skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wrote the following to the article's author:

While your article attacks the advice that one should study in a consistent, distraction-free environment, it only pays lip service to the importance of motivation and focus. Yet most educators will tell you that motivation and focus are prerequisites for effective learning. Students ignore this conventional wisdom at their peril -- sporadic, effort-free "study" in novel contexts is assuredly less effective than genuine, effortful undistracted study, irrespective of other factors.

If you had reviewed the literature[1] on the effects of distractions on learning, you might have realized that the conventional wisdom on focused study is, in fact, extremely valuable. Instead, I worry your article will see hundreds of students studying even more poorly than they already do, filled with a sophmoric confidence that what they are doing is scientifically superior to the more challenging alternative.

[1] E.g., a quick search turned up Helene Hembrooke and Geri Gay "The laptop and the lecture: The effects of multitasking in learning environments" 10.1007/BF02940852
If the word comes to be associated with that name in the same way Johnson is associated with a particular body part or Sanchez, with an apocryphal sex act, all people with that last name will eventually suffer. Johnson and, to a lesser extent, Sanchez are popular enough to have other connotations than their usage as vulgar slang; Santorum is much less popular, and those bearing it will disproportionately suffer.

As for "Hitler," people unfortunate enough to have that surname changed it after the war to avoid the very sort of thing I'm talking about. The same with Adolf; a once popular boy's name in Germany is now unheard of, all because of the one bad apple who bore it.
Yep. Sports motorcycles have small rake (should be responsive on the race track) while choppers have big rake (long, straight journeys on Route 66). I prefer a KTM 990 Adventure, just in the middle, though :)
This applies to so many other types of consulting work too. If you are going to contract a professional for their experience you will be most successful by:

* Clearly defining your business goals.

* Hiring someone experienced and trustworthy.

* Letting them guide the implementation.

I hate working for clients that insist on wasting their money. It makes me feel dirty. I would much rather work with a smart client where we can build a long term relationship because our first projects are susccessful, not disasters.
I go over every 6 months and spend 3 weeks with my developers. It's less than ideal but it has worked for us so far (I think we recognize that productivity won't be optimal because of the distance, but we're careful with hiring to get good people).

To compensate for the lack of face time, we use GoToMeeting nightly to meet with whole teams or team members and to clarify questions. Each team there has a team lead who we want to involve in this measurement process, although we're still debating how best to do this (hence my post).

That leads me to define productivity -> we want our developers improving over time, getting more complex tasks done in less time as they progress. We're concerned that we're experiencing a plateau in productivity, but we're not sure (also leading me to post here).
Samsung Just Revealed Apple's Next iPhone Super-Chip?
Not to mention that it appears to eliminate the long "measuring before you cut" thing at the start of new projects. Fingers on keyboards equals productivity!
Compare: http://www.google.com/trends?q=c%2B%2B+language%2C+java+lang...
I have to say I like the new Digg. Sad this guy is getting his career stomped on over it. Lot of people complain that the new site lets big sites submit their own content automatically, but how was it any different with a middle-man user submitting it himself?
For a ruby programmer, I dare say that ruby code is easier to look at than English pseudo-code...
It was Google caving into the black lobby. Santorum does not have that kind of power.
Where should we report security vulnerabilities in the site?
Presumably he had time to text
"FLLNG OFF CLFF ARGH" before hitting the ground?

Apologies - being over the age of 15 I am not familiar with the shorthand for falling off a cliff in TxtSpk.
That's dumb.

Why not, exactly? Some significant proportion of all voters hate it. But that's true for abortion too. And you can favor abortion and become president. (or can't you?)

also i take it there's a lot more voters who hate gay marriage than who hate homophobes? otherwise potential presidents would lose lots of votes either way and could go either path. wtf...
I won't get into a debate over the merits of JFK's catch phrase, "Ask not how the state can serve you, ask how you can serve the state." If having the population serve the state is the goal, why not actually help them serve the state in some significant way?

All I was pointing out is that the vast majority of what you find on this site is irrelevant. It's nothing innovative, it's just advertisement for various departmental outreach projects. A poster contest on carbon monoxide safety? "Help Fight Environmental Crime Art Contest"? "A video contest promoting a healthy weight..."?

If you actually want to crowdsource public problems, do it. I seriously doubt that will happen, since disruptive innovation might put some government workers out of work, but if you can do it, great. This site just isn't it, and isn't even in the ballpark.

(I'll grant that a couple of good prizes are advertised there, as pointed out by poet. I clicked around a bit more, but didn't see any significant contests besides the green car/green plane contest he pointed out.)
Welcome to Mozilla Labs Gaming
Yeah, it sounds like the launch process is more at fault than the technology for this if there's really no way to rollback to stability.
>argue that he can work for Oracle without disclosing HP trade secrets.

