skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Infocom.

Most especially, the ambassador from Blow'k-bibben-gordo in Planetfall.
3d studio max

I relax by building stuff in 3ds max. Much cheaper than building stuff in the real world, and almost as fun. Currently I'm building a yacht. I am even thinking of actually building it for real when I finish.
I like this. It's not a direct competitor of reddit IMHO -- it's an interesting corollary site. I like everything I've seen so far, especially the sliders. I'll try and stay on the site over the next few days to support the launch.
Yawn. I'm getting rather sick of Zed - whether it's his toddler tantrum tirades, or this jumbled, rambling brain dump.

"The truth is: Any language that's Turing Complete and supports enough language features can solve any problem."

Really? Wow, thanks Zed.
"It depends", obviously. Please fix the question if you want a serious answer.
Ask Hacker News: Cost of living in Silicon Valley
I’m trying to get a feel for what a single person’s burn rate would be in the valley. I know the cost of living there is supposed to be among the highest in the US. What can someone in Silicon Valley expect to pay each month in rent, food, utilities, car insurance, and gas?
Companies Are Piling Up Cash
"The brain plague" by the same author is actually much better. The writing could use some help, but the ideas, oh my!

My personal bias as a biologist sure influences my perception of the book, of course.
>The way I see this, if we happen to have greater intelligences working for our common good, we would be able to solve any problem better than a human could - including a possible problem of feeling useless.

That's a logical error: the existence of a superhuman intelligence might cause more problems than that superhuman intelligence can solve.

When humans solve the personal problem of "feeling useless" they almost without exception do it outside of a vacuum. Their feeling of usefulness tends to stem from the impact that they have on humanity.
Sorry. My bad. I should have said not necessarily more efficient!

@pistoiusp: Any that makes you more efficient + happier (not just more efficient)?
Interesting article for many reasons, but the most relevant part for this audience is the likely increased number of acquisitions in the tech space:

"... companies, especially in the technology realm, have enough cash to expand their market share through acquisitions."
> the system shouldn't require people poking around the blog to figure out what will work or not.

I don't agree with that. The Internet has allowed way to many folk's inner Id (i.e. Id, Ego, Superego) to run a muck. They see some snippet of something or other that offends their delicate sensibilities and they go apeshit in the comments. HN is based on what should be a simple idea: don't say anything in the comments that you wouldn't be willing to say to someone in person. There are variants on this theme: be thoughtful, don't be abrasive, [perhaps] keep your politics to yourself, etc. If someone gets riposted for their comments they ought to ask themselves, what am I doing wrong? Not, what's wrong with the community. If they're incapable of doing that, they probably don't belong here in the first place.
It's an interesting question, I could say Gmail or Twitter but it only makes me happy when I receive an interesting Email or IM, so in that case is not a bout the software but the people.

The only software that makes me happier are music players (Exaile, Amarok, etc) because they let me hear the music that I love in my PC.
Similar to the message of one of my favorite marketing books:

http://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Comp...
We thought about something better a few years back.

If you have a satellite with a reflective surface of roughly 1m2 you can make it look like a star when it is in low earth orbit. The reflective surface can be made out of space grade cellofan, and unfolded when it reaches orbit. Now if you have 50 satellites like this and are able to position them relative to one another (this is the tricky part) you can make a logo with 50 stars that will blaze across the night sky. You can even reposition them to create other logos.

We did a short feasibility study, and it is possible, but quite expensive.

Would be pretty cool though..
"Systems Analyst" any one!!!
You're making an argument around the virtues of HN. I agree with them. My point is about how software should operate not a bout how the community should operate. Good software should be simple to use and understand. You say you do not agree with what I said, yet it does not look like you have addressed my point. Perhaps I made my point poorly. If so, apologies.
Scrivener :-)
A friend of mine works in London as a broker, and is paid in $. During the last year he has taken a bad hit on his income.

