skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's true, at least partly. I know from personal experience that trying to do too much at once can lead to nothing getting done at all.

Then again, there is evidence that focusing too hard can be just a strong a cause of brain blocks and burnout. Many famous discoveries were created when the discoverer wasn't thinking about the problem at all. (Eg. Elias Howe and the sewing machine)

I think that one needs to find a balance between focus and distraction and between single tasking and multitasking, preferably in favor of focus.
His argument breaks down pretty quickly. It might be fine to get on your neighbor's open wifi network, but as soon as you start sharing his (logically distinct) Internet connection, you're stealing.

It's no different than connecting a hose to someone's public spigot.
Yup, corporate work is not necessarily as evil as it sounds.

Take my situation for example. In theory, my company sells a library that is embedded into set top boxes. It's written in C, as that is the only language available for many platforms in the embedded space.

But in reality, I spend most of my time hacking in Ruby, doing tools. For example, a while back, to stuff up pirates, I transferred the lib to run inside of a virtual machine. I wrote a tool that took a relatively short description of an existing processor, parsed the file, and generated the C code to emulate the processor.

Then, in testing we found that asynchronous cryptography was just too slow in the VM, so we needed to move it back out to native. I then wrote a tool that could examine the two that were compiled (inside the VM, and native), identify the missing functions, and then parse the header files for each lib to automatically generate the code that serialised the parameters crossing the interface of the VM.

Right now I'm working on a tool that is very similar to distcc, to speed up our compile times - when we prepare a delivery of the software, we have to verify that everything compiles correctly without warning on about 30 different platforms, with about 6 different options being available. that makes nearly 200 builds, with each build taking about 10mins. You can get old checking for compile errors, and then correcting them. We're hoping, with the help of a server farm and my tool to get that time down to about 10 mins.

In fact, I can't remember the last time I actually worked on the actual problem domain at my company. I spend most of my life working with binary files, compilers, simple parsers and other pure computer sciencey stuff.

So much for corporate work being boring. That said, I'm working hard on an application for the Mac that I'm hoping to sell, as I'm over having to play politics to convince PHBs that there are improvements that can be made to the product.
Fiberglass won't give you any protection in a crush

Damn, just put the tank of air in front. Any wreck will cause a mighty explosion balancing out the various vectors involved. I haven't done (and couldn't do, really) the math, but this seems perfectly reasonable.
Yahoo execs leaving, reorganization planned
That felt like reading a press release.
The source code and other information about the process-one server is available here: http://www.ejabberd.im/
Game Industry Skill Crisis Its Own Fault
If you made downvotes more scarce, then people would only use them if they absolutely had to. Maybe they would prioritize trolls and noise? Somehow, I think we're not quite that wise.
This is awesome. Well done. Really cool idea.
What To Do If The VC Agrees To Give You Feedback
My Experience Writing a Build System
Working as a programmer.. I love the creative aspect where you build up something from scratch (translate photoshop/powerpoint mockups into code). I like fixing bugs because it appeals to my perfectionist nature - bringing up overall quality - I don't know why some other coders are loathe to fix bugs. It's easier to quantify what you have done, as opposed to my marketing/business friends who have to make a case for what they've accomplished. And you make enough money usually to support a lifestyle outside of coding (travelling, hobbies limited only by your current limitations).
That is certainly not mainline Christian theology. Although it might be the view of many sitting in pews who have not seriously contemplated their faith.

Googling "faith works" will get you far more than you care to know about the topic.
I'm not conflating extrovert and good social skills. I'm saying the bucket of introverts, in aggregate, have spent less time socializing.
Microsoft Doesn’t Want Your App Startup
Agreed, for the most part. Yahoo had the right idea acquiring quality services like del.icio.us, flickr, and upcoming, but clearly lacked any vision as for what to do with them.
My perspective: I've wanted to be a developer since I was like 11, and first started using HyperCard on the Mac. I liked being able to create stuff and share it with people (via AOL shareware libraries, back then :P).

I've been out of school and working for a big company in the InfoServices dept. for 2 years, and it sucks. Great pay, benefits, really boring support work with lots of vendor management and semi-incompetent peers. So tell him not to do that.

But if he likes development, I'd definitely encourage him to be a developer. I'd just strongly encourage him to start writing his own stuff now. Don't get bogged down with the coursework in college, but start a few personal projects and finish them. Sell them if you can, but don't focus on Big Money, just do fun stuff.

And when school's over, at least try doing your own thing before taking a job somewhere. I didn't try; never really thought it was an option, and now I have to do my project on the side. Definitely doable, but when you're young, it's a great chance to give it a try fulltime. I think PG's mentioned this kind of thing in his essays ;).

Uh, I'm rambling, but it boils down to: Encourage him, but let him know that the real fun of software development comes in an environment where you have some control/responsibility, and lets you use some creativity without going through the bureaucracy.

