skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This article shares with many other academic exercises a fine analytical examination of current trends but provides a woefully unhelpful basis for innovation. It sounds merely negative to say that, but I think the problem isn't with the scholarship of these exercises, but the purposes they're put to. Plainly put, academic constraints in all but the most fearless imposes a kind of self-censorship, a desire to present a tidy, well-researched argument that only with extreme caution ventures out on a limb.

Almost the first thing I do when reading articles like this is scroll to the end and see if any actual interface designs are offered. There are none. No criticism is intended; mostly a statement of the obvious!

The frustrating thing is that interface design FEELS like it ought to be the most natural thing in the world, yet even after the first Macintosh in 1984 we are STILL steaming down the track of the window paradigm. Over 25 years it's of course become more 'natural' - which is to simply say more mentally efficient - but thinking outside the paradigm is kind of like trying to imagine a third arm; or at least wiggle an eyebrow you've never wiggled ...
I think the big problem is that plaster walls just aren't flat enough to prevent ink hiding in the divots and creases. So you can wipe over the surface but never get the little spots out of those imperfections.

We've painted a whiteboard-sized area of our office with this stuff. There's no border to tell you where the whiteboard paint finishes. As you'd expect, the ink is no longer confined to the bit that's wipe-clean. Otherwise (with the spray proviso above) it's been very useful, and we can always extend it with another pot later.

Another alternative is those statically charged pieces of "whiteboard paper" - Whiteyboard is mentioned below, and there's also http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/ - although they don't stay up tidily for much longer than a couple of weeks. I think they're only really meant to last e.g. a day-long meeting.
That's actually quite a painful way to write async code because the control flow is now inside the functions. That makes it very hard to perform refactoring.

Might I suggest you take a look at my preferred solution for this,

var cb1 = function(callback) {
callback();
}

var cb2 = function(callback) {
req(function() {
callback();
});
}

var cb3 = function(callback) {
req(function() {
callback();
});
}

sequence([
cb1,
cb2,
cb3
]);

The sequencer is a simple lib function you can find at https://github.com/michiel/sequencer-js or using 'npm install sequencer'
nice idea. ideapaint has been around for some years now. at our office, we gave it a thought.

pros:

- biggest possible room for your ideas (your walls)

- that's it - but the above is a big one

cons:

- toxic

- pain in the ass to get on the wall

- uncleanable since walls are not flat

- even bigger pain in the ass to get it off the wall once you change your office location

also:

we compared the cost/m² and it turned out that ideapaint costs more than regular whiteboard (at least in Germany that's the case).
Maybe, but you have to download and install their software. Not going to do that.
It's actually pretty debatable whether this year's KDD Cup will really help the science of music recommendation:

http://musicmachinery.com/2011/02/22/is-the-kdd-cup-really-m...

Because it's entirely anonymised, not just the users but the artists too -- c.f. Netflix's problems with deanonymization:

http://33bits.org/2010/03/15/open-letter-to-netflix/

This means you can't use any interesting characteristics of the music itself, or the associated metadata, to aid the recommendations. All the interesting domain knowledge is stripped out, which likely means the best solutions still won't work as well as algorithms that use metadata (like Last.fm's) or content analysis (like Pandora's) or both, and certainly won't lead to any particularly interesting insights about what drives people's tastes.

Disclaimer: I work at Last.fm
He didn't make a cohesive argument to respond to. libertarian socialism? I don't argue with fools, but I will point him out to others in the hope that they'll save some time.

those brutal psychopaths happen to be the most effective form of peacefully organizing humans to provide stuff others want in voluntary trade ever created. There's a reason we see thousands of years of conquest, then the innovation that allows large safe investment in wealth generating ventures and a subsequent explosion in global standards of living and the decline of conquest. you might want to try reading a book as well.

But who am I kidding? the historical illiteracy of the post cold war era is all but absolute at this point. Rah Rah democracy.
Good point, except that Qt licensing has never bought in very big money to Nokia or Trolltech before it, especially after they changed the license from GPL to LGPL. I think Qt's being strategic lies in their being part of Nokia platforms.

On the other hand, Digia has been doing a lot of Qt work for Nokia, so it's good news for their developers.
Ugh, I really hope this isnt true. I know it's all subjective, but I think the current iteration is the coolest looking one. I think Apple was pretty proud of it, I have a feeling they will stick to that design and just fix the antenna problems instead of going with another complete overhaul.
I'm sure they have ever since Nokia aligned themselves with Microsoft.
Insults do not ad hominem make. Not to say that it was a good comment to begin with.
How did trolltech ever make money, except for Qt licensing? They had Qtopia and what not, but I don't think Nokia is continuing that.
Because then they've been seen to be humble enough to have worked their way up from the bottom... so they can all feel like they've fairly got to the top of the company, and earned it too.

