skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I appreciate your perspective.

I agree about the Thinkpad keyboards. Also, a relative had a Dell 8100 laptop that I used extensively for a while, and its keyboard was very "fast" and comfortable, for me. I think Dell's keyboard quality has gone down since then.

These days, I tend to prefer good laptop keyboards. I like the short throw; also, many of them have a more precise and consistent action than the mass produced detached keyboards.

I'm not familiar enough with the recent Apple keyboards, although I will complain about their (and others') laptop designs of recent years that place the keyboard at the back of a "huge" shelf of real estate often also having a sharp front edge. (Those features bother my wrists no end, particularly when I don't have control over the height of the work surface.)

I've spent time on a variety of stuff going back to DEC terminals (and some yet older stuff I no longer recall). Actually, of older stuff, one of my favorite keyboards was the one that came with my Kaypro. I don't suppose its switches were all that "de luxe", but it was very smooth and I could really move on it without tiring. And/or I was younger ;-) and spent enough time with it specifically to become rather accustomed to its feel.

As for Emacs, every time I start, I quickly tire of its key combination and the discomfort they cause me. I suppose I should try one or another remapping, but I end up switching programs before I get that far. Perhaps if I'd started with it when I was younger, I would have built up a requisite flexibility and muscle memory more rapidly than discomfort.

(As for obsession, I now find the screen and keyboard two of the most important features of a system. It doesn't matter how fast it is, if it's a pain to look at and makes typing an undue exercise.)
Change to "The easy way to take notes".

Pay someone to do some copy writing.
Indeed. Putty's keygen thing has been using it for quite a long time for example
Hermes Jewelry
As an aside, this is the fourth time this article has been posted to HN, and I say this as the person who posted it the second time around, a day after it first failed to gain traction, with a slightly modified URL.
if you don't have anybody who wants to follow you, and you don't particularly want to follow anybody, then yes i suppose joining twitter might be a confusing process. but that's because twitter isn't suited to you.

tailoring a social web service towards antisocial people is probably not a good business strategy.
In fact, there is a nickname field in the Google Profile page. However, it seems that this field, even if public, is not displayed anywhere or used when searching for people.
I take advantage of my addictiveness to getting things done by planning out the next 5 steps so I don't get distracted by new tasks.
This quote is fine to use for fun/irony, but should absolutely not be taken seriously.

Some seriously hard problems in computer science: distributed programming (consensus, consistency, handling machine failure), parallel programming models, proving correctness of nontrivial programs, P?=NP.
Awesome work! I am always curious about the copyright implication of cloning an old game like Mario. Does anyone know?
There's actually a game of this on 4chan.org/b/ there's a pattern to knowing which word is known and which isn't because the known word is put through a recognizable filter and the unknown one isn't (most of the time). They then put in a specific racial slur in for the unknown word, hoping that just once it'll slip through enough that it makes it into the final OCR'd text.
They aren't: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2798475 I don't know if the person being quoted was being serious about this, but do not listen to anyone who repeats this quote intending for it to be taken seriously.
I would take the frame of reference of an observer at the location of the water because that is your goal - it's what is meant by "over there".

Could you resolve the "right now" issue if you took a picture of the event to said observer, who then compared it to a history of images and then said "oh yeah, 5 minutes later it was all gone, never to return"?

These seem like a closer representation of what people mean when they say "it's all gone now."
> “auto-save”, which claims to wipe out the abomination of volatile-by-default documents

I have to say, something like this wouldn't be very useful to me. I want more control over how my mass storage is used: I frequently run systems with mostly-full partitions, and something like that sounds like a very quick way to push my system over the edge into constant failure mode.

Before you say my way is objectively wrong, ask yourself whether you really want to dictate hard rules about workflow to someone you don't even know.
This is not really a security issue, it's an anti-spam issue.
I would have never written any code for class if given that option.

In the real world, you do get punished if you need to program something, but don't know how to. College CS classes aren't meant to teach you how to get stuff done using software, they're meant to teach you how to program. Handing in someone else's code is not going to accomplish that.
I don't believe you.

If this doesn't take off, Wolfram dumps the project, removes the software from its website and other channels, and the documents are worthless.

If I invest in this, I'm betting Wolfram is going to boil the ocean or is going to be cost-insensitive regarding how much it takes to keep this available. Neither of those sound like good bets.
I have been in a similar situation, with my College and Hometown very far away. Now, with all my friends spread out from all over the world, Facebook makes seeing these people again a fun (and fairly easy) occurrence, rather than an onerous task.

