skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure there are any secrets to it.

1. Should I include this feature in the first release? -- If there's a significant chance that the feature will make the difference between your product having users and not having users, add it. Otherwise don't.

2. I realized I definitely should have implemented Feature X differently. Should I reimplement it before release? -- No, unless Feature X is core to your product and this reimplementation might make the difference between users/no users, or unless Feature X's implementation will have a significant impact on your application's architecture, and you still have a fair amount of coding to do prior to first release.

Obviously these are just heuristics. For example, if including a feature would be as simple as changing a configuration directive, you can include it in the first release even if there's not a significant change it would make the difference between no users/users. The way to think about it is that as a programmer, you've got kind of a potential possibility curve--when you're at your best, you can write clean performant code slowly, or featureful dirty nonperformant code quickly, etc. And when you're rapid prototyping, you're optimizing to write nonfeatureful nonperformant moderately clean code quickly.
Can anyone discern what tools he was using? I know the IDE was Eclipse. And Paint.net for the artowrk. He had something really cool for the sound effects, but I couldn't tell what it was. It's a fun little game with some neat ideas: http://www.mojang.com/compo/metagun/
Amazing, thanks! That's really one of the things I like most about HN (useful, insightful comments).
I hear ya, but I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the more robust social safety nets that exists in the other countries you've mentioned. It's almost there between every line you write.

I think that the U.S., despite the existence of Social Security and Medicare, is more like China than a northern European country. We have a dog-eat-dog social structure and economy. One of the only reasons we have such a high standard of living is Brenton-Woods and it's subsequent replacement system, which heavily favors the U.S. because T-Bills are the most liquid place for the world to park their cash. So my point is: Sure, some of American's fear of extended foreign travel may be driven by unreasonable fear, but I'll bet a lot of it is driven by reasonable fear -- the fear of falling behind and not being able to catch up.
I think the answer is the same as for the question of why is copyright law so badly broken as to create a huge orphan works problem? I mean, there are easy tweaks to the copyright system that would alleviate the orphan works problem without interfering with the minuscule fraction of very old works that are still profitable.

The answer in both cases is regulatory capture. The parts of the government that would deal with this have lots of interaction with publishers and authors lobbying them. And those groups hate all the digitization plans.

From the perspective of a content producer, technology is the worst thing ever. Every year, technology advances and increases the number of ways that people can spend time not reading the works of any one author. A mass book digitization program would swamp the market with old books which means fewer sales for recently published books. It might allow people to get into hobbies that would sap up their time and prevent them from buying new books! Can you imagine if Wikipedia didn't exist? Think of the billions of person-hours that wouldn't have been spent reading and writing Wikipedia articles...that time would have gone somewhere, and part of it would certainly have been spent reading best seller books purchased at a book store.
Choosing a desktop UPS: 5 things to consider
You work your ass off for a day and get a really rough, terrible (but working) version of a product together.

Then iterate.
Unlike actual disagreement, mere dislike is not informative. Just saying that the post is not for HN will get you down-voted, and the guy who writes that you should just click on the stories you want to see on HN will get as many up votes.

Mere Dislike doesn't explain the top comments that disagree.

It could be that someone who doesn't like a story thinks about how he could disagree with it, and write the comment in the hope that it will stop the story to get up-voted. But that strikes me as a bit convoluted.
You should write that much more interesting web service!! :-)
PR2.0 Doesn't Work (says panel at Founder Conference)
I actually like Nokia, and wish they'd get their act together, but OVI sucks:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/06/23/ovi-lays-an-egg
Ah, sorry for being brusque. It's a convention here. http://searchyc.com/comments/use+URL+shorteners
If you are working in a slow to develop language like Java or C++, it often helps to use Python, Ruby, or the like to get a quick proof of concept that finds the gotchas and lets users poke holes in the implementation. The total implementation time, including reimplementing in the production language, may actually be less.
Sounds like his idea is craigslist except better?
I'm not necessarily arguing for more technical copy. I'm certainly arguing for less copy. That means what copy you have must convey more information.

Imagine you came into a restaurant and asked, "What's today's special?" And the waiter replied, "It's the best meal you'll ever have. You will be sated. You'll experience savory tastes, with a hint of sweet and salt. This meal will solve all of your hunger problems."

"Yeah, but what is it?"

"Oh, it's steak."

