skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm building an immutable filesystem of sorts on top of a distributed key-value store, and am about to benchmark Riak to see how it might fare (as the underlying key-value store). I'm also looking to do some visualization for execution tracing of a product using Simile Timeline, but I'm wrestling with incomplete documentation (the default DateTime resolution of 1 millisecond is not sufficient).
p -> q does not mean q -> p :)
Since this is about your "About" section of the profile, I have to ask: Why are the links you add to your profile not clickable to people who view it? Is it because of spam? Or some other reason? I just found this always interesting to me.
any idea where to find that and how to remove it?
I can't say I disagree with him on the dislike for OO. However if you are going to do OO in perl Moose is the way to do it.
Yep, seems to be a hole in our SRTM dataset. Such things happen. I'd certainly like a better dataset, because the current one is cut off at 60N and excludes a huge part of Russia.
> Your points are all valid, but

Stop right there. You haven't added anything substantive to support your "but". And saying that you'd trust John Carmack to solve technical problems is pointless. If John Carmack was on your team, you'd get funding even if your startup was about making cupcakes. The probability that you have someone at the very top of their field is extremely low.

Finding someone who can solve the technical programs of your game may not be a huge deal, but gameplay and creative both give you massive amounts of rope to hang yourself with. Moreover, they can completely upend all the work you've done if things don't pan out. This isn't quite like the web startup world, where if you've got a decent amount of sense, you can predict what will be useful, release a minimal version and iterate post-launch.
Thanks for pointing out Tenderapp. I'm using FogBugz, but this looks like it might be much better for us.
Today I am recovering from my first actual mixed martial arts class. My wife and I (recently reconciled, if you're following my posts) went, and she learned her first jab, (vicious) right cross, uppercut, left hook, front kick, body kick, armbar, rear naked choke and a kimura that's still got my arm a little weak.

I used to train in a number of martial arts like, 20 years ago, but now I'm 33, about 25-30 pounds overweight, and VERY out of shape, and decided to jump back in 100%.

Joined a Team Lloyd Irvin dojo (Ivey League MMA) and did the MMA basics course, which nearly killed me during the warm up, but I and my wife kept going through the entire class.

We'll be going back Saturday, and my 8 year old daughter is enrolled as well after watching the other kids enjoy kicking the snot out of the instructors.

As for a picture of the development environment... I suppose this'll do? http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr41/iveyleaguepics/grand...
I wonder about the same phenomenon but on higher levels of organization, e.g. concepts in an explanation. Are there valid ways to explain some concept C such that the interpreter is led down a garden path.

More important would be the existence of exclusively garden path concepts, call it the set EGPC. EGPC is the set of concepts which can only be arrived at via explanations or chains of concepts and reasoning that include at least one misleading garden path. One goal of clear teaching would seem to be reducing the number of conceptual garden paths that students encounter; so knowing that some subject necessitates them would be useful.
It's possible this may be due to false advertising. I bought the Canada maps version on June 16 for $4.99, and it turned out to be a two week evaluation edition, something that I did not see anywhere in the app description before purchasing it.

Something on their support page made reference to a spurious expiry message, so I thought this message might be a mistake; I wasn't sure until it actually did expire at the end of the month. By the time I'd noticed they'd pulled it from the store. The app was still on my iPad, and is still in my iTunes, so I don't think Apple killed it with the switch.
Trying to get an avionics subsystem to display a particular error message, in order to demonstrate completeness in testing. Part of this effort:

http://www.eurocontrol.int/link2000/public/subsite_homepage/...
At first, I thought your argument was really compelling. But I think your analogy fails. You are implicitly equating taking a mortgage, not repaying it and continually living your home with buying your program, getting the refund, and continually using the program.

If you could remove the users ability to use the software when you refunded them $30, like the mortgage lender can when the homeowner stops living in it, you'd probably still be in business even with your clause.

