skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Can anyone verify the license?
Now here's a great example of an elegant solution to a common problem: keeping track of Christmas. How many times have you woken up in a haze, drenched in sweat, desperately wondering whether or not today is Christmas? Well, worry no longer!
Sounds fairly similar to SoundCloud (http://soundcloud.com/) in that the purpose is to share music that one has created.
> the interesting code snippets

Copyright allows snippets of works for discussion under concept of fair use. It doesn't allow wholesale republishing into a distribution channel of the complete original work -- even if your first line does say "just for learning".

See "Fair Use" test #3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Do you like Bob Dylan, or is that a form of aversion therapy?

Have you tried "Bob plays harmonica" for the instrumentals?
Agreed. Here's the github repository for the isitchristmas.com website, which performs similar debauchery based on your originating IP address:

http://github.com/isit/christmas
You can see me on a beach @ 2:30. My life is complete.
It might be true that you are only 10 times better than the guy sitting next to you because he is 10 times worse than you, but this is something of a red herring. There are plenty of terrible programmers out there who are 10 times worse than me. Do I get paid 10x more than them? Not even close. This article is more about why a 10x productivity increase does not equate to a 10x pay increase than it is about the possible existence of programmers who are 100s, 1000s, or 10,000s times better than the worst possible programmer.
Adidas Turns the Sneaker Into an Augmented Reality Device
You could argue though that having a table like wp_usermeta can actually be more confusing that having explicit tables for things. I guess it's all a trade off, personally when hacking away at it I'm not a big fan of how wordpress is laid out internally but I do have to say it's a lot better than something like Joomla
It also doesn't require special guns, no one has to wear bulky sensors which can be covered up, and it can be done on a device that many people carry with them wherever they go.

So it's innovative, but only in the aspect of being easier and having a low barrier of entry.
Yes, this is what I meant. I don't know why you got voted down.
this is exactly the kinds of articles that I could expect to see on reddit - but has historically been ignored on HN.
It really should have a

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/>

in the header. That's the proper way to not allow a page to be indexed.
Anonymous sources are not anonymous to the press, who usually require at least two independent sources for any given assertion - at least, those news organs that wish to be taken seriously over the long term do. Journalistic anonymity can be used abusively to manipulate the news, but then so can official stonewalling and censure of outspoken individuals.
I've been working on a large-ish Radiant site and grabbed a few plugins. So far all have worked as expected, except for one for page-level user access control.

The problem with that one was that the author did not account for having thousands of users and a hundred or so pages. I added pagination for the user list, and created my own plugin to handle page groups so I could assign page permissions en masse rather than one by one.

It's way nicer than having to poke into any PHP I've dealt with. Biggest complaint so far is that I often cannot find docs clear and complete enough to help me understand something before I go and hack my own solution.

But the upside is that when I later realize I should have gone another way it's easy to refactor, and using rspec and selenium tells when when things break.
The Chinese old men seem to have a much longer planning horizon than the leaders of our own country, who only look to the next election cycle (2, 4, or 6 years).
A small sample size would just imply greater deviation. There's no reason to assume the programmers outside your sample would be x10 better than those in your sample.
This might be worth checking out: http://rel.me/2008/09/23/shrub-s3-proxy-service-on-google-ap...
> Type zedshaw.com.

> Browse and listen to music I’ve created.

If I type Miley Cyrus (just example, no offence), will it list only the songs she wrote herself or all those she performed? What exactly does 'created' mean?
Hmm,

I remember using Gnutella back in the day. It was horribly buggy and slow. Maybe Frankel didn't write that one or maybe being satisfying things half-working was the secret to x100 productivity.
It's kind like the difference between URI and URN.

The 'Music Browser' meant to point directly to the true spirit of the original music, nothing else. The browsing process is the exploring of those artistic minds and jumping between derivatives.

iTunes and Last.FM are just pointing to instance of the music class
Well, the key is to order all of your magazines online so that they cost next to nothing.

New Yorker: Have for years, love the urban feel and the mix of arts & politics and 10,000+ word articles on very strange things. Most importantly, great writing and a great fact checking department.

The Economist: To the point, global, compact, and great writing and reporting. Plus the student rate isn't that expensive. It combines well with my Washington Post and WSJ daily subs.

City Journal: It's Quarterly, but is sort of like a more conservative free market New Yorker. Great articles with a different slant.

Atlantic Monthly: I read a lot of the articles online, and read a lot of Andrew Sullivan, so decided to support the magazine and pick it up in print as well (got 2 years for under $10 online)

GQ: For the pictures and ads, although British GQ is better it's just too expensive in the states. Personal interest in style/fashion/design.

