skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's also not only scarcity, but academic-incentives-driven artificial scarcity: in the U.S. especially, many advancement committees have started using acceptance rate as a misguided proxy for "conference quality". So if you want people to see publishing in your conference as a valuable addition to their CVs, you need to have a <30% acceptance rate, preferably more like 10-15%, so you can be counted as a "very selective" conference. This is a bit silly, because acceptance rates are hugely influenced by submission pool, but it's how the institutional system currently works.
Anil Dash: Foursquare is the best-executing startup today
Well, there are some specific add ons that doesn't work properly. Tab kit is a great example of this that kept me from upgrading for a long long time.
That was my frustration too. I think you'll find Passport solves it nicely. Ping me anytime with feedback or questions.
FF 3.6 is at 4% and dropping. People simply won't have a choice but to upgrade once market share gets low enough because developers will stop supporting it. Google will probably stop this year.

Switch to another browser if you don't like the new FF.
2011 LLVM Developers' Meeting
I would learn PHP.
Sounds very interesting, but what kind of system do you have in place for configuration of the date activities?

For example, if a couple prefers to have dates with just themselves, vs couples who want exclusively group style dates? Or a couple that has some kind of physical disability and thus wouldn't be able to complete a "surprise" date that included, say, skydiving?

Cool idea, however. Best of luck with it!
Perhaps because I didn't say nor mean both those things. Perhaps also because your parser mistranslates "sites designed for IE6" as "sites using MS-specific code".
The new HH permanent calendar - 5 year rollout starts this week
No, time to stay in Turkey, but get clients that are abroad. Western rates at non-western living expenses is the magic formula...
IE7 will never be the new IE6 simply because it was tied to Vista, which was the least adopted Windows OS ever.
Using the right tool for the job comes to mind here, but half the time you can only see this with hindsight. And the other half the time, I'd guess, PHP is the only tool available. Unless cheap webhosts offer Python, Ruby and Node.js integration to complement the usual feature-set.

If you have more tools in the box, then you can start to consider whether to go full-stack with PHP (I'd no longer consider this route a viable option), or whether to modularise your project. Maybe for a lot of things that's too much and a PHP framework that does it all is totally fine. No point doing something just because you can, but you have the flexibility to think outside of the box when refactoring.

This is exactly what I did when it came to generating an image and manipulating the output. In PHP it was convoluted, buggy, impossible to understand the library it depended upon, and offered no flexibility. It took months of procrastination and avoidance before we had to get the feature working, so I ditched the lot and re-did it in Python, using Cyclone and a couple of lightweight libs. It took a day and a half to implement, with no knowledge beforehand, and it does absolutely everything we wanted (without any hacks).

It was at that point I realised that it was much more beneficial to look beyond the one-size-fits-all solution of a massive framework, which may be appropriate to some, but just as often isn't. And as has been said - very well indeed I must add - I don't want to be a [framework]-developer who knows not so much the language, but an individual or group's abstraction of it; I want to be a developer who knows what to do when that framework doesn't fit.
Tier refers to how difficult/prestigious it is to get a job in the company. First tier companies choose each individual very carefully and can generally hire anyone they want, second tier companies allow some dead wood here and there, but still put a lot of effort to find talent (aggressive hunting, H1Bs, etc). Third tier companies just hire whoever they can afford having their hiring process fail a lot halfway through due to inadequate pay/benefits/conditions and very rarely sponsor H1B for anyone. There are studies that use similar (although not the same) classification.
Great website. I started with "The Little Schemer" and SICP, and then also started learning Clojure in parallel with just the cheatsheet and 4cloure.
A possible way to structure that business relationship is you have identifiable projects where Real Work gets done. You do the whole contract / invoice / etc song and dance for those, at project rates.

In between projects, you make it known that you are a friendly guy, and bending your ear for a few minutes is free. N.b. This is how lawyers will generally work. This is to maintain customer loyalty for the five figure engagements. Plus, since you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart, you have an instant, built-in non-excuse for unavailability.
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I would just have bought the CD - I don't really understand his objection to that.
I started entirely where you were. It was the only skill I really had that people were willing to pay for. I could diagnose, fix and permanently repair/prevent future issues, whether it was software, hardware, networking, IT support/consulting, fixing viruses. Back then the tools weren't so good, though.

One of the big 'aha' moments I had was when I didn't have to bill my customer minimum 1 hour to drive to their site if they were in town. I offered to bill in quarter hour increments if I could try addressing it remotely, and if it didn't work, I'd come in. Having the keys to everyones offices is something I didn't enjoy, remote access made it a bit easier.

