skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
News is a funny market. If you say to someone "we'll help you find interesting or relevant news articles" they'll shrug and say it isn't a problem. Keeping informed as to what is happening in the world is a solved problem - by editors.

And whilst the current solutions (eg: everyone sees the same content on BBC) aren't perfect they're good enough and this is a tough product to justify to users.

Additionally, changing habits is really really hard. People habitually load nytimes.com every lunch time to see what is happening in the world - and you expect to shift that habit - for a marginal improvement in life? The brand loyalty with publications is ridiculously strong, not only do I trust The Financial Times, I hate the alternatives. "You just called me a Daily Mail reader? I am literally offended."

A lot of people insist that RSS Readers are too complex, and juggling multiple sources without an RSS Reader is too hard. That's true, but in reality most people don't care. If you think about it - people use different destinations for just about everything, so it's tough to imagine why this should be consolidated.

Another small problem with this market is that algorithm aggregators become over tuned. You read six articles about BP and suddenly your newspaper is less of the brilliant news paper and more of a BP quarterly earnings report. So then you down vote a few articles and then you miss the next BP scandal a few months later.

Also with this product - I'm expected to "thumb up" interesting news articles, this hurts emotionally if I'm "thumb up-ing" a news article about six 21 year old american soldiers being limbless in Iraq. "Show me more like this?" I think not.

I think there is significant value in topic communities and curation, an example of this is the Reddit Subreddits, if you want to stay informed in Venture Capital, in Golf, or in MotoGP it's quite hard to scratch that itch and always find cool new content (eg: a few articles a day)

Ask yourself: How would you find up to date content about Fashion? Or Coeliac Disease? Or Graphic Design.

I think news needs a fundamental shift towards social consumption, I think Google Reader, Twitter and Facebook have incrementally shifted this towards a social experience - which is exactly what news is about, it isn't about "being informed" per se, it's about "being informed amongst your friends" people want to look like they are in tap with what is happening in the world, and do not like having to ask their friends what they missed.
Rotterdam here
I thought this was a terrible idea at first, because a significant portion of television viewing time is spent at night time.

However, if the cells were on the front of the remote and were good enough that they could power it based upon only the glow from the TV, that would be great. You're already pointing the remote that direction.
I have to agree with the spirit of the article. In the late 80s and early 90s, much of my work was in C++, and I did some mentoring, wrote a bunch of C++ books, etc.

After my C++ period, I did a major project for myself and just used C - like a breath of fresh air after C++

In all my years using C++, I think that the only good applications where C++ made sense was in Nintendo and PC game development at Angel Studios and some VR development for Disney and SAIC. Everything else that I did in C++ should have been done in different languages.
That sounds very useful, but what's the price? I doubt it will catch on if it is $10 per "battery".
I use Android's talk feature all of the time. For navigation, for web searches, for "typing" out SMS messages. It's not great, but it's often significantly better than typing on either the hardware or software keyboard. Recognition quality is definitely improving.

I doubt we'll ever be in a place where talking to our devices constantly, but there are plenty of cases where it's just simpler - even if you are in public.
I don’t necessarily want to disagree with you, just mention that there are examples were the new thing was the old thing, only on computers. One would be digital photography. Sure, photography got a lot faster but it’s basically still the same thing. Changes have been slow and only recently began to have an impact.

And I don’t think Canon or Nikon did anything wrong. I think that it was probably correct to understand digital photography as analog photography – only on computers – first and look which places you can go only after you executed that perfectly.
Sorry? YC should or shouldn't invest depending on what feathers it will ruffle on HN?

Remind me never to let you invest my money.
Knuth's take:
http://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-calcu...
If you control for race you are implying that there are racial differences. That, may or may not be true, most likely it is not true. Social sciences are adverse to rigorously investigate the issue because I think we have learned from the last century some fundamental things, the main one being that labelling an entire race as inferior is extremely dangerous.

Besides, I am sure all races are infected by diseases and so too I am sure that the difference the further you go from Africa is not because of ones race but because societies are richer the further you go and thus have better sanitation. Moreover, I think that the unites states contains more black individuals than Europe, thus, if race had any effect, you would expect Europe to be more intelligent.

Not that we in Europe aren't mind you :P
Listen to the interview with Tobi from Shopify on Mixergy.com
I second the Sinatra recommendation. When I tried rails for the first time, it felt very large and unwelcoming, with a bunch of files that I didn't create sitting in my directory hierarchy doing unknowable things. Sinatra behaves just like any other library and requires far less of a time investment to pick up and start using.
Attributed to Norbert Wiener: A student came to him with an incredibly difficult problem he couldn't solve. Wiener stared at the ceiling for about fifteen minutes, then wrote down the answer.

