skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sorry, good point. My main point is that you should make some effort to understand the customs of wherever you are. In that light, I'll update my advice:

At the end, if you think "they didn't mean to, but I'm still offended" then you should take the appropriate action.
UX is a science and visual design is an art. I think they are both equally important.

The UX guy is like an architect, but even if he comes up with a nice building layout, no one wants to live in wood and cement foundation. UX and visual design go hand-in-hand and both are needed to create something compelling. In web design, collaboration between the UX guy and visual designer is very important, as the things they do are equally important.
I've heard this said many times - that in the U.S. there is less of a "stigma" against founding a company that happens to not work out (for any number of reasons). Can anyone here give examples of how this stigma is more severe in non-U.S. countries? Is it that no investor will ever give money to anyone who has so much as touched an unsuccessful business? Or are there more subtle social factors at work? (i.e. people stop being your friend if your business doesn't work out) I'd really like to hear some stories about how failure was more severely stigmatized that in the U.S. especially in countries that have much stronger "safety nets" than the USA
One "dish" I used to eat was was canned mixed vegetables mixed with salsa. Eat with chips or tortillas, whatever. Enough vegetables to make it fairly healthy, if you get salsa you like it tastes good (you can even add a little cheese) and if you use multi-grain tortillas, it gets pretty healthy.
+1 for the guy sitting at the window story.

Maven killed the ANTLR parser generator for me. I wanted to try making a compiler and ANTLR looked like the bee's knees. So I download it, try to build it using the official instructions, and package downloads start zooming across my screen.

"What in the nine green hells of Zorgon is this?!," I think to myself.

Then Maven blew up.

"Oh, crap," I think.

Then I look at the config file to see how to fix it. XML.

"Oh, CRAP!" I think.

I try to do a clean rebuild. Maybe a stray file got into version control, maybe an HTTP server horked during the downloads, that sort of thing.

Maven could no longer read its own repository.

"!@#$!@$ !@#%% !@#@$@!! !@#@#@ $#!$$!@," I say out load.

And delete ANTLR. Life's too short to be stepping through a debugger for the build tool for your build tool for you build tool.
SQL - It's data, not a string
As another Linux-using refugee from OS X, I use GNOME's "Subpixel" setting (which as far as I can tell means "snap to nearest pixel vertically, subpixel smoothing horizontally") and I'm quite a fan.

I must admit, some of my more conservative Linux-using friends use the old bitmap fonts like lucidasanstypewriter-9 and Helvetica, and those hand-pixelled fonts have a crispness and... professionalism that you just can't easily get from soft, comfortable hintless antialiasing.

I'll grant that the "sharp fonts" screenshot posted up-thread is pretty horrible, though.
"In the last 30 years, we've gone from having a room full of hard disks storing 32GB, to a memory chip the size of your fingernail storing the same.

In that same time period, batteries have improved a little bit."

And a good thing! If batteries had improved that much, the outcome of a short circuit would be measured in kilotons.
why not have a volunteer fire department? these are quite popular in NY/NJ/CT.
(for the love of God, numerics and statistics in Python?)

See http://numpy.scipy.org/ ;) But don't worry (so much), it's actually just a C library exposed to Python.
To be clear, both the iPad and iPhone do allow you to listen to music and surf the net or use other apps at the same time, but only if you use the iPod application.

The problem has never been that the iPhone and iPad can't support multi-tasking, it's that Apple has only permitted some of its own apps to multi-task.
50 milliamps for a month is equal to the energy produced by 50 grams of TNT.

OK, so not kilotons, but not something you want to carry around either.
There is one single aspect of the public school system, which if removed, would make schools more productive, their material less watered down, and all children more happy and well educated. That single aspect is: compulsion.

If the kids who do not want to be there, were not forced to, the mission of teachers would move away from what it is now: discipline, and back to what it was before compulsion, education.
completely agree.. my home is an hour from work and switching to bus since over a year feels like sheer blessing
The Simple MBA Manifesto: Do We Really Need MBAs?
It's not possible to teach someone the true entrepreneur spirit. Most MBAs go on to become cookie cutter consultants... This quote by YC's very own PG comes to mind:

“If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, you’ll learn something important about business school. After Warren Buffett, you don’t hit another MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. There are only 5 MBAs in the top 50. What you notice in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the technology business tend to come from technology, not business. So if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you’d do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA.” - Paul Graham
Small team, small budget, clever idea, - trumps indie game market
Nice seeing these experienced guys create such cracking software. A labour of love.
Why Mercurial is greater than Git, or How I Learned To Stop Censoring Mys....
If you are regular guy using a car to go from A to B, you definitely don't want to open up the hood. But if you bought a car to learn a thing or two about the engine inside, then you are in trouble with a locked down hood. The same with kids who wanna be hackers.

