skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I completely agree with you, I've always been much of a generalist myself and after a while you realize that the fundamental patterns of technology remain fairly constant, only the details change.

It's just that there's a difference between being able to learn new technologies and feeling like you have to. Good developers certainly have high learning capacity but none of us has infinite learning capacity. My concern is that given the pace of technological change we create (or are forced to create) unrealistic expectations of ourselves. If the lead developer on an ongoing successful product is made to feel that he needs to learn mobile development, I think that maybe crossing a line (of course everything depends on the exact circumstances, if the product were stable and the mobile interface was all that remained to be done it might be a different story).
Yes, it does. Thanks!
The remarks about commercial distribution of the Danger from the Deep CC By-Nc-Nd assets do make me wonder if the Non-Commercial clause can stand up in court.

Consider, by analogy, that I produce a product FOO, which I sell for $1 as a download. It includes a license prohibiting commercial distribution, but this license is not visible to the consumer before purchase and download. Supposing the purchaser simply stores the software, but does not run it nor agree to the terms of the license. They burn it to a CD, delete the original copy, and sell it for $10. They have never been exposed to the license, so Vernor v. Autodesk does not apply, and their redistribution is protected by the first sale doctrine.

Suppose instead that I distribute BAR freely under the same license and conditions. The reseller, having lawfully downloaded a copy of the work, burned it to CD, deleted the original work, but having never been exposed to the license, will also argue that they have a protected right to resell the work, under the first sale doctrine.

The question: Does the First Sale Doctrine distinguish between works that are sold, and those that are distributed freely?
Maybe we need something like twitter implemented... when you scroll below certain number of comments they load n comments more automagically.
You also aren't stuck with overpaid employees once everyone lese is up to speed.
That actually might be a downside for the highly paid youngsters. Once everyone else has caught up with them, why keep them for such a high price?
First, I should be clear in saying that it bothers me when people brush off electric cars completely with that one argument.

My questions for you: Why is it "impossible" to develop a new infrastructure? Can you provide any data to support that? I'm always interested to know why people think "because it doesn't exist, it can't exist".

And to answer your question, here are my points:

1) When automobiles were first adopted it was unlikely that people were taking long trips. The infrastructure developed over time. Give these people some time to develop the new infrastructure.

2) That common argument neglects to recognize I can charge an electric car in my garage every night. I don't need charging/battery swapping stations everywhere. (Though, I concede, people in apartments would)

3) The above point is particularly significant when you realize that the commute for millions of people everyday is only a few miles.

Are electric cars going to solve everyone's problems today? No. Are they poised to solve the problems for many people soon? Absolutely.
Cool. Those are both good products. Heaven forbid, an acquisition that actually makes sense!
This post was on the HN front page for a few hours:

http://blog.trackjumper.com/2010/08/first-1000-visitors-part...

It got about 1800 visits. It's a quick overview of some useful (and not so useful) directory-type traffic drivers.
I have a problem with the metrics they use:

20 pages of writing, or 40 pages of reading

They are going on the assumption that increased pages of writing and increased pages of reading is a metric for amount learned.

There are so many lurking variables at play here. The attribution of cause and effect here to these arbitrary variables is an over simplification fallacy of what's really going on and why.
Ugh, I hope this does not happen, I hate the scroll-to-the-bottom-and-get-more thing. Particularly if the server is under heavy load already, you never know if there is more or if so how much, and it takes the scrollbar away from your mouse pointer once it's loaded another chunk due to the relative offset.
This goes pretty much 100% against my tip. Absolutely DO use a grid system for your design, please DONT'T use a CSS grid framework.

Here's why:

Let's say you have a class "column-760" for a 760px wide column. Now let's say you want to re-design the page. Not only do you have to write new styles, you have to go in and remove all the places you've written "column-760" in the actual markup. This entirely defeats the purpose of external CSS, and incorrectly couples style with content. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to work on a page that says something like:

<div class="column column-760 relative green-background"></div>

DO use content descriptive class names, DON'T use physically descriptive class names.
That is what happens on slashdot.
The more I read from 1000memories the less I like the concept. The entire of the premise seems insensitive from the outset, but the cold analysis they do in their blog posts makes it feel like they're more interested in growsing their business than helping people grieve (or whatever their mission statement is).
A smaller estimate with a more detailed breakdown on the Entrustet blog:

http://blog.entrustet.com/2011/01/17/408000-us-facebook-user...
Ask HN: What skills do you think are necessary to succeed in life?
Assume success = happiness, fun, excitement.

Skills like not being afraid of doing small things, working without distractions when needed, knowing what you want and what you don't want, etc.

