skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>>would it be wrong to assume that 99% of people visiting the site already know what it is?

Every industry is different, of course, but I think pitching a product/service (however briefly) is always a good thing. Give people an intriguing reason to sign up and see what else is on offer.
Neat example of how all aspects of the pharo dev environment are visible to the programming language.

Though as for actually counting LoC, I agree with Bill Gates that "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." :-)
I almost never use a debugger as well (used to rely on it when I was a beginner though). Even when I'm looking at someone else's code, my time is generally spent more productively analyzing it with pencil and paper than running a debugger.

As some one else mentioned, I typically only use gdb for crash dump analysis. The one tool I do use a lot though is Valgrind (to check for memory leaks).
I doubt it's because you're Canadian ;)

Running Windows and Firefox (which Flash normally gets along with) but it's not working for me either.
Think of it like this - if you go to a site and you know they offer accounting software, that doesnt mean you KNOW their software. You dont know how good it is, or how bad.

If you want to keep it simple, at least inform your users with your video without hiding it - ala Dropbox.

I think you need to make a much bigger effort to win your customers - an empty frontpage with just a sign up/login form will lose you a lot of potential customers. Remember, you're not Facebook yet.
Building with HTML5 Tech Talk (how Zynga, FB and SproutCore do it)
Thanks for all your feedback! I'll definitely keep this in mind and do some a/b testing here in the near future.
I can't watch the video (Chrome, US, Windows), but it's likely the change bank commercial.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/first-citywide-...
One data point: I've always thought of CV as more common in academia/research type fields and as some of my foreign colleague's name for a resume.
While they may not have designed the system specifically for it, they've certainly done their best to capitalise on it, including (for example) advertisments such as the one in TC's image, which I imagine is what the patent troll will use to justify the claim.
I watched the tutorial video and it seems like cool idea. In regards to the video, the music was a bit too intense and distracting for me. Maybe you could remix or choose a different track??
Thx--would appreciate you sending me queries that didn't work for you (if you can recall any you're willing to share): http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html

Always trying to improve!
Micro project that allow you plan what need to do in year
Even if that occurs, the US government can make use of a patent without paying fees under something akin to eminent domain laws.
Thx -- both of those things we're actively working on and should have something for this year (probably earlier than later).
Five Common Mistakes in Jumping the Corporate Ship
Yes, I can. I was employed by such a company and laid off when I made a stink.

There is no legal "law" of such: it's an economic reality, however.
My startup, TidePowerd, went through the inaugural class (Fall 2009) of the Springboard incubator (http://www.springboard.com). I'll say without a doubt that we wouldn't have had anywhere near the success we've had to date without going through the program.

Back then, the incubator was hosted on-premises at Red Gate Software; they're the friendliest bunch of folks I've ever met, and always went out of their way to help us however they could. About once a week, we'd have a one-hour lecture by one of the Red-Gaters giving us a "crash course" in some area of the software business -- sales, marketing, customer service, product management, and more.

We also had the chance to have beer and pizza with some of the big names in the startup world: Peldi (of Balsamiq), Ryan Carson (of Carsonified), and even Joel Spolsky. It's great to have a few minutes to bounce ideas off people who have built a successful business in the same way you want to, and it was really cool of them to take the time to give us advice.

I could go on for ages, but instead I'll wrap up with this: it'll tough -- because Springboard offers you a lot of learning opportunities (in addition to the work you'll need to do to build your startup) -- but going through the program will be the best thing that ever happened to you (and to your startup).

Apply: http://www.springboard.com

If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email (my address is in my profile).
Yeah I feel your pain. I submitted a question. Time expired and after the round closed, it said I hadn't submitted anything and thus I am disqualified.
I think I should avoid naming them; this essay caused enough flames already.
Nokia has very little presence here in North America for reasons I haven't been able to fathom.

