skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Apparently the existence of men, or more accurately some portions of the male genome coupled with the processes of epigenetic imprinting, is shortening everyone's lifespan. See:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/07/continued-investi...

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/12/an-update-on-mice...

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/rasgrf1-deficienc...

For what it's worth.
If you read Cal's article, and especially his other DP articles, he is quite clear that this type of procrastination is NOT what he's talking about. Deep procrastination is about feeling completely unable to start a task, and has symptoms like getting extensions and still not meeting them.
A lot of this depends on what you're selling, and your conversion rate (which will depend on exactly how you got those subscriptions).

Is the newsletter geared towards database administrators, who gave you their email address because they wanted to be notified about new developments in their database of choice? Your conversion rate for a database-related product will probably be high, while conversions for a whitepaper on writing your own ebook might not be.

How did you get the subscribers? Are the products you're trying to sell geared towards their niche?

If all you want is a mathematical formula, I like to take a pessimistic approach like so:

subscribers * 0.25% conversion rate * cost of product = revenue

If it's ads in your newsletter - I have no idea.
even though this hasn't been officially announced yet, git can already be used for new projects:
http://code.google.com/hosting/createProject
Why CRUD might be what they want, but may not be what they need
ActiveRecord is an abstraction. Which is good in general, but when you want to get your hands dirty with some SQL it's a pretty serious hindrance.
Feel free. (my initials) at nobulb.com.
When Good Enough Isn't
I read the written piece, price tags in the vending machines, cards needed to get new supplies instead of their previous cabinet solution, employees copied on the bills the company picks up for them to so "so they can personally keep track of their usage patterns and corresponding cost to the company". Campos is a strong proponent of employee accountability

I don't work at one of the "hip" tech companies, even we don't have to jump though bullshit hoops like this or have the company nag us about the bills they pick up. Facebook's going cooperate, man.
Web Design: The business where the more successful you get the more you want to kill the business.

If you are in a services business, and you catch the products bug, it's all over.

This is my own opinion of course, and based on my own experiences.

When you enter the Web Design business, you do so because you are both technically capable AND creative (hopefully). The business honestly feels perfect, like what you were MEANT to do.

Then the Client steps in.

You realize that your creativity is rather meaningless. You can be given "free reign" to come up with a design, but at the end of the project, the Client will probably murder it with no regard for your expertise. Your creativity is stunted, and your soul dies as you have to start asking for permission to implement every bit of genius you want to throw at a project.

Then there's products. You create them yourself, for who you believe the customer may be, and your creativity and know-how form the product. When you are done, it's your own masterpiece. Now you sell it. Some will buy it and love it, others will buy it and hate it, others won't bother, others will tell the world.

But it's all OK. You keep iterating. When your "customers" give you feedback, you don't have to implement everything. And the things you do implement are usually loved by yourself AND your customers.

Like I said. If you are a "services" person and you get a taste of the "products" world, there's just no turning back.
I know that vator.tv was running a competition for startups in a similar fashion: http://vator.tv/competition/splash-competition-san-francisco...

I like the video concept though as it would be more interactive.
Unhelpfully snarky way to put that. Why not say "Getting Git is great. I hope that the UI is improved soon too."?
Fun Hack: Opening A Door Via SMS
The core service behind this is the Amazon Mechanical Turk. We've been working with amazon for years (on this and other projects) and they've helped us create a solution that keeps the user anonymous and helps return quick results.
You may find my internet presence here: http://nobulb.com/personas/

I don't actively use LinkedIn and check it semi regularly, but you're welcome to use that if you don't mind slow turn around from me on there.
Awesome. We'll double our efforts!
How Google gets 1 billion shares from 10 million people a day
Is it possible to extract the names of individual items as well? I keep a food diary and it would be amazingly helpful if I could have an automatically compiled list of foods in my fridge (by scanning my grocery receipts).

I would switch to an iPhone for that.
I have a collection of 10 useful (to me, anyway) Facebook applications that I've bundled together and made available as a subscription:

FAB (http://www.fabappsbundle.com)

I'm looking for no-cost ways to get people to the site, and, more importantly, to have them actually buy a subscription after their free trial runs out.

Any advice?
Vodafone Mobiles Targeted by Hackers
Debt
We understand that everybody goes through difficult financial periods from time to time. We will try to provide you with information on UK Debt, IVA’s, Debt Management Plan’s, Scottish Trust Deeds and UK Debt News to empower you with the resources you need to get back on your feet and eliminate your debt. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below and thank you for visiting our site!
There's also a few other landmines like the "http" extension, which is not part of the standard distribution, and which is completely obsoleted by curl.
Not trying to sound pretentious but...