Give us the meat, then sell us on it. Don't try to sell it before you tell us what it is.
The author says this too:

> "We don’t even have micromachines. Mechanical objects on microscales do not exist."
Not sure, but this awesome video might help:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3AfNXdg2Tk

It's about black holes, which are objects with immense gravitational fields. About 4 minutes into the movie, they start explaining gravity.
Nitpicky nerds wanting to redefine stuff that already has a widely used definition! Who doesn’t like ’em?
NYC is expensive because its more expensive to build skyscrapers than houses. Its not cheaper because of mass production, there's just enough incentive to spend more money than it takes to build houses because of the local population density.
Ears have tiny 'flexoelectric' motors to amplify sound
This is a great portfolio idea, actually! The guy doing this is a pro, but this is within reach of people just starting in the business. Someone straight out of college applying as junior programmer with a video like this would move to the top of my pile (were I hiring, which I'm not).

This video shows off a sense of initiative, a love of games, talent, and a knack for getting things done under time pressure. Nice!
I think your conversion numbers are very small. If the author is successful, he will get much better conversion rates.
Basically good advice, but it also depends on the project. Some projects are too experimental for this.

My approach is the following with my startup project (but not with my day-job project):

I start to write this: brainstorm.txt

In brainstorm.txt I don't have to be concrete and concise. I just write down all kind of ideas.

After a while I start to write this: design.txt This is very concrete (factual) and concise. It is not an essay, it is not written for other people. It is just for myself: to make a conceptual skeleton. It is not too structured, because it is impossible if it is about an innovative product. The only way I can avoid chaos is that I apply extreme minimalism. (Minimalist things are easier to structure, and don't need to be too structured.) Meanwhile I start to write code, mostly bottom-up. And I continuously refine design.txt.

The User's guide (I call the Readme User's Guide) is already a quite different story for me. It must be written for the user and not myself. I don't like fluffy user's guides, but still it should not be as concise and as abstract as my notes to myself. If I would have to start with the User's Guide than my brain would work in a 'user's guide writer mode'. For me 'engineer/hacker mode' is different.
For me, the takeaway is that replacing sugar with HFCS will significantly increase the amount of fructose in one's diet, which is a bad thing. The body obviously can tolerate a certain level of fructose without the serious consequences, but there is a tipping point. It just so happens that the economics of HFCS push many people over it.
Physics books that use computers?
The physics books that are used in my courses often spend much of their time symbolically computing solutions using ancient elaborate hand waving methods. I think that the explanations and examples in these books can become more precise and general and more intuitive by using numerical and symbolic methods done on a computer. Do you know books that do this? The only one I can think of is Structure and interpretation of classical mechanics.
> He had something really cool for the sound effects, but I couldn't tell what it was

It's sfxr: http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html
How to display Puppet reports on Puppet Dashboard
This application, bogus or not, is targeted to the possibility that you steal your own phone.

If Apple wanted to do this to prevent legitimate owners from jailbreaking their own phones, then why bother patenting (and therefore publicizing) the system? Why not just do it?
Are you making any money from them?
Precisely what baggage is holding x86 back? The only thing that I know of is the variable length instruction encoding and these days, that seems helpful: it allows you to use smaller instructions which benefits caching. The extra cost of decoding instructions on silicon is negligible.

In general, I don't understand your comparison of RISC vs x86. The original premise of RISC, namely having very simple chips that can be clocked real fast because of their simplicity has long since been abandoned. Modern RISC chips have all the crazy complexity of x86 chips: you'll find big pipelines and dynamic register renaming and multiple execution units galore. And modern x86 chips internally look a lot like modern RISC chips as well: after they convert native instructions into micro-ops, there doesn't seem to be much difference.
I use Name. I love their costumer service. + I get a special discount code every month because I'm on their "Investors club" for people with 25+ domains. You will also get a direct line to name and a bunch of other cool features.
My benchmark for non-technical users is my father: he's 60-something and he started using computers & internet 3 years ago when I bought him a laptop.

I can recognize in him pretty much all the behaviours described in this article, especially the fear of setting everything up on fire with a click, but I've also noticed that he tends to use the machine with a weird sequential approach.

Click the fox icon, go to thataddress.com, click there, type this, click yes etc.

For some complicated tasks (such as burning a DVD) he's got all the buttons and actions he needs to perform written down on a piece of paper.

The amount of struggle and effort he puts in it always fascinates me.
How to build out a customer focused culture
My card rate is and always has been 0 and it's the way it should be.
No, I gave up - I'm not paying hundreds of Euros to get my simple little test apps into their store. They can go to hell. Even Apple's policies are better than that.

Next phone I get is an Android system.
I was impressed by that too, although I did see a quick twitter check in there at least once.

I'm sure I would do my best to appear attentive when working on something like this, limiting my twitter/facebook/hn browsing to my iPhone/iPod/laptop.
Precisely what baggage is holding x86 back?

