skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wonder if that depends on your world view? If you are "thinking in SQL," adding a layer of abstraction forces you to think of SQL and then solve the puzzle of "Which Arel incantation produces the desired result?"

Whereas if you find a way to think in algebra, Arel implements the abstraction and removes the problem of "Which SQL incantation produces the desired result?"

You're right every abstraction introduces some problems. It's can be a win if the abstraction's mental model is congruent to your thinking or to the problem space.
> Apple is announcing its first true tablet ... and it’s just about the only outfit in the business that abstained until now

Hello ? What was the Apple Messagepad Series including the Newton all about then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad

and don't say PDA when you're including the AT&T E440
Giftinginc. is running contest for this Valentines Day
Gifting Inc., one of the leading international online gifting websites, is calling for entries to its Valentine's Day article contest. The hunt is for the best article on Valentine's Day. The contest is open from 25th January to 3rd February, 2010. The best article will win a 15% discount on purchases from any Gifting Inc., family of brands such as giftsnideas.com, pickupflowers.com and flowersforcelebration.com. The topic "Valentine's Day" calls for an open interpretation and contestants are encouraged to pen down their thoughts on Valentine's Day, the history of Valentine's Day, interesting stories, pictures, essays, memoirs and experiences and send it across to any of these three email ids:

contest@pickupflowers.com
contest@giftsnideas.com
contest@flowersforcelebration.com
Prioritizing IT projects: Let ROI be the guide
Unless this was meant tongue-and-cheek (and even then, it wasn't very funny), it was a dumb post promoting cartoonish stereotypes.
Here goes... Seattle is a fantastic town, water everywhere, gorgeous vistas and when the weather cooperates (August) there's no better place (I've found) in the entie-ree world.

That said, I just moved my teensy company from Seattle to Austin (after nearly, gulp, three decades in the SEA). Ms. Rich's article reads like the 'impressions' of one who's never, umm, started a company in Seattle.

5 reasons I left (and won't be headed back):

- traffic is abysmal. Not NYC/LA abysmal, but for a town of its size, truly awful.

- weather is grey/overcast and misty (most years) for 10 months.

- it's hard to attract/keep talent with families -- home prices near good schools, within short commute of downtown (or eastside) core are high. Wages are somewhat high, but get eaten up fast if you buy a home.

- business taxes, fees. State/county government is bloated and seems very willing to sacrifice job creation for revenue (read: more taxes on the way).

- did I mention the weather? Went back for thanksgiving - culture shock. Weather was overcast and I was struck by how dark it is. Light at 9am-ish and starts to get dark at 3:30.

There's a reason Seattle runs on caffeine.

(edit: thought I had this bulleted list thing down - alas, no)
Escorts that Make your Evenings Memorable
Many people hesitate to travel alone to a new city in which they do not have any friends or acquaintances because they will return frustrated out of boredom. Even the most exciting cities such as London, Paris, Milan or Rome can turn out to be a boring place without the right company. If too are dreading to travel to a new city because you may not have any company, do not worry.
Type initialization changes in .NET 4.0
I just installed Visual Studio 2010, now how do I get Code Contracts?
Err, no. He stated he has one; it doesn't confirm a thing. The article's content came directly from his twitter account -- I don't see why this helps.

There's no story here, just some BS tweets. I have a feeling his response tomorrow is going to be along the lines of "Hahah, you people actually bought this?!"
The hub thing is kind of taking off here. VentureBeat wrote about the building Mendeley are in - http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/12/18/white-bear-yard-lo...

I think Playfire are setting one up over in Soho too. There's also the RIG/BERG axis (http://berglondon.com/, http://reallyinterestinggroup.com/ who do Newspaper Club) over in Scrutton Street, and I think Songkick share space with someone (maybe Moo?)
What does this mean for go exactly? Sorry for my ignorance. Does this mean that go will be distributed with GCC going forward (once the merge date is determined that is)?
Apple Vs Obama
I think that, with the tablet, apple will try to redefine the computer experience for people less used to computers -- they'll try to make the computer more like the iPhone, make it simpler by dropping features.