I would definitely not want to be paid in US$ right now.
I think I understand where you're coming from and I agree with you that good software should be simple and easy to use/understand. And, I think HN is. At it's heart, it's simple software. My point was that the software doesn't stand in isolation; the community shapes and molds the behavior of the software. In a very real sense, the community is the software. HN lives (and dies) by how interesting the people who use it are.
How about something not seen until fairly recently? The reply button. In the UK for instance, there is hardly a single newspaper or online magazine that provides this in their 'respond to article' facility. You can post a comment but without a reply button no one can specifically challenge that non-sequitur or unsupported abuse you've churned out. They can do it indirectly by naming you but who's going to take the trouble to refer back? Where implemented, I'm sure this facility has had a positive effect on the way people treat each other on the net.
GNU Emacs =)
My technique is tagging new blogs with "sandbox" in Google Reader and then either promoting them out of there or nuking them after a week or so.

I also find I go through ebbs and flows of interest in some subjects... so when I first started blogging I read lots of blogs about blogging... now I'm reading lots of blogs about Ruby.

I still have yet to find a good recommendation engine for blogs, although I use the subscribe number on FeedBurner as a good indication.

My blog is at http://InternetDuctTape.com
Microsoft Word 2007. I love the tab strips and the new formatting options. My documents look beautiful.
I fail to see how systems that I use precisely because they are stimulating and curiosity-satisfying are going to dull my mind.
It's a bad question though because it specifies none of the other factors that are important. I'd much rather be paid a million dollars than a thousand euros, for instance.
I think Wally's dream is possible! Especially if we consider architecture as the "normative restriction of design freedom."(Dietz, 2007) And if successful, I think Wally should start his own company!

http://ocastaneda.weblog.tudelft.nl/2008/03/04
latex, gvim, firefox, matlab, R.
yeah I believe its a little overated. Great analogy.
At the moment Squeak Smalltalk is making me pretty happy. I've worked on a project on and off that was in Java, and decided that development in Java was never going to be fast enough to keep up with what I need to do.

So I invested some time in learning Squeak, and now I'm starting to get it the productivity is rising sharply. And as it's relatively such a joy to program, I find I'm putting in much more solid hours as well.
12/100 running IE 6.0

Picasso comes to mind . . .
Happy isn't quite the right word... I feel comfortable when I'm using Emacs. And very uncomfortable editing text with anything else.
Heroku (YC Startup) Launches API and External Git Access
While I'm onboard with the community + software = experience, let's look at the problems.

Let's say I posted a comment, "I love monkeys" and got down-voted to like -10 or something. Aside from relevance questions, perhaps HN is an anti-monkey society. How, from just the score, am I supposed to know that? In other words, by limiting my choice to simple up or down arrows, it makes the other guy scratch his head trying to figure out exactly how his comment was misconfigured for the group. So then he has to plead for somebody to explain that to him. Hopefully, he will get an explanation from somebody who represents the majority of downvoters, but that doesn't have to be the case. He's just as likely to receive advice from somebody, as in this case, who didn't know other huge parts of the community rules.

I love the social networking aspect of the site. But I'm not a fan of the current software as a communication tool between users or as something that would increase (instead of decrease) that experience. BTW, that's why so many "here's my picture of Dilbert" articles are posted -- there's less risk in offending anyone, and heck, you can't figure out what you did when you get downvoted anyway, so might as well go with easy, fast, and funny content over content that might have more substance (and be riskier from the point of view of the submitter)
vim makes me happy when it becomes an extension of my fingers, and allows me to manipulate text like a musical instrument lets me manipulate notes.

The macro programming software for my PC gamepad makes me happy because it makes playing certain games effortless. I don't worry about the interface. I just do. The software gets out of my way.

My favorite online computer game, Final Fantasy XI, make me happy, but in a different way. It is the social aspects which keeps me coming back every time. A more cynical person would say it is the Skinner box effect, but I'm not that jaded yet.
Free (Ruby) Shoes Book and Applications For Everyone!
Time to try learning Lisp again?
> If someone gets riposted for their comments they ought to ask themselves, what am I doing wrong? Not, what's wrong with the community.

