skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting, I'm not familiar w/ Chinese programming jargon, but I can almost translate the feature line word for word:

> 完全面向对象，跨平台，支持Unicode、多线程，垃圾自动回收，类型反射，静态编译，动态类型装载等等

Completely object oriented, cross-platform, [with] Unicode support, multi-threading, garbage collection, reflection, static translation (?), and dynamic type something (装载/zhuangzai, but I'm not sure what it means in this context--ah! DLLs?).

The semantics & translation are much easier than what you would read in the newspaper.
The console, hilariously, looks like someone pressed Ctrl+Alt+Del and killed explorer.exe and just left a DOS box running.

They've done a remarkable job trying to remove Windows from Windows Server, but (they admit) they are still not quite there yet - the evidence is in the volume of patches that must still be applied to Windows Server Core.
Traditionally, Intel and its partners have prevented the microserver market from taking off by limiting their Atom (and other low power) platforms to small amounts of RAM, usually 2-4GB.

It sounds like they're finally willing to open this up and allow a decent amount of ram (8GB and beyond) on low-power, tiny motherboards.
The problem is that if you assign a probably to a point, then the probability you assign has to be strictly smaller that every positive number, so it has to be zero. The system that works with finite sets of taking the number of things you're interested in and dividing by the number of things that might happen doesn't apply. Contradictions and/or inconsistencies arise from that sort of thinking, seductive though it is.

My example about the ranges was an attempt to show that the otherwise excellent ideas from the finite world simply don't apply, so you have to do something else. You suggested that ...

> If the probability of producing the desired result
> in any given attempt is zero, then the probability
> of producing the desired result given infinite
> attempts is still zero.

... and that's what I was refuting.

And perhaps the things to take away from this is that just because the probability of an event is zero, that doesn't mean the event can't happen. Talking about the probability being "infinitesimally small" requires that you make a whole pile of other definitions precise, and that way lies madness. Or at least, non-standard analysis, which is pretty close to the same thing.

In my opinion it doesn't help the understanding of the "interested layman."

All this, of course, is only valid in the theoretical musings of mathematicians (or those doing math at the time) In the "real world" it's all different again.

Doing this sort of thing correctly and consistently is hard.
Funny. I'm in the process of doing the same thing and it does make a huge difference.
No, I don't think so. Airports are already using a similar technology to detect explosive residue. Basically it's a small telephone booth sized box that blasts you with air and sucks it back up to examine. I'm not sure exactly how it works but it seems possible it could scale to detect other types of particles. At a crime scene you could possibly detect unique body fingerprints based on of everything from perspiration on hair, skin particles, clothing particles, cologne, shampoo type, deodorant type, etc) So if the police can get this scan quickly they could go out and round up possible suspects and compare. Unfortunately I think this points towards more brute force policing where innocent people are subjected to "body scans" simply because they vaguely match a description or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Incidentally, this is what happens when the dark ages come to Europe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nqxP2bpF7I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iQyXXsBBQ0&feature=relat...
Does anyone currently use Go Test It? It looks pretty slick and I'm tempted to sign-up.
it is important for a site to provide users, who are already there, an easy way to search. It complements navigation. Doesn't really matter if it's custom or backed by something like google.

Some random standalone search specifically built against another site is not that useful, but is a sign that the built in search is not as good as it should be.
We already have the article, gnosis. This person has actual experience. His comments add to the discussion, over and above the article. No matter what I think of Dubai or the journalism in this article (respectively: BAD and GOOD, FWIW), you're not contributing much here.
Astronaut Hand-Camera Tour of the International Space Station
What has been the value of being on TC for you?

I've had a number of startups get their post on TC, which resulted in tons of clicks on our homepage, and basically nothing beyond that. These startups ranged from VC funded to boot strap, and I can't really say the "publicity" we received was useful in any way.
Genuine question, as I haven't used Windows seriously for years. Does it ship with ssh out of the box yet?
Maybe there is more to the story, but for the first time, I feel bad for Arrington.
The data dates from the 80's but it sounds like it was a recent decision to delete the data.
Steve Souder's "Sprite Me"
http://spriteme.org/
http://stevesouders.com/blog/2009/09/14/spriteme/
To summarise the numbers given elsewhere ...

The number of possible 4-colorings of a 17x17 grid is 4^289 which is about 10^174, but that doesn't take into account the permutations of colors (4!) and possible symmetries.

However, since almost all colorings have no symmetry that's largely irrelevant, so the number of colorings of the grid (up to permutations of colors) is about 4^289/24 which is about 4.122e172.

