skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most of the generic pontificating I find on the run-of-the-mill programming blog just seems like a marketing ploy to me. I worked with a guy who updates his blog almost every day, sometimes more than once, and always syndicates it onto Facebook, but it's all for marketing, and it's really annoying, because the post basically just boils down to "X is cool, here are a few paragraphs about what I like about it, I can implement it for your business!"

On the other hand, posts that are informed by real-world experience and stories that discuss specific implementations are almost always at least somewhat interesting. This is what Joel came up on; he became well-known because his blog detailed hiring practices and how they've worked out for his company, certain strategies and fallacies at Juno, Microsoft, and Fog Creek, and the outcomes of them, and informed analyses of progress at the institutions wherein he has specific knowledge (primarily Fog Creek, I reckon).

Joel's posts were interesting because he had a lot of stories and a lot of anecdotes to back them up. His blog doesn't simply say, "I think if you give programmers offices with good equipment you'll end with some pretty good programmers", but "I thought if you gave programmers offices and good equipment you'd get good programmers, so here at Fog Creek we do that. Here are some pictures. When I was at Microsoft, everyone was sad because middle-management got the glory and the offices. At Fog Creek, we focus on our programmers, and it greatly increases our productivity, morale, etc.". One of these is much more interesting.
Was just thinking that. Very good job.
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Unfortunately we have no technology to manage (or enlighten) 6 billion irrational human beings.

EDIT: And so... variations on the Tragedy of the Commons march on.
Best advice is not eating anything at least 3 hours prior to bed time. Your body will do the rest and makes sure you're ready to rock in the morning.
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How long is the predicted life on these big boxes though? The thirty years quote was abut how long a fuel cell should last. How long do these ones last though?

Well. It can't be worse than coal.
Crisis will always happen, things will always change. That is not in question.
It's foolish to just brush everything off and say 'we will be fine, the system will correct itself'. The system will certainly always correct itself, but it's possible to happen upon a crisis that hits so fast, or a sneaky crisis a long time in the making (and requiring too long to fix), that the wrongs cannot be righted before catastrophic damage occurs. (And by catastrophic I mean not a market crash or whatever but nation-, society-, race-, or world-ending)
Why do people comment? Perhaps it's because they can. People can say what they like. But I still have to filter it. And that wastes my time.

I like threads and tree like comments as it can be interesting to see the ideas and feedback at play. But sometimes I think it would be far better if the comments remained completely on topic.

The problem is good jeurnalism is inherently difficult. I resist writing blog posts because I'd spend too long on a post. As a teacher I'd spend a day at least on a hand out. And a post requires listening to feedback and fine tuning it. That's great if you have an informed receptive audience.

If I do ever bother with a blog, I think I'd ask for my desired feedback. I'd like users to submit links to relavant associated content.

I do enjoy a 'good' article about programming, I specifically like to hear about people's mistakes.
I think that's a great idea. Most sites don't go nearly far enough to maintain decorum or civility, in my opinion. Acerbic discourse makes the communities inaccessible and scary, and usually results in site-wide bullying by the holders of the majority viewpoint.

I strongly encourage strict civility enforcement. I'm looking forward to its implementation, especially since so few places do it. Reddit constantly ostracizes and mocks its users whose beliefs may differ from its mainstream users; for instance, if you look at /r/christianity, many threads are eventually invaded by /r/atheist, and they upvote comments like "There is no god so don't worry about it", and downvote all of the serious responses that a peruser of /r/christianity would want to see. They leave abusive comments on the responses by Christians. The place is brimming with hostility for alternate viewpoints.

I see this kind of thing creeping into HN, too. I've noticed recently a large increase in the number of unworthily downvoted comments, and end up upvoting these to increase their scores though I otherwise wouldn't have done so. It seems to me that people here are beginning to fall into the same thought process that seems to eventually take over every "social news" site, where users with differing beliefs or opinions, no matter how articulately or thought-provokingly expressed, are oppressed by the tyranny of the mob.

So, please, I implore you to keep incivility off of HN to whatever extent possible. Strict moderation is key, imo. Let the naysayers say on; do what's needed to preserve the utility and pleasantness of the community. There are plenty of places online for the abuser and flamer to find refuge; let HN be a beacon of intelligence, helpfulness, and civility. It's especially needed among tech/programming communities.
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News issues
You clearly aren't religious =p . In a very very large part of the world (a large amount of non-first-world-countries [if not all]) divorce is not ever going to happen. Arranged marriages happen. If a woman is raped, she will have to marry that man because religion may dictate it.

