skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In a recent interview, a top Infosys official told Business Line that the company would hire more laterals in the US, and expects no cutbacks on tech spending there even as stimulus funding tapers off.

I've worked with Indian oursourcing companies before but I wasn't aware the term "laterals" is common vocabulary. Does this mean hiring more US citizens/perm residents to work laterally with the offshore workers? I thought that meant they would place more Indian workers in lateral positions on H1b visas to work with offshore teams.
clickable links: http://www.touchqode.com
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O40QQnrNXUk
I'm not sure what you want to say with this link. Do you mean that for you the differences between WEIRDos from US and Europe are small ones?
I got an Android phone. Anything existing for that?
I guess I'm showing my age, but I started out in BASICA on my Compaq Deskpro and later graduated to QBASIC.
Not really. Brazil's inflation had an extra factor helping it: lots of prices (as well as salaries) were automatically revalued by "triggers". The plan wouldn't have worked if the government hadn't also dropped all these mechanisms.
I had my own home-built mp3 player in my car as well.

I removed my center console, and rebuilt a new one, that housed a complete computer inside it. Recovered the console with vinyl, ordered an IR receiver, got the Winamp remote control software, that translated remote buttons => keystrokes. I had it where it loaded Winamp on boot, plus my playlist of all my songs.

The only thing I never did was purchase a visual interface for it. I just had a sheet of paper printed out, with all the songs, and a # to the left of them. I would type in that number, and the song would start playing.
Geim's the guy who levitated the frog:

"Geim shared the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize with Sir Michael Berry of Bristol University, for levitating the frog. His award of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 made him the first person to win an Ig followed by the real version."

Badass. (Even if my physics past wants someone to win something big for work on silicates one day. Dammit, glasses are fascinating.)
My wife recently pulled her hip by standing for long periods at a copy machine. I wouldn't really say it's better than sitting. However, I suppose when every vein in your legs has gone varicose, it's going to be very hard for DVT's to form when you are sitting.
Vietnam's State-Owned Facebook Alternative
I think an alternative that works on 3G is FriendCaller and Fring.
Sipdroid works with most generic SIP accounts and also works over 3G.
Agreed.

However, I do keep one non-virtual slide rule around just to whip out and show the kids now and then. Nice mahogony base, teflon slide, the works.
Get a bar-stool height chair for your work station and place it slightly too far away from your desk for sitting, encouraging you to 'perch', which is good for your posture, but may also allow you to switch more stream-lessly.
Skype (in terms of the functionality it offers) is basically a branded form of SIP VoIP.

You can obtain similar functionality using a generic SIP VoIP account purchased through a reseller .. which will be free from the negative restrictions mentioned.
Who creates jobs? Large vs Small vs Young
And the base concept is probably based on Dwarf Fortress, where logic does come from an unexpected and novel aspect: hydraulics.
Or his user name being "tectonic".
Prepare driving practical with DSA driving practical test book
And I'm guessing that the total effort was greater than 1 months work?

Out of interest as an hourly rate did it come in above minimum wage?
That's funny, I went to college just for the paperwork. I watched them teach the absolute fundamentals of programming but not how to -think-. The people that graduated with me couldn't come up with new ideas if their life depended on it. One guy even dropped out when he wasn't able to write a simple poll application.

On the other hand, I taught myself and I -can-. In fact, most of time I -was-. Turns out some of the ideas were really good and I'm just starting to see other people use them, and others weren't so good and I ended up scrapping them.

As far as syntax errors go, all programmers make them sometimes. Mistakes or typos, it doesn't really matter. A decent IDE will catch most of them, and proper unit testing will catch the rest.
Nokia's VP of Meego Devices quits
With a good amount of American exceptionalism thrown in...
Panasonic's Jungle portable gaming system emerges
Andre Geim is quite a character. He won the Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for floating a frog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#...).
Said so too for my HTC Desire, even though that one of the two thy display in their site.
It checked the App Market and it showed up there instead - now I've got it up and running !

oh boy oh boy oh boy !
How is Kleiner Perkins regarded today?
I'm not in the USA, and I think most parents I know want a separate room for their baby - it's only for economic reasons in most cases if that doesn't happen.

