skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well first off, CSS and design are related by they are not the same thing. You could be the best CSS guru out there, and still not know how to design.

Don't believe what 37 Signals say, if you skip the Photoshop step in the design process then you will end up with crappy looking designs, and most likely, badly functioning ones as well.

If you do hire a designer you should know that there are really two different classes of design when it comes to the web.

First off, there is the normal web designer guys. If you are looking for quality 99 Designs is not the place to go, but it is where a lot of people end up anyways. Go there is you want them to just rip somebody else's design off or use a cookie-cutter template with a few modifications because that is all you are paying them to do and they do not care much for quality. It is a volume business.

A great website designer will run you around $50-75 per hour. D don't expect to get a great website for less than $5,000 if it is a small one and $15,000 if it is medium sized. Good design takes a lot of time and iteration.

The second class of designers are interface designers. While web designers care about the marketing of a product, interface designers care about the functionality of the product and how to make it easy to use. Just because you are good at one doesn't mean you will be good at the other.

Interface designers are rare and go for $100+ an hour if they are really good. The most I have charged for a job doing interface design is $225, but it averages at around $100.
Kensington Microsaver Security Cable (http://amzn.to/bkV7Jd). Coils neatly for easy backpack storage. I work almost every day out of coffeeshops and lock it to a chair and will walk away for sometimes an hour at a time with absolutely no trouble. Someone will either have to spend 10+ minutes sawing through it or try to steal a chair, which most people will notice.
i either get someone to watch my stuff, or i take it with me. as it was already mentioned, it isn't about $, its about the hassle of losing documents and time.

if someone wants to steal my laptop, they're going to do it. if someone is tech savvy enough, they probably won't get caught.
Eric Schmidt on the Verizon Deal (et al)
They should at least install Chrome Plugin.
+ 1 Ressourcefullness is more a "yes maybe it's possible", "let's try this" "why not". Discipline is more saying "no" or "you have to" to certain things.
You're totally right. It's typically much better for developers to go the minimalist route. I just like keeping all design options open. :-)
Fair question. I just checked what exactly the warning message says in IE, and it's actually a pretty fair warning message. Firefox, on the other hand, has a pretty scary "This connection is untrusted" page with a pretty confusing explanation of the alleged problem. I don't know if this still happens, but I remember a couple years ago, it was impossible to get IE or Firefox to actually save the cert or remember your preference to bypass the warning, so you would get the warning each time you had a new browser session and tried to connect to the server, no matter what.

The fact is, my real-life identity was never verified as the owner of the domain by a "trusted" third party. However, the encryption key comes from the same server serving the content, so what, really, is not to be trusted? I.e. the cert applies to "domain.com" and is being used on "domain.com". There is no risk of MITM attack, only that "domain.com" is not what you think it is.
We have been talking to Verizon for a long time about trying to get an agreement on the definition of what net neutrality is. We’re trying to find solutions that bridge between the hardcore net neutrality view and the telecom view. I want to be clear what we mean by net neutrality. What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don’t discriminate against one person’s video in favor of another. But it’s OK to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video, and there is general agreement with Verizon and Google on that issue. The issues of wireless vs. wireline get very messy because of the issue of Type I vs Type II regulation and that is an FCC issue not a Google issue.
I liked the general sentiment of the article, but this jumped out at me: "There’s not some finite amount of self-control to get through each day..." as I thought recent research had proven the opposite (your daily supply of willpower appears to be finite). Have I misunderstood that?
In India, freight charges are used to subsidise passenger traffic
What is the best time & day to "Ask HN" something
No one checks for facts anymore:

"Google and Verizon's agreement could prevent Verizon from offering some prioritization to the biggest bidders who want better delivery of content on its DSL and fiber networks, according to the sources. But that wouldn’t apply to mobile phones."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/08/google_and...
To be clear, I thought there must be plenty of fire in the agreement regardless.

No ISP need run afoul of net neutrality to offer pay-to-play accelerated peering or CDN services. So any talk of traffic-shaping to offer premiere services to content providers sends up a giant red flag.

Further, wired consumer connections are going to be largely irrelevant in the near future. Once 4G has acceptable coverage in the US, landline consumer broadband is going to follow landline consumer phone service. So even if Verizon were actually forbidden from "managing" those, it's hardly a victory.
Absolutely. Wave looked like the perfect way for businesses to run project collaboration, but I can't use it at all until its inside our firewall and we control the data.

Sure we could spend time and effort to re-create the wheel, but if Google wants to monetize it, they will do the work for us and provide us with a product we can purchase.
The reason why I get too uncomfortable around this kinda stuff is that they seem to treat human-beings like machines.. These entities seem to say, we know what you do, what you like, when you're hungry, what you're supposed to do... etc. We're gonna get you so bombarded with stuff that you lose whatever little consciousness you have and start spending wherever we ask you to..

