skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
well, perhaps if Gruber wasn't of such a high opinion of himself he wouldn't need persuasion to convince him that sometimes he's wrong?
JQuery Plugin: BetterGrow Your Words
"RSS is an amazing tool, but maybe we just haven't found the right UI for it yet. Exposing it in the browser doesn't work very well and treating RSS as an Inbox (like Google Reader) where every item needs to be marked as read is too overwhelming."

I think we're looking at half a 'system' here. Userland software also putout a publishing system called "Radio" to go along with the "Syndication" mechanism. So I think the community solution here is to finish that loop and start thinking of forward layer 'radios' that provide 'channels' that filter/aggregate RSS feeds.
Missed it by 900 years unfortunately, but that's cool because an even more corduroyish date is coming in 9100 years.
Science, tech and more: Predictions for the next 25 years
Nassim Taleb predicts the next 25 years
RSS is the pipe, its not a solution. Your average joe doesn't "know" what TCP/IP is and frankly its the same for RSS. Something needs to sit at either end and actually make use of the RSS "pipe".
I'd like to point out a couple of things about these choices for examples of rich UI libraries: All three of them throw most of the DOM, and reimplement almost everything from scratch: structure, layout, and most behavior (outside of that provided by input elements that can't realistically be implemented by hand). I don't think you can ask for a stronger indictment of the DOM and related APIs with respect to implementing applications.

And that's the problem. It's not [p]NaCl vs. Javascript. It's whether the core APIs are designed for the task, which in the case of web applications they clearly aren't. The most egregious failings of web applications stem directly from bad APIs, and if you look at their counterparts (for example) in iOS and Android, there's absolutely no comparison. A better script engine (and yes, almost anything would be better than Javascript) would be nice, but would do very little to solve the API problem (don't forget that NaCl can't call anything not provided by the browser, so it can't serve as an "escape hatch").

There are those who suggest that the browser APIs are close to "good enough" and just need to be tweaked a bit to make it possible to create good, efficient web apps on par with modern native apps. I'd like that to be the case (my day job is working on browser application tooling and infrastructure), but so far it's not happening where it matters most -- on mobile devices. On the desktop you can usually get away with murder because the machines are so fast (and have so much memory), but on more limited mobile platforms (and by limited I mean ~1GHz ARM with ~0.5G of memory) web apps aren't even close to their native counterparts. There are some laudable attempts out there (e.g. Gmail mobile, the Sencha Touch demos), but if you poke on them a bit you start to notice obvious performance and memory issues (e.g., when Safari Mobile crashes on the iPad it's usually out of memory).

Does this mean native apps in app stores will "win", and the web will "lose"? The web "won" on the desktop (for most kinds of apps, anyway), in spite of its severe limitations, because it provided a reasonably stable platform and super-simple deployment. App stores solve the deployment part of this problem reasonably well, but fail badly at the cross-platform part. Can the web be made "good enough" in time to win again? I don't think anyone can accurately predict the outcome at this point.
Despite their wording, the file size limit is size of the account. In this case, 2GB. It really should say 'file size is only limited by the size of the account', or some such.
Rhapsody's (OSX's codename) first two developer releases were available for X86. It wasn't until OSX Server 1.0 that Apple only publicly released PowerPC versions of OSX.
What's the extra step to know with Bundler? I learned it in --- not exaggerating --- under 5 minutes. It took longer to run than to learn.

Now, instead of typing looking up the list of gems I need to install and then typing a bunch of gem commands, I copy my skeleton Rails Gemfile (which is literally just a list of gems with "get them from gemcutter" at the top), type "bundle install bundle", and I'm absolutely done.

You seem to be dodging 'mechanical_fish's point: Bundler improves the process. It isn't "more"; it's "better". They should have just called it Gem 2.0.
I want to read my RSS feeds like a newspaper. I think formatting is really the issue. I don't necessarily want a list of links.
It seems like the incentive is missing. Browser developers have to prioritize what users use and what they know how to use. The author made the point that very few people even know what RSS is, and I think it's the content deliverers' responsibility to make users aware of that feature; there's only so much a browser can do to help with that.
Some really interesting ones here - and interesting to see where some cross over with: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2060782
Ask HN: What happened to Serendipity, the fare tracker?
A few days ago a neat looking perl script for tracking fares via Kayak made the front page. I can't seem to find the article and the Google code hosting has 404'd:

http://code.google.com/p/serendipity/

I discovered this when I reloaded the old open tab in my browser. I'm sorry to see it disappeared....
If you are not able to finish your project on time, you need to tell your manager as soon as possible. You may not have the experience to get it done, and that is fine in my opinion, but if there are deadlines, your manager needs to know sooner than later for damage control. As you said, there are possible do-overs when in college, but you need to do what you can to make a project succeed, even if that means admitting failure - it's a life lesson, failure should be acceptable, just make sure that your own failure doesn't affect others.

