skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sometimes it's not that big of a deal. The idea is if you specify only the columns you need, sometimes those columns can be satisfied directly from the index (what's known as a covering index) and you don't need to seek around to the various data pages to pull the rest of the columns.

InnoDB though uses a clustered indexing scheme, where the rest of the columns are stored in the leaf nodes, so if you query by primary key, all the data is right there -- no extra seeking.

Anyway, obviously it's better to only ask for what you need, but it's not the stupidest thing in the world to SELECT with wildcard.
Men: Let's close the gap - Women: There is no gap
No one was demanding an immediate release. They were just asking for some form of communication. Their expectations were set for a release back in June. That date came and went without any information. A month and a half later, it takes someone asking about it just to get "real soon" as a reply.

Go take a look at how Django handles this: http://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/. For the 1.2 release, they posted every week with a detailed update of when they thought the RC would drop, what bugs were holding it back, and what areas needed the most help. Each week, you could see them getting closer, and when they got delayed, you understood why.
Here is the post I attempted to write in his comments:

"Your analysis is deeply flawed. "Don’t throw things at other people’s stuff." As simple as that? So that rules out baseball, basketball, throwing away trash, tossing a frisbee, etc etc etc."

Posting this, a popup appeared "Sorry we can not accept this data." with no explanation.

My conclusion: this Jeff Jonas person is an incompetent designer, programmer and security analyst.
It is true that the amount of nutrients in a smoothie is unchanged relative to the whole counterparts. However, I'm willing to bet that the blood glucose response curve of a smoothie is significantly sharper than the whole fruit alternatives due to the ease of digestion.

The peaks in blood glucose are what's really bad for you, and especially bad for me. Therefore, I look out for them and stay the hell away.
Fitt's law in HCI
I've been able to eliminate cravings for the bad stuff which, for me, has had the same benefit as making the good stuff crave-inducing.

To do this I:

1. Eliminated all artificial sweeteners. This meant quitting Diet Coke and using delicious local honey instead of Splenda in my tea.

2. After 2 or 3 weeks of no artificial sweeteners I stopped eating sugary foods. No more candy, doughnuts, cakes, or other sweet baked goods. I still allow myself honey in tea and whole fruit, but no fruit juices.

Four months later—and without further dietary changes or the addition of exercise—I've lost more than 30 pounds. I still eat bread, pasta, cheeseburgers, fried chicken, etc. But I eat less because I have less appetite, and I never have a craving for sweet things. A month after quitting sugar I took a bite of crème brûlée to see if my tastes had changed. This dessert, which I had always loved, now seemed so cloying I could barely swallow it. Interestingly, whole fruit now tastes so much better than it ever has, with just the right amount of natural sweetness.

More importantly, this relatively slow rate of weight loss feels sustainable. The dietary changes also feel permanent. I'm not on a weight-loss diet, I've made my diet more healthy.

My untested hypothesis is that I had been so used to the overwhelming sweetness of artificial sweeteners that my tastes were altered such that I always craved sweet. By eliminating the hyper-sweet stuff, my tastes changed enough that I could more easily take the further step of eliminating refined sugar. I imagine this has resulted in more stable blood sugar levels and a corresponding decrease in cravings and overall appetite.

I'd love to hear about others' experiences.
From the link:

> I was looking at Padrino recently and rather like it. It's a young
framework, nowhere near as mature, but has an interesting architectural
"value prop"... and at least so far I haven't gotten any STFUs from the
development team. :)

The client shouldn't care how the core team treats his/her developer. The client should only care about the product. While an insult from a core member may hurt feelings, it doesn't make ActiveRecord any less useful.
Business Term Papers must describe Profit purposes 
It is important to keep in mind that business is an integrated process that aims at making profits. Business term papers always should be concerned about profit motive. This article explains the topics organization and management of a business and marketing.
I think it is fairly normal to go through the wannabe-phase. We all do it until the moment that we realize we aren't getting nearer any goals, and decide to become a doer instead of a talker/planner.
That thing is so darn fast! I love it.
I want Rails 3 and a white iPhone. Gimme now or I'm going to spend my impatient youth bitching about it in fanboy forums.
You missed one thing: They owe the community reasonable expectations of when new releases will drop. That doesn't mean they say a date and always hit it, it just means that they communicate that they are behind their original schedule, a new estimate, and a list of blockers. That way, the community knows what they can do to help.
It's an inside joke in the rails community, and meant as a joke. The poster was not actually saying 'Fuck You'.
NY, NJ Parking Lots Sign Up to Charge Electric Vehicles
You don't have a lot of data- but the data is clearly bimodal (Hartigan dip test value: 0.1875, which is "large"- so this is a very unlikely pattern from a unimodal distribution). The question that can't be answered from this data alone- is the different sub-population of 1-stars due to something in your app (like a bug only they encountered) or something about them (older iPhone, or competitors entering harmful scores).
This was pure joy to read. Management asks for something foolish and counterproductive, and then one of the top techs pushes the absurdity right back in their faces -- take this: obvious big win, but a drastic opposite delta by your crude, misguided, metric!