On the other hand, if all of your users bought your software, thought it sucked and never used it again, and then got their refund, well, you should probably be out of business.

The OP's situation is not analogous. He is not free riding.

Edit: On the other hand, the year's worth of free rent before being evicted is to me a bit morally shady.
Definitely agree. There's got to be a few bars or restaurants in the MPLS area that can hold a party of 20-30. Way back when drunkenbatman was ruling the blogs, they had a 300-man meetup in Chicago.
I'd certainly like to, but this was developed for my employer and would have to be cleared through them. Me and one other guy are trying to make the place more open source friendly, but it's slow.
This one is about as hard and fast as you can get though. That's my point. The moment you leave room for printing presses, you leave room for everyone to just assume they are building one.

I agree that occasionally, a revolution comes along. However they are called revolutions for a reason, and the odds are highly stacked that while you may indeed be building a successful product, it is not going to be revolutionary.

The key to all that is that even if it is, and you follow the diagram, it will cause you little to no pain. Too many people think that their particular project somehow escapes this simple truth. That's the problem.
Very interested but alas, I'm 6 hours away. :(
Nice. Cash base is pretty cool. I really like the simplicity of the interface. Would be cool if it were tied to your credit card, so expenses get automatically displayed.
Other reasons your language might have great tools: there are lots of talented, motivated people using it, or there is a large company with lots of resources which has managed to find the right vision to put those resources behind (which, I know, is uncommon, but can happen).

C# is a pretty good language with very good tool support.

Not that there are no examples to supoort the author's overbroad generalization; Objective-C is an abomination, with awesome tool support. (for the record, I am growing to like Obj-C, but GOSH)
Really though. If you wanted to claim that it was just for research, why give it such an inflammatory name? Compare:

1) WebReader is monitoring internet data.
2) Perfect Citizen is monitoring internet data.

Which one do you expect to be a robocop-like being that will kick down your door at night and declare "verdict: guilty, sentence: execution"?

Not that this doesn't reflect an irrational trust on your part of innocuous names, but really, why name it that?
The problem is that with the immigration situation, those jobs pay less than minimum wage, have horrible working conditions, and people often don't get paid. That's why the solution is a) A border fence, b) Much more strict employer enforcement, and c) Amnesty for those here, once a and b are accomplished. That way, the workforce stabilizes, and there is work for people in the U.S. who don't have a lot of skills. There probably aren't a lot of these people on HN, but many people just aren't going to be able to work a high-end job. We need something decent to do for those people. The problem is that right now, you can't have a first world existence on what a farmhand job pays.

The second step is probably drug legalization, because our drug laws have turned Mexico into a failed state, and it's impossible for Mexico to build a decent economy with the level of crime that they have.
Wetsuits are made of neophrene, they only work because neophrene is completely waterproof. That's not the case with a pair of jeans and a sweater.

New cold water will seep through much faster than your body can warm it. Even if you gained a fraction of a degree from tightly fitting clothes you'd lose much more than that through lack of mobility.
I just spent about 15 minutes messing around with this. Very neat. I then made the unfortunate decision to show it to my girlfriend, who is now angry at me that it said she writes like Dan Brown.

I'd be curious to know how large the pool of authors is.
In the middle of the article, the author talks about three advantages that clojure has over ruby. Simply put, speed, easy concurrence and functional.

I don't find these to be really good advantages.. First, "functional" isn't an advantage.. I mean, the advantage of functional code might be easier maintenance, concise code, easier to concurrence etc.. but "functional" isn't an advantage. It's like saying C++ is better than ruby because it is imperative or OO.. "Why is imperative or OO better?", that's the interesting part.

In my opinion, the advantage of clojure by comparing it with Ruby are:

- You get the best of Java (lots of library, OO)
- You get the best of Lisp (macro, high level function)
Google out-FUDs the FUDmasters
It looks really nice. Small comment: On the main page for a memorial, when the box pops up asking if I know the person, it says "show your support". I found that phrasing a little odd, less heartfelt than I'd expect. I'd change it to 'show your love'.
"They’ll develop their business model over time".

