skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm guessing you're not married?

(EDIT: I hope this isn't coming off as some '50s "take my wife" routine. My point is that marriage isn't about authority, it's about partnership)
I have a 1Gb of ram running some hefty sites, as well as a dedicated mail server. That comes out to $50, per month (roughly).

When i got everything set up i was only paying $10 per server per month.
If you are developer and doing TDD or some sort of automated testing (which you should!) and if you are not writing automated tests for bugs, you are doing it wrong anyway!

If the bug is GUI inconsistency, looks crap on my mom's computer sort of bug, then you can't automate anyway. Assuming you testers' mom haven't got serial ports.
Anyone who still has any shred of respect for these "public health experts", who by all appearances are little more than irrational single-interest zealots intent on pushing through their pet theory regardless of evidence, should seek out and read The Diet Delusion by Gary Taubes. It is an (IMO) authoritative excoriation of the kinds of processes and personalities behind these "recommendations" and will really open your eyes.
Approach I have used for U.S. with some success...

Objective: Deliver complete address with minimal keystrokes.

Constraint: User can type whatever they want.

Approach: One text box for address. Reevaluate with each new key entered. Use lots of indexed tables (zip codes, cities, states) for verification. Reformat when they leave the box. Provide help, autofill, undo, dropdowns, and error message feedback.

Some of the logic:

- 5 consecutive integers: verify zip code. Autofill city and state. If multiple cities, dropdown for choice.

- 2 alphas and a space: verify state.

- 3+ alphas: verify city. Dropdown for State.

You kinda get the idea. There's probably a lot more optimization that could be done. It's worth it because it's used in so many places.
So far young has been bad in my experience (especially the entitled generation) and old has been great mentors for me. Usually the bad old guys are the sys-admin who turned to be the IT directors or the C programmers who scored a dream job (working in a high paying job with low responsibilities and demands).
DHH: Great Ideas Derive from Well-Rested Minds (video)
"No offence to Joel or Jeff, they are doing something nice, but we don't need more Joels or Jeffs, that area already have been covered."

Sorry, but that's simply terrible advice. That's like telling Kafka, "don't write your short stories, Poe already has that style covered."

I agree we don't need a bunch of lame Joel/Jeff knockoffs. But we certainly shouldn't discourage people from trying to stand on their shoulders to create something better.
Rob is this your next startup? I ran into one of the fuzzwich guys last week at Startup Riot (forgot his name).
I remember in the late 90s being excited to root for Apache every month when the new Netcraft survey would come out and show Apache's continued dominance over IIS and other rivals. I remember the FUD around Apache, and having to explain to people that I worked with that "a patchy" server was one that was being actively worked on and improved, and that wasn't a bad thing. I'm happy that Apache and Linux ended up being accepted and widely used -- for a while I had real fears of a dystopian future where the world ran on an IIS/Windows platform. Happy birthday Apache, I'm glad you made it.
What is better as a scripting language: PHP-CLI or Python?
What is better as a scripting language: PHP-CLI or Python?

My website already runs PHP for it's UI. I now need to code some scripts which will fetch data from certain URL's on a daily basis, parse the XML it fetches and populate the database with the data it extracts.

If PHP 5, with its enhanced object oriented features and rich libraries is on par with Python on the command line, then wouldn't it make better sense for me to use PHP for both web and CLI/GUI development?

But, I can't ignore the fact that people do use python almost exclusively for high level CLI/GUI scripting.

Which of them is a better choice?
Sure they were, but he didn't make the loan until well after everything collapsed. In fact the U.S. Treasury was practically begging for him to make these investments and he said he would only do a deal with Goldman because he knew they were the only bank left that was financially sound. EDIT: And Wells Fargo. He bought into Wells Fargo huge.

