skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Excluding computers and the internet, I would honestly have to say cell phones generally, and more specifically the iPhone.
no, phone companies are large and can pursue legal action. as much as you want to think of corporations as persons, your analogy does not hold up against a single developer located in thailand.
It sounds like you've worked at some very inefficient companies.
Interesting, this is similar to the Schumpeter's vision of an entrepreneur.
> the building they paid you to build.

so you're not paying attention at all? they did not pay him, that is why he did this.
I honestly think going from 0 to 2500 will be harder than 2500 to 10000.
Lots of people don't get to that first 2500 because their products aren't in demand, but if you do, you'll realize there is demand for your product and from then on you start scaling.
It's incredible how small the gyro is. I expected something bigger, like a tiny marble (eg the first diagram).
Haha I thought you were being serious up until traveling instantly through time and space... because at first it seemed like yet another completely unrealistic "design" by yet another "designer" who doesn't quite grasp current technological limitations. But you're right! You are much better at it!

I will say however that without the (seemingly, given the limitations of their time) unrealistic visionaries, we would not have the technologies that we have today.
Great point. I've had personal experience with this. It's not just the physical office environment, but the programming processes chosen and the skill of the managers. If a manager is good enough to place you in a role on a project where you will shine, the manager should get some credit for your increased productivity.
I disagree with you. If I liked the idea of doing pointless, repetitive manual labor, getting sweaty, having my entire body hurt and then do it all over again the next day, I wouldn't have spent so much time getting a degree.
"Net neutrality" isn't really going to be a problem in the UK, since the incumbent (BT) is required to sell just the last mile bandwidth to other ISPs and we have a choice of many ISPs to provide the backhaul. I can simply use an ISP that doesn't mess about.

See this post from the owner of a small, highly technically clued ISP: http://revk.www.me.uk/2010/11/two-speed-internet.html

In the US, AIUI the problem is that there is a last mile monopoly in most places that includes Internet backhaul, so competition doesn't work.
Fonts use hinting rules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting). To my knowledge, SVG, for example, hasn't (which, for example, is a problem for SVG webfonts on iPad, http://opentype.info/blog/2010/04/13/the-ipad-and-svg-fonts-...).

High-PPI displays would ultimately solve this. I doubt any software (somehow kludgy) solution will become widespread before technology arrives.
patio11 is right on the money. The linked site, and the discussions here, are testament to the fact that project management and business management are different skillsets from software development.

It's not fun to make money arrangements with clients that work for both parties, but it's a vital part of running a business. For tech people, it's often neglected, because many of us just want to write code. On the bright side, it's really not that bad or uncomfortable once you become accustomed to it and have successfully navigated those waters a few times. If you are in the business of trading your time for money, then print out the last paragraph of patio11's post and meditate on it before you enter into each business arrangement.
A good reminder that anyone can suffer from unexpected loopy opinions about some stuff. You can't take anything at face value.
Nope, you're right to point that out. But a certain amount of success is an important requirement.

You can still fail sometimes and try again and have success or find out that something is just not possible.

So trying to put it in a single word was maybe a weak attempt. There are more factors, like do something new (and hopefully have success with it), learn a lot, hard work...
That's making a new market.

Pretty different than trading against an existing market.
Consider this sequence:

0041301E 33 D2 xor edx, edx
00413020 83 E8 02 sub eax, 2
00413023 74 01 jz loc_00413026
00413025 4A dec edx
00413026 ...

Without a single-byte int 3, a break on dec edx will mess up everything if that branch is not taken.
Seems like 'succeding' and 'innovation' are key components, according with the other comment.
And neither learned a lesson so they'll carry on within the pond at the bottom.
Also, Twitter: http://twitter.com/raynimmo
What for? Just move on. Don't waste more of your life on this. These people shoot themselves in the foot all the time, there's no need to pull a trigger.
lovely place and cheep

couple of contracts a year paid in pounds/usd/euro/yen and you could sustain a happy life.

visas are a bastard, you need to skip the country every few months to renew your tourist visa.
Sorry, but I wouldn't hire these guys, and I've never screwed anyone over.

We only know one side of the story. It could be that they added a whole bunch of extra charges that weren't in the contract, and when the client balked, did this as blackmail. Or maybe the work was of horrible quality. Who knows? I don't want to work with people that could potentially go nuclear on me over a legitimate dispute.

On the other hand, I'd have no trouble working with someone that has a history of suing clients that don't pay up. Or even someone who point blank told me he'd sue me if I didn't pay up (although I'd consider it mildly offensive). Since I have no intention of doing something that'll make me lose a court case, I don't fear getting sued.

