skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No, this is the only standalone article from them I've seen over the years and I assume it was the prototype form of what became the Getting Real series of essays:

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

This particular approach (design all the UI "bits" first, then glue them together like legos) is a classic and I return back to it about annually. I use it in combination with another great bit of advice, Cameron Moll's "Nodes of design inspiration", which is to break down a UI into its component parts and then go looking around the web for good examples of each component:

http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000016.html

Using both of these techniques in combination is the single best way I know for busting designer's block when you're making a site or app from scratch, rather than redesigning or iterating an existing one. Those are the main tools I used last year to come up with the branding, site design and Flash UI for this interactive video startup:

http://asterpix.com

The video player got a bit cluttered since I left, but enough design elements remain to demonstrate the process in action. The top row of buttons on the video player, for example, were directly inspired by Flickr's strip of controls above their photographs. All the other annotation-centric video sites try to cram similar functionality into the same area as the playback controls or shove it off to the side where people ignore it. The sliding drawer of annotations on the left was inspired by google maps, etc.

The closest Getting Real article to this design patterns essay and most directly relevant to hackers is probably Epicenter Design - design the core functionality and most visually important element of a page first, then add in all the administrative debris around it afterwards:

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch09_Epicenter_Design.php

That advice holds true just as much for programming an interface as it does for designing it.

So putting all three of these techniques together, you end up with:

1) decide what is the single most important thing on any given page (epicenter design)
2) break it down into its component pieces and group related bits together (pattern design)
3) go looking around the web for good and bad examples (nodes of inspiration)
I'm a big fan of Archimedes myself. He made some pretty incredible discoveries during his time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes
Teen From Faith-Healing Family Refuses Treatment, Dies
Iraq nearing deals with Western oil majors
Japan debuts 3-D TV
Adoptees use DNA to find surname
Is it easy to write notes on it have those synced to your computer?
Moschino helmets: stylish jet helmets
GM Delays SUV Redesigns to Focus on Lighter Vehicles
Chrysler to Enter the Hybrid Market With Cheaper Car
Who reads books anymore?
Admittedly, I am not into fiction, and I can get magazine quality content on the web, so why read books?
Agreed. I generally sum this idea up as victim-based policies vs. enabling policies. This is subtle in the language people use too. Some people say, "we need to control this" implying they want to rule out everything and allow some things. I prefer "we need to influence this" because, to me, this says we want to allow everything and disallow some things. It fosters a more open and creative environment where people are free to try new things, since new things are allowed.
It would be very difficult to measure the improvement in test scores before the tests were created.
My first layout impression: Don't like how the player is on the bottom almost hidden away. Would be nice if it was more relevant in the design
library of Alexandria had been destroyed

I think we're still recovering from that infamous day.
There is much deeper knowledge in books. Just learning from the internets and reading magazine articles will keep you updated but make your knowledge shallow.
There are several alternative reasons for it: consumerism in communist states was nowhere near as rampant, so that helped a lot. Then, once you steal something it was hard to sell. Even if you do sell it, it was hard to buy something else because distribution system was crooked. And you could not flaunt your wealth either.
Vinton Cerf: Soaring oil prices could boost Internet
Software Company Ditches AdWords for... Kiva?
True, I don't read newspapers either, unless placed in front of me for some reason.
So, in essence, Zed has come up with a dynamic front-end for the GNU Lightning assembler?
Totally agree. I actually did do what the article suggests, since I had been thinking it might work for a number of years before. I had always put off "front-loading my day", as I put it, because I had a stressful job and couldn't afford to be having diet-induced hunger pangs in that job.

But, since I work from home now, I was able to try it properly, and it worked really well. I had as big a breakfast as I could stomach (which isn't that big in the morning), and severely cut back on lunch and dinner. I tracked my weight and body fat % throughout this. Result? I lost about 10kg in 3 months, and 4.5% of body fat %.

And the best part: I felt very clear and energetic throughout the day - no diet-induced slow-downs at all, just the opposite of what I'd expected.

Now, I can't guarantee this was entirely due to a big breakfast, but it makes sense.
There's a flaw in Eratostenes reasoning: you have to assume that the sun is effectively infinitely far away. In Eratosthenes's day there was no way to know this. The one measurement he did does not prove the world is round. It could merely indicate that the sun is nearby. (It makes an interesting exercise to calculate just how near it would have to be, and to design another experiment to eliminate this possibility.)
I thought this was a great article because it was very thorough and to the point. For me, the business lessons from the internet startup world seem to be transmutable to brick and mortart business and back again. Sam Walton's autobiography (Sam Walton: Made in America : My Story) has a list of advice at the end of the book that describes what he thought made Wal-Mart successful. I think this list is something that would be very applicable to the internet startup world.
I Left My Staff in San Francisco
Wordled: http://wordle.net/gallery/Google_User_Experience_Guidlines
Literature is often of higher quality than magazine articles. Non-fiction books often delve more deeply into a subject than a series of articles. Many books are not available online in their entirety; at least not for free. And when I do spend money on a book I expect paper.

