skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Map/Reduce in Bash
he said that technology diverts, he made the pocket exception.

So according to him the iPad isn't a convergence but a divergence.
Don't attack someone's reputation without basis. Tyler Cowen's an economist with if anything an excessively libertarian bias. If you have evidence he's been paid off by someone hoping a New York Times column arguing for more paid parking and less government-mandated free parking requirements for private business will generate public support for a parking tax scheme that wasn't even mentioned in the column to begin with, present it. (You'll need a lot of evidence, because it's a pretty ridiculous claim.)
Yes, that's the main one I was thinking of, thanks. The seam one also I had in mind.
I still don't get how this lawsuit is supposed to bring down software patents. Dilger states:

"It might also result in a concerted effort by Google to join Oracle and other tech giants to decommission the nuclear threat of software patent proliferation in the future."

The problem is that Oracle will change their tune and be pro-software-patents if they have Google on the ropes. I doubt they'll be loyal to the cause. They will just say "Yeah, we were wrong about that."
Can you please cancel the H button? I don't see how it's necessary.
The gem of the article was the articulation of "an object's type is the union of its class and properties". That's how it is, I just hadn't seen it in writing before. It also strikes a chord with what I felt bad about in his examples: nothing really helps if your game has 150 monster classes.

You could attack from the outside by putting the method in Elf class and overloading by the parameters:

public boolean doesElfLikeIt ( Elf mon ) { ... }
public boolean doesElfLikeIt ( Orc mon ) { ... }
public boolean doesElfLikeIt ( Monster mon ) { ... } // default

if your language can do that. Otherwise you'll have to do it manually, i.e. threatening little children with switch statements. But classes are amorphic, it's like trying to reshape glass that's once burned. Having a single Monster class and codifying its type mostly in its properties (which themselves may be instances of other classes) seems like a much better way.
Bluetooth Dongle Hack
People love the idea of being first into a market, because it offers the illusion that you won't have any competition. In the real world, by the time there's a significant market for your product you'll have plenty of competitors, all of whom had the luxury of learning from your mistakes.

The best markets are the ones that have been around long enough to establish a demand, but not long enough that anyone has released a definitive product yet. Think mp3 players before the iPod or search engines prior to Google.
But the definition of good UI is arbitrary.

The folks who designed those old amber IBM terminals (that I still use at work) would have argued that:

- Black background is easy on the eyes.

- The flashing cursor draws your focus.

- The amazing bold font technology breaks up the page very nicely.

So it would appear that "good design" is just a function of the technology available.
Since parking spaces are mandated by the government already, it isn't even an economic choice yet. Once it becomes an economic choice, stores will have to work out the cost-effectiveness of each marginal square foot of parking lot instead of taking a given quantity of free parking space as a given.
Yes it is, I'm just not sure that that is the point the article is trying to make or if it does so by accident.
Several possible reasons:

- Touva was probably not Feynman's main goal, but trying to get there is by itself an adventure with Ralph, his friend.

- He had cancer for almost 10 years. This must have had a tremendous impact on his health.

- It was the mid-80s, you couldn't just Google about Touva and find out about it.

- The cold-war was still going on. And probably USSR was still very much a black-box.

- He worked on several government projects (imagine what security clearance he was when he worked on investigating the Challenger explosion), so going to the a country within the USSR was probably a real challenge.

Granted he could pull some strings in the government to get a piece of invitation paper, but that's not the point. Plus after reading about Feynman, he's not the type of people to do something like that just to go to another mysterious country. He'd find creative ways to do his goal and enjoy the the process as things unfolded. If you feel disappointed about Feynman coudln't fulfill his goal of reaching Touva, then you have miss the point about the whole story. Nonetheless, he did get an invitation to go to Touva a few days after he passed away. So he did succeed after all.

