skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>We should teach programming because... We you know? It really isn't quite as urgent.

90% of office workers would benefit from the ability to write an Excel Macro. I don't even think that's a hard sell. Any businessman who understands what Excel does would understand that.

Of course, long term Excel is a toy, and there are all sorts of benefits to be had from more general tools like Python.
Groupon is abusing their position as leaders in that niche. That will backfire for sure and users will never forget.

A new startup in the field can disrupt the market...
Read Replicas for Amazon RDS
I don't know Marco, so I don't know his motivations or plans, but he's pretty disparaging of Android on his blog. A lot of what he says I agree with, but a lot of it reads like baseless commentary from the sidelines without having used the product much. So I wouldn't necessarily count on an Android client being his top priority.

If you can make your client work exceptionally well and fit the Android mentality, you have an opportunity to be fairly entrenched and beat out the official client - I wouldn't give up.

One thing Marco does well is think out every user interface decision and add polish to the product. If you don't do that, and he does release an Android client, that could kill your app's success pretty quickly. Polish is something Android is lacking pretty heavily, and we all notice it when it's there.
WeTab boss caught posting fake 5-star Amazon reviews, resigns
The tablet that Next (the retailer) is selling
Not to self boast but it has been posted before. It is however a very impressive website.

Curious, why didn't the submission page find the old post?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1646856
Fast growing company ever according to their CEO. Hiring 100 new employees a week. Uh oh.
They've now added that to the product description in the marketplace. That's quite a disappointment.
I think the author expects students to use programs like Safari and Microsoft Word with hundreds of man-years of polish by UI professionals. As a journalist, perhaps he is so lucky, but business people aren't. Business people have to configure generic software and use web apps slapped together by low-paid programmers who don't have the time or expertise to do good UI design. That can be very much like programming, unfortunately, and I can't think of anything else you could teach high school students that would prepare them for that task.
Interesting: 3 months ago HN was positive, now we're negative. 3 months from now the public / business owners might be negative - and then it's fad over.
In the industrial revolution, we had public education for basic reading and writing. to learn technical skills (machining, accounting, etc.).

Now in this new post-industrial world, perhaps we need to add something that is a universal like R&Wing. It might be basic programming - enough to deal with basic data/text manipulation. It might be basic web development / online tech. It might even just be a big sampler of different things to show them how to solve problems creatively.
Skype now available for Android phones
Where did you go to school? It's not on the Ohio standard curriculum.

Or any pushed through with NCLB, to my knowledge.
It seems like every piece of Groupon marketing says not to expect to make money off the deal itself. Then we see people like this complaining that the deal doesn't make money.

From what I understand, Groupon isn't trying to be a wholesaler for goods and services. They're providing an effective advertisement, not moving merchants up the supply ladder.

Though I can definitely see why people would be steamed if they expected that.
Ex-French trader must pay $6.7 billion for fraud
I'd like to see a well researched, estimated total national/international cost to the industry for support of IE.
I believe on the Clojure side, leiningen is the preferred tool of choice:

http://github.com/technomancy/leiningen
Gotcha - I saw that after posting my comment. Cool.

Next q: Since I installed it directly from your website and not the android market, how will I know about updates? Your blog looks rather sparse.
Stupid Handmade Solutions
Trying to find a solution to a problem can be a good thing but in these cases it is kinda funny and dangerous.
First thing, the name is too long.

"Check out this thing on App Store" vs. "Check out this thing on Windows Phone Marketplace". I feel bad even typing it out.
The one argument I could make against this post has to do with the fact that we don't build an increasing amount of our society out of wood, no one uses wood in tricky ways to rob people, there aren't unlimited forms of self expression and communication within wood waiting to be unlocked, and knowing how to manipulate wood won't benefit nearly every other aspect of your life.
The description lacks a bit of detail on his experience and methods, but he seems to refer to the mindlessness of meditation, i'm not an expert, i've read only something about Vipassana and watched some video e.g. some Rinpoche lectures at Google for the sake of it but this seems a common/recurring concept.
Care to explain what he is missing?
Group-think or adjusting to new information?

And have any of the individual people from that earlier thread -- only 7 people! -- changed their advice, or is it a new and different group that's now vocal with negative sentiments?

It'd be a mistake to take either the small sample of the earlier thread, or the people piling onto recent Groupon news items, as accurately representing a single consensus "HN community attitude" towards Groupon.
Ask HN: Distributed Bug Tracking - Why?
I keep coming across people who would like a bug tracker that works like git - distributed bug tracking. I'm having a tough time getting them to explain why that would be better than a standard web app. What is the use case?

