skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hi, I'm a dev in a wheelchair. I agree with whoever stated this would give a run against the ADA, for the following reasons:

1. The standard doors they are using aren't wide enough. No, not even for a manual chair. You could maybe retrofit the specialty hinges so that the door opens wider (outside of the frame), but that only works for some manual chairs, depending on their width. I need at (at minimum) 24" to get through a vestibule.

2. If they are using any sort of flooring, it won't support the weight of a power wheelchair.

3. It would be impossible to not feel like you're going to back into or damage a wall - they don't have any turn radius inside.

4. Even small steps are a pain in the butt. No, ramping it doesn't always help.

5. Once they're in the open warehouse space, and have little 'hallways', the doors will open out into the hall, making it hard to navigate around.

6. If you manage to get more than one person inside of the wheelchair user's own house, it will be a tight fit to get anyone else in there, plus a desk, plus a small chair.

And this is just for wheelies.

Being as how this is one of those careers folks with differing abilities are able to do well, it would be a good idea to consult with universal design principles before going any further. On top of that, considering your business model, you may want it to be friendly to anyone you'd like to rope in as a client. Your clients might be chair users.

Having said that...

I think it's a creative and fantastic idea. I think it's a fun way to personalize the office on a much smaller budget than, say, Google. I'd say finesse the idea a bit more.
This sounds a heck of a lot like the drive by wire issues Toyota is having.

As technologist we should have a healthy distrust of any software. It's simply too complex to predict.

Is it corporation group-think that causes them to ignore this? Or hubris? I can't imagine they are that stupid.
Curiously recurring template pattern
Postel’s Law: Not Sure Who To Be Angry With
Closures are a convoluted way of of doing things that objects and actors do better.
YC-funded Travel Startup seeks outstanding graphic/UI/UX designers to help us fix travel search [global]
Ever find yourself thinking "wow, this travel search interface is remarkably intuitive" or "that flight booking experience was refreshingly simple"?

Neither do we.

We're firm believers in the idea that enabling people to travel more cheaply and more often makes the world a better place, and that that begins with easy discovery of interesting destinations and affordable flights.

We're looking for passionate travel-enthusiasts who also happen to be talented designers, to help us create amazingly intuitive and aesthetically delightful user experiences for fellow travellers of the world.

Already, without any dedicated designers on the team, we've created a travel search interface that thousands of travellers love. But we know we can do much much better.

If you think you can help us, we want to hear from you.

We're willing to appoint an equal-share co-founder, full-time employees or short-term/ad-hoc contractors, but we ideally need someone who is able to get started quickly.

We can offer a combination of cash & stock depending on the value offered and what's most mutually suitable.

Location is not especially important to us; we currently operate between San Francisco and Australia, but it's more important for us to find great designers regardless of location.

That said, if you've ever thought it'd be cool to take a spontaneous trip to Australia, here's your opportunity.

For more info, contact ephextom@gmail.com, and please kick things off with a bit of info about yourself and some links to your best work.

Adios!
I think I was interviewed for this article. I guess I forgot how to talk in sound bites. At least I got promoted to exec!

I wish the "top" angels had some outside SV diversity; I know two thirds of that group pretty much directly.
There is a comment below that I can't reply to (it was auto-killed as spam) that says:

Do you use an iPhone or any Apple products? How about a cable box? Is the software in your coffee maker open source? How about the bios in your PC?

I do not use any programmable devices with proprietary software. I don't have an iPhone, I don't have cable, and I don't have a coffee maker. (I do make coffee, but it consists of pouring boiling water on top of coffee grinds. No computer needed!) I do use the closed-source nVidia driver, but only because I can't buy an Intel-based card for my desktop. The GSM chip on my mobile phone also runs proprietary software, but only because the government won't allow one with open-source software to be sold in the US. Other than that, no.

(No, I don't use the "Google Experience" Android apps. No source code, so if I hit a bug, I wouldn't be able to fix it. No need to even risk getting upset.)

My washing machine and microwave also use proprietary software. Technically I don't own them, though, so I don't feel that bad. (If I were buying appliances, I would gladly pay a couple hundred $$ more for open-source software. But that is not available to me. I have lamented this fact on my blog a number of times, because both devices have annoying bugs that I or the community could have fixed.)

Sometimes I use Flash if someone tells me there's something really interesting that I need to see. But generally it's disabled, precisely because I can't even try to fix the bugs. It is a privacy leak, doesn't work with my sound card correctly, and uses excessive CPU for almost everything. All fixable, but I'm not even allowed to try.

Fuck that. Life is too short to worry about buggy software that can't be fixed.
> I count 2^7 = 64 possible variations (counting the madlib/form as just one point of difference), which would take an awful lot of traffic to discriminate between.

