skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because not everyone can get FiOS or any reasonable alternative.

I'm pretty much stuck with time warner (offering 10+mbps downloads) or sbc (best is 3mbps for me and I don't even get those speeds) both for around $40 and I live in Los Angeles. There's a few other options, but not many that are uncapped (or have a more reasonable cap like Comcast's) or are reasonably priced.

If Time Warner ever decides to expand this program I'll definitely be one switching away even if it's something slower. On second thought, the more expensive offerings might be worth it compared to what I use every month and I'm not even counting the BitTorrent (legit or not) traffic, sigh.
This is happening at a time when 100Gbps is becoming standard in Swedish homes.
I guess it's because I'm still working that I feel that there's no time for that. Maybe when I free myself up completely I'll be able to sacrifice a bit of time towards learning rails.

Thanks for the advice.
Part of our service is our search engine (a web app), but we also develop desktop-integrated tools, command-line utilities, and language libraries to help capture and share error message workarounds.
Well, being 22 I must say that a few of these I had realized a long time ago. The theme of this post seems to be that living somewhat of a nomadic lifestyle and traveling is what we should all be doing. Similar to how drug users and people who don't have 100% faith in what they are doing attempt to bring people in with them, this author is trying to convince us all to be free wielding travelers in a time when we have no commitments. Sort of a validation by mass usage. Not all of us have an extra $1000 lying around to just leave everything on a whim (and some simply do not want to). While I would like to travel someday, it is simply not in the cards now.

One most important things that I have taken notice to in the past few years or so is that your life path is exactly what you want to make it. Early on in the school systems we are led to believe that your life will go as follows: School => Find High Salary Job => Retirement => Death. They train you to become reliant on the system and think that your goal should be to exit schooling with a high paying salary and if you don't you are screwed. You will be miserable and lonely forever. They never suggest once that you can stray off that path and most never question it.

Another realization that I have come across lately is that it is easy to become caught up in idealism. It's nice to dream up what you see for your future and forget where you are now. Steve Jobs spoke in his 05 Stanford commencement speech of connecting the dot's in hindsight and not realizing the impact that some previous events had at the time. The important thing to realize is not that we should look back in hindsight and connect the dots rather, focus on the creation of the dots themselves. You are in control and your future is not some mystical set-in-stone experience that you will have a great epiphany over sometime in the future while reflecting. So rather than hope that everything will work itself out, find out what you want and be the one to create the dots, not connect them. I could go on more but it's time I go create my reality rather than ramble about potentials.
Mod_python seems to be very promising and robust from the first sight. I've tried mod_python and it left me delighted for several reasons; some of them:

1. You can get total control over the request.

2. Mod_python provides a set of wrappers to mimic standart python CGI objects what greatly simplifies your life

3. Basic load tests say that mod_python is robust and fast

4. Installation is easy

The only thing that I've found confusing is unicode support (take a look at http://www.modpython.org/pipermail/mod_python/2004-June/0158...)

The only thing that I need to know about mod_python - is the list of successful commercial deployments.

What about the cons, I would also like to know who are these guys from this PoundPythonWeb, they look like someone official,
but I'm always feel suspicious when someone says: "Don't use this" (except the case when the person is the author :))
Oh, I had assumed that was an electron micrograph. But you're right, now I come to read the article again it only works over a narrow frequency range.
It's important to be unreasonable: Vivek Paul
thanks for the options
its unavoidable. if you offer a good service, spammers will try and find a way to exploit it.

the best thing, imo, you can do is have a vocal, clear anti-spam policy. make it up-front so that people know you're on the watch. let them know you're working on things to stop spammers.

the second best thing is to actually try to be on the watch and to be developing checks and balances that make using it for spam harder to do.

getting the information and intent out there will do more for you than developing silently or quickly banning spammers. be clear and visible about an anti-spam policy so that good users will appreciate it and spammers will be wary.
If people follow you through friendfeed, you can switch around among photo-sharing sites all you want.
I live on Cape Cod, not exactly the boonies, less than 2 hours from Boston and have ONE choice for broadband. No FIOS, no DSL, just Comcrap cable (with rising rates every year). They have me by the balls and if they capped my Internet there's nothing I could do.
Damn it, now I really want to eat Turkish delight. Haven't had those things in years (for reasons I shall rediscover after the first one).

Luckily I am living in the ethnic enclave of Copenhagen.
http://www.plum.com
AWS: The Emerging Cloud Service Architecture
Clients suck, film at 11.

They code HTML by hand because it's part of creating a domain language for the application - the interface drives the data model.
I see! Sorry. I totally forgot about that.
Ask HN: How do I beat the solo development blues?
I'm currently working solo doing client work in my own company, which I set up after my computer engineering degree. It's great experience and I've learned ALOT about business and development, but I feel there's a big gap in my knowledge as far as working in a large dev team is concerned.