That is, the connections may be shallow while we're far away, but when locations change again, its nice to be able to re-develop those shallow connections into meaningful ones.
I'm about seven paragraphs into this and the one thought that comes to my mind is this:

The perfect is the enemy of the good.
- Voltaire, possibly.

Sure, the OS could have been rewritten from the ground up to behave according to this guy's Laws Of Sane Personal Computing. But that would probably take ten years. (And maybe it's nearly time for an effort like that to start, given that the original Macintosh System lasted about sixteen years before everything was thrown out to start OSX.) Add it in bit by bit and you can work out the actual implementation details, growing it from both the top and the bottom of the OS. And the end user gets the benefit of an "imperfect" but functional implementation of these ideas for the, I dunno, fifteen years it'll take you to core out the old OS while it's still running, and dump in some new chunks that do the Right Thing all the way down at the deepest levels.

I wish this guy the best of luck in building a functional OS from scratch that does the Right Thing. It sounds like it could be pretty cool, albiet kind of mind-twisting to get used to using. (It feels alien to modern computing paradigms in pretty much the same way a lot of Jef Raskin's visions were, IMHO.) But in the meantime, I'll be over here using the half-baked version Apple implemented.
"the account doesn't get judged by the bot over it's current status...and is instead judged through it's entire history"

I don't believe that's correct in this case. I believe that earlier today the profile didn't look like it had a real name.
> But looks like the Air France Concorde crash was due to debris on the runway rather than the plane itself. Or were you thinking of something else?

I know nothing about the Concorde, etc. but that the crash was triggered by debris does not really refute that it was a poorly designed or dangerous aircraft, as that should be a design consideration of any aircraft (I assume).
If you weren't aware, the This American Life business team spun off to form Planet Money, which is also an amazing show:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money
Is Online Learning Better? Maybe Not—At Least, Not at First
I dont think he's telling Google what he's going to do, i thnk he's telling us, encouraging others to do the same. And you know what? I think I'll be doing the same.
so Concorde and SR71 is "a giant money pit fed from government slush funds for decades, punctuated only by occasional lethal consequences for its passengers and bystanders. (Not to mention that it was a technological cul-de-sac.) " ? How about X15 or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wan_Hu ?

Nah, man, you're not a romantic, and nobody would name a Moon crater after you... well, except of course the case when you make a sh!tload of money off the Pong and buy the honor.
45 Days
Perl not so bad at Unicode
Following the smackdown from tchrist as an answer to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6162484/why-does-modern-perl-avoid-utf-8-by-default it's worth looking over his unicode-and-you summary that was recently presented at OSCON.
I am not so pesimistic about youself, probably because I am I and not you :-)

I think hack is a good word for that, but many mental hacks don't work. So here are my suggestions:

- How you work with other person? how about pair programming or pair <something> ? may be being a lonely developer is not the answer.

- How do you imagine a small team that leverage your strengths and take charge of your weaknesses? can you progress in that environment?
Why does the headline say "no clear answers"? It seems obvious they are suspending accounts that have a fake name (including quoted nicknames). Whether you agree with this policy is another matter, of course.
Nine Tips to Reclaim your Focus and Creativity
‪Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world‬‏ [TED video]
Fish n' chips or mince pies? ;-)
They appear to be using WordPress 3.0.3 with a custom Javascript based template called Founders Fund 2011.
Yeah it's an awesome little device. I love mine (CM7, market, etc).
How long are people going to tolerate the tyranny of large companies controlling social interaction? Google+ has all kinds of terms of service that I find infringing of free speech. Facebook has their own terms.

I think we need to stop being sharecroppers and serfs and develop social network solutions that are distributed and open, or at least encourage the projects that are working on it already.

The amount of press Google has been getting seemed like a consumerist distraction from fundamental problems, until the past few days. Now we see they are just the new monarchy, same as the old monarchy. Heads are rolling and maybe people will question these systemic issues.
How I dealt with student plagiarism:

10% homework
25% quizzes
25% midterm
40% final exam

On rare occasions, plagiarism might have helped a borderline student move from a C+ to a B-. But I suspect it hurt more students than it helps - the plagiarism bonus on homework is usually offset by the lack of practice penalty on exams.
That's assuming that knowing the minutiae of the lives of people who you don't talk to frequently is important. I'd say that that's actually a huge waste of time, and distracts from actual socializing by making you feel like you're keeping up with people without actually doing so.
I don't think that people give this situation enough credit. I once took over a project of about 30,000 lines of C++, with only about one line of commenting per 1,000 lines; and was frustrated with a lot of tools/documentation/suggestions that amounted to "don't write code like that". (Doxygen ended up being my friend)
Yeah, at least ±10% or so. I really should have mentioned that.
Keep Your Crises Small, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc

It's a lecture from Ed Catmull. I highly recommend it, many gems from a brilliant developer turned brilliant manager.
I'm very confident in my abilities, and learning new things is my favorite thing to do. One can be confident without facing petrification, just like one can be unconfident and decide to give up learning new things.