And no, there's nothing specific about "entrepreneurial thoughts" in the video, so you have had a wrong expectation to begin with.
Post is just reddit material without links to source codes.
But that would still be a terrible assertion since many other companies are generating a lot of revenue in the space. You might more properly be able to say that they have a monopoly on profits in the space, but that would be an ill-formed claim because "profits in a sector" are not a valid parameter for monopoly, except in the colloquial sense.
Good design is about form following function, and is very dependent on the technology available, you're right.

It's not arbitrary however.

Here are some essentially inviolate principles of good design:
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gest...
I have friends and family around the world, but somehow that makes me even more opposed to this quick-trip view of travel. I have a life and family in the United States, and a life and family in Greece, and I tend to not like mixing them a lot. Visiting Greece for a weekend feels hugely disrespectful to me--- I tend to visit for a week at the minimum, preferably 2+ weeks. It's a context switch, and I find that short trips fail to fully implement the switch, instead treating it as just another location, like any other location, rather than getting into the local language, mood, culture, etc. Even just linguistically, it takes me at least a week to get comfortable using Greek as an everyday language again. You really need some time to properly switch contexts and treat it as somewhere genuinely different, imo.

That, and the jet-setting lifestyle would alienate me from friends and family: if I were the type of person who flew in to Greece for a 3-day weekend, I would no longer be one of them.
What to do when most attendees on a conference are vendors?
doesn't work. It fails for almost anyone that tried it. The only solution I can think (and trying now) is to pay someone to do it for you ;)
Agree with pwim that 150 subclasses is way too many. OO Principal Favor Composition over Inheritance easily kicks in here. But even with fewer subclasses we still have to define the likes/dislikes of N monsters with N-1 other monsters. Further, every time a new monster is added, N monsters like/dislike logic has to be updated.

Maybe we are looking at the system/problem from the wrong perspective?

Maybe the likes/dislikes between monsters isn't actually so arbitrary. Perhaps, it is the characteristics of one monster that other monsters don't like or do like. If this is the case (which makes sense as in the real world we judge other things based on characteristics and behavior), then the like/dislike behavior can be encapsulated.

Further, using something like Strategy pattern, you can come up with a set of algorithms that define the likes/dislikes between monsters. That way you can compose that specific behavior of a monster at run-time further reducing your class count.
Dude, that application video is awesome! Thanks for linking it.
Cleese talks about how multitasking is destructive to the
creative process (at time code 6m:30s):

"But if you're racing around all day, ticking things off
on lists, looking at your watch, making phone calls,
and generally just keeping all the balls in the air,
you are not going to have any creative ideas."

I find it hilariously ironic that immediately after he
says this, the camera cuts over to two guys in the audience
clicking away on their laptops while ostensibly listening
to Cleese's talk.
mmm wow, there's an entire micro industry focused around teenage virtual worlds. Big hit in valuations that relied on SL as a comparable?
I'd also argue that an uncontroversial definition for 'good design' would be design that functions best for the majority of users.

That somewhat explains the trends you see in design, because when we employ a convergent design standard, it's more readily accessible in a single visit than a design that breaks away from current conventions.

It's also empirically the case that the convergent design standards represent the 'fittest'.

And I would argue that evolutionary speaking they represent 'good design' (that's my definition anyway).
Via http://www.cognitivefun.net
what kind of consulting work did you do?
The ULTIMATELY Secure Firewall (Adaptive Packet Destructive Filter)
There's fashion in everything from fashion, through web design to science. I think the clean, sans-serify, widely spaced design grew to prominence in part as a reaction to busy, link-heavy corporate/portal sites and for a time it looked friendly, clean and simple. Now it's so common it manages to also look generic and corporate. The visual design has also become a bit a bit of a habit, at the expense of usability. It doesn't always work.

