skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
@jaxdotcom vs. @judsoncollier | Newspaper vs. Intern
From the article:

I think the original artist drew the L weirdly to make it extremely clear that it’s not a one, but if you draw a gothic one, the difference is obvious even with a simpler L.
You start by eschewing the idea of "universal truth" and "morality" in order to show that we don't have the right to act so high-and-mighty, but then you attack us for our "questionable priorities." I can't really figure out your standpoint, unless it's just "What I believe is correct and anybody who holds a contradictory view is immoral."
I upvoted you, however I recommend additional editing for future posts :-)
Profounder.com - Anyone seen this?
Looks like one of the founders of Kiva.org is behind it. It is a for profit version of Kickstarter. Anyone have beta access?
I think Matt Legend Gemmel's post "Your App's Website Sucks"[0] is applicable to all webpages. As others have said, you get a few seconds. Don't waste customers' time with what you think is important.

[0]: http://mattgemmell.com/2010/06/20/your-apps-website-sucks
Are you building a business or a piece of software? It sounds like you're building a piece of software which is totally cool - I just want some clarity before I contribute.
+5, and make it plug and play with Spring/Hibernate.
Next Sprocket: a marketplace for open-source tasks.
Crazy Pee Girls
Coulombs are my favorite, because it's the fundamental amount of "something" (as opposed to "something per time") that most of these can be traced back to:

Ampere = Coulomb/second

Farad = Coulomb/volt
I remember reading somewhere that simple email obfuscation can result in more spam, as advanced bots look for obfuscated emails specifically because they are more likely to be an actively checked account. Also more advanced bot operations are more likely to send clever spam to get past your filters.
But diameter:circumference :: 1:pi, not 1:2pi. Do you mean radius:circumference?
> It's also acknowledging that our thinking is partly shaped by our terms.

Good point, but sounds like Sapir-Whorf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
You're right: This particular instance of plagiarism isn't such a big deal. The reason it's notable is that it shows just how little respect some people have. The guy took the creator's code without permission and altered it to insult the creator, then when the creator expressed unhappiness with this, he hit the creator's comment section with more insults and entitlement.
I agree. I'd say it's because they are balanced across the total height of the font, rather than the x-height.

Sitting next to capital letters or numbers it would probably look ok, but that size dwarfs the lower-case letters.
Does it handle latin 1 and 2 characters? á é í à ã õ ô, etc
It's funny, but it quite obviously implies "...not found. Attach the keyboard and hit F1...".
In my experience rooms/apartments costing $800/$2400 don't usually have bills, taxes, maintenance or other costs totalling $1000/$3000 (respectively).
I've got two running now. A large for the webserver and a medium high CPU for the database. Roughly a couple hundred reqests per second.
Anyone who wishes not to be tracked can simply go to http://oo.apple.com/ on their device to opt out.

More info: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4228
I think any pdf link says scribd, even if it's not. Not sure why.
There are lots of people who "are looking for more practical things" to come to them, rather than seeking them out. Why, for example, does everyone have this bias for new stories about how people made the odds work in their favor? There are so many old ones. Why wait for new stories to appear on HN? Why not spend that time in the library instead?

Why trust my story more than Ben Franklin's? Or Richard Branson's? Or 37Signals'?

Their stories are out there for the taking.

To you, I'm just some random voice on the internet.

Sure, you're right, there are people who will whine and never do a thing, and people who have better potential (judging from this current moment in time, anyway). But a lot of those people with potential are waiting for the stories to come to them. Like they're saying, _You old world, you bastard, I'm going to sit here until you prove I can do it. I refuse._

The exact recipes for success are available everywhere. You don't need to wait for some random chick on HN who gets her jollies yelling at people to get off their asses. Waiting gets you nowhere.

As for the ebook -- the earnings divided by the time it took was less than what I could have made consulting, but the reward is more than just the money it made directly - although that's an appreciable amount.

You didn't need me to prove there was a market for "that kind of thing," either. People have been proving that for decades. Just look at all the people who make a great living selling information products alone.

FTR: I never said that the reason for my success was "hard work" or "hustle." That's part of it, yes, but I never just say that.
NO, not the Aeron; but others with more adjustment are worth the price.

I do a lot of CAD/CAM work, and have spent significant effort attempting to optimize a new workstation setup for long hours at the screen. I set the budget for the first chair setup to over $1000 specifically to be able to include the Aeron in consideration. I then started seeking chairs that would sufficiently adjust to fit MY body, and support it in a number of optimal positions for using the inputs and viewing the screen -- the only criteria that anyone should ever apply to a chair.

I was astonished when I actually checked out an Aeron in detail, to find that it is actually very mediocre, and the adjustment controls are basically crap. Yes, the web back is nice and cool, but even that doesn't actually conform to the body as well as better designed seats and backs. I guess it would be mandatory if you had a hot office and no air conditioning.