These views aren't worldly at all. We should keep that in mind.
yes, it's getting more important quite quick.
This reminds me of the importance of thinking about what you want from each visit to your site. Google quickly became about generating a return on each visit (as someone else has said, google: 1 query => 1 visit, where that 1 visit becomes something with potential ad revenue). Facebook hasn't got the context to provide anything like this, I believe.
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Fantastically, offensively wrong? Care to give an example?
I think a lot of the "he's wrong" reactions stem from knee-jerk reactions. People often miss the point that what he's writing about comes form his own experience. It might not be universally true, but he will still have valid points worthy of consideration.

Then again, people writing angry comments are rarely the kind of people who will take the time to reflect on what they read.
Am I in Pi?
He's actually written quite a bit about programming, but over the years he's (naturally) shifted to writing more about the business of software development and how to run a software business. He's clearly opinionated, but his opinions are still valuable.
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Sounds like a really bad idea to me.
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Bummer, didn't really see that coming. For some reason I felt like Andrew didn't need the money (from what little he posts about his background and experiences with his former company). There was this feel that the main goal of the site was really to collect and chronicle the modern day entrepreneur... and really, he was doing a bang up job at it. (Dare I say the best job yet?)

Guess I can't blame him for wanting to profit, but this particular move for profit just feels cheap. I would've much rather see some other ways of profiting. i.e. Quarterly Boxed DVD Sets, etc.
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This isn't necessarily true - it's quite possible that a Wordpress index template is the first thing run. The idea that copyright law hinges on who called whom first remains preposterous, though.
Here's hash maps A and B. Identify all values which are present in A but not in B.

In an interview at another company there might be a complication like "By the way, A and B are Google-sized" or "By the way, A and B are being written to." or "By the way, you have to do it in constant space.", but none of those things apply to our business.
...is the wrong answer.

If the host happened to pick the door with the car, you wouldn't get the option of switching. And the host does not reveal what is behind the door you chose.
A recent paper with a thorough analysis:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1002.0651v1
Good idea, as some researchers just showed that naps work:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8524549.stm
I meant standard as in, that's what people turn their Latex into when they publish it. But I take blame for the bad wording, latex itself does output DVI :)
Who's this "we" you're referring to?

"We" aren't a dictatorship, "we" don't turn on a dime and immediately decide to destroy another country. "We" tend to try diplomacy first, "we" had to learn that lessor measures wouldn't work (e.g. the Flying Tigers) and that Japan's behavior towards adversaries had changed since WWI or perhaps was different than it had been with Western ones (e.g. Russia), "we" also included the U.K. and Netherlands (other majors sources of steel and oil).

You're trying to create a moral equivalency that I can't quite figure out this early in the morning but that doesn't make any sense to me, so for now I'll just point out that you want perfection, you're not going to find it in international diplomacy and war.

ADDED: Ah, are you trying to say that because our behavior prior to the war was imperfect, we didn't then have the moral standing to end it in a way that ensured we would be able to make sure it didn't continue in due course, as with WWI -> WII?

FURTHER ADDED: Also remember that at the time we the US were responsible for the defense and general well being of the Philippines and that the costs of any war our action provoked with the regional power would inevitably fall more heavily on its inhabitants.

Our reaction to Imperial Japan's aggression was necessarily not a simple thing.
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I think the fact that you'd need a natural gas pipeline, or a propane tank out back, kind of negates the "disconnected from the grid" thingy.

Also, where does one get the energy to heat the magic box to 1800 F?
It's free. ;-)
> by phrasing a comment in such a way that if I don't respond it seems like it's because I have no response to make

I dare say not many people here would fall for that, and you shouldn't really care about those who do. Most are still surprised you take the time to answer as much as you do.

I'd say the problems with points are different though. From the way my comments are voted recently I noticed three things:

- the upvoted comments are those which fit the common opinion, and upvoting them is used to express it.

- the ones I honestly considered good and original stay at 1-2. I have absolutely no idea if they made an impact whatsoever.

