skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
@rbanffy, you and I are on the same page with this one. I just commented in the other section with something along the same lines:

"I saw this on twitter this morning and noticed a glaring similarity in the GUI design and that of MIT's SCRATCH programming language geared at teaching children how to program. They both utilize the concept of visually displaying code segments as "building blocks" which fit together like puzzle pieces to give a visual representation of whether or not code will work.

I commend the approach to get more parties interested in programming and mobile web application development. Perhaps this opens up a whole new world of potential for getting mobile applications development into the classroom at a very young age. On the downside, we might end up with an influx of even crappier Android applications in the market. I already have a hard enough time filtering through the crapplications as it is.

Here's the link to SCRATCH for those unaware:"

http://scratch.mit.edu/
How do revolutions begin? How do tipping points start? Here is a clue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ADwPLSFeY8

So someone sees that, creates their own. Shows it to a friend. "Ooh, I want to do that for my cat too!" And since that person is just about to buy a new phone, they go and get one with Android. Then that person shows a friend their own new kitty "app" and that person who is getting a new phone ... repeat.

Everyone looks for a great big downpour instead of a light rain to change everything.
Link? I was under the impression that men could not have laser facial hair removal because the thick, coarse hair would scar under the high energy of the laser.

(Although, I'm not sure I would do it anyway. Having facial hair as an older man seems like it would be a rite of passage.)
We're here, just too busy to make portfolios ;)
Ahh the famous Matt. You'll see I've followed you on to Dribbble as well now. Hope your stuff with Al is going well?
I consider myself a shaving purist and moved away from multi-blade nonsense to a traditional double-edge razor about 5 years ago. It's very therapeutic, and the cost savings and quality of shave trumps modern razors at the expense of a few extra minutes. To put cost in perspective, for $20 you can have a 2-month supply of razors and have an almost brand-new blade touching your face every 2nd or 3rd shave. When time is precious or I'm traveling, my windfall is a nice electric razor.

Here are some good resources for picking up the art. I tend to prefer the Robert's wet method shaving technique. He's based in Austin, TX and makes all his brushes, soaps, and oils by hand in his shop off Congress.

http://shaving101.com/index.php/education/11-method-shaving....

http://www.youtube.com/user/mantic59
He made some wrong predictions 2 years ago for the European Championships so he's not infallible, though he appears to be getting much better :)
I just did a quick mock up of a design idea I had on Friday (will do its on thread about it):

http://bit.ly/dujjEk

I like doing UI design, still learning however.
It's been like 45 seconds and it still hasn't loaded so you should probably figure out performance first.
If its like VB for Windows, then it's still good news. But god help us if it's like Frontpage :|
Yes, a nice fancy video tour is in the making, should be up by next week.

Targeted landing pages is a good idea. I should work on that.
I use awesome wm on archliux, and I HIGHLY recommend it. Definitely go for it.

You can pretty much do everything very efficiently from the keyboard, which just "feels right" to me (not to mention being way more convenient). You can also manage way more windows in an efficient way. The previous two sentences could probably be said about a lot of "tiling" window managers, honestly, but I think awesome is a great choice.
Another MS mouse mac user! I absolutely love MS mice and have two identical models at home and work. Their OS and office software may suck but the mice are awesome.
How to Spot a Fake Designer Handbag
Desktop: Intel i7 980x 6 core cpu, 6GB ram, Nvidia 480gtx, Intel 160 GB SSD drive + 2x1TB HDD running Windows 7 64-bit with a 30" Monitor flanked by a pair of 20" Monitors in portrait mode (4960x1600 screen space).
Watch Robert Newman's history of oil sketch: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5267640865741878159

It addresses that particular piece of rewritten history.
Work: Dual-Core Power Mac, 5GB RAM, Snow Leopard, 24" Dell Monitor

Home: 13in Macbook Pro, 4GB RAM, Snow Leopard, 24" Dell Monitor.

Before I bought the Macbook it was a 15" Ubuntu/Win7 Gateway Laptop with 3GB RAM.
13.3" MacBook Pro, running OS X 10.6. I gave up stationary computers almost 6 years ago, and haven't looked back once.
The jQuery metadata plugin makes elegant use of this property of class names.

