skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It really helps to have someone show you the proper way to do things.

I've been hacking on rails for a while but only after I joined a company where they had guys with 4 years of professional rails experience did I come to know of all my bad habits and also learned how to do things in a neater faster way.

Basically being around people who are good at what they do will make you good at that skill.

The book "The Talent Code" explains this in detail. Read this book - it'll significantly help you understand what you need to do get good at a skill fast.

Venkatesh Rao wrote a blog post on this as well which is a very worthy read. He called it "The Crucible Effect".
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/07/21/the-crucible-effect-and...

And this goes for any skill from windsurfing, soccer to coding to running a startup.
Excessive Use of Vinyl for Printing Products
Vinyl is excellent for many reasons. It has the capability to serve the customers with the best products as well.
Yeah I think when you're just starting, the most mentorship you need is the teacher of a programming class you're taking. The reason being that to find a good mentor, one who can really teach you a lot about hacking, you will need to have some baseline skills, otherwise you're just wasting that person's time with beginner questions that can be answered in 5 seconds on Google, or 30 seconds on irc if you don't even know where to start.
I've never understood how wasting time on the job can possibly be termed 'theft'. It's irresponsible and a failure to fulfill expectations, but it's not theft.

(btw, I also don't see employers as stealing life from employees)
I saw a another post just like this on Quora. I wonder if its part of a larger trend?
Looking at the bytecode, the JIT handles it fine. atomo pattern matching is the equivalent of using a case;when in the body. And because it's scoped to a certain class and name, I doubt it would have the overflow problem that lisp multimethods have, where you only have the name to bind functionality to.
I'm sure he does realize. The problem is that it's possible to believe this without being racist, but not possible in the US today to say it without appearing racist. It's one of the more obvious Things You Can't Say.

I'm so concerned about appearing racist that I don't even want to post in this thread under my usual account, so I applaud yummy for his willingness to say things that need saying even though it costs him personally in status.
Definition of a hot startup
I started learning how to code at 27 and am 29 now, still going strong. Frankly I wanted to do a web-startup, but realized that unless you can code, you're nerfed. Learning how to code completely free's you from being permanently stuck in "idea mode".

The exception to that is if you have a lot of cash, and are willing to hire someone to build something for you. That's very expensive of course, since you're competing with companies offering them $80k - $150k+ /yr. jobs plus benefits. You can find cheaper labor, but you'll get what you pay for.

Have lots of fun learning! Programming can be extremely rewarding! :)
Los mejores diseños de Brochures - Folleteria
Seeing Both Sides: Figuring Out FourSquare
Algorithm or equation? Either way, I'd suggest the Navier-Stokes system of equations, and associated numeric solutions.

Have a look at Chung's 'Computational Fluid Dynamics' (2010) via Google books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Cq6tqmMVJREC&lpg=PP1...
The Age of Revenues
I agree... especially about the keyboard!
It is on google.com but most of the other country domains (.ie, .co.uk, etc...) havent got it yet. Currently its the same with google instant.
Good for you that you've been able to do well starting a business.

Guess what? Your personal situation is not applicable to everyone - or, for that matter, even most people.

"But working stiffs can't afford houses now, fewer communities are clean, none are safe, and your kid's prospects are worse."

"Compare this to what my employer gets: If the company is successful, he (it's usually a he) gets a standard of living beyond my wildest dreams, including what I would consider fantastic protection for his family, and a world of access that I can only pitifully mimic by changing channels on my TV."

These are legitimate observations, not mere complaining.
You still look like you in all those embarrassing pictures others have posted, right?
Courage, bravery, bravado, boldness, gusto, audacity, pluck, fearlessness, risk-tolerance, temerity, tenacity, fortitude, nerve, or stoutheartedness work for you?