That would be a little scary to me as an investor.
Whoops, my bad. (I extrapolated the "met in college" quote on his wikipedia entry and the "married young" (which isn't actually true) quote on his ex-wifes).
I figure I'll eventually get into some of that more expensive stuff, but at this point I can't really afford more than autocross preparation.
Validation of a wiring diagram extracted from a cluster of physiologically characterized cells in mammalian visual cortex.
Really nice! A few months ago I spent some time thinking about the idea of porting my master thesis project (Charack: Pseudo-infinite 3D virtual world generation, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=822103) to AS3, but I dropped the idea because of Flash limitations.

You gave me some hope now :)
:-) Currently 29 authors. Will feed it with more.
Writing software that generates music.
Ive been a fan of www.kayako.com for some time, its got lots of features and is relatively inexpensive.

For a new product what I would like to see:
Easy Template System
Simple Back-end
1 Click Install (simple to wordpress)
Live Messaging

1 area that I do not feel has been explored or taken advantage of is desktop software. I tried a while ago to create a desktop app that would sit in the system tray, receiving status updates and messages from a central system.

It would allow customers to stay up to date with system status without visiting a website and it could be used to notify of support replies, which should then reduce the "I didnt get a reply" issue.
Could they not have gotten a better domain? Also, the Bad Religion song lyrics are beating them in search results.

Great concept, good execution.
Should have called it Network Activity Recording and Collation (NARC).
Do you think farmers can afford to hire workers at higher rates?
As far as my work is concerned, I'm doing quasi-issue-tracking that's tightly integrated with our IT platform. In Delphi, I shall add.

My side project is still in the conceptual phase, so I'll tell ypu this: I hope to add my entire town to OpenStreetMap by this summer. I've just started.
Setting Up Webfinger for Personal Web Discovery
If you ever get a chance, watch this movie: http://www.badmovies.org/movies/canetoads/
In a nutshell, you're right. This looks like, on paper, a bad investment market, and it might be.

Indie Fund doesn't have to turn a profit and they'll be successful: they're fundamentally about funding the games that they want to see developed that otherwise can't for financial reasons.

Look at their submission setup. You won't find the word "market" there in any form. Not once do they ask about the potential upside. This is not an angel fund in any traditional sense.

I think it makes more sense to think of the "IndieFund" as funding Art and not businesses. They care about how the product will change them and the people around them.
I agree with all of these suggestions. The Kiosk mode strikes me as particularly creative and insightful. There's a startup that let's people create a wedding guestbook with video snips people record on a laptop, that'd be an awesome thing, people teliing stories about the deceased into a camera and aggregating them into a video.
I like C# but XAML drives me nuts. Getting binding to work is like pulling teeth. I've taken to prototyping stuff in Flex because MXML binding is ridiculously simpler, although there's a bunch of C# stuff I'd love to get back...
Their play wasn't "we're pulling out." It was "we're not censoring anymore."
As far as I know, they're still not censoring anymore. Seems to me like a win for all involved.
On the other hand... anecdote != data.

That you were allowed to take APs early in your high school career is rare. That you were allowed to take higher level math/science is rare. That a university accepted a 16(?) year old student is also rare.

The argument isn't that it has no benefits. The argument is that it fails the people it was designed to help. Considering the trend is that most drop outs come from disadvantaged backgrounds and tend to have less beneficially involved parents, it seems your case is irrelevant entirely.

Also, I believe that education should mirror yours in more ways, where intelligent students can progress forward at rates that reflect their changing status rather than an inflexible system.
Which stove did Rolf saute the broccoli with the sesame seed oil next to?
Personally I don't think the people who answered "yes" are cut out for the jobs anyways.

I've worked in minimum wage jobs before (janitor, field work) and I just don't see how the work ethics of an average American worker will suffice on a farm.

