skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I get the AF08 bit, but what's wrong with designing the front end first? I know that many clients presume that if it's in the front end, it's done, but most clients are also most concerned with ease of use. It can be perfect on the backend, but if the front end is trash? It will never be used!

In software where there are few end users, getting the front end done first is not a bad idea. If they can see untenable pieces, it can be changed as fundamental assumptions are challenged.
I was mainly thinking of difficulty understanding as opposed to difficulty doing.

Our minds aren't impressive short term memory-wise. That might be part of the nested backquotes problem. Memory prodigies usually don't have greater short term memories--they're just better at "chunking" which is really a compression strategy.

Cambridge roads are Escheresque. I've been to Manhattan a few times, but my mental map of Manhattan is better than of Boston, where I live. You gave a talk about compression and beauty, if I remember correctly. Maybe it's all related--beautiful things are more memorable.
But I don't see the taurens defining feature in any of the moovies! Peanut butter jelly time anyone?
Thanks for killing my April Fool's buzz :(
"And I’d only just bought myself a new fridge-freezer! If I’d only known!"

A funny highlight in a touching essay.
Are you looking for DDoS protection?
I set that page up to use the mozilla installTrigger method, so clicking the link should activate the firefox install manager. Did that not work for you?
Blog Comments Still Matter
For those of us that haven't heard, what's the prediction?
In the case of Apple products, looking cool in the quad or the food court factors in as well.
New features for the adult-oriented social network I'm mostly working on, these days.
Yeah, nice parody.

Your reference to Nazis is apposite. I once heard veteran Labour politician Tony Benn destroy an opponent's point of view in a televised debate by saying "That's a fascist idea - it's exactly what the Nazis did in Germany in the 1930s". Thereby he simultaneously implied that his opponent in the debate was a fool for not knowing this and made the suggested course of action untenable by association.

In politics, but also in many other spheres of human activity, we have to ask ourselves whether an argument is being advanced in pursuit of the truth or simply to silence an opponent who could get in the way of reaching an ulterior objective.

Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe and countless others had a very straightforward way of dealing with opposition. I'm sure that any D6 or D7 disagreement would have been water off a duck's back for them.
Interestingly enough, as far as I know, Python ints and floats each take up a cumulative 20 bytes.
This figure doesn't surprise me. Every day I see signs to suggest Apple will soon be leaving Microsoft in the dust. Yesterday, a professional acquaintance suddenly announced he was buying an iMac. If you knew this guy, who has praised PCs and MS for years, you would know how big a deal this is. I was almost speechless. Time to go long on Apple, Inc.
I'm consulting for a really large client, teaching teams how to deliver technology quickly, so I'm not working on my startup. I don't believe you can do a startup half-way.

But in my spare time I'm thinking about writing a book about how to run Agile projects in large organizations. If anybody is interested, drop me a line. My email is in my profile.
... and if so, why?
Thanks for your kind comment! I'm glad the article and cheat sheet are useful and appreciated.

I got started with vi(m) about 3 years ago. I did actually do some development on AIX over 10 years ago (that system looked like a washing machine!), but I didn't get hooked with vi(m) until I really did a lot of development on a laptop with horrible keys:

http://blog.ngedit.com/2005/06/03/the-vi-input-model/

Your .vimrc is much more complex than mine! But very nice in any case, I should steal a trick or two from there.

A detail I remember about the AIX system headers: their math.h defined a function called 'class'. I had to do some #defining around that to get them to work with the C++ compiler! It was '96 or so, so they should have taken C++ into account already. Duh. At least it wasn't as horrible as windows.h and its accomplices.
http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html
It seems to me that the early-stage investment market in Canada is pretty terrible. And getting investment in a consumer oriented internet startup is notoriously difficult here. Most Canadian VC's want deals in lower risk, late stage, highly defensible IP kind of companies, and they almost always invest in syndicate so they don't have to take all the blame if things go wrong.