I think it will maybe run one application at a time, have no hierarchical file system, things like that.

But, I don't think it will use the same iPhone apps. It will be a different platform, very similar to the iPhone but not equal; apps will be much more sophisticated, and there will be more emphasis on creating content than consuming content.
The wired version might be a bit more reliable currently http://www.flickr.com/photos/blech/4256983160/sizes/l/
My point was indeed that performance can matter, and will matter even more in the future, since no apparent technological limit on network speed has been reached so far.
Actually, is there a big list of London-based startups anywhere? There must be close to three figures, even if you only count the consumerish Web ones. There's umpty-billion hedge funds and financial technology houses.
Ask HN: Review CoffeeScript 0.3
http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/

CoffeeScript 0.3 was released last night. If you haven't taken a peek at it in a while, now would be a good time to look. Significant whitespace and optional parentheses for method calls have finally gotten settled in together, and things are nice and cozy. Some syntax examples ...

jQuery:

$('a').click (event) ->
event.preventDefault()
$(this).hide "slow"

$.get "test.json", (data) ->
alert "Data Loaded: " + data

Poignant Guide:

['toast', 'wine', 'cheese'].each (food) -> print food.capitalize()

wish: this.read().detect (thought) -> thought.index('wish: ') is 0

Many more examples can be found on the homepage, and in the examples folder, here: http://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/tree/master/examples/

We've been a little concerned about how all these pieces fit together, I'd love to hear what you think.
SourceForge blocks Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan and Cuba
Clickable link: http://www.chaikar.com
Did you feel somehow attacked? The post gives the appropriate disclaimer upfront. And generalization is necessary to make any kind of point.

It's not about promoting, it's about honest observations. Which is what makes this interesting.

I think the speaking "written English" idea is very plausible.
I think that's right. But as they stated, they're not sure when the merge will take place.

This makes me wonder a little bit if LLVM won't (maybe?) do something similar. Not that it's a 'huge' deal, but for parity?
Whats-My-IP-Service without all this crap
Avdi Grimm also pointed me to: http://github.com/dkubb/veritas
Pretend I said "a very user-friendly Linux" if you have to

Wouldn't it have been simpler just to say that?
In Newsday's geographic target area (Long Island, NY), if a news consumer is the type of reader who mainly reads news online, they'll go with the Times, or even the NY Post or Daily News online, rather than Newsday. Newsday's print readers (even before the Cablevision takeover) are the readers most likely to be still consuming print -- they skew older, less affluent, and less educated.

Newsday's only competitive advantage content-wise, relative
to the other NY papers, are hyper-local Long Island politics, culture listings, and classifieds. There just isn't any overlap between people interested in these things and people who consume most of their news online (AND are willing to pay for it).
Yeah, but to give at least some idea what to expect might be good?
Songkick and Habit Industries (both YC) share an office and rent a few more desks out to young startups.

I think it was Dopplr that used to work out of Moos offices.
I just wanted to try this with blocked cookies, and it seems FireFox doesn't even have the block cookies option anymore :-( Or I couldn't find it atm. I suspect it wouldn't work without cookies?

Anyway, I used to block Google cookies but I have become lazy. Still, how would I configure the /ncr in the FF search field ("Chrome")? Overall I take it Google doesn't really want me as a customer, so whatever.
'She did suggest that many of the common
features of fanspeak seem to be related to thinking in "written English".'

That seems a good summary of the differences cited between the "fans" and the "mundanes."
What is the mark of success? VC funding and IPOs? What about the thousands of under 30s who have made good products, are living a good life from the earnings, and aren't seeking to be bought out? I know more than a few under 30s entrepreneurs who don't live in the Valley, have reputable positive cashflow sites, and spend much of their free time traveling the world and meeting new people. How is that not success if that is exactly what they wanted to do? Yet you won't hear about them in lists like these, though they have had garnered lots of media coverage about their projects.

