skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's the mode switch that's frustrating. It interrupts my concentration when I discover I need the mouse, when all I'm trying to do is code.

I use a mouse when I have to, but I'd probably use it more if I could get one of those nubbin-mice in my desktop keyboard. 99% of my job is typing. Switching between mouse and keyboard is annoying.

At home, I tend to do the same kinds of things I do at work. However, I picked up a Logitech bt media keyboard with a touchpad off to the side--and that works fine. I wish I could find a wired version. Cherry builds keyboards that look worthwhile, but they don't sell them piecemeal to little guys like me.
That's pretty unbelievably awesome.

If anything, I wish it was more complex though.
I use "incident pit" for this.

This is a concept from SCUBA diving, imagine a slope that starts off shallow on the left hand side of a graph and becomes exponentially steeper as you go right. The horizontal axis is what has just gone wrong. The vertical axis is how much trouble you're in.

So over at the left hand side of the graph, something major can go wrong (moving you quite far to the right) but it doesn't move you very far vertically, so you're OK. The further to right you get, the smaller the movement to the right it takes to increase your trouble by the same amount. At the point where the graph gets asymptotic, a tiny movement to the right - an otherwise trivial thing going a tiny bit wrong - is enough to push you off the scale (i.e. you're dead).

The trap is that you can't see yourself falling into the pit, because it appears early on that problems aren't having a significant effect. This leads to overconfidence. Then once you're in the pit, it becomes harder and harder to get back out again (i.e. you need a huge vertical movement for a small horizontal movement back to the left). An experienced diver is hypersensitive and this is why you will see people abandon a dive for a seemingly trivial matter - they've felt themselves at the top of an incident pit.
I am a fairly large database nerd and this is epic. The comic on the NoSQL is priceless.
Plan9's acme editor was based on Oberon, FWIW - you can probably find more info there. I have a lot of respect for the design, but have never gotten comfortable with it. (I've used Emacs for years, vi for several years before that.) Its "every word in every buffer is also a command if you click on it the right way" seems like the best mouse/keyboard UI synthesis I've seen, though, if you're doing actual work with complex tools you can invest time in learning. A lot of GUI design seems optimized for people doing simple stuff and hoping the UI will be self-evident / "intuitive". I wouldn't expect AutoCAD to be "intuitive", for example - the problem domain itself is far too complex.

Also, I use dwm, and got a netbook recently (dual-booting Windows 7 and Debian). On a screen that smal, tiled wms really shine, and Windows 7's interface feels like a joke in comparison. The low-hanging fruit on a tiling window manager makes the biggest difference, though - having N different workspaces, automatically arranging windows, and being able to hit alt-3 to switch to the third workspace / alt-enter to open a shell is most of what you need to know.
Cindy Padnos on Women Venture Capitalists
The plan is to charge a flat rate for smaller spends, and do more of an agency, percent-of-spend model for larger accounts.

Your buddy with the $1000/month spend would be in the former category, and pay more like $20-$30/month. I can almost guarantee his ROI will be more than 2-3% better with AdGrok, so it would make sense for him to use it.
This is one of those tools that you don't realize you're missing until you start to use it.

On OS X, the entire process of installing was painless, straightforward, and took very little time. The process of learning it took even less time.

Highly recommended.
Stanford, for example, offers free tuition depending upon the student. Columbia could do it different.
Designing for the Retina display
"in the context of social networks"

This becomes a bit of a gray area when every other webapp now comes with some social feature.
newly-minted MBAs from top schools seem to be doing just fine relative to the current economy

