skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is the only bit I disagree with. Math is his life.

In some respects, that's like expecting someone whose "life is languages" to be able to speak every language on the planet fluently. Math is definitely a coherent whole with the different subfields like algebra and analysis being a part of it but, at the same time, there are enough differences between them and enough depth in each that we're not going to see anyone remotely close to the level at which Eppes is portrayed.
You don't have to name names, but I'd put $ on this being RRE :-).
The Finder is not a very good example of a better explorer UI though, it's pretty consistently awful.
This domain sounded familiar and I see where it recently sold for $115,000 to an "non-profit startup".

The seller shared his story in the comments at http://www.thedomains.com/2011/06/30/domain-investor-brian-w... (scroll down to July 25). It's interesting to see that while the buyers claimed to be a "math educational non-profit startup", the seller was skeptical of the story.
I built a shared-TTY, that works using your browser!
http://snotty.slowpoison.net

Click on the Help page for instructions.
I don't really care about the looks, I'd just like them to unbreak the search UI and behavior. XP was slow but worked correctly, 7's search is a pain when you try to actually interact with the matches.
Drawback: the environment must load the Scala runtime.

Sometimes is better to add some semicolons instead of slowing down the whole device.

Scala is great, but in this case the choice must be made carefully.
Free data smartphone app idea
No, 203 commands. Each button can have drop-down menus that expose multiple sub-commands.

The ribbon replaces a traditional menu. How many commands do you count in your file manager's menu? (Probably less than 203, but I think if they can organize them well, more power to them)
Yeah. Paul Graham mentions this in "The Age of the Essay:" http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html . I talk about it too in this essay: http://jseliger.com/2010/09/27/signaling-status-blogging-aca... , albeit from a slightly more academic perspective.
"Android WebKit is the closest thing to being the IE6 of mobile development"
The reevaluation issue could be solved if all students in the >95 percentile is assigned a random number (e.g between 0.0 and 1.0) and then the students with the highest numbers are selected.

If a re-eval happens, all students that were already assigned a random number since before will keep it, and new random numbers will only be given to the students that previously were below the threshold.

This will have the effect that the list of selected students will not change much even after a re-evaluation. Only the few with lowest numbers risk losing their place.
> Randomly selected jurors did quite a few nasty and arbitrary things. But an elected tyrant (especially one who was willing to do anything to stay popular) might be worse. It's hard to say that sortation is bad because it allowed mistakes - every political system allows mistakes.

Exactly. The point of voting is not, repeat not to execute the will of "the people" as faithfully as possible. "The people" can be just as powerful and arbitrary as a single ruler, when it comes to that. The point of voting is to randomize so that no single entity stays in power indefinitely. (No executive, legislature, or even set of ideals can win elections indefinitely, no matter how popular they are when they start out.) In exchange for mediocre performance in the average case, you get to eliminate the almost unboundedly terrible performance of the worst case.
I map the right command key to escape.

http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/
Earlier discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2882777
Exactly, that we have sent that instructions correctly is what we are testing.

Then they take a picture of something that we both can see (like a star), and if the image is actually 'mirror flipped' of what they would see, we know the instructions were wrong.

You are testing the instructions, not the picture itself.
There are obviously many reasons, but to add a couple;

Fight regression

You don't want to fix the same bug several times, do you?
When a bug is found, I first write a test to repeat the bug. Then I fix the code. Now every time I want to release a new version, that particular bug is tested yet again.

The 'quick fix' 5 minutes before launch

You're approaching deadline, everything is looking fine. Then, just before launch, a small bug or a tiny new feature has to be added. You can't imagine that would have side effects, can you? Well, that one bit of code, a small module that 'never changes', which you haven't looked at for 12+ months, reacts badly to this change. With good tests in place you catch this before you hit production problems.
I think they've learned from the Office 2007 metrics and feedback. Also they have listed the reasons for choosing the ribbon over other approaches. I don't see a 'jump'.

