skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm going to go against the grain and say that I don't feel one should spend much time naming things. I suppose that's just my style of doing things. There's actually a hacker koan about this[1]:

A cocky novice once said to Stallman: “I can guess why the editor is called Emacs, but why is the justifier called Bolio?”. Stallman replied forcefully, “Names are but names, ‘Emack & Bolio's’ is the name of a popular ice cream shop in Boston-town. Neither of these men had anything to do with the software.”
His question answered, yet unanswered, the novice turned to go, but Stallman called to him, “Neither Emack nor Bolio had anything to do with the ice cream shop, either."

Now, I'm not saying that one name variables and whatnot whatever obscure name first comes to mind. It's just that I'm not the kind of person who spends hours trying to think of just the right name. I will spend hours thinking about the appropriate architecture and how things fit together though. I find that once I've done that, the names become far less an issue.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan#Emacs_and_Bolio
Exactly. Why outlaw texting, but not outlaw eating? Or applying mascara? Or reading the newspaper? Or searching for a cd that's slid underneath the passenger seat?

If we're going to expect legislators to spend time enumerating every possible activity that could cause an accident, they're not going to have time to do anything else.

You know what the real impetus behind laws like this is? Insurance companies. What should happen is if someone causes an accident while driving irresponsibly, they should be held liable in civil court and get sued for damages. If that happens, though their insurance company has to pay. Hence, the company lobbies to get things like this made illegal and thus legitimately excluded from being covered by the insurance policy.
according to that he sold 230,441 copies which comes out to €2,292,887.95 euros.

1 euro = $1.36 USD

so that comes out to

$3,118,327.612

After all the fees and costs, that's 3 mil before taxes,
IE9 is supporting virtually everything in the standard, and the standard isn't even finalized yet. It seems like you're the guy complaining that not everyone supports 'export', while ignoring all the rest that is supported.
The 2010 FogBugz and Kiln World Tour
<!-- Creation Date:01/02/08 -->
I think you're letting the allure of the money downplay the costs of actually doing the work. It's not like one client is going to hand you a duffel bag full of $100 bills, you do the conversion once, and then you're set for life. It's going to be a seemingly endless line of enterprise clients who already have a history of not keeping up with the times.

The amount these clients pay, while substantial, probably won't provide you with the "fuck you"-money needed to never have to do it again.
5. 5 dollar. 5 dollar web-presence investment...
On Metafilter, making a front page post that links to your own stuff is the only %100 banworthy offense.

It's all the more important there because the front page is reverse chronological and anyone who's been there a week can post to it.
i'd point out the fact that because of this video, this kid got at least one (public) job offer. not from a big/famous company, but a smaller game dev shop.

so, you could say that him producing this was actually a pretty good resume/portfolio.
Ask HN:How soon and how much have you raised capital for your startup and how?
Hi, I am raising capital, I imagine there are plenty of stories of long repeated meetings with investors, just like everything I imagine there is the easy way, the hard way, and the fun way.

If you could share good, bad and fun stores, It will be awesome!!

Appreciate any comments

Have a wonderful day!
Tell HN: entrepreneur speaking series in Vancouver
Vancouver has lots of little small companies that have achieved different degree of success, but few people know about their success stories. The speaking series is our new initiative to bridge this gap.

Come out this Thursday to listen to the guys from Compass Engine. More info below:
http://bit.ly/9fLtyI

Looking forward to seeing you!

Jerry
The graphics are simple on purpose - because the game is essentially infinitely scalable (theoretical max map size is 3x surface of the Earth), simple graphics are super important for not lagging servers and clients to hell.

He's said in interviews that the improvements he wants to make are improvements that make the game more fun. He's not going to add features that won't somehow add fun, and if he finds that something isn't fun, it's out.

Because the graphics are purposely so simplistic, people are okay with that. As soon as you upgrade them and start to make them more modern, you start getting compared to other modern games like WoW, etc.

