skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In baseball, maybe the gymnast, but the extended reach of the swimmer and his/her ability to bat harder might win out. In weightlifting, definitely the swimmer. In cross country skiing, the gymnast, for the following reason.

Weight is proportional to the cube of body size (length) while muscular strength is proportional to body size. The strength/weight ratio is inversely proportional to the square of body size. As size increases strength increases proportionately but the power/weight ratio goes down rapidly.

Fleas are an extreme example: they can broad-jump like no person. Shorter people, like fleas, have an advantage in some sports (e.g., gymnastics) because of their higher power/weight ratio. This also makes a difference in endurance events where shorter people can sometimes perform exceptionally well because they expend less energy per mile.

Don't waste your money on old myths. Serious swimmers today do weight training. Big people are stronger than small people generally. If you don't believe me, pick a fight with a mean guy who's taller than you. Or better yet, pick a fight with a mean, tall competitive swimmer.
Looks like the source code to this already leaked:

1 PRINT "Meow"

2 GOTO 1
> If bridges were as complex as software, would they still be as reliable?

No. As a simple example, if there are n software modules, there are n! possible communication paths. Yes, black-boxing can partition n down but software is not self-healing (yet). Witness the GMail cascading failures.

The bridge supports were undermined because the high-water level flooding generated enormous hydrostatic pressure against the footings (pressure is greatest at the bottom - where the footings meet the earth).

Think of standing in the surf and getting knocked down by a wave - the force, whether you know it or not, is greatest at the bottom (near your feet - which is why you can lose your footing).

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/h/hollandm/ce135/Viewgrph/SluicGat...

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/h/hollandm/ce135/Viewgrph/SluicGat...
New Haven Computer Repair Services
Geeks Mobile USA provides a nationwide network of onsite and remote support computer repair technicians to bring you reliable service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no matter where your company offices are located. We offer following service.
Evidence for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent
Idealy only an index would be searched. For example when a sorting algorithm is presented, typically we assume that items are just integers.

So if the database itself is huge, one would take a column and feed that into the quantum computer along with a matching function and a search item and the output would be the position of the item in the column.

In general it is assumed that 'items' are integers. That is general enough. But since no practical implementations exist, still we still don't know how it would work in the real world with a real database.

Here is a more in depth (and somewhat dramatic) explanation:

For N, items to be search, it would take log2(N) qubits (that's enough to represent all N states). The matching function would have to be a quantum gate/operator. In other words, matching is performed in the quantum world.

The idea behind quantum algorithms is to encode the input in a set of qubits, then make them interact in a way that creates a superposition of states. A superposition of states can be thought of as sending the input into a 'magic' quantum world, where N qubits simoultaneously represent all 2^N binary states. Then a set of quantum operators (gates) are applied to the state vector, while it is still in this magic quantum world.

All is fine and dandy (provided that we can mentain the whole quantum world in a stable/isolated state). Then the 'sad' part is that once we measure the result and bring it into the 'real' world, the whole 'magic' quantum world collapses on itself, and only one particular state out of 2^N emerges.

The trick is then to apply the quantum operators such that the probability of the quantum world collapsing to one particular 2^N state is increased. In case of Grover's algorithm that is what happens. The quantum operators increase the probability of the quantum state collapsing to the matched index. It is a probabilistic algorithm in the sense that it might have to be run a couple of times.

EDIT: removed stupid spelling errors
Or the quick version: "fast, cheap, good: pick two".
Barebones web statistics in 1 line of bash
My friend is hosting some MP3s on my server, and he wondered if there was an easy way for him to see what the daily download rate was like. I'm a bum who hasn't set up a proper analytic tool, so after An Inappropriately Long Duration of hacking, this is what I came up with:

while true; do ( echo "HTTP/1.0 200 Ok"; echo; echo "<PRE>$(cat /var/sites/kenpachi/log/access.log | grep `date +%d\\/%b` | grep -o "GET .*\.mp3" | grep -v 404 | sed -e"s_GET /~jwiswell/__" | sort | uniq -c | sort)</PRE>" ) | nc -q1 -l -p8081; done

There's probably a better way to do the text munging with awk, but, I tried. I was reminded of this by the "one-shot fileserver" in the Command Line Tricks post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=958494).
Techincally, yes, but I imagine it's very simple code. Most skydiving rigs these days have an Automatic Activation Device (such as the CYPRES: http://www.cypres-2.com/). You're not supposed to rely on it, but can save your life if you're knocked unconscious during freefall.

The thing is run by a small microcontroller. It compares your altitude and velocity. If your altitude is less than 750 feet and you're still in freefall, it pulls the chute for you.

