skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's a little something that most people don't know, that I picked up from my architecturally interested father long ago:

The French architect Le Corbusier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier) made use of Fibonacci sequences to create his famous "Modulor" (http://www.apprendre-en-ligne.net/blog/images/architecture/m... - "A harmonic measure to the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and mechanics.") which represents a few fixed points in Fibonacci sequences that have been in use in architecture, interior decoration, carpentry etc. for more than 50 years, at least here in Europe - I have no idea if these scales are as rigorously followed in the Americas or in Asia.

If you look at the picture, and then look at the height of the seat of your kitchen chairs, your kitchen table, your kitchen sink, your cupboards etc., you will find that their tops, bottoms and heights almost always align around numbers in these scales. These measurements create a strange sense of harmony in the way the mind processes geometry picked up from eyesight, which is not perceivable as soon as you move away from these dimensions, in some way quite similar to how the Golden Ratio pleases the eye.

Just for fun I measured some of the interior in my home. Desk: 69cm. Kitchen chairs and kitchen table: 43cm and 70cm. Kitchen sink: 88cm. Bottom and top of wall-mounted kitchen cupboards: 138cm, 225cm (height of 87cm).

Also interesting to note is that similar scales have been found to be used in ancient times as well - seems we took notice of this particular natural pattern long ago.
If the goal is to end up with -something-, sure, it works.

If the goal is to end up with what you pictured in your mind, then it's absolutely horrid.

BTW, part of my problem with Blender is that I -don't- know how to use it. I tried several times on the previous interface and gave up each time. The new one is better, but I still haven't used it enough to have any confidence that I know what I'm doing. So I consider it an apt comparison.
How managed hosting works
Windows 8 documented development process
Yep, using the word simple to describe those languages is not really appropriate.

What I was getting at would be more in the lines of "confined to a single paradigm and style". And again, not saying either of the two mentioned are. It is more a question of future orientation and concept.
Is your anger is killing your art? - Seth Godin
In hindsight. The problem is often that we as programmers name things after what we use it for internally, or where we want to end up. Ie, we want an email conformation, but the customer that has to send it, so please do.
I'm not pg, and I don't have stats, but .com is certainly more popular

Googling:

inurl:news.ycombinator.com (5,650,000 links)

inurl:news.ycombinator.org (410,000 links)
re 1) it's very convenient for me as often shipping costs more than the book if you don't live in US or UK, not to mention the time factor.
An article that hit the home a few days back explains it: many consider this observation as a personal attack. It's not that prople who buy iPads are fashion victims - it really is great product. It's just not the perfect product for everyone. That and what we perceive as rational choices usually aren't. Our brains contain a whole lot of mammal under its thin layer of Homo Sapiens.

HP was really stupid launching the "Ouchpad" at prices similar to the iPad because the sum of iOS and its application support make it a better product. With a lower price, it could win some market share. WebOS deserved better management.
First Firefox 7 Beta Promises Dramatically Lower Memory Use
A test which predicts ability to program before the start of training
App Inventor returns to MIT
Previous submissions of this topic include:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900450 (google.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899913 (googleblog.blogspot.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899895 (google.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899641 (google-latlong.blogspot.com)

The last of these has the discussion.
Colin,

It seems a great deal of your comments have begun to fall into either the "this has already been posted" or "you're not following the rules" category.

Do you see the problem with "contributing" material on top of material you see as less than satisfactory? You're only adding more cruft to the cruft.

We get it. You don't like reposts. We get it. You don't like it when people don't follow the rules to a "T". Guess what? This is what happens. It's the real world where people don't always make the best choice all the time.

If you would get over that fact and focus on making insightful comments I think you'd be doing everyone a favor.

Lastly, to cite the oft quoted Guidelines:

"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

Edit: here is a list of links to Colin's comments from the first and second page of his comment history where he is either complaining about resubmissions or the rules not being followed:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2902905

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2902882

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2902745

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2901255

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900909

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900877

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899857

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899687

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2897109

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2896827

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2896677

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2896311
Yes, you're being a grumpy old guy.
After one-or-another of Dick Cheney's heart attacks, the news media spent some time quoting research about the way that life-threatening illnesses can change one's personality; how (of course) people react differently to such crises, but also how driven, egocentric men tend to refine and focus their priorities, and even to jettison qualms that they might have previously carried.

It's not surprising to me that an ambitious man like Jobs, who (arguably) failed with Apple the first time around, then failed with NeXT, then became seriously ill while leading a resurgent Apple, might decide that the touchy-feely bits of his youthful worldview are less important than a more tangible legacy.