The only people I know who don't have their baby in a separate room still have an empty room in their house.

It was a very strange factoid to put into the article, but because it was at the start I immediately skimmed the rest doubting it's research or authenticity.
I recently built a desktop from parts, for the first time in years. It's not really a geeky experience anymore. Pretty much everything's onboard, there's no fiddling with IRQ jumpers, you don't have to completely dismantle the case to get to the RAM sockets... you just bolt stuff together, plug stuff in, turn it on and watch it go. There's nothing for geeks there.
Their quarterly revenue is, I believe, estimated somewhere in the region of $X million.

I suspect you got so many downvotes, though, because of the dismissive tone of your comment.
Linux Clusters: Keeping Nodes Securely Configured
Black Duck Software acquires Ohloh
Ask HN: Any interest for a HN app for Windows Phone 7? Screenshots available
Cause i have started working on one. Here are some shots http://imgur.com/a/iz4F8/hn_for_wp7
I spent six months in front of my computer writing the book and doing research, on top of time taken to visit the places (which is the result of a lifetime of traveling).

I worked pretty much an 8 hour day. I was working in France at home so I would get up in the morning and start work on the book. I had always left myself something easy to work on the night before (such as a section of the book that I knew I could write) so that I was never blocked. I would take a long lunch with a glass of wine with my SO and then return to work on the book.

I had a very detailed schedule of work and I put off bits of the book that were easy for me until the end so that I was forced to work on the hard bits first. I had a spreadsheet that would track my progress and predict my end date based on writing rate. This was very motivational and made sure that I hit my deadline with O'Reilly.

Once the book was delivered there were 8 months between me handing in the manuscript and publication. This was longer than usual for O'Reilly because of the large number of illustrations in the book and the complexity of the book layout.
Well, I wonder if it would be suitable as some kind of low-power all-in-one home server (file sharing, irc in screen, not much more), network router and jukebox and movie player. In theory, specs are ok for that purpose, but from the remark "if you need more than 1GB, you're probably doing it wrong", it seems that, hm, I'd be doing it wrong, because 1GB isn't exactly a lot of memory and it'd be wise to put there more.

(And of course, USB might not be the ideal bus to connect a lot of disk space.)
When they say "laterals", they mean non-freshers
Geeknet Sells Open Source Directory Ohloh To Black Duck Software
30 Stunning Examples Of Fashion Designed Websites For You Inspiration
In this article we’ll take a look at the websites of leading fashion companies, as well as some fashion news sites, and see when fashion, style and web design come together.
Ask HN: Do startups need analysts? What can this 26-year-old semi-generalist do?
I'm looking for advice, suggestions and/or guidance from the learned community here. This is a throwaway account, as I'm a contributor under my real name…

A quick profile: 26-year-old CS graduate. Two jobs to-date: Five years in a medium-sized specialist financial organisation and just starting my second job in one of the largest banks in the world. I started my career as a developer before realising that it was not where my expertise lies. I'm now a business/systems analyst… and a damn good one, even if I do say so myself.

However, I prefer to think of myself as a generalist: I love marketing, design, psychology, and hundreds of other subjects. I read and write voraciously on these topics in my free time. I can feel the $75,000 a year sucking away slowly at my soul and have always loved the startup scene. It's always been a long-term goal, but for the last couple of years I've been eager yet unsure how to proceed for a relatively simple reason:

I read advice to those wanting to go into the startup world here often. However it is almost exclusively aimed at programmers. Nobody seems to discuss analysis. Is this a field that only small-to-large (non-lean) companies employ? Are we needed in startups?

