skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Early reports had him in serious condition (which remember, is better than critical condition) after he apparently hit a fire hydrant and a tree while leaving his home in his SUV.

I see this as a problem for twitter and the internet. They got a very important part of the new wrong.

Tiger Woods has already been released from the hospital and wasn't injured.
> One solution would be offer equal length paternity leave for men to minimize that effect.

That will probably just extend the effect to potential fathers as well. It's probably a "you just can't win" situation :-/
I'm more tempted to think of people as individuals who make their own life choices, rather than think of all women as 'pregnancy risks'. Especially in technology - a lot of geek women don't have or want kids.

Am I the only one who sees the hint of a contradiction there? Granted, it's not as broad as "all women", but you still seem to be stereotyping.
Deleting emails is not the same as deleting emails to prevent disclosure. I delete emails all the time; I presume everyone does. The email being quoted here doesn't say anything about why Jones "deleted loads of emails". You are inferring more than is warranted.
Google Wave Console Client
Is the hash-type gonna be in the protocol? (along with lists, sets, ordered sets, etc.)? That would kick so much ass antirez, you have no idea.

Do you want user input? coding? I will do everything necessary to get a nice Redis interface for Genhash:

http://cdr.eurolisp.org/document/2/genhash.html

If that document looks cryptic to you just let me know and I can put it in C terms.

This fucking rocks!
You may want to have a look at the Swedish sitiuation.
Miscellaneous Git Tools
A better solution would be to have the government pay the parent a stipend instead of the company.
It's extremely difficult for a global warming skeptic to get published in scientific journals because the decision-makers are beholden in one way or another to the global warming movement. This is why we've yet to see a fair and honest debate of this issue. What we have today is 90% politics 10% science.
It's a bit of a problem that a law intending to equalise the relation between a larger company and its employees, is likely to upset the balance between a small company and its employee.

If you have 50 people working for you, maternity leave of one employee doesn't affect operations all that much. If you have only one employee, it can destroy your company.
Dark Matter Rocket
But every one is a potential father or mother. I guess another solution would be to require employees to put up a bond that covers the companies expenses in case they go on absence. The cost of a risk of absence has to be paid by out of the gross salary anyway, so we might as well make it more explicit.

(I do not know whether you could then put up a (possibly subsidisied) insurance company to cover the bonds in case of having children. The problem is, that having children does not work like accidents or fire.)
We have this in Germany. However --- how much is fair? And what about the other costs of maternal leave --- especially the job-guarantee?
Judging a blog post by its title alone is hardly fair. Raymond clearly explains what it's about in the post itself. No pretenses about full generality are being made. "Some caches confuse some memory leak detection tools" may be more accurate, but it's hardly catchy.

Also, analysis is only as good as what you know to analyse. Calling a memory analysis "naive" because it bases itself only on the system allocation/deallocation routines (which are, after all, the logical starting point for any such analysis) is just silly. Sure, the analyzer could have been extended to know about BSTR caching, but there's obviously no limit to the amount of cleverness you need to build in to properly analyze everything this way. Any sufficiently advanced cache is indistinguishable from a memory leak, that's sort of the point.
I googled and found something online:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/04/maternity-leave-laws-forbes...

According to the article the law grants 12 weeks unpaid time off to care for a newborn baby. The old job is guaranteed on the mother's return. The woman must also have worked at the company for at least one year. Moreover, companies with less than 50 employees are exempt from this law so most startups are not bound.

I don't find this law unreasonable.
Here's a crazy (and perhaps illegal) idea: maternity leave insurance. This way the risk gets spread across multiple firms.
Average Thanksgiving meal was 2,225 calories, up 5 percent from last year
OK, I was thinking in the security sense, but of course broader availability is interesting.
I disagree: the more people work on improving my favorite programming language, the better. Who knows, if it became really popular, it might even be possible to find jobs using the programming language.

I like learning new languages, but realistically, I can not be very good in an unlimited number of them.
Because somebody told him so.
Ask HN: Who do you follow on twitter?
I want to fill up my twitter homepage with some words of wisdom :P

Give me some suggestions of interesting people to follow
This reminded me that Commodore BASIC (among others, as this is in no way restricted to that platform, and is a common technique), had bit 5 set in the last byte of each word in its keyword list to signal the end of the word. This had the effect of capitalizing the last letter, and avoided the need for a delimiter character on that memory strapped platform.
I do not believe the author is covered by US law.
How about this possible solution? If you're employed by a company and you want to take maternity or paternity leave beyond a standard period, you have to quit your job. Your employer is given a lump sum payment from the government to cover the cost of finding your replacement, based on some metrics such as the salary of the position. These payments are covered by an increase in payroll tax for all employees.

