skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wouldn't expect to be a "certified web designer" after a two weeks summer course, and get hired by Apple for an obscene amount of money. But maybe I could learn some basic skills that would enable me to create acceptable web sites. For example, even creating the graphics for rounded corners is not straightforward (or it wasn't before I discovered Inkscape).

I can't imagine that such courses are completely useless. Of course you are not an expert after that, but at least it can get you started.

In fact my gf just had to learn painting in a short amount of time, and even a one day course teaching some basic skills was very helpful.
I've definitely had problems - emails that show up in Gmail but never get downloaded via POPm 6+ hour delays for messages.
It's not really the same, because everyone is exposed to design all the time, whereas only coders ever look at code. It's more like being able to tell if music is good -- most people have a decent sense for it, but a musician's taste is a little more refined.
"Got an idea that you think your managers are missing? Tell them? They don’t like it? Tell their bosses? They don’t like it? Tell the CEO. Stand on his or her desk if you have to – shout your reasoning, advocate for your customers, do what you have to do. Think you are gonna get fired?"

YES. In the vast majority of large corporations you will get fired before you even have the chance to get near the CEO's desk. Every single outspoken person I've known in large organizations has gotten laid off or canned outright. People who "take" leadership are seen as a threat to those who already have it and are eliminated.

The first or even second level managers don't even have a say. Unless your title is at least "director" you don't have a prayer in implementing any real change in the organization. The problem is, most directors are "yes men" who've risen through the ranks and are more interested in protecting their power than improving things.

Want to take leadership? Work for a smaller company where you might have more say, or start your own company like the author of the article apparently did.
I use the blank side of received business cards to write down details of my meeting with the person. Covering that space with a picture reduces the value of a business card for me.

Is that reduction in usability Moo's business card selling point?
Thanks for that.

Reading it was the most fun I've had all day.
Nokia to Open Access to Mobile Software
What if you wanted to get an array of all the table cells in a particular table?

$('#tbl-order td')

versus

- Getting the table
- Getting the table body
- Getting each row
- Getting each cell

Much simpler. It's cool though, I dismissed it until I tried it too. It's a real eye-opener how much easier things are using jQuery's selectors.
Looks like their traffic has been in decline a bit though. But as they say, it's not like they are paying customers.

Some users can get pretty abusive after a while.

I'm not sure why they didn't just direct the troublemakers to this page, and let others access the site though.
I should have made myself clear: I'm not against moving JS code to a separate file and I understand the benefits of caching.

My point is, some hint of change for a given element must be given where it's declared, for example as a function call in onChange. This function itself can be defined anywhere, preferably in a separate file. Why - because when building a web app you usually look at the page and decide to modify the behavior of an element. In a good WYSWYG editor it's just one click, and you see that there's custom code attached to one of the events of that element.

With "unobtrusive" style it's not obvious at design time whether an element has standard behavior or not, unless you know the code well, I mean, every bit of code in all modules.
Doing less the good way
This part seemed particularly inaccurate: "Gates demonstrated that the old-school model of an Ivy-league degree, or a pedigreed family, isn't a requirement for career success." He came from a wealthy and prominent family.

However, I think the point is correct, even if Bill Gates isn't the one who proved it. I'm always encouraged when I find out that the founder and owner of a successful company came from a modest background.
I'm pretty sure German laws only apply if Google has an office there. If they closed their office, they could call the service whatever they wanted.
I think 37 signals had the idea to copy the design of a webpage that's completely unrelated to the subject of the one you're working on.

Where to start?

http://del.icio.us/search/?fr=del_icio_us&p=webdesign...
Rotating skyscraper planned for Dubai
Exactly! How I wish there was some HOWTO of solving the world's problems. But there is none. So, it is upto us only to go out and solve the world. Very little changes by sitting at the desk and making yet another new app.

I agree that indirectly we all are doing something to change the world. But don't you think we should be keen on solving something more directly?
Never had any of the problems you are describing.
I think this is more of a leadership problem than anything else.

I think one of the goals of a leader is to create an environment in which people feel good about bringing their ideas to the forefront. They shouldn't be punished for being outspoken.

I agree with coglehtorpe that in many large organizations such a person would get fired.

I think employees can speak up but before they do they should assess the situation.

I don't know if your chances are better in general in a small company. I have been in small organizations where the CEO is a bully and don't really care for much feedback.

The trick is to work for an organization large or small whose culture favors such a behavior for e.g. GE under Welch or some of today's great companies when they were small etc.