So get good early, do some fun stuff, get a job somewhere cool or start your own thing. Programming is fun, but I wouldn't recommend the big company path.
Or use the compressed air to fill a whole vehicle airbag that triggers on items on a collision path.

This would mean that your safety systems are highly dependent on software and effective sensors, but hey, cheap car.
Just out of curiosity - do you live near a major metro area or get your gigs virtually? I am just about 4 years into an enterprise job and I look around and see the dead eyes of many 18 year on the job coworkers and I shudder - so I'm thinking about taking a job elsewhere just to keep fresh - but the money is so good and the work is so damn easy I worry that I am going to be shooting myself in the foot. The reason I ask the geography question is that there aren't that many companies in the area I live so I am more inclined to keep what I have rather than roll the dice. But the few times I have consulted I've noticed how much sharper I got - because I had to be.
Since my best and most enjoyable programming happens at home during off hours, I wonder about how good the job is. If you happen to work at a company that 'gets it' (let this mean whatever YOU want it to mean, different for everyone), it's probably the best job around for a tech oriented person. However, LOTS of companies don't 'get it', and they make longstanding infrastructure decisions that make our job less fun and productive.
The very last assignment was to use lex and yacc to compile the same language that we had spent the whole quarter writing a compiler and simulator for. The point of the class ("Compiler Design and Implementation") was not to learn the quickest way to write a compiler, but to learn about the common methods used in writing compilers (REs (finite automata) for the lexer, and LL, SLR, and LALR parsers for the compiler). Since this is precisely how lex and yacc work, someone coming out of the class would have the knowledge to port lex and yacc to another language or to perhaps even improve upon it.

As for saying that lex and yacc "implement DSLs", that is a huge simplification of what they do. A large part of the work of lex and yacc is generating the tables and the engine code that are used to translate characters to tokens and token sequences to parser rules. Thanks to the work we did in using this same approach ourselves, it was much easier for me to understand what lex and yacc do and why various design decisions were made.
When people say "multitasking," I think they really mean "heavy context switching." It's important to re-frame the idea because actual multitasking is /extraordinarily/ difficult. It takes years or decades to master multitasking in even one, very specific arena (e.g. playing the drum set, or understanding two conversations simultaneously).

Heavy context switching, on the other had, is more readily doable by human beings, but still highly inefficient. It would be much better if people focused on prioritizing work more effectively, and then proceeded in a serial manner. Of course, prioritizing work is not easy, especially in complex systems, but the time freed up from constant context switching would help.
It's been even better than I thought it'd be. I almost switched out of Computer Science in college because I was fed up with the boring classes, but I'm glad I didn't. Getting paid to program rocks!
From scanning the article, it didn't look like there was much news to it. Everyone knows that there is porn on the Internet and that people use their phones to look at it is not surprising.

If the article mentioned actual business metrics or trends out of which I could make a business, it would be perfectly relevant and I wouldn't have much of an issue. There is a lot of business opportunity surrounding pornography. As it is, it's just a top 10 list of porn sites, Which is one step from being a link site. This makes it off-topic at best and offensive at worst.

Some people want to avoid pornography for 'moral' reasons, others aesthetic, and some are just married. I think that it is in the best interests of HN if we avoid alienating these people.
This article, via HN, sans irony?
I can understand the entrepeneurial angle that makes this interesting to some, but porn aside, it's just as uninteresting (to me) as a lot of the startup-related news that gets posted here. I think there is a sizable wing of HN readers who don't care as much about business and startups as they care about interesting or powerful and novel technological ideas-- and are interested in startups only subordinate to those interests, to the extent that these businesses advance and put into practice new and useful ideas.

That said, the pornography aspect is not inherently wrong in my view. I certainly understand and respect (to varying degrees) the various moralist arguments from different corners of the political spectrum. Interestingly it is divided in at least 4 ways. Libertarian pro-porn, conservative religious anti-porn, liberal feminist (protection of women) anti-porn, and anarchist libertine third-wave feminist pro-porn. While I would morally agree most strongly with the fourth stance that is both pro-woman and sympathetic of (some but certainly not most) porn, inasmuch as it is compatible with the some of the very real concerns of category 3 (to the extent that they are applied legitimately and not as a masked version of category 2), pragmatically I consider pornography, let's say ethical/tasteful artistic or even non-commercial crowd sourced/community-contributed pornography (just for the sake of argument), to be more of a distraction than anything else, despite being morally good.
Yes. I have always lived in a major metro area. 6 of them.

dead eyes of many 18 year on the job coworkers

I can't imagine 18 years in the same job. Sounds like 1 years experience 18 times. No wonder they're eyes are dead.

the money is so good and the work is so damn easy

I know. I haved walked out on many a good gig because I knew it was time. It's never easy to do that.

inclined to keep what I have rather than roll the dice

Why not do both? Find something better, then quit. (You're right to be cautious: I wouldn't want to be out of work with less than 6 months expenses set aside. 2 years would be even better.)
It's interesting because it's unusual... People use Twitter to announce minutia like what movie they're currently watching, not significant scientific discoveries.

