skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, I think filesystems are (inevitably?) converging towards search or some sort of computer-aided file organization.

I've been meditating a lot on this recently. The way I organize files is in a current directory for the last N weeks, or for the duration of the last project or similar. I then batch process it every so often and delete the files that need deleting and squirrel away the ones that may need referencing later in an actual hierarchical file system. This way a small number of recent files are readily available, and I have some hope of finding historical files later (at the cost of some upfront work).

Anyway, it occurred to me that I really don't enjoy doing this, that my time is better spent doing other things and that computers are supposed to be good at boring work like this anyway. Ideally, the computer should be able to help me "get the files I want" either by placing the files somewhere where I can later find them myself or by searching and providing them for me when I ask nicely.

All this leads me to wonder: are there any tag-based filesystems out there?

EDIT: answering my own question after a google search: http://code.google.com/p/xtagfs/
Steve Jobs: We Don't Ship Junk
With a reasonably defined quality space, what the article is saying is that the measure in any quality dimension is likely to correlate highly with that in any other: i.e. the measures are self-similar.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
This is impressive work. Anyone know who is behind it?
They are doing this on the side in the night to make some extra cash, not their main job, from what I understand.
I was searching for the quote,

well, we've been accused of a lot of things, but not being able to make money isn't one of them

And all I can find is this HN ref. When did Ballmer say that?
What would you do with $250,000?
Powerpoint is how the information is presented. Her post is all about how using a chalkboard leads to a better presentation of the material and increased focus. I like to teach using the chalkboard or whiteboard, and prefer learning that way as well.

There are some use cases for slides. A picture or graphic too complex to be drawn on the chalkboard. Animating an example (I've seen Steve Jobs use this to good effect). In my lectures I strive for a minimal slideshow, lots of chalkboard examples, and live demos of example code.
I had a professor whose lecture 'notes' where a series of overhead transparencies that were written out by him in wet-erase marker. The thing that frustrated me that most about them is that they were in essay-style. The entire transparency was packed with words, just a huge block of text. No separation of different ideas, no bullet points. The only breaks from the huge blocks of text were when he needed to show a graph.

It really frustrated me because unlike when a professor writes all of that stuff out on the board, he was able to breeze through the material without pause in barely enough time for anyone to write anything down. I was really frustrated at those lectures because I couldn't find a balance between taking notes and actually paying attention to what he was saying in the lecture.
In my experience:

A lecturer who is speaking and writing on a chalkboard (or equivalent) usually knows the lecture well and is writing to emphasize and explain key points.

A lecturer who is using PowerPoint often does not know the lecture well, and is trying to hide behind the slides or use them as notes to remember what to say.

Both may be experts about the domain they are discussing, but much more often the chalkboard presenter knows the lecture being given.
Optimizing Ad Banners with YieldBuild
Since it's J2ME, I signed up to see if I can port Hecl to it. What with the slow screen, an interpreter won't be the limiting factor.
is there any sort of indication re: a license to use it / not use it?
I told him, the issue should be fixed.
This really contributes a lot to the discussion, thanks.
Of a few sources for the clearest figures, most appeared to be quoting from this, and not self-pub figures like the OP of this thread.

Here's the best written I could find: http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost...

List price = MSRP/Cover Price.

If John Grisham has 10% printing costs, I think everyone else is likely to. The problem with extrapolating from self-pub figures is that these companies make money off of printing. Publishers don't make a penny off of printing, they make their money once pre-production and marketing has been paid off.

Of course every book is unique, some writers are awful and need more editing, others are brilliant and need none. Colour pages drive up prices ridiculously and non-fiction books are not priced like fiction, which is the major debate piece on the eBook front, discussing non-fiction is rather irrelevant as prices are based on work regardless of cost, plus they need to pay off expenses fast due to far lower sale volumes.
I vastly prefer handwritten presentations to Powerpoint presentations, but because it's so dynamic.

First, look at content. When you're delivering a Powerpoint presentation and a great side conversation arises, you are pressured to return to the content of your slides before you divert too far. If you don't, then you've lost your visual medium for interacting with your audience. Granted, sometimes it's better to refocus, but it's arrogant to believe you can always anticipate the best direction a conversation can take ahead of time. Anecdotally, my favorite classroom memories of school involve the teacher abandoning plans for the day because students were passionately interested in a side conversation. I'll note that none of those teachers used Powerpoint slides.

Next, there's form. Most subjects are easily broken down by bulleted lists, but that doesn't mean that it's always the most effective way to transmit information to others. Some Powerpointers are talented enough to genereate lots of high-quality picture-based slides, but they're few and far between. I've met some of these talented few, and they're always clearer on a markerboard, because they are able to dynamically change their diagrams as I ask questions and comment.

