skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think that it gives as accurate an idea of what suburban life does as driving into the city to work gives of what city life is like, which is what I was responding to ("You're forgetting that many of the suburbians see cities every day because that's where they work.... What fraction of the urban crowd have a comparable experience?").

I don't think either group of commuters is getting the real experience of the place they are commuting to (the skyscraper forest is not the real city, and the office park is not the real suburb), but I think most members of both groups are legitimately glad when they go home and get away from a place that they don't like to be.
Oracle: Open Up or Watch Sun Set
I thought to use bundlebox, you bought an item (in your case an ipad) had it shipped to the free bundlebox address they give you. When it arrives, they then send you an email saying there is something in your bundlebox and quote you a price on what it will cost to ship it to you. They also calculate your VAT/custom charges and factor that into the price. Only then do you give Bundlebox any money. Given that the VAT was £120 and you possibly didn't pay any customs handling fee, what was the remainder price they quoted you?
Twitter Does 19 Billion Searches Per Month, Beating Yahoo & Bing (Sort Of)
"So now China and a few others are at the bottom of the supply chain...who do they pass the buck to to lift themselves out of these conditions?"

Probably Vietnam, and then robots.
Architecture of middle-large website: poppen.de
Yes and no...it does use a pivot, true, but is a bit more distinct than just that. For one thing, it is iterative where quicksort is recursive, so it doesn't need any external storage for a stack.
This is an interesting hands-on book. Does HN recommend any other project based books like this or PAIP? It would be a nice practice for us amateurs.
I also just saw someone roll through here and downvoted nearly every comment. I've long suspected this happens but with only 12 comments at the time it was easy to spot.

So I'm calling it out.

If you don't like the fact that a submission didn't die when you flagged it, downvoting everyone who commented on it is not an acceptable alternative.
Probably the more important page to visit: http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.5/changes.html
7 things you need to know about cloud computing
Biz Stone @ Twitter Chirp Conference
Application defined annotations is the most interesting thing I've heard about so far.
all we have is conjecture based on personal experience

I like it! Can I use it? I can refute anything with that. What a tremendously useful sentence.

"No baby, you can't know that this will hurt. All you have is conjecture based on personal experience. Now come over here."
Is anyone concerned about copyright issues? I'd have to go back and consult the Twitter TOS...

edit:

"You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.

Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.

We may modify or adapt your Content in order to transmit, display or distribute it over computer networks and in various media and/or make changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to any requirements or limitations of any networks, devices, services or media."
If you have a better alternative, do feel free to post your ideas.
Unfuddle's free accounts only allow 1 project and 2 users. Which is a bummer, because I really liked Unfuddle's interface, but I'm not gonna commit to a monthly service until we actually have revenue. :-(
And because most moderately complex Word documents will not transfer 100% when you save them as RTF. Or said differently, RTF documents won't display the same in different applications if they contain enough complexity.
No ogg or flac. Sigh.
Real time infinite scale DB with SQL interface
I am seriously skeptic, but this looks interesting
Unix How-To: File Updates in Linux
As an American I need to ask what is a council flat? Is that like what we might call "public housing"? (Cheap, often low-quality)

And how did you like life in Bangkok?
True, all they rely on BT for is the bit that's completely impossible for them to get anywhere else or duplicate.
Wow, thank you so much.

I have this application (uTorrent) that keeps aborting system reboots because it tries to gracefully close hundreds of connections and lags out. I just added "NSSupportsSuddenTermination" to the plist file, and now it shuts down instantly. No more cancelled reboots!
And unfuddle only allocates 200mb, which is easy to hit pretty quick. Looks like assembla is offering 2gb, but none of the ticketing tools or other services... Unfuddle does those things really well on the free account.

Aint competition a grand thing? :)
> Privileged white collars shocked and dismayed that blue collar work can really, really suck. News at 11.

I know you have the entire article in mind when you say this, but your associated excerpt is a direct quotation from one of the factory workers.

> "We (who?) would respect us? We are ordered around and told what to do and what not to do. No one in management has ever asked us about anything. There is no discussion. You feel no respect."

So unless you question the authenticity of that quotation, i think you're being extremely dismissivie of not just the white-collar western observers who wrote and read this article.

Factory work may have given you a life beyond poverty. It may even have worked out for your mother, in the end. That says nothing of how much she suffered while working in those conditions.
I think the analogy is somewhat flawed. You can always fork Wikipedia's data and create your own with whatever rules you'd like. A closer analog might be OpenOffice. You don't have multiple spreadsheet apps in that one suite; It just wouldn't make sense.
Fitness Motivation for Women & Tips To Keep Up Your Exercise Motivation
Thank you, we'll be looking forward to those!
Live From Chirp: Twitter’s Platform Roadmap
Conversion secrets of a million-dollar landing page (SEOmoz analysis)
Right now I'm using Get Satisfaction, ZenDesk, Salesforce.com, and Basecamp
Why Twitter is better than Google for real-time results
By "hippies" I presume s/he meant people working on open source.
I include Vietnam in the current status of China. Robots would be cool. Although I have a high degree of respect for people that can make things in factories...it would be a shame to lose this skill set to robots.

