then congratulations, you're an entrepreneur. Don't have a business? Start one, and then you'll be an entrepreneur.
Intelligent commentary? I must be following the wrong people. Most tumblogs I've seen are Twitter without the char limit, or gimmick photo collections.

I don't mean to disparage the service (use it for my own site), but basic decisions like one image per post prevent it from being a viable, medium-to-long format platform, and keep the appeal closer to cell phone uploads and one-paragraph vamps.
This depends crucially on the definition of "common sense." What is demonstrated by current research is that the form of cognition known as "rationality" is NOT well correlated with IQ (usually called "intelligence" by psychologists).

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1

The recent book-length work on this subject

http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog...

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238...

provides abundant references to peer-reviewed experimental literature on this distinction.