That way, all companies are shouldering the burden of people having children, so they have no real reason to discriminate against women likely to become pregnant.
How to Try the New Google Search
> As Ken MacLeod put it [...]

Ironic name, don't you think?
CPAN is a community project, I doubt that anyone could create an equivalent for another language, it would almost certainly have to be grown as the original was.
>"Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

…

Cheers
Phil"

http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/willis-eschenbachs-...
Version 2.0 helps you find precisely relevant people, using AI techniques. And then it helps you do whatever you want with them - follow, @reply, whatever. You get a dashboard of info about them, to help you understand that they really are relevant. And if they aren't, you just hit "ignore" and move on.

It's no longer automated. It's a HUD/sales pipeline for intelligent humans.
I tried it but can't decide if any relaxation I felt was placebo or not.
"Heresy became easier to communicate, and Saenger postulates that word spacing eventually made possible phenomena like irony, pornography and freedom of conscience."
> It is a light hearted article with a laugh of two

I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw it that way. Is it just me, or does Hacker News take things too literally sometimes?
Even though he has a good point: strings are lists, and erlang is good at lists — erlang doesn't have native regexps like perl, js, or ruby, nor is the support for them that good.
The best advocacy is using the language. Someone pointed out earlier about the lack of a CPAN equivalent for other languages - CPAN is the best perl advocacy around. The biggest improvement in perl advocacy would simply be to let others know how much it is used, and why.
How does Erlang fare with Unicode in practice?
I like the other one better.
"All you have to do to trigger a deep yawn is to fake it six or seven times."

Does this work for anyone else? Maybe I'm doing it wrong.
I don't know why we even bother to try to explain this to people anymore. Don't you ever get sick of this sensationalist vibe in the Western press wrt computers and robots "taking away people's jobs", and subsequently repeating what you just said, time and time again? We should start taking a new approach to it.

Robots are going to take your jobs away suckers. And WE'RE the ones who are going to make them! Ah huahahahaha.
It's not so much that you enjoy the event live as you are annoyed when it is going on and you are not watching it. The same can't be said of news. You can't be annoyed by not knowing Tiger Woods was in an automobile accident. You can be annoyed, however, by reports that turn out to be false. I don't see of any downside in ESPN waiting 45 minutes so the report can be verified.
Again, I'm not arguing the logic, I just want to see the supporting citation that shows how this translates into increased CO2 emissions for Canada, as you claim above.
I was very skeptical, but it did work for me.
Shake. Load. Kaboom. $600+/day.
Wherefore Art, Thou?
Can We "Open Source" This Job Spec?
>> Calling a memory analysis "naive" because it bases itself only on the system allocation/deallocation routines is just silly <<

No, it's being accurate. Reporting leaks based on mismatched alloc/dealloc system calls is a fair starting point, but is still a naive technique.

For example detecting resource leaks can either be done by instrumenting the program itself, or tracking calls to the underlying OS routines. If the tracking was based on the program then everything would be peachy since the create/free calls match. But it's not, it uses system calls and seemingly discounts the potential for resources not to live beyond their use in the program. And that's naive.

>> Any sufficiently advanced cache is indistinguishable from a memory leak, that's sort of the point. <<

I suppose that depends on your definition of a leak. Mine is "no longer referenced", which a cached item clearly is.
This is true - looked at making a very concurrent webcrawler in Erlang, and the regex bit was painful.
I worked at Amazon for a while. And the only thing I can tell you is that unless someone replies that specifically works in the group you are talking to any specific advice or questions they give you would be mildly useful. Every group has different hiring bars and questions (some groups use the same script for every applicant so they can be ranked next to each other. My group never did this).

advice on questions? Coding, algorithmic complexity, and design. You will probably have to write code during the call. Depending on the screener, it could be e-mailed in a couple of hours after the screen.

A lot screeners tend to combine coding and algorithmic complexity in one question. They'll give you a question with an obvious quadratic solution and a less obvious linear or logarithmic solution (or even more rare a constant solution).

When you are refining your algorithm - talk. Talk about the variables and what'd you name them. Talk about why the nested for loop isn't good. Talk about everything you are thinking of. The whole point of the screen is to get an idea about how you solve problems.

If there is a way to solve the problem using a standard library, mention it. You'll be told you can't do it that way, but it is good for a screener to hear that you know how to use a standard library to solve the problem. I used to give points for this even if they missed implementing the algorithm themselves.

Language tends not to be a big deal. I would let applicants use Java, C++, C#, JavaScript, etc. Whatever they were most familiar with was OK with me. I'll be honest, my group used to give preference to C++. C++ is a harder language to master than Java. so someone that gives a good C++ answer, usually got the edge over the Java guy. Again this was my group where 90% of the code was already in C++.

