skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Launching SmarterSeating.com
This is a follow-up to my post last week about getting off of HN and Reddit and launching an app.

Here's the follow up: http://jcromartie.tumblr.com/post/8576247461/launching-the-pre-alpha-of-smarterseating-com

I'm launching this limited version of SmarterSeating.com and hoping to maybe grow it into a useful tool for teachers and event planners. The idea is validated against at least one teacher who initially provided the inspiration. The UI is obviously very rudimentary and the functionality is fairly limited, but it delivers on its promise of finding good solutions for seating people with complicated relationships.
lol - touche! bug fixed and deployed to 'prod' :)
> Humans are visual animals, GUI's are a result of our evolutionary history.

Your example isn't really why GUIs are good. Yes, humans are great at navigating a GUI, however all four of those problems are introduced by the GUI to begin with. On a command line, you don't have to scan 1.3 million pixels. You learned where to look the first time you ever used it. You don't have to ignore anything, except maybe your scrollback buffer. You don't have to find any buttons. You don't have to identify a symbolic representation of the task at hand. You do have to know what you're doing, which I'll address later.

And those tasks are NOT done effortlessly. We may pretend it is, but frankly I have a huge problem with the clutter of my GUI. My brain gets tired, often without my realizing it, filtering out all the extraneous crap on my screen. I'm so much more productive with all that out of the way. I've taken to using compiz zoom to clear out all my tabs and taskbars and menus and of course ads and stuff so I can actually focus on the articles I'm reading.

But yes, you do have to know ahead of time how to do what you want to do. There is no representation to guide you, symbolic or otherwise, unless you know how to look for it. What the GUI actually does is the last sentence of your post: GUIs convey information. GUIs let people learn to use something as they go. Without a GUI, there is usually more of an up-front investment into learning how to use a tool. That people are good at navigating GUIs is incidental. People are good at using mechanical devices and language, too.

And as someone who has spent a significant amount of time helping people use windows applications, often the GUI doesn't even matter. They still have to get help to accomplish simple things, and often wind up completely misunderstanding what the GUI is trying to tell them.

> However, teaching the average person to use a new piece of software is near impossible without utilizing their incredible brain power for visual recognition.

It's not impossible. 20 years ago, before "UX designer" was even a word, plenty of average, non-technical employees used text-based and command-line systems to get work done. Students at my university had no problem using PINE on OpenVMS to read their email. People have the ability to learn command language and program motor memory. It's not even close to impossible.

But learning a formal language rather than a graphical interface is just sufficiently harder that having an easier-to-use GUI gives software vendors a competitive advantage. So in the last 20 years have GUIs have evolved a great deal, and are used even when they don't fully expose the power of the software they're providing, or fail to provide the user all the knowledge necessary to use the software effectively.
Treat it as "unreliable narrator". I enjoyed it as a story, without taking too seriously any of the opinions which are put into the mouth of the main character (or... either of the main characters, if you prefer).

I'd put it on the "To Read When You're Eighteen, So You Can Reread It When You're Twenty-Five And See How Much You've Changed" list. Along with most of Ayn Rand and Nietzsche.
Cyberspionage aufgedeckt: "Größter bekannter Hackerangriff"| STERN.DE
I learned most of what I know about philosophy from "The Bluffer's Guide To Philosophy" when I was about twelve.

It enabled me to win arguments with philosophy undergrads at least up 'til second year uni.
GUIs are great for getting responses from the computer. CLIs are great for telling the computer what to do clearly and effectively.

I want a command line that can draw the output graphically. I want a GUI that can be driven through text.

If anyone's ever used Rhino3d, it has a command line at the top of the window. That was probably the single most productivity boosting feature of the entire UI.
Defcon is cheap to attend. You should go sometime and get a feel for the event. If a trip to Vegas is out of your price range, go check visit Hot Topic. You'll get the proper feel.

The Defcon crowd is awfully touristy. I mean that professionally.

In fact, it's far more the marketing success of defcon that should get attention from hacker news. They have been building quite an empire over the last 19 years.
Technology does not kill jobs: instead it allows the new jobs to be created elsewhere.

50,000 BC: your "job" (finding food) so dominated your life that your entire community followed it around.

20,000 BC: farming began. Your "job" is in the field by your house.

1700 AD: agricultural revolution. Technology allows smaller number to produce food. This allows industrial revolution. More specifically, this creates surplus food which means people can move. And so jobs can move. But it also means that areas that cannot produce food competitively no longer have to. Surplus food allows jobs to move to where the water wheels and resources are to commence industrialization.

1800 AD: The invention of the steam engine frees jobs from the need to be near flowing water: i.e. to move to where the resources are, or where the need to be. For much of the UK this was near ports as raw materials (e.g. cotton) came by ship. Bonus if the port is near a coal field. Again, areas that do not have cheap access to transport and coal, no longer have jobs.

