skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Still using iframes, I see.

I think someone that offers the same end-user functionality as Disqus but gives the bloggers the benefit of hosting their own comments (non-iframe is important, perhaps behind-the-scenes server-to-server communication instead of client-to-server communication as I suggested on their own blog) would kill Disqus almost instantly.
I don't think the analogy makes sense. Tone, with a guitar, definitely comes from the gear you use. Tone is precisely where there is so much gear and why there are so many knobs over all of it. You may recognize the style of eddie van halen playing out of crap gear, but you will not recognize the tone as anything other than crap.

Edit: If you downmod me, please explain why. I've played guitar for many years and know what I said is a fact.
No he's not. You'll have to elaborate or see my other comment.
Ask PG: Translations into Russian
Dear Paul,

Thank you for essays http://paulgraham.com/articles.html.

Please allow us to publish your translation of your essays on Russian
web sites:
http://spring.jumpidea.com/search/label/Paul%20Graham (our blog)
http://habrahabr.ru/tag/jumpidea/ (Russian hacker news :)
http://translated.by/you/tags/jumpidea/ (crowd-source translations service)

We already made translations of three essays, please allow to keep
them published:
http://spring.jumpidea.com/2008/08/paul-graham-distraction.html
http://spring.jumpidea.com/2008/08/paul-graham-prcmc.html
http://spring.jumpidea.com/2008/08/paul-graham-googles.html

All translations made by professional translator and I promise to keep
them updated.
Every translation supplied with exact link to original essay.

If you have any requirements I will be glad to discuss it.

Best regards,
Roman Zolotarev
CEO, JumpIDEA
http://jumpidea.com/en/
For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time
Facebook: No. 1 Globally
The artwork in Braid is amazing. I like how the article shows Braid's graphical roots and how it has evolved from there. Great insight into the process.

David Hellman (the graphic designer behind Braid) has more Art of Braid articles on his blog at http://www.davidhellman.net/blog/category/art-of-braid/
I fully agree. Why does our society treat contraception as the woman's responsibility? It seems like low-side-effect male oral contraception is a relatively easy problem, but I don't even think there are any male contraceptives in the pipeline, sadly.

My last girlfriend reacted badly to every BC pill she took. I was 24 and 180 pounds, while she was 20 and 115 pounds. Dosing drugs in an adolescent is a pharmacologically hard problem, especially when the drugs are hormonal, and the fact that I was much larger also made me a better candidate for drug experimentation. If there had been a male Pill, I would have readily taken it.
You are theoretically correct.

But: can you name a platform where a null pointer is not represented by zeros in binary?
there are jobs for jack of all trades. i'm working in one now. but if you're looking to pick up a job at something larger than a dev shop, they're going to look for depth not breadth.
Entrecard Truth Be Told | TechJaws
I'm pretty sure I know it. It's not Twitter or Powerset.
IPhone 3G Chips Faulty | TechJaws
http://www.orthoevra.com/orthoevra/birth_ctl_know_option.htm...

Yeah unfortunately there's not a lot of other options other than the chemical approach.
But I vaguely remember reading from somewhere that transdermal methods (like the patch) and injection methods has more direct access to the bloodstream without having to go through the digestive tract, and hence can be administered in lower dosage than oral methods. IANADoctor, obviously.
"A website with intentional 404's sprinkled around" is also something no one wants.
Is it just me or did the G4 cube seem like a "concept" product? Or perhaps even the Anniversary Mac...?
Half of overweight adults may be heart-healthy
True story:

In grad school, one of our professors wrote a memory leak checker for C/C++ and sprung it on his compiler construction class two weeks from the end of the semester. He pronounced that no one with memory leaks in their project would pass his course. My friends were taking the class and everyone enrolled in it despaired of passing. As a joke, to try and bring some levity to the situation, I suggested that they just register every allocation they made on a huge list, then free everything right before program termination. Well, they were so desperate, they went and implemented it. Others in the class heard about this, and soon every single student enrolled in the class had implemented the same scheme.

