skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Obviously I am not commenting from experience with Microsoft's design process, just from the article. But what little the article says is deeply disturbing.

It says that Buxton told Ballmer they needed to fix the design process. There's your problem right there. If they want to turn their design around, the conversation should involve Ballmer telling the troops to get cracking. It needs to be Ballmer's passion, not the passion of some gadfly wandering around trying to evangelize the company while being bereft of authority or responsibility for any single product line.

Design involves making painful decisions. It's not just pretty skins, it's an exercise in leaving things out. That's intensely political, and the only people with the authority to play that game are the people who have responsibility for shipping the products.

Joel Spolsky (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html):

At Microsoft, if you're the Program Manager working on the Excel
macro strategy, even if you've been at the company for less than six
months, it doesn't matter - you are the GOD of the Excel macro
strategy, and nobody, not even employee number 6, is allowed to get
in your way. Period.

Does this sound like the kind of place where Buxton can wander around getting product managers to make trade-offs between their precious list of check-box features and good design?

The goal is noble, but this is not the way to change Microsoft's behaviour.
ge.tt has been my go-to for anonymous-ish large file sharing, lately.
I'm more interested in backend work now. When you say mapped do you mean the "shared folders" via guest additions ?
Sort the results by popularity.
You seem to be forgetting that US is not the only country enforcing the no-fly zone. This is about more than the US.
- Join the jsmentor mailing list.

- Secret of a javascript ninja

- 10 things I learned from the jquery soruce [1]

- 11 More Things I Learned from the jQuery Source [2]

- Read the annotated version of underscore [3]

- Launch emacs and write some code.

[1] http://paulirish.com/2010/10-things-i-learned-from-the-jquer...

[2] http://paulirish.com/2011/11-more-things-i-learned-from-the-...

[3] http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/docs/underscore.h...
Thanks, I did not know about it. I think this is a still quite undiscovered territory so there is place for multiple companies/products here. (I will follow them to learn from them.)
It depends on what your goals are and what you're trying to accomplish.

If you are trying to get on a high-budget Formula One team, of course you're going to want to be the Best Wrench Mechanic Ever. The racing team already has the Best Gas Filler Ever, the Best Windshield Cleaner Ever, and even the Best Sign Holder Ever. You're filling a well-defined spot on the team, and your role is to shave 2 tenths of a second off of the pit time, which can result in millions of dollars for your team.

If you're just trying to win your local autocross league (and then work your way up to the regional leagues, and then maybe even some national racing), you're going to want to be reasonably good with all of the tools, because you don't have the multimillion dollar budget and your goal is just to get your car on the track to see what happens.

CAR ANALOGIES
der spiegel lost a LOT of credibility due to its blatant anti-nuclear messaging right from the beginning of the fukushima reports.

instead of explaining what the hell was happening, they started chernobyl discussions and simply forgot about the actual disaster.

the media in german speaking countries went full retard of fukushima.
Typically a good website. But certain pages seems to lack the theme present by the landing page. For instance, Our clients page. Its too clumsy. There are links rom My jobs4hunt page, contains more button for Job Suggestion, Applied jobs, saved jobs and saved search. On click of this the pages that open also seem to be out of place with the theme. One of the best feature that I found was the feeds. Its an interesting feature just like the facebook feeds. Gives me the status of my application to a job and keeps me updated. But the more button again available on this page which on click take me to feeds page is out of theme again. But this feature is the best I found out.
This is a good site for job seeker compare to other comparators..
Zed Shaw's programming methodology
Paul Ford explains what the web is: a medium for customer service
Thanks, and I'm hoping that part of flash works better than the video component on 64 bit linux.
Nowadays I have trouble looking at any mainstream news sites without being incredibly disappointed.

I'd be willing to give actual money to an organization that a) actually understood what they were reporting and b) reported facts rather than PR, hyperbole and human interest angles but I haven't been able to find one.
But, if that was the way, every old person would be an expert in a whole bunch of stuff and that is emphatically not the case.

Emphatically, huh? I guess it's not so obvious to me. Talk to an intelligent, clearheaded old person, and you may discover that they are experts in a thing or two.
Subversion is not Dead
Also a big fan of Quinoa, however it appears there are some hurdles to cross before it's widely available and remains "cheap"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.h...

[update] Probably one of the easiest and most nutritious meals I know is some quinoa, chopped veggies and sriracha. Hell, quinoa and sriracha isn't bad in a pinch.
Very nicely done. I want it for subversion now!
As told by the blog author in the comments:

" HTML + CSS3 is Turing complete (github.com) – http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300836 "
I'm trying to figure out how the scheduling would work. Let's say I have a dev team of five people and we decide to do what you've suggested. We work today from 10AM-8PM. Here's where I have an issue: do we (or "do you expect people to") wait to code more until we've received feedback? Or do we keep coding without waiting?