The other key 'ahas' that helped me transition from IT work to more software work were:

- Work to always replace myself. Most IT / developer types are of two categories. The ones that make you dependant on them, and the ones that make you independent. The consultants that charge you to do windows patches every month on purpose do it because that's often the ceiling of their talent. The consultants that are bored to tears by doing windows patches but do it to get other work with the customer often automate it to a point that they can say "spend the money you would on patching on other projects with me instead and I will always automate IT as much as possible".

- Solid Email based Case manager - This is the only piece of software that changed my life. One item per case number, tie it to a billing system. If you do go this route, make sure you use a solid email based case manager like Fogbugz (or anything) that is well suited to keeping your work visible in their inbox since they don't see your face much. For me, Fogbugz found me when I juggled too many things manually and I've been loyal since. There are several other capable tools too, find which one speaks to you the best.

The toolsets for managing things centrally (remote access, antivirus, firewalls) are so much more polished and integrated, if you can get your business doing remote IT support/maintenance, there is a good business there.

If this is a field you enjoy and want to continue growing, feel free to hit me up, I'll totally give you everything I've ever learnt or known about this so you can scale up to a .5-1 million/year revenue business pretty easily.
Microsoft UFC giveaway backfires as Xbox 360 app fails during fight
It's not obvious that this statistic is an argument against the success of the Finnish system being translatable to America, though. Black and Hispanic children are disproportionately likely to be poor and subject to underfunded schooling, and may in fact be the demographics who would stand to improve the most under a system more interested in equalizing such disadvantages than the current one.
The sad or happy truth is that thanks to advances in computing power, what used to be dummy toy programming is now not only a valid way of doing things but the correct one.

Using made up stats, slurping the entire output of a process in a big string would fail 99% of the times 30 years ago, 50% of the times 20 years ago, 1% of the times 10 years ago, but less than 0.01% of the time now. You'd waste your time doing it 'the right way'.

So it is with most simple data processing. If your goal is just to ship a product fast, you no longer need the old type of smart programmers; nowadays, smart means doing it fast and badly.
I received a great email from Andrew de Andrade, a fellow Hacker News reader, on why what I perceived to be censorship wasn't, and how it was my fault as the link submitter for not providing a title that provided better utility to the community.

Please, accept my sincerest apologies for my misunderstanding and for jumping to conclusions. This article was not written out of malice towards Hacker News, but rather as an attempt to bring clarity to what is and isn't accepted in this community.

I've added a note on the post apologizing for offending anyone, and inviting anyone who would like to discuss the issue further to reach me via email (hello [at] patdryburgh.com)

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Pat
Weekend Hack: UDIDirectory
I'm not that interested in your names and number if you cannot provide them publicly. Obviously, you seem to be somewhat upset at a person or group of persons related to one or more incubators and would rather champion your three favorites over others. I don't have a problem with that, but I think you have to reword the premise of your argument and maybe provide helpful data points without being facetious about the subjects, nature or provenance of your information.

You know, appear to be knowledgable regarding the subject matter at hand; otherwise it's just some fan-boy rant.
Which part you disagree with?
Ask HN: What is a good support desk solution?
I'm looking for a new support desk solution for my webapp.

What are some good ones that other HNers are using?

My only requirement is that it has CNAME support so that I can have support.mywebsite.com.

An automated knowledge-base that attempts to answer the customer's question before they submit it is also a big plus.
Ask HN:  How do you apply deliberate practice to programming?
I am curious if anyone has any techniques they use to deliberately practice programming. I'm familiar with the "dive in" methodology, so please don't recommend "just start building something."
for retainer I'll lower my rate even more. Any time spent not having to fill next week's ticket is money in my pocket...

damn, freelancing sucks
The next ten years of Mac OS X
Economics for Programmers - Backward Bending Supply Curve of Labor
Solar Panel Building
Conversion of light into electricity is the key to build your own solar panels. The word solar means of the sun. This is basically the idea behind using solar panels for energy efficiency. Astronomers call this Sol. This is what we call light electricity.
Need motivation? Have Jeff Dillman come talk to you [youtube]
Because you need IE 10 for the transforms stuff.

Perhaps the solution is to develop a flash replacement for the HTML5 elements that we can then force feed IE and all you have to do is include that script on a page to give your users a modern expericence, even if they have to be dragged into it.
Haha, I have often called myself a resultant because of the stigma. Over time I care less as I've gotten established and built a track record.

Still, sometimes I find myself saying "I solve business needs with technology." Means what it should to the people who will sign my cheques, and I don't care to explain what I do to anyone else.

Since a consultant isn't the first thing people might assume when they look at me, I think it's important to remember it just comes down to being likable, genuine, curious, responsible, and caring enough to follow through. Respect is my currency and assholes filter themselves out.
The Family Business – Part 2: Growing
Thanks for the feedback! Initially, any configuration that needs to happen will be via concierge, as we want to have the best customer service (and highest resolution feedback) as possible.
How so?

