skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, I think it's a nice way to go for blogs that have built up some amount of story/philosophy/content that might be interesting to an audience that wasn't following from the beginning. If you've never heard of some blog that's well-known in a niche area, and someone points you to it in its 8th year as representative of a particular philosophy, it's nearly impossible to catch up--- you're stuck digging through thousands of blog posts, some of which are important and others of which were just the usual one-off bloggy things (e.g. links to a YouTube video).

There's actually an academic philosopher whose blog I follow who tends to get exasperated that commenters misinterpreted some point he made 300 blog posts ago, or clearly must be unfamiliar with his work because he already discussed this question 250 posts ago. I always end up thinking, well if you would just write that stuff up into book....

I've also seen books that are literally the blog entries put onto dead trees, though, in original, unedited sequential order, which is definitely not the way to go.
I went with a shoe, also without really thinking about it:

http://twitpic.com/17mpg5
Docverse acquired - An Inspiring Success Story
From my perspective, the training montage in Karate Kid demonstrated that it took a LOT of effort, not the little bit this article criticizes it for. Two months of hard work, from sunrise to sunset, to develop muscle memory? It's not the 10,000 hours required to become a world-class expert, but 600+ hours of intensive training is enough to see some pretty decent results. The other movie he criticizes by name, Rocky, was similar. Rocky had 2 months to train for his first fight, and he wasn't starting from scratch.

It's hard to become a world-class expert at anything. You need some combination of latent talent and many thousands of hours of training, hopefully with someone who really understands how to train you effectively. But I don't think either Rocky or the Karate Kid greatly misrepresent the amount of effort it would take for an exceptionally talented individual, with a great trainer, to make the leaps they did.
Bedroom furniture, master bedroom furniture, elegant furniture
Click and view all bedroom furniture, master bedroom furniture and elegant furniture at http://www.profileinteriordeisgn com here...
The same is likely true of startups and places like HN or Mixergy.
Neuromancer - William Gibson

Anything by Haruki Murakami
I may be alone in thinking this, but it's odd when people I'd consider pretty rich have blogs with ads.
Wasn't that Lindows/Linspire?
Don't think about how fast it is unless you have solid evidence that it is slow.
Yep. It takes two things to succeed in your goals: intelligence and persistence.

Intelligence is necessary so you know what to do. Persistence because the universe is messed up and not always consistent, and doing the right things might sometimes not work for no explainable reason (but also because it's impossible to account for all variables and make perfect choices all the time, so we've got to be able to absorb that).
You make it sound like some kind of overdone recent fad, but the phrase 'dead simple' has been in use since at least my childhood.
Give him a break! Do you know how much more effort it would have taken to dig deeper into the subject?
I recall reading somewhere that some of the better font hinting algorithms are patented such that its tough for linux distros to make them as pretty. My pie-in-the-sky hope is that the knight in shining Google armor comes in and buys some of these patents for their ChromeOS and opens them up in the process.

But really, Linux is far from ugly and can look as nice as anything you can do on windows/mac. Your fonts will be the same and you are by no means limited to Gnome or any of its themes. Having bad defaults is one thing, being ugly is another.

Reddit's search is broken now but users their post some absolutely gorgeous desktops where they do all kinds of neat stuff with conky. I will try to post some if the search comes back within the edit timeframe.
Agreed. It's frustrating using an inconsistent API (camelCase, under_score, different parameter orders, overlapping functionality, etc.).

The UI is the API that users work with. Inconsistencies are frustrating.
Ask HN: How intrusive is your company's security policy?
I'm trying to get a sense of the wider world's IT practices with respect to what kinds of virus software and trackers need to be installed to participate on the company/campus network. I'll give my personal background on this in a minute (and you can comment on that too), but I'm actually curious to hear about particular practices elsewhere as much as comment on my own situation.

At my location, they have been rolling out a two-part "solution" over the course of this year: first, a virus scanner, and second, a compliance agent that regularly reports in on what system software your machine is running and whether you are running their virus software and a few other assorted system details, and if they don't check out, you get booted off the network. For instance, shortly after a recent Windows Update was published, a wide swath of the campus was knocked off the network because their system was no longer up to date.

This seemed more or less reasonable for the machines they controlled directly and somewhat annoying when it meant I couldn't use my laptop here anymore (the install failed on the first try, then blocked me from the network, and prevented me from downloading the needed updates without going home first, so I gave up because it wasn't very critical, just a little inconvenient). Most recently, they've declared that we will have to install these scanners on our home machines if we want to connect using VPN. This goes beyond just inconvenient; I work from home with some regularity, they block ssh except from VPNed machines, and I really don't want their scanners reporting in to them about my own personal machines. (Responses to my complaints have in the past been limited to variants on "We need to do this. For security.")

