skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am a statistician that does both research and applied work.

I use R for three reasons: (1) It's Free Software; (2) It's a programming language; (3) Other statisticians use it so it's easier for me to collaborate.

There are the usual supporting arguments for (1). (2), I've only used SAS a little bit, and it was extremely unpleasant to use it for non-built-in stuff, which makes research harder for no good reason. For (3), I have nothing against Python but most other statisticians don't use it. If I want to share my work in R, it's easy (statisticians know how to install R packages). If I want to share my work in Python, I first have to teach [most] other statisticians how to use Python. There's nothing wrong with that, but why raise the start-up cost for them?

tl;dr I conjecture that most statisticians don't want what the author is suggesting. Also, there are plenty of companies that are trying to do what the author is asking for, but most of them seem to miss the desired sweet spot, or charge lots of money, or both. I haven't taken a survey of the available software in quite some time.
I also see the same error. Running on 64bit Linux (Mint), happens with both FF 3.6 and Chrome 10
I love Hipmunk except for that it only gives me limited options for purchasing at the end. I'm guessing this is to maximize their referral revenue, but I have status on an airline and only purchase from their site directly. If I purchase from another site I have less control over changes to my itinerary after purchase. That's my preferred airlines fault, but other sites like Bing Travel let me click through the results right to my airlines' web site.
Microsoft to release Kinect SDK for PC
Data URIs: why they are useful and how to use them
In global terms, you are incredibly rich. If you have ever owned a domain name or a programming book you are incredibly rich.

Around half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day[1]. If you have one dollar a day that you can afford to waste on something you don't need to live, you're in something like the top ten or twenty percent of the world's richest. Sorry, I don't have a source for that last one, although the figure could likely be derived from the stats here:

[1] http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-sta...
"Technology changes. Don't be left behind."
Seems a shame the unhyphenated domain name has been parked for 10 years. The good news is it expires in August.

The trademark for it is dead as well: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4007:lt...

The trademark registrant and domain registrant might be related or one in the same. Both were registered in 2001. Looks like it was intended for a remote job entry app.

Worth watching.
Maybe they're counting each episode of each TV show individually?
Basically the only help your phone provided is to give you guts to defend yourself in court. The data you obtained with google tracks has as much legal authenticity IMHO as data you could pull out of your behind. But the fact that you asked the officer the right questions and he didnt have the right answers is in my opinion why the judge decided in your favor.

btw here is a similar story with an iphone and a radar detector
http://www.americanbankingnews.com/2011/01/21/radaractive-he...
Which is the next country shutting off Internet?
Who else does the kill switch appeal to? Cuba?
Planning your Marketing Channels (quick, macro bite)
Tag cloud might be best.

What I found is that I keep having "feature fever", where I think of all these ways of doing stuff that might or might not have value to the user.

The site database is actually set up for voting -- you can vote up and down books and create your own rankings according to your opinion. But it was another feature I had to kill. I find the hardest thing about building a site is killing stuff. It took me forever to strip out as much as I could from hn-books. Right now I'm a bit shy of starting to put stuff back in. Over and over again it looks like whatever I add -- reviews for tools, a link to get your own Kindle, a new question category, live real-time commenting with social links -- all seems to meet with some resistance from the community. I'm never sure if I'm hurting the community or just making artistic decisions that some small percentage of people don't like.

I really like hackerbooks with the simple categories and multiple books above the fold. One of the emails I got recently was from a guy who set up a "bookshelf" with books on it -- an image of a real bookshelf with what looked like real hacker books sitting on it. That was pretty cool too.

When I set the site up, I consulted with a few HNers about this very issue -- how to sort/filter. Like you, I'm still not happy with where it is right now.

So I'm open-minded, I'm just keeping the bar a bit high for any changes right now. One of the most difficult things I am learning is to separate what might be cool from what might be best. Still working on it. If you guys keep asking for tag clouds, happy to put them in.

