skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"By taking the temperature readings in degrees C, you, in fact, are taking the "base data"."

I don't see how? It is a matter of how you define "the base of the data". My point is that there is a calculation on the measurement, and only the result of the calculation is recorded. Hence the base data is discarded.

We don't know what calculations were done on the climate date in question here. But it seems at least possible that the calculation is also trivial (for climate researchers anyway, could be some standard procedure), just as to us converting heights to degrees is trivial.

Recording the type of thermometer is another matter - likewise the climate researchers will probably record where their measurements were taken, which implies the equipment used.

Edit: of course if the calculations are reversible is another issue. I see now that is the point you made with the thermometer (calculate height from make and degrees). Well, it was just an example, and we don't even know yet if the calculations in question here are not reversible. I suppose if they calculated an average they are not. But I also think there are probably many cases where a measurement is just taking an average (probably even the height of quicksilver is an average in a way...).
I wish I had learned C++, personally. A number of the places I was hoping to work for required many years experience in it. Like or hate the language, it's used frequently. Or at least it was.

Some other things I wish I had done/learned:
* working with external libraries in C
* working in groups on LARGE projects

Something I did learn through extracurricular activities, not school work for the most part:
* SOLVING PROBLEMS!!! UVa, TopCoder, Google Code Jam, ACM Programming Contest. Learn how to take a given problem and convert it into code.
The entire "field" of memetics is a form of pseudoscience, without clear presuppositions, by the way, Dawkins is a die hard fan of bogus scientific definition: http://www.scientificblogging.com/gadfly/extended_phenotype_...
What if they simply felt they didn't have the time to deal with "the MMs", who would most likely not care about the law (also being from a completely different country). Newspapers tend to simply publish stuff they acquire, no matter if they came by it by legal means or not.

Not wanting to deal with the MMs does not imply guilty, just as not wanting to discuss moot points with creationists does not imply evolution theory is wrong. At some point maybe you decide your energy is better spent elsewhere.

Just playing devils advocate... I still feel there is too much context missing.
Everything You Need to Know: Have Them Explain Their Code to You
Or better yet, release the raw data and the transformation scripts.
How to research.

How to ask a question.

How to communicate.

How to come back to a program you've written after a year. Or after ten.

Distributed source code control.

Incremental development.

Integrated debugging. Planning for failure. For support.

Finding and using libraries or frameworks.

Backup.

Source code archeology; how to understand and extend and maintain complex applications.

How to work within a team of programmers.

Upward-compatibility and code longevity; the multi-edged sword of an installed base.

The game (tools, operating systems, languages) changes at least every five to ten years, or more often.

You're an integrator first, and a programmer second. Or third. When you need to.
Agreed. I think most universities would rather err on the side of CS, lest they be construed as something like a trade school. Unfortunately, that doesn't mesh well with the reality that the majority of students will go into software engineering, not computer science. It's clearly difficult to serve the divergent goals of teaching people core abstract concepts, while still adequately preparing them for a career.

In most of my "CS" classes, it was sort of assumed that tools like version control, test suites, etc were just part of getting things done, and they were up to you to learn on your own time. Lots of TAs/LAs had quick tutorials to teach things like CVS and the like, but it wasn't really considered course material. The same was true for processes/development models, and for tools in other areas of engineering, like Solidworks, SPICE, etc.
It'd be interesting to teach a semester-long course building up a single complex application, and to require each student to swap their source code with another (randomly selected) student for each new assignment.
DO you have a summary you could link to of what it takes to self publish?
Learning by yourself when you want to is just so much more efficient than learning in a class.

However I will give credit to school for introducing me to new stuff that I would have never crossed on my own. Perhaps that's how education should be in the future: easy introductions to various things.
War Is Peace: Can Science Fight Media Disinformation?
Not counting mailing lists, mine would be 0-10. With mailing lists, at least a few hundred, since I'm subscribed to LKML and a dozen or two others.
Where do you get the $10K figure? I tried to find a link to award amounts for the exact application linked, but could not. I did find another database of NSF awards from a superficially-similar link on that site:

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/progSearch.do?WT.si_n=Clicked...

Looking at a few of the awards to software companies, they appeared to reach $150K.
Well, he doesn't appear to have much background in programming from what I gather. So perhaps having to use apt-get is a hassle for him.
They debated many different theories --
global cooling, global warming, temperature cycles, etc.

Ick. You're serious, or trolling? There's no way you're serious.
Why I Want the Microsoft News Corp. Marriage to Happen
What model, what theory, what principles determine how the raw data should be filtered and processed? If no one can make sense of the data then the data is useless. If there are objective measures for filtering and processing the data and making sense of it, then other experts can critique those methods, they can test the methods, and others, on new and original data to determine how well the methods work. To reproduce or refute results.

