skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nothing too new here. There has been a lot of talk of how the high price of travel and commuting will encourage people telecommuting and video conferencing. I, for one, can't wait for this to happen.

The legalization of the virtual corporation in Vermont is a sign of this.
I've heard the same from the lawyers I know as well.

Suddenly, being an IT professional doesn't seem that bad...
No Gamer Left Behind: Virtual Learning Goes to the Next Level
Jose --- from what I can tell, there are in fact 3 categories:

(1) The look/feel designers

(2) The UX/IA people who spend most of their time in wireframe

(3) The "developers" who hook things up and get things running.

The difference between (1) and (2) is pretty huge. I've been disappointed on projects that needed strong look/feel but got mostly IA/UX. Here's more advice to readers: you're going to feel like you're "supposed" to want IA and UX. Fuck that. If you want to look cool, clearly communicate that that's what you want.
> Modern medicine is based on the scientific method and millions on dollars are spent on studies to prove that therapies work.

Sure. Take Ambien, for example. The studies show it works! People who take it fall asleep a whole 15 minutes sooner than placebo! For thousands of dollars and unquantified long term consequences you can have something pathetically less effective than lifestyle changes or some cognitive therapy sessions, so ask your doctor about Ambien.

Same for the cholesterol statins. They work! They really do lower serum cholesterol, just as advertised. However, they have absolutely no affect on mortality rates in the typically prescribed case, and are implicated in serious neurological disease...

This kind of nonsense is pervasive in the medical industrial complex. Doctors, for the most part, dispense treatments pushed on them. But the stuff is largely a waste of money.

With a whole lot of these cancer therapies you statistically buy an extra year of life. But the person who took the therapies felt like shit for four years and blew all their savings. The person who just let it be died a year earlier but spent a lot more time feeling ok and saved a lot of money. You can just go on and on with stuff like this. The medical industrial complex is deeply dysfunctional, and at the end of the day there are way too many doctors and they do too much. This is why health care spending and number of doctors per capita is uncorrelated to lifespan and health across regions of the US.
I'm looking for the "look & feel" designer. We have 3 developers on staff, we have come up with basic site layout, and color scheme but we need to make it easy on the eyes and "attractive".
I've found that switching focus helps keep prolonged unproductive periods to a minimum.

For example, I try to keep a couple of projects going on at the same time - I generally have a major release in development for our team's primary product at all times. This is my "main work".

I also have one or two smaller projects at some stage of design or development as well - perhaps a prototype to try show the business owners a cool new idea or some type of development or administration tool which would help support the primary project. Usually, I try to learn a new technology or language while solving a problem related to our business.

When I find myself become unproductive on my main work, I switch focus temporarily to one of the smaller projects. These projects tend to be personal (although work-related) and don't have fixed delivery dates. Without the pressure of a strict schedule or external expectations, I can more easily work on these projects and rediscover my ambition.

It usually doesn't take more than a day or so to get my motivation back and I return to working on my main project with my usual productivity.
1 and 2 can be separate, but there are a lot of people whom can do both well. That's not to say that there aren't also a lot of people whom are horrible at one and great at the other. the "look/feel" designers are more of graphic artists then UX/UI people. A good team should be composed of people from each of the 3 elements you described.

No matter whom you decide to go with look at the portfolio first. I can't emphasize this enough. If you don't like what they've done before then chances are you won't like what they'll do for you. If you want a "cool flashy site" find a person that builds great "cool flashy sites". Don't go for the person that loves minimalism.

Whenever I build a UI team I look at the portfolio first. If I like what I see then I look at the credentials and where they've worked. Otherwise I pass.

Richesh, From reading your updates it sounds like you want a graphic designer and not a UI designer. If you have a structure and layout that you like and just need someone to make shiny buttons and give you a good color palette then a graphic designer is what you're looking for.
Hah. I'm a Mac user too. You couldn't pay me to use a Mighty Mouse. I can't believe someone would honestly be willing to use it because it's so uncomfortable.
1. In this world, it's a lot easier to find someone's address and phone number, making payback much easier no matter where one lives.