EDIT: Bit of trivia, if you hold down "ctrl" and click on questions in hn-books you can apply multiple filters. So say you only had time to read 1 book, but wanted to know as much as you could about "how do I make beautiful web pages" and "How do I tell people about my business". You just ctrl-click on both, then get a list of books that covers both questions: http://hn-books.com/#BC=0&EC=0&FC=0&Q0=1&Q1=... Not sure tags would work that way by default (Also this is probably a great example of something I spent time putting in that means absolutely nothing to anybody)
I disagree. Developers who don't know how to test are bad developers, they should go. And conversely, if you have QA, they should know how to develop, otherwise you're paying them to hunt, peck, and click. Why not have QA write the code to have computer do that and save like 1000x the time? That's efficiency AND quality.
> The scariest problem is our project_list_data function with Cyclomatic Complexity of 145 million.. which is down from 195 million. It "passes" data in via a series of globals and "returns" data the same way. Don't worry, we're working on it.

Is this meant to be sarcasm? Because if not, thats an insanely huge function. I imagine most compilers would choke on it...
tip: add an "operations" category, for sysadmins and so on
Alright, I'm an idiot. For some reason I had it in my head that development had ceased a couple years ago. Thanks for the info.
Love the idea of your site,

+ another request for EU-based jobs :)
I'm glad to see Hipmunk have an app, this could make searching for flights even more fun.

I was interested if they had any problems with selling tickets via an iPhone app using the browser for paymentsm not the in app purchase API. But obviously they did not, as the app was approved.
It's possible for a criminal to have pride in his craftsmanship.
how many qualified individuals visit that site? i can pay about 2x as much and get a listing on linkedin for 30 days, which is, well, better..give me the value prop for this site and if it is good, i will post several jobs.
You might want to check out Coda by the guys at Panic (Transmit). They're basically putting tools together for hand coders who do html, css, etc.
Um.... and they cost a metric ton more than we do...

Someone said something about greed?
whats a good one to use for single devs/small teams?
It's scary because it's old and ALL IN CAPS. Modern Lisp code is much easier to read, especially in a proper editor with syntax highlighting and braces matching. Eg, fib in C:

int fib(int n) {
if(n < 2) return n;
return fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2);
}

(defun fib (n)
(if (< n 2)
n
(+ (fib (- n 1)) (fib (- n 2)))))

The parens aren't really that annoying once you get used to them, and I personally find them a lot less distracting than the profusion of commas and curly braces that C-syntax languages use in their place. Eg:

{{"apples", RED}, {"bananas", YELLOW}, {"oranges", ORANGE}}

'(("apples" RED) ("bananas" YELLOW) ("oranges" ORANGE))

Also, don't forget that abstraction makes everything more readable:

(dolist (var '(1 2 3 4)) (princ a))

for(list::iterator itr = list.begin(); itr != list.end(); ++itr) {
cout << *itr;
}
How Many Programming/Technology Hells Have You Seen | Extreme Java
Awesome research thank you!!!!
Moon Rock Delights
Couldn't reply threaded.

@jancona: I didn't sideload with ADB. I copied the .apk to my phone via USB and used a file manager to access my file system. Tapping on the apk installed it just fine. If AT&T disables sideloading with ADB, how do developers test their apps on AT&T's Android offering?

@lukeschlather: I'm using a Nexus One; it may not be possible for phones customized specifically by AT&T. If this is the case, it's pretty f'n unfortunate.
That's good to know about flash. One of the reasons that I am moving to using a mac is the crappy experience with flash in Ubuntu. I'm tired of it.
this trick is not new, and the functionality is available in a couple pidgin plugins:
http://www.siorarina.net/google-invisibility-half-scan/
http://www.siorarina.net/google-invisibility-tracker/

Note that if you read that first link, you will see that you used to not only be able to see the "go invisible" event, you were also able to simply scan your entire buddy list for invisible users. Google fixed this 'vulnerability,' but for one reason or another left the ability to see the becomes-invisible event.
I love what you're doing here: creating a centralized, universal interface for all kinds of sessions. I hate the way 95% of people "organize" their event information.