Depends, is "treat engineers like crap until they leave - thus reducing costs" an HP trade secret?
It's not just Ruby. I regularly see (and use) it in Python scripts, too. Hell, sometimes I use env for my shell scripts, just out of habit.
Betahouse loses Cambridge abode, future uncertain
A good typesetting program like TeX minimizes the occurrence of broken words. The sample page the article linked to (http://readableweb.com/ala/booklook/lanhamvolatilehard.htm) looks pretty awful to me, way too many hyphens. You don't see that many broken words in professionally typeset text.
Also, with your wedding suggestion, will you offer print solutions (do you already)? Being able to make a book out of selected prints would be fantastic, but could be tricky because of different photo quality levels.
The real problem is that v4 removed the illusion that average users had an influence on the rankings, without altering the fact that they don't.
It is a "well-known fact" on the internet, based on my searching, but I couldn't find a definitive source on the matter, even though I'd swear I've seen one. (Perhaps I too am simply remembering the "well-known fact".) I even found several people asking for the definitive source and coming up empty.

The best justification (no pun intended) for using "ragged text" I found was under the heading "Text Alignment" on http://community.infragistics.com/ux/articles/text-treatment... .

It is also my opinion that full justification may make the text block as a whole prettier but makes the text significantly harder to read. However, soft hypens and zero-width spaces still have a role to play on the web even so because justified and ragged-right text both have problems with very, very long words, and on the internet multi-hundred character words actually show up with some frequency, mostly as URLs.
If he was really fired by HP for being crap at management then they should welcome a competitor hiring him.

It's difficult to think what trade secrets HP has that Oracle would want. That printer ink is actually made from baby unicorn tears and so it's price is totally justified?
In the database or site itself ;)
Ask HN: Beta Test our Music Notation iPad App
Hi everyone,

I'm pretty much a lurker around here, but I'd like to share a beta copy of our iPad app for music notation/composition to anyone who is interested. Our app is an iPhone port of an existing app called Symphony, but there have been many improvements and changes.

The beta has been out for about 6 weeks, though polishing and usability issues remain, not to mention marketing.

Two screens:

http://symphonyapp.blogspot.com/2010/06/preview-of-symphony-pro-for-ipad.html

(More media will arrive before we are ready to showcase this app).

Just send an email to contact@xeapps.com
with a UDID. I'll take requests for 2-3 days (or maybe longer if very few sign up) before replying to testers with the build.

Info on how to get a UDID:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4061

Thanks and feel free to comment!
1. some bad thing recently happened due to the use of technology

2. this is symptomatic of a more general trend; obviously the technology is useful, but we're overusing it

3. back in my day nobody had this technology, and we got along just fine

4. call to action to occasionally disconnect from the technology

Can we stop rehashing the same formula?
Like Joel Spolsky said it:
"They followed the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: They decided to rewrite everything from scratch" - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

I think rewriting from scratch is the core of their problem and not really Cassandra. Gradually going over to Cassandra would have been a much better idea.
Yeah, found a few myself.
Congrats! Also I didn't know the government issues requests for services at no costs.

> Since GSA is seeking information on no-cost solutions, no pricing should be provided. You should only describe exactly what it is you are offering the government at no cost.
So is this just a fun project or does Google plan to use this technology in any of their products?

It might make sense to use this as one predictor for transcribed text in Google Voice. Then again, once the results begin to diverge, this would amplify the problem.
I'm in the same boat as LZW.

But let's put aside the battle of opinions of whether inflation or deflation is more damaging for the sake of this article.

A gold currently would create equilibrium in the market for supply and demand of goods and services. There would be a predictable quantity of money in the system at all times and people, businesses, and investors would be able to base their decisions on this. There would be neither rapid deflation nor inflation, but rather the true value of the good or service would be reflected in the price. We would only see deflation if production became more affordable, or if demand decreased. This is healthy!

The argument that people would delay their purchases because they know it will be more affordable in the future is bunk. There are a few goods and services that have become consistently more affordable over time despite inflation, and people continue to buy those things knowing full well they'll be available for cheaper in the future. This is an easy to understand example of equilibrium between supply and demand.

But nonetheless, did a gold standard lead to a deflationary spiral all the way through the 1900s until 1971 when Nixon essentially declared economic bankruptcy and took us off the gold standard? No, it didn't. Those were some of the most prosperous times this world has ever seen. True economic prosperity not fueled through ever greater sums of debt.

Gold is sound currency.
You can't transmit data faster than the speed of light.
You're right, your understand is right, you won't experience "gyroscopic stability." I've done it. You don't.

