skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
+1

I had one of those for a few years, and it was a joy. It really sprung back against your fingers, and had a really satisfying sound to it.
So, we have reconciled quantum mechanics and general relativity? We have put quantum mechanics on deterministic grounds? Many-worlds is accepted fact? Indeed I must check out overcoming bias....
Could you post "General Composition of the Dataset" with a logarithmic vertical scale please? Should help compensate for the outliers so we can see more detail at the bottom of the graph.
Not a bloomberg keyboard - those are terrible.
Agreed. The problem with over promising is that in every case that I've seen it done (I've seen this 3 times in my short 4.5 year career) the promises were made without analyzing if the agreement fits what's needed not what's wanted. And in every case the cost to satisfy a customer that has been deceived was higher than the profit from the sale that was made.
Das Keyboard.

http://www.daskeyboard.com/
>"In broad terms, BlackBerrys are optimized first for email; the iPhone for the web. What’s more important, an email client or a web browser? For most people, and perhaps even most current BlackBerry users, the answer is clearly the web."

That's so wrong I don't even know how to tackle it.

You can be sure that if Apple is thinking like this, the item on my hip will be a blackberry for a very, very long time.
Lessons learned in launching a startup
You know, the new apple keyboards are NOT bad (expensive, but very very nice feedback on the keys)

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB110LL/A?fnode=home/shop_...
On paper, Crysis was a near flop, but when it comes to actual installs it's close to the game of the year!

When did selling over a million copies of a game in the PC market make it a "flop"? I'm not saying piracy didn't reduce sales, I'm just not sure why people see a million copies being sold and infer that those are low numbers being greatly reduced by piracy.
Anti-spammer convicted for performing queries to the spammer's DNS server
16 Sorting Algorithms - Click to see each run
Why Virtual Reality Could Explain the Fermi Paradox
Pretty Cool UI Trick In Google Reader: Zoom In and Out Using = and - (AxsJAX Framework)
Man I hate the word rockstar in a non "rock" context.
Second that. I've had two for the past three years (one at home, one at the office). Decided to get one after a weekend of frantic hacking that left my fingers in pain. After a month using the Kinesis Advantage my fingers felt great, never going back to a regular keyboard.
> And it starts at 1.

That's just a constant offset, it matters more whether the next karma level is 2 or 10. When fitting trend lines a "linear fit" would normally satisfy y=mx+c, without limiting yourself to c=0. Note that the posted linear fit has c = -1... apparently everyone starts with -1 karma. Lies, damned lies and statistics I say!
The "simple" explanation is that lots of people think that quantum mechanics is nondeterministic. And it isn't. If you know the quantum state of a system at time X you can figure out what it will be at any time after that.

People get confused because it's easy to look at a quantum mechanics problem from the wrong angle and see nondeterminism. We're really well trained in intuitive mechanics ("an electron is like a tiny tennis ball, and tennis balls are always either here or there, right?") so at first glance quantum mechanics seems wacky and random: the electron might be here, or it might be there, with equal probability, and we can't tell which! Whereupon your head explodes. Seriously: The discoverers of quantum exploded in horror, and they started ranting about that crazy cat in the box, or "God playing dice". (Colorful but misleading metaphors. One reason that Bohr and Einstein's early confusion persists today is that they were just so darned eloquent.)

In fact, God does not play dice: God sees all the outcomes of the dice roll at the same time and doesn't understand why we think it's a game, and not a static work of art.

People also think that nondeterminism is somehow an important ingredient in whatever it is we mean by "free will". This doesn't make much sense to me. If you want it to not make sense to you as well, read Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves. You might want to budget more than a couple hours for that book, though.
What's in a Project Name?
I'm honestly a little stunned by the stagnancy of innovation in online interfaces. It's way beyond just laziness or hewing to trends -- it's virtually a total refusal to believe that we can do better. One of my goals right now is to develop ideas (that is, UI setups) that question some of our fundamental notions about what interacting with a website is supposed to look and feel like.
No doubt.