For reference, I've found these slightly helpful but they still show a programming bias: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447747 (and the comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1448145) and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438489
Cult of the Strippers
Having done the 10 day basic vipassana course just after high school (had to find a way to control my restless mind), can't say if it helped with any of those 4 points mentioned in the article. But, gosh, it helped me get some sleep. Finally, I could sleep in the nights instead of just staring at the fan. I could sleep wherever and whenever I wanted.

Of course, its different now, that I consider sleep a necessary evil - such a waste of life. If only I could do away with it....
It works on 3G in the US on the iPhone.

Is there some sort of workaround for root users that can fool it into thinking it's on WiFi?
Apple faces $600m damages claim
Or keep a pitcher of water on your desk, and you'll have to go to the bathroom every once in a while.

This is one of the reasons staying hydrated is recommended on long flights - it forces you to get up and move at some point.
Yea, I see the Maker movement as in the alpha geek phase, but it's certainly becoming mainstream. Now MS, Intel, TI, etc. are all embracing it with their own products. I guess we'll see where it goes.
> ... Americans having the world’s highest worker productivity.

Is that valid?

Here I can see something different
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OECD_Productivity_levels_2...

Although there probably is some measure of worker productivity that US ranks best.
See also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1759141
I appear to have this software built into my brain. I will quite often wake up before my alarm, sometimes as much as an hour, but most often as little as 1-5 minutes. And it does tend to run in cycles, with me waking up ~30 minutes for a few days in a row and then going back to waking just before the alarm.

Only when I'm really tired, or had trouble sleeping, does the alarm wake me up.

Most of the people I know use their snooze button, though. I've always thought that a really bad idea, but couldn't really say why since I wake up ready to go, and not drowsy. (I don't drink caffeine very often, and I've always been a morning person.) Wouldn't you be defeating this device if you just hit 'snooze' and went back to bed for the remaining time?
Mint Slideshow: Money Graffiti
Personally, I think the 'final' bands look a lot more comfortable.
I really love how complex some of the most mundane things we do every day actually are.

Another good example from abstruse goose is the anatomy of a phonecall: http://abstrusegoose.com/306

Just wow.
Skype isn't SIP, Skype is a proprietary P2P protocol. Which is one of the reasons it works so well going through firewalls etc. - Skype had to make it work and could change their implementation at will. (Although most of the magic was already in KaZaA/FastTrack, which the Skype P2P network was based on AFAIK)
I hate the design of the slide show embed but i enjoyed the pictures. Almost did not notice it was a slide show.
The role of the progress bar on the web
Java Build Systems - a sad state of affairs
I post this every chance I get: America seems to be a third-world nation when it comes to office environments. Here in Denmark (and the rest of Scandinavia seems to be the same) I have never worked in an office without motorized desks that you can stand at while working if you so desire. This is across scores of companies from smallish startups to big corporations, and it isn't limited to IT companies. I have also never seen a cubicle in any company I have worked at (except one built from cardboard boxes by a visiting American consultant who was distracted by the open office plan).

I have no idea why the U.S. is so backwards in this area. But I can say with emphasis that I would never work in a cubicle, and I would need some seriously good reasons to not get a motorized desk. I just put this in my own office at home: http://www.conset.dk/product/prodone/4105/Serie-501-19-bredd...
> use an existing currency like the euro ... [which] has a fairly neutral image ....

Opposition politicians looking for ammunition to attack the plan -- correction: looking for ammunition to attack the incumbents; they might have had little interest in attacking the plan otherwise -- would denounce the insult to national sovereignty.

