skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When the media first took note of Gen Xers during the early '90s recession, we were "lazy." Then during the dot-com boom we were ambitious. Funny how easy it is for a generation hitting a workforce when there aren't jobs available to look lazy, or for a generation hitting their late 20s/early 30s during a boom to look like sharp business types.
I totally disagree with this. What the quote means to me, is that the customer's imagination (for lack of a better world) is so limited, that their problems are sandbox by the context of their understanding.

Something that doesn't shit all over their yard might actually be more important than speed, but they wouldn't even begin to think of asking that because it's not a possibility in their world.

What do you want in the next Blackberry? "real touch" and "real browser" were pretty far outside the box when the iPod touch launched..people weren't asking for it because they didn't know they wanted it (or that it was possible).
Please not pie charts!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart#Use.2C_effectiveness_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Piecharts.svg
Ha ha, those darn baby boomers, refusing to give up their jobs like their parents did! The fact that their parents' retirement was in defined-benefit pensions whereas the baby boomers' retirement is in 401ks that dropped hugely in value just as they were planning to retire has nothing to do with this, obviously.
An interesting aspect is if Google's treatment of these links incentivizes publishers to add them, then browsers (or browser extensions) will also be able to use them to defeat the purpose of pagination in the first place, e.g. by having something like Readability slurp all the pages into a view-all page.
Edit: https://tinyproj.com
Microsoft bends over backward for ummm backwards compatibility.

With some work, old DOS and early Windows games _still run_ on a modern OS.

Who else does that?
the interest tax deduction costs exactly ZERO. in what bizarro world does NOT taxing the citizens equate to a "cost"?
In addition, from what I know, Joyent has hired many of the original contributors to solaris and opensolaris (and now SmartOS).
Cool project. I have a similar idea but one that is based on hours, not cash.
A fair point, but then, middling to bad user reviews don't seem to have slowed down mass-market juggernauts like Dan Brown and James Patterson. In theory, user reviews help keep a check on absolute fast foodization. But in praxis, they haven't really mattered all that much. Though I suspect they will matter a lot more a few years from now, when we'll be seeing more and more authors get their starts in self-publishing. (And right now, they seem to matter more at the extremes than in the middle: people pay attention to one-star reviews and five-star reviews, but the muddy middle doesn't seem to register as easily).

As for the treshold of success: agreed on most counts. The costs of entry and the barriers to making a successful living have been lowered. But the tricky part is that authors will increasingly bear the burdens for their own publicity, marketing, etc. Successful authors of the future will probably have a lot in common with successful entrepreneurs in the app market.
Per a prior post, a book is only worth what it costs used. Amazon lists used books titled "Applied Thermodynamics" starting at $0.51. If you're one who realizes education is nigh unto free (personal review & certification being the expensive bit), such textbooks are only worth a buck.

Note that that the textbook market is skewed to artificially favor expensive titles per school requirements and publisher racketeering. Considering it is AFAIK a fairly settled topic, at least in an educational setting, without such price-fixing the introduction of yet another textbook on Applied Thermodynamics would command a far lower price than the typical $50-$150.

Yes, the simplified lead premise is a strawman. So is saying selling a textbook dirt cheap is idiotic. Both are used as a lead-in to a valid detailed discussion of what does constitute reasonable pricing.
Is a MMO == MMORPG? Cool idea if NASA where to create one.

Think of games as explorations of the idea space...
Ford Explorers (and possibly other) have adaptive (automated) cruise control. It's not really scary at all because it measures the distance between your car and the car in front of you, and determines the proper speed to drive. It's no different than you performing that calculation in your head and making the correct adjustment to the gas peddle.
Great, this will just encourage pagination in online articles.
From the article mentioned in the post:
http://januarymagazine.com/features/minmicrochipexc.html

'He did not think that all these companies would succeed -- he filed his paperwork for several of them in shoe boxes that he kept in his closet -- but he strongly believed that by investing, he was doing his part, as he put it, to "restock the stream I've fished from."'
Liked it, put up a 'Moved to G+' image on FB and stopped reading there.