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that most people in the UK will have have owned a Nokia at some point in the last 10-15 years. The brand really is that common. It's the cheap first phone you get, or a fast replacement if your smartphone dies and you still have a contract to uphold, or the phones parents buy their kids 'for emergencies'.
Yeh... it leaves a lot to be desired (another "this is not netflix" situations). Particularly the streaming quality, which is why I don't bother.

I'm on the "three disks at home" package which apparently lets me watch about 4,000 of the streamable ones for free. In the past on cheaper accounts I got less I think.

In my experience the "top" recent films are always pay-for, and the lesser known ones are free. I personally don't mind that because I've always enjoyed indie/arthouse cinema :)

Definitely do not think it is worth it for streaming only.
Yep, Nokia N900 is the only phone accomplishing that :-)

For example, Android and iOS browsers skipped the rather useful contentEditable functionality. On my N900 I have it.
EBay Had a Hot 4th Quarter
That was my thought as well. Anyone have a chart of the margins? Is the 60/40 split inverted?.
I come to your site and I have no idea what it's for. Even if a friend in a band said, "hey, check this out," if I don't see something on the homepage that tells me I'm in the right place, I'm going to close the window. So in big letters say it's "Analytics for musicians" or whatever. Then I know this is the site my friend told me about.

I did wait, and got the message to watch a 9 minute video. You lost me. You might have 60 seconds to show me why this is the greatest site ever. Nine minutes is waaaay too long.

I highly recommend MicroISV's that Sell by Bob Walsh. http://47hats.com/ebooks/ $20 ebook that will tell you how to make a successful landing/homepage. Best $20 I ever spent.
It might be good to say what RELA means

have you tried posting up on dontstayin.com?

People there are lot more rude and not really technical. But they are very keen on partying and organising events.
Great idea! I see this getting a lot of traction.

I would work a bit more on the website though. I don't think is perfectly clear what the objective is.

It looks like you want to accomplish two main things:

1. Get users to download the app

2. Get business owners to request more info.

Number 1 seems clear enough, but #2 I think is a bit shaky. I think business owners deserved a dedicated page explaining the benefits of why would they want to use Punchd.

The idea of the letter to request more info is great and you seem to know your fare share of Direct Response marketing :). However, the contact form is quite unfamiliar. Idea: work on the border to make it look more like an envelope (maybe a stamp or whatever)

Congrats on launching!

If you need any more tips drop me a line. Email is in my profile :)
Hahahah what you don't like inception?! Kidding. When I was coding the site around the time I made the video... I was on an Inception soundtrack binge, so I figured what could be better background music?! On second thought... perhaps I should change it haha... thanks!
"Proof by halo bias;" this could be a valuable new technique to math in the social sciences.
I really hope device manufacturers embrace this technology before Apple feels obliged to kick their butts once again.
Just another reason to totally love my Kindle.

As an aside, I just traveled with my Kindle to Europe and was ecstatic by the ability to load up on (free, from Gutenberg) books, and easily switch between them on the long flight.

However, those who herald the end of books is here are very wrong. Except from the "many books on long trip" or "Netflix-like instant book delivery" (and a few other, like reading long web pages) use cases, I wouldn't event think about switching to Kindle full-time. Gripes are:

* All books appear almost the same, little or no typesetting

* The note taking interface is shockingly primitive, e.g. just to get a questions mark requires several clicks

* AFAIK, pagination depends on you display, so bookmarks may change place among Kindle readers on different devices.

Of course, all of these are easily addressable. The question is: can the device that does these and other cool stuff (e.g. color) be sold around ~ $150.
In case you can't play or don't want to watch the video (an SNL commercial parody), here's the reveal:

"How do you make money doing this? The answer is simple. Volume."
Reading the actual patent (http://www.google.com/patents?id=e-ULAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... ), seems dubious (well, it's dubious full stop..)

My brief reading of it seems to me that the patent is quite specific about categorising celebs into their "fields", it also talks about biographical details as a key part.