I get the impression that SV VC's are a lot more willing to take risks on innovative internet companies.
So, you're working on SLDB?
The comments/karma problem still isn't fixed though for ph0rque and myself.
<shameless_plug>

Startup that makes a gaming platform. >1 million hits per day. Alexa ranking of <1000. http://gg-game.com and http://garena.com

We're also trying to grow the team. If you're a hacker in Singapore or South East Asia, I'd love to get in touch with you! =)

</shameless_plug>
A more trustworthy, controlled reviews and question-answer site geared towards preexisting mailing lists like those in big companies: http://www.askurpals.com/
Self-Discipline: Hard Work
I allllmost fell for that one ;) The lego bricks line saved it for me.
A "FAYC" might be handy. This one in particular seems to come up every week.
Best part:

Developers in the US who've worked on a successful Erlang project probably number less than 10. But the number of developers who've worked on a successful Java project are easily 100X that amount. With a much wider talent pool to work from the quality of the contributions should increase dramatically.
I rather like your site, but it seems very confusing. Like I can't find any hearts for me to click on to say that I like it. (I'm on Opera 9.5 beta.) Also, there are songs embedded everywhere, and I'm not sure why, or what all the links mean. (I don't understand their purpose.) What would also be nice would be the title and the artist within these links as well.

I do like all the music I've clicked on so far though. . .

Edit: It does have the artist and title in the embedded link. Just seemed weirdly placed. My bad there.
I work equally well in vi and emacs. Now I've switched from emacs to textmate, but still use vi for editing config files. It's just how I work, vi for config files, another editor for code. Of course, I also use vi to write short scripts on the server. I've been using vi for over 10 years, but this article showed me why it might be a good idea to edit code with it.
It would be nice if we could avoid the April Fools jokes here at HN. It's just getting tired.
Is Open Source a Wolf in Sheeps clothing?
http://igoogleforyou.com/
Your wordpress Sidebox can be so much nicer!
It surprises me too! (Although I think it may have something to do with web applications still being in the adolescent phase where they're trying to prove themselves to the world.)

I built two easter eggs into YellowPages.ca and they survived for two years until I finally mentioned them to a business manager who I can tell you, did not find them amusing. You can still see the evidence though:

http://yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/invaders/space

What: invaders
Where: space

They obviously don't see the marketing potential in "fun" searches.
Currently, I'm using Panda3D, which is compilable on OSX, though it's not supported in teh main branch yet.
We've already been at that point. No one really needs more than a 300Mhz for email, word processing, etc. The OLPC is 433Mhz and it's good enough for that. My god, you could use a 5Mhz computer to do spreadsheet stuff. A graphing calculator has more power than some of the older computers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Texas_Instruments...

The whole software industry is really messed up when we're forcing people to upgrade to do the same things they've always been doing.
No, it's not (E)Lisp related.

My "debugger" in fact executes a whole function without stop and prints the values of all used variables and the results of nested function calls next to the code itself.

I'm not yet sure how useful this is, but it's a fun project and a good excuse to implement an interpreter for said esoterical language.
a minor bug was already found and fixed for anyone who installed it, you should install again
Trying to write an ms exchange killer.
So many languages I want to learn, and never seem to have any time to start. (Right now on the list: Ada, Erlang, Python, Ocaml, C/C#/D/ObjC, Effiel, Smalltalk).

Was trying to do the android competition but too much junk happened in my life the past month that kept me from starting that idea.
I already read your new essay using GDay ;-)
Actually, I just saw one of the creators demo it at a ruby conference, and he couldn't even figure out how to great a pull request on his own app. So, I'm going to have to say, NOT a great UX there.
The same could be asked of the phone here. Cellphone companies always use the lowest, most underhanded tactics possible. Never trust them.
I found this by searching for fulcrum on rec.sport.rowing:

"where the fulcrum lies depends on your point of view. If your POV is moving along with the boat (say looking down on the pin) then the fulcrum is indeed at the pin. If your POV is stationary with the water, then the fulcrum would be at the point which you describe (on the loom of the oar, right before the blade). It's all relative, and the forces and equations will work out, if you stay consistant, no matter where you assign the 'fulcrum' to be."