Compare loopt to, say, Flightcaster. Loopt is clean, good-looking and entirely uninformative. What does Loopt do? Why should you be eager to 'partner with' them? Flightcaster is busy, typographically sinful and yet answers the sort of questions you might have if you've never heard of Flightcaster. And you can try it right there and then.
I thought that was the definition of a monopoly? I mean, Standard Oil didn't own the coal market, but they were still a monopoly, because they did own the oil market.
Twitter, email, texts: we don't talk any more
Why did Google not just buy Sun? I've been saying this since IBM started talking to Sun.
Tale of Ansel Adams Negatives Grows Hazy
Multiple Selection if Statements
With the number of official offspring.

Sadly, many studies have shown that a surprisingly high percentage of children are not the biological children of their fathers. IIRC, around 5%. And it's well known that many high-profile/successful men have many affairs.

This is fits in with evolutionary pressures.
Surprisingly, I meet a lot of people who still use wrist watches. It almost feels like a renaissance of the wrist watch to me.

Can't wait to get rid of stuff. Unfortunately, computers and phones also aren't immune to cluttering, though. In fact, it is even easier to amass virtual stuff.

I have fund it is almost impossible to clean out a computer manually.

The next step will be uncluttering computers by moving stuff to the cloud. The last clutter will consist of bookmarks.
It might well work, it depends a great deal on the data. In any event, I was talking about in-memory hashing, the responder's assumption that I was was correct.
It'd be one black pixel.

In Lisp, it'd be an empty cons cell.

In C, it'd be the null pointer.

In Java, it'd be a XxxFactoryFactoryFactory.
Feature announcement for new decentralized P2P system
So women are only permitted to search for men? No lesbians allowed? After the eHarmony lawsuit and $500,000 payout, you'd think dating sites wouldn't want to repeat that disaster.
I'm not free from consulting (and want to continue doing it as well actually!), but a few points:

* I treat each of my own projects just like a regular client

* I consider all the projects like a 'scrum' of 'scrums' (ie: I get to prioritize between projects just like I prioritize inside a given project)

* for billable and non-billable projects, I take great care to ensure I keep a sustainable rhythm (I work a lot periodically when required, but not on the long run)

* I keep track of my 'pulse' with Freckle, very helpful

* for each project (home-made or not) I try hard to limit the amount of time I dedicate to it

* I keep high rates

* we've lowered our expenses quite far (including moving to a very cheap area in France, considering buying a house without a mortgage as a result etc)

In my case and when it's in control, consulting is both a risk-splitter and a great way to keep up to date and financially 'confident'.

As well I get to work in various, real-world situations that give me ideas for my own projects.

Last point: as I consider myself an investor investing in ourselves, where my resources (time/money/energy) are scarce, I find it great and sustainable to work this way, slowly building what I like.
On prioritizing features and projects
This one is worth reading (like other presentations by Mike Cohn on the site) to learn ways to prioritize. I'm sharing it as it has been a real game changer to me.
Should I Hire SEO Specialist to do Link Building or DIY It? | SEO Tips
This article reads like it was written by a deluded madman. Hard to take seriously.
One of Oracle's selling points for their database was independence over hardware vendors. Java offers the same - although today's hardware is much less diverse.

Sun in fact did litigate over Java, as the article offhandedly mentions, though the motivation there was that MS different version was fragmenting the language, and undermining the compatibility of "write once, run anywhere".

I agree with the article that even a few billion in damages isn't worth it to Oracle. There must be some strategic advantage, quite possibly in some negotiations with Google that we haven't heard about (and perhaps will never hear about).

The point made about the mobile revolution is the right kind of path; another revolution in progress is the cloud. There is definite overlap between Google and Oracle in the cloud, with Google's technology expertise, and it being used by the enterprise - that's probably what Oracle hopes to gain.
Considering that if Oracle gets it's way, making a JVM type VM is going to be impossible without lawsuit. Those patents seem very broad.
Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility
An (1 hour audio) interview with Microsoft's first employee: Marc McDonald
A Google competitor would be nice. How hard would it be to really replicate the ease of something like Google's hosted apps. Could users rent their own access to it? Could they use DDG safely, along with their own servers for hosting their mail, voice, etc.