I'm not saying it's the correct choice, or laudable, but it is understandable.
You can see how tough that cop was that he needed his buddies to get her off him after he sucker punched her. It's a shame that Spain can barely pay its bills yet has no problem hosting a papal visit with all the expenses that it incurs and simultaneously sending out the goon squad after those who protest the waste. From the other side, protesters have been disrupting life in Madrid for the past couple of months and I'm pretty sure that the residents are quite tired of it by now, but that never justifies lawless violence at the hands of the state. It's hypocritical to ask for the resignation of Gaddafi and Assad while you're beating your own people in the streets.
I was reading it and thinking that I was like that. I used to think "meh, measuring work in hours". It felt especially disgusting when your employer did it. But then I discovered a tiny widget called "Timer" and it really made me think carefully of how I waste my time and helped me to keep track of my productivity. You just sit, start the timer and get to work, no excuses. My impression now is that it would actually be useful, not harmful, to track employees time carefully - and use it not as a final judgement, but rather as another source of data for analyzing efficiency.

After I read this article I started thinking about effectively tracking time. I realized the best approach would be to do it seamlessly, so that I wouldn't have to actually start/stop the timer and write down task names. And so I googled this app which seems to be doing exactly this (for the teams too): http://app.chrometa.com I think it would probably show a very interesting data, especially in a team of developers, which would lead to some adjustments in how people work. Too bad I'm on Ubuntu 90% of my time now, I'd probably try it.
Programming is about representing the world with structures that are adaptable to how the world really changes, so it pays off to read books about human psychology (normal and abnormal), statistics, game theory, and war.

When you get a intuitive feeling for how the world morphs and changes around you according to stimuli, then better code structures strike you, and those superior code structures will have much longer lifespans and will be more adaptable to the needs that the users don't know they have yet. It's all about predicting the future, and in order to predict the future of a complex worldly system, you have to KNOW it inside and out.
You're being overly restrictive in thinking of the attack space. For example, do you think keys in your NoSQL engine of choice necessarily always work out well if they include malformed Unicode characters? Do you think all buffers are safe? etc, etc

Talk to tptacek about this if you think NoSQL means No SQL Injections So I'm OK.
would be nice to find out which 10 apps are dominating the android scene.
"The future? Shorter games"

Then I'm glad that, being in my late 20s, I got to experience a bit of the past.

The 2 points I can perceive seem valid to me:

1) Some people were introduced to gaming in an era were 3d graphics were not much to show of, so it was popular for companies to invest in deep scenarios and gameplay -and if a company invests in such things, it makes economic sense to make fewer, longer games, as these things are less reusable than i.e. a 3d graphics engine. Those people are now older and have less time for games in general.

2) Today's teens are introduced to games in an era where 3d graphics have made huge progress and games are more popular to non-geeks (I think popularity always pushes things to an easy, shallow direction), so the current majority tends to value graphics and fast action more than other qualities. Also it makes sense that modern trends such as "social networking" sites might be a distraction, since they can loosely be categorized as "computer entertainment", and there is only so much time "normal" people can sit on their computer.

I'm sorry the game market is driven in that direction. I just hope there are enough of us to justify enough exceptions that won't be lost in the noise. So far I can compromise with games such as Dragon Age -even barely.
That bookmark service that did great out of the del.ici.ous fiasco (sorry I honestly can't remember your name!).

http://pinboard.in/
Thanks for the clarification. Because I control both sites it wasn't a problem, as described in the article. Yeah, it was a bit of an experiment because I wanted to see how it would work out.
I've not found this to be true. I'd like it to be true, but I don't think it is.

When I try new programming methodologies, ideas, etc, I often notice a distinct change in how I program and how I think about programming.

When I try new life choices (emmigrating to the third world, reading good literature, etc) I grow as a person, but I really can't think of how it's affected my programming.
Sometimes bio food might require more resources (bio crops might lend less from an acre and so use up more land.
The author seems to be generalising on a massive scale. The reason there's so much crap in the PC laptop market is because there's a lot of demand for cheap hardware.

Many of his negative points about windows are flat out wrong, and are either because he bought a shitty 5400rpm hard drive or hasn't adjusted his power settings. It's easy to tell windows to shutdown/hibernate when you close the lid.

In terms of looks, there are a couple of manufacturers that 'get it', and I think Lenovo lately with their edge series and some others are starting to really stand out in terms of design. The author seems to miss the point that there's a trade-off between price/quality and size/quality in terms of price. There are cheap small laptops, and good, expensive small laptops. There are cheap big laptops, and good expensive big laptops (not nearly as useful.)

