skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That depends on how you do time tracking.

The most commonly described strategy is to write down what you are doing every 15 minutes. That definitely kills mental flow. A more useful one is to get a Freshbooks account and track whenever you change tasks.

When someone talks about time tracking I usually assume they are talking about something like the first strategy.
In my case, it's never part of the publicly-served tree. public/ is a subdir within the repo.
He has a problem with their "perfect teeth"? wtf. If I was looking for something believable, I wouldn't be watching a movie about 10 foot tall blue aliens.

Yes the plot was fairly simple, but more importantly I don't think it had any gigantic gaping holes. I'd rather have a straight forward plot that I can understand than one so full of twists I can't comprehend any of it.

I loved it. I'll be seeing it several more times in the theater.
If it's secret, then how can you be so sure?

My impression is that PageRank, while initially extremely successful at filtering signal-from-noise, is very susceptible to manipulation. For example links farms which make unimportant pages seem important. As a result of such manipulation, Google started modifying their crawling, in order to reduce the amount of garbage going into PageRank (less garbage in, less garbage out). For example, they might look at the age and ownership in DNS records, and exclude domains that look fishy based on some heuristics. The spammers fought back with more tricks, and the resulting arms race has come to have an acronym: SEO. But the underlying idea of using an iterative approximation of the likelihood of encountering a page via a random walk of the web is preserved. (Some details here: http://www.miislita.com/information-retrieval-tutorial/matri...)

If that's right (and I could well be wrong... would like to be convinced...), then I don't see it as a "light-years away" kind of issue, but rather a series of hacks to stay one step ahead of the spammers. I don't see any particular value in open sourcing those.
Well, I can't understand this article, there is not "secret sauce". The google pagerank algorithm is open for all to see and understand. I myself made my own simple implementation.

Everybody could do it. This man is not asking for code, is asking for DATA only google has. It's like an atheist saying to a catholic what he must do because he believes. When this man gives something of value to the world,like google did(I remember the Altavista-Ad-flickering in your eyes days) then he could demand to be given by others.
Finnish and Hungarian definitely have their place amongst the hardest languages to learn. If I'm not mistaken, Hungarian has 22 cases of declension.
Amerikai vagyok, de Magyarul tudok beszélni. A nyelv lego-hoz hasonlit - kis kockákkal építsz szavakat. Szeretem.

I'm American, but I can speak Hungarian. The language is like legos. You build words out of little blocks. I love it.
I think he was referring to the students difficulty in "expressing" themselves in code. In the same fashion non-native speakers have a hard time expressing ideas in a foreign language.

For example, I know I want to ask for another beer but composing the sentence along with all the right grammars is hard for me in Spanish. Similarly, to a novice programmer she may know she wants a loop but writing out the correct syntax is simply difficult for her.
Seems to be another variation of "he who has the fastest iteration times wins".

Edit: As well as fail quickly, fail cheaply.
Community Service Ideas
The Idiot’s Guide to Marketing Your Indie Game
It might be machine dependent. For me on an AMD Semperon:

Opera 10.5 alpha: 700.8ms +/- 0.8%

Chrome 4.0.266.0: 840.4ms +/- 4.2%
Wow this went straight to a Godwin.
Dupe of Mr. Blank's original post (as noted in this article), submitted here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750

Some excellent discussion in the first submission.
Προλάβετε την γρίπη των χοίρων, επιλέγοντας το σωστό σαπούνι
Χρειάζεστε αντιβακτηριακό σαπούνι για την καταπολέμηση της γρίπης των χοίρων; Όχι. Είναι αλήθεια ότι το πλύσιμο των χεριών σας τακτικά με σαπούνι και νερό είναι ένα από τα καλύτερα μέσα σας (και ευκολότερο) για να ενισχύσετε τις άμυνες σας.
"You see where I'm going with this. Even if you don't agree with all my movie choices as being "good" or "smart" you'll at least have to agree that most movies that are at least reasonably well known are pretty much based on a dissection or aggregation of common archetypes."

which all has nothing to do with what I said. You are reacting to your own opinions what you think is the sharp division of movies into either a collection of dumb stereotypes on one extreme (where Avatar fits) or "art movies" on the other..

Since this discussion looks increasingly pointless, I will end this thread here. Thank You for your time.
Thought I'd give this a try since I never gave Opera much of a chance, and I'm usually very tolerant of alpha/betas as long as they mostly work.

Lasted about half an hour - Google Reader doesn't seem to work right, and GMail also stopped responding after a while.
When I worked at an environment where being able to work remotely was tolerated, I often had a 30 minute turn around to IMs. Today, I stand up, see if the person I want to talk to is around, and then IM/walk over there.

If you're working completely independently, working remotely is fine. I'd also avoid a job where I don't have to collaborate with others.
Not only that, according to this: http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/12/move-over-chrome-opera-n...