The student said, "I'm sorry, Professor, but I didn't quite understand how you came up with that."

Wiener stared at the ceiling again for fifteen minutes, and again wrote down the answer.

The student said, "I'm sorry, Professor, but I still don't get it."

Wiener, flustered, replied: "I've just shown you two different ways to solve this problem! What more do you want from me?"
> There's no shortage of men in the humanities, nor in teaching once you get past the lower grade levels. In the US, at least.

That's true currently, but only because of very long cycles, I think: there are still plenty of male professors in the humanities today who got their PhDs in the 1960s and 70s, when all of academia was male-dominated. But men make up around a 40%-and-declining proportion of new non-science/eng PhDs, which is actually not much better than the women in science/eng numbers (women make up about a 35%-and-rising proportion of new science/eng PhDs). In some fields it's closer to 25%, since that 40% of men getting humanities PhDs are strongly clustered in a handful of fields (like philosophy, which is still male-dominated). I think things are going to look quite interesting in 20-30 years once the current crop of older profs retires.
Have you tried prayer, friend? I'll get you started.
Man, the Cassandra API is a pain to work with.
I knew a guy at Microsoft who got sick of his dev job and moved to Las Vegas to be a police officer. From what I hear, he's having a ton of fun, but I'm not sure it's less stressful. :)
I've been in the same job for nine years now. Great people, great company, an excellent salary, but it's just gotten old. The work has become repetitive and the big problems have been solved.

So I'm leaving to take a bit of time off and hack on projects of my own. I don't intend to leave programming but I might try and find a new problem domain to work in.

I had an epiphany about this last month: you can't compartmentalize your life. It doesn't work to build your life around a job that bores you - work is too fundamental.
High frequency low latency trading is an fascinating area. If you do decide to make a go of it and have the algorithm, the collocation site, the relationships, and the money, you might want to work with Maxeler Technologies, http://www.maxeler.com, which has the acceleration technology that is need to make it happen.
Because "Visual Website Optimizer" implies ease of use as against the very non-visual "Google Website Optimizer."
Buried inside C++ there are some good languages; Which one you would use? take one and leave the other stuffs out.

The problems is that you usually target a subset of C++, and two different company targets different subsets. This produce fragmentation and is not good.

Can this be solved/simplified? ages ago someone proposed an embedded C++ standard, and we have compilers in the embedded fields that support this stardard.
Why it does not succeeds? everybody wanted a different subset of C++.
http://distractible.org/2010/07/14/a-letter-to-patients-with...
You can spend frequent flyer miles on more than just free flights these days.
* Loudspeaker
* Vibration

Those 2 functions in the wiimote eat battery.
This is pretty much why I hate the idea of applying for a job. Supposing I get the interview, based on my past experience there's at least a 80% chance I won't get the job. I never got feedback for any of my "no hires" so I just have to assume they will all turn out that way.

The lack of feedback makes me just assume every interview is a crapshoot and there's nothing I can do to try and improve.
That's like wearing a helmet while walking down the street because you might accidentally fall and hit your head.

Don't be an idiot in the first place and you won't have to do idiotic things to prevent damage from your idiocy.
No, that's just what you'd need to make it compile
Hosting | Domain | Máy chủ |
Good work for an afternoon's effort. The only problem I see is that all these HN add-ons are hard to track for everyone unless if they were on to see this on the front page. What we really need is an Evergreen HN - where one could track such add-ons and perhaps greatest hits. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have top news of the week/month/year for those who live on an ent time scale :-)
Congrats for realizing that those sorts of "minor" things can have a significant impact. I think that this guy has something similar, which is why I suggested he go to Costa Rica in the last HN story.
> probably less significant

Significance depends on point of view. There are at least 3 points of view here: the donor, the recipient, and the outside observer.

I think the recipients in this case might have a decidedly different opinion on the relative merit between donations measured in tens of thousands and those measured in millions. For many it can literally be the difference between life and death.

So, it may "hurt" more for you to give $10,000, but the absolute good that can be accomplished with hundreds millions is far more important, imho.
I prefer:

my_variable or raise 'Hey dude! Where's My Variable Assignment'

or else:

my_variable.nil? and raise 'Hey dude! Where's My Variable Assignment'

since it puts what's being tested in front like with if/then but is also syntactically light-weight.
Doing exactly this in the Philippines. Most people you will encounter speak English. You can extend your tourist visa for 16! months before having to do a visa run. When you do need to do a visa run you can catch a flight to Singapore for as low as $30 each way.
MMmmm.... Yes and no. I remember the first time I heard of google, that probably wouldn't have been a highly valued domain at the time.