In any case, I think that if there anyone who has demonstrated an immense understanding of the American economy for the last 50 years, it's Warren Buffet and his partner Charlie Munger. There is no one/duo that has been more successful at investing and predicting long term economic scenarios over this time period.
Computers Turn Flat Photos into 3-D Buildings
You got a good point, let me retry:

We need all kind of technical bloggers not only Joels and Jeffs :)
SEO for Startups: Y Combinator February 2010
Why hiring a great developer is crucial
don't confuse the post to say you or your design shouldn't be sexy. sexiness is a huge part of content. but what's underneath the shininess? people don't care unless there's something legitimate, and usually only if there's something that will help them personally..
That depends on your view. I'd much rather something more modern (YAWS, Ngix, Mongrel) be the most popular.
This paper is wonderfully cynical about education in the UK:

> "That administration failed, because the students – rightly, in our opinion – were incensed at the conduct of their teaching and the arrangements for their study, and simply refused to do anything that wasn’t directly beneficial to themselves."

> "Another group had very much lower than average A-level scores, and had been admitted to a maths and computing course largely to boost numbers in the mathematics department: we call this group the low achievers."

Although I do begin to wonder whether the teaching of our professional skills is somewhat to blame for the lack of professionalism and ability in our industry.
I'm in the same boat with you. I love to ship a software product (doesn't matter if it's web/desktop/mobile app). I would be happy if I could churn out 1 solid app every 2-3 years with one or two long-term apps.

I did have that nagging feeling about being old and "still a programmer" or some sort, like I was going to stuck in my career path... but then again, some people are meant to be like that so I decided not to worry about what would happen in 10 years and move forward.

Besides, Linus is technically still a programmer :).
This article is really an anti-hording thing. I immediately realized how many items I have in my house that go unused FOREVER. My wife has been begging me to throw some things out.

I am considering just looking through anything, if its a wire that has a 60% chance of being usused forever, scrapped, a cd, scrapped, a tv, scrapped. I want to do the same with my kid's toys (she has lots but plays with a key few (3year old), I mean really the biggest things we use are our computers.

Although I found a use for old textbooks: Computer monitor stands.
Stormpulse updates coverage with city-level mapping and forecasts
Design nitpick:

Don't use fixed size containers and variable sized fonts:

http://skitch.com/scotchi/ns2be/habit-stream-curate-broadcas...
The stakes on this stuff are high, you'd better be damned sure you're right before you make public health pronouncements.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the standard process when government steps in. Whether the topic is an economic bailout or taking action on AGW, it seems to be driven more by the desired means than a well-understood model of how to get to the ends.
'How to Node' is quickly becoming my favorite new blog. I still don't totally grok Node's flow so I read every article these guys publish as I try to brute force it in to my brain.
Go: Off to the Races
Boston VCs should give young hungry startups a chance.

A team of 2-3 brilliant early 20's building the next google is the dream of the valley.

Hopefully some of the successful Boston founders cultivate the talent here and come up with a nice (PR) Boston story.
gane5h, thanks for the plug :)

For compressed sensing to work when one needs to know in advance that the signal (image or anything else really) is sparse or compressible, Once this is known, one needs two findings that are just plain surprising and are the reason there is so much excitement in this area:

- the signal needs to be acquired "incoherently" and there is much work going on in that area, Most hardware is currently not designed to do this incoherent acquisition (this can be done cheaply in MRI which is why you see some applications there) and much work is currently going into designing new sensors that can performed this new kind of acquisition, Much of them are listed here: http://igorcarron.googlepages.com/compressedsensinghardware

- once it is "incoherently" acquired, then one can reconstruct the original signal using linear programming technique solving an l1 problem, But after four years of intense competition between different groups, we now have faster solvers that are approximately solving the l1 problem without linear programming or the lp (p between 0 and 1) and even L0 problems..

For more information, you may want to check the blog or the big picture site: http://igorcarron.googlepages.com/cs
So how much did the name "mint" really matter? Versus the fact that the CEO seems like a very hard worker and created an awesome product.
Microsoft, Amazon Sign IP Licensing Deal
Thanks for the screenshot. We'll clean it up.
I had no idea that the +1 commenting style originated from the Apache mailing list. Evidently it did, in 1994.

