skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The writer seems to think that Clients From Hell is a little mean and unhelpful because most clients are merely ignorant of Web design issues.

That's true, but it misses the real pain behind the stories. That is, that most Web designers don't get the respect or autonomy they deserve (or, perhaps, they don't command it.) If I get a plumber round to fix something, I'm not going to tell them what parts to use, what brand of pipes I like, or insist on them using outdated concepts. I trust them to do the work. Most people are that way.

With Web designers (and designers in general, really), people think that since they can see the surface of the finished product, they have as much insight into what works visually as the designer does. This is not true and this ignorance is very hard to work around. There are some good clients out there, but the "bad" ones are just worth ditching IMHO.
And in that environment, it makes perfect sense to filter that content out of your search results. If you don't, your users will get big no-no screens all the time, and you run the risk of getting banned yourself.

This really doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
This is a really well-articulated explanation for the phenomena that have clumsily attempted to describe before. As someone interested in cars, I use the example of Cadillacs and Buicks most frequently, since they used to be symbols of power, prestige, and quality but seem to sell almost exclusively to people over the age of 60 today. I actually always play a game when on the highway: I check the drivers of Cadillacs and Buicks and my anecdotal sample has been heavily skewed towards older owners.

I wish that the mesofacts site was more complete, because I love updating my firmware. While reading it, I kept thinking "What else is it there I don't know I don't know?"
Completely agree that had it been short, it'd be much more interesting as there are a lot of people who have interest in Japan, and they would love to read about those experiences you have.

I doubt that the author is in any of the 'cultural shock' phases, as he starts the article by saying " I've lived in Japan for a long time ". Nevertheless, anybody living in foreign country with a different culture faces the trade-off between preserving their previous 'ways-of-doing' (cultural values, ways of behaving under various circumstances, etc.) and adjusting to the new culture (thus, changing yourself to some extent). So the office culture of Japan only seems to be one of these instances in the case of the author, and it also confirms what I've known about Japan.

<i> "Why not "Tim-san"? I'm required to put "san" on the end of their names. " </i>

From what I've heard (I've never been to Japan), Japanese don't attach '-san' to foreigners names'. But I have to say, I liked this :) -
<i>
"
- ... This is just how we do things in Japan, Tim.
- Well, [Name-removed]-san, you can try putting 'san' on the end of my fucking name from now on, then, you know, as practice.
"
</i>
I watched the full video. He says "I did every horrible thing in the book". He's admitting to bad behavior. Where's the context missing from that? The guy let his ethics slip in his hunger to succeed.
My crazy phone doesn't even support flash for some reason...
John Paton to News Industry: "Learn One New (tech) Thing"
I've taken numerous conscious and subconscious decisions to eliminate ads from my life. I don't watch broadcast television and I don't listen to broadcast radio. I don't regularly visit sites that whore out their pixel space (and even the content pixels with floating ads). It's easy for me because I know where to get good content without these media channels. I like to believe the net result is less fatigue at the end of the day.
My hunch is many websites are made 1) with a small budget or 2) by a family member or friend who has a pirated copy of a WYSIWYG web dev app (usually flash).
I am really disappointed in the HN commentary on this one. A quarter of the commenters seem to have stopped reading when they saw the anime criticism. Half came in here to say that the guy sounds boring. And the remainder is split between talking about patio11 (what the fuck is that?) and how long the article was. Most of the criticism here seems to boil down to the same "you're not Japanese" bullshit the author mentions in the piece itself. Is that really the best we can do? This is probably the worst-commented article I've seen since I started at HN.

I agree with others that the anime point is probably off-target. Nostalgia is a big component of thinking things used to be better than they are.

The insights into Japanese company-culture are fascinating. American corporations do make people do some incredible bullshit, but nothing on the level of the official greeting he mentioned. The standing around on the street thing and yelling is entirely odd.

I also liked some of the points about the subliminal impact of self-deprecating language. From what I've read, and from the few movies I've seen that deal with Japanese culture, it _does_ seem like there's something about it that forces an distance between people that is hard to bridge. The host clubs and the separate master bedrooms are a fascinating symptom of this problem.
Yes, but how to ask that kind of thing politely?

I would imagine it's pretty rude to ask "so how many percent of your company are you giving me?" at your first interview, no?
Ask YC: Free / Open Source Solution for online meetings
While I worked at BigCo, we used a really nice tool (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Acrobat_Connect) to have our online meetings - sharing the screen, with a small chat window, etc. I am trying to find something similar to this, but open source (preferably GPL'ed or under some more liberal license). The best I was able to find up to now was http://webhuddle.sourceforge.net - anyone has any recommendations?
It has been just today that I discussed the prospects of analyzing HN front page posts with a friend.

