skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Microsoft to show off spherical Surface next week
I think there's a legitimate question of how possible it is to build a stable software/internet business for the long term

It's easy to start such a business; but it's also easy for your new competitor, and for open source. But apart from barriers to entry, there's that routine cataclysm of a computer technology revolution every decade or so. That one is hard to survive. This volatility is the main reason Warren Buffett doesn't invest in computer technology companies.

I think the long-term is a decade or so.
Foreign airlines can fly to the US but they can't compete on domestic routes.
I once took a personality test (I tried to game it, but I didn't). The results classified me as a heavy "maximizer". Just in case I didn't already understand what that meant, this post is a great reminder.

Just when you think it's good enough, it isn't.
I didn't see the page before you added the elements, so it may very well be an improvement, but it is currently distractingly busy. One suggestion would be to cut down on the text in the bubbles and move from paragraph form to something closer to bullet points.

When I saw the page, the bubbles were the first thing my eyes were drawn to, so they really ought to provide a light and easy overview. Once you've sparked peoples' interest, you have all page to feed them text, but a cluttered first impression is a large turn off.

Edit:
As I look at the site some more, I still find that my largest problem is how cluttered everything works. In particular, articles with a large number of tags tend to really bloat up. It would probably help if they were de-emphasized or boxed up more by default.

As far as the functionality goes, it seemed to be fairly good. I haven't had enough time to really dig in, but I haven't seen anything worth complaining about yet.
Fugitive spammer dies in murder-suicide
I worked for US Airways in engineering, and enormous man hours were wasted using the proprietary mainframes that ran everything. Southwest doesn't have the legacy systems that the legacy airlines have, and the legacy airlines can't afford to upgrade their systems that work.
Creative Code: 14 Ways to Learn From Creative Programmers
Why more Indians aren't hackers
Developer vs “the others”
So, smartest programmers = rockstars? Highly doubtful.
Well again its an arbitrary distinction, Is that 51 lb. bag that much more dangerous than the 50 lb. bag. A baggage handler could easily throw their back out improperly lifting a 49 lb. bag, but at least I won't get charged for it.
spam makes me wanna kill myself sometimes too...
With laptops, there are 3 things to be worried about: video, wireless and suspend/resume.

Video: Always Intel integrated.
Wifi : Anything from Intel
Suspend/Resume: Thinkpads
"Well residual = salary you pay yourself, and yes you can put away a large chunk, but you'll never catch up to a guy who just walked away and sold his company for 10 mil. Well not in single life time."

Tell that to Marcus Frind (PlentyOfFish) or James Hong (HotOrNot).

Some math: PlentyOfFish was kicking off about $200-300k in cash per month. That's yearly income of about $3M, so in 3 years, he's banked the $10M that your hypothetical acquisition target has made, and he still has his company.

HotOrNot was reportedly also throwing off multiple millions per year, enough that James didn't have to work even before he sold the company.

The main source of wealth for owners of small LLC or S-corp Internet businesses isn't their salaries, its their dividend checks - which can easily range into the millions. Many popular businesses kick off a lot of cash, and small private Internet businesses usually distribute nearly all of that to the shareholders.
He is also an angel investor in Xobni. So he will see some payout when they flip.
On Math Teaching: Lockhart's Lament
Silverlight vs. Flash: The Developer Story
Huh? This sounds like a list of things that annoys you, not words used to dismiss otherwise relevant arguments.
Web: As Seen By The Color Blind
Upscale Shopping on Chicago's Magnificent Mile - Associated Content
Git - Fast Version Control System
I find that I use google less than a couple of years ago. I think it is because the quality of destination sites has gone up, so I go directly to a handful of sites most of the time (admittedly gmail is one, but wikipedia, techmeme, nytimes, here, and so on). It's not that there's anything wrong with google, I just find myself searching less.
This is exactly my point. Each individual piece of software, each product, nominally does work very well, and I'll even go as far as to say that they are highly consistent internally. But there is no consistency between even the most common set of applications that the average user is going to need to work with.

