skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A few thoughts on this...

Almost anything that can be automated can be done manually (or with minimal scripted automation) first, often with pretty good results. It's generally a good idea to start simple, and don't add complexity and extra work (like configuring/managing automation!) until you are addressing actual needs that you have... at that point, you can measure the pain to decide how much effort to put into the fix.

The first step to automated deployment is manual deployment using a checklist. Before automated unit tests, you have to write unit tests, and be able to execute them manually. Before automated rollback, you have manual rollback. Etc..

Are your developers able to run the entire project locally? If so, you are starting off with frequent local deployments, and if you encourage them to implement features in small steps and sync with version control after each step (i.e., at least once a day) then you also have achieved frequent integration builds - each developer is doing them independently. Next, throw in a script that executes all of your unit tests, and run that yourself daily (don't automate it into every build... that'll swiftly make them too slow and devs will start avoiding builds...), then email everyone when something is failing.

In other words, with a simple cultural standard -- don't hide in a hole and code for a week, and write unit tests! -- you have already solved (for a small team) most of what continuous deployment addresses. And you haven't put any time whatsoever (or spent money/time hiring someone) into setting up some non-trivial automation yet.

The other advantage is that by the time you are seriously ready to automate your build, it may be quite different from what you have now -- it depends on where your project goes, if you make a large pivot, mix in new technologies, and so on.

This solution might work for quite a long time; are there good reasons to implement continuous deployment instead, from the start?

Other than the cool factor, I don't think so.
Ok. I just implemented a quick and dirty voting mechanism that'll due for now.

It uses the reddit algorithm for calculating how "hot" a story is.

That was fun!
Good artists copy great artists steal.
Wow! $2000 for a set! I had no idea custom sets of Legos were so pricey, even at 72 tiles that seems like a lot, given that the blocks used are pretty basic.
Con la lana que uses, serás medido
El futuro de los dispositivos de Apple
Cool idea. Awesome design! Like.
If you have to ask this question you must not be a good friend. You have to talk to your friend about how they would feel if you pursued the employee first if you care about your friendship.
There's another thing that its competitors can't match. Steve Jobs's willingness to ruthlessly "knife the baby" if necessary, even if the "baby" is a product that is a large source of revenue. The iPod Mini was EOL'ed with the introduction of the iPod Nano.
I just moved back to Tumblr after using Posterous for 6 months or so. I finally got tired of the slow page loads and buggy editor I experienced using Posterous.
Ask HN: Best way to handle payments for a non-US based startup?
Hi Guys!

I'm building an application with a couple of friends and now we have started to look at possible ways to handle payments, our problem is that we are not in the US and paypal doesn't work where we are (We can't either have a merchant account and Colombia's banks suck at helping with it). So I was wondering if someone has had the same problem before and which services have you used to manage online payments? We have been looking into fastspring or moneybookers, but maybe, is there a better way to do it?.

A couples of facts:

- Our target market is US-based (other countries welcome too).

- Billing occur just once, we give the money back if the user is not satisfied with the service.
easy to click: http://vouched.heroku.com
Monster Beats Dr Dre Earphones-White
Product description:
Beats?High Definition Powered Isolation Headphones
Monster Cable headphone cable (1.3 meters)
1/8 to 1/4" adapter
Monster iSoniTalk cable for iPhone, Blackberry and other music phones
Touring case
Monster Clean Cloth with advanced Aegis Microbe Shield technology
Two AAA batteries
Beats by dre that fashional appreance that the cheap headphones industry generally lacks.
There is a little variation in how the noise renders across browsers. FF vs Chrome vs Safari: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17455578/noise.png
Well, I could be snarky and say "usability" -- which, relative to GitHub, it kinda seems like BitBucket pioneered. Frankly, though, I'm not sure whether there's something BitBucket really "invented". There doesn't seem to be much that either can do and the other cannot, aside from BitBucket's ability to make unlimited private projects (of limited size, of course) where GitHub cannot.