2. While I understand the concern about the gang members and payback, the fundamental piece missing is that there is no accountability to one's community if you are an outsider to it. It breeds contempt, and it leads to the abuses of power that we see.

There's a fundamental difference between "that gangbanger" and "Rosa's kid." (Reminding us of the recent XKCD comment.)

Of course, crack changes everything and makes this ideal much harder, but the comments in the article show how disconnected from the communities these cops were. They no longer saw criminals even as human!
Some more thoughts about what would have happened had the Microsoft deal gone through.
The way I read this article, it seemed to be a rant taking Apple to task for wasting their energy on a pervasive multicore strategy, when in their author's opinion multicore doesn't offer a compelling story for improving performance.

This leads to two obvious questions. First, why exactly does Apple get singled out here? As I see it, the CPU vendors are the ones pushing multicore; OS developers are simply trying to make the best lemonade they can from the lemons that are stalled core speeds.

Second, what the hell is this "core thread" Hank talks about? Re-entrant, SMP-capable OS kernels have been around for a long time. If the major commercial OS vendors are just now getting around to implementing such scalability, fine; that doesn't mean the problem is unsolvable, though.
Eben Moglen said something similar in relation to the Google Summer of Code:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7477852615698435519...
I don't disagree, but wisdom of things you haven't hit yet can influence early decision making.
Subversion 1.5.0 Released
Web Browsers and Memory Fragmentation
BricaBox: Goodbye World! (lessons learned from a failed startup)
The Power Of Remarkable
Depends. If you just want a nice paying 9-5, sounds great.

But every single day since Microsoft walked away, another big name from Yahoo leaves. It's like rats on a sinking ship...
Facebook Loses Another Exec - Matt Cohler Joins Benchmark
Great stuff in there. This is required reading for anyone looking to brush up on their front end coding skills, or for anyone that is new to cross browser compatibility issues. The article is clear, practical, and concise.
luckily i have an understanding boss here at younoodle ;)
http://www.e-texteditor.com/

It supposedly supports textmate bundles so that should help a lot.
Rumor: Amazon to Launch PayPal Competitor | Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog
While I personally think that closures and lexical scoping are desirable feature in any language, this seems a bit like putting lipstick on a pig to me.

As a simple wrapper around various C libraries with automatic memory management and higher-level syntax, PHP makes a certain kind of sense, warts and all. As a general-purpose high-level language, I have to wonder exactly what problem it solves that Perl, Ruby, and Python haven't already done better.

What do you think the average newbie PHP developer is going to do the first time they encounter a function which closes over a class instance as state, and then returns a lambda?

The subtle interplay between reference vs. value calling conventions, PHP's weird scoping rules, and the new 'lexical' keyword seems like a sure source of head-scratching for new developers, too.
Ask YC: How does funding actually work?
I realize this is a naive question, but I've never seriously considered doing a startup until recently and I'm realizing how much I don't know...

So here is hypothetical: I have 40K of my own money to start something. Let's say after 6 months I've built something cool and monetizing it is likely. My cash is starting to run out.

1) What would you do?

2) Are there obvious places to turn for funding?

3) If I get one round of funding, hire two people to help me out and then need more funding but get it from a different source, how does this reconcile? I assume it's in a contract, but what should one expect?

4 from 3) If the original source of funding denies a second round, what does this mean for their original investment? Do they write it off? If I get a second round of funding, are they still expecting a pay-out?

