skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure why people asking questions in the office is considered a bad thing. Sure, if they are inane questions not related to stuff you or they are working on, then yes, that could get really annoying. But if people are asking questions that help them get work done or to clarify some aspect of something they are working on, isn't that kind of a good thing?

By working from home and avoiding distractions caused by other people's questions, it seems like you trading other people's productivity (you are making it harder for them to get answers to their questions) in order to boost your own.
Can someone say value prop!
That web site needs some work. It's way too loud. I really don't want to download any movies to see it in action how about some simple screen shots? They may be there but I could quick locate them. And how about a quick mall search?
It's good to see that the public's relative need for weather(.com) forecasts has not changed in the last twelve years.
"Brad's just the most visible externally"

Which is the other problem... People enter Google and disappear from external sight. I don't think Google has a "don't blog" policy, maybe it is that they just see "google = internet" and decide there is no value in having a public facing side.

I wonder whether this will happen to Tim
For me, it wasn't math itself that scared me, it was actually doing calculations by hand. Even though we have calculators and software, we still expect kids to do complicated things like long division and solving equations, and even calculus by hand. (Maybe it's a holdover of the Protestant work ethic.)

If I'd known about things like Gödel's Theorem or mathematical logic as a teenager, I would have seen the big picture.
If he understood how other social human beings behave, he'd realize this only brings extra attention to his persona.
Isn't there a cfscript equivalent that is more pleasing to the eye? Something like:

switch (expr) {
case "val"....
I wonder why Tim has gone to Google - he doesn't seem to elaborate why he chose Google post-Sun/Oracle.
Hard-line 9-to-5 sucks much worse than working from home, but the best is to have an office available with flexible hours. I think the optimum is somewhere around 20-30 office hours plus 20-30 work-from-home hours.

One of the lingering benefits of old-style work environments is the idea that a corporation is invested in your career development; you're their employee. In practice, a lot of corporations ignore this responsibility, but that's another topic... If you work from home, it becomes more visibly evident (or at least seems to be) that you're just providing services in exchange for money; there isn't even the pretense of that sense of responsibility.
Shrinking your ambitions isn't the same thing as shrinking your brain. Living inside the valley means your surrounded by people whose insane ambitions are much more likely to have paid off. You only see the successful ones, because the failures either never make it in, or have left. In general, living anywhere else means you are surrounded by people whose insane ambitions didn't pay off, and who have achieved whatever success they have by being more modest.
Related is a recent post on waxy.org with a list of the top 100 websites of 1999: http://waxy.org/2010/02/dennet_and_the_top_100_websites_of_1...
The problem with a realistic perspective is that it keeps you from shooting for anything really big.

Aim for the stars, hit the trees. Aim for the trees, hit the mud.

And being around people who aim for the stars just feels better, you know?
This reminds me of Mr Feynman's dating advice.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196928

"Angle" might not be the most polite of terms here, but it does get everyone right to the quick of the whole discussion.
I remember the same arguments about color monitors. Some things are appealing b/c they hit our senses better.
The Go Programming Language Blog
How editing for twitter flips my creative switch
What happens if Apple approves Opera Mini within 24 to 36 hours and then uses Opera Mini as an example to direct attention away from the app store's flaws?
669 tweets

Not to rain on your parade, but do you think Steve Jobs is scared by 669 tweets? He has taken much more heat (think FCC letters about monopoly behavior) and still didn't move.
A few years ago, David Goodstein of Caltech wrote an interesting look back at cold fusion. It's available here: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html

Where the story left off, there were a few competent researchers with well-designed experiments that were getting indications that something was happening that was not covered by current theory. However, cold fusion research was by then out of fashion, and no one was interested in looking deeper into those results and confirming or refuting them.

As Goodstein notes, "What all these experiments really need is critical examination by accomplished rivals intent on proving them wrong. That is part of the normal functioning of science. Unfortunately, in this area, science is not functioning normally. There is nobody out there listening."
"some developer time"? That may be the understatement of the year. Opera has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of developer time in the app, and they want it to be used. The PR circus is a nice benefit, not the goal. It doesn't come close to compensating for the financial investment and opportunity-cost of developing Opera for iPhone.
Tell HN: Twitter's monetization platform for 3rd party apps
Twitter's job ad http://twitter.com/job.html?jvi=owUhVfwm,Job indicates that they're building a monetization platform and that they plan to make it available for 3rd party apps.
Isn't this how business is done in most countries? The countries have laws and if the businesses want to enter the market, they have to follow the laws of the country?

It seems like this debate is mostly irrational and hypocritical support of Google and a nationalistic anti-China sentiment.

The U.S. does exactly the same things China is doing now. They prop up GM and not honda or toyota. They bail out U.S. banks, but not HSBC. They retroactively change the laws to enable AT&T et al to violate the constitution.