Later on, I became the TA for that professor for the same compiler construction class. I don't think he knows to this day.
The article doesn't say that good tools don't help - the article says that you will not become a good "insert anything here" if all you have are great tools and no innate ability or vision. In other words - if I am not a good runner, then having expensive orthopedic sneakers while I am running will not do me much good. If I am a good runner, then having those sneakers will make me better.
But what about when you are adding features or fixing bugs in the gigantic base of code written in C?

Or what if you consider C your lingua-franca and find it no less difficult to write a throw away app in C over other languages.

Or if you have to interface very closely to your operating system without writing hairy wrapperes.

Or, or, or ...
Maybe I've just got more tech-savvy friends than most, but I don't know anyone who assumes a 404 when following an internal link is their fault. Usually they just assume that the webmaster was sloppy.

Why not use a 503 Service Unavailable? This is telling (stretching ;-)) the truth, and people do assume that a 503 is temporary, because that's the explicit point of the message. And you can throw in an e-mail link, like someone suggesed, if they want to be notified when the service is "back up".

Or I suppose you could use 501 Not Implemented if you really want to be honest, but that's boring. ;-)
I think it's important to note that home cleaning products are not innocuous. Combine the wrong types together and you can have a deadly situation. So their saying that they were no more dangerous than home cleaning products is not really saying they are without danger.
Singapore and its lack of Democracy
Such as?

Note: There are some interesting cryto systems such that X out of N nodes need to agree to do something. So you can send off the blackmail if 8 out of 10 people think you died etc. Because of this you can add a lot redundancy to most systems without causing problems.

Edit: Maximum time might be 50% longer than 80% of your nodes took it does not need to be a fixed number.
I would like it to be a bit more welcoming. Just a little snippet of friendly little intro text like "Welcome dude! Here's what we do, here's where to start!"

I really enjoy the minimalist design.
Community manager for an early-stage company. You'll be doing a lot of support and interaction but your ability to fill in anywhere needed will be really valuable and allow you to explore and learn
I multiplied the gematria of the 256th word of this essay by the number of karma points original submitter had during the first full moon after the most recent vernal equinox. I applied this result as a siphon to the original lisp source code of Viaweb, and held the image in a mirror. Amazingly, it spelled "Paul Graham" backwards in ancient Aramaic. Wait a minute, the earth i s s h a k i n g . . . .
A job that needs breadth: CIO.

If you want to develop knowledge in depth, this is a good place to start:

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-Pr...

Buy the book, download the courseware for free, and learn how computers work from NAND gates up. Implement your own OO language on the hardware you've built and write your own OS in it. Then write games for the resulting system. This will put you ahead of most coders out there.
Entrepreneur ;-)
HN: Feedback on my laptop recovery service
Think "lojack for laptops." Sign up, download/install client, and if you mark it as stolen you can recover files, delete files, see the IP, take pics, etc.
I don't think this article is particularly good, but I've always wondered how people come to accept living without certain freedoms, so I found it interesting in this regard.
survival of the fittest. maybe we'll all be coding like that in 15 years.
Isn't being part of a growing start-up a need for a jack of all trades to a point? With little or no capital, many people need to be both designers and engineers

So I guess, find a small company looking for some designers or hackers, and I'm sure you'll be designing and communicating with customers as well.
For me, it was not.

