skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was in the last Bar Camp Miami, great time.

If you go with an open mind and less of a mission, it's great. The camps attract curious, ambitious, and savvy folk - not just for Bar Hoppers!

I'm moving back to Boston just in time for this one! Thanks for posting!
Unobtrusive JavaScript with jQuery - slide presentation
I'll be @ minnebar May 10th also. I've heard estimates of 400 attendees planned! If you're interested in iPhone development, lets meet up. I'm doing a 5-min lightning round talk on native iPhone objc development.
TechCrunch UK - TechCrunch UK meetup, this Friday
I've been using selenium. It lets you save your recorded web interactions in a variety of languages.

http://selenium.openqa.org/
Most of the sites I've worked on top out at 1% of registered users online at any given time.
Millions would be M with a slash above the letter. I don't think we can make slashs above letters with any encoding, though.
Thanks, I suspect that my site will have rather long sessions (30 minutes?). I plan on supporting anonymous, free, and paid users. I suspect that most of the users will be anonymous and/or free (I'm considering advertising for some of these. My system will also have a higher than normal communication component (a key factor in my concern on sizing).

My guess is that I should plan for a concurrent user load of about 5%-10% of the registered users (both free and paid). Included in that range would be the unregistered anonymous users. I expect at the end of the day the actual concurrent usage will be much lower. Probably less than 1%. But I don't think the hardware costs to support 5-10 are five to ten times the cost of supporting 1% (probably a factor of 2 or 3).
R isn't "an open source matlab". R is an open source implementation of S-plus. If anything is the open source Matlab it is octave. However, I agree they can be used interchangeably for solving many problems.
I somehow believe that he used double 'm' to signify plural.
Web 2.0 Please meet your host, the internet.
Perhaps I can help, but first. What calculations are you doing (e.g. are they all linear algebra?) What language is it currently written in?
In the article, the author poses the question of what is "worst" and never does properly answer this. Then goes on to list the "worst" bugs without proper criteria. The title should be "What Simson Garfinkel thinks are the 10 worst bugs, in chronological order."
You should open the urls in the same window. Because thats what most of your users will be expecting, considering most other sites do that. So by habit, they'll either use the middle click button or some other way to open it a new tab or window.
Watir (Ruby), or for a current project, WatiN (.NET port of Watir).

It's fun to watch.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=183276

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158939

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133074

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60598
Thanks. I expect my sessions to be longer (30 minutes?). And if I were only expecting hundreds of users, I wouldn't waste my time. I'm hoping to hit at least tens of thousands of registered paying users. I do expect to have portions of "grossly inefficient code" (much faster to implement in some cases) initially that I plan on solving (when they become the problem to solve). My product/site will be highly collaborative (I know, everyone thinks this, but, I think my idea is different (I know, everyone thinks... ())) and with a larger than normal communication component.
1M users... If you have their email, you could really leverage that on any future products/sites you make.
I don't know about "never." I spend a lot of money getting users to my site (I'm not web 2.0, but rather a downloadable software product). I'm not eager to send them elsewhere. That's one of my gripes about xhtml 1.0 strict: target="_blank" doesn't validate. So, my site is all strict except the links page, which has to be transitional to validate.
lotta speculation, very little fact in that post. what if amazon is running at minimal margins or even using this as a loss leader to crush iTMS before it dominates all digital media? Occam's Razor. Remember they need Amzn Unbox to succeed to justify the digital outlay to their shareholders; crushing iTunes on price is their best hope of doing just that, short of a loctite-strength alliance with hollywood and/or TV. Which explains iTunes retliatory move: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/steve_jobs_movie_deal_a_l...
Dup. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182322
If you don't have a solid business plan yet the step one is to write one so you'll have a solid understanding on what you will actually do - it's not a bible so you can change it if it needs to be changed.

When you have a business plan that seems to be working, then you'll have to thing how to implement it, distribute it and so on. These are crucial steps and all beginning enterpreneuers will be far too positive on these so if you think there will be X customers that will pay Y amount of money, divide them by half.