A simple way to do this would be to send a unique, random salt S for every login, and the user would reply with e.g. sha1(password + S). However, to be able to check that the answer is correct, you would need to know the user's password, in plain text, which brings you back to square one.

To securely do this, you would need commutative hashing functions, i.e. hashing functions f(x) and g(x) such that f(g(x)) = g(f(x)). Actually, to be completely safe, you would need to be able to generate a whole (preferably infinite) family of commutative hash functions g(x), a random one for each login. I have no idea if such functions exist, more importantly, if they are known, it's an interesting idea actually.
New WordPress Plugin Lets You Turn Any WordPress Site Into A BitTorrent Tracker
Vikipedia (Visual Wikipedia)
Some communities have made rental owners register their properties as rentals. I live in a college town and we have problems with uncut lawns, trash, noise violations. The rental registry is a way to track the actual owner of the property and not the sometimes ever changing occupant.
Sorry to report some bad news, but I just received an application error. If you'd like full details (platform, browser, etc) ask and I'll send you my details!
"Going analog" is something I have really tried lately. The more I find myself into tech, the more I appreciate not being around it.

I really want to give woodworking a shot this year.
I like a few web-comics that have no official English language translation (Noblesse, Knight Run, etc). Now, I can go to the website and look at the pictures and guess what's going on but if I want to actually read a translation I need to go to a website that breaks copy-write.

As this is a digital good that they make no effort to sell to me I cost them nothing to 'pirate' it. Yet, if you can come up with a rational reason for me to stop I may consider doing so.

PS: As a side issue egscans opens a copy of the original version of the comic when you read them which may provide them with revenue, but this is effectively scamming from their advertisers. (or if it's all pay per click it might just cost them bandwidth.)
...which can be disabled with the Compatibility Reporter add-on

This is the issue. Most people don't know this. I was (1) an avid firefox user from the alpha stage and even I didn't know about the compatibility reporter with out some serious Googling, they should advertise it better

Especially since plugins are far and away firefox's strong suit over other browsers and they want to go with the new update scheme and change the version numbers so much.

(1) Sadly no longer am, due to the memory issues the Chrome team figured out how to fix. I still use it occasionally because I miss its much better user experience but until they get the multi process model done Chrome just uses resouces so much better I can't justify it
I read that book! Very elegant stuff :)
This very common, very simple mistake was done by the company with the biggest video ad network in the world, which advises others on how to do video advertising.

This very common, very simple mistake was also don by the company which over the past year has tossed hundreds of sites into oblivion from its search engines, because they had content that was deemed too "thin" and warned others not to do the same.

This very common, very simple mistake was also done by the same company that has banned or penalized other companies over purchasing links through sponsored posts, even if those companies protested that they didn't know better and that a middleman was involved.

So how did I wring that much out of this "small" issue. Simple. It's not a small issue.
The new release model is bullshit, since it carries no information.

But FF isn't so bad. Without the backing of big corp (which is what kept IE6 in this game so long) there is no or almost no pressure to make sure new homepages still works.
> None of this has anything to do with what you call yourself. No two clients will give you the same answer about what differentiates a "consultant" from a "contractor" from a "freelancer".

Precisely, it's why it's up to us to figure out which relationship they're looking for and do it if we can.

A good idea is always to dress well, speak well, write well, and be pro-active/thoughtful in ways that count. That always comes across excellently in reinforcing your value no matter what you do at any rate.
Another reasonable explanation is that you tend to irritate many people with your tone.
The History of Earth As A Clock
There was a tremendous amount of techno-utopianism in the early 90s. The internet & computers would bring peace, love, erase national borders, enable society to be utterly transformed into a global place without work, strife, etc.

Mondo 2000, early Wired, and Rushkoff were big proponents of that thought paradigm. I see Barlow's essay as an offshoot of that paradigm.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.
Uh oh. Can you email the details to udidirectory@fadeover.org? We'll look at it. Thanks!
New way of social bookmarking
Xomila is an easy use, secure, powerful and social web service for sharing your favourite urls with others.
I feel oddly proud of my .1% contribution to this count. 4clojure has been really useful, thanks to everyone who's had a hand in creating it!
I've had great success with the book "8 Minute Meditation." It's a pretty good primer to what meditation is "all about."
Nobody Understands Debt
New York Times link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html
not news.
Facebook's User Growth Continues to Decrease while Google+ Adds 625K Users Daily
> Not to make RMS happy, but to protect savvy consumers from monumentally idiotic

Hrrm ... that was RMS's point, way back when, with some printer, if memory serves ...
I think sarcasm can be easily mistaken as trolling, condescension, or stupidity. Personally I avoid it online until I have seen it regularly used and encouraged on a website/forum (also the tells/syntactic-indicators of sarcasm and how obvious you need to make it vary greatly depending upon site community).
Storing passwords in plain text (or using an encryption method) and sending password over email are two distinct issues.