5) Any book suggestions for books for learning about this? The book suggestions in YC News's archive is a bit overwhelming to dig through...
BricaBox Closes Its Doors
Amy Hoy. She's amazing. She made twistori and Color Wars among other things. She's spoken at lots of conferences, so you can see her thoughts about UI right out in the open via her slides. Aside from knowing UX/UI, she seems to be an accomplished hands-on Ruby programmer, Javascript programmer, and graphic designer. http://www.slash7.com
I'd be pleased to chat with anyone about the fun of a failed startup! Seriously though, stay tuned for more posts and lessons I've learned.
ThinkPad T61p, I couldn't find any decent hackintosh post on that. I wouldn't mind running it in some VM either.
No, I am not taking Apple to task for anything. And I am, I hope, not ranting. I am simply saying that people should not over-estimate what will come of Grand Central, or any multi-core abstraction layers, or multi-core as a broadly helpful performance increasing strategy.

From one of my other commenters:

Multicore is definitely over-promised. I agree with what you wrote and recommend what Donald Knuth had to say on this topic:(http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856)

"I might as well flame a bit about my personal unhappiness with the current trend toward multicore architecture. To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas, and that they’re trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore’s Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks!"
This is propaganda created and spread by The Associated Press. The Media Bloggers Association has ties to A.P. This is who the A.P. has said they've been talking to about the correct way to move forward, doesn't represent anybody real, much less all bloggers. This site has a grand total of 18 back links in Technorati, which I find more than suspicious considering they're supposedly a consortium of bloggers that is able to represent the entire blogosphere.

It's smoke and mirrors, and it's been making the rounds on all the social media sites today. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/18/something-is-rotten-in-...
I feel sick when I think of all that was lost.
CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 4
Wanna Start Your *mail.com Service? You’ll Have To Buy It From Ad Farmers
Facebook's Matt Cohler leaving for Benchmark Capital
I initially hated the book. I though its attention to detail was anal at best. But if you took the time to read it all, it really did cover a lot and I felt that I had a solid and complete understanding of the concepts (not a feeling I get when reading most other books).

True it didn't cover the advanced stuff which is why I bought 'Advanced Java How to Program' as well.
Actually, Aristarchus, a contemporary of Eratosthenes (slightly earlier in fact) determined the ratio distance to the sun/distance to the moon to be about 20 (actual answer is about 390), and that the distance to the moon was about 20 Earth radii (although Archimedes credited him with an approximation closer to 80 Earth radii; the actual value is about 60). This would have validated any assumption about the sun being far enough away to generate essentially parallel rays.

Incidentally, the fact that the world was round was probably already known by Eratosthenes' time, since the Greek society was essentially a group of seafarers, and when you watch a ship go out to sea, in addition to appearing smaller as it gets further away, it also appears to sink downwards. They would doubtless have noticed this, and concluded that the Earth was probably round.
They already knew it was round by watching ships rise up from the horizon. Also, the fact that you can't see Egypt from Crete. If the earth was flat, the sea and earth wouldn't 'pull away' as it went into the distance, it would shrink to a vanishing point and you'd notice the difference.
I agree. By read, I mean what you state in your correction.
I have a guy.

He did the UX for our CMS, and has just quit his day job to do Freelancing full time (and work for Servee)

Check out http://demo.servee.com for some UX work and
http://kkellydesign.com for general Design