Then Google decided that they are in charge of the name policy and my account was blocked ever since. G+ as a concept was wounded.

Then Google thought it's a good idea to give me a popup saying 'You know what? Your account is blocked, you cannot read the content here anymore. Appeal and bend over or - hey - you can take your data with you when you go out of the door. We won't stop you'. Every link to a G+ post was inaccessible. It died in my world.

They fixed that now (so now I get a popup saying 'You're still not part of this community. Really, you can leave us if you want' - but I can close it and read the posts), but I don't care anymore. I didn't bother to delete my profile completely yet, but I haven't used it forever now and I'm missing nothing at all.

For my tiny micro cosmos (not representative, my own view) they failed hard to keep the enthusiasts. Opening my profile brings the cliche 'wait for the tumbling weed' feeling up in me.
Windows 8 on a laptop: first look
Ask HN: Online or Free Tools for Software Planning and Management?
Hello HN ! Im about to start a new Project at work, and we're looking for new tools for planning, management and sketching. So far we have Pencil for sketching and Xplanner for management.
Would be great to hear what HN community is using!
Thank you for your responses and help.
I'm using the Eclipse color theme plugin[1]. Changing the color theme from the default white to Zenburn made writing code for several hours easier on my eyes.

[1] http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/eclipse-color-theme
Hello nielk and welcome to the software industry.

Microsoft (like any other major software vendor) has popular products and not so popular products. The popular ones survive, the unpopular ones don't die off, they end up still being supported just not in such a way.

See MSFT's data access libaries, you ado, ado.net, entity framework, linq to sql and zeus knows what else now.

You also have COM+. While it's an overcomplicated mess, and not as popular as it once was, it's still supported.
Making $10 of ad revenue is actually very good for a small blog. People don't just do these things to become millionaires but for a mix of recognition and for fun. Doing things for fun is still very prolific...
This guy is seriously misunderstanding the long tail. First of all the long tail is an opportunity, not something that "dies" (his words). It's an opportunity for authors because what authors have today is the opportunity to self publish and instantly receive global distribution and in the case of say Amazon sit on a store shelf that has millions of visitors a day. On top of that, they take 70% of the books retail price.

So all this and he's going to cry about the price point dropping?

For the record my book buying rate has probably gone up 10x since Kindle, partly due to price partly due to convenience.
I work in the Boston area. I said yes to my first job's non-compete. In each job after that (I'm on my third) I have said no. I've negotiated it as part of my employment.

First job was a big company; second two have been with smaller firms. If an employer wants you I think refusing to sign one is unlikely to get in the way.

I've also, without a lawyers help, modified my employment agreement for my current and last job. I've hired a number of folks over the years and not had them negotiate these types of things.

Always negotiate; you can get a lot of what you need/want.
Re: "It just removes any divine purpose(s) in the process of removing God."

And it removes any right on the part of the divine to reveal itself.
Firmware Update Adds Lion Internet Recovery to MacBook Pro
Mac mini Firmware Update Improves Lion Internet Recovery Support
“Don’t be dependent on anything or anyone,” Neu says. “It’s safest to plan as if the government isn’t going to take care of me, companies aren’t going to take care of me.”

Doesn't appear the boomer generation figured this out. As a Gen X, I think and hope I figured this out early enough.
No, you can also have an MMOFPS or just about any other game type. The reason why MMORPG's are so popular is they are relativly easy to create and adictive.
None of the changes here were due to a/b testing. This is just the initial design process + internal iteration.
Use 'height' (and maybe blocks instead of rocks, because then it's clearer they stack).
I have to say I'm not really a fan of wordpress either. Granted I am not a power user, in fact my knowledge of wordpress is crap, but that's partly because it's always taken me so damn long to figure out how to do anything.

