skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It works on the latest Google Chrome and Firefox on the latest Ubuntu and looks nice. On my several years old computer both cores used around 20% to 30% while moving between the icons at a normal pace. Not critical and good performance, comparable to a few flash sites I checked for comparison.

One of those flash sites seemed to mess up the browser and the subsequent flash dock sites failed to load correctly. I don't see this with HTML 5 and CSS sites which achieve the same level of feature usability.
> That means you either move in the suits department

There's also the option of avoiding working all-together for companies that employ said "suits". Which, and I thank the Creator of the Universe for that, I managed to do for the last 10 years of my employee history.
Pretty-printing JSON and XML on Mac OSX
Ask HN: Dwolla vs Stripe
OK, I am getting ready to launch an idea where at different levels I would like to be able to accept $1, $5, $25, and $100 from payers. I would like to keep the monthly costs low initially in case I am about to learn more about the viability of my idea than how to build on it :-)

Given that, and given all transactions would be on the web, would you use Dwolla, Stripe, or something else (PayPal?) to accept the transactions?
Well, you're right.

Personally, as long as the tests worked, I'd just read the documentation string. (My gut reaction of happiness to see a doc string probably means that I should update my CV. 1/2 :-) )
Surface Detail, Iain M Banks
Lessons From Everywhere: Business Tips From Salsa Dancing
Teaching as Leadership,

http://www.teachingasleadership.org/

to learn more about effective teaching.
Hands On With The MB&F LM1: The Coolest Watch You’ll See Today
Left Side Abdominal Pain – Should I Be Worried?
"God does not play dice." Bohr replied, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do."
The source is from Bank for International Settlements, which has a nice interactive web app for doing your own analysis. http://stats.bis.org/ The data in this table is almost a year and a half old.
Funny, one of my complaints about OSX compared to Windows is the (IMO) lackluster implementation of keyboard shortcuts. Perhaps I just don't see it, if so please enlighten me, but OSX's key bindings feel random and inconsistent to me. To elaborate:

On Windows the Windows-key is the modifier key for global operating system functions, things like lock screen (win-l), explorer (win-e) and projector mode (win-p). Save for legacy bindings like CTRL-ESC, no global functions tie to the other modifier keys. The CTRL and ALT modifiers are therefore free to bind to functions of the currently active application. Some of these follow standard conventions, like ALT-F4, CTRL-S. Aside from these, any application is free to implement a keyboard scheme (and e.g. exploit symmetry) without clashing with the operating system.

Contrast this to OSX where there appears to be no designated key for global functions. A "naked" F11 triggers Expose, Ctrl-F2 puts focus in the menu bar, Cmd-space pops up Spotlight, leaving just Opt as unbound. Like in Windows, there are some conventions like CTRL-comma. There is no global key to open a Finder window, although Spotlight alleviates much of the pain.

With no standard key for global functions, the potential for key clashes is always there. Software that targets just OSX can avoid these, but cross-platform applications that originated elsewhere are quite often prohibited from using the same set of key bindings in every platform.

Finally, OSX lacks a key binding for the context menu (i.e. the equivalent of SHIFT-F10 or the dedicated key on Windows systems) and mnemonic keys (the underlined characters in menu items; OSX wants you to type the caption of the desired menu item). The lack of mnemonic keys invalidates all my muscle memory in Eclipse, I really miss them.
I said "think twice", not "refuse"...
pretty good app! the idea of liveblogging had been bouncing in my head for some time. good to see someone build it. great potential
Given the hierarchical nature of most companies, developers tend to be at the bottom rung. They've got project managers above them, then department managers above them. Almost by definition, anything a developer is working on is a "detail" (and can often be regarded as 'tiny' in comparison to the whole of a project or department). Doesn't matter if that one 'tiny' detail can actually close down the company or not, by the very nature of how projects and depts are structured, it's set up to be an uphill battle to get noticed and get heard from a dev point of view.
Likewise, I'm in Ohio and decided not to go. Big mistake.
Any day of the week I'll take reading a comment for a few seconds to trying to get inside the mind of the original coder which can take minutes or hours or days.
Yeah, which ones? I'm actually building a simple browser based text editor (think Writeroom/iaWriter/the other distraction-free editors) but in a browser with full-screen mode if I can figure that out.

