skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Spend 9 months working on something and learn via the work. Don't spend 9 months simply studying programming information. ( Bonus points if you are getting paid by someone else while you are learning... but be clear about that upfront. )

Pick a problem, a tool set and get experienced. You will not gain as much if you simply read across multiple applications and disciplines.

For a focus on the academics, and not the practical, I would not suggest going it alone unless you are really that strange type of person that gets math intuitively.
Jewish -(redirect)-> Jews -> Adolf Hitler. Both are 3 but December is first in alphabetical so it was the first one recorded.
Our first app - SourceGuardian - protects PHP source code and we've been running it for 8 years. We used to make a living off just the one app, but broadened out into other areas. The freedom that the income from SourceGuardian provided allowed us to take risks and create other products - some that have worked out well and others that haven't. Its been thoroughly enjoyable though!
Silent Type of Migraines
http://scripturefeeds.com - RSS feeds giving you a chapter a day from your choice of scriptural books: old testament, new testament, and others from the Mormon faith. Never made any money, never really had a way to try. Killed it when I switched hosting providers. Just never got around to putting it back up.
Heh, I didn't even think about that. Doh.
And also the 'fabled' '1-50' alg. they mention would
easily be got using modulo.
Effective Tips on How to Make Him Want You More
If you are not happy with the level of devotion he shows towards you, you don’t have to be disheartened. Every problem has a solution. There are things you should know about how to make him want you more. The most important thing to understand is how he views you now.
If you're generally healthy and have health costs < $1000/yr, then this could mean going from 100% coverage to 0% coverage, depending on how they set it up. Still a great deal for accidents, though, compared to what most people have.
awesome :)

but it raises 500 (Iresult from ajax call) when I type unicode f.ex Polish letters: ńżźśąć etc., so I can't make fun of people :)

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc5 in position 8: ordinal not in range(128)

btw turn debug off ;)
Don't feel bad, it's just how cperciva rolls :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35083
Incidentally, how is it that Mary Jo Foley has her name spelled wrong on her blog heading?? (with a hyphen)

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-tweak-emplo...
will never release
what did you put as answer for the first level?
I used to think the brain was the most important organ in the body.

Then I thought, look what's telling me that.

(emo philips)
This is very neat. Quite surprising results too, which is great.

No idea whether you can monetize this, or whether you should, but it's certainly fun. Kudos.
Ruby has Array#sort, no command line required.
On the other section of that site I say this below:

"Sorry if the following is a bit contentious at times. I wrote it in an attempt to get some things off my chest. If you keep watching this site, I'll probably clean it up and make it sound a bit more professional"

But then I received constant numerous requests to keep it just as it is. Only a tiny percentage of responses were hostile. I decided against any change. Also note that this was a 1996 page written for Lynx text-only browsers.
I'm in too. I have a few side-projects that have not been pushed, so it's about time! Thanks for the suggestion. We should help each other out as a sounding board during this too
Paul, have you found any significant points in the gas station business you think could be improved by leveraging soft-tech?
I noticed on less geeky folk that there aren't many "badges". Might want to work on that.
So I take on board a lot of your points and also minded that there comes a point in all this where perhaps we're only going to get so close to agreeing. To debate this much more probably offers diminishing returns.

Two comments though if I may:

Your point on

...that won't get you anywhere until you're willing to take it to a judge [in the local country].

While you might be right on one hand, if we conducted our life based on that then many things in life would be curtailed.

I don't have the resources to visit Canada to visit court if I needed be, does that mean I shouldn't sell my stuff on eBay to someone in Canada?

I want to visit Japan for vacation but I don't have the resource to go to court for damages if the hotel doesn't honor my booking - do I therefore not visit Japan?

I like to buy books and stuff from Amazon but I don't really have the resources or inclination to go to court in Washington State (3 hrs flight away) if they run off with my money and don't send me my stuff. Does that mean I don't buy things from Amazon.com?

I want to rent an apartment here in San Francisco but I don't really have the resources or inclination to go to court if the landlord takes my deposit - does that mean I shouldn't rent here?

etc.

Do you REALLY think everyone who buys .ly domains is prepared to go to Libyan court (including bit.ly?). Other way around, do you think everyone who registers a .com/net/org is prepared to go to US federal court?

It's also interesting that you assume I'm American, as you've made several references to that in my post. I'm actually British, spent most of my adult life living in one of the most populated Islamic areas of London and indeed the UK (Bethnal Green, East London) and I've read most of the Qur'an as part of my education (not the case for education here in the US, as it happens). I've extensively traveled through many Islamic countries.

