skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
...replying to mail isn't practicing your typing. You have to set aside some time once in a while and do focused practice in order to get better at something.

An odd example, since I'm pretty sure we've all got a lot better at typing without really trying.

I just did a test to find out, and it turns out that in the last fifteen years that I've spent not learning to type, I've gone from about 35 wpm to 81. Fifteen years ago, 81 wpm would have been a pretty impressive typing speed, but nowadays I guess it's pretty normal, since the whole world has got better at typing. It doesn't seem so long ago that people were still putting their typing speed on their resumes, but nowadays high-speed typing is taken for granted -- it's gone from being a skill to being a reflex, for most people.

I'm not sure about programming, though. I'm sure it's possible to get better without really trying, but really trying will get you there faster. I guess the real difference is that typing is an "easy" skill where you can reach the maximum reasonable level of competence quite easily (who really needs more than 60 wpm?), whereas programming is a "hard" skill where there's far more to learn than you can possibly fit into one lifetime.
The actual release page from the developers is at:

[http://www.givainc.com/labs/mcdropdown_jquery_plugin.htm]

It looks like a very slick jQuery plugin.
There are three separate conveyor systems-- one for smalls (envelopes), one for parcels (boxes), and one for irregulars. Factor in the complexities with the physical layout (branching), any data cleaning that has to take place (mislabels, etc), the need for queuing/caching when planes are delayed, etc, differing priorities for sorting/routing, and it starts to look like a pretty complex system.
Where is your startup located?
Startup Warrior visualizes startup hubs around the globe. Are you in a large hub like NYC, Boston, or San Francisco, or in one of the many new and growing hubs? Does this map match your expectations of where companies are?
Startup Warrior visualizes startup hubs around the globe. Are you in a large hub like NYC, Boston, or San Francisco, or in one of the many new and growing hubs? Does this map match your expectations of where companies are?
Perhaps it works like a switch - and one (basically) linear system like a single large oval would be overwhelmed.
I think new coke had more to do with switching to corn syrup than anything else. Corn syrup tastes worse so you can't do a strait up switch but by introduce new Coke and then bring back the old taste with a minor change and people don't notice.
I guess your explanation is better informed than mine.
Spot-on.

I used to date a girl who went to Brandeis, which aspires to the Ivy League at every opportunity. In fact, by her admission it was the safety school of many who applied to Ivy League schools but were denied entry in the end. The students essentially had all the (sometimes subconscious) elitism of the Ivy Leaguers, combined with a massive chip on their shoulders due to their supposition that they were Ivy League material that mistakenly ended up at Brandeis. It was fascinating to read this article since she (and many of her colleagues) have many of the exact traits he describes, especially that "I have arrived" mentality.

Great submission!
Diary of a Failed Startup
A pool of people who have a demonstrated willingness to spend money online is unattractive?

Letting Amazon brand the transaction and own the relationship is less than beautiful it's true; but that also means they own the headaches associated with those accounts.
Re: Umair’s questions

First you have to organize people. What I work on, OfficeZilla.com helps organize people accross hundreds of non-profit organizations.

For example Mercy Ships uses OfficeZilla to upload pictures, video, and documents created out at Sea and the communications department uses that information to raise awareness of what they are doing and raise funds to do more.

Organizing people is much more power then say creating a database of resources. Organizing people creates capacity to act.

I have a child starting 6th grade. Before she starts school they are having a class on how she can get more out of school by being more organized. Using time, etc. This way she gets the most out of her own resources. Non-profits are the same way. You have to organize human resources but it is not easy, that is where OfficeZilla comes in.
C is a nice third-language indeed. (And you will be glad you did not do it as a first.)

You do not need to care for C++ much now.
Definitely. I hate to sound like an old curmudgeon (especially since I'm only 28) but it's scary the number of people nowadays who call themselves programmers but have never even had to worry about allocating memory.
Thank you for the questions. I realize now that I have been resting my wrist on the chair armrest in an attempt to keep my wrist and arm and hand straighter (thinking this was healthier). But now I realize that even if that whole unit is straight, the resting itself is damaging. Thanks.
Dude, give it a break already. Constantly crying about how HN doesn't suite your taste isn't going to make it any better and certainly doesn't raise the quality of the front page articles.
Ruby really isn't sufficiently different from Python to make it a worthwhile third language, is it? Maybe a sixth or seventh language, after C, C++, Erlang, f77 and Assembly.
It found one of my company's new subsidiaries, a very small branch of our existing work. Very nice Google Maps interface, which is the map "standard" I've become used to.
i love the idea.. interesting to see all those markers when the map loads. makes me feel special that I'm in Atlanta and there are only ~30 tech startups here.
Firefox 3 Surpasses 17 Million Downloads | Tech Jaws
Look at the number next to the title. If I have to "avoid" 50% of the stories on here because they are reddit rehash, there's no point in me visiting this site, is there?
I'm not sure how you ever get around making a personal decision whether some idea is worthwhile or not. Simply because a person had one startup, does that make them a startup expert? Probably not. If I publish a book on model trains, does that mean my opinion on world trade is somehow worthy of five minutes of your attention?

