skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I will politely disagree, from his repeated mention of V.S.Naipaul and also his suggestion to read his books at the end, it seems the writer had a conviction and then just decided to justify himeslf by reading and quoting material which suited his point of view.
The article throughout seemed written by a british apologist and if someone was to form an opinion of the british rule in india entirely upon this article it would seem that british committed no atrocities at all on India post the Jalianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919 due to the deep guilt that the incident inflicted on them. So i am uncomfortable accepting the fact that this article was written by a well-reasoned individual.
I'm sorry but tablets being for "normal people" sounds out of touch. My dad is a 58 year old fire fighter, he couldn't have been any less of a "computer person" yet he emails, manages his iTunes/iPod, and can stalk me on Facebook with ease (too much ease in fact when it comes to FB). And to top it off, he has done all this on a.... Windows PC, I type that without a shred of irony but many will read it as such.

Face it, ATMs mostly run a custom UI on top of a Windows kernel, Police cruisers all have laptops attached to the dash, the US Postal Service will be out of business sooner rather than later because email and by extension the PC has been for "normal people" since the turn of the century. Anybody who hasn't interfaced in someway or another with a PC (regardless of OS) at some semi-regular interval over the last 10 years probably won't discover a need to now just because of the increased portability of the tablet form factor.
I've believed for a long time now that most people would be better off spending a few years in "the real world" before they were admitted to a university. Right now, for many if not most Americans at least, college is an unsupervised extension of high school. It's treated that way not just by patrons but also their parents and administrators. The requisite maturity just isn't there.

Interestingly, historically, there's usually been a war or famine or other hardship that has forced people in their late teens to grow up quickly. Is our society really better on a macro level for the ease that teenagers have now?

Additionally, schooling after a few years as an apprentice is extremely helpful in that you have a familiarity and context about the field and can instantly filter the busy work from the useful information. One may also be in better financial condition by that point, making loans less necessary and ultimately saving the student a lot of money.

Personally I plan to encourage my children to do something else for a few years before they enter post-secondary education (if they plan to do so at all).
Bacsivn
Identifying any celebrity is identification of an outlier. What is your point?
Very true! I have met many university trained people who have not kept their skills up to date and couldn't keep up with the dedicated autodidact.
May be 5-6 years. It' the largest Facebook competitor in Russia having millions of users.
I'm fairly disappointed. When it works, the data is really interesting. I'm on my second unit, and they've both been really really flaky, mostly battery issues as far as I can tell. Annoying to use (constantly have to find a little tiny switch and turn it of and back on again).

I guess for a $49 sleep monitor what do I expect? My sense, having had a taste for what it could do, is that I'd rather pay a bit more if it meant more reliability. It's frustrating when your data collection is thrown off by a lost night, or when the alarm doesn't go off at the right time because it lost its connection.
Any recommendations of data centers down south in the bay area? Also, have any estimates what we should pay approx for 1/3 cabinet, and per Mbps of bandwidth?
These problems are not specific to those with degrees.
I'll second the removal of karma points, at least publicly.

There are some aspects of reputation systems which are useful for identifying misbehaving participants but I don't see any evidence of such use cases on HN. Yet the karma system encourages karma whoring which IMHO significantly reduces the SnR of contributions (both articles posted, and velocity and content of comments).

Maybe as a starting point the karma scores can be hidden from public view?
Pneumatic thought-controlled prosthetic arm created by students
WhisperYAFFS: Encryption comes to the YAFFS Filesystem (Android FDE)
Thanks! I will definitely check it out as I move into JS.
Virally spreading scam spreads over Twitter
Statistics Shed Light on iPad Users
As someone who's spent time scaling sites, the problem isn't going to be if they can scale, its going to be will the management make it happen. Developers rarely do it right, and they'll need good management and oversight to pull it off. The ETSY devs I've met were pretty sharp, so I get the feeling they'll do better than most, but everyone needs a shove in the right direction.
Without meaning to indulge in conversational terrorism (http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html, nit-picking), I don't think you meant 'at pains' where you used it.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/at_pains
Look to someone like Aaron Patterson. He studied CS at university but he did not really understand programming. Out of school, he took a job where he wrote bad Perl.

After many years of experience and a lot of dedication—he expended much effort reading CS books on different topics—he came to be a solid practitioner and now is a leader in the Ruby community.
I'd say that programming falls into two categories. I don't quite know how to describe them, so here are two examples:

1) Your average database/object driven application. There is user input. This translates pretty directly to output. There may be some interesting algorithms in between, but it's pretty much UI programming.

2) Solving difficult problems. A logistics routing application. The bulk of the code is based on graph theory, reducing the problem perhaps into smaller segments that can be solved in different ways. The UI is just the surface.