This is science.

The risk of public science being misinterpreted by the public is less serious that the risk of private science being inaccessible to other scientists. The first risk is that the public will make incorrect decisions based on misunderstandings, the second risk is that the "science" will be wrong which can lead to the public making incorrect decisions which they believe to be backed by the leading scientists in the field. This second risk is far more dangerous. Whether non-technical people (including journalists) will misinterpret the data is less relevant. Does it matter whether non-technical people can make sense of Quantum Chromo-Dynamics? or General Relativity? or 2D COSY NMR Spectroscopy? What matters is that scientific theories and the data supporting them are available openly, so that others who can understand them can make use of them and can verify them. Anything else is just opinion masquerading as science.
I have dealt with Nick a few days ago and I found him one of the most competent, friendliest and patient tech support people I have ever dealt with. 4 hours of his time dealing with my newbie shenanigans when I am only paying you $20/mo; that alone has won me over and I have been a walking Prgmr PR agent ever since that day.
I saw the movie second time while smoking pot. Almost suicidal because I had trouble breathing from so much laugh. I suggest you try it.
When were clean air legislations enacted? Maybe that halted the possible cooling effects of soot, and allowed temperatures to start rising.
"However, current tastes and sensitivities make it highly unlikely that a comedy group would even attempt making a film like Brian today"

It seems from the article that it was highly unlikely that a comedy group would even attempt making a film like Brian in 1979.

I highly recommend Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut) - it's a great documentary about Python. The author of the article appears several times.
What do people think about offering $x/yr and $y/mo options? When I see $y/mo in these situations, it reminds me of mobile phone billing scams. My gut feel is that you'd only want $x/yr in this situation. Do Flickr have a monthly option? From memory, they just have 1 year, 2 years and then just mention a monthly cost to demonstrate how cheap it is?
- Learn how to write a Makefile, your builds should be one button/command away

- Learn how to test your code using assert.h, JUnit, whatever, just test all the fucking time.

- Learn GDB, stop using printf to debug.

One of these things is not like the other. The first two pieces of advice suggest that doing things automatically is better than doing them manually. Then, you throw all that away for debugging? Instead of having your program just print the results of intermediate steps, you want to load the program inside another program, set breakpoints, and type "continue" as you hit them all, requiring your constant attention to perform a tedious task?

Debugging with printf is fine.
I played with Debian for a while and didn't like it. Slightly more annoying to use than rpm/yum. I know lots of people like apt, I just didn't, and I didn't much care for the stable/unstable/testing branches (I assume Ubuntu has the same hirearchy?)

This is a side-track, but can anyone tell me why distros aren't packaging their apps to be installable/run-able independently of each other? Eventually people want conflicting versions of software installed (i'll admit very rarely for a desktop user and more for systems whose OS doesn't change as often as their developers' application requirements) and you have to become a fire juggler with your now-custom packages. Just install every single application and library in its own path and use a wrapper to determine default symlinks for the base-system and reference alternatives directly as needed (apps can also link to their preferred library and path this way so that wouldn't be an issue). In fact, I wager you with this filesystem layout you could go much longer without upgrading your OS as newer libraries/binaries would simply be installed to deal with the new requirements and used accordingly. (I know this may sound complicated as hell but it's not much more work than the current man-hours put into setting up individual packages for building across multiple OS revs)

And another thing: Jolicloud's "ideas" page is the worst web 2.0 market-speak i've ever seen. I can't take that OS seriously.
In this thread several people mentioned awards of $100k, given 10% probability of winning the mathematical expectation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value) of the award is $10k.

That is if you try 100 times you will win 10 times and get $100k each time you win, or $1m total, or $10k per attempt.
If they won't budge with other offers on the table and let you walk away, then nothing would have helped.
Reverse anthropogenic global warming without reversing the global economy
Calling for open
Netbooks and the Disruptive Dual-OS Future
Any reason that we shouldn't switch?

I'm not switching because they meet my needs, my customers are happy, and switching would take me lots of time that I can more profitably use promoting my software. I don't get paid for doing work, I get paid for solving problems. Slicehost is not a problem for me.

Your mileage may vary.
The difference is in 1979 it wasn only illegal to blaspheme against the church of England.

Today in more enlightened times it's illegal to make jokes about any religion, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rowan-atkinso...
I mostly agree with you, but I think it also depends on the types of contracts we're talking about. I definitely read all 20+ pages of my apartment lease before I signed it, but not a word of the iTunes EULA when upgrading it.
I think he should amend his statement to be learn how to use your debugger of choice.

I think printf is a fine tool for some things. GDB others, the IDE's version of a debugger as well for some tasks, re-looking at the code in question another time is another way. It should not be a holy war and there is never a completely correct way to do multifaceted tasks such as debugging. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the tool at hand is the best way to increase your effectiveness.

