skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Congratulations! I really like the "My First Sony" analogy. The start of more good things to come. Another verification of Scala for real products.

If you're at liberty to divulge, how did you connect with Red Gate?

"Ask HN: Rate my startup, Go Test It (cross-browser testing)"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=883049
IIUC this has long been an issue in archeology: for example, a small committee of scholars had exclusive access to the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades, and the scholars dragged their feet on publishing the complete text, until someone reverse-engineered much of the text from a concordance.
Sounds like a good cover up to me. The project was always destined to fail IMHO. This way they can all maintain it would have worked if they had not had a disagreement.
No-one's denying that the glacier's are shrinking. But if they've grown and shrunk naturally throughout history, that puts a markedly different spin on things. Same with the temperatures. The temperature went up a bit, then the "un-tricked" numbers show that it went down a bit. What does that tell you?
Yuck! So bad. Was expecting its launch for a long time. Now that its gone, we might have to wait for apple to come out with its device which apparently nonone knows! as cwan pointed out, this is not something that materializes over a week. Fishy Fishy!
very much so
"Arranging your life around what you like" does not mean mindlessly overdosing on some activity. Essentially this piece is about a somewhat higher than average level of self-awareness.

The problem is, by constantly avoiding unpleasant things, one might lead a semi-happy life, but there is a downside: this way a large part of possible outcomes becomes simply unreachable. (There ARE outcomes, which can not be reached without considerable amount of unpleasantness.)

One might argue, such (hard to reach) outcomes worth more (= bring more happiness).

This is the real question here.
No one said you're a loon or a shill. This kind of Dawkins-like extremism and arrogance has no place in science. I apologize if my comment came across that way.

In my view, there is enough evidence right now that the cause of the currently observed climate change is human caused, specifically, due to our massive increase in CO2 production. This evidence comes from multiple independent sources (ice cores, tree rings, satellites) that all point in the same general direction. There isn't any alternative reasonable explanation on the table right now, one that explains all the observations.

What other causes do you think there are?
Three can keep a secret if two are dead.

The biggest counter-argument to any sort of conspiracy is that it's really hard to keep a secret, so what would motivate such an effort? How would all potential whistleblowers be kept silent? What would these people gain from perpetuating a global warming scare? It really doesn't add up.
Im not surprised; I have said (if you'll pardon the big headedness) it was an ambitious product moving into a very fickle niche market (that is still only on the verge of "mainstream") and, most importantly, possibly moving into Apple territory (never going to end well).

Im a little surprised it ended in an internal dispute - my thinking was the funding would run out and the product wouldn't be good enough to sell well. (and then either Apple launch a tablet or the market just fizzles out). With that said this could still be the cause - it's at this point people would probably start to look really hard at the sale point economics.
And without an API or SMTP access it's not good for a whole lot.
I regret that the HN software doesn't allow me to un-downvote you.
yeah, it seems like he is out of the norm. I've played with a couple different droids and loved it. still plan on getting one.
I don't think translating the language itself makes that much of a difference. What most beginning hackers really need is the ability to search and read forum posts and code from a bunch of advanced hackers who already went through the problems they're having. Obviously English has the most depth in this regard. Chinese and Russian might be "deep enough" to get you to a decent level.

Beyond those three languages, I get the sense it drops off very quickly. I wouldn't want to be a monolingual Mongolian or Estonian trying to get Haskell help during a late night coding session, for example ...

some previous discussion on a similar topic here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=894489
We can see you can't code from the <p> tags you've scattered everywhere...
That's a good point. But what gets me is that Arrington is a former lawyer. I would have thought he'd have proper papers written up from the start.
Good to know what to request to ensure you get a cached version, but the title is pure linkbait.
Seems like an extremely early exit :/

46 days from a "Rate my startup" to a "My first exit" must be a record :)
I'd also be really interest to see network performance tested too. Instance->Instance, Cloud colo->cloud colo, cloud->user and cloud->other clouds/web services.

People are already starting to do the cloud->user (http://www.apparentnetworks.com/CPC/scorecard.aspx) but I think the other stuff is equally important/interesting.
I don't know if it's identical, but many if not all of the slides are from here: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hic...
"The single biggest difference I've seen between great programmers and everyone else is a pure love for what they do."

This applies to everything, whether it's programming or gardening or sales. You can only be great at something if you love doing it. Keep trying different things until you find what you love doing. Once you find that, everything else will fall into place.
No I don't think you are in the wrong major. I was in your same boat, for the majority of college I wanted to switch to being a political science major. But now I started my own company and I code everyday. The worst part, I love it, coding and all.

