skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My friend Ben and I built a piece of art that responds to fluctuations in magnetic fields in the room to move around ferrofluid.

http://jakemauer.com/work/fields/

I also built a T-Shirt with EL wire that sync'd to Ableton Live

http://jakemauer.com/work/electroluminescent-dj/
The city I live in doesn't have any of it's lights on timers...Every intersection I've come to has sensors...
It's ok and thanks, I know I can also come across as terse/dickish sometimes. My profile is intentionally vague just because I prefer being anonymous (this is my 5th or 6th profile on here).

I worked in infosec (on all 3 sides, if you know what I mean) from the mid to late 90s, and then became disillusioned with the entire industry and left for greener pastures. I still attempt to keep on top of things (and have done the odd contract job here and there) but I am not all that up with everything going on.

Wrt the topic, what you are saying is that even with my /bin/sh running in the context of whoever sshd or ftpd are running as, by the time I figure out a local escalation, by then the activity on that shell has already been sent to another machine and onto your phone etc?
Announcing Twilio Fund for 500 Startups
I use the suggestion given by Joel Spolsky[1]: having the binaries of password gorilla for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X all on my dropbox. The cool thing about this is all my passwords are different for one another but I only have to remember one...

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/11b.html
They say that earning $1 in ad revenue qualifies -- with the implication that the game would be free. Freemium seems even more legit.
Speaking as someone who has spent $30,000 on Facebook ads in the last several months: Facebook advertising is fantastically targeted as well.

Google ads work when there is so-called "purchase intent": I know I want a new waffle maker, so I search for it.

Facebook ads work when there is demographic correlation: I just got engaged, and I might not know that I now need a waffle maker, but a Facebook ad can target me and tell me that I should be adding a waffle maker to my wedding registry.

Different kids of targeting, both extremely powerful.
Eco: Embedded CoffeeScript Templates for Node.js
My dad owns a fab shop, so I grew up making stuff.

I was into cars for a long time. In college, I built strut/tie bars and sold them on the web. I turboed my car and built the downpipe and the charge piping. I also made and modified numerous parts for the car and friends' cars (suspension parts, wiring, brackets, blah blah). I also reverse engineered the ECU running the engine and wrote an engine management system for it which required some hardware integration (that count? http://benogle.com/projects/bre ).

All of my furniture that was not upholstered (no couch, etc) until last year was built by me in high school.

I finished the basement in my house which required making a bunch of stuff at previously mentioned fab shop. Even for general house maintenance I often ended up making some small part(s) at the shop (i.e. sprinkler system install, fixing the garage lean, etc).
Apple now the world's second largest company by market value
I don't think eating out is really "conspicuous consumption" (unless maybe you're dealing with very-high end, trendy "see and be seen" destinations).

What you've presented seems like a perfectly rational choice: by moving to a lower-rent apartment they have more money to allocate towards their food budget. If a $5 burrito saves me 30 minutes of cooking, that's a great trade for my time/cash budgeting.
You talking about this post? http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/amateur-hour-over-at-twitte...

Blain having a slide at a conference saying 'Scaling Rails. Its Easy. Really', before they had all those problems, was, well, sorta asking for it.

And anyway it was 2 years ago, could he have learnt from it? This is, after all, a new medium etc. etc. so a bit of trial and error is expected. As this post points out, the hit rate to date this year is almost perfect.

(edit: I just re-read that post and boy it was a bit harsh, the comments are terrible (from both sides - a lot of grudges are being held over this, I feel).

Doesn't convince me to write-off any trust in TC though, especially not two years later. If I ignored every source that wrote a bad story I would be left with nothing atm).
I thought the point was that this is UNLICENSED spectrum.

I can't legally set up a WiMax tower like I can set up a WiFi hot spot. Doesn't opening whitespaces mean that you could set up, say, a city-wide access point without asking permission? Or did I miss something? If that's the case, it's likely to spawn LOTS more competition than assigning frequencies to the highest bidder - which is actually 0 competetion, actually; it's a granted monopoly.