I'm really interested in how he got the caret customized like a terminal caret or cursor, whatever you want to call it. I'm decently experienced with web programming but I'm e,harassed to say I don't know JavaScript which is a must these days.

This little project inspired me and let me know that what I'm thinking of is possible.
Hyperbole much? Having done UI work widt GTK and Swing, I can tell you that Flex (especially the newer spark component set) is much nicer.
Well, there is Facebook Messenger? It's pretty much the same as WhatsApp...
Light Laughing Cow Cheeses: Healthy or Not?
By virtue of its operating system?
They should refer to this as a feature of their platform, not a record type.
Extremely polar article. Not every project goes up in smoke because someone thought they were doing it wrong. In fact, quite a few go up in smoke because nobody listened to the nay-sayers.

You need experience to know the difference between a naysayer, and someone who's spotted an upcoming train wreck. You also have to know that there is a difference, and that it's hard to spot.
Last few bigger companies I was in, as a developer, I was involved in multiple meetings, often with different project managers for different projects. The one constant was me (and a couple other devs), being involved in meetings with marketing projects, financial reporting projects, upcoming IT purchasing decisions, operational IT issues, and more. Guess what? The developers involved in these meetings had a pretty solid view of the entire business. Yet almost any time a suggestion was made by a developer based on info from other project meetings, it was shot down or dismissed. (not 100% of the time, but close). I saw this behaviour at 3 companies of varying sizes (between 150 and 2000 employees).

Developer suggestions were generally based on a broader view of the business' overall needs (because of the breadth of discussions we were involved in) than other people at table had, which apparently can be threatening, regardless of how you present things politically.

I realize not everyone as a developer gets in those situations. Sometimes you're chained to one project and set of people for months on end. If you're not, you can have a much better view of the business needs, but that doesn't mean anyone will listen to you as a developer. You need to move out from being perceived as such - either by changing jobs to another company, or occasionally within a company. I've never had the latter option work out for me, but have seen a couple people do that successfully.
This explanation doesn't really get to the heart of it.

Fast Company has always been breathless and brainless. They always present "business" in such a way to make it seem like all you need to be a rich, successful, famous, sexy entrepreneur is "a great idea" and maybe some fun personality traits.

They aren't in the business of reporting, they're in the business of titillating, teasing, and making their reader think "that could be me!" - exactly, in other words, the stuff I've dubbed entreporn:

http://cubic-m.blogspot.com/2011/09/entreporn-dictionary-def...

"I've got a pizza here with extra sausage." "Ohhhh, we lost our purses, however can we pay?" -- I DELIVER PIZZAS… IT COULD BE ME!
How Google Inflates AdWords Bids
It seems like this is a provisioning trick, rather than an actual DNS record. None of this "ALIAS" records ends up in a zone, or in a DNS packet; rather it is some option on a web interface that presumably never comes near the actual DNS because it is provisioned as something else.

I'm curious, if you point such an ALIAS to a service that dynamically returns different IP addresses based on location; what this service is going to do.
every noob is a guru on programming.
Network Marketing System
A lot of people in this thread seem to be trying to pick apart Whatsapp's business model, but I can't seem to find anything to criticize.

1) Creating a new identity and communicating it to people is a chore. Whatsapp just uses your existing email and phone number.

2) Creating a new list of contacts is a chore. Whatsapp just uses your existing contact list of emails and phone numbers.

3) At least on iOS, signing in to a service and managing session timeouts is passé. With Whatsapp you install it, run it once, and the Push Notification API handles the persistent connection and receiving messages without ever having to launch the app again. Or without even making sure it's running.