From movie Network (1976):
"I'm a human being, goddamn it. My life has value."
I agree. That's why we should keep it out of the law, since it's an unrealizable ideal, and just try to approximate it as much as we can. Egalitarianism is nice, but I don't think it's a moral imperative.
Call to action should be more obvious--maybe a big red Try It button below the copy. I finished reading and had to look around for how to actually try it out.
WarGames, Sneakers, The Matrix, Tron, Disclosure.
مشاهدة مباراة الزمالك وحرس الحدود بث مباشر
Users can differentiate between "amazon.com" and "amazone.com" via the browser's location bar. There's nothing stopping the owner of "amazone.com" from getting an SSL cert signed by a "trusted authority", so SSL does not help in this respect. My opinion is that conflating identity with encryption is a fundamental problem.
I've been switching between Simplenote, Notes Plus, and Penultimate. I like the sketching features of Notes Plus and Penultimate.

I haven't tried Evernote yet - I'll try it today.
I like it. It worked well for me and solved a problem I had last night. It might be that I don't know how to use twitter well. I have too many people I follow and there's too much activity now. I just want to quickly scan to see what's 'new and interesting' from the people I follow. It seems like this does that.

Request: Would it also make sense so that I can see the last tweet from everyone on my list or does something like that already exist? It's not really 'key tweet' at that point though.

ps. I don't mind and appreciate the simplicity of the design. I didn't read the copy though.
I have a large, quite unique and difficult to remove sticker on its back. I don't need to be the most secure, only more secure than other people around me.

Oh and I don't leave my laptop unattended for more than a few seconds at a time. That helps too.
I'm on Firefox 3.6.8/Win, and I have the same problem. It's more a problem with the browser itself (FF4 with retained layers should have no problems I guess).

This also happens when you abuse with shadows (text or boxes/divs).

edit: @joshuacc, since I can't reply directly to your comment: It probably depends on the machine resources. I'm on a 5y old notebook.
It also is not really to read, especially the quote which probably uses a #666666. I only really skimmed the quote so missed a great part of what was quoted.
I use PixelMator to draw the website, then send the PSD and fonts to p2h.com's slicing service, which was reocmmended to me on HN. They work until I'm happy. Turnaround is fast, prices are decent.
Ask HN: a Shopify app for YC hot startups appareil?
I was just talking on #startups on how HN karma points could be spent on stuff like mugs, t-shirts and other similar stuff, with YC startups branding and thought about the idea of a Shopify store for that, in which karma points could be spent for discounts and part of the revenues would revert to the startups (a % of a brands sales) to help the blokes.

What's your opinion? And where could i find information about the required logistics part (getting the items and branding them) ?
That is not outsourcing in any sense of the word. It is an Indian film company entering into a joint venture with a hollywood major.
I suggest pitching it towards people who'll be prepared to pay money for this: PR, and marketing folk who want to keep a tab on a lot of twitter feeds for example.
OK, in economic terms, I don't think outsourcing as often practiced in services and high tech adequately accounts for externalities. If someone is incentivized - through say a bonus system - to prioritize the short term over the long term then that is what they will do. If this means closing a call centre in the West and opening one overseas, then that might make perfect sense right now. Will it make so much sense when customers go elsewhere? That is what I mean when I say that a race to the bottom ultimately destroys rather than creates wealth. Some of your customers will go elsewhere. Some will simply stop using that product or service altogether.

There are already signs this is happening; Nat West (a UK high street bank) are now advertising "only UK call centres". Now, it doesn't matter one little bit that their cheque processing is done in India, that is, to borrow a bit of programming jargon, referentially transparent. That is just one example.

So what I am afraid of? I am afraid of being personally inconvenienced by the interests of the organizations I transact with being further misaligned with my own. In other words, it's a tragedy of the commons scenario. So I know it will fail. I just don't see why we have to go through the pain first when there's no need.
There's a reason why modernism is modern and the rest are mostly historical. A lot of historical approaches to aesthetics are overly flowery and complex by today's standards. This is because in the historical context the fact that any of this was possible was remarkable and something to be emphasized. Today most people don't think it's that remarkable that you can cram a bunch of flowery crap into something, or make it super-intricate and fragile and still transport it. Those are solved problems.

With that said, however, I love Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and a bunch of less minimalist (compared to Bauhaus) modern styles. But they are minimalist compared to those historical styles. In some ways they are partly a streamlining of the more interesting parts of some of more historical styles. They aren't "minimalist" in the technical sense of that term, but I'm not sure that e.g. Apple's products are minimalist in that sense either.

It's hard for me to come up with examples of things that are really totally non-minimalist, like Baroque, that I'd like to see in e.g. software or computer hardware... Maybe some of the spinoffs of Russian constructivism. Some of them aren't really minimalist at all, and many are awesome.