I am hacking on a kernel driver right now and printf(well IOLog) is the easiest way to debug but if I was running in userspace I would probably use the xcode interface to GDB because it lets you zero in on what you want to look at with state but sometimes printf is all I need.
I wish I learned more about testing, Source Control, and using and integrating with existing code and libraries.
However, 30 years on, that same film is regularly touted as the funniest British comedy of all time

I love everything that Monty Python ever did, but I would hardly call Life of Brian the funniest British comedy of all time.

Respectfully, I disagree. I think the author overstates his case. LOB could easily be made today.
Do we really need shrill atheism vs. religion discussions here? What has Richard added to the discussion?

Maybe next we should argue about Sarah Palin, or text editors.
A rather accurate explanation of exploit code for a biologist/geneticist I must say...

Indeed countermeasures to the section about "immunization" was the reason the Morris worm spread so far so fast.
Interesting read. A few thoughts

* Lamenting that 'publishing is a business' or 'ROI is everything to them' inevitably sounds whiny. Authors seem to be very aware (probably even overestimating in order to preserve ego) that the "I" part is very important. As much as she seems desperate for an advance, she obviously knows that large advance = large promotion budget & wants both.

* Her books seem to have failed to make anyone money. It's not that everyone but the author got paid. She got a slice of a small pie.

* Authors get paid so little because of how badly they want to be writers. This is actually evidence of supply-demand at work in job markets, something that is hard to come by. Without knowing any numbers, one might predict that garbage collectors get paid more than writers, professors, etc. No one want to collect garbage & lot of people wants to write. Supply of writers is high, price is low.

* Apart from the financial consequences, I imagine it would be very frustrating for a writer to live in this world of gatekeepers where you need permission all the time.

* I think this frustration is what makes writers sound whiny. Since they are constantly trying to get over the gatekeeper barrier, it seems like this is what is standing between them & crazy success. This lets them avoid the sobering ratio: # of books successful per year/ # of books written per year.

* Writers need to play a different game. Seth Godin/ Tim Ferris/ 1000 True Fans/ Trent Reznor/ etc. inspired (depending on taste) direct promotion. Also, try to make money indirectly. The Author cites how being a published author is already being a mini-celebrity. It might be possible to capitalise on this some way that isn't just selling books.
Newsweek is not a good resource for judging the true scientific research of the era. Newsweek spins stories to sell magazines. If anyone is curious about the real details of the research I would suggest reading:

The Myth Of The 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus by Thomas C. Peterson, William m. Connolley, and John Fleck

http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0...
Wordnik - A Social Network for Wordies
One thing is for sure: unpaid internships are probably illegal nine times out of ten. Employers are legally required to pay interns at least minimum wage if they fit the definition of an employee. Given the way most startups use interns, they would be considered employees.

According to the Department of Labor, if an intern's work benefits the company, then the intern should be treated as an employee. There is a six factor test, more on this here:
http://www.clark.edu/student_services/employment/documents/L...

A related point, I think paying employees only with stock options is also illegal for a startup. The stock options likely don't have much value in a startup, and also the employee may lose the stock options if they quit (or are fired) prior to their vesting date.

So, both interns and employees should at least be paid minimum wage unless the company literally cannot even afford paying minimum wage. That said, the company will probably only have a legal problem if the underpaid intern/employee files a complaint.
That's actually an important effect, decreases in aerosols has probably caused an increase in temperature especially in urban areas in the western industrialized world. Interestingly, the increasing use of coal burning to fuel developing economies, especially in China, is leading to increasing local cooling in some areas.
The Jones family name you use in your screenshots has some bad connotations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_Joneses
Ask HN: Github or your own git server?
Informally I'm curious how people are using Git for new startups that aren't open source. Are you using Github, or setting up your own Git server?
Ruby wrapper for the new LinkedIn API
Mullenweg Speaks Out on Twitter, WordPress and the Question of Competition
I think you're suggesting that they're all the same.
What says you can't use GDB on the kernel? You'll need two machines to use it, but there's support in Darwin for debugging over FireWire.
VB .Net ListView [ VB .Net Tutorial ]
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Rooftop Solar Generation: Ready for Prime Time?
What has she said that's so unforgivable?

The value of her advances? That she liked/ didn't like editor A or agent B, the names of whom you would need to do detective work to find out? Her opinion of the industry?
Compilers.

Somehow I got a BS and MS in computer science without taking a single compilers course, and I've regretted it.