When you have everything planned, you need to think how to finance it - that is when your 50k will come to play.

I would recommend 253% to keep your day job until you have at least one paying customer or are getting some decent money from at least something connected to your project.

Too many projects end like this and it's very, very sad: http://www.snotr.com/video/1133
If you're into Python try Twill, Mechanize and use appropriate tools for Firefox(XPCom--GIYF) and IE (IECom--GIYF).
It's official: Google joins Sprint, Clearwire, Intel, Comcast in WiMax deal
So, who's going from here?
I'd rather spend the effort generating code (UPDATE: and I do mean generating, not writing) than writing tests (presumably I could be generating tests at the same time). But there are enough people on the TDD train that there must be something of value there. Plus it's politically incorrect to say you don't like testing your code.

When people claim to be dispelling myths, I'd really wish they would do so with fact/numbers (ever see myth busters, they don't just dispel by telling you). I'd really like to see some numbers from the TDD folks on number of bugs found via TDD and it's effectiveness. And I don't want the story about the one bug found that saved them (just like that friend that lived because they were ejected from their car in an accident (fortunately they weren't wearing their seat belt)).
I'm sure that object decomposition does not per se, automatically, lead to code obfuscation. If the design is decent, it should be, if not obvious, then at least possible without too much ado to determine where in the file tree methods shaved off larger objects should be placed so that somebody who knows how the file names are chosen, but doesn't know the code itself, can find them by looking at a list or a diagram.

I find a "limit" at indentation depth 1 a bit overly harsh, but I at least casually consider it whenever I reach depth 2, and at depth 3, I really try bailing out, foregoing "else", too. And sometimes I even do it at depth 1, and get a nice fuzzy warm feeling from that. Edit: This was underplaying it too much. "Callisthenics", cleverly used, really do help to organise the code if you have something conceptually larger, e.g. a DSL, to capture the knowledge as it is abstracted from the data.

Then again, I prefer using function composition over inheritance whenever I can, so my whole work method is geared towards managing many small files. Systems of names, essentially. I think a lot in terms of names and naming systems.

Transparency, AFAICT, needs to be built into the design, via an ongoing effort for the seperation of concerns (systematic naming is crucial in that). Which has me trending towards smaller objects over the years. That's just my experience; YMMV. But I don't see how moving from, say on average, 50-LOC-objects to 100-LOC-objects now would make my codebase in any way less "obscured".
Looking at the shape of Holland, I'd say early nineteenth century. Holland's shape has altered dramatically in the last centuries, so it's a good test. Here are some historical maps for comparison: http://www.zum.de/whkmla/histatlas/lowcountries/haxnederland...
Line-height: abnormal
Which langauge do you save them in, out of curiousity? I'd be interested in hearing that from others, too. I'm using the ruby driver, personally.
I'd suggest the opposite, actually. Not going full time means that you'll go half-assed on the startup.
It's not that I disagree with the Apple fanboys. I own stock, and many of their products, and in general their products are very good. And I love that the fanboys are selling, nonstop, with all their heart.

It's that the Apple fanboys are boring. It's like hearing the same song, over and over. And it's not a good song, it's like hearing "Who Let the Dogs Out" or something.

If the fanboys could admit that Apple stuff isn't totally perfect, and there actually are better alternatives depending on people's needs, that would lend a lot of credibility to their argument.

I was one of the first people to get an iPod and hop onto the ITMS bandwagon. Now I'm happily jumping off to Amazon's store, simply, because they have a better store.
Improve Your Page Performance With Lazy Loading
Twitter Voice
I've been using the ruby selenium driver as well. Works great.
I've seen a lot of programmers go from writing no tests at all, to TDD (and pair programming, etc.). This extreme shift in behavior makes it seem more like a fad; I prefer a balanced approach. Use what works for you and your team, and if it stops working, do something else.
The disadvantage of intelligence is probably due to single trait selection and not the extra intelligence itself. Temple Grandin's book Animals In Translation has a chapter about this. Ridiculously insightful book too.
Why do Open Source?
> to think that they would love to give us the music for free goes a bit too far

Did I write that? I don't remember, and I can't find it int he essay. I wrote that they would love to be able to compete with Amazon on price and that if they could get it from the labels on the same terms as Amazon, they woul doffer it at the same or lower price.