Ebay does a form of resolution, but I don't know if it's really good enough. On the extreme end you could offer formal arbitration. I'm not sure what's in between.
I think I would nearly die of surprise if someone was doing what we are doing now. Then, I'd take them out for a beer.
SafeType vertical keyboard. The MS Natural Elite was giving me RSI until I switched.

http://safetype.com/
I don't think this example represented his definition of "knowing". He was using it to show that there are very basic definitions of the word.
Facebook Responds To MySpace With Facebook Connect
I'll buy whatever she's selling.
Let me correct myself: it wasn't a flop. But it certainly followed an unorthodox path, bombing for the first few weeks then picking up in the coming months (absolutely absurd for a PC game).

Interestingly, this supports the "kicking the tires hypothesis" above. But I'd venture it more supports an influencer model: hard core gamers were the only consistently aware group, and their piracy adoption probably exposed those on the edge to a game that practically sells itself once you get in front of it.
Wow! Somebody got "Back to my mac" to work?
apple laptop keyboard, kinesis ergo, happy hacking.
I agree. It is being thrown out in every other job posting. It is getting kinda annoying.
No no no. I shouldn't have said I was shooed away. I was actually invited to stay for a bit after class and talk, but I made a mistake. My professor asked me if I had a class to go to, and I told him that I did but I could skip it. He told me I shouldn't skip my classes, so THEN I had to leave. Stanford professors, even the nobel prize winners, are extremely open to talk to undergrads after class or during office hours.
How I built a poker-bot
The game companies know that DRM doesn't work in the long term. But they believe it can work in the short term. Many games make the bulk of their money in a few weeks or months. To be effective, DRM only needs to keep the hackers busy for this period -- or so says the advertising of the DRM creators.

After this period, however, the DRM serves no purpose other than to frustrate legitimate buyers. Ideally, the game creators would disable the DRM after it has served its purpose, thereby eliminating problems for their customers as well as freeing up server resources and support call costs. Unfortunately, there are few companies willing to do this.
I have installed it on around 12 machines with no problems.
Yea, CS21N. It's the least technical CS class you can probably take.
That is funny because that is what I do, I fill the gap between what is needed and wanted. I believe it would be uncommon for the customer to spec out everything down to what each screen looks like and the logic behind each page and it would be uncommon for the saleperson to do that too. Someone has to be the "interpreter" between the customer vision and the salespersons vision (both of which are valuable) and come up with a working prototype or at least page by page html screens.

I guess that begs the question who in your company is the interpreter. Sounds like you would be a good fit for that position. An approach would be "Hi my name is x in x position, great job on the sale with x company. I would like to help define the x features that will be released upon launch and a timeline for the customer to launch as quickly as possible and help define launch dates for the remaining features".
Upmodded primarily for Reg's responses in the comments, which clarify his argument.
I have a Goldtouch and it's worth every penny. You have total control over the splay and pronation, and it doesn't have a number pad on the right. This was the main thing I was looking for in the first place. I wanted the hand on my mouse to be as close to center as possible.

http://www.keyovation.com/pc-64-2-goldtouch-adjustable-keybo...
I know it's off-topic, but would you mind recommending an alternative that is reasonable?
stufftodo looks interesting. i've got some personal stuff to attend to today, i'll try to get into it tomorrow.

thanks for the links.
Given this theory, a recent example makes even less sense: I bought Company of Heroes shortly after it was released, and it had no copy protection other than a serial key for playing online.

The expansion pack added a phone-home "feature" or alternatively DVD checks with a message box you had to click away every time you start a game or return to the menu. (if you don't have an internet connection or block its attempts to connect)

A recent patch has made this even more annoying by alternating which disc it wants and under certain circumstances appears to completely stop working if it can't phone home. Great when their servers go down.

Ugh. I'm sorry, that kind of user experience just doesn't cut it.
I own my company, love the technology, am delighted in the revenue it's giving me and am absolutely bored to death with the task I am doing today. It needs to be done and I'm doing it, but this day has been an absolute slog with every keystroke.

