skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
when you felt like you had power over the machine and today you’re just part of a mainstream movement

This is something thats been scratching around in the my brain for a while and has driven me away from software. To me, software used to represent infinite possibilities, this blob of clay that you could sculpt into anything you wanted it to be. These days software is quick to slap your hand away when you get too close to messing with the fiddly bits.

I'm a bit more jaded than this poster, but I don't think the Pi will be able to bring the lost world back to us. Tinkering isn't what it used to be in general. Instead of popping down a product and an accompanying RFC that allows anyone to write other software to interacts with it, creators want you in their playground, doing operation they approve or nowhere near the tech at all. They're not just tight-lipped, I even see encryption to keep the tinkerer out.

My brother is a snowmobile gearhead. He used to machine a piece of metal that went somewhere in the engine. I don't really pay attention to that stuff to know the full details, but essentially modifying that piece of metal would tune something in the engine. Whatever that piece of metal controlled has now been replaced by a computer chip. It is an awesome idea, with amazing possibilities. He could set up his machine on the dyno and just sit there adjusting variables to tune and get exactly the performance he wants. Iterations between adjusting and testing is infinitely faster because he doesn't need to go do metalwork.

But thats not the way it works. He can't change the values on the chip. It has gotten orders of magnitude less work to modify, but he is physically unable to. He can bring his sled to the Bombardier dealership where there, and only there, can he tune the sled. He can't tweak values to find maximum performance. He can choose from Configuration A, Configuration B and Configuration C.

This is where software is taking the world my friends. It is why I don't tinker anymore.
5+1 Sonar Plugins you must not miss
Rolls-Royce car sales hit new record
The onset of cognitive decline begins at 45
Teach yourself Git in 2 minutes
"Remember the cost, idealize the benefit"

In other words, it's magical. As in, magical thinking.
I've just tried this one and it's great!
It's simple, unobtrusive and smart: a logo in the address bar indicates that the post is already on HN. If you click it you're taken to the comments page. Neat!
The Etsy Saga: From Silos To Happy To Billions Of Pageviews A Month
You make some great points about the difficulties in running a cross-platform .NET project as open source. However, I think the cross-platform difficulties are only a small part. Open-source is very new to many Microsoft developers. Just getting participation in .NET projects that are Windows only is difficult (but not impossible). Many Microsoft developers have had years of "training" that open-source == buggy and has support issues just like many non-MS developers have been "taught" that .NET is a legal trap so don't touch it.

I think the perception has been changing in recent years and open-source .NET is now well accepted in some circles. As the trend grows I think you'll start to see better cross-platform tools and support for your package management and testing problems.

Who knows, JavaScript might just become so dominant that open-source .NET never reaches its full potential.
for WLAN collecting data check out also Spot Expert: http://servletsuite.blogspot.com/2011/08/wifi-expert-context...
I'm always wary of the sentiment that "good-fit" developers at location-foo or company-bar don't think it's [healthy,smart,reasonable] to [optimize,maximize,consider] "short term" gains. Across the whole industry, especially if you discard the few gigantic outliers like Facebook and Google (but really either way), long-term loyalty to startup-trajectory companies is rarely paid off. You take the gains from equity and spread them across the years of employment and end up with a track record of bonuses that look good (only very rarely "great") but have a built-in survivorship bias that hides the extreme risk the developer took relative to other options.

Personally, I think the pendulum has swung too far in the "invest yourself with your company" direction, too far away from the "pay attention to your own bottom line, because you're the only one who will" direction. Developers should be more conscious of their short-term bottom line, not less. Developer interests are almost never aligned with that of a company's owners.

Like it or not, if you're not willing to move out of town on a moment's notice for your next job (ie, if you're over 27 or so), working in a market with fewer attractive employers is worse than working in a market with lots of them. It is a real disadvantage. It's not an emotional thing and it's not something you can paper over with mindset.

(Incidentally, all the things that make taking a job in a "backwater" market make starting a company in a backwater market more attractive. Talent is sticky. Every major market, whether it's first tier or third tier, has amazing talent that can't move because nobody is going to relocate their 4th and 6th grader kids to another state for an employee #8 role at a startup.)

All that said, Montreal is a beautiful city. I'd look for reasons to work there if I could.
Mainly because the HTML Evernote pumps out is pretty disgusting - it works in terms of making the markup look like it did in Evernote, but it's not structured and does some pretty interesting things.

I'm hoping to work on cleaning it up over the next few weeks, at which point a repo might be a good idea. My only slight concern is that if every man and his dog contributes we may end up with a really thorough, in depth overview of the topics, which in one sense would be brilliant, but on the other hand would make it far more than just a simple reflection of the course.

However, that's hardly reason not to do it, and there can always be one copy in it's current, terse format, so when I get the HTML sorted I'll do that and see what happens....
"A stud finder or old man that knows how to knock on the wall and tell where the studs are."