I recently saw someone make a comment along the lines of "I'm a web developer, why would I ever want to learn about compilers?" Many people seem to think compilers are just programs like gcc that turn a language like C into machine code, but that's really just one kind of compiler.
This is tremendous. I am considering switching from MediaTemple to VPS.net right now and I would love to have seen them put to this test!
How Did Humans First Alter Global Climate? [2005]
Dawkins has contributed interesting, novel, scientific & philosophical points to the discussion over the years. I agree that he can be shrill, but his contributions are meaty.
I never said you couldn't. I said the easiest(least amount of hassle) way is to use IOLog and my brain for debugging purposes.
Why specify the language? Any language should be a possible choice. What is the purpose of the contest? If it is about demonstrating the team's skills at solving a well specified problem, the choice of language should be part of the solution, not the problem statement. Languages get chosen for a variety of reasons including familiarity, ease of interface to supporting systems like game engines, and so forth. But that is precisely why you ought to let the teams make their own choices, good or bad.

On the other hand, if you are interested in leveling the playing field and removing rote skills, you might consider specifying a language with which the teams are unfamiliar such as go, erlang, clojure, or the like. That will tend to force the programming team to think about what they are trying to accomplish in abstract, conceptual terms rather than just hacking.
Sorry I thought it was it is ksmeltzer@ the Google email.
I agree that this probably isn't the place for religious debates, but it's plainly absurd to compare Richard Dawkins to Sarah Palin (presumably) with regard to the substance of his arguments, or to imply that he has not added anything worthwhile to this debate.
Dawkins is a classic yellowist (http://paulgraham.com/say.html). Megawatts of brain power spent on arguing with idiots.
It's pretty simple. People who think in personal, emotional terms tend to explain the world that way, while people who think more logically/mechanically explain the world that way. That's where religion and science, respectively, come from.
Be careful not to pollute your data with people just "kicking the tyres" of your website - I imagine you have many users who create a profile to get a look and never return.
Never Back Down – Pirate Bay Adapts To Stay Alive
Knowing the "theory" of computer systems (operating systems, networks, compilers, etc.) isn't worth a damn thing if you can't MAKE and MODIFY one. Software engineering tools matter because you'll never be able to make or modify a system of any complexity without first engaging with them (to some extent).

The broken assumption here is that you can become a competent computer scientist by doing assignments
The Origins and Decline of the Wage System
Let your data be your guide on this, but I think a lot of these comments are "solving the problems of technically inclined twenty-something males". For example, I predicted without even reading that Twitter adoption is so low as to be negligible. The data referenced elsewhere on this thread suggests that, indeed, .5% of customers are using it. Don't spend engineering time catering to .5% of customers unless you have a darn good reason to. (In addition to Twitter, the vast majority of your customers don't have blogs. Unlike Twitter, though, I think there is a built-in wonderful reason to support bloggers even if they're a tiny fraction of your users: they give great links for SEO purposes.)

Easily importing contacts from their Yahoo email or Google email, which are products this market actually uses, is a wonderful idea though.

Have you thought deeply about your SEO strategy yet, as opposed to your paid search strategy? I think you'll find that search results like "family photos" are going to be insanely competitive. Think long tail -- put a blog on your site and start writing articles along the general lines of "How do I send photos to my family?" You would be flabbergasted how many people in your market do natural language queries. (The long tail search queries at my site is quite amusing.)
Check the Redesigned Google (With Always-Visible Sidebar) Yourself
If you don't mind, could you list some of the films that you regard as funnier than the Life of Brian?
Yes I'm not that technical. I find for the casual user that Synaptic and and command line installs can have issues. Also often dependencies are missing which requires me to fish around for whats missing.

I think Jolicloud offers significant app installation improvements for users only experienced with Mac/Windows.

From my experience installing apps on Ubuntu sometimes and more frequently has challenges I have not experienced in windows/mac. I could see my parents using Jolicloud - I think they'd struggle on traditional Ubuntu, even though I'm a big Ubuntu fan.
New England Patriots vs New Orleans Saints Live Stream Game Online - NFL
Friends BSeasons
Ask HN: What's the best way to dispose of a huge amount of old floppy disks?
Okay, so here's the story.

My dad used to run a company that was contracted to program defensive missiles (using some odd language called Ada....). He passed away a long time ago.

So, right now I'm at my mom's house to organize his old files. I uncover a few thousand floppies and spools of magnetic tape.

What the hell is the best way to take care of this without going crazy? We're strapped on cash right now, so we can't hire professionals.

And I don't want to just shred them. My dad would probably get pissed for doing it the wrong way.

Anybody with experience with this?

Also, I am backing this stuff up.

Thanks guys.
I'd never use Github if money was on the line, it's down all the time and source code is core competency stuff, you do it in-house. Gitosis + gitweb aren't that difficult to set up.

There's also "Gitorious" but I tried to use it once and spent two days unsuccessfully trying to get it to work.