1970 AD: Oil, giant ships, containerization and "free" trade allows jobs to move where wages are cheaper. Entire nations are uncompetitive at manufacturing.

2005 AD: Communications revolution. International calls are free. Service industry jobs move to where wages are cheaper. Entire nations are uncompetitive for service industry.

2008 AD: Computer Vision revolution: computers can now do picking and sorting that previously required a human.

201X AD: Robot Dexterity revolution: computers can now do fine motor skills, such as stitching shoes. Nike finally stops using child labor.

What is left for humans?

Technology has been killing (but not net killing) jobs for centuries.

Is this true? Or is it the case that as technology kills jobs, the unemployed find make work? That is, even if the unemployment level in a country has stayed the same, does it mean that the new jobs that the displaced workers perform are useful, or just a drain on society? Sure in the 19th century there were new non-make-work jobs. But today? Example: people working at Hallmark stores. Example: layer upon layer of middle and upper management. Perhaps it doesn't matter: if society can support make-work jobs, because of efficiencies elsewhere, then as long as people are employed it doesn't matter how. The problem would be if those make-work jobs could no longer be supported. This is what is happening: it is not in China's interest any more to support the vast inefficiencies of the US economic system. Make-work jobs are going away.

Finally, WWII: we destroyed most of the world economy to the point where the US was the world economy (ok, 75% of it). Does this have anything to do with the US having full employment (i.e. hiding technology's job kill) - and if so, now that the rest of the world has caught up, might we now see that the US economy cant support the make-work jobs?
Does Windows still rely on MS-DOS? - Super User
Facebook paid $5000 for bug report
It's both. If you have contacts on a phone that aren't your Facebook friends, they'll be merged.
Thank you, your comment was borderline-interesting to upvote.
I never saw the point to that one at all.

Mind you, I was young, and couldn't get over "Why would this smart guy have sex with this random dumb woman?" Now I'm older I know better...
1. Keep filing your annual stuff in Delaware.

2. Don't forget to keep paying your resident agent in Delaware.

3. You undoubtedly registered your Delaware corporation in your home State because you're doing business there. Keep up to date with the annual filings there.

4. Very important: keep filing tax returns. Even if you have zero income. Two reasons. (1) It is required. Corporations file even with zero income, unlike humans. (2) Your corporation is spending money (see items 1 - 3 above) so you might as well make a little tax loss that you can use to shelter future profits.

5. Talk to your CPA about other peculiarities specific to you. E.g., sales tax returns if you've been filing them. E.g., payroll tax returns. E.g., local business license. In all of these cases, if you are just hibernating for a year it is easier to keep filing stuff with zero written on it than to log out of the system for a year then log back in.
Reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_the_Castaways
Since Google makes their money by giving away information they aren't so much about enforcing patents, but rather in blindly infringing. Their modus operandi is to do run all over your IP and then try to back you into a corner if you try to assert your IP.

In a proper world, blind infringement and independent invention should be proof that a patent is obvious, and therefore, invalid.
Watch,the smurfs 2011,online free,megavideo
watch,the smurfs 2011,online free,megavideo
Smurfs Watch Online free and witness scenes of the Middle Ages, when the evil wizard Gargamel and Smurf Village is to hunt in a wooded area. Smurfs Smurf are scattered and clumsy from a cave prohibited as well as the other Smurfs
> A primary example of this is `ls -l` (the color option is different on different systems, but is almost always aliased on by default).

A primary non-example is Ubuntu, where $PS1 is colorless, and `grep --color=auto` is not aliased to `grep`. It is the least user friendly distro if you use the command line.
The Long Road to the App Store
A description of my journey going from zero to app store for my iphone app, AntAmbush.
Chuck Moore has cited his encounter with that work as a fateful inspiration for Forth.
Also: linking to OMeta (mentioned on the last minutes): http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/

OMeta discussion on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2722730
I'd love to know the OS usage stats here and how they differ from HN.
Could not agree more. Or, as said on Five Questions about Language Design[1]: Give the Programmer as Much Control as Possible

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/langdes.html
Any ideas about how the scoring mechanism works on the site?
I dont think so. He said it would provide puzzles to annoy people and be solved by the time rich. No "great" programmers involved...
This objection -- "but bad programmers will make a mess of it" -- is the stock objection everybody makes to every unorthodox programming construct. Since it is an objection to everything, it is an objection to nothing.
Just want to add that A Brave New World is one of those books that doesn't get as much attention as its counterpart 1984. The latter seems to have become a talking point, a reduced to a symbol thrown around in arguments.
Facebook’s Smoking Gun in the Ceglia Case? The Authentic Contract
Grading (which I'll call marking for the rest of this comment) has three purposes, and you've only described one -- motivation. The second is to let third parties (parents, universities, potential employers) know how well a student has done.