I think they are trying to force their patent to fit Twitters model, and it doesn't really fit.
RFID Solution Providers 
RFID solutions help businesses reduce costs and increase operational efficiency and throughput. Finally, businesses have found that, as a result of RFID technology, employees are better aligned with processes and systems and are able to more effectively meet business objectives
Josh Klein Explains How “Hacking Work” Can Build a Smarter Business
What we need is a compilation of examples where a software patent hindered or threatened to hinder innovation.
Actually, they have streaming in Sweden. Small selection though, only about 100 movies.
It hit me the wrong way on the day I read it. I backed off when I realized that I was probably interpreting the intent incorrectly.
Software that gives web images an expiration date
Amazon sold it's DVD rental services in Germany and the UK to Lovefilm for a 48% stake in the company. Today they acquired the outstanding 52%.
Maze Generation: Wilson's algorithm
No White Smoke Yet in Cupertino
Resume for the US.

CV for the rest of the world.

Let users chose the name.

And post a link to show your work :)
The author didn't read the fine print on the deal - *Amazon.com is not a sponsor of this promotion.

LivingSocial is making the grab for customers and if Amazon isn't a sponsor of the promotion then they certainly aren't losing more than 6 million dollars as the author claims.
Number 1 in the UK, Number 1 in Germany. Big growth in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
I've been surprised at how seemingly minor changes in the relative cost of doing something can have major impacts on behavior.

I'd like to exercise in the AM, however I keep failing at it because it costs much more to go to work early, than to go to work, work until evening, and then walk downstairs to the gym.

What are the "good" things we should target for cost-reduction?

Exercise, reflection/planning, socializing, projects. Anything else?
On the Usage of Most
The print statements to debug was a constant in "Coders at Work" too. Also in that book I found interesting that everyone interviewed was asked what the most difficult thing they had to debug was, and almost all of them said something to do with concurrency.
Surely this patent would run into 1st amendment issues were it ever to go to court?
Google's answer to Wikipedia, Knol, is all but dead
The main thing I'd like to see is a Kindle DX with Wifi support.
Does your iPhone make you happy? Text analysis says no
Attack of the trolls - managing your online reputation
Pagination doesn't actually exist because (except for pdf's) there are no pages, only locations (see bottom of screen). Bookmarks mark locations, not pages.
What I tell others: I'm so good that I don't need a debugger.

The truth: Print statements work so well that they dramatically decrease the need for a debugger. Then when I actually do need a debugger, I have used it so infrequently that I forgot the commands, so I just use more Print statements.
Fake keyboard: PCs hacked with custom Android USB drivers
Business and marketing courses seem the obvious thing.

I'm not sure how much an economics course would help, seeing as the basics should be covered by the business course.
It doesn't matter.

The bonus you get on google for a keyword matching the domain is only on an exact match. So cv.com will get a bonus, but mycv.com won't. Also because "mycv" is treated as a single word it won't even get a normal match for the term "cv", my-cv.com would get the match as Google treat the hypen as a a space, but in general you should avoid hyphenated domain names.
The Evolution of a Python Programmer
To go further, What is and what isn't an "explanation" ?

"Things always fall down" doesn't add much. It says that the observation can be repeated.

Newton's law says more than "There exists gravitational force between bodies" which isn't much of an improvement over "things always fall down".

Newton provided a mathematical formula to measure it, which, as best as could be seen in Newton's time, fit exactly with reality, applying from apples up to planets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gra...

This makes testable, measurable predictions about "why things fall down", i.e. "things fall down because all things obey the law of universal gravitation as given in the formula...". But it doesn't even begin to explain why there is gravity all rather than no gravity. Science is largely silent about this category of question of meaning not measurement - it observes reality and predicts based on extrapolating from existing observations. Other explanations of "why"
are hardly much better - "gravity exists because God said so" aren't very satisfying since you can't test it or infer anything from it.
I took 3 100 level business courses: Intro to Business, Intro to Marketing and Intro to Business Law. I'd recommend anybody with entrepreneurial ambitions take something similar. Of the three, I'd say the Intro to Marketing had the most useful information in it.

