skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
New Linux Jobs Board
Like Dave Winer, I am also 54 and absolutely do not care what anyone else thinks about it.

Perhaps that explains why you are also less likely to perceive it when it happens. Perhaps Dave Winer is more sensitive to this issue and that explains why he notices it more. I doubt that he is imagining this since you are one of the few people in IT that I have heard having a contrary experience. Perhaps you are simply an outlier.
Nature Trumps the Laws of Man in the Long Run
Down, boy.

Inferior? I never said it was inferior. Seems you're arguing against somebody, but not me.
What are the best ways to stimulate innovation?
I don't think that's what the parent was saying at all. They were just providing an on-topic anecdote.
It's not that the necessary information isn't communicated-- it is. The problem is that there's a complicated graph that's the main content of the page, and it lacks a title and axis labels.
I saw this a few days ago on a French site and also wondered why they were complaining about typeface, especially when 80% of typefaces look almost identical except to graphic designers.
http://www.fontembedding.com/fonts-and-the-law/
Language processing may give rise to something wonderful. Interesting work.
A collapsible shipping container aims to revolutionize global shipping
I do think there has been a noticeable change but I don't think it's entirely bad. For example, a discussion around Haiti with a bunch of technologists on HN - as oppose to on Reddit - could manifest a new challenge and opportunity for another hacker that impacts the world in a meaningful way as oppose to yet-another-photo-sharing-site.

I think it's pretty inevitable that as a site grows its core focus will become diluted. I'm not entirely happy to see less startup/tech news either, and I believe there are only two solutions for that: 1. growth with it and deal or 2. convert to a private community with limited invite-only (or application based).
7 Things I learned From #Beth53 Fundraiser and PoST Class
A dog of a breed with a strong protective instinct will probably do more to keep people from breaking in than any locks, anyway. The locks made for residential use are trivial for an experienced burglar to bypass, and a thug will just kick the door in or break a window.
Skype Founders Pondering IPO Don’t Need ’Love’ From Andreessen - BusinessWeek
World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers: Embracing Disruption
Depends on what kind of dealers and where, maybe. Around here, you definitely do not want to be anywhere near dealers. They generally squat in vacant houses, and are usually gang connected, violent, etc.
Ask HN: How to move to the USA and find cofounders
Hi all, I live in a city that is far from being the startup hub, what is even worse, is the fact that it is really far from being in USA as well. On the other hand, I live with startup ideas in my mind, (started one and failed, started the next one. ). So I definitely need to move closer to the place where the air is full of new ideas, ventures and what is more important, the place where I can find people that are eager to take a risk, are willing to innovate and work really hard. Have anyone succeeded to do that? I appreciate if you folks share your personal experience, success and failure stories.
Natural Weight Loss: When you do not accept to Go Over
When an Anonymous Troll is Revealed
Thank you!

I had an old DOS version of this, and haven't been able to find anything that replicated the experience. This is great.
That's really neat to see it so well expressed.

Less is more :)
Look for similar conversations here in the past. It's quite difficult to just "move to the US", so you're probably better off either finding a better place where you are... You risk spending so much energy with the immigration bullshit that you will get distracted from working.

Of course you could come on a tourist visa, hang around a bit and just see what comes up, but being able to stay without a job is not easy, and if you get a job, you won't have much time for a startup.
Wiki Started in Chinese to Get "Google Back to China"
Speed up Windows 7
The content of that article is fine. It all boils down to #2:

"OUR ENTIRE COMPANY’S STUFF WAS IN PHP: DON’T UNDERESTIMATE INTEGRATION"

Joel classically addressed this with regard to the Netscape re-write from scratch. In a word: don't. You have working code, meeting customer needs, and re-writing the whole thing is time you are not spending fixing bugs, adding features, or improving performance of the existing code.

I would say what you ended up doing in that 2 months was a massive refactoring. You took what you had, along with the knowledge of all the mistakes you made, and turned it into the code it should have been from the start. The key was that at every point, you still had a working system that was still integrated with all the other systems you needed to run your business, which is pretty much the definition of refactoring.

None of this has anything to do with Rails or PHP. You can substitute any other two languages or technologies and the outcome would not change. I suppose that is one thing you could have stressed more, but even from what you wrote that should have been clear to anyone not overly emotionally invested in the particular technologies you were discussing. The comment about being perfectly willing to start a green-field project in Rails should have made that clear.

I also liked the part about liking SQL. I'm finding more and more that ORMs are just getting in my way and making my code longer, slower, and harder to understand.
updated post with source
I don't think it's the age, but Winer is out of touch on a lot of issues. His primary computing time is in a scripting language / environment that he built in the early 90s. Much like RMS, he has missed the train and while still has important ideas is frequently only able to implement them in a way that few others can experience.