That's surely why Brazil called it the URV - unit of real value - instead of admitting that in effect they repriced in Yanqui imperialist dollars. That's not in the linked NPR transcript but was mentioned in the longer NPR Planet Money podcast, linked at the bottom of the transcript.
Any chance of seeing a copy of the ad?
apropos: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
Microsoft Downgraded to Neutral
All money is of course "fake" in that it only has value if people believe that it does. Economics could be thought of as a branch of psychology, with "real value" being connected to the transient and sometimes hard to quantify needs, wants and desires of people.
check out http://www.pastemath.com that has been around for 5 years now.
How The MPAA Is Using The Law To Protect Its Business Model
In what appears to be another shocking attempt to constrain and limit the functioning of the internet, US lawmakers are currently pushing an MPAA-backed bill that threatens to block American internet users from accessing sites that are deemed to be ‘dedicated to piracy’.
The numbers seem a bit implausible to me. The top Fox News page only has 530 shares? A sixth as many as the top Huffington Post story? Maybe my sense of US media empires' importance is skewed.
I agree, I want to know the most popular sites and the most popular articles overall.
The quality on a nexus one running froyo is significantly better than land line; almost as good as desktop, both wifi and 3g. enormous step up from sipdroid. Australia now has a year long plan for 120 aud that can effectively replace voice service from the carrier entirely. (three.com.au)
Largely, this is what I think has happened; the interests of big business and corporations have aligned with the interests of nerds and geeks.

Geeks like cool technology because it's interesting .. whereas the other interested (commercial) parties like cool technology because it's enables them to increase their reach, power and profit.

Society has become more enamoured with technology because a shift was necessary for commercial enterprise to flourish. In my opinion, the fact that our families all use the technologies we were championing 15 years ago, is a result of commercial might.

Therefore, my bet is that the majority of 'alpha geeks' are all working happily for 'the man'. At the end of the day, most people who have a love for learning and technology just want interesting projects to work on - if they can be handsomely rewarded for doing just that, the majority probably wont say no.
Do VCs Usually Fire Founder CEOs? (Some Interesting Statistics)
Find Plasma TV Installation in orange county
It is especially important if you have a home theater room. Home Theater Installation in orange county will provide you with the great audio and visual quality and We design home theaters & do home theater installation.
Right, I meant out-of-context usage (if that's what this is) would be a silly affectation like if one started inserting technical sailing terms into one's speech for no good reason, arrr.
Ask HN: No free accounts vs. collecting email addresses
Hi HN,

a recent discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613852 pointed to the opinion that if your niche is small, offering free accounts isn't viable.

My counter-idea is that a mailing list approach seems to be often accepted as valuable. To collect emails, a good approach is to offer free accounts (10% of visitors on http://www.bitesizeirishgaelic.com/ created a free account).

Comes back to the question: for a small niche, would you not have free accounts and try to get newsletter signups, or to offer free limited accounts and try to upsell?
Food Wimpishness
Okay, a good point - but does Skype offer much more than you can obtain from a SIP account?

My understanding is that there's a benefit to choosing SIP over skype, because the technology is interoperable and non-proprietary.

I suppose, my point is that people don't need to rely on Skype to be able to call people for free. In my opinion, Skype isn't the only - or even best - choice.
According to the study, there are actually people that sit 3 or less hours in a day? Apologies if I missed a key element in the article, but how is this possible that out of about 16 hours of waking hours that only 3 are sitting? I literally cannot see how a complete 13 hours can be spent otherwise.
I'm guessing if you change the measure from GDP pr. hour worked to GDP per year employed the US will do a lot better. Mainly since people in US tend to work not only more hours pr day, but also more days pr year.
30 day challenge: meditation
I bought a GeekDesk a month ago and I love it. Typing from it right now. It's big and sturdy, fully adjustable. Can't go wrong with it. http://www.geekdesk.com/
Ask HN: Is anyone still excited by Diaspora?
I recently got an email saying "I, like the world, saw the diaspora release and thought, erm, is that it?"

I realise that none of us were expecting Diaspora to ever displace Facebook, but I was surprised that it's perceived as being disappointing — especially given that there are nearly 3,000 people watching it on GitHub!

