skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I’ve founded many websites that went on to be wildly successful. When I say wildly successful, I mean millions of dollars."

People who actually have been that successful tend not to be so bluntly, hideously arrogant about it.

Tip to the author: people don't like braggers. They do, however, like honest, useful advice. And they don't care if you're a millionaire.
Ok, there might be no "Plate Policy", but there are FDA rules that say your plate must be clean when you eat at a restaurant and that the plates you eat from at home (surely imported from China) can't have poisonous heavy metals in them.
I thought this was a pretty good post but it didn't get any attention.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299094

I think HN is too big now.
I was using murder in a colloquial sense, not a legal one. I'm pretty sure in England the legal term for what was done to Turing is constructive manslaughter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manslaughter_in_English_law#Unl...). But IANAL.
> keyboard shortcuts stop working completely for me

Not just when a plugin like Flash has focus? (You do use it for Hulu)
You wouldn't listen to someone about being successful who had $1 in their pocket.
Tips to write Management Term Paper
Normally students are given a problem, which they would need solving while presenting their management term paper. Hence, they must be able to make a thorough investigation into the chosen topic area,
I actually almost put this in my original post but I didn't know if this was just our server's vim install or if it applied generally. Thanks for the heads up!
Better eating through science.
Holy... The output of this guy is as awesome as it is diverse. Way to go, Zed.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-engineer-gray-powell-...

Gray admits he left the phone at the bar, and then came back later (presumably sober, the next day) and was upset when it wasn't there. He may as well have given it away. The phone was not stolen. It was carelessly lost.
From mine, HeyWay and AccuWeather use AdMob, while Instapaper Free uses "The Deck"
Really? There are tons of them. Some of the AdMob supported apps on my phone at the moment include:

* Movies (Flixster)
* Load Monitor
* MixZing
* Virtual Beer
* BlueTooth File Transfer
* Carr Matey
* Aldiko
* Camera Magic
* VG Classics Board
* Dolphin Browser

The Hacker News Reader app is also ad supported, although I think they're using a different ad network.
A nice quote from the last chapter:

Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but if you want to make about the same money and be happier you could actually just go run a fast food joint. You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession.

Well said, Zed. Very well said indeed.
The other articles on this blog are fascinating too. It applies math to real life with excellent explanations.
Millions of People Now Get Live Streaming Video Sent to Their Phones
Wow, I really liked the whimsical looks of that illustration!
EFF: Dissecting the Gizmodo Warrant
By whose definition? I have doubts about yours.
Those are my sentiments too. I'm scared for one company to have that much power, but they do make a great product and have great tools to leverage it. I'm most likely going to transition to facebook-only logins on my sites off the platform. The social discovery advantages are just too large.
Review My App: Mides IDE
Hey HN, I've been grinding away on this app for a couple of years, trying to build the best mobile IDE that I could on the iPhone / iPod Touch. I have recently ported it to iPad and wanted to get some feedback.

Thanks!
- Irvin
The headline, and the story itself, is what we call a narrative hook. Their purpose is not really to inform the moral of the story, although they should not be totally unrelated, but to grab your attention and give you some kind of emotional attachment to the "lesson" and cause you to pay attention; and keep reading. Whether the story is true or not, and whether the details actually warrant the conclusions are largely irrelevant to their actual purpose within the piece.

The actual message of the piece can be boiled down to "Pick your business partners like you pick your wife/husband/significant whatever." The anecdote _does_ have a resonance with the message, so works quite well in that regard. Also note the "resolution" paragraph at the end that wraps up the narrative and gives you that warm, all's right with the world, happy ending buzz.

And it did cause you to read a bunch more verbiage that you might have otherwise. A little hint of sex and betrayal can really spice up an otherwise trite and shallow piece (sometimes you need to file some copy even when the muse isn't stopping by today...)
In the interest of not quoting films:

"For a friend is not to be had without trial and is not a matter of a single day, but time is needed; hence the peck of salt' has come to be proverbial." -Aristotle (Eudemian Ethics)

"A man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him." is the alluded-to proverb, and that particular wording is from Don Quixote (Cervantes).
Have you never worked with someone and had the thought go through your head, "Sure, this person's intelligent... but can they write code?"

I'm not sure this book is a solution to that problem, but it certainly has a strong opinion.
You can actually select all your local files than choose 'undo gracenote changes' from the right-click menu
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mides-ide/id284965983?mt=8
I think that people see arranged marriages for what they were in the past in Europe (i.e. royalty being forced to marry foreign royalty to seal a treaty or ensure peace, etc) or in the Middle East (i.e. The father needs some goats, so he trades his daughter's hand in marriage for 10 goats).