The implication of this article is that the odds were stacked in their favour not necessarily just through explicit intentions of the higher ups, but through the difference in their inherent attitude.
App Store Scam
Ask HN: how to reach teenagers with a social network?
Hi HN,

As far as I know, the easiest audience to reach by social networks, and subsequently the first audience which is reached, is 20/30-somethings. Facebook would be a bad example as it was first pitched at college students, but look at other examples: only recently Twitter started to be popular among teenagers. (At least in the countries I've lived in in Europe: 1 or 2 years ago no teenager would use it, I now see more and more teenagers on it.) Foursquare is still the domain of 20-somethings, just like Gowalla, or Reddit, which potentially could be interesting for 15/16/17-year olds as well.

How come? Is it because teenagers are not really interested in new social networks, they just want to be where their friends are? Or is it because social networks aren't pitched at them? (Because there's not much money to find maybe?) I'd be interested to hear what other people think about it.
Already exists. Do whatever you want in a webworker, using (very nearly exactly) the same API as you would in an HTML5 client:

https://github.com/pgriess/node-webworker
So, how does loading music on an Android device usually work?

Plenty options. My favorite is TuneSync[1] which syncs your iTunes playlists over Cable or Wifi. There's also DoubleTwist (an iTunes clone) and about a dozen other options, some of which let you mount the phone as a filesystem, some specialize in syncing playlists with various apps.

The nice thing about TuneSync is that it can be configured to automatically attempt a sync whenever Wifi is enabled, or at regular intervals. That means in practice it will just sync whenever it comes near the computer. I sometimes quickly adjust my playlists in iTunes before leaving the house - and they sync while I'm already half out the door.

[1] http://highwindsoftware.com/
Well, that sucks. I thought the whole point of being born rich was that you get to do cool stuff like drink blood out of Abraham Lincoln's skull with Dick Cheney and the Winklevoss twins, and leapfrog the corporate ladder. Spending your 20s making Powerpoint presentations with the less fortunate would be a total bummer.
We do. But seriously, think of yourself as representing the company. Use 'I' for yourself as a person, and 'we' for the company: the company isn't actually you.

Recent Business of Software discussion on this very topic: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.834579.1...
Even though the comment could be more civil and less aggressive, it does point out the phrase from the article that struck me most.

Jumping from people with less economical stability who don't advance because they "spend the bulk of their time trying not to offend" and "don't offer suggestions when in meetings" to brutal authority of bigoted conservatism is a stretch.

In my book, people who act natural, take initiative and get things done deserve to advance. People who are withdrawn and only interested in keeping their jobs don't. And on the other hand smack-average performers don't get noticed and advanced, while silent and shy types, if they're doing a stellar job, do.

Maybe it's specific to the technology field, but I never noticed that one's financial wealth, or lack of it, influenced their carrer path.

edit: typos
But I want you to know from the bottom of my hearth that this won’t be true.

*heart (ahah, yes. There is my contribution)

I like both Wordsworth and The Dark Crystal, but your thesis is drowning in prose. The majority of your intended audience cannot swim.
Highly doubt it, looking at the photos it appears to be too similar to the original iPhone, and if you recall there were antenna issues related with the all aluminum casing. Apple isn't a backward thinking company.
This is a nice distinction between what you mean when you say we vs. I. With a company of more than one it's pretty obvious you'd say we but I think it's fair to say the same when representing the company as an entity.

If nothing else it means you can more easily scale up the company by hiring without having to rewrite all your copy ;)
You only really need to take credit for the work, I took from the article that you don't actually need to be very good.

I for one am blending a bit of both. From a lower-middle class background and being content to be less than average at my job. For some reason it isn't working out as well as I hoped :P
It's still slow, almost unusable sometimes and iOS 4.3 won't come for 3G, so I guess we have to live with that.
Maybe, in a couple of years, javascript (or any language like coffescript that compiles to javascript) will fit your needs, especially regarding the control flow problem.

Here's an excerpt of a blog post (http://blog.mozilla.com/dherman/2011/01/30/proper-tail-calls...) from a research engineer at Mozilla Labs who works on the new ECMAScript standard:

>Having an officially guaranteed tail call mechanism
>makes it possible to compile control constructs like
>continuations, coroutines, threads, and actors. And,
>of course, it’s useful for compiling source languages
>with tail calls!

Of course, it is a long way to go until one is able to use these features. So, for now, you are better off to look somewhere else for your specific needs.
I know I'm quite the minority, but I still like the 3GS design more than the new one. Always thought the roundness was kinda neat. That said, that mockup looks sexy, hope it's true.
Private Trading Raises Twitter Valuation to $7.7 Billion
I think this article is preaching to the wrong crowd here on HN. A entrepreneur is by definition an upstart, an usurper who is out to break the conventions. You can't do this by being a quite yes man.

