skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm actually a developer and I have to strongly disagree with this comment. The same gap exists (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html) between good designers and mediocre. In my experience, great designers are far from a commodity. I also agree with the other poster who said "Think Google not Microsoft". That's great advice - with a little practice even a programmer can produce decent designs if they keep things simple and don't try to get fancy.
The clue is probably in the 700-1000 machine interaction. If they have to display 200% more results (10 vs 30), they're probably interacting with a lot more machines in their cloud.
Sites like these are like Elance for programmers. They devalue good design and force designers to work for very low rates and compete with each other thereby cannibalizing the industry.
No, no, the entire media industry is watching to see if it's possible to make money on video online.

Obviously, the only value Google could get from YouTube is cold hard cash for ad impression eyeballs.
I second this recommendation of Melbourne (and coming from a Sydney native like me, that really means something). But I'm not sure if an Australian visa is any easier to get than a US one.
Please tell me you didn't just recommend template monster. I can spot a "template" design 1000 miles away. I'd rather have my programmer hack his own design than buy a "design in a can"
Will fix the konqueror issue.

What is the point? Not everyone knows how to use nslookup, and there are websites out there that charge for this type of service. It is also just a hobby project, brushing up python skills :-).
Print designers know nothing of the web, and are a nuisance to good web designers everywhere. I have clients who routinely consult their "print designer" who in turn gives them the worst advice known to man.

As a web designer and user interface expert, when a client asks me for a brochure or business card design I dutifully refer them to a print expert and don't tell them "yeah I can do that" just because I can.
I would add 3) Be Consistent, which shouldn't come too hard to a good programmer.
Ask YC: Programming career exit strategies?
a) Pure ageism in the programming job market to begin with. Young programmers have a better chance of knowing the hot new languages, they work for less, and they're more likely to accept long hours and weekend crunches. Meanwhile, older programmers are seen as dinosaurs with out-of-date skills.

b) A skilled developer's salary tops out at, what, $150,000 in the best case, most expensive market? And let's not forget that comment Giles Bowkett quoted recently: "You're a programmer ... that makes you a tool to be used by people much smarter than yourself." We want to think we're genius intellects, but the truth is that there's some crushing-handshake jock at the other end of the table whose daughter's 16th birthday party cost more than you'll make in your career.

Conclusion: Software development is great fun, and satisfying, and I will always keep doing it as a hobby, but it is not what I want to be trying to do at 50. What do you see as the career path, short of a 100% career switch?
First preview of Google's Android phone
Your argument is that teams don't need "20 designers" they need 1-2 to bootstrap the program until is takes off.

That's a big difference from "is a designer really necessary?"

Same argument but for programming; Do you really need a team of 20 programmers? My conclusion from that argument would not be "are programmers really necessary?" Would you hire a web designer to program your software?
I don't mean to be glib but isn't the answer, given the context of this site, sort of obvious?

Developer -> Entrepreneur
"with a little practice even a programmer can produce decent designs if they keep things simple and don't try to get fancy"

Yes given time a designer can program an entire software program by keeping things simple and not getting fancy. I'm a designer and have programmed a good deal, however like designs from my programmer, you'd laugh at what I've coded.
4) Line stuff up. Design on a grid. Simple, but often overlooked.
Write your own. Let me use it :)

(that's my way of saying that I have no idea, but I voted you up so someone can help us)
If you're more just trying to make really nice forms for web applications, there's a nice set of CSS themes from Wufoo. I've been using them for lots of my prototypes before we hire someone to do the final design. In the mean time, all of our demos look nice.

http://wufoo.com/gallery/designs/
If I had a nickel for every time a programmer caused a major delay in a project (after the design was in place) I could probably buy a McDonalds franchise.

Elance/Outsource your programming for less pretentious clients, it's more profitable.

It goes both ways my friend ;)
In theory these are default states - if external factors are removed, what would you revert to?

I default to INTP but can ramp up the E as needed (and these days I need it more an more). I can mess with the other values too, but I/E is the easiest for me to play with.
Thoughts on the Semantic Technology Conference 2008
This is true. When you're a freshman you don't know anyone yet, but no one else knows anybody else either. So people are much more compelled to make friends. After a couple years your circle of friends kind of crystallizes, and those whom you don't know aren't that eager to stretch out of their little circles either.

I went through the "moving to a new place" experience a few months ago when I moved to Germany for 3 months. It was really odd, as it was the first time in my life when I really had to objectively think about how to make new friends.

And the best advice I can give about that is: DON'T go live on your own. At least not for the first few months. Go live with other people, particularly with people who value having a good vibe in the house, and not just living together to share expenses but never looking each other in the face (if you're going to Germany, look for "kein zweck WG" ;). You'll end up becoming friends with them, and meeting their friends that come over from time to time.
Isn't being able to easily "get rid of" bodies the whole point of looking for outside help?