What I can say from experience though is that a company that favors employees to speak and one that values their opinion is a superior company.
I let my computers sleep. But that still counts as uptime ;)
It is cooler than it seems. Needs a new design but great idea!
the "this side of the pond" being UK not US. Sorry if that was unclear.
Hit reply, then flag.
This is really lame, and sadly, it is already on the front page of HN.
If you would like to create your own buttons, graphics, background images, colors, etc, try inkscape open source image creation, editing tool. http://inkscape.org
MacBook or MacBook Pro in clamshell (closed-lid) mode.
Yeah, but then it turns into:

Cat: Go make me a sandwich.
Dog: Yeah! A sandwich! Yeaaah! Yeah! Oh boy, a sandwich! Yeaaaaaaah!
I don't think that only solving the most basic problems is worthwhile. Like, is it OK to make music? It doesn't help against hunger in the 3rd world, so it is a useless activity? But maybe occasionally some guy who is working on solving the hunger problem finds the strength to go on by listening to your music. Or so I imagine...

Nevertheless sometimes I wish there was something more direct I could do. I just think the original article was a bit short on suggestions.

Hm, that reminds me of an idea of mine, that some people gave me good feedback about. Perhaps some people here like it and want to join in making it? Basically, I envisioned a bug tracker for the whole world: http://www.cambrianhouse.com/idea/idea-promoter/ideas-id/NcJ... (I suggested this for the StartupWeekend in Hamburg, but unfortunately something else was selected...).
Took a peek at SproutCore and is it just me but it's slow as molasses. Using FF2 on Ubuntu...another thing I want to raise is it's over reliance on Ruby to install the damn thing. Why can't it be like jQuery and other js libs that you just drop into your web directory and call em from the page. How is this different from jQueryUI?
A rare case of reverse psychology actually working on the net? (...especially for a "social" media site).

Anyone know of other successful cases?
'The title of this post is hyperbole' - no, 'Microsoft manages interns 100 times better than Google' would be hyperbole.
My mind boggles at the response on the talk page:

[General impression:] "Yeah, we sure showed that 'scientist'! He'll think TWICE before tanglin' with us again!"

As a Christian, I cringe on the inside. And outside. Heck, full-body cringe.

* Edit: And to clarify if needed, it looks like there's some reasonable people there as well, but what's with the admins or whoever is writing the nonsense?

* Edit2: Ah, the front page demonstrates the attitude well: "Lenski's latest response to a request for his data is revealing ... about Lenski's attitude. Take a good look at the attitude our tax dollars are paying for."
I agree. It seems like a lot of these web-desktop UI libraries are just reinventing X11, poorly. The web has its own tropes and idioms. The availability of performant and standards-compliant Javascript is changing what's possible, but that doesn't mean we need to just reimplement the previous paradigm.
The new dotcom boom
Yes, I agree with you that it is worthwhile to help someone by making music. But that is a very indirect way. Wouldn't it be more helpful if a better percentage of entrepreneurs worked on projects that help the world directly and powerfully?

Your idea is interesting. Maybe http://www.suggestionbox.com/ is something like that?
I can not believe that people keep feeding the anti-evolution trolls. That's what they are, real life trolls.

Plenty of scientists believe in God, what these people are pushing isn't even good religion. Talk about cherry picking the bible.

But what most upsets me is not the trolls, but the people who feed them. Scientists debating with them. Scientific debate is not the same as "debate". They are in fact exact opposites.

Here's how best to explain it: In debating competitions you can still argue the pro-slavery side and win! That's debate, it is NOT ABOUT TRUTH.

Science, and the unfortunately named "scientific debate" are about making a claim that can be proven wrong. Explaining how to prove your claim wrong, and then sitting back and waiting for your opponents to prove you wrong.

So lets stop feeding the trolls, and lets rename "scientific debate" to gooobladowy or something, just to clear up the confusion.

When science and trolls engage in debate, science ALWAYS loses.

All the trolls need to win is for there to be debate, not even scientific debate, even TV debate is good enough. You can NOT win by arguing with real life trolls. You will NEVER convince them.
Due to the dirtiness of the human mind, I expect most languages have innocent phrases that are one letter apart from suggestive ones. E.g.: "You're such an uninteresting person... At parties, you're always telling dull stories and boning everyone."
The problems of the world are too big for me. I start trying to solve those with the people and communities I am involved in and know something about (i.e. how to solve their problems).

I hope, perhaps naively, the goodwill and network effect propagates and the sum of the whole is greater than that of its parts and certainly that of my initial action.

It’s the best I can do and stay sane.
If you want to get an array of all the table cells in a table, you're probably using the DOM to store data, instead of display data, which is bad IMHO.

I prefer having the data in js, pointing to nodes in the DOM, or containing IDs that may need adjustment, updating.
This is the most entertainment I've gotten from a social network in a long time.
Email problem
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What does the iPod touch need to become a mainstream, wi-fi mobile platform?
I prefer this kind of failure chronicle to the ones usually listed here. It talks about specific, obvious problems encountered and doesn't try to extrapolate any huge overarching themes about startups in general, which are usually somewhat misleading.
cool article, but... gmail has 3-5% of the market or something. Doubt that had anything to do with killing the app.
It is good that "discuss" and "flag" are no longer next to each other.