Forbes: I let expire after they wrote an article titled "Love Global Warming" (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1225/038.html) written by the head of what is more or less an ExxonMobile thinktank. It was just too much for me.

Wired: Because it was free

Used to subscribe to Maximum PC (great magazine) when I use to tinker with computers more.

Magazines I'm looking at subscribing to:

HBS: For upcoming mgmt consulting job

Urban Land Institute: Due to a growing interest in commercial development, architecture, and urban planing

Probably a magazine on design/architecture... haven't decided what yet.
it's too bad we can't have a little roll reversal. most programmers wouldn't last a month in the advertising industry, it's far more brutal and under-paid than most development gigs unless you're founder/cto in an early-stage startup...
I agree with your sentiments but not your facts.

> For example, consider the Maldives, with 300,000 people making about $5k/year.

The sea level of the Maldives fell by more than 20cm since the 70ies. If the worst of the IPCC predictions come to pass, then the Maldives will still be better of in 2100 than in 1970.

Here is a reference - but you can find many more using Google:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2...
What was his version of Pro Tools called? I'm curious, that's all.
In the video it says that when you hit an enemy, his phones vibrates. How do they do that?
how hard is it really, for Google to add

if "we are sorry we couldn't find" + searchquery
then nofreetrafficforyou

I mean there are only a dozen or so ways for people say "we are sorry we tricked you into coming to our site with fake content", surely a company the size of Google can do a fix for this. Would eliminate overnight 90% of all those crappy fake search results
The headline is misleading. He's pretty balanced in his views on Microsoft and Google.
Or any analogue of being paid for piece-work.

I guess some salesmen would fall into this category, as it´s easy to measure their productivity.
If you don't know who he is, you should.
Window Shades in NY | Window Blinds in NYC | Window Treatment Company
Prestigious Blinds provides window shades in NY, window blinds, and window treatments through ought all of New York City. Our shades are top of the line products in NY apartments.
See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012294
A very interesting idea.

That would basically be like writing another generator for the current orderly implementation. one capable of writing code. The thing would basically eat orderly_nodes and poop code.

Here's the intermediate representation of nodes that it could work from:

http://github.com/lloyd/orderly/blob/master/src/api/node.h#L...
All other things being equal (natural resources and energy), technological progress is directly proportional to a population's size and density (for degree of progress) and its growth delta (for the rate of progress).

Interesting point. I had never heard it before (I'd be interested if you have a reference that goes into more detail), but it certainly seem like there is a historical correalation and thinking about it you do seem to need at least a minimum population size (enough to allow people to specialize in careers instead of everyone being generalists with food production their prime concern) to develop advanced technology.

At least offhand, I am not certain how well that causitive factor holds after that threshold has been reached. And that All other things being equal caveat is likely to be of significant importance here. I am speculating, but I would guess that after the minimum threshold is passed than the amount of value the culture places on education and technology itself will likely swamp out size or growth rates in terms of encouraging technological advance. In other words, after the minimum is reached, you would increase technological development faster by affecting the culture of the people than by increasing the population, and that affect is likely to be so great to mask differences in population size.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm guessing the Na'vi did not have very large or dense populations.
The total planetary population is never stated but the population for the region the movie focuses on is said to be in the neighborhood of 200,000 very roughly.

As for their global Gaia network, does the movie explain if it actually transfer chunks of knowledge (memes) or experiential patterns, or is it 'lower level' and works more like sharing emotions?

This is ambiguous. At one point it is shown that at least under certain conditions absolutely everything can be shared and transferred, but that was under exceptional circumstances. How it operates under normal conditions is left quite vague.

The movie is well worth seeing if you haven't.
Agreed, but I'm only using it for keeping track of small amounts of money amongst my friends, so it's no biggie.
'SoundCloud takes the daily hassle out of receiving, sending & distributing music for artists, record labels & other music professionals.'

Zed's primary users are people who listen to music, not music professionals.
Effective A/B Testing
I would go as far to say any results page which is the result of an in site search should be removed, rarely if ever have I found any value from these pages through google.
Location can come from cell tower triangulation, scanned wifi or GPS. There are several ways we match people without location, but the vast majority are currently matched with.
Ever wonder why there's no concrete buildings after the Roman Empire and before 1756?
reminiscent of kanye: http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/09/13/k...
This is referred to as Carbon Intensity. The problem is that China is less developed than the USA and therefore has a higher carbon intensity.