It also gets your eyes off the monitor. These things can't be healthy to stare at 18 hours per day.
I'm Joining Craigslist in July (by Jeremy Zawodny)
No, no no. No.

Don't hack support for badly behaving browsers ;-(
For me, reading non-fiction books allows me to interact with historical figures and understand how they approached problems as well as how they arrived at their solutions. I've been reading many auto/biographies lately and more and more it has helped me realize that most over-night successes are really 20 years in the making.

edit: Another thing that has helped me is in learning grammatically correct english and sentence construction. This is something that I have yet to find in abundance on the web.
I know of no other field where you intensively train someone for years, then make them do routine paperwork that takes up 25% or more of their time.

Do commercial jet pilots have to sign the purchase order for the jet fuel? That is the equivalent kind of paperwork that doctors have to do.
even if this is true - it still doesn't condone what the AP is doing as a response
Explosive productivity
by not being "into" fiction, you're closing off the vast majority of why you would want to read books. if your only purpose is to simply learn about stuff, you can do a pretty good job of it online.

i read books for many reasons:

1) pocket-sized entertainment w/o requiring electricity.

2) reading bulks of text on the computer is hard on the eyes, imo.

3) reading a book exercises the imagination and creativity more than watching or listening to something.

4) writing a book/novel is an art form and skill. supporting it by buying quality works is important, imo.

5) i personally personally know/knew several authors who make their living 100% by writing. i buy and read their stuff to help support them.

6) a typical book has higher quality content and more depth than what you'll typically find online.

i'm sure there's plenty more reasons, i just can't think of them right now.
This is the second opinion-based blog entry I've seen about developers leaving Twitter that has made it to the front page today. The writer makes a hard-line statement for a subject and then meanders around the point and often ends with another question. Anyone should have the freedom to write, but is it remotely possible that things submitted to HN have some real news quality?
Eclipse to Textmate: An IDEological Change
"...since the law made it a goal to reduce the gap separating low-scoring, poor and minority students from higher-scoring white students."

I'm pretty sure that the article is just misleading here. IIRC, the NCLB mandates that the average test scores of the school improve each year or else the school loses funding. The schools then turn around and only teach the lowest scoring students since they show the biggest returns in points per dollar spent. When the NYT says that the goal of the NCLB is to reduce the gap, I think they mean it's one of the ideological goals rather than an actual funding trigger. And the argument is that while it would be nice to reduce the gap between high- and low-scoring students, only teaching the bottom quartile because it's the easiest way to game the system is the wrong way to go about it.

I haven't actually read the text of the final law, but that's at least what educational theorists were saying was going to happen based on the draft text before the bill was enacted.
Plus, the higher your test score, the harder it is to eek out the last few points. Especially once you hit 100%
Dresses made just from iron
Sorry, but you didn't read the article or my response correctly. They did not bring the high achievers down. They just brought them up less than the ones further down. But if they could cure cancer or invent the internet before, they should still be able to do so, and better, now.

I'm a white male too, btw. (We can take a little attack. ;-) I'm just saying that high-achievers complaining that the educational policies didn't further widen the gap seems so dishonest that there must be something more than societal well-being behind that sentiment. It's not as if the US has a problem at the high end, it's the 25% high-school dropout rate that brings it down compared to other countries in the educational measures.
Because using Time Machine to recover burnt artifacts would have clearly been the most sensical course of action. Or they should have at least expected a group of people to actually raze such an invaluable cache of human history.
Is this using Lightning? We've done SPARC and x86 in pure Ruby without libraries here (for other reasons). You might be surprised how easy this stuff is to do. I assumed he just emits instructions.

I don't know why he wastes time with an actual parseable assembly language. Ruby and Python are vastly better languages than Assembler. They have all the same textual features that Assembler has, plus a real programming language to do things like virtualized registers.
Mistakes 3, 6, 8 and 14 sound very, very similar to what 37Signals and other web entrepreneur people are saying.
If I could up-vote you a dozen times, I would. Dead freakin on! I'll add, that I read books BECAUSE I spent so much time on the computer. Books are the cheapest, most engaging form of entertainment that you can do alone. And they last longer ... Running a start-up and on a tight budget? There is no greater deal out there in our world of over-priced, poorly written, 60fps elecrtonic based "entertainment" than books. Books fit in your pocket, in your bag, pretty much anywhere. And when you're done, they can do just as much, or more entertaining for someone else. The are like infinite entertainment and knowledge. They are amazing.