Anyone have any thoughts?
"I don't even know the name of mine"

That's kind of scary. I just got a Sarah Palin flashback.

"Groupon is very good at creating hoards of customers; what it lacks, I think, is the consultation that should be provided to businesses about how to limit and handle the crowd."

Maybe they just need to allow businesses to put a cap on the number of coupons that are sold? Since a lot of companies are only advertising to their local market, I wouldn't even think this would be an issue.
Relevant previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1569559
Fairly certain google would make it fairly easy, if Diaspora ever takes off.
It's begging for auto-location adjustment (when I land somewhere new on a plane, I'd want to see the nearest tower for where I am). At the very least, there should be a way to pick the nearest towers to your current location easily. Bonus points for calculating what range you would need to have that tower cover your current location.

Can the range be shortened even more than 150 miles?
"... at the same time I wonder why successful figures in history aren't known for meditating."

Successful in what way? Meditation is not about making you more efficient in pursuing power, wealth or publicity.

Although it may help you a bit in these areas, it's traditionally a tool for actually seeing (as opposed to theoretical understanding) that the true unconditional happiness lies elsewhere.
Considering the high-quality and availability of Linux distributions these days, what are some of the advantages of using FreeBSD over Linux? More specifically, are there any competitive advantages that could be obtained from using FreeBSD over Linux that would outweigh the costs of deviating from the Linux standard on web servers?
Google acquires BlindType, virtual keyboard software company
The problem is that no one would believe you. And since you don't have any IP protection, the second you showed off anything of real interest (to prove you could do it), they could simply steal the idea at that point.
I don't include ARM in this list b/c they actually market their products and their whole business model revolves around taking the "headache" out of the R&D of chip design.

ARM aggressively markets their products and chip designs, showing benchmarks of their technologies. Most patent trolls fly under the radar, trying not to get noticed, so a major corporation can violate the patent in a huge, best-selling product. Then, they can claim "well, you should have checked all available technologies" - which is a huge waste of effort.

There's no incentive for patent trolls to aggressively market their products, b/c that doesn't bring the biggest returns. Look at this suit that just went against Apple - if Apple had negotiated a long-term license with them back in 2004, it would have been on really bad terms - no one knew that the iPhone would be this successful (except for maybe Apple).

There are perverse incentives in place to try and "hide" the patent as much as possible, and then wait for the biggest fish to show up. One really big fish is worth a thousand smaller fish, and when a really big fish falls, it discourages all the small fish from entering the marketplace all together - to the detriment of everyone.
One obstacle is that you cannot have one million open sockets (for long polling) at the same time on one node. I don't know how easy this is to mitigate.
The graphic opening the "Typographic Terms You Should Know" section is seriously broken. Arrows point to all sorts of wrong things. With a graphic like that, on a topic so graphically important, my rule of thumb is to disregard the article rather than spend the time to discern what is true and what is false in the text.

But if you're interested in typography, by all means buy "The Elements of Typographic Style" which is a sound and beautiful work on the subject.
There's plenty of hive-mindish stuff on HN but I wouldn't call the response to your original post 'overwhelmingly' anything - you got about 7 responses and those responses barely got a couple of upvotes between them. Statistically, nobody on HN read your post.

I don't have it handy now but on the recent thread about the Portland coffeeshop owner, most posters seemed to feel it was the proprietor's mistake rather than Groupon's fault.

What did you end up deciding, though, did you use a Groupon clone and if so, how did it work out?
> We should teach programming because... We you know? It really isn't quite as urgent.

Well, if you only focus on job preparation, maybe. But education is not just supposed to prepare people for work; it's supposed to prepare them to be good citizens. That requires teaching students a whole variety of skills, but it particularly requires teaching them analytic modes of thought.

Learning how to program means learning how to think in new ways. Generally speaking, those modes of thought are not taught in other educational disciplines: e.g., solving problems via recursion or iteration, and algorithmic thinking generally. So CS education fills a niche that, in large part, would otherwise go unfilled. Coupled with its more "practical" economic benefits, offering it seems like a no brainer to me.
I disagree, if someone likes a restaurant then they're likely to come back even if they can get a cheaper meal elsewhere, price isn't the primary factor most people use in choosing a restaurant.
Collaborative drawing with HTML5 Canvas + Node.js + (node-)Cairo
The Oatmeal: If you do this in an email, I hate you.
The benefit I can see to restaurants comes with people's preference for familiarity.

True, it'll be a tough blow to serve all that food for cheap, but if you can make people feel good about your restaurant for cheap, I think there is a good chance they'll be back, even if they have to pay more.