+1 to the entire ASF.
Hey that looks neat. How did you make that video?
"During the first sleep cycle, our body enters deep sleep for the longest period of time, it's at this point that our body temperature begins to drop really low, our respiration, heart rate and blood pressure decreases.

If you've ever been woken up out of “deep sleep”, you know that it’s almost impossible to get up.

It takes about 45 minutes to enter the first deep sleep phase. If you limit your nap to 45 minutes, you will sleep mainly in Stage 2 sleep. Stage 2 sleep also plays a major role in restoring physical energy." -- Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock
MongoDB Array Keys Reduce Friction
> Wierd timeout errors clumped around 1:00 am every few nights

You always can shift clock automatically (on Linux).

Obviously a problem of this sort is not due to the mere numerical value of the time but rather some daily scheduled process that runs around 1am (perhaps a database backup) which interferes with the web app in some way. This sort of thing can be simulated but it's a non-trivial task and it's probably better to apply those efforts in other ways (by diagnosing the problem, putting in place a performance monitoring system, buying more hardware, etc.)
But my gut instinct has always been that people avoid joining startups because joining startups sucks. The question isn’t what are we doing that’s keeping ladies out of the Valley, gentlemen. The question should be why in God’s name are we still here.

The startup failure rate after 5 years is actually closer to 60 than 90%. Two comparisons come to mind:

In a standard company job, career stagnation and unrecognized toil are the standard. If you don't become the protege of someone important-- someone who will look out for you and make sure you're on the best projects-- in the first two years, it's no longer worth it to go to work in a lot of companies. Most people don't become proteges.

So, if you're ambitious at all, there's above a 60% chance you'll be looking for work again in 5 years no matter what you do.

Second, although the boring corporate job is safer, the enjoyment of startups comes from the fact that you're doing relevant, useful work (so long as the product you're working on has a successful launch and trajectory). To do relevant work isn't an option for most people in their early-mid 20s; even if they're brilliant, most companies expect them to "pay dues" before they can do anything interesting, and there are so many arcane, IO-bound permissions systems before even the smallest technological changes can be made.

In the startup, you have a 100% chance of doing relevant work for a product that has a sub-50% chance of ever existing. In the safe corporate job, less than 20% of what you'll do in your first three years is relevant work. It's tough to say which wins.

Personally, I chose the startup route under the belief that, no matter what happens, I'll learn a lot more-- that's a lot more important than what job title I get or what my pay is (as long as I can stay afloat). I figure that I can rewrite my own story a million times-- I've never had to resort to "creative career repair", but if I need to invent more impressive titles or inflate compensation, I can. On the other hand, knowledge and skill are completely impossible to fake. So I focus on a path where I learn a lot, not one where I get my tickets punched.
Can someone with statistics knowledge comment on whether these results are significant? With 10,000 trials they probably are, but it'd be nice to get more insight than raw percentages can provide.
Tell HN: Hacker News Chicago meetup Wednesday 2/24 (tomorrow!) at 7pm
Chicago hackers:
Please join us for the next Hacker News Chicago meetup on Wednesday 2/24, 7pm at the Hophaus (646 N. Franklin, 312-280-8832, http://www.thehophaus.com/).

There is also a mailing list (http://groups.google.com/group/hn-chicago) for future event notification.
Burger joint sales are up 30% since offering Foursquare promotion.
Thanks! We actually made it ourselves, believe it or not. Some screen shots and drawings mixed with After Effects.
Link to a submission from 6 months ago that has a lot more detail, and a video:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=731412
Twitter Ad Platform 'Imminent'
Brown professor markets CDs to stimulate, soothe the brain
I thought this was a pretty neat example of irony. His title is "Keeping It Brief", but I noticed the wide format of the text coupled with the scroll indicator on the right, and I was a little horrified. This is brief?!

Not one to be intimidated by voluminous text, I began to read anyway, and found in the very first sentence: "Why few blogs are very popular, and most practically ignored?" ...Well, I dunno, why tiger run?

