skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I know you were trying to be satirical, gisikw, but you could have offered some suggestions or solutions. For example, I've often commented that I do not know whether a gem runs on 1.9 or 1.8. I have to test it out.

There are many many ruby projects on the rubyforge site that have never released code. They still exist after years! and they come up in searches. There are those that are obsolete, broken, or with not one line of documentation that one has to download, go through source code to figure out what it does, and if it does anything at all.

When a person comes in to ruby he needs a starting page on ruby-lang.org that tells him the popular gems or frameworks for major uses: such as CLI programs, web dev, scientific computing etc. What some call a list of "blessed" gems/projects.

However, we cannot criticize ruby if everyone is writing his own framework, parser, templating engine etc. Its also hard to be critical that so much documentation and tutorials online are outdated/broken due to the constant rate of change. Either devs are not updating tutorials/articles, or google is bringing up older documents first.

When we see a high download count for a gem that still does not indicate that people are using it. It only means people have downloaded it to check out. DOwnload counts are deceiving. Gems that offer a very sketchy description and have NO webpage often get a high download count since that's the only hope of figuring out what it does.
>the tire sensors only send a message every 60-90 seconds, giving attackers little opportunity to compromise systems or cause any real damage.

I fail to see how the normal rate of the system at all implies what rate can be achieved if attempting to hack the system. Unless it's peak receiving rate is 0.5 baud.
Hey they've already added the stretcher in the bottom right corner. That's something.
It's not an implicit insult. It's an explicit one. At least when I say it. I could also say, "I wouldn't have wasted my time doing what that.". And sometimes I do.

If you don't want to hear my opinion, don't make your ears available to me.

And just because you spend 18 months making a hat, doesn't mean that I have to like it, appreciate it, defer judgment on it, or anything else.

Is this statement preferred, "That person clearly has different priorities or available time on their hand that would allow them to, what I would consider, waste it, on such a frutless effort." I guess I just prefer the shorthand.
I'm not quite understanding the "gave it to telecoms" part - The telecoms don't make phones. Companies like Motorola, Samsung, and HTC do.

And while Google "gave" it to them, they've all dumped incredible amounts of engineering hours into Android and their derivatives -- any illusion that they just ran a Ubuntu install on their Galaxy S and that was it is utterly asinine around parts like this.

Seriously, the "giving it away" bit is dumb, and while it sells on the non-technical sites, it is an embarrassment on HN.
This is alot like my own situation. I quit my job last year due to stress issues with coworkers, and I spent most of the last year writing an iOS app just so I could put something more modern on my resume. Mid project, the iPad came out and I felt I could take a moon shot into actually making a small amount of money at it by retooling to better fit the new platform. Unfortunatly, my solo work took too long and I missed a couple of market windows. And I needed to cut so much functionality in order to simply “ship” that I might not have made a “minimum viable product” any more. Finally, my ad campaign and press releases haven’t got much traction.

I had a cushion to live of off for the last year, so I’m not yet at the breaking point. I’m thinking about writing a postmortem and posting it here at HN after I decide if my project is worth salvaging. (If you’re curious, my website is http://www.concernwormwood.com/ .)
It's also a good time to take stock of where you are in a project, and where you are heading. making yourself put your progress into words forces you to think about the overall view. We started an internal blog/status report page for our projects, and simply writing a post - even if it's basically to myself - is helpful.
Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard has an Apple iPad
Youre right. I wish them well. Hope they make millions. I just think these talented individuals would have done better for themselves had they not focused on a trendy/hipster social network site (do we need another?) and more on "bootstrappable" software businesses.
Google Analytics Tos limits you to 5 million pageviews per month
Figuring that out is part of their challenge!
Hi there, thanks for the comment.

Auto-uploaded screenshots aren't for everyone, its something that definitely has to be negotiated with the employee of course.

Our competitor oDesk (an outsourcing portal) offers similar software. They offer a chat system within the client (we could too). Its not a priority at the moment because it would probably only add marginal value; employees already communicate with their bosses through skype, MSN, email, etc.
If Apple ever sells the iPod Touch with the Retina display for $199 I would seriously consider buying it, which now that I think of it is pretty close to what you said.
Update on Deolalikar’s Proof that P≠NP
September was clearly quite unrealistic, from the perspective of a developer who was previously in the habit of making unrealistic project time forecasts.

NEVER believe anyone who says this, that etc. can be done in three months. I don't believe people who insist 'I wrote this and this in a weekend!' either. Yeah, you and that library that took three months to write. Six-nine months would make sense for a project like this, at least if you're planning on ending up with something worth using.
Operator Overloading C#
Microsoft of course tried with the Zune. Sony has been trying with various Walkman products.
Converting Enumerations in C#
With the robustness of modern ECUs I'm surprised that these signals are not checked before being evaluated. Even my Arduino is capable of doing that.
"Users don't really know the difference between a Droid and a Nexus One. They're both Google Android phones right?"