I think storing passwords (and not only hashes of passwords) might be a good idea if it is harder for the attacker to recover the passwords than to gain root access to the http/database server, however, I would NEVER send passwords in emails (not even newly generated passwords). A simple solution is to send a one-time login link, and have the password displayed in the browser, over a https:// connection.

There is still a small possibility of stealing the password (someone intercepts the email and clicks on the link before the legitimate user does), but at least the user would become aware of it (his link wouldn't work any more).
They appear to be alone about supporting grid-based layouts, and share experimental support with Webkit for regions, exclusions and shapes.

(I'm just going by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_%... , I haven't had the time to stay fully up to date on this lately either)
For perspective -- IE6 was released more than 10 years ago; its successor shipped 6 years ago.
Great writeup, and helpful for people like me. I often know exactly what message I want to deliver and the visual hierarchy I want, but coming up with a nice layout is harder. So the break down is good to see.

It was pretty shocking to see the McCurry Afghan girl photo as an icon placeholder though. That's probably one of the top 5 news photos of all time, and I'm not alone in having a strong emotional reaction to it?

Maybe Cookie Monster as a placeholder instead? http://www.google.com/search?q=cookie+monster&hl=en&...
The Only Way to Achieve Your New Year's Resolutions
http://agilescout.com/jobs/ is a good place to post Agile positions. It's $49.
Not even that. You simply have to delete the JavaScript that hashes them on the client side, and have the browser send them unhashed (which is the default behaviour of HTML forms).
Previously I was placed by a "staffing" company that took 33% of what the company I was working for was paying.

I only know this because the person who was my supervisor slipped up and told me... I didn't stick around there too long after that and have built up a great group of consistent clients of my own.
Haha, I see what you're saying.

I didn't mean to put anyone on a pedestal, patronize or be kind out of charity. It's the best lesson I've learnt. I spent 10 years of my life complaining about women and consequently found nothing but women to complain about.

As soon as I realized I complained because I cared I met the one of my dreams.

She's my heart, my compass, and the sunshine keeping me where I need and want to be... even when my mighty intellect forgets to breath, feel, love, and live for a living.

So now, I compliment freely from my heart. The most important things in my life haven't been understood because of my mind, but with my heart and gut.

Hope that clarifies, didn't mean to offend anyone, only live in gratitude a bit more. It's the new year ;)
Pay-wall business model is broken and thus I don't think this site in this form will ever be successful. The thing to do would be to compile all the publicly available information pulling out relevant information via filter for particular topics, groups, and interests. The way to pay for it all is to charge representatives, senators, presidential candidates, etc. money to have an 'official from them' page on the page that describes what they do and who their interests are. The public should never have to fork over any money, or information to these congresspeople, unless they specifically create an account to ask directed questions to congresspeople who are paying money to be on the site. Should charge $25k per year to each state representative ( at a federal level ) and $50k per year for each senator. CA and other state legislators should have to pay $5-10k per year depending on their level. Presidential hopefuls should pay something like $1m per cycle. Most to all of these people are millionaires, and their campaign funds should be allowed to be used on this site. It should also give information about effectiveness of voting technologies, etc.

disclaimer, I wrote up a site like this, but haven't coded/launched because success is dependent on design skills and the ability to implement them, not in quality/quantity of info. Until ordinary citizens are using it, no rep is going to pay for it as a platform for access, and it needs really great design to get ordinary people to use it. If I become rich this is the first site I'm going to throw money at because I think we really need something like this.
I started getting into smoking meats and making my own bacon a few months ago and it's been an incredibly nice break from being constantly plugged in all the time.
World wide cost of living rankings for 2012
Maxmind has a pay as you go option as well, which I am using for my site, and it is extremely affordable. You are also allowed to cache their data, which I do and saves a ton on cost. Also something I haven't done yet, in your cached data, you can manually change IP address to Location mappings in case there are any locations you want to manually specify.

This is the service I use: http://www.maxmind.com/app/web_services_omni and if you ask they will probably give you a trial account.

I use it here: http://localbeer.me
Ha - I am part of the 1% for once (for testing, I even have WindowsME boxes).

But seriously - who is making this claim - it's Microsoft, it's "political" embarrassment?

I'd like to know what Google thinks from their user-agent logs.

I bet a good chunk of IE6 user-agents are from bots too.

But IE8 support is now the new "Netscape Navigator 4", admittedly not quite as bad.