Yes there are millions of plugins, and millions of themes and if you really now what you're doing it's a powerful CMS system that can look/feel how you like. But I've always found doing simple things to be fiddly (more often than not I've had to resort to hacking php), page response times are slow and adding your own themes requires expertise. Which you got to do otherwise it just looks like a theme, as polished as it might be.

What I really want to do is just write my own html from scratch. However then you gotta use some kind of webapp framework to handle page components, provide templating etc which has it's own overhead of course.
Apple Files UK Patent Infringement Suit Against Samsung
Do people generally like Jira and/or Confluence? I know they are popular in the enterprise. However, I've used them, and I consider them pretty horrible. Not sure if I'm just the odd man out on this though.
5 Reasons Windows 8 Tablets Might Be Huge
Atlassian as a company rocks (the code behind some of the products less so but I digress). The reality is that they do have sales people, in fact a lot of them.

It's just that they are not Atlassian employees but are Atlassian partners employees. Atlassian has a massive partner/reseller network these days
That was just for internal fun. I didn't know it would ever make it outside our walls ;)
It's not as if lack of support stopped pagination. I'd prefer better search.
For better or worse, flash is pretty much alive. Apple may need to backtrack on that if the competition uses it to erode their market share and they don't manage to "kill flash" in time for it to be a non-factor.

Right now flash penetration continues to be massive.
Ask HN: What Is The Best Day To Launch? Does It Even Matter?
When it comes to launch your startup or product/site etc do you consider the day you launch it?

Afterall, if you're looking to get covered by TechCrunch, GigaOm and get the most views out of it then... Would you avoid launching on a weekend when they hardly post or Would you launch on the weekend considering they hardly post (meaning they'd more likely cover you) but probably a lower % will see it?

Having said all that, does it even matter?
Review Websites - Best Affiliate Marketing Tool Available
Mike Arrington Introduces Us To the "First F*ucking Amendement"
You're hurting my elbow
Sounds like this technique can be imperfectly implemented without any new technology.

Just encourage people to use defensive behavior when they see a jam up ahead, and optimistic behavior as they leave the jam.

Sure, that's limited to people's line of sight (in the case of approaching the jam), but it's better than nothing.

Interestingly, I've been assuming both optimal behaviors intuitively. When I see a jam up ahead, I slow down well ahead of time, hoping that by slowing now, I'll avoid a full stop up ahead; similarly, as soon as I get out of the jam, I speed up quickly. Seems like the natural thing to do after a traffic delay.
严介和书友会
Jason Scott (of Get Lamp) wants to make 6502, Tape, and Arcade documentaries
Non-competes are incredibly unfair on workers. Companies already have a way of stopping their trade secrets from walking out the door - make the employee's life better than what they would have working for the competitor.

Instead of that, what do we see? Employers that grudgingly give tiny pay rises to loyal employees that are essential cogs to their operations. I can't feel terribly sorry for the company when the employee decides that their career would be better served working for the competitor.
VsVim is a free open source Visual Studio plugin that provides decent Vim bindings:
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3-...

It's not perfect, but in my opinion it is certainly the best free option available. I have never used ViEmu, so I can't compare it to that.
Learn How to Say 'How are You?' in French, German, Italian & Spanish
I'm surprised there's no attempt to reconcile the notions of: secrecy, competitive advantages and the corporate prime directive (to profit), with information sharing like in the Semi Conductor Fab example.

I'm definitely not coming down on the other side of "pay-it-forward" and Steve seems to invoke the "rising tide lifts all boats" idea with the Finland dinner story, but surely there's a moral imperative not to spill the company beans.
> "What you're arguing is that since we're materially better off than the Middle Ages"

No -- what he's arguing is that we're materially better off than the periods of time in which you and the article are trying to compare to. It's dishonest to make a comparison to some decades ago and then complain when others make comparison to those same time periods.