I still actually think the NYTimes description is very misleading though. The length of the stroke the rower takes in the boat is the same regardless of how long the distance between the pin and the hands is, which means you aren't moving the boat as much with a longer inboard. So the reason it feels easier isn't because you're doing the same amount of work with a longer lever, it's because you're doing less work.
Linden Labs is the company behind Second Life. Dropped the April Fool's on the first line. Shame. Interesting picture, though.
Apple is SUCH a good example of a beautiful UI. Compare it to Dell. They are able to put you in touch with information beautifully and their search is probably the best example of live search on the net.
Your description is far closer to the truth, as it happens. It's amazing how many times that simple formula was executed in the span of about 24 months while I was living in SF. (Then again, most attempts failed, some quite spectacularly)

Don't forget to throw in some magic XML sauce when pitching it to the business types.
There are 3 ways to work: work hard but not smart, smart but not hard, and finally work smart and hard.

We can work either which way depending on situation or motivation etc.
OpenDNS
Right now I'm in the middle of a study group that I started here at work. We're studying Graham's book "ANSI Common Lisp" and studying inference in particular, so we're also covering some of "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming".

After that's done, I'm going to either spend some time working on the Netflix Prize (just to learn more, not in a real attempt to win) or doing some music programming in either Lisp, using the Common Music API, or Mathematica.
Actually, Flickr never raised money from U.S. VCs before they were purchased by Yahoo. If I've got my facts straight, they did some angel financing in Canada from investors such as Dick Hart.
Alexey Radul on Why I Hate Scheme; Rahul Jain on DefDoc
In some of my arts classes, if you sit in the back, all you see is a sea of white Macs.
I can't get any speed-up by using declarations. If anyone does, please let me know.
Thanks to all for your comments!

I'll check out PG's article, but in all seriousness, I'm dead tired of SV. I don't think it's for me and it's definitely not a necessity for all web startups.

Leaving SF is a whole another story though. I'm in love with the city. I lived for 8 years in Pittsburgh and know it doesn't offer everything this city does.
I kinda get why people would like mac notebooks, they seem to be pretty nice, but I just can't get why techies/geeks/hackers like the iPhone. Yes the hardware is pretty, but due to Apple's political decisions, it is one of the most closed systems out there - restrictive API, restrictive distribution, remote bricking, no unlocking. Hackers buying iPhones seems a bit like Greenpeace donating money for Japanese whale "research" to me.
I'm assuming most students aren't running or writing finite element codes, simulations, and other computationally intensive programs where more cores and more clock speed gives you huge gains

That's what quad Opteron servers and screen sessions are for, anyhow. An iPhone would provide all the power I need for statistical methodology development (for genome-wide association studies) if I could use effectively use vim on it.

I'm thinking of moving up to an EC2 instance or 20 when the Opteron box gets too slow and I figure out how to use the parallel MLEM approach to missing data more effectively. Again, if I could just get a decent keyboard for an iPhone, I'd probably sell my ThinkPad and just use Putty from the windoze boxes at work, and my wife's iPhone (or buy one of my own, since she's always pecking on it now) at home.

(Aside: if you're looking to turn a mild-mannered, fashion-conscious, professional woman into a hardcore Internet addict, buy her an iPhone. Now she's complaining that she can't make videos on it and post them to YouTube)

The client-side OS is really kind of irrelevant, I don't care whether I'm in Linux or OS X or... well, I do hate Windows, but that's mostly because it gets in the way.
Damn! I keep getting caught...
The Python community celebrated April Fools' Day, too (even though they were rather easy to figure out, I liked them for their creativity):

"Trying to get PyPy to run on Python 3.0" <http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2008/04/trying-to-get-pypy-to-r...;
If you followed PyPy's politics in the last few months, the headline's already yelling "APRIL FOOL" at you. I liked the "Automatic Program Reversion on Intermediate Languages" (APRIL). ;-)

"psychotic -- Pure Python code optimizer" <http://code.google.com/p/psychotic/>;
The source is definitively worth a view.
One theme taken from the article is that, for the most part, practice came before theory. Only later were likely (and even unlikely) explanations given for the practice.

