skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1.) reduce distractions - this includes a clean workspace etc

2.) appropriate music - I cannot work without headphones, and appropriate music on, its more of a tool to drown out the rest of the world.

3.) caffine, cold - at work i drink coffee... its just not as effective. I used to drink a lot of red bull, but my heart started to feel funny so I switched to coke.

4.) Interest - I need to get myself interested in what i'm working on, this is incredibly difficult to do with job work. I'm still working on solving this one.
These people deserve to be bashed. The next thing they'll say would contradict another established scientific theory and then they would ask to include it in curriculum.
This article is excellent - anyone interested in social gaming should take 20 minutes to read it. It'll get you totally up to speed on where the industry stands on the eve of 2010.

However, anyone who thinks that Zynga doesn't know all of this is kidding themselves. They saw a temporary situation (novelty of gaming on a hugely growing platform) and attacked it with everything they had. The road will be a lot harder for them in the future, but because of what they did in 2009, they go in with hundreds of millions of users, a strong brand, cheap cost of capital (because they're hot), a ton of cash, and they're probably the only Facebook developer with anything close to leverage on Facebook. They're one of the most aggressive companies out there and they have given no reason to underestimate them.
An even worse hack, that unfortunately has worked really well for me in the past: generate a simple HTML file (em, b, u, ul/ol, etc.), rename it to .doc, and Word will open it without appearing to notice or comment. This saved my butt once when I discovered mid-project that the Textile library I was using couldn't generate RTF... I felt more than a little bit dirty, but it worked without a hitch.
Sometimes you have to use the data you have and not the data that you wish you had.

They included the American data set because it was the best data set available on the question of political leanings of engineers. They sanity checked the result of that data set against available data sets in other countries and places, including a 1948 data set from Egypt, and the other data sources were consistent with the American one. When you add the other lines of evidence they had there strongly suggestive evidence that engineers broadly tend towards right wing conservative politics across multiple countries and cultures.

And having right wing conservative politics within the Muslim world is likely to make you sympathetic towards al qaeda and related organizations.
Looks promising.

I got on dailybooth recently and liked what it is. And one plus point for twidlit is it's based on twitter (The social network I use most). And the next best thing is, twidlit puts text on image itself :)

Kudos!
True enough, but you've got to love his ambition! He's twenty-five, it's all in front of him. (Of course a lot of HN'ers are probably around that age anyway.)

Plans are useless, planning is essential.
The whole point of the article is that they can get away with simple games and common themes because of Facebook's insane growth. Facebook games are the first games a lot of people have ever played on the web. Once this first wave of new players is on, they will become more demanding and savvy about what games they play, and these "veteran" game players are more choosy in playing and recommending games.
It's true, but that's only one way to be a great programmer. There are a lot of positions out there where it might be incredibly valuable to an organization to build a new CMS, a better UI, or a more robust middle tier, but these aren't independently valuable. With two or three people who can do these things, you can make something people pay money for, but that doesn't mean that the individual programmers aren't competent.
Exactly.
I am currently leaning towards erlang. But then, Clojure looks impressive too. And well I can't possibly deny the absolute awesomeness of CL.
There are other in the hitlist too...SmallTalk, Scala etc etc.
What do you guys use and why did you choose what you did?
I too thought I can put my old tweets on images. And yes I thought it's AWESOME. So twidlit better think of allowing that too.
That statement could be made about anyone contradicting any well established theory. I am not putting the ID guy on a pedestal with Galileo or some such sacrificed truth seeker. All I am saying is that beleif in ID is not like child molestation for which one should be expelled from job.
IPhone app removed for not being raunchy enough
my assertion, in friendly disagreement with you, is that popularity DOES correlate with validity to a useful degree here

Unfortunately, this doesn't scale. It is true now and that makes HN valuable. As HN grows there may be more people who express opinions that are not thoughtful and well reasoned, and then popularity no longer corresponds with useful. I think that's the problem that pg is trying to solve.
Tangerine Seams
What made you choose erlang and nitrogen? Why not Haskell and HAPS or Erly for erlang
When trying to write a grammar that describes Markdown escaping is the obvious and suitable solution.
TenYears: Biggest Losers in Tech
You describe a more efficient design. If sufficiently strong material is affordable and used, and safety is not a concern, yours is not necessarily a "better" design. A transparent panel wouldn't be entirely invisible, and the visual effect of the staircase would not be the same (or as striking).
robokill is the game that reduced workplace productivity to 0% last year! glad to see you made a sequel.
The danger with Azure (especially Azure Table Storage) is that you are now locked in to their platform (the same danger in using GAE or Amazon SDS).