I did study Math, and while most of the knowledge can't be used directly in my daily job as a programmer, and most of the higher math was forgotten, I was taught to think abstractly in several different ways (like algebra, math analysis, statistics, geometry etc.) All of those subject are very beneficial to study, IMHO, even if you don't apply them directly in your job.
Feedback Frenzy: 35+ Customer Service Resources
constructive criticism is one thing, making a big joke out of it (like most of the posts I see here) is another

I was trying to be sarcasstic with my 1st post, I guess it didn't work
well, if you got free for free (bad pun, sorry), would you still be using vanilla malloc ?
If the bookmarklet is the heart of getting images bookmarked, it shouldn't be in the "Post" section. It should promoted on every page, especially the home page where it should be accompanied with some instructions.
Tailpipe power: Generating electricity directly from wasted heat looks promising
Oh, and very important for those Americans: PORSH-uh (IPA: /ˈpɔrʃə/).
This is fantastic. Thanks for the link and the advice. Talk about being helpful... I'd like to +10 karma on DarkShikari's account.
This may seem paradoxical, but have you considered operations/systems administration? Would give you a chance to pretty much do use every single skill, gives you the flexibility to choose between full time and contracting.
I'm doing my best to prove that this is true. While I have college credits (about 60), I'm a full-time developer and part-time entrepreneur at 20. So far no need for a degree...

That's not to say I'm poorly educated by any means. I have the writing, mathematical, scientific, historical, and artistic skills needed to earn a degree. My knowledge of the Russian canon alone might be enough at a school which offered that major (Russian Literature or even World Literature). It just didn't take me four years in a restrictive environment and an empty wallet to earn it :^)
Many companies don't even advertise junior or entry-level positions.

Find a company you want to work for, find a pain point in their product and make a compelling case in your cover letter for how you feel that you can help their company.

Oh, and be prepared to accept honey roasted peanuts as legal tender in exchange for your time :)
For short videos of around 20 to 25 meg, it's quite viable. It's actually ideal for camera phone and small digital camera videos, because it's long enough to see something interesting but short enough to not bore people.
The column seems to be entirely from the point of view of an employer looking to screen potential employees. Like it or not, college is about more than job training. For a lot of people the social life is a big part of it, the first part of life away from parents, but still with some security, and about intellectual exploration (answering the question - what exactly do I want to be when I grow up?). Perhaps none of that is worth the lost time, but when I see it in the WSJ, my initial reaction is that it's another right wing wacko who sees college as just too many liberals with too much influence.

And he puts too much faith in certification tests as "classless", in my opinion. I used to do test prep, and like most things, the people who have the money and the time to train for the certifications have an advantage.
If you set Jott.com up to send email to post@posterous.com, we automatically clean up the email they send us and just post the Jott.com transcribed content.

That's one fast way to get voice to text to posterous. =)
I'm getting a compiler error.
Outsourcing doesn't suck in all cases, which this article seems to imply. For example, I was maintaining cobol apps on a mainframe that were about 20 years old. Recently I read a news story that gov. payroll systems in California run entirely on cobol, and also that cobol programmers are impossible to come by. In India, the big firms actually train new grads in cobol etc., if the job requires it.

So, now, what is better, just stop paying the gov. of california employees, or outsource the payroll processing to india?

outsourcing is not just about money, there's more to it.
HackageDB: haskell library for the analysis and generation of C code
So... I load up a page, and the benefit is supposed to be that I get 10 of the links from it on the sidebar as "related links".

Why do I care, exactly? What's the value here?
default: die( "Goodbye Cuil World!" );
I'm thinking about FiOS for my next apartment. Do you have it?
How Napoleon Bonaparte Built an Empire
Napoleon Bonaparte has carved his name in the history books. Some say he was a masterful soldier. Some say he was a very charismatic statesman. Others say he was the best strategist who ever lived. Yes, he is all of that. But he became “Napoleon the Great” only because of one of his tactics. He created and ruled an empire only because of one secret.
DC area? I'm about 1/3 between Baltimore and DC
Research + Web = More Consensus, Less Diversity (At Least, So Far)
This is better than most "college is a waste" articles, but it repeats a common mistake: thinking that people are hired for their skills. When I'm hiring, I don't want someone with a "web design" certificate or a "Python programming" certificate, or (worse) a "sales and marketing" certificate. I want someone who is smart, passionate, loves to learn, thinks creatively, knows how to write, and is enjoyable to work with. These things can't be governed by a certificate system. Of course, they also don't correlate strongly with a college diploma. But there is some correlation, at least with some majors - give me a philosophy major over a business major any day.
Maybe what he means by "tone" is what you mean by "style".
Netflix Prize Concept + Google 411 Data
The current system is the continuation of a historical establishment, which is the same with many other human-created systems. They will always be flawed, but humans will also be slow to react to changes; the larger the group, the older the establishment, the more resistant to change.