Why the hypocrisy?
Or had to keep a heavily used CF server running...

By around 97, we (at UOL, a major ISP/portal in Brazil) had to develop a small program that automatically restarted it when cfserver (IIRC) locked up. During peak hours, it had to be restarted every minute or so.

By 98, all applications were migrated to saner platforms.
look at jsp!
clickable url http://twitter.com/job.html?jvi=owUhVfwm,Job
"the first inexpensive means of identifying the hallmark of cold fusion reactions: the production of excess heat"

Shouldn't it be excess neutrons?
Blue Mountain Arts. Was anyone else here one of the millions who saw Internet greeting cards as a great idea?

What were we thinking?
The problem is having the younger children outside waiting for the bus in the dark before or soon after the sun comes up in late autumn and winter.
To be fair, you could put a Unix-like lipstick on Windows with Cygwin. It will not change the underlying OS nature, but it will have lipstick on it.
As far as I can tell, the Scientology thing was due to a DMCA takedown notice by the Church of Scientology. Due to that, Google now publishes all DMCA requests here: http://chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi They also link to those DMCA requests as search results when applicable.

They don't censor results on Nazis in the US.

For a rundown of their censorship (almost always government mandated), see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google
> [math nerds] often write terrible abstractions [...]

Category theory to the rescue!
There was the censoring of the autocomplete in the islam is thing too. When you're madly in love with Google, or anything for that matter, you gotta pick and choose which things to remember and which motivations to imagine, but I don't like google, so maybe that's why I can see through some of the irrationality.

I don't feel one way or the other about china, but I do believe in certain social customs that google is ignoring.
IE needs to lose a lot more of marketshare.

Microsoft always produces great software when they are the runner ups.
The name is the only thing the school subject shares with `real' mathematics.
I'm a freelancer, so I guess I have one.
Just one of the many examples that highlights the market for energy-proportional computing. Check out http://www.cra.org/ccc/docs/ieee_computer07.pdf. Machines today still consume around 50 percent of total peak power while sitting at idle!
The no separation between home and work in my case is more of a mental thing than a physical one. If I'm caught up in a problem, I tend to obsess on it no matter where I am and my ability to get away from a problem seems to be more about having satisfied my brain that I have some kind of solution or approach to it worked out than my physical location.
Exactly. Cold fusion is not necessarily 'junk science' but until someone uses it to generate net energy it is an interesting theoretical idea rather than solid science on which real world technology can be built.
No, the current IE8 implementation is so far from the best.

This aims to be a future implementation (when IE9 is released) and by that time other browsers will catch up with this implementation.

Isn't this just FUD?
There are good excuses, like browser capabilities, broadband, % of users online, ad serving platforms, ad agencies, mobile usage, knowledgable people/employees. Heck, I could go on and on and on.

There was absolute no way for Google Maps to have happened in 1999, the strongest evidence being that it didn't happen in 1999.
get around the paywall via this link http://bit.ly/blVnkT
This all pre-supposes that you're shooting for VC funding.

You could argue that it's small-minded to think that's the only way to make a go of your big dream.
Worth checking out if only for the entry from Fake Steve.
Hmm, I think my life would be a sine wave or a saw-tooth wave pattern.
We're talking about cold fusion, right? Maybe things have changed, but I was under the impression that it was not yet possible to reliably reproduce the effects. In such a context, reproduction would be quite noteworthy.
Yes, of course I do, and the generalizations here are gross and condescending. You will not convince me that I do not want this.

I lean towards the Comfort angle, but I also start tinkering and producing when I am bored, so I could hardly be considered to walk the lazy path. I look for freedom from lower-level concerns so as to begin address higher-level needs. Money provides a layer of abstraction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

I am sure someone can link to the study that refuted the "money can't buy happiness" claim.
http://xenu.net used to be the top hit for Scientology in google.com. It was removed after a DMCA complaint. Apparently, it is back up. Search for "google scientology" for background.

The google.de was accused of censoring holocaust-denial sites (they would appear on google.com). I don't know a high profile holocaust denial site to check it out.
San Francisco Digital Agency 
Marker Seven is a full-service digital agency headquartered in San Francisco. We provide services that extend your brand online, provide more operational efficiency, and create memorable experiences for your users. From start-ups to Fortune 500 enterprises, we deliver solutions aligned with your business objectives.
Heyzap(YC W09) Launches Platform to Take Facebook Games to Entire Web
While carb overconsumption is all-around bad for you, the brain needs glucose more than just about any other organ. Neurologic symptoms are often the first signs of hypoglycemia, and the brain's functional ability falls rapidly with glucose levels.
It's also why we are creating a spaceship earth that is uninhabitable by humans, but plenty fine for single-celled organisms. The future of humanity is left as an exercise for the reader.
Of course it's a web browser. It looks like a web browser and you can browse the internet with it. I think those are sufficient conditions. Opera Mini is a good solution when you want to read a few blogs or check up on wikipedia.