Funny (short) story. I used to not read much at all other than what's been described above and computer books. Well, I was out with some friends and brought up a recent episode of a horrid reality show. A very close friend of mine stopped dead, looked me in the eyes and said with just a touch of concern in his voice: "do you know how many good books there are?!" Yeah, I had an idea, but I just didn't read any of them ... Well, the next week, he gave me a copy of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I've been a voracious reader ever since.
whats so unconventional about Google's rules, is they apply them instead of just having them.
The gulf between what seems like a jit assembler grafted to Ruby/DL and a jit compiler for a language like Ruby seems vast. Cool project. Predicting it isn't going to change the world, any more than Zed's "makefile for printed books".
Alexa's "Overview" page for a website (rather than "Traffic Details") will give you Speed and Load Time stats. Not sure how accurate they are.

from http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/ycombinator.com:

Speed: Very Fast (87% of sites are slower)

Avg Load Time: .8 Seconds
I seem to have a ridiculously fast metabolism, so weight loss is luckily not something I have to worry about. (for now?) However, I have experimented with my diet a little, and for me, breakfast is basically essential. I can't function properly for the rest of the day if I don't have a proper breakfast, I end up being lethargic and unable to concentrate for the rest of the day. If I skip breakfast completely, I just end up snacking to avoid getting "the shakes" though, so that might be an extreme case.
Mistakes 12 and 16 are two of the most key things. Especially with web based startups. I'd really like to see more innovative ways of advertising, perhaps developers should focus on this just as much as the service they are building?
Referring you again to the GMail Inbox browse.
This does actually work. Continuous starvation actually conditions the body to store additional fat. A good breakfast also helps to provide fuel to your brain, which burns a lot of glucose.

Eating regularly conditions your body to burn what takes in, because it doesn't have to save for later, so instead of storing calories in fat, it builds other things like muscle.

One of my friends went on a plan to lose one pound per week or thereabouts while he was training for a long, difficult bike tour in the French Alps, and calculated that he would have to consume around 4100 calories per day.
Consulting: a pie eating contest where the reward is more pie.
You have a false dichotomy here: I read books (for free) on the internet.
Yahoo: who else is staying?
Yes this makes logical sense... First thing in the morning you've probably not eaten for 12 hours, that is literally why it is called "break fast". A high-quality, nutrient-dense breakfast is vital. Coffee and a pastry doesn't cut it for me any more. A big bowl of porridge with a handful of berries and a little maple syrup is just about perfect for me, a few simple carbs to kickstart my metabolism and complex carbs to power me 'til lunchtime.

When I have the opportunity I like to make it the old-fashioned way, soak the oats in warm water and a drop of vinegar overnight, then heat it up slowly in the morning, add a pinch of salt and a little butter (NOT margarine or "spread" or any of that modern rubbish). Yum.
SocialMedia Pays Out $8 Million To Facebook App Developers
I agree with a lot of the other commentators. I am a voracious reader, with normally 3-4 books on my reading stand at any point that I read at different points during the day. Reading provides a very cheap and easily accessible form of entertainment that allows you to exercise your imagination and creativity, and provide a wealth of detailed knowledge (even if it were fiction - a good fictional story can provide an insight into different situations, cultures, even the psyche of people in general)

A good book can keep you company at any point in time in a day, and more so, stay with you a lot longer (this is true even with fiction). I have found myself going back to several books over the years, because some are _that_ good.

Having said that, there are a lot of crappy books out there (I have commented about that earlier) and invariably you will get one that is despite checking it out (amazon reviews etc). That has not prevented me from continuing to find good books, and it should not deter anyone else either.

A quick cursory glance over amazon's best-seller lists will give you a good overview on the types of fictional books, and you will quickly see that almost every kind of curiosity can be satisfied - technical, mystery, espionage, war strategy, sci-fi, you name it...

And yes, staring at a tube-light all day cannot be a good thing...
Is it just me, or is his pseudo-assembly language just a funny way to poke fun at MagLev (and all the rejoicing surrounding its announcement)?
Special offers on Beds,soft and home furninshings from Dunelm
Computer (with internet) however:

- is basically free (or cost of retrieving new content is free)

- tabbed browsing makes scanning fast

- broadband makes news pages load quicker (or similar) to turning a page

- commoditization of blogs and cms via open-source means more noise, but also more signal

- instant publishing

- large lcd screens can be dimmed, and font sized enlarged

There is wisdom on the web, and books are still mobile and reliable. Text books are important, but in my view the case for books is lessening. (unless you like fiction, but much classic literature can be found freely on the web due to copyright expiration anyway).
"They put together financial projections as part of a presentation to pump up their investors."