My kids stared at me laughing very loudly for quite a few seconds :-)
In light of the article's complete lack of content, I guess it has revealed something about the nature of intelligence of the up-voters.
Poll: Are you Not a Programmer?
Programmer seems to be a vague concept. What I mean is whether your interests are mainly other things than coding or technical computer stuff, except for of course HTML and PHP and such other almost necessary coding languages. And if so feel free to tell us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Worked wonders for me.
Consumed fats induce a broad range of hormonal satiety signals, so your total caloric consumption is often less. The French and Mediterranean countries are famous for a few things, two being healthy living and high fat diets (butter in France, olive oil in the Med). Know any fat French people? Butter is not the problem.

Carbs are rapidly burned, or rapidly converted to fat. Fat in the blood stream can still be metabolized, what's especially hard is liberating fat from adipocytes once it's in them.

Among carbs, fructose is a particularly nasty problem. Fructose entirely bypasses the insulin pathway, which is the only major inhibitory signals for monosaccharides, but is is easily converted to fat, and there's some evidence it induces some inflammatory markers along the way. Observational studies of my two kids suggest they could eat oranges or candy all day without pause.

Here's a little experiment: pick a day where you're not going to be exposed to huge external stimuli to eat (eg, it's not the company picnic day). Weigh out 3 oz of unsalted nuts and 3 oz of cooked rice. Eat the rice for breakfast. Time yourself until you're hungry for those nuts. Eat the nuts. All of them. Time yourself until you're hungry again. I'll bet you make it past lunch. Eat 3 more ounces of nuts. You'll probably make it until dinner.
I'm using the latest chromium daily build and it looked fine.
Shopping for college textbooks: 2010 vs. 1995
As the others have posted, cutting out refined carbs is huge. But you should also avoid rice, potatos, and other "vegetables" that are essentially nothing but starch.
If I find that if I'm not concentrating or get easily distracted I just do something fun for a while. Soon I'm refreshed and I can start working seriously. Maybe you can take a break, go away on a weekend or watch a movie to refresh your mind?
No context, link to a flame war, flamebait headline.
A really awesome and simple solution would be to ask users to use non obvious sentences as their password. Even better would be to ask them to use a non grammatical sentence with deliberate phonetic spelling variations.

Although that would be ineffective against a sophisticated brute force attack to crack the encryption itself over a period of days, but it would be an awesome stopgap.
Go for a long walk in the park. Stop coding for a few days. Isolate yourself from tech in general for a while. Let yourself reset.
It's helpful to sound off ideas, because there's no guarantee we'll recognize our best. I wait till I really fall in love with an idea, as that will help drive me to implement it (I'm a pretty slow hacker).

Sure hit me up with ideas anytime at messel at gmail dot com. I'm Mark
Looks like Smalltalk.
From time to time I suffer the same issue. I look back hours later and get angry at myself for 'wasting' so much time. There are a few things you can do to help you out that others have mentioned. However this works for me the best:

I edit my hosts file (Windows: /Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts, Mac: /etc/hosts) to look something similar to:

127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

127.0.0.1 techcrunch.com www.techcrunch.com

127.0.0.1 reddit.com www.reddit.com

etc.

Alternatively you can use other tools to block traffic. RescueTime (http://www.rescuetime.com/)is an awesome tool as well.
Symptom: you now just need a programmer to code up your site.

The last startup I did failed miserably. When I looked back to see what went wrong it was obvious that if I could have coded it myself I would have been a lot better off, and it might have worked out.

So I started learning how to program so that I would be better prepared next time around. Best decision I ever made.

I can now get an idea, and straight away do something about it instead of first having to convince someone to do it for me. As an extra bonus it's now trivial for me to see things that weren't at all obvious before such as why one feature is much more demanding to code than another, why seemingly simple things take so much time, and much more.

I'm by no means a good programmer: I can't do a high scalability clustered scheme app, but I know enough to actually do things. And really that's all that matters.

If you're into startups and can't code follow Gabriel's advice and learn how to do so. Right now. It's the best decision you'll ever make.
That's something I find strange myself about the odd smug-superior vibe I get from some of the HN crowd (and silicon-valley types more generally), and I am a computer scientist with a good job. I didn't really pick computer science out of any sort of great foresight that CS would be in demand, or that this is the skillset I need to acquire to benefit society, or anything of that sort.