- from the way scores fluctuate I'm guessing some amount of downvoting

Overall I tend to believe that HN is more and more aggregating _opinions_ instead of _ideas_.
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Because... what? Any skilled engineer is somehow automagically also blessed with entrepreneurial spirit?
I can see it now. "Behind one of these doors is a job offer with your name on it! The other two go to janitorial supplies, and the networking closet. You just might get lucky!"
Anyone else find figure 2 shocking? the basic conclusion seems to be that availablity of somewhat effective contraceptives lulls people into a false sense of security.
I had to stop watching the video half way though, because I was laughing so hard. To me this looks like a definite energy generation hoax, of which there have been many in the past. A wafer of sand (silicon) painted green is not going to produce much (if any) electricity.

Suspend your suspension of disbelief and engage physics 101.
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why? for a job that involves work with probability modelling it would certainly be relevant.
I've tried many of the note taking methods the author has mentioned. But only the plain text files manage to stick around. And once I found Dropbox, I symlinked my note taking text files in to Dropbox directory.
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Someone mentioned take a nap, and I completely agree. Here's what you do: pack your lunch every day (its cheaper, and you'll most likely eat healthier, both making you more alert). Go to your car at noon (or whenever you take your lunch break), put the seat down and take a 30-45 minute nap. Keep the AC or heat on, and if you're like me, turn the radio on and keep it on very low volume. Set your phone to wake you up.

Go back to work, eat your lunch in front of your work station (while working, responding to emails, tickets, etc.) and you'll be very refreshed.

Eat some foods high in natural fat (uncooked/unroasted raw almonds are great) later in the afternoon, but do not eat a lot of sugar or carbs.

This has been working for a while for me so when I get home I can still work away on personal projects.
Would upmod you to heaven, were it possible! :-)

I'm in Asia and 8 hours is a fantasy, by the way. 10 hours to 12 hours is the new 8 hours here. HR folks' jaw drops when you talk about part-time, by the way.
I use emacs org-mode and get a lot of mileage from it.
Cisco (a couple were the cofounders).
I guess the boxes that eBay and Google are using have hamsters inside them instead?
US 'closes in on Google hackers'
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I bought Philips "Wake-up-light" and I am happy with it.
The site supports long term relation with specific translators I liked. You simply ask them and they arrange it.

They dont do version control yet, that would be nice and as for price it is the lowest price I found for professional translation. They charge the same price for all languages and they dont charge extra for fast delivery.

Google is free but I would use it only for reading never for writing.
Mozilla shutting down development of Ubiquity for the time being
If you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend the Jinja2 template engine. It's almost a drop in replacement for Django templates, but has a proper if, macros and a few other extras. I have a Jinja version of render_to_response() and I will post it if someone is interested.
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This is one test I've used: write a program that reads a text file and then prints out all the lines in reverse order.
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BBC News - US 'closes in on Google hackers'
You mean my bias towards wanting actual evidence of the benefits of this benevolent kingship? I hope you don't think the European monarchies of the past are good examples of anything (although constitutional monarchies fall on my side of the argument as they defer to parliaments and the leaders are not near-dictators in the sense being proposed here). I am not certain about your history if you think interest group politics now is worse than pre-democratic periods.

Liberal representative democracies are self-modifying. That is why the United States will persevere well past the records of the petty genetically-based monarchies, quite asides from the fact that even if were it to end tomorrow its achievements politically, technologically and economically outrank anything in human history (I am not a US citizen by the way).

I can understand the allure of a powerful leader who understands what needs to be done for some of the entrepreneurs on this forum. But you are peddling is basically the argument used by the supporters of fascism; strong leader, central control (as opposed to letting the market sort things out) and a total naivety toward the nature of corruption (do away with checks and balances because they are just hindering the visionary leader who has our best interests at heart). And as with most naive political reforms it totally fails the "but what happens when the other side has 51%" test.
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neat... I am in Pi at starting location: 565774
This is actually an interesting variation of the problem. If a random door opens but by chance happens to not have the prize, then the result is different.
whats the idea with getting into a segment that is crowded already? do you have something better?
I'm the most productive in the early morning

This is actually the norm, at least for those of us who arrive at work in the morning.

Of course the meeting is called by management because morning is also when THEY are the most productive, and meetings are much of their job. So your needs are inferior to theirs. Nothing new about that...
I know... that's why I said it.
Another similar problem from http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/

You visit a family whose three children are all at the local school.
You don't know anything about the sexes of the children. While walking
clumsily round the home, you stumble through one of the three
unlabeled bedroom doors that you know belong, one each, to the three
children, and find that the bedroom contains girlie stuff in
sufficient quantities to convince you that the child who lives in that
bedroom is a girl.
Later, you sneak a look at a letter addressed to the parents, which
reads `From the Headmaster: we are sending this letter to all parents
who have male children at the school to inform them about the
following boyish matters'.

