skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think is ok, if you already know how to program. The SICP book is not the easiest book ever, but is also not that complicate. SICP teach you many things, not only lisp. YOu can also follow the lectures in the MIT open course web[1].

If you dont feel comfortable with the SICP book (many people dont like it), you can start with How to Design Programs(HTDP)[2]. It teach scheme/racket, and is one of the better books to teach programming that I've seen, and the people in the mailing list and irc channel are very friendly.

The good thing is that both of them are free[3], so you can take a look and see if the fit your expectations.

[1] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

[2] http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/Book/

[3] http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
This feels like Gruber being Gruber.

For me personally, I love Apple hardware, love the iPhone and like the iPad. I am just not a fan of OSX. I was, for about a five year period, but have gone back to Linux this past year in Ubuntu and have not looked back.

I bought my first mac in 2003/2004, Power Book G4. Tolerated the slowness that the UI had b/c it gave me something I didn't have in any other OS: A *nix base w/ a great UI.

Over time I feel that OSX's lead in this eroded as Ubuntu kept getting better and better and OSX stagnated. Now I feel I can have a rock solid Linux (Debian based Ubuntu) with a really good UI that just works without weird restrictions. OSX isn't the only player in town anymore in that front and since I can install it on cheaper hardware, that is awesome.
What about making people better at improving systems? That's what I'm talking about and what I've seen. Operating inside the OODA loop gives you exponential results. Technology is just an artifact to assist people.

When you get to the point where people truly are first you create and throw away systems with ease. and you get real speed.

But hey, this is HN. So it's all just internet masturbation anyways.
Hopefully the leaker was smart enough to perturb the values somewhat as well :)
I just watched the episode and was pretty impressed with the accuracy of their (iPhone) software development skits, including their dialogue (relative to other shows/movies). There was much more than what's shown in this image. Anyone have video?
I noticed this during the episode as well while the characters discussed their iPhone app idea. If you watched the episode, there were actually some better shots of the whiteboard. The Big Bang Theory has always striven for accuracy. That's one of the things I've always liked about the show.
The Big Bang Theory prides itself on accurate science and tech. They have UCLA physics professor David Saltzberg credited as "Science Consultant" to contribute the geeky stuff.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-11-04-big-...
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2934564/
And violate copyright by posting it on YouTube? I'm sure there are several less reputable places where you can find the entire episode.
His blog is a great behind-the-scenes on the science in each episode:

http://thebigblogtheory.wordpress.com
A unique alias is fine in circumstances such as the one you've given--my point is about account creation and logins. There is no reason you can't use an email as a login and then require the user to give a unique alias to use in their URL. FogBugz (On Demand), to cite one example, does things this way. You login with an email but when you sign up, you have to give a unique corporation name and the app generates a subdomain of fogbuz.com; e.g., mycorp.fogbugz.com.

Anyway, I really like the idea of what you're doing, but as time marches on I am becoming increasingly zealous over this issue. Retooling your app at this point is probably too much work given that most users don't have the same conviction as I do but since you asked for feedback, I'm giving you my 2¢.
You can watch the full episode on CBS.com (US only):
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/big_bang_theory/
When OS X was first released he was very critical of it's ui. Specifically how Finder worked (and the whole brush metal theme ). He even alluded to this in this post. Now he's merely observing how things have changed. He never claimed that he liked it.
Here's a legal way to watch it: http://www.cbs.com/primetime/big_bang_theory/video/?pid=H8pV...

Skip to 6:00.
Two Clever Amazon Plugins for WordPress
Maybe looking for numbers in the domain name? It's probably a really good signal overall.
Clare Hotels
I think the cold truth is that in the OS X era, Apple's designers have been increasingly favoring eye candy over usability and consistency. OS X certainly looks better than just about any other OS I've seen, but other things like Fitt's Law and consistency have taken a back seat.
This idea disappoints me. The system-wide Control-Command-D dictionary works in Twitter for Mac: That doesn't work in apps written in almost-facsimiles of Cocoa. That's only one example, but these's always something quirky about these replicas which is never desirable.
Given the inconsistent behavior of the browser back button nowadays (with rich apps, lightboxes, etc), would advocate that we get rid of them?
I would see this as an opportunity. You have an app that has hit a hard limit in terms of number of users. It is clearly a useful app, otherwise it wouldnt be growing.

The natural thing to do is to make it a paid solution. You inform your users of the situation and say that in order to keep the service up and running you will start charging a signup fee of $1, the same as you would pay for a mobile app. Existing users however, get 50% off and only pays $.50. Give them a month to paypal it in and then another month of repeated notices to inactive users. After two months there will probably 50k+ users you will have to close out from the service. But give them an option to restore it easily.

This is not at all unreasonable, no one would ever be able to say so. Above all it would be a tremendous learning experience for you. Perhaps you also will make a few thousand dollars in the process, but that would not be the point.