People complain when they work in air conditioned offices, how will they survive standing in 100 degrees weather in a field?
The researchers probably did it on purpose. It's their way of warning us of what they are about to unleash.
On vacation, during which time I usually refactor my timetables/strategies for the upcoming year (which I usually have to re-do after summer ends and I get serious again).
Are you suggesting that there are an infinite number of jobs for farm workers?

The reason why farm workers have tiny wages and poor working conditions is that there is a massive global surplus of people who are looking for farm work.

And if you're unemployed it doesn't matter what you are unemployed at. You can declare yourself to be an unemployed auto worker, or an unemployed farm worker, or an unemployed ballerina for that matter. There is an infinite number of jobs that I'm not employed at.

You may ask, of course, why an unemployed software engineer collects more benefits than an unemployed day laborer. The answer is: Because unemployment insurance taxes are proportional to income. The engineer pays more taxes when employed, in order to collect higher benefits when unemployed.
If you could pay and just didn't...I would call that unethical. That doesn't mean it doesn't make good business sense.
Or you could just make something awesome and make it for yourself as the customer and stop needing tricks and strategies to keep people involved and "converting"

I see game mechanics, landing page optimization, and the like as compensations for not being remarkable in the first place.

Look at Threadless or Foodzie or even 37signals as models (certainly there are more) make your product remarkable first and then worry about refining metrics and conversions
Technical Co-founder, Java Server Engineer
I've found this to be very helpful - I've received more than a few emails through my HN profile from people interested in what I am working on - often from people who did not publicly comment on anything I was doing at all.

There have also been time when I've wanted to contact people and couldn't.
FWIW, it was $30 when I went there a week ago. It looks like they're coming down on the price somewhat. I thought $30/month to backup a blog was crazy at the time.
But hey, I'm getting married next month, so take what I say with a grain of salt ;)

Congratulations :) In spite of the subject matter of this story, let's send well-wishes ahead of a joyful and successful marriage for you both.
But he does get to stay in the house (for a year), because of the implicit assumption that knocking him out on his hindquarters when he stops paying would be discompassionate in the face of the catastrophe which caused his default.

As an aside: I do a functional-limited trial rather than a time-limited trial precisely because 100% of the use of the software for 48 hours satisfies the need for 95% of my customers. "First year free" would wreck my business pretty comprehensively if folks took advantage of it.
> First, "functional" isn't an advantage.. I mean, the advantage of functional code might be easier maintenance, concise code, easier to concurrence etc..

Those are all good reasons why functional programming is an advantage. I guess you object to my grouping of all these under the "functional" umbrella term.

> In my opinion, the advantage of clojure by comparing it with Ruby are: - You get the best of Java (lots of library, OO)

I mention this as well, but that's not really an advantage over Ruby. JRuby gives you access to all the Java libraries you want.
I would imagine bringing back "shop class" would be a good start. Or allowing students to take electrician, plumbing, etc classes at another school for credit would be a good start.

I much rather would have taken Electrician 101 than Introduction to Percussion in high school.
Because web apps are still preferable to Flash
This information was in a footnote in the morality paper that was submitted by another contributor. A "deficiency judgment" is when then bank can pursue the borrower to pay back the amount of the loss after a foreclosure. What's compelling about the footnote is a list of the states that offer non-recourse loans, which prevents banks from pursuing deficiency judgments.

BTW, one of my banks hired a debt collection agency to pursue the past payments. They are generally customer service oriented and friendly. But I had one encounter with a very aggressive rep who told me that I was required by law to pay, that because their bank was in TN, the laws of California were not in affect, and other inaccuracies. He was out of control and out of line. Just record those conversations, ask for his name, and his supervisor.