EDIT: Here are some examples of non-Bauhaus-style web design that are still modern. Might be better than looking at historical architecture.

http://www.pho-ku.com/ -- The Designers Republic (Russian constructivism inspired)

http://joshuaink2006.johnoxton.co.uk/ -- web designer's blog I've always found pretty :)

http://www.happycog.com/create/ -- there's a good variety here, most of which could be construed as minimalist, but none of which seems Bauhaus-y.
Well, anyone can supply a key - the problem is that the client could be talking to anyone.
I tried and realized quickly that its not just about knowing css, javascript and html and all; you have to have the designer touch. So I quit web site design and hired a kick ass designer to do it for me.
Ask HN: Bicycle hacks?
I'm a software engineer, but also a committed recreational cyclist. I'm sure there are others out there like me, and I'm wondering what kind of cycling related hacks members of the community have performed. Whether it's to increase performance, augment carrying capacity, find better (ie, safer, less-trafficked) routes to your destination, a total redesign of the bicycle as we know it, or just a cool modification, what have you seen or done?
RE: low hanging fruit.
It's assumed that you have already done that. Just one more piece of the puzzle. As the test suggests.. it would be good to code in a way that's less bloated, however it's not always going to make a huge difference.

re: zero-impact if cached: I assume you mean visitors that have already downloaded your css from a previous visit? That's been shown to be inaccurate. I also would assume that you have css with far future expires and is zipped, (possibly URI'zed), and on a fast CDN. (not all CDN's are fast).
Yet there is no such thing as zero impact. The css still has to be painted on the page and even when cached. If your CSS is 500kb, that could take a long time for a browser to parse CSS.

re: non-semantic class names.. it's a test.. nuf said

re: your ideal site: There't lots I could say here.. besides the fact that IE is still to simpleton to understand most selectors I assume you are speaking of. Also, if you are talking about decendent selectors like I am thinking.. check the Link to Steve Souder's site.. they talk on that. (hint: they're faster)

again, this is assuming you have done all of the other things.. and then some. There is much more you can do before optimizing your css.. but some are at that point. Just because it doesn't apply to you, doesn't mean it isn't an issue to others.. Nor does it mean we should assume there is no issue, without testing and measuring (in order to make sure.)
+1 for versioning. Without it you are pretty much locked in to what you have now, unless you're willing to flip the switch and break all existing clients.
I got something similar, too. (Then I tried again and got something slightly over 800m. The tunnel is getting smaller.)

If you like the concept, you should also have a look at Canabalt (http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/).
> [...] Depends on what is meant by "necessary". Baroque art achieves a particular effect by virtue of its ornamentation. [...]

Except the fact that you're presenting information (being it a webapp, or just a restaurant site).
OTOH, Firefox - and other browsers - make a self-signed or expired SSL certificate look extremely scary, while a totally unencrypted connection is fine. I understand the reason, but it´s still odd...
You're lucky. I've had salt and dish-washing liquid stolen from a shared kitchen in a college dorm.
I see no screen shots, just promise of magic. You need to put forward something that will give the potential user something to go with before signing up onto your system.
getting the items and branding them? not difficult, really.

if i'm reading this right, though, you're basically trying to assign a real-life value to karma points, and that will kill this (or any) community.
I agree with most of your points, except that you can't skip photoshop.

Depending on your skill levels in various tools, it might be way better to simply start into html + css. I know a couple designer/developers who can go from an idea to visuals dramatically faster in code than they could using photoshop (myself included). Additionally, you get the advantage of being able to style simply effects in right away (ie, hover states, focus states, etc) instead of having to create extra layers or version of a PS file.
Teddy Atlas to heavyweight contender Mchael Moorer, on his motivation problems:

"Don't you understand anything about commitment, about being a pro, about sticking with what you say you wanna be? You don't do it just when you feel good. You don't do it just when you're not tired. You don't do it just when it's sunny. You do it every day of your life. You do it when it hurts to do it, when it's the last thing in the world that you wanna do, when there are a million reasons not to do it. You do it because you're a professional."
discounts, perhaps to a certain value, but it's not required :)
Simplicity, or what I prefer to call "cleanness", is an enduring type of design - it is not a single style like "modernist", unless you consider Shakers and many even older vernacular styles modern. In web sites designed to inform rather than entertain, simplicity is a must, and even then they are still not very good at informing. Anything that gets in the way of that is bad. Buildings are functional, but the problem with the post's comparison is that all the gingerbread and painting on a building is orthogonal to the function of a building, where on a web site any added ornamentation directly affects its usability.
i have not done it, but just seeing this as a product makes me want to try and replicate it:

http://www.nightbrighttyre.com/about/
Thanks for letting me know that it happens on your machine as well.