I'm not saying that there isn't good software. I'm saying that it doesn't do a good job of playing well together, and that's what it will take for Linux to be a better desktop platform than what Apple currently provides.

And, no, I'm sorry, but those problems do still exist, and are quite prominent.

Consistently functional copy and paste as an Ubuntu improvement has nearly 2500 votes across two requests, which would be enough to put it in their 'Most Popular Improvement Requests, Ever' section if they combined both of the threads: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3118/ , http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4242/

A new user writes that, while they can use the clipboard in most applications, they have no idea how to do it in an xterm (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=772970). Why does it work differently there than it does in Firefox?

Japanese input is such a mess that there's an entire section of the Ubuntu site devoted to it (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JapaneseInput). Why do I need to choose between two input methods? Why doesn't the input work across all applications? Even Windows, which despite Microsoft's largeness in the world has surprisingly bad internationalization, and which I do not like, at least handles this correctly.
I once had an enlightening discussion on a company mailing list about this. The common complaint among the female programmers was that their university classes were directed towards these self-selected male know-it-alls, who had been overclocking their PCs since middle school. Many of the women, who were just making their first foray into Comp Sci in university, got so frustrated they almost quit. And these women eventually became great programmers, so imagine what the women of average talent experienced.

The funny thing is, when prompted, quite a few of the men chimed in that they resented these male uber-nerds too.

So maybe society just forgot how to teach computer science or programming to adults. It might be that the schools have a reliable business, graduating the inveterate nerdz-4-life.

And maybe that's why practically every student I interview codes like they didn't learn anything in university. (But that's another story.)
Tips on Choosing an E-Commerce Shopping System
I agree about the about page bubbles... they do distract and their contents should probably be moved to other parts of the page... while leaving something small at the top.

I also agree about the articles, etc. in general the semantic information surrounding them should be somehow de-emphasized in the browse pages
Yes. But that's where the issue of popularity and singularity pops up.

For Facebook, there's a huge userbase that's already there, and already cookie'd up. Because Facebook has such a huge brand name, it can stand alone and work pretty well.

OpenID, first off, has a DISadvantage in how open it is. No single large button will work. (I love the idea of Clickpass, I think that it has a chance to work, but that means yet another branch of the original OpenID concept.) You need either one single field to log in from, or you need multiple buttons, one per service.

From there it's a matter of individual service popularity. And here's from my experience only, so I could be speaking alone, but the services I used didn't remember me and I had to log in each time. I used ClaimID, MyOpenID, and AIM. Same problems with each. And I used OpenID to AVOID multiple logins. Even when I'd logged in for one site, the second one meant entering my log in again, then going to a second page to verify access. That means the log-in process is longer than just using a separate ID for the site. Registration moved slower, too, because first I had to log in, then I had to grant access, then I had to pick a user name - half as many page loads as even registering with a site using email verification. (Sites that used OpenID AND email verification were the last straw.)

So... conceptually, yes. Exact same process. The difference is that with Facebook I need two clicks to log in, no keyboard, and two clicks is fair to me. The same as theoretically entering a user name and password. And registration is faster, and it keeps all my identities together. So Facebook, by being a faceless corporate entity, has a usability edge, and for the majority of users (I'm not a fan of either, mind you), usability is all that matters.
My last employer kept discussing using it but they brought on a MSSQL person and LINQ fell by the wayside.
'My Lobotomy': Howard Dully's Journey
I don't think the killer who committed the murder-suicide know who Edward Edison was.
I think ZUCKERBERG wants to be much more. I don't think the entire company does. Either that or they're fooling themselves significantly. I think we've seen already that apps don't have a bright future, unless Facebook does a MAJOR about-face. But see, from what I've seen, Facebook's just parroting Apple right now. From design to ambition to strategy. And this is an example of them following Apple again. But they don't have the powerful platform that Apple does, and they can't play the same game. Nor can they play at Microsoft's game. Microsoft appealed to the CORPORATE environment. Not to college kids. The one route has a future of productivity. Not the other.
'Neglect' of Bletchley condemned
Use Templates in Django
The list has a BIT of bias against Gates. Jobs gets to be humorous and bright and dead-on. Linus gets to be hilarious and geeky. Bill Gates gets to be evil and dead wrong.
Firefox's Awesome Keywords are.. hmm.. awesome, but what if you need:

