skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I just gave it a spin and here are some my thoughts. I know some flaws are to be expected in an alpha build.

- I needed to scroll right to get at the preferences, which is not what I would normally expect for Android.

- Pressing the phone's Back button is a NOP instead of going to the previous page. To navigate history, you have to instead scroll right and use the buttons of the browser.

[Edit]- The address bar is always shown, which seems like a waste of screen real estate, but if you tap it, you can get at bookmarks.

- At the bookmark view, tapping on the address bar does not bring up the touch keyboard. I had to use my qwerty to type in a URL (thank god for Motorola Droid :p) [/Edit]

tl;dr

It disdains all the controls one expects an Android device to have and settles instead for controlling stuff from within the app UI itself, which I found jarring.
If the most complex problem you have when coding is getting the syntax right then you aren't writing very complex code.

I pair code fair bit at work, and it's because other people can spot the mistakes in design that are made very quickly, because they aren't focussing in on the specifics, and so can keep the big picture in mind.
In the context of a startup hire, think about it this way:

He has created something very popular and widely used for an extremely difficult to please market with a huge amount of competition, some of it from scary places. The domain is a hard one.
The cases where I found pair programming to work really well were during major refactoring efforts on large bodies of low-quality legacy code. We were just trying to get the codes bases up to current corporate standards so that we could then have a solid foundation for future improvements. It's tough to stay motivated on a mind-numbing (but necessary) task like that, so having another programmer right there helps to keep both on track. Plus it's easy to make a subtle mistake that wouldn't be obvious in a code review later, so another pair of eyes watching the refactoring live was helpful for catching unintended changes.

I've tried it in other circumstances as well but it ended up seeming like mostly a waste.
Honestly works a lot better than I thought it would. Has a lot of tricks up its sleeve - for example, swiping right and left to reveal tab thumbnails and more controls was a pleasant surprise. Wish it had pinch-to-zoom though.

Overall very nice for a pre-alpha.
If anyone is interested in a very clear example of the story behind the stat, I highly recommend this podcast/radio episode: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/405/i...
Jordanshoes show
Welcome to ugg world,where you can find all kind of high quality jordanshoes!!!
Five reasons the iPad needs to succeed in Australia
US Treasury Pays Down Over $484 Billion In April: Debt Roll Concerns Acute
It seems to me that rating agencies should be paid by the institutional investors that buy the bonds, not the banks trying to sell them. That might help the incentives line up better.

Am I crazy? Nobody suggests this, and I think I'm missing something crucial here.
For many of us self-employment / entrepreneurship is not a choice, it's not something we just want to do, it's something we have to do. There is no plan B. If we have to start 10 companies and fail 10 times, then so be it. Self-destructive as that may be.

So when somebody decides to get a regular job after all, I won't think less of him. I will wonder though... "maybe he wasn't one of us after all, maybe it was just a hobby, an experiment". Maybe you were just bicurious.

Having no respect for regular employees makes no sense, because you need them to turn your vision into reality. And employees with an entrepreneurial mindset are often worth their weight in gold. I don't know any real entrepreneurs who dismiss employees as mindless sheep.

(I realize I'm not speaking for everybody. Take what I write with a grain of salt.)
Perhaps the people you're talking to consider it a critical judgment on their own plans and prospects. I think anyone who starts a business appreciates how difficult it is and realizes it doesn't work out all the time.
When people say they will act one way and have financial incentives to act another, expect them to follow the financial incentives.

Appropriate regulation can help for a bit. But unfortunately the regulated party has incentives to provide incentives (such as contributions to political campaigns) to gain control of the regulations. This leads to regulatory capture that then renders the regulations ineffective.

In a perfect world we'd be forcing the banks right now to write down securities that took a hit, forcing them to declare losses, which would mean that they wouldn't be paying out absurd bonuses. This would absorb the money we gave them from the bailout. In a slightly less perfect world we'd be enacting useful regulations that would avoid this problem returning for a few decades (such as happened during the Great Depression).

In the real world we gave the banks a big bailout, have let them mark securities to models of their choice, and they paid themselves big bonuses on their "profits". Of course they are still sitting on lots of toxic securities (like bad CMBS and the junk bonds issued by private equity) that they have not marked down yet. When that blows up we have good odds that they'll ask for another bailout. And the behavior of both parties says that the leadership will try to get it for them. They nearly didn't manage to deliver it last time, and given the public outrage since, they may not be able to deliver it next time.

This could lead to interesting times. Interesting times.
93% isn't bad luck. 93% is fraud.
It's true. I built the website for my brother's company 6 years ago and it looks, well, 6 years old. Even so his company gets 80% of new clients through the website. He always asks people why they chose him. Most say because they felt it looked like a professional company compared to the "flashy" companies that have more modern websites. I hate how it looks and he's embarrassed to refer people to it, but as long as it works we don't want to touch it.