I figure I have 2 options:

1) Join a big company on a large project.

2) Develop in the open source community.

Option 1 would go against my entrepreneurial/hacker spirit.

Option 2 would be nice, but I code in cakePHP and there's no interesting or active cakePHP open source projects to contribute to (Except maybe the core code.. which is a little out of context for me).

What is one to do?

My idea was to wrangle up some cakePHP developpers and start building a library of plugins and components for common things that I've coded (multiple file uploads, authentication, user management, site news, photo album, forum, etc..). I figure I'd share my code with people and we'd collaboratively work towards the best solutions towards all these problems. Kind of like a cpan for cakephp.

Is this a good idea? Does anybody want to join me? Does anybody have any other ideas?
Ask HN: Good Web UI Designers
Anyone recommend searching on odesk or elance for a good Web 2.0 UI designer? Any particular companies I should consider? What are some good attributes I should look for?
Thanks!
Nick Leung
I's happening. I'm not so old, I'd say maybe 10 years of programming, and in this time things changed a lot. Maybe I just progressed from making my own buttons in pascal to using libraries, but now I look at what a beginner programmer can do with the right tools and it's way beyond what I could. Part of it is the internet. I'm sure there was always a barcode library around, but now it's only a matter of googling "barcode library". Also widespread garbage collection, web interfaces, open source... The craft of programming is getting better by the year.
Oil Prices: The chief culprit is the Federal Reserve !
Amusing and lacking detailed examples, but there's an underlying idea in there that gave me pause.
Then again, no. It's not noscript.
This JavaScript console w/ autocompletion, etc: http://tlrobinson.net/misc/console_bookmarklet.html
I think that there is a big difference between designing a web site for an eventual user (37signals or startups) and designing a users web site (average web consulting). 37signals isn't so constrained by what end users want, and their end users generally have a better feel for how the technology actually works. The Photoshop or Fireworks step of the process is definitely important when dealing with users who are picky about looks and will make you redesign the HTML/CSS/JS over very minute details.
I'd recommend a listing on the 37signals Job Board (http://jobs.37signals.com/). It costs $300 for a 30-day job listing or $100 for a gig listing, but it'll get you by far the highest quality crop of applicants.
If they are not offshore I assure you that it is only because they can get away with even less taxes by having a registered charity as a holding company for their assets, or whatever other shell game company structure is more profitable these days.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14675
There was a recent post on HN about Apple requiring designers to do pixel-perfect mockups before they got approval to move forward.

I am guessing the right solution is somewhere in the middle.
sorry bub. if a woman likes you she will sleep with you within a couple weeks of meeting you. If she doesn't she either doesn't like you or has emotional problems.
One of my favorite proverbs, although I've always prefered the phrasing "lose your first 50 games as fast as possible." That, and "win all four corners and the game is lost."
I tip sites I like with this: http://tipjoy.com/bookmarklet

We're going to expand on the functionality soon.
We've held them off until now, but agreed a good t&c goes a long way.

The issue is I would love to push it more, as I know a lot of people who use more than one service. I for one use my own service (grin) and magnolia.
Captain Cyborg: Turing Test might be passed this year, at Reading U
I'm not sure what lessons are to be learned here -- "be transparent"?

The author mostly complains that they are still taking new customers during downtime -- which is probably not good, I agree, but seems like nitpicking.
Yup. mod_wsgi is written by one of the core mod_python maintainers and is essentially a much more modern take on the whole problem of running Python code within Apache. It's powerful, flexible, easy to configure and it even works well with shared hosting (you can give each user their own process group which restarts when they "touch" a file in their home directory). I'm a total convert.
I think a good metric of a successful business is earnings/employee. It shows how well you can leverage your infrastructure, and how well you can replicate existing success.

Examples: GOOG, Berkshire Hathaway
i think you're neglecting the fact that School => high salary job => early retirement with no obligations => happiness

this is a startup site, aren't we all trying to get rich so we can work on what we really care about without interference? that's what money buys.
Funny, and there I was thinking most people were trying to figure out ways to convert (waste) heat into something useful.

Heat's not that incredibly useful. Particularly when you consider that, according to black body radiation laws, a body will emit exactly as much as it absorbs.

