skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting, I love hearing about shopping options for men! There are too few options for us out there, but that's both a blessing and a curse. If you're savvy, it can save you time. Women have more options, but they also have more to sift through. Men can be incredibly efficient by comparison, just because we have less to go through and the good stuff is easier to spot.

In the last year I managed to transform my wardrobe from jeans + threadless shirts to strictly dress clothes, but without looking conventional about it or spending a lot. It took some work initially, and some courage to try things out of my comfort zone, but now I dress well by default and it feels good!

First place I go is Value Village or another used clothing shop, maybe once every couple weeks. I don't spend more than 5 minutes (you learn to be efficient pretty quickly). I look at dress shirts, pants, jackets, and ties. Nothing else. I may not find anything, but I feel good when I do ($5-10/shirt, heck yes!). I've found several great shirts that would be $60+ new, and a couple really sweet blazers too.

Then I hit somewhere like Winners, reasonably stylish but not so expensive. When I find something I think I like, I ask myself a couple questions:

a) Does it look like a "dad" shirt/pant?
b) Would a teenager wear it?

Both are deal-breakers. If I'm really unsure if it's too loud, I'll try it anyway. But be strict on fit. Dress shirts that look like a garbage bag wrapped around your waist are terrible. Of course, you have to tweak to your physical size, but you can find things that flatter. If it doesn't flatter, even if it's nice, put it back (even if it's "your size").

And for the first while, have a woman come with you, but tell her what you're going for. She'll steer you away from the truly awful, but encourage you to take a chance on the brilliant too :)
Cheaters never win. What happens? They get in over their heads and fail. I'm not sure why anyone in a right mind would want to participate in affirmative action. They might be delusional. More likely, they haven't thought that far ahead.

Your misbehavior makes me giddy as I ponder God watching.

God says...
punishment watchings mounting succeeding Charity distraction
deeps constantly case murdering prophecy fainting oratory
whit prophecy allege forenoon she durst lottery lip celibacy
reality risk firmament Thine falls ninth plainer Mothers
apt grasp X Pylades hiddest wars possesseth does measure
stead united footsteps suddenly thriven acknowledged architects
lofty mutable younger sowing diluted Ours prairienet abashed
Shepherd smallest contained whisperings disdained closing
respect sometime captive decree
The headline should probably read: 'AT&T Remaking a Monopoly.'
HBR - Building Resilience
This week, I'm using my super power to replace a sign-up sheet in a clipboard that once hung on an office door. Is there any menial task I cannot defeat? I am Invincible!
Meet the Goliath of Ruby Application Servers
My own (call it "c").

At university (1985-9, EE major), there was (MS-/PC-)DOS (CP/M had faded into oblivion). Unix was something heard of but not seen. There was no internet (for starving students). The only sanely priced own-it-yourself computing platform was IBM-PC (clone). I bought a used Sanyo MBC-775. I scrimped to afford the Borland and MS C compilers w/student discount. The Borland IDE was nice, but the MS compiler seemed qualitatively better. And the MSC package had this powerful text editor M. It had almost no UI, but with its "reverse polish" command syntax, box, stream and line selection modes with commands accepting all arg types, I found it tremendously intuitive, Completely customizable key assignments. A macro language. Unlimited undo/redo. It could edit files > 640K (Borland's could not). The manual was well done for those days, and included an API and build process for "editor extensions" (basically DLL's before there were DLL's), which I was soon writing. I was hooked. My brain-finger editor mapping was soon cast for life. Shortly MS replaced M with PWB, which I tried but discarded (bloatware), sticking with M. Years pass, during which I wrote a M clone, now a Win32 console app. Which I use today. While I'm fond of unix (use it for servers at home), all of my employers have been Microsoft-only shops, so my investment in developing my own text editor, which I can change as my needs require, has been worthwhile. Editor vendors in this market have come and gone (Brief, Codewright to name a few of the more popular), and their users have been disrupted. I just "keep on truckin" with my own... If the need arises, maybe I'll port to Linux/BSD.
That's a fairly typical German viewpoint. It's something that caught me a bit off guard when I moved to Germany 9 years ago.