Remember we're living in an era where most people read their webmail via an unsecured connection. The risk of using Opera as a middle man pales in comparison to all the security risks people casually take.

I think Opera Mini offers a good trade-off between speed and security, and I don't think it's gimmicky at all.
hey guys-

i do freelance social media for sunshine as one of many, many freelance projects that i have, and one of the fringe benefits of putting in a few hours a week for sunshine is that i get to work out of either of the Manhattan locations. it's a bit of trek, since if i'm at home i'm in astoria and if i'm with my girlfriend i'm in greenpoint, but i've found that the act of getting up and actually going in to a desk space, rather than saying 'yup, gonna start working" at arbitrarily assigned time, even figuring in the hour of transit.

it's true that a lot of the same distractions, or rather variations on such, can exist in a co-working space. annoyingly loud phone calls, bothers from home, cat videos on the internet (sooo many cat videos. SO. MANY.).

but in a co-working space, every distraction is an opportunity, really-someone COULD be bothering you to see if you do graphic design, because they're looking for someone to do their business cards. and i've found those opportunities outweigh the negatives? because when it comes to stuff like not slacking around on the internet, that's still a temptation anywhere-may as well place yourself smack dab in the middle of networking opportunities.

that's just my two cents-i'd probably STILL be working from home if my work at sunshine hadn't introduced me to Coworking with a capital "C", but, honestly, I've tried to work from home and it just doesn't happen.
669 tweets are 669 mentions of opera and have nothing to do with steve jobs. this is marketing, not trying to scare steve jobs or apple into anything.
i haven't found a list of non-us schools, but if you e-mail hack@hndir.com we will add it soon
Isn't the fact that it's interesting, and that the pay-off would be huge, reason enough? The idea that there is a confirmed, reliable, reproducible effect, but that people are hiding that, seems a little odd.

You seem to be confusing being hopeful or popular with being (proven) right.
What are you guys doing? I'm in Tampa.
It's a lesson that some people will understand, and some won't ever.

I'm curious about this: does anyone who doesn't want to be rich - at all, or not in the correct third way - fall into the group of "those who don't understand"?

I think I understand that if I had a desire to be rich - endlessly, endlessly rich - and not for the things it brought me or for comfort, then I might prefer to work with other people with the same attitude. But is it necessarily the case that if you understand this lesson, then your desires fall into line?

Socrates thought this about being good: if you understand what goodness really is, then you immediately have the appropriate desires. I don't think desire and understanding work this way, generally speaking.

I certainly don't see any attraction in "being rich" as described in the piece, but I don't think that means I failed to understand something.
Metricly seems to allow importing historical data. However, I suppose being in a private beta is a drawback.
I don't have a link, but the blog post detailing that was linked here before. Apparently it really did work
I think a lot of people have a dislike for OO and for some reason by extension design patterns, which in my mind are more or less the same thing as best practices.

Patterns are handy as they provide you with a nice template to solve a common problem, and to provide structure to your designs.

As the interview states, eventually everything becomes a big hairy mud ball.
True but irrelevant. When Google Maps did happen, there's no reason why MapQuest could not have built the same thing at the same time.

The fact that they didn't, and that Google did, suggests opportunities for upstarts (sorry, startups) to get the jump on established players by introducing disruptive innovations.
I was going to reply myself, but you've basically said exactly what I was thinking.

Some of us enjoy what we do, but would rather have a self-sustaining lifestyle that lets us do what we enjoy doing not because we have to, but because we want to.
This does a better job of illustrating the problems of credibility on a corporate blog. I mean, really, this company is selling you office space and is blogging about the downsides of working at home? I bet I could find lots of blog posts about the downsides of cooking at home on lots of restaurant blogs.
As much I dislike Microsoft, this case has me rooting for them.
Are there no buses where you are? During my entire time in public school, I got there in one of three ways: took the bus, I got a ride with my older brother, or I drove myself.

Also keep in mind this would apply to high school students, not elementary school kids. And this isn't a single study, or even a new result. I've known this about teenagers for a while.
Would have been funnier if the blog had lasted more than 4 days.
My favorite recovery (though it was not fun at the time) involved a headless machine that wasn't booting, and all I had available that would boot on the machine was a floppy disk that ran a rescue shell. I modified the floppy to start linux with console=/dev/fd0, and so was able to type blind and then remove the floppy to read the output. After a few painful cycles of this, I noticed I could often guess at what was happening by listening to the write patterns of the floppy drive, and completed the rest of the recovery using essentially morse code.
At a previous employer, we were supposed to be in at 8:30am. Our boss even spoke to myself and a friend if we regularly arrived at 8:45, even if we didn't have any specific appointments. (And we stayed plenty late at the end of the day.)