Opera even beats the webkit nightly in sunspider benchmark.
The Wikipedia article for Thorium as a fuel is surprisingly detailed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
It may be true that it is a company's legal responsibility to serve its shareholders first, but that's not the way it should be. With this mentality, corporations will minimally follow the law (if the fine is less than the profits, the corporation may be legally required to break the law!) and do whatever they can in their own interests. Society as a whole would benefit massively if caring for others and society in general was regarded as a good thing.
Well put. With computers you can replicate something ad infinitum. If you get to do something no one has ever done before, you can make input irrelevant.
I love it. As newspapers discovered long ago, it's often much easier to read text that isn't a foot wide (less necessary eye movement).
How many things are wrong here?

1. The only outcome measurement mentioned was standardized test scores. I don't know about other states, but Ohio's "achievement" tests attempt to measure minimum competency as defined by a State-wide committee. This study's authors have implicitly decided that the proper way to measure a math education is by the percentage of students who have obtained minimum competency. [Unless there were some other tests used which I am unaware of, of course] Most readers here likely have a very different definition of a good math education.

2. Public schools have a huge incentive to optimize upon obtaining good test scores. Because of No Child Left Behind, public schools are under the gun to obtain good test scores at nearly any cost. At least in Ohio, it is optional for private schools to subject their students to standardized testing. My wife and I toured the local Montessori school, and I asked one of the teachers if my son would have to take Ohio's achievement tests. She thought I was concerned that he would not, so she began to tell me that they were optional but the curriculum would adequately prepare my son for them, etc. When I cut her off to tell her how disgusting I found them, she started to complain about how they hurt education and clearly shared my views.

3. Private schools whose purpose is superior education are lumped in with those which exist to protect youth from hearing that the earth might be more than 6000 years old. It might very well be that academically-oriented private schools offer far superior math programs but schools that exist for religious reasons severely drag down the average.

>The end result, however, is students who are “prepared for the tests of 40 years ago and not the tests of today,” she said.

Is test preparation now considered the primary goal of education? I am becoming less and less convinced that I want my children to participate in the machine that is the US school system.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989424
Strange Amharic wasn't mentioned, it has a unique script and long alphabet that is similiar to Indic ones, except for the various stress sounds and "clicks" you put on different letter sets. I'm betting that these stress sounds would be difficult for native English speakers to pick up
Modern day sign you are looking at a software sweatshop? Too many toys in the office.
I notice that they didn't bother to say (or deliberately left out, at the orders of their corporate overlords) what operating system(s) this computing behemoth runs.
This is fascinating. A left of field approach to the problems of uranium based nuclear power. Let's hope that opportunity meets preparedness here and this can make it to an inflection point.
Kim Peek, the original Rain Man, dies
Tell HN:  How Justin.tv can dramatically reduce software piracy.
The idea is to have developers broadcast the development process.

Once people see just how long and painful the development process is, they would be less likely to pirate the software.

Why would people watch? In the case of games, many would be curious to see how a game is coming along.

As for IP protection, you could have the broadcasts done without sound and without close-ups of monitor screens.
Some comments are victims of drive-by downvotes, and it is annoying.

I see this problem a lot with nested comments, where people fail to read the comment within the context of the parent.

I would really like to see more people explaining their downvotes. Maybe, through this, they'd figure out the source of the quote and its point would be brought into better focus.
Never said it was Google, just pointing out that open-source implementations exist.
Firefox 4.0: New Design Changes Revealed
Agreed.

After reading the comments at cdixson.org by the author and reading openness article at Google, it seems like author is simply saying: "I agree they won't open it. But then they should stop talking sactimoniously about openness." which I agree with as well.

Here is an interesting perspective: "And millions of websites will have to continue blindly relying on a small group of anonymous engineers in charge of the secret algorithm that determines their fate." Have you ever been delisted by Google? Is there a transparent process to get back on the list? Perhaps transparency is what Google needs the most at the moment.
I think what the author means is that students have trouble breaking down large problems into small ones, and quickly testing out solutions to these small problems. As a student, I notice that people I know have some difficulty doing this.
If you put it in a butt, then yes.
You're right... I should have said something like "increasing shareholder value though the increase in value of the stock or profit distribution via dividends".

I actually think that more companies should give dividends.

I can see why companies like to have billion dollar war chests, but at some point you have to wonder when enough is enough. I mean, even Microsoft was forced to start paying dividends. Then again, their stock price has been pretty flat for the past few years, so that might be the only reason to hold it.
Certainly. Processor, OS, RAM, etc will matter a lot.

FWIW I ran in a Core 2 Duo P9500 with W7 64, 4gb of ram.
I _know_ I'm going to need to zap a new PC

This would seem to support the article's thesis of degradation of trust.