Have you tried thinking these ideas all the way through? When I'm coming up with a new idea/design/product I first try and imagine why the current iteration is the standard way of doing things. Also, I rack my brain trying to understand the marginal value added and if that's enough to overcome the inertia of the current iteration. This typically involves thinking of all possible scenarios, including corner cases and then evaluating how often each happens. E.g.

#1
a) What if people had multiple packages coming on the same day or from different shipping companies? Their phones would be beeping non-stop.
b) What if people don't have SMS plans? Each SMS would cost them.
c) If it requires an opt-in system, each store that offers shipping needs to require this field from each customer.

#3-#6 are just recommendations about best practices that don't necessarily take into account why things are the way they are. Stores want all this info because if you've invested this much time the first time, it makes future purchases easier and now you'll have a reason to come back. The question then becomes, how many initial purchases are lost and then what is the net effect in terms of Lifetime Value of the Customer.
Can you explain what you mean by submit by email utility? Do you mean a web app that allows you to submit receipts via email?
I found that tackling a project is easier if you just do one fast and simple setup task without obligating yourself to do anything more than that.

The fast simple setup task could be something that takes less than one minute of your time, such as open an application, create a new document, type a few notes, save the file.

Procrastination is friction. Doing the first simple task without any direction or commitment gives you that initial push force needed to get the project moving.
The real money in software comes from selling the same thing to as many people as you can. The more customization you have to do, the lower your potential profits are.

At one time I worked for a medium-sized software company in the process of going public. One of the metrics analysts were keen on was the ratio of license revenue to services revenue. The lower that ratio is, the less of a product company you are and the lower your potential (and the crappier your IPO).

If all of your work is custom you're no better off than guy who installs kitchen cabinets for a living, in the sense that every new dollar comes in only as a result of new work. If, for some reason, the customer doesn't pay up you have very little to show for your effort.
You didn't ask me, but the one thing any site can always take away to make it a gazillion times better is ads. Please remove those ugly things and think of a better way to make money of your otherwise quite innovative product.
Google+ should not fail, Key features Google+ needs to challenge Facebook
Lack of git support is one of the major things that has prevented me from using google code. I'm happy to hear it's resolved. :)
Appreciate the link, that was one of the contests we checked out while thinking about the SXSW concept. I think that the design and interactive nature (no video) of vator's contest could be improved a bit but it is a good example.
It's not the total opposite. This article is saying that the top AND the bottom of society are both very stressful, and those right below the top are in the least stressful position. Personally, this does jive with my experience in human society. Who struggles more with drug abuse, marital problems, etc, the "rich and famous" or the "reasonably well off and relatively popular"?
Teensy is "a USB drive whose malicious software waits until the victims' computer is booted and sufficiently logged into a computer network before it begins operation"? Bad journalism... Teensy is only a microcontroller...
How Ben applied for a job at Twitter, using Twitter. #HireBen
The Late great Mich Hedberg: http://www.break.com/usercontent/2006/9/28/mitch-hedberg-on-...
It may be that being able to see all the layers of abstraction clearly helps to illustrate just how far removed from worthwhile action the task is. For people not used to dealing with abstraction, they may only sense the disconnect. This may make the problem more apparent.
Thanks for the heads up. All those are global brands and we're a new start-up. It seems like we have to engage people first.
App is nice, but pricing is out of control.

Change all instances of "/ month" to "/ year" and you've got a customer. Or better yet, just charge 0.01$/scan in $1 increments, or $5 increments.

Your top plan costs as much as my internet!

I could scan a thousand receipts to my FREE gmail or dropbox, for, um, free; so you can't sell the data storage element.
blogspam with a single video
I always get a bit nervous about the technical accuracy of an article like this when stuff like the following gets past both the author and editors:

Fast Ethernet uses the same CDMA/CD as Ethernet

That should be CSMA/CD. They had it right earlier and later on, not sure how this reference got by them, Ars is usually pretty good about nailing this stuff. The article itself is actually pretty darn good.

Also,

On the other hand, in 1975 few people would have guessed
that today's students would go to class carrying
affordable computers with 10Gbps ports.

I'm wondering what they are referring to here - what portable systems have 10Gbps ports?

On a related note, several top tier network engineers I work with who do a lot of work at Layer3 (Writing Mesh routing protocols) - say if they could have one, and only one book for the rest of their life, it would be Radia Perlman's "Interconnections, 2nd Edition." I'll attest that some chapters have captured my attention for months. :-)
Good point!

I tend to think of the time value of money, loosely speaking "opportunity cost", as a sort of risk (the risk that you needed the money right now to go do something else with it), but that's a pretty idiosyncratic way to think about it, really.
I feel like this would be a cool startup idea, a karma network where people post things they would like help with and people get karma points for helping.
The filter bubble (Google, Facebook)
What do you think about it ?
The Internet Is Filling Up with Dead People
"You don't even know what the thing is yet."