That said what percentage of entrepreneurs, successful or not come from rich backgrounds? This article's ideas would apply two fold to the startup arena where you cannot get anywhere simply by running on the hamster wheel.
If the app is a serious business you are looking forward to, safer to use We. Soon enough you will be more than one employee in that case.

If this is a weekend project, use I till it turns out to be bigger than your wildest dreams.

However, in all cases, in your About section, have people with their real images shown so that users are not left in the dark.

Often I chose the support expected from a project based on how many people are there, but it is a disaster if I know it is one man and they never tell that in About page.
What a programmer does for a living
Show HN: hackerByte - Newsletter for Start-up Folks (A weekend Project)
Friends, Romans, HNers!

Link: http://hackerbyte.com

This is my first “weekend project” and it was really fun doing it. The sleepless weekends nights when all my friends were our partying or something we (me and two friends) were busy creating ‘hackerByte’ - a weekly newsletter to share inspiration with start-up people.

Nothing fancy - just we’d like to share some really nice stuff we read and some news with you, every week.

We know that newsletters like these already exist so why one more? Because we are not really satisfied with what they are doing and here is our version of the wheel. We are already working hard to keep the quality up. And have some evil plans for future.

We will be posting out the first edition in about 6 hours from now.

We are using Google Website Optimizer so before anyone gets confused there are eight versions of the landing page we are testing. Will write more about the experience and things we learned later.

Let’s hear from you!
I'm interested. Ideapaint is intriguing, but has too many drawbacks.
As suggested, I just tried to change the title but the "edit" option is no longer available for this item on my submissions page... Any ideas?
The “people who rate a whole slew of movies at one time tend to be rating movies they saw a long time ago” example is wonderful, actually: it indicates exactly the reason that humans can guide choices of algorithms in a way better than machines can: the data that a human uses to to come up with that hypothesis is quite literally unavailable to the machine. It's completely outside the dataset that's under analysis, and comes from a human's experience dealing with humans, and his assumptions about how they act. Most humans would probably mark that statement as "probably true" without even investigating the data, and that's an extremely valuable prior that a ML algorithm has no access to (unless we explicitly program it in).

Sure, you might argue that the hypothesis is implicit in the data set, and (though I'm not familiar with the actual Netflix data, so I'm not sure) that might be true - if it's in there in some form, then it's even conceivable that some algorithm might eventually pick it up. But a human would likely never even dream of advancing that hypothesis without at least some vague sense that other humans would probably act that way, and in many cases, without that high prior probability that comes from our knowledge of psychology it wouldn't be proper to consider that factor. So in a sense, we're cheating every time we use our external domain knowledge to push our ML algos to a better spot in hypothesis space.

This doesn't say that generic ML fails; it merely says that "the sum total of human knowledge + ML algo applied to data set" > "ML algo applied to data set", especially when "data set" has something to do with shit that humans know very well, like ourselves.
clickable link - http://hackerbyte.com
Show HN: Quiz Cafe - Download & Print Quiz Sheets in a matter of minutes.
After running a successful quiz night for my brother's birthday party, I thought it would be cool to create some sort of web app that makes it really easy for people to download quiz sheets to print so they can host quiz nights easier.

I found a lot of sites that already provide this service to be way stuck in the 90s and were cluttered with way too much information - so my aim was to make it really simple and straight to the point.

I did the design of the site (character was created by Pasquale D'Silva), question resources, branding, front end development etc.

My friend @sesh handled all the magical back end stuff which was built using django.

I had originally built the site www.trivia-lab.com and used the Trivia Lab name, but realised that the word "trivia" was more associated with where I come from - Australia - and that Quiz is a more common name for the rest of the world. Therefore I now have two sites:

http://www.quizcafe.net

and http://www.trivialab.com.au

Thanks for checking it out!
Two seconds spent worrying about this issue is two seconds of your life you will never get back. Use whichever is more pleasing to your ear. Your customers do not care about this. No really, they don't.

This is almost the canonical question on the Business of Software forums asked to avoid launching. Don't avoid launching. All good things come from launching.
I agree - the artist in me wrote it for me - selfish creatures that we are. I really never expected anyone to read it - let alone see it on the front page of hn.

But I'm sincere about the efforts to change my ways. I'm writing much less and coding a lot more. ;)
Present job.
If the downvotes are bots, then wouldn't a lot more articles have that many downvotes?
Interesting visualisation on Google earth
Good point. I wasn't thinking of photo sharing and such in regards to "conversation"... in my mind I pictured plain text email/chat vs. phone call. By that measure, Facetime and Chat Roulette are internet conversations and greatly exceed what is possible via a phone call.
I recommend Lubrano's book: Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047126376...
You're surprised that people on an entrepreneurship website are capitalists?
I see the similar dynamics between American citizens and immigrant workers. Immigrants, in general, are more risk-averse. They do not want to lose a work visa or to disrupt the green card process. As a result, they become yes-men and avoid challenging and unsolicited projects. Of course, it is not always the case, but I feel that in general Americans have some psychological advantage in career advancement.
If you have anyone helping you, even informally; if you have participating customers or a user community, who believe in your vision; if you have a legally-incorporated entity, which is itself a legal person separate from yourself; if you ever use other contract work, or will add contractors/employees as soon as the volume requires it... then I think it's OK to use 'we' when speaking as the company.