The third is the most important: low grades. If a student does poorly then it lets everyone (the student, the teacher, and potentially the parents etc) know that something is wrong. Maybe the student hasn't been working hard enough, or maybe the student has misunderstood some key concept, but getting feedback when your work is bad is vitally important.

Doesn't matter much when you're a bunch of five-year-olds studying ancient Egyptians, but if you're studying stuff you actually need to know then you need to know whether you in fact do know it.
I have so much open source to demonstrate my ability, I promise you I'll never use this site or complete any code exercise for an interview. If you don't want to look at my github profile, fine, I don't want to work at your company

I also happen to hire and if the candidate does not have an open source project I give them a meaningful challenge (add value to the community) and tell them to create a github acct and share a link to the repo. At least by the end of the process they have something to walk away with
Ideas don't have to be original. They need to be well implemented.

Of course, in the real world there is an obnoxious patent system, just something to be aware of.
To save me the trouble of reading an entire book just to get the one point I'm interested in, why does the author think that achievements in video games are a bad idea?
"Black Hat"-Sicherheitskonferenz: Fünf Hacks zum Fürchten - Digital | STERN.DE
Man this article was boring. I couldn't even get past the first 150 characters.
I wouldn't bet that technology should net kill jobs now. There's still a lot that must be done by humans to get to the next technological plateau. If jobs don't come back now it will be because of economic reasons. It's possible that our education and economic systems are weakened and can't keep up with the moderate tech advance we're experiencing.

But there should be a point in the foreseeable future at which technology will progress too quickly for mortals to keep up, despite the best education and economy. It wouldn't be the first paradigm shift of this magnitude. At one point in our past human population increased dramatically from farming, so even if people wanted to go back to hunting they could not. Then towns sprung up because farmers learned to produce a surplus. Then there wasn't enough land for everyone who wanted to farm.

Similarly today, we can have some people "farm" or do the essential work and produce such a large surplus of food, raw materials, technology, etc., that others will be freed from jobs, just as ancient towns were freed from farming.

Frankly we could make such changes with today's technology, but the economy and culture may not be ready. Instead we create contrived jobs.
Well ,thats shareable lol
And it actually might mean that by questioning what is the desired outcome, you complete the task a lot faster or perhaps even determine that working on task X is actually a waste of time for everyone.

Or it might mean that you think you've figured out that task X is a waste of time, but in fact since you're merely curious and not omniscient you might have missed the point of task X entirely.

"Why do we need shoes anyway, man?"
Most of the people here understand English and another language. You should at least translate the title of the submission to get the people interested in it.

Title: "The largest known hacker attack" took years

Autotranslation: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&...
100 Best Free and High Quality Linux Games | Open Mind
Google today with Android is a lot like Microsoft back then. Yet for some reason, today offering free (deeply discounted, more precisely) stuff to kill competition is considered perfectly OK. I find this quite interesting.

Not really. With IE vs. Netscape, Microsoft tied IE into an existing monopoly (its Windows 95 OS). There is no smartphone monopoly or mobile advertising monopoly. Even if you consider Google's search and/or ad positions a monopoly, Google isn't giving Android away for free in association with its monopoly, it's giving Android away for free independent of its monopoly (as evidenced by Android phones that don't use Google services by default, instead using Baidu, Yahoo, etc.). IE was tied into the Windows 95 OS, so customers had little choice in using it. This doesn't even consider the various agreements Microsoft made with OEMs.

Also, behavior that is illegal or unethical for a company with a significant monopoly (e.g. Microsoft in the 1990s) may be legal or ethical for a non-monopoly company (e.g. Google's smartphone business in the 2010s).

Edit: I will add that Netscape's business model was probably unsustainable regardless of IE being free. Web browsers are better off being free.
Cryptocat: webchat with client-side encryption features
Are all these USA-only?
And as feedback. Students need to know whether or not they're doing well.

In some subjects it's obvious to the student whether they're doing well, but in others it's not.
I'm pretty sure any hacker worth his weight in microchips doesn't have a problem. I've been to def con and always take a *nix system with a solid firewall and a way to ssh/vpn home to do all my logging into websites from.