Loose cannons, on the other hand, I do fear, which these guys clearly are. Even if they're in the right, this time.
Sequence of tweets:

anyone got any suggestions what to do when a client wont pay for increased development costs for work you have already completed?
5:01 AM Jan 18th via web

Should I change a bad clients site to a page that says they aint paid me and then change the password?
7:08 PM Jan 20th via Twitter for Android

this is what I am reduced to http://bit.ly/badpayers
8:34 AM Jan 21st via web

Followed by about a dozen identical tweets, until it got picked up by HN.

Note the key section: "when a client won't pay for increased development costs".
no, the sleazy conniving wheeler dealers who run companies like utilitybidder need to be excruciatingly punished for every transgression.
Pretty please put this in Firefox 3.6.15 as well because it will be quite some time before many power-users can upgrade to 4.0
Give a sequence like (using Intel mnemonics):

mov eax,[x]
or eax,eax
jz foo
dec eax
foo call bar

The instruction "dec eax" is one byte in size. If you want to place a breakpoint there, and you used the two byte form of "int 3", then when the code did the "jz foo" (jump if the previous result was zero to location foo) the "call bar" instruction would be partially overwritten and form a new instruction. If the condition leading the breakpoint isn't taken, you now have some other instruction (it ends up being an "add" instruction) which is bad.

That's why there's a one byte version of "int 3", because there are one byte instructions.
Javascript, HTML, CSS, browser tricks paper cheatsheet
I'm sorry, my head is on wrong today. I totally agree with you. I meant to say, the first 2500 are the hardest by far. If you can make that much, scaling is pretty easy.

s/probably going to be easier/probably going to be harder
One nice instance of the archetype is George Danzig: http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp
why you copy what @smashingmagazine tweet??? twitter stealer!!
In Smalltalk, you can start writing a debugger that lets you browse a stack trace in under 5 minutes. The debugger is just an ordinary application working on (mostly) ordinary objects that happen to be the meta-level of Smalltalk. (In particular, the contexts.) To complete the debugger, you just need to implement a Smalltalk VM without GC, which is not all that hard, as it's little more than a 256 case switch statement. Basically, your debugger is a VM you control through an app, running the debugged process.
Obviously a smart and practical person like him knows
that this will not work

It's interesting how people will acknowledge the guy is insane and in the same breath accuse him of being sane enough to understand something doesn't work. Arguments based on that premise can't hold: if someone is insane, all bets are off. Especially because you can't know how this huge failure (being incarcerated is losing the 'get-what-you-want'-game big time!) affected his mind.

I'll offer an alternative 'explanation': his mind does in fact contain all kinds of 'feeling guilty' thoughts, but it doesn't know how to handle them. Hell, the appropriate pathways may be missing. As a response, his mind comes up with some plan to restore her to life. Never mind his justifications: they may just be made up by other parts of his mind, so it can ponder a narrative that seems coherent/consistent to itself. He may just ve trying to silence nagging guilt in the only way he can.
Tech blogs you wish existed
So there are many tech blogs like techcrunch,mashable, etc, who cover things like startups,gadgets,app reviews, etc but are there any tech blogs that do not exist yet that you wish existed? Or do all the current tech blogs cater to your needs?
Trivia: actually "NS" stands for "NeXT & Sun". Old NeXT classes had an NX* prefix. (There are still a few of those lingering in Cocoa.)

The NS prefix was adopted as part of the NextStep -> OpenStep transition around 1993, when Sun was planning to use OpenStep as their main desktop environment. That never happened because soon Sun got Java religion and dumped OpenStep.
i see.
Thanks for this feedback then.
Hiring technique
Singer is an amazing thinker.
Gateway NV59C with 1GB Graphics Review and Price | TECHGADGETSITE
hristov never said he was insane, he said he was a psychopath. Psychopaths are often _exceptionally_ rational people.

(Note: I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with histrov, I'm just saying that calling a psychopath "smart and practical" doesn't contradict his argument)
Orkut Grew by 60% in Last 3 months Who said it is dying?
You may think future clients will see the righteousness of
your action [..]

And you will be wrong. When this story gets told, a future client will more readily identify with the client in the story, simply by virtue of it also being 'the client'. They will consider how this situation could come about and will come up with all kinds of reasons why someone could reasonably not want to pay you. What happens if your work sucks and you get into a serious disagreement? They would want that to be resolved via the usual ways, without them being harmed by you abusing (nb. their thoughts, it's irrelevant whether they are mine) your powers. All in all, it will mostly rub off in a bad fashion.
JavaScript Application Frameworks Comparison
It's on his site because he asked the author apparently if it is ok to reproduce it, but it's written by one 'Robert Hercz', it was the cover story of the Sep. 8th 2001 issue of Saturday Night magazine.

That's not exactly a scientific publication either, but it is not as if he wrote it himself.
Yup, it was Derek Silvers in a TED talk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4

Well worth watching. This one is < 4 minutes. Cites his sources.
Anybody who's done any consulting has run into this client before: Things are going great, then for seemingly innocuous reasons, invoices start taking longer to pay. Eventually you find yourself six weeks out and start asking plain questions over the phone. Things rapidly go downhill from there.