"While most states allow deficiency judgments, many states hardest hit by the housing crisis, including Arizona and California, are non-recourse states – meaning that a lender may not pursue a borrower for a deficiency judgment on a purchase money mortgage. See Andra Ghent and Marianna Kudlyak, Recourse and Residential Mortgage Default: Theory and Evidence from U.S. States 5 (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Working Paper No. 09-10, July 10, 2009), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1432437 (listing Alaska, Arizona, California, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin as non-recourse states)."
Well, what I'd like to do is have e.g.

mymodule.coffee:

x: 5
y: (z) -> z * z

main.coffee:

load("mymodule")
puts mymodule.y(5)

I could set this up manually, of course, but if I wanted to do things manually I wouldn't be using CoffeeScript. :p
1) Anyone who bought a house is just as guilty of precipitating the crisis as the banks. Both home-borrowers and banks took a long position on housing on the theory that it would go up. The only people not guilty of precipitating the crisis are the people who shorted housing or remained neutral.

2) The societal norms in b2b deals are different than in home mortgages. No one expects you to exercise an out of the money call option, but you are expected to exercise an out of the money mortgage. Similarly, the societal norms when hiring a web designer are different from the norms when dealing with a waiter. You tip your waiter, you don't tip your web designer.

This does not make it ethical for you not to tip your waiter, even if you say "but I'm doing it for the benefit of my family". Similarly, the fact that different norms of behavior apply to corporate debt than to mortgage debt does not make it ethical to ignore societal norms.

[edit: to clarify, I do mean that it's unethical not to tip your waiter in the event of good service, as tim points out below.]
Top 6 Most Obscure TV Spinoffs from Popular Shows
We here at WeirdWorm have (at gunpoint) compiled a list of six amazingly obscure TV spinoffs from popular shows which you probably never knew existed.
I'm doing a Silverlight app as well (project management/code editor tool--does it sound like a solved problem? Why, yes, it is!). I concur with much that has been written, but here's a few other comments...

If you are working with RIA/WCF Services and the Entity Framework, if your app isn't straight up CRUD, data access gets a bit kludgey really quickly. The asynchronous calls from the client don't help.

I also agree with another comment that points out that there is little that Silverlight can do that a good JS-driven UI can't. We grudgingly moved to Silverlight because it allowed some degree of interoperability with our main product (which runs on PDAs and tablet PCs--data collection devices)--the web app will allow users to build UI flows for the devices, and thus we can use the controls already defined for the devices in the Silverlight app. I suppose that's one on of the selling points of XAML, but I haven't done enough work on the UI to make an informed decision about it.
It's ironic that levelling-up is what I hate most about Computer so-called Role Playing Games.
For a certain (large) class of programs, being "functional" is an advantage. Interestingly, you made the point that being functional means easier maintenance etc., but fail to attribute those advantages to being functional. If your argument is that there can be bad functional code which performs worse than non-functional (imperative or OO) code, I don't disagree. However, in the multicore future that our semiconductor overlords have in store for us, functional programming has a demonstrable advantage in helping build understandable and robust programs.
working on the curation of datas on http://www.gmbhnews.com
I think the better curmudgeonly solution, then, is not to read email from people who use HTML without restraint, rather than not to read email from people who use HTML.
At long last!

I will be able to close all my Gmails with my (handwritten) signature and a corporate logo!

(I've worked for people who do this.)
Los mercados de los EE.UU. podrían tener otra jornada positiva
It sounds like they're arguing for authenticity rather than opinion, pushing back against phony centrism in reporting.
Recently I spent a day working on my friend's farm, and I came out of that in absolute awe of people who do it as a job. I'm reasonably fit, and I felt exhausted like I never have at the end of the day. There couldn't have been news more upsetting than "You have to do it again tomorrow." (Granted, I'm physically pretty lazy.)

It's hard, hard work, and the people who do it get undercompensated because of a lot of bad regulations and incentive programs gone awry.
Why We Need Location-Aware App Stores
4 rolls to eden (tiny util inspired by The 4 Steps to the Epiphany)