Likewise, if a politician used their SNL guest spot to announce their intention to withdraw from the presidential race, you can bet most headlines on the topic would include the words "on SNL".
Finally, somebody speaks logically and with credibility about how little actions have no practical effect on energy use or carbon output. Like he said, if you eat hot-cooked and/or refrigerated food, drive to work, and are socially acceptably clean, then frankly you use a ton of electricity. Disconnecting your phone charger does nothing.

Hopefully the mass media will report on this in the US.

I was surprised to learn that current nuclear technologies don't have the throughput to handle a lot of our energy needs in the long-term. Hopefully the new fission technologies (or even better, fusion!) get developed and put into practice.
I hope this renews interest in cryptography and attack resistance in network applications.
eBay seems to be its own worst enemy at times.

However, their game, their rules.
There aren't nearly as many high profile startups that depend entirely on advertising for revenue as people seem to think.

Many startups that appear to have no revenue model make money in ways that aren't obvious to consumers. How does del.icio.us make money? By selling marketing data compiled from tagged urls. Flickr didn't start with a clear revenue model, but they can pay most of their bills from the ~5% of users who have a paid premium account. Even craigslist, the paragon of free services, makes a significant amount of money by charging for job listings in a few select markets.

Matt makes some excellent points, and I believe him that the future is probably going to be dominated by smaller companies with low profit margins as opposed to venture backed behemoths. But it doesn't change the fact that it's difficult to NOT make money with a "wildly popular" product.

If you have a growing website with hundreds of thousands of happy users, you will find a way to make money. I run a website that is mildly popular on occasion and believe me, we get emails. Every few weeks someone will come to us and suggest ways that we can make more money. The more popular the website, the more opportunities you'll find to make money on it. I don't think that Mint or YouTube will close their doors any time soon. There are just too many ways in which they could build significant revenue. Right now their biggest problem is choosing and implementing the right one.
I used http://jmcpherson.org/editing.html as well as a cheat sheet. There's also http://vim.org/tips/ which seems to come up a lot whenever I'm searching for specific functionality. Other than that, simply immerse yourself in vim and deal with the pain for no more than a week before you'll find that you're already becoming more efficient.

Some less-commonly-used-but-awesome features:

C-X C-F in insert mode: complete file names
C-X C-L in insert mode: complete entire lines of code
C-N, C-P in insert mode: complete word forward, previous
v (V) in edit mode: entire visual mode (visual line)
gq in visual mode: rewrap selection
>> in edit/visual mode: indent current line/selection
gg=G in edit mode: reformat indentation of entire file
@@ in edit mode: repeat last keyboard macro

There's a lot I've left out (obviously), but that's a little teaser. One paradigm I use a lot is when I need to change a variable name... this is very easy. While on the variable itself, press * to search forward for it. Then type cw to erase the word and type in the replacement, followed by ESCAPE (of course). From then on, you can use n to find the next occurrence and then type . to change the name, because . repeats the last command.

Oh, and one last thing. Remap ESCAPE to CAPS LOCK, or get used to using C-[. Both are more convenient than reaching for the top corner; CAPS LOCK is superior in my experience, but it will kill you when you're on a non-mapped system.
By starting a separate corporation, he guards his personal fortune from potential liability payments. He's got billions of dollars, so he wants to avoid losing any of it to greedy lawyers who push people to sue for marginal slights.
Ask HN: What criteria do you use to {up,down}mod submissions?
...e.g. do you upmod a submission if it's personally interesting to you, or do you consider what might be interesting to other people?
Peter Cooper's "Beginning Ruby" ebook for $10 on Apress
The car analogy isn't so great. Bandwidth is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. It's entirely possible to have a profitable website if even 1% of the visitors are paying customers.
The swearing is a bit too much, I agree, but I think his point is that scribd is a completely useless service that can't be improved because its basic premise ("sharing documents on the internet") is wrong.
People getting offended by it. Reality check guys, this the nature of online/television/books/etc entertainment. Know your customers. It's no wonder that almost all of your silly startups will fail.

This brings up the real problem with startup interest sites. Too much focus on BS philosophies by overhyped bloggers and not enough on what is actually working out there.
Reviews on Amazon for the same http://tinyurl.com/5c65xg
I agree - it's overdue for someone numerate to analyze the options. I've downloaded the book and will read it this weekend. It's always astonished me that most mainstream journalists focus on stuff like not leaving your TV on standby, but never suggest turning the heating down a bit (or turning the A/C off for any of you lucky enough to live somewhere warmer than where I live)
It mentions the actual products. Last time I checked, HN is made up of hackers who actually put most of their focus on the product.