If your kid want to be a hacker and learn things, he is definitely going to be in big trouble with locked down devices like iPad and companies like Apple .
Marriage: For better or worse, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part. We all live under a sentence of death and, in truth, none of knows how long we have. Modern society gives us more ability to categorize, label, "predict" (based on aggregate statistics, which may mean nothing for one individual life) and so on. But the relationship deal really hasn't changed, even though our excuses can be more elaborated upon.

After spending about 3 1/2 months bedridden, I was diagnosed in June 2001 with "atypical cystic fibrosis" and promptly informed "people like you don't get well". I have spent the last almost nine years defying doctors orders and getting well. I agree that "a cure" is the most logical pursuit -- but you will still be living under a sentence of death because none of us gets out of here alive. And it doesn't mean you can't also pursue a relationship. For me, I am currently alone and was fine with that for a time. I grow tired of it and I think my reasons for being alone will soon be resolved. In my case, a big part of it was that working a full time job, rebuilding my life after getting divorced in the midst of a serious health crisis, and getting well has taken all my time -- which isn't a very different story from some of the complaints on HN that launching a start-up leaves too little time to seriously pursue a relationship as well. For me, the time issue has been lack of hours in the day, not lack of (perceived) years left on my personal calendar.

And I can so identify with your conundrum that other people who have the same diagnosis are offended. I get that a lot, for a variety of reasons.

Peace and good luck.
I live without a car and hope to never go back. I currently live in an apartment in the 'burbs and bus service sucks and the number of stores/amenities nearby is limited. I am currently researching what it will take to buy a house in a more walkable neighborhood. Even with the constraints imposed by my current location, for me, living without a car has been wonderfully less burdened and more relaxing than living with a car ever was. (Of course, I hate driving and always have.)
Exactly. And we have systems like lego mindstorm that are designed to get people interested in hacking. The universe of possibilities is expanding, not contracting.

And nothing, not a single obsolete machine, ever truly disappears. I'm confident that COBOL will still be running somewhere 2250.
poof. they're all gone. i'll wait here while you check
True, especially because an iPad will not replace the PC/Mac under the desk: Where do you let your children (or for this example teenagers) play gamey like CSS, Gothic 3 and so forth? Certainly not on the iPad. It is the same story with video encoding, rendering or even burning a cd/dvd.
The """young hackers""" will still have their platforms to play with. Even if somebody only had an iPad, he might become a web security geek.
Would it be rude to say that I don't care what anyone has to say about the iPad after only a single day of use? It's not a new laptop, it's a new mobile device entirely. It'll take more than one day to really get the iPad, for better or for worse.
Pretty stupid.

Short version: MBAs aren't the end-all be-all solution for any kind of business. Specifically, they probably aren't a good solution for technology start-ups. So far so good.

But the presentation also suggests that MBAs are, as a field, responsible for the Enron-crash, the sub-prime crash, and boring companies and unmotivated employees. And that everything an MBA does (there must be some positive things, after all) can be learned from a handful of business bestselling paperbacks.

Being an extraordinary business leader can't be taught. Not in an MBA course, not by reading books.
Unless Jefferson wrote that after the denouncement of the French Revolution and the appreciation of how it changed the game, I can't consider it to be useful advice today.

E.g. to update a bit (to Marxism or Marxist/Leninism), Jefferson's potential and actual friends didn't include ones who considered him to be a class enemy with all that that implies.

Things like a sign that says "Democrats need not apply" are merely an indication of the continuation of this eliminationist civil war in Western society (well, more likely who it has been heating up in the last year and a quarter; I never saw such in the 1991-2004 period when I lived there).

Anyway, I "dislike" people who want to put me and mine into concentration camps, plus or minus (i.e. less and more severe examples of the same thing). There are no virtues in such people that can cause me to "like" them.
I live closer (~20 min drive, ~40 min bus), and go back and forth on it. Sometimes the convenience and 2x speed of taking a car seems better, but sometimes the "don't have to drive it" aspect of the bus seems better. I definitely get more reading done on days when I take the bus: it takes 40 vs. 20 mins, but that's 40 minutes in which I can read a book. I guess I could do 20 mins of a book on tape in the car, but I hate taking in information via audio, so I just listen to music instead.
'Keeping face' is very important in China, and founding a failed company would cause you to lose face - which could damage your social network (people willing to trade favors with you).

Also, in China, many people don't respect people who start companies. I often hear the opinion that business people almost need to be devious and unethical to succeed here.