DEF CON doesn't scare hackers. It gives us a chance to see if our setups are actually secure and if we get pwnd we deserved it and learn from the experience.
Underground supper clubs
Does a digital watch use more power when the stopwatch is left running?
Your OP question seems phrased at click-throughs whereas your current question is about technical execution. What are you really asking?
A quibble with the footnote - the author has muddled the history about the WHATWG and W3C pretty badly. The W3C rejected the WHATWG's work initially in 2004; the WHATWG then created the HTML5 specification (largely by building on Web Apps 1.0 + Web Forms 2.0) as a browser-backed guerilla group outside the W3C. The W3C then adopted their work in 2006 (http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/166), and a fragile partnership with the WHATWG has been in place since. The W3C therefore deserves little credit for the HTML5 spec - they declared HTML dead in 1998 after all, tried to turn the web into XML (via XHTML), and then eventually came back to earth in 2006.

--

Surely it's also not simply being pedantic to insist that things like CSS3 (!) and SVG don't get lumped into the "HTML5" catch-all. Pity the poor designer or developer just getting to grips with this stuff who has to figure out what someone means when they say "HTML5".

Nevertheless, as Mark Pilgrim said:
"HTML5 will continue to be popular, because anything popular will get labeled "HTML5"."
(http://diveintomark.org/archives/2011/01/09/dive-into-2010)
Miracle Healing
Actually, neither matters. The entire point of this tactic is that paying up costs less than mounting a legal defense.

This is just a symptom of the socioeconomic bias in our legal system. Fix that, and such tactics won't be possible. Don't fix it, and you'll be here trying to patch it all day only to have someone come up with another tactic.
Ark.com: A Powerful New Social Network for Social Change
Play DotA clone Heroes of Newerth on Linux Natively For Free | Open Mind
It's possible to prove talent directly in an enormous number of occupations, it's just necessary you are let work for a probation period. Of course there are situations where everybody anyway want to avoid loosing time or where a mistake could have big consequences, but in this case i don't see how programmers would need to be recruited differently from other kind of qualified jobs either.
As for online hiring, I don't see how this changes anything.
Everything you need to know has already been said here, I'm just giving my own perspective.

I'm 18, so probably just few years older than you, but I can promise you the best possible idea is to learn to code. I learned to code and started a few mid-sized projects in high school. Last year (my first year of college) I was fortunate enough to have one acquired for 'no need to work again' money. I highly doubt this would have been the case if I outsourced to some cheap dev shop for a below-par product. I'm also not sure it would have happened if I just decided to 'find a technical co-founder' and split equity.

Learning to code is the way to go, even if it takes a little longer than expected. Best of luck, and I'd suggest changing the name as it doesn't seem descriptive and can't easily be spelled upon hearing.

(throwaway for privacy/safety, I like to stay out of tech blogs)
Ask HN: Client wrote returned check for over $10,000. How to report him?
I did work for a client who seemed legit. I worked day and night with him for 30 days.

His check to me returned. He paid menagain and the check returned again. This was few weeks ago, since I have found many more people(including his own lawyers) who remain unpaid by him. He's got default judgements against him--though most people are having a hard time collecting $ despite the judgements.

Most importantly, he has been convicted at least once in past for writing non sufficient funds check.

I am in NYC while he is based in California. How can I try and get a criminal case going against him? Do I goto NYPD? The DA?
What is a crypto-racist? I've met many people who work there and have found them quite friendly. And what's wrong with 1940s right-wing politics? It was definitely more sane than modern politics (right and left).
Programmers in the category "adequately competent" tend to self-identify as "great", so it is at least a consistent use of language.

And is it any wonder? Threads like this are filled with comments saying things like "80% of programmers can't code their way out of a paper bag", so is it any wonder that the folks who can program adequately get big heads about it?
IMO, quite a while - on the one hand, HTML5 video in the form of H.264 is mandatory if you want your stuff playable on iOS devices; on the other, the codec situation is a bit of a mess (search for WebM v H.264 and weep). Then factor in DRM, streaming, features like full screen playback (though a recent API in Mozilla/Webkit has just appeared I think), plus the two-encoded-version-to-suit-all-modern-browsers issue and the most likely case (again imo) is Flash video will be around for years yet.
How Debt Has Defined Human History
Better yet, from gentoo's /etc/inputrc:

# map "page up" and "page down" to search history based on current cmdline
"\e[5~": history-search-backward
"\e[6~": history-search-forward

This way, you have up/down for history traversal, and page up/page down for history searching.

More importantly, and what most people missed out is that, this history searching works on ALL command line interfaces, including bash shell, ipython, and psql.

Seriously, a command line advocate who doesn't know about this can't be serious.
There is a wealth of articles, free (good!) books, etc. at http://www.mises.org/, home of Austrian economics online.
I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that Nokia isn't betting the whole farm on WP7. They managed to drum up loads of interest in Meego with the N9 and I hope it's not the end of the line.
I would call that weak to moderate by their own scale.

That is moderate to strong by their own scale, http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales/

1 = Minor
2 = Moderate
3 = Strong
4 = Severe
5 = Extreme