I guess I come to the same conclusion, but without the cynicism. It isn't exactly profitable to not care about utilization rate of bodies, but then a small web dev house has to pump out better stuff faster than the other guy (and there is always an "other guy").

I mean, if your product isn't selling, then you should probably find a new product, right?
This is why I like, and have been reading Fred's blog for years: he is honest and forthcoming on his blog.
Bletchley Park Iconic Codebreaking Buildings in Decay
"Nit-Picking" is indistinguishable from someone trying to clarify what you are saying!
While I agree with the critic, I'd also point out that at no point did blogs magically become bona-fide news outlets. Sure, some are, but being a BLOG doesn't make it journalism, the writing does. I view Techcrunch as more of a Op-Ed column.
I/E isn't as much about whether you are "outgoing" or "gregarious", etc. It's really more about whether you:

* Process things internally/externally
* Get energy from being with people or find being with people "draining"

I'm also an I who has learned socially acceptable things like public speaking, participating in group discussions, etc. but a couple of hours in such a group and I'm exhausted while my E wife is energized.
It's amusing that Economist's authors confuse 'homogenous' with 'homogeneous' and editors don't catch the mistake.
Ask YC:  Drupal?
Would you use Drupal for the Alpha release of a social bookmarking and news aggregation site?
I've been slowly coding something to do this. I'm a heavy note taker, but often find myself searching for notes in multiple places. I've been trying to build a task tracker/note organizer, but have yet to find the right combo. The tool has already been rebuilt twice with a third already on paper, so it may look like a mess... but its my simple attempt at solving this problem.

http://tasks.tompimental.com
Go freelance maybe. Then you are in control. As a business, you also won't be making statements like "young programmers have a better chance of knowing the hot new languages" but rather "my business needs to keep on top of new technologies to survive." It is a different mind set.

I'm not sure your observations reflect reality though. I think you are over generalizing.

Everyone is a tool.

Making $150K per year is good pretty much anywhere.

The owner might actually be making less than you.

There is always a "top" when trading dollars for hours.

There is nothing wrong with programming at 50. I know lots of web developers (I am a web developer as well) around that age. I actually look up to them.
Design is one of my weaker talents. When recently designing my new portfolio site I made sure to play to my own strengths and made something technically challenging with an extremely simple design. I won't misrepresent myself as a designer and I am sending a good signal about the code that strings my site together. Just play to your personal strengths and you will have a great site.
I know it's a presser, but I figured quite a few people here would care about this.
This is indistinguishable from the 10 year old just not getting it (because they don't have the first-hand experience) and being so tiresome you don't want to continue.
I basicly use an emacs mode to organize them, keep them version controlled, tagged, only to never find the information i need when i need.
"often people are quick to assume design isn't important--and therefore not worth paying for"

Well that is not what I said.

So what do you pay your freelancer designers? I highly doubt they earn 100$ per hour?

What I meant is that if you can earn 100$ as a developer, you can afford to pay a designer for 50$. If I thought that design was worthless, I would have recommended do-it-yourself design.
An Australian visa is much easier to get than a US one. You apply online and get an answer within weeks.
That is a much better message, I think you're probably right. Really, I love Columbus, and I'm disappointed whenever someone says that there is nothing to do. There are always a ton of events and cultural experiences to enjoy, you just have to make the effort to look.

Perhaps Columbus could find it's own specific niche within high-tech? I've been impressed by the Tech Columbus initiative.
Invitations and message notices are exactly what I was talking about.
My buddy switched someone's explorer.exe with a Mac OS 7 emulator.

It was hilarious.
Did China's Hackers Shut Off the Lights?
"corporate companies look for money and large numbers of staff. Web development agencies on the other hand look for quality, code is poetry."

This is a very naive statement. Web dev agencies are looking for the same thing as corporations: to make money, and maintain size or preferably grow. They are just smaller and earlier in the business lifecycle, which means less bureaucracy. Many cater to larger corporations anyway, and face the same political challenges by proxy.

The bottom line is that work experience will depend on your team much more than your company. There are just as many tight knit and creative groups who their love code poetry at big companies as at small.
And yet, I agree with the author, and upvoting it made me feel good.
Twitter Scaling for Dummies
Great, hope you'll find the right combo and all of us will be benefited as well. One thing I can suggest is an 'import my existing documents' feature.
I write them down in my Moleskine (which i take everywhere). At the end of the week I review the ideas and normally start prototyping the following week.
Just because everyone else is drunk doesn't mean you have to be too.

Granted if you are sober, a really drunk person can be a pain. However, drunk people don't know you are sober, so you can banter away with them sober or not, but its difficult if you are shy I admit. Its 'just' a matter of putting yourself out there and doing it.

