skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Wow you guys have no idea. Please, just because some loser used it as an excuse to be a slave driver, don't blame agile/scrum.

Daily stand up meetings should happen whenever everyone will already be there. 9 is irrelevant. 10 is fine. If someone is WFH, then they call in.

Agile saves me FROM the micromanagers. Instead of having to be polled every few minutes, go look at the freaking board! Finally, no interruptions...
Social Media Impact on the Call Center Industry
Social Media impact on the Call Center industry. Long a slow industry to adapt, social media is having a profound impact on how call center companies both interact with customers and clients.
Have family who is a paramedic. By the time you add on the extra pay for doing night shifts, etc., he gets paid _extremely_ well.

There's also big pros and cons to working a non-9-to-5 schedule. 4 days on, 4 days off, etc.
"I never get the opportunity to properly engineer something and learn from what works well and what doesn't work well as a result of my own design decisions."

Sure you do, it is called what you spend your free time on. In your case, you aren't devoting any of it toward what you loathe you aren't doing. That's fine, but everyone is equal in the fact that they get 24 hours per day, what they do with it is up to them.

-Scott
The IKEA Fredrik desk is adjustable and can be made into a great stand-up desk, claim many blogs that I researched when I first became interested in stand-up desks. Currently as I recently moved to a spacious apartment my computer is stacked on boxes. The reason I tried a stand-up desk was to get that intense focus, as I am now not easily distracted from a task when I work.
Yes. Yes. Yes. You can't expect great people to work for you unless you're a great place to work.
"Veracity goes beyond versioning of directories and files to provide management of records and fields, with full support for pushing, pulling and merging database changesets, just like source tree changesets."

Okay, I re-read that three times, and I still parse that as some form of database versioning (vs. a database where versioning data is stored)... I mean it talks about records and fields, etc. I guess we'll have to wait a bit to see what's supported.

On the other hand, tghw's interpretation could be very on the mark as well (e.g. simple meta data that goes alongside the sourcecode).
kina chicks that double up on a dude like me dude!
I still don't know how to down-vote. Do you need super powers?
Sitting for long periods of time has an effect you can easily see in a lot of Americans. A fat ass, from all the blood pooling in their mid section.
Call Charlotte Wall at 415-217-6908. Spott, Lucey & Wall on Montgomery St. They do international tax so directly it's probably not a good fit, but they're small, reliable, smart. And plugged in, so they'll know other small, reliable, smart CPAs in the Bay Area who can help you specifically.

Tell her Phil Hodgen sent you. I gave an international tax presentation at their firm a few weeks ago.

What you REALLY need is a high quality bookkeeper. Every $1 spent there will save you about $50 in CPA bills. :-)

/Phil.
"We were only using a subset of agile, but it seemed to break up the team rather than get them working together."

I'm just guessing that this was not a team led initiative. It really must be to be successful.
Aviation Formulary
I just started using it. Maybe I can try the wrist straps used by electronics workers to protect against static buildup. We'll see.
Landscape architect / gardener...
You'll find once you start referring to PMs as "Powerpoint resources" they stop :-)
Your analogy is not valid. You're ignoring reality, and the posts above which explain it. You are imagining that the women hooking up with these men are so naive/gullible/stupid that they went home with a guy they just met in a bar, expecting a deep long-term emotional relationship.

The truth is, women are a lot smarter than you seem to believe. They know what the men are up to, and they are willing participants. They are not being used. Your analogy would only hold if the bums were intentionally looking to find someone to murder them.
I can barely see the difference even after the explanation; but it's a beautiful thing to watch perfectionists creating a truly great tool, and making it free. They really are making the world a better place.
Apple Buys Online Mapping Company Poly9
I've used Squarespace for the past 2+ months for my blog on NoSQL and it's been great. I looked around at the various options when I thought about starting up and in the end went with Squarespace because of two reasons:

1) It's the hosting provider of highscalability.com and Todd Hoff had a lot of good things to say about the platform.
2) I saw it as the quickest way to get something that looked good and allowed me to just start on the content.

It's not the perfect platform. Sometimes you have to some crazy things to make things work. But overall I've been a very satisfied customer.

If you are interested you can try it out for free for 14-days to see if it works for you.

Derek
I'm getting a 500 internal server error on your site.
Someone needs to write an intro to scala that assumes no prior java experience. I know Ruby, C, C++ and others on a *nix quite well, but I have no clue about anything Java-related. This is a problem when I'm trying to figure out how to deploy a self-contained scala application.
There's no graceful way to make the distinction in modern English, and the distinction isn't important to the phrase being translated. Why go out of your way to preserve it, to the extent of using awkward or archaic language?