I realize Powerpoint works better for some scenarios, but if given the choice, I'll choose the guy with the marker in his hand every day of the week
Not to mention the courtesy of not promoting competitors products in one vendor's own turf.

It's weird, I thought that once I purchased a phone, the phone became my turf.
Hack Your Brain Into Productive Daydreaming
So, again, you don't actually have any data to back up that claim? Ok, that's my point. You're talking from your own experience with your video collection. That's fine, but you should understand that that may not always be a good indication of the demands of millions of other people. I strongly disagree with your estimation, but I likewise lack data, so I won't make any claims about percentages.

The iPad's limitations will only be known once people get their hands on them

The video codec support is listed on the tech specs page on Apple's site. A more exhaustive resource is Apple's developer site. This is not mysterious unknown information.
It does.

VC-1 has hardware support in a number of areas and is included in WMP since at least 10, IIRC. h.264 still is not supported on any version of Windows before 7, and is only available in Flash.

Supporting h.264, with your logic, makes no sense.
Maybe you haven't heard, but at least 1 in 10 people in the US can't find work right now. Unemployment figures always undercount by quite a bit. The official "discouraged workers" count is about 10 million, so let's put real unemployment closer to 16%.

We don't all live in Sunny California where tech jobs are seemingly always abundant -- unemployment wouldn't be so high if the jobs were available. If you can't find any work, then $200 is better than missing rent and living on the street.

If you think unemployed or underemployed coders are either terrible at what they do or aren't looking, well, you're not living in the same country as me.
"I guess I'm just old-fashioned: I like to receive my content unfiltered and make my own decisions."

then, why are you using an apple product? Part of the iphone value proposition is that they do that filtering.
I suppose that if you're an unemployed programmer in the US doing something like this might at least keep you engaged and your skills up to date, even if the money isn't enough to pay the bills.
Why Riak should power your next Rails app
Here's the best explained I've found: http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost...

Other breakdowns always seem to hit close. All numbers are averages, but printing generally hit between 8% and 12% for fiction. However all prices vary, some writers need no editing so figures for printing will be artificially raised, whilst a poor writer with great ideas will cost a small fortune to edit and printing will be tiny in comparison.

Colour pages and anything else always cost more (I once read 20 colour pages in a book can cost as much to print as the other 230 pages), same with non-colour artwork and everything else.

Non-fiction is always priced differently from fiction due to extra steps in the editing process. Sources have to be reviewed and evaluated, plus the author can have an advance before they've finished the second chapter.
The "light" drawing feature impressed me the most. Nice work!
the populist attention to AGW is irrelevant from a science standpoint. that is a political issue and should stay as such. a scientists job shouldn't become half scientist half PR relations just because the general public happens to show some interest. but alas, scientists need funding, and are all too human. public attention is one way to generate grants.
Tag based structuring is rather progressive thinking.

People who write/design file systems are neither progressive nor creative.

Don't believe me? Just look at the names :P
The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict
Or, you could compete like this: both companies sell products, and make money. Whoever makes the most money 'wins', but those that make more than they spend still get ranked in the credits.

I don't really see the need for any other sort of 'business competition'.
Underemployment is arguably worse than unemployment for a given person. It ends up moving the equilibrium S/D price to a drastically lower position in the short run, and ultimately somewhat a lower position than where it should be. Taking gigs like this is foolish for anyone in software who cares about a stable salary any time in the future.
For me, personally, I tend to low ball my costs because I'm just not that sure of my ability.

Where do you gauge something like that? There isn't anywhere.
Investment simulation/model game.
hi...

trying to find out if someone in yc land has any pointers/contacts with anyone who's created a functional web based app for an investment simulation/game.

basically, i'm talking about a situation where a user can create a fictitous company, and others can then invest in the company using "chips/points".. there is no exchange of real dollars/cash, so this isn't an attempt to rip someone off or make cash as in a ponzi scheme..

i'm looking to be able to do large scale modeling, so i need a basic investment process..

any thoughts/comments would be appreciated!

thanks..

tom
It turns out I was running Safari in 32 bit mode. I have no idea how that got changed, though.
I honestly think this is related to the ideas in Edward Tufte's "Cognitive Style of Power Point: Pitching Out Corrupts Within" [1]. I've had professors who used PP elegantly, but, anecdotally, their methodology was far different. I'd speculate that PP simply doesn't have the information capacity to truly cover complex material.

If a professor understands this, they can use it effectively as a skeleton of a lecture which persists aiding students' intuition of the hierarchy of the material. If a professor, who may well understand the material, doesn't catch the information dearth of PP, they often only end up presenting a small part of the material.