Within the 17x17 grid we must avoid X-Y-aligned rectangles with corners all the same color. The number of such rectangles is obtained by choosing two rows and two columns, and so is (17choose2)x(17choose2) = 23409.
Ask HN: Are there any on-demand Django deployment and management solutions?
I just ported my Drupal based community site to Django. The Drupal site has been hosted at a shared hosting for last 4 years and gets around 5k unique visitors with 70-80k page views a day. My sys admin skills are limited and I'm about to deploy my first Django app. I would like to know what would be the easiest option for me to host this app with minimal sys admin work as I have very limited time (and desire) to manage my own VPS at the moment. Does anybody provide a Django deployment platform similar to Heroku or Engine Yard?

Edit: I have a small internal Django app hosted at Webfaction. I really like Webfaction. However, can Webfaction's shared environment handle my traffic?
Twitter named top English language word for 2009
The original comment seemed more belittling than frivolous.

As for ego, I don't have a window into anyone else's psyche (do you?), but can think of an easy explanation that has nothing to do with ego: YC is a business. It would be irresponsible not to defend one's business against false or disparaging statements.

Beyond that, it's important to hold the discourse to a certain standard; we have many examples of the pestilence that befalls online communities where this isn't actively done. (Your comment wouldn't raise an eyebrow in many of these places, but it was locally acidic.) IMO PG does a pretty good job of pushing back on this kind of thing while at the same time letting reasonable criticism have free rein. That's a hard balance to strike and not likely how a runaway ego would go about things.
I think the problem is that Starbucks just had bad luck with their clientele. Seems to me coffee drinkers are more likely to value a unique experience over homogeneous reliability.
> Because the politicians and lobbyists who advocate for the "skeptics" are paragons of honesty and openness.

You got it backwards, nobody expects any politicians and lobbyists to be paragons of honesty and openness!

That is why when scientists start acting as politicians and lobbyists, they lose their credibility, and that is the issue he was pointing out.
An Empire At Risk - How Economic Weakness Endangers the U.S.
Well his sentiment isn't off. Substitute any one of the documentary forensic shows on TV for CSI and you'll see how deep forensic science has become over the last 20 years. I agree it's really hard to cheat with the level of skill forensic scientist have achieved. The only issue with this observation is even in simple cases it can take years to get the evidence and science together to convict someone. Those shows make it seem like it's a matter of a days work, but there are years of research and hunting that goes on in order to solve just one crime.

He used CSI because forensic science has become linked with the CSI TV show in pop culture's mind for better or worse.
I realize that. I used a business memo as an example of a mainstream document type, not as a ref to "business".
Ezusecured
Unsecured Loan
And what did you just contribute?
Yes. But you forgot to mention that, "People who need to get Real Work(tm) done use $my_favorite_language."
Open source cinema - hack in HD and build your own camera
Ruby may not be the fastest language in the world, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for better performance. As far as startup times are concerned, have you tried using nailgun?

http://blog.headius.com/2009/05/jruby-nailgun-support-in-130...
If there just was device that let us browse the web (much like Chrome OS would do), integrating an unlocked 3G modem (where I can drop any SIM card and configure it in 30 seconds) and good WiFi support, in the range of the 200$-400$, I'd buy it. Right now.

I'm the kind of guy that loves to be connected (reading HN/Greader/Twitter), mostly when I'm out from home (that can be anywhere). I can wait to contribute (hey, it's okay to not have a physical keyboard when I mostly read webpages), but I just can't stay more than two days without checking the mail or opening Twitter (I'm addicted, I know...)

The iPhone is good enough for that, but I need something bigger with multitasking (or at least some decent browser-tab management). That can be used outside. And the CrunchPad looks much like what I want (indeed Chrome OS does!).

I'm sure that Arrington knows the potential of this project. So this is probably not its dead note, but a resurrection note. about:phoenix :-)
Well fwiw Grail is rated higher on IMDB than LoB. And I can agree that some (a lot?) of the skits in Meaning of Life are pure gold, but overall it lacks the narrative that ties both Brian and Grail together.

Life of Brian being rated as one of the best British comedies I can understand if only because it had more of a broader appeal (at least more widespread coverage thanks to the religious hullaballoo).

Grail on the other hand, may appeal to the cult market more and be more popular on that front (being the type of people who might vote on IMDB).

I'm grasping at straws here, but at least in my books the religious aspect of Brian (combined with the overall quality of the film) would lead me to say that it's more important than the other two Python films.

It's also telling that the two films you regard as better than Life of Brian are both by the Pythons :)
Scribd Important Stuff List Revealed (Humor)
Okay, that is interesting to know. I guess I had been part of that random subset.
"Real" use of wave
If I were a clever defence lawyer I'd argue it would invalidate any later line-ups. This sounds like a stellar way to destroy a memory of a face.