You are almost at the end of your coding stint cycle - is the next six-month cycle more along your lines of what you want to do? If not, then I would look for something else. You have a goal of what you want to accomplish, and working on something that isn't even your field does not make sense for your future.

I'm not a startup founder, but I do at times question when people have tons of short stint jobs - but if it's only one, then no big deal - a history of short stints here and there can raise concern, but even then it won't be an ultimate deciding factor when I choose to hire someone.

Make sure your resume reflects your additional activities while in college - they may not be as necessary on there when you have more of a job history, but when you are first starting your resume, you want your potential employer to know what you are capable of - and this will get you callbacks where you can go in to more detail.

Good luck!
On the contrary, I think the debate over the issues of a service that is soliciting donations from us is of direct relevance.
Edit: I mean, it's 403'd, not 404'd...
Can I be the jerk on this thread to raise my hand and say, "from what I can see, every single thing Debian has done with Ruby, from the way they split Ruby up into separate packages to the mindboggling damage they inflicted on RubyGems, has worked to the detriment of Ruby and provided no discernable benefit to end-users"?

For at least a year now, I've simply accepted that Debian's Ruby lives in a parallel bizarro-universe, rm'd any trace of it that intrudes on my own (real) universe, and installed everything from source.

I write this not to feel better about myself but to attract the passionate, angry disagreements that will help me better understand the problems this guy was trying to solve, so I can understand how he looks at the world and what his decision means instead of silently hoping that this post means nobody is going to try to integrate Debian and Ruby anymore.
Again, I see no reason why an improved JavaScript language/runtime would not perform as well as this LLVM-based solution...

The original article here does an excellent job of explaining why. Did you read it? In particular, his reference to Tom Forsyth's article on Moore's Law versus Duck Typing is very informative. And his reference to the game Supreme Commander makes it pretty clear what level of performance he would like to see web-deployable pieces of code achieve.

with the added benefit of building upon 15 years of knowledge on how to secure (and not to secure) a JavaScript-based sandbox

Those years of experience can be brought to either solution, can't they?

I watched the video that junkbit posted a link to here, and they appear to not trust the llvm-bc. Once the bitcode is translated to a native executable, they run a verifier on the resulting binary, and if the verifier is unable to prove that the only instructions that can execute are those in thi binary, then they have a strict policy of not letting it run. In addition to that, the translator itself runs as a NaCl module so that if a bug is found, it cannot be maliciously used to escalate privileges.

Their approach seems pretty reasonable to me.
I don't know why Taubes gets so much play on HN. His science is bad and his studies are cherry picked [1] for whatever narrative he wants to sell. For a large group of people who usually are critical thinkers I'm surprised at what passes for real nutrition science on HN.

IMHO, if you want to read good diet information from someone who not only knows what he is talking about, but also uses it in practice every day look up Alan Aragon [2]. I particularly like him because he is a research fanatic and understands the difference between high and low quality studies.

BTW, I am in no way affiliated with him at all, but have read his stuff for years.

[1] http://weightology.net/?p=265 -great read with LOTS of links to studies that Taubes conveniently (purposely?) ignored

[2] http://www.alanaragonblog.com/
And so can Patrick Stewart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_cwI1Xj4M
It won't stop here. Apple will put ARM in their laptops, and they will help usher in a new era of more power efficient computing in a way that x86 simply cannot, in whatever shape. Just wait and see.
I'd suggest for you to do some office jujitsu (work on the project while at work). If the project is tech one and you don't have the skill sets yourself, outsource via getacoder/elance. For less then a 1k you probably can get a working alpha for your product.

The key though as nolite mentioned is passion. You cannot be a successful entrepreneur without it. If your wife yell at you and you are passionate enough about what you are doing, yell back.

This is your dream. Make it happen.
RSS is primarily used by aggregation widgets and sites as a server-to-server protocol for retrieving lists of links from blogs and news sites, and I see no evidence offered that anything is changing in that regard.

As far as people actually using their "RSS" buttons to read websites, I've actually never heard of anyone doing that. The author appears to misunderstand the primary rationale of modern RSS.
Ahh, if only I were at a real keyboard. I'll just say that 1) you make a fantastic point in the discussion, 2)there is evidence that even when the fat person fails to eat that additional bacon, metabolism and activity levels drop to compensate, and 3) you have failed to refute Taubes' primary point, which is that "we get fat because we eat more calories than we expend" does not satisfactorily explain why we maintain a calorie surplus in the first place.
Given that Taleb's "big idea" is the importance of unanticipated events, there is a certain delicious irony here, pointed out by the interviewer.
Read The Four Steps to the Epiphany, do a SWOT analysis on these ideas. Determine, with some degree of confidence, your ability to reach the markets your services target, the costs involved, and their propensity to spend on your solution once the technology is actually implemented. Then focus on the solution that has the greatest potential.
Consider the coding project at work an investment in yourself. You're right, this isn't college anymore. Your performance at work and in groups directly affects your co-workers perception of you. Sure, if you truly hate the place then you probably won't care, but people are very good at detecting when other people truly dislike their job. This has a full circle impact. Getting yourself into this mentality will only make your experiences at that company less enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. If you actually cannot handle the task that you have been assigned, then speak up. Tell your project manager how you feel. Somewhere along the way you obviously gave them the impression that you were fine with the programming tasks, so they most likely are just not aware of your feelings towards programming. I would just advise against "giving up" and subconsciously forcing yourself out of that position or company.