[1] http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp
And or learn something new while getting paid to do it.
The great global warming collapse
FYI the term 'corporate welfare' typically refers to governments giving special treatment to corporations, not corporations tolerating unproductive hangers-on.
Wow this is really fast and responsive!
Invite Media is hiring in Philadelphia and New York City.

http://www.invitemedia.com/careers/open_positions.shtml

Big engineering problems, an amazing team, growing quickly, and free food/beer!
Would it be possible in the future to supplement our existing font formats to have two versions, one for subpixels one way, and one for the other (so that the OS could transparently switch between which version to use)? Or am I misunderstanding how subpixel fonts work?
I am very impressed
The best lectures I've seen have powerpoint & chalkboard, sometimes with an overhead projector. Each have their purpose.

1. For displaying text, graphics, animations, etc a powerpoint presentation is great.

2. The chalk board is great for pulling out important equations that will be used throughout the lecture (not lost on slide changes) and to interactively work through a problem. You can draw something out and then ask students what to do next and then execute.

3. Overhead slides are great to manipulations on complex forms. For instance showing how a parser works on a piece of text you can use a pen to mark up the text. Or to show how different actions can effect a system. For instance if we increase the interest rate, the line moves like this etc. This allows you to answer questions in real-time in a visual way.
The term "software engineer" has always been problematic to me for this reason, and a lot of real engineers agree, but among software people it's just become accepted. Whether you keep on arguing about it it mostly a matter of your own stubbornness. I'm stubborn enough about it to distinguish "software engineers" from real engineers, but I'm not stubborn enough to turn down a job just because the job title contains the term "software engineer".
It's a reference to this blog post:
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-...
Have you actually used IE8 as your main browser for any length of time? It's actually quite good. Certainly better than FireFox+Firebug for development, with its proper javascript debugger.

If it weren't for Chrome, I'd be using it today.
Could be. It sure will make the next round of programs tricky, though, won't it?

- TrashFlab
- BrashGrab
- GashBlab

Oh... it's going to be ugly. ;-)
From my experience it really depends on the class that you are taking. If the class relies heavily on images that cannot be easily drawn or represented and needs little textual content to achieve ideas PowerPoint presentations can really work well.

When you have subjects like mathematics and physics purely chalkboard whiteboard lectures is the only thing that works, even classes that are based heavily on either really need a chalkboard.

A mix can work well when the lecturer needs to represent a large amount of diagrams and concepts but still needs to explain how to work out complicated concepts, like example problems. (This is usually where the lecturer really knows a subject.)
Adaptation (calmer iPad opinion)
I'm aware of that usage, but I think it's still OK to use it in a different way. :-)
"Though if I know in advance that the “trial day” will consist of me “donating work for free” then I doubt it is a place for me."

It sounds like you and I actually agree for the most part. Both the hirer and the hiree have the same problem: hiring is almost like extracting War & Peace from a newspaper. Is it necessarily fair for me to turn somebody down for wanting me to do a "trial day"? Of course not. But I have to go on what I have to go on. Just like it's not fair for an employer to hire me using a cover letter, a resume, and a couple of hour-long interviews.

So if a company asks me to work for free for a day, should I draw the conclusion that they're really wanting to evaluate me well or that they're cheapskates who won't pay people for doing work? Just like you'd probably rather turn away a superstar than hire a dud, I'd rather turn down a kickass company than work for a crappy one. So I'm probably going to go with the latter.

Don't get me wrong, money isn't what I'm in this for either. But that doesn't mean I should let people take advantage of me.
Maybe Hulu is right to block Boxee?
a very nice showcase of how redundant and useless Flash is, and will be, once HTML5 goes "live". i for one am just eagerly awaiting Flash's total death.
They should be fired, but in practice they rarely are.

There's not really a big difference between a firing and a layoff, except in terms of scale. Rarely are whole groups of employees fired, but layoffs are -- well, precisely that.

When planning layoffs, managers are usually told to identify the "dead wood" in their organizations -- unproductive, wasteful souls. That'd include our corporate politicians, and in some cases, they are actually included.
I wonder if this is true of reading online as well? I very rarely feel stressed, and I read a lot online, but the two might not be related.
> and scientists are just as arrogant, dogmatic and condescending when they are wrong as when they are right. Look at the many conflicting ideas that economists have brought forward over the last two hundred years.

Economists are not scientists.

> Trans-fats were made into margarine and promoted on scientific grounds as healthier than butter.

Scientists don't create products and promote them. Entrepreneurs and marketers do.

> Look at the science of ‘eugenics’ in the light of whose findings judges once condemned people to involuntary sterilization.

Was 'eugenics' ever an agreed-upon scientific consensus? According to Wikipedia: "Eugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species." How does that definition include the "involuntary sterilization" of people? I'm thinking this reference is less about 'science' and more about trying to slip a Nazi reference in through the back door.
What do you suggest, then?