It doesn't matter how much you love your company: You're going to have "Ya know what? Fuck this!" days every now and then. Just learn to roll with 'em when they happen.
Unfortunately you can't get paid through tipjoy... Thought about moving your country to a different country where you could actually process payments easier than in the US?
But it certainly followed an unorthodox path, bombing for the first few weeks then picking up in the coming months (absolutely absurd for a PC game).

This may be related to Crysis' significant system requirements, too. People may have put off upgrading their systems until they heard whether or not it was a good game or how well it would run on specific hardware.

(Given that users can "kick the tires" just as well with the Crysis downloadable demo, I suspect that wasn't the motivation for most of the game's piracy.)
The Ultimate - or - The Only One We Came Up With (in 10 mins.)

So you attach contextual ads(wow. brilliant.). How does someone interact with this ad? You only have 140 chars. Not enough to create a link, and also describe the ad without consuming the entire 140. Also, people are on their cell phone, do you rely on the user having web access on their phone (that is spawn-able from a txtmsg)? Do you send them a follow-up AdTweet after every regular Tweet they receive?

Without consuming the entire 140chars. or sending a followup AdTweet, you are limited to simple branding messages like, "Drink Coke." appended to the bottom. No good.

In this incarnation, Twitter doesnt make any money because they are subjugated to the cell carriers revenue model.
I designed my own rockstar in rock-band. Do I qualify?
How to Create a Tag Grid and Evolve Past the Cloud
+1

Orig PS2 is what I'm typing on right now. I started out on orig XT/AT keyboards, which have an even stiffer click, but I had to quit using them because they're missing F11-F12 keys.

IMO, the orig IBM keyboards are still the best keyboards ever made. Lots of PS2 keyboards on eBay for a reasonable price, but AT keyboards are going for 150-200 bucks! 20 years pass and computer items start becoming collectible.
Why Did Mozilla Adopt the Deki Wiki?
I have a couple of IBM small form factor keyboards (model SK-8809) from several years back. It is no longer manufactured, and the replacement model has laptop style keys which I don't find as satisfying. It's a full 104 key keyboard, with full-sized keys and all function keys and a numpad, but it's about 2 inches shorter than standard full-sized keyboards...it brings esc closer to home (I use vim). Pretty much everything is just closer together, and so reaching for delete, pg up/down, etc. is nicer. Likewise for the mouse.

And it's an IBM, and though it's not the Model M style of tactile feel, it has a nice feel. Not too much resistance but not smooshy, either, the way MS and Logitech keyboards feel.
Shorten more, please
Github trick - associate commits with your user account
OEmbed: An Open Format for Embedding Media
why use a plain model M

i sooooooo want one of these

http://steampunkworkshop.com/keyboard.shtml
I use a Happy Hacking Lite Keyboard. I like the key action on it a lot; but I do find myself missing function keys and a number pad.

However, the benefit of not having a number pad really shows up if you end up having to mouse + type a lot - you barely have to move your hand at all.
I am building a startup that, by definition, is what I want it to be. I can't imagine anything about it being "boring".

This kind of, for lack of a better term, blind optimism, is one thing that gets to me after a while on News.YC, and I'm a pretty positive guy to start with.

I simply cannot believe that every single last aspect of your start-up is enjoyable to you. Either you have someone else doing the parts you find boring, or you steer around the boring parts (possibly to the detriment of your start-up), or you're convincing yourself that you don't find them boring.

I've spent the last week and a bit doing some work which is at best mind-numbingly boring, but which might be essential to our success. I will definitely be happy with the results, but that doesn't mean I wasn't bored out of my mind and whining about it the entire time; it just means I want to get it done faster so I can go back to something fun.

There's nothing WRONG with finding certain aspects of the work boring, and I think that's a dangerous signal to send. The boring parts have to be done too. What happened to "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration"?
awesome article.

