skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Tech meccas are born from hundreds of small technology companies constantly pushing the limits of a platform, not from the presence of a single, large employer."

I would think having a few large tech companies in an area would aid in the creation of smaller ones.
Planning and write Your Law Dissertation
A good law dissertation is required to be written in order to confer the law degree. This type of document should be written in the exact manner prescribed. Failure to do so will result in the non receipt of the degree. Therefore, proper planning is required to write a successful law dissertation.
Nasty!

To start with your #1, what I actually said (and meant) was: "I'm not sure I wouldn't have done exactly what they did"

And the rest of your list is just as bad.

So if you need to mis-state what someone says to "prove" them wrong, then you don't really believe in what you believe in.

Which is, btw, what?

Are you boycotting Amazon?

If so, what are you giving up?
I've changed my whole style of programming using Data::Dumper::Simple It does the obvious, but instead of a more or less anonymous (unless you use extra key strokes) dump of a given variable, Simple allows named dumps of multiple values one per line (complex structures arrayed in a vertical fashion) I used for years something like print "\$variable = '$variable'\n"; and this completely replaced that with much clearer code. I combine this with a trailing if $debug; and life is very good since my code allows turning $debug on and off selectively. If I combine this approach with some of the things mentioned in the post, I can greatly extend my ability to know what the hell is going on with my program :)
/be is Brendan Eich (creator of JavaScript)
This seems like good advice for getting rid of bad habits:

"just because I did something yesterday is not a good enough reason to do it today"

Gotta keep that in mind.
Software consultant caught with huge stockpile of homemade explosives
Python virtualenv with pyenv
This idea has been around since the 50's under various forms and will someday change the world as we know it. It is mostly known as Personal Rapid transit (PRT) and can be used to trasport food, waste, and all sorts of cargo including people at 1/2 of the cost of any other transport system (bikes can be cheaper). See www.personalrapidtransport.com (not a commercial site, just advocacy).
Google taking 48 cents on the dollar unless you're a major publisher... ouch!
Actually, I don't think that's the source of the market failure. The source of the market failure is that there is no real feedback to the advertisers when the recipients are disgruntled or annoyed. The only people that matter are the Nielson raters, and I don't think there's a slot on their forms for being annoyed by volume. If advertisers saw a big dip every time the commercials came on, and could ask the customers why, and then could run an experiment with more level volume and find out people don't tune out so quickly, they could learn and the market could correct, but due to the nature of the technology not a single step of the requisite path actually existed 20 years ago, and still mostly not today.
Google Launches Online Bookstore, Challenging Amazon
I am planning on continuing my usual practices with regards to transparency, with the proviso that I could think of some circumstances where obligations to customers might force that to change. (e.g. If I land one big whitelabel client, and my gross revenues would tend to give away the size of that relationship, then I'd start publishing very incomplete data.)
Income is not linear. So the disparity in income today is less evident. Thus helping paint the picture of a perfect future.

That and the selection of medians for thing like income and life expectancy makes that a very poor data viz choice. But a very good motivational talk. Really Ted material...
Google Editions Launches As Google eBookstore
So true. The interview was typical of mass media. They interviewed a real estate guy about the technology industry and the startup scene. They got the kind of insightful commentary on entrepreneurship that you would expect ;-p.
Julian Assange (WikiLeaks) - Who Will Be TIME's 2010 Person of the Year?
The lure of the new
A big reason this is important is that it's a stepping stone to location based DNS routing. That'd be the very last showstopper for some deployments being exclusively AWS.
GetSatisfaction uses pair programming exclusively.
FCC has received complaints about loud commercials since the 1960s

Nice to see that if you ask your government for something, within 50 years, they will deliver it.
Interesting. His problem of dry skin went away. What about people that have oily skin?
You're directionally accurate. I will probably have something to show off on that front in January or February.
People always expect someone else to stand against the government, they won't do it themselves since there are negative consequences for that behavior, but its easy to pontificate with self righteous indignation.
Patrick - you may find this useful:

