skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I haven't seen this mentioned yet, so I'll mention it here:

The production curve for bitcoin, that starts steep and eventually levels off when total supply reaches 21M, is not at all like gold:

http://www.goldsheetlinks.com/production2.htm

At times gold production has exceeded population growth, at times it has lagged behind, but it certainly has not leveled off.

Also recall that Friedman called for a fixed 3% growth in the money supply, year on year, commensurate w/ long term rates of economic growth. So why would Bitcoin use a curve that starts steep and levels off?

I have heard two claims from Gavin: 1) it represents the pattern of natural resource extraction (easy it first, progressively harder until the marginal cost exceeds the margin gain), and 2) it encourages early adopters.

Now, I might wish it weren't so, but we're really good at natural resource extraction, and we get better over time, until demand falls. Plus, the general thinking goes, money supply should ideally grow at a constant rate, in line w/ long term economic averages. Maybe the extended long term view would restate that as a constant rate, relative to population growth. I don't know. The system has to reach equilibrium eventually, but we're not there yet, and for now the closest approximation is a constant percent, year-on-year.

So I'm afraid that reason (1), and Bitcoin resembling something fundamental in nature and the economy, is just not true. At best, Bitcoin is an entirely new kind of monetary system, with properties that don't resemble the gold standard or fiat currency, but will be beneficial in some fashion down the road. And at worst, it's just a Ponzi scheme.

I haven't seen (1) addressed substantively, so for now I'm tending towards bitcoin-as-ponzi-scheme.
Nice!
By they way, the hints, tips, tricks and plugins in that article can be applied to using Vim with other languages as well.
Didn't know about Gundo or minibufexpl, for example.
I don't get the 'happiness' aspect of this.

It just looks like a list of personal preferences. I would like to think that ideas for cultivating happiness goes a little deeper.
"Embrace and extend."

Way to support open source, guys!
marco also posted about that recently

http://www.marco.org/2011/05/08/laptop-size
While you're right that crossing the IDL doesn't make you a day older or younger... there is a slight flaw in your logic. In order for you to have gone forward a day every two weeks, you must have come back a day in between, as well.

After all, it's possible to fly around the world in less than 24 hours, but you can't use that to travel forward or backwards in time, you can only ever get to a maximum of 24 hours ahead or behind of another place.
I've yet to hear of someone who felt as a criminal after quitting his job (or after stealing himself from his employer as you put it).
C can be very productive if you put your energy into the right place: choosing your libraries and build-system to support the needs of your application.

I can right now build a lot of code in C because I've got the frameworks already set up and ready to go. I've got server code, xml-parsing, file i/o, database access, html-output, etc. - all functionality provided to me because I've done the work to set up the C build environment to support it. And, I think, I can be quite productive in C as a result.
So, the claim of being P2P goes to the wind first :)

Second. When accepting a coin, a node needs to check the coin was not spent since the last time it changed hands. If the buyer claims he got it 1 month ago (and shows a proof), then the seller needs to check a month worth of transactions, just in case it was double-spent.
Note the terrible asymmetry of the attacker's and the defender's costs.

Third. Today I had to reread the paper (by Nakamoto) and I am surprised (again) by the level of wishfulness and naïveté. Sec 5 (page 3) says: "the nodes that were working on the other branch will then switch to the longer one". Does he realize that in a distributed system nodes might have totally different opinions on the number and length of those branches? And that those opinions might change. It is easy to imagine nodes hopping between branches with no global agreement possible. His very way of thinking has zero intuition about distributed/asynchronous systems, sorry.

Obviously, that may be cured by introducing well-provisioned central sites, as you say. But then, all that crypto-trickery becomes entirely meaningless and the system loses its raison d'être. Well-provisioned mutually-recognized sites/banks may do it exactly the way they do it these days.

Sorry for the rant.
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b...
Combining "Buy a portable computer instead" and "The only peripheral you absolutely need is a hard disk or network drive to put backups on" doesn't make sense. I don't know about you, but my productivity tanks the second I don't have a mouse.
Setting the minimum and maximum length allowed for a field's value
It's not so much that I disagree with OP, it's just that I've never done much of what he recommends.

Initially, screw the algorithms and data structures.

That's like saying, "Initially, screw the basement and build the attic." The number one problem I've ever seen with shitty code, over and over and over again, is lack of understanding of fundamentals. Do yourself a favor and learn how to build things properly first. Poorly structured data cannot be overcome by the greatest of processes. Poorly structured processes will give you technical debt forever.

Choose a good language. One that you think you can produce something useful in short time.

This is a chicken and egg problem. How would anyone know which language to choose without using it first? Choose anything, just get to work. (When in doubt, choose something popular. Things will be tough enough without running into problems no one has ever seen before.)

Choose a good editor.

