skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Really? I found exactly the opposite. I moved from white backgrounds to a dark theme (emacs color-theme's "gnome2", basically #f5deb3 on #2f4f4f, not unlike zenburn) a year ago and found my eyes were much more relaxed after a bunch of coding.

I actually find looking at white-backgrounded web sites (like HN) to be fatiguing these days.
Hadoop's creator discusses how the technology is making its presence felt
Rails: rails vs ./script/rails
SMS is only effective because there are costs associated with it. As soon as I start getting SMS spam I will disable it.
Engineering and UX can go hand in hand. What clashes is User-Centred UX and (sometimes) business objectives.
When engineers and UX people work together, it is bliss as both provide a piece of the puzzle, can't see why one person can't do both.
When people talk about 'interface design', it seems they rarely mean anything more than where on the page to place the navigation... The crux being that we all assume a set of priors, and everyone asks "how do we make doing this easier?" instead of the more fundamental "what does the user want done?" I don't think that skill is necessarily related to other forms of design -- it's just a case of taking a step back.
Observations on the Immunization Controversy
As a note - I've known this Dr for a good # of years. He's part of a dying breed of general family practitioners and sensible doctors that you don't see much anymore.
You're thinking at the wrong level. The password that encrypts a user's credit card data is almost certainly not the password a customer logs in with. It's some highly controlled password that only some privileged authentication server knows.

The goal is to reduce the attack surface, and prevent incidental discovery of data. For example, I could set up a server that manages high security passwords and only grant access to a select few trusted people. I have to carefully audit how that server gets used, and who can use it, but I can let any old DBA mess around with all my encrypted data. I can throw it on any old server, I could outsource it to some cloud hosting company, it doesn't matter. That's a huge win in some industries. The only thing I need to trust now are the servers with credentials and the CryptDB software itself, I don't need to care about the data itself.
Wrangl: debate made easy
New Qt Based Desktop Environment
I use both, I think it came out of not being able to edit eclipse's themes easily. So static languages I code in light themes and dynamic I go to the dark side. I've converting to one or the other but I think it helps with the mental mode switching, light theme ok I'm in static land.
Most startups aren't looking for, and shouldn't be looking for, top caliber design. It costs too much and usually provides no measurable value for an immature product.
Methods of Modern Farming
does anyone know of a simple (preferably one click) way to get eclipse or intellij idea to work with a dark theme (on linux/kde)? i use a dark kde theme and it causes chaos in eclipse (or at least used to when i last tried - black text on dark backgrounds etc), while intellij idea at least works, but uses a light theme. i'd love an ide for java/python that was easy to configure dark (yes, i have emacs working fine white on black, but that's not what i am looking for).

[edit: i just installed eclipse 3.7.1 and it picks up the general theme correctly, but the editors have dark text on dark backgrounds and i don't see any simple way to change that without changing each font setting in turn.]
> And the availability of some very nice applications was a
> large driver of the OS X market share increase from 2% to
> 15%

I doubt it very much. I'd say people came to OS X by discovering other Apple products first (iPod and iPhone).

Also, developers who would be most pissed of by this most likely are Android developers already.
Totally the opposite for me. In the dark days of coding on Windows, I used to invert the entire screen's gamma ramp just to have white text on dark background. I found that switching back to black on white caused my eyes to squint due to the excessive brightness.

I've often wondered why computers in general still persist with black text on a white background. I'm convinced in 50 years time there will be legions of people with eye problems that could have been avoided by just inverting colours on active displays.

For this reason I only like ePubs too as you can invert the colours easily when reading on a tablet.
There are 3 publications listed... not that I read them...
Webmonkey.
Sir, you are mistaken: We are in the market for a Desingineerketertesteraccountant.

(Is this how German got started?)
You mean pixel-pushing design or product design? And aren't majority of Engineers really not just programmers?

I know what you mean and it is easy to pick issues, just wanted to state these differences.
What's the difference with Pagoda Box and PHP/AppFog or using PHP on Heroku?
Puruze Social Bookmarking
Manage and maintain custom bookmarks better than any web browser. Get involved and submit your favourite sites today.
I think the idea is that a users data is encrypted with their password, or a key derived from it. So the key doesn't really sit anywhere that the admin can access it, it only exists in memory for a short period of time when the user enters it into the website, and the web app is decrypting the data using it.

This doesn't just defend the data from unscrupulous sysadmins, it also defends data from hackers who manage to gain access and run a mysqldump.
Banish the thought, but for a moment, I thought of dwarves.
Ask HN: gui front-end for ssh-keygen app?
Are there any applications which provide a GUI interface automating the process of setting up SSH key access to a remote server? I wrote up a blog post about this [1], but then I realized that something like this probably already exists, and I just don't know about it. Anyone familiar with something like this?