I believe that people who believe otherwise are working on misunderstandings of perceptions. It's nototiously easy to confuse several effects in this. Careful experiments are required with tight controls on error bars, etc.

It's easy to be fooled. Eric Laithwaite is a classic and high profile example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Laithwaite
Are you guys going to build an API?
seriously? you don't see a difference in calling a white person a chimp? I want to live on your planet.
Google's stance on gay rights is well known.
Its quotes like this that make me think that in his mind, Google's real slogan is "Don't Be Evil... until They Can't Stop You."

Schmidt seems so different than the rest of Google. I feel like there are at least 2 internal cultures going on over there.
I'd actually like to see the exact opposite: an editor that warns me every time I use a too common and worn out phrase or sequence of words.

That shouldn't be too hard to do, should it? :)
So people feel the need to be constantly connected and communicating. I can sympathize with this.

Maybe this means we can now embrace mass transit, where you can tweet and facebook to your heart's content without risking your own, or anyone else's life.
The article asks what would happen to gravity if you suddenly "removed" the sun. My question is- is that even possible? How could you instantaneously "disappear" a giant blob of mass/energy? Is this kind of like trying to divide by zero? I'm not being facetious, just wondering if the whole idea is predicated on an impossibility.
I met a ScrumMaster that sees things otherwise.

The point of Agile (and Scrum) is to give responsibility back to the clients/managers: pick one -> time or money, you can't have both; we'll show you why from our user-stories, cards, task-boards, poker-game, scrum planning, etc.
Fox News parent company’s ‘Big Lebowski’ game developed by North Koreans
There was an issue in Django's tracker that someone wrote a patch for, and a few of us volunteered to rewrite if given some direction. It's still waiting for a design decision, though.

I've seen this happen too often.
It's pretty good here - we don't see a person's skin colour as being any more significant than their eye or hair colour.
Excellent - so if this passes, and also passes all the higher courts then it will be against the law to arbitrarily track cell phones.

Except for matters of national security

Or when the NSA do it

Or if it's about terrorism

Or if the police asks the phone companies nicely, and then pardon them for breaking the law afterwards.
Nice site, but now the government has yet another entry point for grants.
Point out that in most agile books, people should not work overtime. :)
I go over every 6 months and spend 3 weeks with my developers.

In what other situation has this level of contracted, limited involvement actually worked? Generals with Soldiers? Coaches with Players? Parents with Kids? Teachers with Students?

If you can find a single like relationship that is similar and has worked demonstrably, please raise it. Until then, I'd ask what is so special about your situation that would mean that it isn't the expected norm...

It's less than ideal but it has worked for us so far

Except that you are stating here that you are unable to measure which programmers are more effective than others. That doesn't seem like it's working to me.

Most managers, myself included, can tell you immediately by name who their best programmers are. When you see them day in and day out there is no way you can't do this. It's human nature.

You're asking for a methodology, but the solution isn't your lack of one, it's your lack of involvement. It is either for you to get more involved, or to relinquish this particular task to the person who is in a better position to make the call. If that person is in place and cannot make the call, you've got an issue with their performance, not your team's.

Good luck.
Single & loving it...give us a break
Digg has had some significant downtime during this transition (Can't blame Cassandra - but can't clear it either). Issues with product features are one thing - but nothing probably got more people jumping to a different ship (reddit) then not being able to find a good lolcat when you're bored, and your favorite news aggregator is down. Hmm - I wonder if fark has seen the same uptick as reddit has.
You got JFK's quote wrong.

If you're deliberately going to mischaracterize anyone to the left of Newt Gingrich, why even pretend to debate?
1 I'd actually like to see

2 the exact opposite

3 worn out phrase

4 that shouldn't be too hard

5 should it?
Of course almost all non-competes are unenforceable, but it takes a lot of time and money to prove it. This is just a nice parting gift from HP to Hurd.
Ahh, you are absolutely correct. I jumped to my pre-existing stereotypes. Bad me.

I actually have a negative opinion of most consultants (generally defined as people who tell you what you should do). I feel much better about contractors (defined as people who do what you tell them to do), but only in cases where it isn't your primary business competency being contracted.
Ask HN: How much legal work is involved to run a non-profit startup?
I am planning on creating a web service where organizations caring for foster kids
can post their specific needs
( something like, John's 7th birthday is on Sep 30 and he would like a skateboard
with a product link to Amazon)
and donors can pick a need and sponsor by paying the cost of the product + shipping.
Once I receive payment, I will place the order on Amazon to be shipped to the kid's address and email receipt to the donor.

My questions:

What kind of a legal structure do I need for this?

Does it have to be (or better be) a non-profit?

How much legal work is involved upfront?

Once created, what other (legal and accounting work etc) is involved on an on-going basis?