Now, would I trust my life to code running on a desktop OS? Hell no! I've seen too many CVEs for that to happen.
Article submitted in honor of today's 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species

It's a good summary of evidence for "descent with modification," as Darwin called evolution in his earlier writings on the subject, mentioning both recent discoveries and discoveries that date back to Darwin's time.
> Biology is destiny, no matter what your dreams are. Short people will never play in the NBA no matter how hard they practice. Dumb people will never get smarter by studying. Ugly ducklings grow up into freaky-looking ducks, not swans.

You'd have to make quite a stretch to say "never" for all of these. Short people do play in the NBA: Nate Robinson, Muggsy Bogues, and Ty Lawson come to mind. Try proving that "dumbness" is determined at birth by biology. And ugly ducklings growing up into freaky-looking ducks is a generalization, not a rule. Sure, there are some features people inherit that make them beautiful, but as one grows up there is a lot one can do to even the playing field (e.g., exercise, dress better, even plastic surgery)
If the scope of your statement was that narrow, I will agree with you. Though, the article does point out that eventually, code you've written and perhaps released without claiming any responsibility whatsoever might be used in something more important than what was originally intended.

Certainly a lot of food for thought there.
Don't ask us, ask your customers. You need to find out whether or not you have a minimum viable product. If you do, get some customers and find out what matters to them.

http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/minimum-viable-...
Infosec Island Membership Drive Promotion - Prize Giveaway
You hear this BS from time to time. Usually from some organization, or individual, that wants to make computing a "Profession". They usually neglect to mention the thousands of bridges, buildings, and other structures that collapse every year, or the occasional city that drowns. How many automobile or baby cot recalls were there this year? I suspect that Engineering is no more reliable than computing.
"If the self-employment rate captures entrepreneurship, then West Palm Beach is by far the most entrepreneurial place in the country and the San Jose metropolitan area, that home of Silicon Valley, is one of the least."

So is self-employment rate a poor gauge of entrepreneurship, or is Silicon Valley less entrepreneurial than we tend to think and West Palm Beach more so? Are all the people working for other people's companies in Silicon Valley really as entrepreneurial as they think they are?
I think it would be worth listing them if others find that useful. I fully believe a large percentage researching YC wants a comprehensive list. If you look at the famous alumni lists on Wikipedia of universities, you'll see quite a few lists of over 100 people (some famous; some obscure). Having a large list isn't out of the ordinary. I think YC's page should restore the company list.
1) I'm not saying those other people aren't masters as well. Clearly they are. I listen to all of them, frequently.

2) When I say "Michael Jackson", I am referring to the entire 'product' known as Michael Jackson. If I said "Apple has some good laptops" you don't say "Actually it was Jonathan Ives that designed them."

Most of MJ's famous hits were primarily written by the person himself, though. Produced by Quincy Jones, yes. Not written. Those two terms have come to be commonly conflated recently.
Does v8 know supports cross-platform aio, epoll, kqueue or at least sendfile()?
Maybe the source of altruism is selfishness, but altruism exists anyway.
Forget it, As a Chinese I can tell you the real source: It's a practice in China to save company money in a private account.
Interesting. I wrote a similar blog post that I had planned on posting this morning. Guess I don't have to now! http://ryanleland.com/2009/11/iphone-developers-arent-stupid...
Big Data on Grids or on Clouds?
shudder You just made me envision a world where there is EA Civilization 2009! With Pro-Tak!

Sickening thought...
All items on this list can be summed up to : We always act out of self-preservation.
sigh Everything is a conspiracy to the Consumerist isn't it?
Well, I think those actually researching YC on Wikipedia would find a comprehensive list relevant. The alumni lists on Wikipedia, for example, aren't very interesting to a large population, but it does serve those researching those universities.
"It's also possible to create some APIs that would tell a website how much bandwidth is available to it, so the developer could adjust its features accordingly."

Interesting.
JVM so multiplatform by default (even on Android)

Even on Android what? Which Scala based project I could run on Android unmodified?

Where I can get JVM for linux/bsd on ARM?
Pretty generic suggestions, but I thought the art was fun. Well done inc for making me read something I've read a dozen times before.
I studied civil engineering in school. All of my civil engineering friends are now licensed professional engineers (most, if not, all of them structural - designing and inspecting bridges).

What that means, besides having a really nice seal embosser, is that when you sign-off on a design (embossing it with your professional signature) - is that you take responsibility for that design. You are professionally liable for the failure of your design.

As a side note, to take the Professional Engineering exam in certain U.S. states, you have to submit 4" thick or so of your actual engineering work notes from your 3 or 4 years of professional work experience (a prerequisite to sit for the exam). Pretty much the year you sit for the P.E. exam you study for it like a part-time job (companies support you because they know the importance of it).

It is not just about reliability, it is about ethics (the Citibank building case is studied) and a sense of professional responsibility. Real professions are very regulated and self-regulating (belonging to a tribe) at the same time.