"Know yourself" doesn't have the ring of authority and solemnity that "Know thyself" does, but when you think about why "Know thyself" sounds that way to an English speaker, it doesn't make any sense at all to exploit that connotation. (That is, unless Socrates himself would have approved of exploiting religiously tinged language to bypass rational skepticism. That doesn't sound like the Socrates I've heard about, but I must confess that I know Socrates mostly by reputation.)

Different languages make many different distinctions, and translations are inevitably lossy. Translation would be an impossible job if translators didn't feel free to drop distinctions that, in their view, aren't essential to the meaning of the text.

For example, in a Spanish news article about a criminal's appearance in court, the gender of the criminal's lawyer might be evident, but if the lawyer is not mentioned by name, the lawyer's gender would probably not be evident in the English translation. There's nothing wrong with that, unless there happens to be some special reason why the lawyer's gender is relevant to the story.
Camera operator. The film/video field is rife with opportunities for smart digiterati, the work is challenging, fulfilling, and well paid. Not a photographer? Become a 'dgitial imaging technician' - arrive in middle of nowhere, set up a bulletproof fileserver, push terabytes of video data around on demand while creating secure backups and often working with alpha builds, work 18 hour days.

Downsides: you need to be near LA, NY, London or some other international city to get regular work. It's psychologically as well as physically demanding, with many extreme personalities. Upsides: if you have talent or brains you can rise fast; film is an extremely meritocratic results-based environment. Arty types are mostly technophobic and will worship you like a god as long as you don't screw up.
Offline on Android support sounds really amazing.

I'm poking around DroidCouch and only see a wrapper for the CouchDB REST API:

http://github.com/sig/DroidCouch

Should I be looking at another project for offline support?
Been there. Join a company who's challenges are technical. That's an oddly rare venture as a software developer... most devs spent careers shoving data into and out of a database, and the grand challenge at most software shops is social.. it's designing software that user's interact with nicely. If you feel like you're losing your technical edge, look for a company that's doing something that's technically hard. Makes all the difference.
The horizontal scrollbar covers part of the document (even when scrolled all the way down).
Great idea....would love to find someone with marketing / online marketing skills willing to do the same.
It would be horrible for the guys at YC to have created a $200m+ business, right? http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/google-in-final-negotiation...
Does Minnesota have the laws that protect employees to keep their inventions done outside of work?
I did a ton of research recently on this issue, and other cost-of-living issues, because I live in an RV full-time. I'm currently paying California taxes, because that was my most recent permanent residence...but everything is insanely expensive in California, including vehicle insurance, health insurance, taxes of all sorts, vehicle registration and licensing, etc.

On my way back from Alaska in a couple of months I'm going to take a detour east to setup my domicile in South Dakota (I want to see Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument, anyway). It will save me at least a few thousand dollars next year.
>>I like Mercurial too but the branching as a clone is somewhat of a deal breaker for me.

Not sure what you mean hg branch Branchname creates a branch in the repo.
My understanding is that this release is partly intended to fix some of the earlier design mistakes before it gains too much popularity. They wanted to do this now rather than later to prevent a python3 scenario.
Minimal Tee: M
AfterLive 1972: 'Five Years' By David Bowie
For comedy value, there should be a follow-up article involving the "Casual Encounters" section of Craigslist.

2600 magazine recently had an article about a Bayesian filter for getting the spam out of the "w4m" section. A human could weed out rejections, spambots, and prostitutes, putting the rest into a sortable spreadsheet.
This is actually one of the two things about this product I find most interesting. Having a user-friendly public key system is really tough to get right, even when you're targeting programmers. Look at Monotone, for example: I'd argue they've basically got it right now, but it took them a long time to come up with sane ways for handling things like a user losing their keyring. Veracity will have to get this right from the get-go if they want to nail the enterprise market.
And horrendously dangerous.
Both US parties mull raising retirement age to 70
That's such a pity to hear. Duluth, MN is a GREAT town, but with only a handful of companies doing any real software development (web or otherwise) I'd imagine it would be pretty hard to get funding.

I know Points North (http://www.points-north.com/) managed to obtain quite a bit of angel investment about 4 years ago. I guess Lloyd and Jason just didn't know the right people. Anyway, congrats on their success outside of the Northlands :)
Ask HN: Thought experiment -- what is the true value of an asset?
Lets imagine a situation where we're watching a world from the outside, without being able to send information in to it.

Now suppose that we on the outside know, beyond a doubt that the model world will be destroyed unless the model inhabitants build a certain expensive artifact -- too expensive for any individual to build. Maybe we're to be the agents of the destruction, or maybe we can predict the future. Whatever. The essential points are that we know "if not X then destruction", that building X will require collective allocation of resources, and that the model inhabitants are uncertain about this future.