In fact, most of what people say -- even famous people -- is probably off-the-cuff and not exactly geared to your particular situation. Most all communication, in fact, is basically just chit-chat: obscure facts, disagreements based on partisanship instead of philosophy, pot shots at those out of power, praise for those in power, etc.

You can decide to listen to what "smart people" have to say, and that's probably a good idea. I'd just be really careful how I defined "smart people" -- it certainly isn't fame. In fact, I'd turn the equation around backward: I would judge the people to listen to based on their ability to have given me insight in the past, not their fame, fortune, or other crowd-based attribute.
I knew I was forgeting someone. Sorry.
I always liked his "plastics may be the reason for human existence" speculation, which was part of his "the planet doesn't need saving" rant (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw)
Does Pepsi use corn syrup? Do the other soda companies?

It's a little weird for them to risk their brand on making their product worse by way of risking their brand on throwing the whole product out. And (I am not a flavor scientist, so this is perhaps uninformed) why not just sweeten with 10% corn syrup and 90% sugar, and gradually raise the syrup ratio?
At some point I tried to watch some MIT lectures. After a few minutes I realized that they're just as boring as the classes at my University were. I guess most lectures are dull whether you're at an elite school or not. Or?
This is really interesting, because right now I use a very small wireless travel mouse.

Actually, I've ditched it and have begun mousing with my feet: http://www.bilila.com/foot_mouse_slipper_mouse

From 2000-2006 I used the MS Intellimouse. I should have stuck with it. Perhaps now if I must use a traditional mouse again I'll purchase another. Great tip.
So I'm truly curious what's at work behind this inability or unwillingness to talk to "the masses", as it were.

Class consciousness. The problem has nothing to do with the content of the conversation, but everything to do with the subtext: You're interacting with someone from a completely different social group and you may not even be sure what social cues you want to send, let alone exactly how to send them.

What is the proper relationship between you and your plumber? Master and servant? Master and slave? Contract employer and contract employee? Genial boss and long-term employee? Two friends trading with each other? Fellow members of a communal society? Friendly rivalry? Unfriendly rivalry?

How does this change if the plumber turns out to be the cousin of your sister-in-law? If the plumber belongs to your church? If the plumber lives next door?

If the plumber recommends an electrician friend, how important is it to hire that friend? Why is the plumber telling you this tale about the draconian local house inspector -- is this a standard plumber gripe, the plumbing equivalent of complaining about the weather, or is he trying to excuse the fact that his work might not pass inspection? When the plumber asks to be paid up-front, is that a standard practice or could he be planning to get drunk and then skip town?

(Regarding that last one: The books suggest that you never pay construction subcontractors in advance, but only as the work is completed. Unfortunately, the books don't tell you the precise words to use to inform your subcon that, no, you were not born yesterday. That part is up to you, and it's one of those things that they can't teach in an Ivy League class.)

Obviously, the problem of conversation has nothing to do with the topic or your knowledge of it. Thanks to the web, we know that people can happily spend hours discussing topics that they know absolutely nothing about. And there are probably very few topics that you're afraid to discuss with your peers, because you know how to navigate their social world: you know the slang, you know the legends, you know the taboos, you know when you're being insulted and how to give insult in return, and you know how to change the subject. Most importantly, you know the social order. If I log on here and write "Arc is Blub", everyone knows that I'm either issuing a (crude) challenge or being a clueless noob -- the authors of Arc have high social status here. If I write "VBScript is Blub", everyone knows that it's the news.yc/Slashdot/Digg equivalent of talking about the weather. ;)
Posting good stories and comments won't help if the quality of the community at large is going downhill. And what else would the falling quality of the stories and comments be a symptom of? No amount of "following the guidelines" or "only posting interesting stories" by the regular community will help if there is a swarm of other users who don't give a fuck.

If this development persists, history dictates that the old regulars won't hang around for long, which is really sad.

It's such a pain in the ass to drift around the internet like nomads, leaving for new territory when the locusts come to consume the places you know and love..