Am I missing anything?
So evidently taking Schmidt's words out of context and putting them into inflammatory headlines is the new black.
Is intimidated the right word? Can you risk enough money on a hand to make it unprofitable for the other player, becaues you want to make a point? Sure.
predicting text and predicting text well are two very different things.
You don't. That's because the gyroscopic effect cancels out in that case. But if you use a single spinning wheel you will. I'm just saying that precession isn't a different effect than the gyroscopic effect; it's a specific case of it. The same forces that cause a wheel to feel like it's hard to turn (i.e. the "gyroscopic effect") cause precession.

I asked:

> Which other spinning wheel effects? [other than the gyroscopic effect]

And he replied:

> Precession

To which I replied that precession is not a different effect. I did not mean to imply that precession happens when you have two wheels spinning in opposite directions, in fact I believe it does not because the forces that cause a single spinning wheel to precess cancel out if you have two wheels spinning in opposite directions.
Sprint, Google and others invest $3.2B in new Wireless Company
mcknz's point is that this is not reflective of the true nature of our planet. It's pretty easy for a white person to claim that racism against blacks (or any other minority) is extinct. On the other hand, racism against whites is equally alive and well.
I think api was substituting "Management consultants" for "Scrum consultants". I don't think api was criticizing management in general.
Exactly, this is what "calibration" and "velocity" are about. But the elephant in the corner of the room is that skill still matters, you can't swap a good team for a bad one and get the same velocity. In fact it makes the management problem harder; now you don't just need "a hacker" but a whole team...
support@challenge.gov, thanks!
"the company's investigation of the claim also revealed Hurd's attempts to conceal payments he made to her"
(quote from another article at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/07/... )

Beyond things that a company would approve of, just what were these payments for? (...something beyond payments for sex, or payments not to talk about having had sex?)

Note that payments "to her" is different than saying payments "for meals" mentioned elsewhere. (obviously those would go to the restaurant, not her)

If it would make anyone feel better, there are affairs that are non sexual.

The WSJ had this on the amount:
"One person familiar with the matter said the questionable expense reports totaled no more than around $20,000."

A bit much for dinner? Do HP stockholders have a right to know what that was spent on?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870330970457541...
I'm more curious as to why your planet does not see historical context.
I tried entering a few names ending in Santorum into google and none of them brought up the site in question. That suggests that the vast majority of people whose surname is Santorum will not have this website show up in google's results for searches containing their name.

Given the lack of demonstrable harm, I don't think it makes any sense to claim this campaign was mean-spirited and misguided for the reasons you claim.
One problem people have in this country: I'm hungry but too busy at work to cook. Some frenchies, mexicans and indians solved that for me [1]. Another problem: my stuff is in house A, but I want it in house B. Some Ukrainians solved that problem for me. I'm highly engaged in solving the problem of "you want to sell your stocks, but no one wants to buy them right now."

While there are an unusually large number of people not doing this right now, it's mainly due to assorted frictions. Some of them don't know what problems need to be solved, or are not very good at solving the problems that currently need to be solved, or just live too far away to help.

That's a problem, but it's really not clear how this site helps with it. It seems like a site such as monster.com would be more useful.

[1] Temporarily, at least. My local city council is trying to shut them down.
That's awesome. Have any of them been so brave as to actually record a song?
This. The one thing that creeps me out about git is that it encourages you to use the index to make partial commits which don't match any state your working copy has ever been in. If I don't know whether that revision actually worked, I don't want it polluting my history and making useful revisions hard to find.
The statement as reported doesn't appear to have a different meaning than the statement when read in context; unless I've missed an obvious piece of nuance.
I think my brain just exploded. Thanks for the references!
Interesting, thanks. I'm not sure if I agree, though; I think our natural understanding of language is acquired mainly though statistical inference, even though it may be encoded in the brain using a semantic taxonomy for efficiency.

I doubt that a lot of people will use this, although the obvious place to deploy it is in mobile communications, where per-word prediction is still very slow and text entry is very inefficient. This seems 'good enough' for most functional communications. But I would imagine that it is or will be running in the background soon on all Google pages featuring text entry, like docs or mail, because that will provide a huge flow of data to refine their models against.
Michael Feathers's _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_ is entirely about dealing with this sort of code, especially on carefully retrofitting tests so you can safely do deeper restructuring.
The problem is it is packaging some of the things hackers do anyway.

When it's just something you do, it's fairly easy to see when it is or isn't appropriate to do.

When it's a package, it's invitation/excuse or requirement to always do it that way. And as the gp says, that's a problem.
Hewlett-Packard Sues Former CEO Hurd Over Oracle Move
Techvibes TV: Boris Mann of Bootup Labs and IQMetrix