As for free iPods, I don't remember writing that either. That being said, lots of companies work very hard at making their products less expensive in order to occupy mor eof the market. Last time I checked, Apple has offered a variety of iPods over a very broad spread of prices, from shuffle to iPod touch 32GB. Cheap iPods = no oxygen for competitors at the low end.

That's a perfectly normal business strategy, isn't it?

"you can copy it freely on your own devices, but you can not sell it on ebay. The ebay factor is something I still don't see factored into the prices for online music (it should be cheaper than CDs, because I can sell a CD once I get tired of it)."

That is a novel and interesting point. Thank you.
True fans, without a doubt. People who are interested in and care about your product will send you comments and ideas, and will evangelize for you.

That is, assuming you care about making the best possible product. If you're just looking for something to monetize and/or flip to a VC, a million idiots is great.
Ask YC: How stealth (and far off) is Topspin Media?
Topspin hosted the latest NIN .mp3 release (lossless were .torrent'd). Ian Rogers, vice president of video and media applications at Yahoo, is leaving the company to launch a start-up, Topspin Media.

So how far off do you think a public-facing Topspin is?
Inbox Hero
"The moment I’m so tied to email that I need to read it from my phone is the day I need to throw said phone away."
Interesting refactoring in F#/Ocaml
Angel Financing: An Overview
Feed Your Mind With Impressive Information [Flash]
twill so far ... selenium rc maybe soon
Hmmm. Actually, I disagree with your statement as written.

"Programs with short methods are easy to understand"
expresses that the set of programs with short methods is a subset of the set of all programs that are easy to understand.

Therefore, every program with short methods is easy to understand, or (easy to understand) if (short methods), or (short methods) -> (easy to understand).

I was expressing that it there exists a very large set of programs with short methods that are not easy to understand.

To make these statements less subject to procedural wrangling, given a particular working program, the set of all possible permutations and refactorings that produce the same output contains many permutations with short methods that are not easy to understand.
Genius. Try 100 things, have one work, then give out that information for free to many people who could build the same thing in a few hours.
Yes, it's all joke. I find it very funny that Steve's writings would be discarded from the data as "probably not real pages" and I imagine Steve would too.
Not exactly an answer to your question, but we started keeping track of every funding source that we'd heard of or have contact to in our intranet wiki. After a couple months of just keeping your ears open and taking notes you end up with a pretty long list.

That said, just repeating our list wouldn't do you a lot of good; usually you're looking for people that are either in your area or that you have at least some distant connection to. Think you don't have connections? Yeah, so did we. Then we started paying closer attention over a period of time and realized we had quite a few.
Gates: Microsoft going 'independent' way
For me, it's mostly avoiding the hassle of commercializing something. If I'm never going to try to sell it, I might as well give away the source. Also, there's not really much choice when a lot of what you do is in perl or ruby or ... -- just about anything but c/c++.

How I got started is another story. I switched to linux because windows drove me crazy. Then Gnome and KDE drove me crazy. Then xfce drove me crazy. It became apparent that I had very specific needs, and nothing available was going to fill them. So, I chose something close to what I wanted (fluxbox) and started fixing things. Thus, I guess you could say I started because I'm picky.
'Inquisitr?' - I am Inquisitive
Finally, we got our Tube
We were actually hoping to meet people individually. But gathering a group of people at one place does not seem like a bad idea. I'll try and figure something out.
What's new on Gmail - Compiled features with screenshots/examples.
No doubt. But is my choice to work so I can buy a new gaming console for my kids instead of spending that time playing with them using the old one really one that is sure to have no negative impact on their (and my) life?
Your Employees Are Dying to Be Heard
The Bohr paradox
Why many MCSEs won’t learn Linux
Ask YC: Obama or Clinton ? and do you care anyway?
Does it make a difference to tech community who wins? Issues that tech community care about are H1B visa, student visa, outsourcing, encouraging bright student to stay in US, encouraging new startups and innovation thru federal policies etc.
I wish I could give 10 points.
Does Technology Drive History?
To learn something new that I wouldn't otherwise get a chance to learn. And to scratch an itch.

