skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The first question I need to put out there is: are you bored or simply burnt out? This can often masquerade as an inability to concentrate. Fact is, if you like what you do it's a lot easier to just do it.

That being said, many (most?) people benefit (or even need) a relatively distraction-free environment. This means no TV near your computer (particularly relevant if you work from home), stopping distractions from other people and can go so far as cutting yourself off from HN and other prime sources of distraction (there are various programs, plugins and extensions for this kind of thing).

As for distractions from other people, this can take many forms. If you work from home, it means saying that certain time blocks are for work and you're not to be disturbed. It's easy for other people to fall into a pattern where they'll ask you for stuff or to do stuff simply because you're there.

In my case I can't stand people walking around me, particularly behind me. I position my monitors such that I don't really see people walking by and, where possible, position my desk such that no one walks behind me. If that's not possible, I at least ensure I don't have a thoroughfare behind me.

Other people can distract you by asking things they could easily find out themselves. Joel Spolsky talked about this [1] as a reason for giving engineers private offices. It's too easy to ask a colleague "where is X?" when you could find it in 30 seconds thus crashing them out of "the zone".

Headphones help a lot here. Some people are distracted by music. Many will argue they're not. Testing indicates otherwise [2]. Still I find the right music with its distractions, at least for me, tends to trump the distractions of other people so it's still a win. People tend to bother you less when you're wearing headphones (it's a psychological barrier).

There's also a certain "fake it til you make it" aspect here too, which is another way of saying that your inability to focus is the sum of many behaviours. You probably have many bad habits and you need to change them one at a time. Blocking distractions like HN, reddit, etc is one way of doing this.

Another is, well, just grinning and bearing it. This can take you far but could lead to burnout. Part of this is attitude though. If you're stuck doing something uninteresting (or simply an uninteresting phase of something otherwise interesting) finding little challenges and measurable milestones in that can go a long way.

[1]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

[2]: http://www.quora.com/Does-listening-to-music-while-programmi...
Your product needs two sides of customers: merchants want to reach more consumers and consumers want to get good deals. Breaking this chicken and egg issue creatively is probably the single most important thing you needed to do.
I have to work with Drupal 6 on occasion for parts of a number of projects with my employer.

Before I was hired I'd had zero knowledge of Drupal or anything to do with it. "How hard could this be?" I thought.

Let it be said beforehand that I tend to use OOP practices when coding.

With that in mind, I was given some Drupal related task in my first week and my mind was utterly fucking blown. My OOP stuff was useless when dealing with the procedural nightmare of a Drupal module. I had to learn how to deal with Drupal's pointless reclassification of HTML when using its APIs to create forms, and had to get used to the idea that the people behind it are dangerously obsessed with multidimensional arrays, to the point they're used for everything (check out the module list function, which returns an array whose keys and values are identical).

As a developer, the tools included within Drupal that are intended to make life easier are not abstractions, but obstructions. The documentation is neither help nor hindrance, because there is barely anything that qualifies as documentation.

When it came to performance, I was just as blown away as I was by the development process. It's hard to even use performance and Drupal in the same sentence. Everything requires a horrific number of database calls. My colleague and I ditched the horrific concept of nodes and developed our own solution that, because Drupal is neither a good framework nor a good CMS, had to hack a lot of things to fit in. So we cut down on database calls but it was still slow. I logged calls to module_init() and noticed modules were being initialised not one, but up to 4 or 5 times on a single request. There were no doubt a good 20 or 30 db calls in that.

Then there are the practises it encourages amongst poor developers. Why not roll your own code when you can download a module that is barely any better than the Drupal core itself. Abstract existing functions within PHP to the point of them being abstruse and then spend the rest of your day trying to make sense of the non-existent documentation. And you end up with a project with a modules list that could stretch to the moon and back and an extra few hundred MB of bloat.

Considering I came to Drupal with no prior knowledge, bias, or experience, it couldn't have made a worse impression if it tried. This isn't entirely on topic of course but I find it hard to disagree with anyone who says it needs sorting out.
10 years later Lower Manhattan makes a dramatic transformation
This is nothing like a real byte stream, and is very misleading. The name implies that it's for data i/o, when in reality it's for mathematics.
Certainly is.

EDIT: Imagine if there was a sharing option where each new person could only edit one new row. They can't edit the headers or alter the arrangement, but they have a saved, protected slot.
Appealing Lenovo
Samsung's Windows 8 tablet powered by Intel processor
I'm trying to catch up copying the info from the original document. If you already entered your information in Writeboard, I'd appreciate if you could help me and copy it to the new spreadsheet.