I "discuss" a lot, and almost accidently clicked "flag" many times.
Suggestionbox looks interesting, will check it out at home when I have more time...

I guess it is not the same as the world tracker, but it has some common elements.
I used the XPS M1530 as a model because it seemed to match more closely. For $200 less the DELL had 100gb more hard drive space but no bundled software.

I also think it's weird that they don't just offer Vista Ultimate, they make you pay extra. Who wants to buy a limited version of the OS? I'm sure the shop interface is so confusing that most people end up with the default option of the Home version just because it's so difficult to read their cramped store (I tried in both Safari and Firefox and it seemed like tiny cramped font and a poor explanation of the differences, maybe it looks better in IE?).

So yeah, you do pay a small premium for macs. It's maybe $200-$300 before tax, which isn't much, but it's real and its there.
And be lucky enough to live at a time when a technological invention (the computer) changes the world.

How many times has that happened in history? Fire, steam, rails, oil, electricity, the telegraph, radio, computers, did I miss any?

I'm hoping biotech is next great world changer.
Tried with 2 different email accounts. No email through
"Am I the only one who is sick and tired of all this "honoring" one of the biggest bandits in history?"

I'm on the outside looking at Gates but here's the thing that troubles me with this line of ad hominem: Had MS not been so aggressive, how many proprietary OSs would there have been through the decades of the 80s and 90s and to today? Same deal with the different Office-type products or enterprise apps.

In forcefully promoting a common framework, MS penetrated PCs broader, deeper, and faster into the world. The reverberations of that reality are unknowable. But without Gates and MS, I don't see a kindler, gentler version of MS. I see lots of competing alternatives (in all their different markets) for many, many more years. Maybe that's good for more businesses and the eventual products, but as a user going through the many transitions it would have been painful.

Take something as simple (and "evil") as pre-loading Internet Explorer onto Windows machines. Sure it killed Netscape, but more importantly it flooded the market with new users. Outlook (and email) is the same deal. With the common framework, there was a Tower of Babel for us to live and work on.

In light of those results, it's very hard for me to argue with the methods. Even now, most of us own one iPod and that product line is just as "evil" as anything MS put out (though much better looking!).
>The problems of the world are too big for me.
I would argue that the problems might be too big but they do have simple solutions. For example take microfinance. The problem this industry is attacking is lack of banking facilities for the poor. The problem is huge but the solution is simple and not too hard to scale. Similarly, don't you think that once we figure out the right model at the fundamental level, it shouldn't be hard to scale up rapidly?

>It’s the best I can do and stay sane.
I don't know how attacking bigger problems prevents you from being sane. In fact, you become saner as you get out of your comfort shell and experience what world has to offer.
If it's like the iphone3g, supporting copy&paste would be a good start.
Seems like a very longwinded attack on a "optimization is evil"-strawman. However, he has one valid point: You should consider performance issues when you design the overall architecture of a system, even though this is prematurely in the sense that it is too early to actually measure where the problems might be.
Quite so.

Its actually quite easy for those of us in technology to make ourselves sound as if we're solving the world's problems, when doing nothing of the sort. For example, my full-time job is working at a company that provides forex for retail investors, yet I can say that (and this language is used in company PR) I am democratizing the forex market and empowering millions of people!

A lot of web 2.0 companies are especially guilty. They've the long-term importance and impact of a fashion house, yet their PR is all about revolutionizing this or that.
Laptop:

10:56 up 83 days, 1:50, 7 users, load averages: 1.05 1.32 1.12

I don't reboot - but I do close the lid to let it sleep. My main reason for not rebooting is I generally have 100 things open at any time and that 'state' is important.
Not my responsibility. I'll just do what makes me content without getting in anyone else's way... Which coincidentally is creating products which benefit the world, for profit.
What's your problem with Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It's totally scientific as far as I am concerned.
Or you're adding rollover events to the table, or styles to the table.

Also, the DOM's not a bad place to store data. Why duplicate it elsewhere if it's already in-place in a table? This allows you to say, gracefully upgrade your simple HTML table to a YUI DataTable if your user has javascript enabled.
>Do you really want a web app suck all the battery of your iPhone, even when it's not necessary?

Do you really want a GUI sucking all the battery out of your iphone even when it's not necessary? Yes.
For their sake, hopefully you (and others) do.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=faceparty.com

It might reverse the trend (pun intended).
That's like using a video cards display ram to do inter process communication, or store other program data.