[1] http://shadyacres.tumblr.com/post/14513004460/application-request-simplified-ssh-key-generator
He still runs 2 miles a day. He will be around until he's 150 I'm sure. I read in his most recent newsletter that his updated bibliography is 150 books.
I think buried in your statement is the idea that democracy is inherently better, an end in itself. I strongly dispute this: I think that it's more important to get to the best answer, than to follow the herd, whatever direction it might go in.

In your second link, it notes two problems. First, it says that Crowds tend to work best when there is a correct answer to the question being posed, such as a question about geography or mathematics. I submit that this is quite the opposite of political questions.

But more importantly, it also discusses one of the big problems of "Wisdom of the crowd", although it couches it as an advantage. The effect is enhanced through communication between individuals, as would (and should) be the case in any political question. To this I reply with two words: "witch hunt".

History is replete with examples wherein the common, accepted ideas of society have stood in the way of progress -- I don't think I even need to recite any. And the whole point of the United States is to protect the minority, or even the one, against the will of a strong majority. So I don't think it's wise to strengthen further the crowd-based aspect of our political system.
Big-headed?
I used this command to get the debugger working on 1.9.3-p0.

bash < <(curl -L https://raw.github.com/gist/1333785)
Managing Memory on iOS
I have about 14 years into my career as a web guy who can code (front to back), design killer UI and create, execute and grow business strategy.

What that being set! "being" a generalist is not for everyone.

There are some things to note:

1. Keeping up with all three is a LOT of work. Understanding the latest javascript libraries, deployment tech, UI tools and successful business models take a ton of time. I roughly spend 15-30 hrs a week trying new things our, designing or running spreadsheets not to mention the meetups and whatnot.

2. Every startup is looking for this person because they can enable so many parts of the success equation in one, self-contained shot. They add more value per square inch at critical phases of business growth that is a considerable asset. As a startup grows, this is personality turns into an optimal product lead, who can drive major decisions and participate in meaningful discussions with teams, investors and press.

3. Large corporations are not tuned to need or understand your services, unless you are accomplished in mid- to senior-level management positions.

4. You can visualize and eval business ideas quickly, then be able to communicate them to specialists with ease. I can't tell you the number of times being able to verbalized the need for a linked list or onHover whatever has made communcation easier with people who I bring to help me execute. This makes you a better implementer who is respected by counterparts and team members. Business folk quickly grasp CLV and burn margins when deciding to invest or advise.

4. You don't necessarily become an expert in everything. In fact, it's near impossible. I've had to focus of two or three major activities and fine tune my skills. This could mean I will be specializing in the future.

5. You don't get rest. The world is moving quickly, technology even faster. There are millions of able and hungry people willing to execute on their great ideas every single day. That means I have to keep moving or lose my flow. I can probably point to 7 or so ideas that were launched in the time I was evaluating the opportunity with 3 that have gone onto real growth.
I think you meant "deingineerketersysadmin." Accounting and janitorial skills always a definite plus.
Kickstarted: How one company is revolutionizing product development
I found it was really slow when assets were in debug. I generated a new rails app and copied the config from there and then merged in the settings from the old project I needed and it was super fast.
Don't see a problem with becoming a generalizing specialist that sees the whole picture from many facets - from marketing, business, coding, design (product, pixel...).
A startup needs people being willing to fill these roles and if a said venture is successful (and becomes a business), you can afford specialists, until then, I would expect people to have many roles.
Consider conferences like your office. Sure you can hit on a woman, free speech is a right, but you're also a dick for doing so, and should be ejected from the conference, or the office when your employer finds out.
Yes. Three detailed papers in PDF format. The front page needs a summary of what it actually is though, and the README file provides that information quickly and efficiently, whilst the website doesn't.
Drone Hacking Claims: A Little Truthful or Bold Lies?
I switched to vim and immediately found a vim colorscheme for my beloved Monokai: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2340
You might think that, but not everyone is interested in the business side of things.
Is this what you are looking for?

https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme
I remember reading your post some time ago, it really helped me creating a better view of this solution and is in fact our preferred method thanks to it. I still haven't implemented it for real and it would be great, if not much to ask you, if you could elaborate the impact of these changes in a post update? What do you think?
I switch to light on dark depending on ambient conditions, my study is really gloomy and I work at night, so a bright screen blinds me.

On OSX10.4 at least I use the accessibility switch for this - sadly the anti aliasing looks worse with a dark background.
Are you referring to the sidebar? You can apply colours to that as well, it's just that the built in themes dont have them defined yet for some reason. At least the default one doesn't anyway.
I think I must fit into some super set of this somewhere.