Have you ever seen THX 1138? It's a good movie.

In all seriousness... lets try to admit there are problems here. I lurk more than I post for simple fear of bothering someone's sensibilities. In fact, when I do post, I tend to generalize so I don't lose half my karma.
Rails is the best thing that ever happened to Python
Is this guy supposed to be educated ? I was raised in France and I feel less alienated than the author of this article. He sounds like Moses coming down from his hill with the tables of laws.

United States are the epicenter of the economical world without any doubt, the ultimate place for entrepreneurs for sure, "the place where it happens", but history teaches us at least 3 things :

1/ Portugal was this place before (hello America), Spain was before (gold from America), Holland was before (beginning of world commerce, main Harbor of the world), England was before (industrial revolution), etc.

So today it is the turn of the United States to hold this place, but tommorow it might be China (who knows) and I don't think you'll appreciate what Chinese reporters have to say about your lifestyle (like not living as an ants colony wich is prejudiciable to your economy).

2/ France has never been the epicenter of the economical world in it's history, it has never been the #1 power in the world, never. And with our strategic geographical position in Europe it's pretty ironic. It's not that we didn't try, but the reasons are cultural, and they take their roots far beyond socialism.

3/ You can't have it all. The reasons why France is #1 tourism destination in the world are also the reasons why we weren't the #1 power at any time in our history.

France is undergoing a serious cultural crisis right now, and economy is certainly not our strongest skill, but a lot of our problems come from deliberate choices of lifestyle. You cannot have it all. It should not be so hard to understand that there are different kind of lifestyles that all come with their pro and cons. Especially for a traveled reporter.
For everyone (like me) who doesn't know lisp or functional programming yet, I'm gunna have to heavily endorse this (http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html) link that the "How To Learn Lisp" article gave. It's the first article that's helped me make sense of all the proselytizing going around about functional programming and continuations and currying and stuff. What it is, why it's useful, and how it's used... all laid out so I could understand it.

It's just a straight up must read.
Nokia to use Silverlight on their mobile devices.
I want the title Artifex.
OS X, Textmate, Safari and VLC.
Tesla: Little electric roadster that could
Related? 6% of users account for 50% of Ad clicks.
Thanks, it's in the list (although towards the end, maybe I should have put that first).
Of all the posts people have complained about lately, this was the best one by far. I cracked up and even my wife thought it was funny. And I've defended the integrity of YCNews as much as anyone.
Ask HN: Where do you stand on privacy?
During my first quarter-century of life I've already lost money to a professional con artist while starting my first business (@ 20), quit a relatively high profile/responsibility position because of corrupt leadership, resulting in high tensions due to reputation risk for a political family (@ 22), and severed ties with a close business partner due to manipulation and dishonesty (@ 24). Last month a friend called one of my roommates to come over at 3 AM because a guy (casual acquaintance of all of us) was threatening to break down her door and rape her.

And I grew up in one of the smallest most conservative towns around, in one of the most sheltered and safe families I've heard of -- all of this has happened only since I left high school and had the freedom to explore the rest of the world. (Granted, I am not a normal human being. My understanding of risk allows me to safely undertake many activities that some would find terrifying, and I have a strong drive to have new experiences which ensures close contact with a great diversity of people, cultures, and situations).

Just yesterday I began removing all my info from Facebook, and was promptly greeted with 3 messages from my friends asking me who my new love in life is -- Facebook had courteously notified each of my loosely-acquainted contacts that I was "no longer listed as single". Last fall, I discovered that my cousin was divorced when his wife took him off her friend's list (I'd been out of the country at the time, and he wanted to tell me face to face). Surely my experiences here are not unique.