(also highlandpr.com/portfolio for branding work)
Eh, it's too late to edit my other post, but the new design at Clojure.org looks great!
25 Exciting Google Apps and Tools for Educators
Teachers at all levels are expected to be on the cutting edge of technology and Internet education, despite the level of technical or computer training they’ve received. Find more relevant information from specialized search engines and utilize multimedia tools to make learning more fun and a teacher’s job bit easier.
Enter about:robots in the URL field if you're running Firefox 3
They have a plan
Have you tried Aptana Studio? http://www.aptana.com/
I have a T61p. I use Emacs on it. TM may be easier to use, but my .emacs file is cross platform and is just a malleable if not more. Perhaps it could make a decent substitute?
After seventh grade my parents brought me to the best math school in Russia, the Moscow 57th. I passed the entry tests (barely), and studied there for four years. University - math, honors degree - was a breeze after that. I shudder to think of what my life would've been like if that didn't happen... or if the 57th was financially forced to bring underachievers up, instead of kicking them out. Before it, I was absolutely not adjusted to society, and was often bullied at regular schools. That's why I'm in favor of widening the gap, giving maximum opportunities to gifted kids.
The problem is that high clock speeds cost heat and energy consumption. So it is possible to solve this problem by finding a new material for making processors. Its only a matter of time until someone figures it out. I read an article 2 years ago about using diamonds in chips, to solve exactly the heat problem, the problem was that it was going too be expensive, so maybe if someone thins of a cheap alternative to diamonds we can have some very good results. This may take a year or 10 years, i don't know if its even going to happen, but until then multi core CPUs are a good alternative.
Mistake 15 makes me think of a quote that always struck me from Machiavelli's Prince:

"Since men for the most part follow in the footsteps and imitate the actions of others, the wise man should always follow the roads that have been travelled by the great, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour. This is like the skillful archer, who seeing that the object he would hit is distant, and knowing the range of his bow, takes aim much above the destined mark; not intending that his arrow should strike so high, but, in flying high, it may land at the point intended."

I tend to think aiming higher has a better chance of hitting a decent mark. So where he says to know your aim but also know your limit, perhaps you should still aim at $10 million if you're trying to hit $5 mil. Not saying everyone's goal should be to overtake Google or MS, but just aiming at your exact target means you're likelier to fall short.

The flip-side I guess is that you need to recognize what success is for you personally, and reaching your lofty goals 100% maybe shouldn't be a requirement of that, since if you're aiming at $10 mil, $5 mil is still quite successful by most peoples' standards :)
The Twitter Hall of Shame: 50 Tweets That Will Echo in History
Twitter has become more than a communication tool — it's a source of angry, funny and awkward messages that would be sometimes best left unsaid. Whether they're embarrassing or just interesting, these tweets are worth preserving.
Try this one: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=74360

Very detailed, and the thread owner has a T61p.
He came much later; in particular, he lived shortly after Archimedes, whose existence doubtless steals much of his thunder.
Could you talk about how you guys decided on the design for the front page? Or, more generally, home much time/money did you spend on marketing and was it in house or an agency?

IMO, it's pretty shocking. Your target market general population, people that don't have tech skills, etc. and the background on text look isn't exactly, um. . . inviting.
What more do you need in an editor though? jedit works. It's finished :/
I think this is a byproduct of the "always-on" startup culture. Everyone spends all their time cutting, and none of their time measuring; and they burn out as a result.
Alot of words, not alot of content. I'll sum up the article for all that haven't read it: "Though I haven't seen what Apple will be offering with Grand Central, I am making an assertion that the fundamental problems found in multi-core computing can't be solved by anybody. Ever."

Does this remind anyone else of a certain Bill Gates quote regarding 640k being enough for anyone?
Author means ?mail.com or .mail.com, obviously. hpr8923my973n2487382y8mail.com is still available.
AT&T paying Apple $325 subsidy on every iPhone 3G sold - report
Building and managing virtual teams
"Christopher Alexander, who came up with this stuff, calls these chunks patterns."

In design school, we called this design & layout.
Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload
The music industry abuses us and we're to blame
That might work... once.

