skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Doesn't look any easier than a mod_wsgi setup, especially on Ubuntu which he chose as the server OS, so the rationale 'Maybe it's that we want to avoid the added complexity of Apache in our setup.' does not really hold.
Also, like some of the other articles in the series it looks more like a random blog post than an article dedicated to a new Django 1.2 feature.
When you're loading in ajax content, it loads very slowly. I clicked the sign-up button and it took about a second to load.
> How much should I ask for?

More than you can get. (Unfortunately, biz folk respect folks who play games.)

It comes down to alternatives, yours and theirs.

You shouldn't join if you've got better alternatives. They shouldn't pay you (salary, equity) more than it would cost them to get "good enough" from someone else.

If they don't get you to sign on, what are their alternatives?
Culture is a byproduct of humanity and therefore it's quirks are a reflection of our quirks.
Ask HN: PhD students - how do you find a remarkable research topic?
I stumbled upon Seth Godin's TED talk yesterday in which he presented his Purple Cow meme about the importance of being remarkable. As I listened, I couldn't help but think how true his words were, even for research.

I'm a PhD student in my second year currently searching for that topic that I'll pursue for the next few years to ultimately get a degree. One thing I've noticed looking at older students is that they fall into three camps. The first group pursues a random assortment of small projects for ~5 years and graduates with a "stapler thesis" -- essentially a grab bag thesis describing their small forays. The second group picks an obscure and incremental topic and pursues it, becoming an expert on a novel, but ultimately unexciting, phenomena.

The final group are the ones that truly succeed, and I expect are the ones that land jobs at top-tier research schools. They are the ones that manage to innovate not at the research level, but at the conceptual one. Rather than thinking up new ways to better old problems, they find a way to look at things that completely surprises/delights people when they hear about it.

So to all those PhD students out there that fall into this third category: how do you do your brainstorming? How do you identify the large-scale research themes waiting to be discovered? Is it dumb luck, inherited gift, or the result of a process that can be learned?
>A custom solution will always be better.

This statement is so absurd to me. I guess it depends on what you load into the word "better". Taking your idea to the extreme, why doesn't Facebook just develop a computer from the ground up, with custom hardware, a custom OS, and everything else? Wouldn't that be faster?

I don't agree with your statement even on the basic level. Why do you even use any pre-made tools if you could just crank out everything and have it work "better"? Why use an established programming language at all?

Custom-made is not always better, especially not at a place where it just now dawned on the developers "if we make a library, we won't have to keep rewriting the same things!"

Let's take the example of Google, a more stable and mature company than Facebook. They certainly have the resources to come up with a completely custom stack if necessary. Why, then, does Google run on Linux? Sure, they modify their systems to meet their needs, but it's still Linux. And, why does Google occasionally rebase their customized kernel off of mainline? Shouldn't Google just rewrite all of those patches so that they are applicable specifically to their situation if custom is always better?

I mean, seriously, be reasonable here. The communities behind Linux or BSD or LLVM or many other open-source projects are skilled and experienced. They may make some sacrifices for the general-purpose nature of their systems, but I sincerely doubt one could sit down and churn out from scratch an OS that's "better" than Linux just like that for their specific use case. Linux or BSD is almost always going to be better than a custom solution. There are a few cases where this wouldn't be true, but in most cases, it is true, and to assume otherwise is silly.

The only advantage of writing something custom comes if the authors of an open system haven't considered your specific problem set, but even then, unless the open system is trivial (relatively) or its implementation is totally off-kelter for your project, you're better off modifying something than starting from scratch.
They should use git-svn.

using a new version with a few new features of an existing tool (svn) is always an easier sell than using two new tools (git, git-svn) as well, especially when one (git) has a reputation as being very complex, and the other (git-svn) looks like a hack to glue two different systems together.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=483610

Maybe?

(btw, op, there is another post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=483605 asking a similar question with numerous good answers... and only one of them is mine!)
It looks like a typical garbage collection file: a collection of letters to the government from people suggesting or accusing Einstein of communism, anarchy, or any anti-government suggestions.

