skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I lived in the inner richmond while I was working down the peninsula. I agree with everything you've said about the neighborhood - a lot of good bars, inexpensive restaurants, quick access to downtown on express buses, cheaper rents.

Huge downside: very difficult to get south on the freeways. There's no clear path, so you have to fight your way through city traffic. At rush hour, this can easily add 25 aggravating minutes to your commute (and add in an extra 10-15 minutes to find parking in the inner richmond). Really, it's a lot easier to live in the city and work south from the south-central neighborhoods (sunnyside, glen park, mission terrace, bernal).

Ultimately, I'd say that if you work downtown and only need to go to the valley now and then, the inner richmond is a great pick. But if you're in a daily commute type situation going south, I'd avoid it.
If you are distributing a proprietary bit of software you presumably have a method for counting how many copies you sold in order to know how many $ you should have.

If you are giving it away then why not just use the GPL version
You have no place for jokes, not HN.
I would guess that MainConcept or Ateme charge much more.
I added the following correction to the article:

CORRECTION: as pointed out by users Adrian and Bones in the comments below and by Mark Fulton and apollo on the HN thread, I made an error in interpreting the data. The numbers given by Google for each query are not telling how frequently a query was asked, but rather, it seems, they are related to the popularity of the words and combinations of words (from the query) in a large corpus of website data. This way they are still related to how popular these words and groups of words are, however, not as queries, but as the text of websites. According to the Google Suggest help page, the suggested queries are all real queries, i.e. they have been issued in this exact form by someone, which in my opinion still makes the list below an interesting read, however my interpretation of the order as pure query frequency was wrong. I thank everyone for the feedback, and apologize for the misunderstanding. I leave the text below unedited, but consider this correction as you continue.
Taranis, the Semi-Autonomous Stealth Unmanned Aircraft.
The problem is that all of these techniques are based on speculation and/or empirical data, but without solid measurements, especially since google's ranking system is a black box.
Personally I have encountered 2 opposing opinions on this subject, one suggesting that google does take the duration of the registered domain under consideration, based on some patent that google had filed about it's ranking system, and the other one was from some supposed employee who claimed it didn't, due to the fact that some registrars withhold this information and thus no comparison could be made between them and domains on those that publicized it.
Puerto Rico is a bit slow to learn, but pretty great once it gets going.

I have Agricola on the shelf because I've been hearing how great it is, but haven't had time to learn it yet =P.
Court strikes down FCC indecency rule - latimes.com
You will get much better advice if you can be more specific about your ideas. Some examples would be helpful.

I've built a few gadgets that collect data, analyze it, and then send it to a data store on the web. Think carefully about your needs for each of those 3 steps, as well as your readiness to get into low-level technical details. And then tell us more about what you're trying to do.

In the mean time, here is some general advice:

In my experience, the connection to the web is the most challenging part of the project, and the one that has the most impact on the total cost of parts. Most of the microcontroller kits that appeal to casual developers (such as me) do not include ethernet or wifi connectivity. They assume you will be connecting via USB to a PC. Adding wifi or ethernet to an arduino significantly increases the cost and complexity. For stationary (non-mobile, non-battery-powered) gadgets that need to communicate with the web, I can recommend using a wifi router as a development platform. Many of these can run the OpenWRT version of linux, and collect information from a USB port. Here is a good description of working with linux and USB peripherals on a wifi router: http://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/10/building-a-wifi-radio-part... As to cost, the router used in this blog post costs about $30 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320...).

Another thing to consider is the analysis step. Some devices will have no need for fancy data analysis, but for gadgets that need to work with data in complex ways (learning/compressing/transforming) you may run out of processing power and/or memory on some of the microcontroller platforms. Again, a wifi router is quite capable here - as long as you stick to fixed-point operations.

Once you have an idea of a suitable hardware platform, then it's off to the races. There are many great places to see examples of hardware projects, as mentioned by fragmede. And you may want to consider working with a hackerspace (NYCresistor, noisebridge, etc) - I've found that having an oscilloscope is very helpful for troubleshooting my gadget project.
Yes I know my claim, and I showed you a way to grasp it.

"Categorically": that's what you said. Just observe, instead of trying to apriori-tize the world.
It is the ever-increasing exchange of ideas that causes the ever-increasing rate of innovation in the modern world.

If that's true, it makes a pretty strong case for open source.
You can down vote comments once you get 201 karma. Articles can't be downvoted. (And don't you dare use the flag as a downvote, that's a no no ;)
I think along these lines every time someone mentions the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is frequent these days on Hacker News. It reminds me of a funny aphorism I once heard about higher education:

First you get your Bachelor's Degree, and you think you know everything. Then you get your Master's Degree, and you realize you don't know anything. Finally, you get your Doctorate, and you realize that nobody knows anything.