Also, the world will be destroyed soon. Say within the lifetime of the majority of our model people, so that most of them can expect to see the end of the world. The world will be destroyed in a way that does not confirm widely held religious beliefs. In other words it should appear to them as a Bad Thing, not a Good Thing.

Ok, questions: how should the model people value some person's plan to build X to avoid disaster? What is the true value of X? Are there different reasonable answers, or only one? Should we prefer metrics that are more likely to cause X to be built, or is that irrelevant?
Exit the Middle
They have a feature voting system called Votebox under which emailing files to dropbox is highly requested with 19,874 votes.

You have to be logged in to dropbox to access it:

https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/20/email-files-to-dropbox
I think the roof is at a significant angle, standing 2 feel back from the screen it's probably 1 to 2 feet above head height.
I recall another study that figured out people who are the gym who flex in the mirror all the time (hate those guys!) get more fit. That probably applies to desk jockeys as well.
Don't worry it happens to the best of us. I had a similar situation and it lasted for quite some time. Actually it lasted until I left the employer I was at. There are a lot of below the surface issues that can affect your ability to develop optimally, language, platform, the code base can all have an effect, even office politics can have an effect on your code quality.

In some ways we are like athletes, where better skills separate the superstar from the average and the superstars really shine. But just like athletes we have our slumps, which you are probably in. Averaged out over a career though they are brief even if they last a couple of years.

To me if I had to play 1000 ft view arm chair psychologist, I would say it is most likely your job, their is no passion and without it there is no dedication to producing quality work. Over time this has a compounding effect. I personally got to the point where I did not want to learn new technologies which, if you knew me is a very strange turn of events. I tinker with everything, trucks, computers, low tech camping and wilderness tech, solar / clean energy, bio-diesel, you name it and I tinker with it.

Anyway point being it can drag you that low, where you loose passion for the basis that got you here. That is when it becomes dangerous and when it required immediate action.

So lets get to the important part, how did I break the spell? by doing exactly what I did not want to do, on nights and weekends I started coding my own side project, it was like pulling nails at first but then things started to spark again.

Planning and design started to occupy my mind again, efficiency of code and modularity dominated my curiosity. The wheel started turning again and I got sharper, my code quality went up and I was happier even in my private life. That project ended up pulling me out of that job and out on my own

When I stated it I subconsciously agree to my self that even if it was a flop I was doing this for therapy. I also agreed amongst myself to never tell myself that again because I needed the belief that this was going to carry me somewhere else. That prepared me for the fact that it could fail and would soften it with the fact that I achieved the goal of rehabilitating myself. While also providing the hope that it could turn into something that will change my life. It did on both accounts.

I have been there, if you need someone to talk to my email is in my profile. I can help you with ideas for projects and help you with what I did to navigate certain mental demons in that situation (e.g procrastination, lack of motivation). It's tough and it is a form of depression, the sooner you break the cycle the easier it will be to recover.
It's an outdated pic, I quickly moved downstairs and took over our master bedroom. We sleep in the attic now.
Isn't that what wife is for?
I can see both sides on this one, you should certainly be self-aware enough that you periodically reflect deeply; I think the danger is that far too many guys in their 20s get into a rut, paralysed into inaction through over-analysis; your 20s and 30s are the time you should be vigorous, active, taking risks, exploring, having experiences, and doing so will result in more self-knowledge than sitting in your room contemplating the universe. In general, it's better to err on the side of action - when in doubt, build something.
Entropic Gravity For Pedestrians
Seems similar to what I've been experiencing.

Things that I've been doing:

- work on side-projects

- take up new activities that require commitment. Nothing is always pleasant and if you feel like you're constantly procrastinating/putting unpleasant tasks aside, then actually doing something because you have to helps shift the "I can do it later" mentality to a "let's just do it while we're at it" mentality. I'm doing martial arts

- cut back on reading news. If you need a "daily fix" of news, you'll probably notice that this addiction impacts your ability to focus.

- take time away from the computer. It helps organize ideas in your head. I walk.

- forget the idea of a "learning ladder", i.e. the idea that what you must accomplish next must be harder than what you've learned previously. Particularly, get rid of the notion that your next learning milestone should be programming related. Instead, research a real-world problem. You'll find a whole new industry worth of code to explore and it'll open doors.
Field researcher in oceanography, zoology, biology, archaeology, geology, or similar field.
Well, that explains the Shake Weight..
fta: "One area where we are seeing real-time analytics improve content companies is in article headlines. For most of us, an article headline is all we use to decide whether or not to read on, so having a good one is definitely important. The Huffington Post is ahead of the game here. They use analytics to run A/B split tests on their important articles – in real-time. The Huffington Post initially shows 2 headlines for the same story, after 5 minutes of testing they discard the less popular one."