"One restaurant owner greatly reduced the percentage of no-shows (people who booked a table but didn't honour the reservation and didn't call to cancel it) by having his receptionist change what she said when taking a reservation from 'Please call if you have to cancel' to 'Will you call if you have to cancel?' Of course, nearly all customers committed themselves to calling by saying 'yes' to that question. More importantly, they then felt the need to abide by their commitment: the no-show rate dropped from 30 per cent to 10 per cent."
(quoted from 'Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion' by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini)

One other suggestion: Give your would-be customers a FREE split test. Half of the appointments get a reminder, half don't. Get the user to place a 'value' on the outcome of each appointment, then tell them the result of the split test. The user will be BEGGING to give you money.
Adam, nice work on getting Charts on HTTPS!

I understand that Google is a large company. But, with Google Maps in particular it seems to be a business decision rather than a technical one. What can we do to help swing a decision in favour of making HTTPS be part of the public Maps API?

2+ years of comments on http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=5... hasn't seemed to have had any effect...
Small question - why is the blog directly on the root rather than under something like /blog/? And don't you think it'd look better to post under something other than "ADMIN"?
I like the comment under "Refuctoring":

> We had a guy come in and immediately strip out comments and whitespace from our code "to make it faster".
Every google app is above 1.5mb. That's really above the fold for most categories of apps
I would strongly disagree with that. Rent control is an absolutely necessity for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.
Do you have a source for that? I have super curly hair and in a futile attempt to manage it I researched hair care for a morning a few weeks ago.

If you didn't know curly hair tends to become dry towards the ends. This is due to the natural oils not being able to reach the ends because of the curls. I found a few sites advocating shampooing about once every two weeks to let the oils do their thing (along with moisturizing conditioner every day).

That being said my hair is still a mess so I'd love to see if I am "doing it wrong".
Android 2.3 Platform
I watch live sports events, there's no good on-line replacement for that yet. I have the minimum level of TV + Internet from Comcast, as that's cheaper than Internet alone.
>Featured Friends

>You can now highlight the friends who are important to you, such as your family, best friends or teammates.

Cue increased drama in 3...2...1...
It doesn't violate someone's right to free speech or any other right for a company to fail to provide a service to them. A company having to provide service to some particular entity only violates one set of rights - those of the company.
One thing I couldn't find is if it supports wildcard DNS (granted I only did a quick in page search both here and the service description page). Anyone have any insight?
Norman Foster to design Apple’s new campus called ‘Apple City’
I drink Red Bull just for the taste. It has zero effect on me, so does coffee. I can drink a cup of coffee and a can of Red Bull and go to sleep.
This is the problem if for some reason I must stay up when I am getting sleepy—I just don't know any means to stay alert.
The first book I see (Cross Fire by James Patterson) is $14.99 vs. $12.99 on the Kindle.
Personally, I carry a small notebook with me and whenever I find myself having difficulties with anything (whether it be finding a place to eat, the nearest gas station, or remembering what I had to do at work) I try to consciously think of how I could prevent running into the problem in the future. If an idea comes to mind then simply write it down. The result is that you will find your notebook will fill up very quickly and will become a resource for you when you are attempting to start a new project.
My problem with Tumblr
Thank you -- I've had my head in the trenches so long that didn't even occur to me, and split testing is ordinarily a passion of mine. I'll consider doing that if I can figure a way to sell it to my customers as well as I can sell it to Rails developers.
I've been doing a demo video last week, and you can get a long way with powerpoint, windows movie maker, camstudio and audacity. I found I got significantly better results by writing my script, doing the voice over, then the screencast, import all into movie maker, and then edit the screencasts to make it all fit.