There is a need for both types of programmers. The first type are increasingly graphic designers who decided to learn PHP or some similar situation. There are tons of great applications out there that really aren't that complex (except when scaled to extreme proportions - ie Twitter). Wordpress, Gmail, even Microsoft Office isn't terribly complex (at least, the 90% of it that everyone uses).

The second group seems to be a bit more selective. Applications like Dropbox, which need to route data in the most effective way, or Adsense, in which profit needs to be optimized in choosing what ad to display as a page loads. These are complex problems, with complex solutions. That's where O(n) analysis is important. That's where an understanding of graph theory and established algorithms is critical.

While these two groups aren't completely exclusive, I'd say many self taught programmers find themselves in the first group.
He's off base taking 10 days off without a reason (illness, etc). That's not cool.

You're way off base on the 3 day weekend. You should both spend an occasional long weekend with a loved one. Life is way too short to not do that. Just don't do it all the time.

I also don't agree with working every single day. You're not helping yourself by not taking breaks. Everyone should have 1-2 days per week of no work to recharge. Even hard core startup founders.

I'd say the magic number is 60 hours per week. Working more is a recipe for burn out. Working less is probably not pushing hard enough.

Once you're doing 60 hours per week your biggest problem is spending all that time in truly productive work. Optimize for that.
That's the case for almost all countries outside the United States.

Heck, where I live iTunes doesn't have a single movie, tv episode or video on offer.
It's easy to loose to piracy when you don't even try...
Firebug found the pixel!
W.H. vows to protect net neutrality
Sony Ericsson Launches Xperia Play in 11 Markets with 60 Games
I use both. Paypal has about 15% take rate. The user is shown the credit card form, and can opt to switch to Paypal.
Barber shop problem again (clojure actors version)
Depends on the app but generally speaking I would use CoreData to map the object and store it in SQLite database.

I can't think of any reason you would use a MySQL wrapper. If I wanted to get something from a MySQL database I would set up a REST api on my server.
Build your own fully working LEGO felt tip printer from scratch
Another anecdote: I overheard a conversation on Friday at a client's business where a lab tech was told to find another source for a part because the seller only accepted PayPal, and the CEO refused to set up a PayPal account for the company.

I thought that was kind of interesting; usually, once I start hearing things like that from my clients, it signals a sea change. I won't hold my breath, though.
We use a web service with JSON. On the iPhone, we use HTTPRiot to talk to the web service using JSON.
I guess I'm in the minority. For me, having a paypal link can be the deciding factor for if I buy something or not.

For paypal, it's a username and password that I can recall from memory.

For a CC, it's getting my wallet out, taking out my card, typing in the number (which I don't have memorized), the expiry date, the CCV and my full name.

It's an extra pain.

In my opinion, amazon/prime 1-click checkout is the best, followed by paypal, followed by CC#, followed by typing in a checking account and routing number.
I love it! Try looking into these things:

1. CSS Sprites: merge all of your images into one large image so when your page loads, it makes one request for the css sprite. When the right pixels are found by the user, your images will appear straight away without being pixelated as the CSS sprite would have loaded at the start so the web page will not need to load a new request

2. jQuery (javascript framework): This is a great JS framework that is easy to implement that will allow you to start displaying your images using "Star Wars" type effects! e.g. http://jqueryui.com/demos/show/#default

3. source control: if you want to get into programming, you should look into using source control to manage your code... even if you're starting off using html and css, it's good practice. Later on when you start doing some complex stuff, you'll find that it'll save your bacon more than a few times. I would recommend using git because all the cool kids are. Just sign-up for a free account at http://github.com and you should be right with their great documentation

All the best,
Star Wars fan at heart!

i dont want to get into a git vs svn debate here so I won't even begin to list reasons for my preference
This. If my bank would notify me via email when a transaction occurs I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Great idea. Let's customize that cheat sheet.
Alan Kay, the one behind the Dynabook said:

>"When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world."

http://www.edibleapple.com/alan-kay-on-the-iphone-and-the-ip...
At http://build.kiva.org there are some nice datasets in the "data snapshots" section. I have high hopes we will be releasing a lot more data.
wow, where do you live, if you don't mind me asking :)
For reference, here is a picture from one of the MW patents:
http://www.patentlyapple.com/.a/6a0120a5580826970c013487fbb5...

You can see how there is some Cover Flow similarity there. However, why should this be patentable at all? Otherwise, shouldn't I just sit down and sketch as many UI configurations as I can think of, patent them all, and then sue the hell out of anyone who then implements them? Just seems silly.
Can I receive postbacks using this ?

Explanation - as usual, my company works on a shared LAN which goes through a single internet connection.
To test some applications, we have to be able to receive postbacks (on our developer machines) through 3'rd party services.
The best way we found was to have an OpenVPN server running somewhere. Each developer connects to the VPN server and receives a private IP-address. All postbacks go to the VPN server and are then routed through nginx to the correct developer machine (on the private IP address).