Success varies person to person. Four billion in the bank and a fully-booked schedule may be success to one while $240k in savings with absolutely no obligations may be success to another. This doesn't mean they are not entrepreneurs. It just means they don't fit the author's/society's definition of success.
> Non-geeks might perceive such behavior as rude and arrogant, like the geek is trying to show his smartness and be a 'know-it-all'.

It's only perceived as rude when it comes across as rude. For example, if you interrupt someone mid-sentence to correct something insignificant, then that's rude.
Waiting for the person to finish talking and then immediately correcting something they said earlier gives the other person the impression that you weren't listening to what they were saying. There are better ways of dealing with this in conversation. One of them is simply to ignore irrelevant inaccuracies.

Calling it "altruistic behaviour to educate" is also disingenuous. I've met many geeks who thrive on expounding minutiae about irrelevant or insignificant topics at the most inappropriate moments, all for the sake of recognition. It's the same as when jocks try to impress others by being macho. Obviously not all geeks are like that, but they definitely exist. My dad is geek who is like this but for him it's also about self-affirmation.

Finally, I often see articles on the net trying to explain "geeky" social interaction, but I rarely read articles specifically targeted at people with these tendencies describing how to improve their social skills. That's because, IMO, people who have these skills recognize that intelligence has little to do with it.
ok thanks i may add a screenshot
Cringely started with stating the source was an alleged beta tester "in a position to know."

Cringely ended with "that's not me that's the beta tester."

No confusion here - Cringely is citing an unnamed source which he trusts enough to pass on.
Excellent body language resource
Just came across this web based book - 19 Chapters no author name I could find - which I've barely been able to put down. Body language fascinates me and this book provides lots of stuff to interest including little anecdotes about use of various signals by the famous (mainly heads of state).

Example:
In Japan it can mean 'money'; if you're doing business in Japan and you make this sign for 'OK' a Japanese may think you're asking them for a bribe. In some Mediterranean countries it's an orifice signal, often used to infer that a man is homosexual. Show a Greek man the OK signal and he may thinkyou're inferring you or he is gay, while a Turk might thinkyou're calling him an 'arsehole'. It's rare in Arab countries where it is used as either a threat signal or as an obscenity.

In the 1950s, before he became President, Richard Nixon visited Latin America on a goodwill tour to try to patch up strained relations with the locals. As he stepped out of his plane he showed the waiting crowds the American 'OK' signal and was stunned as they began booing and hissing at him Being unaware of local body language customs, Nixon's OK signal had been read as 'You're all a bunch of arseholes.'

Entertainingly written and bite-sized chapters that will doubtless help you in your daily face-to-face communications.
How valuable is location if you're not in SV? New York seems pretty great for media companies. But what about else where?

What is Londons calling (zing)? Is there notable value in groups of startups being together other than the PG "don't ever stop typing" social aspects? Whilst that is valueable, a lot of startups go to SV for the visibility and proximity to the exit acquirers.
Shh! I'm trying to make some money here.

(I mean, duh. The headline is Apple Tablet Twit.)
When we make a joke, we don't do a little laugh in the middle of a word to signal that it's funny; we inhale and exhale a very fast, short breath at the end of the sentence, rather like a suppressed beginning of a laugh, or a kind of a gasp.

We're actually pronouncing the :-) at the end of the sentence.
On Power is about the scope of political power throughout history. I couldn't recommend it to someone already intimately familiar with the last few hundred years, but as an overview of history that doesn't simply devolve into "story time" (viewing history as a coherent narrative in the style that we are comfortable with; involving heroes, villains, and dramatic tension) it is hard to beat. Since such gross simplification is all most people are familiar with (think the history channel) I recommend it to everyone as a starting point for non-pandering historical analysis.