It is indeed a choice. The consequences of reversing that choice get much more complex as you gain responsibilities in life. Ultimately, however, your life is on you. No one else can care like you do.
That's putting way too much faith in the average Facebook user. The security maze is way too complex.
I still think the 3G had the most futuristic interface (other than a touchscreen) of any iPod. With its non-mechanical buttons in an all-white, translucent face, and the red backlighting that only triggered when you touched it, it's still a pretty amazing bit of design.
Disqus Commenting Down
The biggest problem I've seen with performance reviews is that most managers actually spend very little time actually working with or observing their employees.

Flip side: if you are a small enough group that know each other very well, performance reviews can be a good opportunity to raise awkward subjects.

It's a tool - it can be used or misused.
This fact is displayed pretty prominently on the sign up page. That said, if there's enough demand for it we'll add support for other app servers as well. For the initial launch we've focused on Phusion Passenger integration so that we can deliver the best of the best.
I think its a good question actually.. Here is my opinion:

1) Environment. Having the right people and drive around you striving for the same goal has a positive impact on your own actions. Makes you more motivated to do stuff (at least for me)

2) Make less mistakes. I made a ton of mistakes the last couple of years and I am now VERY receptive to not learning things the hard way.

In the event that I did not, the plan was to get a regular 9-5 job and devote nights and weekends to improve my technical chops.

There are many ways to do this but having a mentor or a right environment to do it certainly helps an already difficult journey.
> You're attacking the messenger, but you fail to address his core argument

I'm not attacking him. His message places a lot of blame externally. That leads to not looking for solutions and building a better life.

Marxism isn't the solution. I've been to a lot of the Marxist/ex-Marxist countries, and they're all worse off than similar neighbors who didn't endure Marxism.

But that's not the big point. The big point is that placing the blame externally kills off your ability to solve problems yourself.
I've noticed that multiple blogs I read which use Disqus are missing their comment section. Is this a result of everyone's coverage of the Apple conference?
Pretty sure it's not a typo ;)
Making the new 404 HTML page was probably someone's "20% project" for a year.
Ask HN: Good app ideas to learn a new platform
So I wanted to start learning iPhone development last night and I didn't really know what to build. I thought it would be nice to have a list of little projects in order of increasing difficulty for learning mobile development, web development, game development, and desktop development.

Got any ideas?

If we get a good list, I'll put them up on a website or something like that.

Here are mine:

For game development:

1) Blackjack (console)

2) Tetris

For web development

1) todo list
here's mine:

http://michaelglass.github.com/conway-dark-roast/

and here's my coworkers much more fleshed out version:

http://life.michaelgeraci.com

why? nice excuse to learn canvas, coffeescript, tdd in javascript. certainly can do it with divs (in fact mpg did it that way first).
I repeat: I think this company will completely pivot and focus on groups

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2232628
Liveblog: Apple's March 2 iPad event
I don't know exactly what the "science industry" is, but in general this is bunk. K-12 education is paid vastly better (in terms of money and job security) than most scientists. Perhaps tenured profs do better, but most scientists are not tenured profs.

What are you basing this off of? Just looking at Payscale, k-12 median is about 42k per year, a research scientist is over 60k median, all scientist salaries listed the lower end is around 50k:

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary...

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Research_Scientist/S...
Except for the fact that it pinpointed(!) my address and showed an error range of ~30 feet. Unless there's a cell tower on my roof that I'm not aware of, it still doesn't make sense.
Do you get to be ahead of me or do I get to be ahead of you?

You could get ahead of where you were last year.
If you have any questions about One Day, One Job, I'm happy to answer them.
Just FYI, that wasn't their actual one, but the 404 for their April Fool's joke: http://www.google.com/tisp/
Initially I started with Python because everyone told me it was the best intro to coding, which it was and I'm glad I did. But I want to be focused on the web, so I think it's important to know PHP (despite some people knocking it, it's still used on 75% of the world's web servers).

The two languages I'm really focusing on now is Ruby and PHP. I want to get good with both. And if you want to do anything on the web, you gotta throw Javascript in there as well.
By claiming that they can contribute to software engineering, the soft scientists make themselves even more ridiculous.