If I'm understanding right, there could be networks that are not for profit, or indirectly so. Like, maybe a hospital could have a Wi-Fi-like network that spans the whole city, which their ambulances could use to transmit vitals to the hospital while bringing in a patient.
Computer Build Tracking
So I'm looking to create a website that helps novice builders (and even the more advanced ones) find parts that will interact well with each other. I just finished my third computer build in my life and I remember every single one was rife with worry that either the memory won't like the motherboard or the power supply might not be suited for the machine or... well, you know. Perhaps that's part of the fun, seeing your OS logo pop up after all that stressing, but I wanted to see if I could whip something up to ease these pains.

Laid the DB foundation, created a UI, started working on some of the other various elements of a web project, and now I am interested in adding a feature that might be very helpful - some sort of external product database.

What I was hoping was that I could find a major retailer with an API to lookup product information with proprietary product codes (ie... http://api.tigerdirect.com/product/S190-5295.. which is not a real link). Anyone know of any services or retailers that maintain some sort of up to date API like this? Or any other solutions?
Best Pricing Practices for Cloud Software or Conventional Wisdom?
Last time I tried to submit something and it didn't go anywhere, I checked the new page and it was full of multiple submissions from the same person. Personally, I think people should be limited to one submission per day, or else multiple submissions start to cost you karma, so people had better like them or else you get punished for Spamming.
You're right, I should have phrased it "And that, my friends, is one of the many reasons its risky to build your entire business on top of FB Graph API."

Just went through a nightmare building a product entirely on top of fb graph. FB fails, a lot. And not just in terms of downtime, in terms of inconsistently implemented technology, poor documentation, lack of transparency, inconsistent policies etc.

Not saying don't use FB ever, just that it's risky.
Why would a hardcore player want to play on his phone? Away from poker tracker, multi-tabling, etc? Seems risky, but might attract enough fish to be worthwhile.
What matters is moving people, not traffic.

http://commontragedies.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/cars-vs-b...
In general I agree except don't lie!. Whatever reason would he have to not say "my offer was rescinded by Flaky Corp" and he can use that as an opportunity to praise the stability of his Fortune 500 company and that sector.
Oh my...this is just the preamble from my own list. I just never understand some of the age old interface issues that still linger on in OSX...small things that a bit of attention to detail would resolve in a patch release. Ugh. So pretty, such a PIA to use.
Roboform Online (http://www.roboform.com)
> "If they truly want to build a completely social internet, this kind of downtime can't happen."

Why not?

Even commerce sites such as Amazon or Ebay have downtime. Studies demonstrate that unless you're selling a perfectly commoditized generic product, obtainable instantly from multiple sources, downtime doesn't materially impact revenue.

Users seem to manage to "queue up" their intended actions and do them when a site is back. And it's not like Facebook's users can gravitate en masse to anywhere else.

The founding principle of the internet is not "5 nines" uptime for all components, but resiliency. Switch off your mail server for a few hours; you'll still get all your mail when you turn it back on.

"Kids these days" build apps and APIs (and sites that rely on APIs) that are much more brittle, because today's developers are spoiled into thinking communication conduits are reliable. They're not.

The fabric fails, so your site, your apps, your protocols, should fail gracefully -- and recover gracefully later.
F2 renames in Windows, if I recall correctly.
someone please enlighten me on an easy way to rename in windows

F2
It's been a while since I regularly used Windows, but F2 generally triggers the rename behavior (for filenames and most other editable labels).
Off topic and written by someone who has no idea what he is talking about.
Megan McArdle misses the biggest reason why tuitions are sky-rocketing and that is because Government funding is disappearing.

Basically this is what happened: Before the Bush administration, the fed government would give out these huge grants to the states for education and other purposes. When Bush became president he had to figure out a way to cut taxes while drastically increasing spending at the same time (because he had to have his war). Borrowing was a big part of the answer but he also severely cut the grants to the states. Bush also transferred huge war costs to the states by requiring that the national guard take an unprecedented part in the war.