I hope Lanyrd gets enough traction to fix that.
Maybe if registered users were allowed to downvote crappy postings?
The y axis doesn't have specific units because they vary so much by location. I tried to mention a few specific data points below the graph to provide a bit more context. Good point about the error bars. I'll try to include them in an update to the post.
Apple iPad 2 Event Set for March 2
Sure, I'll try to file one later so it can at least be considered.

What I was trying to say in my earlier comment was that I would actually prefer the explicit @task decorator be part of the official Fabric API because it's more clear and, well, explicit. I prefer my @internal decorator as a hack in the meantime because I imagine it's less surprising to someone who might stumble upon my fabfile without any explanation from me.
How is your choice of where to place your business logic GWT's fault? Isn't that a choice you would have to make judiciously with any tool?
This got blocked by the proxy server at work. Can anyone summarize (if a summary is even needed beyond the title)?
Facebook Scam: “Southwest Free Flights” Will Comment Spam Your Friends
Idea #21216: a journal of my work in my laptop
Get App Store Reviews with 1 line of code
China launches new state-run search engine
Not to mention it's possible to write a bot that actually drags the handle across the screen to "unlock" the form
How to Exploit Your Employer
To be honest I find the whole repeated "no, shut up" thing to be a bit crass and it makes me unsympathetic if anything. I hope this doesn't become a catchphrase in blogs.
Ask HN: Django continuous deployment
Hello all! I am currently working part-time on my first startup and I've hit my first snag that can't be solved by "coding more".

The question concerns continuous deployment, I love the company structure of Etsy and feel that their kind of development suites my personality very well. So I would like to try my hand at continuous deployment.

I am using django as my web framework and have had a lot of success in the past for building quick sites for friends and family.

I currently have a two tree development, a "frontpage" and a "master". The frontpage is not moving and only contains enough backend to run my landing page/beta testing scripts. But I am getting closer to MVP and I would like to replace the frontpage with a moving "master". This master would maintain the frontpage/beta testing scripts but allow logins for initial first adopters.

I have looked into migration addons such as: django-south and django-evolution. And I am currently at a good crossroads to implement one of them.

I am asking the community for their general experiences implementing continuous deployment and any django specific continuous deployment schemes.

Thanks!
Anything that supports a decentralized model. Git, Bazaar, Mercurial.
The way I see it, 30% is not "pretty reasonable". It might be reasonable, it might be a great deal, or it might be a deal killer.

It's not much different than if Google were to decide that all AdWords clicks are now $3.

The thing is that nobody cared when it was a one time fee for their $1.99 app. When Apple starts talking about subscriptions that may cost 10's or 100's of times that each month, Apple starts to look like their overreaching - and it could be damaging to long term adoption of the platform.

One might even hypothesize that these ham fisted policies are defining the very nature of the offerings in the app store - it explains the preference for fart apps over sophisticated (expensive) products.

Apple is just coming off as if they didn't think this through.
ScribbleJ’s Dual Extruder (for MakerBots)
They might seem a lot more expensive, but when you're looking to hire a new employee (an expense on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars), the difference between $75 and $500 to advertise the position isn't really that significant.
GPS is only accurate to 5-10 metres so it would be impossible to accurately tell you were in front of a driveway with it.
Why the monthmy retainer of PR agency is under fire
It seems to me that this assumes developers never get promoted (which makes the long term look unappetizing). But developers become lead developers, architects, and (gasp) managers.
The questions is: "will I make money on this platform?"
The answer varies from project to project, platform to platform. But it has nothing to do with 'trust' in the platform vendor.

If your answer involves "I trust the platform vendor" you're not making a decision, you're gambling.

> "I'm still having a hard time getting my head around that concept and why anyone would invest development resources into that kind of platform."