Now, I've visited many places that granted access to their network---not just cafés but college campuses, hotels, etc---and they did not require me to download and install invasive scanning software just for the privilege of internet access; my sense of IT practices is that this is really being overzealous. But I figured I'd pose the question to the metabrain and get schooled in case I'm wrong. :)
If I were to pull out a pair of binoculars and look at your speeding car, I would actually see its length contracted and you moving in slow motion inside.

This is not quite true. If you were to actually observe a relativistic object with your eye, you would not observe the object to be contracted in the direction of its motion. To quote A. French:

"It seems almost incredible in retrospect, but for over 50 years after Einstein's 1905 paper there was an unchallenged belief among physicists that the Lorentz contraction of a moving body could be seen or photographed. ... When proper account is taken of the time for light to travel to a stationary observer's eye from different parts of a moving object, one recognizes that the appropriate instants at which light must start out from various points of the body must be different, and hence are associated with different positions of the body as a whole. The general result of this is that the body appears distorted."

French then goes on to describe the case of a moving rod and the case of a moving rectangular board. Were you to actually see either of these objects moving relativistically, they would not appear contracted, but would instead appear rotated.

It's a subtle point and it was not recognized until 1959 by J. Terrell.
I think that battle has been fought and won by Windows. Open Office has had a long time to unseat Microsoft Office and it hasn't found that reason for people to switch (it's free isn't doing it). We are now looking at the computer actually turning into a low maintenance appliance, and I really believe some Linux distribution or BSD has a shot at taking a chunk of the market. I just hope it isn't by copying someone else.
Nanoparticles Target Cancer Cells
There's also http://ietherpad.com and http://piratepad.net
"Ender's Game"
[O.S. Card even wrote his own review on Amazon]

"The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship"
[a Bukowski book about getting high on making good work]
Auburn University
I find that I'm able to consume all of the media I need to on except for Microsoft Silverlight content like Netflix and the Feynman Lectures. The bigger pain for me is that there's no iTunes or Adobe design products. I'm not sure if there's anything that we can expect more from Ubuntu in this regard.

With Google's ChroneOS on the way and Apple's eventual move to the cloud, I hope that I can soon access my iTunes functionality from a browser. And adobe has committed to moving all of their products to the browser, so I'm not too worried about i, just wish the process would move along a bit faster.
http://www.freetype.org/patents.html
Ubuntu is a hardware OEM problem. Most normal people don't install an OS. They buy a machine with it there. Ubuntu needs to get serious with OEMs. The design stuff is fairly important too and I know they recognize it.
I just think it's odd that she's using the completely incorrect term in a professional setting where she's trying to convince a future employer that she can do the job.
The site looks great. It's very clean, which I love.

One of the things I would do is split the main page into left and right and move the "Recent Artwork" to the right of bullet point list on the left. This will let prospective users see artwork right away and you don't really lose anything since there isn't much content in the bullet points anyway.

Also, I would lose the captcha for the signup until you have a spam user signup problem. No point in giving people another obstacle to signup if you don't have to. I would lose the "password again" field also as I've never really liked it.

Good luck.
Ubuntu is a free software community project. If you're so concerned about the looks of Ubuntu you might do better to join the efforts and help improve it rather than troll on HN.
Perfect: Presents some degree of intelligence mixed in with an emotional appeal.
works here too
if you are going to call something ugly, you need to provide us with something you think is not ugly as reference (maybe a screenshot of your desktop?). If you think windows is beautiful, then you have no business calling anything ugly.
I still find the explorer XP to be nicer out of the box than Ubuntu... so much wasted screen space, feels like win95 vga mode
Linux.com Store
Ok, it's true that this looks like a naked grab for money, but honestly? If this app works the way I think it does, I'd seriously consider springing for the analogous thing for Le Monde or Nouvel Observateur---I've tried to buff my French by regularly reading the news, but the grammar and vocab targeted at a general audience is still just a smidge too dense for me to handle. Training wheels would be nice.

I suspect there is quite a market for this, actually.
Nothing hugely Ruby-specific here, but this is a nice, readable high-level overview of how to integrate a JIT into a dynamic language.
Yup you can, http://alpha.artevolve.com/arts?tag=moped I haven't included it in to general usage yet because there still some kinks.

I also plan on making it so the source artwork's tags will also trickle down to derivatives works and etc.
He should write his Governer, who apparently doesn't give a damn about the effects of the legislation on his constituents:

From the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142405274870486930457511...):

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said, "Amazon has taken a disappointing, and completely unjustified, step. Amazon is simply trying to avoid compliance with Colorado law."
> Two months of hard work, from sunrise to sunset, ...

Kind of illustrates the writer's point, in my opinion :)

I do not really agree with the entire thesis[1], the idea is not novel and the article itself is rather awkward, but there is some truth to the assertion.

