skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Totally agree. Less is a feature, and can be exploited too.

Too much choice is a bad thing.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_choice

Relating to software, I often see too much choice with regards to pricing and features.

More features do not make a better product, just as much as more pricing schemes/packages/tiers will not lead to more sales.
The human brain does not need to store all the information in the environment in the genome to develop fully, so why should an AI need to? I expect an AI would include that data in the development of it's brain just as a human does, by being put in an environment to learn from and absorb that data. In other words, design and development are different kinds of data here, and a human's and an AI's initial brain design can be stored in ~50MB of data.
Fair enough.

I guess I don't understand what non-conscious thought is supposed to be, exactly.
Not only can you define your own highlighting, but there are hundreds of others that have made available their preferences.

Try any one of these a run; you may be pleasantly surprised to know that highlighters "assume" nothing...
http://vimcolorschemetest.googlecode.com/svn/html/index-c.ht...
These cues can be suppressed, and most people do so naturally without any practice. The thing is that these cues happen unconsciously. They usually show up before the conscious intellect can suppress them.

Let me give you an example. Oliver North was summoned to Congress to testify about the whole Iran Contra affair. I forget what the question was, but the important part was North's response. If you watch closely, you can see his lower lip extend below his upper lip for a split second: he pouted. He was upset by the question somehow, but didn't want to show it, so he quickly suppressed it.

Apart from psychopaths, there are very few people (less than 1%) who can totally suppress these types of cues.
Ethically, I would argue that working on a startup is every bit as useful to society as looking for a job. Perhaps even more so.
Google didn't, but all the tech blogs did for some reason. Either they can't read or they have some kind of business motive for making things up. And now they have a reason to generate another story from nothing.
What makes programming so unique?

Why cannot we generalize?

I think most of the same conclusions apply to teachers, lawyers, salesmen, marketers, architects, physicians, nurses, engineers and scientists, whatever.

Wherever knowledge is valued in a job and there are intricacies lots of research, smart planning and thoughtful execution with a great commitment is going to make the worker a lot more productive.
Unfortunately, I'm not the best person to go into much detail. If you're interested in this subject, I'd highly recommend checking out "Telling Lies" by Paul Ekman: http://books.google.com/books?id=7I_wDDfrwCgC&dq=ekman+t...
Those are evergreen classics, and belong in a future Hacker Monthly, as well.
The research is interesting, but I have to register strong disagreement with Marek Kimmel's comment that the age of the mitochondrial Eve is always less than the age of the true, first female modern human.

If the defining characteristics that define "modern human" arose outside of the mitochondria (which is very likely when you consider evolutionary adaptation happens far faster with traits that have sexual recombination), then those characteristics can easily arise and spread through the population without strongly selecting for or against any particular mitochondrial line. Therefore there is little logical relationship between how far back the speciation event was, and when the mitochondrial 'Eve' happened.

That said, the theory of punctuated equilibrium predicts that speciation tends to take place in small, isolated populations that are a potential mitochondrial bottleneck as well. But that bottleneck is not necessarily going to lead to a mitochondrial 'Eve'. And when the new species spreads out, it may breed true but it is not necessarily entirely reproductively isolated. That could reintroduce old mitochondrial lines. See, for instance, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660940.stm for a description of recent evidence that homo sapiens bred with Neanderthals, long after those two had diverged in different directions.
So I should never use the AbstractList, AbstractSet, AbstractMap, or AbstractCollection Java classes for implementing their relative data structures? Instead of reusing the code these classes provide through inheritance, I should instead be using composition?

Code reuse is the only good reason to use concrete inheritance and there are many situations where concrete inheritance is much cleaner than composition. Honestly, this whole conversation feels a little silly to me.
Yep, my comment was cost is really only an issue when looking at 30" screens or really high quality displays. Below that the question is not simply get more pixels but what layout is most effective. One option I have seen many people use is 2 or 3 widescreens tilted on their sides so you can increase the numbers of lines shown without taking buying huge monitors.

However, the best setup I have seen was a widescreen in the middle flanked by two smaller screens on the sides. (1200 X 1600) (2560 x 1600) ( 1200 X 1600) but that’s still pricy and takes up a lot of space.
Just replace soda with software - or better yet apps - and think of how a chart like the one in the link might effect factors you care about.

That may be a ridonculous comparison, but when you take into account the way the Coke's and Pepsi's of the world are able to dominate - by controlling distribution, by copying new ideas - you might start to see parallels in the software world.

I'm likely in the minority, but I'd actually rather pay my dollars to the Tweeties, Shopifys, or Smile on my Macs of the world than the Twitters, Facebooks, or Apples. It's just more fun.
"Buckle up Dorothy, 'cause kansas is going bye bye"
How to automatically encode video in Rails with Zencoder
Selling Tips For Software Entrepreneurs
> Isn't the total variety of offerings more important than than variety of companies?