It also doesn't help that most of the arranged marriages in the movies or on television just use it as a plot device to throw adversity at the main character (i.e. evil mother doesn't like daughter, when the father dies she 'sells' her daughter's hand in marriage to a wealthy slob).
I am working as justin.tv's iPhone developer right now - feel free to ask me anything. We also have an Android app in development (but I'm not working on that).
Ten Crack Commandments: B.I.G.'s Business Lessons for Startups
Sorry to break it to you, but computing page rank for Twitter followers really isn't that much of a revolutionary idea. It is, after all, one of the most successful measurements for rank on social graphs. Ranking apps for Twitter are popular, so you only have to put 2 and 2 together to hit upon the idea.

I have pondered it myself, but alas, didn't act on it. I am very sure I am not the only one.

Google already searches Twitter, too, they are bound to use some form of page rank as well.
I like the idea of this -- any chance for a Ruby spin-off?
I have one even better. Comcast is actually a big group of companies split up by state. I was told multiple times that each state does not share data, accounting etc... I got to this point because when I moved from one state to another I had to close out my account in one state and open in another state. During the move I happened to accidentally double pay my final bill.

Now, any reasonable company would just credit me my overpayment on my new service (in the same company right?). Nope, everyone kept telling me it was impossible. I'd either talk to someone from my old state or my new state, but neither could see any data from the other. After 3 months of this they mailed me a check. Just so happens my mailman is horrible (completely different story, but this happens all time) and somehow managed to tear the numbers on the bottom of the check so I couldn't deposit it ugh.

Once again on the phone with comcast telling me I'd have to wait for them to cancel the check before mailing me a new one and still telling me it's impossible to credit the account. After 10 days I called back and the CSR acted like I had never called. So they started the process over again. This went on for over a month. Finally last month (nearly 7 months after the original overpayment) they CREDITED my new account! Something I was told over and over was completely impossible across states.

EDIT
I wanted to add that actual internet and cable service from comcast has been fine, and the people on the phone were generally nice.
Calories in - calories out is a remarkable good predictor of weight gain, though.

I have a coworker who recently wanted to lose 15 lbs. so she could fit into her wedding dress. She did up this spreadsheet with goal weight, predicted weight, and actual weight over the several weeks leading up to her wedding. The three curves matched up exactly, down to the pound. We were teasing her a little about just how scientific she'd made the process, and she said that it really came down to calories in - calories out. Once you know your body's basic metabolic rate over typical exercise conditions, every X calories above that will result in gaining one pound, while every X calories below that will result in losing one pound. The reason most diets fail isn't that the formula doesn't work, it's that most people don't have the willpower and anal-retentiveness to count calories like that.
I think that's a pretty unproven assertion. There's no evidence that Apple's review process is anywhere near comprehensive enough to detect zero day malware.
Yeah but the value of the Internet isn't the carriers, it's the content. Your argument more relevantly applies to small startups stifled by the ISPs in favor of larger websites. There are more of those than small cable companies being stifled by regulation.
I concur. Keep working on your app while you find a new job. Then, go.
Go for the outspoken / confident ones. Or at least, do not be fooled: the quiet / shy / low self-esteem types

Hmm, empirically I think this is the wrong way round. Or rather, yes, the shy girl may have emotional issues. But she is unlikely to leave you (instead become dependant). Rather it is the extrovert ones who will quickly move on to someone more interesting.

To be honest your mostly making a few gross generalisations based on some personal experience. I could pitch plenty of counter-examples from my own (and friends) experiences to invalidate pretty much all of it as an absolute theory :)
The phone was sold. The finder made a profit from the phone he found, instead of turning it in to the police or bringing it to the owner.

Does California state law, or federal law, mandate that you have to attempt to return found items? That would be news to a lot of people.
The message at the end is quite good. It is the same message he gave at the http://blog.cusec.net/2009/01/05/zed-shaw-the-acl-is-dead-cu... talk. I discovered Zed through the rant against Ruby's community (I had done a google search about ruby disadvantages or something like that and his post came up). He's grown up quite a bit.
We'll see won't we? I'm betting Gruber's right. Being a journalist doesn't mean you are allowed to buy stolen goods.
It seemed more geared towards kids to me. It seems like an attempt to bring back the way a lot of us learned, by buying books/magazines with code listings and typing them in. It's a decent idea. Anyone can do it and you really do learn something about writing code. Sadly, we stopped doing this when books started to come with disks. And then the internet... There is much less satisfaction with looking at source that is already typed and running it.