Keep it simple, people won't worry about the graphics.
Considering that he'd quit his job as a game developer to be able to develop indie games (http://www.minecraft.net/about.jsp) it's not so surprising that he turns down the job offers.
And it also seems that he's in the beginning of starting his own company and hiring developers (http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1205447916/im-sorry-about-the-l...)
Any particular reason why Subway was chosen? There's got to be a billion other pages out there as bad or worse.

Personally, I like Sears.com. I looked more closely after I found and reported a security hole in one of their systems. It's far more terrifying than the relatively-tame code I saw on Subway's site.
Tweets in your media, media in your Tweets
your comment puts a Smullyan my face, but I fear we're devolving into a redditesque pun thread...
There are many companies in the US that offer this service. They're generally called print shops, or printers, versus a manufacturer.

http://startups.com/questions/23253/which-online-photo-print...

I've personally worked with SmugMug before, but there are several companies that offer this service. Many also offer an API to integrate with. :D
Even when I do, I end up using an online service like http://www.hellofax.com/. Works really well!
Minecraft is more like a lego world.

Recently, someone built a 16-bit ALU in minecraft:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/28/working-computer-mad.ht...

And a 1:1 scale model of the Enterprise D:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/09/the-true-story-be...
According to Max Klein, that is certainly true for programmers. Based on the numbers he gave, "a good programmer" in Germany gets paid less than a fresh college grad in the US.

http://maxkle.in/giving-up-on-europe/
"We are building an online social app that lets you stay on top of and enjoy anything that your friends find interesting, good, likable, cool, irresistible and noteworthy, or things they just liked for no reason. Of course, it's also a way for you to tell your friends what you like."

This description reminds me of Facebook.
Money is not always a good indicator of societal wealth. The standard of living rankings tell a truer story.
Agree. I played a bit of Dwarf Fortress, and there was definitely a learning curve. Minecraft has, essentially, no initial "how to play" learning curve.
The question is how long will it take major game developers to build a similar game and turn on the marketing faucet?

I don't know much about game development, but it sounds like it would be a pretty easy game to replicate, right?
:) AIM is screwy on IMified - I've posted on the support site but haven't heard anything yet. Apparently I have an account online, but it's not connected to anything. See the post at: http://help.imified.com/discussions/problems/326-unable-to-a...

MSN works on IMified but doesn't work on Tropo - that's just odd, as you yourself said that the IMified system powers Tropo's IM integration (and the UI at Tropo hints at that from a third party perspective).

The bot.im users still aren't appearing on Google Talk, and I can't seem to add an additional account through GTalk directly.

BTW, though I didn't mention this in our Twitter chat earlier, I far prefer the API that IMified offers to that of Tropo.
Eh, a good programmer can just treat Java as an object code format, compiling it in their heads from something like Scala or Clojure.

The real problem isn't that Java is spent, it's that (most) Java programmers are dorky. I avoid the language mainly to avoid associating with the community.
I'm German I find the recent sentiment towards Germany enjoyable but a bit surprising. Not long ago we we're the sick old man of Europe and Ireland was the European tiger.

I like life in Germany but it all seems like flavour-of-the-month journalism.
Right now he has earned $3.6Million...
Mechanical Turk has been the brute-force behind a lot of unique concepts, it seems. Really cool use of crowd-sourcing, and you've gotta love the name. "Soylent is people" indeed.
Soylent is made of People!
I agree, and I think that's a lot of it. Minecraft isn't a very typical game, nor a game that you would ever see out of a blockbuster publisher. It seems like its success is because of this, not despite it. Rather than be a formulaic FPS, RTS, RPG, etc, it's something (fairly) new that leaves it up to the player to have fun with. I've heard the comparison to Lego frequently, and I think it's an apt one. Most videogames today play more like movies, but sometimes it's nice to have a game that you can play with how you like.