AdWords strikes me as the death of marketing still shambling along as a zombie. (Not to dis an army of shambling zombies, they have their own sort of power.) The genius of a marketer is not required, just pick some words and pay the bill. P.T. Barnum would be horrified by AdWords. I expect he would have done better with the first two paragraphs of http://www.jamasoftware.com/ too.
How To Gauge Likely VC Interest In Your Company Early
Reminds me:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18624973.4...
I'd be surprised if they ever get above third place in the Wikipedia search market.
Most Doctors Aren’t Using Electronic Health Records
State Changes Are Essential to Reliability; Functional Programming Is an Abomination
Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon: The three survivors
I'm submitting this because it's entertaining, not because I think it's informative or insightful. The guy's a kook.
The purchase of jet fuel can very rarely directly kill someone. A prescription, on the other hand....
Who quotes themself on the header of their blog? Shouldn't that be some kind of inspriational quote from someone else?
I Farted and Would Like Everyone to Sniff It (by Jeremy Zawodny)
The best part of the article is this statement

They say 9 [out] of 10 entrepreneurs fail because they're undercapitalized or have the wrong people. I say 9 [out] of 10 people fail because their original concept is not viable.

Totally agree. I can vouch for this from my personal experience and also as I watch older business people who should have no business managing or running companies.
I think when you are Carl Icahn you can do whatever you want.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahintampa/2588051904/
Sure... We did everything in house. For most the time it was two of us working on the startup -- like many startups in general -- and the design was conceived of by the lead developer.

We were investing $$ in a new design towards the end, but ran out of cash before we could get it out the door!
Facebook Executive Leaves
Awww, I was really expecting something interesting to happen after I clicked on the "Please do not press this button again." button.

Oh, and by the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaatu_barada_nikto
First reports of a Firefox 3 vulnerability
> © 2008 Copyright of Icahn Blog LLC

All business. Always.
He's a pretty fair writer. I wonder if any of it is ghostwritten?

Interesting posts nonetheless. I hope he starts posting rants about Yahoo! soon...
You don't want UX/IA. Putting UX in this request will add several thousand dollars to the project cost and probably diminish the value of the deliverable.
To carry your analogy further, those who salvage the ship gets the treasure.

More specifically, what I mean is that it takes different skills/tolerance to steer a ship versus salvaging one. If you are similar to those who are leaving Yahoo, then you probably shouldn't join right now. But if you possess skills that can help the company right now, it's a golden opportunity.
Forgive me, but who is he?
No kidding -- he's a perl scripter and knows some mysql. Did he start a company? Why do people care?
Yes, there were plenty of things to steal, even in poor countries. Everything is relative, you don't have to have a plasma screen, or high-end stuff to be worth stealing something.

Clear example, we had a troubled guy in our neighborhood (alcoholic father, poor and all). In my old house, we had three chikens (it was in the suburb). He stole one of them, from our house and cooked it with his friends, and ate it. Eventually his friends ratted him out, so the local cops, came with a van, and gave him a beating and made him buy my us a replacement one.

He asked for forgiveness, and never came close to our house. So, there you go, police justice in action.

Eventually this guy did more things in other places, and ended up in jail. Meanwhile, the neighboorhood was really calm, and basically nothing happens.

Democracy came, the police had much less controll on what was going, judges and prosecuters could get corrupted, etc.

This guy graduated in a super-criminal, and was unstopable. He could bribe his way out charges, initmidate witnesses, etc. Eventually he steped on the wrong feet, and got assasinated, (middle of the day, by a sniper).

So, there you go. Police actioning actually works and makes things a lot safer. But you have to give a lot of freedoms to reach that point.
Is the extra safety really worth it when you can't voice your opinion without being afraid being roughed up by this super cops?
http://www.icahnreport.com/report/about.html
We could all learn lessons in self-promotion from the blogosphere elite!
Bedsteads,soft and home furninshings from Dunelm
Wiki Providers Come Together to Offer Universal Edit Button
He didn't self-submit, he just posted to his personal blog, so why are you complaining?

edit: can one of the downmodders please explain where i'm going wrong? the blog author may have farted (no comment), but he did not do anything to make others sniff it.
It would be if they didn't put a hiring freeze. Awkward considering all that money wasted on advertising.
Early gadget buyers are arrogant: study
Question: Do they have any intention of going public? If not, then what's the point of equity? Profit Sharing?
Ask YC: Are there any better syntax highlighting plugins?