What would you want to go back and teach yourself?
Just so I'm clear on the etiquette at HN... it's acceptable to advertise your own products/work (without a "Review my...")?

I'm not trying to undermine Mr. Rosadi... just curious.
Maybe I could have been more clear. I was asking for a detailed description of what he saw, not a screenshot.
It seems like that should get harder and harder as the density of disks increases. I wonder how different the ease of recovery is for drives made now compared to when that book was written.
Everything looks simple and easy from the surface.

Nine times out of ten when I hear a developer (or engineer, or lawyer, or wall streeter, or doctor, or contractor, almost anyone) saying something else is trivial or easy, it says a lot more about how little the person knows about the subject matter than the actual complexity of the subject at hand.

I can't think of one thing in my life that is gets simpler as you learn more. It is all corner cases and esoteric solutions to non-obvious problems as you get more advanced. Engineering, software, math, physics, language, philosophy, economics, politics, design, and every single sport I've ever played (not to mention most relationships) only seem to get more complicated the deeper you dive into them.
Kids Who Don't Sleep Enough Are at Greater Risk for Depression, Anxiety Later
The more link has the rel="nofollow" attribute, so anything but the top comments will (in theory) not be indexed by search engines either. Given that some functions of the site are based on karma, I hope it's just a stopgap measure.
Good point with the vapourware-wariness, but as far as government subsidies go electric vehicles is where some money should be going. Especially when compared to the billions given to companies like GM who were either unable or unwilling to adapt even when facing bankruptcy
My roommate in college was an accounting and comp sci double major. He became an accountant after college. Never have I heard him say "you know, I could replace my entire job with a computer program". Nor have I heard him really complain about the software he uses at work.

This makes me think the problem isn't really with the software available to your average full-time accountant.

Maybe the real issue lies with small businesses that need some accounting, but it is not what they do 100% of everyday (but isn't that what Quickbooks is for?)
Interesting. I hadn't noticed any ads on youtube so closely related to my search history, so it was a bit surprising.
So today I learned two things from the front page on Hacker News:
1) College students aren't really learning anything in college.
2) Fresh, young college grads should be paid more.

Makes sense.
Anyone want to Co-Sponsor a Table at the Crunchies?
Im a Single Founder, and I need a table at the Crunchies. I have a good rate and the buy-in is $500. comment or hit me up cp@metrodataone.com
NOoooo!!! Anything but the Scrollbar of Sisyphus!
The findings also will likely spark a debate over what helps and hurts students learn. To sum up, it's good to lead a monk's existence: Students who study alone and have heavier reading and writing loads do well.

You can "lead a monk's existence" by yourself, without paying a college $40-50k per 30-week year. Hit the books, learn as much as you can, then go out into the real world and make things happen.

It kills me that education and credentialing are so tightly bound together in popular perception. Learning is about what happens in your head, not necessarily what happens in a classroom.

I'm kicking around an idea of an alternative credential for entrepreneurs, which would legally certify you've operated a real business at a certain profit level for a certain period of time. If you want to seek employment when you're done, most employers would recognize that you have economically valuable skills - above and beyond those of college graduates.

If the business takes off, you won't care about the credential... which is a good thing. The amount you'd learn pursuing such a credential would put most college programs to shame.
I have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with the the founders. I can say, categorically, that your analysis of their motivation is wrong.

Yes, they are interested in growing their business, but their commitment to helping people remember loved ones in a positive, loving manner is inspiring.

I can see how you think the blog post is cold, but unfortunately death is the backbone of their business. You can't judge them for taking an objective look at the numbers. I loved 1000Memories from the beginning, since it solves such a real problem - a ton of facebook users will die, and facebook is an awkward place to honor/remember loved ones. They are providing an elegant and thoughtful solution.
When will the myth that MBAs can manage everything die?
Particularly among board of directors of large companies.
I can appreciate that you guys feel there is a market for your services, but your enthusiasm and analysis are probably best kept private rather than blogged. Frankly this post comes off as a little ghoulish.
> If they didn't want to invite criticism,

If the only outlet for your criticism is Hacker News, then I would argue that it's not very constructive criticism. You're saying that criticism is what will make the product better, but that only works if your audience can directly affect the outcome (e.g. GNOME developers/contributors).
The most important skills I can think of:

Curiosity - Never be afraid to learn how something works, whether it's some new programming language or a specific law or why Pop-Rocks fizz - be curious as it will make learning new things a lot more entertaining.

Speak Up - Learn how to speak up when necessary, whether it requires being assertive to put people in to place, or showing someone what you are capable of and something you have knowledge in - don't be afraid to speak your mind.

Patience - this is a very important trait - you will need it when trying to learn something new, or if you are in a position of mentoring someone. You need to understand it takes time to get things right.