For example, you can do something like this:

<a href="#hello" class="{name:'George'}" />

and then in jQuery you can retrieve the metadata like so:

$('a').metadata('name'); // returns "George"

Its incredibly useful for associating metadata with DOM elements without breaking the HTML's validity.
Self-built computer: AMD 2.8 GHz quad-core, 4 gig ram, running Ubuntu 10.04 .

Keyboard: black Unicomp SpaceSaver (http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/en104bl.html).

Mouse: Microsoft SideWinder gaming mouse (http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-HKA-00001-SideWinder-Gaming-...). 2x 21.5" emachines 1920x1080 monitor (http://emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=E211H_bmd).

The only important user-facing software on my machine: Emacs, Firefox, Pidgin, VLC. I installed Stumpwm (http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/), but went back to Gnome until I have the time to learn, and am less ego-depleted.
Any specific tweaks/hacks/configs I should look at? Otherwise I'll just dive in ... and hope for the best. =)
And for the innocents on the receiving end of some horror that is an understandable sentiment.

However, for what separates the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century from today's situations is the degree to which the unimaginable suffering of individuals was known about and dictated by those in power rather than being a tragic side-effect of other misguided policies.
I learned a while back about the idea of sharpening your blades. I know, it's obvious. The idea is that these disposable blades that you buy in packs of 4 can actually last quite a while if you 'sharpen' them. Basically, wet the razers, and then run it up your arm. Make sure you drag it across so you aren't shaving your arm, but rather, running the blades face across your arm, sharpening it.

Wow. That's a really bad description. Hopefully you understand. You have my apologies for forcing you through that mess.

Anyways, it's really helped with the life span of my blades. Before I shave, I run them across my arm 10 times, real quick. Takes all of 5 seconds, and then I commence with the shaving.

It's like running a knife of a leather strap to help keep it sharp. Look! A concise description. >_< Need more coffee to get back to default awareness.
I've considered this in the past as well. But every girl I've ever dated has really disliked the idea. A little stubble on a Saturday is a great thing in most women's eyes.
Our experience (at Timetric) is that selling visualization as a direct benefit is a real challenge. The people who know what a boxplot is are comfortable with Origin or R or whatever: everything else either doesn't care, or doesn't know they should care, or doesn't have the budget to care. What'll be critical for you is communicating a value proposition which gets past that. How does using PrettyGraph make you money?

The Verifiable deadpool post is an eye-opener, too, as to the dynamics of this market: http://stuartroseman.com/post/619953720/out-with-the-old-bus....
Reminds me of the Sandbenders computer from William Gibson's "Idoru":

...he used to tear up her hardware, the designer's, and put the real parts into cases he'd make in his shop. Say he'd make a solid bronze case for a minidisk unit, ebony inlays, carve the control surfaces out of fossil ivory, turquoise, rock crystal. It weighed more, sure, but it turned out a lot of people liked that, like they had their music or their memory, whatever, in something that felt like it was there... And people liked touching all that stuff: metal, a smooth stone... And once you had the case, when the manufacturer brought out a new model, well, if the electronics were any better, you just pulled the old ones out and put the new ones in your case. So you still had the same object, just with better functions.
I basically buy everything Apple releases. So I've got an 8 core Mac Pro loaded to the hilt and.. it's sat in my shed unused for the past 9 months! Once the new 27" iMac came out, that was it. Perfect form factor, "fast enough", a far better screen than my 30" ACD.. so it turns out a machine half the price of my Mac Pro set up totally replaced it. And as there's no market for used Mac Pros, it seems, I now have a full Mac Pro + 30" setup sitting around entirely unused (and a 17" MBP - once I realized I don't really like or need a notebook).
I'm sorry about that. I'm trying to fix it now.
Hrishi, on the "Learn More" page I think there is some content on the tail end of the "How does it work?" video that accidentally got left in the video. Starting at minute 2:55 you can see yourself editing it in Windows Movie Maker and then the first 30 seconds of the video again.
Ask HN: A Customer Service Support Tool (idea)
Hi,

Well someone posted a comment asking what would make a great customer support tool (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1500634) and I said a desktop app would be great.

