skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I guess I can understand the demotivation part. I'm heavily invested in Ruby/Rails at my job and I'm often bummed out that I can't easily use Haskell idioms at my day job. However, I think the title is a little bit inflammatory (as is customary on HN it seems). Learning a language so that you can transfer its idioms to another language which uses an entirely different paradigm seems like a waste to me.

I'd advocate learning Haskell for use in problem spaces where Haskell would be most appropriate rather than walking into work with your Haskell goggles on. This problem gets magnified if you work with others. Unless you want to foist a language they won't even use on them, stick with the code that is most idiomatic and understandable for the language in which you are working.
I don't mind it if it's snappy and the image loads almost instantaneously, which is what I got when viewing this demo. Typically, with javascript, I'd have to wait a few seconds for the loading-wheel to spin until the image finally loads. Not that I can't wait a few seconds; it's just annoying.
Snake Man
It's not a Diwali picture, just a normal night picture. Why else would Pakistan also be lighted ?

More comments here http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/e2hkp/a_satellite_ima...
Lots of hedge funds used MS stacks even before F# - I'm guessing the biggest reason is staff skill set both of the early developers and the other tech people. Most hedge funds will only have a single IT guy to maintain app servers (exchange, etc.) so it makes sense for the trading servers to be Windows as well to avoid having to hire a Unix sysadmin.
> this concern that the US manufacturing industry is dying or dead is a myth

The counter-meme that US manufacturing is still strong is also something of a myth. The biggest components of the manufacturing sector are things that most people probably don't immediately associate with manufacturing. For example, agricultural products are a huge component. As are primary industries like logging. Processed chemicals represent another big chunk. Most of the factory goods that fit the traditional definition of manufacturing are industrial equipment like earth-movers or electrical transformers. Note that these are all capital-intensive industries that are either protected by tariffs and subsides, or bulky, cost-sensitive goods that aren't as easy to build at a profit overseas.

On the other hand, the mass-market consumer product industries that most people think of as synonymous with manufacturing have been wiped out in the US.
I try to work in non-interrupted blocks (ideally; don't always succeed) and check Google Reader twice a day and go through everything, marking things unread that I'd like to read later and catch up on that Sunday evenings. I check twitter every few hours during an idle moment.

And while I am on the information hamster wheel, I'm not entirely sure it is good for me. I want to stop.
Eyesight deteriorates with age, regardless of surgery. They should explain this. You'll probably find yourself wearing specs after 40 or so.
Agreed, in fact they seemed to 'talk up' the future would be HTML5 so much that the Silverlight lack of mentions got a lot of (Silverlight) developers quite anxious [1].

I don't especially want it to fail, as the market is ripe for competition and it will keep pushing Apple and Google forward, but as an app developer that really just wants to stay on the 'pure web' now, it's an unwelcome extra column in the already big matrix of things to have to specially support...

[1] http://www.silverlightshow.net/news/Silverlight-and-PDC.aspx
Just found a reason to upgrade to 2.7...
fwiw, Apple never said they would never make a netbook. I believe the relevant quote was "We don't know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk." (And, the MacBook Air is still not sub-$500.)

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_47/b41560003...
this picture has been floating around a lot..but it seems that this does'nt have anything to do with Diwali
http://www.sciencephotogallery.co.uk/pictures_1705155/india-...
Arh, but then she will forget how to left click and we will be back to square one.
Argh, I just lost 45 minutes with no return, damn you :) And this excellent lofi music!
Is there a demand for broadband among these people? Isn't dial-up about the same cost as low-end "broad"band these days?

Another thing to consider is that broadband might not be the problem, it's actually having a computer. There are quite a few people I work with who don't even have computers at home.

Hmm... that would be a fun thing for some geeks to do, grab up some of the old spare parts we all have laying around and build computers for people that need them. I'll have to bring that up at the next hacker space meeting :)
“Cool It” Documentary Re-examines the Inconvenient Truth of Global Warming
Metabolism is a minor factor compared to calories in vs. calories out?

You are aware that one of the variables in that equation is intimately tied up with metabolism, aren't you?
Many close-door buttons that appear to do nothing only do nothing if the natural cycle has not been interrupted. I've seen ones where if you press the open-door button to interrupt a door closing, then the close-door button becomes functional and causes an immediate door close.
Thanks for that on point 5, didn't see it, but very nice
Pests thrown out of Congress
It's probably more expensive than just snipping the wires.
Well, there's two sides to that coin. By having the client pay hourly you put the "risk" of the project on his shoulders, but you also limit yourself to earning only a hourly rate. Why is that bad? An experienced programmer might accomplish a task/project quickly due to having done similar projects and have an arsenal of code/examples/tools at his disposal. An experienced programmer might be able to get 20%-30% markup on his hourly fee but he might finish the project five times as fast as another less experienced programmer might.