While it is atrociously suboptimal, it's a bit much to call it a waste of time.

Incidentally, I happened upon this article this morning and like the idea very much: the Grandes écoles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%89coles
Does anybody have any related stories to tell?
The perfect free and hands free database backup.
The problem with this plan is that it will just make every college vocational. Why waste money on classes that don't apply for your certificate? Why spend time playing with classes that could lead you to a different certificate when you are already 20% done with this one?

Or better yet, why not get a couple princeton review books to pass the test? I passed 35 credits of AP exams in high school, all with 5 out of 5s, and several without taking the course. When I actually took some classes in college based on that, I quickly found out how little you need to know to pass a test.
A long time ago, books and educated people were extremely scarce. So, it was efficient to group as many books and educated people in the same place so that, in that particular place, they were not scarce. That place is called a "school". The scarcity that gave schools their key advantage is largely gone.
Sysadmin for a startup. Bring a hammer and a power screwdriver too! :)
Jungle Disk Goes Workgroup
I just recently saw a video of TED from Sir. Ken Robinson who said School's kill Creativity, Really a great talk and worth seeing. Hope some of you find it useful.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools...
My college degree means nothing on paper professionally, but meant everything to my abilities to meet business and computing challenges. I didn't study computing at all. I don't expect that my experience is much different from others who have Liberal Arts degrees and found joy in technology.

I've worked with many people who have degrees and certification in computing and many who don't. As a result of my experience, I've rejected resumes from people who have studied computing and sought professional certifications solely, in preference to people who have English degrees and weird hobbies. Professional experience is supreme, but after that, I want a broad mind to tackle the problems at hand. While that's highly prejudicial, I've found it a very rewarding way to approach a stack of resumes.
Then, as I said, he's wrong. Tone and style have very clear meanings in the world of guitar and they are not the same.
It looks good. I would charge for it though. It almost seems strange/shady if you don't charge for it, especially if the recovery data is hosted by you. I suggest not using what a lot of other companies use, which is charging per month. For some reason, I really hate that. Maybe per year, like $20. You should do some sleuthing, see what people might pay. (I understand if you're not charging because you want people to check it out).

Also, on the marketing side, I want to know more about how it works and what it does. Some people might not be as literate. I assume it doesn't "phone home" if the thief never turns it on or connects it to the internet, or immediately formats the drive. You should explain that somewhere. Also, what files can you retrieve and where? If the thief is using it at the time you're trying to retrieve files, does the thief have any indication something is happening? You don't need all this on the home page, but maybe under a "learn more" button.

Using the term beacon implies that you can tell your customer where their laptop is located (i.e. a physical address). Also, what help would you give to someone once they get the IP address. What do I do once I know the thief's IP address? Honestly, what would you do?
For people who enter school for vocational reasons, the sports and parties and alcohol and Shakespeare classes and diversity training and dormitory life and extended vacations and other activities are completely distinct from getting vocational training...ie, they are a complete waste. The 10K+/per year expense is vastly more wasteful than any cert training...
Y Combinator To Offer Standardized Angel Funding Legal Docs
Gmail/Google Apps Tips, Tricks & Tweaks
We recently migrated our staff from Exchange 2003 to Google Apps, here are a few things I am sending out to help ease the transition.
Has anyone here done much pairing? We're gradually adding more of it to our standard process, and we're seeing some really interesting results...
I find the whole "college is..." or "college is not..." to be a problematic mindset in itself. For example, why not develop social skills in high school? Many of the student leaders I know from college started as high school student leaders.