Through the years we've watched the competition go through one design after another and try all kinds of SEO, but our crappy, framed, obtrusive javascript website still outranks them. The only downside is the constant calls we get from SEO and design firms offering to "help us out".
The problem is that the institutional investors buying the bonds are much smaller, and there is no way to keep the information from leaking. Therefore most of those investors won't be willing to pay for the bonds, and the ones that can pay will be paying less money.

That doesn't mean that this model is not viable. But it isn't viable at the kind of margins that the rating agencies would like to remain accustomed to.
Ie7-js: JS library to make IE behave like a standards-compliant browser
The inconceivable recovery
Pair programming is programmer abuse. Two people are rarely the same competance levels, so either you end up teaching or slowing someone else down. All the merits of pairing can be achieved through other, more efficient means.
I am not familiar with B2B, but I had the impression that the B2C companies in the area of technology and manufacturing have been mostly founded by high-net worth individuals, and scalability has been a function of enlisting the help of provincial leaders and state-owned banks.
You can't actually use any non-Xiph codecs in an Ogg container in the real world [...] because they don't document any of it

He covers this in the article. If you want to say the the documentation is lacking, just say that, and they'll explain that they don't want to encourage mixing of open and non-open codecs. If you want to focus on the can't actually use non-Xiph codecs in an OGG container side, then you'd have to explain how Dirac and Flac managed to be put in the container without any change to Ogg.

One is a (unfounded?) criticism of the technology or API of Ogg, the other is criticism of a Xiph policy decision to promote open codecs. Don't just throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

Also, if seeking is broken in Quicktime for both Ogg and Flac, two containers with very different approaches, maybe blaming Ogg is illogical? There's no obvious reason to even mention Flac as, despite coming under the Xiph umbrella once it was a popular free codec, it was developed independently.
I wonder if he wrote it himself. It's really well written.
This guy Craig runs a list with a similar strategy...

The absence of a button is a feature.
what does this have to do with news.yc ?
it's not even about startups!
I saw this link here on HN a short while ago from a person more passionate than me when it comes to IQ:
Spearman's g, a statistical myth
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html
Lucian Wischik gave a really nice talk recently about language design at Microsoft and he indicated that they are trying to do it in that order from now on: determine the feature that's needed, add the necessary plumbing that would allow programmers to implement it, and implement it as a reference implementation.
The Accumulation of Innovation: Lessons From The Internet
The Next Empire: Africa?
The BSG finale was probably one of the better season finales that I have seen. I didn't like the Kara Thrace stuff, but I did find it fit thematically to the story.

I heard the argument that there was a happy ending to a dark story, but to see it as a happy ending is akin to seeing the arrival of the Europeans in "Apocalypto" as a happy ending; it was a prelude to horror. (Even if you don't buy that, the fact that the main character in the series (Admiral Adama) is basically a wreck by the end...)
Maybe investors could pool resources to start their own rating agency that would be answerable to them, and publish ratings for everyone to use? There has to be a better system.
I believe the person you replied to just replaced the liboggplay backend in Firefox, so it appears not to be necessary for seeking.
Take a look at this mile long listing of HN related folks' jobs, gigs, etc...
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely... You need to log in to look I think.
The world is FULL of articles about finding jobs. Most people are just looking for a J.O.B.

Right or wrong, your entrepreneur friends probably see you as a quitter. They probably see your going back to work as a failure, and naturally, your friends don't want to see you fail.

Think about it though. You probably set out on your own to be a billionaire, top the of hill, a titan of industry.

Why wouldn't your friends still want that for you?

If this is the image you've portrayed to other entrepreneurs for a while, don't blame them for wondering why you no longer believe in the goals you've expressed to them.
Neat visualization, but I wouldn't say this is the kernel trick. The kernel trick is a trick because it maps the higher dimension dot products into a kernel function in the lower dimension. The neat thing is specifically that a kernel function on low dimension points can actually correspond to a dot product in an infinite-dimension space. In fact this is the case for RBF kernels like Gaussian, which is probably the most popular SVM kernel choice.
Bullies can't pick on people who are simply mistaken?

Bullies can pick on anyone they choose. In my school they picked on everyone - including each other. The ones they continues to pick on were the ones that didn't fight back.
In a way, they can't accept the idea that it's okay for you to quit—because it means that it could be okay for them to quit, too. Some people are only motivated once they've convinced themselves they have no other alternatives (or that they've at least found the local optimum in their configuration space.) Saying that a regular job is just as valid a path challenges all the cognitive biases and rationalizations they need to carry themselves through what can be a very stressful way of life.
My brother-in-law is a homicide detective and is constantly asked by victims' families why is it taking so long to solve cases when it's over in CSI by the end of the hour.
The beard indeed and the 5 a.m. shadows :-P
Perhaps I don't want to learn two interfaces, so it is sometimes better to choose consistency over some sort of pure ideal.
If they become offended or defensive then they are implicitly conceding that you have a point.