Looking through, it appears whack-jobs are not a TV-made phenomena (as we've been led to believe) and that whack-jobs have been prevalent in society for much longer than any of us suspected. This give me great pause and concern...
The Seaquest DSV could take it.
you're still skewing things.

all that matters is power. the distinction you make above can easily be handled in terms of power: someone who can throw you in prison has more power over you than someone who cannot. restricting that to "government" adds blinders. for example, it takes the focus away from those that pay lobbyists to enact and enforce certain rules. by focussing on power and those that wield it you are freed from distortions like that.

it's no different to any other field: focussing on the abstract concept lets you handle more cases. talking about "oop" is often more useful than talking about "java"; focussing on "government" rather than "power" is the same mistake as confusing java with (all of) object oriented programming.

of course, java is (probably) the largest oo language, just as the us government is (probably) the largest source of power. but that doesn't stop the more abstract approach from being more useful.
Why not integrate that into Goggles, instead of launching a complete new App?
Bollocks. If it was only used for finding lost or stolen computers, why did they turn it on in the case that was reported and why did they act on the information obtained to punish a kid for something done outside of school? That doesn't compute.
"During the Olympics", she said with a sneer
"your site can't use an Olympian's name even if they use your gear."

Something makes me think that wouldn't hold up in court. You can't copyright a fact.
We're all just creatures of habit
With regard to your first comment I will look into this and try and fix it - works fine in IE, Firefox and Chrome (I believe) but I thought that to be true of Safari too. I will look into it and fix it.

With regard to your second comment - Favilous is aimed at the mass market. We feel that Delicious, in particular, is a bookmarking site for 'techies' and we are keen that anyone can use Favilous. We also want to focus on the bookmarking and not just the social part of social bookmarking. We also feel we fit well with the IPhone and IPad markets - our site is particularly visual, clean and simple. Added to that the fact then when you are browsing from any browser be it IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari (on the IPhone or IPad) you can bookmark any link using Favilous

If you're somebody who thinks "I like this article but I haven't got time to read it now, I'll read it when I get home", you might email the link to yourself for when you do get home. With favilous you can click one button and it saves it for reading later.

We wanted a visually compelling site that focused on bookmarking and the ease of bookmarking. With additional touches such as being able to have your own background image, sending links to your Favilous followers, seeing what is popular on Favilous and discovering new sites and reading descriptions of sites.

We are also going to be offering a big feature in the coming weeks that we hope will give us a niche in what is a very competitive market.
It is pretty cool. The email has a broken link in it (They've added you to a project called "XXX"), but you're probably aware of that by now :)

I like its simplicity. I would say you could benefit from a few borders surrounding specific tasks, but nothing major.

Thanks for sharing.
The Canon S90 has a soft-dial that can be configured to shutter speed or aperture.
It's actually simpler (and I think more used) to wait until someone leaves their home, and then one follows the victim while the other one enters the home. Why using google buzz and having to figure out their name and address?

I personally don't think this is that great risk.
Well, the thing about git-svn is no one has to know you're using it. The commits look just like they were submitted by SVN. You don't have to sell git or git-svn to anyone. Everyone can keep using SVN, and you can use git, and there would be no issue or problem here at all.
You should put this idea into a todo list.

Here's a good place: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/tasks/

...

What!? =)
Android VoIP App - What difference a service can make
Ask HN: Hacker in the Trailer
Ok so first sorry for this "Real Estate" offtopic here.

I am going to work on something in Valley for about a year and thinking about buying a trailer and living in a park.
Yes, I always dreamed about such experience.
Yes, I am looking to sell it after i finish that project and understand that i will probably loose some money on that deal.

So, can anyone suggest a good resource or personal advices on buying trailer, good parks, Internet access, things to know, etc.

I dont have strict location preferences yet- anywhere between SF and San Jose is fine. I have a car and will be working from home most of the time.

Maybe there are other hackers here who dreamed about living in trailer/hate renting small room in noisy SF with emergency cars passing by every minute/want to spend more time on air/love barbecue?
If you like this sort of thing, I've released full code for an interactive heat map in Javascript, built on top of Google Charts:

http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2009/12/how-to-m...
The metaphor technique jumped out at me, because when someone is explaining something to me, I like to respond with an analogy to check my understanding. Most people seem to respond by "Yeah, I suppose, but not exactly." Some people respond by saying "No", and then repeating the original explanation (as distinct from "No; here are the differences"). A few people respond by discussing the analogy, which is easily the most productive way of explaining something I've ever encountered. It's certainly much more efficient than the popular "deluge of examples" method.

There's a very strong tendency for smarter people to tend toward discussion, though by no means is it black-and-white.
No group by. Sucks.

(Will eventually not suck when they hit 1.1 but they're only at 0.9.2.)
I would rate this article as very basic at best. I became very interested in fashion after I needed to learn about it (long story). One thing you'll see a lot of -- and this article is guilty of this too -- is that clothes should fit well. Duh. The thing is, it's very rarely explained what that actually means. Part of the reason is that a lot of people writing these things simply don't know, beyond a few basics (listen to a tailor or a fashion designer who understands drape, etc). The other part is that the definition of "good fit" changes with time. Currently, the trend for mens fashion is for slim fitting garments. In two years that might change.