4) iMessage and BBM do the same thing, but those are nonstarters in a multi platform world. Neither service is going to go multi platform any time soon if ever.

Whatsapp is the Dropbox of messaging. Everything else just looks outdated and clunky in comparison.

That said, I'm really disappointed in Google. Google is positioning GTalk as a competitive advantage for Android. There is no reason there shouldn't be official GTalk clients on every platform. GTalk on iOS would be more popular than all of Google's other iOS apps combined.
Einstein never got a job in the USA ...anywhere, from Caltech to the other coast. This is why his backers actually made an institute for him (IAS). Oddly, his presence was perhaps the only reason why Feynman wanted to be at Princeton (besides his ego, oc).

And yes, E. was a jerk to his family, at the very least: http://www.giagia.co.uk/2010/03/23/ada-lovelace-day-2010/
Just great - reading these comments got me to go install etherpad again, I noticed etherpad-lite, paused to install it as a private service on one of my servers, now looking at the client JQuery API for embedding in other web apps. Yes, reading HN can be a time sink!
Does anyone else have the feeling that Adobe was just waiting for Steve Jobs to die before they killed Flash, just to avoid giving him the pleasure? He would have been delighted that he won. ;)
Epic Answer: Why is e-commerce such a hot area in venture capital now?
An introduction to Probability by William Feller
Code(By Charles Petzold)
Feynman Lectures Vol1
Artificial Intelligence,A Modern Approach By Norvig
Blink By Malcolm Gladwell.
Concurrently.
This I don't understand.

Keeping the prisons full simply means arresting people for behavioral mopery instead of pharmaceutical mopery. As long as the public supports a high incarceration rate, the prison guards unions have a license to print money.

And police departments and officers should likewise dislike the War on Drugs. It takes low staffing levels to investigate whether people have crack in their pockets. Doing, you know, actual investigations of crimes requires considerably higher staffing, plus the toys are way cooler.
Sometimes these attitudes start cropping up in large numbers because you're a shitty boss, so I guess watch out for that too.
مشاهدة مباراة مصر والبرازيل بث مباشر اليوم 14/11/2011 من اقوي المباريات الوديه
If you fire the "nonbelievers", you punish those who speak truth to power. This is a recipe for managerial pet projects that end up unprofitable because any insufficiently enthusiastic employee input was punished.

That whole section reads like it was written by a cult leader or a "The Secret" author.
ALL LIVE SPORTS TV: New Orleans Saints vs Atlanta Falcons Live sopcast
> And it’s used in 250 countries on 750 networks.

There aren't 250 countries in the world. Must be a typo?
I am assuming a fictitious one, since his website (linked in HN profile) has swasticas in it... http://dl.dropbox.com/u/942437/TQ/index.png
To Type or Not to Type
Every time I read something like this, I feel a certain sense of regret for idolizing this man--alas, no one will ever say these kind of things about me.
So I'm going to try this next summer. I've always wanted to, but never heard of anyone who actually went through with it.

I've also heard of someone setting up a script that automatically sent out a "I have not read you email since it arrived 2 weeks ago...if you need an answer reply to this email and I'll get back to you".

And it's not like people who actually have something important to tell me can't give me a phone call.
Network Marketing Online Is Critical To Your Success
Numis Network Company Review
I'm impressed with this post for a few reasons. Usually we see people either wanting to tarnish Jobs' image because they're just not in his "camp" or because they're RMS lovers or some such nonsense. Then there are those who go out of their way to justify and excuse all of Jobs' shortcomings.

I'm a Jobs fanboy but I appreciated this so much. I'm not too far into the book but I do see the OP's point about Jobs acting like a spoiled brat at times and really being a misanthrope. That said, I see a lot of redeeming qualities in him as well.