>And what user data prompted them to create 203 buttons if some of the (far less than 200) commands they have now don't get used in more than 1% of user sessions?

You say that as if the 200 buttons were on one screen. They are spread out over different contexts and tabs. I believe they were trying to make the commands more discoverable from the previous versions.
For the love of God, why Java when there is Python? ^_^
Users do not know what a filesystem is. They don't want to know. Whilst the improvements enumerated here are undoubtedly improvements it's all lipstick on a pig. It's time for the hierarchical filesystem to die.
Bottle and Flask actually allow for this too. Bottle's variant:

@route('/hello/:name', method='GET')
def hello_get(name):
return 'Hello %s' % name

@route('/hello/:name', method='POST')
def hello_post(name):
return 'Hello %s' % name

Pyramid permits a larger variety of predicates (including custom ones), however: https://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/1.2/narr/vie...
Inbox Assistant keeps your calendar in sync with your email conversations
The ribbon is beautiful because you can hide it.

I disagree strongly with the whole "too many buttons/clutter" sentiment. This provides an awesome learning curve for users. The tooltips for the ribbon expose keyboard shortcuts. A first-time user will click the button, then eventually try the keyboard shortcut, learn it, learn all the shortcuts they need from the ribbon, then learn to hide the ribbon. This opposed to the crappy menu or context menu system which is much less conducive to exploratory UI learning.
العاب طبخ 2012 
العاب طبخ 2012 العاب طبخ 2012 العاب طبخ 2012 العاب طبخ 2012 العاب طبخ 2012 العاب طبخ 2012 العاب طبخ 2012 العاب طبخ 2012 العاب طبخ 2012 العاب طبخ 2012
Gore on Climate Change and Racism
Apple iCloud Phishing is Back Again
Nice pivot. Used to be a pic-sharing app. I guess my pics are gone now?
Online Ad Spend to Overtake TV by 2016
How Airbnb Switched to a HTML5 Photo Manager
> In addition, most RMDBS are optimized for mechanical disks.

Since SSDs blow the hell out of platters no matter what the workload or access pattern is, you'll still get significantly improved performances, even without SSD-specific optimizations.

The one "optimization" I'd like to see out of SSD's rise is deoptimization: since access patterns becomes less important (or at least naive access patterns become less costly), I'd like to see systems simplified and "optimizations" removed rather than new optimizations added.
I think your target audience may be electronic music fans which might limit you in your service growing. I have seen a similar implementation of a StumbleHype however, it redirected to each blog. I like your implementation of loading the songs into a music player located on your site. You may already have this on your list of things to do, but, a categorization of music types might help, as well as it being more clear on how to pause the song that's currently playing. (Scratch part of that, your main page allow you to chose. You just linked to 'hot' tracks from HN.)

Hope this helps. I'm definitely a fan though.
Nuclear power plants for settlements on the Moon and Mars
OCZ's SSD offerings have carved out a very good chunk of the SSD industry. Their Vertex drives almost always receive favorable reviews & perform competitively, and their Agility drives are a popular budget SSD. Judging from the past few shootouts I've seen, they are one of the Drives to Beat, along with the intels.
Thanks ^_^ Yes we're focusing more on File Sharing !
I schedule a lot of things over email. Lunch meetings, phone calls, and so on. Inevitably, I'd sometimes neglect to add a particular appointment to my calendar after confirming via email...

So I decided to write a simple product backed by NLTK (Python's natural language processing toolkit) that would do something a lot like Fantastical for OS X - given a message body, try to figure out the when and where, and add it to a calendar.

The product is still in early beta, but I'm looking for testers to help vet the parsing algorithm with real world conversations. I've been using it for about a week for all my scheduling, and so far it's worked great :-)
I don't know about you, but it's been a LONG time since I've seen anyone using an HP computer. If the general consumer wants a computer for their home, they typically buy from Dell. This is also true for a lot of companies. HP hasn't been a major player in the consumer PC market for a long time. I don't think leaving the consumer PC industry will matter much at all in terms of their "public facing division."
Exploding Software-Engineering Myths
Agreed, the column is ridiculously biased. The author thinks Hurd was so great, but it was Hurd who first paid over $1B for Palm and then, when asked what HP's plans were in phones, said "Oh, we only bought Palm for the IP".