Would you just search Craigslist for the old man? Sounds tricky.
Or just use the bookmarklet from the submit page...
Many (most?) homes also contain Radon gas, and it and its daughters are alpha and beta emitters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon:

Radon is responsible for the majority of the public exposure to ionizing radiation.
For the Twilight Zone fans, there is an episode (Queen of the Nile) where an immortal Egyptian princess is alive, in the modern day. She lives off of male souls to continue her immortality. She mentions to one of her victims that she's 38. If she's immortal, why choose 38 to live forever? She explains she chose it because any younger, and others consider you too inexperienced to take seriously; any older and you lose attractiveness/health. Perfect age? Maybe. Granted, this is a tv show from 1964. Food for thought.
Ah, good point. I should have added that I also got one of these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/MDM11S-Single-Monitor-Bracket-Pull-O... which takes care of my screen height [Edit: pic] http://dl.dropbox.com/u/44212/IMG_20120109_180019.jpg
You don't need to drop your existing friends to make new friends. Just make new friends. Eventually you'll either hang out with them more than the others, or not.

Also, as a s/w entrepreneur myself who hangs out with a lot of similar people, I made an effort over the last few years to make friends on different career paths. It's nice to talk about something besides technology and startups from time to time.

My closest friend is still a college buddy. He works in a completely different industry and has different goals in life, but we still relate on a fundamental level.
> If there wasn't rampant piracy we wouldn't have to worry about idiots drafting up bills like Protect-IP and SOPA.

There's really only one way to interpret that.

Piracy isn't "rampant". Profits are up on pretty much every form of media out there. Every time an industry group whines about piracy, you can count on it being a complete pack of lies.
Cheers - updated!
NYC TechStars Member Blueprint Health Announces Its First Class Of Startups
Respectable forums should not allow threads like this
uhm... the most important skill is missing from his 8 core skills: Marketing

without good marketing, all the other skills are worthless.
(yeah, yeah, I know there are exceptions, but seriously, marketing is the skill with the most leverage)
Having just wrote a blog last week, "E-books are not easy!" I really can't tell you that it's going to be easy :)

I wrote mine by looking at the EPUB format and setting up gedit and a bash script. Here's a nice guide for all of it: http://www.jedisaber.com/eBooks/Introduction.shtml. Once you run the script, there's a nice little epub-checker over here: http://threepress.org/document/epub-validate/

From there, Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) will load/translate your epub file. Also it will load it to your devices for checking. As much as I like complaining about formats and such, I found this process very similar to writing a website -- lots of xhthml and xml. Nothing too tough.

Once you're done, then there's finding a publisher. Amazon will take a MOBI file, LuLu takes an epub, etc.

There are a zillion details to writing an e-book. If your question is narrowly-targeted at "how do I physically make an e-book" then the answer is not so bad. I did it all from scratch. There are a bunch of third-party tools that will help you also.
I love clever touches like this in TV and films.
When referencing for the purposes of a storyline niche topics such as CS , Maths or Physics I always feel that whilst writers need to make their story accessible to people who are not savvy in these topics they should always stay as true as possible to the field itself and not insult the intelligence of people who are familiar with these things.

I get quite annoyed when people put "hacking" scenes into films that are filled with nothing but nonsense. Usually legitimate technical jargon that is thrown together in ways that don't make sense.

Does anybody have any opinions of the modern Sherlock remakes that have appeared on the BBC recently?
Hirewolf: The pitfalls of hiring filters
Substitution is not very useful for keeping CPI down. We substitute from steak to spam, then from spam to cat food, and then there is nothing more to do. It's a trick you can only do once.

Substitution does, however, keep CPI stable, and rightly so. My food bill hasn't changed much in spite of the recent peanut butter price spike - I just substitute other goods for peanut butter.
The ministry of purity has determined that your website offends the invisible powers that be. It has been purified. Thank you for your cooperation. This decision may not be appealed or challenged or examined. You may not ask how this decision has been reached because if you do, you would be exposed to impure thoughts.
Really. For me a repository is somewhere I might leave something...storage...like dropbox maybe? I don't know what it means in the github jargon sense. I have no idea what version control is specifically, but again, I guess it is v1.0 v2.0 etc.
Infographic: 71% More Likely To Purchase Based On Social Media Referrals
Arrays and pointers are most certainly not the same thing in C. Check yourself here:

char x[100];
char* y = malloc(100*sizeof(char));
printf("Array: %ld\nPointer: %ld\n", sizeof(x), sizeof(y));
It seems to me that it would be good if 20 hours a week was already the norm, but for the reasons you highlight, I don't think it's something that's possible to transition to from 40 hours as we have now.