Thanks!
Property inventory services
Hacker group draws increased scrutiny from feds
My Plan as the New CEO of Yahoo: Video, Social and Mobile
MongoDB for everyone!
tl;dr; = It's an array with a few utility methods, but can also hold 'infinite' things like "all the positive even numbers".

Not terribly useful imho and certainly doesn't live up to the hyped intro.
If all you building a Grouppon clone - then technology is the easy part.
Compare prices
I was in a company that created "apps" on Twitter. It's basically a bot that responds to input of a predefined syntax. If you tweet "@twitterbot weather singapore today" it will give you the weather. It could be an execution problem that people just didn't find it intuitive enough to use Twitter this way. So it didn't succeed as a concept prover.
Agree, i thought the name is awful as I expected to see something related to I/O and buffering of content. It looks like a handy list object and seeing "stream" everywhere was just blinding.

However, right at the bottom the etymology of the name is made clear:

> The name 'stream' is used in Scheme, a LISP dialect that supports these features.

So the name is from the FP community. Given the cultural issues, a name change seems unlikely...
Will you still aim for a business profile on Google+?
I found the concept of being 'logically rude' insightful. I have been on both sides of that.
"idlewords finishes by calling pg a "weenis"."

Yes I thought the crude insults were indicative of the quality of the post as a whole.
Secrets of the Masters - An Algorithm for Learning to Program
Thanks for the feedback; I'm not that happy with it either. I just didn't want plain white. I'll play around with some stuff this weekend.
(scroll-down 1), for example, does it, but apparently now there's a function that does it.
Funny you mention that site, it was one of the ones I used as an inspiration...
I am iTerm user so for those folks here is the setup you need to make "option" key the 'meta' key in iTerm

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/196357/making-iterm-to-tr...

I still don't like it since I am so used to hitting the Apple key in emacs, but it beats having to use Esc+<letter>
Before you quit your job and plan to spend a year on your startup, validate your asumptions. Will there be anyone who cares about your product once it's finished? Don't write one line of code until you really know the answer to that question.
I don't believe Eliezer has ever said that evolution works by incremental improvements, only by incremental changes that become increasingly complex as a system when there are dependencies. Therefore even if you have a super-complex system it can still suck, the complexity may add nothing to its goodness, incremental changes can be directly harmful, and the right solution may indeed be to throw it out and start over. This should be clear to any programmer.

I'll profess historical ignorance here, though from my knowledge I believe that most instances of government change to a better government (and there have of course been changes to a worse government) have come through sudden revolutions that upset much of the previously existing power hierarchy. Additionally, to me it seems like government is naturally against any change at all, which precludes it from being improved easily. Eliezer has written numerous times elsewhere: "Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is necessarily a change." So I don't think a "scrap the current system" is necessarily a bad idea, though I don't want bloody revolution.
I can recommend a procedure that has worked well for me . Leave your computer off an entire day(or 3 or 4 hours ). do all the work you would do on the computer on paper. If its coding, this is simple . Other tasks may be more difficult. If you come with something you can't do ,write it down on a list .after you've run out of stuff to write, turn on your computer and transfer everything from paper to digital .
Repeat as needed.
I second the third point. My most productive times are when I have my iPad right next to my laptop ready and waiting for me to need the internet. If I need to look something up I'll do so on the iPad and keep it open if I need to refer to it or turn it off again when I'm done.
I find that not switching between windows really helps me stay in the zone. As soon as that code goes out of sight behind a browser, it's so easy for it to go out of mind.
This was the most useful episode of the series that I've seen. Basically, before watching this I had no idea of the most fundamental feature of Javascript, which is events loop and that only one function is executed at time.

This means that you don't have to worry if any other data is updated while a function works.

It also means that expensive code should be done as timeouts loop or some other way, but not as a for loop, which blocks the browser or server completely.
I downloaded the leechblock plugin for firefox to block certain websites during working hours. Now, whenever I load hacker news (or whatever) during working hours it forwards me to a failure motivational poster. It has actually helped me a lot.
And a part 5:

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/09/11/video-game-progr...
I've been meaning to try this. In meantime: Only 1 critical open ticket:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/buglist.cgi?query_format=specifi...