All of a sudden states budgets were trashed and the first thing they cut was education subsidies.

Of course there were other things that destroyed state budgets such as the slow economy, pension liabilities (which were caused by the slow economy), etc., but it all started with the war.

It was always the large high quality state schools that kept tuitions down. If you have the UC system (for example) that can take hundreds of thousands of students, provides excellent education and charges only $5k per year (as it did during the 90's), it is very difficult for other schools to raise tuition. Of course few schools that were clearly better than the UC system could raise tuition also few schools that specialised in serving rich kids, but most schools could not.

Now of course the state schools are losing their state funding, which means they must raise their tuition, which means that all other schools can raise theirs too.

Now mind you student loans are an issue as well, but one has to mention the disappearing state funding when discussing skyrocketing tuitions.
Have you viewed more than 300 pages on the facebook.com domain in your lifetime?

If so, they've gotten a dime from you.

3 ads per page, each ad selling at a $0.10 CPM.
Hi, nice website ! Btw there is also http://nasr.ath.cx for that.
Thanks, but I'm looking to get started on my own rather than join yet another consulting company.
Semi-recent projects: Bookshelf, desk, plug station, coat hanger antenna, hollowed out book.

My grandfather was a carpenter and when he passed, he gave our family his tools. We always have lots of wood and woodworking tools around so that's my preferred medium (when all you have is a hammer....).
House Passes Small-Business Bill
Technically, I already did this a couple months ago. But the sales I made didn't cover advertising costs. )-;
Interesting. I'll give that a try thanks. Still OS X noob so it's good to know these things.
I have a challenge. How about setting your sights a little higher and doing something that might benefit society. That can be a game but if everyone designs their own version of 'Angry Birds' then this challenge is idiotic.
Wow, don't miss this.

I'm ready for a combo IR touchpad, keyboard, and PICO projector right now.

Brilliant work.
A working CO2 laser, with enough power to char wood and cut paper and thin plastic.
More like zuckerberg making a statement to detractors, how important they are.
If you just map the CapsLock key to Control, that means that in regular Mac apps you need to type things like Command-C and Command-V, which is not as convenient as CapsLock-C and CapsLock-V.

So, I have CapsLock mapped to Command (so that CapsLock-C and CapsLock-V are copy and paste, for example, in Mac apps) and to make sure I'm happy in emacs, I have the following in my .emacs

(setq mac-command-modifier 'control)

which means, I can type all control-using commands (like C-x C-f, C-g, etc) by using the CapsLock button.
nope, thanks for the tip. will do.
- Menu location: Having the menu at the top of the screen actually makes it easier/quicker to click (see Fitts' Law).

I used to keep my Taskbar at the top of the screen in Win XP and Vista. Now, with the ubiquitous widescreen monitors, I keep it on the left-hand side, and wouldn't go back.
ONE and ONLY ONE word: networking. It's the most important factor in getting your initial customers. Once you have those, they are added to your network, and will continue to bring you new work IF you do good work.
Whether Arrington was right or wrong, there's probably some truth that angels hate YC. It's based on the whole premise that VC's and angels aren't all their cracked up to be. It would make sense that these "superangel" gatherings would discuss their slipping hold on power and how to get it back.
I understand the principle behind your opinion.

But fact is, there are probably dozens of not hundreds of people probably applying for the same jobs. I can see them being inundated by requests, and simply passing me over because they can interview several (equally qualified?) people immediately rather than drag it out with someone who has to relocate for the job.

Am I being realistic or just pessimistic?
The problem with this is it becomes 3 keys when you want to select (part of) a line of text. I very often use shift+home or shift+end while coding. Remapping right control and right option works well because they're right next to the shift key.
Just explain your situation. That's what cover letters are for. Or in this day and age, the body of your email.

They'll either say:

1) Why don't you try again when you're out here.