The word "poor" does have real meaning -- but its meaning is relative. 1959 poor and 2009 poor are not the same thing. The measures used to define poverty (and inflation) are not absolute, objective, or static, despite what wikipedia claims.
In my experience, if the book isn't a blockbuster with a huge marketing budget, ratings make or break it. If someone searches for a book on amazon, and finds a "maybe," they look at reviews. If the reviews are consistently good, they buy. If there are bad ratings, they don't.

I've had books go from selling consistently to selling almost nbothing just from one or two negative reviews.
Also see http://rmurphey.com/blog/2011/07/25/switching-to-octopress

Have to say, i also think Jekyll is a really nice compromise. Not something you could recommend to a client though...
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
What's the penalty for lying to Dropbox with useless email information?
They sure are getting a crapload of publicity out of this. I much prefer them talking about it early than to late. If it's really bad ideas at least they can adjust before finalizing win8.
Who can I trust to send my email?
Windows Server 8 plays catch-up with VMware and Unix
I would say that the syscalls issue was gone as of Solaris 9 and Solaris 10 was very fast. The VM subsystem in Solaris is superior, and memory allocation using zones is excellent. Basically a Solaris zone is similar to an OpenVZ container.

Under load and under memory pressure, Solaris is as good as or better than Linux.

Despite all this, I am in the process of moving remaining Solaris systems to OpenVZ-based containers due to factors other than technical excellence and more to do with familiarity (clients are just more familiar with Linux than Solaris, though 90% of the shell etc. is the same).
Panamal Canal and Software
If you want to play with a simple traffic flow cellular automaton, check out this quick C++ gist: https://gist.github.com/1199391

More discussion at reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/k6ked/can_you_guess_wh...
There's a good mix of iterative changes and structural changes. I think the structural ones (that don't deal with aesthetics) are the most interesting.

One trick I like to do is stand a few feet back from the monitor/LCD, and try to, in 3-5 seconds, figure out what I'm looking at. I think its a good trick because you'll realize where your eyes go to first (smaller text/details usually gets blurry), and the time interval will tell you what you're communicating clearly.

When you compare the first version in the video with the last using this trick, there's a huge difference.

The 2009 version has an overwhelming amount of detail, with an ambiguous "Change your Business"/"Change the way you work" title. A lot of information is crammed in the first frame (company history, latest news, etc). The 2011 version is remarkably clearer: The two large texts explain the product offerings and that they are kind of a big deal (social proof) - both keys to selling. The rest of the information is prioritized descendingly. "Style" (what people most typical mean when they say design) has been minimized.

Another company's website that is great with this (standing back/first thing that pops in your head) is, suprise, surpise... apple.com
My hunch is that ultimately, ceding control of the car to an automated system is going to produce better results, at least when driving on major "pipeline" roads. The biggest source of traffic jams isn't necessarily the pure density of cars, but the inefficiency of the individual driver. If each person takes that extra second to accelerate, that gums up the whole works (in NYC we are trained to be more efficient - taxis will honk at us if we take more than .05 seconds ;)

Imagine this: You enter a major arterial roadway -- I-95 or Route 80 and you program your destination -- an exit #, a rest area, etc. Your car joins the pipeline, syncs up with all the other cars on the road, accelerates to a (fast) cruising speed (100+ mph), and you sit back and enjoy the ride. No lane-changing, no "human" failures (like slowing down just because the sun changes direction) - and when it comes time to arrive at your waypoint, the system safely gets you out of the flow and into a "manual" lane. Then you take over from there.

Could be awesome...
I disagree that it marks someone who might be trouble. If you are respectful and explain yourself the negotiating employment terms can be a very positive, but stressful, experience.

I agree it can be hard in the first job (I didn't do it then), but I don't think it gets you labeled as a trouble maker. It actually could get you labeled as a thoughtful and aggressive person. This can actually help quite a bit for your relationship with the new company.