I think the turning point between practice/theory could've actually happened within the 20th; black holes were thought to exist using available data and were then later discovered.
Atlanta, Chappel Hill, Raleigh-Durham, and Charlotte are good places in the south to find pretty and interesting people.
Surveys where people say what they will do in the future, and an empty sack, are worth about the same as a sack.

Come on, you measure what people do, not what they claim they'll do. And if somebody came to YC with a piece like this in her quiver, you'd probably be the first one to grill them about it...
But unlocking is easy if you're a hacker. It's the non-hackers that apple is screwing the most.

The point of knowing how to hack stuff in this way is to get the most out of your soft/hardware, not to support the most hacker-friendly company with your completely insignificant amount of funds.
Plus it's a brilliant ad for his product. Basically, "here's why I wrote this product, once you get hooked on Vim, come back and I'll sell it to you for your day-to-day work."

Genius! This is what Hacker News is all about, conversion rate :-)
Esc-Meta-Alt-Ctrl-Shift ;-)

I started out in Emacs, made the leap to XEmacs, learned to write elisp, then one day I discovered that Vim syntax highlighting was pretty damn good too... it was all over.

Vim + Screen == Real Ultimate Power
The customer pain for college students isn't just that they need a machine to crunch numbers or browse the Web... they also have the pain of wanting to be cool, hip, and trendy.
I think jwz's "How will this software get me laid?" question applies (albeit to hardware): http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

So, for $1,000 to $2,000 I get a really cool computer and an increased chance of getting laid. I'd like to see Dell fight that value proposition.
The solution to your will power problem is that Apple should start just selling subscriptions. You sign up for an iBuy subscription and send in $300 a month. Apple randomly sends you cool stuff.
I am probably going to get an Apple in a few days. I absolutely abhor windows and am comfortable in Linux. Any advice? Is the pro worth it/necessary for developing web apps? (I am comfortable using a smaller size laptop)
I'd really be interested in a phone with slots for 2 or more SIM cards. Can you get those?
I'm working on http://codepad.org/
I wasn't being facetious, that's really what happened with Ariba. I remember seeing their ipo on MarketWatch or something and everyone rejoiced because their stock hit billions but the talking heads on tv didn't know how to explain what it was they were doing except saying World Wide Web a lot. I think they're worth like 9 bucks per share now.

I remember watching VA Linux's ipo as well. They profiled Larry Augustin and the company as their ticker went to 300 bucks. They then showed him walking on a street and asking him what he's going to do now that he's worth a billion dollars on paper and he dropped off mail into the mailbox and said he was going to finally pay back his credit card bills.

Oh, Dot-com Boom, how I miss you.
Use context in Gnome Do (or Quicksilver) to improve results
I agree that prototyping the front end is good starting point and a great way to build end-user confidence. I think what the article is lampooning is a project that develops the user interface to the exclusion of everything else. Many specification flaws only come to light when developing the back end -- which may, in turn, require changes to the already-complete front end, wasting time.

In general, the article makes fun of methodologies by picking a handful of software design approaches and pushing them to absurd extremes, hoping that the rest just falls into place. It's slightly amusing (and entirely consistent with other methodologies) that some of FAD's approaches may actually be helpful when applied rationally in appropriate situations.
Maybe you can work with pg to make it work using the functions from the site itself?
I can't download it here at work. The word hacker is blocked on addresses.
Don't be sad! Today could be your last April's Fool's day. :-)
The Motorola F3 has been selling at this price point for a year I believe - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE_F3

You can pick up pay as you go Nokia S40's for £20 or so these days too.

The tricky part is designing a UI for illiterate users.
Which Markets Is the iPhone Winning?
Not as far as I know but you can get dual-sim hacks in most market phone shops. See http://skydeck.com/blog/thisisbroken/the-xphone/
Writing my resignation so that I can devote more time to freelancing and a startup
I'm pretty glad to have the second core hanging around in my MBP. It didn't cost me much to have, but when I was working on this project:

http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-my...