As I understand it, college grads are generally doing better, unemployment-wise, than the workforce as a whole.
I love this! I use dtach (with dvtm) instead of screen, but it's serves the same purpose. I'll be working at my desk and then have to head to a meeting (with my laptop) to another floor. My ssh connection will drop but once I log back in I just need to reattach and I'm right where I left off.
We're beta-testing our pricing model at the same time we're beta-testing our product. There's historical evidence in the ad space that people are willing to shell out 15-20% of their spend on agencies. We're shooting for a pricing structure that will make using AdGrok a no-brainer. Our early adopters are finding AdGrok very "sticky" -- they consistently say they are happy that they never need to log into AdWords again.
HILARIOUS Tokio Hotel Best Of 2009
Sony's Hirai: we're over 10 years away from disc-less PlayStation
It's also really funny to get weird looks from the few octogenarians and young mums in the supermarket at that time.
This is great. Requesting Sybase!
I first read your reply as "I am a large database and this is epic" :|
Gemsets for different apps, running MRI vs REE, and really you can run and switch from any flavor of Ruby (including JRuby) in an instant. It handles all the configuration and compilation for installation. Huge time saver, even if you are one of the few that only need one ruby version.
Like many things in economics, it's imperfect.

If you compare the US with Canada, which has a similar mixed ethnicity, the dollars to life expectancy is still way better in Canada.

To save some time, I think the typical libertarian argument is to admit the system in the US actually does stink in terms of costs, and argue that if only we had a truly free market, where people could instruct their ambulance drivers to drive around shopping for the best price/performance ratio for their emergency surgery, then things would be better in the US.

This just goes around and around and around, though, doesn't it. I somehow suspect we won't see "health care economics problems solved on niche web site" as tomorrow's headlines.

I love to talk about this stuff with people in person, but the bandwidth of a web site is just too low - people write books on these subjects, for pete's sake.
Warning: oci_connect(): ORA-$$$$: Insert coin to continue

Fantastic!
There is probably a lot of national pride that manifests itself similar to NIH syndrome.
Ask HN: Looking for recent article on a Patent Trolling Media Attention
Hi,
I've been searching for this article the last few days--it was about a lawyer/law firm being surprised by the recent negative publicity and media attention they had been getting.
I think it was submitted to HN a few weeks ago. I can't find it even after googling a few dozen times. I thought it was on law.com or wsj.com, but could be mistaken. If anyone remembers and could link me, I would realllllly appreciate it.
Thanks!
> If you're not on a tiling WM, you're constantly switching between the mouse and keyboard.

Can someone explain what the author is talking about? I'm not up to date in the latest Linux WM fads. (honestly, I thought the problem was finally solved years ago)

When I'm working, 95% of the time I launch apps and select windows with the keyboard, on both OS X and Windows.
Mongo DB is web scale
Ask HN: Lessons For A Service-Based Startup
As per title. Go.
Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: Alien Skin Software
I agree on both points, actually, but when people mention that study, they tend to use it as a "See! Using the mouse is faster!" handwave-y dismissal, without mentioning the fine print.

I'm not a neurologist, but I wonder how differently the brain's spatial centers and language centers interact with the part(s) that perceive the passage of time.
How fucked is my NoSQL database?
I think OS X behaves exactly like Windows, i.e. only a short delay.
Warning: pg_connect(): Unable to connect to PostgreSQL server: FATAL: database "postgreserrors" does not exist in /var/www/database/postgres/common.php on line 10
Why would XY lead to extremes just because men are more susceptible to X-linked recessive diseases? That's a total non-sequitur.
If you have a few apps, it makes switching between so much easier. Best way to switch effortlessly between Rails 3 and Rails 2 apps.
I can see so many parallels in this story and how SuperMondays.org was setup....it's interesting that the first follower is so important.
Not all Europeans can go to the US without a Visa. Romanians stills have to apply for a visa and I think that Bulgarians too.
I got "Massively fucked", dunno why...
Focus on making a really great product. Everything else will follow.
A dBase III option would be neat. They're still using that in certain places....
I fail to see what traveling has to do with immigration. They're different things.
This was the case all along. What is interesting to note, however, is that the MPEGLA hasn't really ever jumped on anyone about royalties for selling MPEG-formatted video.
Swingly CEO Andy Hickl on This Week In Startups
I'd say choose your clients wisely - avoid timewasters, and clients which aren't likely to scale.
Indeed, and this is also true for non-EU Europeans.
You are correct, I should have originally specified that I was only skeptical of the claims on health care and luxuries (since working hours are easy to look up). That was my mistake, and I offer my apologies.

