skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's one of the curious parts about the whole thing. Any mind capable of the brain teasers, or even grasping the rudimentary explanations of cryptography found on the site, is likely to be quite unimpressed by "D-Dog" and "Crypto-Cat".

Half the site says "Nova", the other half "The Electric Company", and its all put on by the NSA? The dissonance hurts my brain. Sigh My tax dollars at work.
Its bad enough that TV commercials brainwash kids.
Ten E-commerce mistakes
Quirky isn't difficult? Doesn't sound like a simple design.
I often think one of the best things people who want to sell things (both in the real world and online and regardless of the product) can do is to sell seriously on ebay for a while. It teaches you many of the principles outlined and so much more e.g. market, marketing, product, focus, trends, analysis, accounting, stock taking, customer handling, psychology, competition etc..

It is especially useful before launching into an ecommerce website offering.
The best in-browser cross-platform 3D solution out there today is, by a long distance, Java.

With something like JOGL or LWJGL, you get hardware accelerated 3D that's supported on Windows, Linux, OS X and Solaris and that will 'just play' in about 95% of surfers out there.

If you want to see what you can do with it, Runescape's new HD client came out recently and it looks beautiful (and runs damned quick).
Ask YC: In exchange for giving up a 5% stake, would you accept $25,000 today or $50,000 6 months from now?
Assume it's just money being offered, no experience, contacts, etc.
Isnt that exactly what Linux could handle?

If the financial incentive is there for sure I think you'd see a supercustomerfriendly linux OS. there already is Ubuntu.

And running ten years without problems is what Ubuntu is for, not windows.
I found this article and some others from the same guy eight or nine years ago. I lost the links and had tried very hard to find them again without any luck. The name got confused with Don van Vliet in my mind. In particular I loved this piece: http://www.multicians.org/andre.html because something very similar happened to me at the time. Thank you very much to prakash for bringing it back to me :-)
Confessions of a Used Programming Language Salesman
PC Emerges As A Primary Source Of Entertainment 
"Some 36% of all entertainment is now consumed via computers that underscores the central role of the PC as a primary access point for entertainment."
"colons: why bother to come up with clear title when you can explain yourself"

From the same author as "How to become extremely successful at writing self-help books"
Pioneer unveils 400GB Blu-ray disc
Opera opens Web Standards Curriculum site.
where would people go instead of Windows?

FireFox.
I'd get a signature on the $50k 6 months from now, take that to the bank, and sell it to them in exchange for $48k today.
10 ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Secrets
Yup, it's the problem space that is hard, not the implementation.

A good way of seeing this is to look at languages that have "solved" concurrency issues, such as Erlang. I mean, sure, you won't have concurrency problems in Erlang, but that comes at the price of only having immutable variables...

I think the problem with concurrency is that certain things that we do in sequential programming are provably impossible to do reliably in concurrent programming. So we end up using traditional languages, such as C/Java/Python, which are very error prone because we can only correctly use a subset of the language features, and it's not clear what the subset is, or we can use a language such as Erlang, which explicitly enforces concurrency-correct code, but then we find programming in such languages very restrictive.

Meh. I'm not enough of a language wonk to figure this one out!
The person that wrote the code did something super hackish and non-sesical which I attribute to the low quality of the language itself.

The language is only half of it, the other half is the culture. If you write Perl that uses an obscure (and perhaps undocumented/unintentional) feature to accomplish some relatively straightforward task, other Perl programmers will worship you as a God. The language and the culture are mutually reinforcing. Ruby is going this way as well.

Python language and culture both place a premium on doing things the simplest and most explicit way you can. Over the long run, the culture makes the biggest difference.
Its from salon though... Gotta be reputable. This is the kind of news that HN has been missing though! We need to be more like reddit and digg!
Lively browser plugin uses DirectX 9.
>> Master! That's the longest "for" loop I have ever seen!

>> printf("Run it all, machine!");
Live Longer: The One Anti-Aging Trick That Works
Okay... on the one hand, I can see how someone could build a successful business around this.