Apotheker isn't perfect, and there have been missteps to be sure, but on the whole, as an HP employee (recently, via the Fortify acquisition), I think Apotheker has a much better plan for HP than Hurd or Fiorina did.
'Less is more' is a thousand years old general maxim. And of course, there is nothing from Buddhism or stoicism in cutting some costs and undoing some bad habits. One also should watch the Fight Club movie. ^_^
Google trademarks Spot for new programming language?
Is Apple making a mistake with the iPhone 5?
1. Press the "windows" key on your keyboard.

2. Type what you want to find.

3. Profit!
It was a huge amount for us and we went through a broker for the process :) Still love our old http://min.us
Another point I'd like to raise - If you're not introducing any new technology (just a new platform), then creating a new website or app is like starting a 'people movement.' You are actually aiming to change the culture and the way people interact with each other. When you're doing this, great programming, clear UI/UX, and a smooth functioning website are extremely important. At the same time, building the 'movement' requires passionate, charismatic, and outspoken business co-founders that can inspire others with their presence, writing, and speaking.
I don't see it as giving up, but rather tighter integration. It's easier to just check a box by your status saying "yeah, you can let people know I'm here," instead of the old option where it was a completely separate input.
Users, in general, don't like keyboard shortcuts.
Chinese General’s Spy Video Leaked to YouTube
How do I create 'folders' on the site?
Think You're An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It's Unlikely
I was cringing right through this whole article until I hit the Quick Access Toolbar. In short I hate the Windows Ribbon UI for reasons others have mentioned. But this entire redesign was saved in my eyes by the quick access bar and the fact that you can add any function to it and collapse the ribbon out of sight. Now THIS is what Explorer has needed for years and I am actually excited about using it now. I will never have that ribbon open, it's way too cluttered and a visual mess... but give me 10 minutes and I'll have a QAT bar set up that will (on first glance) make me a VERY happy power user.

Now, we'll see what their attention to detail is when I try my favourite shortcut... Holding CTRL while clicking on the up arrow. This used to open the parent folder in a New Window and it seems that MS forgot this shortcut in recent Windows versions.
How to Pick the Right Idea for your Startup
I've thrown out invites, and offered to invite a ton of people. Most didn't take me up on it. The ones who would've been most likely to join, had already found a way to join on their own.
And it doesn't even have to be that you like the actor.

If I see Brendan Frasier in a movie, I think "that dude seems to ONLY pick terrible movies."

Nic Cage: "His appearance in a movie often has nothing to do with it's quality, although as time goes on he's gotten pretty bad at picking movies"

Leonardo DiCaprio: "Never picks a bad movie. Regardless of opinion on his skill, he has never made a Ghost Rider or a Mummy Returns."

I'd say Joseph Gordon-Levitt also seems to have great taste in scripts, as long as you realize how hard it is to turn down being "the GI Joe bad guy alongside Doctor Who."

YMMV

*Directors, sadly, seem to be much less consistent. Besides Nolan.
U.S. Government Intelligence: DNI/IARPA Announces Open Source Indicators Program
Unlike email, there is a very significant divergence on what exactly a social network should entail and most of the networks don't mesh.

How could you merge twitter with facebook for example; you couldn't show most of the posts made on facebook on twitter because of length violations. And what, you go to twitter.com and you can see content that you couldn't see on facebook.com because twitter is choosing an public-only asymmetric model and facebook isn't?
> Wife and kid don't necessarily have to change everything, as long as you find someone who thinks similarly to you.

Sorry, this is quite a naive statement. My wife before pregnancy and childbirth had a different outlook on life... people's personalities change, and having kids often makes this change (large cause of divorces and break-ups).

