skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
He points out that minimalism isn't the "best" design, just a different style and a designer has to pick the most appropriate one. While I wouldn't call this an earth shattering new insight, it's still is a fair point.

But his examples are poorly chosen to underline his position. You can't point to designs that have come and gone and disprove that simplicity is an attribute of good design. He should have pointed to other contemporary styles that are clearly not as simplistic as possible but still "good" (for example the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao [1] or the Beijing National Stadium [2]).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_National_Stadium
Agreed that this is not a reliable number, they also say 2M businesses and not the detail of end users.

But what I meant to say is that they do have other sources of revenue outside of ads that are not negligible.
Large Language Models in Machine Translation (Google's way of doing it)
Thanks that is really nice to hear.

I have spent a long time writing some really big applications with javascript and still find it such a strange language, every time I think I have found "the style" I hit a reason why I shouldnt be doing it that way, luckily its really fun at the same time.
The Ivory Sweatshop: Academe Is No Longer a Convivial Refuge
The demographics of the typical programmer-blogger are not representative of the typical programmer. And writing a blog is not correlated in any way with talent or productivity.

Probably the vast majority of working programmers either don't write a blog, or don't blog about programming (but about their cats, kids, and steam-engine building hobby).
Really? That sounds fascinating - have you got any references I could follow up on? It's always felt like it should be true, but after acting as if it isn't for a while it didn't seem to hold to me.
No, they shouldn't choose more specific books, they should just friggin get to work. Startups are all about hard work, not about sipping coffee and reading.
Or more importantly, bring it to Outlook.

Please, please, please make email templates easy-to-write!
As well as being an outstanding developer platform, it's a really nice everyday phone;

IIRC, previous developer phones were not allowed to download/run paid Market applications, to reduce piracy. Is that also the case for this phone? If so, that might make it less desirable as an everyday phone.
You are also presenting ambience and attitude, which effect the user's perception of your site and business.
Even optimized memcmp leaks useful timing differences
The issue is with the encryption that BBs use, which prevents snooping on the traffic. Kicking anyone sending encrypted data off the network would be a good way to do that. As I understand it, the data is relayed through RIM's servers on the way to corporate networks as well, so blocking them would probably also factor in. The cellular networks also probably have some way to identify devices, though I'm not certain of this.

Failing that, arresting anyone who tries to get into the country with a blackberry would probably work pretty well.
I'm an engineer, but I design my own. I'm not a great designer, but most importantly, it's usable. I mainly stay away from too many fancy things, and stick with a general color palette, the right font, and most importantly, spacing and vertical rhythm.

I suggest you take a look at a book called design for non-designers by robin williams (not the actor).

And this post has really helped me.
http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/169/
The existence or nonexistence of outsourcing won't change the fact that people do not always make the optimal economic decisions. The fear of some economic agent making a suboptimal decision is a pretty poor reason to argue against anything, unless there's something intrinsic to the economic good in question that inspires suboptimal decisions (drugs, gambling).

In fact, when it comes to drugs, I bet the majority of people people on this website would support legalization of at least some drugs, and allow people to make their own bad decisions. But we're still poisoned with the notion that companies in market economies in general have to be prevented from making sub-optimal decisions. Why? Why do people still think this?
Yes, it is. The learning process is kind of painful because in the beginning you can only type at an excruciatingly slow speed, but with time you'll get better and faster and will start to see the benefits. Using other computers is not really a big problem, although I use my computer 99.9999% of the time. When I need to use another computer for an extended period of time I'll configure it to use dvorak. I had luck doing this even in internet cafes, but YMMV.

I have a similar use as you (programming/English/Portuguese) and I used to use deadkeys for accents. They are handy for Portuguse, but are a pain for programming (need to type things like ` and ' twice). Now I use a key modifier (alt+gr) for accents. It's a little bit more awkward to type accents (need to use 3 keys for an accented letter instead of 2) but usually I just leave the accents out in informal writing (emails) and most writing I do is in English anyway (papers, blog posts, etc), so I don't need to type accents that often.

I have the matrix keyboard that nuclear_eclipse mentioned and it's truly a good keyboard and the folks who make it are very nice. But I don't recommend it for programming because the alt, ctrl and meta keys are in an awkward place (to my taste). So I have one but end up not using it.

I agree that it'd be nice if the braces and brackets weren't in the number row, but it's so nice that all the other punctuation characters are very easy to reach. In fact, I think that dvorak is a great layout for programming.
The NYT should issue an apology for their recent bullshit net neutrality story
Wouldn't you just export the food from Africa where you probably can buy a banana with 10 pence.
Google Public Policy twitter account just tweeted that "@NYTimes is wrong. We've not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet."
Good article. I think it would be better if he used a counter-example or two, to make sure readers knew what he meant by "Business Books". For example, according to Amazon, "Getting Things Done" is a business book (two of the three categories it's in are subcategories of "Business"), but has specific actions that could help many startup founders.