You won't be able to leverage your gray hairs and the time they save you as efficiently with an hourly fee.

If the project is well-defined you might be tempted to accept a fixed price and crank it out quickly which will net you more money per hour. I'd advice holding of atleast a week even if you do it in a day or two or the customer will start questioning your price ;)

If the project/customer is fast and loose with the spec and functionality (as most projects are) you're in dangerous terroritory where constant changes keeps eating away at your time.

If you can get a high hourly fee and the project is fuzzy, go for it, meetings and stuff like that will earn you a bunch anyways.

Another strategy is to split the project into discrete parts and charge a fixed price for each (negotiating each one), that way it's easier to define the scope of the project and it eliminates risk both ways. It also gives you and the customer have a chance to get to know each other before committing to the project and helps avoid being in the clutches of a psychopath customer.
I love Boston, but this is the first time I've ever heard anyone describe time there as "luscious," and if I was wanted to start a company why would I care about the trees blooming along the Charles? And why are there three exclamation points in the title?

I don't understand. Who is the target audience of this post? I have read some good things about TechStars, why the used-car-salesman approach to marketing?
Does the Pedestrian Walk signal come on if you _don't_ push the button, I mean, _ever_ - if it doesn't, and then comes on immediately after pushing the button - you've found a working button. It only takes one cycle through the vehicle traffic lights (and zero, obviously, in a pedestrian controlled intersection) to determine which is which.
Forbes Opens The E-mail Time Capsule
Auto Transport Albuquerque, New Mexico
What if F# is somebody's pet project? Microsoft might have invested in F# because the supporters inside Microsoft had the political capital to make it happen and not because there was a real product strategy.

Some things about F# are consistent with the pet project theory:

- The language was developed by a team in Microsoft Research, not by a product team. If a product team thought there was a good product strategy for the language, they would have taken it over.

- Some of the reasons given for F# are not a direct customer benefit. Example: show that CLR can support languages other than C#.

- Given the question here on HN, it's not obvious to some people why Microsoft invested so much in the language.

I raising the question about why Microsoft invested in and released the language and not making a statement about the quality of the language itself.
It is idiomatic .... sometimes but if you want a full api nobody want to work with java all the time.
Out of curiosity, what is the point of a "light box"? I tend to open lots of images into new tabs while I'm reading articles, and it's really annoying to have the rest of the article go black when I do.
Call it a personality conflict, but I value quiet, dedicated productivity over relentless self-promotion with nary a sign of some kind of project or productive venture.
Beat People At Your Game
I think that it's much more readable due to familiarity more than anything else. The C syntax for the ternary operator was the one thing that it took me the longest time to get used to when learning to program. I usually just ignored it because it was too hard to remember what it did. That said, I can easily read it now, but I still feel that the Python syntax is more understandable.

Which is more readable:

> condition ? value1 : value2

or

> value1 if condition else value2

Maybe the latter is just more readable to me because I'm used to reading Perl all day long that looks like:

> die unless condition;
> return true if condition;
> return false
> if condition1 && condition2 && condition3;

That said, I'm also used to reading:

> return condition1 ? value1
> : condition2 ? value2
> : condition3 ? value3
> : value4;

and I still find the Python ternary operator more readable:

> return value1 if condition1 else
> value2 if condition2 else
> value3 if condition3 else
> value4
Putting an SSD in to a 3.5 or 2.5" hard drive enclosure is indeed a waste of space, but talking 'mSATA' to what is essentially memory seems to be a waste of speed.

All that work to stuff data down a serial pipe emulating a harddisk that isn't even there.
Almost certainly he's referring to a formal career plan, of which I saw none at Apple. On the other hand, I know many engineers who have made director -- but only by switching gears to management. If you want to stay an individual contributor, you can, but "moving up" at Apple is largely confined to management. There are a handful of DESTs, but they are the exception, rather than the rule.
"I remember things like this and knew the search terms. Then http://searchyc.com/ is your friend." -RiderOfGiraffes

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=940276
> An Open Letter to Apple Computer, Inc.

It's been almost four years since the company was named "Apple Computer". A lot of words were written at the time about what the name change signified, but I think it's reasonable to say that making the "nerd elite" happy has taken a back seat to producing more locked-down, consumer-oriented products. Apple has hit on a pretty successful model with the iPhone app store and I'd be surprised if they move towards opening that up with the Mac App Store.
Another way to interpret the disabled walk buttons is to say that pushing the button N times is N times as effective as pushing it only once!
How to sort through job applicants - make them write.
Note also that Microsoft employs Simon Peyton-Jones, one of the foremost contributors to the Haskell programming language, so it's not clear that they needed to create F# for language researchers. Although, as Don Syme says in the interview quoted by TomOfTTB, an ML type language mated much more neatly with .NET than Haskell did, so you might still be right.
I have seen things like this from Don Syme in other forums. It does not look very business-y. I could do it, so I did it!