Nope. Imagine, as a nonsensical example, that Coca-Cola decided to put pesticides in all their products. Quick, which drinks do you avoid?

It may not be such a nonsensical example. We saw a very similar thing last year, when cat and dog food started causing renal failure in pets. It turns out that the majority of the pet food brands you find in the grocery store-- even the cheap, knock-off brands-- are manufactured by a tiny handful of companies, most of which all sourced their wheat from the same Chinese company.

As a result, it took weeks to nail down every brand that could kill your pet, and more affected brands were cropping up every day. We ended up switching to a "whitelisted" brand during the fiasco, which did not set well with our dog's delicate constitution.

Even the retailers could not (or would not) keep up. We saw known-affected brands sitting on shelves at Wal-Mart and the local grocer throughout this fiasco.
Energy Efficient Incentive Programs: Benefits from Efficient Practices
The warning signs are people saying "I'd use your product if..."

OK, but what if people use and like your product for years, but it still spreads slowly?
The one I had heard about had to do with Oxford.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/oak-beams-new-college-oxford
I was speaking about the perspective of Dagny.

I'm not sure of where it is you think poor people are demonized in the book.
Because it's so difficult to stand up and manipulate a television, or use the gasp remote control that came with it. I'm quite surprised YC would invest in a .. television company.
I was going to buy one after my t-mobile contract ran out. They just didn't give me enough time :-/
Be innovative, but don't use that word
I say it doesn't change your changes. Having seen my friends and colleagues grow up and settle down with people - it is apparent to me that people don't change. If you are motivated and serious about getting things done, you will continue to do that when married. If you prefer to veg out and watch TV after a hard day at work - that's what you're going to do when you settle down with your special someone. If you wake up one day and think you've changed and you want to turn off the tv and loose weight and be energetic and travel the world and do everything you always though of but never did... it'll probably pass after you get tired of working for it. Just speaking from the experiences I've had via people I know. I started my current company after I was married for 5 years with a bun in the oven.
Apps.Gov
Don't forget the fact that the very, very best funds are often not available to external investors.
However, you must also have a proof about the complexity of the emulation and the encoding of programs to emulate. Without that proof - which basically means you are no longer talking about two arbitrary machines but rather about two which are deeply related - the mere possibility of emulation tells you nothing other than that one machine is of equal or greater computational power than the other.

If we're talking about Turing machines, all of the machines are of equal computational power, and are also able to emulate each other.

If we're talking about real machines, the take away is that moving from one machine to the other doesn't require much code, but does require that the other machine be powerful enough. Thus leading to Ray Kurzweil's argument that the real challenge is getting a powerful enough machine, and not in the amount of code needed to run on that machine. (He further argues that Moore's law will provide us with that machine.)

And, maybe I need another cup of coffee but I am actually having trouble parsing the syntax of your comment about Omega.

Basically I was saying that if you offer some facility to translate programs from machine A to machine B, only a very small portion of the programs on machine B will turn out to be programs that were translated from machine A. Therefore the probability of programs halting on machine A tells us nothing about what the majority of programs on machine B are likely to do, and therefore tells us very little about the probability of a random program on machine B halting.

Does that make more sense?
You're going to be building things that many people will use for a long time in the future. Even that small script that converts a customer email to PDF, copies it to the shared folder, and prints it on the copy room printer could become a critical system. Find these small one-off projects and solve them before they slow down the business. I've made many small utilities that overtime got replaced by larger systems but without them, maybe the company wouldn't have grown large enough to afford the large system.

Think of yourself as a foundation-builder than a typical developer at an established company. Once you setup a git-flow or email distribution lists, you'll own these systems for a while and will be the expert on managing/fixing/growing them. Plan well but not too much. Get it out in production (inside the premises) immediately.

If you're working on external customer-facing stuff, start writing policies on how things should happen, if such policies don't already exist.
My RTT is similar here in Alexandria, VA on T-mobile. Of course, my N900 usually shows 3.5G instead of 3G. Having not paid much attention, it's not clear to me what that means in real speed terms.
I know this probably adds little to the discussion, but I can't get past the word "Gamify".
You must read sivers.org - Derek Sivers is a musician turned entrepreneur who became a programmer too and he has great advice on many issues you speak of.

First, check out the following on finding your passion:
http://sivers.org/passion

Next read this article about taking that big step towards your dreams (its one of my favorite):
http://sivers.org/loss

If you find yourself wanting to get into the tech startup route but despair about not being a programmer, the following is excellent advice on how to turn your idea into a blueprint for a programmer and also (I think) great advice on how to become a product guy:
http://sivers.org/how2hire
This would have been interesting if we could actually read the images
Why would you have to isolate "your" mortgage? Couldn't you just buy the equivalent number of shares in the correct CDO then present them as payment to your bank? Rather than try to follow the mortgage all the way through the system, just focus on each end.

