skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's an interesting take. But I fear the day the business types get hold of the idea. And the shady types. Oh boy.
Here's my experience working as an independent status. Once a megacorp wanted to hire me as a consultant. The problem was that this megacorp had a list of "approved-vendors" to do consulting work for them. To get into the list was a time consuming and expensive hurdle. What did the hiring manager do? He asked me to join one of these approved vendors temporarily and billed through them. And this vendor got a cut out of it. Apparently it's a common problem that they did it alot. When I told the consulting firm my agreed rate was $200/hr, the guy said their contracting rates were never even close to that. Sweet time.
I think the real explanation goes back to the Restoration. Charles II and his court wore 17th Century cavalry boots, which were high-heeled as a means of ensuring that the foot stayed in the stirrup, like the modern cowboy boot; this style carried over to women sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century (women's shoes for most of the 17th and 18th centuries were delicate rather than high-heeled; there's an anecdote, I think in Fernand Braudel's _Structures of Everyday Life_, of a lady complaining to her tailor that her shoes had disintegrated; the tailor examined them and replied that of course they did, she had walked in them); and once high heels were established as a female fashion, a sort of sartorial folk etymology came along to explain their popularity.

This is why I don't have much respect for contemporary fashion; the extent to which it's dominated by accidents of English history is even greater than that admitted in the article.
I think it's too late to put history scraping back into Pandora's box. There are several articles on it already out there. Those who are less scrupulous already have all the information they need.

At this point, I think the best that can be done is to make people aware of the practice. No browser should leak history by default. It's a huge security vulnerability, and should be regarded as such. Start putting pressure on Mozilla, Google, MS et al to fix it.
Wow...that is the best fashion advice I've ever seen on a tech site ;)

Definitely second the 1MX shirts from Express. I prefer the fitted or "modern fit" as I'm fairly slim. These shirts look great for work or going out after work to a nicer bar/restaurant.

Also seconding the JCrew hoodies. I have a blue one that is about 2 years old and looks great. VERY flexible for making outfits, especially here in Chicago where it can be chilly during the spring/fall.
This is what Eric Schmidt meant when he said "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Of course it's stated in the general case, and as a consequence it's more tactful, but it's the same idea: If you don't want someone to know something, don't tell them.
This is confusing. The clear text of the article says that programmers can't do individual contracting, which is insane and clearly wrong. The examples (e.g the contracting company with 50 "workers", none of whom were technically "employees" of anyone but themselves) don't seem nearly so clear cut.

I mean, if this is really an important law to understand, wouldn't the idea of good journalism be to tell me how to avoid breaking it? I don't see that at all here. It reads like just another "tax is bad" screed.

A pointer to the text of the law, or a less sensationalist presentation would be very appreciated.
How would the Windows Update work?
anyone got a link to the actual law itself?
I just want to note how delighted I am by these "data porn" posts that show up every once in a while. The last notable one I remember was OKCupid's analysis of communication success correlated with user photograph traits. Is there a site devoted to Tufteian data visualizations and analyses like this? I'd bookmark the hell out of its RSS feed.
I would point out that we have investments in solar thermal, geothermal and EGS (hot dry rock) power generation technologies.

That said, I don't think this is about that.
Can a $99 personal server stop Google?
This data is incomplete; have we considered that the truly randomly mobile people might well, perhaps even as a consequence of their random personality:

1: not have/carry/use_frequently a cell phone?

2: travel to locations outside of cell tower range?
I predict that by 2020 it will be very difficult to think of "The Internet" as something as opposed network connectedness being the nature of all things. However, I am not an expert.
If I were in your position, I'd do a few things simultaneously:

- Cut the price to $1.99.

- Contact as many app review sites and forums as possible and tell them that, thanks to support from the community, you've decided to reduce the price for a few days, and give away a few copies of the game.

- Give the sites promo codes that they can give away/promote for you.

Generally speaking, I've found that total revenue remains about the same regardless of your price. But what you have is a relatively interesting talking point (spike in sales) that you may be able to use to get other people to promote the game for you.

(I've previously had a game in the top 10 paid games.)
For people who don't know, the license in this case is the Artistic License. It is substantially weaker than the GPL. So if the Artistic License can be upheld, then the GPL is definitely OK.

Of course the important precedent isn't the final settlement. At this point that was a foregone conclusion. It is the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit a year and a half ago. See http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1001.pdf for the details of that settlement.

This precedent was doubly important given how horrible the first ruling in this case was.
Is he? I thought this was about HTML5.
First one is a 92 page pdf.
In my experience traveling with a laptop, a lot of coffee shops will cut off power to their sockets to avoid giving you free electricity.
I don't have a problem with socialized medicine, though that term means different things to different people and we tend to categorize countries differently around the world, but I think the Canadians have a good system. Lots of European countries do really well with their systems, which are much appreciated by the recipients of their care. Taiwan has a very good system. We could adopt something closer to one of the good examples out there, rather than recreate something messed up from the beginning.