The great thing a out this post was that I felt it approached the topic from a really fair and grounded perspective. I would agree that others shouldn't try to emulate Jobs because his behavior just isn't acceptable in a lot of cases. Jobs could get away with it because he was Jobs. He was just one of those people who were one of a kind. There can only be one Jobs and to emulate him would most likely doom your prospects for success. There are qualities and anecdotes that can inspire us, teach us, and that can be safely emulated in our own style but speaking to what the OP is talking about I'd agree that what he talks about are not the things to be emulating.

I'm just really impressed. It's rare to see such a grounded perspective when talking about someone like Steve Jobs. That name can really stir up a debate and cause some heated discussions and, to repeat myself, this post comes at it from a great, grounded perspective.
“Can you believe what they want us to do now? And of course we have no time to do it. I don’t get paid enough for this. The boss is clueless."

I hear this around the bullpen a lot lately. I don't think we have a group of victims whining around and complaining all day. These are competent senior engineers that want to do the best work possible given our resources and schedules.

Problem is, they're constantly interrupted by management asking for a sales demo for this customer, or a feature change for that customer. It's the lack of clarity and direction and project management that is frustrating the employees. And who owns that issue?
Why does it want almost full access to my Twitter account?
And this is why I don't believe it when people say that Apple's closed platforms will be the death of the technological creativity and curiosity at young ages that we were able to enjoy when we were younger.
I worked for Ed for ten of those. Jobs was very hands off at Pixar. I think he realized that Ed had things under control.
Yeah, in my limited experience, that's always been the case.
One point I haven't seen so far in this thread: even if manager types make more money than programmer types, that does not imply that management is a more lucrative career choice.

To make the point, let me turn the question around: if management is easier and pays more, why don't more programmers choose management?

The answer is that it's not necessarily easy to land a management job, whereas there's often work for programmers to do (though programmers may need to do consulting and travel around or something).

What happens is that business types get comfortable communicating with specific managers, and then they don't want to spend time building rapport with new managers. Great if you're that one manager, but not necessarily good for the 5 that are stuck trying to apply as a manager while unemployed.

(I'm sure it's more complex than this, but I believe the above describes a significant factor.)
You don't have to know anything about Feynman or Physics. The book assumes a basic knowledge of Mathematics and Science, and that's all you need to understand it.

But be warned - this isn't an easy book, and you can't skim through it. This is an extremely dense book; it builds on what it already has told you, which makes sense because "Observe, Reason, Experiment" is how you do science. To reason/deduce, you need to have a base and then you take it from there. When it introduces concepts that can't be deduced, it tells you that. Also, it clearly says analysis/logic alone isn't a killall - sometimes you just go the numerical method road(which is somehow similar to brute-force algorithm most of the times), and it gives you results which analysis alone can't.

I am reading it a very slow pace, because the book is packed with information with no superfluous content, and many a times I have to stop to think about what it's telling me.

I would recommend you read the first chapter "Atoms in motion" first. Well, I already knew everything is made of atoms(duh), but still, it presented things to me in a very engaging way.

Some gists to give you a preview:

Everything is made of atoms; water is made of molecules which are atoms in a bond; molecules are held together by mutual attraction; molecules always jiggle; the jiggle is represented as heat; you heat water - you increase the jiggling; increased jiggling loosens the mutual molecular attraction and some molecules escape, and you get steam.

And molecules which escape are the ones which are jiggling badly; because the ones which aren't jiggling hard won't be breaking the mutual attraction; and when high energy molecules escaped, the net energy of the system is lower.

Oh, and now you know why you feel cold when your sweat evaporates.
Spot on the "post-emotional” generation : no anger, no edge, no ego.

Is the entrepreneurial model so attractive that everything that may set you apart has to be shaved, to avoid displeasing anyone?

To me, hating something is at least as important as loving something else.

I'll place the first brick here and proudly declare that I hate organic food and the whole "bio" movement, since it is not scalable and mostly used for class signaling (ala overcomingbias)
Should a team write for the least common denominator? And if so, exactly how compressed should they make the code? I think the question may be unanswerable.