It's a risk like any other. (Non-gambling) business-people accept risk when they think they can make enough money to offset it.
Here's a link to the actual posting: http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qw49Vfwo&...

And on a related note, their job requirements are refreshing. They tell you what they're using, and that they want some related experience, but don't make a huge deal of 'AT LEAST 5 years in our language and framework combination'.
Show HN: Twitter as a news reader
Ask HN: Do you charge a retainer?
I've been freelancing for a while now and in general it's gone like this:

1. A potential customer requests a quote for a project

2. I send them a quote and (usually) they agree to have work done

3. I complete the work on time and everyone is happy

4. A couple of weeks down the road they want minor changes made to the site (copy, images, etc.)

The problem is #4 - while what they need done is extremely minor (maybe 5-10 minutes of work per shot) the REAL problem is that they consistently want these extremely minor things done every week or so. I didn't charge them anything initially because they were my first customer and they've been referring new work my way, but the little bits of time are starting to add up.

Would you charge a retainer/maintenance fee for a situation like this? How would you present it to your customer? What do you recommend for terms for a retainer/maintenance fee?

Thanks!
http://bettween.com/dhh/obie
I don't see any point in discussing GWT by itself, without any comparison to other development techniques, and when you compare it to traditional approaches, the "SEO overhead" mentioned in the article is a downside.
The one product I was mostly involved in needed to be rewritten because it was the result of a quick proof of concept hack that kept growing because people actually bought it. There was literally no separation between GUI, model, or DB backend. Adding to the code was like swimming through molasses.

I took the product over as lead developer and saw no way to save it. It helped that only maybe about 10% of the features we wanted to have were implemented, so two of us managed to do the rewrite in less than six months.

The main focus of this rewrite was indeed to make sure that we would never have to rewrite the product ever again. We kept a very close eye on identifying what went wrong, what design principles can help us to avoid doing things wrong in the future, and how to design for extensibility considering that 90% of the features still have to be added.

In the end the rewrite turned out to be very successful. Until the day I left the company (three years after) no rewrite was ever necessary again. Rather, we managed to keep up the good principles laid down during the rewrite so we could just work on the code incrementally. The product was also the commercially most successful piece of software the startup sold.
Clickable:

http://www.tripzard.com
Yea, definitely add a link to that in http://code.fabfile.org/issues/show/76 please! Might be nice to give people even more control. I think @task is "enough" but if we can have a richer API while not overburdening things, could be a plus.
Redis 2.2.0 is out
http://bettween.com/
Apple to Unveil IPad 2 on March 2 in San Francisco
Making money off Tumblr would be incredibly easy - David Karp
I'm pretty sure getting data about # of bytes transferred on a hourly basis from Netflix's instances would be valuable to estimate # of movies viewed. Further subdividing the flow by (src, dst) IP will give a good idea about # of minutes watched per day etc.

The point is that innocent statistics about Netflix's machines gathered for routine "security" and other housekeeping efforts can lawfully give Amazon a lot of information about Netflix.

IMHO, Netflix has needlessly put themselves in a vulnerable position by moving to Amazon.
Windows Loses Hacker Star Status In Next Decade
http://twitter.theinfo.org/39778057610997760
If a lot of your projects end up on shared hosting solutions, it's difficult to streamline effectively. Depending on the provider and the hosting tier (single domain, unlimited, whatever), SSH access may be available or not. For a lot of those hosting arrangements, a process centered around FTP is the safest.