VPN is a pain to setup and configure - can something like this be used instead ? The question really is - how does nginx forward requests to the correct developer machine.
I still use slirp to get free tethering on my iPhone.
This assumes that the consumer has PayPal setup with funds, or the appropriate backup funding method.

A bigger pain is registering for PayPal and adding a backup funding method (takes days).

I'd also like to reap the benefits of Credit Card rewards.

In theory, PayPal makes life easier, but I think the common case actually can be a bigger pain.
Another great mind.
Just checked out startups for the rest of us from harold's recommendation.. Looks good. Anyone have any other good recommendations about startup podcasts? Other than This week in startups--I can't stand Calacanis.

Also, I recommend Too Much Information (http://tmipodcast.com/) -- Interesting topics and wry humor, its a good listen.
As a consumer, being able to file charge backs for unresponsive merchants is also a nice feature that isn't available with PayPal payments.
The Future Of Libraries In The E-Book Age
They lack the sense of urgency brought about by the working world.

Also known as making deadline.
Sadly I can attest to this. Disparaged by every society western, eastern and I strongly suspect even Africans themselves.
So your dad knows how to use Outlook, iTunes, and Facebook. Can he install applications? Update drivers? Install Windows security updates as they come out and keep his anti-virus up to date? Tablets remove all that stupid maintenance crap, and that's why they are PCs for normal people.
Thanks for that. I have removed the phrase from my answer.
The engineers who invented the touch screen has done more for the field of usability than any UX or usability expert could ever hope for.

Which is interesting in itself because for the first 30-odd years of touchscreens they were largely a usability nightmare for anything more complex than simple multiple-choice buttons (and even then, often sub-par.)

Partially due to technological limitations (low-res resistive screens), but partially because traditional interface abstractions don't translate at all well.

It took clever UX engineering around touchscreens for them to get past the gimmick factor and become useful and immersive mainstream computing interfaces.
1. That's great stuff! It was bothering me how the images wouldn't load right away; when I tried it on my work comp (IE7) it was basically unusable as you had to roll the cursor over the divs suuuuuper slow. I will look into CSS sprites right away!

2. I had heard of jQuery and had a faint idea of how it works but now that I know you can display Star Wars effects I'll be all over it!

3. Good advice. I just registered at git thanks to @DTrejo.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I really appreciate it!
I found a lot of the tests pretty interesting - this one about a free software download is a standout for me: http://whichtestwon.com/archives/4823
> ask someone who's been out of school for a long time the difference between a thread and a process

Quite the contrary: if you're in the industry, the difference between a thread a process should be very hot in your page cache. Understanding why ``system("cd ..");'' won't work is pretty vital.

As for sorting algorithm, you should at least know the big-Oh for a good sorting algorithm. In many specialties of programming, understanding what "amortized" means (e.g., in the context of quicksort's performance) is also important.

Somebody out of school may naively think that quicksort is always good as it's O(log N) or (if they never took an OS class-- and OS classes are, unfortunately, optional in some universities) not fully understand why their code is burning up 100% of a single core in a 8-core machine and leaving the other 7 idle.

On the other hand, I can agree that asking questions which are only answered from memory (i.e., either you know the trick or you don't) that will only be in a recent graduates page cache (e.g., remembering all the rules of a red black tree, or a dynamic programming solution to a classic problem) but can -- and should -- be looked up, doesn't make sense (if I see you implementing a balanced tree in a project without at least cracking CLRS open and looking at existing implementations, I'll have a chat with you...)
It never ceases to amaze me how serendipitous I find the comments on HN to be. Like the dcpdx, I've also been working on my first website and have been looking for a feature exactly like the effects you've linked.

I've also been debating with myself on github vs svn (or in my case, bitbucket). Care to explain your choice?
I've been meaning to post an Ask HN about this topic myself for awhile. The online buying experience has unnecessary friction, particularly at the "giving you my money" stage. Paypal has strong brand power and familiarity, and is the only payment processor that takes low volume (that I know of; Braintre et al require more volume and the mythical Stripe isn't available to all yet).

If Stripe is as successfully low-friction as it's been hailed to be, I'll be mighty pleased and use them as processor of choice.
There's less of a text input problem on the iPad than there is on a mobile phone.

Since I've used smartphones with software keyboards I find myself in the habit of replying only when I get home, the phone becoming little more than a notification device.

At least on the iPad I respond a little.

I find myself seriously considering a blackberry again. I'd miss the software but know my response rate whilst mobile would soar.
The difference: sharing the file violates the original author's copyright, but sharing the URL to it on the original author's site doesn't.