Also, your kid's personality you can't choose. Some kids are very colicky and stubborn and do much better with stable environment. Others are free spirits. If you have a special-needs or disabled child, forget about it. No choice there.

My wife's friend roams around with her husband (and their kid) - he does short-term contracts around the world. She had repeated complained about the churn and stress to my wife.
What do you mean when you say "is it risky"?

* You risk that you won't be able to find developers at a salary that will help your company earn money
* There is a risk that you may have to do lots of the work yourself and may not be able to pass it on if you write programs for these industries

In my opinion, you need to decide why you want to use a "fringe" languages over something with more available talent. Are you using it because it's what you know? Because it will be fun? Or is there a benefit of that language that you wouldn't have otherwise?

It won't be impossible, but it's hard to replace commodity software with something that would end up being more expensive without adding any innovation or new benefits.
Webvention (which is really one guy Dan Abelow) was the company which originally filed the patent. IV/Lodsys bought the rights to the patent from them (him). Note this is how IV gets their patents - they purchase them from existing patent holders for the most part.

The confusion seems to be that Apple actually licensed the patent from Webvention, not Lodsys and that license would transfer with the sale of the patent rights. From this filing it looks like Lodsys hasn't read the existing licenses which transferred over, which is a bit absurd.
This discussion is dumb. To begin with, CEOs don't all do the same thing. To end with, it's only a certain sort of CEO people don't like.

In reality, the CEO is just the top level person in an organization. The most important task the company faces should be expertise and focus of the CEO. If your company is product driven (Apple), it should be your chief product dude. If your company is advertising driven (Coca-Cola), it should be your chief marketeer. Etc. This ensures (we hope) that the focus of the company is on its most important dimension because the CEO can quash all opposition to its goals (on paper).

The CEOs who are truly reviled are those which are "standard management hacks". These are placeholder CEOs. If your company has one of these, it's in trouble.
Re: the FAQ

----
How can I use Minus?

* You can use Minus to:

* Create an online portfolio of your work with your Minus profile

* Share photos and videos from your recent trip

* Publish your work whether it's an ebook, music, photos and more

* Brainstorm and share your next killer project

* Collaborate and share design mockups, code snippets and beta apps

* Backup your important files, documents and access or share it later

* Share lecture notes with your class

* Share all aspects of your life

These are just ideas we came up with. Start sharing today with Minus!

----

FWIW, if I were someone new to the cloud-sharing thing, that last 'idea' would freak me out.
I have a Kingston and an OCZ Vertex 2 and the OCZ drive failed in a month. My experience with the RMA is similar, it took 3 weeks to get a replacement and very slow email support.
GuidEmpty: Don't search Google for an empty guid again.
Not defensive, but rather offended. Also, there is most certainly a lot of loaded text in your replies.
> Here’s one wild idea: the CEO stock options should be compared to a reference index built with its main competitors.

It's not clear that US tax law makes that reasonably possible. If it doesn't, it's a safe bet that the relevant provision was promoted as "protecting investors".
It looks great, but there's no way any of my companies would condone sending emails out to a third party. If it ran completely internally there might be a chance, although it's unlikely, and our scheduling requirements are minimal.

Having said that, I love the idea, and I love the idea that technology can do this kind of stuff. I wish you the best of luck with it.
1. Unless you are a raging success investors won't be tracking you down - and chances are the ones coming to you won't be the ones you want. Always pick what investors you want and go after them first.

2. I can't envision a scenario where the second piece of advice makes any sense. If being gone for a couple months (perhaps 6 months calendar time, 2 months work time) - and it costs you 100k then you would never raise 100k, you would be raising more.
Congrats on the purchase. A good .com domain definitely enhances credibility outside of the startup world over a domain hack.
Despite the huge ribbon the new layout actually has more vertical space due to the removal of the details pane. Once the ribbon is minimized there would be tons more real estate: http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communit...
Programmers: feeling uninspired? Try teaching.
Yeah, I'm curious about that. When article said, "He lists benefits of Scala development for Android as speed, easier programming, . . . ." (emphasis mine), that turned my head a bit.