Dressing well is not about wearing certain types of prescriptive clothing ("thou shalt wear a slim-fitting button-down oxford, slim chinos, and expensive longwings") but rather, is about dressing appropriately for the context, and choosing your clothes with a little care. This means fit, but it also means making sure the colors and patterns work well together (I can expand on this topic a bit more if anyone is interested).
You're comparing linux, to jQuery. Please...
Windows is #1 because Windows is #1? There's certainly something to be said for network effect, but this particular line of reasoning seems more suitable to a tautology club meeting - http://www.xkcd.com/703/
I don't think acquisition will be as much of an issue as recruiting employees will.

If you think you can find people to work for your company who either know those languages or can learn them quickly enough to not kill your productivity or your product, then go for it. Otherwise, you may want to think about making some tradeoffs (i.e. node.js over Erlang because you're going to be far more likely to find competent js devs than Erlang devs.)

Most acquisitions end up with the founding team contracted to transition for a year or three; during that time the acquiring company either rewrites the IP or ends up with enough qualified people to take it over.
Panasonic L1 and LC1, also.
Nifty.

I wrote up an alternate derivation based on fixed points for my compilers students:

http://matt.might.net/articles/implementation-of-recursive-f...

It also shows how to exploit the Y combinator to get speed-ups from memoization in JavaScript.
Call me crazy, but I read this as "The Marijuana Trench To Scale"
Thought so! Love it :)
I prefer to start with two definitions and an assumption:

Yf = f(Yf) for all [combinators] f, defines the desired behavior of Y

Mx = xx for all [combinators] x (note that M then equals SII in SKI combinator calculus)

assume there exists a y such that My = Y

proceeding from there, I can derive Y without having to memorize it
We need serious laws, with company-destroying penalties attached, to protect the privacy of individuals

We already have them, and I don't think we don't need more. There is a fundamental difference between the government spying on citizens or abusing the information they collect, and companies doing so. People voluntarily sign onto Facebook every day, and the company does not violate its privacy policy (if it did, you'd have grounds for a law suit). If Facebook users find its privacy policy acceptable, I don't think establishing contrarian laws is a proper response. It's not the government's place to institute laws to protect consumers from themselves. I don't believe Facebook abuses the customer's trust (and there are already contract laws against such things). The proper action here is educating people about privacy, not adding more legislation.
Thanks for the reply - glad to hear it fits a need, it fit one for me and that's why I built it.

Assigning users to tasks is a possible feature, as are comments - I'm thinking I might save some things for the paid version of the app.

As for templated lists, that's a possiblity too. It wouldn't be too intense technically, but fitting it into the UI without straining things might be fiddly. I'll keep it in mind though!
i absolutely agree on context. you are participating in a kind of conversation; the statement you make takes its value not from the absolute measure of what you wear, but how it contrasts with the assumed standards of your particular environment.

it might be worth emphasising that for many "nerds" that probably means that taking more care over your choice of jeans + t shirt is better advice than how to pick a suit. (i say this because i asked my american co-workers if they had any sense of what "well dressed" meant and all their answers focussed on formal wear. that's missing over 50% of the point).
It seems to me that this design could put an excessive amount of stress on the bearing that holds the wheel in place compared to a traditional hub.
A comedian, eh?! Do you see multiple checkboxes on there?!
dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1136810
> Or do you seriously believe that the government should have the right to violate people's privacy based on their political leanings?

I'm not the original poster, but something to think about - communism isn't a political leaning the way debating about state/federal powers is a political leaning. Mainstream communist literature - Communist Manifesto for instance - directly advocates violence and rioting, to the end of placing the state under control of the workers. Marx said that condition - control by the workers - would be socialism. Socialism could then slowly dissolve until it's a classless, peaceful society, but Marx said you'd need to make a lot of violence on the bourgeois first.

I don't know, if there was a group that advocated, for instance, that they should confiscate and destroy all the property of non-Caucasians, make sure whites control everything, but that's only a necessary step to a perfectly peaceful and equal society - well, would you want the FBI to keep tabs on those people? How about if someone believed that they should kill all infidels to place society under the control of Muslims, which would then lead to a peaceful society? No, Communism isn't a political leaning, it's a very bad thing that's done very bad things.