For the record, I do my best: I submit new stories when I find them and produce (presumably) useful commentary. And it works, for now, but I'm not very hopeful as to what HN will look like in a year.
Stop coding and travel the world.. like Matt Harding
The ability to do these sorts of competitions is a learned skill like any other. Certainly, it is a learned skill that has some relation to research ability within mathematics, but neither tests, nor grades, nor classes are the be-all or end-all of skill measurement tools. If you can solve half the questions, you have enough logical ability to accomplish anything short of beating cperciva at a math competition. The true mark of skill is to go use that to create something new--anything else is just practice.
Tell me about it, I started to roll my own and then I thought, wait, the amount of time saved by doing this is outweighed by the amount of time I will spend coding. There is a surprising lack of open source tools to modify as well. I feel like it might be a good candidate for a ruby on rails app but then you need internet access which you don't always have when you want to edit a task.
Same here. Solutions like that are unfortunately the norm, which is leading to the deplorable state of software industry wide, and the general and growing malaise from the developers.

When I started out as a developer, I was one of the best. Over the years, I've gotten rusty because my work has been so mind-numbing that the last thing I've been wanting to do after work has been to look at more code.
But we're not talking about whether or not Paris Hilton reads HN. The people in question are startup founders, Putnam fellows, essayists, etc.

There are many streams of data. Most are (in my experience) not worth the effort. I mostly listen to people who have said interesting things in the past, and I mostly hear about them through other such people. I inject a little randomness into that process by reading old and obscure stuff, but that's more to view my ideological bubble from the outside than to get a high-quality data source.
yeah, i started to read a ruby tutorial and in 20 minutes i stopped, i might learn it if i have to. I do own a K&R ANSI C, and i thought of reading it, but didn't find low level programing as fun as python. I will learn it eventually, but i won't learn assembly, C is as low level as i will go. I've been thinking of learning smalltalk any opinions?
You might want to try Comindwork, which we currently use at our startup. It's not that it's perfect, but it has all the important functionality and looks pretty decent. You can register a free account for testing purposes (1 project, unlimited users, 100mb storage).
Jakob Nielsen: making the 1% of websites that don't suck even better
I am not constantly complaining about HN submissions. I do submit good (the ones I think are good) links.
Amazingly, he did indeed "die," and not just "pass away." Perhaps he did indeed affect mainstream media slightly...
I suggest a new tag for headlines, much like the [exe], [vid] or [pdf] how about a [spread] tag that indicates that in the end you will end up far away from hacker news (in this case around 10 back clicks)

- or perhaps I just have a case of the "mondays"
>"The political implications should be clear. As John Ruskin told an older elite, grabbing what you can get isn’t any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists."

That's probably the most profound argument against our society that I have yet seen in a one liner.
I wouldn't say they're more driven, but that they realize that their lot in life has no limits, whereas a standard university grad imposes limits on themselves - their dreams become hobbies, and work becomes work.
So let me make sure I understand you correctly. It's more important to listen to famous people in this area (startups, Putnam, essayists) than it is to listen to more mundane people who have been proven to given you advice that was worthwhile to you personally?

I read all the time. I take college lectures on CD and DVD. I love reading HN. But I don't think any of that consumption was based on the celebrity status of a person inside the community. Rather it was based on the perceived future value to me. Projected future value, as best as I can figure, doesn't relate to "notable people" Bill Gates made billions, but if he posted here on his opinion of functional languages I would give him no more or less consideration than if you did. In fact, if you and I had talked about functional languages in the past and I found your comments useful, I'd be more inclined to hear what you had to say over Bill. "Bill Gates" or "PG" or whatever is just a concept we have of people we've never met. I think you'll find once you meet them that they have to prove themselves like the rest of us. Life is like that: what have you done lately?

I read commentary to kick my belief system around. Lots of great commentators out there. But I don't have heroes, and if one of my favorite commentators were to post here, who cares?

I'm probably missing something. Apologies if I'm off-base.
When I say the system was developed overnight, I literally mean it was developed overnight by a single developer. We didn't spend weeks of unnecessary time on it. It's a simple solution that works for us at this present time.

The only resources we're "pouring" into it is a dedicated server, which we already had available to us. Since we're a smaller company we'd rather focus on scaling our app instead of our to-do list. When the time comes to expand our team, we'll adapt and overcome. I don't see any reason to abandon what works for us just because of the "what if's."

Sure, some may feel our solution is a bit too much but that's okay. We spent a lot of time looking for something comparable and decided to create our own instead. It may not work for you, but it has created measurable results for us.
They still don't want to be governed by people with different cultures -- I think that's what it boils down to, and it's mainly a phenomenon of the lower classes who aren't really as hip to the Internet, or whose interests aren't broad enough to bring them together with people in other countries very often.

But increased communication, economic mobility, and business' willingness to adopt English as a standard language even in (gasp) France, are clearly knitting the continent together socially and economically.

I agree with the consensus that this guy goes a little nuts at the end. When I read it, I couldn't help thinking, "So, what, are we going to put hunger in neatly-labeled boxes?"
Well, I was disappointed to see how few startups there are in France and generally around Europe outside England. But happy to see AF83, as I am considering a job offer from them :-P
You're missing the point of his comment.