I'm pretty aware of what Islam thinks is right or not based on it's views of decency and I actually thought we were careful to navigate around that based on what the NIC.ly regulations said they would (and wouldn't) regulate around. The point is that I don't think Islam or Libya for that matter is some crooked society where the rules of law are malleable as you make out. Perhaps on that last point I am wrong.
Very insightful comment.
No Text (Messages) Please, We’re Japanese
Have you seen this? http://lifehacker.com/388708/track-your-dominos-pizza-order-...
Not sure if it works for Aus Dominos - but it might.
I read some of the Wikipedia article about it. However, the bank won't give you 20% yearly, yet barely enough to cover the inflation. Nor the stock market and real estate do, so I wonder how compound interest would help and in any way?
agreed. Trying to figure out a good method for all to keep in touch. Any suggestions?
I don't know about powerset(), but challenge 3 was pretty trivial using Python's itertools module: http://gist.github.com/617663 (warning: spoilers)
Apple is making a version of the iPhone 4 for Verizon
Roads Fit For People: What happens when you turn off traffic lights
AFter a year or so of lurking I've decided to finally create an account on HackerNews just to say... "Count me in"
I was tempted to say "NSFW in Germany", but then again - that would be provoking havoc. :)

Living in Germany I find of find the idea mildy irritating (and the Graphics - erm - far too "comical"), but I love the technical side of the project.

Would be interesting to have a way to show the hops between arbitrary two words (but, yeah, the domain name gives away that this is not planned).
Mind posting your solution as a Gist? I want to see how to do level 1 without explicit loops or variables.
The rub is that "fun" is a subjective term. If all you want to do is program you may be right. If you enjoy problem solving and you do it in a way that is usable by others I don't see why not. [Currently pursuing the dream] ;)
Firstly: America's airports represent a minority of the daily commutes in America. In order for America's airports to be police states, they would have to be states. They're not. They're airports.

Secondly, while there are 'checkpoints' of sorts in NYC, I don't believe they're the variety staffed by heavily armed guards. I haven't been to NYC in around 5 years, but as I remember it interacting with police, heavily armed or otherwise, would be an extraordinary event on a daily commute.

Of course my definition is arbitrary, but I stand by it.
Yet another channel is to recruit evangelists from your most passionate users. Microsoft did a great job with their Microsoft MVP program.

http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
The Reinvention of Print, One App at a Time
We have drafted off the success of Flavors.me, which is Goodsie's sister property (http://hiidef.com is the parent). Goodsie was featured on Lifehacker (which is the holy grail) because I sent a thank you email for a brief Flavors mention and the author noticed Goodsie in my email signature.

For Flavors.me, we were super lucky to get a fantastic bunch of creatives and influencers to try our beta, largely through personal connections. Just before we launched, I emailed every big blog like TechCrunch and we were able to get a ton of high quality coverage.

Only now are we just starting to work with a PR firm, so it can definitely be done by pounding the pavement.
Investors take back-door tactics to get Twitter, Facebook shares on the cheap
> But why must the software be explicitly tied to the hardware?

"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware."

- Alan Kay

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alankay375550.htm...
SlimPoints: http://slimpoints.appspot.com -- a diary app for tracking Weight Watchers points

Create-A-Password: http://create-a-password.appspot.com -- an app for creating memorable (yet secure) passwords

Both created with GWT and Google App Engine.
Ageism sucks. At 25, I'm an idiot – I mean, truly a moron by comparison to some people ten, twenty, thirty years my senior. Not because of what I know, though that always needs work, but because of how I think. How passion can funnel into trivialities. How unfortunate events can discourage good ideas, while optimism can blind me to reality.

Youth can be applied to do great things but it has its disadvantages.

Ageism becomes, unfairly, a proxy for determining something important: The creative humility of being able to embrace and extend new ideas.

The thing is: Someone in their 20's can just as easily become set in their ways as someone in their 40's or 60's. Becoming jaded and self-important is easy. Losing your curiosity is easy – boy, some people lose it by age 10. I can't stand people who decide they've learned everything there is to know about the world around them – whether they're 22 or 82.

Especially when selecting people to help you build something, buy into people with creative insight, curiosity, humility and passion. Those can be found at any age.

(Fun example: Watch a David Attenborough nature documentary from the BBC. One where he actually shows up on camera, in the middle of a remote habitat. Watch how delighted he is, even after decades of study and exposure to what he's talking about. He doesn't take anything for granted. He and his work are wonderful.)
Connect Shapes -- http://connectshapes.com/

Network Graphing/Flow Chart prototype. Started out toying with RaphaelJS, but I hit a lot of cross-browser bugs having to do with a DOM issues, arrays, and side-effects in general. There are a lot of cool graphing programs now, so I don't plan to work further on a standalone app-- but might use it as an interface for a later project.