This is particularly dangerous since MS has shown in the past they don't have a problem totally killing off platforms (look what happened in SDS before it even launched).
3D Poker Software | The Princess Of Poker
You do know that that video was done by MS as an intentional self-parody, right?

http://www.ipodobserver.com/ipo/article/Microsoft_Confirms_i...
No, because its not just about you. How can I as a developer know if a function I'm calling in C uses more than its inputs? That's the real issue.
And it just can't be expressed in functional terms.

Incorrect. Say you want to read some global state:

a = do
info <- ask
return (info + 1)

b = do
info <- ask
moreInfo <- a
return (info + moreInfo)

runReader b 42 -- ==> 42 + (42 + 1) ==> 85

This lets you weave information in as deeply as you want. If b doesn't need "info" but a does, and b calls a, that's still fine. You don't need to change b to make the information available to a. Just like a "global variable".

You can also accumulate arbitrary information:

fib :: Int -> Writer [String] Int
fib 0 = tell ["fib 0"] >> return 1
fib 1 = tell ["fib 1"] >> return 1
fib x = do
tell ["fib " ++ show x]
a <- fib (x - 1)
b <- fib (x - 2)
return $ a + b

runWriter (fib 4) ==> (5, ["fib 4", "fib 3", ...])

Again, very much like a global variable holding log data, but without many undesirable possibilities (like clobbering the log history accidentally, or performing IO during the computation) that are inherent in "global variables".

And of course, you can read and write state, if you want:

inc :: State Int Int
inc = do
old <- get
let new = old + 1
put new
return new

fib 0 = inc >> return 1
fib 1 = inc >> return 1
fib x = do
inc
a <- fib (x - 1)
b <- fib (x - 2)
return $ a + b

runState (fib 25) 0 ==> (121393, 242785)

This is just like imperative programming, except easier and more fine-grained. Note how the number of times "fib" has been called is scoped to the "runState" invocation, and that we don't even need a "variable name". And as with Reader and Writer, if a called function needs the State, the calling function doesn't need to pass it in.

So basically, many variations on the hacks that imperative programmers can be implemented easily in functional languages. Imperative programming languages give you a box to do with as you please, but functional programming languages can give you a box that you can prevent yourself from accidentally misusing. The best of both worlds.
"Microsoft...[have] become so insular that their job postings are full of incomprehensible jargon and acronyms which nobody outside the company can understand."

Sounds like something I heard about GM last year. Their managers had no idea what the competition was like because they all "had" to drive their own cars.
Clearly you can see in the implementation of the function that it doesn't rely on any globals. However if you look at the function as a black box, you cant really be sure what global state it relies on. This could be an issue if you use larger libraries you didn't write yourself (or in my case, if I use code I wrote more than two weeks ago!).

In a language like Haskell the type signatures clearly indicates which global state the function (and other functions called by it) has access to, which makes it a lot easier to reason about side effects, even for code where you haven't read the source.

Of course, this approach also have its downsides. If you decide for debugging purposes to add a logging function to an otherwise pure function deep inside a pure part of your program, you may have to change a whole lot of code.
Note: I founded and operate Ignition Alley here in Atlanta: http://www.ignitionalley.com/

Despite the bias, I do have to agree whole-heartedly with the article. Coworking is about two things: productivity and community.

It's insanely productive to work among others, particularly like-minded, self-motivated individuals. We've got a library of books here, but I get way more value out of the people. Right in front of me, I've got a group discussing and learning about Chef. In just an hour or two of discussing, I've gotten all the knowledge of a full 500 page book. It's that much faster! Every single day I've been here, I've either given or gotten help from others that has saved us significant amounts of time. It's highly motivating.

The other equally big aspect is community. I didn't know who to go to for PR or marketing before we opened up. Now I know 3-4 people. The same goes for designers, programmers, business folks, etc. And I now know about a dozen or so really interesting projects going on in the area. I've struck up a major business deal with another member of the space. Business is booming!

Coworking is the real-world extension of the communities we've built in the virtual world. It's an incredibly motivating and highly rewarding concept.

My only regret is that I wish I had started this project 2 years ago!
10 Gadgets That Defined The Decade
A new $35M fund to back young entrepreneurs’ buyouts
I think it would be helpful to summarize:

"Western education forces lifelong Muslims to more thoroughly analyze their beliefs, which until that point they just accepted without questioning. They then go to one extreme or the other: either they reject those beliefs, or take them to their logical conclusion and decide to convert/kill infidels."

It's interesting, but it doesn't address why this would happen to engineers in particular, rather than just all western educated Muslims.
Hmm... as joe_the_user said, it's a nice checklist for holes in one's background, but I'm not sure if it should serve as a list for "hireability" - I know people that are probably on the higher end of most of the points, but are terrible at real-world situations.

These probably are crucial for the kind of programming done at the startups, though.

I score as Level 1 or Level 2 at most on almost all the items, some Level 3 points don't seem relevant (why should I need a license header for my work programming?).