How common is this kind of behavior on the web? Are many news outlets doing this kind of split testing?

Can anyone recommend a 'getting started' with A/B testing guide (for blogging)?
Without evidence to the contrary, it also seems reasonable to relate declining movie ticket sales with increasing piracy. I think we all know what's wrong with doing that.

The right way to run this sort of experiment would be to track how much music someone buys for a while, then give them a mildly inconvenient all-access pass to iTunes or something (a la Rhapsody) and see what changes.
Use Multiple Google Accounts in One Browser
>200 karma, you're almost there.
You are still pretty green. Keep working on it.
While I'm not an expert on these type of studies, I am married to one. I often see these types of criticisms bantered about, but I'm fairly certain that these researchers are MUCH more sophisticated in their controls than we give them credit for.

There is an entire body of research dedicated to ascertaining the quality and reliability of surveys, how surveys are delivered, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. In doing these studies those methodologies are generally well understood (and clearly cited) as part of the paper itself.

While I know those of us who where educated in the 'hard' sciences (I'm a physicist by training) find it hard to buy into these... I've been quite impressed by how rigorous they really are.

I haven't read this particular study, so I may be way off base... but the fact that the fundamentals of the study involved a survey do not make it bad or invalid science (as long as the study was conducted properly that is).
I was completely unaware of the law mentioned in the article. Minnesota is a great state, and I love living there its a shame that it seems I'd have to move if I ever wanted to create or join a startup.
I'm on the west coast and I see a wide range of talent at events that I go to. I primarily go to events in tech and entrepreneurial related topics like docstoc events, marketing/seo talks, lean startup, etc. I'm looking to network and meet people I can possible partner up with for future projects. I usually get to know the person and get some references after i've met them but it beats having to read a resume and read through the BS. I've met some great companies and people so far and references are always rock solid when I ask for help through these people.
1. Daylite. www.marketcircle.com.

2(a). Because all my data are belong to me. (sic) (AKA I don't want to be held hostage to monthly fees in order to keep my business going. That's why I abandoned 37 Signals.)

2(b). Because we are all-Mac and Daylite is kind of all there is on the Mac.

2(c). It has an iPhone app - this is the killer feature of Daylite for me. It is actually better than the desktop software. This is a $50/year item, not a one-time purchase, which is the primary reason I am always looking for an alternative. Do you hear that, www.marketcircle.com? Abuse your customers with pricing and they'll constantly be looking for the door. Which I am.

2(d). Because in fact Daylite works quite well for a team of 5 to be up to date on all of the projects and opportunities going on in the office.

3(a). Daylite's ability to sync remotely with my MacBook has been shit, frankly. The so-called "offline" capability isn't capable.

3(b). Daylite's ability to sync between its own contact database and Address Book, and between its own calendar and iCal has been shit, frankly. Marketcircle blames this on Apple's sync services. 3,500 contacts? C'mon. It's not that much.

What I'm looking for - I watch for stuff that will plug into Google Apps and will have an app for an Android phone. I'd be gone in a second, as soon as I'm comfortable that I have control over my own data utterly and completely.

Tried Salesforce, Zoho. UI is crap, complex, overdone for our purposes.

Breathing and blood. Hard for humans to outsource comfortably. Same with business - finance and CRM. While I and happy/eager to go to the cloud, I won't do so until the data exit is simple and trivial.

/Phil
I just mean that you said you are very active, so you maybe able to build on one of those specific activities. For example there are people who design artificial waves for surfers. This involves a lot of optimization work, But of course you also need it as the waves.
I'll avoid the database section, as that's a bit involved.

I bill customers on the day that they signed up. It's easier to bill Joe Smith on the 12th every month than to explain to him why his first months bill was smaller than the others (pro-rated approach).

You should definitely automate this. Try to bill, if it works, send an invoice via email. If it fails, send them an email asking them to update their payment information. Now, an automatic process could have bugs in it, but so could having a person push a button. It's the code to execute the charges that matters, not how it's invoked. That said, the first few times it happened I'd be danged sure I was watching in realtime (and maybe require human intervention to prevent a bug from affecting ALL my customers).

You aren't saving credit card numbers, right? I use authorize's CIM to obtain a reference to that cc file. You don't want to go through PCI compliance for storing cards, or even risk massive fraud due to a security breach. It's worth the extra money.
Well, that's taken long enough. Lotus Notes has everything to do with CouchDB. Damien was a product developer at Iris/Lotus, and in a lot of ways CouchDB is a modern rethink of the best of what Notes/Domino is. When you take away the client and the need to be backwards-compatible to the late Bronze Age (Notes V2 applications from '93 can run unmodified in the current version 8.5 client), you're free to make a lot of improvements, but you also get to keep the good stuff.