2) We'll fly you out for an interview, but relocation costs will be all you.

3) We have a relocation policy.
My latest approach is to observe the sabbath, as it were. I'm not religious, but it's ancient wisdom. Refuse to do work on Saturday.

It's actually hard, it makes me realize how much my life is lacking in the leisure department. Fun, to me, ends up being working on something fun to work on, and sometimes I end up doing that on Saturday anyway.
I am not who you think I am
Today's psychoanalysis of patio11 was uncalled for and the member who wrote it should be banned. There's no demand for that sort of thing here. If a member wants help from this community they'll ask; interventions are offensive.

But, more importantly, patio11 is not who we think he is, and I am not who you think I am.

The jgrahamc you know through my blog and through my comments here is a persona. It is a facet of my life, and a window through which I have allowed you to see. Most of my life is hidden to this community, deliberately. You do not need to see it. I came to share a part of me that this community, and perhaps only this community, can truly understand. For me this is a sacred place where an important part of my personality and self is allowed to blossom.

Let's keep HN sacred.

We all need private spaces where we can be with others who are like us, and express things that others would not understand or appreciate. For me, HN is that type of space even though it's public. To keep it sacred means certain limits must be respected and today's article was beyond the pale.
About a year ago, I spent a weekend building a letterpress. It's turned into a fun hobby.

Printmaking is much more difficult than I'd have expected. One of the biggest challenges is maintaining a clean, inkless field. It's so easy to get ink on your hands, at which point it's nearly impossible to pick up a sheet of paper without smudging it before you're within three feet of the press itself. Registration (proper alignment) is a challenge as well, but is manageable. Working slowly and deliberately is difficult but certainly rewarding (though the reward here is spending an hour with lacquer thinner cleaning off the type, but I digress).

Even so, it feels great to take a Saturday evening away from the Internet, sit down with a set of lead 72pt Franklin Gothic, a brayer and ink, and print a few runs of something that strikes you as amusing at the moment.

Here are a couple photos from the last experiment:

Printed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cscotta/5018870586/lightbox/

Letterpress: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cscotta/3825133446/

(See the "luck" tag for a couple in-process shots)
The goals of a business are to maximize returns and minimize risk.

Drinks and casual conversation are not a particularly efficient way acomplish that.

Though maybe the Boy Scouts offer a Gangsta' merit badge.
My parents treated eating out as an event, to be had a few times a year, maximum.

Of course they didn't have fast food, then.

ps: Making a burrito takes 5 minutes with leftovers, not 30.
This is called "bait and switch" and is extremely common. There's a reason all those sales jobs are advertised as "management" positions.
Open TechCrunch and take a look at the net tab -- Facebook and Twitter are killing the web.
Menu location: Having the menu at the top of the screen actually makes it easier/quicker to click (see Fitts' Law)

While I see that this is true for smaller monitors, it becomes less true with today's large monitors. When I have a small window on the lower-right part of my large monitor, it becomes a hassle to move the mouse all the way over to the top-left of the screen, select my menu item, and then move it all the way back to the lower-right of the screen to continue working on what I was working on.
lots of photos in here:

http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/windmill/
Most of the responses here are perfect indications of why technical people have problems communicating with the rest of the world.
Wow. I tried to build a voting-based news-to-your-personal-taste site, but never did I think of this "groups" idea. I'm intrigued.

Idea: do it to HN as an A/B experiment: see how the content of the sites diverges. Actually the "/classic" url does this, sort of, by ranking articles not by total votes but by votes from users older than one year.
GoG.com is back
I don't know what your business is, but if it's consulting or custom development, then you may be wrong. It matters very much to me if I buy something from you that is written in some esoteric language that only a few people can develop for.

Obscure languages are a form of vendor lock-in, in that sense.

if you're developing SAAS or something, then I'm sure you're right, but that argument doesn't apply to everybody.
Check my profile for my throwaway email account, if you want to email me I'll reply with a list of sites I've worked on.
Around here (NYC metro area) more of the construction is done at night than not at night. It is generally less noticable because if you aren't driving at 1 or 2 in the morning you don't see it, but I do a 100 mile drive about once a week at night and it is noticably different than the daytime. The biggest loss is not working weekends.