So what's the general sentiment? Excited? Disappointed? Couldn't care less?
Surgeons. Interventionalists. Possibly construction workers and other manual laborers.
Hey Skype,thanks for letting me know. Actually, you came pre-installed on my Droid. Wish you had given me the chance to decide if I wanted you or not. Seems like I can't even uninstall ya, either. So looks like we've taken part in a shotgun marriage.
Thoughts on Objective-C and how it might/should evolve
Thanks a lot for responding. This again is interesting in the light of the salary discussion from yesterday. Thinking out loud here I assume that JGC isn't living on anything near a minimum wage. 1/12 of that could certainly be 1/6 to 1/4 of a yearly salary elsewhere, again refering to the gap in salaries for basically doing a similar job. Which changes a lot about the ROI here, for me.

Not that I want to undermine the effort you had to put into that project. I seriously cannot imagine or understand the work put into that book by you. And I certainly don't plan to write a book now...

What really is interesting about this number game is mostly that I come from the opposite direction of guy that wrote the comment ("Living of your book royalties") that lead to your blog entry in the first place: I assumed creating a book would suck in terms of money in general (except for the obvious exceptional cases like Rowling) and for a minority target group specifically.

Now, on the other hand, I can better understand why and how one could live off writing most of the time (obviously with numbers like yours you wouldn't be able to sustain a life in NYC, but again - the differences in cost of living and salaries showed that it should be possible elsewhere).

Thanks a lot for sharing this.
MySQL update addresses DoS vulnerability
On the other hand, I taught myself and I -can-.

I suspect you have this reversed: you can, so you teach yourself. In my experience this is true of most competent people. At best, high-level schooling can be a guide, and an excellent teacher can save us some time gaining insight. But by-and-large it's up to us to learn.
The karma is mostly because I spend too much time here ;)
Per recent news items about large companies considering open source an issue :( ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1735360 ) in the products/services they acquire, the Black Duck code label seems like it would be useful:

http://www.blackducksoftware.com/files/code-label1.jpg

For others though, I'm not sure what the use would be, as they'd probably try to hide it from companies that asked, even though that could kill a deal per: http://www.nytimes.com/external/idg/2010/09/27/27idg-how-to-...
The six prejudices of Jason Cohen, A Smart Bear. Geek to entrepreneur
Breaks are good, but they're not going to significantly reduce the time you spend sitting.
except Skype works with SIP now:

http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/business/sip/overview/
Or http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php
Samsung Galaxy Tab UK Price: iPad wins first round
Distributed Social App with CouchDB. Brilliant
military-grade light

Hmm... I'd like to see this tested with consumer- and enterprise-grade light too. ;)
I seriously cannot imagine or understand the work put into that book by you

It was a pleasure to spend the time on the book and if I had the means I would write another book. But I also need to make a living. If I get the time I'd like to do "The Apollo 11 Guidance Computer: Annotated Program Listing" :-)
Diaspora suffers from the Marimba effect. You can't combine insane media hype with the "release early, release often" strategy. Worse, they convinced consumers (rather than professional investors) to invest in a product before it existed. Meeting the expectations generated by that are hard to meet, especially for a relatively novice team. (as far as I can tell) They might pull it off in the long term, but I would never have dreamed of going about it the way they did.
Even for big projects there are often good reasons for which they don't accept a certain contribution. The project maintainers usually have a broader understanding of the application, so more often than not, they find important flaws or coding style issues in contributed patches which the contributor has to address before the patch can be included.

This is often perceived as bureaucratic and timidity against changes, but usually this is nothing more than a self-defense against subtle bugs, unnecessary complexity and vanishing readability, for which big projects are more vulnerable than small projects.
Venous stasis is a part of Virchow's triad (for developing thrombosis) and thrombophlebitis is a common complication of varicose veins. I wouldn't be looking forward to varicose veins just yet ;-)
That's some crafty crappifying. It took me quite some time to translate it back to

We speculate that "survival of the fittest" applies to people.
But still no matter how much water you drink, you're not going to average more than a few minutes an hour going to the bathroom (unless you have a medical condition). That is not going to make a noticeable dent in the 8-10 hours of sitting you're doing.
There is also http://mathbin.net/