Each time you show a person a face, you're adding new memory trace that will conflict with the real one. This will reduce the confidence in a later recognition task. You're also re-activating the real trace, allowing it to be disrupted. This would increase the false-positive rate in a line-up.
I'm hoping that these will shortly a) exist and b) be produced in enough volume that they unit cost will come down to <$100 levels. I'd like to buy a small, low-power cluster for hobbyist use but the current low-water mark is about $200 plus memory (which is limited to 2G). Hopefully there would be some standard on DC-DC distribution but that would just be gravy.
> but then decided against it because the math is a bit too abstract and unapplicable

Combinatorics isn't really abstract as far as math goes. In fact some call it concrete mathematics.
Just chiming in with agreement on this one. If you are interested in business, CS can be a valuable background to have.

Look for jobs that put you in the more administrative/management side of a software project, and then transition from there to building your own company.

Having CS credentials will give you more street cred with programmers who you'll ultimately try to rope in with a startup you want to found. Without those credentials, they'd likely just view you as "just another business guy with an idea".
Poll suggests Android developers unhappy so far, only 4% pleased with revenue
Hmm, let me make sure I've got this straight.

Some CRU folks conspired to hide data from skeptics. Other data was lost, but not deleted. We know this because the people conspiring to hide the data told us so.

As for how to reconstruct the data, please explain how. Nearly all statistical data analysis methods in common use are highly lossy [1], which makes reversing them to get back the original data impossible. It's ridiculously unlikely that the entire CRU used only reversible analysis methods.

Regarding your "but you are a libertarian, so hah!", I'll mostly ignore it, except to point out that while I am a libertarian on most things, I tend to support regulations which internalize externalities. If I believed the scientific case for AGW, I'd support a carbon tax.

[1] E.g., moving averages hide the noise, or finding the mean/sdev discardes everything besides the mean/sdev.
Its called pre-installed software, search engines and default services. Its worth alot- Both in "revenue now" and recurring revenue.
Announcing the Winners of Android Developer Challenge 2
In the interest of privacy, these ubiquitous videos will be encrypted so securely that playback will be effectively impossible unless the court orders it.

While I agree there will be more and more live video available, I think the encryption and privacy stuff is mostly wrong.

For starters, nobody bothers to encrypt email, despite the technology existing for many years. Also look at social networking sites. People happily post all kinds of personal data, with increasing frequency and decreasing concern for their own privacy. I think that trend will continue.

People might say they care a lot about the ongoing loss of privacy in the modern world, but they don't really.
My app, "Car Locator", nabbed 3rd place in the travel category =)
Is the problem basically this game? http://www.kongregate.com/games/Mygame/blocky

i.e. find a grid where you can not make any moves in the game?
Wow, that book is really old (2003). I had no idea R had been around that long. Is the stuff in it still relevant? I have no idea how quickly R has evolved.
It wouldn't be that surprising.

INC did an interview with Markus Frind where he talked about not necessarily trusting what his users wanted when it came to partners. He's got an algorithm that suggests people for matches even if they said they wouldn't be interested in the person:

... if you tell Plenty of Fish you want to date blond nonsmokers but spend all your time gawking at nicotine-addled brunettes, the program will adjust

(The quote is on page 4: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rol... )
I don't think it is but to go along with the metaphor, those things you list are methods of conveying stories and emotions. A programming language is a method for conveying instructions to a machine. Theses would be 8 reasons not to use any human<->machine language. The Perl biosphere just seems to produce non-sense like this as a matter of routine. To me posts like this are about on par with pictures of cats.
Anybody else remember Ventura Publisher? An awesome publishing suite from Xerox that worked much like PageMaker or Quark, for DOS. Came with its own GEM runtime environment.

Awesome program. Cumbersome, but ungodly powerful in the right hands.
Sacrifice your health and family for your startup?
This is also more brute forcible than 4^289 might suggest.
Consider a 2 x 2 grid. The first square does not count, there are 2 options for the second square, and 3 for the 3rd. But there is only 4 options for the fourth square if the first 3 squares where not the same color. Resulting in (2 * 3 -1) * 4 + 3 = 23 options not 4^ 4 = 256.
> Execution is simply how well you predict what works, and how well you don't lie to yourself.

I never meant to imply that execution is always equal.

The idea doesn't have to be original, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. You can't be completely ignorant and go ahead with your flying horse idea. But your incompetency at realizing your idea sucks is essentially bad execution.

The flying horse idea is horrible, but it won't matter only because you'll realize immediately after executing that it's a shitty idea. So in that sense you'll amend your flying horse idea and try something better like a flying car instead. But after that iteration it's a new idea.

Google and Facebook certainly weren't original, but they are also completely different from when they started. The idea itself is trivialized in the long term, but only if you are capable of logically iterating and filtering out bad ideas.

I think you should try to grasp my definition of what is an idea and what is execution in relation to an idea. Comparing execution to an idea is like comparing apples and oranges.

My main point is that idea and execution are two different things that are part of the same process.