[1] Should it be that difficult to have a house and a car etc.?
Ask HN: Lightweight/Quality Blogging Software?
Wordpress and MoveableType seem so bloated and scary to run (security-wise). Is there anything out there that was written from scratch to be simple, secure, and do 90% of what most people want and do it well?

I definitely want to host the software myself, on my own server.
Why SQL Failed
I have to agree. I like Ubuntu, but the graphics are aged.
But the whole point is that two months is NOTHING. I ran 50 miles in an ultramarathon last year and it took me 6 months of pretty intense training (one marathon or longer every weekend in june & july). Even my six months were absolutely nothing compared to the guys who've been running for past 20 years. There is NO way I could have done anything during those six months that could have made me anywhere as good as the pros. So yeah, Karate Kid is indeed not possible.
Thanks! Those are some great ideas, already applied your advice on the signup form and captcha, this is a excellent point.

I agree about the front page content as well. I'm playing with the design now trying to get them fit nicely. Not being a web designer, this is going to be a joyful :)
Problem isn't what makes you stand out. Problem is where are you? How do I even find you? How do you find me? There are over 10k jobs on Monster for people with experience in LAMP in my area. Are you really going to apply to all of them?
I didn't really like the article. It's just summing up what we've known for a good time: success requires effort. I don't buy movies being the cause of it. I did find the choice of Rocky somewhat amusing though, especially when the author mentioned his book taking 8 years (albeit doing other things).

Sylvester Stallone: [Explaining to 'The New York Times' on how he wrote the script for Rocky in three days]: "I'm astounded by people who take 18 years to write something. That's how long it took that guy [Gustave Flaubert] to write 'Madame Bovary.' And was that ever on the best-seller list? No. It was a lousy book and it made a lousy movie."

Effort alone doesn't make one successful, either, and in my opinion telling people it's going to take them years to succeed is just as bad as telling them they can succeed in 21 days.
Just use XMonad, instead of Gnome. You will soon forget about visual beauty.
Rocky and Karate Kid aren't good examples because both stories are about underdog characters who's will and determination overcome their lack of skill.
Wait, so, an animated kid's movie about animals that talk and do kung-fu has unrealistic plot elements? Say it ain't so!
Or do they just know better the effort required to become a master at kung fu?
Please don't downvote for posting what I found, only for disagreeing with my upcoming opinion:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /blog/2010/03/09/amazing/ on this server.

I hate it when I get this message. HN should kill links with server errors.
But they'll teach you how to be lean, so that you can last even longer despite losing the 699$.

Sidenote: where are you guys living?
Never be Clever
offhand thought I had -- wanted some other people's opinions.
Ubuntu or Windows seems like a limited dichotomy you've just imposed on yourself.

There's more than two options out there. What about other Linux distros? What about BSD? If you're looking for something that's pretty, there's still no going past OS X, IMO.

To me, the choice is not Ubuntu vs. Windows, it's Unix/Unix-like vs Windows and Unix/Unix-like wins.
What a domain name!
I thought the same. It seems to me that a "business person" is someone who runs a business. A Good "business person" runs a successful business and a bad one runs an unsuccessful one. A lot can be said about the way 37 signals self promotes but its hard to deny their success.

Personally I learned a long time ago that there's no business book that can tell me how to run my business. You read some good, some bad and if you're lucky find a few good pearls of wisdom along the way.
> I think this review managed to accurately sum up what 37signals puts out.

...Which you can assess by virtue of not having read it. Well done!
1) add a cert signing server that you control to the client's browser,
2) install a self signed SSL cert in the client's browser,
3) done.

(assumes over https, which for HIPAA stuff should be a given)
Now @ryanamos can get more than 2 hours of sleep every night. Congrats guys, you're a great team.
6 months : 50-mile ultramarathon in real life
2 months : Winning a city-wide karate championship in a movie

These seem proportional to me.
At the very lightweight end of the scale, one of the more popular ones is blosxom: http://blosxom.sourceforge.net/

Development has been mostly dormant for the past year or two, though, so there are a bunch of forks, one of which is: http://toroid.org/ams/loathsxome
Google Campfire One, March 9, 2010 (live stream)
Live stream tonight 6pm PST: http://www.youtube.com/googledevelopers
...or in some cases, that it's not possible at all, regardless of effort.

I wanted to be able to play guitar well, but I've come to terms with the fact that I suck. People told me that continued practice would make me better. And maybe it would, to a certain degree. But no matter how much I practice, I'll never be able to play like Jimi Hendrix, because he had a very long finger spread. My hand just can't cover the same range.

Similarly, Salieri worked his butt off, just to be shown up by the upstart Mozart.

It's not fair, but some people really are better than others at certain things.
I'd throw luck in there too. A little luck goes a long way.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
And the point was that, in real life, will and determination usually do not overcome lack of skill.