On the other hand, if your business idea doesn't create and capture more value for humanity than this, I'd suggest going back to the drawing board.

Your standards may be too low, aim higher.
Touch Controller for Slider and Buttons
Atmel Corporation announced the AT42QT2160 - a touch controller IC combining touch key and touch slider functions in a single device.
BC212L Datasheet
I made the switch about 6 wks ago due to oncoming CTS. It's tough to do, for sure - I type slower today, no doubt - but my wrists hurt less.

If productivity is your main goal, I just don't think switching would help. Let's say that someone tells you that a Dvorak keyboard can helkp you type 5% faster. Fine - but it will take 4-6 months to get to that point and, during that adjustment period, you will have have been 5% less productive.
Exactly; for me, there are periods where my work is challenging and interesting and I have no desire to code outside the office. Conversely there are lulls where I'm flooded with ideas for personal projects, and suddenly have energy and motivation to work these.

It comes and it goes.
Depends on what my current needs/values are. If I was in the fashion industry and I knew that it was either have a booth at the Big Fashion Expo in September or wait until next September, I would opt for the $25,000 now since I could get started now - the $25000 would be more valuable to me now than $50k would be in January when we don't have any buyers.
Is the OP a troll posting this here? There is no one on earth except TM employees and investors that like TM.
Ummm - hate to contradicate the title here but the 3rd sentence of that article is, "The argument was that the new fees were insufficient, and that tasting would continue to be profitable."
> Due in large part to the encouragement of her so-called friends, 34-year-old Karen Sabin quit her steady job

Friends are the ones who you want to support you, not shoot you down so you're still on the ground with them. If your friends are silent/neutral/negative, hang out with other hackers/entrepreneurs (join/start a group in your locale).
Eye97 – Free Internet Radio Station
Online music station playing non stop hits of the 70's, 80's, 80's, and today
The death of yearbooks
Justice Breyer Is Among Victims in Data Breach Caused by File Sharing
Why is Wireless Service so Expensive?
Had this been a real front page article in New York Times or LA Times, she would have other newspaper and television companies contacting her to feature her story. She would also easily have enough orders to reach $100,000 in the first year. There are a lot of very, very rich people with dogs who would be in the market for this for novelty as well as health reasons.

And since she's making them by hand, she could customize each order with the owner's suggestions about what their dog likes.

For satire, it could be written better, without the "terrible idea" or "ill-conceived" remarks made by the author. There are a lot of stupid, low-volume ideas like this that aren't well-thought through and are just done almost as a hobby, without a business plan or addressing scalability, that can generate full-time income after a big media story about it. Sometimes the novelty of an idea, and reliance on one person, actually gives the person a "moat" and a small niche, both of which make it hard for big established companies to compete, as well as the credibility from having been the first person to get major press coverage about it.

Starting in Montana could also be smart, since it's a mail order business and she can likely get her ingredients much cheaper there, even though most of her big ticket customers would be in big cities across the US.

If this somehow didn't generate enough sales, she could use her new-found expertise as a "nationally-known dog chef" and work for somebody rich like Donald Trump, or even release products under the Donald Trump name.

The reason she would be an expert, by the way, is because by working on something full-time, even if she ends up making less money than expected, she would have become skilled and recognized as an expert, rather than a 2nd shift clerk at a store, or any other job you she have held before.
World's happiest places
Secure Design Using a Microcontroller (II)
Smart Lighting
From remote control to smart lighting that helps you save electricity — Control4 solutions offer endless possibilities.
Now if she offered Gerber 2% of her equity to build a platform for her business...
That journalist is an arrogant and ignorant asshole, he reaches conclusions - that he then states as if they were fact - about Reiser's personality as if he were a trained psychologist/psychiatrist, and as if he has studied and analyzed the subject.

Every bone in my body wants to projectile vomit upon reading that crud.