I agree that executing ability of the people running the company is more important than any individual idea.
I am confused. He didn't like that there was copyrighted material on the site and rather than attempt to remove it he just closed down the site? If the copyright holder didn't care, what did it matter?
Also: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7166
I doubt they'll be that micro; the optimal point looks closer to $500. Also, the minimum order tends to be a full rack. You should look at mini-ITX boards.
I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling schadenfreude at Dubai's current predicament. I, at least, feel vindicated that good old common sense appears to have trumped wild disconnection from reality caused by wealth.

More proof that no country can survive without producing any of tangible value.
Does anyone know if they are going to update the Cupcake CNC with this too?
Does this one have multiple heads at once so you can print plastic and metal, etc?
I'm not the most mathy person in the world; can someone explain to me the following statement:

"Exactly one of the following sets is in OBS4: 19x17, 18x17, 17x17."

If I've understood it correctly, OBS4 is the set of grid-sizes which are impossible. But if 17x17 were impossible, surely the bigger ones would be too?

[Edit to answer my own question: the OBS4 set seems to be made up solely of the smallest such grid-sizes that can be given without being redundant.]
I don't understand why people feel the need to delete sites. _Why did this too, and I just don't get it.

I can understand shutting down the site. I can understand having new interests or priorities. But what I can't understand is why people can't just leave things in place with a disclaimer. This isn't 2001, bandwidth, hosting space, domain names, and disk space are all incredibly cheap. Why burn the bridge and scorch the earth behind you?
I'm not convinced of the premise either. A major tenet of computer theory is that programs are data. The distinction between "data" and "metadata" is merely for human convenience, as is the distinction between "code" and "resource".

If techies are the ones who accept this false dichotomy and non-techies are the ones who don't, I'd say it's us who need to adjust our position, not the other way around.
An easier loophole is to go straight to http://news.ycombinator.com/logout. Then you can continue reading.

If you're really struggling, seriously try working on a computer without an internet connection (See http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html).
I am rather amazed nobody has mentioned LyX yet. Its "what you see is what you mean". You get the pointy-clickety GUI, all the tweaking possibilities you need, and you can still simply focus on content, ignoring the jibber{jabber} until you really need the ERT (evil red text). When it's time to layout, you let LaTeX do all the work.

http://www.lyx.org/Home
Meaningless \jibber{jabber}

Nonsense. When you program, does your code look like meaningless.jibber(jabber)? I certainly hope not, and your TeX shouldn't look meaningless, either. TeX is a programming language, and you need to learn to use it effectively. If you are doing non-trivial formatting, then abstract out your directives and macros. Give them meaningful names.

That said, I actually agree with your points about LaTeX, and I gave up using it a long time ago. Plain TeX works exceptionally well, though. I even wrote a small and straightforward macro package for typesetting screenplays. It has a \direction macro, for typesetting script directions; a \speaker macro, for typesetting text spoken by a speaker; and a \scene macro for switching scenes. Aside from these directives, the entire script source is readable plain text.
Tech Adoption, Then and Now
Google App Engine is a scalable low-cost Platform as a Service run on Google's infrastructure. You get to use their toys (Datastore based on BigTable, large network of servers and datacenters, etc), but it will not "just work" with most Django/Python web applications. For example, you have to use their API to interact with the Datastore, and some things just don't work. Once you do the work to get your app running there, though, it turns out to be a fairly good deal.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://stepwise.com

I'm assuming that if he asks them to, Archive.org will remove it from their archives?

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about Stepwise or the author, so hopefully I don't offend anyone.

Things like this and the disappearance of newmogul.com make me nervous about the ability of one individual to destroy knowledge on a whim. It might be useful to have offshore archive centers where it's harder to get rid of stuff like this. Yeah, I know this was the property of this one guy, and he has the right to destroy it, but something about it doesn't sit well. Sites like this seem to be a collection of knowledge from many different people, and it's a bit disconcerting to see it disappear overnight.

What if archive.org decided on a whim to disappear into the night? That's a lot of knowledge lost.

Maybe the answer is decentralized archival in general. Some kind of opt-in network where people agree to store a bit of the internet on their machine. Hmm...in fact, we already do this with caching. Maybe some kind of browser plugin that makes use of those cache files for decentralized archival purposes?

Sorry...rambling a bit. It's an interesting problem.
While the material is rather amazing I have to admit the image of enslaved spiders producing silk gives me the jibblies.
Does it mean we need to create non-brand brands now? Hm.
Not the same. No one is going to read that and then try to use those in their work. I suspect people have read this article and thought "dam those might come in handy, let me bookmark that."
There isn't any but people don't usually write about problems in the context of "now here's something you can use"
It sounds like he has an unspecified disagreement/grudge with this unspecified person.
Reading between the lines, to me it sounded like there was some personal falling out between Scott and someone else.

"But I could not live with some of that content remaining on the site."

It just sounds like there is more to this story that we aren't going to hear about.