A fractional factorial design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_factorial_design) of the experiments and other statistic techniques (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_experimental_design) may decrease the amount of traffic needed.
"Sue-somebody-who-screws-me" insurance seems like it has a pretty poor incentive structure.
I'm a developer with Crocodoc. We can get very high fidelity document rendering using Flash. We tried out a few PDF -> HTML converters and none of them offered the level of fidelity and accuracy that we were looking for.
Every time I read one of these stories, I think of Nintendo in the 1980s and 90s. Back then, Nintendo was the undisputed king of video games with an install base of over 60 million NES consoles. They had a trusted brand, a massive library of titles, and money coming in hand-over-fist. They even managed to keep that success rolling, and the SNES was the top console through the early 90s.

Developers hated doing business with Nintendo. Nintendo put every game through a rigorous review process, and stripped out anything that they found objectionable. This castrated a lot of games like Mortal Kombat and Final Fight, and ensured that some titles never came to market at all.

Nintendo also charged a licensing fee, and ensured that only licensed games could be played. In order to distribute games, publishers had to buy the cartridges from Nintendo at pretty hefty prices.

This system worked great until Sony came along, and told publishers that they'd cut a better deal. Much more relaxed terms, and a far fewer restrictions on content. Suddenly, developers migrated en masse to the Playstation. Square became Sony-only. Capcom suddenly concentrated on Playstation games like Metal Gear Solid. All of a sudden, all the big new games were Playstation exclusives, and the only big games for N64 were Nintendo's own first-party titles. At the time, it felt like a switch had been flipped.

I feel a similar dynamic starting to play out with the App Store and Android. History seldom repeats itself, but it tends to rhyme.
Also the last paragraph here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_10/b41690396...

Not very compelling, but that's their story and they're sticking with it.
For anyone with access to Nature, I found the Editor's summary considerably more readable than the actual research article (since I'm not all that well-versed in quantum mechanics and biophysics):

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7281/full/463614a...
They could crowd-source it or pay some mturker.
The Linux netbooks were/are very much like iPhones. There is a button you press to view the web. There is a button to press to play music. That's it.
Is that how pretty much all investment deals are done? or are some done ... rationally?
The New York Times?

(Maybe, just maybe... there's not a conspiracy here, and the author just happened to write about something he found interesting. Nah... that could never happen...)
Strange. I'd expect more accounting and number-crunching.
Microsoft Withdraws Cryptome Takedown Notice
That's technically true, but not quite what I was thinking. Let's define Xooglers as people who were pre-IPO at Google. Or even just people who didn't originally come to Google through the acquisition of another company.

How about in that case?
2004 onwards was the time frame.
I thought about that a bit more and talked to our music director and I think you are right.
Based on my observations of the behavior of the UFT (the New York chapter of the national teacher's union) when I was in high school in the late 1990s, the anti-union response is absolutely on-target.

http://educationnext.org/files/ednext20033_20.pdf

Most importantly, read the section "The Case of Iftimie Simion". I was lucky enough to have been one of Simion's students, and can attest to his stellar talent. I also saw some of the fireworks that erupted between the principal and the UFT representative — they don't exactly keep students well-informed, but I knew all the parties involved, and believe that the facts of the story are completely true.
And interestingly Americans also tend to address each other by their first name.
ODroid to run on Android 2.1 soon
How on Earth is Chris Dixon #1??????
There's another view to this, though.

Starting with the Wii Nintendo has significantly loosened their requirements for publishing games on their platforms. The Wii SDK is much cheaper (almost an order of magnitude) than either the Xbox or PS3 dev kits, the from what I can tell approval processes are far less onerous.

What has resulted? A deluge of crap. The amount of cheap shovelware games for the Wii boggles the mind, and dilutes the Wii brand significantly. It gets so bad that even non-gamer grandmas have noticed.

In comparison, Sony and MS are riding high, they have a gigantic amount of 3rd party support, people are willing to pay their ticket price for entry to the platform, and willing to put up with a lot more content restrictions (e.g., no free DLC, extensive multiplay/connectivity requirements even for singleplayer games)

There's a fine line to be walked here, and I'm not sure if Android has the model right either.
You have to love that Larry Wall himself bothered to stop by and post a comment.

The article itself isn't bad either.
I think part of the reason founders try to keep as much stock as possible is to retain control for as long as they can through each investment round.

If you can demonstrate two cap sheets with the typical scenario and the feel-good scenario and it can be shown that founders loose control at about the same stage, this would probably be more digestable.
actually, i don't have to demand much of my team--they demand it of themselves.

I just pick the most driven people and fire the ones who are clock punchers.
India?
Seems like feel-good nonsense.

I hate this sort of thing. Capitalism has delivered huge benefits in terms of prosperity, advancement and health. We've got to the point where someone willing to accept a lowered standard of living can take lots of time off and use it to focus on other things that are important to them. (The fact that people continue to toil to get more possessions just shows where their priorities lie).

