skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Winforms to WPF was about 20 years, and a sorely needed change.

Silverlight is iterating quite quickly, but then they have WPF to build on.
I used to use 45/15 for studying. I could do amazing feats of rapid learning in college that way.
Sounds kind of like fiber.
Somehow, writing an OS in a higher-level language really appeals to me. I doubt I'd ever get around to it, but the idea calls to me.
So if I can't find the right idea in a month I should give up and become 'a lifer'?

I don't buy it.

The corollary of this is that every entrepreneur should be able to come up with an idea that will be a rock solid success every month.

It is easy to come up with ideas, but successful ideas (whether the reason for the success is being first to a new market, a better implementation of an existing idea, or whatever reason turns a good idea into a successful idea) are hard to come by.

Superstar entrepreneurs may be able to come up with such ideas with such frequency.

But if you can't, you should give up? I don't think so.
I don't think retail price really reflects iLife's value, if you need such a software. Because iLife only runs on Macs (sold by Apple), the price of iLife can be subsidized. Still, I agree with you that the value of any software (for an individual) is highly subjective.

Also, the big value of iLife comes from the fact that it comes pre-installed on Macs and integrates well with the rest of the system. That's exactly what Apple sells: a hassle-free experience out of the box. No 3rd party alternatives can offer that.
You've got to get some statistical mechanics on this list. One would have a very difficult understanding quantum field theory without at least some experience considering phase transitions in more familiar settings.

Feynman's Statistical Mechanics is a pleasant read:
http://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Mechanics-Lectures-Advance...

I used to be an experimental particle physicist, so I've certainly got some bias here, but I really think learning particle physics and the Standard Model is worth while. Halzen and Martin is a VERY good textbook and an excellent preparation for studying quantum field theory.

http://www.amazon.com/Quarks-Leptons-Introductory-Particle-P...

Yes, it is expensive. But it is very well written and thorough.

Also, I think it's always important to mention in these conversations that most physicists don't take string theory seriously. From the outside, it looks like the exciting frontier of modern physics. But that's more about Brian Greene's skill in marketing himself than string theory's explanatory value.

That being said, the Fabric of the Cosmos is a good layman's survey of the modern physics landscape:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabric_of_the_Cosmos

Just bear in mind that Greene makes a lot of claims that aren't experimentally justified in chapters 12 and onward.
Mirror, in case HN or reddit breaks the non-WP Cache'd site: http://i.imgur.com/vokDd.jpg. (Again.)

Edit: Looks like it did indeed buckled.
The Art & Science of Seductive Interactions [video]
Back yards vs city parks
Good advice, cheers!
Unsecured Tenant Car Loan
Our Company Provides Online Unemployed Tenant loans, Best Adverse Credit loan UK, Low interest Rate loan, Personal Loan for Non home owner, Instant Council tenant loan for UK tenants
For me, it's a case of "You Have Launched, But No One Noticed", I launched TradesAlerts (http://tradesalerts.com) in Nov 2010, the first few days got a few users from HN and Facebook... in short -> no sign-up.

Looking at my Analytics stats, most of my visitors are from the USA, but my site is more Asia focused. So now, I'm working on a variation to make it more localized.
I've bought several timers on Amazon while experimenting with this, and this one was by far the best: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JRAKSG/ref=wms_ohs_prod...

* silent, no distracting ticking

* alarm starts quiet, gets louder

* no need to "turn past" a certain point to get it started

Basically, it doesn't require you to fuss with it... just turn the dial and you're off.
How To: Create Bots with Notifo User Messaging
For Entrepreneurs, a Lesson in Keeping Control
Superfluid light flows past obstacles without scattering
He sounds frustrated because he's not a master of CSS. Like most things, this takes a lot of time and practice, and whining about how UI DESIGN IN HTML IS IMPOSSIBLE really doesn't help. After years of working with CSS I tend to go straight from pencil sketches to HTML/CSS mockups, and find it a fairly straightforward and pleasurable way to work.