As an aside, I like that Zed is very opinionated.
Thanks, looking forward to working through it.
It would if Google or Microsoft lost some new "supersecret" prototype. People are making the false equivalence that this is the same as losing your phone. It is not. They lost an unreleased prototype of a phone that will likely sell millions. The information about the design of this phone would probably be worth lots of money to competitors.
We started down a different path too. We were making a Disqus clone for newspapers. We definitely stumbled onto this path, because we were talking to so many journalists and feeling their pain.
I think that at the very least they're going to have to provide some method for Enterprises to load custom or semi-custom enterprise specific apps without going through the app store.
The best defense is a good distraction, it's just that.
Journalist shield law may not halt iPhone probe
Why Your Looks Will Matter More, Thanks to the Internet
I first saw the article you linked on a day when I'd made hamburgers and salad for dinner, and it didn't pass the smell test. I calculated the cost per person of a whole-dinner-plate salad (made from fresh veggies, including bell peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes, with dressing) to be about half the cost per person of a quarter pound burger. This was right after the Chile quake, which had doubled the price of some of those veggies.

A McDonalds salad costs more than a Big Mac, not because veggies cost more than meat, but because McDonalds salads typically come with meat (chicken/bacon) that's as expensive as ground beef, and the salad veggies, cheese, and dressing are more expensive than a hamburger bun and condiments. (The prices of non-meat salads are anchored to the prices of the meat-containing salads.)

I'm all for criticizing food subsidies, but let's do it honestly. Even with subsidies, ground beef costs about twice as much per pound as the veggies I commonly buy, and ground beef is at the bottom end of the meat spectrum. Subsidies don't make a Big Mac cheaper than a salad; price anchoring to chicken-bacon-ranch salads make McDonalds salads expensive.
If this isn't innovation, I don't know what is.

Beautiful things happen when time and effort are spent on mundane problems.
From what I've read, Zed's goal is not to be exhaustive training for an existing professional developer, but a gentle introduction for the non programmer.

He's leveraging his experience from taking time off to go to music school.

http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1272132621.html
> One thing people miss about past totalitarian movements is that they truly believed they were making the world a better place.

Of course they do - "making the world a better place" is one of the most powerful motivators.

Yet, many folks think that money is the motivator to worry about. People who are bought can be re-bought and wander off if not paid. True believers keep at it.
Yep, still a work in progress. Ex 27 is where they switch to learning logic, so I laid a marker there to work toward.

It's not really patronizing so much as "gentle" to non-programmers. I do however poke fun at programmers because non-programmers have some odd beliefs about coders being these gods that they aren't. By cracking little jokes are programmers I'm hoping to get them over this fear.
Maybe by someone else? I think Zed is done with the Ruby camp. Although only he can really answer that.
Weaving the Pedantic Web [pdf]
No, not really. :-)
Macrabbit Espresso shortcuts cheat sheet
We'd love to hear a solution that makes people using their real name without using Facebook Connect.

The point about anonymity is that we'd like to allow some sort of anonymous comments, because they can sometimes add to the conversation.
I disagree completely. Drifting along and dealing with life in a passive way is sure to get you something that doesn't make you happy, or something that won't suit you, and won't be good for your long-term rational self-interest.

The world is a big place, and wrong possibilities are endless. Adults are able, by and large, make correct choices - not all of them do it, mind you, but they are capable nonetheless.
I registered learncodethehardway.org in order to do similar books for other languages. I'd do a Ruby book, but probably after a C book.
This is very true -- if you're bad at it.
yeah bro. i'd much rather track a millionaire than the cashier at bestbuy.

anyway, pretty cool site man. Found a lot of useful things and voted for almost everything!
Disclaimer: Personally, I only use my Mac for iPhone dev. I think it's inferior to Linux apart from media, phone sync, gaming, as you allude to.

I am underwhelmed with the interface. It's better than the Microsoft offerings, but it's not half as slick as it's touted to be. Despite what another user has said, I've found clashing keyboard shortcuts to be a problem, between XCode, spaces, etc. It's a bit of a PITA to get everything working just right.

GNOME may not be pretty, but I'd argue it's more functional.

Also, as an APT addict, it feels so clunky to go back to manual installation for everything.

I see Mac OS as the happy medium between Windows and Linux. You'll have to grab most of your software manually, and you won't be able to tweak everything to your heart's content, but you have access to a lot of commercial software, remappable shortcuts, POSIX compatibility (MacPorts), and more.

Keep in mind that if you ever have second thoughts, you can utilize VirtualBox or BootCamp to run your favorite OS, whether it's Windows, Linux, etc.
MTA Unconference for Developers
Either you trust an entity with your data or you don't. Whether that entity is an individual, a corporation with a bunch of grey-beards on the board, or a corporation run by someone who, presently, happens to be 25 isn't particularly relevant to the issue.
I have submitted a WTF to thedailywtf before.. they do publish user submissions.
It uses printing to teach strings, format chars, escape sequences, variables, and calling functions.

Glad to see my sneaky ways are working. :-)
Becoming an ISP is hard; the regulations are among the least of your problems.

