skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Procrastination tools for sites/apps other than HN
I have enabled the procrastination settings for HN over the past week and love it. It keeps me focused when I am logged in and keeps me from coming back to waste time.

I would love programs that are similar, especially for email (I use Apple Mail) or Reddit & Digg. Any suggestions?
> Someone who can wear an "M" can just as easily wear an "L" or "XL", but the reverse is very much not true.

It's that thinking that leads to skinny people (like me) having a lot of large t-shirts that they don't fit into. Just because it can physically go over your body doesn't mean that it "fits."
I don't care for the default as long as the dropdown on the login screen leaves me the choice to have my "real" Gnome desktop. Else, this release would be a nightmare, i guess..
"experienced hackers" and "students right out of college" are quite different in my world view.
The bit about showing Patzer's own financials on a publicly viewable, annotated instance of the Mint dashboard is brilliant. It puts a face on the founder. It shows off the product in a very real way. It makes an impression.

I don't remember them doing it, so maybe they chickened out, but that's a fun idea.
Jingoism != Patriotism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility
I was once told that if Hell is here then Heaven is also here.
The Heaven is hidden from material eyes.300 - 1000 years back it was present even in the material form.But it attracted lot of crusaders.
So now the heaven is hidden by poverty and slums.The heaven is in the form of spiritual knowledge which can lead you to self relaization.Only people actively on the spiritual path can relate to this.
It would be most interesting to see what percentage of Android phones sold are these sorts of super-cheap devices (in this country, a Galaxy Europa is about 80 euro on pre-paid; they won't even sell it to you on contract. By contrast, a Galaxy S is about 550 on prepaid or 150 on contract), versus the high-end devices which we hear so much more about.
I would guess Bermuda and Mauritius, in order.

(edit) That is the case, although it's rather a joke because these exchanges are ridiculously tiny...

http://www.world-exchanges.org/member-exchanges

Although I suppose they'll grow in importance as this relativistic arbitrage stuff becomes mainstream.
How much could you do with this? Also, why does Apple allow Square into the app store when it does this?
it's still not clear that Baidu/Facebook will be able to execute a workable social network

Pooling the effort of losers in a market is like having the second and third place finishers in the hundred meter dash tie their legs together to run three-legged and then challenging the winner to a rematch. (I think I first read that comparison on Daring Fireball).
Agreed, it's almost like a uniform. The next step is asking employees if they want to add some company "flair."
Getting Comfortable With Contracts
that's the same language they used for when they started allowing longer video lengths, and I started seeing much longer minecraft videos that day, so it seems like this won't be limited to just big corporate accounts.
Might be true for guys, but if you give me an L or and XL, I might use it to sleep in, but the chances that I'll wear it out in public are essentially zero.

When I see at least some smaller sizes (and I'm not a petite woman), I feel like at they least they were thinking of people like me.
Acer Set to Take On iPad with Iconia Tab A500
Right, and that's what the topmost poster meant by "buy small and women sizes" -- if you really care, you won't have to say "we don't have anything smaller than a large."

People used to hearing that line really appreciate when you go the extra mile:

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/1...
The population increased from ~700million to ~1 billion over that time frame. An 8% increase in the number of people living in poverty while the population grew 42% is still progress. The US has a similar history economic growth lifted most poeple out of poverty, but it took wealth redistribution to reduce the number of people living in abject poverty. (Now we have beggars making 20 times what an Indian day labor makes, but 100 years ago things where vary different.)

PS: The simple poverty numbers say vary little. If a farmer in the third world with a wife and and five kids he is unlikely to get out of poverty any time soon. But, with a reasonable education his kids can lead a much better life.
Bermuda and Mauritius? Not sure why there would be exchanges there.
http://www.rescuetime.com/
i B nO tek co Found er (Thoughts from a non technical Co-Founder)
As another data point, I'm a pretty small guy (5'8" and about 150 lbs) and I can't stand wearing L shirts - I feel like I'm wearing a dress. Given the choice, I'd much rather a S than a L.
Lines with multiple asterisks mean something different from outlines marked with spaces and asterisks (or hyphens, or numbers). You can only put a TODO, a priority, or a tag on a line with multiple asterisks. The spaces-plus-whatever lines are not meant for top-level tasks, but for little sublists.

I'm inclined to agree that it's a bit unsightly, but the font-lock hack works well enough for me, and I use the distinction in my outlines all the time.
people also upload really terrible stuff right now, and it seems to be flagged quickly enough (though not quickly enough for Italian judges).
Astroturfing is almost always found out, and usually quickly, and comes with a very nasty backlash. See, for instance, the recent fuss over the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 astroturfing.
80% of lower caste children in rural India are dropping out of schools before they can complete 10th class because forward caste parents brainwash their children to practice casteism in schools.

http://cablesearch.org/?id=05NEWDELHI4761&v
That's what I was referring to. Did I misunderstand you?