On the upside, I learned about closures doing this project and ended up dropping it to learn more about functional programming.
1. A few hours
2. Forums, blog sponsorships, PPC ads and holding #1 organic rank on all the relevant search terms
3. Sales were slowing and I lost interest in putting more into it, so I sold it while it was still valuable

http://flippa.com/blog/case-studies/dan-grossman-on-selling-...
That was actually the original idea but the CPU behind it (requires a lot of ram and multiple systems the way I worked it) was too expensive to swing by the wife for a goof off project ;)
I find it viscerally painful to see the casual association.

6000 years of culture and all you can think of is some delusional scumbag.
3-4min? Since it was only like 5 lines of code I did it in brute force. Python and Mac Mini here - the answer came almost instantaneously.
What kind of keyboard do you have? I've never heard of hjkl as a control scheme (I make Flash games).

Edit: never mind, I found it.
Well, forums have always been good for this. Happy to host one. Maybe someone else might have a better idea. I think if we do this in a way that its visual - ie you tell other people what you're trying to achieve - then its much more likely to be done. I also like the idea that everyone is pushing forward, but as a group there will be a diverse range of skills and experiences to call upon.
I am planning on focusing on CSS/Javascript and I have a simple browser extension that I want to make at some point and will be focusing on learning the skills necessary to make the add on.

I will definitely take a look at other languages as well and I already know some basic Java but in the beginning I plan on focusing on Javascript.
I'm working on http://www.sparkmuse.com to aid in just this purpose. I was hoping to get it out by the end of the year, but in light of this thread I'll push for November too. The day job is brutal to side-project productivity, especially when you've to work overtime!
I believe Limor Fried created some type of glasses that would detect refresh rates of video sources and black out the glasses when viewing the monitor/tv.

No image recognition, though.
"So practically then you're saying most crime should just be allowed to happen as it can't be detected without taking a proactive approach."

Where any approach to law enforcement conflicts with the fundamental principles of ordered liberty, including privacy, that approach is improper. If we attached video cameras to all citizens that would prevent a lot of crime, but it would be a tremendous violation of privacy rights.

"Why is it bad if the government.. try to prevent harm to private citizens but not bad for individual or small groups of citizens?"

Because the government is unlike any other organization. It has a monopoly on the use of force. If a gas station uses CCTV cameras, and I feel that violates my privacy, I can choose not to use that gas station. If the government decides to enact a law mandating installation of CCTV cameras in your living room, you can't refuse.
My solutions, in ruby:

http://gist.github.com/617672

Any improvements welcome!

(warning - contains the answers!)
Ah, you hit on my central philosophy: all content, no esthetics. Whenever I have free time, I add more content (hand-written in HTML, via a telnet terminal from wherever I happen to be.) See the FAQ:

This site looks like something from 1994!!!!!!
http://amasci.com/faq.html#1994

NEVER TRY TO PLEASE EVERYONE! YOUR GOAL SHOULD BE TO BECOME THE HATED ENEMY OF CERTAIN KINDS OF PEOPLE. :)
Thanks for the advice. I completely agree on picking a problem and a toolset.

I really want to focus on the practical aspects of "web development"

Do you have any advice on what type of "environment would be ideal for learning programming?
You can use the Android Scripting Environment[1] which supports Python, Perl, Ruby, Lua, JavaScript, Tcl and things you've probably never heard of before. Their FAQ says you can build APKs too.

There is a Clojure port for Android[2], and I hear you can compile Scala programs as well[3].

If you're a CS student, you may find Scala interesting (it's a bit similar to Haskell).

Of course, straying from the well trodden path will give you more freedom but you'll get scratched along the way. Which is probably a good thing.

[1]: http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

[2]: http://github.com/remvee/clojure

[3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/476111/scala-programming-...
The quote having it's own Facebook page is probably because of the changes they made fairly recently with people's profiles/interests.

I think the quote, an unlived life is not worth examining, is nice and deep. I take it to mean that, not just a boring life, biographies of young people are premature.

As an example, the 24 year old who chases a small bag of air around a grassy field, has a 5-book biography planned.[1]

The man who created the Red Army, lost the struggle against Stalin, inspired revolutionaries around the world and was brutally murdered aged 60... He managed a measly 3 part biography.[2][3]

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/m/man_utd/478...
[2] http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=inauthor:%22Isaac+Deutscher...
[3] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n23/neal-ascherson/victory-in-defea...
I'd laugh if those Indonesian guys had found a way of automating it themselves and spent their time doing something more useful!
Nice and short Haskell solution to #3: http://gist.github.com/617675

Ruby solutions to #1 and #2:
http://gist.github.com/617676
http://gist.github.com/617678
You have a very good memory! Yeah, I won RailsDay (the first contest, a 24-hour one, supplanted later by RailsRumble) with a wedding planning app called Freckle. But that never got anywhere as a product. I just reused the name because I like it.
http://emailops.com - creates an ascii formated schedule for email arbitration. Was used by several professors in india to schedule meeting times for study sessions. Never took off.