But I don't want those services to be tiered. It enables Google and Verizon to negotiate for that streaming video/audio/voice space, if they decide it's not part of the "public internet".
On mountain bike trips I use my android phone now, I rarely get to anywhere that lacks phone signal but for a real trip that might require a real gps+compas+paper map.
Yup, it should be illegal if other traffic suffers as a result of it.
Yes, you can solve it quite simply with an active pattern, or type union. The fundamental problem with the problem is that it's a relational problem and polymorphism largely solves hierarchical problems. This type of problem also solves easily in prolog. The solution to the problem in java is to create some kind of relation class that abstracts the state of the relationship to between individuals/groups.
too right! lawsuit in the making!
That doesn't necessarily solve the problem. The attack needs to login to some routers to extract the MAC address, but others provide it willingly without login (I believe DD-WRT does this on the default logged-out status page, for example, although I can't check at the moment).
This is a common wishful thinking but actually no one of the famous "drug-philosophers", starting from Huxley, managed to create any path or even small practice or routine which could be used by other people than themselves to improve their lives.

You know, any way of living which can't be passed to other people is kinda useless.
And apple is not a monopoly, just acting like one (some times).
I don't think we should discount this as purely a financial move by Oracle. They're a very rich company but who doesn't want to be even richer? Imagine if someone had cashed in on a small license fee for every copy of Windows circa 1992? The SmartPhone market is even bigger and upgrade cycles are shorter. That's an awful lot of money to leave on the table.
No, not at all. The first thing is to realize, that Android, the platform, does not use Java at all. It uses Dalvik, proprietary virtual machine, just like Microsoft's .net or random Smalltalk. There is no JVM in sight.

What uses Java is Android SDK, for their tools. Clojure is Java application the same way, as Android SDK tools are.
I didn't realise that zoning and regulations governed parking spaces attached to houses in the US.

I always assumed that would be something perfectly well decided by the market.

Does anyone know the failure that requires regulation there?
I have a problem with the "lawful" part, though -- it's not the business of the network operator to judge lawfulness.
> they made a mutually beneficial agreement

No they didn't make any agreement. They made a proposal. Google has been advocating pure net neutrality on landline and wireless for the last 10 years. They've been rejected by the FCC, the telcos and the governement. After 10 years of getting nowhere, they are trying to get net neutrality on landline at least because right now there are no laws at all protecting net neutrality, wireless or not. No one has pushed as hard as Google for pure net neutrality, but after 10 years, Google needed to get real and face reality, no laws are going to get passed on pure/absolute net neutraliy, so they went for this proposal instead. Call them evil if you want...

> You assert your opinion without giving an explanation

So do you.
Casino Player Wins Jackpot while Sitting on Toilet
In his book The Innovators Dilemma (http://astore.amazon.com/hypernumbersc-20/detail/B001I05ZVK)... makes a throw-away line that rocked me back on my heels.

He said something like "resources are allocated by customers not managers, so choose your first customers carefully".

The point is if your customers are for your consulting business they will allocate your resources in that direction.
No special privileges... yet. Some people might be jumping the gun but this proposal certainly lays the groundwork for it -- at least on wireless. So often these days we're aware that the other shoe drops eventually. I think people are wising up to these old manipulations that used to work so well. We just assume the worst.
It's because their major purpose, as a site with mostly visitors who are new to them, is to communicate at first glance what it's about.

They don't have the luxury to be able to jump into it and spread all they have over the first page, as websites with known concepts do (news sites, video sites, forums, wikis).

So the design might look generic, but that's because as often in design, it solves a specific purpose in a way that doesnt allow too many variations. All knifes look the same.
Presumably you're charging the rate you charge because you're you. You can't simply drop Junior Dev Jimmy onto the project and keep billing away at the same rate.