Germans have a real aversion to noticing their own racism, no doubt that's a product of cultural baggage, but racism is pretty rampant in Germany and permeates all levels of society.

A few of questions to suss things out a bit: What would you or your friends parents think if you announced your engagement to a Turkish girl / guy? If in most of society racism isn't problematic, what do you think the chances of an ethnically Turkish chancellor being elected are? Why are people whose grandparents immigrated to Germany still commonly referred to as foreigners?
HBR's Special Collection - The Failure Issue
GameQuery: Javascript game engine for jQuery
It's possible that very few black people seem to care enough to give it a shot. Being black has never stopped me from trying anything. So long as I know that I can pull it off. At the very least there may be a slight prejudice simple because of the scarcity of motivated black individuals. In the end, if one can show what one's got, I do not see why that person should get a fair chance. That's my 2 cents on the matter.
The only prominent site I've seen that does it a bit strangely is Wikipedia:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/

Which makes sense, but I can never remember whether it is en.m.wikipedia.org or m.en.wikipedia.org

(And the fact that the iPad goes by default to the Mobile version despite the fact that it's not appropriate for the size of the device.)
Poll: What language do you use primarily?
I'm curious as to what everyone here uses as their primary web language. There were some older polls that somewhat address this but I figure this would be more accurate and up-to-date. I've listed the main ones but left an option for other in case someone else uses something else primarily.

EDIT: I just added the options that were on the other one since people were adding other languages in the comment area.
Sounds like Java development, all right. I think the problem lies with the idea that learning an uber-framework is a one-time cost. "Just learn it, you will be more productive aftwerward", they say. But that never happens. In reality, you keep working with new problems, which require new tools, which mean you're learning this stuff all the time. If the tools are complex, you're paying a high "tax" in term of your time and productivity.
I think that I may not have made my point clear. The point is not that we are superheroes for knowing how to program, but rather than learning to program is so cool that it's like having a super power, for what it enables you to build and do. If you read the article, you'll see that I mention how even "product guys" should learn how to program. In my next post, for example, I'll talk about how to learn programming as an absolute beginner. When it comes to programming I try to take a stance as far as possible from elitism.
Videos from December NodeJS Camp in SF
Well. This is a good way to make my JS looking insignificant by comparison.
This is a promising market if other outfits like http://www.trunkclub.com/ and http://manpacks.com/ are any indication.

I think the trick, though, is making sure that you can align style with your customer. When i first saw trunkclub i thought "netflix for clothes" which is a pretty novel concept if you figure that reselling overstock, late season purchases ala http://gilt.com/ is a pretty solid concept but if you also add-in the whole "personalized wardrobe" aspect, then it's really something exciting for folks that want nice wardrobe standards similar to what jesse at http://putthison.com/ advocates but don't need it this season.
I don't like either one of them. As for the first kind, I don't even know what to look for; there is too much choice. I also hate trying things on in the store. And the second kind of shopping I simply don't have the energy or motivation for.

I'm still waiting for a gizmo that does a 3d scan of me and automagically finds the best fitting clothes, shoes, etc online :)
Just for idle speculation: what options does the HN crowd think there are for monetizing a service like this?

Charging a monthly fee for access to the service, or a fee for each consultation? Some sort of referral fee or commission scheme for referring customer to the (eventual) brands and stores?
Thats the point. Who says it has to be a config file? Think outside the box.