No. The more features and functions an editor or EDI has, the more crutches you'll routinely use when you don't need them. Which means you won't learn and grow as quickly. Choose something simple like Textpad, disable the syntax color highlighting, and make mistakes. Sure, it'll be a pain in the ass, but that's the best way to learn the quickest.

Use an operating system that’ll teach you something.

If you are paying enough attention to the operating system to know what it is, then you aren't paying enough attention to what you're building. Focus on what you're building. Get it to work properly on any operating system. Let someone else worry about porting or emulating on other operating systems later.

Don’t copy-paste files to backup stuff.

I've been doing this for 30 years and have never lost anything. I save every old version. Relying on special software to do this for you makes you dependent on that software so much so that you may lose track in your head of what you have. Other programmers may disagree with me; it just shows that there is more than one way to do things.

Know where to get help.

The more popular your choices are, the easier it is to do this. (Don't make the same mistake as me: using specialty and proprietary technologies. When Technology A and Technology B don't play nicely together, it's really hard to find someone else who has experienced the same problem.)

Develop your netiquette.

"netiquette" shouldn't be any different from any other etiquette. Just treat others the way you'd like to be treated.

Meet people, because books only teach you routine stuff (oh and the "book" is dead they say).

People aren't much better than books. The best teacher is building stuff.

Write opensource code.

I've never done this and have never understood why people think it's so important. I prefer to build stuff for paying customers. They're never bashful and are a great way to get really good really quickly.
"karmafeeder" is meant somewhat tongue in cheek. Really it is just a better news aggregator, that is all.
Show HN: FPGA build environment generator
Last week I released a web-based, automated build environment / Makefile generator for FPGA projects:

http://www.boldport.com

It's just a start, and I'd appreciate feedback. Tell me what sucks about it, what you love, where to improve. (BTW, I'm happy to help anyone who's interested to set up or convert their projects to work with the "boldport flow"!)

In this context, my proposal for a scalable and version control friendly project structure for FPGA designs may be interesting as well:

https://www.boldport.com/docs/fpgaproj
Searching Without Objectives
Employers can fire you at-will, without cause, in America. It is traditionally considered good practice for an employee to give an employer two weeks notice before quitting a job, so that they have time to try and fill your position. It is not the case the other way around. If your company decides they need to trim the ranks tomorrow, you may walk in at 9:00am and be told you are no longer needed and escorted out of the building by security with a box of your belongings at 9:05am. The only protections are that you can not be fired do to discrimination based on gender, age, religion, or ethnicity. In some states, you can not be fired over sexual orientation (but in about 30 of the 50 states, that is not protected and you can therefore be fired for being gay).

The protections are rather meaningless, however. How are you going to prove that you were fired because you are too old or because you're a woman or because you aren't the right religion, if your employer says "no, we just fired her because she smelled really bad" or "we fired her for her poor work performance".

Of course (other than protecting against discrimination), I'm not sure what the alternative is. If I'm writing the paychecks, I should be able to determine how many people I need in my company and when I no longer need them -- whether due to finances or simply not liking them. Why should I be forced to keep someone on the payroll for weeks or months beyond when I can afford them or be forced to deal with someone in the office for weeks or months after they have worn out their welcome?

My employer is free to hire or fire me at will and I'm free to find another job. They're private entities with obligation to provide for me or look after my well-being.

I know there are other differences, too. For example, in America, we consider vacation time to be something for professionals who have put in their dues while paid vacation seems to be issued to employees along with their office chair straight out of the gate in a lot of other countries. My mother is in her fifties and still has no paid vacation at her work. If she were to come visit me, she would have to take time off of work (meaning a big hit to the pay check for that month). Same goes for both of my siblings.

On the other hand, a professional with fifteen or twenty years of experience and a college degree can earn ten days of vacation per year, where I work (though not immediately, you only accrue vacation time fast enough to get two weeks a year of vacation once you have worked at this company for at least seven years). On top of that, we have six or seven company holidays (New Years, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas).

Again, I don't really have a problem with that, either. I mean, why should I get paid when I'm not working? If my employer wants to entice me to their company or keep me at their company and in high spirits by offering to pay me to take time away from work, then that's their decision and it's great. But I don't see a particular reason that they should be obligated to compensate me for time I'm not spending on them.
I had hoped that the all digital display one would be less dorky looking. As it is, I can't help but think that it looks like a modernized Radio Shack calculator watch. Digital watches always seem to suffer from poor aesthetics.
My idea of NIH is "we can't use this code/library/app because we didn't write it ourselves." I've been guilty of this kind of thinking. I justify it with the task being so simple that there's no excuse for not writing it myself. Then comes the feature creep and ultimately it would have made more sense just to use a library.