Finding those patterns between disciplines is always a delight--there is a surprising amount of crossover between many fields of study and human behavior. Programming was where I first found that humility is very positively correlated with competence, and the same principle shows up in a lot of other places.
Uneven Google
The Power of Viral Marketing
One "feature" of HN that makes me not to vote is that you can't change your mind. On mobile devices, where it is very easy to hit the wrong arrow, I fall back to read-only mode.
A 20% margin would reduce space-access costs immensely.

We use exotic alloys, explosive fuels and precision machining because we need to reduce weight to the structural limits. If we hadn't, space access would be cheaper and safer.

Sadly, Earth has just enough gravity to ruin our day.
Really, what excuse could you have had for including such content in the first place, other than malicious intentions? Surely you review all content before placing something on your pages, right?

I'm not buying this feigned innocence. It's like listening to Zynga say giving Farmville credits for users to sign up for trial offers is perfectly legitimate. They know perfectly well the revenue generated by getting thousands of users to sign up for free trials of stuff that is impossible to stop before the bill gets charged to your card is generating more money than legitimate ads/networks.

You're using illegitimate ad networks because it pays a higher CPM period. Just admit to it so we can blackhole your domain without bullshitting us.
Rapportive has raplets. (http://raplets.com)
5% would only be the break-even point, though (for 3000$). At that point, you still haven't made any extra money, but invested time into adapting their solution.

Also, if you make 3000$/month, you are already rich (if it comes from automatic sales), so your attitude to spending might differ from somebody who is just starting out.
If it's something every programmer should know then there should be a summary that every programmer will actually read.
Great link!

Thanks for the post. It's one of the better summaries of SEO practices around.
I wouldn't call it sexism. When I was maybe 10, I was friends with another kid (a boy, like myself) just because he had a nintendo. Most people (my adult self included) would condemn that behavior in much the same way, particularly coming from an adult.

If you'd condemn a man behaving the same way (e.g., making friends in order to use a playstation), it isn't sexism.
Serial consoles... Bah! Get me a 3279.

Actually, I would really like a 3290.
Honestly I don't think they're putting themselves out of the reaches of a startup. It's more than possible to justify the cost if the service is going to be genuinely valuable.

The problem is that the 30 day free trial probably isn't enough time to evaluate it, and the people who are being left out are the hobbyists who like to blog about all the cool things they've managed to do with stuff.

An ecosystem of hobbyists is useful for me when evaluating products, it's a shame KISSMetrics is going to miss out on this. A free account for under 100k events and a noncommercial license would be far more useful than a 30 day trial.
Does every programmer really need to know the physics behind dynamic ram?

What every programmer should know is the latency of the various memory types (cache, RAM, virtual) and their respective sizes.

Here's a nice graphic:

http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/what-your-computer-does...
"Oh really? Half of the Labor/Conservative vote isn't reliable?"

No; but people vote for what they consider the least worst option, not because they actually like the politicians. There's certainly very little vocal support for them!
> so why do people that don't even own a product feel it is necessary to do so?

Because Apple's products impact so much of industry, that even if you don't use their products, their products impact your life.

For example, just because you might not use a Microsoft product doesn't mean you aren't affected by Microsoft's choices.

That's at least one of the reasons.
Not So Fast: Consumer Reports’ Flawed Study & Thread Whiners: App Advice
Charting the World Cup
I just took a brief glance, but these just look like standard sorting networks.
Old Spice on Twitter
For any non-Americans confused by this, in the USA it's common for bank-issued cards to work as both a debit and credit card. The same machine is used for both.
Can't you sue if doctors mess you up? (I don't know, at least not in this case...).
Apple Rule #1: Never buy the 1st rev of any Apple product.

It is unfortunate, because I really want an iPad, but it's a hard reality we have to tolerate until Apple figures out how to get their 1st revs right.

The most disturbing aspect of this rule is the almost guaranteed denial of 1st rev problems by Apple.
Your experience with the Socratic approach at your high school was probably spoiled by poor execution.

Doing the lab before reading the theory behind it can be an extremely effective approach to build real understanding of the nature of the experiment, and allows students to explore the very same thought process that the originators of the theory followed to transform their experience of reality into a useful conceptual model. If you've reached this point, the value of the textbook is only in learning the conventions of language and notation that are generally used to frame the idea.

But the whole approach requires an instructor who already has both the enthusiasm and the skill ask the right questions and lead students to their own intuitive understanding. If teachers are simply going through the motions and following a process without being fully engaged in the dialogue, the Socratic approach simply won't work.