True, true.

I'll admit to being a pretty big G+ fanboi so far, but there are definitely some things I'm hoping to see, both because I want them personally, and because I think they'll make the service more attractive to others. Personally, I'm hoping for:

Something along the lines of shared circles / groups /
google groups integration

Content search for "stuff" in your stream.

Integration of "sparks" with Google news (news alerts in
particular)

Better import / discovery tools. I'm still struggling to
make sure I got all my old facebook contacts added to
circles / invited / etc.

Ability to collapse comments on a post in the Stream

More control over which circles are currently active for the stream. I
want "all but this one" or "these (3 | 4 | 5 |n ) only" etc.

Nested Circles would be kinda cool.

Deeper integration of G+ with Google Calendar, Google Reader, GMail,
etc.

Hashtags

A quick way to navigate to / view / list all my comments

Apps support using OpenSocial.

Developer APIs

I'm guessing we'll see some of that stuff, since a few of those are things that a lot of people seem to be asking for. If Google follow through and deliver, G+ is going to be very awesome.
That's an awesome tactic. Take one statement out of an entire essay without context and just sarcastically reply to it to dismiss the whole essay.
There's one point I don't entirely agree with. Do you have to meet with the client face-to-face? I mean, wouldn't a video call on Skype serve a similar purpose?

You probably would have been able to cater to clients from all over the world through video chat. Or is there something about face-to-face meets that makes your task easier?
I wish I had read this post in college! Any course I didn't like ended up with me being happy with a "D"...
Except the conflict is not "countries vs. banks". Big banks and governments are essentially the same entities, and this has been the case throughout history.

Historically, financial crises and disputes haven't often lead to armed conflict.
Of course! Humans are fucking greedy! People have different motives for seeking failure in others, but you're kidding yourself if you think everyone has the best intentions in their actions, words, and gestures.

To note: this gesture is seemingly altruistic, however I benefit from these interactions in ways that may not be immediately obvious.
How to use the iPhone Home Button
The highly questionable practice of applying game theory to human psychology is also dangerous IMO. It didn't get anyone anywhere in the cuban missile crisis, and it won't help us understand the "problem of altruism" either.

People are not rational! This is demonstrably true. Even if they were uber-rational, they never have enough data about the world to make useful rational decisions WRT maximising gene propagation through strategic altruism.

It is very telling that this modern notion whereby every time someone acts selflessly towards another they are in fact acting with laser-precise logic in their own interests was developed by the RAND corporation at the height of 1950s/60s cold-war paranoia.
Sweet project, been thinking of doing the same thing myself.

I guess since most don't care about privacy this is a niche question. But I'd like the option of processing the images myself. If the phone is to weak for it send it directly to my PC (or sync when I get home) and keep everything there.

Although the potential for this is huge I just will not use it if it is stored/processed in the 'cloud'.
Chrombinator - Chrome Extension for HN (parent highlighter and inverted title)
Can I add custom fields (i.e. to search for and collect a 10 digit alphanumeric tracking number on postage receipts, por example)?
Its a distributed system. Use them both if you want. Each have their strengths.
33 Ways to Stay Creative
Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber
Get early access to the Rapportive UI when composing emails
I like the concept, but $7/Month for the base plan seems like another subscription I just don't want to deal with (and a bit more than I would be willing to pay)

You should consider an annual pricing plan, and a lower rate. (I pay $45/year for evernote, and it solves a lot more pain points for me)

Again, like the concept, so please take this as the constrictive feedback it is meant to be.
"News feed" patent licensee issues notice to Facebook, Twitter, Google, MS, Y
The problem for the web design community is that web design has become a commodity.
MySQL queries constitute a signification proportion of SQL queries, and PHP's MySQL extension is responsible for a significant proportion of MySQL queries. It's not a problem of MySQL and it's not even a problem of how the PHP code that uses MySQL is written - the problem is that PHP's MySQL extension doesn't even offer a way to safely prepare a statement. "Fix the developers", in this context, would mean beating them about the head until they remember to mysql_real_escape_string() every parameter every time, and that's obviously not the right approach.

A better approach is to either (1) add a mysql_prepare() function to the PHP MySQL extension, or (2) deprecate the extension in favour of one which forces or at least encourages or at least supports the use of prepared statements.
Hi, i am the author, it just change 2 simple things.