I'm not saying this point of view doesn't have its place. I just think it's important to understand the dynamics involved with it. You don't tell someone they don't know as much as they think they do unless you're trying to stop them from doing something (you feel) they shouldn't be doing. Trying to paint it as enabling them is disingenuous. If you want to enable them, you have to work to help them learn good behavior in addition to limiting the bad behaviors.
I'm really curious how he used his philosophy studies to "make major progress in AI". I've spent several years avidly reading philosophy, and ultimately found the field quite sterile. Granted it raises interesting questions, but the answers are too varied and contested to be of much practical use.

The only example the article gives is "when you have a question, we connect you to another person who can give you a live answer". But this seems more like avoiding the problem than like major progress in AI.
Gridless HTML5/CSS3 boilerplate version 2.0 released
Admittedly my degree wasn't a comp sci but a design degree, but when we did the programming half of it students were encouraged to use others' code on the condition that it was properly attributed. It was strongly suggested to add our own comments to demonstrate understanding of what was happening.
The problem is that test taking is only minimally useful outside of school, and by choosing tests as the only measurement, you end up optimizing for the wrong skill. (I know because I was a pretty good test taker as a student, but the laziness and procrastination that it fosters is really starting to bite me in the ass right now) I think tests are useful because they're an easy metric, but if you're goal is to teach or learn a skill, tests are a really poor tool.
As a thought experiment, if you wanted to teach yourself something what would you do? You probably wouldn't do it by giving yourself written tests.
benrmatthews: Another revenue driver is also number of users. # of users X revenue per user. You can continue to breakdown both of these categories and have create user segmentation according to income per user, etc.
Fake Apple China Store Gets Animated [video]
If you click your name in the orange bar at the top here, and click 'saved stories', you can find all the stories you have upvoted.
Flipping around the hands used for directions and actions is standard with emulator keyboard input, actually.
>Willpower alone isn't sufficient motivation for long term change. - Know that willpower won't sustain a long term change by itself, although it can get you started.

The most important motivation for long-term change is to have a goal. Enthusiasm for that goal is what will get you started. Willpower is for powering through the (hopefully brief) periods where your enthusiasm and your focus on your goal falter. All three are necessary for sustained achievement.

>Failures don't necessarily indicate a lack of motivation - More like a failure of planning.

The big benefits of planning is to clarify your goal and then provide path for reaching it that will help you maintain your focus on the goal.
There are a couple of things at play.

First, as others have pointed out, criticism is generally more interesting than praise and often a more productive way to extend the content or foster further conversation. Even well researched articles will stake out a position on an open issue and thereby spark debate.

Second, the writing in the the techpress often lacks any depth of analysis (something which often could be said of journalism in general) and is often based on an original communication which was intended to produce buzz or create spin - e.g. press releases, product announcements, etc.

In addition [ok it is more than a couple of things], often the criticism will be of an apparent bias or questionable level of objectivity on the part of the author.
It is remarkable stupidity to post such nonsense on the site which is a reality-check example of the exactly opposite. ^_^
I've paid for google apps for domains in the past and the service has been barely better than when I was using the free version, so while you point is valid, the statement that google customer service is lacking for many paying customers is also true.
That's why I wrote the second paragraph. It's still a logical fallacy to assume that "rite of passage" means "this is the only way to proceed". It's just an event that marks an important stage in someone's life.

There are lots of different rites of passage in every culture/subculture, and most people ignore most of them. If you're atheist, is it "insulting" that Jewish kids have Bar/Bat Mitzvahs?
Thoughts on "growing as a developer"
> The New Yorker is basically philanthropy. According to the comments of more then a few journalists, the guy who owns the new Yorker doesn't care if it makes money, or even if it looses some money because he just wants to be the guy that owns the New Yorker.

That sounds more like Harper's, which is run by John R. MacArthur, the same family as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which gives MacArthur "Genius" grants and is the "more just, peaceful, and verdant" sponsor of NPR.
the enlive vs hiccup battle is not really changed by ClojureScript. I am glad that we have enlive, hiccup and fleet so everybody can take whatever he wants.
Agreed. I don't care what Amy Winehouse did with her life, but to hear some professional Twitterer bellyaching that her death is wasting his time is sickening.
Anyone who's been a programmer very long has pulled their hair out over programs which have been extended far beyond the intentions of the original developer. It's not the right reaction to make everything as extensible as possible either, but eventually one learns a healthy respect for the dangers of global variables.