You provided more data unrelated to health care and luxuries. One of your data points looked (at first glance) to be directly on point, but on further examination it turned out not to be. I pointed this out. I'm sorry that you consider disputing your facts is impolite.

Preventing an illness is great, and I'm strongly in favor of it. However, you are expanding the term "health care" beyond it's normal use. A quick google search finds definitions for "health care" similar to the following: "The prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health professions."

Being ethnically Japanese, visiting the gym or living in a less polluted environment is not health care by the usual definition, even though it affects health. If you want to define health care as "anything which improves health", be my guest. With that definition in mind, I agree that the US has a poor health care system. But when you use a non-standard definition of terms, it's helpful to clarify that.

I was simply arguing against the idea that the WHO rankings provide strong evidence that the US has poor health care, with health care defined as per the definition I quoted. The WHO rankings don't even attempt to study that question.
No DB2?
A tiling window manager (such as dwm, wmii, awesome, ion, and xmonad) automatically tiles windows for you, and has multiple workspaces. Usually, you can just switch between them by alt-1 to alt-9, move windows between workspaces w/ shift-alt-1, etc. If you're mostly working with shells & reasonably large emacs / firefox / etc. windows, they're really nice. With a little muscle memory, the whole window UI thing suddenly becomes a nonissue.

If you ever used ratpoison, it's a better design in the same general space.

I'd personally recommend xmonad if you use Haskell, dwm otherwise.
The cynicist within me thinks that it was intentional. These days almost everything viral has been designed to be viral.
> One of my clients spends about $1000 per day on adwords. They would never spend $50/day on software like this.

Assume the human effort/labor isn't part of the equation:
$1000 in adwords -> $1001 in sales.
$1000 in adwords + $50 AdGrok -> $1052 in sales.

Only reason to not pay for AdGrok is if the labor cost increases. If the labor cost decreases, they absolutely should do it.
I started using this last week to refactor a pile of legacy Ruby code. Gemsets per app is a godsend for that. You can disentangle the giant set of installed gems on your machine, figure out which ones are actual dependencies and which ones are only there because they were part of some crazy experiment six months ago, which ones are only there because they are dependencies of some other gem...
What does "Service-based startup" mean? As I was taught to think about it, Reddit is technically a service. My company, Matasano, is a services firm (we consult on software security) and we sell a product. Plenty of companies in my space offer coin-op professional services; log in, push a button, and something will do a network security test for you.

Which kind of "service" do you mean?
The People Who Support Linux: Paying it Forward
cool story bro!
The A E I O U of Software Marketing
The message said they did a bad job cracking the software. Maybe they took it down, are doing a good job, and then they're going to put it back up.

I feel that ego is a primary motivator for the piracy community. This does not feed it.
http://www.rootein.com/
I'd meant client based, $P/H work. Design, development, consultancy etc.
In retrospect Microsoft could sue any company with soft in their name; God knows how many software companies use the suffix Soft. What Facebook is doing is simply not positive.
best feature: hopping on irc #rvm on freenode for instant assistance
They don't really, as Sweden alone has taken e.g. more Iraqi refugees than the USA.
Here is a nice post on RVM (and Perlbrew): Two tools you should be using, if you aren't already

http://ithaca.arpinum.org/2010/06/13/rvm-and-perlbrew.html
"And what makes people eat crappy food in the US?

Could it be that crappy food is sold starting from the school's cafeteria? Could it be that people don't have enough time to cook or eat at better restaurants?"

Crappy school food does need to be changed. If people "don't have enough time" to cook or eat better, it's because they are lazy. You need to make time for these things.