* a synchronization between different computers (the same keywords on different computers)

* to use other browser

* two or more parameters, e.g. to find Google Sets for "cat, and man"

* to combine multiple queries, e.g. to search for "hacker news" on Google and Yahoo

YubNub's examples:

$ gset man, cat

http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=gset%20man%2C%20cat

$ ms2 hacker news; g y

http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=ms2%20hacker%20news%3...
"So a smart eugenicist who believes that resistance to sunlight is an important trait would encourage darker-skinned people to breed more, at the expense of those of us with lighter hues."

You can't just select for one trait and leave everything else untouched. DNA doesn't work that way. Pick up a copy of Animals In Translation the next time you're in the bookstore and skim the chapter on single trait selection, I think it's ch. 4.
God, I remember reading this on reddit. Brilliant article.
I think with engineers things are pretty binary. There is just 0 and 1. Some engineers can just follow (0) and other that lead (1). The (1) are the ones that just get things done. The (0) are the one that need some coaxing to get finish line. The whole idea or a rockstar, ninja is BS. It is like a project 0 you failed and are not complete 1 you've met the deadline. If you want a rockstar goto hollywood. If you want ninjas goto japan. If you want an engineer goto colos, star wars movies, your local tech meet ups.
Is it considered dweeby that I knew about this site through reading logo blogs?

Looks very cool. I'll have to try it out soon.
God I wish I had that much design talent. Love the logo.
Agreed. What an awesomely novel way to make a website look nice.
This is one of the best pieces I have read on mathematical education in quite some time.
Santa Monica Pier Restaurants - Associated Content
There's only one way to be perfect.
Coding Without Comments
A startup where the co-founders have time to work on random OSS stuff is probably working on the wrong things. A startup where employees can spend 20% of their time hacking on OSS or side projects is likely doing just fine. I would be more worried about a startup that expects or demands that employees work 40+ hours. It either means that it's being run by suit monkeys that don't understand how programmers work or has poor project management that requires a constant crunch mode.
Speculation over back door in Skype
Since I actually worked on something closely tied to the Yahoo Music property (NOT on the DRM side, don't worry!) when I was with Yahoo, I'm sad to see it closing. I know several folks who may be out of a job because of this news. Sad.

I think when Ian Rogers left, that was the beginning of the end: http://mashable.com/2008/04/03/ian-rogers-leaves-yahoo/
What price a byline? (Or: what’s wrong with Knol)
Telephone = Synchronous, Email = Asynchronous.

Asynchrony really helps with the performance of a system ;)
So is this the new official site, or a better designed version with permission, or some dude's idea for a better site or what? http://git.or.cz/ is still up and doesn't link to http://git-scm.com/
"As it turns out, there is something special about them — they’re normal people, doing normal things."

No, they're people in stock art doing absolutely nothing but standing around and looking stupid.
Because Linux's problem isn't its bugs, or its glitchiness. Its problems revolve around the design theory that builds it.

That's where Apple wins big-time over the other two. It has a consistent theory of how to reduce clicks to get effects. From not having a lower bar to HAVING an upper menu to Spotlight to its Dock, everything is designed to make things faster for you.

Ubuntu won't ever have this. It can't. Nothing that's designed to be truly open can. You can't tweak things to the same level of control. You can't implement multitouch and make programs that RELY on multitouch. You can't put iTunes controls on the keyboard, or an Eject key. You can't make iChat integrate with Mail and your Address Book when not everybody will have each of those programs. It's not possible.