Promise to come up with interesting results. Thank you.
I simply can't believe so many people are paying that exorbitant price tag ($1600 to $16000 an year) to have zero-profit niche Q&A website.

It doesn't make sense financially, and they could sponsor free software development of the already mentioned clones.
Damn, I can't edit this any longer. Just in case this pops up on Google for a decent way to achieve this, my last Latex example is missing needed \\ commands. It should be:

\begin{tabularx}{0.9\linewidth}{|l|X|}
\hline
\textbf{Title A} &
$\bullet$ thing 1 \newline
$\bullet$ thing 2, but it's much longer than the other items \newline
$\bullet$ thing 3 \\
\hline
\textbf{Title B} &
$\bullet$ thing 1 \newline
$\bullet$ thing 2, but it's much longer than the other items \newline
$\bullet$ thing 3 \\
\hline
\textbf{Title C} &
$\bullet$ thing 1 \newline
$\bullet$ thing 2, but it's much longer than the other itmes \newline
$\bullet$ thing 3 \\
\hline
\end{tabularx}
Thanks, that means a lot!
It doesn't seem to happen as much any more, but historically people used to post "rate my startup" posts without a url and just link to the start-up in the body of the text.

If people did that now it'd show up in the Ask section, so maybe we should return to that practice.
It's not a complaint, it's a joke.
Anime used to be awesome. For me, it stopped being cool sometime back in the late 1990s, when it went mainstream.
The official directory is at http://www.stackexchange.com/directory . I believe it's opt-in, but it's got quite a few sites.
I can see how small, local businesses fall into the trap of all-flash, all-hard-to-actually-use. But what about a high profile, nationally known restaurant like The French Laundry. Why does their site suck so much?

http://www.frenchlaundry.com/
"American corporations do make people do some incredible bullshit, but nothing on the level of the official greeting he mentioned."

Wal-Mart makes their employees do this every morning, and they are the largest private employer in the US. IIRC there is footage of this is The High Cost of Low Prices.

I agree with your comment in general though. This article should pretty much be required reading for everyone in the US, since at least to me it's pretty clear that in another 20 years life here is going to resemble either Idiocracy or Japan depending on your socio-economic status.
For most your hunch is dead wrong the family member or small budget websites are the ones that look like MSFrontpage and other such website designs.

Flash websites are usually payed for and in good amounts to and they are done by people who don't really understand usability but do know marketability (for themselves) and how to make things look pretty.
So many of these things resonate for me, I'm troubled by a good third of the problems, or the seeds of the problems outlined here. Some sterling advice that I'm going to heed well.

I think the nature of the failed startup is irrelevant as much of the advice is raw, yet vague enough to apply to many areas. Almost all startups are based on a good idea, their success or failure rests almost entirely on the back of the choices you make along the way. Thanks for sharing this.
"stay little, grow big" is probably one of the less-appreciated points there and I'm exuberant that you noted it. It's also something that they likely won't encounter until they've actually tried writing something more open-ended in a functional language, like a full-blown program of any sort. It's like telling people to use MVC for a GUI. Important to mention it, but it's going to take some experience before it's down pat.
You should ask about it when they offer you the stock. Any earlier, and you're being presumptuous.

Stock is impossible to value without knowing the percentage of ownership. Since this usually comes up when you're negotiating compensation, it's appropriate to ask at that time.
Someone mentioned in another HN thread or a comment somewhere else that none of those sites are actually paying anything yet, so maybe they're hoping that by the time they have to start paying they'll be making enough money to make it worthwhile.
Why online news is ad-based and not subscription-based
I'm pretty sure it is because it is in beta and free:
http://stackexchange.com/pricing
Repost of a link that was on HN before that answers this question. I liked it so much that I bookmarked the submission. http://www.payne.org/index.php/Startup_Equity_For_Employees
How did you pick who to email at that organization ?
In case anybody's been waiting for the paperback edition of the book, it's now available.
Hahaha. I used to work at a tech company that constantly had happy hours and even dinners out at restaurants together. Eventually I stopped going to all of them because I couldn't handle all these nerds getting drunk and trying to talk faster and louder than the next one. They still tolerated me.

But one day the boss bought some shitty Chinese food for the company lunch and I just went out and got myself a gyro and came back. It was never the same after that.
Ask HN: How will we be looking for jobs in 20 years?
Finding, attracting, and recruiting the right talent are some of the most difficult and time consuming aspects of running any organization. People drive organizational culture, and the right culture is critical to an organization's success. Smart companies understand people matter. These companies will empower people, encourage them to contribute to the culture, to become the culture. Smart companies attract smart people and actively help them maximize their potential within the organization. Smart companies win more often.