(This post started out about being about being willing to ignore conventions, but drifted somewhat into the nature of gameplay, sorry.)
GoodNYCApartments.com is available, if anyone wants to start the Five-Star-Yelp equivalent.
A plumber climbs out of a manhole, and his arms are covered with - guess what? - excrement! A beautiful little girl in a beautiful white dress happens to pass by. The plumber seizes the opportunity and quickly, but firmly sweeps his hands over the girl’s white dress.

Little girl (appalled): AAAH!!

Plumber (outraged): Oh yeah? I bet you love to take a shit though.

http://www.yosefk.com/blog/the-cardinal-programming-jokes.ht...

So yeah, Java is dorky and uncool, but I bet we love to play Minecraft (I don't know, since I haven't played a video game in at least a decade).
a: he doesn't make $350k every day

b: valve pays well north of $50k/year

c: valve likely has profit sharing of some variety, which could be quite substantial

d: likely valve wouldn't just hire him but would purchase his company, giving him a several million dollar lump sum payment

Factor that in with the temptation to use valve's resources in developing your game, it's not such a bad deal. Nevertheless, if one is making even $10k a day and feels they can continue to support and develop their work independently then any offer of full-time employment is going to be an uphill battle.
Wow, this is excellent -- you're just the kind of person we were hoping to hear from! This is really exciting.

Thanks for all the feedback. Interesting re: social media + restaurateurs. We will roll that in immediately.

We didn't realize pricing would be so important at this stage but so far the three people we've heard from on this site have all mentioned price! We will get that up ASAP.

We will also stress the customization aspect -- yes, the app is completely customizable right now and we're in process working on the pictures, reviews, product details, etc.

Regarding existing data, we're also working on data import methods to help on board people more quickly...but this is proving to be difficult so far and dependent on what other people are currently using so will have to be on a per-account basis at least at first I think. If you have any suggestions on good ways to do that we'd love to hear them!

And finally, re: iPads, we're not tied specifically to a device -- we're a web app so we work on anything that is HTML5 capable. We're trying to find the right case for iPads to make them more resilient, but we're also trying to find some cheaper devices such that it's not such a big deal if they get dirty...

Again, thanks for the feedback and hopefully we can talk again sometime. Like I said, you're exactly the guy that I want to talk to, any chance I could pick your brain at some point?
It's useful to have journalism and english lit majors as the BFDL's for a web framework. This is the main reason that the documentation for the framework is so amazing, the owners of the project really care about it.
Not as far as I am aware.
Maybe. On the other hand, people do things every day for the love of it that get little traction in the market place. It seems more likely this confluence is just a coincidence.
Just look at the game that the team they purchased made: portal. The indie game was very ugly. The final game was polished, funny, and fun. If he were to bring his game to valve they could probably improve it a lot.
Face.com: build your own facial recognition apps
It may very well be better for everyone's quality of life to pay people less and mandate more leisure; in other words, it may be better if society decides (for most people) how hard they should work.

But that's orthogonal to my point. You could mandate 6 weeks vacation in the US, too. But wages would go down as a result.

Generally, if you're in our profession and you want more vacation, become a contractor. People have been doing contract work for decades for exactly this reason.
My take:

* Size doesn't matter, but one project - one developer; only nominal reporting to the management

* Flexible working hours, should total to 40 hours weekly though

* Rare meetings, only for brainstorming architectural issues

* Guaranteed yearly salary increase of 10%; as well as stocks/options granted every year

* 15% of time is allowed for hobby projects, another 15% for reading news, articles

* Free and never-ending flow of coffee and chocolate (and food?)
Bingo!

Excellent point... "Stand-up straight" as advice is simply too simple.

Still, I think your good advice from Trigger Point therapy should be supplemented with some information from the Alexander technique.

You see, original article begin correctly in saying that "bones don't get tired, muscle get tired". If someone could stand or sit without muscular tension, they could avoid getting or aggravating trigger points.

BUT....