That and his new found mobile passion is just hilarious to witness. Confused about SMS and MMS (which he called multimedia SMS), unaware of the differences between GSM and CDMA, etc etc. He may not be gramps yet, but if he's looking to duck the title he should stop writing about mobile.
When I was in college, I never locked my POS car because I figured there was nothing worth taking in it. One night some kids got in it and took everything that wasn't nailed down - absolutely nothing worth anything to anyone else, but stuff that cost me a lot of time and irritation.

I always lock my car now, and I wouldn't ever fail to lock my house either. Not putting up that minimum barrier is just foolhardy.
Above every comment box on every forum there should be a small little warning, it should read 'you are not as anonymous as you think you are'.

I've helped busting a few people that were distributing child pornography using my servers, and I can tell you that in each and every case they were completely surprised that they had been discovered. So secure were they in their feeling of being anonymous that their disbelief was only surpassed by the sentences they got.
Around here, number one thing insurance checks is whether there's evidence of a break-in. If thieves walk in through an unlocked door, you're not covered. I don't lock my door to keep thieves out, I lock my door to make sure insurance gives me a new laptop if someone happens to break in.
I think you should also consider the possibility that the Chinese entrepreneurs are speaking sincerely - while I know many natives (particularly among the white collar workers) here in China who find the gov't obnoxious, I also know many educated, intelligent people who would agree with these statements.

And when you consider the statements of Chinese expats about the Chinese government - you have to expect an anti-Chinese government bias (merited by the government or not) in their views. I mean, they left China for a reason. It's a little like asking political exiles from Iran whether they like the Iranian government or not.

In short, I don't think it's reasonable to completely toss out the statements of the people who haven't left China and focus only on the statements of the self-selecting population who have made a concerted effort to leave.
"His reasons would be just as valid if he'd written this yesterday about the latest and greatest PHP and Rails versions."

It would also be just as valid for any two technologies, not just PHP and Rails. The real message is: don't rewrite working code from scratch.
it sounds to me like the people who find problems might already have found a balance, and are canceling out anything that might disrupt it.
I am getting the squatter page in both cases.. :(

Curious, why you would have had one version work and one would not work.

What could have happened? DNS poisoning, site owned by squatter, or most likely scenario, site is hosted on a low-cost provider, which switches to squatter version when the site gets too much traffic.
Does it really help all that much? Seems to me there is no point in bringing more empty containers to China than full ones back. There already is enough space for the full once, so what does one save by collapsing them? Not sure where the 25% less weight come from - another subject altogether (I don't think it is the air inside of the container...Also I think they are often in lower pressure anyway?).
Could you do that if you look a middle eastern?
I rent, so I'm mainly concerned that if someone were to ransack the place, and it came out that I hadn't locked the door, then I'd get the blame for the damage and the landlord would try to get me to pay for repairs.

As for bikes, I have a fairly nice one ($900 new). I lock it all the time but only to stop crimes of opportunity -- some teenager seeing it undefended and riding off with it. I know (from experience) that bike locks don't stop determined thieves, so I try not to leave it unattended for long periods of time.
You're not allowed carry-on on US domestic or flights to the US now.
So… Joyce Weisshappel, where was it that you say you live? Hope the people in your building don't read the Times.

I lived in Brooklyn for 5 years on the border between some sketchy neighborhoods and some very nice areas. On my last day before moving to Tokyo, my car was broken into. I had always been careful not to leave anything of value inside the car, but on the last day I was tired from moving and had parked in the nice neighborhood, so I wasn't as vigilant.

I think this article says more about New Yorkers living relatively disposable lives. Many New Yorkers move every few years, and sell off their valuables (rent money!) and lead minimal lives.

The other half live in secure buildings and pay piles of money for maintenance fees and doorman tips. I don't know if I can count that as not locking the door.
He intimately understood exactly what his application needed, and had working code to start from. I think that was what enabled him to build the tools he needed.
I think you missed the point of the article. They used Rails for 2 years, I don't think it was an issue of familiarity.
If you're relying on straight pieces you're doing it wrong!

Back when I was starting with Tetris I would always try to avoid "holes", i.e. empty spaces that are covered on top. And this leads to the requirement for the straight pieces.

I became much better when I started to accept holes and instead just try to keep the top edge a nice shape compatible with many blocks. The straight pieces become a bit of a nuisance, actually.
Kodak sues Apple and Rim over patents
I'm sorry, I really did my best to make it look as good as I could, I will have to study open office a bit more.
It's not that there is less of it, it's just that the attention is divided over many other subjects.

The more people frequent HN the more submissions there will be on any subject, startups included.

But those articles have to compete for attention with all the other ones.
I already have, it is wonderful.

http://github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash
Yahoo target of China Cyber attacks too
Variable-Interval Reinforcement Schedules FTW
Google thus announces publicly that its results are not filtered. If you are in the largest growth market (China) and can get to Google (you can somehow) then you will get authoritative results.