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-resear...
While you're technically correct, of the standard four half (+, *) are both left- and right-associative. / and - are the ones that are only left-associative.
I was going to say AI, but then I remembered my AI course had us do a few small projects in Prolog...

Really, though, I'd say AI. Mainly because there is often no a "right" answer, just the "best" one given the inputs and problem space. It gets you thinking in a more non-deterministic way, if that makes any sense.
What Google's ITA Acquisition Means for You
What do you mean? I replied to every point you made.
Done. Intransigence123 at gmail dot com
If you visit India again or just contemplate the differences between India and America, you'll see that A LOT of the GDP in the USA is generated via internal trade. And this happens because the USA is an efficient economy, with a lot of know how (i.e., "techonology" in the abstract form). India is progressing towards making it's systems efficient thereby allowing internal trade.

You seem to think that exporting goods is the only way to absorb extra industrial and service capacity. Yes, if you want do things double quick. But if you're OK with doing it ploddingly (like India is), a gradual ramp up of internal demand (due increased economic efficiency + scientific inputs) can also lift up everybody's standard of living.

Remember, there's actually not that much of a dearth of capital in India (people love to hoard gold; land is an asset etc). But there is a dearth of investment. Anyway, I'm repeating myself.
I've been a big fan of Concentrap http://getconcentrating.com It lets you set periods of time where you'll be focusing on a certain task, and lets you perform actions when you start and end that period.

For example, when you start a "Work" concentration period of say, 50 minutes, you can have it block a list of domains (HN, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, whatever you choose), have it quit your IM apps, and launch your Text editor, for example. It's a wonderful and effective app.
One note of caution; while the platform version thing is up to date, the screens one is from August 2010. 240x320 is probably an even smaller minority now, as it only really showed up in Sony's 'mini' devices, which did not sell well and seem to have been effectively discontinued; there are no released plans for a current-gen one.
So, I have an interesting perspective to share. I'm graduating and might end up working for Kayak. I know at least part of their infrastructure depends on ITA, and while the existing contract goes until 2013 (I think), Google is obviously looking to compete. Kayak also recently filed for IPO.

It's not like Google has never failed at any of its ventures, but to me it seems like it might be a tough competitor to everyone in this field, since a decent amount of traffic does come through search results. On the other hand, I think a majority of users come in directly, either through WOM or advertising or previous use.

So, what is HN's thoughts on the situation for Kayak? Would it be a wrong move to accept a job there? The engineers seem smart, the work is interesting, the culture is sane and easygoing. What's the worst that could happen?
Embrace and extend. Wrap ebay with a more usable wrapper, then start to give people who are using your wrapper better usability and more features.
You've still failed to correctly apply associativity, unfortunately. You're treating 2(9+3) as a single unit, but ÷ appears before the implicit multiplication between 2 and (9+3) and so should get evaluated first. The division should get simplified first with its immediate operands, 48 and 2. This yields (48÷2) * (9+3).
The words "high tech" were used 7 times in that article.
prolog is actually impure logic language, and given the general lack of HOF i'd be reticent in labelling it functional.

it's a declarative language though, and the model you have 'here is a query, what solutions exist' is reasonably accurate
There is a C++ library proposal to implement (lazy) range algorithms and overload the operator| for their composition:

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n187...

it would allow to do things like

std::copy( ptr_vec | std::reversed | std::indirected,
std::ostream_iterator<int>( std::cout ) );

Boost.Range implements part of the proposal, a much more complete implementation is Oven (http://p-stade.sourceforge.net/oven/doc/html/index.html), which includes the pipe operator, but I think it is unmaintained.

The result can be very readable and robust, I've seen complex production code using extensively this syntax.
Facebook has never attempted to enter that market yet; I don't think that's quite the same as being a loser in the market.
padding-left: 20px;

Please....
I know most here seems to love t-shirt but personally I am a fan of a suit, or at the very least a nice shirt (Not a cheap one that looks like a tent please).

I see the points the author of the blog post makes but still, is it so bad to want to wear 'typical' business wear at a tech company?

Note: I love a witty t-shirt just as much as the next guy, but preferably on my free time.
My first forays on HN were marked by similar mystery downvotes, and I still get them from time to time. Don't worry about it. HNers are just a fairly fickle bunch, is all.
I think that in the video you should get rid of the elevator music and have someone narrating the most important points about the service, such as how it differentiates itself, what are the limits (storage capacity, etc).
Seriously, dude, nobody is out to get you. I'm glad you made Pow. Pow looks awesome. I don't control what gets voted to the top of the page, and I'm probably no happier than you are about the sprawling nerdwar that resulted.
I notice they restrict themselves to the surface of the earth. Out of curiosity, is it feasible to use modulated neutrino beams to communicate straight through the center of the earth? You could theoretically shave up to 24.3 ms in latency this way.
As much as I agree with the title I find the contents of the article misleading.