It's just that at point of being in distress, people just don't know how to do that. And there really isn't an easy instruction set that will tell most people how to do that because... trigger points and habitual misalignment causes people's sense of their bodily position itself to be distorted. Specifically, when your muscle is habitually shorted, it "feels" to the person like that muscle where it should be. So a person who say is told to "straighten their back" will do by tensing another muscle to fight against their habitually shortened muscle. And so in practice, as you observe, "posture doesn't help".

Still solution to people's misuse of themselves also has include something like a "hands-on retraining" of the body so the muscles and nerve learn together what "upright" actually means.

I'd link to Wikipedia on the Alexander technique but the article has gotten so crufty it's an embarrassment... Still, retraining of "use of the self" is an important compliment to any massage.
I agree, the MSFT engineers (not the marketers) seem likeable enough. I think they're handling criticism reasonably enough and I think the Reddit crowd should understand exactly how little input these engineers get inside of Microsoft's development model.

(Still, I will continue recommending Chrome and Firefox to friends. IE anything is just bad.)
He has sold 272,233 copies, making about $3.6million

http://minecraft.net/stats.jsp
A lot of the voice quality problems can be attributed to forcing cellphones to route through the PSTN[1] which is 8bit u-law 8kHz audio. That's a huge stretch from CD-quality audio--it used to be presumed the minimum required for voice to be understandable, and besides the u-law encoding, it's uncompressed. You would get much better audio quality by recording voice at a higher sampling rate and encoding it as a 64kbps MP3, which is the same bitrate as the PSTN and trivial for cellphone hardware to do; however, cellphones have to be able to call landlines and other cellphones, and the common point of connectivity (and so the lowest common denominator) is the PSTN. VoIP can use even better audio compression algorithms that result in audio quality far superior to anything you'd hear through the PSTN. For instance, this is why many reviewers of FaceTime report that activating it makes the audio quality of their call noticeably better, on top of all the niceties of the video stream.

It's not just humans that have trouble hearing at 8kHz 8-bit u-law--voice transcription software is remarkably more accurate when using a microphone on a computer recording at 44kHz 16-bit compared to over the phone. This is part of the reason, for instance, Google Voice transcription is nowhere near as effective as Dragon Naturally Speaking on your laptop, and never will be.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_switched_telephone_netwo...
Women make safer financial decisions when faced with sexual stereotypes
As somebody who has been a renter and a landlord, I feel like there will be a strong incentive for renters to either exaggerate an apartments problems, or outright lie. If your landlord is evicting you due to noise, late rent, etc., many people's natural instinct is to "get back at him" and this provides a zero risk way to do that.
He'll be fine if he gets a financial planner and keeps running a business. He should start a business or foundation. Healthcare concerns are done away with because all your company really gives you with it's health care is the fact they've purchased into a group-policy with some company... you could do the same with your extended group of friends if you can organize the thing.

350k/day = 7 years of 50k/year. If he pulls 10 days of 250k/day he's made 50 years of income, or $2.5 million. |I'm really worried for the guy.|
Airbnb - Email Marketing Specialist
Well, yes the metric is a bad one and has very bad consequences. But I'm not in a position to fight it. It's a fait accompli at this point. I've lodged my complaints with my superiors and will continue to lower my standards. Society - via our elected and appointed leaders - wants passing grades. They sign my paycheck so that's what they'll get.
Airbnb - Backend Engineer
Facebook movie is all about the hoodies ... and shower shoes
This scares me given how poorly HR departments make hiring decisions.
Yeah, how can you seriously write "look it up on Google Images. It'll help." and not realize that the article could use them?
Airbnb - Customer Service Engineer
There's also the advantage of them taking care of the business side. Reading some of his recent updates seems to indicate that the past few weeks have been spent dealing with administrative duties like lawyers, servers, and hiring. Were he to take them up on their offer, that could all be taken care of for him, if we wanted (I'm guessing).