I might get voted down for taking him (and the post) dead-on, but I think Dijkstra is just plain wrong here. Granted, this was written in 1975, but I think a lot of thinking about human interface design has tremendously benefited various computer fields. That said, there is a subset of "soft scientists" for which this may be true.
It only gets worse.
I really like this idea/interface, this could be a great layer to apply on or replace Craigslist's places to rent section, it reminds me of a craigslist-ified version of the mls.ca website.
Even if you are hiring a programmer, it's still helpful to know how to code. You will be able explain your ideas and discuss the project intelligently.
I don't think it's possible to believe it without being racist. I don't think it's so easy to fool your unconscious biases if that's what you believe.
Definitely a typo. They left out a "one" at the end.
I've worked with the USRP and USRP2 extensively trying to use the hardware to detect cosmic rays using forward scatter of radio waves. Both are incredibly fun, versatile tools, especially if you learn a little bit of verilog.
I don't understand what you're trying to say. The manufacture of hardware is entirely separate to the operation of a software marketplace.
I have definitely seen a few other guys on HN posting about this as well. I think one of the commenters in this thread is another such person.
"But if you say that, then you have already accepted a premise that the piece is calling into question, namely: why should that be the choice that everyone faces? Why should the only options be self-sacrifice"

It seems to me that this line of thinking is ultimately just asking for the removal of choice entirely. If you 'get ahead' without any self-sacrifice then you either managed this solely through an act of wishing or entirely on the backs of others. Is a world without choice preferable? Is it meaningful to ask the question when reality is clearly otherwise?
Live Blog: Apple iPad Event
Ah, my mistake. I did know that. Honest.
You own the paper. You can publish it on your personal site before X in "© acm 200x". It's not your fault they didn't choose to take interest in the paper before that date...
I have a white board at arms length of my chair. Swivel 45 degrees and I can draw, make lists etc. So useful.
Could not have said it better myself :-)

We want to get people along to try out their ideas, and also who just want to collaborate on great projects! Great startups are born of great teams of people, who are much more important than any one idea.

Today we have also announced special prizes for Wireless and Healthcare projects, as well as our overall prize for best project.

To find out more, look here - http://cambridge.startupweekend.org
Mostly, because I already run my own business (as a business coach) - built that up in Australia, then moved to London, now building it back up again. So between learning to code and putting on another client, its a large value difference in the short term.

Once this business is chugging along, I'll do something more scalable. But that's just as likely to involve publishing, where I have passion and experience, as it is to involve a startup, where passion alone would need to develop experience.

So it's entirely possible that I'll be sitting here in 10 years, having never learnt more than some basic HTML and CSS, because I keep creating more immediately valuable opportunities. Though I have noticed, as more of my friends have kids (we don't, yet), that 'long term' things like learning a new skill, going back to college, or even committing to a local football team, suddenly seem smaller and more realistically achievable - ask me now if I want to commit 10,000 hours to something new and I won't have time, but with a backdrop of 18+ years of child-minding in front of you, it doesn't seem nearly as large. Of course, as I understand it, kids take time too!
You should totally blog about it when you get the time!
Who started that trend?
I have everything in friends only.. even friends list. I have a public twitter though. I see no reason why they should not hire a human being. We are all human and if they are clinging on to a 1950s view of Man then maybe I should not work there. I am quite professional and accomplished but I always speak from my heart.

My biggest gripe with HR is in their ability to understand transferrable skills. I may have x years and a masters degree in y but they are looking for y'.

I have faith that with my generation, politicians and businessmen alike will stop pretending they are "perfect" people. Then finally we can get past these old ideas of how everyone should exist.
What makes you think that's a typo? We're not allowed a bit of humor every so often? :)
I do find it ironic actually and that is why I like that one. It is very easy to be trendy and I think you know you are onto something big when it easily breaks them.
I've heard about the 20% things but look a the page and ask yourself. Anyone could have made that in 5 minutes + maybe a week for discussion.
Comparing side by side 3 enterprise collaboration cloud apps
This is an absolute if you

...exclude certain conditions as unrealistic, or take the particular common case as universal.