It is almost as if prolog didn't make him a better programmer, given the idea that prolog 'returns values' or uses 'method calls' is 'not even wrong'.
If it's not hard to get, why hasn't Google gotten it yet? Certainly not for lack of trying or technical execution. It's a whole different beast. The first order problems (IMO) are around empathy, design, positioning, marketing, and community (things that Google is historically not good at).
This thread is not complete without a link to Paul Krugman's paper, "The Theory of Interstellar Trade". Abstract:

This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf
>I wanna see some lorentz transforms in the mix :/

it is somewhat present as they said "for spacelike".

There is also another opportunity - by locating your data center on higher floor where gravitation is lower and thus time is flowing faster you'd get your computers work faster compare to the ones on the ground floors.
"Perhaps something like Quora does would help: before you can use the site you have to do a quiz on what kind of comments are good comments."

Really? Sorry, but that sounds like a terrible idea. HN is already insular enough, we don't need to start demanding newcomers pass a test before we let them comment.
Almost. Coprimality can never be guaranteed. If the numbers are p and q, with p prime and q being adjustable, just take q=p. Then they match up, showing that this barrier isn't enough.

The other relevant barrier we have is probably that a 6-year wasp has difficulty stretching its cycle by a factor of 3--much more difficult than a single year or two.
For us, the PR value is more important than any of these reasons...

FeeFighters wore shirts at SXSW that had "YOU are getting RIPPED OFF on your credit card processing" on the back

This led to a number of fantastic leads, including some huge companies that we were able to help.

We also got several requests for shirts including from some notable folks... we came with extra and sent them out!
This article is a bit long and waxes too philosophical for my tastes. But, from the author's screenshots, he spent a lot of time customizing it to do exactly what he needs — and that's great.

org-mode is awesome because it can be whatever you want it to be. I didn't write a single line of Elisp to customize it (except for a few small keybinding tweaks in my .emacs.d/init.el file). Even so, it serves perfectly as my personal, simple task list. I also share org-mode files, through Dropbox, with other people, and it works beautifully as a project documentation system, a shared task list, and a bug tracker. It saves a lot of time and trouble: no third-party paid services (other than Dropbox), almost no learning curve, no maintenance, no user management overhead, no vendor lock-in, and no proprietary file formats.
>Someone who can wear an "M" can just as easily wear an "L" or "XL"

Sure it is physically impossible, but that person will end up looking like a slob. Fit is the most important factor in style, so if you're going to "brand" your employees at least do not force them to swim in the clothing you give them!
Detector size would be a problem ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/62/Super-k.jpg )
is it so bad to want to wear 'typical' business wear at a tech company

Want to, no. Try to force everyone else to out of some misguided sense of "professionalism", yes.
Retroactive copyright extensions afoot in EU as Denmark reverses course
It looks great; thank you! It will be nice to be able to put this on my Kindle and have it next to my MacBook as I work through examples. Flipping between the book and dev environment on a laptop screen is not as good.
The difference between GOOG and MSFT in these situations is pretty heavy. Yes, one product is supporting four or five in terms of profits. But there's a key factor that you're missing.

Looking, specifically, at this:
http://saviorodrigues.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/microsofts-pr...

Does uptake in online services increase profit in Office or Windows? Does uptake in Entertainment and Devices increase the profit of Server and Tools? (Tools, perhaps, in terms of IDEs).

The key difference is this: all of GOOG's non-ad products are loss leaders. They increase internet usage - specifically, internet usage on pages that run GOOG ads. As long as their loss leaders increase the profit of their main product, they win.

Investments in Google's side products (email, maps, etc) create a feedback loop, putting more eyeballs in front of their profit machine (ads). They really are in the best position - the more people that use the internet, the more money they make. That's why they're so keen on doing things 'pro bono' - like their fiber initiative, and Android.
I hope the following is helpful. If you want rainbows and butterflies, avert your eyes now...

I don't see anything about this site that makes me want to type in my personal info, and the "schtick" is a turn-off. Are you, or have you previously been, a middle aged man going through a mid-life crisis? If not, then your caricature of their desires seems overdone. Plus, the divorce stuff is a major turn off to those who are still married.

Why does the M3 page mention an Eclipse, NASCAR, and a 6.4L V6?

You have some rendering issues in Chrome on Mac. Haven't tried any other browsers.

Most importantly, as a dealer considering this website as a source of leads, I wouldn't think the leads are serious inquiries with purchase intent. That's going to make it a tough sell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility
The Case for Having More Kids
Looks pretty, and simple. I liked the quick sign-on.