There are two alternatives to this as I see it. Either you do the above but the only thing you require is for users to manually report in by clicking a button in a form. You will still be able to weed out thousands of accounts.

The other is to set up Smart Tweets 2, hosted on another ip, and refer new users there. Explain why and make it into something funny for the users.

Whatever you do, do something bold enough to make it to Techcrunch a second time.
Project management is a huuuuge term that can cover a lot of different apps. I'd say, "specificity". There are already more online project management apps that you can shake a stick at, but if you can make one specialised for a really specific kind of project (e.g. a specific industry - NOT web design), you might be able to do something better than what's out there already.

Beware of building a generic PM app. It's a very crowded field, and unless you have a really, really good insight, and the chops to market it well enough so that you get some market share before everyone copies you, it won't be worth your while.
350M income, $50B valuation? So with today's facts you get your investment back in 142 * 3/4yr = 106 years?
It's a FAQ http://ycombinator.com/faq.html

Can we do it without moving to where you are?

Sorry, no. We tried this once, and by Demo Day that startup was way behind the rest. What we do, we have to do in person. We would not be doing a startup a favor by not making them move.

You can leave one founder at home, but the rest, including the CEO, have to live in the Bay Area during the 3 month funding cycle.
Http://www.shoeslockers.com/
Games obviously need a UI that is directly related to playing the game. I'm not including games. But these ones seem to be different for the sake of being different:

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9iz9hfWvl1qazfelo1_400.jp...

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9iz9hfWvl1qazfelo1_400.jp...

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l26vemSib51qazfelo1_400.pn...

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l1illmwHTD1qazfelo1_400.jp...

And there's not really anything wrong with that. But one can't say that they prefer the iPhone vs something else because the apps are more consistent UI-wise and ignore the trend away from consistent user interfaces.

Then, there's something to be said for things like Sally Park, which is effectively a limited function app that doesn't have a lot of complex user interaction. A lot of these kinds of apps are commodity, so the way to differentiate is by the "prettiness" of the UI. And that's too bad in some sense, because I think usability suffers -- but maybe usability doesn't matter because, since they are one-trick pony apps, you spend more time looking at the screen than figuring out which button to hit or learning it (because the functionality is limited, not because the UI/UX is "obvious" or "consistent").

When it comes down to it, many iOS apps are do-one-thing (and hopefully do-it-well) independent apps, mainly because they don't integrate with other apps on the phone. You kind of expect standard widgets (or icons or labels for functions) (even if you think they are "ugly") on Android because of the integration. I have an Android app that adds a Flickr option to all "share via" functions on the entire phone. This isn't a standalone app that needs its own UI, and it would be dumb if it had its own UI as an independent app, partitioned off from the rest of the functionality of the device. It needs to integrate (hopefully smoothly) with everything else. When I select "share via flickr", uploading to flickr shouldn't be significantly difference in experience or widget selection than sharing with a contact, otherwise it would be too jarring. It shouldn't look like I'm going to some place else to do this, it should look like I'm sharing it without having to leave the app I found the thing I wanted to share in.
Lessons learned from writing and launching a WebApp in 23 days
When is the deadline for funding?
I agree. This the first explanation that's made me fully understand and accept this problem.
Thanks for addressing this head-on and in a professional way. Nothing you said was particularly offensive. Sex sells, and that is a part of life.

Do I think that you're a misogynist? No. Nothing you did was even remotely as offensive as the CouchDB talk at GoGaRuCo last year.

As a result of the hoopla around that talk, Martin Fowler wrote a fantastic piece that discusses the interaction of gender, programming, professionalism and humor here: http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SmutOnRails.html I highly recommend you give it a read.

It's one thing to make a comment about sex selling, it is another to make it a theme to talk about how you can see that visitors are spending a lot of time looking at the woman's breasts. Once again, I don't think that your approach was overtly offensive, but there is some great writing that the GoGaRuCo incident inspired. Articulate and measured (as usual,) Sarah Allen's post talks about the difference between a comment and a theme: http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-...

My thoughts about feminism changed in college when I went to gay clubs and was aggressively pursued for the first time. It was weird to think that I had to be on the defense against people's advances and question their reasons for having an interest in me -- that's an experience that many men in our society never have. I can't claim to understand the struggles of feminism, but I do put more thought into how I approach women that I may be interested in (both sexually and professionally.)

I'm sure that you were being lighthearted and meant no harm, but if you're going to crack jokes about staring at boobs when giving a presentation to a room full of strangers, I have to wonder about the jokes you'll make in a more casual workplace environment and will be selective in my recommendations because of that.

This all being said, Zed Shaw has (in entirely different ways) offended a lot of people. I am careful in who I would recommend to go work with him. Personally, I think that working with Zed would be a fantastic opportunity and would jump at the chance.
Apple should test for this in the review process, and reject paid apps that are
susceptible to this simple technique.