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produc...
Yeah, that bothered me too, but I suppose it does feel very alien to have something so very abnormal growing from within.

I don't think people realize that cancer is just a very slightly modified you. Hitch factually knows this, I'm sure, but it's a damn hard thing to conceptualize.

I heard someone on reddit the other day say that at conception, you've selected yourself to exist, which I thought was equally as mind bending :P
Then why don't they make an official statement?
I believe the block was actually only on Market apps that had the copy-protect flag enabled.

Google has (as of last week with the release of the licensing service) changed their stance on the copy protection flag, advising developers to use the new licensing service instead and not set the copy protect flag at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion
Great pictures, but I have a technical gripe: while waiting (and waiting) for these to load, I took a look at the HTTP headers of one image: http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-1251...

Given that URL I thought I'd see some flickr-style years-in-the-future Expires and Cache-control headers. The article is dated July 26, but 1281011079 (assuming this is an 'epoch time') is today, August 5. It's almost like they went out of their way to defeat caches by tacking on that query string.
Do you know what networks it works with in other countries? I'm interested in getting one in the UK. Or is it just a matter of using a SIM that has 3G support etc.
It's an interesting question. Unfortunately it's not always up to us. I found out that I cannot control my ups and downs and that if I could (meaning, that I could have a steady rhythm of work every day) then I would accomplish a lot more. So I was looking for the solution on how to achieve more self control. I asked a friend of mine, who is a medical student and a very passionate person who loves what she's doing. She said something very simple, yet it somehow never occurred to me as clearly. She said that when she feels motivated she works 200% and that way she can afford the unpredictable "downs" without worrying too much.

Also, there's probably a correct observation that american culture may affect the judgement here. Entrepreneurial culture in US seems to cultivate this workaholic lifestyle, which I always envied. However I don't think that this culture is able to alter human psychology (and probably biology), and so some people who are naturally not inclined to have steady workaholic lifestyle and are trying to adopt it may, in fact, only suffer. For what it's worth, I am sure there are examples of both successful people who worked 7/356 and successful people who worked 200% one day and procrastinated the other day. There are even examples of successful people who worked less than it seems necessary. But I'd love to meet anyone who has ever worked 200% every day for at least a year non-stop and who became successful - that seems very unrealistic to me.
I hope they'll give some of it away while they're still alive, along with a significant effort in time and effort to ensure it's well applied. And with an open enough mind to identify and recognize the value in things outside of "mainstream business" (e.g. "pure" R&D as well as the public domain and public property (e.g. libraries, as an an old school example)) -- something I assume they mostly have or they would not have achieved such levels of success.

We need enabled intellectual prowess as much as outright cash.
Stanford School of Medicine is giving the iPad to all incoming medical students
I also thought this was interesting (re: Android)

"Remember we make the majority of our money on advertising and the powerful browser that is in Android when people search — they click on ads and that revenue goes to Google. And trust me that revenue is large enough to pay for all of Android activities and a whole bunch more."
PCMag is reporting Google's full denial of any such deal.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367436,00.asp

AFAIK, net neutrality has never pertained to prioritised mobile traffic. So such a deal would seem to be outside the discussion, but I would agree that it would certainly make G look hypocritical.
Sure, if you don't know Photoshop very well then you could code it faster. Except you will end up with sloppier code and a weaker design.

It is the equivalent of building a house without blueprints. You can do it, but if you take the time to plan things out before you break ground you will end up with a stronger product.

Now, if you already have a design style locked down and code you can just puzzle together then sure, go ahead and skip Photoshop. I do that as well. But, as soon as I need to design a new UI element I am back in Photoshop making dozens of variations.
I've heard many, many good things about Red Gate, and know people who work there.

There's one reason I reject them immediately as a potential employer: they're a Windows-only shop.
what are the keys? it didn't seem to work with the arrows???
The trouble with being a machine is that you're not a machine. It can be a good short-term strategy, but if you do it for too long your system will start to rebel.
I had a great time at the last meetup. I came to listen to what other people were working on and ended up getting a ton of great feedback on my own startup. If you're in the DC area and want to talk with a great group of smart people, this meetup is for you.
Maybe it comes from growing up in London, but I will /not/ trust someone I don't know with goods that are worth a great deal of time and money to me.