I think this is one of the major causes of consumer confusion these days, since most people jump on the shitty cheap stuff and complain when it breaks in 3 months. If you spend the same amount on a high end lenovo/sony you'll get a lot more power than a mac, and better battery life too.
I use django-mediagenerator[1], I love it to bits.

[1]: http://www.allbuttonspressed.com/projects/django-mediagenera...
Anger and Creativity are mutually exclusive?

Perhaps in business, but I am not convinced this is true in Art. There are a lot of angry musicians out there. (Would we have had Punk without it?) Although it's out of my area of expertise, I would guess the same is true with painting.

Anger clouds and narrows the mind, but isn't it a stretch to say it can not occur side by side with creativity?

Seth is usually right, but I disagree with him on this one.
I worked for them for a couple of years as a developer. They do have an underlying core technology developed in the very early days of the company which they have exploited to the absolute maximum possible. It works fairly well, but Bayesian analysis of documents is beginning to feel a little old hat.

To be honest I've been waiting for a startup to come around to attempt to disrupt this field, but none has arrived so far that can match the sales team at Autonomy.

They really do concentrate entirely on sales, and have some of the most driven sales people I've ever seen - largely due to seemingly ridiculous bonuses paid to sales staff. That does however lead to issues as some others here have described where they sell technology that doesn't exist - I could tell you some horror stories! The relationship between sales and development there, and the situations sales put the development team in, were the main reasons I left. Having projects dumped on you that were never even discussed with development, 2 weeks before the deadline for implementation, with requirements that were completely unrealistic does not make for good software.

Autonomy always felt like one of those circus performers with the spinning plates. You're always expecting it to collapse, but somehow the sales and legal teams keep the whole thing going.
So many sentences in bold, yet so little substance. What he seems to be saying is that to be a better interface between development and customers/management/etc requires more than pure programming ability. Yeah, ok. And maybe this is beneficial for business or, if there really is a lack of this talent, for career prospects. But it's not being a better programmer. The pithy title is not very relevant to the content.

As regards the pithy title though, and the earlier part of the article, I disagree. Programmers can and do develop. There is a large difference in ability between people who stick with the craft for a large number of years (and actively develop their abilities), and those who are new to it. When I was younger I would have probably agreed, yeah, programmers are just good or bad (and I'm good). But I wasn't good. I've become better since. And there's still a lot to learn and pursue. It takes time.

Having said that, it's definitely possible not to progress as a developer despite programming every day. It requires some amount of contemplation.
That has been possible for a long time in Google Calendar: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=...
To be honest, this guy sounds like he's just horrible at buying and using laptops;

...
"This reached absurd levels when I bought a netbook that had a full C drive right from the purchase"

Sorry what? I bough a netbook a year and a half ago, and it had a 250GB HD then, are you sure you're not looking at the recovery partition?

Some of the points stand, but they're hardly consistent across all "Windows" laptops (whatever that is...).
Major Fanboi Butt Jizz,..

Nothing of substance here, move on.
HCG Activator
Hcg Activator is a difficult routine to deal with even less types of Hcg Activator. As of now, there is really no leading Hcg Activator so most helpers choose Hcg

Activator based on recommendations. This is the why behind that situation with Hcg Activator and that I am not happy with Hcg Activator. Hcg Activator is
Is Email In Danger?
This isn't free advice, it's free whining. And if it was re-worded as advice, it would still be a terrible article.

Points like "don't make hardware that breaks", "don't make batteries that run down fast", "don't make noisy laptops", does he really imagine that Dell, Sony et al are sat reading and muttering to themselves "holy cow, why didn't we think of these ideas"?

Not to mention that half of the feedback isn't even about PC manufacturers, is about Windows.
/r/netsec is having an Information Security Hiring Thread
HBO and the future of pay-TV
Yes, my petition missed the 2011 cap by two days (think the cap was reached on January 27), so as for the parent poster my start date was pushed to October.
Licensing webOS May Not Be Much of an Option for HP
While this is interesting, the most important metric for solar power is not Watts per square meter but Watts per dollar of production cost. Complex configurations like this may be more efficient from a W/m2 but unlikely to be more efficient from a W/$ perspective.
Rails Users: Should Mass Assignment Security Happen In The Model?
That's really kick ass. The rewards (simple numbers/badges) work well for me.
The average age of gamers is 37? I find that a bit incredible.
Thanks for this post, as a H1B on my to SV it's frustrating to be lumped together with "lowest bid" coders. My employer specifically reached out in a recruiting campaign in Europe because, quote "we've interviewed every possible and willing candidate in the valley". If you look at the money they throw at my transfer it's easy to conclude that they'd rather hire local if it was possible.
Nike Mercurial Vapor iii
It all depends which part of "reality" you focus on. I doubt that Windows is dominant anywhere where interesting stuff happens: be it HN, or developers' conference (save for .NET).