That part is just silly. Developers should decide themselves how much time to spend on the validation. For example, the Twitter for Mac app doesn't have any validation (you can run it just fine without having the app store), and it doesn't need to as it's free anyway.

Adding proper validation takes a relative large amount of time, and sometimes it's just not worth it. Hackers can still dynamically link against a custom OpenSSL, or patch your app to not exit() if the code is 173, change Apple's CA in the Keychain or a few other tricks that would work with a large amount of the apps in the app store. You'll probably do better using your time to make your app better than trying to fix the DRM.
98-year-old woman wrote a letter to her bank. Bank manager publishes it
HyperMac responds with vengeance, and non-patent infringing adapter
Really, a seemingly content-heavy site with no ads to serve, why?
Do the Mac App Store guidelines actually disallow Qt apps?

If I'm reading this correctly ( http://pastie.org/1236378 ), the only major requirements are that apps don't screw around with the HIG too much, and they don't use "deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta)". Admittedly, the only Qt app I recall using on OS X is Last.fm, but that seemed to be mostly HIG-compliant (a couple things felt a tad out of place, but nothing major).
in all honesty I think the short sightedness is that .. this environment of developing 4 different applications with 4 different code bases to support the major mobile platforms (IOS,Android,Windows,RIM). Mobile web will win out in the end.
The 24 Burger Strategy
Evidence to support this claim? Facebook has around 600 million active users today, giving them several billion more prospects. Their core product, the graph of human relationships, might very well be the single most valuable business product ever.
Are the minuses because you disagree? Please discuss.

For me, dealing with codebases generated by the untrained is a daily problem. I do what I can to try and help - I sound like a broken record rattling on about naming variables what they are and whatnot.
Great minds, and now me!
Wouldn't it be better to let people do their own blacklists, and then incorporate that into their official list if a percentage of people have that site down as spam?
Good point. One of the main reasons against non-standard UI design is that there is a huge amount of behaviour attached to the standard UI and once you start implementing your own interface elements, you’ll almost never get everything right. Keyboard shortcuts, accessibility, system hooks for other apps, etc.
Great answer and thanks for the recommendation.
Thanks for that - not sure how I missed it.
This is true, but somebody will do a program to automatize and all this non tech-savvy will install it and use it. It always happens the same...
I'm sorry, but when was the last time that you made something out of an idea everyone thought was gone for good, and made money from it, on the first day? Honestly, be happy for the guy.
http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/takethat.asp
thing is, internet is a fragile market. Especially in social, if something else becomes hot, users can go away very quickly. It's not like some manufacturing business where you build relationships over years.

Some possible risks:

* Orkut-like sites were around for a long time, now nobody uses them today. People shifted to facebook and may move elsewhere.

* It is possible that a decentralized, autonomous solution may come up for social profiles.

* The fact that the company is not mature is a double-edged sword, a new idea or feature may come up that may well make facebook a less attractive place to be.
Especially considering these are almost all jQuery 101 tips, e.g. things people learn within the first month of using jQuery. It's not like these are crazy secrets. I was also quite put off by the "check out my book" reference in the very first sentence.
Justification for posting this?
Exactly. Look no further than subprime if you doubt this. There is no group more expert at (knowingly) inflating a bubble for their own gain. And they take no risk because they get 0% loans from the Fed and are the definition of "too big to fail". This is dangerous behavior.
Assuming no growth; risk free + equity risk premium = 8% + company lasts infinitely (or for a long time):
3551e6/.75/.08 = 5.9110e9, or 6 billion.

Let's assume they grow to five times their current income over the next five years; and, ooh, I am busy - just multiply the previous number by five to get an approximation.
Oooh... are you being ironic?
> likely to happen once in 50 experiments or so.

How many hypotheses did he investigate? I seem to remember reading that he said he had investigated a fairly large number of them before finding this one.

If he investigated many different ways that people might manifest ESP only to find negative results in all but the porn study, then the odds change a bit. I mean, suppose you have 50 studies and a 1/50 chance of something like this--you'd have a 63.6% of ending up with a study like this one.
Thank you. Just thank you.

Also carrying a shadow, and I tried to say what you've managed to say so well.

Also available for out-of-the-blue emails should anyone want to chat.
"I believe the name "dissident" comes from a desire for anonymity"

I'm sure. But it's an absurdly self-flattering and grandiose name. He's not a dissident. He's helping people copy inexpensive apps, that are in no way necessities, that generally cost less than a can of Red Bull, and are mostly from small independent developers.