So after a little sketching at the pub on Friday and then a little photoshop work I have created this mock up of my idea:

http://bit.ly/dujjEk

Ideally what I think it should do is be able to remotely monitor services with the ability to turn off and on (restart) them when required. It also plugs into a status area which can be updated by the company along with links to any support tickets that are open.

The task bar icons would change if a new status/message have been added or a service has gone offline.

Thoughts?
I'm not opposed to a moral code, in fact, I welcome it. I am opposed the the knee-jerk puritanical reaction that anything related to SEX is automatically immoral.

To quote George Michael: "Sex is natural, Sex is good."
As I see it, you have a problem convincing people of the value of your service, particularly the value over a different solution (i.e. Excel). I like your Video on the Blog page and I'd move this to the first page. However, a scatter graph can easily be drawn in Excel - maybe add a more "awesome" example?

I don't know what you think of the freemium model, but it could be an alternative to your free trail. It could make sense to introduce a free product category with maybe 10 free graphs and datasets with less than n elements. This way, customers aren't bound by the 30 days and have more time to warm to your product.

You write that there are differences in the design themes across the different products (basic, designer, premium)? I'd explain the difference in detail - you could use a check list of the available features - so that it's clear why premium is better.
Minnesota Short Sale
Instead of accepting foreclosure and surrendering your home, a Minnesota short sale allow you to make a deal with your lender so you can avoid foreclosure and the other pitfalls that come with it.
Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money?
What's one thing you did purely for the enjoyment, that later made you money?
awesome == spam
True but if you look at the manner in which it was done then the Nazis are up there. What was horrible was the systematic way it was done. It wasn't a city gassed on a whim, or a population shot because they where rebelling. Those are terrible, but what is terrible about what the Nazis did was in the planning and efficiency of it all.
A crappy cell phone i use to talk to other people, and a crappy Chinese mp3 player i use to listen to music. A fancy swiss army knife. A copy of K&R in my back pack(just in case). A pack of cigarettes and a lighter, occasionally matches.
I bought a Merkur Futur a year ago and haven't looked back.

The initial investment in going to an old-school shaving setup is about $100. Safety razor, some blades, badger-hair brush and saving soap. But the payoff is huge over time. A $5.00 bar of shaving soap can last 6 or 8 months with daily use. High-quality DE blades are $0.50-$0.80 ea, depending on quantity.

As the article states, it takes a little more time and finesse to get a full shave done, and I like that. It's been, for me, an enjoyable way to start the day with a routine that requires some craftsmanship and skill.
The same way people with BP, BlackWater, Halliburton, etc. on their resume explain it?
I've recently taken up shaving with a straight razor. I there was a place like Pasteur's Pharmacy near me because the only place to buy equipment is online.
no freemium offer? why not?
I'll always be fond of this book because, directly or indirectly, it changed my life.
Extractiv launches "Semantics as a Service"
I'll be in NYC a week after it... :-(
Check out PixelPipe

http://pixelpipe.com/
What is the most effective use of e-mail to drive revenue and loyalty?
Response-based e-mails will frequently generate more than 50% open rates and will be read carefully by the recipient—because the e-mail is recognized as containing relevant content he or she is looking for. Therefore, these e-mails create wonderful opportunities to cross-sell, upsell, initiate initial purchases and generate feedback from recipients.
I asked because 1st of all, i believe that usually (but i may be wrong) "SuperDeveloperX"'s
get the most fame and glory for a web project and, apart the technical side, designing a great and visually appealing UIX is hard,
you have to try it to really understand, i think. So i wanted to send some luv and hugs, for realz :)

2nd, i have a pet project atm and was looking for an UI and logo for it. I've tried partenering up with other people (both design and developers)
but i've almost given up (when someone asks you if you'd like to partner up on a project and you say "yes, i do and i love it" that person is asking for your help doing it, it's because she needs you to proactive and HELP, not waiting around to take orders. my 2c) so i was looking for a budget for a one page layout (what i can afford) and maybe a simple logo.

3rd, it's likely i'll need to do freelance work (there's a chance i'll get funded for my main project) and was looking for ppl who would like to team up. I'm a [mediocre :p] developer and atm i'm focusing on Python/Django/Google App Engine.
For god's sake man, upgrade those monitors!