I also can't help but give a CSS tip to the author. Please don't exploit browser bugs to trick IE in to doing things; use conditional comments instead which will let you cleanly put all of the IE junk in a separate stylesheet.
A hacker's lullaby [img]
Soc Gen trader on trial for high speed algorithm theft
I'm not sure the databases are that valuable - simply advertise the posts on the site (or on other websites). Which is exactly what recruiters do.
The Axorcist replies: problems of media and celeb culture
I love how there's so many calculations with energy and time. Here's my offering with just concept.

The first thing they teach you in projectile motion in grade 12 physics is that the horizontal component is independent from vertical component. That means, if you ignore friction, and you throw a ball in an arc, you'll find that the horizontal speed is linear! This surprises many people, since it's not very intuitive. You would expect the horizontal speed to be quadratic or non-linear, which is not the case.
If the ball loses 40% of its vertical energy, it means that it'll just keep bouncing, but at lower and lower heights, but the horizontal speed is continuous. In fact, if given the initial velocity and angle, you could calculate the horizontal distance traveled by the ball for any point in time.
Why 17%?
PG&E Official Suspended in Fight Over ‘Smart Meters’
Somebody make a music app that does this for you!
The idea seems to be that it doesn't have to be the right idea, or a successful idea, but it does have to be an idea worth pursuing. If you don't have that, you'll just be spinning.
"But 200 computer terminals in five "back offices", where officials processed applications and ran background checks, will be spared the crusher. Instead, workers will have to "provide file locations of extracted data" so that the Home Office team can put together an "audit record of data deletion"."

Seems to me that this is where the compromise will be. Asking "workers" to "provide file locations of extracted data"? What's the chance that some locations will be missed? And why do they not already have a registry of all locations where private data is copied?

Also, it's far easier to compromise a computer (do it remotely over the internet) then some piece of card scanning hardware (more likely to need physical access).
I had nowhere near 100% utilization (in consulting) between May 15th and October 15th but I didn't get a single line written for Appointment Reminder in that interim. I just couldn't find the mental bandwidth or the kick in the pants I needed to dig in and start writing out the full system ex-nihilio.

What eventually worked for me was getting myself about 2.5 months of a breather from all consulting commitments and getting BCC past the busy season. I've been able to devote almost 100% of my time the last two weeks to AR, and it is progressing faster than any project in my life.

I also hired a virtual assistant and have been aggressive about firing off things to her rather than spending an hour or two chasing them down myself. I'll write it up after I have some results to show, but it has been a real stress saver to know that e.g. bookkeeping for January through October is now in the "being accomplished" pile rather than the "have to put it off to tomorrow because I've got code to write today" pile.
Hey, that's a great idea. I've been following the progress of that draft a good bit, and we're already using URI-templates as part of the DocumentCloud API...

"image":"http://s3.dcloud.org/docs/101/pages/inauguration{page}-{size}.gif"

I'd be a bit concerned if we used them in Backbone, that we wouldn't be following the spec by parsing all variants of the expansions -- but on balance, it's probably a great thing to do.
Atheists’ Holiday Message - Join Us
Does anybody know of a minimalist JS variant? There are so many JS lightbox versions I don't even know where to start. I need something super simple.
What's your data source? Any plans for college football?
YouTube - Kinect open source driver demo
No, there isn't. A big part of the idea of Backbone is to provide some support for large web apps without dictating anything about your HTML or CSS for you -- there are already a large number of frameworks that give you widgets, and I'd suggest looking at one of those.
The Clojure community tends to be in favor of using core data structures and functions to compose, simple, reusable things, instead of using syntactic abstraction because it's there (like some people encourage). Clojure code uses macros, but most of the time it's to tie stuff together into a prettier, more convenient interface--sometimes to remove repetitive code of course.

So, why not use macros all the time? Not because they're hard to understand--you can always expand them to see what they do (or ask the original author to document it), but because they are hard to compose, and reuse. Sure, they can be used in special case a, b and c, but give me a higher order operators, and suddenly I can compose an opus.
I sent a link to my friends who play fantasy football to see if the stats were of use to them.