('better' when compared to the 'do it all in one go' approach)
Custom Carbonless Forms - A Great Option For The Corporate Dealers
When it comes to the 2 part NCR sets, they have a special edge for the corporate owners always. That is why online carbonless forms printing industry offers you matchless carbonless forms printing solutions internationally.
Differently from kindle and other ebook apps, such as adilko, google goes great lenghts, at least in this version, to hide the free content besides the 3 samples that it adds to your lib when starting
I use magnesium hydroxide, usually sold as a laxative. It is nearly the same thing as the active ingredient in most deodorants, except it isn't an antiperspirant nor is scented nor has a creamy consistency, etc. It's also really cheap, and you can buy by the liter.
Pruning your digital contacts: get time while reducing distraction and stress
Is it just me or is their bookstore search awful? I've tried various programming subjects (software, software engineering, computer graphics, etc.) and always get results like "Report of the 55th National Conference on Weights and Measures 1970" or "Veterans' Administration FY 1988 budget"
The pricing is a little complicated and I think there are volume discounts, but I believe I'm paying something like $2/million in advance and $6/million if I go over plan.
Google’s Advice On Building A Mobile Business
I think you have it backwards.
Except that it's easy for just about anyone to spot a bad manager. A manager who doesn't actually know how to code couldn't spot a bad programmer if they fell into them.
Does that apply to most countries, or just Poland (and maybe few other countries)?
Speech recognition has steadily improved over the past 10 years. You can see a few examples: Android system wide speech input, Siri iPhone app (which Apple bought), Dragon Naturally Speaking advertises upwards of 99% accuracy for general purpose dictation, and the latest speech recognition IVRs do pretty darn well; try calling Amtrak or United. If you try to dick around with it, have a strong accent, or are in a noisy environment, you won't get (as) good results. However, as a whole, it's greatly improved.
Using Kinect for photographic art
My Choice: The Social Network

Why? Largely because I find it inspirational, vis-a-vis my own entrepreneurial ambitions. I've watched it twice already, and every time I watch that, I feel very inspired to sit down and start hacking, and work on building something.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Mark Zuckerberg, or even of Facebook; but the movie was well-done, entertaining AND inspirational. What more can you ask for?

Honorable Mentions:

Red

Inception

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt 1

Looking forward to:

Tron: Legacy
You know it is a blog, and I know it is a blog, but does my business gain anything from saying "This piece of content was written by some pajama-wearing shmuck who doesn't know what he is talking about and what it says was obsolete within 30 minutes of being posted"?

Blog? What blog? No blog here, Mr. Person With Decisionmaking Authority At A Law Firm. All I see is experts talking to experts.
I'll second 'The Pragmatic Programmer' as a wonderful career enhancer.
I'm reading 'Growing Object-Oriented Software guided By Tests', Pryce, Freeman right now, and think it's really worthwhile.
This page discusses the highlights over 2.2:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.3-highlights.html
This is great, I wish there was an easy way to save the SVG - theres a nice nodebox/shoebot script that can take an svg and recolour randomly I want to try with these.
"In the future, we plan to add additional integration features such as the ability to automatically tie your Amazon Elastic Load Balancer instances to a DNS name, and the ability to route your customers to the closest EC2 region."
likewise in portuguese, spanish, italian, etc :) but the latin origin of the word clearly explains why that's the case.
Why "nasty"? Seems like a decent summary.

Anyway, I just bought a bunch of books from abebooks.com rather than amazon.com. Save a pile of money :o) but (I assume) they will not be new and shiny :(
Having inherited code developed by lone wolves a few times, I have come to believe that healthy code is like healthy DNA; it needs a variety of contributors. Yes, it can be difficult at times. It can involve struggles but I have no sympathy for the complaints about them, the struggles make you stronger.
Kent Beck mentioned this Refuctoring video a few months ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RJmoCWx4cE&feature=youtu...

