skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
FreeNAS 8.0 released; here's how to roll your own network-attached storage box
I'd love to buy a Spotify Premium account, particularly with the new restrictions on the Free and Open accounts, but the only UK credit card I have is a company card - it won't let me buy an account with my personal non-UK card.

I'm this close to buying it on the company card and letting the accountant be cross with me at the end of the year (Hey, I need entertainment when working, right?).
Not that this sounds like a particularly smart idea, but it's sad that even Reuters can't write an article about nuclear power without devoting half of it to "what happens when terrorist pirates tow it to a major US city, turn it into a bomb and blow it up???"

(Presumably the same thing that happens when they hijack an offshore wind farm, tow it to a major city, turn it into a bomb and blow it up?)

Somebody needs to come up with a name for this form of power that doesn't scare people so much.
I'd suggest looking at Freenet.
But that's a walled garden, not the open internet.
OBL's Death Gave us a Glimpse at The Future of News
Programmers are like trains, hard to get started and easy to get derailed.

Given that, how to you get into a coding mood? The quicker you can get into a coding mood, the faster you can knock features.
The Two-Bucket Mind
In computer science, you will sometimes get to choose which 20 hours of the day you want to spend in the lab. Luxury!
This looks almost exactly like WebNotes, the product we built before joining YC and pivoting to Crocodoc.

Will be interesting to see where Scrible takes their product, especially with fresh funding from the NSF.
This is coming in their soon to be released Podcaster accounts.

Details and beta signup here: http://blog.soundcloud.com/2011/01/13/calling-all-podcasters...
Awesome news! Isn't it pretty unprecedented for students to be elected to parliament?
And unless you get paid 1000x's more than the average person in your field, you aren't a rock star.
Good point. Thanks.

Operating an entire school building just to give teachers a continuous workspace and the ability to easily talk to their coworkers would be wastefully expensive anyway.
The Dangers of Opening Your Mouth
You can't put it that way. Part of understanding the effects and experience of drug use requires the actual experience of drug use, unlike studying cancer.

It's like someone criticizing the taste of a mango without ever experiencing eating a mango directly, or other life experiences like sex, having a child, riding a bike for the first time, etc...

It's more like:
"If you haven't ever tasted a mango, you can't really comment on the experience of it."
Arm cpus and flash memory chips are worth a bunch more than 0.02 and they are easy to reuse. I've desoldered a few myself for projects. I've even rescued the data on a flash chip by pulling it from the phone.

Its easy and well worth it even for me the rich westerner. I'm not sure how valuable a mixed bin of SM capacitors are, but I assure you, if they weren't making something from them, they wouldn't do it.
Cory Doctorow on Techno-Optimism and the Internet's Ultimate Bug
Tor is again of the US intelligence

Thats news to me. I remember hearing some rumor that turned out to be completely baseless. Are you referring to that or something else?
Too often around here we're flooded with the "out for yourself" mentality, which I suppose rightly fits in with the entrepreneurial nature.

I don't think this is the case at all. There is nothing in the spirit of hackerdom where "I got mine" is the standard mentality. In fact it flies in the face of OSS development where people are interested in doing something because they thought it was cool and wanted to share it. Or they found a solution to a problem everyone is having and felt that the best thing to do with it is to give it away.

Saying that someone has gained something by doing charity is a very Randian point of view. Maybe PopCap thought it make them look good. Maybe they thought it would make them feel good on the inside. Or maybe they felt like doing because some kid asked and they thought, "oh, what the hell".
Supersized jQuery Plugin - Full Screen Background/Slideshow
For my current project, a multiplayer game that runs in the browser, its essential to be able to run the same code on the server as in the client. This is how FPS games such as Unreal do it with C++.

Basically the game simulation needs to run on the server and be the authorative game state to distribute to the clients that does their own prediction of the game state.

To do this with Java or PHP on the server would mean to implement the game simulation twice.