Taking at least 1 course in Accounting probably wouldn't be a bad idea either.

You might also find some value in Statistics courses, and other Maths courses that aren't part of your CS degree.
There are many things you can do on the phone. Not that many you want to do, given the experience.
In your target area, i.e. business, resume (don't forget the acute accent on the last e) is the defacto standard in the US, most people I encountered don't know the term CV.

Think of the situation as similar to "elevator" and "lift". I think most educated people, since they travel around, have contact with foreign people, etc., would know what a "lift" is but when you're going to a build a business, you want to avoid the awkwardness, unless, of course, you deliberately want to elicit the European or foreign feel (this is why some radio commercials for tea use people with British accents).
You can also rotate the axes to align with one object's motion. Then the 'axis test' reduces to one axis, and collision is a line-segment test.
The Ellipse is the Frisbee of Art
If browsing the web on the phone is as easy as on iOS or Android it’s not a dumb phone, it’s a smart phone.
Understanding Map Reduce
>anyone who visits for the first time is pretty much forced to read what it is

I think you're overestimating the patience of the average web user. I spent about 8 seconds trying to figure it out before giving up an closing the tab. without any idea of what the site is, I have no motivation to invest any time in trying to figure it out. just my opinion, though.
Nah, it's just discussion. It's highly upvoted, isn't it!
IDOS strikes back, returns to the App Store
I would recommend a Statistics class, if it is not already a requirement. In this increasingly data driven world, it's handy.
Smart Defrag | Best Disk Defrag Freeware | Free Defragmenter
Why America's 1st platinum bicycle city is Davis CA (video)
> The note taking interface is shockingly primitive, e.g. just to get a questions mark requires several clicks

Do you normally make notes in your physical books?

> AFAIK, pagination depends on you display, so bookmarks may change place among Kindle readers on different devices.

The start of the page you bookmarked will still be the start of the page you jump to, whatever display layout you use. The pages might be different length.
For academic and PhD people in the US, a CV is a multi-page document that goes into more detail, for instance, listing all of the details of all of your publications. A resume is generally a one page (sometimes two page) summary.

These are a bit flexible, though. I've seen three or four page resumes, and two page CVs.

From my perspective, having professional looking templates, each with a different look and feel, would be a major plus.
Why not? Long before the iPhone, several people got rich by selling J2ME apps to low end phones.
But then it does matter. While choice of language is not the end all be all it will affect run time, scalability, resource usage, correctness and time to market. And if you have a choice in language to use then do not forget we are humans with psychological considerations; balance the choice between the one you want while also considering its fit for the problem domain. Going less common has its down but also up sides. Its up to you to decide what is paramount.

Some syntax and language features suit different mental types better. This will affect things like motivation hence touching correctness, time to market and similar mental state affectable things.
Kind of funny that Americans use a French word and French people use a Latin word :)
I good thing I found recently is PageLime CMS.

Basically you tag some of your static-page divs as 'editable' and then give PageLime your FTP login. Users can then use the PageLime site to edit text and image content. The results are uploaded to your server. It has a very nice UI. Haven't tried it but I plan to use the free plan for a small site soon.

Saves you installing any CMS, mySQL etc in your hosting service.
This.
I always liked the term "CV" (I was just trying to be different - lame I know), but I realized in North America - I'm Canadian - "resume" is the defacto standard. A position in academia will mention CV, or rather, "CV/Resume".
In my experiences, I've noticed there are some distinct differences between a CV and a Resume. The most obvious difference being the focus on papers, publications and research in a CV that's not usually found in a resume.
From my experience in university, a resume is a shorter summation of a person whereas a CV is more detailed.