Unfortunately there's always a small contingent who think that all this advancement is terrible and we'd be better off living the kind of "simple but happy" lives they condescendingly imagine people in the third world live.
See also: the classic Rogue-playing AI "Rog-o-matic" - http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/rogomatic.html (Rogue being the ancestor of NetHack)
Interesting but the article fails to even make a mention of information visualization or visual analytics (how are we going to sift through all that data to see the patterns to make decisions)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_visualization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_analytics
Sure they can. But they're called iPads.
I love the breckyunits posts and this topic is of interest.

It seems to omit the obvious problem with flat structures: modern IDE's require certain folderings.

But if you use VIM and work alone then I guess that's not an issue.
Personally, I've always interpreted the word "appropriate" to be aimed at correcting other first-worlders with (often dangerous) misconceptions about how development works. Case in point: your water system example.

Let's say you're an organization interested in improving the water situation in a rural village in Kenya. Which of these two options makes more sense?

1. A well that the village residents can build and maintain themselves with relatively small amounts of initial and ongoing costs, and that doesn't require specialized knowledge to keep running...

2. OR, a modern chlorinated water system, which depends on tons of pipes, valves, pumps, etc., and will require a massive construction effort to build, and will also need a steady supply of chlorine, and somebody who can fix all the pumps when they break, and somebody who knows enough about water treatment to keep the the water system from accidentally giving everybody cholera, and a steady supply of spare parts, etc. etc. etc.

I mean, yeah, in the best case, a modern chlorinated water system is a great thing... but you have to look at the whole picture and at the long term. A simple solution like a good well can have a real impact on a lot of people's lives, and unlike a proper water system has fewer expensive and dangerous failure modes. Oh, and by the way, the well solution was cheap enough that you've got enough money left over to go and build a well in the neighboring village, as well. Woohoo!

I agree that the term "appropriate technology" can be used in the matter in which you describe; however, to me it seems pretty obvious to say that technology is not a one-size-fits-all thing. There's no point in (for example) shipping a bunch of MRI machines or surgical robots to a rural clinic somewhere when what the clinic really needs is more rubber gloves, syringes, and malaria medication. In my mind, that's what the phrase "appropriate technology" is supposed to mean. Here's Steve's three-step process to a successful technological development intervention:

1. Actually learn about the people you're trying to help, preferably by living with them for a period of time. Learn about what resources (physical, educational, human, etc.) they have access to, and what resources they don't have. Learn about the problems they're facing in their day-to-day lives, and find out if the things you thought were problems going in actually are perceived as such by the people living with them.

2. Together with your new neighbors and friends, decide on a problem to try and address with a technical solution.

3. Decide on a technological solution that takes into account all of the stuff you learned in step 1 about what resources your population does and does not have access to.

The biggest and most common mistake that people working in development can make is to blindly throw technology at a problem, pat themselves on the back, and go home feeling good.
Not in their front yard: "tits in the App Store" is about generated content
Great idea. Now how about we form a union so we can spread the cost.
Even if self-serving, he offered a number of points to think about. One does not have to always agree in order to learn a lesson. A wise man learns even from fools, so much better from smart men who are also successful.
A Brief Reminder, Passwords Have Been Around Forever
Facebook will set indie gaming back 5 years
I read it that the writer was implying that Scientology in general practices strange activity, so strange activity at a particular venue is not surprising.
NetBSD?
you dont see the point because you're an outlier. most people are retarded when it comes to computers. most people actually want to do THOSE three things with a computer: mail, word processing, and web. (throw in media watching/playing games somewhere there too). what % of computer owners you think fire up emacs and terminal? a small amount. Geeks != mass market.
Ahem: http://twitter.com/kellan/status/9651902873
YC is probably two or three intermediate value (35 mm) highly probable acquisitions away from a 100% ROR, assuming 2.58 million invested thus far (129 companies * 20 k avg investment). Between loopt, scribd, jtv, et al they'll easily clear that barrier. This is assuming they're at breakeven now.
I really think this kind of approach, 'I've shown them how to send an email and they can manage it,' is missing most of the point.

They don't have a grasp of what they're doing. They know this. It intimidates them. They're afraid of breaking something and need to ask for help all the time. They hate it. It's disempowering.

These are not some small minority. These are a lot of people.

An iphone can be picked up, used, and give a larger number of people a feeling that they can understand how it works. They are in control. They don't need any help. If they can keep that and replace more of the the desktop, they'll want it.
True, there's a lot of crapware, but look at the sales results. Wii is the top console, by a large margin. Nintendo is absolutely beating the stuffing out of both MS and Sony on profits.

Look at the game sales charts on The Magic Box. NDS and Wii games dominate the top 20, and have been doing so for years. There's simply no comparison.