The key in situations like this is to always stay professional. Stop working immediately and make it clear that you'll start going again as soon as the check clears, but stick to the high road. The client will turn petty on you, will come up with all sorts of slanderous attacks on you, your work, and your character. That's fine. Let him vent. Then calmly explain once again the concept of "work for hire", and how you're perfectly happy to continue doing work for him, provided he pays his bills.

This may or may not work. On the off chance he pays up, you get to put him on weekly invoices payable immediately on receipt. If it doesn't, chances are you're out a bunch of money. Either way, try to suppress your natural geek sense of vengeance. You're the professional here. Never act otherwise.

Now, as a pro, you do have one option. Since your invoices are itemized and dated, and source control is itemized and dated, you're well within your rights to accurately roll back the deliverable to the state it was in after the last paid bill. Tell the client that you don't want him to pay for any work that he's not 100% satisfied with, and as such you have retracted your invoice as well as the work it covered. You'll keep the associated changes archived in case he wishes to purchase them in the future. You wish him the best of luck going forward and regret that you'll be parting ways.
Apps you want but can't find
Are there any iPhone/Android apps you want but cannot find because the apps are not made yet?
Funny, after responding to your post I was watching that IBM video on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrhDaAmn5Uw&feature=chann... somebody had posted on HN in the meantime. And "to invent" was what I actually wanted to add here, after I heard Bijan Davari in the video, saying "Our job is to invent" (around 26:30)
Increasing number of hedge funds betting on a China crash
Yep, this is what I meant in my own comment: http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2132005

Just thought you're referring to something else. Thanks for clearing this up; I hope you don't mind if I use your example in the next part of the series. :-)
Just bought an HTC Desire HD and this is what I miss:

1) An app which automatically takes snaps every x minutes. (I think iPhone has iSpybot which does this)

2) A good app that works as a car-cam (records last x mins. in video)
In very few jobs are negotiating skills unrelated or useless to the companies needs. If you're the sort of person who can walk into your bosses office and convince him to give you a 20% pay increase, you're probably the sort of person who can convince a customer to agree to sign off on 50% more consulting hours. And that is a skill any company can use and should be willing to pay for, irregardless of what your job title happens to be.
There is some to be less proud of too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II. However, it should be strongly noted that culpability for the use of the systems has not been established.
As I mentioned in the other thread, there is actually plenty of evidence against this view, evidence showing that publicly announcing your goals actually reduces your motivation.

Here is the same short TED talk I posted on the subject in the other thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4

Don't mean to rain on your parade, just trying to get all the relevant numbers out there. Your brain may vary.
Thanks for that pointer. Without it I might have just guessed that you may well get guru-like test coverage and aid from other communities.
Offtopic question: this article links to http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/01/python-is-better-than-... where author writes that google have official UI language. Anyone knows what is the name of that language? Is it something like XUL but for web?
I didn't know that. In fact everywhere I have read, it is assumed that NS stands for NeXTStep. Thanks!
You are so awesome.
I still remember the moment in statistical physics class when my prof wrote down the Black-Scholes model, explained how people made a lot of money using it, added that the inventors had received a Nobel prize and proceeded to show that it was just the diffusion equation.

The diffusion equation. It was so underwhelming that I lost any interest in going into financial engineering.
Oh typo! Sorry I wanted to say that 99% of rails developer are developing on a Mac and those not just web, facebook, email guys.
From the title I thought this was a joke about three separate people, a mathematician, an artist and a maker all looking for a job, in the classic 'an englishman, an irishman and a scotsman go into a pub' format.

I'd try out one of my own but I havent been awake long enough...
Ways to bootstrap a startup: on the side
Right, I totally agree with you. I have such a drive to build a product...but again, it might not be as good of an idea right now.
That title would have been much more accurate without the "how".
Laptop, Internet, Central Heating, Money, Food
>SuperFetch only hits the first 10 meg of a DLL. If any of these are larger than that, you'll still see significant thrashing on pages located further back in the binaries

Yuck. Is there a good engineering reason for this reliance on the physical location of code within a lib file rather than its logical internal structure? I guess its a compromise they made after running some studies. Still seems sickeningly ugly though. Just like the trick the OP was forced to implement to override this behaviour.

Yucketty yuck yuck.
Lush Cosmetics: We've Been Hacked; Message To The Hacker
The problem you'd have with anything that represents a page as some kind of graph is you have to construct the whole tree before you can start doing anything with it. The API largely precludes streams. Callbacks would be possible but some of the conditional CSS selectors need a complete knowledge of the page before they can be resolved.