I wanted to learn Python. And I wanted a clock and a weather applet in the Avant Window Navigator (a dock for Linux). The opportunity was too good to pass up... I wrote them myself.
What's Next in jQuery and JavaScript?
While $500 million in sales is extremely impressive, they're still in the red when it comes to net income:
http://finance.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=NASDAQ:TTW...

Additionally, GTA sales aren't recurring each year and although the GTA effect will certainly help them this year there's a lot of time between GTA releases to account for. I'd say $2 billion is pretty reasonable for a company that lost $138 million in FY07.
Read Godel Escher Bach. Given the comment above, you'll like it.
Build something SMBs need (like QuickBooks but online).
What Would I Do Without Programming?
MySQL Bugs: #11472: Triggers not executed following foreign key updates/deletes
i'll likely be there at some point
Eternal Lands' MMORPG Postmortem: Mistakes and Lessons, Part I
Wanted/Needed: Twitter Services Directory
The open secret of (Toyota's) success
I'm very sorry about that.

I suppose a browser-escape could be possible; press some keystroke and then it unbinds the key handler for 3 seconds or something.

Any suggestion?
Poor indoor coverage holding back 3G
There aren't.

This was originally designed for an email client at http://demo.internetconnection.net/netmail/ and was originally going to be the editor for it. That is, "emacs" mode was going to be the default for people who don't know vi, not a vi-script that was trying to cater to emacs users.

However, the textarea itself was fine, so it just became an option in the settings manager to "enable" the vi editor, and the emacs-mode kind of got forgotten.
Home Office Snapshots
I upmodded you because my sarcasm detector trembled ever so slightly. In fact, the post is pretty dumb for being at #1 two days running.
Agreed. In the Twin Cities, Minnebar is by far the best tech/startup event of the year. We've met clients, business partners, and even our attorneys there.
Looming Lisp Boom?
In addition to what the others mentioned, there's also paperwork (such as my nemesis, filing); the time you spend running to OfficeMax to buy a new chair or a box of paper; the time spent looking for medical insurance (and being aghast at what it costs for an individual); "casual" contacts that sometimes can be transformed into business networking but don't, always; doing your invoicing and bookkeeping (most freelancers I know are terrible at this). And that's just off the top of my head.

I spent years as a sysop of the CompuServe Computer Consultant's forum. I'm kind of familiar with this stuff. <g>
University of Maryland Gets Only U.S. Lab for WiMAX Next Gen Wireless Apps
Absolutely agree on Secrets of Consulting. It was a major revelation to me when I was first starting out.
Git - coming to a Windows computer near you?
Incidentally, while the earlier link to the "what do I charge" is a good one, most of the computer consultants' discussion has moved to http://openitforum.yuku.com/ -- nice folks, too.

You can also find more data at Janet Ruhl's realrates.com. It is a database where people share how much they're getting for what kind of work. The home page is no longer updated but the database is live with people adding info.
I don't agree with all of the author's views, but article is interesting to me in that I feel that "higher productivity" appliances were key to the sexual revolution in coming about...
Tips to Work Well With Recruiters
What happens if the backup service goes down? Does the client have a way to recover backups from S3 directly (or from the data files I've pulled down from S3)?
Can a theory cooked up by a Soviet labor camp survivor solve today's thorniest engineering problems
Why?

Not disagreeing per se... I'm interested in your reasons.
I'd be into a group dinner or a lunch or something, that'd be fun. I work for reddit, but I can't really speak for my co-workers about how startups work and whatnot, and I've only been on since January.
This could be summarized as:
"You can use XMLHttpRequests to send more code, and then eval it."