I was able to continue all my normal tasks while one core did all the processing work.
I would be willing to pay 10x as much for such a service! :P

The problem with that service is I am far too cheap and picky to subscribe.

They need to stop releasing such great new products. You can't go play with a Macbook Air and not consider purchasing it.
I know some folks working in secure facilities who actually drill out the camera lens with a drill press and fill the hole with a drying cement. It's effective, if a bit... draconian.

Though I heard a month or two ago that the regulations for some secure sites have been changed to allow cameras on phones. Several people I know who have not gotten cells are now looking at getting them because they can keep them when at a secure site.

This is all experience with military contractors in St. Louis, so your mileage may vary.
(Legal) Espionage: 20 Creative Ways to Research your Industry Competitors
As I began to read Paul's essay, I couldn't help but be reminded of a book I read about a year ago, "Crimes Against Logic" by Jamie Whyte. DH1 Ad Hominem almost defines our political system. From the book: "The motive fallacy is so common in politics that serious policy debate is almost nonexistent. The announcement of a new policy is greeted, not with a discussion of its alleged merits, but with a flurry of speculation from journalists and political opponents regarding the politician's motives for announcing it. He wants to appease the right wing of his party, or is trying to win favor in marginal rural states, or is bowing to the racist clamoring of the gutter press, or what-have-you."
Unlocking my phone this time around (upgrading to the latest version) involved clicking 2 buttons and waiting 5 minutes.

Extremely non-hacker friendly. The first time around was much more command-line-ish.
I agree that there's a wide range of it, from very shallow to slightly imperfect.

But what happens if you wear something that isn't pretty and people start noticing? Some won't like you. Others will notice their reaction and compensate for it. They will think you didn't do anything wrong, and they shouldn't react badly, and make sure to treat you normally.

If you don't wear clothes to fit in and be pretty, you only come off (a bit) worse with the people who aren't self-aware enough. In business, it's important to be able to get along with flawed people; they can still be valuable business partners. But in dating, if you are very smart, you don't want those people who aren't self-aware enough; you only want to go out with exceptional people.
Polishing my shopping search engine
Whow, how did this happen. Appreciate the 90 comments guys + girls.
Never pitch a VC Shirtless again!
You might want to consider locating a satellite office just across the border, and incorporate (inexpensive) in the USA. Makes it much easier from a legal standpoint to do business with you.
Do you see a difference between teams using Agile to maintain existing products and teams building brand new stuff?

I've found in my experience so far, that Agile works better for new development and can't or shouldn't be used as a hammer for everything.
Currently working on my lead generation business n2neuron.com (site is woefully incomplete and doesn't represent much of what we do, but ok because our business is conducted on the numerous content sites).

Working on my client lead-flow. Trying to break the 100 sales/day mark.

Setting up new content sites to generate more free advertising.

Billing upstream clients, paying downstream advertising vendors.

Trying to convince my partner to leave his full-time job at Dell.

General day-to-day business stuff, I suppose.

Building an "excess data" exchange to re-market unsold lead data, which is kind of cool.
I grab a cup of coffee every morning from a local indy coffee shop who offers free Wifi, and, over the past two years I have certainly noticed there are more and more little glowing apple icons to go along with all the white ear-bud cords.

I wish I could find the source where I read a comment about the ergonomics of apple products. It was something along the line of a cross between a kitchen appliance and a dildo. I still smile when I think of that.
On my spare time I am working on a litle Android app. Financial and stock market information. Just for fun. Not going to make it it time to submit for the competition thou. I am one-two months away to have something useful.

I also want to work on something else, but as a project it would very involving, and I will need to work on it full time, and with partners. Unfortunately I am a H-1B servitor, and can't just take long breaks from my job.

Ah, and my full time job (mobile tv and multimedia, working on java and lua). Not bad, as I am actually working on advanced stuff.