I would up with a very adjustable Steelcase chair for way less than half of the price, and I reversed one of the forearm rests (sorry, I forget the model right now, and I'm typing this at a different office). It works more than adequately. My next iteration of the setup will involve something fully recline-able with adjustable support for all 4 limbs -- much like the seating setup for an open-wheel formula car.
I am, mostly through saving and real estate investment.
I'd be interested to hear of examples of successful companies (other than Posterous) where a founder is CEO and continues to develop. I would think that would be a very challenging balancing act.
Jaron Lanier - Individuals and Mob Mentality
I thought this was interesting and felt like posting it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfKDSIWEIGQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj335bRlADw&feature=related
I like to use 'particular' instead
IrCache's Top 50 Origins in the Internet
How come it says tethering is new? Tethering has been available on the 3GS for ages, I've used it numerous times.
In the absence of an absolute, we have to deal with what we have, there are people who wish to grant monopolies and claim a moral prerogative, all the while assuming or claiming that the inequalities created are justified. I suggest that those assumptions or claims are faulty.

And yes, I choose to attack priorities that do act high and mighty (good description for the whole general mob outcry, btw) while they ignore the inequalities created and/or bolstered by the very same IP regime which is at issue. Why is that confusing?

We must constantly select intellectual abstractions to guide our reasoning. That becomes more difficult once there is a realization of the lack of clear absolutes (and very difficult if one is originally religious). As coders we're aware better than most that all abstractions are leaky, but they are still valuable.

My specific desire in the discussion for this article is to cause someone who is in the midst of mob furor to question the trade-offs of the IP issue at hand and consider that all this sense of justice may (I say does) create and rationalize more inequalities than we would have otherwise, and either way is utilitarian in its notions (i.e. the greater good, etc) and the people arguing for it may not have considered that and may not actually agree with the full implications of those ideas.

We've got enough actual scarcity, why are we creating more?

[Edit: It's very convenient for artists and artisans (coders, for instance) to feel morally justified, but why are the inequalities created by them in the pursuit of wealth or fame any different than those created by the uber-wealthy? It's all just a bit too self serving.]

[Edit: We have to live in the world we have. Getting the impression that I'm claiming a person should not utilize IP at all is incorrect, it's a whole other thing to light the torches and burn down a house with a smug sense of rightness of a cause, and that's when I think, okay, enough play, you might have to use what we've got to survive, be stable, attempt to find satisfying lives for ourselves and our families, but let's not get too sure of the justice of it all.]
Cooking itself usually takes little, a few minutes. It's the food preparation and cleanup that take time.
Live link: http://nielsolson.us/LivingWill
It was too long. For instance, I missed that quote which I would have replied to:

What exactly is meant by letting the system fall apart? The economy is the system that keeps you fed. You as in yourself. As in your family. As in your friends. As in the people who live near you who will also be driven to desperation. As the solutions you pondered had intended, we have to minimize the human cost of fixing our problems -- as we are those humans.
Notice the words "should", "preferably" and "obvious". Sometimes some people miss these for some reason and they read "There is only one way to do it", which is a shame because they either like it as an idea(which means they are mentally limited), or hate python for it(which means they are ignorant of the languages flexibility.
The article points to a bit of legalese which says that 'in order to provide location services, apple and their partners and licensees' etc.

In other words 'Some apps or Apple services (e.g. MobileMe) may have to figure out where you are and send that somewhere'. This should be a no-brainer.

As one commenter said, it's just scaremongering for pageviews.
The [scribd] in the title is actually a link to the same pdf, but on scribd.
Seeing Standards: A Visualization of the Metadata Universe
The [scribd] isn't a comment, it's a separate link -- you can click on it to view a broken version of the original document.

carterschonwald is commenting that the Scribd link uses Flash, rather than the recently released HTML5 Scribd implementation.
There are two points I wish to add to this discussion:

1. This is what works for one person. Every body is different and everyone's daily routines are different, so what works for one may not work for another.

2. This diet distinctly lacks any form of exercise and implies that by simply eating less and weighing yourself every day is the key to losing weight.

While this may be true and may make you lose weight, it will not make you healthy. It's a fine balance between diet and exercise and it takes some time to find a solution that is right for you.

If you really want to be healthy and not just lose weight I would suggest seeing both a personal fitness instructor and a dietician, both of whom can tailor a program depending on your own body and level of fitness. It is really the safest (and I stress safest as following any sort of dietary or exercise advice from the internet can be extremely dangerous) and easiest way to lose weight and become healthy.
Jason is for sure not a millionaire, but in his article he just outlines some good tips on how to identify an opportunity.
precisely :)
You can do this with regular pi; you only need to use diameter-ans instead of radians. You can do it without a pi at all; there's an actual (used) unit called the "cycle". 1 Hertz is defined as 1 cycle/second.