I'm sure this isn't allowed contractually, but there was a lot of paper torn up by the federal government during the bailout. I would argue that this change would have been less damaging to all parties invovled.

Consider that everyone that owned a home would be scraping every dime they have together to put money into this system. There would still be loss, but this would stop the panic and add a floor to the housing/debt markets.
Change Axiom: Pain of staying the same has to become greater than pain of change
Attack of the IE Conditional Comment…
Google has TERRIBLE PR when it comes to stuff like that. They just seem to manage releases so horrendously that it is simply shocking. The whole net neutrality thing being the most recent example.

Not only did the Nexus One "die" without dying, it died multiple times because at each step Google would make some sort of vague release, and again every tech (and mainstream) site would scream that the Nexus One was a failure, it's now dead for super sure, and so on.

Seriously, if someone in the Google executive is reading this: You guys are clownishly amateur at dealing with this stuff.
That is basically what happened, but most people considered that a "death" of sorts since you could no longer get it direct from Google.

I broke down and bought one w/o a contract literally about a day before they announced it - it's the best phone I've ever had the chance to really mess with, hands-down.

Plus Goggles is a great party trick.
Hydrogen! Even more buoyant than helium, and if you get it near a flame, the balloon turns into a fireball. Just one of those would make a party more fun. (Do not let oxygen into the mix, though, or you'll get a lot more than just a fireball if the thing ignites.)
It depends on how bad you want the position. If it's a golden opportunity, keep your eye on the prize.
A couple of points to make here:

1) A start-up is just a business of your own design. It may be that you're in tech but the whole concept of running the business side of things is really no different from opening your own restaurant, dry cleaners, or becoming some sort of contractor or realtor. You are self employed and must rely on yourself to bring home the bacon. The vast majority of people in the world are in this position (and create the most jobs according to the latest surveys).

2) Work is not life if you also wish to have a family. If you prioritize work over family then you are bound to fail at one or both. Through proper time/resource management you can enjoy both immensely and successfully.

I have a wife and two kids. They do take up (I mean, deserve and I enjoy giving) a lot of time. Having a family is incredibly exciting and there ar joys to be found there that cannot be found anywhere else. If, however, you prioritize work over them you will quickly find yourself on the road to an unhappy household. I know far too many who ended up in divorce and have nothing but regrets for the opportunity they squandered there.

A very wise and successful entrepreneur once remarked to me when I asked them about balancing work and family that I would likely make as much money as I did even if I didn't work as long as I did. It's not about putting in all those hours. It's about putting in smarter hours, delegating and optimizing. Take your vacations, hire interns, and enjoy your life (not at the expense of the business or the family).

Oh, and one more VERY important point: Marry someone who knows your tendencies to be an entrepreneur (ie risk taker) and will support you through thick and thin (and when things get too thin have the sense to stop), The biggest problems always start when the partner does not support the rolling of the dice. Family must always come first. Always.
Nokia buys analytics firm to compete with Apple's App Store
My point was that your fundamental assumption is wrong. HN has a fantastic design. I believe the trucking site is just as effective.
that was yesterday, right?
A box office model based just on reading a screenplay?
I've read that sentence like 5 times, and it still doesn't parse. I have no idea what you're trying to say there.
I only hope there's a small chance that shareholders can reject the acquisition.
Yes and no. Java interfaces are a very degenerate case of roles. They provide no default behavior (a few constants notwithstanding), they are special cases in at least part of the type system (declaring a class does not also declare a role), and I know of no good way to handle conflicts when implementing multiple interfaces with overlapping requirements.
I don't think Myers is always right. Surely, it always seems that his assessments are correct, until you look at the right angle.
fuzzy-finder-textmate (http://github.com/jamis/fuzzyfinder_textmate) is a separate script from FuzzyFinder (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1984). FuzzyFinder was the driver. fuzzy-finder-textmate was the adapter that gave command-T to FuzzyFinder.

FuzzyFinder works for things other than just files. It also works on tags, buffers, etc. Also, with updated versions of FuzzyFinder, you no longer need fuzzy-finder-textmate, just that line I posted above.

That said, if all you want is command-T, yeah...FuzzyFinder might be overkill.
I wrote one a while ago on a whim for the same thing. It's called TracShell. It's a command-line interface for Trac using the Trac XML-RPC plugin.

It could use some love as contributions have dropped off and I haven't had time to maintain it myself for quite a while.

However, it is quite useable.

http://code.google.com/p/tracshell
CSS3.0 Generator
Motivation For Success - Sean V Walker
Polymaps - A JavaScript library for image- and vector-tiled maps using SVG.
This is a nice visulization rather than your typical org-chart type diagram.
You are of course correct that the Parsons turbine is quite complex and demanding; I didn't realize how fully he had developed the concept. (I still take issue with "as demanding as a [modern] race car", though.)