Besides, health care overseas when paid for with cash is often better and more cost effective than the health care that can be acquired in the united states with insurance and a copay.

This new policy will be in place for decades. Let's get it right.
I was recently given a collection of Einstein's writings (http://www.alphadecay.org/libro/la-mentalidad-militar) and was quite perturbed to find that he thought that a "supranational" world government was the answer to the threat of atomic war.

Funny to find, then, that he was on the hook for anarchism...
Scanned in the 90s from 80s photocopies/pictures?
Hotels, Hostels, solar panels. There is plenty of energy in the world for a laptop and you don't have to write code every day, only when you have enough electricity to sit in the park write or check emails. Use a notepad. Write stuff down. Draw diagrams. Think more, code less.

You have a guaranteed income when you get back just don't run out of money that's all. If you do run out of money, go back to employment and start over. Find a job while you are away.

The world outside employment is full of green pasture and sun for programmers as individuals and the future of the world alike.
I've read through your blog posts, and while I agree with your "crippling" of the free version, I don't agree with how it was done.

With Hearts Solo, are there not better ways to make a trial version of a game than to randomly interrupt a match? Most trial software makes the user aware of how they will be limited - e.g. disabled features, time limits, and limitations on the number of usages.

Wouldn't having a maximum of X hours of playtime (or a similar strategy) on Solo have been more user friendly?
So, this ask the question; Where did the people that caused the collapse go ?
James Miao (of thesixtyone) responds (about the redesign fiasco)
Not being American, this is incredible for me to hear, especially since the Boston Tea Party was staged over a tax of just 2%.
Reading through that article a couple of times was like a high school student attempting to write in the spirit of Kafka. It almost feels like an urban legend amongst geeks.
Particularly Flusser's "Style and the Man" and "Dressing the Man". I can't upvote you enough, he literally wrote the book on men's fashion.

The main problem with this article is it doesn't stress proportion nearly enough. Proportion/fit trumps all.
I don't believe my point has changed at all; sorry if I haven't been clear enough, but I've been asserting from the beginning that there's no appreciable difference. ("analagous situations" from my first post.)

Further, I wasn't asking for a difference, I was asserting that you had failed to demonstrate one. Finally, I completely disagree with the point in your final article, which is the absolute opposite of my point.

Let's take a real-world example; you can tell me whether it is an example of a healthy process or a not: A handful of authors are banned entirely from submitting articles to a widely known, widely respected, online repository. (They were submitting topical articles, not random junk.)
I'm not sure we'll see many more of the OkCupid posts hit the front page. I think some sort of filter may have been added.

I recently submitted their latest: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1129738 and it got upvoted a lot in the first hour (more than others that did make the front page) but for some reason never made it to the front.

Which is a bit sad because I think it was their most interesting one yet. (And the visual aids were extremely well done.)
http://flowingdata.com/ is a pretty nice blog about data visualization. Both for reposts and commentary of other sources, and some original content. Some of http://flowingdata.com/category/data-underload/ posts are pretty amusing.
IANAL, and I might be misreading the law (http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml), but the way I understand it is that if non-tech company A needs some tech work done, and they hire tech service company B to get it done for them, company B is not allowed to farm out that work to individual contractor C without treating C as an employee for tax purposes.

So if you're an independent contractor and you get your own business, you should be fine.

If someone knows this to be incorrect, please let me know.

EDIT: nevermind me, read grellas comment.
http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml
I can't comment on the pricing, but IMHO both the description and the support website have room for improvement.

Half of the short description I see in iTunes describes what the app can't do (no multiplayer over Internet). Only when I click on "more", I see the wealth of features. You could write "play with your friends on a local Wifi" and move the disclaimer to the extended description. Put a feature on top instead, like "robot players are pretty good".

On the website, there is a lot of text, which is good because it shows you care. But make sure the features don't get lost in the details. Make them stand out and list the most exciting feature first. Strong robots and easy multiplayer game setup are probably more interesting than a Default.png graphic. Mentioning Default.png will only confuse them anyway, unless most of your potential customers are iPhone developers.

Also, put the iTunes Store links on the bottom as well, so your visitor does not have to scroll all the way back up.

Just my 2c, I hope you find some of it useful.
To be clear, I am only advocating the self-censorship of this information until the browsers you mention have had a chance to fix it and people up grade.

I guess really you just gotta delete your history all the time. Or make history links only work for the domain. If you see a link in a page that is not on the domain where the page originates, then make it the same color as the unvisited links.
"It’s like this: If you send data to someone over the Net, you can’t control what they do with it. At least cost-effectively. Or, if you want a good outcome.