So while GET-ting pages to scrape can benefit from async IO, you're effectively "blocked" while scraping pieces out of the page itself.
Yes, it's wordy because it also talks about the experiments did / results achieved in the author's clinic, i.e. how people with diverse illnesses (even terminal ones, like cancer) managed to cope with their condition.

It can be summed up even shorter than you're describing ... but it's fucking hard to do, unless you have strong motives to do it and belief that this practice will have a good ROI on your mind / body.
Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
IBM Centennial Film: They Were There.
Snippet from the article:
> "The book's thesis is essentially that real life isn't as fun or rewarding as videogames, and so life should be "fixed" to be more like the games. This would be achieved by applying gaming scenarios and game logic to real-life interactions, ranging from doing the laundry to saving the world."

That idea is not new; the science fiction novel "Ender's Game", by Orson Scott Card, came out in 1985. It sounds like a similar concept to me.

I think the proposal to solve real problems during video game play is interesting, in any case. The article quotes McGonigal's book as saying large groups of video game players could be involved in
> "a whole-planetary mission... to raise global quality of life... and to sustain our earth for the next millennium and beyond."

The reviewer responds:
> "Sounds dreadful, I know, but I wouldn't worry about it."

Does this idea sound so dreadful? I don't think so. Hm.
They're hiring!

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EkZUHRV...
Упражнения за тонус- Видео
Упражненията са полезно средство за постигане на добър тонус. Карат ви да се чувствате здрави и силни, като едновременно с това засилват мисловните функции.
Constant access to the Internet.
great post. "Constraints make you focus." I couldn't agree more. Since I am going through a similar thing there was no time before when I thought my work was so efficient when working on this startup.
Note that I'm not necessarily disagreeing with hristov either. I'm just arguing that psychopaths are not just rational people and are known to behave in what are generally considered to be 'insane ways'.

The idea that psychopaths are often exceptionally rational people is a misconception, popularized by the common depiction of the 'accomplishments' of highly intelligent psychopaths. Most psychopaths are not highly intelligent. Moreover, as far as psychopaths seem to function as normal people, it's because they employ rational methods of thinking to know how to behave to get what they want. However, that their behavior is mostly based on rational ways of thinking, does not necessarily mean they are actually any good at those ways of thinking. Only the highly intelligent are.

And even then: point in fact: murdering your wife is hardly ever, and certainly not under the circumstances Reiser did, a rational thing to do.

Psychopaths behave in insane ways, specifically because they only employ rational modes of thinking, which are necessarily insufficient to make proper decisions about 'how to get what they want'. Why is that? Because you always lack enough information to make proper rational decisions. I can't rationally decide whether to eat another cookie.
Surely a decent shell could provide some additional functionality to terminal using e.g. D-Bus (I'm not sure what standard desktop IPC is in OSX).

I'm not convinced auto-completion is one of them though. But hey, if you like GUI popups better it's certainly hackable!
Honest? You'll note they don't say they became aware of the breach in late December.
Sorry, but who's talking about PHP here?
Insight into Steve Jobs' Product-Centric Approach in 1985 Interview
Agreed. After some time there would be a database and a ranking with web site authors, skills, languages, etc. Interested people would look into it to find people that match their type of site design...
AOL Steals Content From Disabled & Unemployed Blogger
I think that should be rephrased to:

"Did he accomplish his job in such a way as to deserve earning 6 billion over the course of 10 years?" Seeing as he has a 9.6% share of the company which he has acquired over the past 10 years as reward I suppose for the job he has done.

And then you can ask, did he deserve a 100 million gift on top of the 6 billion.
Additionally with modern x86 you can set breakpoints using the special debug registers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_debug_register
I used to run a business doing hosting, custom software, and web design. There were several occasions on which we got screwed by customers who didn't pay, or who withheld payment until we did extra work that wasn't in the original agreement. At the time, I felt that my reputation and the reputation of the business meant that I couldn't lash out on the mailing lists of the (very small) industry were were in. When I'd had a problem with someone in the industry, though, and then later someone else had a problem, and complained about them publicly, I noticed two things: first, it didn't seem to hurt the reputation of the person complaining; second, if I had complained, my example might have saved another person from also getting burned.

I now believe that I should have made a lot of noise when someone tried to scam me in this way, and should have spent less time worrying about my reputation. I'm still not sure I should have gone as far as shutting down the (online-only) businesses which I still had passwords to, but I no longer view that as beyond the pale, as I did then.

[Edit: Although, in this case, iwwr's comment suggests it was the developer who was shady.]
In nearly every application domain, you can compare the Smalltalk way and the Other, and in nearly all the Smalltalk is better, but that doesn't mean people will listen.

It's best to explicate your point using a 50-page tutorial on the Java Debugging API, Platform Introspection, and .NET Tracing Hooks, or whatever. Make it so hard that it's worth our time, then we will listen.