It's the reason why national brands can charge such a premium over generic stuff, even when it's exactly the same thing. People are risk averse and a Groupon takes half the risk out of a meal purchase.
Yes. And teach the biologists Matlab (or something similar, and perhaps more open), instead of making them rote-learn C.
I never understood why they stop communicating if an opportunity doesn't pan out? Why wouldn't they be interested in cultivating a long term relationship?

That's what I think I would do if I were a recruiter. I'd keep in touch with say 200 people I know are really good and keep placing them as they switched jobs. I'm guessing at least 10 or 20 of those people would be switching jobs every year.
We will move it to android market soon. Meanwhile you can either subscribe for updates on the main page or follow us on twitter.com/touchqode

And promise we will update the blog as well :)
Rate my webapp: self-help dynamic FAQ. Tell me what you think.
Overall the article was good, but people have been worrying about peak oil for 4+ decades. It kills me. We're always finding more and more oil and when we do eventually run out, the laws of supply and demand will ensure that the people that really need oil will get it (absent any carter style price controls, in which case nobody will get it)
Shoot he should respond to this "I created the Ruby on Rails framework. My base salary is $5,000,000 a year. Looking forward to relocating to SF"
This means nothing to those who develop for the Enterprise world :-(. We still have clients who are on Windows 2000+IE6.

In a way, I can't wait to go back to consumer development.
Partly - but people who like trying new restaurants are going to keep trying new ones. Not stop because they found somewhere they like. They might like the next place even more - and at half the price I'm sure they will.
Try oDesk. I've hired a bunch of help from there. Its been hit or miss but I've found a few real gems who I now hire regularly.
Here is one that looks promising: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/09/video-labs-p2p-next-co...

It's a CDN that uses P2P technology to help distribute video. This would come in very handy for viral videos...if 30 of your coworkers have already watched the video, then you could stream it from them rather than fetching it from an edge server (in the case of a traditional CDN).
Yes, you will not know as much as those guys but you will know plenty to get it done...

As long as your software gives them some kind of advantage and they see value in it, you'll do fine...
Life-saving "buoyancy bazooka" wins 2010 James Dyson award
Why would you use a commercial database anyway?
I was pretty amazed by the video, Mahoney is brilliant. Thanks for the PDF, I'll read it thoroughly.
If you have to ask that question and you're running web servers the BSD's are probably not right for you.

OS choice mainly comes down to preferences, some people like the way the BSD's do things, and some don't. There are some features that Linux has that the BSD's don't and vica-versa (like ZFS support on FreeBSD). But it's probably not going to matter on a web server.
I'm curious as to whether anybody working on cool Android projects is writing them in Not Java. I've been meaning to try Scala on Android, but I don't know of anyone using it for anything beyond demonstrating that it is possible.
I've totally neglected it (and it's been in rough shape for a while) but I have a functional Geographically based Augmented Reality library. If someone's interested I'd love to hand the reigns of the project over. Right now it's very much in a proof-of-concept state.

http://github.com/haseman/Android-AR-Kit
My guess is that DHH is primarily annoyed that the spammy email started by addressing him as "Dave".
I think the Restaurant.com model works better for restaurants since a minimum purchase is typically required and the tip is automatically included based on the actual (non-coupon) price. Although, I do find it hard to get coupons for the more popular restaurants.
You'd have to root it. However, HTC Sense isn't too bad - I actually enjoy it. There's a few apps you can't get rid of, which is kind of annoying, but you can just remove them from your desktops and never think about them again.
what helps me very often is the vision: where do i wanna get with the product and myself?
what do i have to do to get there?
write a list and work an it every day.
marking accomplishments creates a quite good feeling for me too :)
hope that helps a bit, martin
For a merchant to make effective use of Groupon, he must use it for one purpose: to acquire customers. Once someone comes to you via a third party, you must convert them into your own customer. This generally requires getting their personal info so that you can engage them directly in the future.

Amazon merchants have been doing this for years. Pay Amazon their commission for the first sale, then move the name to their permanent data base. 15% of the first sale is a reasonable customer acquisition cost; 15% of every sale is not sustainable (unless you have ridiculous margins).

Since many Groupon merchants meet their customers in person, an extra step is required: collecting personal info. Skip this step and you've just lost 2 things: your money and a name on your customer list.
P2P search and p2p social networking. If you've already got p2p media sharing and streaming and bidirectional chatting and talking, you've pretty much remade the internet. You've pretty much remade all conventional media too.
HN likes to turn against companies that become too successful - FB, Groupon, etc. I assume it has a little bit to do with sour grapes and a little bit to do with not wanting monopolies forming.
I second the other comment on this thread. Android is still in wild-west mode. Don't give up!
Don't be so quick to discard CreateSpace.