And of course you can always change jobs. If you dislike this company and can already tell that the big corporate life style isn't your thing then start looking for new jobs. Too early to switch jobs? I'd rather find one that I like now instead of 5 years from now.
There's a common industry practice of double- and triple- booking people on projects, to the point where schedules can only possibly be kept if people regularly work 10-12 hour days (but, of course, bill 16-32 hours each day). Consultants are kept happy --- indeed, many are thrilled with the arrangement --- because the consultancies pay subcontractor-rate overtime.

This is predictably disastrous for clients.

It blows my mind, really. When you get a contract to assess an application for security flaws, the client presumes you are going to find the stuff that needs to get found; they trust that once you're done and they fix your findings, the app is safe to deploy. Overbooking consultants is like being an auto shop that fucks up brake jobs or an electrician that leaves bare sparking wires in the basement.

That's the thing about hours.
You're making the point that in order to figure out what (if anything) is valuable, we need to have a standard of value, and you're absolutely right.

Now, there are lots of potential standards of value. e.g. "immediate pleasure" (hedonism); what's good for others (altruism); etc.

The proper standard of value is: what is good or bad for an individual's life, as a human being. So, that's how I'm defining "valuable" here.

Why is that the proper standard of value? Well, any deviation from that standard is going to be destructive to life, whereas following it will sustain life. Living successfully is a prerequisite (and the primary component) of happiness (in the fullest sense of the word--i.e. a non-contradictory enjoyment of being alive and all that that entails).

My statements here are not to be taken as standing on their own. There are lots of questions to ask. (A basic one would be: How can you claim to actually know anything, in the first place?.) I'm not going to try to present the full philosophical justification (i.e. present and validate an entire philosophical system), but it's out there if you look.
Either publish your ideas as proof of concepts and encourage others to take over (with no shares for you) or prepare better (don't plan just code, plan execution - how much time will you spend after work & discuss with your wife) or make sure that you have cash for 6-12 months and your wife is ready for 4 years of struggle (and I'm serious about the amounts of time I mentioned)

What won't work - finding somebody more motivated and giving him 80%... if you have 20% then you will be a cofounder and long nights and plenty of work will be required of you. Also getting money an hiring people won't work - as a CEO you will still have plenty of work and it will be even harder because you will need to coordinate their work - if your wife tells you to go to bed then you cannot finish that spec for a designer and he will not do his job. One or two times like that and you will lose speed.

Finally, a thing that helps - having users (and paid users even more). Get stuff out of the door as fast as possible. Asap = 2 weeks if we're talking software.
I don't understand why you're in a development position when you know you don't like it. And you're working for BigCo when you don't like it.

Don't worry too much about switching after six months at this point. You just graduated and you're finding your place in the world. Explain yourself as you've done here, and don't make it a long-term pattern. The best way not to make it a long-term pattern is to find the kind of company you want to work for, doing work you like and are good at.

As for how to get in somewhere... I had heard that if you really wanted to work somewhere then you should let them know, and also follow up. Once I picked a place that I wanted to work and I applied. They turned me down, saying there were no openings (I just cold applied, not in response to a job listing). Every few weeks I checked back with them. Yes, they hired me. ;-) I only did this once, but that makes my success rate 100%. YMMV.
DMCA in 3..2...1...
Delicious Is a Dead Man Walking
What I find odd about the level of debate on this topic is that Taubes' thesis is easily tested empirically. Give up grains & carbs for a couple of months and see what happens. If, like me, you lose 30 pounds and lower your cholesterol significantly, then all the better. But if not, at least you'll be arguing from something other than "this violates the conventional wisdom." (Remember when the conventional wisdom promoted margarine and said eggs were bad?)
Haven't heard of FlockDB before, it looks really interesting
Android Reverse Engineering
I hope the rest of the year goes like this. I was just looking at git clients for the Mac and how to use git from th command line. w00t!
Thank you. As a Ruby package developer, I have to care about MANY platforms, not just Debian.