Plus, there is no comparable appreciation for smaller, boutique, local companies here that there is in the US. The notion that 'small can be good and premium' and 'big can be bad and faceless' doesn't really translate. If you ask a person if they think they'd get better quality at a little, specialized cafe vs. a Starbucks, most people would pick the Starbucks (unlike in the US, where Starbucks has been experimenting with running 'stealth stores' where they don't display their logo and which they attempt to customize to the neighborhood).
no, its all been relatively minor. There was no massive inflation in the 70s, and there's no massive $12 trillion debt. And we aren't going from bubble to bubble.

yep, its all been smooth sailing. only because they've figured out how to borrow and inflate their way out of every correction.

in the mean time total system risk grows to never imagined heights.
Agreed, that was about theft pure and simple.
IPad app pricing: A last act of insanity by delusional content companies
Thanks for the link, it was an interesting read!
I usually use this phrase to signal, that deed that the person asking me is trying to perform is really not a good idea for a variety of reasons, while simultaneously I can't think of a single good reason for performing the deed: e.g.: If somebody asked me "how do I go about writing an XML parser for Java", I would firstly respond with the question. And then proceed to explain to our little grasshopper. That ALL the grasshoppers I know have been ignorant enough to go and write their own XML parsers which weren't really good, and made them waste precious life energy (not to mention community's resources) on something they had no business doing.

There is a big difference between writing an XML parser for purpose of learning how they work, and writing an XML parser because you are too ignorant to learn how many times before they were already done badly, but still way better than what you will produce.

I would also respond with forementioned question if somebody asked me: "How do you go about mending car chassis with duct-tape??".

But then I might also ask the question, when faced with a new concept that might be really, really cool. But I was thus far completely unaware of - due to either my own ignorance or lack of experience.

In either case - I use the phrase to introduce some humor (or vent some frustration) in an awkward situation.
they would have survived, but they certainly would have had a big loss without that 12 or 14 billion payoff from AIG.
I did if you check my first comment.
If that link went here http://www.ypermutator.com/index.html
I probably would've thought they were the same :p
Immigration Reform And The Jobs Bill
Yes, and no. Let me explain: if it would be a new laptop, the differences from existing laptops would be mostly subtle. A day may be too short to see them. With a device of a new class, you'll feel the differences right away. Being able to analyze and articulate them takes some time though, even if you do that for a living. This is why I dislike all this rash of articles about the iPad. They're all speculation, as the facts have not sunk in yet.
When I hear that phrase, I usually think of cultural factors, which includes some economic ones like the attitudes of employers. In Silicon Valley at least, it's perfectly reasonable to turn down an $80k solid job offer to start a company with an unproven idea, fail at at it within a few years, then go apply for those $80k jobs again. In a lot of countries: 1) your friends/family will think you're nuts for turning down a good job for some insane side project; and 2) future employers will look at your 3-4 years starting and then bankrupting a company as a negative, not a positive (i.e. as evidence that you're good at running companies into the ground).

Of those, #2 might be the biggest difference? I feel that in the U.S., #1 is actually still pretty strong, at least as far as reactions among non-techie family/friends go.
how about we see how this goes before we declare it healed?

The government borrowing massively to keep the government sector expanding and is paying people to consume in an effort to convince everybody that things are recovering.

This is not sustainable and only worsens our situation. One day, we must face up to our debts. We'll be very lucky if interest rates aren't jacked up on us.

And, as in Japan, it seems they want to keep the zombie banks alive and avoid acknowledging the extent of the problems.
Compiler pragmas we'd like to see
he said he DIDN'T know if it constitutes treason.
Its just the spinning of that tray in the microwave has us mesmerized is all.
Watch Vedio Report Special Womens:Women Marines
Phony currency used to fight bribes in India
I fell for the iHype
This sort of question annoys me to no end. My bosses and coworkers always asked me this whenever I proposed refactoring code (improving "perfectly good" old spaghetti or removing unused code). How would one go about answering this question in such a situation?
Want to test in a sandbox separated from your SCM for security reasons? Good luck.

How in the world does the choice of build tool affect if you can test your application (once it's built) in a sandbox environment? If you can compile and package the application, you should be able to upload it to whatever environment you want.
"What do you get for $4.99 a week?
Unique interactivity including landscape and portrait mode, scroll navigation and customizable font size"
I'm at work after a long vacation, so got access to my .zshrc. Here's the relevant part:

#It starts in insert mode
export VIMODE=INS
function zle-keymap-select {
VIMODE="${${KEYMAP/vicmd/CMD}/(main|viins)/INS}"
zle reset-prompt
}

zle -N zle-keymap-select

bindkey -v

I use Oh My Zsh, but as far as I know this should work without it too.