Other good places to meet people is at the gym - take circuits classes, join a sports club of some sort (tennis, biking, swimming, rock climbing ...).

I am pretty shy naturally, but I have met a ton of people at the swimming pool and on nights out (but I do drink a bit too much beer!).
Is Google Violating a California Privacy Law?
Hopefully this Google's Design Guidelines can help you:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/googles-design-guid...
No Way to Build an Operating System
Does the following help?

http://fuseurl.com/ap or http://all.fuseurl.com/ap
Grockit Gets $8 Million More For Mysterious Learning Game
Yup, same problem here. I'm writing my own as well. It's very simple (twitter-like) and the site will email me with recent notes, etc. (not sure how often, but I don't want to forget things, soo)

Making notes/tasks shareable is a feature too to get feedback on ideas.
Interesting. I've switched the other way. Although I don't think I actually changed at all. I used to think I was pretty organized, but I've come to realize I'm not and I'm more P than J.
How many hours do you spend on design? How many hours do you spend on development? That is your answer, practice makes perfect.

Being artistic is a natural talent to some degree but you don't need to be a Picasso to create effective web designs. However, you probably don't want to waste the time to become a good designer when you could be working on skills which are closer to your core expertise.
It's sad to hear he passed. Genuinely fun fantasy novels are hard to come by, but were Robert Asprin specialty. I grew up reading the Myth Adventures books, and amassed most (if not all) of the collection. Then I moved on to Phule's Company, another great series he wrote. I'm looking forward to sharing them with my son when he gets a bit older.
So everyone knows "ironic" doesn't work like they use it, but they do it anyway?

As in, No One Cares?
If they use a Windows computer, type the command Ctrl+Alt+DownArrow. It turns their screen upside-down. The other arrows work as well to turn the screen sideways. Not sure how familiar most people are with this though. I've always wanted to try it on someone and see how they reacted.
Twitter blames its users
Ask YC: Can you learn an industry without working in it?
Let's forget Twitter and Facebook for a bit. I think some of the most interesting opportunities are in industries not directly related to software, where creative application of software can make a huge difference. Octopart is a great example.

The reason there are many such opportunities is that very often software people focus their efforts on rehashing the same themes - software for developers, software for "business", social software, or software for its own sake. And the reason behind this is that many developers aren't exposed to the other industries - mechanical, chemical, transportation, hospitality, farming, industrial fishing... the list can go on and on.

So, a long-winded way to get to my question: Can you learn an industry without working in it, to the point where you can spot the gaps that can be filled with software? If so, how?
Type-3 iNTj (44-50-50-22)

I used to be an INTP (i think) in high school, but since then I've become a highly social, highly popular but really-geeky geek; which gave me the above score.
Fans Rip Metallica a New One
I'm currently using google notebook. It's much faster than google docs. Stuff that I don't want to keep up there, I put on my encrypted usb flash drive or my palm tx.

From reading the other posts, it looks like I'm not the only one who is working on something that I want as a better solution.
John Lam: IronRuby and Rails
Don't tease me man...

What emacs mode do you use?
Here's a trick: do the test twice, about 10-15 minutes apart.

When I did, the strength percentages changed, but the actual type was constant. Interesting.
Thanks for sharing. I just graduated last August, and experienced these same persistent feelings all throughout my college career. I'm often the type of person who can be surrounded by a huge group of people and still feel incredibly alone.

Here is an excerpt from an essay I wrote after returning from a year abroad in China:

"The concept of 'foreignerism' is not unfamiliar to me. Though I have spent the majority of my life as a citizen and resident of the United States of America, I am, in many ways, suspended between two worlds. Long before I moved to China, I felt like a stranger in a strange land and I often yearned to find a place that I could truly feel at home. Then shortly after I had adjusted to life in Beijing, I found myself completely at ease. Looking back now, I have to wonder if I did actually find somewhere that I "fit in" or if rather, I finally became comfortable with the fact that I might never quite fit in anywhere."

I can send you (or anybody else) the rest of the essay if you would like. Just email me at m[at]gee.ky. However, all of my experiences in China leading up to this realization are chronicled on: http://www.middlefusion.com/
Agreed on all sides. The gap between decent and really good designers is huge and great designers are no more a commodity than great programmers. If the author can find a great designer to work with I'd strongly recommend he does. If not, and he's doing it himself, he needs to keep things simple if he's going to produce passable designs.
Gazing Through Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope
Yes & No.

Yes, because, you don't come with the pre-conceived notions, assumptions that hamper that particular industry. you come with a fresh set of eyes, you ask why a lot and come away with a lot of interesting observations.

No, because, you don't have enough data points; meaning what you observe could be representative of one company or the entire industry.