If you say you know C or C++ and can't see how pointers could be used to solve the coding problem you are given (especially if a string manipulation question), that would be a huge red flag for us.

Design questions can run the gamut. I used to ask "design a reservation system for restaurant", "design a parking lot", etc. Simple things that everyone knows. The design would include what objects you have, how they interact, data structures, etc. I'd look for whether you treated classes as data containers or you believed in data + behavior.

And finally, don't forget that Amazon is about getting stuff done. That means your solution may be a perl script slicing some data and piping the result through cut, sort, uniq, etc. Don't assume you've got to write a program from scratch to solve every problem.

Good luck!
I find this issue interesting. I'm a single male with no intention of having children any time within the next 5 to 10 years, if at all. I have many coworkers with families, and I completely agree that family should come first. However, why should it be taboo for a business to recognize the difference between the career-driven and the family-driven employees, regardless of their gender? If I'm willing to sacrifice a few weekends here and there for a project's success, isn't that worth something? If a position requires a higher level of dedication, is it that bad for a business to screen out those they know have family obligations that will prevent them from putting in the extra effort? I think many businesses do this informally right now, but why should it be a questionable thing to recognize? Some tasks are a better fit for less-rounded individuals.
And this is the part that society has to cope with - at least for the time being. As a population we are still used to trusting authoritative news sources, ones that are presumably bound by law, ethics, or policy to verify their information.

The result is that we react rather quickly to news. This can (and has been) disastrous in internet communities where the news has turned out to be incorrect or fraudulent.

The consequence of the Twitter phenomenon is that collectively we all need a much better bullshit filter than the one we have right now.
Who are these "decision makers"?

As far as my experience goes, papers just get submitted and then go into the peer-review process. If a paper comes down to the level of discourse we're seeing in these blogs, it won't get published, but if it contains some valid science, I see no reason why it wouldn't get published. If you have proof otherwise, please share it.

> What we have today is 90% politics 10% science.

Yes. This is both unfortunate and as it should be. It's unfortunate for the scientific debate. The level of discourse has dropped dramatically because of the politicisation.

On the other hand, scientists have been researching this for many years. The scientific debate has been ongoing for at least that long. Their conclusions do have a strong effect on policy. Political decisions have to be made about how to handle the issue.[1] Such policy-making has already started years ago and lead to the Kyoto Accord in 1997. So we're more in the political phase than we are in the scientific phase. 90% politics is probably as it should be right now.

[1] You can read this as "how to handle the issue if at there is an issue" if you want. It doesn't change what I'm saying.
My impression, from the article, was that if the strict washing procedure was followed, then hand washing was effective. Anyway, it is clear from the article that using alcohol gel works and is much more convenient and yet compliance is still not great.
> But every one is a potential father or mother.

Not really. It's a sliding scale, but at some age the "new child probability" drops dramatically. People who already have children over a certain age are unlikely to have more children too.
You know why the Internet really wins? Because I DON'T have to deal with stupid worthless news like this. Sorry, but unless I suddenly wake up as the CMO of a sponsor company, a trader with options in such a company, a competing golfer, or David Murdock (who owns the Sherwood golf club), this news is NOT essential to my life and I am glad my only connection to it is this stupid TechCruch article.

By allowing me to customize who and what I consume, the Internet allows me to get rid of all of the crap that CNN et al try to shovel at me. That's mainstream media's real problem -- they have completely alienated the most affluent and intelligent among their readers.

And in case you're wondering what I'd consider "vital news" -- how about the potential default of a sovereign nation (Dubai) which could trigger a CDS event which could re-trigger the global financial crisis?
the real nightmare here is that this is going to cast a huge shadow on legitimate climate research -- and science in general -- for many years to come. these douchebags need to rot in jail for a long time.
how is it a ponzi scheme. I pay $119 a year and that is it.
Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' Gets Digital Makeover
Ahh... the author of the gamesbrief article seems to be talking about the situation in the UK. It seems a lot different in the US. I wonder if the gender discrimination the author talks about happening in the UK also happens in the US despite considerably laxer laws.
I think if society wants maternity leave, it should pay for maternity leave. Why should businesses have to compensate for the higher risk of employing women? I don't think it is discrimination to avoid hiring women if hiring women simply is going to cost more. It's certainly not the fault of the business if women get pregnant (also not that women CAN get pregnant - businesses did not invent genders and sex).
If I understand it correctly, Erlang fares well here because it stores each character as a 32-bit integer in a list. The implication of that approach is more memory overhead for each character, but that allows you to treat strings as a list of characters and gives you all the benefits of the standard list-manipulation libraries.
I think in Germany how much you get paid depends on your former salary, which does not seem fair to me. There should be equal pay for every mother (if the government paying is the right solution at all).