That might be my answer.
NYC Startup Weekend
54 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application
I am working for a nonprofit company building a site for good. Not sure how much more I can say...
In my previous apartment there was a strange, doorbell-like button in the middle of one of the walls. I pressed it once in a while, but it never seemed to do anything.

It also seemed very unlikely that the floorplan of the building had ever put a door near it, so I'm guessing it was a placebo button for some previous resident.
I love that not one person has made a rude comment about Microsoft. I know I am adding noise instead of signal here, but I want to say: Congratulations HN! Keep it up!
Great Idea

Suggestion: it might not be a bad idea to include the age of a certain part.
Actually on ruby 1.8.7 the proc coercion is default. No need for active support. And yeah, ruby underscore is overkill for this trivial example.
Personally, I still have to think about what the ternary operator means every time I see it. It's just so nonobvious.
I would say it is another ML flavor. It has ranged much further from SML than other SML derived languages have. To me it is about like calling clojure or Dylan lisp.
"Oracle DB has more than one “isolation level”. The strongest, READ REPEATABLE, provides ACID transactions."

i couldn't read his blabber past this point. Before talking about something you don't know about, check the docs at least:

---

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b283...

"Oracle Database offers the read committed and serializable isolation levels, as well as a read-only mode that is not part of SQL92. Read committed is the default."

---

To make it clear:

1. there is no READ REPEATABLE in Oracle

2. in general, among the isolation levels, READ REPEATABLE isn't the strongest
I'm probably not normal, but my first reaction was "uh oh, what did I say? Was this another comment I made on little sleep and without thinking?" I was actually a little disappointed that my response wasn't idiotic, because now I can't learn what was idiotic about it.

Ultimately, you are right that Zed is divisive, possibly because he's taken "you can't please everybody" too far, and I wouldn't want any significant number of people to have Zed's personality, even though I tend to take his side on topics I know anything about.
I'm actually conceptually working on something similar to this. A part of me wants to congratulate you, because I do truly think you are on to something. The concept of not paying for the service if your company is willing to transcend into a democratic process - superb. I sense that you got some of these ideas from working in a crippled work environment, as I.

My advice to you: push the democratic side, leverage the idea of selling to the employees rather than the employers through engagement and fandom, simplify your motions process and dashboard. If possible, have a "democratic functions" toggle somewhere in settings.

The other side of me wants to be upset that I can't post a link...yet.

Good luck.
I'd love to try building an app or two for WP7, but I'm not about to pick up another phone contract merely for the privilege. Until MS has an iPod touch-like device (new Zune, perhaps?) it's just not going to happen for me.

I wonder what Apple's App ecosystem would like right now if the iPod touch had never existed. I bet it wouldn't be nearly as robust.
Schools: The Ultimate Agents of Social Change
Social Innovation Camp:
http://www.sicamp.org/

Bethnal Green Ventures (inspired by YC):
http://bethnalgreenventures.com/
I recently noticed that a surprising number of people around me don't know that middle click opens links in a new tab.

Most of them use the right click drop down option.
Doing a try/catch doesn't imply anything, except that an exception occurred that you caught. Behavior after that is completely app dependent.

Top-level try/catch blocks that simply do logging and nothing below that may not always be a bad idea, but its usually a sign of a poorly designed app.

And why can't you get extra-permissions or recover from not having enough memory? I've certainly worked on systems with the later, where we catch an OutOfMemoryException and then do some stuff we're required to do -- including in some situations to get memory back (which is for example, why we'll often pre-JIT and keep loaded code required to free up memory).

Checked exceptions are a big fail, but largely because they're a broken way of thinking about exceptions (and why Java was the last major language to have them).

EDIT: I glossed over the fact that you may have been actually getting at which is the requirement associated with checked exceptions. You're absolutely correct there. No argument from me. I wasn't think of that originally, as I'm not a Java dev.
I think the existence (and meager performance) of the Apple TV works against point one.
Nokia reabsorbs Symbian
A new way to think about programs
I've also lost 40 pounds with purely calorie counting. Although I've managed to keep it off for two years, and I don't see it coming back (easily). My approach was to kill bad habits one at a time and create new good habits to take their place. For example I replaced smoking with walking. I replaced high calorie snacks at home with fruits and vegetables so I would go for those instead.

The key has been to take things slowly and not try to do too much at once. I still count calories, but what I eat is pretty much a mindless habit now, (the good kind). I have also gotten into the habit of weighing myself daily and plotting it on a graph. This gives me very good feedback when I'm going in the wrong direction.

Almost 4 years ago I weighed 220 and smoked a pack a day. Now I weigh 175, ran my first 5K this year and I ride my bike 20 miles to work every day!