I find it to be just another case of math envy, the imbecile KNOWS that he could never in a million years achieve 1% of what Reiser has achieved, however Reiser is now a convicted murderer, thus the idiot can now feel better about himself, and hurl contempt and scorn on Reiser.

I also find the general tone of the article to be awful insidious.
It's not the idea per se thats bad. There are a number of stories on YC which point to this problem: Most ideas are nothing without execution. (most recent: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=237096 )
The article dates back to Oct 2003. The outcome of the venture should already be known.
"Tech Dating" In London
yes. I will tell you, because my existing response is not yet enough of a threadjack.
Symbol table manipulation, source filters, run-time method generation via AUTOLOAD, proper closures, taint checking, lexical pragmas...

I think you'd be hard pressed to implement something like Perl's Moose in Python. I'm not completely sure it's possible.

There's a lot of tricky stuff that's easy in Perl but requires tons of hoop jumping in Python.

Don't underestimate the utility of perl one-liners. You can't do them in Python, both because of the whitespace and because in practice Python is too verbose.
Reverse autocomplete: a small tweak on the familiar feature
I told him that if he wants to love what he does, he should do what he loves. And you call that utter insanity.
5 Resources for getting up to speed on Rails 2.1
Adding value from the Board
Anyone who really understands the game can tell it's fluff as soon as they realize that the real greatest basketball player that ever lived is the other MJ in that picture.
6 months from now. Looking at it from a purely economic standpoint, a depreciation of anything from 1.4% to 6% a year is expected, depending on who you ask. The higher the figure, the less future money is worth.

But even at the top end, 6%, that 50,000 in 6 months is worth $48,500 today, so yes, i'd take it!
Computers May Soon Read Your Mind...by Looking at Your Face
Forcing someone to do a job he hates is no-one's birthright either. We see "quit" everywhere we look because too many people are afraid to rock the boat, but wish they had the courage to do so.

Quitting means nothing in itself.

It is a vice when you back out of reaching good things because you lack the courage to do what is necessary.

It is a virtue when used to eject soul-destroying things from your life.

There is no virtue in voluntary suffering. There is no virtue in staying in a horrible job (I'm ignoring the complexities of having dependents).
Top Ten Worst Uses for Windows
Is anyone here using ASP.NET?

Not trying to start a religious war, just wondering.
Can you give a concrete example of something useful that's hard to do in Python but would be so much easier in Lisp?

Languages give you a certain amount of expressive power. By stretching the language, you can always reach a bit higher. Python can reach Lisp. It's just damn ugly. Worse Is Better ugly.

Right now, everything that I complained about in the top post, I "fixed". But it's damn ugly. So I don't build anything on top of it. I just use it. If these features were done the Right Way, I'm sure the next abstraction level would be obivious. That's how it always goes.
Yes. Because it's about which town is number one. It's not about the fact that any town can produce great tech today, with or without startups.

Nor is it about the fact that today's abundance of great free tech enables many towns to simultaneously produce work of top quality, making the whole concept of "number one" meaningless.

Nor is it about the fact that so many towns and non-towns can produce great tech that towns become irrelevant too.

Actually, by yes, I mean no.

I think I've read nearly everything you've published. I was aware of the quote when I wrote the criticism, and I think the quote fails to address any substantive part of it. I think if you want to address any criticism I make, you'll need to write something new, or dig up something obscure which I haven't read.
Make something dogs want.
ohh and I forgot about this http://goessner.net/articles/jsont/
it's depressing that the onion correlates with reality to a higher degree than mainstream media.

That's the whole point. If the mainstream media did its job, there would be no onion.

(Just like if the corporate world made any sense, there would be no Dilbert.)
Eat less? You don't live longer; it just seems longer.
I am trying several languages and frameworks to increase my understanding and learning, (C#/)ASP.NET included.

Understanding and insight through experience ...best way to learn?
Ouch! I didn't notice that the article dates back to October 29th, 2003.

@ordinaryman: thanks for pointing that out. I liked the story so much that I had just made up my mind to make an online store for her for free once my exams are over(I was searching the contact details of her business).