If it's the former, then are there going to be enough quality code reviewers from 8:01PM - 9:59AM so that our workflow wouldn't be affected? It most certainly would require a bunch of mostly-overseas coders to review code during those hours. That means to make this "work" you need global marketing - not impossible, just more work.

If it's the latter, then I wonder what people will do when a comment is posted on code that is 7 days old? Many times I've written lines and lines of unit tests, integrated the code into many different areas, and moved on into another area/module. A minor refactoring would take us out of our current workflow and be costly. A major refactoring may cause us to delay launch. If the refactoring is high quality it would be worth it. So the key here is finding code reviewers who contribute high quality refactoring ideas.
The idea that one can "lend" a string of bits is nonsense:

http://www.loper-os.org/?p=351
How Long Does a Google Penalty for Last?
One obvious thing to look at is the link between programming languages and editors/IDEs. Some things seem obvious (Java programmers will probably like Eclipse, .Net programmers are probably more likely to use Notepad++ than vim) but there may be some surprises (one of the comments suggests that Rubyists will like vim, which I hadn't thought of).

It's possible you haven't collected this data; that would be a shame.
Geo Messages
Share location info as a signature for email or SMS
Big list of independent Australian media:
http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/dw95o/big_list_of...
Pro work. Buffet knew the state would bail out GS and he was in on the take.

I'm AMAZED he was allowed in, actually...
The ultimate passive solar office/house for any startup (micro-documentary)
Interesting. I was not aware of that. Would you say that Der Spiegel's news is generally credible?
Talk about a hostile working environment, though.
Another copy is here: http://vimeo.com/21341684
I think Atwood's essay is relevant again - "If it's a core business function -- do it yourself, no matter what" http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/programming-is-hard...

You can learn any number of things just in time, but have a core set of competencies which you invest in, upfront.
It sure has, but only thanks to piracy, not through any initiative from the movie studios' part.
Please, could anyone explain how Sendoid implemented in-browser P2P streaming?
Error message should be displayed properly in registration
* ST 2 runs on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows;

* Auto-completion has been improved, in that you can now continue typing when the suggestions pop up;

* Other UI changes (new tab design, mini map has been moved to the right side, side bar, you can hide the menu when in full screen mode, etc.);

* A lot of other changes; I'd therefore recommend you to have a look at the change logs for more information: http://www.sublimetext.com/2

I had been using ST1 for quite some time before starting using ST2, and I already was a fan of ST1.
You've got it all wrong ... best thing thing you can hear as an entrepreneur: I'm willing to invest however much you want at a 100 billion dollar valuation :-p
Yeah, it may seem an odd comparison but the tone and thoughts expressed here resemble community complaints back in 2004 that serious "uber power sellers" made after eBay started really messing around with its pricing and policies too much and too often. Within a couple years, sellers realized they had to diversify away from eBay and AMZN effectively captured a lot of that value by creating the third party platform.

eBay then, now Twitter and any platform with some critical mass still has to be careful about policy changes like this; they can easily create enough animosity to alienate their most innovative users, motivating them to support other platforms and eventually flee entirely. This pattern has played out a number of times elsewhere; Twitter isn't invincible.

If a platform isn't really an open commty standard and shows it doesn't appreciate your contributions why build on them? And why not instead figure out how to organize other disgruntled users to build something better that addresses their most apparent shortcomings?
I think the point is that asking a user to do this (even though they can get around it) is offensive.
"Hey spam your friends and we'll give you free stuff" is starting to get too common.
The New Era of Social Technologies
For a while, I've liked the idea of a client-side PGP plugin for Gmail. Essentially, you have a greasemonkey (or bookmarklet, whatever) script which performs the encode on send and save draft, and the decode on receive.

Of course, it kills Gmail's big feature, which is search. But for that, I figure you could take the wordlist from the email, hash each one individually, and then paste that at the bottom of the message. So your searches would still find matching messages, they'd just be a garbled mess to Google or any interceptor.

This doesn't seem like it'd be terribly complicated, but I don't think anyone's done it.
William Buxton: Innovation vs. Invention (2005)
However, just the fact that there is more competition might mean they both have to become less evil to retain/attract customers. Which would be very welcome.
I'm not sure I'd hold up a project that left a fatal vulnerability exposed to the world as a "good" example of a methodology.
It has become a mantra for our whole industry which hasn't changed said industry for the better.

What is our primary responsibility, to make our whole industry better or to make our customers better? Sometimes, there are tradeoffs.

Why bother, it will be replaced, superseded, marginalised and out of fashion before you're half way done.