The author kept the tests green while refuctoring it...
I dunno, my dreams are pretty wild.
These are old, but I got a lot this year out of 'Dynamics of Software Development', McCarthy and 'Working Effectively with Legacy Software', Feathers.
Shape-Shifting batteries fit sizes AA-D
Introducing Nexus S with Gingerbread
Oh wow, you worked 13-14 hours a day? Jesus, when did you live?
Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) platform announced
Thanks for the correction. I am shocked- shocked, I say!- to learn that the Wikipedia contained an incorrect datum! ;-)

Best wishes with getting the treatment you need, and for a speedy recovery afterwards (both medically and financially).
This is a random one
R.G. LeTourneau: Mover of Men and Mountains

It's an autobiography of the businessman and inventor who basically created the industry of large scale earth moving equipment before, during, and after the Great Depression. "What does this have to do with tech stuff?" you may ask. I read this book right after re-reading Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham. LeTourneau utilizes many of the business principles that Paul Graham espouses in his book. Additionally, LeTourneau was a true hacker before computer hackers were around - he just hacked tractors. I highly recommend this book. One thing that many may not like is that his machines destroyed rainforests. Being from a different generation, he saw this as taking unproductive jungle and making it productive. Not a view many of us would take in this day in time as we've seen the consequences. LeTourneau was a Christian and he does talk about his faith a good bit in the book. Even if that's not your thing, I still think you'll enjoy the book and be surprised at the similarities between his makeup and the makeup of a modern hacker
Google buys Widevine to Beef Up DRM Offering
What I believe is that free speech is important, and when companies wave a big red flag that they don't value it, there need to be some consequences.

As for what i'm giving up ... on a personal level, I haven't shopped at Amazon for quite a while (because of one-click patent, privacy issues, and their support for DRM). I had been considering of publishing something on CreateSpace and now will have to find some other options. I give up convenience, time, and occasionally some money. Then again I get to support independent book stores and sometimes buy directly from publishers who value free speech and privacy, so for me it's a big win.

Professionally, I'll use somebody else for future projects. Obviously, this'll give up the "one-stop shopping" for high quality services and some best-in-class options. On the other hand, at this point it seems extremely risky to me to host anything that involves potentially-controversial content on Amazon, so I don't really see a lot of options there.

I do agree that when you're deeply tied into the Amazon environment it's not an overnight change to get out of it. Still, I don't see that as an argument for not taking any action.
Finally! One more reason to boycott Amazon.
Startup Job Fair @ Palo Alto Sheraton December 9th 25 companies attending
Is there a price anywhere?
"I'm not sure I wouldn't have done exactly what they did"

Maybe I'm having trouble parsing the double negative, but doesn't that mean what OP said it means? If not, what does it mean instead?
"Unlimited budget" doesn't mean "unlimited spending". I'm pretty sure people would only buy things they needed, so the situation you describe wouldn't happen any more than it does now.
Wikileaks Cablegate Radar (Viewer)
I'm not sure what your point is here? You're saying that you can define freedom of speech in a narrow way so that Amazon is off the hook. Great.

But that doesn't change what they've done - it just makes you look like a lawyer making excuses for the inexcusable.
The integrated SIP stack look excellent, but from http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.3-highlights.html:

"Support for the platform's SIP and internet calling features on specific devices is determined by their manufacturers and associated carriers."

This is disappointing, but not unexpected.
Oh, I'm going to have to steal that line!

Boss: Want to go to New Jersey to see the co-lo facility?

Me: Why? To visit my rack?

(My original answer to his question wasn't nearly as impressive.)
"E-Reading Takes To The Cloud"

Sorry, what?

How is this any more cloud-y than a Kindle, or whatever also-ran B&N has, or the iTunes books thing? Not to say that it isn't cool (personally, I'm surprised it uses Adobe's eBook DRM format instead of something simpler and more open), but the cloudiness of this is far less notable than the weird fact that Google's getting into this industry.
In my opinion one the critical issues is that AWS doesn't require a relationship to start hosting. I know amzn mentioned that and it might sound like a lame justification to you, but I think it's pretty reasonable.