So I think you have two options coming out of your major in your position. (1) you don't code, but that's ok because at least you'll have a technical background which will enable you to do a lot of cool things (tech consulting, tech ibanking, project management, etc.). or (2) you find out you really do like to code, at which point you're happy anyways.

Last, but not least, most things in college you can learn by simply picking up a book and reading about it. The only critical classes I took in college were several of my upper-division CS classes that I would not be motivated to learn about (ie. how to build a CPU) and accounting 101. As such, whatever your choice, at least you gave CS a shot, and that has defined another set of paths for you given your current disposition.
As evidenced by the fact that we're all poring over his code :-)
Perl is designed around linguistic concepts. You may as well ask "why do people who use language get such a kick out of junk like this:poetry, rhymes, prose, novels, etc.?"
The copyright cartels will never allow an extension of the customary "dead tree" unlimited right-to-lend to e-books, as that way lies the ultimate collapse of artificial scarcity, something they live in mortal dread of. I discuss this issue at length in my debunking of the B&N Nook's lending feature: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=54
How to Remove Antivirus System Pro | TechJaws.com
It makes sense if it was 3 days from a launch, and there were one or more major problems that the public isn't aware of. Maybe he knew that it was unrealistic and saw a chance of getting out.
I thought it was funny, though I havn't seen it before.

When you say it's "been killed" does that mean it's already been posted on HN? Does killed mean ignored?

Sorry I'm kind of new here. I've had an account for a long time, but only voted until just recently
I hate to weigh in on this but two things come to mind:

1) There's a really long way from groupthink to accusations of something like faking the moon landing. I don't even think the word "conspiracy" is apt, although I agree that, according to the way it looks, "they were in on it". There are legion of examples of large organizations or movements colluding to control the message on some issue or another. It's a very common thing. Just throwing out "conspiracies are difficult" as a refutation isn't going to cut it in this particular case.

2) Science is especially vulnerable to groupthink and there is a great tendency for everybody to move in a herd, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out in what was probably one of the topten scientific books of the 20th Century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn - that doesn't mean that science is broken, or even that the larger issue of AGW is settled one way or another. Most likely what is happening is that nobody knows what climate is doing, yet simple allusions to black-body radiation and greenhouse gases has driven climate scientists to a point where the politics are way ahead of the science. That just means they need to be extremely prudent with their data and methods, and check all assumptions.

Also, John's analysis is much ado about nothing, in my opinion. You can take a random piece of code off the source control system -- they were using a SCM, right? -- and make it say all kinds of things. Unless you run the data you're not even sure if you're looking at the right code. Might as well be reading poetry. Sorry John, as much as I love the hacker angle here, you're not going to get very far in a discussion about code if you can't run it. In technical terms it's nonsense -- it has no meaning.
It's a cultural thing. Python people value doing complicated things with simple code. Perl people value doing simple things with obscure language features, then basking in the glow of being called a "wizard".

In other words, every other language community cares more about what you do than how you do it.
I really think you're attributing malice when bureaucracy would suffice...Be very careful of conspiracy thinking,

While in general I'm suspicious of "conspiracy thinking", it's quite reasonable in this case: the conspiracy (to delete and wrongly withhold data) is now a matter of public record:

Michael Mann: "...don’t pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people."

Phil Jones: "If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them. "

More Phil Jones: "I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone."

Tom Wigley: "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise."

Tell me; would you give someone working in financial services the same level of leeway that you seem to want to give to the CRU folks?

"I think I'll delete the file rather than send it to the SEC". - "What little malice there is in the equation is a bunch of bankers frustrated with silly SEC rules designed to keep politicians happy."
QA with Altor Networks CEO Amir Ben-Efraim
Arc should be ported to Chinese; it looks like you'd get much shorter programs out of the deal. And that's what language design is all about, right?
Looks like a useful tool. I've been using a similar one: http://regex.powertoy.org/

The latter supports several languages' regex dialects, and I like the visual way it displays group matches, particularly when groups are nested. It can be a bit clunky, though, whereas Rubular is pretty clean and usable.
Freakonomics: Why Don’t Reputations and Salaries Rise Together?
Smoking Hazardous To Your Apple Warranty
If I had $5,000 to spend on music promotion
> The old Google linked from the SERP through a proxy link which redirected to the actual result. The new Google links directly from the SERP to the result.

It is my understanding that this is always on, but for a random subset of users. If you go drastically changing your cookies (like the instructions here tell you to) you are very likely to change the state of this flag, too.
"Hopefully this doesn't become a HBS case study"

Hopefully it does. Things like this should not happen...
Freakonomics: A New Car or Ten Thousand Lattes? Ways to splurge less
Myers Briggs Test.. quick one
[Some] religion[s] and science are not at odds. I'm not atheist, yet I have no problems with the facts and findings of science. I believe in evolution (and that is not incompatible with my faith, even on an official level).