Why bother when you will never use it? There's enough to do already without learning every nuance of every tech out there. Lots of software running the world is using only 10% of the tools of the given technology.

...developers differentiating themselves based on soft skills rather than developer skills – seems a bit twisted.

Developers differentiate themselves on what needs to be differentiated. Sometimes that's deep tech. Sometimes it's shallow tech and deep domain knowledge. Sometimes it's good people skills. The only thing "twisted" is thinking that any one is better than the others.

You seem like an expert without ever being an expert...

Only to your customers, but not to other experts. One of the best pieces of advice I ever learned was, "All you have to do is stay one step ahead of your customers. No one else really matters."

You can't learn something if you don't know it exists.

Absolutely! The question then becomes, "How do I find out what exists?" There are several ways. Reading a book is one. Getting your ass kicked by a competitor is another. Which do you think gets more attention?

...there is a billion lines of code out there right now which can be replaced with a million lines of faster, cleaner, better code simply because whoever wrote it didn't know what they didn't know.

No question. Who's going to pay for that?

...skimming subjects doesn't allow you to retain anything, our brain doesn't work that way.

Our brain learns best by doing. If HaveProblem + SkimmingSubjects leads to Doing, then SkimmingSubjects serves it purpose. We can't possiblity learn everything. The trick is knowing what to learn based upon the problem at hand and the stuff we pick up along the way. Skimming is an invaluable tool to help make these choices.

OP brings up lots of great points. If the existing code base is any indication, our industry really needs to advance. Too many developers are building too much stuff with the same hammer and screwdriver from years ago.

Nothing scares me more, however, than the vision of developers becoming academics, learning the technology du jour and still not being able to build what's needed by the great masses. We've been down that path before and it takes a long time before anything is pretty. There has to be a middle ground.
Which is correct behavior, trying to implement generic file synchronization is doomed to fail.
Ask HN: Where Should I Look For A Programmer To Partner With For My Start Up?
I am looking to find a programmer/designer or two to partner with in order to continue building my start up company's website.

I can only offer part ownership of the company in the form of stock issued to them. It is a legal S-Corp. How much stock depends on the amount of work and input offered. I do not have capital at this point.

I originally launched my site in 2005. It is a Social Magazine about all forms of art and the business of being an artist.

Its content is by and large about and by the community. The goal for every piece of content is to inspire and educate people.

33% of the profits once monetized will be donated to charity every quarter.

Every piece of content is linked together using a system like facebook's pages. We released that feature in 2005. This is one example of how I know my concepts and ideas of how they should be executed are still ahead of the curve.

In 2006 everything came to a halt because I became very ill and almost died. I was out of commission for years and my entire personality was altered for this time due to a tumor.

While dealing with that my original team had to take on new jobs and what capital I had raised was used up.

I am not looking to find a programmer to take advantage of and not compensate them what they deserve. The plan is again, to offer part ownership of this company and split income accordingly once the site is monetized.

I have a very extensive plan for how this entire project will scale.

I just don't know where to look for a potential partner to build it out with me.

I am based in Los Angeles but I am willing to travel between San Diego and San Francisco if there are good meet ups going on where programmers look for start ups to join.

If there are good places to meet programmers online please inform me of those sites.

Please advise me on where to seek a new partner or two. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Gary Livingston
You could be the official Ruby historian.
Extending Perfect Server - Debian Squeeze [ISPConfig 3]
Is having "american" users that big of a deal?
http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/5667/firefoxss001.png

So our CEO is saying he can't sell this app because there aren't enough "american" sounding names on the site. When you pitch to VCs etc is that big of a deal? I always thought it wasn't. We are marketing the product throughout the whole world so I would guess there would be a variety of names on there. I am trying to explain to him that it shouldn't matter as long as we focus on good product and try to get a steady stream of users on the site.

Btw, we operate and developed this thing outside the US.
never (age/race)
Religion may become extinct in nine nations
Can you please give some examples where this would be useful, and how it can be used?

Does it mean you can just 'mount' a git repository, instead of working with commands? Or is git just used as an incremental backup system?
The guy's office is messy and far from stylish. This is the design guru at Microsoft?!