Unfortunately, most public school teachers probably do not have the qualities that are needed to make it work.
Here's another nice article focused on Xen:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8909
While I have never gotten 'FU' money, at one point in my life I had access to all the digital media I could ever want. All the appz, movies, games, music, audiobooks, etc.

Everything in digital format, I either could get, or had.

At first, I was extremely excited - and naturally told a few people (who subsequently told a few people) and before I knew it I was the 'go to guy' for anyone that wanted any media.

This experience scarred me. To the point where now I am ultra private and if I get a new album or new movie or something (even through legitimate means) I hoarde it and tell no one.

I have always imagined that this is what getting FU money would be like. Relatives, old friends, etc. would come out of the woodworks...especially once you start spending and travelling, etc.

For those that have experienced FU money, and the transition from not having to having it, can you shed a little light on how your interactions with close family, other relatives, close friends, etc. changed. Did you tell them? Who did you tell and why? Also, who surprised you by the way they view you and your money?

Anything else interesting about how you manage your wealth and why you decide to tell who what, would also be appreciated.

P.S. I have since given up said access, because I got bored and the maintenance required was stressful. I wonder if this is a precursor to unimaginable wealth.
Raw core Perl doesn't have named arguments. You can pass in a list of key/value pairs and the function can simply pull those in a hash, but you don't need to have them in the right order for that.

I don't know all libraries on CPAN that implement some kind of function signature or argument validation, but I can't remember seeing one that requires ordered named arguments.
AV software is a very bad idea. It's like having a blacklist of spammers' e-mails: you just can't blacklist them all. Combined with the fact that the whole AV industry is built on the customers' fear of "hackers", I find the whole thing quite gross.
Wouldn’t that be sweet? : Performance Based Pricing
A lot of average C programmers write high-performance linked-lists in C, while they could have used high-performance hashtables in Python/Ruby/Java with the same programming effort.

(and no programs are high-performance if they have a pointer bug that makes the program crash).

"The difference between theory and practice is small in theory and large in practice..."
I first heard it in Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis, 1989.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0140143459
"Feel free to argue that high altitude balloon flying is more important than reading."

I would rather that 20 kids be able to fly a balloon, and the 21st kid who can't read be shuffled off to some other program/classroom to learn to read, than for 21 kids to sit in a classroom learning to read when 20 of them already know.

That wasn't so hard. All I had to do was reject the idea that children are all identical and if they aren't being exposed to the exact same education each then they are being misserved.

This is yet another argument that, in order to make sense, has to take as axiomatic that the current school system is already optimal and anything that isn't perfect must be because we're not applying the current system correctly. I find it astonishing how many arguments about school fit this classification.
I suppose, provide you never changed the data model once you'd designed it, and you designed the entire application in one go, before writing any code. That would sort of negate the advantage of having a datalayer that regenerated itself on the fly every time you messed with the schema though.

Personally, I find that starting from the schema makes one more agile (small 'a'), not less so.
Oh dear, I too assumed it was about http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
Is there a reason why etacts.com doesn't show any screenshots?
That's one assumption. It might be convincing to me except that even though many people I know are NYT readers, nobody I know is "mired in debates over macroeconomic models." Who are these people?

I suppose its the we that's not me.
Yes, but it goes to the levels of the students in the class. A lower level class is not the teachers fault (or may not be, and realistically is prior year's teachers, parents, and other outside influences), but it will limit the teacher from doing things such as the balloon since they need to really focus on the NSLB testing studies.

So a teacher may be very competent, but not have the right opportunities to do interesting stuff like this if they cannot easily and directly tie it to classroom studies, especially those around standardized tests. And unfortunately it seems like teachers with lower level students only have enough time to focus on getting them to pass those tests.
> Is it possible to get this kind of experience as a developer?

yes, but it depends on the company. tough to say which companies would give you this type of experience without insight from an insider.

> If so, is it possible to get it and work with cool tech?

same answer as #1.

> How much is a lack of CS degree going to hurt me?

less and less as you gain more experience. a degree is important, but if you can show someone doing hiring that you're an intelligent, successful, experienced employee, then you won't have as big of a problem.

> How much should I study up on verbal CS interview puzzles, which I loathe and suck at?

as much as you think they'll come up in your interview.