I'm wondering if having been previously conned (thankfully many years ago now - the embarrassment has faded) has something to do with it. I fell for the man in dining suit asking to borrow money for his meal in a restaurant. I also fell for the girl in tears outside my front door, complete with baby in pushchair. And then, nearly every day in summer months, standing outside the pub, there's /another/ guy or girl who's lost their train fare home. There are more of them out there than you might think.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tough-choic...
Another option is to read The Success Manual - which contains summaries from 100+ best business and self help books. http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com
I probably wouldn't if I were you. I switched to dvorak in college. My wrists started hurting while finishing a major project. I immediately bought an ergonomic keyboard and switched to dvorak. My typing speed was drastically reduced. Some combination of layout, ergonomics and reduced speed fixed me. The science behind the superiority of dvorak is sketchy at best. Now nobody can use my machine. I struggle on others' machines and servers. Ctrl+c,v,x aren't in the right places, so copy/paste is awkward. Key bindings for many programs make less sense. It's also harder to interview for jobs where they want you to type. With dvorak, either your keyboard is mislabeled, or you don't get an ergonomic keyboard, or you use stickers that get gross and oily.

I would learn qwerty if I were you and only switch if you have pain that other, easier fixes don't help.
cant wait!
You would need to ask your provider about frequency compatibility.

If your provider supports the UMTS bands listed below, you're good to go. Most likely, your UK provider does not, so you would only be able to utilize EDGE.

The SIM normally doesnt have anything to do with whether you get 3G or not.

Phone specs for reference:
*
UMTS Bands (900/AWS/2100 MHz)
HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
HSUPA 2 Mbps
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
*

I hope this helps.
I see where you guys are going with this, and that's a fine place to be, if you're comfortable there. But blogging and putting code up on GitHub IS directly correlated with letting people know who the heck you are, and not just sitting behind the corporate firewall, being a good little human-resource, hoping that your dedication gets noticed and yields good marks on your personnel file, so that you will continue to be employed, and be able to afford a new model steam engine.

If you don't blog or use GitHub, or do something similar, then when that mid-life layoff happens, you'll may be at the mercy of recruiters and whatnot, to spice up your resume try to sell you.
Thanks for this. Just learned about css_browser_selector. This will be super handy for me.

http://rafael.adm.br/css_browser_selector/
I have designed all of my websites, but I'm not trying to make money on any of them. I have been happy with the way some of them have ended up, disappointed with others.

I currently rely heavily on CSS for the layout of my websites, but truth be told, I'm only doing it as a learning exercise. I also actually enjoy figuring out how to get my websites to look identical in as many browsers as possible.
I totally agree. I actually worked on a closed government system back in the day. The plain fact is that they moved to Web apps a long time ago. Most of the web apps are geared towards IE6 and the messed up style guide. This means that even if they try to upgrade some of their military operations will not be working correctly and there for need a style upgrade... I know of just three projects like this. Building for IE6 when IE8 was out was horrendous. So I imagine there are a ton more projects just like it.
> ...a broken SSL implementation is still a broken SSL implementation, even if it's protecting content that doesn't seem to need protecting.

That depends on what is required of the SSL implementation. A self-signed cert which the client cannot verify still provides some protection. It is MITM-able, but casual snooping is prevented. If this is the specification, then this implementation is not broken.

Put it this way. Forget the specifics of SSL for a moment. If unencrypted data is acceptable, then in what way is having the option of weak-but-slightly-better encryption suddenly "broken"?

This analysis is flawed because it assumes that strong security was required by all who use SSL at all. Many installations use a self-signed SSL cert by default. These default configurations often remain when security is not required and therefore not configured further. I suspect that this skews the figures far enough to make this sort of analysis meaningless.
The version I found for Android is called ThrottleCopter, if anyone else wants to destroy their productivity. It appears to be a fairly faithful port of the common flash version I've seen (blue helicopter, green cave), although with better hit detection. My best so far is 23470.
I feel stupid sometimes for not understanding (mostly men's) love of alcohol.

I mean it must be the alcohol right, because otherwise non-alcoholic beer would be just as popular?

But not to take away from the project which was impressive from a analog to digital stance - I would have liked to see more of how they wrote custom code for a locked device? Did they jailbreak it?
When all else fails, find a Wordpress theme and adapt it for your site's purposes.
You are probably correct that the other revenue sources are not negligible. I do wonder however how Google would fare if their ad revenue took a major hit. I don't think their other offerings could sustain the current juggernaut that they have become. I suppose given their cash reserves they could figure something else out. It certainly seems though that most of their new products are just more ways to push advertisements and of not that much utility in the first place.
I don't think salt and laptop thieves are necessarily the same people. I might eat someone's ice cream in a shared kitchen, but I'd never steal a laptop.
Pulse is not in top of Wave and really is a separated product that doesn't depend on Wave at all. And in fact is what a lot of people are asking: Wave behind your firewall.