Not at all true. Especially with children. Shouting rude words at kids, threats of physical violence, and implication of things they don't understand make kids feel awful very easily.
While this specific article may be focused on a UI change for the netbook, Shuttleworth's focus extends to the ubuntu UI in general. In fact, it may be wise choice to distinguish between pure desktop and netbook, time will tell.
Sometimes, you just need to throw away your laptop and just do nothing. I find that staring at clouds on a cool spring evening can clear your head real fast :-) In fact, it's my best debugging strategy.
Barbados vs. Grenada in '94: The Most Bizarre Match Ever
I'm having a hard time thinking of a profession (outside of menial physical labour) where you couldn't use programming skills to either make your job easier or to do it better.
My guess is that they're disappointed about losing a fellow entrepreneur rather than disappointed in you or your choice. That's how I'd probably feel if I were in their shoes.
This is a valid point. What benefits would PayFacade provide over ActiveMerchant?

I guess it's tough to build products where the customers are developers (anything with API in the description), because programmers don't like to pay for tools like CEO's do.
Windows 7 now on 10% of world's PCs
Ah man. I just started a Gandi account the other day when I needed a .it domain (and had been recommended). Definitely recommend then - the no bs stuff is real.
Banana Mousse Cake
fyi 160 pounds of gold is almost 3 million dollars. just saying.
Windows XP Commands , That Command Prompt Can Run | Windows Tricks
...let there be light?
I'm glad that happens to you too. I thought I was going insane.
That was an excellent read and probably the most convincing answer I've seen to the Fermi Paradox.
Like Conways game of life, only the rules are random and unpredictable... create a pattern, and something might evolve
Link to original Quicken threatens Mint article:

http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/19/quicken-online-cant-believe...
http://blog.pearce.org.nz/2010/04/new-ogg-video-decoder-for-...

This is awesome — finally someone released an implementation that's more reliable than liboggplay instead of just doing the minimum necessary to get basic playback. I guess when you won't support other containers (because noobs would think you supported other codecs (which you refuse to do on ideological grounds)), you have a really strong incentive to make OGG actually work.

Now to get everyone else using your implementation… :)
Agilewords document collaboration application just got a new design
i see 2 columns, so i only had to scroll back up once.
I really wonder if people are having trouble browsing the original HN site on iPad.
A review of Wondershare SafeLock: Lock your files safely
happened to find this not bad software to keep my files and folders safe! Even the free trial version has the fantastic functions to protect any private files from being seen by anyone except me. With it I can encrypt, hide or lock anything I want, amazing! worth saving this program!
A touch screen you don't touch (via reddit).
Think of it this way : what is your social contribution (what do you give to other) with your work/time ? Do you think it is worth the effort ?

I think entrepreneurs are a bit more selfish : their prime motive is their own good, the social good is just a consequence. I don't think it is bad per se, ut I recognize I don't like it much.

Another point of view is : our society is based on employment (and other stuff, that is). Those who create employment are therefore seen as more useful, better.

But again, is giving employment to people to make cigarettes or junk food a real benefit to the society ?
I keep losing interest because there are no animations.
Merlin Mann's Time & Attention Talk (Improvised Rutgers Edition)
They may want to defend The Don't Be a Dick License (http://github.com/SFEley/candy/blob/master/LICENSE.markdown)
Gmail vs Pine
How do you politely say, "Your mental representations are so messy and imprecise I'm having trouble categorizing what you need?"

You say: "OK, now that we've covered the standard flow, let's talk about the strange cases. What are the weird situations that come up once in a while?"

For many users, "ALWAYS" translates to "always, except for the oddball case", and "NEVER" translates to "not usually, but you never know."

That's why Requirements Analysis is as much about psychology and anthropology as it is about logic.
"No Bullshit" but then they force you to remember some stupid GANDI-12317251 username that you can't change.
Not that I think everything was above-board, but to be fair, these are hugely correlated instruments: it's not reporting 93% of all AAA debt tanked, but 93% of all AAA-rated derivatives of subprime mortgages. Given the subprime-mortgage crash, it's not surprising that everything tied to subprime mortgages uniformly tanked too.