Still, I would say that the ability, let alone expectation, to reinstall an OS, marks you as being more technically apt than the average user.
Depending on whose butt.
Not sure this would work to be honest. People are already aware of how much effort goes into making films and music (more so than software) yet that hasn't stopped piracy.

This has been discussed to death all over the web but I'm convinced the problem boils down to the lack of value people attribute to digital, non-tangible goods.
I'm poor (according to our government we live well below the poverty line but things are not that bad, gov metrics are just screwy; I digress) how would I gain from stealing from other poor people. Surely to increase the wealth amongst the poor, money needs to be taken from the wealthy - Tesco make how many million UKP every day?

Stealing from poor people is simply stupid, morality aside.

If I give everything away today then tomorrow the guys who I've helped are still going to be needy but my family and myself will also be in need. How is that helping.

We do what we can whilst maintaining our own existence. Granted I bought trousers yesterday giving me 2 pairs that don't have holes in (4 pairs I can wear in public) but it does make it difficult to work without having clean clothes to change into.

I don't think it is hypocritical to hold that others with more resources should help more than me. Christianity does teach altruism and self-sacrifice but these are not the prime message - relationship with God is utmost and we are not taught to be stupid but instead to be generous with the things (and time) we are blessed with.

(Incidentally not paying heating bills is also theft as gas is paid in arrears.)
But making a stock a stock that can pay out dividends versus a stock that cannot pay out dividends is also increasing the stock's value.
> Perhaps transparency is what Google needs the most at the moment.

Absolutely, and not only on the search engine part of it, Adwords/Adsense are extremely opaque and as a publisher continuously give you the feeling you're being screwed without any chance to prove that for lack of information.
You can create new Ning "networks", but you cannot search for existing networks. Apparently the search feature was taken away because it was "primarily being used by people moving from one illegal Ning Network to another." http://blog.ning.com/2009/11/redesigned-ning-com-is-now-live...

This makes Ning networks a lot less valuable.
I was talking to a comedy writer friend of mine and he reckons the way that the world has been makes both humour and establishing a relationship really, really easy. The trick is just to be honest. Honesty is now so refreshing (in a world of "spin") it becomes both hilarious and endearing.
Cold Remedy: Free Flights Anywhere in the World
Ruby & WebSockets: TCP for the Browser
SEO 'experts' are modern day dowsers.
The median? It's almost certainly less than $10, if it isn't $0. Most apps don't ever make any money, especially after they disappear from the new releases list.

You'd have to look at all applications which sold at least $1 in that month otherwise your results would be too skewed.
I've been thinking some about the idea of coding fast, or coming up to speed on new languages quickly.

From that viewpoint, I'm wondering about what the minimal set of language features you need to have committed to memory to enable you to code fast. These are the pieces of code that without which you can't make even a passing claim of competency in a language. I'm thinking about the crib sheet of functions/definitions/language features you have to have ready to go in your toolbox so you can code fast. It's the stuff you'd want candidates to demonstrate knowledge of in an interview as well and be able to apply at least in conversation to a new problem.

I'm interested in figuring this out for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is retention of knowledge related. Years ago, I hacked in C for performance reasons in the domain I was working in Lots of pointer junk, tiling of data (interleaving of row and column data to blow up memory bottlenecks), and a healthy dose of bit twiddling to make it all work nicely. I realized not too long ago that most of these skills had faded due to lack of use.

I'm playing some with spaced repetition software for memory training (think SuperMemo and Mnemosyne) and thinking about plugging in those pieces of programming languages that you have to be ready to throw out to code fast in a language. I'm just testing for now, but I think I might even try throwing something like the question/answer pieces from The Little Lisper in there for fun. Kind of a daily brain teaser.

Since I spend most of my time at work hacking SQL, it's pretty easy for me to stay fresh and also identify the minimum set of concepts and ideas you need to even think you can write halfway decent SQL: SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,JOINS - all types, ansi sql functions - including analytic functions, nulls, subqueries, boolean logic,etc. It's a non-trivial set of stuff to have in your head so you can think correctly about problems.

To make it even more fun, you need to have a meta-sense of when to apply what tools and languages? When do you want a RDBMS versus rolling out hadoop? What data do you want to send to your web app so your users can muck around with it - which means understanding enough Javascript to be able to provide them with some intuitive tools to munge data there.

I'm pushing towards the idea of internalizing not only the specifics of a language, but the idea of what programming language and tool fits a problem best at any given time.

Software folks get all the best toys to think about . . .
the line you see over and over again in IPO filings is "shareholder value" and not "value of the stock" so dividends fall into the former category.