Usability seems to be a major difference between not just BitBucket and GitHub, though -- it's also a major difference between Mercurial and Git themselves. Between the two, I find I like Mercurial/BitBucket much more usable than GitHub/Git. The big advantage GitHub/Git has is popularity, basically, and I've never really been one to let a lack of market-dominating popularity hold me back.

Anyway . . . to answer your question more directly:

I don't pay much attention to the fiddly corner cases where they differ in total functionality, so I don't really know who came up with what features first. They've both been evolving pretty quickly, from what I've seen, so I'm not sure anyone else can really say what features one has copied from the other, unless they were working on one of the two and involved in the imitation process.

I don't even see why it matters. It's like open source software: imitation is a good thing, because good features get more widely used, and everybody wins. It doesn't have to be a competition. I just don't think holding up GitHub alone as some kind of messiah really helps anything.
The Big Wait: Trying not to get stressed-out for SXSW
Prediction: Facebook is no longer a viable marketing strategy for startups
Apple has changed the review process to be less biased. Not sure when it was (somewhere around 4.0 launch last year) but they no longer prompt users to rate an app during the uninstall process.

I too really dislike being asked to rate an app. Especially since there's never a good time for this. Most of the time I've see this on my phone is when I launch an app for the 5th or 6th time. I launched the app to use it, not to review it.

We all hate the bad reviews. But don't start doing this. It's just bad user experience.
My (in-depth) summary:

The authors (in 1996) imagine what an interface would look like that is inspired by the opposite of all the guiding principles for the Mac GUI.

Mac => Anti-Mac

* Metaphors => Reality

* Direct Manipulation => Delegation

* See and Point => Describe and Command

* Consistency => Diversity

* WYSIWYG => Represent Meaning

* User Control => Shared Control

* Feedback and Dialog => System Handles Details

* Forgiveness => Model User Actions

* Aesthetic Integrity => Graphic Variety

* Modelessness => Richer Cues

The authors then talk about the weaknesses of each of the principles guiding Mac interfaces.

1) Metaphors - impose artificial restraints and obscure the true capabilities of computers.

2) Direct Manipulation - repetitive work is better handled by batch processing and simple scripting.

3) See and Point - language is more expressive.

4) Consistency - different things should be represented differently, forced consistency is oversimplification.

5) WYSIWYG - the authors interpret this as meaning "your document, as it appears on the screen, accurately reflects what it will look like when it is printed," and argue that interactivity is better.

6) User Control - sometimes automation is better, and when there are multiple actors (as in networked systems, like the internet), control must be compromised.

7) Feedback and Dialog - interruptions should only be made when they are valuable to the user, and over time as he/she gains proficiency they will matter less and less.

8) Forgiveness - forgiveness means there should always be an "undo" button and warning signs, but this can become a nuisance when the warnings are gratuitous.

9)Perceived Stability - the real world is not stable because there are forces beyond our control, and that's what makes life interesting. (This principle is curiously missing from the table summary in the article).

10) Aesthetic Integrity - variety is more interesting and expressive than unity.

11) Modelessness - this is defined as not having "modes" which restrict the user's range of actions. The problem is that users can only cope with so much at once, modes help chunk things up.

-------------- Next: The Anti-Mac Interface --------------------

This was a pretty time-consuming summary, and I'm kinda wanting to get back to work. Want me to write a summary for the second part of the article? Use the upvote as a demand signal. If this gets 20 upvotes I'll summarize the second part.
Why Hiring for Start-ups is so Hard Right Now.
ITrolley 16C - Computer trolleys for laptop and notebook PC's
We just launched a recruiting promotion at SEOmoz (http://www.seomoz.org/dp/engineer-page) and would love to have you apply! If you know or bump into other dev friends at SXSW or in Seattle, feel free to send some of those folks over too :-)

You're gonna love Seattle - it's an awesome town, and the opportunities for engineers are incredibly right now.
My first suggestion would be to stop feeling guilty when you make a mistake. Yes, you'd like to make as few as possible, but you're trying as hard as you can under the circumstances, and you're human, and no human is perfect. We all make mistakes sometimes, even the best of us, and schedules often slip as a result. So, relax a little. This doesn't mean you stop caring; it doesn't mean you stop trying to learn from your mistakes; it just means you don't feel guilty about them.