Given that limitation, I would definitely echo the importance of version control, and then highlight that a text editor capable of edits over an FTP connection can save a lot of trouble. I like UltraEdit, although it's commercial - it does have a full use trial period though. On Windows, I believe Notepad++ and Crimson Editor will also support edits over FTP. Be careful with an FTP capable text editor though, it's easy to make changes outside of your vcs this way.
I'm a nobody, but consider making the pages less clicky and more product page-y, with the external references that provide the structure of your site constituting something of a "topics covered in this book." I think the references/links should be at least as prominent as the book blurb that currently serves to authoritatively describe the contents. My point is that the contents may actually be described (for sufficient numbers of refs) better by listing how people are actually recommending it, how its readers are using it. You could even implement a semantic parser that constructs a new book blurb based on the words and sentences in the recommendations and references. :) Anyway, good luck!
I use git at work and for personal stuff. The learning path is maybe a bit steep if you come from things like Subversion, on the other hand I instructed a developer new to VCSs and so far he didn't complain, shoot his foot, or shoot mine :)

git is only my personal preference, generally speaking I recommend to go for a distributed version control system: it's modern, it's mainstream, and it's more versatile in terms of workflows you can implement.
Book review: Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It
Did they ever previously promote the idea that "next" for the sake of "next" was a good thing?

No one ever does that.
Goldman makes a subsecond trading system, they get money, consumers get... ???

Smaller bid/ask spreads, greater liquidity.

Of course, HFT is just a high tech sideshow to the rest of the market. It's not anywhere near as big as you think. Do some simple math - multiply daily share volumes (here is NASDAQ http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DailyMarketSummar... ) by the fraction of trades done by HFT (estimates range from 25%-75%) and multiply that by a typical profit of a tenth of a cent. You don't get a huge number.
A book that I would recommend for refactoring object oriented code (Java in particular) is Refactoring-Improve the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler (a friend to the Go4). Written well and in a simliar format at Design Patterns-Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Go4 (Gang of Four).
Um... fwiw, djbrowning is "Dave" ;)
Business exist to earn money and the best way to convince others of the value of your service is to charge for it. You can argue that it isn't good business sense, but calling it greed is a judgmental call that you have no evidence of.
"I once visited a museum in New Zealand filled with beautiful paintings."

Was that in "Te Papa"? I saw an exhibition of local artwork, nothing ground-breaking but most were quite exquisite.
Search facets are likely the best and fastest filtering mechanism for the users. It's pretty much just a straight products site with some recommendation engine. Just start faceting out the books by a few criteria, topic, length, proficiency level, etc.
Thanks - we're very keen on providing permanent, archived URLs for things. Conference websites have a terrible habit of going offline after 11 months so they can put up the site for the next year's event.
I think his point here is that the most visible aspects of the code are the structures built up to do the computation, rather than the computation itself. As a description of a generator loop, it reads quite nicely. But the language does not give much ground to the topic it's describing, in the way (to use the obvious example) Lisp would. I think that's what he is getting at.
Their recommendation engine is a key strength. I LOVE it.

Second, at <$10/mo, the cost is not high enough to make bother with switching. I would rather pay $10/mo have the best streaming experience than pay $6/mo have a second-rate streaming experience.

I expect Netflix to come out on top in this battle. Obviously, I'm rooting for them (I dislike companies which squeeze competitors through loss leaders).
Definitely yes, though I don't know why it would be necessary to trim the synopsis at all in most cases.
Thank you. A fix is in the pipe. In the meantime, you can select that blank cell that turns up as the first result when you type "AUS". Dumb display logic decision on my part. Sorry.
Why Your Brand Should Avoid Facebook
I've used GWT for about a year, and I like it because I like static typing more so than I like java the language. And yes, i've tried various dynamic languages (ruby and javascript), and i still prefer the statically typed ones for large projects with a large number of developers over a large time frame. I also know that not everyone agrees with that, and if you don't, GWT may not be the best tool for you. However, it works well for me. And if you ignore the language debate, the toolset is very powerful.

(I also hope scala-gwt will become real-world-usable some day :) )
http://i.imgur.com/Y59Rq.png

Basically, developer salaries go up dramatically after the first year or three. Get a new job after that point, and reap the rewards.
RSS feed is now added, thanks for the suggestion!
How Should We Educate the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs?
The Learning Equation