See Google's S1 (IPO) filing for reference: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125040...
I'd be interested to see some benchmarks (unofficial-probably) between Hadoop and Google's C++ versions (at least, I assume Google's is C++). I've always wondered if there was any extra overhead in using Hadoop. I know Java is almost if not faster than C++ in some areas, and long running servers (like Hadoop) should benefit the most. But I wonder if there are some extra limitations Java places on things like BigTable.
He's not talking about fast typing. He is saying that is a big effort for his students to try out an idea because they have to struggle to find the correct syntax and keywords to express it.
CSS Techniques I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Websites
"This is a staggering figure for a company that only has 20 employees"

Not really. $50k revenue per employee doesn't leave a lot of room for overheads let alone profit. Compare and contrast with Apple, who turnover a truly impressive $1.06m per head.
Hpricot for Ruby is great.

For instance, parsing a Google search results page:

(doc/"a.l").each do |link|
label = link.inner_text
href = link.attributes['href']
...
There are many ways to skin a cat. Assuming the equity amongst the
co-founders is equal, I think the methods used to resolve conflicts are
mainly dependent on the co-founders dispositions.

For me personally, I believe there has to be a willingness from the
founders to put the customers' needs first. If I truly believe I'm
working with my equals, then their opposing views are just as important
as my own.

Assuming there are four founders and there is a conflict then I'd
suggest the founders get in the same room and talk about the problem
first. Make sure everyone agrees on what the exact problem is.
Assuming there is still a conflict then brainstorm on possible
solutions. At this point if there is still a conflict and the vote is
2-2 then I'd suggest flipping a coin. Trying one of the solutions is
more valuable than both ideas combined. The insights the founders will
receive from attempting the solution should make it obvious which
solution is best.

Lastly if conflicts are cropping up on a consistent basis, if the
general mood of the group is negative, if people are going off on their own
and/or if there is a strong belief in the group that not everyone
has the customer needs as the primary focus, then quit. Use a
shot-gun[1] clause to resolve the issue of how to buy out a partner and
move on. It is easier said than done.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_clause
> "If you’re boring, predictable and don’t enjoy having fun, then you should follow this advice."

and stop judging me.
> Communism is a spectacular failure of centralized planning over the entire economy.

Wow, and here I was thinking it was a form of government.

Communism in principle has absolutely nothing to do with the flow of information and/or decision making, and its implementations have only very little to do with its basic ideas.

A true communistic government has never even been tried, we've only seen a 'new boss same as the old boss' approach to communism with one batch of fat cats replacing another.
The only ones I've visited served bread and a bowl of something like curry or stew. Shorthand "soup". The point is it's a simple meal unlikely to provide a complete days _nutrition_ and enough energy for warmth in Winter; but probably enough for medium term survival.
You need to take a look at Dodge v. Ford to see the evidence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company

Not to say it's interpreted correctly, but that is where the 'meme' stems from. If people quoted primary sources this might be more widely understood.
I am disturbed by the lack of faith in open source among the readers here. I mean, I understand some skepticism but this, to me, is pretty extreme IP-fetishism.

It's perfectly understandable. Lots of money is made in the existing paradigm and so many of you have incentive to believe it's the most rational system. Besides, hard to imagine Google's doing something wrong, right?

But the argument that "the only people this will help is spammers"? Really? Are the only people helped by open cryptographic protocols those who look to decipher traffic?

"They have every right to keep it secret and profit off of it." Let's allow this for a moment. We've still got a false dichotomy. Making it public will not deprive them of their profit. First, incredible marketing coup. Does anyone else remember how much of Google's initial strength came from its rabid fans? This would do a lot of re-energize that base.

Second, are there going to be new startups which can effectively compete with Google, even given its algorithm? How are they going to provide a better experience, or serve the volume of traffic, or index a larger amount of pages with the same algorithm with fewer resources?

Third, who says they have to authorize competitors to use it? This is I think one of the more interesting points. They could release the algorithm but license it only for non-commercial use for anyone not themselves. Ridiculous? Because Microsoft would violate such a deal anyhow? Because the algorithm could simply be reimplemented? Perhaps. But it would be another roadblock.

Fourth, why do we continue to believe that Google's strength comes from proprietary code? Why do we not recognize that its strength comes from mindshare, user experience, and quality of execution? None of which would be negatively affected by releasing the source.

Perhaps Google would face heightened competition as a result of releasing its algorithm. Perhaps this would outweigh the benefits of doing so. But there would be significant good which would result, including public feedback which would make it significantly harder for spammers to be successful.

But I'm just a foaming-at-the-mouth open source radical. And I'm sure history is on your collective side. If there's anything we've learnt from a hundred years or so of Computer Science (overestimate if you only count actual programming, underestimate if you allow Babbage as you should), it's surely that secrecy is what drives innovation, right?
I'll believe that when I see open source achieve a conclusive victory against email spam.

Spam:email = 90% or worse

in search results it is closer to the opposite.

I'm sure once the open source community actually manages to do this and prove the 'many eyes' doctrine applies to more than just security and bug fixes that many doors will open.