Brilliant move. Ethics are good business. Should have done it sooner.
I have USAA and use the Deposit@Home feature regularly. it is amazing and simple. I have deposited by scanner and by phone and have yet to have a check that didn't go through successfully and I've done it at least a hundred times. I don't use my USAA account for anything but that reason. Also, because of this feature I no longer use brick and mortar banks either.
Sorry for mis-spelling your name!
How do you like this Twitter-Startup idea?
I don't understand the proliferation of cross-language compilers. As an academic exercise, great, but for a large project, surely debugging is going to be a pain when the errors refer to code that you never wrote?
Redis 1.2 Stable Released
I had this same experience. I am just glad someone took the chance on me, and has given me the opportunity to get experience.

Although my situation was somewhat complicated - applying for entry level project management work and having a philosophy degree.
Giles possibly gets posted on HN a little too often, but this post really got me thinking..

It's not a new insight but he's right. I had the same problem as him with Adsense in 2008 when I was making some pretty serious money with it (down by 90%+ since start of 2009). I'd be logging on to it a few times each day just to see the money racking up. Ever since it dropped 90% though, I still make money but I rarely check because it's not worth it..

So I'm wondering if "variable interval reinforcement schedules" works, but only if the positive stimulus is strong or gradually increasing over time? I used to check Google Analytics a lot as the traffic on my main site was increasing too, but now it's plateaued, I don't check so much.

Could we find other variable-interval reinforcement schedules that help us with our work in the world of startups? :-)
You are overdoing Flash. Theres _no_ reason why something like job listings should be done in Flash when good old HTML would do.
I use vimperator as well. it gives you the ability to follow links using the keyboard (same tab, new tab, copy link) as well as all the bookmarky shortcut stuff that gleebox does. Combine it with a keyboard based window manager (like StumpWM) and you can (almost) throw your mouse away!
Yea I remember playing it back in the day. It was called "Blockout" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockout
Possibly the greatest thing about this release is the "Append Only File".

The Append Only File is an alternative way to save your data in Redis that is fully durable! Unlike the snapshotting (default) persistence mode, where the database is saved asynchronously from time to time, the Append Only File saves every change ASAP in a text-only file that works like a journal. Redis will play back this file again at startup reloading the whole dataset back in memory.
Is that the directive in response to the guy that started his blanket on fire? I'm pretty sure that expired December 30, 2009. Or has there been a different change to TSA policies?
The game you're thinking of for DOS was called 'Block-out'. I used to play it on my Dad's computer all the time when I was little. =)
The Google news: China enters its Bush-Cheney era
We might like Apple’s gadgets, but iTunes not so much
No problem.

I've been working for a long time on a hobby project that may one day be a little more serious called autotagger.

It's main function is to detect the subject of a text automatically given the text, but the titles are too small for it to function reliably.

Do you have some kind of formula for your software that will give you confidence based on the length of the sample text ?
This works until the filter is one who wants to maximize profits by minimizing risk. You see this in every field where there are filters:

1> Music
2> Movies
3> Publishing industry
4> Venture Capital
5> Newspapers
...

But I think there is a glimmer of hope on the internet. There are millions of blogs but the best still surface and build a large audience. There are infinite number of videos on youtube but still the best still gets 100 million views. The common element here is social media. As twitter and facebook gain popularity, general public will decide winners and not a media executive.
Not sure, but to my knowledge they arrest first and would check on those sorts of details later.

And yes, there is a "provision" for carrying a weapon through those cities, the Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986, but it only provides a defense once you've been charged. You would spend weeks or months with your life in turmoil, perhaps locked up (you're obviously a flight risk, no ties to the community) and spending significant money for competent counsel to get the charges eventually dismissed.

And this does frequently happen (arrests at O'Hare, La Guardia (sp?), JFK and I think Newark), enough so that I don't see the ruse as being worth the risk.
The satellite angle he proposes at the end of the article is interesting but the dishes are one-way. Rooftop dishes don't broadcast up to the satellite. A request is made through a phone line and the content is then sent down to all dishes. Your dish then decodes the part that was meant for you. It works because the bandwidth of satellite broadcast is so fat, it can support the average of all of the customers at once.

China would not allow the uplink. Unless there is some new technology I'm not aware of, it won't work.
It was indeed. A friend of mine liked it enough to replicate as a Java applet - http://brokout.org/

My site, but his app. Oh and for amusement value note the specs that it was tested against...
Donald E. Knuth wrote quite a letter to the editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms about escalating fees:

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf

A major problem in replacing current scientific journals with something else is their use as reputation references for hiring and tenuring professors.