From the newbie's perspective, how is he supposed to know what libraries implement which algorithms? Moreover, he usually doesn't know the algorithm name or thinks his problem is unique and so he's sure a library doesn't exist. My experience years ago with this was spent wading through belittling comments from IRC participants while I described what I needed to do before someone with a brain said "OK, you want Algorithm Z. Not sure what libs are out there but someone has probably solved this problem." Now I can search.

As for glue code, learning against several libraries with different coding/naming conventions is a Super Pain in the Butt, regardless of experience level.
This reminds me of the recent story of an Applebee's (an American chain restaurant) employee that accidentally served alcohol to a toddler. All the commentary I read on the story said that the employee should be fired. But as long as it was an honest mistake, that's a terrible idea. No employee will ever be as careful with drinks as that guy will now. You shouldn't ask for experience when looking for employees and then fire them for getting it.

You have to be careful though because sometimes a mistake like that is not an honest mistake, but carelessness. To bring it back to the topic at hand, LastPass (possibly) made an honest mistake somewhere. Sony is careless. Fire Sony, run to LastPass because now they will be even more paranoid.
140 char posts are not what one should should subscribe to via. a RSS reader.
Though I stand for open standards I don't really think that it is crucial that Twitter and Facebook supports RSS. Especially not Facebook - Twitter because it is more like the medias that I subscribe to; blogs, newssources and so on...
Clickables:

http://www.boldport.com

https://www.boldport.com/docs/fpgaproj
I'm actually pretty excited about this. I think anybody whose heart stirs a little when they see a calculator watch can understand the appeal. It's a gap in the market (if you can call it a market...) and an area the DIY community can't really tackle, since to get a practical form factor you need some pretty serious manufacturing capability.

An ipod nano on a watchstrap is not really any kind of competition; yes it has better specs but you're not intended to be able to reprogram it. TI's previous watch offering caught my attention, but the display on it was quite limited. There's really a lot of scope for imaginative projects on this thing.
Android Market to overtake App Store in August 2011
So the P/E ratio is currently about 398 (optimistically) assuming they earned $2M for each of the last 4 quarters.

Guess that isn't a useful metric for valuing 'social' companies! Anyone know what Google or Amazon's P/E ratio was when they went public?
It was an energy drink, "Brawndo", not soda.
This may sound a little harsh but:

That's the risk with putting all your eggs into someone else's basket. Especially if that someone is a faceless corporation with famous bureaucracy.

FB closed my account earlier this year too, because I have an uncommon/strange middle name. It led to 7 iOS apps not having any FB support for several days. No, the FB acc wasn't reopened - I just uploaded new versions to the app store with FB support removed. But I was sort of prepared for that and never gave the FB integration a prominent place in my apps - so users weren't that upset when it went away. (I got burnt the first time around 2002 when Google decided to close my Adsense account because our color scheme was "mis leading" users. Adsense was at that time my only (but good paying) income and suddenly losing all of your income was a hard lesson to learn.)

I don't know your site/app but maybe you should (after you get the stuff sorted out) over think your investment in FB for your future projects. (I'm sure you aren't desperate for no reason.)

Btw. FB answered my request 3 weeks later with a form letter asking me for a copy of my ID. I didn't react to that but I have the feeling that it would have taken another weeks and form letters to sort the situation out.
Vancouver is the most livable city, so why is everyone moving NY?
EBay Gets Closer To Closing $2.4 Billion GSI Commerce Acquisition
Associative Arrays and Cellular Automata in Octave
I have a 10" netbook for personal use, which I take with me everywhere I go. I also have a 17" monster of a thing, which never leaves my desk because it's too big and too heavy to carry around with me. Going off the keywords "comfortable" and "portable", I'm going to have to pick the former.
Develop locally with the Facebook API using your own domain
I think it all comes down to the saying that "a tool is as good as it's user",you can have the latest hardware,software but it makes no sense if they don't add to your productivity or they slow you down instead of helping achieve your goal.
Myriad pushes Android/MeeGo at connected car
Using MySql as a bootleg message queue
I'm amazed that an 11 year old said this about having to live in the part of the school that is still being used as an evacuation centre:

""It's good that class is very close by. But home, of course, would be better.""

I can't imagine any child saying that in a similar situation in the western world. (Boarding school isn't really the same as losing your home and sleeping on the floor in a classroom.)
Server costs will continue to decrease, whereas salespeople will continue to demand more (we aren't going to lower the minimum-wage).
Suppose someone exclusively receives money via bitcoin and their name is in no way linked to the bitcoin address. Yes, they are probably anonymously receiving money. But, if they are purchasing any actual physical goods, the IRS knows they are receiving money somehow. They better be reporting them as the IRS likes to look into people who have spending that is out of line compared to their income.