Just be sure you are negotiating with your new boss and NOT HR. Make it light and playful if you can. Explain yourself as best you can. Read up on negotiation (there are a number of great books on it) so that you don't do it in a way that is bad for the relationship.
Understanding the File System and Structure in Linux
In that case, you may look into Octopress (mentioned in the post): http://octopress.org/
Short Sales Money Maker
Loggly's site and app are on two completely different stacks. The app is what you log into, and most of it sits behind authentication. I'm speculating here, but if we were to do some type of semi-automated documentation, it would PROBABLY sit behind authentication as well, as it would live in the app side of the house. Not because we wanted to 'track' someone. We can do that when you write a program and then test it! :P

I'm certainly not speaking for Dropbox here, but my point is that there do exist reasons why a company might want you to log in to see documentation. Maybe you are on a beta trial of V3.0 of the APIs, and need to see alternate docs, or some of the examples require you to have a hash that is used in examples, or...etc.

Seems to me you are being a bit pedantic. I doubt seriously that Dropbox is going to violate your privacy.
72 hours later... #gaming #startup #metrics #arpu
Mindfulness Practice: 10 Minutes of Sound
But 401Ks were sold as "you taking care of yourself" because "you" controlled your retirement, not some pension fund. What's your alternative for retirement savings? The mattress?
According to my own calculations very few of the baby boomers will retire. Most of us spent our lives fighting a losing war, the inflation of the eighties, the rising housing prices. Schooling for the kids from being a very small amount of a family's life to eating a major portion of one's work efforts. Personally add one wrong move where I lost all my capital and still fighting to recover.

Most of us are still supporting our kids as they are the kids of the recessions or helping them with capital for their start-up and hey we don't want to rust in the port like an old ship. Many other of us have build Companies where these X's are currently employed.
Masque Visage
Two reasons imo:

1. MS advances their product at a semi-decent rate so people just wait for MS to bring out a solution. I don't mean this as a dig, it just seems MS is more plugged into emerging trends in programming. Asp.net MVC came out within a year of Rails and Django becoming popular and lots of MVC frameworks appearing for PHP. I also had just seriously started playing with NHibernate when Linq2Sql and the Entity framework came out. Same with lambdas and all that goodness. They seem to bring stuff out just as people are saying 'hey, this is a really good idea'. I don't see that happening in Java. They get it wrong sometimes, like their over engineered SOAP solution which personally I think contributed to its downfall. Also WCF and WF are both pretty shitty.

2. I think a lot of the other tools is because Java came out first so some of these problems were were already solved when it came to .Net, so we got nant, etc. I personally have never worked on a project where something like Maven seemed worth it comapred to some slight customisations to MSBuild which you can do in VS, so can't comment on that.
Mr. Ford might not have actually said that.

http://www.foolproof.co.uk/three-old-chestnuts-cracked/
http://www.quora.com/Quotations/Did-Henry-Ford-actually-say-...
I can't agree more with the negotiate bit. I met someone that ended up sighing a fairly draconian non-compete that said they would pay his old salary for as long as they wanted to keep it in force. It was something along the lines of they got to make that choice at the time of his departure.
Doesn't matter. It's not like the fate of your entire startup rests on picking the right launch date. Also, I think we all understand that there is no such thing as a overnight success, that generally you'll have to work hard for years before things pay off.
I use and manage our JIRA instance in a small tech group inside a large non-profit. Probably only ever had 10 users. I love it, and our team has grown to be more efficient as a result of its use.

Now, Confluence? Not a big fan. Tried it, ditched it.
No. Not in the least bit.

Emacs is an interactive Lisp interpreter. Once you realize that you can change function and variable bindings on the fly, you can do anything.

Vim is "merely" an editor with an acceptable scripting language and incredible keyboard shortcuts. The shortcuts have survived for 40 years due to their ease of use and intuitive nature.

The only similarities between Vim and Emacs are their ages and the fantastic communities surrounding each of them.
Figured it had to be something like that if every checked out version was being displayed, and it was on the screen for such a short amount of time.
I don't think this will make any dent in the use or expansion of pagination. Pagination in order to increase ad impressions have already done the most damage.