I think the photo says it all.
I have just been on this site for a hour now! Read few interesting articles. I like the way it is built. HN is simple and nice site.(Y)
When I go to attach an attachment, there is a box which is automatically checked as "compress". Apparently it can be set as the default with no option to change it by the user by an admin who doesn't want everyone sending large files all the time on a corporate network.
It doesn't mention energy, but that's just a bag of hurt on any public forum.
Nice, but why would I leave Dropbox? Also, I like www.letscrateit.com for ad hoc sharing.
Why isnt the data sorted from most voted to less? Its a big mess to read graphs like that...
Yes, but that doesn't stop people trying.
Coming in late, but I guess the thread you refer to is "Finishing the network protocol" at http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2011-Mar... . After skimming through it, I'm not afraid for the network transparency any longer.
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html has decent info on the reactors. Not sure who's doing good reporting on the human side of the disaster.
I feel necessary to point out that the sites you regularly visit seem to fall in two broad categories. Wikipedia, Slashdot and so on are enormous sites with vast user bases and advanced JS, where any JavaScript functionality has to be backed up with plain old HTML or the site becomes unusable for a significant number of people. University websites are in my experience much smaller sites with a very strong emphasis on factual content and almost no JavaScript at all in the first place.

The problematic sites are going to be the middle ground - large-ish sites with reasonably competent web developers who have higher priorities than supporting the 1% of users who have JavaScript disabled.
BluRay has scratch resistance built into the spec. Get one from Netflix and you'll notice a surprising lack of scratches.
No. That would just mean you would lose your shares and make it impossible to ver do an exit that would satisfy the investor. He expects a x20 return on investment so unless you can turn your company into a 2 trillion dollar company, you are screwed.
There's nothing wrong with focusing completely on your customers - after a couple of years you're likely to find yourself a good businessman and a good-enough coder. There is something wrong with just coasting as a programmer, though: after a couple of years, you'll still just be a good-enough coder.
"Indians are not maximalists, but they are not minimalists either."

"Indians like the idea of more in less."

India is a very different market and I guess Apple will take time to understand it but I hope its not too late ... Indian market is for both (classes & masses) and they both love and want Apple products... i was happy when i heard Tim Cook saying that Apple can't make products only for rich - this came when i guess cheaper iphone rumor was in media, and if Apple wants to remain world leader even 50yrs from now then they have to turn this rumor in to reality asap by pushing their innovation button even harder than ever before... India is a HUGE HUGE market and to understand that you require your active presence there ...Indians like the idea of more in less and that is the biggest challenge for any non-indian companies, because they just dont get it (in the beginning) ... for the first few years they struggle until they understand social-cultural-economical way of thinking of this unique society...
Yes. Setup networking between guest and host, then on the host connect to the share on the guest.
Reasons not to use XOR swap:

1) It obfuscates (the most obvious thing, but still worth mentioning).

1) It is incorrect if you swap a memory location with itself (which many algorithms, like sorts, can end up doing without meaning to).

2) It is always slower on any modern optimising compiler than using a temporary in Java, C and C++ (a strong claim to make, but I stand by it. That's why I list specific languages where I know about the internals). Modern compilers use "flow" techniques for temporary variables. A swap will usually compile away to the compiler internally relabelling which value is in which register, and therefore no code at all.
Website glitch let kids buy Lotto tickets
Hackers  top sites
Another good resource is the Japan Subculture Research Center by Jake Adelstein (American journalist who spent 12 years in Japan on the crime beat for the Yomiuri Shinbun).

Sample post: the yakuza's role in relief efforts -- http://www.japansubculture.com/2011/03/the-worst-of-times-ca...

PS. Off-topic, but calling Stross a "pop-sci-fi author" is an injustice! Kevin Anderson and Orson Scott Card are pop-sci-fi authors. Stross writes hard science fiction.
If you are creating value in a way that is incompatible with the incumbents, it is very difficult for them to co-opt you. They lack the skills for your odd way of doing things; and if your business model is also incompatible (e.g. low-margin/high-volume instead of the opposite; one-off instead of annual maintenance; monthly instead of yearly; advertiser-based; freemium) it doesn't make sense to them so they aren't motivated to co-opt it anyway.

Whether you are creating value in a way that is sustainable for your customers (and sustainable for you) is another question. However, it's in our nature to improve each time we do something, so even if it isn't sustainable at first, it might become sustainable. Similarly, if it's lacking in some quality that the incumbents' customers love, you might be able to improve enough to please them. Note the two mights.
I find this very interesting, and I hope that they get it peer reviewed somewhere so it's more "official" than arxiv. I don't normally view religion as a social activity, and this analysis seems to hinge on social factors (i.e. it seems to be counting edges instead of nodes). Religion doesn't seem to necessitate multiple people in the same way that language does, so I wonder whether their model might be fundamentally flawed. Looks like my pile of papers to read just got a couple pages higher.

The link to download the paper is here if anyone wants it.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1375
New model of protein folding helps researchers handle flood of genomic data
Finding social media startups
I run a social media news blog(http://fastgush.com) where I also cover social media startups.

I have been facing the difficulty of finding social media startups. Until now, I have looked at HN for new startups, but lately there have been very few of them in social media space.

So, If you are building/built/know an app or a site related to social media, please contact me at contact@fastgush.com.

Would love to hear from you..