That was my understanding anyway.
Direct link for Q&A: http://venturebeat.com/2011/01/19/hacking-work-josh-klein/
IT employees wrecking havoc to organizations and how to protect your company
I agree you can't generalize a problem, but if you make an algorithm work on more than just one specific problem class, aren't you generalizing the algorithm (in this case, by reducing the problem)? The only other word I can think to use there instead of generalize would be 'generify' but that's only used in the context of languages that have generics, IIRC.

If moultano had actually said 'generalize [the problem]' then I wouldn't have even left a comment, because everything you have said is correct, I just don't think his statement needed that clarification. Now, however, I'm interested in whether the word 'generalize' can be used with respect to algorithms. (<--- someone not in complexity theory)
> Prices for text messages are well known and there are plenty alternatives available.

Maybe in Germany, but not in America. We're calling it a scam because we think it is an example of price-fixing, which is anti-competitive, anti-free market behavior. (http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/guidelines/211578.htm)
Our CSE program had two statistic courses required. I feel statistics will be a great skill-set regardless of area of study.
JavaMe is not that cross-platform from what I've been told. Qt runs on Linux (including embedded), Mac, Windows, BeOS and Symbian/Maemo.
When my family sees me working I'm afraid they'd get the impression that I hate my work. It seems like I'm always dealing with something that doesn't quite work right.

I had a conversation with the salespeople in my organization that got me thinking about it too; as a developer, I was always talking about what was wrong or missing in my product, not what was right about it.

If you're the kind of programmer that the "buck stops with" you'll always be frustrated with what you've got because your whole job is to make it better.
If you really want it to have no explanation normally, because the user has been there before, just set a cookie saying that it's been seen before/closed. If a user is coming back often, then they will close it once, and be done.
You would benefit greatly from an intro to philosophy class.
I get the same problem on Reddit, except they call it "there does not seem to be anything here".
Pivotal Tracker No Longer Free
Great agile tool...sadly Pivotal Labs has to charge now.
Facebook, privacy, and the uncanny valley of advertising
I'd suggest some form of design/arts/UI/UX course. Break the "This looks like it was designed by a programmer" loop!
Languages. At least one. Get yourself to reading and conversational competence. Agreed with zoomzoom on philosophy.

Accounting.
One of the reasons why I like Google Voice on Android so much is it handles texting through data, which is free if the plan is unlimited. And that's not even counting the additional benefit of being able to get threaded texting through the web interface.

On another note, here's some cost analysis from 2008 that doesn't appear to have been linked yet unless I missed it: http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages
Not using a debugger is like giving up a knife and using a spoon to eat your steak. Yeah, you can do it, but why would you? Debuggers are invaluable when you encounter difficult bugs, especially ones related to threading issues. Being able to freeze/run threads at will comes in handy. Setting hardware breakpoints to see when particular memory locations are changing is also useful. Maybe you're just not using the debugger to its full potential?
Wait, you have to pay to receive messages in the US. Thats batshit. I wonder if there are any mechanisms in place to prevent financial ddos?
All of my SMS is free, sent through Google Voice.
You don't directly. But if the internet landscape becomes unusable to content providers, you'll care when there is nothing worth finding anymore.
The World's Happiest Countries
<meta> Please don't complain about possibly being downvoted. It ruins otherwise good posts. You had an insightful post that people would have modded up anyway. </meta>

Indeed, it's a lot easier to justify this as "fair" when it's someone you like. I admit that I'd have a harder time defending the GS exec, but I don't see how what they did is against the rules. It may not be "fair" because poorer people don't have that opportunity, but it's still legal. The focus should be less on fair/unfair and more on fixing the current broken system in which many people die.
That's not surprising though, if there's one thing I've had drummed into me throughout my education and career, it's that concurrency is /hard/. Particularly since it requires thinking about things in a completely different way to a lot of single-threaded programming.