Regardless a number of small and micro ISP's exist - as well as some midling sized ones. Particularly here in the UK.
It's funny because Fake Steve has now written at least four or five posts about the matter.
A programming book has as much of a chance of turning you into a programmer than swimming classes of turning you into a fish.
Ask HN: Experiences Programming Outside of Tech?
In Zed Shaw's new Python book, he writes:

"People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines."

How true is this, as far as you know? Have you had more success programming in non-programming-related fields? What relevant experiences do you have?
>A counter-point: instead of storming into work one day and quitting, ask your boss for a meeting and point out in the most direct-but-professional manner you have that this isn't what you signed up for: that this is hurting you as a developer, and that if they intend to enforce those rules, you can't stay at the company.

Excellent point. I believe that no matter the outcome, going on the record in a "direct-but-professional" manner is good karma. Worse case: it removes any ambiguity about the reasons for your departure. Best case: it gives you the opportunity to talk some sense into one manager, potentially improving the lives of a whole team of developers.

It's also good negotiation practice.
Yep, that's exactly what it does. I wouldn't say it's geared toward kids, just anyone very new to programming. I'm writing it at about a 6-7 grade level so that the prose doesn't scare people away.
'Cause fossil's the shit.
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1277612
I don't personally find arranged marriage inviting - but I agree it's a cultural thing. At least done right (as you explain) it's just a different way of doing things.

But be careful painting a 100% rosy picture. There is a large problem with arranged marriages "forced" through familial, social and religious pressure.

I think people (rightly) disapprove of that and by-extension accidentally disapprove of arranged marriage in general.
For anyone else wondering why Pepsi cares about this: they own Frito-Lay.
I think a large part of conservation/endangered species protection is not that we just want to prevent everything from going extinct, but to prevent ourselves from being the unnecessary cause of that extinction. If whale oil had never been fuel, whales would be doing better right now. If weasels/rats/etc. hadn't been introduced in many places, a lot of native species would be having less trouble (particularly in New Zealand).

Also, saving endangered species, from a utility perspective, makes sense. People like animals. Therefore we want to keep them around. The cute ones like whales and kiwis anyway. I bet this page doesn't get a lot of visits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_spiders ...and now I'm ranting.
If Zed started off life as a slightly loose cannon coding rock star, I believe we've seen him evolve into something much more important with greater staying power. Here's hoping he stays excited and engaged in the Python community.
They're a bit more readable at full-size, but I have to agree, that angle is just annoying. But, better hard-to-read data than no data, I suppose. (I'm not responsible for the linked-to test, it was just mentioned on an internal mailing at $EMPLOYER.)

For what it's worth, his results and conclusions correlate well with similar testing done here.
Better better through science.
Given how many are predicting that the mobile web is a key component, if not the dominant component of the future of the web itself, and further given how many HN readers are running, or would like run some kind of web-focused startup. I don't see how this can NOT be HN relevant news.

Regardless of what your personal preferences are for one mobile platform vs another, the increased competition among the leading mobile platforms is driving down prices and driving up innovation in the mobile market. All of which is driving greater penetration of web-capable smartphone vs plain old "feature phones". All of which is likely to make the "mobile web" and important part of being competitive in any web-based venture.

Or at least, that's my perspective. :-)
Centrality analysis can get much more sophisticated than PageRank (which is why Google uses PageRank only as a part of their overall search relevancy computation). But even exposing something as trivial as a PageRank for twitter is extraordinarily valuable for a number of use cases, especially since, AFAIK, no one has done it before.
They have that. See here: http://developer.apple.com/programs/iphone/enterprise/
"Ownership" of this data is not clear to me. If FB does not allow large scale spidering/collecting of this meta data, then FB has the best use of it. On the other hand, if many other web sites use these meta data tags to be consistent with what is an ad-hoc standard, then anyone can spider 3rd party sites subject to their robots.txt file. Hopefully, by using the FB public APIs then developers can get sub-graphs of FB hosted data to work with.

I like standards, and I would like it if many people started supplying RDF for their sites. I am not sure yet if this advantage out weighs FB's lock on the best use of this data.
Why I have migrated from Ruby on Rails to Seaside
This is a weird submission... If you don't like em tell em to go finger their butts, if you take their money, do what they tell you... Every living person makes this decision, you're being a tad precious.
As most articles on this have mentioned, California state law does indeed mandate exactly that:

* http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/PEN/3/1/13/5/s485

* http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/CIV/5/d3/4/6/4/1/s2080.1
He claims to be "brutally honest", but that doesn't explain his immediate firing of someone who gave a perfectly reasonable 2 weeks notice, and telling him not to come back to the office, even though he had personal effects there. This is obviously just another jerk trying to spin his reputation since his jerk-ness has been made public.