But the government promised to lower it by 40 percent by 2020.
Seems really damn simple:

A web browser visits host.domain and gets documents

An SFTP client visits host.domain and gets files

A music client visits host.domain and gets music

Ie, like the program you have open now, except it only shows the music produced at news.yc.com, rather than this page.
Anyone have an idea just how significant this is in the scheme of things?
Programming ability is more like athletic ability than most people want to admit. Some guys just get better, faster. Some guys can't ever break certain plateaus, no matter how hard they try. In golf, it's probably possible for anyone to go from a duffer to a scratch golfer. But it might take 20 years of work for someone who isn't set up with the right natural gifts. Quality and amount of instruction and practice will determine some of the pace. But some people will just get it faster than others. And even "elite" golfers simply won't be as good as Tiger Woods, ever.

I used to be a good skateboarder. There were guys I skated with who could learn the tricks 5 times faster than I could. I don't know why. We all skated the same amount... in fact, some of the guys who were better than me skated a lot less than I did. They just had something clicking that I didn't have.

I'm a proponent of self-improvement. I think most average people can develop skills far and beyond what they give themselves credit for. I hate to be the guy who is arguing for mystical innate ability. However, it seems naive to claim that it doesn't exist.

To end this comment on a useful note, the one thing I noticed both with the good skateboarders and the good programmers I know, is that they would 'go big' when practicing. the skaters would try something hard and figure it out until they got it. They wouldn't just sit around and do the same kickflip in a parking lot over and over again.

Likewise, the good programmers I knew would always be seriously challenging themselves. For practice programs, they wouldn't just write a dumb fibonacci generator. They'd write a full blown throttling distributed network file copier, or a scheme compiler in postscript. Serious, hard projects for practice. Most programming is mundane and you can go for years without getting any better. The best guys I know are never complacent with doing the same boring shit all day - they'd always challenge themselves.
That sounds right. I still do that when I'm working with a new programming language/library that I can't yet use well...
jeez that conversation wouldve been so much cooler in real life.
That only works when you can assume your sample is representative of the global population. Since people are not evenly distributed according to their abilities, that assumption will not hold.
Thanks for "The Seasoned Schemer" book! You are absolutely right that I'd also appreciate "The Reasoned Schemer". :)
I'm starting to get a little burned out about trying to maximize my productivity. It's not a easy-to-understand, linear thing in most professions. No one really knows how to accurately measure it, and once you come up with something, you can game that system to produce false results if it benefits you.

I think the best approach for anyone is to do the best you can with what you have. It's more important to get something done than to worry about if the amount you got done is greater than most others. You certainly should do whatever you feel you need to do to optimize your "productivity", but don't get distracted or depressed trying to be #1 in the world.
I'm young enough that I can still change my career easily, and I often worry that I'm not one of the super productive programmers, and that I'm wasting my time and that I should choosing a different career.

Is uber-productivity significantly enhanced by choosing the right development methodology (e.g. test-driven development) or is it mostly something innate? Aside from stories like rdouble's (which I don't find that helpful, since it doesn't contain information on rdouble or his employer's domain expertise), what is the evidence that super-productive programmers exist?
Dynamic Interactive Web Development in Clojure
The last time I checked the Financial Times (from memory) lets you read 3 articles a month without registration, 17 articles if you register, and you have to pay if you want to read more for any one month period.

Quite reasonable, especially given the quality of a lot of their copy; the only problem I had was once hitting the 17 article limit ... and now I only follow a link to them if I really want to read the item.
Dreadfully low tech, but I would use a wiki, then export to a single HTML page and use htmldoc. At least, that's what I did.

I look forward to seeing other people's answers.
Twitter acquires Mixer Labs, creators of GeoAPI
I don't think the OP ever implied that the leaders know the best. It was meant to be read from the viewpoint that there aren't good or bad politicians, there are only politicians making good or bad decisions.

In fact from what I've read, the current generation of Chinese leaders aren't particularly smart as people have given them credit for. Though they do seem to know that they don't know enough to be visionaries, so they take the stance of non-interference.

I can see the appeal of this kind of mentality has on HN, as I sense a lot of users here hold libertarian views.
How Personalized Search Changes SEO (and Doesn't)
http://www.reaper.fm/
This is very impressive. One can only imagine what it sounds like. Wonder if Donald Knuth http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2006/mayjun/feat... has had a chance to see it (scroll to nearly the end of this article).
I'm actually skeptical of "natural ability," and I find it... a cop-out to ascribe learning rates to it. I think presence of mind matters. All practice is good, but some practice is better than others. People who are continually conscious of their performance, and who actively try to figure out how to improve will probably learn faster than someone who practices passively and hopes to improve "by accident."
I am definitely unable to read more than one book per day so that would be plenty for me.
Practical Uses of CSS3
An Incredibly Short PHP Script That Renders a Christmas Tree
recording a performance is an act of creation.
I'm curious but how are you determining database size? What do you feel is an adequate size?
We had a contest at work to see who could write the smallest code to create a Christmas tree. Ryan won with flying colours! For it to work error_logging must be set to E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE.
wow. fastest acquisition, ever?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=938936
HN: Help me choose a Clojure project
I'm looking to learn more about Clojure and, of course, the best way to learn is to do. I'd like to do a small project, maybe around 4 to 6 weeks total, and I'm sure I could come up with something, but I thought I'd throw it open to HN and see what others might suggest, to get to know some of Clojures strengths and weaknesses.
Whatever I end up doing I'll blog about and release as OSS, hopefully providing something back to the community.