When I heard my sister was dating a programmer - my future brother-in-law, I had her ask him if he thought software could be engineered. And he gave me the correct response. Having been trained in structural engineering, I hate... really, really abhor the term software engineer - I prefer software developer.
Some Things That You Really Can't Say
I'm disappointed with the articles that attempt to say things that cannot be said. I read them and was not angry. Hopefully some of these will really anger people.

- The ambitious greed of Wall Street keeps everyone else from true success. The .com bubble was Wall Street paying off a handful of us for the opportunity to skim fees off of the irrational investment of the world's money (same as any financial bubble). Other successful sectors have often taken funding that will ultimately send the returns back to Wall Street.

- Relatedly, successful public companies are bad for society. They are always bound to delivering the greatest possible profit, and rarely held to any standards of ethical behavior. The best you can do for society is to create a successful non-profit.

- There is no solid evidence that 9/11 happened like we are told. Any discussion around this fact devolves to name calling and ridicule.

- People who join the (US) military are making the world a more dangerous place. We have no natural enemies; they are creating a solution looking for a problem.

- Ad sponsored media's primary function is to force you to pay attention. They trend towards accomplishing this with fear and social exploitation (shiny, sexy things) because these play to your un-ignorable biological reflexes. Google has so far avoided much of this, but those ads are getting bigger and flashier...

- And most amazingly: it is okay to be wrong. To attack someone for not believing that we landed on the moon, or in the Holocaust, is actually selfish. If you are so concerned, the correct recourse is to present convincing evidence.
We've heard from plenty of sources on this climate center hacking business. We really don't need an article from the Washington Times!
Arguably not a single statement that you have made in your overly hasty second post is true:

This article was so absurd that I wanted to make sure I addressed it exactly the way I wanted to (which I did).

The letter was on-point at the time: the ACM believed it to be relevant.

He was begging for rebuttal. I simply complied.

You're 18 years too late! May as well rebuff Isaac Newton for missing relativity!

What difference does it make if you lose data integrity?

The common network-style (CODASYL) and hierarchical databases enforce referential integrity and are full ACID.

Both[ed. PICK,TOTAL] had columns, rows, joins, indexes, stored procedures, and triggers.

Indexes, stored procedures and triggers are implementation details and are not part of relational database theory per se. None are required for a database to be relational: none guarantee that a database is relational. And to be pedantic, neither are "rows" and "columns" part of relational theory: the proper nomenclature is "tuple" and "attribute".
I disagree. The more comprehensive Wikipedia can be, the more information we can share with each other on any particular topic.
Donald Norman frowns, sir!

Edit: Do people just not know who Donald Norman is? Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Norman#Partial_bibliogra...

He wrote "The Design of Everyday Thing".
Internet routing blasts into space
book is called The Great War for Civilisation after the inscription on the back of my father's World War I medal.

After WWI the British and French created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and the Middle East.

I've spent my entire professional career watching the people within those borders burn.

For me it's all about linking history with the present.

-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4393358.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_for_Civilisation:...

http://www.archive.org/details/RobertFiskWarGeopoliticsAndHi...
Advice for start-ups : You're just getting started
I completely agree. This also applies to engineering, though. If you are making a gingerbread house with your child for a school project, you are not going to need any kind of certification. If you are building a shed in your backyard, you may need a permit, but you do not need extensive approval from quality assurance teams on each step of the process. Software is the same way. Large systems require more extensive testing. A space shuttle needs software and engineering with extensive testing. A bridge and software for medical devices needs quality assurance beyond the usual scope. However, quick hacks exist in engineering and software, and it makes no sense to 'trust your code with your life' or 'trust your engineering skills with your life' when all you are making is a popsicle stick house.
Regarding #2, that's exactly my point: the father's behaviour can be explained completely without resorting to a sort of reverse Oedipus complex.
Also being in China a great deal, I would anecdotally say that the posting seems fairly accurate though I would add that a lot of funds saved by those in the city or at factories are sent home and spent there. There has also been a massive amount of consumption in the form of fixed assets that a lot Chinese would call "investments" like real estate where pricing seems unsustainable. It really isn't the households that have the money to spend (particularly given that they also experience shocks like healthcare expenses from time to time), but the SOE's and large industrial firms (at least in my experience).
How to benchmark competition conversion rates using Alexa
Letter from a Scientific Skeptic
The government officials are particularly wary about the information Google is able to collect on websites of health insurance companies and the like, saying Google could conceivably create profiles of people that would include information about their interests, lifestyles, consumption patterns, political and sexual preferences.