This applies to Internet Standards. Any standard that tries to constrain the way in which data, once received, is processed, is broken."

So, is the author then opposed to having a secure, standardized way to make credit card payments? Methinks he should be using a word less broad than "data".
I understand it to be the opposite: if you're drumming up your own business, you should be fine, but if you're getting work from an intermediary, you have to be treated as an employee of that intermediary for tax purposes.

IANAL, and I could be completely wrong on that; anybody who knows better, please correct me.

EDIT: nevermind me, read grellas comment.
No, it's exactly the right name. The distinguishing feature is collaborative albums, where the work is divided, or 'divvied' up, between friends.
As good as it looks, anyone that doesn't know it's the banks at the top of that image that collapsed (like, say, a european like myself) is going to be very confused by this chart.

It's explained in the text but for the graphic to more sense on it's own, some sort of arrows would've been nice.
As far as browsers go, how would you rate IE? Is it the best? Second best? Probably third or fourth? It has over 60% market share in the world. 18 months ago, it was over 70%. I would argue that this has more to do with Microsoft having 90% desktop market share and IE is the default browswer.
"Comments require active moderation or they rapidly go sour."
Microsoft confirms that Malware caused MS10-015 issues
nit: It's risk averse. A risk can have adverse effects, though.
Invisible computer graphics
Compare the internet of 2000 to the internet of today, while realizing that the rate of change is compounding. Ten years is a very long way off to be predicting things in technology.
I'm not sure wasting a year of my life is really the right solution to this problem. Or, any of the other "solutions."

My wife falls into this category. First (years ago), she just worked as a consultant via her sole proprietorship. Then, she had to start getting insurance policies. Then, she incorporated. Now, her corporation does work for another corporation that has a contract with the corporation she actually works for.

It's a bad law and it should be removed.
Absolutely right! This is the problem...

Which is also why we've developed such an imbalance in wealth!

We've got a serious problem with an imbalance in INFLUENCE!!!

Actually that's my own focus for technological innovation...

Realtime Networked Citizen Lobbying and distributed credit creation... (no pitches here, see my blog if interested)

Fortunately I don't fly planes and still have a sense of humor.
A parable about one nation came to financial ruin.
Google appears to be thrashing around like a conglomerate trying to have another hit record.
Interactive climate change simulation table
1. It's all math. You can't patent english either, but patents are english -- at least in the united states.

2. There are so many because it is easier to write code than it is to cut iron. That doesn't mean the value of the invention isn't worth just as much to the world and the inventor. Maybe more. We should see an exponentially increasing quality of life due to the exponentially increasing ease with which it is getting to innovate.

People can build a CNC in their garage with parts from the lumber store and a couple websites. That was unheard of 20 years ago. We have lasers in our junk that can start fires. Think of the leap fire gave us!
Bill here - I wrote the article linked above and designed this kill switch.

It's been helpful to me several times when I've had trouble collecting from clients, but I only use it as a last resort. There's a pretty good comment thread on the post debating the ethics of the matter.

Also Acid_bath - I recognize what you're saying about validating over HTTP. It would not be acceptable for all my clients' sites to go down if my validation server goes down. That's why my code is configured to only disable a site if it is able to explicitly retrieve a KILL signal. No response from my server is interpreted as a lack of KILL signal, thus the site stays up.
My Watch List, Into 2010
Let's focus in on the three major geek failures:

Jeans: Don't wear them constantly. Get decent proper fitting wool pants; plain blue, black, or brown. You instantly look five times better. Also, they're more comfortable.

Shorts: almost never. You're not 9, or trailer trash. Get summer-weight wool/cotton pants and they're about as cool as shorts. Adult men look ridiculous in shorts and it's somewhat rare to see it in most places outside of America.

Synthetics: never. Clothing is made of wool and cotton.

Tailored dress shirts sounds excessive to me. Just favor those marked trim-fit if you're thin, and be careful about the styling; cheaper ones often have outdated over-sized collars.
Please let us know the results of your experiment in a future HN post. There is not much info out there on the results of these kind of experiments.
If You Took Top 5 Ideas from Left & Right Would You Have Workable Healthcare?
Notational Velocity, Simplenote, and Dropbox bring child-like wonder
Can a Sports Drink Improve Your SAT Score?
As it uses tries, a supporting library (trie datastructure implementation) in Scala, as released open-source by Twitter:

http://github.com/pankajgupta/Trie
> clothes are made for normal, maybe slender and fit people

Ha! How wrong you are! I am what I consider should be a normal, fit size but all the competitively priced stuff is made for fatties. I am forced to go pay more for proper fitting clothing.
RT @FakeAPStylebook expert - 1. Person knowledgeable and well-known in a relevant field. 2. The first person you could get to call you back.
This is an interesting question. I'm not sure what the legal or business reasoning is; but from my personal perspective, Internet browsers are fundamentally different from most other products.