To the how part of your answer. Work at a job that gives you the data points. You could speak to the founders of all the companies in the hospital health records and HIPPA compliance industry for eg.
I think mine would change based on how I was feeling that day - does that make me bi polar?
I'm ENTJ - just like Madonna and Whoopi Goldberg!
For ideas I use OneNote (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/default.aspx). I'm a Windows user and it is part of the Office suite. OneNote is great for bringing order and search to disorganized ideas.
Tichy, I never said you said that.

$100 is very reasonable for a quality designer--personally I find $75/hr to be a good rate for the type of work I'm looking for.

My whole post wasn't geared towards your comment--so I apologize if it came off that way.

Did not mean to imply this was your view.

My point was, many people assume design is the least important part of a web site.

This mind-set is flawed, because design is very important. Not the most important part--but still very important.

There is a reason some designers charge $25/hr and some charge $100/hr, and the $75 you save today may (or may not) cost you $1,000 tomorrow.
Check out this site for a quality description about your type.

http://keirsey.com/handler.aspx?s=keirsey&f=fourtemps...

I'm INTJ which is a Mastermind. Sounds exactly like me.
Worse, print designers know nothing of the web, and tend to think they know everything because design is design right! It's a pain to convince them that different mediums have different idioms and what works in print doesn't work well on the web.
I subscribe to the one text file way of thinking. Well, mostly one text file. Some giant parts (phone/address book, usernames/password hints) got sharded off into their own text file.

Reasons for a simple text file: Text works well with unix CLI tools (grep, etc). Text can be read and editted on every computer out there. I own my data - ain't stuck in someone else's server or hidden in a big binary blob. The format is flexible, so it works with everything I throw at it.

Everything else is in the one text file. Ideas, books I wanna read, reminders, todo lists... everything.

It's sort of a mess, but I can usually search straight to what I need. If I can't find it straight away, I sprinkle in keywords when I get there...

Before I was doing things this way, I using emails and IMs and post it notes and a notebook and... I could never find anything.
route their favorite webmail client to a gay porn site (or straight, if they are gay..) through their hosts file
One thing I'm doing to keep the cost of a designer low is to have them focus on things I know I'm not good at.

I can slice the layout in Photoshop, markup the HTML and code the CSS--so I don't have the designer do any of these things.

I have them focus on things I'm not good at--colors, typography, general look and feel, etc...

This saves some money and let's me maintain control over the code base (which I like).
I use a paper notebook, turned completely backwards, I work from back to front - Put dates on every entry... Thus when it is full I can read it like a book, I also Post-it tab every important entry.. I prefer the 70pg .70 cent notebooks with a spiral bound, also picked up a $1 portfolio at wal-mart, my boss taught me this one; he has used it for 5-10 years with great success. He can look back to when we build this building (7 years ago) and tell you the exact paint on the walls and the carpet he used and dimensions or each room...

write the range of dates on the front of each notebook then stack them in order...
I use http://www.assembla.com/. I've got a workspace for each project and ongoing process (e.g. "Taxes"), each with a wiki to collect notes and links, the ability to write tickets, assign tickets to milestones, send messages to the process, &c. SVN, too, for projects that need that (I don't use version control on my tax files, but I could now :-). So far, this has been a splendid arrangement.
for all you INTPs out there, have a look at this:

http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html

I was floored when I found that link. Describes me to a T.
I second that.. also check ms research parallel task library, very cool stuff.

Here's a primer video

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=384229
Golf prolongs life
Hey guys, thank you for the massive amount of comments, I am going to look at most of the options: read the design book, keep in mind the priniples you mentioned and if that fails I'll look at the designer for hire sites.

Thanks again, I have never gotten so much helpfull feedback!
Is YouTube Building Market Dominance At The Expense of Building A Business?
Prototip 2 - Create beautiful tooltips with ease
I admit I made it sound a bit too easy in my reply. For me the preferred way to would have a designer as a partner, because the designer should be involved in the whole evolutionary process of creating an application. With freelancers usually you give them some specifications and they deliver, but it is difficult to work in an evolutionary way.

I was lucky to find some affordable designers, but I am all for giving them their money's worth. I can't design at all, so I respect good designers for their work.
It depends on whether your blog (or whatever it is that you're feeding through RSS) is meant to achieve.

If you're trying to make money from it through advertising, then the paragraph makes sense. However, your blog better be one of the top blogs in the world if you're to make a living off it, so what's the point. Also, it's clear from the comments here that many people (myself included) are turned off by partial feeds, so that will only decrease your chance of being successful.

However, if you're trying to build a name for yourself or your company, that is - you're the advertiser (of yourself, your skills, your thoughts), and the ads are the blog posts, then it doesn't really matter where and how people read them, and it makes the most sense to provide whole article feeds.
Ask HN: feedback on early version of tool: ECMAScript 4 - JavaScript translator