Keep in mind that China is already in competition with places like Vietnam. China puts its own provinces in competition with each other in much the same way that states and municipalities in the U.S. compete for a new car factory, data, or distribution center. If China seriously ratchets up its labor protections, buyers will move elsewhere...to an extent...China still outguns everyone on population.
Deep Truth about the Markets and Investing
Free API tools for developers and providers
Five iPhone apps for managing your money
How to Make a Screencast for Your Website
Document Open certainly didn't prevent proprietary document nightmares. Lock-in is only an issue inasmuch as users don't demand a sane export. Pages documents could be a proprietary, patent-protected nightmare internally and it wouldn't matter to me: when I want the document out, I export it back to myself in a standard format. (Sure, it'd be nice to have a mass-export, but these things will come with time.)

Automatic versioning is also just "one of those things that software should do". Ideally with some logarithmically scaled set of versions when space becomes an issue.

Folders don't scale either. People quickly wind up just using search. Search works pretty darn well everywhere beyond the trivial case. Of course, for search to work really well, what the iPhone OS needs is an interface to let device-wide search tap into third party data stores.

Also, I think "piles" a la albums in the photo app is going to become a more generalized solution to the 'folder' issue.
It will fill the middle-ground where linear lists break down and tagging/foldering makes sense, but before tagging/foldering gets so complex that you just search anyway.
LTO, finally.

http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Optimize-Options.html#inde...
If you haven't done it before, I highly recommend signing up for the beta book program. The pragprogs really do a nice job with the beta PDFs and have a great system for downloading new versions.
Http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=lotsofjokes
Yes you got it: cheap public housing. Councils are the local area authorities (either county or town level).
Amazing how many great looking projects are coming out of the Clojure community. I used to think that Scala was the heir apparent to Java but it seems like Clojure now has more momentum. Clojure has a kinder learning curve than Scala so perhaps that is the reason.
Boston's Best Angel Investors
I have empathy toward them and their harsh circumstances, but the thing I recognize is that the alternatives are mostly WORSE. In opinion writing, one of the key rules is that it's useless to simply complain about something — we have to offer a workable alternative. Failure to do this is one of the reasons why Bush's Iraq War was considered such a failure: He had a hugely successful plan to topple Saddam, but he didn't know where to go from there and lots of people suffered for it.

So I feel for people in bad conditions, but it's also important to have perspective about how bad "bad" can be.
Especially if cat is not declawed.
I used to work at an amusement park that did that as well.
Geekiest Houses: When obsessed geeks build their dream homes
55 million tweets/day * 140 characters/tweet ~= 14.5 GB/day, presuming a 16-bit character encoding.

That's only about 20 TB for four years worth of data, or about $1500 worth of storage, before compression.

That doesn't seem like it would be a significant challenge for the LOC. I'm more interested in understanding why they would want to use that amount of space to archive Twitter, as opposed to anything else.
If not, this would be a cool project for a third-party distributed project like SETI@home or folding@home.
Ok, I've replaced the emails with a contact form instead (still working on the captcha).

Also, the login is your url: HNHackers.com/username
Wikipedia does compete, in the sense of debating over which edits to keep. Ultimately, it also competes for mindshare with the rest of the internet, and other wikis (usually ones that focus on a particular topic).

I think the open source world can learn a lot from Wikipedia's social operating model, but there's no reason that there shouldn't be multiple open-source solutions to solve the same problem.
I flagged both submissions because I see no reason for HN to become yet another venue for funny cat videos.
Wikipedia is such an overwhelming success at this point that forking its data won't gain you much.
ClamAV versions less than v0.95 will be automatically disabled tomorrow
a few numbers would have been better than 5.5.4 is very exciting
Of course, what would you expect? Given the publicity, everyone downloaded it to try it. It's free.

Now, if there were charts for the apps people actually USE…
Right, this has to do with the way I was storing tags to make them searchable. I've fixed this for new users, and working on restoring this for previous entries.
Facebook deletes iPhone apps from its system
I thought for sure this was a late april fools post.
Is this your hack so that your random questions get a higher ranking?
... They especially have no idea what its absence means.

Oh, I wholly agree, this makes sense for the average user. It's just wasted space to most people. They've already dimmed everything but the domain name (a brilliant idea in every single way), making the prefix' "cognitive impact" rather minimal already. To that end, I don't personally see that removing it is necessary, nor helpful. So at best it maintains the status-quo, and arguably lowers it slightly.