What I believe is that some of the points are WAY more important than others, I personally place great value on my domain and business knowledge and believe that is a trend going forward.

Still, thanks for making it available, reminded me I have to do some more studies.
Great mathematicians of the early modern period.
I hadn't read the whole paper, no.

The article went only as far as suggesting that right-wing ideologies appealed more to the engineering mindset. And I'm hardly convinced that any given extremist ideology is more, or less, seeking to bring order and unambiguity to the world. That the summary went on to note that fundamentalist extremists were actively recruiting engineers didn't exactly help the argument that the over-representation is a natural result of mind-sets.

All things being equal, perhaps there are more engineers willing to kill for Allah than ELF. But the summary in that article is so unconvincing that I'm not particularly motivated to spend time with the paper.
I took some code recently and ran it on Mono and only encountered one issue, which was a Mono bug that has now been fixed. MonoDevelop isn't a drop-in replacement for VisualStudio which is a good thing since VS is bloated and MonoDevelop isn't.

Confirming neither is a drop-in replacement, which isn't to say that Mono isn't useful or valuable, but simply that it is necessarily 2nd-tier in a Windows-focused development environment.

Given that you've spend 3 years developing C# in VMware on a Mac, I'd ask why you're not using native Mono/MonoDevelop entirely?

I have been writing .NET code exclusively in VMware for 5 years now, 2 years on Windows and 3 years on a Mac. The performance impact is there but it isn't a deal-breaker (especially if you have a fast HDD and enough memory (6GB)).

What do you see as the significant advantage of .NET that has warranted using non-native tools with an admitted performance impact exclusively for 3 years?

This sounds like individual developer inertia, not a high-level business decision.
Ebert handled this film better than any of us can:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind....

(He's not a fan).

I agree with you that it's wrong to fire someone for believing in I-D, and I also find Ebert's take compelling.
Not if you use IORefs, foreign calls, unsafePerformIO, MVars, TVars, etc. In all cases except unsafePerformIO, though, the type system ensures that you are prepared to handle this unusual behavior. That's the primary difference between Haskell and the imperative languages. (In Haskell, it's easy to not accidentally use effectful code. In most imperative languages I've used, it is impossible to control your use of side effects.)
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Presumably because engineers are trained to be analytical and to trust their analysis, so they are more likely to follow through on the outcome of their soul searching.
cow orking? sounds fun
> If you're super strapped for cash, just get an MSDN subscription, and use it for everything.

That's a very bad argument. If you're super strapped for cash what are you doing with closed source software anyway ?

It's not like there aren't plenty of free alternatives.
IMO, both the cable supported and transparent beam versions would be nearly as striking.

Of course, this is all down to aesthetics and judgment about what the design should prioritize. The designs I describe can be just as strong, or stronger, and cheaper at the same time, with additional safety features.

EDIT: To clarify, in my designs, there would be only one cable running to the ceiling, attached to the landing. Alternatively, one could use a transparent column.
The movie is well put together but, according to convincing descriptions from Roger Ebert (and many others), frequently dishonest.
There are sooooo many reasons why these numbers may look like this. You may consider it is because smart people are unattractive, or you could consider it that smart people are smart enough to know it isn't a good idea to have sex when you are fifteen.
Thats the idea. No need to rebuild your audience and it makes Twitter more visual. I kept getting data that a significant portion of people who doesnt get Twitter is because its all text. Thats why we built Twidl.it to have a layer of visual engagement, fun activities and promotional tools without altering the core Twitter experience. we are closely listening to feedback on how to prioritize the next set of features to build.
* The general plan will be to de-emphasize points and to add more types of flags.*

I'm anxious to see this experiment. If flags are not binary,
I'm curious how the number of different types of flags will be used to bubble up articles and comments.

I like the idea of separating "worth reading" from "agree". If only "worth reading" makes things bubble up then people that strongly agree might mark things as "worth reading" because they want them to bubble up. An interesting problem.
What China learned from Japan's 1980s bubble
I hate to weigh in here, cause it looks like one of those no-win conversations, but I don't understand.

Are you saying that Ebert called Ben Stein a liar? That's usually what the word "dishonest" means. (as opposed to "mistaken")

EDIT: The reason I ask is that I've seen a lot of adjectives applied to creationists (as opposed to true ID'ers) Words like "mistaken", "superstitious", "simple-minded", "pig-headed", "anti-academic", etc

But never liar. It just wouldn't fit in with the rest of the words commonly used.
what does this have to do with my comment?
Awesome! I welcome contributions. Could you send me something for page & section breaks?

I'm already working on images and 100% nose coverage. I'm intending to do document properties after that.

Re: zebra striping for tables, we already have that via the inbuilt styles. But more options to control styles would be useful.

Coding style is:

* Functional

* Google style -
http://code.google.com/p/soc/wiki/PythonStyleGuide

* Unit tests are handled with nose / coverage
Unfortunately, it's broken in Chrome.
Thanks, I hadn't heard of this before!