I'm visiting Cambodia in two weeks by the way, I'm going to see the relic of one of the most literal applications of Marxist communist doctrines:

> People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity, or having had contact with a foreign source, such as a US missionary, or international relief or government agency, or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean". This meant being taken away to a place such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture and/or execution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields#Process

Communism is a bad thing. The legality/criminality of advocating it should be equivalent to the legality/criminality of other forms of advocating violence and destruction.
63/37 solder is even easier to use. And if you can find it, tin/lead solder with a slight silver content (note: this is NOT the same thing as the "silver solder" that plumbers and jewelers use) will help you get nice shiny joints every time.
Perhaps it's because I'm not a twitter hipster, but what's with all the bitly links? They really detract from an otherwise great post.

I personally really prefer to know where I'm going before I click a link. Save bitly for posts that restrict your character count please
Did you look at the prices yet? Expecially at lens prices? If not, prepare for sticker shock.

Not to say Leica M cameras aren't worth it, they just aren't for everyone.
"#6 – The 5-Year Old Method (Try explaining quantum physics to a first grader)"

I do this automatically. I can't help it. It is agonizing.
Look no further than William Taft for an example of a larger man who is, to this day, widely admired for his sartorial elegance.

Sure, you're not going to be wearing the ultra-slim fit clothes that are trendy with a certain crowd right now, but that's only one small segment of the population. The world would be a very dull place if we all dressed the same way.

Learn what works well for your body, and it will help your confidence enormously. For example, a pair of properly fitting pleated dress khakis, and a nicely fitted blazer would be an easy look to do well no matter your size.
For those not following the Olympics, it's Lindsey Vonn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsey_Vonn
In the case I mention, the lead founder was CTO of a multi-B company for over a decade (indeed, had been a key player in helping build it to that level) - he is technically savvy but just not doing that aspect of the work (at least at the detail level) in this company as he drives it. I don't think it is an issue of devaluing technical people (at least in honest situations) but just a matter of weighing relative contributions for a particular venture. Technical is not always foremost in what distinguishes a particular business model for success.
I completely disagree -- the law moves slow, we don't want to jump the gun and get bad laws. If in the meantime some people are inconvenienced or worse someone dies (stalker finds them etc). Those are risks we have to take for progress. If you have a stalker stay away from new things, don't hurt everyone by forcing them to slow down.

Premature laws are worse than no laws.
Why the Maya used a 260-day calendar
Microsoft and Yahoo joins forces against Google
Uhh, I voluntarily signed up for GMail and GMail ONLY. This however does not imply that I agreed that Google can package their "Facebook-Killer" without as much as asking.

In my opinion that's actually worse then Apples completely slimy attempt to smuggle their software onto my box without asking. Just because I had the bad sense to install Itunes.

Don't be evil; Ha!
Q: How do you improve a mechanical device so simple and efficient that it's had largely the same form for the past 100 years?
A: Make it more complex and expensive!
Unfortunately it's kind of buggy in IE8. The meter doesn't work and you see "<br/>" in the popups.

P.S. I use Firefox normally, but I always check websites in other browsers so please don't flame me.
.. and yet your link doesnt [sic].
Here's a link to the original feedback - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1060022
Hmm, what's wrong with OpenLayers?
Wait... Google already knows about pretty much everything I do. If I follow your suggestion, they'll also know about the stuff I haven't done yet, but will do!
>Suits are made to be as comfy as pajamas. There is a reason investment bankers tolerate them. If yours isn't, it's either a lousy suit or it needs to be tailored.

Wearing a tie to bed sounds like a form of mild torture.
How Government can see your data without a warrant, if you use public clouds
Initial thoughts:

* Keyboard shortcuts.
Just some ideas:

- n for "New <ContextItem>"

- t for "New task"

- j/k navigation for list items

- space bar for checking

* Intelligent defaults

- A page should do something. A new project page should set my cursor to the new project name

- Anything not required shouldn't be on the "new page" by default. Email list, stages are probably useless.

* Usability

- Allowing someone to just start creating tasks without a project.

- Checking off a task takes a long time. To check off the task completely, I have to click 4 times! The look of the other 4 areas are fine, but allowing someone to click a checkbox further in would be handy.

- I can't edit a list item. Allow me to do that in place.

- "All Lists" area doesn't show percentage done easily. Make it a visual graph with a percentage value.

* Functionality
None of this functionality should really impact the usability and sparseness of the design. Most of this can be hidden away, easily found, and not required.

- Allow me to email a list to someone. Click button to email, allow me to enter an email address, and book, click send. That's it!

- Allow me to create due-dates if I want for lists and items.

- Allow for list reminders ("Hey, you forgot about me!")

- Allow for list importance ranking. ("This is really important and needs to get done")

I know it's a lot, but I actually like the app. Take my criticisms as a compliment. If I didn't think it was worth it, I wouldn't have wasted my time. =)