You don't actually do development on 17" screen do you?
Asus Eee PC 1000HD
* 1.6Ghz Atom
* 1 GiB ram
* 10" 1024x600 display
* OpenBSD (recent snapshot)
* StumpWM is the window manager
* emacs is the editor

I use it as terminal to login to my ps3 running Debian sid for cell processor development. I use profont to let me fit a lot of code on the small screen.
Right, that is the key to the issue I think: Spotify can't just include an MP3 decoder, unless they pay licensing fees to Thomson or Fraunhofer or whoever it was. On Windows/Mac, I guess they instead rely on the system-wide codec, but on Linux there would be some diversity in the implementations, and so probably they chose not to bother, for now.
a fast-enough computer with ubuntu 10.04... that's all I need.
What do you hack on?

Today; our biggest distributed cluster (several thousand machines, 4 heads). Which is very fun :)

Usually I hack on various computers; either a water cooled Amd Opteron [the older ones that overclocked like stink] or Intel Core 2 Duo based machines. OS is usually Feodra core 11/Ubuntu (at work) or Mint (at home).

Synced with Dropbox, shared KB/Mouse using Synergy.
whoops... meant 17" and 19".
I came to same conclusion because originally budgeted for a Mac Pro + 30inch screen but instead went for the iMac 27inch (and used money saved on extra external HD's, Drobo & software and still walked away with large pocketful of money!).
Ask HN: Is .app TLD coming anytime soon?
We all know that ICAAN has recently opened up possibilities for new TLDs, especially with non-Roman based languages.

Any idea on whether .app is planned or in the works?
Tablets to Replace Low-End Laptops, Netbooks
If you don't need your facial hair totally shaved, an electric hair trimmer, like the kind your barber uses on you, is quick and foolproof.

If you do need your facial hair totally shaved, just get a safety razor. The blades are ~55 cents each, and while there is a little learning curve, within a week or two you'll be all set.
Also bats with firebombs attached to them. Surely that's almost as good as sharks with laser beams on their heads.
I'm a UI guy who works on the web by day and iPhone/iPad stuff at night (I also write Obj-C.)

Usually I post my in-progress stuff at Dribbble:
http://dribbble.com/players/mike
How to import avchd to imovie
Out Of Nowhere, The iPad Has A Real Competitor
Thanks Andrew. In my limited experience in research, a lot of the most brilliant people were not interested in looking at anything to do with code (such as R). Others who didn't mind would rather spend their time doing their core research than programming, but they had no choice.

I am trying to build something which can save such people time.

Outside research, I have been contacted by a few different business people, who said they would love to use something like my product. There are some alternatives like Tableau Public out there (which is admittedly more than just a graph maker) but costs a lot.

I did read the Verifiable post but the key point there (as the name suggests) is that data quality killed them. They were trying to be a databank. Pretty Graph is not. It's just a website, where you put in your data and get graphs out.

Anyway, I'm sure I could learn more from your experience at Timetric. Are you going to the HN meetup this week? I'd love to have a chat.
Sigh... You've just pinpointed for me my biggest frustration with the current "news" industry. They could easily provide a lot of that historical background to help their viewers/readers actually understand current events. But they don't.
The Second Congo War was the deadliest conflict since World War 2 and lasted until 2003.
Isn't this what the data-* attributes should be used for though? Storing that kind of stuff in the `class` attribute seems semantically flawed.
http://html5doctor.com/html5-custom-data-attributes/
Is Techcrunch a sensationalist tabloid or last bastion of quality journalism?
Sound not as memory but as experience
Only few of your examples show off these features. I can replicate the rainfall and sales graphs in Excel in less time than it takes me to log in to your service. The heat map on your blog on the other hand looks great - why not replace the boring graphs with this one?
The brush & soap is still the most satisfying shave I've ever had. I'm not sure how effective it really was compared to others as it's been a while, but I certainly felt the best afterwards and itched a lot less.