I've used both thoroughly. The level of polish on the one side is VASTLY superior. Look even at Adium versus Pidgin. They run the same library. But one takes up far less space, has better-designed themes, runs more smoothly... because Apple allows for that. It offers big screen resolutions and superior font support, so you can keep things tiny and out-of-the-way and still readable. It deals with a modern-day theme that means a focus on professionalism still works. It knows it can use Growl and the Dock for notifications, which keeps it much less in-your-face than anything FLASHING ever would.

You can't get keyboard shortcuts that are as good when you don't know the keyboard. You can't get software support when you don't know the hardware. You can't have a superior user interface when people use five hundred different displays and two thousand different methods of input. (Exaggeration.) Ubuntu can not win a battle when it can't control the tools used to fight. It can't control hardware, it can't control software, without betraying its design theories. Apple can, and so Apple will always win in a fight hands-down.
That's doublespeak, not labels. There's a difference.
From the site:
Source for this website at <a href="http://github.com/schacon/learn-github">GitHub</a>, which was forked from Petr Baudis's <a href="http://git-scm.com/">git.or.cz</a>

So it is not an official site. It's just a rewrite of the git.or.cz, to make it cleaner and more user friendly.

P.S. Can someone tell me the correct way to put href attribute in HN?
Even for true side projects, the solution is to make sure your project schedule doesn't depend on everyone working a strict 40 hours. Having time set aside to do some OSS hacking every week is actually likely to lead to less time wasted with other, likely less productive activities.

You also never know when one of those completely unrelated side projects will come in handy.
Don't forget "moderate." Nobody liked Giuliani's being moderate, no no no. You're not safe ANYWHERE in the scale. Avoid it and you're "apathetic." Get too complex and you're "elitist" or "flip-flopping" or "hostile" (if the right crowd catches you trying to explain things).

...Man. I miss George Carlin.
Thanks for making this. I had no idea it existed, and I think it'll be perfect for something I'm working on.
It is kind of arbitrary, but unless your going to eliminate weight limits altogether, I don't really see how else you could do it.
Romping. "Dude, you're on a major romp right now.
It's because neither one is an ISSUE for a politician. What laws could POSSIBLY require thought as to either one?

AI rights? Yeah, save my Roomba.

Free will/rationalizations? Let's just assume that nobody has a choice in anything. Where's that lead us then? Nihilism? Dude, how exhausting would THAT be?
Wait. Does Scribd automatically create files out of PDFs for HN? How did you do that?
It's all your fault for not sticking to records.
Yeah, but what matters is that people are losing music over this one.
http://news.ycombinator.org/formatdoc
On his comparison of FB feed aggregation, I like the friendfeed model better, non-intrusive feed aggregation and sharing.
Facebook users can tell the difference, though. Hardcore ones. The ones who want absolute control over their feed. The ones who would actually FIND that button. Most people don't know you can actually hide your feed stories.

Though the wording of your quote is actually a bit misleading. What if you don't have enough information to make a decision? What if you're not entirely certain of your priorities before going in? Some choices do take a while to pick.

Unrelated note: what do you guys see as the advantage of using Posterous to write entries? Just ease of emailing it? Given a choice between writing a blog and updating to Posterous, what would the end user (rather than the founder) benefit from? I'm asking because I'm legitimately curious what you think: I used Posterous for a bit, but I'm still a bit unsure as to what its aims are.
SEO Submission
WL Marketing provides a suite of web promotion SEO services that cover all aspects of website optimization and promotion. Professionals and newcomers alike have successfully used WL Marketing's services to enhance their websites and have found it to be easy and reliable.
It appears that when there is an article listed with 2 separate links in the title, it then doesn't auto populate the comments panel correctly. Clicking on the comments link for the comments you wish to read works properly still.

Ill get it fixed right away.
Fab "Mad Scientist" performance by Damian Conway, bonus cameo appearence by Larry Wall.

Gotta love the Perl Community!
yahoo could never surrender all ads to google - the govt would never allow a cartel to control over 90% of web ads

most advertisers also are not interested in an ad cartel, which is why many continue to spend on yahoo and other ad networks
Let's define our terms carefully. When I use the word "academia", I usually mean "getting a job that's on the career path to becoming a tenured professor, at least in theory".