To everyday users they are all 'droids'. It doesn't matter if it's the nexus one or a galaxy s phone. Every regular user I have ever talked to about their android phone calls it a 'droid'. Even the original G1. Good for verizon I guess...
Ok, I guess I shouldn't feel so bad when I miss a test case or get an occasional exception in my web apps.
Actually, I doubt it will take you all that long. At one point, I was following ~1,900 people; I unfollowed all of them to get back to the essence of things… since then, I’ve climbed back to 600, and I don’t believe it took me more than, hm… a few months? If you’re trying to re-amass such a following, instead of trying to keep it down (as I was), you shouldn’t have any trouble at all :D
Just remember that renting is like SAAS.. you don't really own your stuff and don't have control over it. For 90% of use cases - that's fine. But remember the 10%.
Can't a guy engage in some simple hyperbole without it turning into the Four Yorkshiremen sketch? ;)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2255807183978932387#

But I'll say three serious things:

1) Yes, of course nearly everybody in the world is worse off than these guys.

2) No, such facts do nothing to cheer anybody up, however factual they may be:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/richard-cory/

3) Empathy is not a zero-sum game, in which giving it to one person implies that you must withhold it from another. Rather, empathy is like a muscle: If you work it, it gets stronger. The opposite is also true: If one makes a habit of sneering at the pain of the rich, one may soon find oneself sneering at the pain of the poor as well. Practice makes perfect.
This is a fantastic post, and I definitely jive with his opinions.

Note that the title to the post is quite misleading, and it's more about the general state of affairs in regard to the async / process / thread debate.

I was @ OSCON and watched Ilya's presentation. It was very well done, but one of his slides was a bit too objective to Unicorn. Eric has done a fantastic job on the software, and there "are" reasons to use it (Rainbows! as well).

Like Zed & Jacquem's discussions on poll vs epoll, I think Zed did a great job @ stating the obvious... use the right tool for the right job. The same applies here.
Presumably it's a reference to this site:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

And, yes, that is what it means. I guess http://stufftheuppermiddleclasslikes.com didn't test as well.
I dunno. Craigslist has made the market for "stuff" pretty liquid. I can get rid of most of my crap for a healthy fraction of what I paid with way less than an hour of effort per item. Hell, a whole lot of my stuff came from craigslist.

Just deliberately live in a small place, don't buy a lot of crap, and regularly cull. Buy only high quality and durable items and do it after a couple day's deliberation.

I'm pretty sure I could be liquidated and out of here in under a week. This seems to be the goal he's shooting for. I guess that's a good thing if you're rootless. But it makes one wonder about the days when people bought or inherited heirloom furniture, made to last over 100 years. The culture of disposable and cheaply made crap, and rootless people, is ... questionable.
My ideal living space would be a medium-sized house almost entirely devoid of any "stuff". No art hanging on the walls. No stack of crappy DVDs I never watch. Just a bed, a computer desk, a nice TV, and some kitchen-ware.

But I have a wife, and she stuffs our house full of all kinds of stuff.

BTW, I'm not trying to start a gender flame-war; I'm sure plenty of guys annoy their wives with stupid toys.
Very sensible article. I can scarcely improve upon it.

The choice is not the issue, its probably more categorization, and somehow having the good stuff bubble up and the bad/broken stuff sink.

We cannot totally rely on google searches, for often google brings up outdated articles that perhaps have a high number of hits, while something current does not show up.

I liked your para on READMEs and railscasts. I recently saw a video demo of a Java framework named "Play" -- really made me want to download and try it -- that kind of stuff can do wonders for a project.
I didn't speak against net neutrality. I spoke against regulations on wireless internet to enforce it at the current time. (For what its worth, I would be against any proposal that insisted that net neutrality regulations could never be implemented).

Tabling the issue for wireless networks for now might be the wrong position. (I don't think it is, but I could be wrong). But it is hardly the same as implementing policies that would forever block neutral wireless networks-- most of the critics I've read over the past few days have characterized the Google/Verizon deal as a total loss of neutrality on wireless networks, forever. It specifically outlines an annual review of the current policy.

That's hardly language of a "surrender monkey" (as Wired so inarticulately put it).
You don't even need to pay Rent. There are a few resources out there to lead you to living rent-free:

http://www.caretaker.org/ - House sitting and property caretaking newsletter. Basically live in someones house in exchange for taking care of it.

http://www.couchsurfing.org/ - Find reliable people willing to let you sleep on their couch for free. I always look here when needing a place to stay and don't want to pay for a hotel. Search in advance if you know your travel dates and length of stay.
How is leasing a car less stressful than owning? I own my car, and at least I can put it on Craigslist whenever I like. If I was leasing it, who knows what I'd have to go through to get rid of it. I guess you could actually _rent_ a car... for $70 a day.

