skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It already has, especially with the advent of things like railscasts (screen casts that teach new skills by example,) things like the javascript mentors mailing list and so forth.. i think you are on to something wrt writing for an audience and having that audience change as time goes on. I think the "popularizer" blogs that are basically n00b guides to web tech are increasing in popularity and directly increase the exposure of their curators...

for a direct example, compare the README.md in many GitHub projects to the pages on SourceForge.

We used to take for granted that you'd know how to get cvs, configure make and install for your system (and would understand architecture flags and so forth...) nowadays library authors (who in many ways are the "first educators" for their tech) are putting in more effort to make things as easy as "copy and paste this into your terminal to install."

That all said, it is kind of terrifying how many people are developing networked applications with only the most rudimentary understanding of networking...
This pretty much sums it up: "Tell us where you want to go and experienced travelers will provide you with info you cannot find on search websites."

You can probably rewrite a lot of that homepage, make it shorter and convert better.

I like the "Got an awesome deal? we'll find you a better one for $10" approach. ie: encourage people to find the best deal they can find on expedia etc, then get them a better deal. One way of doing it would be to take that approach and build your homepage around that (instead of just making it a sentence in between other sentences). I would imagine that would convert very well.
Oh, dang. I am sitting here waiting to pay my big adult bucks for the HD remake of Space Quest and they had to revive that girly knock-off quest... jeez :)
Congrats to Steve and the Apple team. The iPad 2 is a phenomenal product. 33% thinner design in less than a year since it was first released. And crazy cool covers as a bonus.
A Built-in Web Server For PHP
I appreciate your input and opinion. I actually spent quite awhile drafting this post and keeping track of the progress before it was submitted (40 days) for the same reasons you mention in your comment. I try to read nearly every story I submit before I submit them (some I didn't and I've made mistakes along the way, I'm sure, but isn't that the point of learning?). I also happen to feel it brings value here, but my opinion of value and yours evidently differ.

I am not trying to be the most influential member of this board, nor am I looking for recognition for reaching my personal goal. I simply wanted to express what I'd learned about submitting content in my first 40 days as an HN member in a fun way that incorporated something everyone here could related to (karma points). The real value we could all get would be in others sharing their stories (the title does say 'Ask' and is formed as a question), whether they talk about karma points doesn't matter to me one bit.

If this post ends up bombing, and is frowned upon by the majority of members, my feelings would be hurt, but it would also motivate me to try that much harder in the future. Like I said, I am new. Thanks again for the advice.
Just having a tag for ruby questions doesn't make sense.
Ruby users tend to do many different things, using many different libraries.

Basically the intent is to focus on ruby. No Java, no python, just ruby programmers answering ruby questions.
This seems fraught with adverse selection issues.

1. Only Fan Boys Apply. Only people who are willing to pay $100 to work at google will do so.

2. Only people without other opportunities will apply. For example, why would I pay $100 to apply to google, when I can apply to everywhere else for free.

3. Reduce the number of linchpin applicants. If I know I don't fit the stereotypical google employee, why would I spend $100 to apply and be told no. Where as I might apply for free, and hope they can see that I am actually a good hire, although, I break the mold.

If these aren't enough, how do you handle the PR side of things?
Also, you need an example of a question and answer on that homepage. I want to see what I'd get.
To be fair, if someone was in truly poor health or undergoing radical chemotherapy, standing at length would likely be either incredibly difficult or impossible.

So sure, it's not fool proof, but its also not a bad indication that reports of his impending demise are exaggerated.
Why $2.99? Have you tried other price points?
That's a great point you bring up. Of course one of the assumptions, which may be wrong, is that Google is a desirable place to work.

If you are a highly desirable employee, you would likely get an offer at Google and have your application fee paid back in multiples--the point of the revenue neutrality is to encourage "highly desirable employees" to apply, not to discourage them. But I can see how it's hard to get over the psychological hurdle of paying to apply.
DroidDream Turns Into a Nightmare: Malware Invades Official Android Market
http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/6/4/...

10 to 3 to 1. Take the pixel-perfect approach and pile on top of it the requirement that Apple designers expect to design 10 different mockups of any new feature under consideration. And these are not just crappy mockups; they all represent different, but really good, implementations that are faithful to the product specifications.

Then, by using specified criteria, they narrow these 10 ideas down to three options, which the team spends months further developing…until they finally narrow down to the one final concept that truly represents their best work for production.

This approach is intended to offer enormous latitude for creativity that breaks past restrictions. But it also means they inherently plan to throw away 90% of the work they do. I don’t know many organizations for which this would be an acceptable ratio. Your CFO would probably declare, “All I see is money going down the drain.” This is a major reason why I say you can’t innovate like Apple.
"For someone who's supposed to be on a leave of absence, he's sure doing a lousy job of it" is how it was put to me a few days ago.
Throws an SSL error/warning:

This is probably not the site that you are looking for!

You attempted to reach market.android.com, but instead you actually
reached a server identifying itself as *.google.com. This may be
caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more
serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to
visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of market.android.com.
You should not proceed.
Thank you!! Because revolutions didn't happen until facebook/twitter were invented. They might have helped, but this was brewing for ummm 30 years or so.
Text adventures are still alive and well: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Current_events
2 miles / hour seems very slow! Typo?
I agree. Great response. So much advice a person like this would receive would be "do this" or "do that." If you don't have the urge to do anything perhaps that is a good thing. Your mind/body is trying to tell you something. It may be time to take a break. There's nothing wrong with that. We all sleep at night and sometimes we need more rest at points of our lives. Humans are not linear. We are more suited to a cycle of up and down rather than a straight, linear way of life.

When we're sick, the best way to get better is to rest. I know this isn't a popular opinion for a place like HN or even America in general.

You said you tried meditating but can't stand it for more than 5 minutes. There are other forms of activities that can get you into a meditative-like state. For me, this could be reading or walking for the sake of walking.
not really sure when these images are from, but...

asia in general: http://subdude-site.com/WebPics/WebPicsEarthLights/asia_east...

more here: http://subdude-site.com/WebPics/WebPicsEarthLights/WebPicsEa...
Cyclists would be an exception to your 2 miles/hour theory.
This sounds like the whiny rant of a child. It's not just about money, it's about drive and vision. If you have drive and vision, then your employer will notice and you'll move up, learn more, maybe even make enough to start your own business with your own ideas. If not, if you don't choose to better yourself and fight for what you want, then you fit the position you allow yourself to fit. You wouldn't ask a janitor to make business decisions, why would you ask an accountant, or a programmer, or a designer?

Life is about taking pride in what you do and going after what you want, not about whining, me me me.
Yeah, people have use that to do awesome things, including embedding http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/js1k/

Pretty much everything you can do in the browser, you can do through that tiny text box. But as soon as someone pops it, it's gone forever unless they put it back :)
Thank you! I was wondering how that works even though I have contributed some bug fixes to the android sdk before...

Is there a google page with the addy to send the betas ?

Once again thanks for the info
PlayBook a bit rough with less than 2 months to launch
As a user I would love it if I had a free forever account, but in reality as a producer I probably would just give a discount 25%-50%.
What I don't get is that they're "exercising" rats that are being forcibly sedate. Rats travel long distances on a daily basis, they have large areas in the wild (not so much in the city) where they find food.

For a fair study you would have to find how much a wild non-urban rat "exercises" during a day and then up that to see whether exercise will keep them young.
Oops, didn't see your reply. I was having second thoughts about whether that was a good idea or not. Someone could do something... not so nice.

Interesting experiment though!
The question, as another commenter posted elsewhere in this thread, is: does it scale?

Sure, you choose your career (to a large extent) but society needs developers AND plumbers, and too many people choosing to be developers would push down developer wages to the point where being a developer would no longer be desirable. It can't work for everyone.

We need a solution that does not create an underclass of people that society needs but does not value. In a truly fluid job market in which there was always hiring in every industry and every worker was able and prepared to do any kind of job, capitalism might take care of that. Unfortunately, that's not reality.

I think that the system we have is much better than many others that have been tried in the past, but that doesn't mean that it's optimal or that we should stop trying to improve.
Cloud Linux is marketed towards shared hosting providers, often the kind that might have 300-2000 websites on a single server. The isolation prevents rogue PHP scripts from taking down the entire server normally seen with non-updated/misconfigured WordPress or common forum software.
There is one thing everyone is missing, Apple does have a process of verifying the identity of the author even if there was a malware that was slipped in it is easy to identify the author and report to authorities that in itself is a good deterrent against trying. remember malware writers want low hanging fruit first and and Android extremely ripe for it.
It's what their client base demands. It's part of their success. Think how many internal tools are relying on compatibility since they would be too expensive to rewrite. (I'm looking at you VB6)

You may be interested in this technet article on the concept of Shims
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd837644(WS.10).a...

Not only can you make your own, Windows ships shims with each release to provide compatibility support with popular user applications.

Edit: fixed some grammar.
Yeah, there are all sorts of bad things that can happen with this, use this at your own risk. But it's entertaining, at least.
> > three times a week

> Do this every day for five months

Three times a week. Also, mice can't ride bicycles.
This makes me wonder: is there some way to undo the taboo of a cash gift, but retain its economic efficiency?

Perhaps, encase the cash in something that, while not very expensive, required a lot of advance thought/planning?

For example: the enclosure-with-cash needed to be ordered long in advance. And also, encased inside with the cash is some dated and/or custom artifact, such as a personalized note or recommendations of things to buy.

Overall, it sends the message: I rationally want you to buy what you want, but I didn't just thoughtlessly drop a bill in an envelope at the last minute. I've been thinking of you on this gift-giving occasion for a while.
I used to be a humongous fan of 2D adventure games. Most notably the Space Quest series. If you've never played them start out with Space Quest 4 and then play SQ6. The audio dialog in the game is unrivaled humor. Full Throttle was also one of the mega-classics of 2D adventure games. I think the downfall of these games came when the studios tried to go the 3D route.
off-hand sounds like if you do a limited-feature free version you could bring up that amount at least double it or maybe even 5x it..
This gives a great deal of assurance for Windows developers. You don't have to worry about your app not working in future versions of Windows.
Erm, actually malware is being identified on iOS as well;

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10446402-245.html
this blog post? http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/02/26/Mobile-Mon...
John Gruber on Apple’s 30% cut: To the victor goes the pricing power
Good point, but consider all those old business apps that can continue to run in small companies all over the world.
Seems to be back to normal, using Chrome 9.0.597.107
ars technica had a very recent and in-depth article about the Rise and Fall (and re-rise?) of the genre. Definitely worth a read: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2011/01/history-of-gra...
One place you'd use something like this is for corporate gifts. In such a situation the goal is not the "thoughtfulness" you might aim for if you were buying a present for a friend. The buyers want something asymptotically close to cash.
This one's timeless though:

Kevin: This shot reminds me: You'll see games with forklifts and crates, but you won't see one goddamn pallet. You know what a pallet is right? Yeah, you worked at the warehouse, you know. But all these whiny bitches who go to college on their parents' money and then design games have never been inside a real fucking warehouse and have no fucking clue that in order to move a fucking crate, you need to have a goddamn pallet.
It's interesting that you bring up adverse selection issues, because I thought it would reduce them.

1. Can you explain why fan boys would be "bad" for Google?

2. The argument was that if your probability of being accepted is greater than 4% (greater than their goal), you stand to gain more than you lose with their revenue-neutral provision.

3. Good point. This could be one of the false-negatives that the program introduces.

Of course the PR side of things are the most difficult to handle. Colleges are allowed to do it, but companies may be put in bad light for it.
Weirdly enough my uncle actually knew the guy who wrote Trumpet Winsock.

He says he got burnt by piracy fairly badly: computer magazines were including the full version of his app on their cover disks all over the world, ISPs were handing his app to their customers, and his company was too small to stop them.
Morgan Spurlock Sells Out At TED
You can do that with most unixes easily.
I don't want to be in North Korea at night, but isn't the way the US landscape is illuminated a major waste of energy? It just seems whack for the car dealership to be lit up like a sports arena at 2am, or for the interstate to be so bright at night you don't even need your headlights.

Wikipedia on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution#Energy_waste
Try this: https://mail.google.com/asdfasdf
Hmm, I find it hard to feel so pessimistic. I don't go to the cinema very often, but all the films I saw this year were outstanding (Kickass, Inception, Social Network, Kings Speech, True Grit were the latest). Also, sequels aren't necessarily going to be any worse than non-sequels. Often great art arises from restricted subject matter. For instance all the paintings of religious figures, or all the Shakespeare plays that were reworkings of popular stories/dramas.
Not really, if you're forcing yourself to go faster you're likely doing damage. You might be able to go faster for shorter periods or slower for a lot longer. However, I would think if the Roman Legion had been doing 25km in 3 hours I doubt they would have won any wars.

Their forced marches were to make them march longer, not faster. I'm saying 2 miles/hour because the Romans only managed around 1.5 with weight.
> Nobody expects a "back" or "undo" button in everyday activities like driving a car or cooking or making social conversation. How did this expectation become so irreversibly fundamental in computers?

People make mistakes. All people, in everything they do, at every level of responsibility.

"Back" or "undo" buttons in everyday activities like driving a car or cooking or making social conversation would be astoundingly useful. In your first example alone, literally tens of thousands of lives would be saved every year.

The expectation is irreversibly fundamental in computing because in computing, unlike reality, it is actually possible.
I think he means Goldman, since the gov't is essentially prosecuting on Goldman's behalf here.
Probably referring to Goldman rather than the lawyer.
Such a simple thing, such an elegant design. Color me impressed.
VC from Menlo Ventures taking two calls tomorrow from anyone
Am I the only one that fails to see a problem with Google search? I'm all for fighting the 800 lb gorilla. I love to support the little guys with big ideas, and I'm usually quick to realize and point out flaws with the incumbents.

But with Google, I have never had any issues. It does exactly what I need it to do, and it does it instantly. It gives me the results for what I meant to search for even if I typed my search completely wrong. In the matter of seconds I can learn about any topic that pops into my mind, no matter how ridiculous it may be. I can't even remember the last time I had to click that itty-bitty "2" at the bottom of Google's search results.

"The relevance of the articles have been declining"? Bullshit.

"Content farms"? Who cares. If they give me the answers I'm looking for, I'll gladly wander over to those content farms.

"Privacy" What?

Don't get me wrong. I live for the David and Goliath type stories, but I think these guys are going about it all wrong.
JavaScript Enlightenment - Objects are the Nucleus, by cody lindley
A book to turn a JavaScript library user into a JavaScript developer
>The optimal thing to do with those revenues would be to return them to successful applicants: Say, 4% of the 250,000 applicants get job offers and 60% of them accept the job. Then they can get anywhere between $1041 and $4166 in "bonus bonus" (i.e. bonus on top of the sign-on bonus) to keep the program revenue-neutral.

Another idea would be to pay out the bonus to anyone who receives an offer, rather than just those who accept one. I think this addresses your second point, Noah, because if I think I have a good chance of getting an offer from Google then I might actually expect to profit for having applied.
Fill out this form if you weren't able to get an appointment:
https://spreadsheets2.google.com/viewform?hl=en&hl=en...
Yeah the new entry level in law, government work and politics is "unpaid internship." I swear these people are taking huge advantage of the economy and the surplus of qualified workers.
Agreed. I hired an experienced programmer to help me part-time for a few weeks at the beginning of my current project. He boosted my confidence by showing me that I could actually write good code, corrected bad habits before they became ingrained, and sped up development significantly.
Now all we have to wait for are class projectors with HDMI ports. It's why we can't play LAN games, with the handicap for the best player - his game on the projector.
An iPad would also be a lot easier to lock away in a secure location, though.
I would prefer to have a card slot

I am not sure whether I would want one. Having one would introduce a lot of opportunities, but also would remove lots of ease of use. Install an app => user must select where to install it. User interface-wise, what would happen to the home screen if I take out a card with some applications on it? What if I plug in another card? What if that card contains an application that already is on the built-in flash? Will this support separating executable from user settings? Etc.

The best solution for this I know of is the one Microsoft chose for their phones: no built-in flash, and the card slot is in a place where it cannot be removed without shutting down the hardware. However, I am not sure that solution adds sufficient value to the device to warrant its downsides (some compartment door that makes the device slightly larger, and that likely makes the device look a little bit less nice)
shrug I haven't seen any online page to send betas and such.

Meet a few of the dev advocates at IO, SXSW, and a bunch of the Android events around SF.
Tokyo is a very overcrowded place, I suspect data center costs are high due to this.
Hmmm, not able to reply to your "reply" so I'll post here:

I'm still confused by that 2mph number, the average human walking speed is 5kph (or 3.1 mph), so to walk at a 2mph pace seems suboptimal and potentially more difficult and dangerous than walking at your "normal" pace would be.
This is sarcastic? He looked like the walking dead.
the icon for "There is a person that understands you." should probably not be a computer.
Can you explain why fan boys would be "bad" for Google?

A healthy dose of cynicism/skepticism is healthy for innovation, and the term 'fan boy' suggests to me a level of zealotry that's at least slightly abandoned rational thinking for emotion. I don't want to hire anyone who thinks everything we do is perfect, what will they fix!?
The Thrill of Being Stumbled
Anybody know if the 3G models are carrier locked, or is it simply that the 'AT&T' model is GSM/UMTS and the 'Verizon' is CDMA?
Sure, you wouldn't necessarily ask a janitor or a programmer to make business decisions; the constraints of mortality force us to specialize in life. Nevertheless, do you really believe that one speciality - business - is so much more important than all the rest that it deserves to extract a disproportionate share of the profit from almost every enterprise? That doesn't seem self-evident to me.
Not a total newbie, studied engineering, been programming little projects for years and had a few side jobs while in school doing mostly simple stuff. Will hit you up, curious what you have though, and always looking to make new connections.
How does the software append your IP address if it doesn't know it? It can't get it from your router via UPNP, because that traffic is blocked. If it tries to get it by connecting to some online service and asking the IP, the IP it gets back is the Exit nodes.

It doesn't know it's IP address, so it can't leak it.
You can do that with a lot of reading I think...
By no means. The average marching rate for foot-borne, pre-industrial armies has been a pretty consistent 10 miles a day. Only a few exceptionally well organized forces, like the Roman legions, could march more than that on a regular basis.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/history/marshall/militar...
Cel shading gets around this problem somewhat, and also, IMO make the game "Feel" more like an adventure game.

What shits ME about modern adventure games is when they decide that interactive objects need to be shiny.
Not sure why you were downvoted for that because you bring up a good point (upvoted).

The thing is, that would encourage people to apply for the sake of gaming the system--essentially wasting a lot of recruiting time even if they didn't want to get the job.