Then shouldn't the regulators be looking at the health insurance companies, making sure they aren't using tools like this (or exporting this usage data to other companies), rather than the provider of this free service?
Hadoop for Bioinformatics
Joost Is Now Officially Dead – Assets Acquired By Adconion Media Group
JavaScript, Tail-Call Optimization
That's strange -- would you rather it be vice versa or do you like being able to notice the minutiae?
I prefer:

nc -q1 -l -p8081 < somefile
Please sign petition to throw out Mandlesons Internet Bill (UK)
I suppose there are also distinctions to be made amongst kinds of "entrepreneurship". A guy and his brother starting a service business is not very likely to change the world, whereas a lot of SV stuff has big goals, and aims to either achieve them or fail in a short time period.
I have read through the comments on Techcrunch, and I don't think anyone there gets it - unless I am the one with the misunderstanding.

Installing Google Analytics on a website allows Google to track users visiting the site. Can Google not follow this same user across different GA-enabled sites (e.g. through a cookie)? And can Google not connect this user with search terms entered on its website? If that is the case, that seems to be a significant amount of data that would potentially fall foul of European privacy laws.

The commenters on Techcrunch, however, seem to think the issue is with the users of Google Analytics (the web site operators) gaining private data. It isn't. It's with Google getting this data.
..Oh, blow me. Michael Jackson was an incredible musician...
Perhaps this is the appropriate point to encourage folks to learn a bit more about art. Because the more you know and understand, the more you can appreciate.
XFS (from SGI) has xfs_fsr for defragmentation. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.
I'm looking for start-up advice!
I've got some seed money and a social media analytics focus. What would you do with mid five figures? Also, you're not a developer - yet. Anyone out there with strong opinions?
but webtrekk.net is allowed???

(A sampling of clients include Allianz[insurance], Esprit[lifestyle], Siemens[almost anything], Flatex, Map24[location], Bosch, and Die Zeit[pol].)
I live in West Palm Beach, and I have to say, this is one of the worst places for a startup. The mindset here is anything but entrepreneurial. It's ridiculously difficult to get any sort of traction going. People come here to retire and die; their mindset reflects that. Unfortunately, I have two properties that I'm upside down on, and I can't sell -- I'm out of here as soon as I can.
Dear Editors,

Why was this renamed?
I had the same thought. I think they're confusing crappy package design (incompetence) with malice.
Do you think Posterous should enable desktop editors by adding the parameter?
Enough. As with the "Unambiguous smoking gun" post from yesterday, this isn't evenhanded reporting, nor is it newsworthy at this point. Please, let's stop speculating.
Canopy Financial Accused Of Serious Financial Fraud, Investors Burned
Given the fact that most systems will start the SSH daemon at boot time, a regular user won't be able to use its port.
With the success of the Appstore, Apple also has little incentive to invest heavily in enhancing the web interface. In the long-term, web apps will likely be better supported on Android, since the web browser is Google's major focus.
Really? I think they're saying the cheap design itself is doing the 'tricking', not Verizon or Moto. Which seems fairly accurate.
I'm not clear, are you asking for startup advice, or are you offering it?
Nonsense. While buildings and bridges certainly do fail, and they require significant expertise to design and build correctly, they do not collapse because of one misplaced bolt. One misplaced *p++? Segmentation fault.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/amorphous/workshop-...

The real problem with people calling programming "software engineering" is that programmers have absolutely no idea which processes actually produce more reliable software. There's a lot of hand-waving and anecdotes, and no solid or reproducible results anywhere. TDD this, agile that, waterfall this other thing. All of it still produces buggy software which crashes, corrupts data, and otherwise makes programs unreliable. Relatively bug-free software is always the product of really smart people who made very few mistakes and tested thoroughly, and never the product of any particular "process" which generalizes well even to another group of smart people. (Just look at the arguments which arise here on HN every time TDD comes up.)
Analytics sets it's cookie under the site's domain name, so it is not available to other GA-enabled sites.

edit: whoops, I misunderstood your question
Amazing. Can't wait to find out who did what.
The root account from RHEL and Fedora systems is configured by default with safe-delete command aliases.
For those interested on the background (and wonering which Citigroup Building):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center

'Changes during construction led to a finished product that was structurally unsound. In 1978, prompted by a question from a Princeton University engineering student, LeMessurier discovered a potentially fatal flaw in the building's construction: The original design's welded joints were changed to bolted joints during construction, which were too weak to withstand 70-mile-per-hour (113 km/h) quartering winds.'
Why is right-wing news clogging up HN? Flagged.
Not to mention completely off-topic. Follow parent's advice, and take your political propaganda somewhere else.
Announce: Haskell 2010
Flagged because the Washington Times is not a legitimate journalistic enterprise.
If someone takes something of mine that's not been built for 'safety critical' use, and wants to use it there, the onus is on them to put the extra effort/money/time in. Same as if I built a one story house and someone wanted to add 5 floors to it - it's not really my fault if it doesn't work out.
Free Market Research Methods Part 1 - Analyzing Public Filings
Would You Accept Google's Free Netbook?
This is awkward. I hope someone investigates this thoroughly.
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