If you can't find a job that pays your normal salary, don't work at all? So, homelessness?

Or a career change? Take up a job as a janitor for a few years until the job market recovers, then look for programming work again?

It doesn't sound like you are grasping the situation millions of people are in right now. They've been without jobs for months if not over a year, the local labor market in much of the country has more available workers than jobs (hence the 16%+ unemployment and underemployment), they've long since run out of credit and savings to tide them over... and you're suggesting they pass up income opportunities because it might hurt their future salary.
I made a comment saying I felt sorry for Adobe. Then I deleted it.

I went back to the site and had another look.

Poor Adobe.
buy a dock
Using class-based views effectively with Django
Object-oriented programming stresses the idea of code reuse, through concepts like inheritance and polymorphism. View programming in django can sometimes get a boost from class-based design.
Anyone with some Riak experience care to talk about it?
In fact, Georgia is a no-brainer kind of choice if your site is text-heavy. It needs to be opened up a bit -- the line-height should be around 1.4em -- but it makes the right word shapes (most "expert" reading happens at higher pattern-recognition levels than letters) without sacrificing clarity at the level of letter shapes and letter-spacing (as, say, a Garamond or Palatino might). Serifs make a huge difference in readability. They just got a bad on-screen reputation from implementations like Times New Roman on Windows (which is more of a weak encryption scheme than a legitimate typographic decision).
What you say is correct but doesn't even go far enough. What authors need is an insurance company.

What risk is being insured against? The risk of spending six months to a year per book to construct books, and then discovering that the books can't make enough money to feed you. The scariest cost of producing a book has nothing to do with paper, or even with marketing or editing. It is opportunity cost: When you're writing a book, you're not doing anything else, and you may be very well throwing your time away.

Software startups reduce this kind of risk by taking money from angels or VCs. (a.k.a. "publishers"). Or they try to gauge product/market fit as quickly as possible by doing things like shipping early, charging money, listening to customers, A/B testing, etc. However, this doesn't work well for books. Books have a smaller market than software, are harder to prototype, are much harder for customers to try out (it takes a lot of effort to thoroughly evaluate a novel), are much less valuable if they fail [1], and have a much more mature, undifferentiated, and well-saturated market: Your software has to compete against about fifty years' worth of earlier software products, most of which suck, and 95% of which won't even run on the machines your customers own. Your book has to compete against William Shakespeare. Literally.

How does the insurance work? A publisher reads your first book (or the first three chapters and an outline, which I'm told is a fairly standard way to submit a book proposal) and then offers immediate, free feedback: Either they accept it, which means pledging to stake a bunch of money and reputation to bring it to market, or they reject it. If your first book doesn't get accepted, it's a very valuable sign: You need to keep your day job, and you need to either become a better writer, try writing something different, try a different hobby, or learn to live without actually selling any of your work.

---

[1] Everyone on HN knows that having worked at a failed startup is no big deal. It teaches you a lot. You get a lot of resume-enhancing experience. And your failed software experiment may have valuable pieces that can be extracted. But bad novels are literally a dime a dozen, and an unpublished novelist with three failed novels is not worth any more on the job market than one with no failed novels.
Calculated Risk (http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/) one of the best real estate blogs around, thinks that rates won't go up very far - 30 or 40 basis points, iirc.
http://mugtug.com/ and http://www.colorjack.com/blog
Nice.

I see that you added the IEcanvas code to the source, but it looks like you might need to do some more IE testing. I see 3 javascript errors followed by a black screen in IE8.
Just a quick note:

Pixelcal.com feels like a parked-domain-with-links kinda thing. I guess it's the style under "Upcoming" and "Recently added". Just thought I'd let you know (didn't look further, but going back now) :)
thought experiment: walk around your workplace and see how many non-developers work in windows with all their windows maximized
Still remember the first time I saw somebody painting on the old mac. B&W, naturally.
high five. awesome html5 example. however ...

selection tool defaults to 7 sided poly, which is not intuitive, and seems to move against the user's intention a bit.
Kindle Development Kit, Now Accepting Beta Requests
Maybe you haven't heard, but at least 1 in 10 people in the US can't find work right now.

How many of those 10% are unemployed coders who would be glad to take work for $2 / hr? I'm guessing zero.

Sorry, but $200 for two weeks of work is less than minimum wage. If that's all you can make as a programmer in the US, you're either not looking in the right places or you're not much of a programmer. I know enough programmers (myself included) who charge more than an order of magnitude more than that and turn down work constantly to think otherwise. And I'm no rockstar. A good friend of mine who does PHP web development landed a good telecommute software developer job last year making $80k / yr. He lives in the Midwest and has been coding for like 3 years.

So maybe I'm not living in the same country as you.