On a friends recommendation, I recently switched to one of those cheapo King Of Shaves. It looks ridiculous and it was a bit fiddly to get used to, but it's doing ok. Prefer it to the crumbling Mach 3 anyway.
Sheesh. Okay, here we go:

Hackerspace Kit

ASUS 1000HA
2gb RAM upgrade
BT4 / Windows Dual Boot
Arduino Diecimella

Freelance / Personal Kit

MacBook Pro 2,2
2gb RAM
ATI Radeon x1600
Boot Camp / VMWare Fusion XP Dual Boot

Gaming Kit

Custom Built i7 Rig
i7 920
6gb RAM
Nvidia GTX 260
Dual 19" WS Monitors from Dell
Dell Docking Station

Work Kit

Dell D830
Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz
3.5gb RAM
Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M
Win XP
Dual 19" 4:3 Dell Monitors
Dell Docking Station
It sounds like you were on a (gs) Grid-Service with us. This is not a VPS hosting solution, which is what it sounds like you have at Rimuhosting. I'll admit that our (gs) hosting has had its fair share of stability problems. However, our VPS solutions, such as the (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server and the (ve) Server are incredibly reliable and have virtually zero downtime.
If you're looking for a home for it, feel free to shoot me an email.
Is there any ETA on when Spotify might become available in the US?
Another big difference was that in Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China just about everyone was under potential threat - being a member of the party or close to the leader wasn't really any help.

Whereas in Nazi Germany it was a much colder clinical decision to systematically remove "undesirable" elements from society. I think it is the systematic element of their terror, rather than the sheer lunatic barbarity of the communist regimes, that makes them so scary.
Thanks for pointing that out. That's really embarassing. I do apologise.

EDIT: Video fixed now.
27" i7 iMac with 8GB RAM, attached to a 30" Dell display (3007WFP). I switched about a month ago from a MacBook Pro (attached to the same Dell display), and it's phenomenal. It's the first setup I've ever had that actually feels fast enough to run everything I need (iTunes, Word, Excel, and Windows running in VirtualBox, along with a few instances each of iTerm, Chrome and Textmate) without skipping a beat.
I don't get the joke or anything, but the honest, personal, on-topic comment is still there? Making a bad joke doesn't take away from that.
Ick. I think I'd rather just break my HTML and add random attributes.
Secret to innovation success = keep senior management away from the ideas
HTML5 has a proposal for a proper way to do this:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/elements.html#embedding-custom-...
Here's the Consumerist article and video that popped up on this a few months ago. It's been working pretty well for me so far: http://consumerist.com/2010/03/make-your-disposable-razor-bl...
Is it possible to use generator to stub out an app and then work on the generated source? I would love something like that as an gateway to app development as a developer w/o much previous Android/Java experience.
I agree. After reading this article a couple years ago, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6886845/, I only use my electric shaver for its mustache trimmer.

You shave every day? I thought I shaved a lot at once a week.
Unless you're nating between those locations, that's not possible.
UI Developer here

I do contract and client work. Prefer to work on B2B apps
Yep, this was my immediate thought too. The number of new employees I have to drill in the basics of debugging and problem solving is frustrating.
The barrier to entry to creating basic applications shouldn't be programming syntax knowledge, so I applaud this move by Google. There are millions of people who think logically and systematically and could write down on paper the architecture for a great program but they just don't know how to program.

I haven't checked this out entirely yet, but if it does what it's suppsed to do well then this will ultimately be a good thing for quality applications from a wider domain space.
It's a distributed cluster - I was trying to avoid being too specific for that reason :) my post was just about our practical example of naming many many computers
Yes you are absolutely right. This is where I get to use my "I'm a poor overworked single founder" trump card :-P

Jokes apart, I agree I have a ton of work to do to make the messaging on my site clear. I just put it out today to get some kicks in my butt.
No, that is not a competitive advantage
Remember the feature of the old iPods where you could add notes that used a subset of HTML? When I was in high school I wrote a little command-line program that would generate a bunch of notes linking to each other that in effect let you play blackjack on your iPod. It was a total hack, but I had a casino contact me asking to sponsor it. It didn't end up happening, but it's the closest I've come to accidentally making money.

I've written other open-source software since and had people offer money for new features, but I'm not sure that counts since it involves additional work.