Here is how Flask can do configuration (a Python micro framework):

<code>

class Config(object):

DEBUG = False

TESTING = False

DATABASE_URI = 'sqlite://:memory:'

class ProductionConfig(Config):

DATABASE_URI = 'mysql://user@localhost/foo'

class DevelopmentConfig(Config):

DEBUG = True

class TestinConfig(Config):

TESTING = True

</code>
Jack Dorsey's debate over Twitter's SMS model
It's really not that murky. I'm hard pushed to find any organisation that doesn't classify Wales as a country.
The Last Townie
Entirely agree; fonts have great power that way. I was transported back to age 11 in my basement with an Atari 400, and to a friend's room who had a C64. All kinds of details you've forgotten can come rushing back into active memory if the right switches get flipped. Ah, the days of laboriously typing in BASIC programs...
Web language? I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Just looking for some inspiration. It's that simple. I don't think 'THE MAN' is trying to hold me down. If I had that mentality I would have never made it this far.
while the regexp would find Ghaddafi in all latin script languages even if it's not understood, then let me suggest my Russian as well :)

Каддафи

btw, it's always written only this way, to the opposite of the Osama bin Laden situation, when some emigrant sources name him as Осама бин Ладен instead of the correct Усама бен Ладен.
Presumably, you'll have some rules that determine which is the best match and then error if it's ambiguous - just like the static case
Finding clothes that fit is an important part of looking nice/stylish. It's also a serious hurdle to shopping online and why I never do it. I think a service like dress.me will need to address this in some way or the process will remain somewhat anxiety-laden.
> What would you or your friends parents think if you announced your engagement to a Turkish girl / guy?

I have been in a relationship with a Turkish girl for eight years, dude. Everyone was OK with it. Not once did anyone say anything about it. You know what? It was just fine.

> That's a fairly typical German viewpoint

Did you just assert that I'm a "fairly typical" German racist? If you knew me at all you wouldn't accuse me of painting Germany in an overly positive light. I hate it here.
Interesting. I have a Google voice number and a Sprint account but there is a question I don't see an answer to, although I haven't dug around in the fine print yet.

If I switch my Sprint number to Google voice, are mobile to mobile calls still in the unlimited mobile to mobile pool, or do they go into the anytime pool(in my case 1500 shared between myself, wife and daughter)? With a nearly teenage daughter I'd rather keep most of our calls in the unlimited mobile to mobile pool!
Immersion works really well -- I've had exceptional results with Rosetta Stone, which teaches via immersion. It's expensive, but they're usually giving away trial demos.
It doesn't really matter what the overall percentage in the population as a whole is, it's more of a question of their representative percentage in creating a technology startup, or as others have mentioned, it matters how many apply to YC.
What is the best way to test your idea while on the job before getting in full time?

It's not easy, but it can be done. Anecdote: my approach has been to build "stuff" related to my idea, using my nights and weekends to code away. After reaching a point where I had a reasonable demo of some of my ideas built, I started calling on friends, former co-workers, acquaintances, etc. - people I considered to be smart, insightful and thoughtful - and arranging to meet with them (over lunch, before work, after work, whatever) and go over things and get their thoughts. I'm at the point now where I'm about to embark on a more formal process using @sgblank's "Customer Development Methodology" approach.

Some key points seem, to me, to be this:

It's going to take some sacrifice and stretching yourself... giving up nights and weekends that could be spent going out with friends, or playing sports, or reading, or any number of other leisure activities.

It takes flexibility... if you're trying to squeeze meetings in around a day-job, you may have to get up early (not easy if you're not a "morning person") for a breakfast meeting, or hustle from work to a meeting location across town for an after-work meeting.

Leverage your network of friends, acquaintances, former co-workers, etc. Get preliminary feedback from them, and ask them to refer you to other people that you might need to interact with.

It helps if your day-job employer is fairly laid-back and accommodating. I have the luxury of having a day-job where I can get away with the occasional 2-hour lunch, or where I can leave an hour early, or come in an hour late, or take a half-day off, etc., to chase my entrepreneurial ambitions, and they don't mind (as long as it doesn't interfere with me getting work done). If your day-job isn't like that, it'll be a lot tougher.
Show HN: My open search index project, success or failure
I started working on Stumpedia.com about 3 years ago and am having a difficult time try to determine if this project is worth pursing any further. My biggest problem is lack of resources since I am not a developer nor have the funding to pay for further development or marketing. There are currently active users and all traffic and engagement indicators are pointing up, and this is what makes it both confusing and frustrating for me. My dilemma is should I just leave the site alone and let it take its course, should I try to sell it now and recoup some of my initial investment, should I hand it over to the open-source community, should I give it away to someone who has the resources and desire to continue the project, or should I just shut it down since this concept is not going to work and I'm wasting my time.