What really matters is links. You can put whatever you want in a link, since most people don't look at them too much.
Good point. I think this is why sometimes change is good just for the sake of change.
You said there was a good chance it was the right decision. That may be true in some amortized sense across all hires, but you implied that it was also likely the correct choice in this specific situation. I don't think putting that much faith in the results of the hiring process is justified.

Jobs interviews at Google aren't near perfection with a slight bias towards false negatives, and it's unfair to the people who don't make it through to suggest that they are.
HN: Is Posterous blocked in China?
Happens to be in China for 2 weeks already and I cannot get on Posterous at all. However, I can access tumblr, wordpress, and typepad. And no, the posterous site is not down, because at the same time I can access it via a server in US from where I am.

IF it is blocked (don't see why, though), then bloggers in those platforms may not want to move to posterous too fast, unless if they don't care about the Chinese audience.
There is no shortage of men demonstrating to younger males that they can make it in technology. This is what we get to take for granted, and as a result, aren't really aware of. Girls trying to figure out what they want, out of the set of options that they think are viable/promising, don't have this benefit, and needlessly self-select themselves out.

Really? Downvoted? I'd love to know what for. Is what I'm saying making people angry?
See also: Mitch Altman's "Brain Machine" (seen in Make Magazine) which uses binaural beats as well as pulsing LEDs to mess with your head. I like it. Some people think it's a bit too intense.
Of course KDE4 is like KDE4, but I don't see it as more similar to Windows than the Mac desktop. Mac OS doesn't revolutionize the desktop, either.

For KDE4, Lime Snow Leopard

1> You have a 'widget dashboard'

2> The preferences panel is very similar

3> KDE4 has a features identical to Expose

Probably more, too. All of the other features and ideas have been kicking around KDE/Gnome for years. Having a separate menu bar at the top, for instance - Gnome is set like that by default, which is more similar to Mac OS than the KDE style. Desktop 'Spaces' has been available on Linux for ages, too, while some people see that as feature unique to MacOS (though it's been added to Windows in various ways recently)

There is not really such a huge difference between Mac OS and Windows, even. It adds up to a lot, but as someone who has used scores of DEs and Window managers, they all share features, concepts and traits. They all use the same basic ideas - launcher icons, a desktop, a window tasklist, windows with menu bars, buttons and titles, etc.

I'd been using KDE4 for 6-9 months when I got my first Mac and all I'm saying is, well, I see where inspiration for certain features and design came from.

KDE and Gnome do have great ideas of their own, no doubt. They don't have $300 million worth of support to make KDE as polished as MacOS, though. I wish they did - the design of these DEs is just as good or better than the mainstream systems.
Study like a scholar. Scholar
I remember after the first tech bubble burst back around 2001 a lot of (young / male) disillusioned devs abondended the internets to become bike messengers (although they returned to blog about it naturally). It was an awesome read - if anyone remembers that and has some links please share. Some points I still remember:

- A lot less money (as mentioned here by a few).

- A lot less coffee. Being really tired at the end of the day (but the good tired after having felt as though they really worked). No more trouble sleeping. Keeping normal hours.

- Harder. Faster. Stronger. It is hard work, but it makes you hard.

- Few regrets (that I recall).

It was a little Fight Club-y. And I don't think anyone looks to retire as a bike messenger (probably get taken out by a taxi before then). But I'd be curious to know how long the experiment lasted.
Oz vs. Apple
Using crowdfunding to take on Apple's questionable practices? Mr. Ozwald is trying to do just that.
Are Wordpress themes necessarily open source?
The Wii remote already has a 3300uF capacitor in it for that function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_Remote#Power_source

I know there's not serious data processing on the remote, but I count an analog to digital converter as processing.

The main reason why I don't think it would be suitable for a wii remote is that two AA batteries are supposed to last 45-60 hours depending on use. Remotes last much longer. Granted the wii remote is used more actively, I still think the non-reliability issue, even if only for pause, kills it as a power source.

In the end though, its probably the consumer's decision unless nintendo hard wires them in.
> He is and will remain obscenely rich and this will make absolutely no difference to him in terms of how he lives his life.

It will make a difference in lives of millions of others - absolute good is better than relative good.

> ... day to day impact on what he can and can't do, it's probably less significant than someone on this board giving away $10,000.

It's much better for the world for billions to go into productive endeavors than $10,000. You shouldn't award extra points for suffering. In fact, I award extra points for a person being able to do massive good without hurting themselves.
You are having the same problem as mine, except for me I can't stand out to live for a year alone ;)

Your problem is: You are bored from your current job. You have been working for 5 years and it had become a monotonous job. You like coding but you hate your work as a coder.

The solution that I found is: Build something -> Your own -> Not only coding is involved -> unleash the sens of adventure

Take for example a SaaS service. You have to do the design, coding, deal with databases, setup the servers and then test and launch the product. Next is marketing, customer support, may be you'll try Google Adsense in the way, start a blog to enlarge your audience, do some open source work to attract related audiences, travel to x to promote your y to z....