Also, from the FSF announcement: "Because of the way the system works, contributions to this address will not be fully anonymous."
Instructions for compiling VLC on Android released
Saying that "bitcoin means freedom to choose a form of payment" is naive. Let's say that Bitcoin is success, and 98% of internet merchants accept bitcoins as a mean of payment.

This will mean that once I open up a shop, I have to accept it as well, or I'll lose sales. Of course, in theory, nobody would force me to accept Bitcoins, but so is the case today - nobody forces me to use Dollars, or PayPal.
Clojure for Schemers by David Nolen
I'll also formulate that differently. One of the tasks I usually give to newbies is to configure a Linux or BSD with a running Apache/Nginx/whatever from ground up. (for example using Gentoo Stage 1, as I know that it has hidden bugs)

I don't do that because I think they should learn Linux by heart, but because it gives you a great insight on how an operating system distribution is put together: what is fixed, which parts are moving. Its a quick run through everything that you cannot get using Windows or Mac OS X.
There might be other definitions, but I was referring to free market capitalism.

Edit: Why the hell am I being down voted here?
Melbjs 11th May
I have to say that I agree with the article on 'screwing the algorithms and data structures'.

Sure, if you want to be a good, successful programmer, you need to know your algorithms and data structures, inside out, back to front, whilst underwater being surrounded by sharks. This is far more important than being up-to-date with language X or framework Y.

However (and this is a big however), the letter is targeted at people who are thinking about learning to program, in which case it's important for them to actually achieve something quickly, so that they will be encouraged to continue.

When I started to program (at the grand age of 3), I wrote absolutely terrible programs in BBC-Basic. For years I wrote lines and lines of code without a single function, procedure or subroutine. Even Arrays, lists and such were beyond me.

I didn't care though. I had written stuff that worked. I had created text based adventure games that the computer would play with me. To a young kid, that feeling of power, creativity and success was like a drug, and I was addicted.

If instead, I'd spent ages reading books to work out whether I should be using quicksort or radixsort, or whether my Hashmap would scale well enough, I'd have gotten bored and never written anything, and probably become an accountant.
Marie Curie
Compared to SPOT, I can't decide if this has better or worse connectivity - yes, its bluetooth and I can run whatever I want over it. But its only going to go as far as my phone/laptop. So why not just interact with my phone or laptop? From the "always online" perspective, it feels kinda precariously balanced in a fairly narrow gap between "checking the screen of my phone" and "feeling the incoming-message vibration in my pocket". Is that worth a few hundred dollars?

I'm interested to see what other apps arise that don't require some permanent connection to another device, though.
Not to be anal here, but the original article is about LastPass[0] as opposed to KeePass[1], which is another password manager (NB: KeePass is locally hosted).

[0] http://lastpass.com/

[1] http://keepass.info/
روجر هارجريفز|ولاد العم
This is one thing that does seem to make sense: If mining isn't worth the return, then people will stop, and the returns will go up. It should adjust itself to whatever return people think is necessary to bother.
Because you can use that shell of plastic and glass to take your kids to school, go to the grocery store and haul your groceries back home, go to the building supply store and haul the supplies you need to build a deck on your house home, go out of town on a vacation, tow your boat to the marina to go enjoy a weekend at the river, have transportation to take someone to the hospital if there is an emergency and so on.

And, most importantly, have a way to transport yourself from one place to another without having to deal with young thugs and punks, junkies blasted out of their mind, people selling you stuff, crazy people hassling you, loud people, smelly people, annoying people, and generally being able to avoid the dregs of society.

Public transportation is wonderful, in theory. One of the best cities that has nailed it properly is Portland, Oregon. However, public transportation is still public transportation and as much as I truly detest the act of driving and the wasted expense of a vehicle, I detest having to deal with loud obnoxious high school kids every day, the crazy people who won't stop scratching themselves and urgently talk to you about government conspiracies or aliens when you want to rest, people shooting heroine in the seat across from you, people and their enormous brood of children out for a trip, people who haven't showered in months brushing up against you and violating your nostrils, fights and other miscellaneous violence and . . . far more than I detest a car and an auto insurance payment.

Oh, and of course cities that are only now really being modernized and coming into their own will be more advanced and well thought-out. Let's, see, which will be better . . . A place whose infrastructure and architecture and contents were built up fifty to two hundred years ago using the newest technology of the day? Or, for example, a city in China being built up with the newest technology and benefits of 2011 -- with little to nothing to have to demolish before doing so?
You think this is an underserved niche?
And what does that mean? Know how to write apps? How to use your favorite shell? What the Kernel loadable-drive API? Know the Kernel internal API? Know how to build packages? Learn how to port Linux to new hardware? Know how to administer linux services?

There are folks with facility in just a couple of those that know they are "linux experts", and they are right. They are all valuable. Which ones are we talking about here?
Tunnel your Android traffic over ssh
That's weird--I'm way more productive when I'm not using a mouse.