The way an AAA-rated derivative of a subprime mortgage could exist to begin with was via "tranching", where debt was sliced up into different buckets of repayment priority, which heightened the correlation. In a minor crash, the AAA securities would do okay, because they'd get the payments from the non-defaulting loans, and the lower-rated tranches would take the losses. But once you go over the threshhold where there isn't enough money to even repay the top tranches, then everything tanks all together. So really, near-0% and near-100% default rates were the likely outcomes.
I'm sure this is a fine book and would be interesting for many people, but having seen part of this story first hand I can tell that it's been white washed and isn't factually accurate. Odeo didn't run out of money for instance. I don't know if the people telling the story were loose with the details or if the writer was, but I don't think this is a retelling that anyone here should pay much attention to.
From the FAQ:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

This one's a bit of a gray area, as it's heavily political in nature, but the mechanics of loan securities is of both intellectual and personal interest to what I'd imagine is a heck of a lot of HN readers.
I think you just proved my point. While Beijing definitely has advantages, there are other places in China where you can do business for a heck of a lot cheaper. An order of magnitude cheaper.

Even in Beijing, you don't have to get a massively expensive office in Wudaokou or the CBD. I'll also guarantee that you can get pretty good Tsinghua and Beida graduates for 15k, although I'll concede that finding talent is one of the top challenges in China.

Microsoft China spends money like it's going out of style. They're not really a good baseline, although they are a magnet for talent because of the big brand name and outsized salaries. You can get in bidding wars with them if you wish, but it's not strictly necessary.

Bottom line is that the only reason to spend that kind of money is to impress the hell out of people. However, that kind of impressiveness is necessary, which is why you almost certainly need such a large investment.
I want to address your point that the world is full of articles about finding jobs and also your point about why people initially set out into entrepreneurship.

As I've observed, it often begins like this:

1) This job sucks.
2) I need to work for myself.

In the start-up culture and commentary (and apparently among Gen-Y more broadly too), that idea gets a lot of airtime.

It's a natural and intoxicating thought pattern. You see that the leaders are making more money, you realize you're just as bright as they are, you reason that your efforts could be better spent being your own boss.

Without much effort, you soon stumble into a thousand thousand blogs pumping that idea full of adrenaline for you. Eventually, something you read ends with a challenge and a call to action. You take the leap.

Having a ton of articles about resumes or getting an interview or how to earn a promotion doesn't make an impact on what I'm describing.

It's having more measured, more realistic portraits of what entrepreneurship means, what success rates are, and pointing to other alternatives that address the "My job sucks," part but refrain from rushing to "Start a business." And importantly, for these to hit home at the right time for the right people, it'd be good for these messages to appear not in the Sunday Paper or Yahoo finance but interspersed alongside the rebel, hacker, lifestyle design, no-rules stuff we see.

I've seen some of that around, and in fact, I owe a great debt of gratitude to those people and those writings for helping my crystallize my frustrations with entrepreneurship as it really is vs how I expected it to be starting out and until relatively recently.

So, no, I did not set out to be a titan. I set out to find satisfying work. I mistakenly identified my dissatisfaction as stemming from working for someone else (again, as is natural to do), and I set out to blaze my own trail to make happier work.

Along the way, I wasn't interested in articles about finding just any old J.O.B.--I was looking for articles that captured the ethos of frustration and disappointment I'd experienced in my early jobs.

Where I found that, almost inevitably would follow advice or even a sort of cultural force that I should seek self-employment of some kind.

What I will be trying to add with my voice going forward is that dissatisfaction with work, especially early on, is a complicated thing. Self-employment is not a panacea. In fact, for many people who are not suited for it, self-employment can be a painful and/or expensive experiment that delays discovering a better fit company or career as an employee.
Altering a Python function's local variables with a trace function
I had no idea. Food for thought: Google's average revenue per employee is $1.2 million/yr.
He should tell them they're in a multi-episode story that's not in syndication and being broadcast over several weeks.
Oh, he's changed it to 2 columns, which doesn't actually help much for this post, since you still have to scroll up and down.
The exponential growth of technology we have experienced in recent decades (WWII+) would lead us to believe that technology is indeed advancing at a very fast rate. I think most people especially adults and young adults can relate to the fast advancement of technology.

P.S. I still remember dial-up (not that my current DSL service is all that better).
Superman designed his own suit, and except for the underwear placement, and the cape (darrrling), it's...

Actually come to think of it, you were right in the first place.
JSR 292 and the Multi-lingual JVM
The Most Annoying Habit Of A Software Manager
Let me briefly explain the difference:

With mturk, you have work you want to get done, and people go look through the HITs for things that fit their abilities.

With fiverr, you have money you want to spend, and you go looking through things people imagine someone might want to pay them to do.

I've used mechanical turk for annotating a training set for automated classification. I cannot imagine what I would use this service for. Claiming this is what mturk should have been assumes that mturk sucks because all the tasks people want to get done are boring.
Well, there's no chance that Iron Man could defeat Superman in a head-to-head unless he uses kryptonite. OTOH, Superman vs Hyperion...