The Public Library of Science PLoS is an attempt at replacing the old journals. PLoS aims at keeping the price at cost, done by charging for publishing (once) and not for reading (unnumbered times) as is the current business model of the publishers. In short, we want the publishers to perish while keeping a reputation and least-abusable-as-possible system in place.
He did not select an arbitrary period, but an arbitrary place.

For example, recently there was a post on HN about the current cold wave. Turns out while it was very cold in Europe, at the same time it was very warm in the arctic.

It would be interesting to look at the data from central England and see what kind of results one could get by cherry picking individual weather stations.
Did he declare it? If he didn't it's a big chance it's just luck he didn't get caught. If he did, than it IS strange.
In NL we have kinda strict laws against replica weapons.
Maybe this should be "second-person tetris" since you rotate with the block. I would expect a first-person tetris to offer either a view from the POV of the blocks downward, or from the base upwards at the blocks headed my way.
Should we start looking into techniques for keeping the mind and body young? One measure would probably be how quickly you can learn new technologies and methods for getting work done. As I get older, I'm always trying to learn something new and coming up with ideas for solving problems. The last thing I want my employer to think is that I'm only good for maintaining the existing code. Another thing is how well you can relate to younger people and work with them. You can't afford to have them thinking of you as being out of touch with the current tech.
China Economics Blog: China's empty city of Ordos
Looking forward to seeing the source!
It was in MacWorld's report and I've seen it a few other places, but no first hand information.
Strike One
Nokia, please try
There's no need for it to be a random string. For instance, #ptgavinb gets 0 google hits.
Labor protection is much, much stronger in Japan than the US, or many other first-world nations, for that matter.

It's not that simple. Although permanent employees can't be fired easily, dispatched workers and temps are a significant (and growing) proportion of the workforce and may be fired at will.

We don't have long vacations like in some European countries, nor do we have "sick days" (lots of national holidays, though).

Some companies put a cap on overtime pay (not on overtime work), some smaller ones don't pay it at all. And so on.

You're right about the law being on the worker's side. Most people won't sue, though.

As for self-employment I can't imagine it's much harder,

I think it's not hard bureaucracy-wise, except for potential visa problems. I wonder how Patrick will deal with that (I once had an offer to work as contractor but had to reject in part because of visa headaches).

Many translators are self-employed. But I don't know anyone working in IT that is self-employed, probably because most Japanese companies don't like to hire individual IT contractors. Or maybe my sample is too small.
It's obviously untrue for 'any two technologies'. And I don't know about you but I like to assume that if the author's 'real message' was 'don't rewrite working code from scratch' he'd have simply said that. Are you suggesting he put the effort into summarizing his particular experience while having some secret and entirely different message? What makes you believe that?
Sheer luck.

http://www.justitie.nl/onderwerpen/criminaliteit/wapens/nepw...

270 Euro maximum fine and an automatic charge for possession.

Better warn him not to do that again, next time he might not be so lucky.
You don't even need the gun - you just need the case.
We carry long lenses and tripods in a Pelicase - the only one that fits is the gun case design.

If you buy the camoflage pattern one it is generally treated as a gun by the airport - even if you don't declare it.

It means a trip to the luggage office at the destination to recover it from the locked secure baggage area but thats a small price to pay for a free armed guard.
This would tend to confirm the "ageism" that Weiner is talking about. If a young body and mind is a good thing, an old body and mind is not.

I guess the "Ageist" position is that yes, human bodies and brains do decay, but experience and wisdom precisely mitigate this. It seems a little absurd.
IIRC the US takes in more shipping containers than it sends out, so we have empty containers accumulating here.
CEO Lessons: Jeff Bezos "Everything I Know"
If you are going to measure a dataset by its completeness and its length you are going to find it's the best based on that scale. However, if you want to define some other scale which cares less about those factors and more about geographic coverage feel free, but don't try to mix there definition with yours because your "best" will be less compleat or cover a shorter period.

PS: If you feel some other dataset would be a better proxy feel free to argue the point on its own merits. But be careful when you start to redefine the terms someone else is using, it has little to do with their argument and is not useful.
Toppcloud: open-source PaaS
What makes you say that? http://www.tsa.gov/311/index.shtm even identifies how you can bring items on to the plane.
Share with HN: East meets west as 1602 Chinese map goes on show in the US
Hi HN,

I happened to have this 1602 world map that first detailed five continents, if you don't know what I am talking about check it out here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/13/1602-chinese-map-washington

Wikipedia:

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

Preview:

http://i.imgur.com/jFBdO.jpg

Download it here

http://est.im/downloads/KunYuWanGuoQuanTu.rar (35MB)

two 12020x10772 jpeg for western sphere and eastern sphere, plus one 6351x2880 jpeg global map

Enjoy!

Credits: http://bbs.godeyes.cn/showtopic-210833.aspx

looks like the picture is released to public domain. Correct me if I am wrong.