You're also missing the point of life if you continue to hold "being rich" to such a high level.
agile/xp. release early. release often. a startup in its infancy needs to get the product out fast.
Mnesia Unlimited
from a business 101 perspective - pitch the product you are working on first
"Solve a problem, not a class of problems."

I, for one, think this is good advice for code in general. At least "at first, solve a problem, not a class of problems".

I have noticed that if I write my code too general at first, it ends up solving one class of problems kinda poorly, and ends up being re-written. If I write it for the specific problem I need to solve, and then generalize it to include another similar problem when I need to (and continue this process), I end up with very solid generalized code that solves a specific class of problems very (IMO) elegantly. It still gets re-written, but in a small-chunk iterative fashion.

This, of course, may be because of the way I think - or it may be due to me being relatively "young" as a developer. I am slowly generating more general purpose code that is getting reused for similar problems in different applications, however I write much more code for specific problems than I re-use.

Perhaps someone who's been doing serious coding work for more than a few years would like to weigh in on this?
Behold some seriously beautiful graphic design
In my experience, it never takes long for "the business" to come back and say "I thought you fixed this."

Yes. But the problem is that without the sub-optimal time-saving hack the business might not have come back at all.

A business that can afford to pay people to fix the hacks that kept it solvent last month is called successful. [1]

So, there's a balance. Inevitably, it's impossible to get the balance quite right, so even the optimal software engineering job involves spending half your time complaining about overengineered code and the other half complaining about underengineered code.

[1] Of course, many businesses just pay people to paper over last month's hacks with a new month's worth of hacks, ad infinitum. That is sort of like success... for as long as the house of cards stays up. But it is also hell.
Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?
I'm a high-schooler and will be applying for colleges this fall. I've slacked a bit in high school (you know, working through SICP instead of doing homework), so my GPA is neither good nor bad (4.1), while my standardized tests are a little above average, but nothing extraordinary.

I'd love to go to someplace like MIT or Caltech but these are now unrealistic aspirations (for undergrad). I'd also love to go to a liberal arts college that does CS, like Harvey Mudd, but even if I was accepted I'm not sure I'd be able to afford it.

I know I can get an education anywhere, but I'd like to go to a school with interesting/intelligent people, or, at least, not be surrounded by apathy. Do you have any suggestions for schools I should shoot for?
More posts like this, pls.
Have you considered the University of Waterloo? Its in Canada, but its highly regarded by companies like Google, Microsoft, etc. Tuition may be cheaper as well.
Ask YC: Great software companies to work for in DC?
I'm looking at moving to DC at some point soon, and I would really love to work for a great, medium-small software company. Based on previous experience, I feel I'd be much happier at a smaller company (being at a "big corporation" hasn't been so exciting for me) that focuses specifically on developing software, rather than a company where software is in support of other developments. The list may include, but by no means be limited to, software startups. Any ideas?
5 cognitive abilities you might think only humans have
Completely off base here, but um I think it's still relevant for anyone who ends up down in the dumps and just wants to go to school no matter what:

DO NOT GO TO ITT TECH.
Too obtuse? I worked in C++ several years professionally, and didn't have that feeling. I was able to code anything I wanted.

I consider myself an average programmer, and from my experience it takes at least one year to understand C++ to reach the level of being proficient in it. I was asking my question above since in many cases, I found that the critique of C++ comes from people who didn't put enough effort to understand it thoroughly. (but I am not talking about anyone here, it's just a general observation of mine).
I think he's saying that his non-pooled customers that are willing to pay him may not be willing to sign up with Amazon.
What are social networks really worth? TechCrunch gets it mostly right
Interesting, though I sure hope he is wrong about "If your idea starts with "We're building a platform to..." and you don't have a billion dollars in capital, find a new idea. Now.", since I work at a startup doing just that (buglabs.net). We are selling though, so hopefully we are gaining some traction.
IRobot & Foster Miller briefly interviewed about robotic gun platforms
Short article on combat robotics from roomba's manufacturer.

Maybe I SHOULD put "Battlebots" and "Robot Wars" as training on my resume.
I'm waiting till 2009, as my company pays for my current phone anways. I might be a fanboy but I think it will be worth the wait.
A heatmap approach would've been better to depict the data I think. Or use different sized bubbles.
This will only become more true as you gain experience.

Take a look at any piece of software you consider great, and you'll see that at version 1, it did very little, but did it well.

Conversely, take a look at something like Lotus notes, and you'll see that the opposite is true.

Consider yourself lucky to have discovered this idiom so early in your career!
Special Discount on Mattresses | bedroom accessories | Roman Blind | Duvet
Bad experience?
Everything I've heard about the college-spread-across-the-nation sort of schools is bad, so I'm avoiding them.