One thing I can say is that I love the attention to detail you put in the slider thumb labels. Especially for those where the labels would collide and you merge them into a single label showing an interval.
"NO TESTS. You must work at a startup."

LMAO. You have to hand it to Zed Shaw sometimes...

Now, seriously tho, this has been waiting to happen since forever. I always knew that when the right people started messing around with Lua, awesomeness would emerge.

Lua is the closest scripting language to C. It's faster than Python, Perl and Ruby[1]. It's not just faster, but also uses less memory. It's also extremely elegant (in language concepts[2], at least -- not too much of a fan of its syntax but whatever). But the fact is, apps running in Lua would be hard to beat in terms of single-node performance. Your $20 cloud box that struggles to keep hefty Ruby processes running (or even Python processes, though these are way smaller than Ruby processes) will suddenly be able to handle a lot more than it does today.

I think Lua for instance would make a lot of sense for the big ones: Google, Facebook, Twitter. Google has a lot of C++ code on its infrastructure[3]. Facebook resorted to C++, Java, Python, and Erlang[4]. Twitter took the Java path with Scala.

The more I build applications (and keep them running), the more I respect the Unix nature and the more I want to become proficient in C. Mastering a scripting language and knowing how to glue it to raw C, or something close to C, gives you a lot of power.

Imagine a Python+Lua stack, where you can have handlers written in Python and use small, specific Lua-based extensions to run complex computations. I'm already contemplating using something like Lunatic-Python[5] to accomplish that in an app where I have to create similarity-based clusters. Today the Python code that handles it takes about 15 minutes to run as a queued, background task. I'm very curious to see if I can bring that down with Lua-based code controlled by Python...

[1] http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-language-is-best...

[2] http://www.lua.org/history.html

[3] http://www.quora.com/Ben-Maurer/Google-Infrastructure/answer...

[4] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-work-nuts-bolts-techno...

[5] https://github.com/dmcooke/Lunatic-Python/blob/master/docs/l...
A lot of the ruby elegance comes from the dynamic typing.
I use Colemak. It's supposed to be easier to learn than Dvorak, and it leaves some keyboard shortcuts intact (e.g. ctrl+zxcv). There is a colemak.vim file that completely customizes vim for colemak. Warning: it changes nearly every single key binding.

The only downside to colemak is that d is next to t. This sometimes makes it difficult to type Dutch, because some words end with "dt". A typo "td" is easy to make.
Alpha males take greater risks: Study links finger length to behavior
The Official Google Timeline
Have you ever wondered just how Google got to grow into the giant that it is today? Google was once just a little start up in a garage just like many businesses out there. I often times here people asking “how did Google get so big?” Below is the official Google timeline describing the growth of this international phenomenon.
What exactly is your problem with the Arc code? Is it that the code that handles the form comes before the code that writes the submit button?

The problem is not that you have to remember the metaprogramming. I do not know what exactly
`aform` expands into, but it works for me and I know what it is supposed to do. (Yay, I can make an argument from ignorance too)

I would still rather use Mongrel2 than Arc in production, but readability is not the problem.
you must be between 18 and 30

Why the restrictive cutoff at age 30?
DNA reveals origins of first European farmers
I found this page convincing that polyphasic sleep won't be optimal for performance in practice, despite its obvious appeal

http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm

"""
Healthy body clock runs a 24 hour cycle. This cycle will make you sleepy during the subjective night (which can be midday too). This is why you won't be able to wake up from your nap in your subjective night without an alarm clock. Alarm clocks are unhealthy. They prevent sleep from fulfilling its function. The choice is yours: either (1) sleep polyphasically or (2) sleep naturally and let your brain develop its full intellectual potential.
"""
I would love to see a detailed description of how he went about cracking that. I haven't been through the source code yet (http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=libfreenect.git) but I'd like a commentary on how he managed it in 3 hours!
Groupon Founders Invest in Start-Ups to Manage Social Web
It's not necessarily something you notice. It gradually gets a bit more difficult once you start getting past that point. And you won't necessarily think "oh, this is so hard to read" either (at least at large-but-still-reasonable widths). It'll just end up being a factor you weigh (if not consciously) when deciding "okay, I've had enough with reading this" and go on to the next thing.
Well you have a correct solver to the problem. Couldn't you just randomly generate an input, push it through the certified solver and supply me with the input-output-pair?