I would think the best Scala could hope for would be to match Java's performance. I can't imagine how it would be faster.

Are there actual numbers for Android development? What do you lose doing Scala and where?
You can just as easily say "only founding CEOs are worth the money" using this sort of analysis.

It seems to me that the right CEO is worth way more than the 2nd best. It's just that you might do a poor job of determining who is right.

Kind of reminds me of the old joke "what do you call the guy who graduated last from med school? 'Doctor'!"
I use Heroku while building out or testing applications - the first dyno is free and additional are $36/month. You can handle a decent amount of traffic on 2-3 dynos. To keep dyno time down, set up workers to run only when needed.

It would be a good idea to plan ahead for your db needs - AWS is a good solution. Try to run you RDS in the same zone as Heroku.
> Nope. There was blob-support, but that relied on special library functions to extract the data to a file which you'd then have to manually read.

OK.

> The old functionality is still there (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/largeobjects....) though I totally failed and still fail to see any practical use.

Memory constraints maybe? That's about the only justification I could see for using that over bytea: if you store single binary objects in the GB+ range, you may want to interact with them as streams.
Check Out This Revolutioinary Makeup System
Show HN: An easy visual way to find the best old TV shows
I am relatively new to HN and have _read about_ but not _seen_ an anti-testing mindset around here. I imagine this article will stir that debate if it exists.

Can anyone tell me why they would not want to write tests? I have no biases here.
I have come to believe the reason the ribbon interface is criticized is a result of two things.

First, everyone reviewing the ribbon interface online is more than competent with the old menu bar.

Second, everyone who is competent with the menu bar finds themselves in the awkward purgatory of "I know there is a Find function, but where is it hidden in these menus...".

In other words, the reason people don't like it is the same reason most every person has resisted improvements in interfaces for the past forever.
Yes, but that's how it will be with everyone. The growth of a social network is driven by having lots of nodes to start from. Google+ doesn't have that; it has a core of techies. My invite is only once removed from a Google employee and then only because I asked my roommate before my Googler friends.
Optin App - Facebook Slap
I understand the 'meme' and don't see how it has any place here, whatsoever.

As for your summary, I find it to be amazingly slanted toward a particular view. The X220 is truly nothing at all like the Macbook Air. I used a consumer grade Toshiba, so I have no horse in this race, but I can plainly see (from specs as well as design) that the X220 is in a significantly different category from the Air.
Internet Marketing Suicide- and How to Come Back to Life
And RRE is an abbreviation of?
I think I should point out just so it's duly noted- what my parent has just noticed is the Windows team catering to both Regular Joe Users and Power Users, at the same time, without stepping on the toes of either too much.
IIS 8 from Windows Server 8 Appears
I'd love to see an article on unit testing that gives reasons they add business value, so hackers like us can convince pointy headed bosses that we should be allowed the budget to write them.

"Improving the quality of our software" is the one I tend to use, but it's so vague. How will unit testing convert into cold, hard cash is what upper management want to know.
Time is a very precious resource. The lean strategy is especially important for lone hacker as you have only so much time. Another big factor is energy level and attention. You don't want 12 hour hacking day for a long time or burnout is the norm.
I was only referencing the parent post about the 200 buttons, it's certainly true that they're available in ribbon form.

If the commands are things that were previously available and less discoverable, then that's one thing. However, I felt like it was a jump to go from having so few commands available menu to having around 200. Do they expect the new commands to be used frequently? Were they actually needed? That's what I was trying to ask.
Oh thank god. I hated the detail pane.
Facebook's New Privacy Controls
Thanks for the support, Colin!

Yeah, I know some organizations wouldn't condone outbound email going through a third party. Part of my inspiration came from Highrise's ability to copy emails to HR and having them be attached to the relevant question.