Keeping in mind that social network sites, etc resembles multiplayer games more and more (realtime feedback etc), node.js really helps out here.
Isn't the point of this approach to be _difficult_ to switch back and forth? Next thing you know there will be a chrome extension that swaps your hosts file and you will be separated from procrastination by a single click.
I thought it was more that it's for people that are too busy for social networks; those who want to be found and to browse some structured information on other people in their field without the time sink of status updates and shared media.
مسلسل الارض الطيبة 3 الحلقة 20 
مسلسل الارض الطيبة 3 الحلقة 20 مسلسل الارض الطيبة 3 الحلقة 20 مسلسل الارض الطيبة 3 الحلقة 20 مسلسل الارض الطيبة 3 الحلقة 20 مسلسل الارض الطيبة 3 الحلقة 20 مسلسل الارض الطيبة 3 الحلقة 20
Show HN: QEDServer: A standalone playground for JS and AJAX
I really like Mozilla's docs. I read this one recently actually.
"Dick" is a common nickname for people named "Richard". Considering who is most well known for making ethics arguments in the FLOSS world, could Linus be perpetrating a pun here?
You should use django-haystack like this
It's just a parallel social network.

OTOH, if Facebook chose to, they could really hurt LinkedIn by leveraging their existing network. Just expand the jobs part of the profile to support resumes and such, add support for job relationships similar to family relationships, and provide default privacy settings for "colleagues" rather than "friends". Sell access to a back-end search limited to the jobs section, and LinkedIn starts running scared.
What do four college kids, a cage fighter, a bartender, and a musician have in common?

(I don't know)

Jack Layton doesn't know either.
How many of them are active? 7?
I've never used it. None of my friends use it. I know a handful of people with accounts, but they never actually use it.
Although this sounds like great news, I'd suggest it's not. Reasons being, yes it brings energy to government, but also inexperience. Further, it shows the ridiculousness of "elected representatives" when no one has heard of them (they're elected because their party is wanted in government, not because of their particular talents in politics as individuals) and as one commentator says, the representative didn't even turn up at their own celebration. Democracy in it's current form in Canada is a joke.
I just released an eBook about exceptions and failure handling in Ruby
The State of (Mobile) Web Development 2011
Great report on the state of mobile web development. Some key findings:

* 2010 saw an explosion of interest and activity by developers in HTML5, and developing native apps for mobile platforms like iOS and Android using web technologies.
* Android gains dramatically on iPhone as developers’ regular mobile browsing platform
There is a correlation between the devices and platforms developers use, and those they develop for.
* Web site testing across a wide range of mobile devices jumps significantly.
* JQuery Mobile leads from JQTouch and SenchaTouch in a still immature mobile frameworks market place.
* Three quarters of respondents expressed an interest in developing native apps using web technologies in the coming year, with 30% likely to do so.
* iPhone, iPad, along with Android phones and tablets all show strong interest from developers, while other platforms have their work cut out to woo web developers.
* Web developers express confidence in developing native apps using HTML5, with reservations about application performance and user experience.
Here is an article with more background about the people that were elected.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/decision-canada/Five+McGill...
It's surprising the 'Bloc' no longer has such a political influence. Have Quebec's secessionist ambitions been quelled?
Nope, there was a 20 year old elected in the 70s. But what is unprecedented is the sheer amount of people who got in this election who are, what some would say, unqualified.

Me, I'm happy about having fresh people in parliament who have yet to become politicians.
Unplug internet!!!! I thought I'd be less productive without internet at first since I can't google things.. but I was totally wrong. There's like a 5x productivity gain, and the thing I need to look up, I just do it in a "chunk" later in the day. (Anecdote: The first time I tried the "no internet" things.. I just had internet so I had no choice. But now, I do it voluntarily).
DRM can be obnoxious when it's done poorly. But it can also be an enabling technology. Content creators should have a right to decide how their content is disseminated - whether it's sold, shared for free, given free for noncommercial use, kept private, etc. The author should be able to make this decision. If someone writes an e-book, they should be perfectly welcome to give it away for free. And if they choose to charge money for it, that decision should be respected too.