My day job is as a physical product design engineer for a consultancy and have a degree in Industrial Design. So I would do the mechanical and aesthetic design of a product including Injection Moulding, Sheet metal, machining ect. which is not to dissimilar to someone doing the user interface and back-end of the software/web product.

What makes me a little different is that I spend my evenings doing web development and although I have never done it "professionally" I think I am probably allot better than most at the front end development using html, css and javascript (I do like a dash of coffee script). I also have a fair bit of experience with Python on the back end mostly using Django but have also more recently been experimenting with Gevent and web-sockets to do some interesting live updating stuff.

So I suppose I'm a bit of an odd ball, I can't work out how to get both the physical product design and all my interest in web development (front and back end) into one job. I think I will just have to invent a job for myself that does...

EDIT:
I guess I'm a web-mech-prod-desingineer...
I love Iconfinder!
Excellent points. I never bothered to expand my thoughts beyond "why" it is broken mostly because I'm not American and don't necessarily have a say in the matter.
Probably historical, as CRTs are black by default and you could burn in a solid white background.
I put all my web 2.0 data mines into the exploding clouds so I don't have to worry about synergize my glass envelopes to keep up with the Outranet-based-revolution.
Many of the techniques can be done at application level. A great example of this that most of us already use in the database is the hashed password.

Wayner's translucent databases book is one of those classic DB works that should be on every dev's bookshelf.

I'm not affiliated with Peter Wayner at all but I've added a separate story to get the word out about his work:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3373947

But to see what is really unique about CryptDB see this paper:

http://people.csail.mit.edu/nickolai/papers/raluca-cryptdb.p...

We already have a way of checking equality and indexing data safely using digests.

They have come up with similar techniques for ordering encrypted data, performing calculations on encrypted data and doing full text search on encrypted data.

These are all quite amazingly useful to me even though there are definite drawbacks. Eg. an encrypted value that you want to provide calculations on is stored in a 2048 field. But there are definitely great applications for it where it would be worth it.

I am still trying to understand what benefit their DET and JOIN constructs have over just using say a sha256 digest. But I have only skimmed the paper so far.

It would be interesting to see if this can be setup on an ec2 instance proxying towards an RDS instance. I don't from the outset see why not.
I can't read a white background unless I'm in a very bright room. Off whites are better for me. But personally I prefer light on dark. But it's a personal thing.

I rue the day the browser default background colour changed from being light grey to white.
I love your idea. The way I see it in my head is a somple dribbble-like site where users can post these "everyday" designs. Can't wait to see this live!

Cheers,
Shahed
> The backend was failing due to getting slammed

The original description was "server is crashing without leaving a trace", which sounds like an obscure bug to me -- certainly of the kind described in the article I linked to. It's as related as it can be given the info they gave when they originally posted their query.
You're just using the word "value" in a different way. I meant "value" as in the 7.
How to Upgrade Sharetronix 2.0.0 to 2.1.0 Without Lossing Data and Users
Source: Groupon Doesn’t Have The Cash to Build Its New Data Center
You're not going to escape having to trust someone along the way, the goal is to minimize this trust. Presumably the win with CryptDB is that you don't want to trust Joe Developer who is writing SQL queries, and you don't want to trust Evil Steve who is walking around the cloud datacenter with a bolt-cutter and a USB drive.

Right now, if you want to store sensitive data, you basically have to do it all in-house, which costs big money (think of all the PCI regulations you have to satisfy and auditors that you need to pacify).
Show HN: Disrupting the hypnosis industry
I've been a hypnotherapist for the past five years, doing fairly well for this small niche, but since day one I've had ambitions of expanding beyond the borders of my city. The only question was how to do it without a corresponding increase in staff (...and capital, and headaches).

So I thought up Hypnotizr: http://www.hypnotizr.com

Hypnotizr provides online hypnosis sessions by sequencing together snippets that are recorded in advance. It's an inexpensive way to deliver well-made recordings that are also customized to individual clients' needs. With good voice control and a little post-processing, it sounds like one continuous recording. Nobody else is doing hypnosis like this, but I believe it strikes a good balance between personalization and cost.

Currently this is just a minimum viable product. To launch cheaply, I built the site using Drupal and Ubercart (with a lot of CSS/Javascript help from brianfarr, who you should hire if you ever get the chance: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3152012). I'm fulfilling orders by hand. If this site gains traction, I'm planning to hire a developer to rebuild the website from scratch, with automation for the session construction process (which isn't trivial, since some judgement-based decisions are involved). I'll probably rework the recordings too, depending on initial user feedback.

In any case, I'm hoping that this will be viewed as a "good enough" service compared to a bona fide hypnotherapist, for an affordable price.