Perhaps learning how things work makes you more sympathetic to the idea of a creator, or suspicious of complex things occurring spontaneously, or seeing how complex systems can arise from a few well chosen first principles.

I've found that the more I learn about society, neurology, human psychology, and organizing principles of systems, it makes me more confident of two things. First, that the world could definitely and logically be the product of a certain kind of Creator (not all visions or ideas of God apply). Second, that such a Creator is not necessary if you believe in infinite universes.

The thing that bothers me about #2 is that if you believe in infinite universes, shouldn't there be a universe with a God in it?
Ok I've heard this before.. Let's look at other subjects.. for example philosophy: What about the great Philosopher Dr Joseph Goebbels or Karl Marx? The discussion is quite ridiculous.
Haskell shoves them into the IO and State monads (among others) and hopes you won't notice.

In both of these cases, if you don't notice, your program won't compile anymore. So really, your statement is the opposite of the truth. Haskell hopes you do notice.
I tried watching Expelled a week ago. I approached it with an open mind trying to be able to see an alternate perspective. Unfortunately, I found it to be nearly unwatchable. I didn't like it because the presentation made it impossible for the documentary to even present an argument. Cuts during interviews were so rapid that I could barely understand the context of any statement. Furthermore, the rapid cuts symbolize an intention to mislead or misinterpret what people say. I got to point where Ben Stein visits the concentration camps. I was so perplexed by this I just turned the movie off.

As for the information contained in Expelled. It was hard to interpret because it was filled with so much opinion. Nothing was hard fact enough for me to consider that the professors were fired for an invalid reason.
Would you fire someone for teaching that the earth is at the center of the universe? Because ID pretty much falls into the same category. What people should be doing is being upfront about the reasons for firing rather than trying to hide them.

Clarification: Firing is only relevant if they are actually teaching life sciences. If they aren't then it is a personal belief and doesn't really matter
I believe in developing on the platform that the application will run on, right now all of my code runs on Windows Servers so it makes sense to develop on Windows in a VM.

In the last 6 months I have been investigating moving my application to Mono and running on Linux servers, when that happens I will use Mono and MonoDevelop exclusively for that project. Of course other client projects I will still use VMWare and Visual Studio since they will be deployed on Windows.

The reason I didn't look at Mono earlier is that I had dedicated Windows boxes and didn't see a benefit in moving, now that I am on EC2 there is a price motivation to move.

Running in a VM is not a big deal, most .NET developers I know do all their client development in a VM even if they are running Windows.
Maybe I should go into biomedical engineering.. I can't imagine that they have religious people there ;)
Whoah, that's a whole lot of rant you've got pent-up in there.
First, apologies for using the wrong "whether" prior.

> I did, however, downvote his comment on PageRank because, to me, it appeared to have been posted as a one-liner intended to make the author look witty without any regard to actual validity of the claim.

Which is surprising to me since PageRank is essentially an algorithm based on argument ad hominem (pages with a good reputation are better) and we all humbly accept that as being a reasonable thing to do. This questions the validity of tossing a concept like argument ad hominem into the rubbish bin of rhetorical devices. This is a both an interesting (at least to me) and unique spin on the perceptions of the fallacy in common usage.

> But downvoting excessive redundancy seems perfectly reasonable.

It would be, except by your definition and actions, you appear to consider any number of repetitions > 1 as redundant (please, correct me if I'm wrong and that number is really >2 ). I'm sorry, but you aren't the HN police, watching vigilantly for unnecessary redundancy, guideline violations and other such perceived infractions and policing as appropriate.

> Beating a dead horse falls into that same category, you know

Yes, I get that this is a reference to me and my particular grinding axe <bzzzzz!!!!!>. So long as people keep using the downvote unnecessarily and to the detriment of the discourse here, I'll keep happily grinding away.

I've upvoted you for engagement. I don't mind that you used the downvote to express some kind of disapproval of a comment, what I mind is that it's provided with no commentary. Uncommented downvotes are not helpful or instructive and imho are a bit on the rude side. I'm using my upvote here to provide positive feedback that what you are doing right now, explaining your vote, is useful, interesting and drives discussion. It's also good form concerning arguing (as per the topic).

:)
I think for O(1) in each category you can write "have conceived, designed, and implemented" a log(n) concept, construct, or tool.

data structures: creator of skip lists

algorithms: creator of genetic algoritms

systems programming: lead engineer on JVM HotSpot

source control: "subversion sucks, here's Git"

build automations: creators of Maven

etc. (You can go down the whole list and figure out exactly what O(1) is and who belongs to that set.)
The Dark Side of Zipcar
In that if someone asks for them, they can have them for free
The link to "Journey to the Center of Google" is broken. It should be: http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/200502/google-lar...