If that's what you're asking about, I can talk about that, although my first advice will be to forget all about it. ;) But that's not what I'm recommending in the post above. I'm not even recommending going to grad school for the credential, exactly. I'm recommending going to grad school because it's a great, society-approved excuse to quit your job, get the hell out of your cubicle, take some interesting classes, do some small and interesting projects (either for school or on the side) with a bunch of other smart people who have similar interests, and change the direction of your resume.

(There are obviously other ways to accomplish the goal of changing your career's direction, and one of those might be better. But this particular scenario -- a person who feels trapped by their own job history -- just smelled to me like someone who might prefer the grad school route. It's a fairly safe, classic, and well-respected way to mix your life up a bit for a year or two.)
Dell charges $1-2 per crapware install, but sometimes those are free if Dell feels like they add value. Vista Basic, OEM edition, is probably $50 (I am guessing about this one). This requires 20-25 cases of infection with useless shit to offset Microsoft tax.

This still can't explain how come Ubuntu-based machines are more expensive.

I think that Dell simply rides the demand train: they're the only big-name brand that sells Ubuntu-powered machines (very few know that Lenovo sells SUSE) and they're enjoying higher profit margins on them.
Friendfeed? It's just a leech of a site. It produces nothing and adds a layer of abstraction. It is only useful for people wasting time, and as such it has only attracted people wasting time on a massive scale.

Besides, the two sides have utterly different goals, and comparison is pointless.
I disagree. Code without comments will never be as understandable as code with comments.

This is true because code is designed partly for computers while comments can be written entirely for humans.

This is important because comments only have to be written once and maintained occasionally while code without comments has to be reinterpreted every time it is read.
And I was JUST looking to learn programming, too. Thanks.
Engineer seems as humble as programmer to me.
Forrester: Vista is ‘New Coke’ in the enterprise; Firefox, Apple gain a little
Thanks dude. But it just says: Urls become links, except in the text field of a submission.

But I want for example, "GitHub" to be appear as a link with value http://github.com/schacon/learn-github
I get that disease prevention is a non-controversial use for eugenics.

I'm just pointing out there is nothing "religious" about a belief that eugenics works. Eugenics is just a straightforward application of basic genetics, and has been demonstrated to work in humans and other animals exactly as the theory describes. There may be some engineering issues, but many human traits can be modified by eugenics.
Let me give you some analysis:

- Interesting concept, video is slowly gaining ground, so it seems like a natural evolution from Twitter. WITH that said,
- The design does need work - it's simple, which is good, but it's unappealing.
- Good front pitch on the site, but not great - it needs to be more interesting.
- You need to justify WHY I should take the extra time to hook up a webcam and record my 12 second snippet than just Tweet it - this seems like too much time for something as simple as a status update. Convince me this is a better method and just as easy and you'll get customers.
- Trot out the appealing people. We're a very physically-minded society, the cute girls and interesting guys will get you hits, maybe even a viral one.
- Great job on TechCrunch! I'll keep watch. And yes, I'd enjoy an invite (ben@benparr.com)
I don't know of anyone who's actually opposed to sex. Plenty of people are opposed to sex at certain places and times, between certain pairs or groups of people, or in certain styles or orifices, or as part of a commercial transaction, or in front of other people, but I'm pretty sure that being opposed to sex in general is a fairly rare position.

(Insert your own "fairly rare position" joke here.)
Two years ago, I'd have totally agreed with you.

With laptops, make sure you buy one with a factory install of Ubuntu or at least another Linux. There's enough out there (at least in the US and UK) to vote with your wallet and make compatibility someone else's problem.
I always get a laugh when I see this linked to. It's like offering "Ford Taurus for the Astronaut".
I agree that's a big deal, I was just critiquing the "End of DRM" headline as being misleading and pushing an (untrue) agenda.