These two sources of evidence establish that at least one of the three
children is a girl, and that at least one of the children is a boy.
What are the probabilities that there are (a) two girls and one boy;
(b) two boys and one girl?
Not very fair, though, if even maths professors get it wrong.

On the other hand at this point it seems everybody should have heard about it already, so it might work as a test for curiousness.
That is correct, of course (otherwise, I'd be unemployed!). But what you comment on might mean "design" as in "system architecture design"?
The people at Google are no doubt hotshot software engineers, but how many of them are physicists/chemists I wonder. Has there been an independent scientific confirmation that the underlying mechanism of electricity generation is valid, and produces significant net energy gain? I very much doubt that.

Do we have anyone here on HN who can actually confirm that these devices have been installed at Google?

I've taken an interest in various energy generation ideas over the years, and a fair amount of hoaxing has always gone on. Sometimes the hoaxes are quite sophisticated an investors who like what they see but know little about physics end up being defrauded out of large amounts of money. From what I've seen in this article/video this raises all the classic red flags which you could expect from a hoax operation.
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Hmmm, I wrote and edited UK IT trade magazines for well over 15 years and I can tell you a couple of things in my experience:

1. The editorial staff didn't give a fig for the adverts that went in. Once the magazine had been put to bed, we hardly ever looked at it again, apart from to see how the colour repro came out.

2. Occassionally we would get calls from a vendor who was stupid enough to suggest that we should cover them, since they advertised. It gave us the greatest pleasure to tell them we really didn't care.

3. Occasionally an ad-sales guy would make a stupid promise to bring something to editorial's attention. They got short shrift. But that's what ad-sales sometimes guys do, they sometimes make silly promises to try and make their quota. That doesn't mean the organisation is rotten to the core.
I do indeed mean architectural design.
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I was thinking on how Wars fund many technological break thoughts and more often improves the economy. Where would the internet be without War? DARPA anyone?

If there were no war in the world tomorrow, millions would go out of work.
I always find this the most interesting part of it:
"A restated version of Selvin's problem appeared in Marilyn vos Savant's Ask Marilyn question-and-answer column of Parade in September 1990 (vos Savant 1990). Though vos Savant gave the correct answer that switching would win two-thirds of the time, she estimates the magazine received 10,000 letters including close to 1,000 signed by PhDs, many on letterheads of mathematics and science departments, declaring that her solution was wrong (Tierney 1991). "
Especially the science PhD's (I have seen quotes from some of the letters..).
Could this phenomenon happen because of stress ?

I've done several interviews where I was asked to code and I really don't think it's easy, because you're under intense pressure of doing your task right the first time and under a very tight time frame. Sometimes even with your interviewer sitting next to you.
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It's incredible sailormoon is getting upvoted for basically proposing the arguments used by the fascists (strong central man, remove checks and balances to help him clean up) and making the incredibly stupid move of assuming that people (from both sides, now and into the unforeseeable future) won't extend their term of office when they are a "king, with near-unlimited power to do practically anything they want". This argument wasn't believed by the actual fascists that took power, they were far more cynical, but it was made to and believed by the people who were duped into voting for them. I just keep rubbing my eyes and looking at his upvotes.
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I do the same after reading an article on zenhabits.net. Of course, I get up at 5:50 am, but only because it allows me to get a seat on the bus and train.
Yeah, there's more scope to maneuver in a fiat-money system; I was mainly objecting to what seemed to be the suggestion that under a gold standard FRB and the money multiplier somehow wouldn't exist. It seems that some people in this group want to somehow mandate that everyone conduct their transactions by literally exchanging gold coins in bags. But the people with that viewpoint tend to also be libertarians... how, consistent with libertarianism, can the government prohibit private individuals from exchanging pieces of paper saying "I owe you 5 ounces of gold", and force them to physically exchange the 5 ounces of gold instead? But if the government doesn't force them to physically exchange the gold, you have a money multiplier, and, in effect, privately minted fiat currency. And the related bubbles and crashes would also exist, as they have for centuries.
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