The only problem with these units is that, like with degrees, d/dx sin(x) != cos(x). It messes with calculus.
I am guessing that there are dozens or maybe hundreds of assertion type errors like this buried in the code. Only a small fraction of them turn out to be real errors that actually occur in the field.

So presumably the guy who coded the original error message didn't anticipate real issues and likely didn't have a handy resolution available. Only later, once the code was in the wild and the error started happening reasonably frequently in the real world did customer support investigate the problem more. Eventually a workaround was developed and made available on a website.
Firstly, what's the purpose of you (re)learning math? Do you care to make use of the math? Or do you want math to become a hobby of yours?

Most math in math books is pretty useless in terms of practicality and enjoyment. I would bet that you've always had an appreciation for math but the math curriculum you went through destroyed any chance of you enjoying it.

I'd say you should think of (or find) problems you think would be fun/useful to solve, and then learn the math required to solve them. In the process you'll probably find you don't understand certain concepts, but you can always go back and learn those until everything begins to make sense.

Be in control of what you learn.
Actually, the other day I was installing a patch to a Microsoft game, when it crapped out on me and rebooted.

I got the "would you like to report this information to Microsoft" prompt, figured "hey, it's Microsoft game after all" so I hit yeah, and it opened up Firefox and told me that the problem could be addressed by downloading an updated sound driver.

So Microsoft does do this right, when there's a solution.
Ask HN: What and How many VPS/hosts/servers for side projects?
I'm wondering how many VPS, etc other HNs use for side projects? I currently have one shared hosting (for blogs) and one VPS (for real apps).

I do a good bit of Rails, but also have a couple of Django projects and I've lately been dabbling in node.js and Clojure.

My current setup is dev (local), test (local), staging (VPS), production (same VPS), but I only have Ruby/Rails and Python/Django on the VPS (Apache).

I'm thinking Google App Engine, Heroku...<p>What have you found best so that you can have multiple projects out there and keep your costs down?

Thanks.
Devise has been my choice in recent times. but beware it has no roles. it's simple and bakes in everything though. so in 2 commands in the terminal you'll see a login system in your browser including forgot password feature that authlogic doesn't give you.

Making all of those features Samparicio said would be a little tough for code reuse. Engines feature was planned for Rails 3.0 beta but pushed to 3.x. That's the feature that can help code reuse. But it's possible to do this neatly on Django, which allows component-based architecture for apps.
Parsers: the trouble is, once you've learned how to consume and dispatch actions based on recursive data (this is the essence of parsing, and in many ways is also the essence of Lisp) you start seeing it as a potentially more optimal - in both design and algorithmic complexity - solution to all sorts of problems.

I could make the argument that navigating a trie while consuming the search string is an exercise in parsing over a grammar defined by the trie structure. The grammar is regular though, without cycles in the trie.
Ask HN: Would you be interested in a startup guide?
I'm thinking about building out a site to brain-dump my experiences as a co-founder of a venture-backed software startup. Kind of like an AMA, but more structured and (hopefully) with contributions from other entrepreneurs. Think guides.rubyonrails.org but for startups.

What would you want to see on there? It doesn't necessarily have to be content...
Early Facebook Employees' New Project Quora Opens to the Public
Hah exactly my thoughts!
FuzzyShot Blog Export, Posterous Import
So you're going to celebrate refactoring a mathematical constant to give a neater presentation on a day chosen based an apparently illogical ordering scheme for dates.

That has to class as irony.

Out of curiosity: Does anyone here genuinely believe that Pi should be the circumference÷radius and hold that dates should be written Month/Day/Year ?

I've heard one reasonable defence of American date ordering based on actual priority of information (roughly: "you want the month first to broadly narrow down the locus but the year will be assumed"). But I still go with English or just [truncated] ISO dates.
No obvious information on what platform your software is for. The only hint that it's Mac-only is that you got that MacUser award.
Do you think you might have pets? Would a mention of them be necessary? How would you want them handled? I see you covered Locked-In Syndrome, which is one of my own fears (I read the book and saw the movie ... and aren't there better technical ways than that today?). You should, of course, amend it if, say, you are in some sort of catastrophic accident of some sort and really hover on the edge of life and death. Would you want a chance to heal and come out of coma? Maybe that's covered in a section with some of the medical jargon I can't fully comprehend.

Edit: Also, I don't know what country you're in, despite the American framing. What about medical expense? How extreme a cost would you expect others -- or yourself -- to bear? Do you have items you would want sold -- say, rare collectibles -- to cover medical costs beyond that you can imagine?
Hear, hear. Apple is only a notable example because its products are vaunted for their relative attention to detail, but the problem is industry-wide.