"It could also mean any number of things ... like a middle-class that is better represented, or that the distribution of wealth is more efficient."

Either way, it's not something I want.

"Oh, the freedom argument :)

I'm not saying one is better than the other, but it seems to me that you've got no idea of how Consumerism works."

I do know how consumerism works. I also know the alternative is having the government make those choices for me.

"When you're sunken in debt, how much freedom do you have left?"

I have tons of freedom, because I am responsible with my money (IE: no debt). The people "sunken" in debt got that way because they spent money they didn't have and were foolish enough to do it on a credit card with huge APR.

There were many people during the housing crises that knowingly got a mortgage they couldn't afford because "the banks let them do it". When those same people couldn't pay their bills, they blamed those same banks. This is pure stupidity.
MSSQL with the nuke option:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-270351.html
Interview With A 'Professional' YouTuber (Find out how much they make)
Not available worldwide, by the way. URLs:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93450

http://www.kindlepost.com/2010/08/free-games-on-kindle.html

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003P37FW0

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003P38AAG
Greater online activity associated with narcissism
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there” – Lewis Carroll

That's not a good quotation to cite when suggesting you define your goals :)
All of the WebGL fixes are very welcome. I'm looking forward to ANGLE working better than b3.
You are an idiot
The rise and fall of quicksand
No Excel? :-)
"“If Google wanted to do this, they could do it themselves,”

How viable is this long term as a company? Does AdGrok use Google's API?

I'll admit, the Adwords interface leaves a bit to be desired, so this should be interesting.
Gosh, this is silly! You don't even have Excel listed. Amateurs!

(The Oracle < $1m answer is a RIOT.)
Even I wouldn't call companies like that a "startup". There's a VC-backed shoot-the-moon vanity startup bias on HN, for sure, and it manifests itself in arguments about what the word "startup" means --- but nobody I know calls consultancies startups.

You should hit searchyc.com and look up submissions containing the word "Freelance"; they tend to have the best info about consulting.
You should come up with a joke about it ;P
Improving conversion isn’t just about expressing benefits; it’s about overcoming all the major objections.

Key lesson from this article.
Oil production accounted for about 50% of Norway's GDP in 2002. Just saying that it's not only oil.
I run into this question frequently: how much logic belongs in the controller, and how much in the model. The difficulty, I think, is that every method you add to the model requires a name, and the profusion of names leads to complexity and poorly named methods.

An alternative is to collapse similar methods (for example, two queries differing only by "order by") into one, and use a parameter or function argument to distinguish the cases. But this pushes ORM-specific logic back up into the controller--only now with an extra layer of indirection for the programmer to remember how to use.

My approach has been to define methods on the model only when they are used in more than one place or have a concise, meaningful name. Introducing the abstraction later rarely requires modifying several aspects of the application, and Sequel's def_dataset_method/chaining approach make this relatively painless.
For anything like this to get approval they need to have a clear "how do we undo this" plan, that is fundamental to selling this.
wait for it, wait for it.

Microsoft JET Database Engine error '80004005'
Table 'tblTable' is exclusively locked by user 'Admin' on machine 'MyMachine'.

Ahhh there it is..
I found the opposite to be true. Whenever I did something "guerilla marketing"-style, it never worked.

Though, of course, the intentional part of this was that I took a screenshot to share with my friends and Twitter followers, but I never thought it would become that popular. (BTW, I took it and posted to Twitter in May, however it became hot when I used it as an illustration of my opinion in reddit comment.)
I've always found these America vs Europe comparisons to to be rather poor. We're so much bigger and more diverse and our problems are on such a larger scale that its hard for me to rationalize we are still talking apples to apples. I cant help but laugh when i see these "quality of life" indexes that compare Norway, one of the most xenophobic/racist/elitist nations with a population half that of Manhattan, to the US.

While it's easy to point out how much nicer life is in Europe, i worry that people forget how much of that lifestyle is fueled by American growth/consumption. In Greece we have an expression, when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. If America slows down, the European lifestyle, which is already in decline given its unsustainability, is going to completely disappear.