Almost any competing service (besides app engine) in this space would have required a signed contract and contact with an account rep. How many of these [US based] hosting providers would agree to a contract with wikileaks given that distributing classified US documents on US servers by a US business is likely a crime?

I'd expect very few. At the very maximum, something like 1 in 10. But we're not calling for boycotts of rackspace, right? The only reason amzn is taking heat for this decision is that they turned them down a few days after the service switched instead of a few days before. Otherwise folks might as well be boycotting most of the industry.

Isn't the right to choose who to do business with at least close to the same level as the right to free speech? I've refused to sign a contract with a guy simply because he was a dick, with no other concrete reason. Surely amzn had more cause than this.

Also, I think a lot of people are overestimating their own likely actions in this case. If the white house and senate staffers are calling you all day asking/telling you to do something how sure are you that you'd be manning up and taking a stand on it? Hell, how many of you would stand up to a Jobs/Schmidt/Zuckerberg call?
I stopped using shaving cream years ago thanks to this article: http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker65.html
Turns out using shaving cream makes you dependent on it.
"Amazon's got competition so it's not that big a deal if they don't stand up for free speech"

Not what he said. He said that Amazon isn't a government body, but a business, so they're not supposed to "stand up for free speech". He mentioned competition to explain that Amazon is not a monopoly, wherein different rules might apply (if they were legitimately the only way to get things hosted, it would be a much bigger deal if they choose not to host you.)
The thing very few people realize is that you don't really get notably dirty or smelly underneath your clothes (exception being certain odor where the sun doesn't shine). If you work up a sweat for a long time, it's a different issue in terms of smell, but there's really not any dirt underneath the clothes to talk about other than epithelieals - which is nothing that water alone can't handle. I don't use soap when showering and I smell just fine, but I do use shampoo for my hair, and deodorant under the arms.
Dns Made Easy is $1.95 per zone beyond what's included in your plan.
The truth wears off: The tendency of scientific results to shrink over time
TechCrunch Review: Google Nexus S
The headline cracked me up. "BREAKING: Groupon Aims to Increase Valuation, Not Have It Crash Miserably". The article itself is a decent roundup of what happened after several other large non-acquisitions
That's interesting and relevant, but should in no way mean this post needs to be flagged. I wasn't aware of any of this (post nor rebuttal) for instance.
I've been doing no shampoo/soap only where it matters for about 6 months now and can only report positives. I don't smell, I still shower daily (showers being shorter now). Win in my mind.
Here's an excerpt of what he said:

"There are plenty of choices for web hosting besides Amazon. And because they charge money for their services, they guarantee that there will always be. If Twitter had shut them off, that would be serious, because their pricing model, and lack of federation, more or less cuts off competition. There it would be really chilling. Here, not even slightly chilling."
Being wrong isn't flag-worthy. Being a nearly content-free addition to a topic already discussed on HN, and inviting yet another pointless argument about Wikileaks: that's flag-worthy.
I heard about a similar story in college and decided to try it out over 15 years ago. My roommate's uncle was a doctor and a big fan of not using soap and shampoo. The first 2 weeks were tough - very oily. But I stuck it out and then my body adjusted. I could really tell that my body was producing less oil and I felt cleaner throughout the day. So I kept on going, and for the next 10 years I didn't use soap and shampoo in the shower. When people found out, most were grossed out. But it felt right. About 5 years ago, I started to use shampoo cause it would let me wash my hair faster (just using water takes longer). But I use a gentle and natural shampoo (current from Melvita). I still don't use soap cause I feel like it strips too much natural/good body oil from my body and isn't good for me. Anyway, it's refreshing to see a post like this. And in all places, at HN.
مسلسل سيلا الحلقة 72
It seems to me that burning the house to the ground is merely an excuse to check some of the disaster planning methods and equipment to determine accuracy of fall out equipment etc.

I strongly doubt that most of the material is too hazardous or dangerous to remove. Like I said it's an opportunity. 8)

Anyone else think this?