However, simple rotary pneumatic motors are used quite effectively in many hand tools, and they're essentially low-speed turbines. They don't have the immense efficiency of the Parsons turbine, but they are quite simple and can be quite reliable. (The high-speed ones used in dentists' drills had to wait for the development of the air bearing, though.)
Great story. I worked for a small startup where it was hard sometimes, but nowhere near that. And it confirms my opinion that working in the industry is dead hard.
Try clicking the link to the zoomed in version:

https://www.msu.edu/~howardp/softdrinkszoom.html
I understand that, but if I'm in risk group X and buy shares of the equivalent risk group. Why can't I trade those for my debt?

On one side we have underwater homeowners that have no option but to walk away. On the other side we have cash strapped banks that are holding on to debt obligations that are worthless because homeowners are all walking away.

It seems to me that giving homeowners a way to buy into this system rather than walk away from it would benefit everyone.

I understand there is no legal/contractual method for this currently. I was suggesting adding one.
How extreme was the Russian heat wave?
I see red characters on a black background as "deeper" into the screen than blue, most often if they are right next to each other. It's a neat effect. It doesn't bother me normally, I often have to actually look for it.

This doesn't stop me from having syntax highlighting on, however.
Felix doesn't seem to realize that JavaScript already has native functions for this. All of his code can be simplified to decodeURIComponent(escape(utf8ByteString)).
Wow, Jacques, it doesn't sound like you feel much that "Fred" basically stole a bunch of money from you. You explain that you didn't have a contract drawn up, and that Fred's justification for not sharing proceeds from the company sale was that, after all, it was his money invested. I'm sorry, but if money invested was the only determinant factor in a company's success VC's would simply produce hits every week. Also, you may still feel some misplaced guilt/responsibility/loyalty to that venture, even in hindsight, but to me, looking at it as an outsider, it appears you contributed around 80% of the overall value to that company. Even Fred wasn't delusional enough to believe the company wouldn't crash and burn without you. You also say Fred was the "driving force" of the company. Yeah, sure, but he was riding on top of you doing the driving. This was a great and graphic story, and I'm glad you choose to look at the benefits of knowledge you took away from it, but man, that Fred seems a real charlatan/a-hole.
Logo Downloads & Brand Guidelines
"Astute readers will have figured out by now that literally every point falling on the entire solid curve in the graph must be “Pareto optimal” by the economist’s definition of that term..."

Isn't that wrong? I can see how it could be true for the points on the curve between Y and Z. It's obviously not true for R and U, which result in decreased happiness for someone.

What is the curve supposed to represent, anyway? Or to put it another way, why is it on the graph? What does it mean? What purpose does it serve?
It’s easier to throw away bad code and start over than to change it.

You had me nodding along until I came across this. This single sentence is not just wrong, it's so wrong that it unfortunately calls the rest of the article into question.
Do cartoonists usually have personal assistants?
Flaming blog? It seemed pretty tame to me. The worst thing he said was "not cool" and just asked to be credited for the work that's far from flaming. No threats, cursing, or ranting at all.
True, but that fact only becomes useful after you already have it running on a virtual machine. Chicken-and-egg problem.
"What makes programming so unique?"

Programming isn't necessarily unique any more than any of the fields you mention are unique.

"Why cannot we generalize?"

... but here's where you're stretching it a bit. I agree with you that programming isn't as unique as a lot of these blog posts make it out to be. But there's no ignoring the fact that different fields have different requirements.

For example, I don't think that a good programmer necessarily has the skills to be a good teacher (unless it's a computer science teacher, and even then it's debatable). Computer science involves translating logic into code. Teaching requires you to make logic suitable for people less educated than yourself to understand. That's not to say that a good programmer couldn't learn to teach or vice versa. It's just that they're orthogonal skill sets.
I believe it. We have a couple kicking around the office and they're fantastic tools. You won't get my HTC Incredible away from me (Vz > AT&T, optical sensor > trackball), but the extra effort required to root and NAND-unlock it is a downside over the Nexus One. Part of me does wish I waited for the Droid 2, as I like the form factor much better, but with Motorola's anti-hacking efforts lately, I probably wouldn't be as happy with it.
The problem in this case is decision making: over-optimizing flight options even though the gain is outweighed by the time spent doing so. Should we really simplify everything because options might trigger someones OCD to optimize even if those options are really useful to some people? Let there be options but not bloat, and people can use what they need.
For early stage startups with unknown names and products, a strong visual identity like Dribbble's helps products make a great impression.
Replacing your SQL store with Redis (A Python Example)
Does the patent now belong to Twitter?