It doesn't take a very savvy client to notice when throughput drops by a factor of 10. So unless you're a body shop that's already sending out mystery devs, or you're very good at explaining away a huge drop in productivity, hiring is not going to help this situation at all.
> why does it matter if someone figures out where you are?

If this allow to know here you are not (eg: you're not at home), this can be useful to a couple of people.
Wouldn't asking "which button" instead of making them click a button, skew the results? I think it's weird users would choose the giant red unfriendly "DENY" button over the friendly green "Approve" button.

The red button definitely stands out more, but maybe the user would be hesitant to click it because of the negative connotation created by the alarming color and wording.

Apparently the author was as surprised as I am about this in an earlier article [1]. He suggests a red call-to-action button has a 20% higher conversion rate than a green one.

[1] http://www.gavinelliott.co.uk/2010/07/call-to-action-buttons...
Oracle is used to a world where it sells products to people who don't care either way about things like this. Your head of HR decides they want to use Oracle HR; by the time IT even hears about it it's a done deal. Same with Oracle Financials or any other parts of their Applications suite.

It remains to be seen however what the former customers of Sun decide. Certainly anyone running Sybase on Solaris will be urgently planning their next move...
Wow!

I started building this about a week and a half ago after watching my wife and my mother-in-law tediously exchanging contacts across the country. And then spending hours filling out thank you cards for gifts on the recent birth of our daughter.

I'm still in development of it, but should be in beta in a week or two.

I'd love if all the interested people would sign up to get early access: http://kindrd.com/?hn=1

If you leave the hn=1 in the query string, I will be able to discern the HN'ers.
I learned English by watching cartoons when i was a kid...
Matched the subtitles to what they were saying and doing that everyday i managed to learn...
Living in Europe, I can see free & paying parkings. In bigger cities, most shops haven't free parking an it's not apparently keeping customers away. When you go in the land though, most parking is free.

Interesting enough, I've seen the opposite effect to the one you've described - in a city where all street parking was costly, a supermarket had to make his parking paying for non-customers and customers who took more that one hour.
You have to admit that while some principles are not arbitrary, there are definite design styles or trends that go in and out of vogue, and at the time everyone was convinced they were good design.
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلي وشبيبة القبائل
Crap. I thought that was cool until you informed me it was already a thing.
Expanding Images using HTML5′s tabindex
I built a cheap website for my startup that is guilty of the same design styles. I would love to try something new and different, but I am not a designer and even if I was I don't have the time.

If any quality designer wants to work with a standoff client; let me know: mmiller@agentshowroom.com
My understanding of clothing IP is that they can't control the creation of toe shoes, but they can control the use of their logo and company name.
You're correct. Perhaps the up-voters were thinking it must just be better to report the piping. Which it is, but that doesn't make the comment valid.
File sharing = theft is a "category mistake"
i was one of the designers on loopt.com, and the reason i think most of these sites look the same is because we all go through y combinator hearing the same thing: "the number one enemy is the back button." we just don't have time to overload the home pages with too much stuff if we intend on someone doing something while they're on it. so i think all styles gravitate towards a similar highly-focused product-oriented design.

as for the actual ui elements. i think a lot of companies out there, specifically the freelance design firms, are taking their inspiration from apple's mac os x ui elements. the gradients and button styles are very similar, and then other freelance designers will look at that and try to find ways to change or improve that even further. i think it all ultimately derives from apple though.

many designers i know of will use a css grid framework; we used grid 960. the reasoning behind the number 960 pixels is described on their web site:

"All modern monitors support at least 1024 × 768 pixel resolution. 960 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 32, 40, 48, 60, 64, 80, 96, 120, 160, 192, 240, 320 and 480. This makes it a highly flexible base number to work with."
Awesome that RTM's dad ends up beating everyone with the unstoppable self-replicating program. Like father, like son: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm