skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
All of the things you hate drive me crazy too. I sometimes want to bang my head against the wall when I see copy-and-paste code written by someone who didn't know how to program. But I enjoy the challenge of fixing the problems, one by one, refactoring incrementally.

I've also learned that what I think is the right way to solve a problem isn't the only way. Most often I am rewriting bits of crap code, but I also learn new techniques and approaches.

I love green fields programmers who know the best way to do everything. Their projects frequently flame out, leaving a desperate client and an almost-working code base that fell short of someone's idea of perfection, but is fairly close to working after some practical compromises are made.

The best thing about maintenance programming is working on real code with real users. I don't miss spending three-fourths of the project schedule arguing data structures with three other programmers and a nervous client.
It's all down to different cultures. Open Source projects, the way they currently are, are driven by coders - version control, bugtrackers, IRC etc - all geeky things.

Designers work in different environments: personal discussions, meetings, illustrator, photoshop, other web communities (like dribble and obscure sections at flickr).

If you ask a designer to add stuff to your repository, you're asking him to adapt to your way. Most designers aren't going to learn git.

To embrace designers means that you include them in your processes and tools. And let them in on strategic discussions - that's where good design is most often lacking in OSS.

If you continue with a Codeocracy where only check-ins are valued and the guy with 100k lines of written code is king, you're not going to convince many designers to help you with their free time.
Err.. Okay.
And would also likely not wish to pay to have advertisements removed, lest a payment carrier have their information.
Notice the number of shoulds. A list of what you should do is like training wheels: useful for beginners but not as much for the advanced.

Instead of thinking in shoulds I like to think in terms of causes and effects. If you don't follow the law of demeter then these will be the effects. Then the programmer realizes they have a choice: even though the law of demeter usually brings about desirable consequences, maybe in a particular situation the effects of not following the law of demeter bring about the better set of consequences.

Thinking in terms of causes and effects also loosens potential dogma.
It's probably a good decision. OpenGL is full of legacy baggage, even ES, and its shader language is modeled after C. Flash developers don't have the same skills to leverage as game developers, so they might as well start fresh.
WordPress add contact methods to profile, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr
Depending on DHCP to audit trail is flawed, because it is easy to spoof addresses.

Unless, of course, you're restricting traffic to prevent spoofing: in which case you could be doing the same for addresses assigned by SLAAC just as easily.

SLAAC also has a lot to offer for faster configuration of mobile devices roaming between networks.
If you make more than the minimum, you have to file (if you don't make more than the minimum, you don't have to file.)

Since your parents are the 'developer', they can probably depreciate the Mac you're using, and write off the $99/year fee.

Yes, Apple sends the full 70%. Yes, they want a SSN (or EIN) so they can tell the government (IRS) what they paid (your parents).

Are your parents technically sophisticated enough to deal with Apple, etc? Perhaps a better option would be to find a kind soul who is already an Apple registered developer who can publish your app, and pay you a (high) percentage of the proceeds.
Is it common for incubators to take the tact of kicking out startups that don't complete certain 'tasks'??

Is it a realistic way to separate the wheat from the chaff, I just wasn't aware that this was how incubators operate.
Actually, it is there (Typing UNIX Commands on Wrong Box). If anything, it's a classic lesson to log out of the root shell as soon as you're done with the task that required it. Tellingly, that lesson is missing from that list.
Right, the steak/hamburger is one of the well known examples and certainly not the only one nor is it an isolated example. It is the way things are done; cooking the books is the official state policy. The adjustments are done across the board and have resulted in massive "savings" (more money for war yay) regarding Social Security payments and such that are indexed to their official inflation rates.
The PS3 is still hard to develop for. What's changed is that they've finally shipped enough units to make ports worthwhile.

The 360 has three symmetric cores and a decent GPU. The PS3 has a single core, a comparable GPU - and six very constrained SPUs that you'd better learn to juggle if you want your PS3 game to even approximate the quality of a 360 title. There are more than a few games that crippled their 360 version to match what they could achieve on the PS3.

To be fair, the PS3 is easier to develop for than the PS2 and it has gotten easier over time, but if you take the 360 as the benchmark the PS3 will always be hard in comparison.
Facebook, Groupon, Zynga: Off-The-Chart Revenue
Heck, I've used rcs in the past five years because the server didn't even have cvs installed. It's not exactly like you need advanced branching/merging, atomic commits, and a distributed system for a one line change to /etc/hosts.
One of the things I dislike about B2B is the lack of fine grain control.

With B2C, your revenue grows over time as you grow your userbase. It's pretty predictable, and not too risky.

With B2B, it's more binary. You might go months with 0 revenue, then get some deal and suddenly be profitable. But then there's added risk, as losing a single client can have a massive impact on your bottom line.
Great idea! I would use it for my app
Say it yourself a few times: "I love software"
Finally, 3D at an affordable cost! (I hope)

Flash has always been great for experimental games. In a few hours you can make a functioning prototype, upload it to a big website and let people see your work. I look at Kongregate and Newgrounds as the programmer's equivalent of deviantART.

I would love to see HTML5 catch up with this one day, but until that I'll be using Flash to play with. And now with more liberty!
Tolkien Estate Censors the Word "Tolkien"
10 Confessions
Somehow I was expecting a candybar and really starting to wonder what the video would be about. Still, very beautiful
I don't think image comparison is the problem here. The problem is that designers works in rather different flows. To us a file can be many different states at once.

Kind of like a developer would have 10KLOC but be commenting the 8K of them in and out all the time.

In other words the document have many states at once depending on what you make visible or not.
Thanks!

Our models are calibrated first using transaction data, then by layering in other types of usage.

Acquisition channel is then looked at to see which sources drove the customers with the highest lifetime values.

As for data in/out: we integrate directly with a number of recurring billing and shopping cart platforms or we can take simple log file inputs.
Without mentionning they already have trouble finding tasks for the multiple cpus we already have.
I believe it's because open source projects are designed to be modular. Design on the other hand is holistic. So it's hard to integrate design into an existing project unless it's an open source project such as a CRM where basically designers can make nice skins of the entire project.
I actually use Google Reader (or Reeder) quite often, but when I want to read a full story I click through to the actual website. 30 seconds later I am finally able to read it. Seems a little excessive.
Is Apple Design Guru Jony Ive Quitting?
Huge difference. Huge thanks nudge.
You're right that I'm expecting a lot. If the 'openness' that is claimed for Android is only accessible to expert enthusiasts and tinkerers, that's fine, but then those people have what they want already so why are they complaining about the iPhone?

I think the answer is that like me, they see computers and software as a medium for sharing ideas and creativity. The more people who can participate, even if just as recipients, the better.

This leads some people to be angry about the closedness of the iPhone because it's so popular.

For me, the iPhone is what it is. It solves a lot of problems for a lot of people very nicely. It ends an era of software nightmares for everyday people, but it doesn't usher in an era of true software openness for those of us who believe in the potential of software to improve our world. Personally, I don't think the way forward is to try to undo what Apple have done. You don't change the world by being 'against' something - you change it by creating the thing you think is missing.

Given this, I am disappointed with Android because I don't see it leading us in the direction of a universal medium. Its direction is controlled by a combination of Google and the Carriers, and the fragmentation (don't flame me - I'm not talking about the exaggerated hardware differences) between the levels of openness of handset to having the ROM replaced severely limits the viability of a long lived fork coming from the community.

Linux and BSD are open, but more importantly the PC is open. Even the Mac is open - I can install BSD or Linux or Windows or some homebrew OS (for which there are plenty of kits), or an Ocaml App running in Mirage on to of Xen, or whatever else I want on these computers. That's the kind of openness I believe in.

Android isn't just a source tree. It's the complete system - you can't use the source tree without hardware and a network. If these spectrum rules have any bearing on this (which I doubt), then what would be interesting is if they forced all the Android devices to be open.

Obviously it's easy to demonize Apple, and make Google into the hero in these debates. Apple isn't even pretending to be open and they don't care if they're criticized for it. If we want an open world, and Google are claiming to be part of building that, then they are the ones who should bear scrutiny.

And if we want non-geeks to switch to this amazing open world - the answer is simple too - make it easy to switch and better than what Apple offers.
If the content is of such low quality, why couldn't you find a couple of examples that could support your point without having to grossly misrepresent them?
37 Signals (for one) proves this wrong daily

37 Signals doesn't design iPhones. Physical objects are not websites.
Google has a feature to search recipes?
If it was really only about getting Osama Bin Laden, then we would probably have him by now. It was really about attacking a group (Al Qaeda, Taliban) and looking strong in the face of 9/11 by striking back at someone (anyone).
How to read Hacker News – what mistake I made for 2 years
I am reading Hacker News for the last 2 years. It's been a really good source of information relevant to tech and startups, which I am interested. Recently I became a member to ask a question.
Not much feedback came back except from some kind advice from PG.

My next submission involved an analysis about the future of YC, which got only one feedback.

>> Who are you?

Quite a way to handle an opinion expressed.

Now I noticed one thing. I was doing something wrong for the past 2 years. I would only read the pages that are listed in the “Hacker News” tabs. Quite a mistake I think. Over time I would check the pages again and see the same posts, because they were “rated” high. I don't know who and how rates the articles (of course I read that if you want to make it to the top you call your buddies clicking your article), but it clearly does not provide a real good sense of the articles submitted.

Now I believe a lot of people provide really valuable input and I have to browse through to see what's interesting. From now on I am going to check the “New” tab just beside the bold “Hacker News”. I counted roughly 300 posts published in a day, which I can skim through in 10 min and select the postings I found relevant.
Thanks for the feedback - we'll take a closer look on different versions of chrome.
Do have any tips for someone looking to do better?
I read the article and was struck more by the difference between me and someone who would pay $6,000 to go to a conference than about the difference between Group A and Group B.

GIve me $6,000 and I'm off on a round-the-world trip. I might take a few TED videos to watch on the way, though...
I've just heard about 37 signals this past month or two and am thinking about putting out a portfolio for them. Would they actually care about OS projects as a designer?
A lot of people look the same to me (unless I know them). They are just faces in the crowd. Because of this, I'd never swear under oath that I saw a stranger do something. Unless the person had a very distinct scar or birth mark or purple hair, etc. that I could vividly recall... honestly I cannot tell them from the next person.

I think most people are like this, but convince themselves otherwise.
Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime
I am a customer of Joyent.

For the past two days, the server on which I host some customer websites and mail servers has been down. I did not receive any warning or explanation by email or telephone. When I filed a support ticket, I was given a link to their help site with some status updates.

Status updates (paraphrased):

2011-02-26 09:22:19 GMT: server offline

2011-02-26 14:38:38 GMT: no ETA

2011-02-26 17:09:42 GMT: estimated downtime 12+ hours

2011-02-27 22:23:08 GMT: estimated downtime 20+ hours

That final estimate of 20+ hours is in addition to what is now 37 hours of downtime. Joyent has offered no reparation or backup service (e.g. backup MX service to keep mail from bouncing).

For your consideration when choosing hosting providers.
How will you make money? ;)
If Quora doesn't give user numbers it's probably because they have good PR that projects value in terms other than user numbers. You shouldn't refuse to give numbers, instead you should talk about how the user number isn't important. Quora doesn't have to give user numbers because they are perceived to have important people.

Note: If you're an ad-sponsored consumer internet startup then users are probably important unless you can quote an insanely high eCPM
"The African says: what's electricity?"

That should read "The Africa says, 'What electricity?'"

We certainly know what electricity is; we've heard of it and understand its usefulness; we even use it almost daily. However, as you aptly noted, its availability is sufficiently irregular and inconsistent that we expect it to be off as much as it is on.
If you are having performance problems, make sure you have "Enable Hardware Acceleration" checked on the right-click -> settings -> display menu.
TechCrunch's analysis of its increasing Apple device market share
"it usually detonates violently whatever the temperature, without apparent provocation." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_azide

Anything described like that I would stay far away from too.
"This level of knowledge of any other language you'd be fine to let the guy do some code. You have to have considerably better developers."

Don't tell that to every Ruby and Python startup that's hiring "rock star" developers. You might hurt their feelings.

At the end of the day, you want the best programmers you can afford on any project, so I don't think it's a particularly compelling argument to say that Blub is a better language because it lets less-qualified people get work done faster.

That said, this guy gives the impression of being competent at C++, but most of his advice is really quite bad. It's fairly easy to write and informed-sounding rant about Python or Ruby, too. The difference is that more people in this forum know those languages, so they're more willing to call bullshit on the poseurs. The level of C++ (and C) competency in the web world is, frankly, disturbingly low.
While I don't think you should thank for them every patch directly, I think there should be praise for their work occasionally.

WINE's release emails always specified who did what, and that's not quite a 'thank you' but it's definitely more acknowledgement than I sometimes see.

It doesn't even have to be the project leader or other developers doing the praising. A proper bug reporting system will give the users a chance to give that praise as well, thought the leader/developers should also be thankful for the contributions.

It's not easy, and I'm not trying to say it is, but it needs more attention.
Http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=LightInTheBox
As a designer I like your counterpoint. If I could work with developers like you're describing I'd be interested. I'm nervous about offering help to a project though, because I'm getting the impression that developers are expected to navigate the community solo and I don't know if I can learn the ropes of the community while making a good design for a project.

I've been thinking that maybe a buddy-system might be appropriate for attracting designers.
This is about the easiest thing a person can broadly state about anyone or anything. Probably <-- isn't very definitive.

Entrepreneurs are the exception among society, but when you're comparing exceptional people to each other, yes the differences become tiny.

The real difficulty is for people scouting entrepreneurs. They're observers and the differences between founders and projects probably blurs as they see so many. It's difficult to precisely measure mental agility and fortitude, so they have to use other factors to mitigate risk (e.g. past success, strong team).

An entrepreneur has to fix a problem with the world and overcome the obstacles associated. But analysts have to turn us into objects that make their predictions easier. That may abstract away characteristics which they could miss. For them it must be like trying to predict which marble will roll the farthest down a hill. Possible, but difficult when every marble starts to look the same.
Um, that hyperbole is part of the joke. Americans know that electricity goes off and Arabs have opinions.
I did, when I read it originally a year ago, or so. They are often as good as the blog post.
Good point! One of the things I always end up spending more time on is defining the interface, so I thought I'd point that out. I think spending a week on a decent interface is a fair amount, but (like you also mentioned just now) that doesn't mean that all of the interface design has to take place up-front.
Gmail accidentally resetting accounts
I think the real value propositions I'd like to offer are these:

To employees: information about interesting and potentially better-than-you-have-now jobs without having to expend any effort

To employers: access to the inboxes of thousands of passive job hunters; those would would jump for the right position, but who aren't looking at job boards
I stopped reading the article when I hit "Given that Japan's current account surplus (the widest and most meaningful measure of its trade) ...".

A positive current account balance is pretty useless figure for the robustness of a country's trade. A country could have extremely robust foreign trade and have a zero or negative current account balance.

The US, for instance, during our economic boom times often (always?) had a negative current account balance.

And if I were analyzing the Japanese economy, the giant current account surplus would give me pause because it begs the questions:

a.) Why are the Japanese not importing more?
b.) Why aren't foreign companies making more capital investments in Japan?

Each of which contribute as much to the enormity of the capital account surplus as their healthy amount of exports.
Fuck that. Good design IS modular design. If your designer isn't following best practices like modular design then they are NOT good designers. Learning to work in non-destructive modular ways was one of the most important lessons for me when I transitioned from art to design.
Ask HN: Any electrical engineers?
Hello guys!

I'm an electrical engineering student with a focus on control and automation. My dream is to build my own plant, to better society using technology.

Do you know any electrical engineers starting businesses?

Can you recommend any good stories or internet communities for this?
I would really like to know what happened in the intervening year, but money does talk. It seems every group with any power has some perceptions that seem mean spirited or strange to the people they affect (ex. I got rejected from a summer internship because the high school I graduated from is in the same phone area code as the college I attended - like the rest of the state). Maybe the guy/girl did something wrong, or the patron thought they were acting out of their station by going without the patron's support.

Scoble had an article not too long back on how SXSW was too big and needed to be cut down. I presume to the point that he started showing up. I remember in my early days thinking Gen-Con was cool up until the damn card people started showing up :).

I think the really interesting thing is how to build a conference with better talks than TED, but not keep all the "commoners" out. Remember, Bill Gates wasn't "cool" many years ago. In a cynical moment, I wonder if it is possible to hold a conference that might inspire the next, unknown individuals or is it always going to slip into an "old boys" club patting themselves on the back.
it works like this with Chrome too, but without keeping all the stuff in RAM.
Use Rails 3.1 Hocus Pocus gem to edit your app like a wiki
Not me of course, but Armstrong began Erlang by writing an algebra for telephony exchanges.

Codd wrote an algebra for relations.

Thompson implemented Kleene's regular expressions (notated with an algebra).
Build Yourself a Bluetooth Controlled Six-Legged Robot
I appreciate the entertainment, investing would have been so boring.

"Angel List is like Dangerous Sex with Super Models for Virgin Nerds.

yeah that's it -- imagine if you're Urkel and all of a sudden you get to find out who the newest Sports Illustrated hotties are, who they're screwing, and then SOMEHOW you discover an opportunity to SCREW THEM YOURSELF TOO! (omg, where do i sign?!?) ok, so you get the picture. this is probably why Bryce left the party."
I studied some organic chemistry and biochemistry during the IT death. I got ill, or I might be a chemist today. Really hard work, but fascinating.

I went there with the vision of building subroutine libraries and making bacteria programmable.

But biochemistry wasn't so fun, since the big proteins and other macro molecules are magical. You can't design them -- you have to get already created ones or evolve them.
My worst:

`cp -r folder backup` turns out folder was a symlink. Then I messed up my script and deleted all of the contents. Backup was destroyed with the original since I copied the symlink instead of the directory. Luckily I had just setup a slave server and was able to copy 95% of the files from there.

Recently I did a `rm -rf /directory/` instead of a `rm -rf /directory/directory2`. Once again luckily I had real backups.

Every-time I screw up, or a system has problems (stupid hard drives) the belief that backups the most important part of a system is reinforced. It basically doesn't matter what you do if you have proper backups you can recover.

The catch there is that no backup is truly a backup until it is tested.
Probably a good way to get yourself banned from whatever tracker you run this on. If everyone ran this, download speeds would go down across the board.
I actually alias sl=ls for exactly this reason...