It's just what I was doing and good at since the days when I was 7 or 8 writing BASIC on my Apple //c. Other people at the same age, and up through high school (when I was still doing computer stuff in my spare time) happened to be really good at all sorts of other things, whether drawing or pottery or ancient history or learning foreign languages or carpentry, and at the time I certainly didn't see their skills as less important. Mine just turned out to be more commercially relevant, essentially through no skill or doing of my own. (If you had asked me as an 8-year-old to guess, I would've probably told you that carpentry and pottery were more practical skills than programming games on an Apple ][ was; I did the latter because it was fun.)

So I find the "screw other people, they should've picked a marketable skill" view weird, because I certainly didn't pick a marketable skill, and I think a lot of other techie types didn't either. I just got lucky that the thing I like turned out to be marketable. If it hadn't, I'd be struggling along doing something else I wasn't as good at, I guess, or trying to get one of the few meagre CS jobs. Or actually, it doesn't seem too unlikely that I'd be working as a waiter or coffee server or something as a day job to make ends meet, to support hacking in the evening. So the "struggling artist" types don't seem that foreign to me--- I just have the good fortune to have an art that pays.
Historious, the bookmarking service you can love, now with sharing
All my desktop PCs were assembled by me from random parts when I was in school. As long as you can read about compatibility between parts online, you can assemble desktop pc without any problems. The only time i bought assembled PC was when I switched to use laptops =)

And yeah - assembling PC yourself gives you opportunity to drop microsoft tax completely!
> My untested hypothesis is that I had been so used to the overwhelming sweetness of artificial sweeteners that my tastes were altered such that I always craved sweet.

Not likely, though backing off on the sweets probably did improve your ability to appreciate the broader range of normal sweet. The reduction of cravings is probably more related to stable blood sugar.
I highly recommend learning meditation. I meditate once a day for 15 minutes and it's worked wonders for my ability to feel well and focused.

Personally I learned a cheaper and less cult like variation of transcendental meditation, because it requires little training, time, or even effort.

A day without meditation for me now is worse than a day without sleeping.
Charles, is there any chance virtual machines, JIT compilers can get "smart enough" to introduce native typing without requiring a hard decision by a developer. I'd prefer not to have to worry about types ever, and let the interpreter/compiler/optimizer slap them onto objects as needed to really crank numeric throughput.

Maybe I could tune software with profiling tools after the fact. But it feels like as soon as you start locking specific objects down it's a slippery slope.

I'm not very familiar with the depth you've gone to, but can a dynamic object have numeric features or be capable of substituting numeric handling for a limited time (virtual numerics) and then revert back to a sloppy untyped object?
> you don't understand your startup's assumptions.

The cure reminds me of what Fred Brooks said in The Mythical Man-Month after 20 years, at p.258-9 (MM-M, 2nd ed.) about defining the user set (ie. who the users are), as a population assessed along several attributes, with a frequency distribution over each (my eg. how much RAM they have; their largest file - but the most interesting ones are app-specific). He says you should GUESS the set of attributes and distributions:

1. you will think about it carefully;

2. they will be debated by the team, revealing differences in how each member sees the user set;

3. it "helps everyone recognize which decisions depend upon which user set properties. Even this sort of informal sensitivity analysis is valuable. When it develops that very important decisions are hinging on some particular guess, then it is worth the cost to establish better estimates for that value."

He summarizes: "It is far better to be explicit and wrong than to be vague"
Smoothies were one of our model foods in medical school for what's wrong with the American diet.
Fight Zero-Sum Bias (possible evolutionary explanation)
Initially, I was going to flag this post. However, the link sets the context for what could be an interesting discussion.

What is the proper way to handle releasing open source projects? Does having a flippant, almost combative, attitude help project development? Granted, I would have preferred a blog post analysis rather with link to this flamewar as part of its evidence. Nevertheless, it could spawn a good conversation, as long as it doesn't turn to a flamewar on HN.
Because the typical Chinese household doesn't eat too much food. It's all about portion control and they eat a ton of veggies. Rice is just a side dish to them, and they only eat it once or twice a day.

Also, you need to take into account that the typical Chinese peasant family is out farming or working hard all day. They need a lot of carbs to work that hard. Now that they have a significant population living in large cities and eating "American" fast food, working in office jobs, they are beginning to have a lot of the same health problems (obesity) that we do.
Addendum: Maybe this has something to do with it:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/2gd/fight_zerosum_bias/
We're happier when busy, but our instinct is for idleness:

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/07/were-happier...
Yep. You've got it absolutely right. I'm also amazed that people who write and edit words for a living go without keyboard shortcuts for delete word and delete sentence. Not to fetishize the tools or anything, but come on, I use those a thousand times a day. "This sentence blows. M-k"
For comparison, the recent Django 1.2 release estimates:

Update Tickets Blocking RC 1 Est Rel Est
Mar 09 120 -- Mar 22 Mar 29
Mar 16 84 -- Apr 05 Apr 12
Mar 23 69 -- Apr 05 Apr 12
Apr 01 54 23 Apr 19 Apr 26
Apr 07 46 14 Apr 19 Apr 26
Apr 14 49 14 Apr 26 May 03
Apr 22 51 8 May 03 May 10
Apr 28 48 2 May 03 May 10
May 05 --* 0 Released May 10
May 15 -- 0 Released May 17
May 17 -- 0 Released Released

These were taken from the Django blog: http://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/. About once a week, they had a comprehensive update with bug counts and revised estimates. If anyone wanted to help with the release, the blog told them exactly what parts needed the most work. They were nearly 2 months later than their initial estimate, but it wasn't a problem because everyone knew what to expect.