Secondly, try to get as much rest and exercise as you can. This is very important.

I do agree that you should complete your promised deliverable; it's the right thing to do. But after it's done, do see if you can get two or three weeks off, at the very least. You know you're starting to burn out, and it's not in your employer's interest to burn you out completely. (Point that out to them if necessary.) If your finances allow for it, you could perhaps take an unpaid leave of absence.
> especially because the United States is still very receptive to immigrants from all over the world who feel an urgency about bettering their lives.

But unfortunately increasingly less so from the poorer countries. As if clever only comes from Western Europe and Canada.
It looks really good, just it's a bit blurry
It would seem that having everyone on the team making technical contributions is a potentially big boost for overall team cohesion.
No smoking gun, just little anecdotal things that engender suspicion.

For example, years ago when reddit was new I used to post actual articles and consistently make the front page with them. But one day all my submissions suddenly started getting downvoted, many almost immediately after posting as if someone or something was constantly monitoring the new submissions page, killing any chances of developing the critical mass they used to get or of making it to the front page.

The nature of my postings hadn't changed at all, but the nature of reddit's voting behavior had, and not gradually but unnaturally abruptly, hence the suspicion. Whether it was a human voting ring like was exposed at Digg a while back, or actual bots, or just some no-life basement dwellers with nothing better to do than game reddit all day, I have no idea. I eventually abandoned that account, and now only post comments and the occasional question thread to smaller subreddits.

Of course one person's anecdotal experience is hardly evidence, much less proof, but suspicious nonetheless. When the reddit guys visited you and denied there were any bots, did they explain how they knew this? User agent info, statistical behavioral analysis, etc? I'd be really curious how they go about testing that hypothesis against their massive amount of data.
Sometimes you need to read more than just the first line to know what's going on.

"More recent SSDs will often contain internal idle/background garbage collection mechanisms that work independently of TRIM; although this successfully maintains their performance even under operating systems that do not (yet) support TRIM, it has the drawback of increased write amplification and associated increased wear of the flash cells.[4]"
Are resumes collected at a hackathon worth that much to a recruiter? It's an honest question, I'm trying to find some good devs and haven't tried this approach yet. I always assumed that the majority of people attending the hackathons are either employed in job they love (startup) or aren't looking (their own startup). I know they are the best and brightest to hire, but does anyone have any feedback on if this works?
Yup, that's why I picked Tumblr over Posterous. The toolbar is just ugly, I'd be fine if I could make it that 2D tag they used to have, but I couldn't get it to work.

Tumblr is definitely less stable, but my blog isn't that important anyways.
Yup, the Archos 101 is exactly that. The killer is the lack of formal support for Google Market and the relatively low internal RAM.
I don't remember "Supports Git" being one of the seven signs that Git Christ the Savior has Risen.

> Mercurial is great, but it's not git.

Yeah -- it's easier to use. I've even seen Git users suggest that newbies to the world of DVCSes coming from Subversion or CVS might want to try out Mercurial first because it's easier to pick up, then migrate to Git because that's what the people suggesting this path use.

> It's a hassle to have to learn two ways of doing everything.

That's as strong an argument against Git as it is against Mercurial. Despite this, I've learned to use both -- because "it's about the code". I just choose BitBucket/Mercurial for my own projects; otherwise, I use whatever DVCS is appropriate to the project based on what the project's core team uses.

> Being intimately familiar with git's required these days, especially for Linux and Android programmers. Mercurial's not.