So, now I'm faced with the prospect of reading a large text which the author apparently didn't even bother to proofread. Oh joy. My well-honed, internet-trained skimming instinct kicks in: skim skim skim Write like Joel skim skim skim Write like Jeff skim skim skim Write like Seth...

Where in the hell is the actual checklist? Why not let it speak for itself? Oh, wait, here at the very bottom. OK, so what's on it?

Well, the same generic, overgeneral tired stuff that every mediocre writer keeps saying, that's what. It even comes with the arrogance to suggest that you might want to download it in PDF.

Try this instead:

1. Is it brief?

2. Can you remove anything else from it, especially stuff that the reader will find completely useless? (Example: "I read many blogs for professional reasons, and some among these are a real pleasure to read." The reader doesn't care about what you read, or why. Strike it out.)

3. What are you saying? Are you giving the reader useful information? An insightful story? Or are you just trying to keep your tired blog "fresh"?

4. Did you make your point clearly?

5. Did you check your facts? (Your article does contain facts, doesn't it?)

6. Did you proof-read it? Twice?

7. Did you get a friend to proof-read it?

8. Did you break up your paragraphs whenever possible?

9. Have you reviewed and used basic typographical rules, like those outlined in http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/03/8-simple-ways-to-... ?
> Collaboration automatically opens up security problems.

I think you mean: "Collaboration automatically opens up _privacy_ problems."
Eschew ELSE
Hey Paul. Same company, same team (http://habitindustries.com/about), and still trying to make social advertising easier. It's been a winding (& interesting) journey of customer development from Fuzzwich to Habit Stream, which I'll probably post details of later this week.
I thought about not writing that but decided it would probably be good bait to see if you were going to actually look at the rest or not and actually comment on substance. You make it sound like he lost his status and his job. He simply got a different position at Harvard and works with Obama, real step down.
Pulling The Plug on Bad Customers
Although I've heard 5.3 fixes some of the issues, PHP is often not suitable for long-running scripts due (I believe) to memory consumption (when using OO code). I believe it is an issue w/ garbage collection of objects.
Just want to say congrats to Emil and his team :)
Ask HN: Review my startup, Tweetc.com
Cool line of the article:

He subtitled a recent grant proposal "Bats with Frickin’ Laser Beams On Their Foreheads."
There's always an opportunity cost. Traditionally you see opportunity cost expressed in dollars; I haven't really thought to view it in time.

But time is the most valuable resource there is. Money comes and goes, but would that week of time in Barbados have been better spent elsewhere?
Be warned. The code relies on a list published in 2004. But the list of zip codes changes regularly. For instance 4 new zip codes were added in Dec, 2009: http://maps.huge.info/blog/2009/12/new_zipcodes_200912.html

Unless you're going to keep your list up to date, this code will break from time to time.
That's definitely true. It's only a counterproof to some extremely strong versions of the EMH that assume that you can buy any possible asset or derivative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_market
Good advice, reminded me of K. Vonnegut's list:

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

Source, "How To Write With Style": http://peterstekel.com/PDF-HTML/Kurt%20Vonnegut%20advice%20t...
Democrats and Republicans Can Be Differentiated from Their Faces
this is really really smart and a potentially big market. any smart site (ecommerce or whatever) has testimonials. the problem is, they're fairly static and people see them as possibly unsubstantiated. if i tweet "I <3 my iPhone" and its linked on your site, you cant ignore that. throw in the other sources too.
Or did he misread it?
This is going to be wrong for some of your users, because some ZIP codes cross state boundaries. So you'd need to let them correct the guess in that case. It is unusual for one zip code to be in two states, but it does happen. [1]

It's also going to be wrong for military addresses, as I understand it. [2]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_code#By_geography

[2]: http://www.usps.com/supportingourtroops/addressingtips.htm
Here is some good insight into why Apache is better for a lot of implementations: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/195534/in-production-apac...
Freakonomics: “We Pretend We Are Christians”
Gotcha. I'm a big fan of the API examples in the meantime.
Google earth on Android - Video
Thank you for the more in-depth explanation.
The signal pixel camera is an interesting application.