Greed - yep, I'll say it - you need a certain level greed (not just with money but also in accomplishments) - not because it's a good thing in the grand scheme of things, but it can also act as a motivator to your success in life; at the same time don't let greed get the best of you and be humble about everything - even if it's a facade at times.
"Them darn kids aint learnin cuz they aint tryin!"

Let's consider the assumption that between 36% and 45% of all undergrad students are slackers. Sure, a bunch of students aren't learning because they are slackers, but why there are SO MANY of them? Are there more slackers as a percentage of the population than in the past? Is the internet/cell-phone/facebook era changing the mentality of students to be more focused on the short term easiest/best solution? Or maybe the percent of slackers in the general populace is the same, but a much larger percentage of secondary students go on to undergrad. Well, why are so many more going on in school, especially those that are slackers? Parental/societal pressures might suggest that going to college is just "what you do" after high school. Or maybe peer pressure makes students continue in through school because their peers expect it of them. Perhaps it is sheer inertia that is the driving force; our slackers do whatever is the most expedient at the moment, so when the time comes they'd rather go to a generic college with an undecided major than to go and do something.

Or, (and I like this theory the most), students feel a need, from an economical perspective, to get a degree in order to get a job. And then they go to school, with the singular goal of earning that piece of paper so they can get a job. At this point, "slacker" has been forced into the role by going to school just to be able to get a job afterwards. It's a means to an end, and incidental value is just that. At this point, it isn't just the college's fault, but the general expectations of employers. Why do you require a college degree? Is knowing the theory essential to doing the work or save a substantial amount of training or ramp-up time?
Newbie's Guide to Network/Internet Security?
I know a little computer science and some high level programming languages. Can anyone point me to some good books, articles, or websites to get started?
A nice visualization has been made: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1397751
The U.S. has the advantage of a relatively (for a developed country) high population growth rate of around 1% a year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...)

A growing population helps in keeping per capita debt (or its growth) down.

The downside of this, of course, is that the U.S. needs a 1% GDP growth each year to prevent its population from getting poorer.
> but much yet less usable in the process

Based on what metrics and evidence? I think it does a good job making me more efficient.
No need when you've already got Chinese manufacturers that don't ask questions. Or whatnot.
I'm curious, what is the career path and salary looking like for people in these situations as time progresses? For example, someone at Facebook who might be paid $120k, how much higher is their salary going to get as they get older and more experienced?
George looked down and sighed. “So you are telling me
there are no guarantees, and oh by the way, you want me
to mentor these new guys on the business requirements?”

“Yep, that sums it up,” I responded, not half as
convinced as I sounded.

“Well, that sucks.”

It sounds like this engineer didn't learn anything. What he should've done was quit on the spot and started updating his skillset. He should've taken his experience and applied it to new technology, and then bring it to a completely new company with new problems to tackle and hopefully an even higher salary.
The problem isn't that college-aged kids are performing poorly. The problem is that we've raised kids in an educational system that is dying and underfunded at the early levels. We cut physical education, art, music, cancel recess, and expect kids kids to grow up fine while learning subpar English and Maths. Universities have to lower their standards to help provide a job market for these children with under-developed fundamentals.
> buyers are told to install a hardware driver and software program on their Windows PC (both are safe and virus free, trust us!). After that, users are instructed to enter the password "0000" when prompted, but this seller doesn’t include instructions for changing the default password. It’s nice to know that computer crooks make the same flawed security design decisions as many mainstream manufacturers of consumer electronics.

It's not too hard to go from ignorance to malice. Imagine hawking these things and taking 10% off the top, through a backdoor...
Why not use semantic class names with the grid system? That's what a tool like Compass (http://compass-style.org/) will do for you.

Also, if you're using a template or theme, many of the changes you'd need to make if you were changing the layout would only be made in one place.
Some similar charts here, such as S&P Composite since 1871, adjusted for inflation (much more useful in my opinion):

http://dshort.com/articles/SP-Composite-pe-ratios.html
Note that the Tesla Roadster can be charged to full in ~3 hours on the 240V outlets found in RV Parks.

Crossing Utah is no problem: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=rv+park+near+Utah
use primarycss.com. it helps. Dont blow this
I don't understand the rationale for this feature.

Here's a better way to reduce load: make commenting not require a reload. Same for editing comments, deleting them, etc.
Online Car loan-Get fund for car without the hassle of paperwork
Stuxnet Authors Made Several Basic Errors
"See the sad thing about a guy like you is in fifty years you'll start doin' some thinking on your own and you're gonna come up that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library"

-Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymsHLkB8u3s
Haha I thought it was a virus too at first!!
Excellent linkbait post.