Hah. There are lots of Linux- and Android-related projects on BitBucket and otherwise developed within a Mercurial framework, too -- and not everybody is developing primarily for Linux and Android, anyway. Did you notice, for instance, that the majority favorite language of GitHub hipsters (Python) is using Mercurial now? Your narrow world is not everyone else's narrow world.
Likewise, everybody should do sales and user support.
Any reason why the "TO" in the title is capitalized?
Pamela Anderson en el carnaval de Río de Janeiro
I have absolutely no idea what this article is trying to tell me. I think it's (luckily) quite unusual to encounter writing that's so completely and utterly unintelligible.
The displayed numbers and real numbers have a two hour gap between them. This conclusion cannot be derived from the posted screenshot.
How exactly does this conspiracy manage to overcome market forces to keep rents artificially high?
Treat people as you'd like to be treated. The way you treat people on the way up, is likely to affect the way you'll be treated on the way down.

Poaching staff from your associate / friend's company is likely to create friction.
AlwaysInnovating's touchbook beats the iPad on price, last I checked.

http://alwaysinnovating.com/
No reason. Thanks for pointing it out. Fixed.
Tips for minimizing the food budget:
- Cut your meat intake in half or lower. It's expensive, and you'll feel better. Avoid red meat in general, as it is most expensive. Eggs are the cheapest protein. Tuna is probably second.
- Generally speaking you should consider rice, potatoes, oats, and beans the base of your diet. They're all cheap if you buy them unprocessed.
- Get in the habit of diluting everything that is processed by half. So if you get a package of cheesy rice mix for 1 euro, add a cup of plain rice to it. Likewise with Tuna Helper, etc. I don't know why they put so much spice mix in those things. Also you can do this with canned soups -- add a can of beans or veggies, and you have two cans of soup for a lower price.
- I would encourage you to cut out sweetened soda all together, as I believe it has almost no nutritional value and is probably the leading cause of obesity, but if you can get the large containers (they sell 3L bottles over here) on sale they are probably the cheapest source of calories.
- Make your own coffee and tea. Get a thermos if you don't have one.
- Consider milk a luxury. It is relatively expensive for what you get out of it.

Cutting out all of these things that are above-average cost, you may wonder what damage it will do to your health. I'm a firm believer that optimal nutritional health comes from 1) greatly lowering the excess bad stuff and 2) eat green things. Really, anything loaded with chlorophyll is probably good for you, and will fill in the gaps in your nutrients. I'd bet you could live on rice and spinach alone indefinitely.

When I was in college I a single-burner hot plate and a 1-qt non-stick sauce pan for just about everything.

So basically the cost-minimizing technique is to eat as most of the Chinese do.

We have a few discount stores over here (I'm thinking of one in PA, but I know of another in MT) that sell dented cans, out-dated (but perfectly good) boxed food, etc. for roughly half of regular retain price. It's the same thing you'd get at a regular grocer, but the packages aren't right. If you have one near you it could save you more than any other diet-changing strategy.
JQuery 1.5 - create your own deferred object with parameters
Sorry, I'm not going to bite on some boring argument over Israel, their right to defend themselves, etc. Been there done that, not fun.
This was exactly the reasoning of the high-end hi-fi retailer B&O - they opened flagship stores around the world, and it didn't turn out well.
The best way to get feedback from users would be for Apple to provide, as part of the iOS API, a widget that lets you do the rating right there in the app itself.

When prompted 'Would you like to rate this app?', if you choose 'Yes', show a ratings widget and comment box right there in the dialog without booting you to the App Store.
I've heard the issue discussed by interested parties, though certainly not international law scholars. It seems the commonly held opinion is also a rather simple one - an electronic attack that causes a building to explode would be the same as bombing the building, stealing classified documents electronically is espionage, and so fouling nuclear enrichment would be sabotage.

The critical difference is proving who did it. If you want to prove who bombed your building often there is some physical evidence that can be pretty conclusive. Chemical signatures of the explosives, photographs from customs, caught on video, what type of plane it was etc.