I would imagine one of the most powerful applications would be compression of files. Might make things easy for big websites like facebook. Or allow zip to make files smaller. Or a flash card that hold more information.

I'd had to learn more about the technology. But EE standpoint there are two big questions:

How fast is the process?
I'd imagine that it work fast enough for images, voice and but not fast enough for video. I'd imagine the speed will increase as people start playing with it.

And does the photo have to be compressed using the algorithm?
The single pixel camera idea and many other signal capture operations really open up if you can just take a swab of the signal at random intervals. Perhaps a cool little program could be written to hunt for the necessary data points and capture them.

This technology will definitely bring improvement to many fields over time.
Since we're doing the ad hominem thing, I'm guessing that you're American, and your wife makes you sleep on the couch?

In all seriousness, my point is that the person with the more radical view on how things ought to be done has to lead in that instance, and lead with authority. This doesn't imply the entire marriage is about that. But in this instance, yes. His wife would have been more receptive to his point of view if he delivered it with more authority. Passive aggressive "experiments" to prove a point will not influence her point of view and will not carry him closer to the goal of making their lives simpler.
freecycle them. There are groups in most population centers. Someone out there begging to find that tivo console cable.

Me and my wife have been getting rid of items not valuable enough to sell but too valuable to pitch through that channel for a while now.
I think Craigslist and news.ycombinator.com both have a well executed strategy targeting a specific market. It's not the generic "slick" approach, but most users view it as "ugly enough to be useful" not just "ugly."
Sometimes the long term gain of taking a nice relaxing vacation is easily worth $1000 and a temporary decline in productivity.

Or, to put another way, what's the point of making money and getting things done if I never feel able to take a break?

Edit: Reminds of Stefan Sagmeister's TED Talk: The power of time off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNuOmTQdFjA
One hell of a relationship this guy's got with his wife
I became fan of his writing after I read how I can make fruit salad and get laid. :)

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/09/fruit-salad-reci...
Do you get more than 5? I've just started doing it, but I think I pay no more than 2.
This sounds more like "programmers versus cheese-head managers", not "old programmers versus new programmers"
http://www.supercook.com/ is a front-end to allrecipes.com
Good tip, I'll have to remember freecycle, thanks.
I'm 41 and programming is more fun for me than ever. Don't worry about people wondering about you; it's worth it. Just make sure you have enough money to give your kids a good education.
people, this is ridiculous.

Why few blogs are very popular, and most practically ignored?

the first sentence isn't even grammatical.
I'm ancient, so don't think I'm standing up for youth - and you do bring up a valid point. Older programmers at least have the "market proof" of being employed for umpteen years.
I can agree to that somewhat, but what's interesting about this paper is that it's starting to formalize the fact that some people can "think like a programmer" and some can't. Now, what that says for programming paradigms as a whole...
For the older crowd on HN: How much of ageism is real, and how much is in your head?

I only ask because all the places I've worked at have had a lot of older programmers, at least in their mid 30s up to mid 50s being the typical range. Then of course there's the slew of non-quite-programmers-anymore but who still make tech decisions (managers).

Then there's the very frequently uttered "Well he doesn't really have enough experience but we need to fill this position ASAP" and "He worked for Corp XYZ for 5 years?! Get him now!"

I'm not saying it's tough to be a younger programmer because it's not, but strictly IME (internet companies) older devs are a rare and valued commodity.

Now that I think about it, could it be because most of the senior devs don't have much web-related experience, due to it being relatively new?
Your brain naturally wants to make associations like that, but resist. You might find great mentors who are young, too.
I put all the old books and DVDs I don't want on half.com at a very low price. It's a bit annoying having to mail them all, but it makes me glad to know that they're going to someone who wants them.
Video of the day google earth for android
Yes, the video of this presentation will be available on pycon.blip.tv soon. Thanks Mike for posting this.