For one, even if this is the actual test input you use, I will not know it.

For two, it might not contain the trigger for my errors, but if I can get enough such samples, I should eventually get a sample which contains the problematic input.

For three, from what I see, the problems should be possible to generate randomly, especially if the certified solver rejects malformed input. E.g. for the missle problem, throw together N numbers and look what happens until the certified solver outputs a proper solution.
A Eulogy for the Xserve: May It Rack in Peace
Well I don't like the idea of giving all your data to Google to exploit. I think the interface itself is nice and versatile but do you really want to give your ecommerce data to Google? If you really love it I think Google now licenses Urchin that you can host.
Alternatives include, but not limited to:
GetClicky
Omniture
Pwiki which is open source and can be modified
Mint
Log Files
The only people who have the ID cards are the ones who volunteered in the first place. They clearly don't care about their privacy so why bother going to all this effort?
Smule's new iPad app: Magic Fiddle
Rock Salt UK
Icethaw Salt Supplies Ltd are UK's oldest independent Salt Manufacturers and Suppliers. Get High Quality Salt from UK's premier Salt Company.
Finance Professionals – UK finance and accounting recruitment |
It really should have shipped with 512K (Forth was fun then). I wrote all my college papers on an Mac printing to a LaserWriter. For the time, that combo was incredible.
I guess an 'idea worth pursuing' needs to be good enough to overcome the fear associated with starting a startup. You need a strong belief in the idea if you have a lot of fear to overcome.

Maybe his point(1) is indirectly really about point(5) (for many of us)
Legal Resources for Start-ups
Trademarks for start-ups:

http://www.pinskylaw.ca/News/news.htm

Patents for start-ups:

http://www.pinskylaw.ca/News/patents_for_startups.htm

Legal package for start-ups:

http://www.pinskylaw.ca/News/startup_legal_package.htm

Resources for start-ups:

http://www.pinskylaw.ca/Resources/resources.htm
I think they all do, nowadays. The only reason I don't need a keyfob for my Alpha account is that when I opened it, 9 years ago, they didn't have keyfobs. Their password policy was retarded, though, it wouldn't accept a $ in the password. Of course, you can't do anything without the keyfob now other than view the balance and pay some bills, so it's okay.
The Secret Winner Of The QQ-360 War?
I've never done it, but I suspect the easiest way to get "permission" (and I use the term loosely) is to add a section to your standard T&Cs, which customers agree to when they sign up, that allows you to identify current customers in your marketing materials.
This is, of course, a problem with any language. Start naming functions pr and arg and everything quickly becomes unreadable.

The other problem is that there is really no way for the reader to intuit that there is a continuation or that state is being captured and passed around. Using the word "lambda" in the onlink continuation might help in that respect.

Not storing the request state in the global environment would also help readability. One thing that shocks me about programmign is how few people realize that you can pass arguments to functions, and they can return values. Instead of:

(omg-magic)

Why not:

(send-response (handle-request req))

Hey, now we know that the parameter is a request and the result is a response. You wouldn't write:

(let ((a 2) (b 2)) (add-and-print-a-and-b))

You'd write:

(print (+ 2 2))