> To sum it all up: what exactly is an entry level position in web development, and where are the best places to work that actually have them?

again, depends completely upon the company as to what will be expected of you. finding a good company, though, is tough. the better ones are usually smaller, although you probably already know the best big ones.
Believe it or not I learned some tricks I use daily with Google from an otherwise computer illiterate English teacher in high school: using quotes and - to modify how the search works.
OA title is linkbait or at least misleading. about innovation and economics, no sex involved.
For what it's worth, neither of those threads are the main one the article is talking about, which can be seen here: http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=consumer+report+apple+site:...
Real Time Gaming Slot Machines
The machine pays off based on patterns of symbols visible on the front of the machine when it stops. Modern computer technology has resulted in many variations on the slot machine concept. Slot machines are the most popular gambling method in casinos and constitute about 70 percent of the average casino's income. It is estimated that thirty percent or more of the profits from gambling machines come from problem gamblers
I'm not buying this - how does an iPhone 4 antenna issue affect someone that didn't even buy one? Are you being harmed if someone you call gets a dropped call because they held their iPhone 4 in the wrong way?
It's an issue of passion, I think.

Compare Apple fans to that of the XBox or PS3. For some horrible reason, people will defend to the bitter end their console of choice. Nothing is gained or lost in these arguments, the same arguments are constantly thrown out, and quite frankly all the facts are widely available (system specs, regular issues like the RROD or hour-long installs) but no one cares. Everyone argues an opinion, and because this is the internet, quickly devolve a discussion to a flame war... I mean, really, how many Mac users have had serious issues with a one button mouse in the past decade?
uhh this is version 4 of the iPhone.

While I agree with you, on first gen, but this is a 4th gen iPhone conversation.
I bought the first iPhone and it was far and away the best phone I've ever had. I replaced it with a Sony Ericsson phone because I've grown to be quite uncomfortable with Apple. The Sony phone is awful. It sort of makes me wonder what I'm really accomplishing by doing this :)
Ah rapelets... great name!
Gravity always wins.
Eh, I would consider the phones to theoretically be version 1.0 (first gen), 1.5 (3g), 1.6 (3gs) and the iPhone 4 is 2.0. Avoiding "dot oh" releases is a common thing regardless of manufacturer.
One man's cheap trick, is another man's UI integration. I've done something similar to mimic what the end-users were accustomed too.
Brilliant. I just sat and willing watched 9 different adds for old spice. I love the commercials and this is over the top. I bet the cost to produce each clip is pretty small and the traffic that this is generating must be huge. I have no idea how much this will drive sales, but I've got to think it will.
FLicKeR: A Film By Nik Sheehan
This article focuses on the use of these "dark patterns" to mislead people, but the basic idea is used positively in many, many contexts.

Quality engineers use the concept of a "poka-yoke" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke) to failsafe their processes and systems all the time.
There are those (myself included) that would say Perl looks like it was created by aliens.
No it's not. For some programs, it is possible to tell, for others, it most certainly is not.
I'm looking forward to a proper response to these design issues.

I have quite a bit of my savings invested in Apple and, while a recall would be bad, an Apple that doesn't recognise it's own fuck ups would be far more serious.

They've made it much harder for themselves with Jobs' obnoxious e-mails and that dishonest press release.
Funny thing is, I actually hold showed a person who bought an iPhone 4 how to hold the phone without cupping the bottom part. He nows hold it a different way and hasn't gotten any issues.

This really shows that there are always so many things we assume don't matter but really do. And frankly how I'm holding a cell phone shouldn't matter.
Fashinating.com just launched, a plain simple way to discover fashion items
Well, if it's a support board, wouldn't that make this even more salient? As far as I've heard, apple doesn't even really want to acknowledge that there is a problem.

Lots of times when I'm looking for support, part of what I'm looking for is if other people are having the same problem. Linking an article detailing specifically why the problem you're having exists is very helpful when the company that built your defective phone doesn't want to help.
So your concern is that Android and MS will start creating dubious antenna designs? Sheik, what a bunch of copycats.

I think Apple's stance, that anyone who isn't satisfied with the iPhone 4 can return it within 30 days, is the right way to go. They said it before ANYONE had their phone for more than 30 days. Instead the people who weren't satisfied filed a class action lawsuit against Apple for making a "flawed" product.

Can you tell me again why Apple OWES you a product that is perfectly free of defects? To the point of you being able to purchase that product and suing them over it instead of just getting a simple refund?

This is as if they walked into the store, purchased the phone and yelled (across the internet) "this is a crappy phone, don't give me my money back, get me my lawyer". They then walked out of the store, and proceeded to use that phone for months while the trial went through its paces. Likely those months of horrible reception will only add to the charges they will put against the iPhone.

Also, could people direct this feeling elsewhere, where it is more meaningful and productive?
This topic has been discussed a number of times on chinese-forums.com (http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-5008220562729147%3A...)
Christ, some people here are fucking uptight. Quality comments are one thing, and HN has done a good job of keeping a quality community, but having a stick up your ass is a different matter.