I actually think the growth in old people on facebook will be the 'death' of facebook (not death in gone away, death as in dying growth). Who wants to be where your parents are?
TechCrunch vs. Engadget as RockEm SockEm Robots
chrome version: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mmgagnmbebdebebb...
If Google tried something like that, phone vendors would just fork.
It never will. It's another example of professional chauvinism. We're guilty of it[1], so too are lawyers, economists, mathematicians and no doubt many others.

That said, I think an interesting thought experiment would be to ask a manager to run a ... something ... without knowing what it is or what it does. Is it a factory or a retail outlet (which is all most MBA programs teach you how to run, really)? What is made or sold there? Why did production or sales fall? What product should be developed or marketed next?

My suspicion is that most MBAs would complain that this is too little information. And by god they'd be right.

Incidentally, I wonder if any B-schools have studied the performance of C-suite officers comparing Greeks (coming from elsewhere) and Trojans (long-termers with domain exertise).

[1] Try this on: "A good programmer can program anything."
I meant on reddit. Is your reply satire or am I missing something?

I'm not a new user and my comments generally fair well here.

I (was, but am not now) downvoted on HN for saying that my posts on reddit get well received attention even with lots of noise... Seems ironic...
1. I worry I might have a bug that returns the proper output for some inputs, but improper output for other inputs.

2. Cryptographically strong random numbers isn't strictly required for a bcrypt salt, I guess. But if I'm building something which I plan to share with other people, I'd rather err on the side of too strong.
Hahahaha this is brilliant! I remember there used to be a popular central site for finding DHTML widgets back when that was a thing - anyone remember what it was called? (Sorry, I know that is vague, it's all I can remember. I think it was quite popular at the time, though.) I'd be curious to find out if it's still around and still as kitchy as it once was.
Well, jed has removed it, but his original comment here implied that links|comments are ordered solely on the score via voting... While that is a larger driver in the "topics" that get posted, it certainly is NOT the algorithm used for determining comment ordering.

I noted more in my later comment responding to your (in my opinion) naive cheapshot on reddit, but the "best" algorithm, that is the default, does not simply rank by the number of votes. And even then, the nature of subreddits and people opting to subscribe to that which they're interested in goes a long way to putting their "upvotes" or "downvotes" into the context of the users in that subreddit.
Now at Starbucks: Buy a Latte by Waving Your Phone
I think in all their marketing they should use examples of successful specific individual memorials, even if they're trying to illustrate that this is a growing problem, and maybe adopt a consistent "tone" in dealing with death being inherently sad but not something you can just ignore.

How a memorial brought together friends from around a the country/world in a specific case is probably going to put people in a better frame of mind and makes it seem less mercenary. They should study how funeral homes, etc. sell services; I really doubt most people buy their caskets at Costco.
> I wonder how much more code I'd need to write to use this as a backend to handle billing my customers?

More than you'd expect. Plus you are now relying entirely on yourself to remain abreast of changes to the law and accounting practices.

The division of labour is not some kind of personal affront to programmers, mate.
Amazon Releases Elastic Beanstalk!... What?
I was using my AWS console a few minutes ago and a new tab popped up featuring the odd title "Elastic Beanstalk". I tried to sign up for the service and access the documentation, but got nowhere.
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/7673/elastic.jpg

Google turns up elasticbeanstalk.com which redirects to AWS.

Ideas? Is it an ever expanding farm of Minecraft servers? Or maybe unlimited storage for hosting for leaked Scientology documents? Or is it just the public page for their long rumored agro-business venture?
It's going to be interesting to see what Apple does here.

Prior to the iPhone 4's release, Android competitors were poo-poo-ing the 3GS for its pitiful 480x320 display, which by then looked dated against the (up to) 800x480 (iirc).

In hindsight, Apple's move was both farsighted and brilliant. In doubling the resolution they provided a seamless user experience.

In light of this I was a little surprises theipad introduced both a new aspect ratio and resolution, a resolution not even fully capable of 720p.

It really makes me wonder what Apple will do. Will they repeat the iPhone 4 trick and double it this or next year? 2048x1536 does seem rather high.

It's possible there will be an altogether different resolution but I rrwally think developers would need 2+ months notice of that to update their appsand get them approved. It wouldn't be as drastic change as the original iPad as that was a totally new form factor but it'll still be a change.

So the choices seem to be no change, doubling or new resolution. All have downsides so Apple seems to be in somewhat of a corner.

If the iPad 2 is just a CPU/RAM bump to the iPhone 4 and camera, even if a little thinner, I will be disappointed at this point.

The originalipad was a huge gamble and I believe it paid off beyond Apple's most optimistic estimates. Perhaps there'd is room for a big hardware bump given a concrete track record.