Neither of these online experiences caused me any physical or financial harm, but are they not examples of how these services can have unintended consequences, which could be dangerous when involving the wrong people? Think "Black Swan" here. It only takes one really rotten egg to spoil the rest of your life.

So I'm re-thinking my stand on privacy and have yet to come to any conclusions, but am being conservative in the interim. I used to be entirely "pro-exposure" -- I deliberately marketed myself aggressively online because I figured that that was the best way to "win the game" -- but these days I find myself taking as much personal info off the net as I can. Do you think I'm making a mistake? What sort of "happy medium" do you think might be appropriate? Where do you draw your line on privacy?

Like many people on this forum, there's a good chance that my professional ambitions will necessitate attempts to draw public attention to myself and my work in the future, so this really isn't an issue that I can ignore. I think it's important, and I want to be smart about it. Any ideas, experiences, perspectives would be much appreciated.

Cheers.
vim has my vote. It's my "killer app" for notes, fitness log, recipes, etc. It's also my favorite IDE, together with Firefox/bug.
Yes: http://www.langpop.com/
If 20 or 30 of us each post the 20 or 30 blogs we follow... a big mess ensues.
When we lived out there, we rented a 2 bedroom townhouse for 3 people. Rent was $2100. Food was ~$500. Public transportation is good out there, so we used that exclusively for travel. And then another $100 for internet and bills. So ~$2700, but you could probably get that down to $2100 for just one person. This was in Mountain View.

That's about double what I pay to live in Florida.
These are mostly common sense, but many people haven't actually considered the cost of some of these things. My wife and I belonged to a nice gym with a big pool, etc, but I realized that we were spending close to $2K/yr on it. We left and joined the Y, saving half of that. And I pay tons of attention to finances!
Thanks for posting this; I enjoyed reading about his lifestyle:

http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/simpleLife.ht...

People who are determined can Find a Way.
Cool physics interactive toy program
i particularly liked the piston pusher at about 3 min
i don't know about extremely happy but i love using fogbugz ... and emacs
>Millions of children are being raised on prejudice and disinformation. Educated in schools that teach a skewed ideology, they are exposed to a dogma that runs counter to core beliefs shared by many other Western countries.

Doesn't this statement apply equally well to American schools, from a European point of view?

It would be possible to write an interesting, informative article contrasting the values taught in Europe and the US without being so inflammatory. And I expect it would be more constructive. Scorn is cheap and easy.
Mergelab Emerges to Streamline Friends' Web Updates
wait for smaller companies to feel the crunch, then buy them. Cheap expansion model.
The BugMeNot addon for Firefox is one for me. I can get around stupid required registrations for sites like NYT.

The other thing that made me happy was when I wrote up a bunch of bash/python scripts to make my day easier at work.

See a theme? Yes, I'm lazy.

Also, Fullscreen Homestar Runner addon for Firefox. Required for happy viewing of H*R if you use your HD TV as you monitor.
I'm not sure how privacy works online, or who sees what. Having said that, as a hacker I probably understand it better than most regular people. When I decide to put anything (anything) online, I keep two things in mind:

1) Anything I put up can be seen by anyone (not just the people I would prefer see it)

2) Anything I put up will be around forever and I can't unring that bell.

With those points in mind, here are some of the things I haven't put online:

-the company I work for

-my home address (I think I've mentioned the city, I have mentioned the metro)

-any pictures of my daughter (maybe she has slipped in the background of some)

-religious affiliation and (for the most part) political views

One the other hand, I've gone out of my publicize (here and on reddit) things I've written on technical and business topics. I want that stuff to be found, but I try to make sure it's something I wouldn't mind someone pulling out 10 or 20 years from now. My goal is that the worst thing that could happen to me based on what I publish online is that I'll be accused of being dumb or naive. I don't want my friendships or family to be affected by some web fad.
True. I think there is something to be said for experience giving weight to opinion, but people use it to monopolize opinion too much. Plus, there's always the fact that it is hard to be objective about something you are experiencing.