It's a good idea, and can work pretty well in practice.
Do things like this really need to be called out and given pattern names etc though? :/ Patterns suck.
I learn from your response that my comment was written in a too inflammatory way. Sorry for that.

It just seemed to me that it was too much biased in favor of Apple. Unless you have insider information, I am not convinced that your theory is right. It is a possible explanation, but on the other hand, Apple has a nice lock in with iPods and iTunes. Do they care about DRM? Maybe: they might be happy that you bought an iPod. But the thing is, once you consider upgrading to a newer, fancier MP3 Player, you better make it another iPod, or you lose your music. So Apple does benefit from DRM. Not saying that is what they want, but it is an alternative theory.

Possibly they simply charge higher rates because they can (yay for fanboys). Most consumers by now might associate digital music with iTunes and not even check Amazon for prices.

I think Amazon also has the DRM that signs the MP3s with the buyers names, but I am not sure (haven't actually bought any music online yet).
Ten Interesting Memes Plucked From The Blogosphere
One of the worst things that "start your own business" books suggest is taking out a loan. A very high percentage of startups fail (really. high percentage!). The last thing you want to do is quit your day job and get a loan. If the startup fails, you will have no income, no money, and a fat debt. Hello bankruptcy! Avoid loans until you find some measure of income/revenue stability. If you absolutely have to go the loan route, fine, just don't quit your day job.
The shapes of the Iberian and Italian peninsulas have not changed much, and they look very inaccurate in that map too. I don't know if Holland's shape is a reliable indicator, considering such noise.
Microsoft’s Project Granola–Facebook Tastier Than Yahoo?
might be there at 6pm if its still going down
I love the bootstrapping instinct of the YC community, but $50K still doesn't give you much runway. I've seen several startups struggle because they tried to bootstrap problems that were too hard.

Here are two suggestions.

First, build something subscription-based that you can finish in about 3 months and 25% of the money. Then support, promote, manage, and improve the site part-time, and get another part-time job. Or sink all your money into initial development, get another job, and manage the site on the side.

Second, build a consulting company instead of a product. A healthy programming/design shop can generate steady paychecks + profits, and you can reinvest the profits in a product. $50K is more than enough to start a consulting company.
Anyone for Cuivre Reserve Château Bottled Nuit San Wogga Wogga?

http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/australian_table_wines...
Why Google Invested in Clearwire
how can we take the standard system we have and make a better standard system out of it? Nobody seems to have a good answer to that.

Montessori is a good answer. The U.S. could convert its standard system to Montessori. The project could be funded by taking money out of the invade-small-oil-rich-countries budget. It only doesn't happen because the U.S. does not make education a priority.
Really what I think it does is force you to focus on what's really important. Either way you're always going to feel that there is much more work to be done than you have time for. Having less time will just let you do the core tasks. Then you can see whether or not the core idea gets traction. If it turns out not to be a successful idea(which is most likely) you'll have wasted a lot less time.

A large number of famous startups have started this way--Facebook, Yahoo, Google, craigslist, eBay...

It is incredibly easy on the vast internet to work on things that may be interesting, different, unique, cool, but in the end don't attract a big enough audience to pay the bills and beyond. That's why I think it's dangerous to go full time until you have some site with significant traffic & growth rates.
Does Bill Gates Think the Internet is 10 Years Old?
Screenshots of KTechLab
Lessons In Electric Circuits (free books)
Embarcadero Technologies agrees to acquire CodeGear from Borland
I know, I know (we) all here are into web, ruby, python, etc, but still ...
(Borland -> Inprise -> Borland -> Codegear and finally -> Embarcadero)
MyStealthStartup: Financing in Canada
This is where Martin Fowler's distinction between application databases and integration databases comes in. If your app is the only one hitting the database, things are much simpler.
How to "Ask for the Order"
I slightly disagree. There is a tradeoff between what the local market wants Vs what startups develop. Frankly, the local market in India doesn't need a startup that can index all the planets and stars and make it searchable. They first need something as simple as this one.