Edit: I hope you give it a go again. It's not easy, but once you turn the corner it's really worth it.
We're working on a way to submit code without the need to register. However the service want to be a community where developers compete against each other and earn points, that's why we ask them to create profile.

We try to lower the barrier as much as possible by not asking the users to create a brand new user/pass for coderloop.
As a Las Vegas entrepreneur I'm surprised to see Nevada so highly ranked. I knew Zappos had done a lot to legitimize Vegas as a potential location for startups, but I still don't see too much of a startup community in general here.

Perhaps we're getting some residual fundraising benefits being sandwiched between CA and CO.
Presumably he meant "impossible in a 40 hour work week," so that if you're killing yourself with an 80 hour week to meet deadlines, you're not a counterexample.

Of course, there's a prevalent opinion around here that working over 40 hours a week always decreases your productivity (and not just per hour), and the people who buy into that will likely find this definition of impossible to be silly (since as a corollary, every possible thing is achievable in 40 hour weeks).
One Laptop Per Hacker--OLPH
> The only thing that kinda bugs me is that some books (I'm looking at you, pragmatic bookshelf) don't have a kindle version

Are you unable to read the (DRM-free!) MOBI versions of the PragProg books on your Kindle? (Because I can...)

Or are you just referring to being unable to purchase Kindle versions directly from the Amazon.com store?
In the discussion some months ago about whether Hacker Magazine would include reprinted versions of comments, grellas thought that it would probably need permission of the commenters to do so. His view was that, absent any explicit license terms, there was an implicit grant of permission to print the comment on HN, but not an implicit grant to reprint it anywhere else.

Link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262546
Why would they even bother to do that? Just deactivate the buttons in software.
Ask HN: Twitter style StackOverflow?
Every time I ask something on StackOverflow, or on any other forum for that matter, I keep on refreshing the page to see if anyone posted any replies. Just now it came to my mind - could this be done via Twitter (hashtags, to be specific)?

To ask a question, just add a hash tag to your question (lets say #someonepleaseanswerthisasap, or something better) and tweet it. People can just track this hashtag, and answer whatever they feel like answering.

Might sound like like Aardvark, but on top of Twitter. Does this sound weird, or possible?
Read through sites such as Odesk and Elance for gigs that look like they are doable for your level of knowledge. If you find that you aren't confident for any of them, then beef up on the skills the gigs mention that you feel you don't have.

These are freelance gigs. Honestly, it would be best to get a job first because then you could see how a successful web shop is run, but landing freelance gigs is much easier. The trade off is that you are jumping into a trial by fire situation. Starting out freelancing is way more stressful, more difficult to make a living and you have to manage a lot more things that you don't have to think about as an employee (taxes, sales, cash flow, etc.)

Employability depends on a lot of factors we don't know about you. Important factors include your location, educational background (you would have a lot more options with a CS degree than you would with only a HS diploma,) skill level, etc. It's possible you could get a gig working remotely but it's much more difficult to pick something like this up without experience, connections or a kick ass portfolio of code.

Your best bet at a beginning level would likely be to start out with an internship or a junior level developer where you could work in house rather than remotely. In this case, you could likely get a gig with what you know.

As for what you should learn, make sure you know Ruby well. Try to do things that keep you coding in Ruby rather than spending all your time hacking in Rails. Read code that other people wrote in well known open source applications and make sure you understand what's going on. Learning JS is good as well.
I'm sorry but in the Health and fitness community this has been disproven time and time again. Someone can fix their sleep and eat at their bmr with good foods and still lose heaps of weight. See good calories bad calories by Gary taubes
A lot of Smalltalk programmers / NeXTSTEP programmer can vouch for that.
Good organic seo is almost always the best way to advertise your site. Spending money on fleshing out your site with lots of pages with lots of relevant specific copy and keywords is much more cost-effective than simply spending money to advertise the site.

A couple important things the article leaves out:

1) Create a cron script or otherwise automate sitemap creation. Otherwise, its easy to forget to manually add new pages.

2) Put a useful succinct meta description in the header of all your pages. Otherwise you leave the little blurb of text that shows up on google search results to chance and miss potential clicks on search results.
Distribution of companies followed on StartupFollower after TC post
Toronto recently setup a series of really obnoxious lights where lights in one direction (these are only at intersections of a major and much more minor street, and usually only during off hours) will only change if either the car presence sensor, or the pedestrian button is hit. Now, this is annoying enough as it is, but what makes it worse, is that the countdown on the pedestrian lights keep counting down as if normal.

So, let's say your tired, or really drunk at say midnight. You wait at the light waiting to cross a major road. You see the light count down from 14 or whatever down to 0... and then it stays red! It just starts a whole new traffic cycle until some car comes along, or you remember to hit the damn button.

Worse design ever. Drunk icegreentea has probably tried to rip disassemble one of those boxes with trusty multitool more than once.