Sure though, if you want to add things to a table once loaded to be unobtrusive I can see that use. Although then I'd say just give them sane IDs, and have a js array with the IDs you need to update.
I don't think setting up Microfinance is simple at all. I would rather have studied the stuff in depth before I tackle it (economics, that is).

So far, I am not even fully convinced that Microfinance really improves peoples lives. OK, the Nobel price for that one guy might be an indication, but it is not proof. It could still just be a scam.

Then, how do I deal with legal situation on location? There might be civil wars, communism, dictators and what not getting in the way. How do I estimate who is worthy of credit? I don't even speak any weird languages, so I probably couldn't even communicate with the poor..
As Umair in his original article suggests, how about an open source list of world's problems and then a wiki for their solutions so that people may collaborate. Any takers for this idea?

PS: I understand the irony here that Wiki is sort of web2.0 technology. But that's okay!
Depending on how far you want to take it, I think it's very important to study Design before studying Web Design. Learn the principles of good design - the rule of thirds, color theory, negative space, typography, etc. - then apply that to the web. One wouldn't study open-heart surgery without first going to medical school. That analogy may be a little dramatic, but I hope you get my point.
Yes, I used to work for a biotech startup, writing bleeding edge scientific software.

The startup tanked, but I don't regret anything, and I plan to get right back into bioinformatics.
The problem is that even though Java GUIs tend to suck, web app guis suck more. I'm probably going to get a fair bit of hate from this, but seriously, web apps are a pain.

- they have the browser's baggage. Address bar, back/forward buttons, etc
- They don't use native widgets... except for some places (form widgets)
- They're slow
- They can't integrate with other desktop apps (drag and drop, saving to local disk, heck, even loading from local disk sucks)

While web-app style development is going to get better, I somehow hope we could get to the "write your UI in a GUI description language, develop your logic separately, talking to a network server" stage without being stuck with compatibility baggage resulting from needing to be compatible with the browser.

To be clear on what I mean -- Yes, currently developing and deploying desktop apps isn't fun. Who wants to write reams upon reams of code to pack widgets into containers, or whatever layout-method-du-jour your toolkit is using, when you can simply type some XML to describe your UI? Who wants to use a slow installer after a slow download to get an app installed? Web apps win here.

However, web apps -- by design -- are unable to integrate properly into a desktop. They're trapped in a browser, cut off from interaction with the rest of your UI, and if they weren't, it would be an insanely bad design decision.

On the flip side, with things like Glade, designing a desktop GUI is starting to hurt far far less. I think that pushing desktop app development frameworks towards being far more network aware, easily deployable, and faster to develop will lead to far, far better results than trying to make web apps not suck, while dragging the web browser legacy junk onto desktoplike web apps.

[edit - expand on ideas]
books to peruse on amazon:

McFarland: "CSS, Missing Manual"

Crockford "Javascript, the good parts"

"Pro JavaScript Design Patterns" Ross Harmes and Dustin Diaz

"JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" Flanagan
Should UIs be document- or stream- centric?
My life plan has been to succeed in business, then spend my time and money trying to make the word better in innovative ways. Step one is just taking longer than I hoped...
I found the Xbox360 UI to be atrocious, actually. Why does the green X button turn the system on and off? Why are there 6 different versions of the Marketplace, none of them consistent? Why are there ads everywhere?

I enjoy the games themselves but the design seems extremely ad-hoc.
Practice and lookout at designers' portfolios for more insights, inspirations and try thinking and doing what they did by yourself. soon your bag of tricks will be full of nice tricks & skills
Honestly, I don't know about the country you live in. But here in India there are tons of problems needing to be solved. You name a problem - hunger, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, etc. - and India has it. But despite that, it is surprising that many Indian entrepreneurs are focusing on web2.0 me too startups. Perhaps they can better utilize their time by learning things and doing stuff which helps the country and makes money for them.
Voice recognition?
i recommend
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
http://psdtuts.com
http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/alldesigns/
for more inspirations
Hey Bill Gates from twenty years ago, how's it going?

Seriously, though. This is not a bad approach. I don't know anything at all about bioengineering a more plague-resistant wheat crop. I don't know anything at all about how to calm two nations dead-set on the destruction of each other. And I sure don't know ANYTHING at all about how to practically and easily reduce our dependance on greenhouse-gas-producing oil.

That said, if I put my knowledge about how the web works into an application that people use and like and buy, then build up enough capital, I can fund the people who DO know those things, or at least know how to approach learning them. It's not a bad plan.

You're life's not wasted unless you waste it. I hardly consider what I do a waste. It's all building towards a larger goal.
Suit accuses Google of trade secret theft
Same. Happened on my system at work and at home. At home was due to the skype plugin. I fixed the work one by just using their non-javascript client. It would get locked in the loading screen at the start and keep refreshing. Very frustrating.
A company making $100 million a year disintegrated when Google took away their business model.