Sure, we could argue about whether that assertion is correct but these comments demonstrate that at least half of the equation seems to hold.
It's quite nice to doodle mindlessly with http://i43.tinypic.com/svgk5c.png

How about letting you draw with white on the right click?
I think the inner flap pretty much every business book I've ever read has said something similar.

I'm pretty sure the copy writers of business book promotional material have some sort of mad lib system for writing that tripe.

This book will _______ by showing you how ______ changed their business by _______ . All answers to your problems inside!
That is good, since many of the startups here need paying customers -> Those customers would have to have money to spend. Having a forum of startup friendly hackers to publicise to is extremely useful.
The worst part, in my mind, is that we are taking away one of the cues that the world used to give you in deciding you should try something else. Failure allows a person to find their true talent.
If I still had edit access to the submission, I would have changed the link to go directly to the site (see Comment below). It seems his site has been taken offline temporarily due to bandwidth issues/costs. head desk
So, screwing real users in order to avoid expending effort on spammers then.
Yeah, still not liking this idea. It's basicly the forum software coders throwing their hands up and saying "Hey, we don't know how to solve this problem, so we give up. Screw you buddy!".
Honestly, it sounds like the software they custom-developed to act in that role was a knockoff of the basic functionality. The flip side is that OpenSSO uses in-built Kerberos encryption, and generates token-based session headers that contain zero sensitive information.

Honestly, you may well have a point, in that the customer may well have only been receptive to the chosen solution because it was custom-developed, but I was mostly balking at the developer's initial reaction of 'impossible'. Not only is it not impossible, it isn't hard to do, and certainly didn't require reinventing the wheel when a perfectly adequate solution exists that would not only have worked well, but worked for de-passwordifying OTHER web services as well (potentially).
Also notice how it says "Internet Plug-ins" instead of Flash or Silverlight.
If you learned just one thing at this conference that helped you optimize development by even a small percentage, this would be worth it.

Or if you met one person who you could ping for specific questions when you hit a roadblock, this would easily pay for itself.

I really encourage you to think about value, not cost.
Ask HN: Would using rpxnow.com hurt the chances of Google buying your app?
A friend and I were discussing... If you're building a web application with the plan that Google might buy it, would including Facebook connect, and Twitter authentication hurt your chances of Google's interest. We were discussing possible disadvantages of using rpxnow.com. Secondly, is planning for Google to buy the app a bad idea in the first place?
Agreed, but given the choice of one or the other my money will be on persistence every time.
how can you be a lean startup if you have to pay $699 to know how to be lean? $699 buys you months of server infrastructure.

ceo
EDIT: Whoops, I didn't see the part where you want to want to host it yourself.

---------------------

A popular way of achieving this at the moment is to register for a blog on Tumblr or Posterous. A lot of designers and iPhone developers are doing this to relieve themselves of all the responsibility of hosting/maintaining blogs. You can then redirect your URL if you want to as well.

Case in point: http://blog.graphicpeel.com/

The theme integrates back into his website's design seemlessly.
Hold on. I have been building something and you sound like a perfect customer. I will be sending beta invites in few weeks. Will remember you.
to be fair when Flash came out no browser is capable of drawing anything well.
If you use WordPress I have written an article detailing some common SEO mistakes and how to fix them:

1. Bloated title tag and abandoned post titles

2. Lack of relevant keywords and phrases

3. Disregarding the NoFollow link attribute

4. No Sitemap or ping notification to search engines

5. Not adding images in posts

6. Improper anchor text for internal links

For my suggestions and solutions to these basic SEO issues, continue reading...

http://www.dotsauce.com/2009/11/17/wordpress-seo-mistakes/

Do not listen to the black hat advice! Organic SEO pays off much more in the long run.
Everything you have said is true, but remember that by compressing that timeframe into the span of one upbeat song it doesn't seem like they spent two months of hard, dedicated training forsaking almost all else.

It seems (even though the story is trying to portray something else) that they worked just a little, that it is easily achieved.
Heh, I think they meant it in the sense of breaking suspension of disbelief required to find the story engaging. Which sort of illustrates the ingrained effort level calculations we make. Perhaps.
— or pop?

Depressing as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if suicide rates climb. Durkheim would probably think so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Durkheim
Flash 64k demo

http://http.de.scene.org/pub/parties/2009/assembly09/in64/pr...
I agree with your assertion, FWIW.

I'm just pointing out that the article incorrectly interpreted Rocky and Karate Kid. The article says that Karate Kid is misleading because it shows people achieving expert skill in two months time. The author is incorrect because Karate Kid (and Rocky) didn't succeed based on their skills, so it's not relevant.
If you can stomach the voice of Anthony Robbins, there's a very interesting YouTube video with some background about Stallone and Rocky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2AXGz4rAQg
I like how CSS is by itself. Since I never use HTML or Javascript in the same project as CSS :P