This is why RubyGems was developed, because neither Windows nor Mac OS X have package managers built in. Debian maintainers may despise RubyGems and what it represents, but the RubyGems developers have never been unwilling to take patches that make them better citizens. They have not, however, been interested in neutering fundamental features.
Freemium executed well with a small detail at Vimeo
It's all derivative of forum software. Thread, post, reply, notify, user, profile, follow.

If Reddit has an interest graph built on a social graph with a Twitter graph and a map to find all these graphs then they too can be the media darlings of Silicon Valley. But, wait, they slayed Digg, is that not good enough of a narrative in 2010?

Quora has now momentum, I think that's going to get them over the hump more so than anything else. When Steve Case is on your site commentin', that's at least worth $1MM in valuation right there.
The irony is not lost on me, certainly. I think this is the first time I've ever called out a comment as inappropriate in my nearly two years of active HN participation. Usually I read comments like this, downvote and flag, and then move on.

My intention was not to start a discussion. My intention was to make people think before upvoting, and to make people think before they consider posting a similar comment in the future. Hopefully, despite derailing the larger thread a bit, I achieved that goal.

I'm happy to take this discussion offline though, in order to prevent further derailment. My email is in my profile.
Wikipedia is broken in a lot of ways.

I wrote a big long comment about a year and a half ago where I supposed that the problems probably boil down to "editing as sport" and "status seeking quests for adminship". Both lead to situations where editing decisions are made in a slipshod fashion and then defended to the death to avoid losing points in RfA's.

Deletionism is not one of the things that is broken about Wikipedia. Deletionism makes absolute sense. Wikipedia owns the Google SERPs, there is tremendous incentive to paste up bullshit articles for profit, and the sheer volume of crap --- take this from someone who spent 4 months patrolling AfD --- is staggering. The "pure" deletionist ideology is harsh, but it ultimately serves the greater good of the project.

In every one of these debates, I see people lose sight of the fundamental point of Wikipedia. It is not, as many people believe, a repository of all human knowledge. It's an encyclopedia. The point is not to have all possible articles. In fact, that's the opposite of the point. The point is to have only good articles, using nothing but volunteer work.

I too am done wasting time on Wikipedia, and I'm pretty grossed out by what happens when you look under the rock that is the Wikipedia: namespace. But I respect the project itself. It is tremendously, staggeringly successful. It is clearly doing something right.
Very cool!

I just slapped together http://www.mileagebrain.com/ in two days to do a proof-of-concept and convince myself that it was feasible, and to gauge interest from the frequent flyer community. They love it so I'm moving forward with making it a real product.
It's definitely easier to look for known flaws, such as obvious spec violations like this ECDSA signing flaw. It's much harder to review a high-assurance system and be sure you've anticipated all possible ways something might fail years down the road.

One point I have not said recently is that crypto review is very expensive in terms of time and money. So the design approach to security problems should be roughly:

1. Avoid crypto if possible. Store data on the server, for example. Doing this correctly is orders of magnitude easier than developing crypto protocols.

2. If using crypto, use something high-level. GPG is a great example of a bundle of crypto primitives with a well-understood protocol for encryption, integrity protection, and key management. PGP has been around for 20 years now.

3. If none of the above works, develop custom crypto protocol. But budget 10x for review as for design/implementation. So if you spend a week and $10,000 developing it, spend 10 weeks and $100,000 to review/improve it. This includes external review, not just internal. This goes for everyone, even "experts".

My main point is: "Crypto costs a lot. Are you sure you want to pay for it?" Because if you do implement custom crypto, you (or your users) will pay for it one way or another.
Taubes is a journalist.

Well, sort of. He also has an undergrad degree in Physics from Harvard and masters in Engineering from Stanford. Which doesn't mean he's right, but it does make him better qualified as a science journalist than most.

The people on HN are several standard deviations ahead of his audience.

Yes, and this is what's making me want to cry. This is one of the few audiences that knows what 'reductio ad absurdum' means, and yet bright people (whom I respect) seem unable to grasp what to me seems to me a fairly obvious argument. Are contrafactuals truly so rare as to be unrecognizable?

Ignoring the fact that his science is wrong.

Sure, it might be, but the commentary so far has not been about "his science" but about his portrayal of conventional wisdom, which he also agrees is wrong. It's like pointing out that a mathematician is obviously a fool for saying "Let us assume momentarily that the square root of two is a rational number" as the preamble to a proof.

It feels like a scene from Idiocracy. It's not that Taubes is wrong, it's that you are misreading his argument. I'm not arguing that "it's complex" --- although I'll happily stand up to defend deconstructionism --- rather I'm trying to tell you that you are in agreement with Taubes that the conventional wisdom is rubbish.

Now, if you want to point out the flaws in his actual argument and say that there is no difference between calories from carbs and from proteins, please do! But insisting that he's wrong because it really takes more than 20 calories sounds an awful lot like chanting "Brawndo's got electrolytes".

It's a new year. I want to regain my faith in the world. Please stop making me cry.