So, this might be useful to get an object to reach room temperature really quickly.
yeah, i can empathize with that stance from an engineering perspective. but to me calculus feels like looking under the hood of the universe though. algebra is static, calculus is dynamic.
Market Share Q4 2007:

Windows Mobile: 12%
iPhone OS: 7%

With years of past sales of Windows Mobile the overall market share gap between MS and Apple must be huge.
Las Vegas Nevada is also another consideration. Get yourself a bank account, 'office space' and it's a done deal.
[ask] have you used Heroku?
We are thinking about using http://heroku.com/. Anybody has any experience with them ?
I don't see anything on the list about winning the TechCrunch 40. That's a good step to add.
I'm new to NYC -- any meetups in particular that you'd recommend?
Thanks for using my code, Google
I agree. Maybe I neglected to put the emphasis on the point I was trying to make which is that they attempt to scare you into believing if you stray off the beaten path you will be screwed.
Not exactly pennies, unless you make less than $1 per year.
Exactly, see IKEA
Study to measure 'how much information?' is in the world
The Neb, a hypothetical secure dongle for unphishable ecommerce
To be fair, Noah left Mint around that time period. He did great work at getting Mint noticed before all that.
Even if the IRS comes after your business, you can typically pay them off. Typically IRS agents deal on a very personal level, and the IRS is simply another business (masquerading as a government agency). They'll take money to settle and move on to the next target.
On the topic of paying taxes (or not): http://www.amazon.com/America-Freedom-to-Fascism/dp/B000JVSU...
Don't think he's paying for top tier if he's searching around oDesk and eLance.
Tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/
YouTube’s Head of Monetization Quits, Joins Cooliris
What's a GAD?

I can't figure it out from the web site.
I've done some posting on elance before and I will suggest to start with the smallest job (i.e. cheapest) first to get used to working with bids and vendors. Start with a logo + business identity for $300-$500, go with only 5-star people with 6+ months of feedback. Once you have that, do a 3-5 page website for $300-$500. By now you should have a good feel for (1) the process, and (2) the people so now's the time to bump it up to a $1000 or $2000 project.

Those places really aren't the place for $2000+ projects IMO.
option 3) build and grow your own business, if there are enough opportunities and the money is good.

i know that i'd be willing to jump into something like this if the pay was good, with a small group of consultants.

and i wouldn't mind joining, either, though i use codeigniter. ;) would have to learn cake. also, have the experience in large corporate development.
Auctions on eBay: A Dying Breed
Yeah, I'm being cheeky. ;-)
There are some (not many) UI designers on HN, like me for example.

/shameless plug

I would stay away from Elance type sites unless cost is your only factor. 37signals job board will attract the exact opposite candidates as Elance (read: expensive/overpaid)

Ever think of hiring local?

Attributes to look for would be experience not only in creating the 'web 2.0 look' but also solid experience in eccomerce and application development. Too many designers only know how to make something look good, and fail to consider that you're doing business on the web. Avoid designers who rely on wiz-bang features, even a boring business like portfolio is better than one filled with tons of Flash and AJAX.
I have lived this lifestyle, it is ok, with some caveats.

If you do extended travel, learn how to be outgoing. My first long trip was to Japan. Being shy and quiet made the first 3 months a nightmare. Luckily, at the time I was young and still reasonably good looking so women would ask me out. But it would have been more fun and easier if I hadn't had such social anxiety. I did some extreme personality modification afterwards and when I went other places I had a much better time.

It is very important to nail #1, figure out a career that you love, or at least LIKE. It isn't as though you come back, return to work, and your work anxiety is alleviated by your fond travel memories. In fact, your travel experience makes it much worse because you are just thinking "fuck I could be on the beach in Thailand right now instead of rebooting these servers at 4 in the morning."

Safety net is sort of important. You don't want to return and then be stuck taking the first job that comes along. Note that safety net doesn't necessarily mean having a bunch of cash. It could mean having a friend or family with an extra room where you can stay in the area where you want to work. In my case it sucked, because most of my friends were bums like me who live in studio apartments, and most of my family lives in the extreme middle of nowhere. Trying to find a job in Palo Alto while you are in the Yukon is not easy or fun.

Also, figure out what you really want. Travel is easy. You just need money for a plane ticket. You can go almost anytime. I didn't realize until after I traveled that what I really wanted was financial and career independence. I probably missed out on 5 prime career building years by bumming around doing the travel/slacker thing. Now I have to compete with Google Ycombinator braniacs. Back in the day, I only would have had to be as smart as the guys who made BlueMountain.com or geocities...
What Yahoo doesn’t want you to know about the Microsoft deal
Wrapping your mind around OO (simple or bad or good or perfect as it might be) may be much harder than create some home-grown, intuitive dynamic dispatching solution.

The only difficulty with the above approach is team working. In a team, you have to find common grounds to base your thinking on.

So, I never ever use OO, but maybe the only real reason is: I don't need to work in a team...
I fear that it's happening, because of our weak education system and the decreasing cultural appreciation for intellectualism in American culture.

Our education system and our culture also discourage imagination and curiosity, both of which are necessary for innovation as well as for R&D.