I recently published my first book through them [1], and imho, it looks good. I formatted the book itself in LaTeX and had a graphic designer do the cover, which cost me a couple hundred bucks. It doesn't look exactly like a typical textbook, but that's much more because of some first-time mistakes of mine than anything about the production process.

Also, not sure what "a lot of upfront fees" are in this case. I paid for my cover, but that's not required. They offer a plan for $39 (iirc) that gives you a better royalty deal. But that's it.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1453772316/8631&pf_rd_i...
Groupon is crack for struggling business owners. It's a minimal up-front cost for a massive rush. But then the rush disappears and you're left needing another one. It's a few months later that you realise you're more fucked than you were.
As much as I dislike facebook and Zuckerberg, I like his quote: "If you had invented facebook, you would have invented facebook."

So you figured out how to build a cold fusion reactor. If you had done that you would have built a cold fusion reactor.

If one looked only at sweat equity, I'd wager that the creation and invention of the product in your average million-dollar-revenue company is dwarfed by everything else that needs to be done.
I still use Makefiles, and I like it!
I agree - the groupon price is likely going to become the "reference price" in the minds of most customers, meaning psychologically any number higher than the "reference price" will be considered too expensive. This effect is even more likely to occur on someone purchasing a service or activity for the first time (first impression effect), not to mention groupon buyers are mostly regular deal-hunters.
There is already a front page story on this, so why another submission?
If they’re just going to spam people from emails they find on tech sites, why not just pay some shady Russians to do it?

Based on some of the emails I've gotten, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what some of them do.

It's easier and much cheaper in the short run to just spam everyone with a job opportunity and sort through responses versus actually doing the legwork to find qualified candidates.

Of course, in the long run it's going to make me skeptical of any future opportunities they send my way, and it certainly isn't going to make me want to hire them if I ever find myself on the other side of the table.
You'd have to do a lot to prove to me you're not just cold calling me and actually interested in my career and me as a developer. No recruiter has done that to date.

Having a recruiter "keep in touch with me" now feels awfully a lot like they're cold calling/emailing me. I'll now go to great lengths to take a job not offered by a recruiter.
I have wondered the same thing. Responding and responding in a timely manner when the opportunity doesn't pan out would be an improvement.
It would have the same advantage as distributed source control: it's distributed.

It works offline, meaning I can add bug reports, comments, change them and so on and so forth while being offline. Or one could work on the reports and publish a cleaned up state, without all the noise he might have generated during triage.

That's two cases where being distributed would help.

Also, most of the current distributed bug tracker efforts tie into a distributed VCS, which has the added advantage of the entire issue database coming coupled with the code: one doesn't have to visit yet another web application, doesn't have to figure out where the original bugtracker is, and so on and so forth.
Chrome is a disallowed program on our network by "Symantec Endpoint Protection". You can install Firefox but it's discouraged by the IT department. I wouldn't doubt if these setups are common among larger corporations.
Groupon markets to you in a way that claims you'll gain long-term customers, that's where the retailer is supposed to make money.

The problem is that doesn't end up happening for a variety of reasons, as has been pointed out elsewhere in comments and the article. Of course Groupon would never tell potential customers of these flaws in the system.

FTA:

"The 32% that said they didn’t make a profit from the program reported that customers rarely bought more than the coupon deal and few returned to the business at a later date."

Tough to make a profit from Groupon when you don't get any additional business from the groupon customers on top of what the groupon was for.
That's weird - possibly because this listing was for http://thewildernessdowntown.com while the first was for http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com (note the missing www. subdomain).
I was intrigued by the idea, but ever since I saw the code on Github I've been, well, saddened. First of all, they chose to market the idea directly to average consumers (and gladly accepted their money). In my book, that means they have a responsibility to turn out a product that an average person can deploy.

I realize that Diaspora is still in the early stages of development, but honestly, who in their right mind would use MongoDB and Rails on an app that's being marketed directly to consumers? It's hard enough coaching people through WordPress's trademark 5-minute install process. Can you imagine your aunt Gertrude or little cousin Mordechai trying to deploy a production-ready Rails app?
Very true. At work, our sysadmin prefers Solaris so everything we run here is Solaris-based. I actually prefer Ubuntu Server for my personal projects since I prefer its Apache structure and easier package management. In the end, the results are the same.
Apple Found Liable For Patent Infringement to The Tune of $625 million
Getting Good with Git: Free eBook from Nettuts
You can pay with a tweet - but are the tweets that are used as currency are going to be seen as genuine?

If enthusiasm isn't authentic .. who's going to take notice?

If the generated buzz isn't actually generating interest organically, then this scheme is just about link building .. which is equivalent to spamming imo.