If you have any thoughts on the website or the service, I'd appreciate your comments. If you're interested in becoming a beta tester, e-mail me at support@hypnotizr.com and I'll give you a test session for review.
How Do You Functionally Decompose?
I remember eading th ebest was white that matches ambient light (i.e. if its dark in the room, turn the light on)
I think you should just leave it down to your desktop defaults, that should ideally be configurable in one place.

It's annoying going through each app setting them up individually.

Each to their own.
Pretty sure badclient said that the company has one person each for HTML, CSS, JS and PHP.

That does sound pretty nuts - seems like almost every layout/front-end/design change you'd ever need to make would touch both HTML and CSS, requiring two people to handle it separately.
Universal transistor serves as a basis to perform any logic function
Is Twitter Destroying our Environment? - Visual
The problem is, Kickstarter is the sole arbiter of what gets presented to funders, and subsequently designed and developed.

Many a good idea have been rejected by their less-than-knowledgeable staff in their apparent attempt to unilaterally decide what is "cool" and what is not.
i'm a designer/engineer and trust me there isn't anything mythical or special about it.

i've been a web/graphics designer for 9-10 years and coder for 3.5 (python at first, but this year i started ruby/rails)

from personal experience i can say almost all creative/visual people are scared of logical/geekish computer stuff ... i was scared and lost at first too but then i realized i'm quite good at architecture and once i put my focus on becoming a better at it things weren't scary any more. my designs improved, my love of internet expanded and i can't imagine doing anything else!

the most important mistake designer make is that they think they need to become REAL "software engineers" like building compilers or even worse thinking they have to master java or C++! (nothing against java, it's just that designer shouldn't start with java or similar programming languages)

for all you designers first learn html5, css3, a bit of javascript and then start with python/ruby (django/rails) and go from there. it's not a 1 night journey, it will take couple of years but it's worth it!
Your pupils contract because you are being overwhelmed be the amount of light coming out of your monitor. This doesn't sound so relaxing to me ;)

On the other hand, you could be myopic and under-corrected - and so suffer more when the pupils are relaxed (similar to the Night Myopia effect).

I do find it almost impossible to use dark background IDEs (such as XCode and Eclipse), because of the other GUI elements cluttering the screen (which are usually light). And this causes a lot of eye strain, because the amount of incoming light is still huge, while most of the screen is dark, relaxing the pupils and burning the retina.

Since most of my time I'm on Emacs or the terminal, I'm cool. Switching to a browser still hurts - one more incentive not to look at Hacker News while working ;)
First official release of Ceylon
10 biggest ERP software failures of 2011
I wonder how the pressures were achieved. I remember a sciam article way back which discussed attempts to create metallic hydrogen in the lab using, in essence, g-clamps. (Only a tiny amount of substance could fit into the apparatus, of course. Still it was amazing that such a simple device could achieve the necessary pressure.)
Ge.tt is by far my favorite file sharing service, been using them since beta. They've also released some of their code as open source on Github.
I can confirm that atleast the restriction on Undernet IRC (us.undernet.org:6667) is still active.
I've got great faith in planes as a whole, but these sudden vertical accelerations (wind pockets etc) is one area where they don't seem to have much of a plan aside from hoping you're wearing a seat-belt at that particular point in time.

Maybe they should add something crumple-zone like in the panel above the passengers heads. Or put something air-bag like there.
What is the most evolved form of this Pokemon?
TONIGHT 12/20 9PM EST Free 45 Q&A: “How to Break into Hedge Funds”
I didn't understand the love for solarized until I got a decent quality monitor. Now I use it for MacVim, iTerm2, and Adium (I just tweaked the colours in minimal_mod, and can share if anyone cares). It's perfect.
I would think that the type of person that is a designgineer is likely to be informally trained, usually starting as a design person and becoming increasingly more technical over time.

Because of this, I reckon they would do poorly at a lot of the types of technical interviews that are in fashion today, such as puzzle interviews and data structure/algorithm questions that you'd probably only do well with if you had a computer science background.

"Tell me how you would go about building an efficient maze generator" is the wrong kind of question for these people. "How would you go about building token-field interface from scratch in javascript" would be a better question.

Sites like InterviewStreet and CodeSprint don't optimize for hiring this kind of person.
It is; that's mostly what people want.
I used to build wxWidgets and all my personally made Windows Software using mingw and gcc. Sadly, gcc is far, far slower than other compilers in windows (and once or twice I have found some compiler errors in gcc).

I also used Digital Mars for the same, but DMC sometimes fails with big builds.

I use Visual Studio now because I'm using DirectX and I just want something that works out of the box.