Of course there are always ways to get around the author's decision (read: thepiratebay.org), and if digital restrictions are onerous, people will do that. But used properly, it can be nearly transparent: without DRM, Netflix would still just be in the DVD rental business.

This might be an unpopular opinion here, but I'm interested in how people think about this topic.
You realize we're saying the same thing, right?
Oh come on, it's not a criticism of the NDP so much as having a chuckle at such a strange election outcome. It's also proof that people don't actually care about the MP they are voting for. People only vote based on party.

I'm an NDP supporter, but even I can find a reason to laugh at this whole thing. I still think it's positive, however.
Nowhere near as broad-ranging, but I'll make the note for HN users not aware of it - if HN is your sole (main?) distraction, you can use the noprocrast feature on your user page. Change to Yes, add a max time you allow yourself to visit HN and then the min time you want to be forced to be away.

As I say, nowhere near as broadly applicable or useful as the OP, but worth noting especially if (like me) HN is your distraction of choice and you have minimal technical skills.
Are you a student? Then you have no use for it.

Its experienced professionals with a largish group of colleagues. I can find nearly everyone I've ever worked with in there. And none of my nieces/nephews/kids friends.
I'd rather see the bright side of having some people who aren't politicians in politics, rather than yet more lawyers and businessmen who will likely vote primarily along their own interests rather than along actual idealism.
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Two ways to review
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My take on productivity is:

If I'm going to be productive and get things done, then I'm going to want to.

If I don't want to get things done, and I force myself to, I won't become magically productive, I'm just going to try to get the task done as quick and cheap as possible because I don't want to be doing it. So the quality of that work lacks.

So when I'm feeling unproductive, I go browse the internet for a little while or get up and walk around until I want to work again.
So far this has worked for me throughout my jobs and my managers have yet to complain about it.
Challenge HN: Programming Challenge of the Week
https://github.com/elliottcarlson/ProgrammingChallengeOfTheWeek

When interviewing candidates we are always coming up with little problems for them to solve - but then we realized, it could be just as fun to come up with problems to test our existing developers (and ourselves).

Basically, we will submit a challenge each week and anyone can submit a possible solution in any language they desire. Comments are encouraged on submissions but there are no winners - just show off what you can do to solve the problem.
I'd say people vote more for the party's leader. But yeah, they don't care about the MP.
iPad / iPhone workers forced to sign 'no suicide' pledge
Prof. George Church is doing an IAmA on Reddit.
Leave yourself fun hooks. If it's the end of the day and there's a task coming up that you really want to do - you know how to do it, and you know it will be fun - don't do it. Leave it until tomorrow. That way when you start tomorrow, you'll have something fun that you know how to do, and that will get the ball rolling.

This doesn't just apply to coding. I've used the same technique when writing papers. Some things are just more fun to write than others, and I'll sometimes leave those as hooks to get me going next time.
even though this is an ok article, i can not upvote it. on the right hand side of the page there is an unbelievable annoying "live ticker" that makes reading a pain.
I think this mindset illustrates the problem: You're looking for hacks, which means the normal route doesn't cut it. What ever happened to "just-effing-do-it"? When I want to get in a coding mood, I start coding. I know eventually I'll get in the mood.