Curious to know what some of you would do if you were in my position and this was your project?

Some side notes:
I’ve already tried to look for a technical co-founder and didn’t have my luck with that. The site is generating enough income to pay for hosting costs.
True Startup Competition
Great write-up, thanks for sharing Dan. Reading about your experience reminds me of threewords.me a while back, how it just blew up and spread virally through HN and the rest of the startup ecosystem. It's one of the great things about light-weight Facebook apps I guess, they naturally have mass appeal.

The Breakup Notifier also inspired me to whip something up to find out whenever someone removes you as a friend. It's my first Facebook app and I just wanted to get my feet w/ the API: http://friendsnomore.net
Or it just needs effortless returns, like Zappos or WarbyParker.com
Looks interesting, especially to those coming from Smarty as it appears quite similar in terms of templating.

To compare the two, the upside is you get to feed the site JSON, which is easier to generate. The downside is the extra content load time of the script vs doing the template integration server side and caching the result.
You would have to ask Github, as they own the copyright to Octocat.
"We learned that you can't rely on anyone else to control and maintain your own brand."

doesn't sound quite like coming clean.
Did we listen to the same talk? He is a practitioner in the field of security ("choice", "society").

OP: many thanks for the link. The problem of the compromised platform is an interesting one. A programmable dongle would address the compromised host platform. (Used to be a JVM on a chip dongle out there back in late 90s... just run on that and treat your pc as hostile.)
Corkboard.me introduces embedding and read-only corks.
> Do they really, naturally? I don't think that many people are walking around, constantly repeating an inner mantra like "I'm a white middle-aged male", always comparing everyone against what they themselves look like in the mirror? Who does that?

The term "naturally" implies that it is an automatic function (e.g. breathing is natural). Did you not realize this or are you intentionally leaping to the straw-man argument?

> It's my experience that most humans are only thinking like "beasts" if they have been conditioned to do so.

I didn't mean "beast" in any bad sense. I simply meant that human beings are evolved creatures, hormonal, emotional, and often instinctive in their approach to social situations. We are not a rational abstraction.

We don't have to 'force' ourselves to be rational all the time, because mostly we aren't rational and rationality would be the long method of coming to the same conclusions. The typical person doesn't have to rationally process every quirk of someones facial or body language to decide on what emotion is expressed---that would take forever. Instead we have mental shortcuts built into our psyche which while are irrational, are also usually correct.

When it comes to issues like racism, it is a case of our natural instinct being wrong instead of right for a change.

Yes some people are ever curious about the "other", but this isn't the norm.

For further discussion, can anyone find a copy of this article ( http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/12134981 ) outside the Paywall so everyone can see it?
Pretty sure they mean server side language.
The main 3? You're actually missing ASP .NET which is quite popular (in fact, isn't it 2nd place in popularity to server side languages?) .. Please add this, otherwise you'll be getting A LOT of 'Other' votes
Reddit Game Jam 06: Starting 2011-03-25 and ending 2011-03-27
Seriously ? This is something that I've been doing all the time when I assist someone in parking in a tight spot.
Inc.|800-CEO-READ - Business Book Bestseller List
clean the bathroom comes to mind and make pot of good stew is another.
I must be an idiot, because I still don't understand it.

So I'm an old fat ugly-looking guy. According to you, I should be looking for other folks like me who made it? This will somehow be inspirational?

And what good, exactly, does finding another person who _looks_ like me going to accomplish? What the hell difference does it make?