Suggest away.
His CrunchBase page (http://www.crunchbase.com/person/ron-conway) has a more comprehensive list of his investments.
That looks pretty good. A great way to learn a new language: write something useful.
"Intentionally disable" ? I don't think so. There are plenty of phones that get 3G on T-Mobile and not AT&T (And vice versa).

900/1700/2100 is a pretty common set up for T-Mobile phones. According to FCC documents, this appears to be the only frequencies the Nexus 1 has been tested on.

Really, the only reason this is an issue is because of the rumor Google will be pushing this phone unlocked through retail. I don't think this is true. I think it will be exactly like the G1.
A person in foreclosure is, by the definition of foreclosure, not losing their home. They never owned a home, all they owned is a call option on a home.
As a rule this sort of fraud isn't.

If the result is important, people will try to do work based on it and sooner or later figure out that the foundation is rotten and why.

Most of the time the work isn't important, except to the "scientist" himself in accumulating published papers ("publish or perish").

This is one of the reasons there's no need to directly double check every scientific conclusion, instead you tend to work on good faith and then backtrack when things get screwy.
Now you have two problems..
What the fuck is wrong with the scientific community? First Elsevier (who faked an entire journal), then the East Angela university climate group and now this?
2010: The Year of the Tablet
A guy posted a "fictional" link to a search for "jon payne is so hot" on target website in the comments:

http://www.target.com/gp/search/188-1977530-4602238?field-ke...

Soon enough, the search for "jon payne is so hot" on google returns target as top result.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=jon+payne+is+so+hot&ie...
iPhone of person whose color was just tagged?

AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(kSystemSoundID_Vibrate);

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1856538/iphone-sdk-shake-...
Im sort of in a similar position. I've writen only a few toy apps in clojure. Im thinking about writing some sort of game. There are a few clojure versions of snake, tetris and pong floating around the net, so i have were to look at to learn, but im thinking about something a little more complicated than a tetris clone.
Inflation as a Compound Annual Interest Rate
I was just browsing through "The Economist Numbers Guide," and read the part on inflation. Here's the part that jumped out at me, which I thought the econ geeks here would find thought-provoking:

"Accounting for inflation is easy in a numerical sense. The ugly dragon is nothing more than an interest charge. The annual rate of inflation is compounded yearly." (p.51)

I've heard inflation referred to as a "hidden tax" (which it is), but framing it as compound interest charged to all dollars circulating in an economy is new to me. The beneficiary of this "interest" is the monetary issuer (the central bank) and the member banks that receive the use of this new money first, before the money is devalued due to the increase in supply.

Think of the Fed (or your respective central bank) as the equivalent of a big JP Morgan Chase / MBNA / Bank of America credit card, charging you interest on every dollar in your pocket every second of every day, without your permission or consent. At any time, the central bank has the power to increase the interest rate (by printing more money), and there's no way you can opt-out outside of reverting to bartering for goods directly.

They don't even have to bill you: your money simply becomes less valuable over time, so it takes more currency to buy the same goods. If you're like 99.999% of the human population that holds some form of fiat currency, you're paying compound annual interest to the central bank in exchange for nothing. Eventually, the currency becomes worthless - historically, every fiat currency ever created as eventually lost 100% of its value. It's less a question of "if" and more a question of "when".

Now I have a better idea of what Mayer Amschel Rothschild meant when he said, "Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws."
Sounds like oEmbed might come useful here ( http://www.oembed.com/ ) - you could have an oEmbed link for "my music" in zedshaw.com, and a browser extension (or dedicated app etc) that reads these particular oEmbed URLs.
I'm skeptical, too, but I don't think anyone's yet figured out a unified theory of ability.
They're the only links I have. This is the way TechCrunch gives out the links for voting. Probably they do it to encourage people to use them in tweets.
If that were true, this would be the best-ranked site in the universe:
http://ianab.com/trillion/1.html
> There is no substitute for a good connection to the scalp.

Most people don't realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.