Electronic attacks often fall more in the lines of having circumstantial evidence. Even if "everyone knows" who did it, it probably falls short of proof unless someone takes credit.

Is sabotage an act of war? I'm not sure if there is a set standard. In practice it often seems to get a pass - the CIA was apparently responsible for sabotaging a pipeline in Siberia in 1982 without any international outcry. Especially in the realm of non-proliferation the international community seems to be mostly united. Even overt action like the Israeli bombing of Syrian nuclear sites in 2007 received a muted response at best.
How to take a screenshot of a section of a UIView
Great to see Bay Area and Chicago in the same sentence. Pumped to be part of a chicago meet up and would love the feedback. Thanks!
FeeFighters is doing a bang up job with link bait. They will start to reap the rewards in 12-18 mos.

It seems like the people who dislike SEO either a) high a high burn rate and can't wait 18 mos to get a payoff, or b) have investors who can't stand putting money into a marketing activity with such high uncertainty.

Bottom line-- it's no different from PR. High initial expense, uncertain payoff, but sometimes you get monsterous ROI.
Right. That should have been "would be".
I'd like to be able to grab a list of all the articles I've upvoted.

I think upvoting an article is similar to 'starring' it - and I often find myself wanting to return to interesting articles I've found via HN.
Liked this post and certainly agree with the advice.

If anyone's planning a hackathon in Seattle, we'd love to contribute/sponsor and possibly even host (if it's after-hours or on a weekend). Just drop me a line - rand at seomoz dot org
It's an attractive page, but I'd venture to say it's either not very usable, or there's a formatting issue on Chrome 9 with Vista.

On the page I see, there's the header, and a rocket that takes up the entire page. The signup form itself is actually below the fold, and has no margin below it, so it appears to be absolutely positioned with bottom: 0;

This makes it easy to overlook which, arguably, is the number 1 point of the site -- to harvest emails.

If you put the signup form, perhaps with a translucent background (and of course rounded corners) sitting about halfway down the rocket, I think it would look even more appealing than it does now, and be TONS more usable.

Here's the screen as I see it on my computer: http://twitpic.com/46zq4o
How Facebook is Killing Your Authenticity
Totally agree. A troll's main goal is to get a rise out of people -- that's the very definition.
They don't have to resort to advertising so much as choosing the advertising model because it yields more revenue. At least for the specific case of Angry Birds.

http://www.intomobile.com/2010/12/03/angry-birds-android-1-m...
This is a little (a lot) off-topic but I liked the way he conveys his contact details in that image to the left, heh.
Anyone know how Zenedy.com (YC W10) is doing with their "unviable" SEO content farming strategy?
Another thing that should be mentioned is timing. I noticed that Cut the Rope put in a request right at the end of the first group of levels, and to boot, they made the final level of the group really easy to get you feeling smart and euphoric. Sure, 5 stars!

While I'm not sure what the "euphoric moment" will be in my app, it's very wise to time your reminders to be placed in strategic areas associated with positive emotion: the end of a task, a major completion.
If you don't need to sync with iTunes - you don't need another Apple computer.
Anchors, prices and value
What part of the parent comment lead you to any conclusion about Android's user experience?

I think he was just talking about a way to get rid of ads in games that have ads. Presumably the same would work for iOS games that use ads as well.
If you respond in the way given under "what to do instead", doesn't the troll fail to get the rise?
I couldn't help but parse that as "App pirater" and was thoroughly confused as to how that would help your sales.
The response was dismissive because his whine deserved to be dismissed.
So the point is there simply is no way to solve such a problem with solely the data contained in the data set.

I wonder then, could a system be developed for capturing the minimal required domain knowledge either in a data set itself, or in some other form. Especially as it evolves over time.

Either way, the article was a good read.
Thank you for this! I had no idea where to start. meetup.com seems to be a great resource, exactly what I needed. I'm going to try to attend a few of these, starting with the hack and tell tomorrow, if I can make it!
You, sir, are the ridiculous one.