Anyways, I did some googling only to see onion and entrepreneurs.com pages talking about her. Nothing much.

But I pray she's doing good in business. I hate to see enthusiastic people, so passionate about their dreams, giving it up. If she's still in business I would like to see her in the headlines soon.
* Selling the Wheel
* Growing a business
(need_money==now) ? "Yes" : "No";
Honey? Does this format make my data look fat?
Performance Testing Web 2.0: Don't Forget the APIs
Yep. I really like some parts of it (the request pipeline), and hate others (Web Forms).
America Losing the New Space Race
I meant complex memory, not simply pathing repetition that can be replicated with an EEPROM and a few lines of code.

And by that, I mean, how people are using activity in areas of the brain to say that a person is 'x' or what thinking about 'y'. It's phrenology for a new age.
It's not how long you live that matters, it's whether you enjoy life.

I'd rather live to 50 and have a wonderful life, than life to 100 and be less happy.
Rogue ported to Common Lisp
It's the Onion.
Yes but, say you've got a longish chunk of code with several error conditions; you come across an 'else' after a lot of closing braces. What the heck does it match with? What other error conditions need handling and got forgotten in the forward rush of common cases? Error handling is easy to forget; the common case remembers /itself/ you might say, and can be put off for a moment while you get the clutter out of the way. My MO, anyway.
Can mydeco Democratize Design?
Live a happy life till 50 Or live a happy life till 100? Which one would you prefer now?
AFAICT procmail only gets invoked when you have a valid recipient. How do I make addresses that match a regular expression be valid from the MTA's point of view? The script (procmail or not) would decide which ones to bounce.
How well are you sleeping?

In my experience, when I get sleep-deprived, one of the first things I lose is insight; if I'm not repeating procedures I've pretty much learned by rote, I'm staring at the screen going "uuuuhhhh..."
Gosh, How Many Diggs Does It Take To Get To The Home Page, Anyway?
I notice that while they "criticize Apple ads," they don't actually, you know, dispute the content of those Apple ads.
I concur. The road along which all Apple developers travel is littered with the corpses of great programs with bad interface design. This is due to a windows or pc mentality of "if it's just functional enough people won't care what it looks like." There's nothing wrong with this mentality, in and of itself. However most Apple users, by definition, have already discounted that this statement could apply to them by choosing Apple as their preferred method of computing.
We don't know what your issue is, so we can't give you useful advice that applies to your situation. For me, I'm finding that I don't want to work 100% anymore, and I won't work overtime anymore, and I don't want to live in a city anymore. I can afford to stop doing all of these things, so I will, and I'll do it before I burn out.

I've worked years for other people, and in those years, I have created nearly nothing that I own. Like you, I've had ideas, and technically I would even have had some time to work on them, but after a day of sitting in front of a PC, more sitting in front of a PC at home just didn't seem very pleasant.

I want to have more time and energy to work on stuff I actually own. And that's what I'll do.

But perhaps that's not what you want. We don't know what you want and why what you're currently doing isn't working for you. I guess the first step should be for you to find out what you actually want.
I think exercise has also been shown to work.
http://www.google.com/search?q=gourmet+dog+biscuits

About 350,000 results!

Not all ideas are bad, just because they didn't follow an MBA's market research. The guy that invented the super soaker came up with the idea while doing some plumbing in his bathroom. It took him years of determination to see it to success -- it's those years of determination that make the difference.
Ah, the fresh smell of a new launch
My buddy Reid and I have launched our 100% from scratch forum! ( http://forum.starmen.net/forum ) Admittedly, it sounds like a silly idea since we basically reinvented the wheel, but we had a unique problem space involving tons of custom code. Things I learned over the course of this:

* Testing is awesome. I didn't understand the reason to test what I just programmed to work. When it got to the point that 50% of my bugs were regressions I buckled up and started test casing everything.