1) A button to highlight the parent comment (of any child comment)

2) The title for every news page becomes "$TITLE | Hacker News" instead of "Hacker News | $TITLE"

You can check its source code here: http://pastebin.com/CzfTGuJM (its uses jquery and its very simple so i think github is overkill)
Naive might be too strong, I guess I meant incomplete. These kinds of tricks can be helpful, but are unlikely to "solve" the problem for most people.
Not sure if people saw the comment that someone left on the original thread: "Seriously? It is because of the Panda update and the resulting shift in traffic away from ad-ridden low-quality sites and towards higher quality sites that often haven't yet been optimized for ads in the Google network. They've addressed this directly in both of the last two earnings calls and have said they expect the effects to be largely transitory."
This "2 week old field trial" is getting relentlessly advertised as a serious challenger to Facebook which has 750 million users, so maybe a critical headline to counteract the astronomical hype is warranted.
Waiting to get invited to a Google Code drinkup.
The article is simply a plea for Google to speed up the evolution of the Circles concept... author doesn't seem to actually think Google+ will fail (he doesn't even define the context of what failure means here).

Missing features and Apple has dominated many markets it stepped into... the flipside being the key feature-set should be done well and polished to perfection.

The key is UX. I'm still waiting for an easy way to easily add one person to multiple circles without repeated click-drags... Circle auto-discovery (or suggestion) would be even better.
As the article says, what Firefox is doing is the correct behavior. I am surprised though that all other browsers are doing it wrong, I would have expected some variation.

Worth checking btw if JS strict mode fixes this. I know it fixes related issues.
"Back" is normally used to move "up" because most of the time, "back" and "up" are the same thing.
In my experience, people are vastly less likely to rename a variable than move it to a different place in a query.

There's also the proclivity for people to want to reuse the same value in multiple places in a query. Name-based binding makes that a lot more readable and straightforward.
A Guide To Turntable.fm Etiquette
Thank you, I will read it.
Another Pickled Onion fan. I still have his tutorials saved just in case http://www.usefuljaja.com/ every went away.

Now with Heroku, CloudFoundry, et al it's difficult to remember how hard Rails hosting was back then. The combination of Slicehost, Litespeed, and Pickled Onion's tutorials were a godsend for me. I could finally just build stuff and not worry about infrastructure.
That's great, but I'm still slowly moving my projects over to Github.

1. I get much more engagement from random developers on Github. On Github, random people will fork and add features, do code reviews and leave comments. All of these things are technically possible on Google Code but nobody does it—probably due to the usability but possibly also a cultural problem. Github has a strong culture of collaboration because they strongly emphasize it in the user's experience.

2. Managing forks and pull requests is easier on Github. I want my life as a maintainer to be as easy as possible.

3. Notifications: For a long time, Google Code notifications simply didn't work for me, at all. I'd randomly stumble on one of my older projects and noticed 5 new issues opened that I didn't know about, I felt like I betrayed my users for 6+ months. Now they seem like they do, but some trust has been lost.

4. Multiple choices of documentation markup on Github is appealing.

5. The code browsing feature on Google Code feels like its own application. When you open a Github project, first thing you see is the code. On Google Code it takes 2 more clicks (that's 1 more click than Bitbucket). Think about what's the most important thing here—the code, and Github got it right.

As far as version control goes, I'm happy with either Git or Mercurial.
Even though some of the information in this article should be a "no-brainer", I felt it did a nice job of reinforcing useful attributes of an effective application. Furthermore, I thought his real-life interview examples were helpful. I will definitely keep the pointers of this article in mind during my post-grad job hunt.
I can see how this would be nice for people who prefer cash over cards, but it seems like a lot of work unless you're tracking expenses for reimbursement. I'd rather just use credit and debit cards and let an app like Mint handle the categorization and bookkeeping.
The argument isn't that if only the government keeps out there will be no pears, but that if the government keeps out the following recoveries will be faster and those responsible for the crash will take a hit financially, so hopefully someone learns a lesson or two.
Or even better, explain what about the UI could be improved. I've been using Google Code for several years, and I love the UI.
Webcomic artist raises over $30,000 in a day
Chomsky on Cognitive Systems (University of Cologne, 2011)
Well, if you use a PHP framework or library, of course there are easier and less verbose ways to prepare SQL statements.

I don't think RoR vs PHP would be an apples to apples comparison.
The Audacity of Shaw: How Canada’s Internet just got Worse
This is for "regular" procrastination. Thi "deep procrastination" is a different animal.

I can actually give an example from my own life. And this is totally legit. Imagine having todo a parallel Masters in Physics so that you'd have the opportunity to do a Bachelors in EEE so that you could get a job working with computers!! I literally was "deep procrastination" for 4 years!

One good thing that came out of this is that I can handle really intense situations which others cannot psychologically handle for long periods of time. But on the flip side Im really bad at Prioritizing my own immediate happiness but I'm making progress in that regard.

Great post!!