But, since these decisions are largely made for the majorities, it does make sense that they're going that route; I'm not really annoyed, I'm just mildly disagreeing with the decision.

As to the white non-secure flag, I'd tint it slightly yellow so it raises an eyebrow for people interested in their own privacy; white is too ignorable, and much harder to see at a glance. On the whole, it's an interesting idea, as it'd effectively turn the whole http/https battle into a slight-but-real push to move to https entirely.
But central to Wikipedia's success is not allowing similar articles.
Http://www.freelotto.com/LottoPicker/register.asp?
In my experience this is true when you're solving easy problems. The hard part of solving lots of easy problems includes managing time, not making errors, creating simple, understandable abstractions, etc.

Solving well lots of easy problems in a consistent, manageable way is itself a hard problem, to which pair programming is imho a great solution.

I've come to the conclusion that for individual hard problems, where you're trying to understand how to implement a complicated algorithm or some such, individual programming allows a much better attention span. It's hard to get "in the zone" pair programming. In this case, I prefer "asynchronous pair programming" (joke), by which I mean code review and asking colleagues for advice.
I can understand your sentiment (Im sure I once shared it too). However please bear in mind this is a huge culture clash problem. Extended visits to the region will throw things in a new light (like it did for myself).

Now, clearly, conditions definitely are a problem in many places. However the general theory of working at 14/15 is more of a cultural thing and not an issue.

I don't think it's correct to dictate society rules such as "thou must not work under 16" just because we happened to stop that practice several years back. I find it a bit sadistic that we wish to dictate that sentiment to others...

Of course us then exploiting that work environment is a whole other problem.

Additionally; what's the solution? Stop all these kids working? What are they going to do? Really, seriously? Increased wages would be good - that is certainly something we should encourage.
Would you be happier if I submitted a blogger link to the same text?
My mother (1941 born), went to work 15 years old to sustain her mother and two siblings. She worked 16 hour workdays, 10 hour factory job and the rest working on a farm for shelter and food. She worked hard up to her 60's, never complaining about anything being too hard. She raised three kids and still accomplished a lot.

Her generation had it even harder than these kids (many of their peers do!), while enduring hunger and scarcity.

Looking on today's spoiled western civilization - I really can't help but to feel that we have it too well. I mean - leisure really ain't something humanity has been built for.

I predict that this Chinese generation will, ultimately prove as more satisfied and fulfilled than the one in 50 years.
I followed that article to http://www.ripcode.com/news/newsRelease.php?id=42 and the page looks completely corrupt and messed up in Firefox on my Mac.

If they can't even generate good html, why should I believe they can handle transcoding flash?
Yep. It used to be the case that council housing was given as part of social care and/or at subsidised rents.
It still is, to a degree but nowhere near the amount it used to. Originally it was part of resettling the displaced population after WW2 and the bombing of the UK.

The Tories back in the 80's decided that "home owners" were Tory voters so introduced a "right to buy" scheme that enabled tenants to purchase their properties at discounted costs. This means that a lot of council property in the UK is now actually private property.
A lot of people made a lot of money with these purchases due to the recent housing booms. However it is a case of location, location, location as some lost money as in some locations properties can be practically worthless (Hull or Burnley being examples).
If you're big on visualization check out Harvard's www.CS171.org. I'm enrolled in the class right now and it's been very enriching. I think it is also available as opencourseware.

Books:
http://www.cs171.org/syllabus.html

Resources
http://www.cs171.org/resources.html
I have been to the ice house in madras, its now called the vivekananda house (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivekanandar_Illam) - in honour of swami vivekananda
Twitter launches User Streams Preview
Is it just me or how come the cat doesn't scratch it?
Evidently, a large number of people thought that little comment of yours wasn't HN worthy, either.
Open the Clouds with Portable Stacks
Password reset still isn't working. It says an email has been sent, but emails aren't arriving.

Also, from another comment, HN usernames are case sensitive, so making them all lowercase will most likely cause problems sooner or later.
I completely fail to see how this is any kind of demonstration that it is an intuitive interface. The cat is pawing at something that is moving and changing, the pawing also happens to generate actions through touch sensors. You could have the most horrendously unintuitive UI possible and this could still be true.
If you aren't working (or not earning enough) you'd get 'Familienbeihilfe' [1] as a student (something like 600-700 euros a month) until you're 26 or no longer a student.

That should cover the bulk of your expenses if you live frugally in Vienna (I lived for about 800-900 euros a month as student).

Regarding getting fired - you don't seem to take unemployment benefits into account (~55% of your salary after taxes, probably the same or similar in Germany, state also pays your medical and social insurance in that case).