And why do you have to pay so much? Construction workers have one of the highest unemployment rates, I bet if you start offering 3 shifts at day you would have people sign up for time or time and a half max.
I was stunned that my last submission, that the gog.com shutdown was a marketing ploy, received 0 upvotes. It was the latest development in the story that was voted #1 just two days prior:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1717426

It appears they're actually back now, so I've submitted it again:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1721598
My favorite thing to do when visiting the US is to get lost in Borders and BN stores for hours.
I've actually switched the other way, from Chrome and Chromium to Firefox. I used to think FF was compartively slow and clunky too, but then something strange happened: I discovered Vimperator a few months ago.

I don't how Vimperator does it, or whether it's just the a placebo effect of sorts, but installing it on FF 3.6 on Linux made FF feel as or more responsive and stable than Chrome and Chromium. It's now my primary browser & I'm lovin' it.
paid prank calls for the masochists. could be a BIIIIIIIG success.
enter to rename files, best keyboard shortcut ever

If enter-to-rename is so great why does Apple violate it in iTunes?

In iTunes, when a song is selected and you press Enter, it doesn't ask you to rename it, but "opens" it, i.e. starts playing it.
How to Survive a Layoff
About a year or so ago, I started to not check work email, or server stats, or sales states from home.

One of the best decisions I've made in the last decade. Work is work, and home is home.

I'm not a driven lunatic, and I will never be a billionaire...but I am much happier now.
The whole thing was a publicity stunt. Personally, I hope it does them more harm than good, because I hate to see such cheap tactics be rewarded.
Can anyone comment on the intersection between (clients who are happy to interact with you purely over Skype vs. clients who fly you out to deal with the in person occasionally) and (consulting through other companies vs. consulting directly for the client)? Is there any correlation between one property and the other in your experience?
Interesting list. I'm actually a recent Windows -> Mac convert so I still find some of the behaviors you mentioned infuriating (probably because I'm not aware of the alternatives yet).

enter to rename files

I hate this. When i press enter on a folder in Finder, 99% of the time I want to open that folder not rename it. F2 does the trick in windows.

closing the last window doesn't quit

Also another weird one for me. Why would I want to close all windows and leave the program running? Doesn't it just hog memory/cycles while it's in this mode?

confirm delete

I'd rather it confirm than not but, then again, I'm constantly fatfingering keyboard shortcuts.

window management in the mac

I still can't get used to the fact that program windows don't fully maximize without a manual resize. I want my window to go full screen automagically, not only after I take a minute to resize the window to the perfect dimensions. Maybe my mouse skillz aren't l33t but I also hate the small minimize/maximize/close buttons.
The point was less the absolute number and more the historical comparison; taxes on upper income brackets are nearer the lower end of post WW2 historical norms than the higher end, but from hearing people complain about it you'd think that taxes right now were close to historical highs.
No they aren't. I don't want or need it to fit into my pocket - that's what my iphone is for. I want a larger iPod Touch that isn't too big to read in bed with one hand.
Some of the discussion is reasonable, but I really dislike the reliance on "Figure 4: Expected Lifetime Earnings by Educational Attainment". Certainly there is a correlation here, but is there causation?

"But as you can see from the chart above, $1 million is close to the lifetime value of a college degree (it's actually about $1.4 million), and colleges are getting better at extracting quite a lot of that value for themselves."

To prove the point, you could make a parallel chart of "Lifetime Earnings by Car Driven", and I'm sure that the BMW owners would on average earn more over their lifetime than the Honda Civic drivers (like me). But this wouldn't imply this is a good pricing model for cars.

Obviously, the actual chart used is better than this hypothetical. But shouldn't one at least try to distinguish the value of the degree from the skills that the person already had going in?