And if I was renting all my furniture and appliances, God, I'd be broke right now from the payments. If I had enough money to rent everything, I'd just buy it and save the rest. Or buy better stuff. Or go on vacation. If I want to move and not take stuff with me, I'll sell it.
Exactly. And if you buy it on Craigslist, you can usually sell it again for almost no loss.
> The "threads are bad" cargo cult has often lead people to pursue "interesting" solutions to various concurrency problems in order to avoid using threads.

I know. Redis and Memcached are definitely cargo cult programs. ;-)

Seriously though, I'm not sure if I follow why it's a cargo cult. Evented programs, as the author knows, is a way to avoid I/O blocking. Sometimes it's not the right tool for the job, however I've been pretty happy learning the evented idioms. It helped me to more clearly think about client/server and web service communication.

Maybe zealot would be more appropriate to cargo cult member?
This is an interesting example of a deal between two different YC-funded startups. More and more of these are happening. It stands to reason that the rate would increase sharply because the number of potential connections grows as the square of the number of startups we've funded, but even so I've been surprised by it.
Getting a job...help?
I don't think your comment necessarily has to be viewed as belittling them...obviously a big part of getting into ycombinator (or any other credible incubator) for startups is the opportunity to get access and credibility (and getting into the program to begin with says something as well because it is competitive and the idea does happen to have the potential to be a homerun due to the so-called network effect, especially with some sort of groupon like approach to monetizing these activities). To those who say someone got it just because PG liked them, of course the charisma/leadership of a founder is a major factor in success, and the ability to forge strategic partnerships (friends of your business) is huge. Bootstrapping and owning the whole pie is great, but of course you have to have some knack for marketing your idea and figuring out creative PR because no one is going to find you hiding in your garage (ie to actually see your service and signup). Ycomb and techcrunch are two great 'shortcuts' so to speak but obviously aren't the only ones.

So in reference to your question about whether they could actually exist as companies rather than hobbies without Ycomb and techcrunch, I'd say 1) it's a good thing they have those avenues to take a shot at succeeding with their idea and 2) i'd love to hear from other users what they view as some of the other top blogs and incubators that can make or break a young startup at an early stage.

PS the first thing i thought when i read about this idea is that i'd love to find a local activity with my wife as we've just had our first child and need to drop some ice cream related pounds :)
Driving theory test- know few things before applying
If you are a learner driver you must take and pass your theory test before you book your practical test. If you already have a driving licence you might not have to take another theory test if you want to start driving a different vehicle.
I made pretty good experience with a VA from India (no agency), currently working with the same guy for over 1 year now.

Regarding success: If you picked a reliable person, I think one of the most important things is how well you describe a task (unambiguous, measurable results). And you should have done the task before by yourself, so that you can estimate the effort and the difficulties of the task.

Usually I describe the task to the VA in form of sequential steps like a use case. When I am not sure how much time it needs, I tell him to invest 1-2 hours and then get back to me so that I can see how far he got. By this approach, I avoid to waste time and money.

For the quality assurance, I always tell him to do first 2-3 examples of the task and then get back to me. Then I check it, and if everything is fine, he proceeds with the task. This also saves me from wasting time and money.

I found the VA through mturk. After I completed my tasks there, he mailed me and asked whether I got some more tasks.
In retrospecitve, I think this was a pretty good quality filter since only the really motivated guys write you an email and asking for more. Of course, this is not a scalabe approach but on a small level, it worked for me.

And I recommend building a working relationship and see him as partner, not as cheap assistant. This is something that you do rather indirectly, by how you communicate and express yourself in the emails, etc... From my experience, veing a nice person will have a big impact on the quality of the work. But that's actually valid in any field.
Article argued for using public transportation instead of an owned vehicle.

I think you missed the point of the article, which was you can focus more on your passion (work, family, hobbies, start up) if you don't bind yourself to ownership. If you own a house, sure, you have an appreciating (???) asset, but you also are responsible for fixing every little thing that goes wrong. The "extra" you pay in rent vs owning is for having a landlord to worry about investing time and your extra money to fix things.
I always find the statement 'I am yet to drop a call' from Americans very strange. What the hell is wrong with your mobile networks?
> I can't imagine getting a master's without reading a research paper. If that happens somewhere, I wouldn't think that their degrees are worth very much.