I found this point quite interesting. It clearly matters whether the question has an answer and I suspect there's a way to determine that.

If we buy into the whole "good programmers are 10x more productive than average programmers", then we can build a mathematical model of team productivity. We have X number of great programmers, Y number of average programmers, and Z number of bad programmers, each of whose productivities are mathematically (in this case, linearly) related. At this point the question becomes an operations research problem which ought to have a clear answer, which might be different depending on your team's configuration. (Question: Are there published, peer-reviewed papers measuring programmer productivity in this manner?)

Suppose we don't believe we can actually reasonably compare one person's productivity to another. It then would seem reasonable to try to avoid the question altogether. The issue arises from different skill levels on a particular team, so if you could somehow guarantee people will have the same skill level (at least as it pertains to the specific project) then you no longer need to worry about how to write your code. I think this is what things like pair programming are trying to address - creating a team that is somehow aware of their average skill level and writes code in the appropriate style.

This would also explain the general frustration people have with pair programming - if you haven't internalized the team's style, you're likely to either be either way over your head or having to slow yourself down and teach instead of getting as much done as possible.
John Nash - Autobiography
The beautiful thing about email is that the 'features' have stayed the same - today's email can do essentially the same stuff that email ten years ago could - and yet it has evolved as a method of communication beyond its original uses.

The unfortunate thing about email is exactly that - it has evolved beyond its original uses. Not too long ago, paper communication was a must for any important document. Now, most banks encourage customers to use online banking for their statements - which, like many important online activity, is authenticated by email.

I don't think there's a person around who doesn't receive more emails today than they did a decade ago - many even by an order of magnitude. As OP shows, there are ways to adapt email organically, without changing the underlying protocol or standard. These sorts of adaptations are only going to be come more necessary as time passes and the volume (and type!) of email that people receive grows.
I'm not a US citizen, but I'm looking forward to apply for internships in the US next Spring.

What are in your opinion the skills that an intern must have to get a position? It is normal in the US to consider foreigners for an intern position?
So ultimately, all the Euro did was reduce German buying power and force Germans to work more.

ADBOC[0].It seems to me that it actually works out more like redistributive taxation than one might naively think from what you wrote. An artificially cheap currency means more manufacturing jobs at static wages more than the same number of people working more hours. It has very approximately similar effects to progressive taxation, or more accurately it acts as a subsidy to the German manufacturing sector.

I don't know (but doubt) if the German people would have signed up for this, but the possibility is stronger given that Germany is in the extremely unusual situation, for a developed country, of having a larger manufacturing sector than a services sector.

I don't think I actually disagree with you on any point.

[0]Agree denotationally but object conotationally
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/140...

- quite good so far (1/2 way through)

A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster

http://www.amazon.com/Room-View-Bantam-Classics/dp/055321323...

- not sure what I think of it yet (about 1/2 way through). Found some of the writing a bit opaque, where I'm not sure what he's trying to say.
As a parent of a 1 year old perhaps I should consider bailing on his "speaking to humans" effort and get him focused on "speaking to computers"! :)
> Let's remove all stereotypes

Being of African descent is not a stereotype, it's an ethnicity. It would be a stereotype to call black people "basketball-playing Americans," or "urban-poor Americans." Suggesting that we all just call "them" "American" is insulting -- there is an important and distinct cultural identity shared by many African-Americans that they wish to continue identifying with, at least in part.

I'm Indian-American, and if you told me to just call myself American, I would feel a) that you consider yourself to be in possession/authority over the definition of what it means to be American, and b) you had some strange interest in me behaving exactly like you, instead of expressing cultural differences.

You are offering a false dichotomy -- either be American or be African-American, but not both. Try this instead: how about you be alright with African-Americans as both African and American, and not give so much of a shit about which cultures other Americans choose to embrace?