An important point for those of us who may seek angel or VC funding for our startups at some point. It's all too common to hear entrepreneurs say things like "Investors are going to be looking for better growth than that...."
Google Suffers Outage On App-Hosting Platform
Well, no, how to eat healthily is pretty much known these days. Eat 5-6 small meals throughout the day, every 3 hours or so, avoid refined/simple carbs, aim to get your calories from 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat, all from a variety of sources, aim for 25g fibre a day. This is right because it's what humans evolved doing. The difficult part is doing it in the modern world. Like if you're in a hurry in the morning, you might skip breakfast, or grab a pastry (white flour, white sugar) at Starbucks. Or if you're tired or stressed in the evening, you might order a pizza.

But the more processed food is, the more profitable it is too, so it's hard to live as you were meant, but it is possible.
Obligatory 'Examination Day' (1300-word short story) reference:

[PDF] http://education.uncc.edu/ssagallag/6124/Examination%20Day.p...

[HTML] http://englischlehrer.de/texts/examination_day.php
First Certified Mobile WiMax Gear Arrives
Ask HN: Recommendation for a good UI/UX expert?
We are an Atlanta based startup looking for an UI/UX expert to help us build for our Beta. We are self-funded and have the budget allocated for this work.

After hours of looking on the web, the one thing I've realized is that for this type of work you really need someone who comes with recommendations. So I turn to you guys for help.

Thanks!

EDIT: We are an angel-funded startup, building a web-based research aggregation tool. We have a budget of up to $5000. We are looking for someone to help come up with a clean design, branding, and layout. We have 4 unique pages, and a bookmarklet that needs the creative touch. We are implementing using the JEE stack (Struts2, JSPs, etc.), and have been using Blueprint CSS for layout.

EDIT AGAIN: We have 3 developers on staff, we have been able to come up with a basic site layout, color scheme, and know how to wire it up. What we want is someone to give us a new logo, CSS, header, footer, graphics for certain controls on the page, and maybe if they have a better idea on how to present certain data (but this isn't as important).
TextMate is a great editor, but I do find that it's support for any given language lacks the depth you might find in IDEs, even multi-language IDEs.

So I find myself wanting to use TM, because as a pure editor it is very nice - but for example find that the Ruby specific features in Netbeans* are such huge timesavers that it is impossible to justify sticking with TM. I found the same to be true with Objective-C and Xcode as well.

(*I have been no fan of NB in the past, and there are many things about it that suck, but they have done an amazing job with Ruby, nothing else I've seen comes close.)

That said, whatever you do, do NOT tie your development/build process to an IDE. You need to allow every developer to use the tools they prefer, and you want the freedom to be able to switch these tools quickly.
I think the best thing to do is to realize that you are in a recovery-needed stage and then go and recover! Embrace it without guilt. Doing nothing (or something recreational of course), for a time, might be the best way to get more stuff done.
Curious to know if Craigslist still hands out equity to employees?
I downvoted because there are a lot of assertions here without sources or context.

My anecdotal experience, where my wife is in the doctor's office routinely due to Hashimoto's disease, is that your mileage may vary. We went to an immunologist who sat on his hands and waited for several months for her thyroid to get enough out of whack before he ordered more testing. We've had several incompetent doctors who failed to diagnose conditions that harmed her health and the health of our son. On the other hand, since we've moved and had to find new doctors, we've gotten some really helpful doctors who really know their business and have been clearing up longstanding immune problems.

The right doctors have really been great for us, the wrong doctors have really been bad.

The first close citation I found for your argument was here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12...

There was a study that most doctors have high standards, but they would fail to report colleagues who didn't meet those standards. However, they appear to claim that reporting would not solve the problem, just lead to its own set of headaches.

I would say that America needs to follow the money to get to the bottom of this problem. The prices of medical care just aren't commensurate with the costs anymore. Ease the financial pressure and the whole system will probably improve.
When Is Less Invention More or Less Innovation?
"In tests of fourth-grade reading from 2000 to 2007, for instance, the scores of the lowest-achieving students increased by 16 points on a 280-point scale, compared with a gain of three points for top-achieving students, according to the study, by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research organization in Washington."

Is it just me or does this seem normal? Is it not much harder for someone on top to improve vs. someone on the bottom? For example, a Michael Jordan who already spends considerable effort and energy being the best (having little more total time to work on improving), vs. someone who puts little time and effort (having much more time to contribute and therefore improve).
Wouldn't we just have diseases that are 10x stronger too? :)
Probably not after the whole eBay fiasco.
Yes, what makes this article extra helpful is that it consolidates the best of the various tricks out there into one simple document.
I've yet to meet at single software statup founder that "spend (s) enough time researching the business idea to see if it's viable".

I wonder if that is due to the very low barrier to entry with software.
DIY Wiretapping: The Ultimate Guide (and How to Fight Back)