You see? a SaaS (or uISV or any other crap really) will make your salary and also your journey. Start in the side and launch in your vacation, support it in the side until it supports you like your job does and leave. Don't spend your savings as they can be helpful in though times.

You'll get motivation every time you sit at your day to day job desk and feel really bored about it. This boredom (for me) will up lift your working power gauge in the night.

Don't burn yourself, work for 1-2 hours per week-day and 10 hours week-end. You can raise the number of hours, just make sure you enjoy your work. Make light schedules and plans in a way your web/desktop development becomes like an adventure journey. If you are bored read other unrelated-coding/related-project stuff (think marketing, SEO, scaling, culture...)

I'm not sure if this is the correct answer, if so, let just your journey begin!

Hope someday we meet in Dream Land, once each of us achieved his dreams.
1. What do you want to do most, what are you passionate about?

2. Do that thing, no matter what.
Ask HN: What blogging site is best for me?
I already have a domain but I want some blogging site where I can host and point it to may domain. Wordpress asks for 10 bucks to do so.

I currently use Tumblr and I am loving it so far but the issue is, I doesn't have comments. I am using Disqus for comments which is fine too but since everything is rendered at client side, Google bot doesn't scan the comments and I dont get good ranking on Google :(

Any suggestions?
Cloud Storage Gateways, stairway to (thin provisioning) heaven?
That's just PhDs, though. What are the percentages for new profs?
Ransom Note Generator
Any leap into the unknown is very hard, but whatever you do, don't procrastinate on it, the older you get the harder it gets - don't look back in 10 years and wish you'd made the move. Whilst I firmly believe if you really want to do something you can do it at any time, it definitely gets harder as you get older.

Try telling your wife and kids you are going to leave programming and the money you make and start again on something else, it's possible yes, but generally not so easy. Your "support group" of friends is much harder to leave the longer you have had them around. And "aspirations" are generally slightly harder to fulfil as you get older (trainee hairdresser at 25 OK, at 50 it seems a bit weird).

Also don't assume that if you leave you wont be able to step back into it. There is always a demand for good people and unless you are in an extremely limited market you quite possibly will be able to step straight back into where you are.

My wife and I (late 30's) are about to pack up our family and move countries and I'm contemplating what I want to do when I get there so I'm kind of going through the same thing.
Ok. I don't know what you are talking about. But everyone on the internet right now is talking about generic plastic bumpers (like a glorified condom) for your phone. Not plastic materials found within the iPhone or developed by Apple. If you've never seen one before, it looks like this:

http://www.gadgetgreats.com/images/products/detail/SoftPlast...

I bought one for an iPod. It was $30. My impression was, this might be the most over-priced, marked-up product I ever purchased. Ever. It was clearly < $1 worth of generic keychain plastic. Clearly you believe there are $29 worth of IP and licensing costs to justify the price.
> The GPL "deals with" copyright law, but that does not mean that all of its force relies upon copyright law

Actually, it does. The GPL is a copyright license, which means its only restrictions derive from copyright law. It can't prevent activities otherwise allowed by copyright.

> The GPL is a license, granting users the right to use the software. So, we can use WordPress, because the author allows us to (by means of the GPL).

The GPLv2 (the version in discussion here) explicitly denies that it covers running software:

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification
are not covered by this License; they are outside
its scope. The act of running the Program is not
restricted

> The GPL puts restrictions on our use. Among these, that if we wish to produce any derivative works (under the GPL's definition of "derivative"), we must also release these under the GPL.

There is no such restriction. You are legally allowed to produce derivative works, without releasing the source to anybody. The catch is to do so, you must not distribute the derived work in a way which requires copyright permission. Once you distribute a derived work, copyright (and thus the GPL) applies.
"is there a reason to make a class and wrap some things? If so, you can do that in C++. You can't in C."

Yes, you can. Object orientation is a property of the program, not the programming language. Pretty much every time I crack open C now, I'm writing Object-Oriented C.

(Also, immutability is a property of the program, not the programming language. Etc.)
C is a simple language with some pearls and a lot of corner cases.
For the corner cases "C. Puzzle Book" by Alan R. Feuer it's a funny read with a lot of oh-oh moments.

For the pearls... well I can give you a couple:
- sizeof() macro is a good friend
- ISO C99 <stdint.h> introduces Exact-width integer types http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stdint.h
You do realize that twitter didn't invent bittorrent, right?

;)
Hey, email me (email is in my profile) ... I've experienced the same kind of thing and have a few of the same ambitions and came up with a solution, perhaps it could work for you too.