This should also cover the bulk of your expenses - so the amount you need to save is a lot lower then you think.

I'm not saying working as a programmer is your ticket to wealth and fame, but come on: you'll earn a significantly higher than average salary and you won't be promptly thrown to the wolves if you get fired.

The Germanic countries have fairly extensive social safety nets and at the end I really don't think such a level of worrying (about financial security) is justified (btw you also pay less taxes if you have children).

People earning far less than either of us raise families and buy homes here (and in much poorer countries) just fine.

[1] http://www.help.gv.at/Content.Node/8/Seite.080712.html
This is the only way they will get users from GitHub.
"best country to work" have you heard of France? I think they have a maximum 30 hour work week. :O
Although I guess this depends on your definition of "best" ;)
Football News: MAN CITY EASE INTO FOURTH PLACE IN PREMIER LEAGUE
Haha, I noticed that too but didn't say anything because I was worried I'd sound too concerned with comment karma :^)
I agree that less is often more. It's better to do a few things well than to do many things poorly, the latter being an inevitable result of feature creep and design by committee.

That said, I tend to hold to the MIT Approach: correctness and consistency should not be compromised.
This is a good read for those who just want a broad overview and working code for some interesting machine learning problems. It's not too realistic, but will get the ball rolling. For those who want to delve further, I would suggest reading through the Netflix Prize forums and perhaps even try implementing some of the code thrown around there. You will learn a lot by tackling a problem of that scale.
Industrial robots are extensively used in the Western world in industrial production. However they are rather expensive and are only worth installing for tasks that don't require any human brain activity, can be done 24/7 (as robots don't require sleep it's more economical to run them 24/7) and not change too often so regular reprogramming is not required.

Also, they're not exactly popular amongst manual labourers as a robot takes away the job of at least 2-3 people and never goes on strike.
I'd really love to move to Assembla but the packages are a bit strange, starts 40 users and 1 repo? I carn't see many projects having 40 users and only one project at a time, I did ask if I could sacrifice some users for repo's, we work with smaller teams so 10 repo's and 10 users but they declined.

The pay as you go is great until you realise you have to pay for each member of the team and each project, so if I work on two 'spaces' I'm classed as two separate users... it soon gets expensive
One could see that as equivalent to a large OSS project that forbids you from writing two versions of the same function. Rewrite or improve the old one to be the new canonical version, or fork the whole thing into a new project, but no adding extra noise that'll have to be maintained.

One thing is to keep in mind too is the immense scale of Wikipedia, which is not true of all OSS. Any large project pretty much has to use a similar model of competitive cooperation and rules of the road (or sometimes just an authoritarian leader), or it quickly spirals into chaos.
Glass is pretty scratch-resistant. You can take your keys to an iPhone or iPad as vigorously as you'd like with no ill effects. I've demonstrated it to several people, to usually shocked responses. Cat claws don't do anything to windows, they're not going to hurt an iPad.

This is also part of the reason why Apple's stopped selling screen protectors - they're as useless as Monster cables. They don't actually help anything, and they get scratched easier than the screen does.
The glass on iPhones, iPod touches and iPads is quite scratch resistant (it is, after all, real glass). Scratches are possible but unlikely. Small sharp stones (sand!) are probably the likeliest thing to scratch your iPad and I think cat claws don’t have quite the same properties.
The Coolest Easter Eggs Hidden in Your Software, DVDs and Video Games
No people like you are bad for these people. People take the best job they can get, because you know what -- it makes their life better. Yeah working hard sucks, but you know what being in poverty sucks more. China is poor, to reach the standard of living found in the west (generated over decades if not centuries) they have to make up a lot of that effort. Technology/Productivity improvements significantly reduce the level of effort required, but eventually work needs to be done.

They can build cities, cars, etc -- but they need natural resource imports, so they must trade with the rest of the world. For some things it makes sense to purchase from the outside market, cheaper to purchase than make themselves, so once again they need to make something that the outside values. It's the most efficient use of their time.

As for possible inhumane treatment in the form of employer abuse, etc that of course is wrong and a different matter than just working hard.
Declawing cats is pretty cruel. Trimming the cat's nails is a better idea, it serves the same purpose, and isn't as cruel to the cat.
The brevity of the question makes it quite suitable for an AskHN post.
Metals can't scratch glass. Cat claws have even less chance.

"Q. Do metal scrapers or razor blades scratch glass.
A. No. Metal scrapers and razor blades alone will not scratch glass. However, abrasive materials, such as sand or fabricating debris from the tempering process, trapped by a metal scraper or razor blade, can scratch glass."
You can get Vorbis and FLAC from Magnatune, which is also integrated into Rythmbox alongside Ubuntu One and Jamendo. Ubuntu One Music Store apparently chose 7digital for its wide selection of music, not the number of formats it supports.