I don't know if end user-facing text needs to be written by marketing, but all strings in a software product should at least be reviewed by somebody in the organization with some minimum set of credentials in the target language. A tech writer, for example. It's incredible to me that this is overlooked pretty much across the board.
i just thought about this and wah here you've posted it.

why not make a spreadsheet with each one's name and start date (may vary depending on our schedules)?

We can log our names and our app urls whenever it's done and we'll collaboratively set a final date. We'll then have people review our submissions.

Agree with the time period. 1-2 months is great. 48 days? Just to match railsrumble's 48hrs :)

The spreadsheet can be used to log our progress too. So if anyone finishes fast and and some other app is on the same track offering data which another app needs, then they can collaborate and release their data via APIs etc. Would be a great hackmonth :)
Steve Yegge has a blog post titled "Math For Programmers" which discusses this topic. Here is an excerpt from the post:

"1. Math is a lot easier to pick up after you know how to program. In fact, if you're a halfway decent programmer, you'll find it's almost a snap.

2. They teach math all wrong in school. Way, WAY wrong. If you teach yourself math the right way, you'll learn faster, remember it longer, and it'll be much more valuable to you as a programmer.

3. Knowing even a little of the right kinds of math can enable you do write some pretty interesting programs that would otherwise be too hard. In other words, math is something you can pick up a little at a time, whenever you have free time.

4. Nobody knows all of math, not even the best mathematicians. The field is constantly expanding, as people invent new formalisms to solve their own problems. And with any given math problem, just like in programming, there's more than one way to do it. You can pick the one you like best.

5. Math is... ummm, please don't tell anyone I said this; I'll never get invited to another party as long as I live. But math, well... I'd better whisper this, so listen up: (it's actually kinda fun.)"

Here is a link to the full blog post:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers...
Naming a project is the hardest part of the project. I recently had one name that I was really proud of, though... I started writing a little package manager in Ruby, and when I was thinking about the name, I remembered that a "furoshiki" is a traditional Japanese wrapping cloth... so that all seems to go really well together.
I love Inconsolata. I hate the curly quotes.

If you feel the same, check out Inconsolata-dz:

http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-dou...
Authlogic has no roles either, I use acl9.

Authlogic and forgotten passwords is pretty simple, though. It sort of gives it to you. Well, it gives you the tools. It's really only a tiny bit of coding.

I'll certainly check out Devise though.
She's actually describing the archetypal enlightenment experience that many world religions (Buddhism in particular) attempt to convey.

As such trying to put the experience into words is going to be unsatisfying and even absurd. It's vaguely akin to describing the taste of a hamburger to someone who's never eaten beef or bread (or pickles, cheese, etc...). Words cannot suffice.
If you want to share them, I am all ears. I am working on how I would seed the site now. My initial thought was to target reputable blogging freelancers and make them the initial group. I was also thinking that maybe also allowing open enrollment, but only allowing open enrollment individuals to bid for extremely small projects (under $500, so if the minimum allowable rate is $50hr then 10hr projects) this would allow them to build rank slowly, as well if a member uses them for services they can up them to an invited status. As well I have formulated the idea that a member is forever linked to their invites. If you invite someone to the site and they do good your recommendation rank goes up, if they are bad your recommendation rank goes down. If it gets too low you are no longer allowed to invite people, as it gets higher you are allowed to invite more people. This has no bearing on your abilities rank (which is what gets you gigs). My other thought is new members get feed smaller projects and as their ability rank grows then they are feed larger projects. As well, I think I would go with pure rank not a pure customer satisfaction indicator one bad project can ruin an otherwise good freelancer on the site and lets face it at some point for whatever reason, you are going to run into a bad project. I think the site could make money by being a paid verification service where we would charge a fee to certify that the code is of good quality and we act as PM's to make sure the project is tracking to the schedule.
Defensive Design by 37 Signals and Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug are both great books about how to design for when things go wrong. Engineers, in addition to designers, should read these books post-haste. EDIT: If you're a hacker in SOMA/SF and want to borrow either of these books they're very quick reads.

The trouble with technical error messages is that almost invariably, engineers end up writing them. "Not my area of expertise" or "I put in a request for copy months ago" are some of the many reasons that poor error handling happens.

Additionally, having a truly helpful environment requires additional resources: In the example in this article, the "Heres how to fix your problem!" link would require an additional application to keep track of known issues and solutions.

That being said, it's exactly how every application should work: Error messages like this may not be daunting to more technically proficient users, but the vast majority of users are not technically proficient and many users simply give up (if they can) when they see an error message that they are unable to understand/fix.
Do women need a sex pill?
I think this is a really useful article, and honestly the advice sounds like good and rational advice. So I hope it's clearly that I'm genuinely not snarking when I say this:

Why would one want to be a millionaire?

This isn't to say that there's no reason to try. It's only to say that most people don't think about how much it costs to become a millionaire. Maybe some things are just worth more...