In addition it is only $11 for a very nice book that will impress others :p
The Problem with Big Media: Why One Tablet is Not Enough
A sneak peek into Groovy++
Newsday's response to reports of just 35 online subscribers
WaveSecure: An App Every Android User Must Know and Use
There are all different types of mobile apps out there. There are apps that offer a wow effect when showing them to your friends. Then there are apps that offer a fun and completely pointless gaming experience. There are apps that actually help you develop skills and there are apps that help you communicate. Now that I managed to sound like an Apple commercial, I will get to the point.
Bank sues victim of $800,000 cybertheft
1960s internal corporate musicals
Eventually, the hacker got 'hacked' by the media. Amusing. Should he be remembered, he'll be 'the guy who wanted to promote his porn site'.
Side effects, the new ad campaign benefits from the traffic peak and Techcrunch gains visibility.
I suspect the kid behind the hack is actually working FOR techcrunch ;)
Damn, I should have had those before I got it printed at lulu...
Apparently major corporations hired Broadway artists to create musicals for their employees' motivation. The article has some links to amazing songs.
Same here. Anyone know if and how they handle that? Seems like a major problem that'd prevent this sort of thing from working well.
Agreed!!! I was recently heartbroken when, upon receiving my new computer at work, I found that my tried-and-true PS/2 that I had been using for years no longer had a port to connect to. Switching to the new keyboard was not fun.
How is it suppressed?
That sounds cool.

Timetric looks very good. How long have you guys been around? I'm working on a startup in a similar space (see profile for details).
Thats pretty awesome, I will check it out.
Just because they say so, it does not make it false ;)

We will have to wait and see :)
The journalist seems to prefer "tablets" that ran MS-DOS.
Senses, Limits, & Door Cracks: Why We Don't Experience The ‘Real’ World
Azeem is spot on about what UK startups face, but here's a couple more overriding themes that I've observed:

- There's a culture of "what's in it for me?", so it's hard to get advisors or put together an advisory board without getting out your cheque book. People in the valley (outwardly) seem to be more willing to take a chance, and trust that they'll get looked after in the event the business goes well. Not as much altruism in London.

- The UK is more risk-averse than the valley, you don't just need a vision, a prototype and a quality team, you need all that plus traction and profit before you fall inside investors appetite for risk.
Not really. Vim can't run a command inside a window like Emacs.
Get a man purse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnKRbEPbItE
I think it's it's really more a matter of experience than a worldview. In a previous life, I used to work on a (commercial) product with similar capabilities. I'm also not the sort of database superhero that can just spew optimal SQL effortlessly. In fact, I do tend to think at a level closer to relational algebra.

I've just come to find such abstraction layers less useful in the typical web app. They seem to be more applicable in an enterprise app setting where portability is important, control over the schema might be limited or non-existent, the performance and scalability requirements are more predictable. In a web app, the structural complexity of the data is often low or the data is not well-representable in relational form (note the rise in popularity of non-relational stores). Performance requirements are harder to predict. Adding an relational algebra abstraction layer in that context often doesn't add enough value to justify the increase in complexity - you still end up having to understand the entire depth of the stack while getting little benefit from the extra capabilities it offers beyond the warm fuzzy feeling of using something pretty neat.
Maybe it's just me but I thought that meant "I just installed Visual Studio 2010, now how do I make money?"
This is quite minimalist but interesting. I think you might get more traction if you spent some time writing up the "methodology" or workflow you're proposing here.

That is, if I understand it, I think what you're suggesting is that people use this app to take simple notes on acquaintances (e.g., "wife's name is Jane", "has three kids", "went to Penn State", etc.) and then use this app to recall those notes when you are about to meet these people (say, at a party or business function). A little writeup on this approach may help you clarify the value proposition for potential users, and should help you get some inbound links from productivity blogs.
I would have loved to meet you guys. Been really busy lately though but now slightly more free.

If you ever come up to Cambridge, drop me an email. It's in my profile.
One way that we get around false triggers is by using some sort of "push-to-gesture" system. This would tell the recognition component that it is time to pay attention. I could imagine using some simpler heuristic that determines if the user is squared off at or at least facing the TV before accepting any gestures.
Say Goodbye To Your Mouse - Hello 10 finger Touch
Scala 2.8.0 Beta 1 released
Ambidextrous children ‘at more risk of having learning difficulties’
The Semantic Web: Speaking to Humans With Readable Code
"The complaint itself is somewhat unusual in that it doesn't seek anything specific from Hillary. Rather, all it asks is for the court to certify that [the bank's] systems are reasonably secure."
Actually, given that Cocoa Touch is all just drawn to textures which are rendered by the 3D chip, it's trivial.