Now we're talking about "HS is..." or "HS is not..." or "HS sucks." Why wait until HS? Now we're talking about MS... then lower school. Then it's just your entire life as an individual.

I like the idea of a loose education system where there aren't Nth-grade, Xth-year students, but simply students who have proved themselves in a particular set of studies. For those with the time to study, take one year. For those without, take ten years. Then there won't be any of these ideas of what college should or should not do.

It's my personal fantasy. Impractical perhaps?
Announcements about YUI might be news, a blogpost like "consider YUI for your next project! Here's why!" might be news. Your personal gratitude, while admirable, isn't news.

It's not my site, though, and I'm only expressing my personal opinion about what I like to see here. I prefer straight news and commentary, without Twitter-style observational chatter.
Play DVD's On A Wii
It's written from that perspective because college degrees are used as a proxy for job training, and most people pursue them so they can get a better job, which makes the system broken. The other benefits of the college experience don't require college anyway, and are cost-prohibitive to a lot of people.

I don't think he was arguing that nobody should do 4 years of college. Just that employers need a better vetting system.
merit based hiring is too rational to work in america.
I think you have a solid idea, but your implementation is wack. If you can code, why would you use some platform that has absolutely nothing to do with your service? Its just going to create problems down the line. Ex. URLs.

I honestly suggest, you spend about a week implementing this yourself. Its trivial.
If you're using Boehm GC, you're not using vanilla malloc anymore.
I like the minimalist look. However, the bookmarklet shouldn't be confined to the "Post" section. Make it clear that to post images, one needs to use the bookmarklet.

It would be nice if the images either had no title at all, or the user that posted the picture could change the title.
At first, I thought the bookmarklet was broken.

I like the way you click on the bookmarklet, then click on the image.

Would be nice to have some sort of indicator after clicking the bookmarklet so the user knows that the images have become hot. Just a discrete little flash message, something like "Okay! Now select your image."
Tripeedo: Command line for travel (from Wundrbar)
Jump out!
Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you...
Startup Engineers E. Coli to Poop Oil
Rise of the rat-brained robots
whether or not they are relevant is besides the point, I think author isn't saying "end 4-year colleges" but rather that we should change how skills are assessed -- so that a 4 year college isn't required ... i.e you can take a test and if you pass thats it. so college could still be a valid route of developing skills (like the ones you said) but not the only route to getting a job.
That's not true. Have you looked at Sinatra? It's gorgeous. All URI definitions can (and should) be placed in a single .rb file.

get '/content/:id' do
header 'Content-Type' => 'text/html; charset=utf-8'

# Get content using params[:id]

if (!@content.empty?)
erb :show
else
redirect '/'
end
end

get '/newstuff' do
header 'Content-Type' => 'text/html; charset=utf-8'
login_required

# Do stuff

erb :new, :layout => :layout_admin
end

post '/newstuff' do
header 'Content-Type' => 'text/html; charset=utf-8'
login_required

@summary = Summary.new(
:date => Time.now,
:title => params[:title],
:author => params[:author],
:worthwhile => params[:worthwhile]
)

# Save content

erb(:new, :layout => :layout_admin)
end
I've been saying this, almost to the exact letter, for the last 13 years. Not the "college is a waste of time" part, but the part about "we need to divorce the skill verification from the skill teaching".
We used a version of these (though had to edit them some) in our recent funding round, and I can't even imagine how much money they saved us. They are, if nothing else, a great starting point. Were I an angel, I'd use them for sure.
Yeah, and I think the point the author makes is that a college degree is just as bad an indicator of that as a certificate with a number on it. If you want someone with those qualities you can interview them and find out.
samataro: I'm working full time and using laconica was simply the quickest way to get from the idea stage to up and running. If imgfave take off I'll most likely rewrite it from scratch.