A part of my point is that it hasn't been holding x86 back for a long time. A part of the article's point is that perhaps it will soon. Reread my comment with a skeptical tone.
The naive "loyal" employee doesn't exist anymore

Your insertion of the word "naive" makes this difficult to refute. But if I may rephrase by removing that word, I do think that loyal employees exist. I've been with my current employer 14 years with no plans to leave (as have the other 3 managers in my area, plus many employees). My wife has been in her company for 10 years.

There's much more to having a job you enjoy than just pay. Having one free of politics (as is my office) is important to me. Having a team that one gels with is also very important. I'm spending half of my waking life at work: I want to enjoy it.
My problem with this theory is that if Mol did wake up after jumping off the building, why didn't she kick Cobb back to the real world?
Can you be more specific about the cluster membership testing? Sure it is based on some "distance" calculation, but how do you avoid long chain problems inherent to clustering algorithms? And to reiterate, do you need to know the number of clusters ahead of time?
Tumblr has crossed the 1 billion posts mark
>One interesting thing about OnStar is that it actually has been used for exactly the sort of remote bugging that the EFF fears Apple's program will get used for.

Not quite the same thing, you're talking about the government using the OnStar system as a wiretap. In the government's case, they don't need an Apple-like system, they can just wiretap your phone with its built-in functions: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6140191.html
People really don't like unselfish colleagues
Yes. We can securely connect via SSL and we're working on SSH tunneling. We recommend a db slave if possible.

We can also take nightly dumps to our servers right now.

We store metadata about your databases in order to provide a richer experience and we might eventually set up local caching but if we're remotely connecting we will not store any of your business data and we really don't want to.
Posted this at 1:30 am last night and only recieved like 50 views. Last time I release late in the night.

Dying to find out what you think - my most detailed blog yet and personally Im not sure how I did. Feedback appreciated.
Who cares? I wouldn't care if my credit card interest rate was %100. I always pay it off in its entirety every month. I will never carry a balance, and thus never accrue interest, unless there's a real emergency. If there's a real emergency, the amount of money it costs is not really a concern, the emergency is. That's what makes it an emergency, it's more important than money.

A credit card to me is just a convenient way to buy things online and in person without having to deal with cash. IMHO, if you ever carry a balance in a non-emergency situation, you're part of the problem, and you deserve to pay that higher interest rate.

Don't buy things you can not afford.
We're still safe to assume your parents are around 20 years older than you.
I think part of it is just the nature of what gets posted here. One could make the argument that articles favor sensationalism for the purpose of link-bait (or a less cynical argument might be that they subconsciously favor sensationalism to stand out from the crowd), but if a large portion of "news" is inherently inflammatory/hyperbolic, then I think a skeptical response is both warranted and natural.

Also, a lot of articles that get posted here are technical blog entries whereby someone makes a pronouncement on the positive or negative effects of some technology/methodology. These are fundamentally opinions, and will immediately garner a response from someone who holds a differing opinion.
This is a mild suggestion. Could we stop using the term 3rd world to refer to relatively poor countries? I think in a modern, globalized, and rapidly developing world, '3rd world' is unnecessary and carries a derogatory connotation to it, IMO. I can't speak for others from a so-called third world country, but it offends me.

Plus, the true meaning of third world is something quite different, concocted during the cold war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World
I've just noticed that my comment didn't get posted... It basically said that while this could easily be taken as a throwaway snarky comment, it's not intended to be. I was genuinely shocked by the code I read.
I’m reminded of James Tauber’s blog post on ‘job creation’: http://jtauber.com/blog/2008/11/12/x_will_cost_y_jobs/
No worries about the tone, which was fine. I just wanted to know. Thanks for the link.
Heh, when I went to Peru (Macchu Picchu, one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited), they ate Guinea Pigs (called "cuy" locally).

Odd they left them around the kitchen.

Agree with your recommendations. Also, watch out for ice cubes... often people make the mistake of buying bottled water... and then putting ice cubes made of tap water.
You can always rent the house to pay the mortgage, and cancel the insurance, as it probably doesn't cover you overseas.
1. That doesn't even come close to technically incorrect.

2. Nothing in the application or idea of the software hints at such a use. A much more likely use case (the only sane one unless you're looking out for the black helicopters) is an extension of the existing "find my phone" set of features, which allow the phone's owner to locate and attempt to recover a lost or stolen piece of property
Dreamwidth Studios Brings Corner Store Approach to Open Source Publishing
see also: Flash programmer in 48h

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtZNylG74M
According to the article, most of the homeless he encountered didn't have the problems you describe. Black Mike, for instance, was fit enough to defeat Nev in a slap-boxing match. The author also never called upon his support system or job skills, so I'm not sure how they are relevant.