As for balance: this goes both ways. However it is much more difficult to find someone with no experience of Windows (I've used MS products for 15+ years before switching and still have Windows VM for testing) than someone with no experience with OS X. Somehow that does not stop the latter crowd from talking about walled gardens, form over function, „it's all marketing“, computers for non-techie people (it's UNIX, are you kidding me?), hipsters and gays, etc.
I'd even say Aidan's "set for life"

And I would strenuously disagree. No one is set for life at that age. As you yourself point out, sometimes marking a mark early just makes thing difficult later on. There are plenty of historical examples.

Best wishes to him. There are still plenty of mountains to climb.
Flame-bait junk, save yourself the time and skip this.
Really? How long have you worked in enterprise IT?

We been dealing with mobile users for decades and it's a small percentage of our staff/budget that actually deals with in-field devices and issues. iPads and smart phones are nice, but the sales force and folks at remote sites find themselves more productive with a laptop that has a keyboard and the ability to run "true applications".

As for HP, it hasn't been the HP of lore in decades.
But if HP is become an entreprise-software company, why would they want to keep updating WebOS as a end-user software for smartphones and tablets ?

Licensing only makes sense if HP puts his weight behind WebOS as a good alternative to iOS and Android.
Some of the most productive programmers I've known toss code together in a horrifying slapdash fashion but somehow get great things done. And sometimes people with far more precise and mathematical minds just get mired in their beautiful architectures. The common trait I've seen in all exceptional programmers is an ability to keep a tremendous number of details in memory at one time. Most real world code is not lambda calculus but a barely controlled mess.

Humanizing technology is a bigger win than technologizing humans, IMO.
The Top 100 Node.js Developers
It should be noted that outside the US, the international 3rd edition of the book (supposedly containing some undisclosed differences) can be had much cheaper. I bought a new copy from a seller in Malaysia back in April for about $50 USD.
I imagine they rejected you because you're a sole founder, plenty of companies who apply to YC and don't get in do well. YC don't have a magic ball that tells them who'll succeed and who'll not.
That would be the cynical way to look at it. For a sole inventor, working independently of any company, I think the filing fee is about $150. It's possible he had enough saved to pay for it himself. :) Heck, judging from his report, the kid might have even figured out the whole application by himself. That alone would be just as impressive as any invention.
Wikipedia[1] links to several industry studies, most of which place the average age of gamers between 30 and 40.

Public perception is certainly different.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game#Social_aspects
No, if they want an OS to build on they can use Android.
until erasure is fixed, no new hacks\workarounds can be added.

unfortunately you can't build hacks on hacks on hacks...even as engineeringly pleasing as some hacks might be.

imo, java needs to find some way of updating the vm.
Do Your Players Know Their Role? (gamedev)
A Complete Source Guide For Bridal Gowns
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Combined with the new style F2P MMORPGS, where cash shops allow people to advance to the end, and old school game play is dead, dead, dead.

Welcome to the world of micro-transactions, where yokels end up spending the price of a car where they used to just fork over $70 to $120 a year subscriptions.

They also pretty much skipped over the whole dumbing down of most games, from open world sandboxes, to fairly narrow tunnel crawls. It's all about cutting costs, and then rationalizing it with all this psycho babble. Korporations simply want to do to games what they have done to most consumer products, water it down as much as possible to maximize profit.

Compare the most recent Duke Nukem to the original and you will see this is true.
Math Is Like The Stock Market
Roid rage
Actual information about steroids and roid rage.
As mentioned by sirclueless, that's not necessarily the case. Since last-modified is sent by the server and simply replayed by the browser, the server can simply make sure the two strings are identical.

Browser: "I want index.html"

Server: "index.html was last modified on 'Pungenday, the 9th day of Bureaucracy, 3177 at 14:53'. Here are its contents."

[Time passes]

Browser: "I want index.html. I have a cached copy that you said was last modified on 'Pungenday, the 9th day of Bureaucracy, 3177 at 14:53'. Is there a newer version?"

Server: "Nope, your Last-Modified is the same thing I would tell you if I sent it right now."

Note that because the server sets the contents of last-modified for the browser, it can simply check if it's identical to what it would currently send as the last-modified header for that request.
"Most real world code is not lambda calculus but a barely controlled mess."

Beautifully put.