To me, an unsustainable system of life/rule/govt etc is bad by definition, regardless of whether or not it works "for now". European companies are falling behind their American counterparts in many of the next generation industries. The Chinese are lining up to trounce them further. It's going to get really bad unless they make some serious changes.

Just my perspective, not that it's worth much.
I won't claim to have any solutions, except that in the future I'll be a lot more careful about asking people what their intended time commitment is, and where they want the project to go. I'd also insist on written agreements from the start.

In the case of my project, there was about 6 months of anger, finger-pointing, and general failure to make meaningful progress because all our time was consumed with debates over how the project should operate. Eventually, I realized that the project was a major source of unhappiness in my life and I announced my intention to leave the project. We reached an agreement for the other two to buy out my interest in the project, and they have since made it their full-time job and are attempting to turn it into a real business, working with a local startup incubator.
The mysql path ought to ask whether or not you're using Java, paying the 500$ license fee for the damned driver, and then remind you that you're extrafucked.
really? i haven't had much of a problem (edit: or rather, not much more of a problem than the process required to enter in the other country). but i've also never had much to declare, either.
> Something such as a unified desktop (OS X, Haiku, Gnome, KDE) will make you more productive ...

Its not an either-or thing. XMonad works perfectly well Gnome, panels and all. It only replaces metacity/compiz, not the whole environment.
If you're going to say 'shit,' you should just say it. We're all grown ups here.
"Excuse me but where did that "ignorance is bliss" come from?"

People that don't have freedom and are stuck in one system don't know what they are missing.

"But the number of people that can afford those in the USA is so small that when you look at the average, most are worse off."

The majority of people (last I heard it was > 70%) have some form of health care in the US. Our health care system does need to be reformed, but to say the majority of the population has no health care is just wrong.
Norway was also one of, if not the poorest country in Europe until the oil boom. They did indeed have a high degree of income equality - nobody had any money. Culturally, this, along with the harsh environment meant that Norwegians already had learned to live collectively and save whatever they had.
Why should they elaborate more than you did?
NASA's "intriguing planetary system" press conference @ 1pm EDT
The Storray Engine didn't make the list. Guess I'm safe.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Storray_Engine.aspx
Humans are mostly monogamous, but men with status/wealth get more women. The tribal chief gets several wives while others have only one. In early civilization the distribution was even more disparate with emperors having hundreds even thousands of wives/concubines. Today large numbers of male politicians, sports stars, business leaders, have one or more women on the side.

Wars and fighting provide a ready surplus of women. In an Amazon tribe, the Yanomamo, I believe, 40% of all males die by murder or fighting. Recent genetic studies show that we have twice as many female ancestors as men. (Sorry, about the lack of citation.) Today jails, drug use, and general decrepitude keep large numbers of males out of circulation.
I think it is cool that it is semi-autonomous.

I don't think it is cool that the US military is using it for law enforcement operations in Central America.

Can't wait until the US starts blanketing various countries with drones. Excellent precedent.
You're surprised that people from a rich European country can travel with relatively little hassle?

I'm surprised that you're surprised.
"Oh, lovely, we’re very racist, are we? Compared to what, USA? I hear the same anti-muslim, anti-mosque rants from Americans that I hear from fellow Swedes"

FYI: muslin isn't a race.

"You complain about illegal immigrants, we complain Eastern-Europeans, ”They’re here to take our jobs”. We complain about paying for refugees and asylum-seekers, you complain about... I don’t know, do you have that issue?"

I'm glad we agree that it's not the paradise that so leftists claim it to be.
Attack demonstration of XSS hole in AOL's personalized email landing page [live]
it is huge for developing/maintaining a gem since you can run your tests easily across all sorts of ruby versions and gemsets
Books that will Substitute for a Computer Science Degree
i do a top left alligned dock, once i set it up that way, i'll never go back.