Also, according to his experience at various shelters, he seems to have a backpack full of stuff comparable to other homeless people. Some of the items (e.g., toothbrush) were given out free at the homeless shelter. According to you, various organizations will give out other items "like the backpack & sleeping bag he tossed".

The only item that seems out of place is the laptop/phone, but according to the article: "There are two guys openly playing on their laptops here [a shelter] and one guy with a portable DVD player watching a movie. Many people have cell phones and MP3 players. "

Why do you feel his attempt is "feeble"?
I have always been fond of this description:

"Picasso didn't start with painting women with three eyes and square breasts. He knew how to paint a cow."
Is it sad that the only thing I could think of when reading this article was ‘Oh great, another thing for Creationists to misquote’?
"The Government" doesn't need this. Your standard phone already has everything it needs to locate you and tap your communications.
Thanks this made me update mine just now =)
If it was all just a dream, the spinning top would have not stopped spinning in the beginning.
+1. I've been out of my country for the last 5 years seeing the world. I build my startup in a little house in a little country in latin america.
I think we need a better definition of innovation, how many releases of systems per period doesn't really cut it. Is a slightly faster clock cycle innovative?
Okay, I know that the media is powerful and all, but isn't this a bit too much power for a newspaper to have?
Summer of Floods: Tennessee Hit Again
Don't buy things you can not afford.

This is a fine rule to aim for (prudent for individuals and all that), but it makes me wonder. If everyone in the world (and the nations of the world) actually began to live by this advice, wouldn't that trigger an immense depression? (When responding, please take me at my word: I'm not consciously posting flame-bait; I'm just truly ignorant when it comes to economics.)
Don't worry, you're still paying for it.
Heed the Advice of Nurse Patience: She is never wrong.
Clearly I spend way too much time switching between my code and mindlessly browsing the internet.
Because it's for a 48h coding competition

http://www.ludumdare.com/
As is mine. Why waste money on interest? If you don't have enough to pay for a thing, you shouldn't buy the thing.
Hackerspaces at The Next Hope
And this is why I canceled my subscription to the economist.
Forget about it. You aren't looking for a business partner or advisor, you're looking for a spouse with whom you will have children and a life forever.

I am married to a programmer (and am one myself) so you might think that we are always talking about it, but we have different focuses and sometimes feel like we are speaking different languages.

When we do talk about work, it is usually just in what happened and how we dealt with our co-workers, not specifics of how we technically implemented something. It's rare that we'll ask each other for technical advice or have a deeply technical discussion, although it does happen.

And now that we have a child, 90% of our conversations are about him, or our parents, or our friends (usually with kids too) or our house. Trust me: the tech startup scene might seem like your whole world right now, but that shifts completely once you have kids.
"I'm talking about
a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending
over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to
have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as
scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen"

He's right, of course, and that's why science is routinely beaten to a pulp in the media by those with an agenda who don't care about the truth.
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That's because you're assuming the wrong frame of reference on your singularity.
http://www.kmeme.com/2010/07/singularity-is-always-steep.htm...

If you were to drop back to 1970 and estimate the next 20 years by the 2010 scale, things are almost identical. If you measure 2000-2010 on the 1970 scale, things are a hard takeoff.
What software is good for time lapse recording on Windows?
just to be clear, this is all relative? Lets face it, in the world of creativity and development, there is no right and wrong. I have seen some beautiful applications developed in VB, a technology I despise, I am also continual impressed with what the PHP guys produce, despite the fact that I personally loath working in PHP. So in that context GWT is not right for me, and I find that it is not right for a lot of other development houses, because they are focused on design centric concerns as much as development centric. Yes, you can find a master of both worlds, but many times you can find a wonderful designer who's logic escapes him, and we have all seen the horrors of a programmer designing interfaces. It has been my experience that it is easier to find masters of one and mediocrity of both. So for me, and my development efforts separation of concerns is the right thing. For others GWT may be the right selection. I just wanted to be clear in my statement, I am not telling anyone what is right for them, I am telling them what is right for me and the developers I work with.
An increase in the savings rate has significantly negative effects on GDP growth in the short-term. So, if the US suddenly lived within its means, it would cause/worsen a short-term depression.

In the long-run, a bigger capital base can create more technology and/or capital investment, which improves productivity, which improves standards of living.
If you don't trust someone to be the gatekeeper of the group, you logically should not trust them to view your information at all: they could always copy it and forward it on to other parties.

Maybe there's a difference if you do not trust their competence, rather than their intentions. You have recourse there, though: it's easier to test (or improve) someone's competence than to do the same for someone's intentions.