The University of Chicago awards ‘incidental’ master's degrees at the end of the first year of graduate study (http://catalogs.uchicago.edu/divisions/math.html). Although it's certainly possible to be reading current research at that point, I wasn't; and yet I think it's fair to say that U of C degrees are worth something.
I wasn't sure whether to feel happy that all kinds of great cross-platform hacks were well-documented, or sad that so many millions of hours have gone into dealing with them. :-/ I wonder again when I see things like this whether the browser's let-me-lay-that-out-for-you approach was the panacea it sure seemed like at the time.
I graduated from college (thankfully without debt) and started righted away. Developed product / failed for about a year, which left me just as broke as when I was in college - but I was used to that standard of living, so it wasn't a huge deal. A little more than a year from that, things are starting to look up, my quality of life is only improving.

The downside is my fellow students who went straight to jobs after college lead much cushier lives than I do and sometimes make me envious, but I expect that to change given a few more years.
I would suggest using OpenID, I've had much better experiences with that.
I don't think I could do without some kind of art on the walls. Bare walls make a house feel cold and sterile. That's not some place I would want to spend a lot of time.
QuestionHub 2.0 is Now Live
Okay... how does it reference that? I thought that site was about sandwiches or something. I'll take this as an example of mixing up race and economic class, I guess.
It's interesting that you say "behavior programming" because that is exactly how some would define marketing. This startup, in its current state, is basically just an outsourced marketing campaign for Cabot (that might be a bit reductive of the concept, but in terms of where the revenue is coming from, that's what this boils down to). It will be interesting to see if other companies sign on to the concept and adopt the same type of campaign. It will also be interesting to see how they deal with reinventing themselves when companies tire of issuing the "I Move You" challenge.
See, who said bolting on touch ability to a desktop OS wouldn't work!
Tips on Omniture SiteCatalyst Custome Link Reports
I think you are absolutely right...it will be extremely tough to gain instant traction without a previous network. However, as fast as the tech world moves, I think taking a bit of an old world approach can really pay off. Take a step back and think about forging real friendships and loyalties, and letting it happen slowly. You can build a lot of social capital by just doing favors for other people...but obviously try not to be Don Vito Corleone "Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me, and you won't refuse"

So, I want to encourage you to start building that network now that will become your 'previous exposure or network' by fostering genuine relationships with people you want to meet and even your current competition.
> The only thing that you can say is that this approach was one of the trickier ones to do it in a wrong way.

Or, rather, that someone (well qualified) thinks it was. I am very sceptical of a refutation based on the assumption that the proof founders on a beginner's mistake; it's not impossible, but, if Deolalikar is a beginner in the relevant field (I have no idea!), then it seems very likely that he would have consulted with someone who wasn't to avoid such trip-ups.

> Yet it does not "necessarily" means that this approach is actually a starting point.

I am a mathematician, not a computer scientist; but I think it's safe to say that any approach to a well known problem that is not (1) immediately dismissible (by experts) as crackpottery or (2) a laborious advance an inch down a familiar road of reasoning is likely to represent a promising starting point for something (future research in general, if not the answer to the specific question). If it is (3) described by experts as a novel and/or unexpected approach, as I think that this paper was, then that likelihood becomes a near-certainty.
Renting isn't the real goal here, only one of many possible solutions to being nailed down to one place.

For example, I own a duplex, and furnished the top unit rather nicely and lived in it for a few years. But I decided to move abroad for a while and rented it furnished and got a property manager to take care of the duplex.

The key is just to plan for not needing income. I knew that I'd reach the break even point on my duplex pretty quickly vis-a-vis rent and mortgage, so although I own property, it isn't really an anchor, instead an investment.

I agree with some of the other posters, seems like if you are frugal and buy off of CL you are probably going to do just as well. You can also rent entire houses or apartments furnished for less than the cost of renting stuff separately, so that's another option.

Keep your options open, that's the real goal.
A great teacher is able to vary their methods to reach all of their students.
Actually they did post an update already at the Federated Social Web summit and they showed some nice progress, they have almost full ostatus compatibility. There's a pdf of their presentation here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15865/diaspora_pres.pdf
For the cities with multiple airports (DC, NY, Chicago, etc.), just have once choice - "NY" as opposed to "NY - JFK" and "NY - LGA". Your target user seems to be someone who is more interested in getting from point A to point B by the cheapest means possible, as opposed to someone who's going to fly there - in which case they would think of their origin as (for example) New York, as opposed to La Guardia.

I would also add travel time in there - time is money, and it's not much good saying that it costs $70 in gas to drive somewhere if you don't also mention that it takes five days.

If you really want to get fancy, add an option for the full cost of the trip, for lack of a better word - meaning that the plane price includes travel to/from the airport (making reasonable assumptions about cost) and the car price includes accommodation as needed.
FEES AND SERVICES . Subject to Section 15 herein, the Service is provided without charge to You for up to 5 million pageviews per month per account, and if You have an active Adwords campaign in good standing, the Service is provided without charge to You without a pageview limitation.

I don't see the problem. If I had 5 million pageviews per month I guess I could afford to have an active AdWords campaign without much problems.