I'm happy that he's decided to stay independent, but I think Valve could actually handle a hire such as him correctly. They've got a great reputation with most of the gaming community for doing things right, and I'd be surprised if they screwed something like that up.
Airbnb - Fraud Management Engineer
Again - when you're dealing with outside vendors and you have internal applications which rely on browser compatibility you can only move to IE8 if the applications support IE8 - which they don't. So, IE7 is the current ceiling. It sucks, but it's the reality.
Agreed on both counts, particularly the documentation. Its clearer and better written then probably any I've ever come across; it's incredibly well done.
Hmm? That's news to me, I thought the US had a higher productivity overall. Hourly Germany might be better, but considering that you'd have to go to Korea to find people putting in more hours, the US comes out ahead.

And while France was behind Germany, they do even fewer hours.

Whether that matters a lot is a different matter altogether. Life-work balance is one issue, job satisfaction another. Working more hours vs. wanting to work more hours etc.

And in my experience, the IT industry is a bit different anyway, never mind the entrepreneurial sector thereof. So does this matter a lot to the usual HackerNews reader? Probably not.
Funny, the java community is one of the best and most helpful I've encountered.

Much better experience than I've had with the supposedly enlightened lisp community.

Also, Markus programs in straight java, not scala or clojure.
I suspect that the Lightweight Java Game Library is seeing a spike in downloads.
I do love how there are overwhelmingly negative reviews of apartment managers online. But then there are also equally ridiculous positive reviews of the apartment managers, obviously written by the managers themselves.

Agree with random samples. Also need larger samples. Or something like a carfax for apartments.
To followup on the blog post, we have about 20 technical and product openings at the moment, though this number keeps increasing, not decreasing. Some of them are posted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs
If you think it's related to GPS you can turn off Location Services to see if it makes a difference.

However, I would guess it's related to network usage.
Drug Dealer Or Software Developer? - A Career Comparison
Airbnb - Frontend Engineer
I had the same thought when I read it. Either that or Google's initial stock price was based more on the company's goodwill than earnings.
IFixit Takes Apart the New Apple TV
Download Ubuntu Themes: 23 Awesome Themes for Linux
Did you have a comment with this quote from the article?
Airbnb - Payments Engineer
There are many other phones out there besides the iPhone 4 that have signal problems. Is Scott Adams famous? Sure-but that doesn't necessarily mean he's an Apple follower. If his article mentioned anything about the iPhone, it still wouldn't negate the points about other callers, low battery, ambient noise, etc.
What is the marginal cost to an employer in Germany of an hour of labor? And, in the US? The article did not explicitly state the metric used to quantify "output", but, given other similar studies I've seen, I must presume that profit/employee across the economy is a likely underlying metric. Given such a metric, could labor cost differences explain this "efficiency"? Let us consider a contrived example where, in Ohio, construction workers earn $20/hour and, in New York, $60. If we examined the techniques used (by capitalists) to build a structure, we would surely observe more capital-intensive but labor saving techniques in New York when compared to Ohio. Does this mean that the New York workers get more done? If you measure output (yards of concrete spread per day or whatever), then yes -- using a really expensive robotic concrete spreader allows the $60/hour employee to produce a lot of output. However, it might also be rational in Ohio to forgo the machine in favor of more labor-intensive methods. The profitability of the Ohio construction company might actually be higher, but the laborers in New York are "more productive."

I know little of Germany's regulations w.r.t. employment. Are labor costs (due to not only wages but taxes paid by the employer and other non-wage burdens) higher? Do employers in Germany rationally select higher levels of automation? Could this explain the disparity between countries in such a metric?
Airbnb - User Acquisition Engineer
Soylent Green is made of People[1]! At the very least it's a clever name.

Really smart, interesting concept. I'm not sure I trust other random people to correct my grammar though.

[1] Thanks to Mr. Kenuda, 11th Grade Physics teacher, who convinced me to watch that movie.
Airbnb - SEM Specialist