A few niggles:

* After I've signed on, the first thing I see is it asking me to "Share with friends", before I've (theoretically) even figured out what the hell the app does. It feels a little obnoxious to me. I think it would be better if that were placed a little lower on the page (that is, after the part where I interact with the real meat of the app, better to decide to share or not after I've experienced the app).

* The "Go" button might make more sense if it said "Add", because that's what I'm doing after all, adding a task.

* Similarly, after I've added a task, hovering on one shows a "Delete" overlay. While in the current implementation this seems to delete the task, maybe it would make more sense to say "Mark As Completed" or something along those lines?

In all though, excellent work, especially for just having started! Keep at it.
The best thing this guy did was nick someone else's good idea. I do not really follow WikiLeaks or its movement, I think they do some good but at the same time endanger peoples lifes by their work.

I have no real input on who should have won it but I would rather see Mark eating pot noodles in a skanky apartment somewhere.

You may call this mis-placed jealousy on my part, I call it an undeserved win for a spotty teen. I doubt he has any real input in Facebook, rather it's run by the people who know what they are doing. Serious amounts of delegation.

I have real respect for companies like Google. The guys there worked hard to get where they are and have some real brains. I read their paper which they published at Stanford on page rank, incredible stuff. They built their own db and servers. That's real talent. He made a website and got some people going to it. Suppose I could say the same for YouTube and eBay but I really don't think Mark deserves even 1% of what he has achieved.
I don't think so.
Also, since we're at it (I took some time to read the whole frontpage) "(GET, PUT, and POST)" are standard HTTP (not HTML) methods.
Rumours only. I'll believe it when I see it.
Sorry, I misread and only looked at the first picture you indicated, where he'd written something that looked like "Pil". I did not realize he was writing "PiRACEY" and thought you were just inferring from his outfit...
Is Amazon Finally Getting Into The Online Ad Market?
To be honest, as a smaller man (5'9") who prides himself on having a little style, the difference between giving me an 'L' and giving me an 'M' is not wearing it but feeling a little more comfortable, it's the difference between wearing it and not wearing it. I refuse to look that unattractive on purpose.

Also, if your T-shirt looks good and is really well designed (high quality, maybe fitted, good graphic design and color work) I might actually wear it other places, even though I don't usually wear T-shirts.
While this is on the front page - can we ask the question...

What is the best place to get small runs of high-quality shirts printed for low prices?
Providing free gourmet meals (along with snacks, drinks, etc) is a standard startup perk these days.

Free T-shirts would be in addition to the free meals at funded startups/companies.
Gotta concur with this. Just because you can drape something over yourself, that's still not the same as having it fit.
Gotta love objective d) "Find cheerleaders in the beta process to help us promote the service"
I'm also more comfortable in a tailored suit. Yet I dare not wear one to work, lest I be accused of pretentiousness or trying to take over the business. It's an interesting dynamic...
I've always wished someone would do a JVM-version of Prolog, like Clojure (Jalog?) where the prolog databases can, on demand, be linked directly to MySQL databases and/or a networked in-memory cache of some sort. Do that and don't charge an obscene amount and I can promise you that you'll have at least one paying customer. :-)
I hereby declare this the first day of the web 3.0 era.
That is a cliche, and an incorrect one. Take autocorrect for instance - hardly a perfect product. (http://damnyouautocorrect.com/)
Actually, I miss wearing "work clothes", I like changing out of shirt and tie into jeans and t-shirt when I got home, it drew a line under the working day. Now it all blends into one (including working after hours...)
1980: India 181 B China 188 B

2010: India 1.5 T China 5.7 T

regardless of future predictions it seems to support 'the vastly diverged since' claim. China's economy is almost 4x that of India's today where they were virtually the same size in 1980. That brings a lot of concern over democratic vs non-democratic in terms of bringing economic growth to the people.
Want the t-shirt from the 2007 company picnic? You had to be there to get one.

T-shirts as badges, or achievements (as in gaming). Never thought of it that way.
On 4th August 1932 Round Table Conference, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald gave autonomy/independence to Muslims/Christians/Anglo-Indians/Sikhs/SC/ST communities in India.
But Gandhi colluded with Ambedkar and foiled it to favor forward caste community in India.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Award
Oops. Thanks - I'll correct that. Any elaboration on why this service would or would not appeal to you?
Normal people assume that if their account is compromised, the appropriate countermeasure is to change their password and get on with your life. Is Dropbox a tool for normal people or for people who geek out on device authentication?
In your city there will almost certainly be some punk or goth kid with all the equipment for screen printing who'd be delighted with the business (so long as you aren't some megacorp). If there is a record store that does vinyl, they'll know who they are.