Companies that understand people matter invest in their recruitment process. Unfortunately, many focus on the wrong things. Some build HR departments and silo them, leaving them out of touch with the business and its requirements. These HR departments use the 'resume' as the main recruiting tool. What they fail to understand is that resumes are really good at telling whether people are good at writing resumes, but really bad at telling whether they know anything about the role they will be asked to play. Some companies rely on external help and work with recruitment agencies. These agencies operate to maximize the chances of short term success across a pool of jobs. This means that it is in their best interest to make sure that a decision is reached as quickly as possible in order to maximize return on time invested in any position they may be working to fulfill. The best way to convince people to make a decision is to give them no choice - recruiters put forward a handful of carefully selected candidates out of which one or two will stand out. It is also in their best interest to create competition between the companies trying to recruit the candidates they are putting forward. This will inflate salaries, which for recruitment agencies working on commission is evidently advantageous.

For job seekers, finding the right job is even more difficult. The process is obscure, the landscape is filled with opportunists and until the candidate walks through the door of the company he is interviewing for, he will know very little about the role or what it is like to work for that company. If the candidate does not understand their audience, changes are their discourse will be misguided. In the event that the candidate is offered the job, they now have to decide whether they want to commit the next few years of their professional life to a company they don't really know.

---

Given what we know today, and how we feel about what it means to go through the process of finding a job that is both stimulating and rewarding, how will we be doing it differently in 20 years?
Until you are pulling out into an intersection and the brake sensor misfires, preventing you from accelerating out of danger.

I prefer the physical off switch.
I just attempted to find the hours for that restaurant, but got too annoyed that it kept opening up new windows...

Reminds me why I generally just type "<restaurant name> menu" into Google, and generally someone has a direct link to a PDF.
isn't startups.com a SO site? it's not listed
Thanks a lot Matt. That should be one heck of a dataset to play with.
It would seem to be vastly more useful then the "leaders" link that's currently at the top of the page. How many people (other than people actually on it and trying to climb the ranks) actually use that page ?
I'll never understand the complaint in scenario #2. Use the device in your hand for what it was originally intended, and CALL them.
The analogy to the plumber only works if he's remodeling your entire bathroom, choosing your fixtures, the color of your tile and where the toilet goes. Generally, plumbers don't do that... but interior designers do. Likely if a web and interior designer had coffee, they'd have lots of war stories to swap. It seems like an industry hazard for anyone whose job title has the word "Design[er]" in it.
David Chang's Momofuku has a great website for its restaurants:

http://www.momofuku.com/

Everything is pretty stripped down and simplified. No gratuitous use of flash.

I also like their use of reservations, for the most part the system is set up to treat everyone as equals, so its not like a celeb can just come in:

"In March 2008, Chang opened Momofuku Ko, a 12 seat restaurant that takes reservations six days in advance, online only, on a first-come-first-served basis, without regard to social status or income. The highly limited seating, along with Chang's popularity in New York, has caused a furor, generating frustration for both influential and ordinary people who have failed to secure a reservation"
Plumbers and designers aren't working with even remotely the same constraints. The fact is, Papyrus and Copperplate move bingo card software, kobe burgers, and designer handbags just fine. Many normal people even find those designs attractive.
"and not only that but a tendency to overreact to a client’s innocent requests or questions. Knock it off."

Maybe some of the CFH posts are overreactions, but I see way more posts that aren't.
For example, "Next time we meet, you might wear something a little more low cut. We’ll get more done." I don't think that it is an overreaction to call that a bad client. Complaining about fonts, white space, etc actually seems to be the minority on CFH. Most posts now seem to be utterly absurd examples, like the one I quoted above, or billing disputes.

The writer could have done a nice post reminding designers to be patient with clients lacking design knowledge without even mentioning CFH.
I've had a Toyota suddenly accelerate while I was driving it: http://blog.m104.us/2010/03/07/my-toyota-suddenly-accelerate...

Bottom line, this isn't an engineering issue or some big coverup in need of Senate hearings. This is a whole group of interests wanting to put Toyota on the stand for something that, while quite random and frightening, is very mundane and embarrassing. What you're witnessing is a modern day witch hunt where Toyota is the accused and has no way of clearing its name or even addressing the possible problems with integrity. The way we (US media and federal government) are treating Toyota is shameful.

Hacker News readers, especially, should be very worried that the mechanical and computer engineers of Toyota are being told that they must only make systems with 0% chance of failure, even if the driver could be at fault. Entrepreneurs should be scared to death of the kind of liability that the US Senate is laying at the feet of Toyota's management. Zero risk is acceptable, that is the message.
First off, by all means, keep reading "clients from hell". If you're just starting out, it's a great way to figure out what the red flags are when dealing with prospects. If you've been going at it for a while, it's a massive stress release to see that it's not just you.