People want a magic pill that gives you the willpower to get things done. I've always seen this as a new-age-psychology-meets-internet-human-hacking thing. JFDI \m/
No, in fact there's a good chance that the Parti Quebecois will win the next provincial election. Separatism still has mass support in Quebec.
Every company I've worked at as a software developer or a manager, my managers have been technical. I got to my position by being capable both technically and managerially. If you don't believe that doing what you are told to do is important, that is the reason that you won't be promoted, not because you are a "beast of burden".
The Big Online Book of Linux Ada Programming
To what gain? Custom scrollbars are unnecessary on this page. It makes sense on a scrollable div with lots of content around it; big fat default scrollbars are distracting in that scenario. But this page is a document. It breaks the expectations of the user (what is this thin line on the right of the screen and why can't I see the rest of the document?).
I'll take a look at the top questions here as well (if there are any) and send them to him.
How would you look suspicious? What if you stick to communication through innocently used domains using new accounts in internet cafes?
Is Osama Bin Laden dead or alive?
Seven out of ten government IT projects fail[1]. The last government wasted 26 billion pounds on projects that ran over budget or were scrapped[2]. Government IT procurement is an absolute shambles and I cannot imagine how it could be any worse.

British libel law prevents me from stating an opinion about Mr Maughan or his work. The defence of fair comment is so weakened as to be useless. As such, I will not state any opinion on the quality of this article. Fortunately, a comment which is merely abusive is not libellous, so I can call him a fuckwit.

[1]http://www.silicon.com/management/public-sector/2007/05/18/f...
[2]http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2001612/labour-accused-wastin...
Discover 20 web-based apps which can help your team become more productive
http://twitter.com/#!/myspacetom
New job board flips traditional business model, charges job applicants
1-
No television

2-
Physical good shape

3-
Eating well (and actually knowing what eating well means)

I'm not sure the forth one is for everyone, but...I used to wake up on weekends at 10:00am (at the earliest). I'm a morning person (as in, I'm not grumpy/tired when I do wake up earlier), but I just love sleeping in. When I moved, I didn't get good blinds..and I've been waking up naturally with the sun. On the weekends, it gives me an extra 2-3 hours in the morning. However, the biggest change is on the weekdays, where waking up more naturally than a shocking alarm, seems to make me even more receptive to waking up early.
On Mac OS X, it seems that 99% of apps don't mess with the scrollbars (except for dark HUD-style windows and a other rare special cases where the default look would be too out of place).

iTunes is the lone offender. Those weird flat scrollbars were introduced a couple of years ago -- maybe iTunes 7.0. Perhaps Apple's justification for the change was that they wanted iTunes to look the same on both Mac and Windows.

(Edit -- it worth mentioning that 10.7 Lion will introduce iOS-style scrollbars to the Mac, so we can probably look forward to more freeform scrolling experimentation by app developers as well.)
You are Not a Software Engineer
Clickable links -
Signup - http://www.freshdesk.com/signup.html

Demo - http://demo.freshdesk.com/login
How the Group Changes What We Think
you can hold your breath in too along with that hope and yet in about 4 minutes be gasping for breath..it will not happen in this century or ever
In our lives, there are many instances where we organize ourselves in ways that aren't optimized for individual self-aggrandizement. Families are one. I'd say start-ups are another. The sublimation of our own selfish desires for the benefit of another person or for the collective welfare of a larger group happens all the time. A world without such behavior is the stuff of Ayn Rand nuts' masturbation fantasies.

I'd never argue that the culture of the military is not, on balance, profoundly different than civilian life, but the term "socialistic" is a misnomer.
Read up on Evan Ratliff's project:

http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/08/author-evan-ratliff-is-o...

He was found on ~day 25, even though he used some pretty high-level tactics to try to remain anonymous. If no one's specifically looking for you, these might work. However, the less on that I took away was that if someone's incentivized enough to find you, you will be found eventually. No matter what. He's done some talks regarding the project; they're entertaining, and may be of interest to you.
Just about everyone I know or have meet through employment has account. Some are more active than others (I fall in the less active range), and those that are active see it as a legitimate networking tool, sort of the 21st century Rolodex.
This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
This might sound backwards, but sometimes I do my best work after I decide I'm not going to do anything that day.

I go outside and walk around and just think, day dream, brainstorm. Almost always, I'll start thinking about "work" in some form and will end up dying to get back to it. I'm usually incredibly productive when I get into this mindset.