* Total ticket counts weren't given after RC1 dropped. All open tickets as of RC1 were translation or documentation related.
In doubt, assume you are bad. You will fare better with that.

I guess I have to elaborate on that a bit :)

At first, if you assume you are bad at programming, you will begin to look for reasons why you are bad. You will find them and then you can remove them, if necessary. This will make you better.

Second, assuming you are bad removes a lot of pressure. You don't need to be good, and it is not bad to do an occasional mistake, because you are bad. Surprise, Surprise, bad programmers make mistakes.

Third, this assumption creates a good attitude. You won't think that that particular habit of someone else is stupid, because it is different and you are good, so it must be bad. No. You are bad. Maybe that little attitude of the other person can make you a little bit better, or rather, less bad than you are right now. Let's examine that!

And once you are firmly confirmed about how bad you are, you are a good programmer at the same time, for the reasons above (and you will have found a paradoxon. yay).
I'm perfectly fine with "it's ready when it's ready". But if you choose to give yourself a deadline by saying "RC in days" and a couple of months later there is still no RC, you should be able to empathize with people who are curious about the delay.
Best comment I've read the entire thread - people don't realize that the GI of carbs is the most important factor to weight loss. Managing blood sugar and keeping a steady, non-spiking blood sugar level will result in pretty much automatic weight loss, without even having to diet.

My snacks are usually a small handful of almonds and a piece of fruit. Also, you can combine a somewhat high GI fruit like an apple with a handful of nuts, and the fat content will end up lowering the speed at which your body will absorb the sugar from the fruit, which evens out your blood sugar level. There are other fibrous foods that will do this as well.
Many of us are founders first, and everything needed along the way second.
http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/07/14/im-a-founder-first/

A fascination with technology and development doesn't guarantee we see ourselves as programmers.
> Some people would rather argue than converse.

That's a smackerel of truth if there ever was one.
Michelle Obama's Plea for Education
No code tech. Don't really operate, though.
You're right. I should have included corn.

If I look at an American plate, half-covered with two giant scoops of fried rice, and an entree of Kung Pao chicken, and was told I could remove only one ingredient, I would remove the rice. If only I could remove the rice and give them the sauteed vegetables, they would be full faster and and experience a substantially smaller, slower, glucose spike.

One of my best friends in high school was Chinese. I used to study at his house because his mom's cooking was awesome. Her idea of a serving of rice, and the average American-chinese restaurant's serving of rice are two different things.
There is a book that came out a few months ago by the people who built the reputation system that Yahoo uses called, aptly enough, "Building Web Reputation Systems". It's a really good book. One of the things they make very clear is that the idea of trying to build a globally useful reputation system is basically a pipe dream.

The problem is that reputation is earned in context. So, reputation on a particular blog is useful, but trying to extrapolate that out to be useful on another blog is not as useful. Reputation gained in one domain is not really transferable to another. (As an example - if Jon Skeet had a cooking.stackexchange beta account, he shouldn't be automatically the most reputable user just because he has the top stackoverflow account - cooking and coding aren't directly transferable skills.) The best you can hope for is saying that this person is not a troll or spammer. The real hard part is, say, for Wordpress, it's easy for people to create a new account - how do you distinguish between new people and trolls on new accounts? This is probably the fatal flaw for the use case you are espousing.

You also need to think about how you're going to control overprotective "old timer" members. I've read of people that put in systems only to have the top members down mod everyone else so they could protect their top spots. I assume for the Wordpress plugin that you are going to add some sort of comment voting system. (On a side not that's ANOTHER problem with blogs - there isn't much a person can actually do on them - read a post, comment, maybe vote in a poll - hard to build a reputation system around that).

Obviously, since my startup (IActionable) is in the same space and would be a competitor I believe in the general concept, but I think many people make the mistake in thinking that it is an easy problem to solve. Blogs especially are a tough nut to crack because you have to add in a lot of functionality that most of them don't come with.
The fake person is not to pressure them into paying you. It is to separate financial and customer service concerns.

If you want to talk about dishonest no good lowlifes, let's talk about the client who doesn't pay for the product.