I wonder mattmaroon's thoughts on this.
umm, consider how much money is spent on the various stages of marketing (a lot!), truly effective tools that can improve the analytics phase of a marketing effort would definitely have a market! (methinks)
Are those the flexible rubber mat keyboards? I checked one out previously and thought it took an extraordinary amount of force to depress the keys reliably.
Didn't win and I wasn't expecting to either. It would have been a neat app, but I only submitted an early version with pretty limited functionality.
Do you actually use one of these regularly? I see a lot of people recommending them, but very few people using them as their daily keyboard.
i have one of these keyboards for my living room pc, it has the same spacing as a laptop keyboard, however mine has some strange & tiny backspace, for which i tend to hit the \ key instead. i highly recommend it, but maybe not for hacking. even for gaming its a bit off.
I did a Hecl port for it, and it didn't win. On the other hand, our daughter was born the other day, and she is simply wonderful:

http://padovachronicles.welton.it/articles/2008/05/08/helen-...

It's kind of tough to think of much else at the moment:-)

Besides the Hecl entry, I also got some client work out of it, and although unfortunately that didn't win either, at least I made a bit of money, and there's a chance we'll keep working on the app, which is pretty cool.
No rockstars here. We have plenty of ninja coders, though.
does anyone use one of these?

http://www.amazon.com/C51-A04031-Laser-Virtual-Keyboard/dp/B...
You may want to take into account differences in file timestamps because the data was collated over many days.
i wish there was a mouse technology based on that. it would be sooooo cool to have your laptop just sense your movement to the left and right of it, as if you had two mice. but, what am i , thinking that would require someone to do something totally unique.
Can't wait to read the rest of the series. Promises to have a bit of everything: OCR, screen-scraping, rules engine, WinAPI hooks, DLL injection, and that's just part one!
No, not really.

Well, not in any useful sense. Not any more than you test Einstein's theories every day when you get up in the morning and find yourself getting pulled down by gravity.
Knowledge about the world or some part of it potentially gives the ability to purposefully change it, or influence it if you wish. At least I'd be more comfortable with this definition of knowledge that distinguishes a camera from a human.
healthy market forces at play...

Wait, we're talking about the recorded music industry, right? An industry that continues to exist only because a massive regulatory structure prevents me from just giving you a copy of all of my albums?

You might be able to convince me that, on balance, this is a good monopoly... if the public domain still existed. Which it doesn't. (Thanks, Mickey Mouse and Sonny Bono!) But, whether you approve of it or not, it crossed the line of "monopolistic behaviour" more than a generation ago.
Need one to sort Alrogithms into a word I know. Just kidding,
edw519. :)
Is it odd that there is zero contact info on the website? I did find a funny easter egg however.
Yep, the Advantage Pro. The ultimate emacs power tool.
Damn my visual memory, I actually picture somebody sitting in a Vacuum cleaner programming. Sorry, I know that adds nothing to the conversation.
I use one every day and am typing this on one right now. I actually like it so much, I bought 2 more. One for work and one for home plus and extra on in my closet in case the company goes out of business.

The blank aspect is kinda cool but I really like the feel and sound of the thing. I don't know if I type any faster with it and finding some characters like % and ^ can be difficult at first.

I also know of several former co-workers that use them.
Ha. That's much better, and I'm glad to hear it. Incidentally, I think grad school and undergrad are different this way too.
Beware, fellow hackers. Many of us will suffer serious wrist problems. I did, after 15 years of hacking on various keyboards. What finally got me was 2 years of working on a tiny laptop keyboard (a Japanese 12" laptop).

Sit down in front of your keyboard, place your hands on it like you usually do when you type. Are your wrists bent? If they aren't perfectly straight, you're heading for trouble. How much trouble exactly depends on your genes, but trouble it is.

I found that once you are in pain you very quickly determine which keyboard is healthy. It's the one you can type on with the least amount of pain. My personal ranking:

1. Fingerworks TouchStream. Those aren't produced anymore, Apple bought Fingerworks and turned their technology into multi-touch screens. They sell for ungodly amounts on eBay, and for good reasons. Once you get used to the gestures, you never feel at home on any other keyboard.

2. Microsoft Natural and variants thereof. Any keyboard that is split in the middle is way healthier than any straight keyboard.

3. Any other keyboard that is wide enough so that you can keep your wrists relatively straight.

The keyboard on a MacBook Pro is what I'd consider the limit as to width -- go any narrower, and you're certain to hurt yourself.