If you disagree, spend some time watching the Simpsons and see how they present the intellectuals (e.g. Lisa Simpson, Professor Frink, Martin), and look at how close to reality that is. (Satire doesn't work without a kernel of truth.)
Oh, oh, I know this one! I learned this as a kid with a magnifying glass. "Ants"
I do believe that this is a move in the right direction but, why require registration at all?
That attitude would guarantees that you'll never pick up new skills, or stretch yourself enough to discover what you're really capable of.

Learning new programming languages and frameworks is incredibly important, if your goal is actually to be a well-rounded developer.
4) learn a framework other than CakePHP.
It seems like your saying it takes you longer to do it in HTML/CSS than in Fireworks. They're saying that for them, like myself, that's not the case and thus you should skip the extra step or learn to do mockup html/css faster that you can justify skipping PS.
I have limited experience with Heroku, tested the beta for a bit. For small/development apps I say you can't go wrong. I don't know anybody running production apps on Heroku yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if they are.

The Heroku guys are friendly and competent. If you don't have a dev environment, they provide one for you. If you have your own, their gem makes it cake to sync your changes to their servers.

My only beef would be that they have a custom Rails install that you're forced to use, so you lose a little flexibility, but all in all that's not a major hold-up.
> I did some extreme personality modification afterwards and when I went other places I had a much better time.

I'd love to hear more about this. Usually when I go to a party I talk to a few people and have an OK time. However, the few times I've talked to everyone at a party, I've had a memorable blast. It's definitely not natural and I feel I have to be warmed up socially.
Amen. I haven't logged into ebay except to sell things without an ASIN in years.
Ruby, as a language, is reasonably compact, and certainly not a big jump for someone with any amount of Perl and OO experience. Rails, on the other hand, is a big framework. You can learn the basics in a few days, but much like PHP, you really can't master the ins-and-outs of the full stack without (at least) several months of regular use.

It's also a moving target: new APIs fade in and out of existence with pretty much every release, and many "best practices" (early RESTful routing, anyone?) are picked up and dropped pretty much according to the whims of DHH and the other core committers.

That's not to say that it isn't worth learning, of course; if you're willing to commit to using Rails pretty much full-time (and work within its limitations) for the bulk of your projects, it offers a lot of great infrastructure to build on. Since it sounds like you want to focus on solo development of web applications, Rails may be just about perfect for your needs.
You could try expanding your current company with additional developers and tackling more complex client work. If you add on cakePHP developers, perhaps a more collaborative environment will spawn a unique idea to develop into a web application.
I'd seriously consider buying a house/condo if I had the money (though not in the Bay Area). Livable inner city neighborhoods are only going to get more expensive relative to the rest of the market as time goes on because people are realizing that living in the suburbs is kind of lame. If gas prices continue to go up and stay up, rents in such areas will shoot up as well.

The environment you live in is a huge part of your life, and if you don't own your home, you're unlikely to be able to stay in an environment you enjoy. Aristocratization[1] isn't that far fetched.

[1] http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_nations_gentrifi...
Pick One, Just One Web Analytics Report, Go!
> I think some math needs to be done on what the optimal auction structure is given participants arrive and leave at random times.

EBay implements a second place auction which works well given that all participants may not be present at the same time. It counter-intuitive but it has been shown that a second place auction generates the same revenue as a first place auction, partly because participants compensate for only paying the second highest bid. Indeed, the second place auction system can sometimes cause a bidding fenzy, which leads to auction addiction.

However, a simple application of game theory is to minimise information the is revealed unnecessarily. Therefore, if you treat the auction as a sealed bid auction and snipe in the last minute then you save money.

However, the main problem with EBay is the glut of uncontested auctions. I ran a survey on auctions using a script and I found that less than 1/3 of auctions received any bids at all. Much fewer received two or more bids.
...if, of course, you're still alive then. (At least for the mountain bike stunts...)
I find Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech to be a very good real life advice. If you are graduating this year, please watch it and learn from his experience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA
The PHP Benchmark
cool i signed up how do i get the material, emailed to me?
I actually disagree with this. I typically use Illustrator to mock things up before going into CSS /HTML.

The reason I do this is that when I’m in CSS /HTML mode, I feel like I’m more limited in what I can actually design. When I’m in Illustrator, I have the freedom to explore different design elements that I might have overlooked in CSS . I’ve solved many hard design issues in Illustrator that would have taken me many back and forth tweaks in HTML and CSS .

The one thing I agree on is that Photoshop is a bit awkward for mockups. I only go into Photoshop before rendering design elements into pixels.
Well, I am crazy. Around my friends I am outrageous and will say anything for a laugh. Around people I don't know I clam up and hide in the corner. I just decided to act the same way around strangers as I do around close friends.
Yes, but the point is that if you're a startup, say, Microsoft, Google, Reddit, eBay, Paypal, Redhat, or whatever (all incorporated in the US), it makes more sense to focus on growing the business, rather than trying to focus on what is relatively pennies compared to growing the size of the pie.