* Since our forum uses Textile, users can implement their own CSS. Originally I threw in RedCloth and called it a day. My white hat friend originally had a problem since it didn't even check for quotation marks escaping. Then all sorts of (mostly IE6) XSS attacks using weird CSS. My favorite was an attack through color:. (CSS is now strictly parsed.)

* Converting old data is a real pain, but there's all kinds of rewards to see old messages from 2003 along with newer ones. However, the day-long downtime could've been prevented. ("ROFISH's Epic Nap" has already found it's way into the site lore :/)

* Reid wanted to escape the bounds of traditional table based layouts. Our design has been met with 'meh okay' at best, but hostility as it's worst. One should always give people what they expect.

Next week is a much earned vacation! Then it's time to work on the main site. (If you're interested in more, check out our woefully under updated blog: http://fangamer.com/blog/about/ )
For iPhone, the ‘New’ Is Relative
I'm not sure whether saving money for a startup is a good idea. It might just be a copout, a reason why you can't yet start your own company. But you can. You don't need that much money to incorporate, and you don't need to quit your day job - you may be able to move to a cheaper flat, keep working something like 50% at your day job, and spend the rest of your time on your startup while still making enough money for a reasonably decent living.
its not illegal in many countries, though you may have to pay initial license fee - also you need to have a lawyer who has knowledge of international internet gambling law ...

so you need a VC who can pay your license bill and a lawyer who can find you the legal way of doing this.

i have this old news piece that might help ...

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/congress-to-take-te...
Controlled experiment in futures markets: onions
DNA Study Traces Migration History of Humans
Sounding black hurts your income; so does sounding southern
Samsung ships low-cost 128GB SSDs
Anyone else getting Mercury Rising flashbacks?
Developer Guide - Protocol Buffers
I misparsed the headline to say that the way to avoid looking older is just to live longer, to have a slower metabolism.
Would be even better if it was more fuzzy.
Computer simulations support Mars asteroid-impact theory
Is being crazy a crime?
After browsing the paper... it seems his sample was 300 random kids 19-25 average age 22, the avg income in the study was 11$ an hour...and the difference in wage from sounding black to not sounding black was 8%... unless I am missing something this study sounds very meaningless due to the small sample size of the subgroups of the sample, and the pointlessness of comparing 22 year old wages.
Now if there was only a pill that took hunger away, so that you could eat the allotted amount and no more...
I agree, but I wanted to try out just one idea, it can still be combined with all the existing stuff.
Interesting. I was under the impression the "5 Whys" were a convention created by the Six Sigma process... Instead they merely adopted it.
It's a nice distinction, but perhaps exercise only prevents diseases which kill you 'prematurely':

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080514064921.ht...:

'...these findings indicate that exercise can prevent an early death from disease in some rats, but does not extend the maximal lifespan of any of the rats.'
If it took them a year to admit it, how long will it take to fix it? Rather than a marketing push, how about an engineering push?
First Look: OpenMoko's Linux-based open smartphone platform
Oh god, I already trust Microsoft to slow down everything I do at home, but if my breathing apparatus in my hospital responsible for saving my life hits the BSOD, I am going to rise from the dead and eat some MS brains.
From what I've heard, the amount of exercise needed to increase lifespan is so little that you're almost certainly already doing it. If you walk a few blocks once in a while then you're basically set. Vigorous workouts dramatically increase the quality of life in old age, but the actual life expectancy peaks out really fast.
Not one of those has more than a couple mathematical operators per line. Very misleading examples. Try again.
You write with big gaps like that? No you don't...
Because dogs can buy things.
Why do you waste time with doubling the number of characters you have to type at the interactive shell?
I'm a seed-stage investor in the company. You think pets.com was big? You just wait.
This has a lot of quirky personal preferences, you just don't see them because they match yours:)
Sure - dog food is not an area I ever felt much like getting involved with. But for some aspiring mom in the suburbs it might be just the thing. A lot of people love their animals more than their fellow humans, so the money would definitely be there.

In fact TV advertisement for dog food is already going the gourmet route, which is disgusting. I remember an ad where the icky meat heap was decorated with a thyme leaf.