It's really hard to make the argument that Nintendo's screwing up here. If anything, facts seem to support the argument that loose licensing requirements leads to dominance.
I wonder if this article will motivate hackers to change/complete some of the particularly old untouched or unfinished code mentioned.

Such a technique might be a good way to find older code which could be improved upon or upgraded.
<I am not a pilot />The article briefly touches on this: when the flight computers on an Airbus are out, handling the plane is sufficiently strange to the pilots that it's dangerous. They are used to the computers being pretty much in control.

I also speculate, based on the passage about it being very difficult to look through a manual for angle information while the plane is bouncing, that their training produces a first instinct to go to the manual rather than "aviate ...".
Isn't "you will be fired unless [x]" equivalent to demanding x?
Interesting how pg is the only YC founder listed here. Other than being the most visible face of YC, why is only he on the list?
There are thing we measure, but not unhatched chickens.
Apple, There’s Pornography On My iPhone. The App Is Called Safari. You Made It.
"there's a suggestion that the pilots were simply incompetent and lost without the computer enhanced controls."

You fight how you train. They were probably trained to do what they did.
Links to a presentation by Jesse Schell, whose book on game design - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0123694965?ie=UTF8&ta... - I read recently. If you're at all interested in getting into games, this is such an essential read. It literally covers everything, from discussing the nature of play and fun, through the details of mechanics and story, to the reality of working with a team and pitching to clients. It really is an excellent book, and has inspired me to start making games again.

Considering it's get overwhelmingly positive reviews on Amazon, I'd actually be interested to hear from someone who didn't like it (I always like finding negative reviews of things I like).
When people fall prey to one-true-wayism (as the article does), they wipe out a lot of possibilities.
When I first heard about it, Ihought it was a great idea. But where are all the preinstalled NBR sales?
Yes, my original point, which I didn't make quite clear, was that a Mac is an expensive unix box - for the price of one, you could get a higher-end machine running an OS like Linux. However since Google is probably paying for their hardware, I can see how that would be a non-issue.
It does seem pretty weird. If it really hit the water flat, the only thing I can imagine is that they didn't realize the plane stalled until it was too late. If the turbulence is really strong, then I can imagine it would be hard to tell a stall from general turbulence, at least for a while. Since the margin between unsafely high speed and stall speed is very small in strong turbulence, at high altitudes, and maybe the fuel situation made them fly higher than they otherwise would?
I don't use lead generation forms so I don't see the big win here.

P.S. If you're using Rails, download A/Bingo. If you're not, email me and I will write you design documents sufficient to create an A/B testing framework in your language of choice.

It should not take godhood to do A/B tests. I want A/B tests to be like for loops: not only will you know them and use them automatically every single time, you will laugh with your buddies about that one time somebody applied to your company without ever having written an A/B test before.
a first instinct to go to the manual rather than "aviate ..."

That's why there are two of them...
Rhino Divan DB reboot idea
Exactly. I see this all the time. This constant fear of breaking something, the lack of confidence.

Good iPhone apps can feel as though you can understand them completely, even to non-technical users. (It’s not automatic, though. Everyone who has ever used Stanza knows that.)

The Browser (especially ones like Chrome and Safari) is pretty much the only desktop app which can feel that way, too – at the moment.
I'm a pilot, but just little planes and I haven't flown in years. But I do still read up on aviation accidents regularly -- lots of good lessons there.

The question I have, which is very nuanced, is does the Fly-By-Wire system in the Airbus lend itself to making it harder to fly by the seat of your pants in partial panel situations than in a Boeing in the same situation?

I'm not sure that question even can be answered.

Commercial pilots are indoctrinated over and over again to go to the manual for everything. (I have a commercial license) I used to joke that if a UFO landed on the wing of a 747, the copilot would remain calm as he said something like "Looks like an alien craft on the wing, captain. We'll need the checklist for alien contact while in flight"

Most of the time the big boys have no trouble at all transitioning from full computers to basic flight instruments, and there are plenty of standbys in a modern cockpit. I don't think there is yet another standby pitot besides the ones they already have, though. And nighttime flight over the ocean in IMC in heavy turbulence is an unusual situation to be in, but these guys should be pros. That's the type thing you should train in the simulators for -- "Let's turn the plane upside down, totally ice it up, and kill all the pitots" See how you guys handle that.

Having said that, I don't fly the big birds. There's that deadly coffin corner to consider. Could be that the plane's sudden complex situation simply overwhelmed the ability of the pilots to handle it as quickly as they needed to.
That is a good point founders are worried about losing control and getting screwed. I'm not saying there aren't shady founders out there, but disproportionately in the anecdotes I've heard about its the VCs and investors raking the founders over the coals.
The Harvard math PhD...

I thought pg's PhD was in Computer Science?