I think experience is valid when means are being discussed, but much less significant when ends are being discussed.

BTW, I don't know if you've noticed, but I use upmods as a way of keeping threads alive. I know I always check my threads when my points increase, and I assume others do the same.
I think that picture of a stack of books is very telling.

2006: http://www.garbett.org/files/books.jpg

2008: http://antoniocangiano.com/images/rubyandrailsbooks.jpg
Perceived performance makes for a great user experience. Tricks where the developers took the time to look at the user interaction.

A web example may be here on news.yc when I upvote a comment, I see it's done instantly even though ajax wizardry in the background does it. Sure is better than doing a whole page refresh.

One perceived speed example I absolutely love is on the iPhone. Everything "feels" so snappy and fast when in reality it isn't much better than the competitors.

Applications can use an image of their UI - a default view while the device really loads the application in the background and then switches from picture to app when loaded.
Combine that with the zooming effects and it FEELS like apps load instantly and makes me FEEL like I love the experience, even though I can't actually interact with the application for up to a second.

I think it takes a very good engineer to come up with these little tricks. Perceived performance has real world satisfaction benefits.
Regarding old Lisp books: PG's "On Lisp" is available (used) on Amazon for $250-$450 depends on which day you look for it on.
Make sure you read this first:
http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2007/10/27/10686.html
Exploratory Programming
I've been thinking a lot about exploratory programming, but I don't
really understand it; I don't get this "you don't really know what you
are writing until you write it" thing.

pg says in the programming FAQ section of his site that you should use
exploratory programming when the problem is complex and ill-defined, but what counts as that? Every time I've sat down to write code I've had a general idea of what the main purpose of my program is and no idea at all about design details (how I'm actually going to implement my vague ideas) or extra features (which are dictated by the users). Is that exploratory programming?

Also, what can you learn from a first prototype? If the idea is to get
a minimal version of your program running and expand from there one step at a time, then it seems that what you are really doing is writing the chore of something and then let the users dictate how it should expand. Is that what you expect to learn from a first draft?
That still doesn't speak well of the moderators that they'd rather vote down than explain how he could make his writing better.
I've lived in Boston, Dallas, Atherton, Mountain View and Palo Alto. Rent is a lot higher the closer you get to Stanford. I live a block away from Stanford in Palo Alto, so rent is pretty high--$3,500 per month for a 3-bedroom house. Utilities vary a lot depending upon where you live; they're typically handled by the municipality. Gas is $3.69 per gallon around the corner from my house. Car insurance depends upon your car and your insurance company.

I have to disagree about public transportation, having come from the East Coast. It's godawful. There are five discrete transit systems (BART, Caltrain, MUNI, SamTrans, VTA) that are actually more expensive to use than driving. You really need a car out here.

It's double what I paid in Dallas, but I think it's worth it.
My wife and I pay $1700/month for a two-bedroom house in Mountain View. I pay $300 each six months to insure an awesome Z3 that I never get to use (I take the train every day - $150/month for a pass between Mountain View and San Francisco). Internet is $60/month, Electric is usually about $50/month. I'm embarrassed to say I don't know how much we spend on food... I would guess about $400/month, but that could be wrong by quite a bit since I don't do the food shopping.
Counterpoint> George Bush is your president. Twice.
VCs Pump $3B into Clean Tech in ’07
I don't put anything online unless I'm comfortable with the idea of millions of strangers, and my mom and dad, looking at it.

And I'm a pretty shy person, so not much of my life makes it onto the web.
Sony Increases Hard Drive Storage Fivefold
Finally an advantage to living in DC – $2100 doesn’t sound all that bad to me.
"Exploratory programming" is not a defined methodology but an approach to a task that has yet to be fully defined.

You explore the possible by writing code blocks and combining them in different ways - looking at alternate algorithms and outputs. Eventually, the overall program objectives will start to become concrete and the architecture will exist - even if just in outline.