Apart from that of course the question is how much should be paid in absolute terms (people who don't have children are at a disadvantage).
And in case you're wondering what I'd consider "vital news" -- how about the potential default of a sovereign nation (Dubai) which could trigger a CDS event which could re-trigger the global financial crisis?

I think the point is-- no matter what you consider vital news, the Internet is a better way to get that news faster and more accurately than traditional mainstream media.
Unlike coal, biomass is carbon-neutral, releasing only the carbon dioxide that the plants had absorbed in the first place.

Um... What?

Coal is also "releasing only the carbon dioxide that plants had absorbed in the first place". It's a question of time. If you're burning biomass faster than you're producing it, it's not carbon-neutral.
The ENIAC of quantum computing? Perhaps not, but immensely exciting! Maybe it's more accurate to compare it to Colossus.
Author of HOW GOD CHANGES YOUR BRAIN
Great background site for understanding the science behind the climate debate
Waist Fat Doubles Dementia Risk In Women
> Erlang fares well here because it stores each character as a 32-bit integer in a list

Which is silly because if you make a list of 32 bit integers that have ASCII equivalents then Erlang assumes it is a string.
People are individuals, but there are things which hold true, on average, between certain populations.

It's not a contradiction, it's called outliers... or even 1/10th a standard dev, depending on how close the means are.
pg did this for a few hours and used circles where the point number one, something like orange or red color was used to denote a popular comment.

Many people disliked this however and decided that the numbered system was better, thought a few hours allows very little benefits to be seen.
Subsidized day care would also mitigate these problems as well. My wife is returning to work in a month at the end of her 1 year (Canada) maternity leave, but the cost of daycare is enough to make the decision difficult. Nearly half her income goes to daycare. If there was daycare in her building, however, that would have made the decision to go back much easier.
I'm trying to figure out why this article is posted, as a UK anti-discrimination bill doesn't seem to matter much to mostly-US programmers.

Additionally, the linked article is simply false; there's no proposal to raise maternity leave to 3 years, and what changes are being proposed to the UK's maternity leave laws (minor tweaks) are not in the mentioned Equality Bill.

For what it's worth, the UK requires employers to pay women 90% of their salary for 6 weeks only, and then a nominal amount for up to a year (which most families will not be able to take, since it's not enough income to live on), and the woman must be offered her job back upon completion of the leave. Most women take six weeks and then return to work, or quit entirely to take care of the kid. It's better than the U.S., but hardly a socialist utopia gouging out the soul of the hard-working noble capitalist, or whatever the linked article was trying to say.

False all around. Nothing to see here, move along.
seems i'm now getting down voted out of spite :)

I guess some people don't like being wrong hehe
Yeah, but still: it lets you operate on unicode "characters" pretty easily. With a ton of associated downsides (unclear string/list of integers dichotomy, wasted memory for ascii, etc)
Aside from the carbon sequestration aspect, "burying" charred biomass is very interesting from a standpoint of improving soil quality, as mentioned briefly in the article--though it's not really burying so much as churning it into the topsoil.

As an illustration, it's now known that the rich, fertile soils of the Amazon river basin are actually man-made, via a process of soil enrichment thought to involve burying smoldering wood to create charcoal, then breaking the char up and mixing it into the soil along with manure and other organic waste. The natural soil of the Amazon is actually very poor and infertile otherwise!

See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=934117 (I commented there as well along similar lines)

Related articles on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
Andrew Newburg is director of Penn’s Center for Spirituality and the Mind. This essay is from the book: HOW GOD CHANGES YOUR BRAIN
Just a side question: I hardly ever delete emails (except for automatic reminders etc), and I always assumed that's the standard thing (I'm using gmail). But ionfish deletes emails, so I'm questioning my assumption.

Do you delete emails?
"Please design a logo for me. With pie charts. For free."
# Only about half of women return to their previous jobs, a figure largely unchanged since maternity protection was introduced in the 1970s.

# Sixty per cent of women signalled their intention to return to work, but research suggests that two-thirds of those that pledge to return had no intention of doing so (I struggle to reconcile this point with the previous one).

It's easy. 40% of women signaled their intention to return to work and failed to. 20% of women signaled their intention to return to work and did. 10% of women did not say they would come back to work, and did not. 30% of women did not signal their intention to return to work, but did.

Conclusion: 70% of pregnant women are indecisive.
From 12Bx that changed, regexps are enjoyable but still not as rich as Perl.