Have you ever visited or not visited a web site because of the way the person who created it looks? Ever purchased or not purchased an app because of the religion or heritage of the developer?

YC, if they have any sense in their heads, should care about traction, scalability, and success potential. None of that is based on attributes like this. If it is, I've never heard of it. (And it makes no sense)

Now perhaps you can make a case that things like this play a role with finding investors, but AFAIK YC has made it clear -that not every entrant has to have a beauty pageant investor track.

Here's a question I could get behind: Let's say I want to find funding. What sorts of things that I can control -- looks, haircut, attitude, etc -- make the biggest superficial difference to investors?

I'd like to hear a lot more about that. Wonder if anybody has any data?
Here's an "Interesting new phenomena" for you to chew on: How dare you suggest that I'm Black? My father is Scottish-Canadian. I went to St. Andrews, a Scottish-themed boarding school. I grew up listening to Rush. I play hockey. I listen to Jazz music. I ride a mountain bike. I'm told I speak with a standard North American accent. What is this "Black" thing you speak of?

I figured you'd say that ... I think you've blogged/spoken about it before and if I'd spent a little more time on the comment, I would have said "are black (or are often considered black by others)." Still applies.

If we dismiss the personal aspect of it, what then of the "substantive" piece of the argument? Are you trying to suggest that any questions about the composition of YCombinator classes should be forbidden on Hacker News? If so, why? And why hasn't this come up for all of the myriad other questions of the same ilk?
Good point. Depending on brand and even individual shirt by the same brand, I can be a small, extra small, small slim fit, or medium slim fit... sigh

Short of inputting your detailed measurements, I wonder how a site can solve that.
Zend Framework also handles configs with inheritance. It's an elegant way to handle overrides, no doubt. They do one better by allowing the definition to be in ini files, which would have circumvented the Tumblr bug.

Still, I think config files are often best when they're verbose and as straightforward as possible. There are fewer surprises this way. If I'm working on a project by myself or with a very small team of people I trust, I'd go the inheritance route. If the team is larger, I'd go the verbose route.
Sites like this make me sad. For some reason it reminds me of an article I recently read in the New Yorker about Magnus Carlsen and his comments about how widespread use of chess software and databases is ruining human chess, because people have started to think like the computers. Too much reliance on information, less on originality.

Based on my experience, A lot of tech interviews in large companies nowadays are mostly done by young people who have limited understanding of what a good employee is (because more tech savvy guys don't want to waste time with interviews) and who therefore keep asking rote questions like: "how do you shuffle a deck of cards", or (my favorite) "What is the 'mutable' keyword do?" and string matching the answer to the right one in their minds. This in turn has affected the interview preparation process, consisting mostly of memorizing the answers to the rote questions.

Which (as the architect in The Matrix said) has led the would-be coders, inexorably, here and similar sites.
OneSentence.Me. Get your friends to describe you in One Sentence.
A trip down memory-alley with the Atari and ZX-81 fonts. ;-)
This is the same person who has made Envy-code-R[1], my favourite font for the terminal and text editors.

[1]http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-cod...

Edited to add a link to the font.
He may mean PythonWin, which is a part of the pywin32 package, which ActiveState has distributed for quite a long time.
Totally agree with this. I've used Quartz on and off for about 5 years and I've always been able to get it doing what I want relatively easily.
Show HN: 1 million votes
I have been running my side project for about over a year now and it has finally logged 1 million votes! The site gets on average, for the past 3 months, 600 users a day with an average bounce rate of 47%. Majority of the traffic comes through StumbleUpon.

I posted about the site a while back here
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338487

Site: http://faveone.com
That's about how it is on Android. Maybe more than 2 seconds, though. 3? 5? Something like that.
... and anyway, who cares? It's not like these polls have _any_ validity.
In the context of this discussion, you are talking about creating a crypto solution that prevents the NSA from sniffing your customers. Not a casual packet sniffer, the NSA. This is not the time to be running off and implementing your own crypto!