I've switched the background image to scroll until I can do proper testing, though I haven't been able to reproduce it yet.
So, with all the money we gave to the banks, we could do all that like ten times!
It's certainly true that Legal Grounds Cafes (a chain of coffee shops which is often situated near courthouses) might suffer. But on the other hand, a consumer of legal services has more money to spend on restaurant meals.

Over the past 20-30 years, we have outsourced a huge amount of labor to other countries, and we outsourced even more of it to machines. And yet, we are more prosperous, have more consumer goods, and we generally eat out more often. Why is that?

(Incidentally, I generally find that the truck food is superior to restaurant food in Jersey City. I love thetacotruck and the H1B cart isn't bad either. Au Bon Pain, meh.)
Ask PG: Startup School - any news?
Just wondering if there is any update re: this years Startup School - have attended the last two events and keen to again attend (from the UK) :)
I remember playing a game like this back in 2001 on my Palm. I think it was called SFCave. Very addictive.
I think you're missing that some of those small steps weren't obvious at the time everyone was writing software that the government leans heavily on that only works on IE6, the people that developed it are probably long gone by now and rewriting everything is hardly justifiable.

Large banks are having a hard enough time ditching it and they have a clear motivation to do so to aid competitive edges.
I carry a light cloth two-strap bag inside my backpack. It can be worn just like a backpack, but it crunches into about the size of a tennis ball when not being used. It's very quick to stick the laptop in the bag without fussing with any of my other stuff. Putting the laptop in the backpack is a more involved process - have to wait for it to sleep, talk to the person who points out to me that I forgot my cord (I didn't), negotiate with the person who comes and takes my seat that I was still using, etc., etc.
Google Denies Priority Internet Access Deal With Verizon
Thanks for the feedback. I've darkened the text a bit based on your suggestion. Let me know if you're stilling having trouble.
Then I wish you luck, but urge you not to be too desperate, it's all too easy to jump from the frying pan into the fire in situations like this.
didn't run at all for me, 404........
well, it really depends on what kind of product you're building. answering with customer stories would have been stronger.

kick-ass presentation nonetheless.
I want to second the point about not skipping the photoshop/fireworks/illustrator/etc. step like 37 signals does. The reason they are able to do it is that they have already established a fixed set of agreed upon design patterns that appear in their apps.

If you skip directly to css and html, it's very difficult to think like a designer because you feel all the constraints of css and html. You'll think things like "oh, yes, I'll put a 5px border here and make it have 5px margin from the element above because it's easy" instead of "wow, this block would be interesting if it overlaid the top block".

In photoshop, it's easy to experiment visually by moving around blocks. In CSS and HTML, it's a pain. (Although, tools like firebug and web inspector have made certain things easier, not all of it is).
Next Hacker News DC Meetup on Monday (Aug 9th)
Facebook Gains an Android Facelift
so I got the following keywords: "comments, prop, wave, link, google, democrats, photoshop" - Today is a poor day for this or I am really having a hard time with how I would use this. I do think it's a great idea, I just think the topic algorithm needs to look at multiple words and ignore some others.
Enterprise extensibility and inter-operativity or inter-dependency is extremely complex to get right.

Multiple standards exist for just about anything, and most implementations of something are broken in one way or another. I've seen obvious and subtle breakage in things that ought to be simple:
* timestamps (not unambigious, not including timezone data)
* mac addresses (within SNMP, in a variety of formats in different places on the same kit)
* integration with LDAP (group membership only looking at primary membership)
* etc.

We live in hope. Postel's Law applies.
They'll force MS to give them another 5 years.
OP here - this is a fair point but I think the comparison stands; in the post I defined discipline as taking the easy way out (in this case avoidance and/or giving up) off the table and forcing yourself to keep looking for other ways to make progress. It struck me that this was another definition of 'relentlessly resourceful' - not giving up just because you've reached a wall, but instead continuing to look for other ways you can keep moving forwards. No?
> Realistically, the Taliban is only a threat to you and me if the US state apparatus allows it to be

So wait, let me get this correct. Your world-view is that a decade of NATO actions in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, capture/kill Al-Qaeda and emplace a system of stable national governance, improved civilian security and improved economic conditions (regardless of how bungled or successful that process has been) is not the process of Western state apparatuses attempting to take groups like the Taliban off the threat list through proactive policies?

You have just gone on my list of people who suffer from an insatiable thirst for Hollywood conspiracy theories. Enjoy the time-cube. http://www.timecube.com/ You'll feel right at home.
>>>Web applications aren't like Melk Abbey, Queluz Palace, or the Grand Palais. They aren't meant to be beheld.

So is architecture, in a way. Living in a house is close to using it. It's almost interaction design. (Arguably, it's more true of houses than of monuments.)