There are enough senses in which it is true, and true to what people expect. And for the few who get the wrong impression because they think 'we' only means multiple full-time employees... well, the 'we' will either become true soon enough, or become moot with your failure.
It is a very pretty way of seeing stats.

I especially like how he has tackled (to a point the ) splitting up of countries into a grid, to allow him to block the stats into something a little more meaningful than many thin lines.

The blog post about it:
http://enda.squarespace.com/tech/2011/3/6/nokia-place-regist...
Project Time and Billing Software
Control your projects and budgets and bill faster with WorkSolv project management system integrated with TimeSolv time and billing software. TimeSolv & WorkSolv can be accessed by all parties from any location through the internet 24/7.
> it does, because it makes the valuable parts harder to find

I fully agree with that, as I was just pointing out that the good content is still there, although somewhat hidden. There is a mental barrier (consisting of crappy text) between the reader and the good content, making it harder to find and harder to read.

But this is, again, the perfect analogy on an ugly website, where you also have a hard time finding and reading the good content. Not because of too much text, but because of things like bad colors and fonts. And because the overall structure is hard to grasp, and because the ugliness makes you don't wanting to read into that. Those are all mental barriers, too. It's just a different kind of crap that hides the good content here. (... increasing your search effort, thus decreasing the information value)

The moral question here is whether it should matter that you have to search for the good bits. And in both cases (language as well as optical design) this question is equivalent to the question of whether we should hold up the strong value: "only content matters" (... even if its hidden behind crap).

But no matter how you answer this question, it should be the same answer for both kinds of ugliness. Otherwise you're applying double standards.
The rich kid is also motivated to pay his dues. If he's installed directly into management then people will bypass him because he'll be considered a no nothing in middle management. If he works his way up, gaining experience all the while then it's a victory for him.

The big difference he, or she, knows exactly how long he has to stay in the at entry-level analyst position. While most people are promoted when someone in management feels it's the right time, the rich kid knows when to ask; not when a position opens up, not when they are asked, not when they feel they've learned enough, but when they are ready to make the leap.

One of these rich kids is a friend of mine. He's been hired and fired from more jobs than I care to remember. While my biggest concern is making the mortgage each month his is making enough to put in his daughters trust fund. Rent, food, and even vacation are expenses he's not worried about.

He paid his dues by doing his stint in different banks and now he's a family financial planner. He built his Rolodex up by being a performer; something that is impossible to do any other way.
Consider how Digia used to make money (taken from Qt's blog on this news item)

Employing hundreds of Qt experts, Digia has 7 years experience in providing top-class Qt competence, and is dedicated to continue and grow Qt Commercial relationships as well as to contribute innovation to the overall Qt LGPL and commercial community.
It's more subtle than that. Let's say you get 100 risk points to spend. An American might say, I'll spend 75 points on setting up my own business. An immigrant would say, I've already spent 50 risk points on coming to America, I don't have 75 to spare.
I thought Honeycomb had moved to using MTP, which is originally a Microsoft but now widely supported protocol that various Linux applications and libraries talked?

edit: reading the relevant part of the review, it is using MTP, which has built in support from Windows. Google is providing an app to add support on Mac OS X, on Linux it seems you need a recent version of libmtp and support from your music app. The link provided seems to be a way of making it appear like a mounted drive, as previous Android versions have done by default. Many small hardware music players have a firmware switch to change between USB and MTP mode so you can use either at your choice but I'm guessing that the extra SD card slot (which currently isn't working) will provide that capability for those that prefer it.
The 3GS felt really good in the hand. Ergonomically it worked better for me. The iPhone 4, in my opinion, looks much cooler, but doesn't fit as nicely in the hand.
From when Nokia acquired TrollTech (http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3235):

Trolltech's total revenue is around €25 million. Total losses were around €6 million for the last couple of years. Total cash on hand at this point is around €13 million. They've got around 250 employees worldwide.

No info, though, on how this was split between licensing and other professional services.
I host all of my side projects on Google App Engine and write them using Gaelyk. It is a lightweight Groovy framework for GAE, if you already know Java you're good to go. Once you get one project out, it is amazing how productive you can be. Check it out here: http://gaelyk.appspot.com
Let me know if you want any help or would like to work together on something.