Religion versus science is a false dichotomy. You can be religious, scientific, logical, reasonable and rational at the same time; and many are.
Magnetic nanodiscs could kill cancer cells
More information would be helpful.
It's a complete killer if you have a large number of smallish objects floating around. (Which was my case).
Crunchpad Dies a Quick Death
There are tablet PCs, and the kindle.
Nokia In Trouble With Nintendo for Showing Off Emulator
Can Spotify's free music pay off?
Red Gate hosts the Springboard program (similar to YC, but Red Gate doesn't take an equity stake). Even before that, they hosted the "accidentals", a group of startups from in & around Cambridge (UK). Martin was part of the accidentals.

More on that here:
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/08/the-accidental-in...
A few thoughts come to mind here for me.

First ... So don't take a stereotypical coding job; whatever your definition of that may be. I've personally in general avoided big companies my whole career to avoid what I see as the stereotypical coding job - too many meetings, too much waterfall style development and way too much bureaucracy which I find myself unable to navigate. It's served me fairly well in that I get a chance to do a lot of different things. Small companies need more versatile staff - people who can do systems and network work as well as coding. Who can help design and architect systems as well as coding. These things from my standpoint let me enjoy technology while not going insane spending 12 hours a day producing cogs and widgets. And of course the option exists for you to go the route you are obviously culturing of Entrepeneurism. If you can handle both the technical and business sides you may have an advantage as you can work both sides of the equation. But beware of becoming the dreaded business-guy who produces crappy code and expects his programmers to take it as holy writ from upon high. If you plan on blending business and technical keep your skills and knowledge polished and relevant. (Yes, I've had a few of those. Including one who would "Align" all his code in the gutter [aka no freaking tabs] and freak out if anyone reformatted it)

Second... The degree does not make the man. Personally, I'm an autodidact although I originally pursued a Criminal Justice degree. The best programmers I've worked with personally (keep in mind the plural of anecdote isn't data) have all had either no degree, or had a degree in an unrelated subject. I've worked with chemistry, physics, English and history majors all of whom were stellar programmers. While the fundamentals are important, it's the capacity for learning and doing something that you enjoy that matters much, much more. If you think you have the core concepts of CS at a point that they're useful to you, change majors. Go get a business degree, or one in physical education if it makes you happy.

Just use what you know, and what you think you can learn in the future to best advantage.
I've been trying to change hostnames for >30 minutes now. They've progressed from completely out from interminable delays now.
In October, I switched from godaddy to namecheap. It took about 7 weeks to get 16 domains transfered. I left the others for dead. Its quite a process to move from godaddy, lots of unexplained transfer failures. But I'm feeling good that its done. Hope namecheap doesn't turn into a pain.
Although it may seem like an irrelevant point, I'm guessing the price was a big contributor to the project death.

Why? because when you say up front (with no experience in hardware/manufacturing design) that you're going to sell it for $x the scramble then becomes "how can each party squeeze margin out?" When theres very little margin, parties are more willing to bluff knowing that they can walk away and there was almost no $ on the table.

Hardware has this problem, and I've seen it so many times, that the founder prices the hardware at only a bit (say ~30%) above the parts cost, not realizing the tons of NRE expenses, ballooning BOM, contractor costs, and the hundreds of other ways the price can easily double. Then they're stuck: the investors/contract manufacturer/designer/customer hates them. That leads to abandonment.

Please please please, if you decide to do any kind of hardware, add an extra 40% margin on top of whatever you pick. If you don't need it, you can always cut the price later! :)
obviously that is his purpose in posting it

he's demonstrating his value as "visionary/evangelist/whatever"
It's interesting to consider why the myth that porn drives innovation has such legs.

It strikes me as something of a modern-day fairy tell for the information industry, where the moral is that people who restrict (even patently offensive) speech lose economically.

In that context, as an advocate for openness, I can't help but see it as something of a virtuous lie. The truth is that technological openness is good for society (at least, I feel that way) and it is good for business far more often than it is not. But the case for both of those arguments are complex. The porn myth is a glib and memorable little factoid that --- while incorrect itself --- does hold in its moral a deeper if more nuanced truth.
I love regex, but man it's still crazy voodoo. I hope those lines were well commented.
Amazon Kindle breaks all time sales record in the month of November
They're all microsofty though :/ puts me off a bit.
No. Despite what people are saying there are a bazillion such jobs for a smart, non-coder, person to grab hold of.

Ultimately "the wrong major" comes down to the course content. CS courses can vary wildly - the one at my uni (I never was on it) was very business oriented for example. If your enjoying the course then there seems no reason to consider it the wrong one.