If your spouse will give you grief because of a link on HN then you have two problems.
That is pretty much the only thing I can see scribd being useful for, but, as I said elsewhere in this thread, Google's cache is now making those available in HTML as well, so it's not a unique selling point for Scribd.
>Why try to mimic the thing that bookstores are already good at (physical presence, browsing books)?

I think you just answered your own question.
Explained in another comment:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=221787
5 minute shower * (5 gal/min) * (440 BTU [to heat water 85 degrees]/gal ) = 11000 BTU or 3.223kWh or ~16 hours of 200-watt HDTV

1 gallon of gasoline = 115000 BTU or 33.7kWh or 10 5-minute hot showers

Am I willing to take cold showers (not sure..)?
Yes, the device loosened up some dirt whereas all the other loose dirt in the area had already been blown away by wind. Makes sense to me.
'Chinese YouTube' shut down amid censor fears
Startup Business Strategy For The Simple-Minded
Inventions they said would never work
17 Mistakes Start-ups Make
You say marriage sucks, and people assume you're single. You say school sucks, and nobody assumes anything. Hmm.
Lunacy at large
Even if spam never saw a financial return, there would still be spam.

A lot of spam is purchased as a 'marketing service' by fools who _think_ spam works, who make a payment to a third party to spam on their behalf.

As the failure happens after the payment the effectiveness or lack thereof only modifies the decisions of repeat offenders - and even then only those who actually learn from their mistakes.

Of course spam will stop once the world runs out of fools who think they can get rich quick... any day now, really...
Multi-Column Hierarchical mcDropdown jQuery Plugin
New Rails documentation site
How Is the Internet Changing Literary Style?
The other Social Graph
The future of email: From smtp to xmpp
Evolving how we work
I guess one difference is most people pay for water by the gallon, but internet is usually unlimited for a fixed fee.
It is so much better than I ever could have imagined that it would be. It is a daily game of show and tell where we get to show off the cool things we got working. If you had told me 20 years ago how much fun it would have been I simply would not have believed you.

Programming opened the whole world to me and I've written code in Africa, Asia and Europe in addition to the small New England town where I live now. The money is respectable, the hours are flexible and I always have the opportunity to learn something new and try a different approach.

I simply cannot imagine a life where I do not get to run up the stairs to my office and bounce in anticipation as emacs fires up for another day of profound geek joy. I do not ever plan to retire, they are just going to have to pull me kicking and screaming away from the keyboard someday.
The book can be downloaded here: http://www.withouthotair.com/
Something suggests that Yahoo not only lacks vision of what to do about delicious, it lacks vision and style of web services in general. For some reason none of the home-grown Yahoo services (ie not those acquired in recent years) have ever attracted me as a user. For anything Yahoo tried to do, however good-looking, there have always been more decent alternatives out there on the Net (probably Google more often than anything else).
"How does del.icio.us make money? By selling marketing data compiled from tagged urls." Really? Do you have a source for this info? I'm not saying the data isn't valuable, I just can't see where they offer this.
Python: Writing a Compiler and Interpreter in 160 lines of code
Nevertheless, a short summary would be appreciated, as I wasn't planning on becoming a specialist on faith workers. Therefore I don't feel very inclined to invest the research hours - especially as the first Yahoo search results were not very instructive.
Will the iPhone apps store kill the jailbreak market?
Cause you're back with a brand new invention?
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i upmod sparsely. there's only 3 reasons i'll upmod:

1) a new Ask YC/HN type thread that pertains to my interests. i want to see more experienced people respond to it, so i'll upmod it.

2) a thread that has an interesting discussion in which i want to see more responses. i'll upmod it to get more eyes and answers.

3) a submission or discussion i want to save for later reference/use.
This guy sounds pretty good.

I took a physics class like this ("Energy and Society") from Philip Taylor back at Case Western Reserve University ("a tradition of excellence that's even longer than our name"). To sum up the lesson of the class in a sentence: One of the most useful skills of the physicist is the ability and inclination to do simple back-of-the-envelope calculations, and to take the results seriously.
"...and the chances of turning a profit are pretty high."

Really? How big is your team? The general easy-math burn rate number for a software engineer is $200k/yr...

So say you're a startup with 3 founders who'd like to (eventually) get paid market value. How many page views do you need for $300-600k year? Or subscriptions?

Starting a company is getting easier. Turning a profit is still damn hard.
Microsoft comments on OOXML/ODF at Red Hat summit: "ODF has clearly won"
FF3 Downloads Per Country/Per Capita (almost real-time)
While I see the point of such a thing, I don't like the idea of only reading the posts of people sharing my values/ideas. I already have my values/ideas and reading them will reinforce, instead of expand, them.