I believe a person's ability to access information is more sacred than her ability to perform word processing. I liken the question to why I support universal free education but not universal free binders.
I bought a nice, black suit for formal use. I was taking the advice of a good friend of mine who I brought along to help me. I took her advice because she is a woman ten years older than me with a background in textile engineering. Her reason for why I should pick black was "You look better in it."
Same problem. 30 inch waist, but my thighs are bursting out of 30 inch pants. I typically buy 32 inch and have them taken in for $6 at the dry cleaner.
How did you generate the map coordinates? By hand? I'm doing something similar and I would be very interested in a way to automate it.
Http://www.beststeak.eu/therestaurant.swf
Against a company with a monopoly and a vested interested in closed standards that help maintain that monopoly? I'd say so, yes.
Constrained Data and Interoperability
I do dislike grouping unrelated application settings into ~/.gconf -- before, if you screwed up a setting you could always just rm -rf .<whatever>, without losing anything unrelated.

Oh, God yes. It's awful. There are severe usability problems with lumping everything together. (Of course, this is outside the issue of the original post.)

In addition, if GConf is the One True Way to store Gnome settings, why do I have ~/.gconf, ~/.gconfd, ~/.gnome, ~/.gnome-rdp.db, ~/.gnome2, ~/.gnome2-private, ~/.gpilotd, ~/.gpilotd.pid, and ~/.gtk-bookmarks?
Success Takes Time for Startups, so Start Now
This is valueless and trollish. It proves nothing other than that uninformed people who've made up their mind in the absence of logic exist on both sides of the debate, which you already knew.
If you think a realtime video version of Google Maps isn't part of their future plans, you're wrong. It definitely is.
You'd use the statistics from the likely huge amount of sales data that Campbell almost certainly already has to adjust for things like that. You'd also have a magnificent sample size to play around in.
Functional Programming on the JVM using Clojure
I don't understand this at all:

"Anonymity online will gradually become a lot like anonymity in the real world. When we encounter it, we'll take a firm grip on our wallet and leave the neighborhood as soon as possible ‐‐ unless we're doing something we're ashamed of." - Stewart Baker

The real world is largely anonymous. I can walk into a store and buy something with cash; nobody will know I was there, and there's no implication that I was doing anything wrong.
With the volume of feedback James is getting, it is clear that he struck a nerve with the new design, and it speaks volumes to the popularity and adoration of the people who use the site.

James clearly can see the numbers of how people are using the site now, and I assume visitors are listening more,which is the goal of the site.

Kudos to James for making bold steps and taking changes, and (I assume) listening to the numbers, not the chatter.
Insure -> Ensure

As an ex-college-newspaper editor, this error always stands out to me. And the NYT should know better.... even in 1998. YC's headine is the same as the Times.
It's not that he is advertising, it is the delivery of the message. I would prefer to see a demo of the product or some screen shots, rather than someone telling me I should go check it out because he wants us to and they give him money for the plug. It's the opposite of compelling.
That's not really a complete story.
I know this is really long and people <sigh> when they see long paragraphs of text... but I just wanted to say the above is REALLY work the read if this situation applies to you.
Thank you. This is a great explanation.
Making Undergrad CS More Enticing at Stanford
See that I appreciate. Much better than hear the same message about the same company every time. We all know about shopify. It's all the buzz. I don't need a shopify, i have paypal. I don't need woofoo. I have skype already.

Let the companies create a video and submit it to play and pay $20 for the spot. Spice it up. Make the advertising entertaining.

Does he even really need the advertising? Why not use the time to talk about a startup in his community?
Short URLs you probably cannot type | séó.com
thanks, Opera is now reinstalled and I'll try DragonFly...
Pregnancy might be something that's by choice, but that practically everyone will go through. Do we really want a society where only the rich can afford to have kids?
Congress to Hold Hearing on Location Data and Privacy
When I started my career, back in the 80s, the independent contractor was the "rock star" of software development career field. Would work at $MajorCorporation and bill directly, and make $100-$250 per hour or more. This tax code change, as well as some other regulations and tax issues mostly eliminated such direct consultants. Instead, a corporation like American Express would select several approved vendors and consultants would have to work for these firms in order to get work as a consultant.

The shift meant a reduction in rates and another middleman to carve up the billable amount. It didn't totally eliminate the independent contractor but it certainly put the kibosh on it as most of the corporate world (big employers) funneled those positions to a set of preferred vendors.

And which was exacerbated further with the rise of offshore vendors (who supplanted domestic bodyshops) and NIV workers.
The ballot screen is for XP, Vista, and 7, but I have to imagine that people stuck on IE6 are either using locked-down corporate machines or simply people who don't install updates; in either case they probably won't even see the ballot screen.
Compare what you wrote with something like this response: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1136775
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