Pacman is a toy application by today's standards. Imagine developing an MMO. Sometimes the biggest part of the problem is precisely figuring out what state lives where authoritatively and exactly how far out-of-date each asynchronous copy can be safely allowed to drift.
Your understanding this wrong. You can use all java script libs (with sometimes more sometimes less work) but the google closure library is really easy to use. This DOM library has nothing to do with clojurescript itself its just there and easy to use.
> Just so you're not surprised and disappointed later, I'll let you in on a secret- they don't care.

EXACTLY! They don't care. That's why you have to care. Otherwise, who's looking out for you?
Great article, although I wonder about the assertion that willpower is a solo thing. Surely social pressures act as motivating forces on our will to do things - for instance if we tell a few friends that we'd going to run a marathon then we'll be more likely to train for it. Or even better, if we agree to meet a friend at the gym at 7 then we're much more likely to get ourselves to the gym than if we just write "gym at 7" in a to do list.

But perhaps this only applies to initial motivators and isn't enough for focus (sustained motivation to concentrate on a task)
香港六和彩
So, if you have the philosophical Q's figured out, could you send me the lisp code for the 'redness of red', I need my latest program to have phenomenal feeling.
So you want a synchronous relationship in an async medium?
>"As a guy, I just can't, just listen to it. I strongly feel that if you are going to dream of something that you need to go after it or give it up. It's a waste of emotional energy to hold on to things that you will in the far future attempt."

[IANAW] Usually, just listening to it is what she wants you to do. She is not asking you to fix it, just to be emotionally supportive in the here and now. Feeling like one missed out and is stuck can not be disproven by logic.

In other words, these conversations aren't about you and your feelings. They are about her and her feelings.

I will point out, that your girlfriend's ambition to return to school is clear evidence that she does not believe her time to succeed has passed. What it means is that she is looking for change.

Listen and offer support to her (not give unsolicited technical advice) and you may be part of her future and she of yours, otherwise you are likely to go on the things to change list. That will require biting your tongue - sometimes literally.

Good luck.
If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. In this case, a product Google no longer wants to sell.
That's what I did too. Is there a browser this reads well in? Founders Fund should briefly forget about solving more important problems and just stop creating new usability ones.
Hey, really cool trick. Thanks for sharing!
Apple Has More Cash Than 39% Of Companies In S&P Combined (And $413B Less Debt)
If you are designing a program, even in an impure language, it's a good idea to design it so that it never has to do this. It's confusing and bad style.

But if you've already designed the program, and you want to make a semantically minor change that requires linking formerly unrelated parts of the program, an impure language lets you do it without modifying half the program to keep up with new signatures.

I think the fact that the author is writing games-- where the user literally interacts with a big mutable world, and "when A happens, B should happen" is a natural request-- magnifies the problem, but it could happen anywhere.

Actually, I can think of an example: in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, there is a nice toy feature where when the music reaches a certain point, the enemies dance to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s03Kco-XQCY . I don't know anything about the actual development of the game, but as this doesn't significantly affect gameplay, I could imagine that this feature was added late in development, making what was formerly a one-way pipe from gameplay to sound into two-way communication. In a well designed program in a pure language, wouldn't this be hard to implement?
明星节能灯
The author's view is strange indeed. To be a "rounded, open and engaged intellectual citizen" we can well just get out of the room and put curiosity and action into people's lives and matters, and reflect on what you see and do. In my experience that works much better.
> why don't you just sit back and enjoy?

We've been doing that for the last 20 years or so. That's the essence of Rubin's strong dollar policy in general, and our interactions with China in particular.

The only drawback is that you build up a big imbalance (in this case in the form of zero personal savings plus noticeable interest payments on the national debt). That's not really a sustainable situation; the only question is when and why and how things will change. http://mpettis.com/2011/07/current-account-dilemma/ has some discussion on this. The US may well have an interest in somewhat controlling how the imbalance is unwound when it unwinds.

Changing the trade balance unilaterally from the US point of view is somewhat difficult if China is really insistent on maintaining it. We can impose tariffs (though we'd have to sell them to the WTO) and we can try to get China to stop messing with the exchange rate, but all China has to do is subsidize its exporters enough to overcome those issues (e.g. give them enough money that they can give US consumers large post-purchase rebates that are larger than the tariff amount). The only way to really prevent that is to either ban those imports altogether or to make the required subsidy more painful than China is willing to do... or to convince the Chinese authorities that doing what they're doing is stupid. Which is hard, because they're doing rational things that help them stay in power, and to hell with what will happen to the Chinese economy in 10-15 years.