It also means that you get to define 'bug-free' as 'implements the standard to the letter',

When the specs are engineering specs, this can sometimes be usefully close to true.

not 'does what every single user expects all of the time, even when those expectations contradict and are insane.'

Formal systems will usually tell you when specs are outright contradictory.
(sites)
- HNews
- Quora
- Mixergy
- Sparkmuse
I wonder what this fellow would have thought about work 100 years ago or more. The amount of "slavery" that a person has to do today to sustain himself has never, in the history of mankind, ever been lower than it is today. We should be so lucky.
Which is interesting since Google doesn't serve a 404 over HTTPS as far as I can tell.
How many of those sites had the sustained level of traffic that Mahalo had for years?

Also note that Mahalo enjoyed that level of traffic based on auto-generating pages through shagging third party content (without requesting permission and without any way to opt out of getting your content scraped, since they were pulling in the scrapes from Google's search API & you couldn't block Mahalo doing that without blocking GoogleBot).

In the past when Matt Cutts wrote of such MFA scraper sites he described them as "shoot on sight"
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/im-on-webmasterradiofm/#commen...

"In the chat room, I said hello to teeceo, but I know the stuff that he was doing and it’s shoot-on-sight. I think anyone who is blackhat knows (or should know) that I’m happy to talk to anyone, but that we’ll still take action on the spam we find."

And yet you have sympathy for Jason? Shows how powerful his public relations skills are! :D
Yes, but how are you going to find them?

If I set my privacy settings correctly, you won't be able to see any of my photos, or see who my friends are.
Theft of labor resources, if you're salary non-exempt and reading HN is not in your job description :-)
I love the fact it's an 'around the world' canvas. Most implementations I've played around with use an expanding or fixed width one instead...it makes some combinations truly amazing.

For example, the acorn pattern(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Game_of_life_acorn.svg) is a lot more impressive, because the gliders spawned travel across the screen and interact with the solid blocks. Empirically, it seems to make the pattern last a lot longer!
Ask HN: Review my app: gramfeed.com
Gramfeed is twitter like web client for instagram
"It’s similar in theory to buying an American Express gift card (though without the credit card fees). The Cardpool gift card makes a lot of sense for the startup and is sure to be a popular way to gift gift cards."

This sounds like you buy a Cardpool gift card and can then purchase specific gift cards FROM the Cardpool marketplace. How is that anything at all like an American Express gift card, where you can use the card immediately.
As evidence that these facebook-reference checks are actually occurring, Here is an example of a recruiter friending me during an interview process:

Elizabeth Nuzzo,
Senior IT Recruiter @ Professional Alternative Inc.
Studied at University of Connecticut,
Lives in Boston MA
Born on May 23, 1982

It feels wrong for the hive mind to discuss Elizabeth Nuzzo's behavior against her will. But hey, it's a two edged sword.

It is a bit jarring for everyone on the internet be able to expose you and your innermost personal preferences, what you do, and how you work, why, and evaluate you based on this against your will. I figure it is inevitable that privacy becomes a thing of the past, we might as well embrace it and remember that what you do online is as important as how you present yourself during an interview.

You are never off-stage, your entire life is an interview. Sleep with one eye open.
Clickable link: http://www.gramfeed.com
Wisconsin Transit Tracker Costs Developer Only $75 For One Year
Conway's Game of Life
because it has a simple backend and a simple grid-based GUI
I'm definitely going to run things by a lawyer before signing anything. I just want whoever I choose to know they're in it as much as I am and it's not like a "hey, jump on this with me and do tons of work for 10% because I had the idea" sort of thing. I want a committed partner, not an employee.
Commodore Basic had a "def fn" command, but it only supported single-line (= single-statement) functions.