Wish HN had a notify-on-reply system like Reddit's orangered. Would you see this? Would you not? Would I miss eternal gratefulness from a fellow HN citizen? Oh, how I wish I knew the answer!
Why don't you just download the binaries from the ANTLR site?

http://www.antlr.org/download/antlr-3.2.jar for "Complete ANTLR 3.2 jar; all tools, runtime, etc..."

http://www.antlr.org/download.html
FYI: bug in virtualenv in Ubuntu 10.04 (this hit me earlier today)
The article makes me think of a principle from mapmaking: A good map is typically described as "beautiful" but a beautiful map isn't necessarily a good map. If you design/engineer it properly to do a particular job well, it tends to have a certain elegance and visual appeal. In contrast, adding all kinds of froo-froo crapola to the map may make it look like art but cease to function effectively as a map.
AI Bug or Feature?
I think we need MBA if we are not rich & connected.
Don't forget the cost. If its the future, its a must have thing. But its also expensive, meaning a lot of people can have only one and its a choice between the future of computing and everything else.
I loathe source code templates. To use web (newspaper?) terminology, it puts the content below the fold.

It also raises the cost of factoring code out into its own file. Even a simple code header can easily be double the amount of code I consider worth extracting.

I know many IDEs add them automatically, so it doesn't feel like much of a cost to the writer, but as the reader, you pay it every time. Why waste brain power thinking "Ok, ignore everything above, this down here is the real source code"?
News.YC Greasemonkey script to hide iPad articles
A greasemonkey script to hide all of the annoying iPad articles when viewing news.ycombinator.com. You can modify the regular expression in the script to hide other articles as well if you know regex.
I vastly prefer "free enterprise" or "free markets" to capitalism for two reasons. First, the word capitalism is antiquated - large amounts of capital are no longer a requirement to succeed in business. Second, you can have arguments about what "capitalism" is - but "free enterprise" and "free market" are a lot more clearly descriptive.

> (The point being that it's a weakness of capitalism, or at least of the contemporary system everybody calls capitalism, that institutions that would otherwise die off are able to preserve themselves through political influence and other unsavory means.)

Now, this gets to the root of it - sectors like banking and healthcare are explicitly not free enterprise/free market. The entire banking system is a set of regulations, starting with the piece of paper of no inherent value that you're required to accept for all debts public and private in the USA, to the Federal Reserve choosing how much of this new paper to create whenever it likes, and so on.

Healthcare, likewise, with its artificially restricted supply of doctors, ridiculous licensing requirements (10-12 years, or more, hundreds of thousands of dollars of fees to become a doctor - I understand it's an important job, but they could get it lower). FDA requirements adding millions of dollars of cost and years of time to new drugs coming to market. Needing to pay $50 to see a doctor to get a prescription for basic antibiotics.

The sectors people usually point to as failures of capitalism - banking, healthcare - are not coincidentally the least free market sectors in the United States. People don't talk about this enough when they talk about the banking crash -

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

"The Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.[1][2][3] Congress passed the Act in 1977 to reduce discriminatory credit practices against low-income neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining.[4][5] The Act requires the appropriate federal financial supervisory agencies to encourage regulated financial institutions to meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered, consistent with safe and sound operation (Section 802.). To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions."

80% of the subprime mortgages came from meeting Community Reinvestment Act standards. So when someone says, "The last decade proved free enterprise doesn't work" - I'm always a little amazed if they use banking as an example. It's got to be one of the least free sectors in the United States.
Socialism is preventing race to the bottom
Capitalism is promoting race to the top
Why give free advice to multi-billion companies, though?
From what the German business press has reported and my personal contacts with many entrepreneurs have confirmed, in Germany (which still has a strong "safety-net") you'll be stigmatized.

On the level of your personal contacts, when you start up, you'll mostly not be (morally for example) supported in your intent by your family, friends, peers. Most Germans want a secure job, working hours from nine-to-five, their (circa) 30 (working) days vacations etc. And will most likely aim for that (or eventually fall into the safety-net of the social state) than risk starting their own business.

Second problem is your future: If you start a company and it fails many doors will be (in many cases firmly) closed afterwards making it harder and harder with every failure for you to start again.

I'd say that a safety-net everywhere (!) isn't good. Because, when you put safety-net everywhere, everything becomes overregulated. Favorite joke in Germany is that, because most garages don’t have windows and laws forbid working environments without windows, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and many other garage start-ups wouldn't be possible.
Kangana Ranaut Hi Blitz Magazine April 2010
Kangana Ranaut cover page of Hi Blitz Magazine for April 2010.She has been yet while seen Cineblitz Magazine March 2010 & Verve India January 2010.