That being said, whenever I get into discussing this, I tell about how I went to my hairdresser (a fairly outspoken man) a while back, and while he was cutting away, I asked if he could cut it a little more in the back. He replied simply with 'no' (later explaining it). I accepted that in the instant, recognizing the parallel, yet most people (web developers and non-web developers alike) think I should've forced him to cut it as I asked. Some even get angry when I suggest that my hairdresser could do anything he want (within my given requirements), because I am paying him for his expertise. Their reasoning is that because I pay them, they should do anything I tell them to. I suspect therein lies the difference between bad clients and good clients.
I think that there is a stepping stone, half-way between "talk" and "code". I remember a question on comp.lang.lisp. A student had the task of writing a "sublist" function, for example, (sublist (a b c d e f g) 3 2) => (d e). He task was to do it functionally and he was stuck.

But would supplying code unstick him? It seemed unlikely. Thinking about the equation "Concepts + details = code" I wondered if there was a way of conveying the concepts first, before getting down to the details, and wrote:

Put on your Dijkstra robe, and sit in your arm chair, with a
cup of tea, and write on a pad of paper, made from dead
tree, using a pen with real liquid ink. This is mathematics
not computation :-)

(sublist (a b c d e f g) 3 2) = (sublist (b c d e f g) 2 2)
= (sublist (c d e f g) 1 2)
= (sublist (d e f g) 0 2)
= (d . (sublist (e f g) 0 1))
= (d e . (sublist (f g) 0 0))
= (d e . nil)
= (d e)

compare this to peano arithmetic

(- 7 3) = (- 6 2)
= (- 5 1)
= (- 4 0)
= 4

If you want to learn recursion you should move quite quickly to writing code because that animates your recursions and clears up any lingering misconceptions. On the other hand, jumping from the words "learn recursion" direct to code is a big leap. Recursion has its own soul, separate from its embodiements in various programming languages.
For instance, the fact that you can boil a frog, by slow heating up the water its standing in (used as an example in the article) is most likely wrong: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/01/frog.html. Not technically a meso-fact, as it the reality of it didn't change, but close enough to be funny.

For more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Contemporary_exper....
He should move back to the U.S. for a while. I bet he lasts two weeks before he's screaming for Chokukuro.
Sensible "Cyber War" Preparation, Or Just More Government Snooping?
Ubisoft DRM authentification server is down, Assassin's Creed 2 unplayable
My favorite part of this post: even the designer who is trying so. hard. to empathize with "ignorant" customers still managed to suggest inflicting hundreds of dollars of font licensing costs on the project (go price Mariposa). But hey! At least you're not yet another website using Papyrus.
Some, yes, but all from over 100 years ago. The contemporary scientific opinion is very much against this "fact." http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/01/frog.html
I suspect you and the grandparent poster both need to replace the batteries on your sarcasm detectors ...
Jeff Bridges' totally different website
Be sure to check out his music. It's good! I didn't even know he can sing..
Video: Computer Scientist David Gelernter
In theory that's true, but in practice it isn't. It's so easy to take a quote out of context and turn it around. Just look at Fox News. Or the headlines over at Reddit for that matter.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

Cardinal De Richelieu
First of all, honey bees are an exception to Fisher's principle.

Secondly, your reasoning is more generally completely irrelevant.

What you said was analogous to this:

Children can kill their mothers in childbirth, so obviously kids before reproductive age are still relevant!

Ok, so obviously non-reproductive individuals can affect the transmission of a person's genes. So can hurricanes, viruses, and cows. However, when you're solving your nice systems of differential equations to look at the evolutionary dynamics of various genes, you only consider reproductive individuals, because these are the only ones that transmit genes.

Yes, non-reproductives can have effects in evolutionary dynamics, but only as passive environmental elements. Dying because you have a gene that makes you susceptible to a virus is the same as dying in childbirth, to evolutionary processes. There's natural selection against the genes that made you weak to the virus, and natural selection on the genes that made your fetus too large.

I hope that makes sense. It can be hard to communicate with people from different fields; they use words differently than you do. (I'm a graduate student in evolutionary biology)
Yes - glad to see now that two of the powerhouses (Microsoft, Apple) have aligned their products with the cultural and ethical values of their customer base. My guess is this will be one more way they will go after Google - Google supports porn, we don't.
I used to be pretty paranoid about posting things online. I thought that my privacy was valuable, and so I didn't put anything up.

However, a few years ago I realized that there was a ton of stuff about me online. Photos on facebook, an article in a school newspaper, all sorts of directories and listings. I had an online identity, whether I wanted one or not. Moreover, I knew it would expand exponentially with time.

So, I decided the only solution was to put my own stuff up. I started blogging, Facebooking, and posting on places like HN. I now control the conversation by making sure that most of the stuff about me is from me. That way, I'm in the driver's seat.

We are all public personalities now. Yes, it's somewhat distasteful and a PITA. Life in the fishbowl can be stressful. However, the only alternative is to completely withdraw from the world, and that's not really an option.