Not sure about apps that directly use 3D, but in the worst case they can draw to a restricted viewport.

In light of this, even scaling should be pretty straightforward considering Apple's iron grip on the APIs.
Busting an iPhone thief
Acceptance is likely due to Ian Taylor being a long term GCC developer who is easy to work with, which mean that 1) the front end obeys the often unwritten conventions for good behavior, and 2) they know Ian Taylor will be around to (and capable of) fixing the various unavoidable problems that will show up. Thus, the new front end should only put a minimal burden on the other maintainers.

The merit of Go itself has likely been less of a concern.
I was interested, saw i had to register, didn't bother.

note that i did bother to leave a comment.

lesson in usability.
Just tried in Aquamacs 1.9, seems to work, except I have the Command key as meta (because of years of having the Meta key immediately to the left of the spacebar), so the M-h binding ends up hiding Aquamacs rather than moving focus left. There should be a way to correct that because Aquamacs disables some other standard Mac "Command-" bindings when using Command as meta.
The leased life - Why own anything?
Interesting article about Rentalic.com (and other similar services) which makes it easier to lend and borrow common, but infrequently used.

Like so many other websites, it connects mutual beneficiaries - in this case, people who own things they don’t use much with people who want to use things without owning them. Members can post either belongings they have to offer or goods they are hoping to find. Items recently listed include a body fat scale ($5 a week), a bread maker ($1.75 a day), and a cupcake transporter ($3 a week). The site was launched last October with limited membership, and opened to the public earlier this month.

There have been many times where I've wanted to borrow/rent a high performance DSLR camera (for sporting events, special outings, etc.) but wouldn't feel right just bugging my friend for theirs. I can't afford the $1000+ price tag either, so that's not an option. I can understand that the DSLR example may not be the best example, because it's very expensive and fragile, but there are many other items available on their site which make perfect sense to borrow/rent for a fee (bikes, golf clubs, wheelbarrows, etc.)
Security by legal declaration? Not very confidence-inspiring.
Drupal Goes Hosted With Private Beta Launch of “Gardens”
Interesting article about Rentalic.com (and other similar services) which makes it easier to lend and borrow common, but infrequently used.

Like so many other websites, it connects mutual beneficiaries - in this case, people who own things they don’t use much with people who want to use things without owning them. Members can post either belongings they have to offer or goods they are hoping to find. Items recently listed include a body fat scale ($5 a week), a bread maker ($1.75 a day), and a cupcake transporter ($3 a week). The site was launched last October with limited membership, and opened to the public earlier this month.

There have been many times where I've wanted to borrow/rent a high performance DSLR camera (for sporting events, special outings, etc.) but wouldn't feel right just bugging my friend for theirs. I can't afford the $1000+ price tag either, so that's not an option. I can understand that the DSLR example may not be the best example, because it's very expensive and fragile, but there are many other items available on their site which make perfect sense to borrow/rent for a fee (bikes, golf clubs, wheelbarrows, etc.)
Let's hope Jobs finally has an answer to his own question, (quoting from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/technology/05tablet.html?_... ):

<…> the tablets kept getting shelved at Apple because Mr. Jobs, whose incisive critiques are often memorable, asked, in essence, what they were good for besides surfing the Web in the bathroom.
However, there already is a certain amount of free space allocated for this task. On the Intel drives, it's the difference between 80GiB and 80GB; the latter is the maximum addressable by the OS, the former is the actual capacity of the flash chips. Flash chips always have a power-of-2 capacity, and there are 5, 10 or 20 chips in the various intel drives.
LG, Nintendo may use pressure sensitive touchscreens this year