Be careful, people. If only I could go back in time and tell myself to use healthy keyboards...
I use a TypeMatrix 2030 and I love it! Legacy aside, non-staggered keys makes so much more sense. It only took about 2 days to get used to it. The keyboard is small and thin so you can have the mouse close and you don't break your wrists.

I did have to remap some keys because the default layout is horrendous. First, I use Dvorak but from the OS, not the keyboard itself so I never use the dvorak built-in to the keyboard. And here are my remappings, in logical-key --> labelled-key format (compare with http://www.typematrix.com/images/newpics/new2030us_640x266.j...):

Left Ctrl --> Bottom Shift
Shift --> Pg Dn
Alt --> Pg Up
AltGr --> Left Alt
Pg Up --> Right Alt
Pg Dn --> Right Ctrl
Right Shift --> F32

I use emacs so I use Ctrl extensively, it's great to have it where I put it because 1. it's very convenient to reach and 2. I don't have to alternate left and right Ctrl, I always use the same key. Point #2 also applies to having the shift on the equivalent position of the right hand, this way I can write in UPPERCASE without having to use caps lock! Having Right Shift as F32 means I can map it as a normal key in emacs. I write lisp (a programming language (with (lots of ((parentheses))))) a lot so I told emacs to generate two parentheses then put the cursor between them when I press F32. Similarly for double quotes and CTRL-F32. Previously I needed to press 3 (well, 4 if you count the modifier) keys for that...
Really Awesome, now I will apply to WoW.
Is it really possible for a website like Twitter to receive as much investment as I am sure they have without any sort of business plan in place for making money?

Can somebody literally say to an investor "Hey, we are just focusing on getting eyeballs, we will worry about how to actually make money later on" and still get money?

I'm not being sarcastic, I honestly want to know the answer to this question.

My gut says there is a HUGE difference between a private monetization strategy (one that hasn't been implemented but was part of the plan all along) and the sort of 'on the fly' kind of make-it-up-as-we-go philosophy that this article seems to think Twitter is using. I'm not sure I buy the idea that Twitter really doesn't have a plan.
Ask YC: What is a reasonable equity stake for a summer internship?
Here's a hypothetical situation: Let's say I'm an MBA-type and a few of my business school friends and I are starting a web startup. We have a technical guy who has been doing all of the coding so far, but we'd like to get a bit more cheap manpower so we can put out a beta by the end of the summer, so we're trying to hire one or two summer interns. We can't offer the same kind of pay the interns could get at an established company, but since they're only going to be working for us for a few months (unless we still exist when they graduate), that kind of complicates the equity calculation. What kind of equity stake do you think is reasonable for a summer intern if we pay them ~80% market value?
Likewise, but I'm using one of the newer ones (Natural Ergonomic 4000) and I like it. Been meaning to mod it ala tlb (http://tlb.org/keyboardchop.html) to get the mouse closer but I've never gotten around to it. Would love to have a trackball in between the keyboard sections to see if it works but never looked into it either.
Congrats! You're in for a lot of fun, and a lot of sleep deprivation.

I noticed a comment beneath the photo that said your days of late night hacking are gone. This is true for the first 6 months, but things do improve on that front.
His rules engine doesn't appear to trend other players at all. There are good tools out there that gather data on players and with enough data, you can pinpoint a player fairly well. It also shows his bot playing no-limit tables which seems like a horrible idea for a bot. There is a lot more to take into consideration in no-limit poker and I'm not sure a bot that only takes 3 or 4 things into consideration for every move could ever win at worthwhile stakes.

If your bot can play 14 limit tables at a time with even the slightest % edge, you're going to make money. However, if you added more advanced player profiling algorithms into your bot, you're edge would likely increase and allow you to set it up at higher stakes.
I want to see a documentary on this! Why not right? they already have on out for the font Helvetica.
Convincing others that your goldfarming bot is actually human seems like a highly challenging variant of the Turing test.
Looks like you have been working on your points to syllables ratio ;)