Sounds vaguely familiar!
It's good to know that quality still sells, and prices aren't everything.

Maybe because of Europe's location, I see textiles sourced from places like Turkey and even Latin America, rather than purely from China/Asia in general. What kind of things do you see coming out of the UE?
For which category?
Do you have an alternative?

I'm not the parent poster, but I suggest that co-ops have led to greater employee satisfaction. There are also non-co-op companies where employees all have a say in business decisions, and they have done well and have great employee satisfaction and retention.

The current (big) business climate dictates that the sole purpose of a company is to maximize shareholder value at all times, at all costs. I suggest that the purpose of a company is to provide value to all stakeholders, and find a healthy balance.
Is My Product Ready To Launch?
Whoa, thanks for this resource! You just gave me a possible client list for the entire country, haha.. My app is for restaurant owners and/or managers and I'll need to contact plenty. Thanks again!
Google's most frequently accessed pages (most prominently, the homepage itself) are designed by a team of pretty high-level engineers, to reduce latency and bandwidth requirements, by stripping bytes. Every change is reviewed with extreme scrutiny. I'm sure the 404 page was designed with similar care.

If you view source, for example, the image is base64 encoded, and they don't even bother closing their tags on the page, because that's more bytes and the browsers don't notice. This was very carefully engineered.
Agreed completely, I'd heard a separate interview with Max Levchin where I believe he quoted the amount of money that PayPal lost at around $150 million (IIRC). That was their "learning money" to figure out how to handle fraud.

Seeing as how Mr. Levchin has actually invested in WePay I'm assuming that they are have some strategy for fraud prevention.
You have a really great scrappy startup story. Keep up the good work.
Haha, I don't know, it's always been easy to get a new IMEI. Go to one of those "cell phone support forums", advertise an unlocking service, ask for IMEI, receive in your email. With a little more work you could monetize it but botnets for CC#s are probably a lot easier, and 419's provide even more pay for the effort involved. But then again i'm not a kid in some 3rd world country looking for a quick buck so who knows, Android apps could be a really interesting proposition.
The difference being that, once you set aside Dijkstra's glib aphorisms, there may not BE a 1940 to talk about.
I think he's busy.
> I'm not attacking him. His message places a lot of blame externally.

True. It's probably a matter of seeing where form ends and where meaning begins (which is of course based on a false dichotomy :-).

> The big point is that placing the blame externally kills off your ability to solve problems yourself.

That's your big point (and I agree with you on that).

His point is a reformulation of a key facet of Marx's analytical economic theory, with which I agree. I wouldn't however ever think of advocating any of Marx's proposed solutions, which took out the human nature out of the equation, for great disaster.
I believe that it is a byproduct of increasing popularity of hacking bringing in a more diverse group of people and the lack of formal support structures / "good" trade schools for programming.

Before the internet was pervasive, a self-study of Programming was for the curious tinkerer. Now that it is incredibly mainstream, we are seeing more people who are approaching programming as a means to an end, for whom the solitary pursuit of arcane knowledge is not an end unto itself.

For people who are not auto-didacts, a little more structure is needed. From a (Vygotskian) pedagogical perspective, most learners require an Expert to create "scaffolding" (support structures) that allow the learner to increase their "zone of proximal development" -- that is, they require someone else who has mastery to provide a little help or guidance in order to help the to tackle tasks the learner does not yet fully master. the completion of tasks with help then increases the learner's level of mastery and they can then take on ever-more-challenging tasks.

Tl;Dr: most people prefer to not teach themselves hard things.
either, really. not much of a stateful backend but it's a nice toy in javascript.
LOL please. The number of completely irrelevant emails I get from recruiters is astonishing. I'm not terribly worried about potentially wasting their precious, precious time..
The quick, easy, and non-communist way to do this is to have the opportunity for employees to become shareholders through purchase of premium stock and bonds.

This solves the moral hazard problem quite well.