Not a lot volume on google group and stackoverflow

http://groups.google.com/group/fsharp-opensource/topics

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mono+f%23
Streams and other lazy infinite data structures can be very convenient, but this isn't really obvious at first glance. I recommend you check out some of the FP literature. A good place to start reading about the virtues of streams and lazy evaluation is "Why functional programming matters" (available at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/courses/cs345/whyfp.pdf).
Quickly Search File From Command Prompt In Windows
Here's a helpful two-part Berkeley lecture on the topic: http://academicearth.org/lectures/streams-i
In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column
Anyone know the release schedule for this?
The inertia associated with implementing a new governmental model on a large scale is VERY high. If your experiment does not work, you may need a war or a revolution to abandon the experiment.
If I try "import math" or "import itertools" I get an ImportError. "import sys" works though.
>Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News, Yahoo Tech, Yahoo Women, Yahoo Kids, Yahoo Travel and Yahoo Seniors should be video-based, social and mobile content hubs.

Which is to say that Yahoo! should become a content hub.

Agreed.

What I doubt they can do, instead, is steal the #1 spot in neither Video (YouTube), Social (Facebook) or Mobile (probably Facebook).
7 Things You’ll Need for a Home Based Business | Broke Professionals
Does anybody know exactly where this is being held? I am debating vs. flying or driving (from Boston), and possibly staying overnight.

If anyone else is coming from Boston, let me know, maybe a carpool would be more efficient (we can take my car).
2100 more highway deaths resulted from Americans avoiding air travel, post-9/11
Facebook, Google: Welcome to the new feudalism
What does the rise of Google and Facebook mean for data sovereignty on the web?
I don't know of a way to do it.
As someone who conjured this exact thing up in another language after reading SICP, I have to suggest that the first two commenters here missed the point: this is a very basic but powerful structure that implements a lazy stream and is nearly a monad (many standard options are written for you but could be generalized).

Want it to apply to data I/O? Stick your reader into the HEAD function, store the pointer to the next byte in TAIL, and implement functions for reading X number of bytes and converting them into their new types.

Yes, you can do math with it. You can also implement process/procedure into it, if you consider yourself popping lambdas off the stream, and which lambda is Next can be guided by choices in the current lambda.

Mostly, you can use this device to hold any collection of things and operate upon them in a streamy-syntax kind of way. For those who are familiar with jQuery, it is a bit of a reimplementation of a lot of jQuery's basic array-data handling with extra helpers like "range" tossed in and a stronger focus on the laziness. Where jQuery's prime target is work with the DOM, this stream package's target is the more theoretical version of some of jQuery's features, specifically those that iterate over the contained arrays. You could wrap jQuery in this and get an amazing hybrid.

Don't sell it short; it really is another useful and powerful way to approach data management. Check out how you construct your own stream with this package, and think beyond the basic numeric approaches.
Amazon.com begins rolling out new homepage design
Good video because although it just uses text, the info comes quickly and is engaging.

Interesting idea about continuing the same YC growth rate through 2015, but I can see now why you have a system for managing your time in terms of reading all those applications, etc. I just speak for myself, but it would be really interesting to read an informal essay about some practical time management skills/tips/tricks you've developed over the years...
In a first step you really have to find out _why_ you are wasting time!

I thought for a long time that I am kind of addicted to the internet and that this is the reason I am wasting a lot of time there. Over the years I tried a lot of stuff to cut down consumption but nothing really worked.

What finally helped was the realization that the excessive internet usage is really just a sympton of more underlying problems and not the problem itself . (For example if there is no internet, I use books instead):

I use (and still use) the internet as a way to flee from reality and all its associated problems. Especially at work when I have a difficult project I automatically open the browser to hide from all the problems which comes from the project.

So in order to get to work I have to make a list of smaller task I have to do for this project and then start with the one which is the easiest one because this reduces the likelihood that I distract myself.

Some more infos on my specific situation:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2886218
I'm actually surprised OpenSSH doesn't yet print a large warning when you go to connect and forwarding is enabled.

agent forwarding is not enabled by default, so if you've turned it on, you should know what you're doing. it should only be enabled in ~/.ssh/config per-host, for hosts that you trust.

you should also enable confirmation in ssh-agent so that whenever a key is used, you must manually confirm it. it will prevent attacks like this where another user on a compromised machine will use your agent to login to another machine.

i wrote about doing this on osx, but it works similarly on any other platform - http://jcs.org/macssh
But start over with what? I don't interpret libertarianism as "throw it out and start over", but as "throw it out and do nothing". They seek to strip government down and put it in a sealed box of predetermined size that can never change. It should be equally clear to any programmer that boxing yourself in eventually leads to disaster.
Facts, not baseless opinions, please. For example:
http://drupal.org/project/usage/drupal