(Disclaimer: I'm a Novell employee but I don't speak for them).
I'm using my Nexus One on AT&T with 3G. Is it somehow a different model?
Warding Off Espionage with Network Forensics
Very nice! I played around with something similar. http://www.tweetspeedreader.com A technical explanation is on my blog post: http://www.carlosjustiniano.com/experiments-in-natural-langu...
Some studies have found willpower to be a limited resource. It is often likened to a muscle, because using it depletes its power in the immediate-term, but regular exercise increases its strength in the long-term. Wikipedia article on this phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion

The Wikipedia article is quite dry, however, and I suggest this readable NYTimes article instead: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02aamodt.html

Or this one: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/how-to-boost-your-w...

That second NYTimes link mentions that the mechanism of willpower depletion might be glucose depletion. Drinking a sugary drink restores willpower. (This effect has also been shown to be true of the self-control of dogs: http://www.miller-mccune.com/health/dogs-offer-clues-to-self...)

Regulating your emotions also depletes willpower (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/mu-rda092409.... but it doesn't go into detail on the regulating emotions part). I have observed that tolerating irritating people harms my productivity.

I warn that at least one study has failed to replicate the willpower depletion result: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1fe/antiakrasia_technique_structured...
Please, don't editorialize in the headlines.
I would say that it is scarier - with a self signed cert you have someone claiming an identity without providing any independent confirmation, while providing an encrypted channel for that communication so that it "seems" safe.
KeyTweet's blog is on Posterous which had a DoS attack.
I'm not making an argument about publishers and accessibility of textbooks. I'm just stating a fact that was overlooked in the article.
Shape-shifting robots (w/ Video)
It's not ergonomic, which undoes the rsi advantages of dvorak. It's a weird physical layout, which undoes the "it's standard" advantage of a qwerty switch. It won't save your wrists and it won't let normal people type on it without effort. What's the point? Oh, games.
...The fact that you've asked means the people sat around you will have heard, so if someone did then try and steal it... someone else will almost certainly stop them from doing it.

Psychologists disagree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

For the extremely sad story for why this is nicknamed Genovese syndrome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
I'm having the same problem. When I just tap the enter key, the copter shoots up into the ceiling. Way too quick to control.
Why A/B Testing isn't just about Small Changes
Ask HN: How to Disrupt?
Thoughts, ideas and suggestions?

We have great articles on "How to become a hacker":ESR and "How to start a start-up":PG. I though it would be interesting and useful to explore "How to Disrupt?"

Disruptive ideas should be push enough to make then your new need. Now days we use google, for almost everything online search, bookmarking, history, cache, research... essentially google disrupted market so much that it has become a daily need(if you are online).
I think it's a little disconcerting that you basically have to keep the button held down as you start or you crash.
Interesting, but it definitely needs more study. Doing stuff in a petrie dish isn't necessarily meaningful to the real world. I'd like to know whether people with high fructose diets have more cancer.
Once upon a time I used some vim plugin--and that one sounds familiar--to allow me to compile from within vim and then jump to that paragraph in the dvi viewer. I think I could also click a paragraph in the dvi viewer and jump to that text in vim.
Been there, done that. You're still going to lose a big chunk of a day.
Take something that is capital intensive and make it free.
Still no info on how much the shipping will cost outside the US as usual.
FWIW I think people over design their websites sometimes. Too many shitty looking websites do too well for me to worry about every little detail on my page.
Thanks for the link to the great article. This sentence in particular caught my attention:

“[The phrase] 'It follows easily that...' does not mean if you can’t see this at once, you’re a dope, neither does it mean this shouldn’t take more than two minutes, but a person who doesn’t know the lingo might interpret the phrase in the wrong way, and feel frustrated."

I encounter this phrase frequently and it always leaves me feeling like a dope. :)
They've made it more flexible since this April now if you don't have a masters you can still get a tier-1 but you have to have higher earnings.
Put a speaker and battery in the USB device itself. If it loses power, it can still warble. You might need to make it bigger if you want a sufficiently loud sound though (I don't know much about the physics of noise-making).
Along those lines, I had a site called Squeezed Books that does free summaries: http://www.squeezedbooks.com - I sold it though, and it remains to be seen how it'll end up.
Blueprint CSS is really good. I have saved to much time using a CSS framework rather than coding all the CSS myself.
MongoDB 1.6 stable released
Uh, you already asked that:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1578019