A more appropriate pseudonym would be Veruca Salt. At least that would capture the pettiness and sense of entitlement.
Great! Still a good read though and it certainly conveys sentiment I am sure is shared by many (and perhaps even more so in post-recession 2011) :P
T-Mobile upgrading HSPA+ network to 42Mbps this year -- Engadget
Apple is obviously following the innovations of web app design here. People use web apps with wildly different designs all the time, and yes, there are some usability issues with that, but when consumer OSes were first being developed some decades ago, HCI researchers assumed that everything had to look exactly the same between applications or users would freak out. The web never had a single HIG, so we found out that users are much more tolerant of differences, or at least they are now.

As web apps become more important, the notion of an OS HIG needs to evolve. Obviously an app needs internal consistency, but how consistent do two apps need to be between each other? An apt comparison is the world of typography: the rules for good text layout don't specify one font for every single book, we can handle the fact that different books use different fonts. But there are still rules for good typography, they're just more general than "All uppercase G's should look like this: G." This is the direction that HIGs would need to go, but whether this is a good thing is debatable. For whatever reason, I have a hundred or so books on my bookshelf and basically all of them have very good to excellent typography. Web sites and apps have nowhere near that level of consistent quality. Native apps are better, but now we're going to start to see more of the web's no-rules design norms applied there, which probably means a few really gorgeous apps and a whole lot of crap.
Getting Started With MongoDB GridFS
When I went overseas for two months for an internship, I figured this out the hard way.

But then that got boring, and alcohol was cheap... and fun :-P
I'm confused on what kind of 90+ year old person would use nanoseconds in their vocab... Don't hate on me, I've just never heard anyone (of that age) talk like that.
If they actually lower their prices, yes, that would make me slightly more willing to fly. Though, actually, I'd prefer that they lower their absurd fees (and that all the places to compare flights would give us a way to add up all the fees up front in order to expose such shenanigans).

I don't really expect them to do that, though, even with this sort of setup. There would be little reason to get rid of a customer surplus if they planned to give it back to us.
A Mac App Store tax on those unwilling to Google
I haven't thought about that yet, but you are correct.
Q&A: Ishaan Kumar Creator of MongoVUE
url is dead already
I thought the whole thing was hilarious. The pirates couldn't crack the console, so they told everyone not to buy the PS3 because they wouldn't be able to play pirated games and stuff. But then Sony did something stupid and removed the ability to use Unix on the PS3 so those guys (homebrewers) were like 'RAWRRR' and cracked it.

Lesson learned: Never mess with the guys who know what they're doing!
Let me translate for you. It says there was no law forbidding the use of Thimerosal, and also it says plainly that Congress found in 2007 that some vaccines still contained it. Thus, your statement that it was "eliminated in 2001" is false.
Having started NeXTSTEP/Objective-C coding in the early 90s, and lived through the mid-90s near-death of the platform, I find it pretty remarkable that in 2011 a prime-time major network comedy had a whiteboard with "NSObject", etc, on it.

(In the late 80s, early 90s NeXT hardware turned up in some pop culture locations due to how it looked: Mono NeXTStations in the Madonna video for Rain I don't know how I remember that, and a Cube in the movie Flatliners. But source code is something else entirely. Granted, given the recent cultural phenomenon of the iPhone, it's not that weird. But from a longer-term perspective, it feels a little like we're through the looking glass.)
Group buying: Fad or future Facebook? 
Group buying websites enjoyed massive growth in 2010 grabbing new customers and the headlines as the sector's biggest player, Groupon turned down a reported $6 billion offer from Google in early December.
Actually it looks very bad, feels clunky and the revenue model is idiotic with a passion.
From http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html :

"A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting."

I believe that this submission is only superficially interesting, sorry.
I wonder if 30daysyoanewhabit.com wouldn't be a better URL than habitualapp.com? Then again it does sound very infomercial-ish.

I'm one of those people who won't use it as a Facebook thing. Give me a Twitter login and option to have my progress reported there and I'd give it a whirl.
Consistency is still important, especially on the "truck" computers which are much more prone to damaging actions by novice users compared to iOS. Hell, messing with standard interface elements can even mess advanced users up. Opened up Logic or Sound space designer recently?

Maybe regular users _are_ getting more used to different looking widgets (eg. All the different kinds of custom buttons on websites) but I don't think the HIG should be binned just yet. It needs to be abstracted: specific UI concepts/patterns, rather than specific colors of dropdown menus etc. That said, universal, system level elements like window controls shouldn't be messed with IMO.
Once you tie some traceability or accountability to their words or actions, words and actions change to manage image and status.

I argue this is not a trivial aspect to the matter :) Sure; if real world had a social structure similar to the internet people would interact very differently.

But we don't.

It doesn't necessarily mean that someone who acts the idiot online is simply an idiot in real life, but hides it well :) It just means people are reacting to two different social environments.

HN is a classic case in point; people here are friendly and polite in interactions. We all try to be a bit more intellectually stimulating, because that is the social structure.