http://celebrityladder.com - reddit like voting system for anything taggable. Was only intended for me to learn RoR- i killed it almost immediately. Thought it was a really dumb idea as soon as it went live, but I haven't been able to clear it completely from my mind yet.

http://theuniveristy.org - a really cool social network which only used the web for organizing. Rest was done through the mail. Inspired by the zine/mail art world that was more or less killed by the web. Basically, it paired 12 people randomly, then once a week for 3 months (12 weeks) somebody was supposed to send some thing to the other 11 people in their class. This actually worked for folks, but some people didn't participate, and I had no idea how to manage the community. Was around 2000, maybe friendster was just around, and there weren't establish patterns for handling things like this, and mostly I was interested in just creating it. But, this project has really stuck in my mind. If there is interest here in this project, i'll bring it back to life.

So many others that never were completed....
I would suspect that some of the timing may have been based on the outcome of the Obama health care bill. With additional requirements like insuring until children are 26 and things like that it makes it more expensive to provide health care.
Gravity is the 4th dimension also litterary theft
I think your calculation is not correct.

Your calculation is (300000 km/s)/(12761 km) = (23.5 (1/s))

Note the result is s^-1, not ms.

1/23.5 is 0.0425s, or 42.5ms, so that latency is not possible.
It's a good thing then that you are on Hacker News. As a tech person who wants the latest software, you can spend a few minutes rooting your phone and installing a custom ROM with the latest Android version.
The number of hops for "Adolf Hitler" should be 0, not 1.
I've also heard rumors that Gmail and Adsense for Content aren't particularly profitable for Google. Of course I've also heard that the brand equity created with Gmail is very valuable and those two are extreme examples, but even based on similar rumors it's possible Google could shut down either one.
Getting the first paying customer isn't going to be a watershed moment for every kind of venture. Some aren't in it for the money, others are building a foundation for what may be profitable later (re: basically everything Google does or has done).

Launching an app, for whatever the reason, is an accomplishment in itself.
I moved to SF from Reston, VA (right next to herndon) 2 years ago and the difference in atmosphere is astounding. I'm still working for my old company (right on the reston/herndon border), but I've got a serious itch to join the fray out here.
I'm still working my day job but my most recent iPad app, iJuror, has been doing almost as well for the last 3 months.

http://www.front9technologies.com/ijuror.html
Woodside historic mansion:Steve Jobs gets green light to build version 2.0
I've created a (publicly) shared google docs for tracking who's launching what, here's the link:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoLJFombeWOmdFpPcVV...

I've took the liberty of adding two entries, haven't add my own since I'm still developing, not sure if I can launch by November.
Abso-f*cking-lutely. :)

CRM: who's buying from me, what are they buying and what should I market to them so that I can make more money.

Inventory Management: what's in stock, what do I need to re-order, are my employees stealing from me?

I can keep going... :)
And sometimes it takes a break... http://i55.tinypic.com/1zr2743.png
It would manifest itself if you invest in your own company.
I worked as Nokia's UK and Ireland technical support, both tier 1 and 2, and you are entirely wrong.

Almost no users, including people buying smartphones, have any idea what a phone operating system is. Most users, including people buying smartphones, struggle to tell you what their computer operating system is.

Phones, including smartphones, are not sold like computers. Lots of people buy smartphones because they have the best cameras, or because they're the 'top end' phone, or because 'they want a blackberry' and can't tell a Nokia E61 from a BlackBerry device.

Also, at least in the UK, there's a lot of smartphones - including Android devices - being marketed at the general consumer market. There's not really any phones sold to 'technical' people - the distinction you want to make is 'consumer' versus 'business'. Windows Mobile and BlackBerry are 'business' (traditionally). The iPhone is 'consumer', albeit high-end.

Android phones tend to be consumer-focussed, competing against the iPhone. There's a few Android phones that are priced to the mid- and low-end of the market, and there's a lot of Nokia S60 smartphones in this range. (A lot more than Android or iOS, actually. Nokia are still the #1 smartphone manufacturer.) Most people buying these devices are 'non-technical' and if they understand the difference between 'Android 1.5' and 'Android 2.1', they just don't care.
It sounds perfectly feasible to me. Apple is no stranger to prototyping.

That doesn't mean it's gonna be shipped any more than that code you've written for that new project idea you were exploring.
http://www.fantasymonster.com/
Fantasy sports app for the iphone. Launched 4 months ago. I still have a full time job but the app is pulling in 20K+ per month in sales and ad revenue. Not sure if that qualifies as "big" but it's more than enough for me =)
The World’s First Everything-Proof Underground Luxury Community
And we'll all have some additional spare time since we won't be shaving during the month.