So why does this common sense go out the window when the problem is more complex than adding 2 and 2? I wish I knew...
Web developers tackle advanced font controls
I've been in Thailand on and off for around a decade. I founded / used to run a PR agency in Bkk and now write software. I'd be happy to give you some pointers. Email me at mbenjaminsmith at gmail. - Matthew
Strangers at a Cocktail Party (2009)
Glad to hear that , because at the moment this is a show stopper for our project.
Do you have any idea how difficult it would be if you found a great employer while on the working visa, and wanted to make the move permanent?
I briefly worked for a large bank as a buyer and part of our contract with any supplier was a clause that they could not publicise us being their client without our explicit permission. The main motivation for that was simply that we did not want our name plastered everywhere, since most of the benefit from that would accrue to the supplier not us. I expect most other large companies are the same.
Nevercookie Eats Evercookie With New Firefox Plugin
Aristotle (The Hillis Knowledge Web)
Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)
Hi Patrick,
Where did you get your virtual assistant from? Can you recommend a good company for this?
Thanks
"Lua is the closest scripting language to C"

Hmm? Neither syntax nor semantics are really close to C, and considering the plethora of C and C-like script interpreters, this strikes me as a pretty odd statement. Or do you mean in regard to binding/FFI?
Did you mean "Nov 2010" ? If so, I'm surprised you only gave it a few days before giving up and putting a "This is now a Closed site, consider joining the Forum instead." message up...
Ask HN: Are there any startups using/considering Windows Azure? 
Either as a deployment platform or as an area that you are investigating for a tool/service.

Or maybe you're just adding Azure integration to an existing product.

I'd love to hear any opinions/experiences you might have had, or maybe if you're considering it what you find attractive about it or what puts you off.
If I have data types defined as function arguments in header files, I need to include the headers for those data types. There's apparently no way around this, and it does result in messy dependencies.

I'm just curious if large projects have a systematic way of dealing with the dependency tree created by having fine-grained compilation units.

The simplest way to write a C program is as a single file. Then you have none of these problems, other than it's very difficult to navigate through the code as nothing is separated by functional area, and you have to recompile the whole program for every small change.

Next in the complexity chain, you could break apart the single C file into multiple .c files and include them in the right order, and not use header files at all. However, that still requires that you recompile the whole program for every change.

So now we're down to compiling every separate .h/.c entity as its own object file to speed up compilation, but structuring these files so that they compile and include everything in the correct order becomes a much bigger problem.
Looks interesting. I found Lua to be a wonderfully predictable language, both regarding semantics and syntax. Which is quite nice, in an age of decorators, macros and weird histories (looking at you, JavaScript).

As opposed to Zed, I would say the same about Lisp, though (if you're a mature programmer, who went beyond the first excitement about macros).
can't help you, but it's absolutely understandable and not at all retarded :)
This could be considered innovative, if they hadn't done it wrong. Problem: It can't be used in conjunction with with fob- or phone-based authenticators. It's a step backwards. Now, rather then using two-factor authentication every time you log in, users using this method will only be verified when Blizzard deems it suspicious. Account being stolen from an IP in China? Blocked. Account being stolen from an IP in Canada? Have a nice day!
Clients need deadlines too
Dear Zed Shaw, can you change the <title> tag of your posts to the actual post title and not the blog title? Always annoying to have to change it when I save your articles to Pinboard. But most of all, it's annoying because it's like, just wrong, dude! :D You can also tell me to go away and that's it's your blog and you keep it the way you want to. (That's fine too.)
Ten+ things you have to do before you launch a website
Guess the last few decades did not really encourage these kind of developments, which is why we are running short now. It's not easy to fix though

It was the .com bust along with a few other things. The market was so over-saturated with hacks in for a quick buck that when it popped it took a while to shake out who was who. This ran a lot of good developers out of the market never to return. The outsourcing craze right afterward did nothing to help the situation and just reinforced that the remaining few jobs where going to be further and further constrained. Which is what happened for a while. The schools and their CS programs pretty much became ghost town overnight.

I know, I had went back to finish my degree after 10 years in the industry around that time. I remember what was a full class became me an 2 other guys. I remember saying to one of them. Times are going to get good again in about 5 years.
The new normal: living alone
Is 4500 visits really that much for the time that you invested? I am wondering cause it might be easier to get the same amount of traffic by writing some good post and trying to post it on your or someone's blog?