I wouldn't have minded, except that he would regularly be 30-60 minutes late for meetings with clients!

Yes, rules like this can be extremely stupid and counterproductive.
The Periodic Table of Periodic Tables on Flickr - Photo Sharing
zsh's built in zftp support, which can be loaded and run without a working ld.so, has also saved me at least once.
The buildings also came from OSM. The OSM data contains height data [0] and where they don't have that information, I bet they assume some standard height that "looked right".

[0] http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/40758798 (the build:levels = 5 key/value)
Iron-Nitrogen Compound Forms Strongest Magnet Known
I don't know, man. I hear people ragging on advertisement all the time. But the history of western media is the history of text advertisements. Subsidy from advertisement made the newspaper something the everyman could buy with the change in his pocket. In modern times, advertisement still supports most of the media that people choose to consume.

I know ya'll have read your "no logo" and everything, but you got to acknowledge that advertisement has done some good. It's hard for me to imagine what the last two hundred years of history would have been like without it.

How big would the internet be if people couldn't use google ads to pay for their bandwidth costs? How many small net businesses would never be able to reach their customers? I know Patrick uses ads to get customers for his bingo card creator. Thousands of other businesses do.

I just can't hop on the "ads are evil eye pollution" bandwagon.
I'm pretty sure you can with KISSMetrics. They have a PHP/Ruby API where you can set the dates for stuff. Just run all your old event data through the api setting the dates when they actually happened.
I don't like any of those categories.

1st group: starfucker douchebags, properly characterized by the OP. Prone to serve the "high-status" set they want to join as soon as they have access to those people, and therefore a liability to anyone who wants .

2nd group: contains a lot of clock-punching mediocrities, also correctly portrayed by OP.

3rd group: driven by empty ambition, likely psychopaths. These people are responsible for the "next quarter" mentality that has ruined the US and shaken the world economy.

What unifies types I and III is the narcissistic character of a toxic and dangerous personality. What differentiates them is low (I) vs. high (III) self-image. The stronger self-image of the third set makes these people more dangerous, IMO.

What about?

Group 2+: Those who want to be comfortable, so they can spend their mental energy on things that are actually interesting and useful. These are people who wouldn't mind getting rich, but are more interested in solving interesting problems and making the world a better place than in having toy X at age Y.
with tcsh, "set rmstar" will give you a confirmation prompt when doing something like "rm (star)".

and while i'm at it, "set noclobber" has saved me a few times from doing something like "grep file > someotherfile" when i meant to do "grep file >> someotherfile".
One beautiful web app/game: http://www.playauditorium.com/
Would you like a line by line analysis?

"Not every story has that very simple, very pretty shape that even a computer can understand"

What very simple shape? He hasn't said a shape, he laid out the graph, but that doesn't change per story.

I had no idea what he was talking about here.

"so start your story up here"

I'm writing a story? Oh, didn't realize that, maybe you should have said something. I backtracked two paragraphs and re-read it, now that I know this.

"Now, I don’t mean to intimidate you, but after being a chemist as an undergraduate at Cornell, after the war I went to the University of Chicago and studied anthropology, and eventually I took a masters degree in that field."

I guess this is informal, but the grammar connecting the two "afters" is strange.

Was this transcribed from someone speaking? It make a bit more sense if it was, because as writing it's kinda bad.

BTW, just because this was hard to read doesn't mean his books are. I probably never read his stuff because I'm not a big fan of satire.
I know several people in the 5 to 100 million range and I don't really want to be that rich. A close friend growing up had 6-7 million in trust fund + a lot more on the way and it was a lot harder than you might think. You don't have enough to "change the world" but working is almost pointless etc. So he took a lot of stupid risks to feel alive and died at 30.

I have that type of personality and while I like taking 6 months off, it gets old and I want something meaningful to do.
I come from a C/Unix shell/Perl background mostly (with a sprinkling of Java). The main stumbling blocks that I found were:

1) oddly-named functions -- rplaca, cadaddaddr and the like

2) weird "macho" indentation -- more so than the much-maligned parens. I found that at some points of The Little Lisper, I needed a ruler to make sense of the indentation level. I have hopes that the default 4-column indentation in Clojure will make it much easier for me to learn.

3) strange control flow constructs. Trying to make sense where the condition, if and else clauses begin and end in an "if" can be a pain. More so for "cond" or "do". Combine that with 2), and things become unreadable quite fast.

By the way, none of these would be a showstopper if I had to learn Lisp for work or college. Just that, they made it not worth my time to try to learn it for fun.

Edit: I forgot, tail-call recursion. A single misstep and your CPU and memory footprint go from constant to exponential and/or Ackermaniac.