I turned this into a "hack" by waking up early (7AM) and deciding that I'm not going to do any work until noon -- just spend some time outside. By 9AM I'm usually itching to crank on something.

(This doesn't work for me if you watch movies or TV during your "thinking time"... you have to be alone with just your thoughts...)
I don't think inexperience in the NDP is really going to be much of an issue initially. Given that the Conservatives now have a majority, even a veteran opposition would have a hard time being effective.

Hopefully, we'll see these "kids" bring some enthusiasm and idealism to parliment.
> the sense of right and wrong is a general human trait, independent of race or culture.

If you're talking about the fact that every culture has notions of right and wrong, yeah sure.

If you're saying that what is right and what is wrong is universal and not cultural ... Well where to begin

Some of thoses traits are shared amongst most cultures (Murder is wrong, incest is wrong), but even there there are exceptions (ritual murder ?). For anything more complicated than that, this position is simply impossible to hold.

Most precisely, about property, intellectual or physical, and things like profit, the sense of right and wrong varies so wildly amongst cultures that i can't really think you're making this argument seriously.
You must start a job to import my account as soon as I sign up. 15 minutes after signing up, I have already forgotten your website exists.

I will give you more feedback in 9 minutes.
Just read the sample pages and already learned something I am going to start using.
Remove the clock from your desktop view. It surprising how much unneeded stress and distraction is tied to it.
"Burn, 6 years later."

shh, be a quiet professional
Okay, then "stay meek". (a word our society seems to have very much forgotten)
Here are the slides from the presentation on the same topic given by Avdi.

http://avdi.org/talks/exceptional-ruby-2011-02-04/
The separatism issue is far from over in Quebec. The NDP is the hero of the day or shall we say a "testing of the waters". If Quebec doesn't like this test, they'll banish the NDP is quick as they came in, and it will not surprise me in the least if the PQ win the provincial election as well.

Blame Canada! (Southpark)
SuperKids - KHTN
SuperKids - KHTH web developer team
And no one has ever played music for free.
They're ninja-rockstars. That's why they stay out of the limelight ;-)
Share HN: Dribble is an awesome place to find great freelance designers
Microsoft, Juniper urged to patch dangerous IPv6 DoS hole
"Under Agile projects, you pay a given amount of money for a set amount of effort. But you can't guarantee a specified outcome for a specific price."

You always run this risk when writing software. The only difference with waterfall is that you can pretend that you won't have cost overruns.

If you want a guaranteed price for something, don't use custom code.
Todo-list in Google tasks is working for me these days.
Thanks - you're absolutely right about this. I've forced an archive run for you, your data should show up now.
Mail Chimp: May the Fourth be with you.
What's a 'mid-six-figure'? 150000? 500000?
This is what I do: http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2011/04/10-best-tricks-of-fool...
Moore wrote a paper in 1965 that was the first reference to anything in semiconductors doubling every N months, but he also wrote wrote many other papers and speeches before the term "Moore's Law" came into use, and in some of them he talked about feature sizes shrinking every N months. So if you want to be pedantic you could say that the 1965 paper wan't actually referring to "Moore's Law" and that it was really formulated later, but there's no reason to say that modern usage is a misstatement.

See this paper for a good historical overview: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1677462
After seeing Avdi talk about this at Ruby on Ales, I've started using `fail` almost exclusively instead of `raise.`

It's the little things.
To reiterate, even if murder is universally considered as being wrong, other issues such as property, copyright, profit and a lot of other things are treated extremely differently in different cultures.

So it's as easy to find something we all mostly agree on (murder) than something we all mostly disagree on (property).

Also taking the murder example is quite dishonest. Linus wasn't talking about murder issues. He was talking about intellectual property issues. Do you claim there is objective right and wrong in this domain ? Do you claim to know what it is ?

EDIT : Didn't see your edit, so correction about the "dishonest argument" part :)