I actually wouldn't recommend adding DRM or sharing prevention. Instead, I'd just add a lightweight system to make it trivial to know who shared the URL. That will likely do wonders for getting people to play nice.

Optionally, you could add proxying through the gumroad site as an extra feature (perhaps at the cost of a higher margin on the sale), for people particularly concerned about the issue.
I'm a self-taught programmer also, as many others have mentioned. I believe a CS degree can certainly be a launching point for people passionate about programming and computers. I actually did a year of CS before switching to a humanities degree. Part of it was I got a little scared off by some of the complex algorithms that came in the second year and I didn't have a good foundation. I ended up teaching myself PHP and VB.net.

In my profession, I ended up becoming a "technology guru", including some development. But as the only developer I never have had anyone else to lean on for expertise or support.

I think that for a self-taught programmer, having (good) mentors is probably a far more effective way to learn real-world development skills than a CS degree. I feel, for myself, that I would thrive in a development team where I could learn for co-workers and receive criticism and correction for my work.

Without that outside influence, it's hard to know if what I'm doing is really the best or even a good way of doing it.

I think every developer needs a mentor, and that's what I feel I missing most.

(P.S. Does anyone out there want to be my mentor? I am looking for a technical co-founder for a startup idea I'm working on)
Why you should use Canada as a test market for your mobile apps
Texas Instruments Bets Sales Force Can Stoke National Semiconductor Growth
Is that what screws up global events (at least on Android)?
It was an honest question; I don't really see how it is "sad."

I made it clear that I was writing from my own experience and would like to hear about cases where it really worked for other startups.

As far as I can see on this thread, nobody offered up any specific examples. I'm sure they occur all the time, what I'd like to learn is how startups can make it work.
I don't buy that limitation. A tax accountant could properly make good money around tax time with the right targeting.

The key is not to target too broad a group.
Maybe its not a UI problem ... maybe it's a gatekeeping problem.

This might sound harsh, but what I tend to see is a lot of beginner or wannabe crafters selling the only thing they can make: generic knit beanies or a cheap bag with some felt shapes cut out and glued on.

For every truly artistic, quirky item or piece of jewelry created by a skilled artisan there are ~20 simple, cheap things that (I'm guessing) almost no one buys.

Why does Etsy have to let everyone and anyone in? Is it wrong to consider some type of approval process or "hey we noticed you haven't sold anything in 6 months" filter?

Edit: to add to that, one area I think Etsy should increase their focus on is in fine art (photography, paintings, prints). Sites like 20x200 are doing well and I think it would be good for Etsy to have an area of their site dedicated to getting good, curated art on the walls of people's homes.
Dispatches from the front lines of management innovation
1) Charge radically more, regardless of which you go with. Many businesses have reported no change in conversion rates with monthly payments in the $5 ~ $12 range. If this is the case, pricing under $12 is just giving away money. This tracks with my own experience, which is that the main cost of trivial payments is convincing me to dig out my card to pay anything. (There are people who perceive $5 as different than $9. They make terrible customers. Do not seek their business if you value your sanity.)

$10 one-time payments are challenging to build a business around because you'll have essentially nothing that you can spend on customer acquisition. If you're not on a platform with built-in distribution up the wazoo, well, that's less than happy.

2) You don't have to expose the fact that you're using Paypal to users. See Paypal Website Payments Pro -- they're just an API endpoint then. (Quick plug: Spreedly means you won't have to program recurring billing logic. This was a major win for me.)

I've offered Paypal / GC to customers for years on BCC, and (somewhat surprisingly to me) it is almost exactly 50/50 in which one they pick.

As to doing a poll on HN for views on this sort of thing: keep in mind that HN users are not your customers.
Really? I use PayPal as my processor and I get hit with reversals a few times a month. From what I gather, PayPal will always return funds to the buyer unless the seller shipped a physical item and can provide proof of shipment.
a) You're still talking about physical copies, which is not the case.
b) He is not selling anything.
For me, I love it because I can work with it offline and it's branching and merging rocks compared to other version control systems. Checkout this page for a good detailed explanation: http://learn.github.com/p/intro.html. One last reason why I love it... because github rocks! It's all setup for you with a large range of third party add-ons that I find useful.
I bookmarked Threadbird - http://www.threadbird.com/ recently, from the folks of Storenvy I think, but your pricing is much more competitive! Threadbird got a bit more printing options and materials.
As a mostly self taught programmer, I disagree. I think this is an extremely relevant question. There are fields of CS that are generally not encountered when learning programming, in spite of being relevant and often useful. Formal verification and proofs, the lambda calculus, language theory, and other "hard CS" subjects which have real world applications (well, in some fields, anyways) are also relatively rare to run across when self-teaching.

That said, the list in the article is not an especially good one. It might as well have said "The Basics", as far as I'm reading it.