Clearly shows both Drupal 7 usage (and consequently Drupal usage as a whole) continuing to increase at a steady, fast rate.
wow, that's pretty impressive. how did you automate that?
Letter from Space on September 12, 2001
A new startup offering a self service, better (we think) solution: https://www.lettingcheck.com
Some time ago I wrote an article (http://alexott.net/en/writings/emacs-devenv/EmacsScheme.html) on working with scheme from emacs - maybe it will useful for somebody. Although it doesn't cover great geiser package yet...
I think you are putting words into his mouth with the "this is broken, throw it out". The reason why unconventional governance models are treated with general skepticism is one of the major points of the essay, which is that if the unconventional governance models are being designed and implemented by the same crew of people with the same basic beliefs that are dominant today, there's no particular reason to believe the outcome is going to be any different in the end. "What makes me a libertarian is that the prospect of having that reconfiguration done by the same system that managed to ban marijuana while allowing tobacco, subsidize ethanol made from corn, and turn the patent system into a form of legalized bludgeoning, makes me want to run screaming into the night until I fall over from lack of oxygen."

Also, characterizing the libertarian answer as "shut it all down" is a strawman in its own right. I daresay one of the major ideas that prevents people from understanding libertarianism is understanding that "let the market deal with it" is not anything remotely resembling "shut it all down". The market provides very sharp constraints on what actions one may profitably take, and one of the advantages of the market system is that said constraints are much more closely connected with reality than any other commonly proposed system is. As an also-little-l libertarian I don't deny that some further regulation may be necessary, but defying the market is less like defying people and more like defying physics. You will pay the price. (In fact, we are, right now.) In particular I strongly believe in the need for regulations that ensures that the market stays free, so I'm very in favor of regulations to prevent monopolies from forming, and very hostile to government-granted market monopolies.

If you understand the market as "it's all, like, greed man, and greedy people abusing other greedy people, and, like, evil, man", you really ought to spend some time understanding the theory of the market as an actual existing entity, rather than a politically-oriented strawman designed cognitively innoculate you against ideas that may actually change your mind if you were to truly learn about them. Perhaps it won't change your mind, but I'll say that most people online's efforts to pry me away from my libertarianism fails on the grounds that almost nobody actually understands it in the first place, which puts them at a bit of a disadvantage.

(Remember, almost nobody is raised libertarian. Few libertarians hold their beliefs unexamined, the way that those who were simply raised liberal or conservative can, though of course not all do.)
I don't believe they have released this information yet.
Virtually every functional democracy (or reasonable facsimile thereof) has built-in mechanisms for changes, and most provide for quite radical/unbounded changes. Unless you're starting with the premise that governance shouldn't be subject to voting, revolution/war should not happen.
Second on the pomodoro technique. If I had major deliverables no matter what the task is, I'd use it if I was serious. I've used it on hobby project and saw an obvious difference. If I was indie, I'd put all my discipline energy into following it.
You can create lazy enumerables with linq.js as well.

http://neue.cc/reference.htm

Enumerable
.Range(0, 1000000000000)
.Take(10)
.ToArray()

Output:

0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
I never got that to work on a pair of Vista / XP systems. The target system had several password protected user profiles. I needed to have a keyboard on the target system to do the login, and then Synergy would launch after the user logged in.
Winter boots women
You'd be surprised. I don't know the inner-workings of most electronics stores, but I bet the markup on cables like Monster is extraordinarily high. And most consumers (and maybe some sales people) don't know the differences so the stores push expensive cables on to their customers.

It's not just HDMI and home theater cables too. Here is a 6' USB 2.0 cable from Best Buy for $24.99:

http://bit.ly/qlOXza

And here's basically the same cable at Monoprice for $1.30:

http://bit.ly/9yG9wP

Never underestimate good marketing + gullible customers.
The Years of Shame - 9/11
But keep in mind that parsers are designed to parse well-formed documents, not to parse non-well-formed documents pretending that they are well-formed. When you are typing in code, you are often in an invalid state that a formal grammar would reject. Hence, syntax highlighters try to guess what a piece of text is in based on as little state (previous lines of the document) as possible. Yes, you lose absolute accuracy, but the heuristics get a lot right, run extremely quickly, and are tolerant of errors.

As an example, nobody has a formal grammar that will parse Perl 5, but cperl-mode highlights (and indents, etc.) almost everything you throw at it correctly. In fact, I can't think of anything that doesn't highlight correctly!

(Also, CEDET is in core now, and it has a library for writing parsers. Never seems to work for me, though.)
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Bird Watching ethics
well, yes, i think the article as a whole is heading in that direction. all i meant was that it doesn't get into any details - it wasn't meant as criticism, i was just trying to explain that it stopped before that point.
I certainly would be. I've noticed similar problems in the foundations of mathematics and I'd be very interested in an alternate system (and a strong defense of how this new system overcomes the problems found in other systems).