However beware: do talk to people who are happy to be critical of you (and you trust to tell the truth) and find out if you ARE a people person. With the best will in the world every single person I have ever met claiming to be a "people person" generally isn't. I'm sure you are: but it's worth checking :)
Honestly, everything I've ever seen with regard to Arrington or TC has been surrounded in "drama" and hype, both things I'd rather simply avoid.

I truly don't understand the appeal, but I'm curious... Are there any hackers out there who think that TC provides any form of intriguing technical commentary? Or that he's a legitimate "visionary/evangelist" in things dot-com?

If the answer to both is "no", what's left? Why do we have so many TC stories?
'Killed' suggests 'removed by a moderator' to me - though I may be wrong...

Either way, the post (which is funny) came up on this thread (which has itself been killed): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=961354
Too right. People who want to be coders shouldn't be CS majors (though the better coders tend to be CS majors), they should be IT majors and study programming. People who want to understand the theories of computation should take CS. It's that simple.

It's a common misconception that programming = CS. It stems from the fact that programming just so happens to be a very convenient way to compute things, so it happens to be what most people who don't understand CS see.
1st Annual Universal Any Hat Day
Blue beanie too restrictive?
The question was:

Why do Python/Ruby/X people get such a kick out of language wars?

Your response was:

Python people value doing complicated things with simple code. Perl people value doing simple things with obscure language features, then basking in the glow of being called a "wizard".

Methinks there's a disconnect somewhere here.
Trying to calculate expected value is a reasonable approach. (I understand expected value, just hadn't seen the $100K estimate.)

This appears to be the full solicitation of which the "(IC)" area is part:

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09609/nsf09609.htm

Looks to be 200-300 awards of up to $150K each

It might be reasonable to assign a much higher expected value, if the applicant knows (via communication with the program officer) that their team and area are in a favored area, or if they expect to also seek government funding past the first stage, or if they get some value (experience/feedback) even from a 'loss'.

Also, the costs of applying could be far less than 2 weeks if (for whatever reason) an applicant is good at the process or can repurpose other presentation materials.

So perhaps the expected value is some multiple of $10K, for just a day or two's effort,
Drop and Compute
But yet they seemed to have been so close. Regardless of those expectations it seems they pulled it off.
Then why the story about IP rights and backstabbing?
I wasn't being "smirky" and don't appreciate your characterizing me as such.

The OP has indicated no interest in creating "technology", whether in bits or in the abstract, but has indicated his interest in both business and technology. So regardless of the validity of your general points and personal anecdote, you are not really answering his question.
Until pretty recently, the top google result on my name for years was this 1997 haiku contest: http://orangecow.org/pythonet/haiku.html

It's interesting to me that this showed up on HN, as I remember Monty Python being a huge part of my first experiences with the internet. Before searching was so easy, I would spend hours looking up quotes, scripts, clips, and so on.

I might be tempted to say something else that 'Life of Brian' did for us was give people like me reasons to become more familiar with the internet, leading to careers in programming, etc.
Although it sounds fancy, this reminds me the 90s. Sorry.
I majored in Physics in undergrad. When I was taking the physics GRE for grad school, it dawned on me about halfway through the test that I didn't want to do physics anymore (likewise it also dawned on me that I wasn't very good at physics either).

Was I in the wrong major? I'm not so sure. I've thought about it a lot. Physics, while not my ultimate passion, was responsible for teaching me a way to think about difficult problems. It "broke me in" so to say, and from then on, everything else became "well, atleast its not physics". Physics taught me to be immensely skeptical but curious. It was inspiring and thought-provoking. Satisfaction didn't come by answering a few questions quickly, but at the end of a 20-hour problem set that I sat with the entire week.

So while I agree with your post (and up-voted you for writing it), I'm not sure to what degree I agree. Because I feel like everyone should have the opportunity to explore many different subjects and find out through the course of learning them what their true passion is. Perhaps the OP will be really thankful in the future for having a CS background which afforded him opportunities he would have otherwise not had.
I switched to Moniker a few months ago. Moniker made it a very painless process. Most domains were transferred in a day (except for the ones that were less that 60 days old, once the 60 day hold was up they transferred automatically).
You should convene your group of advisers at http://AskMyBrainTrust.com
Also -- I'd be happy to help.
The AP exam has never been scheme.

It was:
Pascal since at least 1990 (probably earlier?),
C++ since 1998, and
Java since 2003.

Note: years are from memory, and may be off by a bit, but the general idea is right.
Apple, Chip Bully?
How does this remind you of the 90's?

(I'm involved in Seesmic, as both a disclosure but also a "direct to the source" opportunity!).