As you say, you certainly can't just say "right everyone, 20 hours only from now on..."
With some ISP's caching DNS for >48 hours regardless of your TTL. And sometimes browsers caching pages for even longer. Stopping offering the service is fine. Ending up with your domain pointed to a site that isn't yours is an entirely different thing. They could run a phishing site and users wouldn't have any way of knowing.
The best tool is probably whatever you use to make webpages.

epub is basically a simple variant of html that uses xml to deal with chapters and assets. You zip the whole bundle up and rename it and bam! epub!

http://blog.threepress.org/ is probably the best and most useful resource for learning about this sorta thing, half of the stuff is random tech and the other half is stuff to get it done.

another thing: amazon's kindlegen is actually a great resource if you're targeting that platform. You can generate a mobi file pretty easily and their example is actually incredibly resource-rich.

But really, the whole thing is just a webpage wrapper with limited css and no js, so go nuts and have fun.
"There's just one thing, Dude. Do you have to use so many cuss words?" -- Big Lebowski

Joking aside, there is really no need to ruin a great guide by swearing in the subtitle.

I'm not sure I'll ever understand why developers think they need to swear in articles. In this instance, is it because the author is writing in nerd (addressing a seemingly technical concept) and needs to show his article has some universal accessibility by using one of the most understood terms for excrement in the subtitle?

I mean, I'm glad he warned me there is no deep poop in the subtitle because I won't read ANYTHING that has deep doo-doo in it.

Show some maturity: s/shit/stuff (that'd be Sed for replace the word 'shit' with the word 'stuff')
I've tried something like that in the past - I've used ruby on Linux to program a robot, with I/O piped through an Arduino. It was painful. I've ran into lots of timing issues. The whole thing was incredibly unpredictable. Disabling the garbage collector improved things a little, but it's still annoying when your robot falls down because a cron job started.

An RTOS is much more suitable if timing matters, and a language with a more predictable runtime helps as well.
I just want basic midi and audio recording capability with low latency. I hace all the DSP power I need in specialty gear, but would like a lightweight musical sketchpad.
Reddit successfully pressures Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to back off support of SOPA
If you like math fun and movies I would recommend the series "Numbers" and the movie "A beautiful mind" as a dramatic portrayal of paranoia that some famous mathematicians have developed.

(The linked article is a bit light and in the end not so interesting for me, unfortunately.)
D.U.Eye - Iphone app to calculate blood alcohol.
I built my own 3-tiered, sit-down or stand-up desk, link to pic below.

Seated, the monitor is the right height for me, so as to keep my head up and neck straight. When I want to switch to standing, I just move the keyboard to the top level. I make the switch once or twice per day. And I can sit cross legged on the lowest platform (I dont like bucket/office chairs).

That was v0.1 of the desk, constructed in a few hours. the As you can see it is not production ready :p

http://blog.angelinegragasin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/...
SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith calls criticism of the bill 'completely hypothetical'
If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, then I certainly wouldn't be at work today.

But if I knew someone I loved was going to die tomorrow, then I wouldn't be at work today, either.
Thanks Daniel :-)
Spotify is from Sweden though.
Event Programming with Google Guava EventBus
No firebug is not about to die
Cool idea. I've done the standup desk thing before at work with a tall chair as a sitting option. I actually ended up using the chair most of the time so I switched back to avoid constantly vaulting up and down, but it was an interesting experiment for about 2 years.

One concern I would have about this particular configuration is the lack of a keyboard tray. Ergonomically, you would want your eyes about level with the top of the monitor or maybe a few inches below the top. At the same time, you want your keyboard to comfortably sit below so that you can keep your elbows at about 105 degrees or so. With the addition of a keyboard tray, and possibly a monitor stand, this can be a really nice long term ergonomic setup.

Found some tips on ergonomics at the link below, and these are inline (no pun intended) with what I have heard from the mandatory ergonomics training at my employer.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art21940.asp
Absolutely. I am aware that lots of developers seem to like the command line, but I can't for the life of me understand why. I think visually, so looking at a visual interface such as Windows Explorer is several orders of magnitude more productive than fiddling around with cd/ls to give me a picture of what's going on. Once I find what I'm looking for, I'd much prefer to right click on it and get on with my day than open up a terminal, type out a path, then try to remember some archaic command syntax.

As I say, lots of programmers claim to be more productive from the command line than they are in a visual interface. It doesn't make much sense to try to dispute that, but I still find it quite baffling.
That sounds really good. Will definitely check it out

Shameless plug: is is my last bookmarklet for HN: http://christopherdebeer.github.com/hnCommentWatcher/

Update: I was a bit let down that you just show the HN page in an iframe, nd dont actually restyle the comments in a user friendly way like in a side bar for the site (which i think would be brilliant)
Standing desk improv: http://instagr.am/p/GHAmP/
I find it most annoying when a computer is used in basically any TV show or movie. The actors always look to just be tapping on the keys at random, often hitting completely irrelevant keys to the task at hand. It doesn't ruin the scene for me but it does not make it as good as it can be. The attention to detail in this film made it more enjoyable.
I got this from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QA0EHI/ - goes from too-low-to-sit to too-high-for-work (I'm 6' tall), is sturdy enough for a laptop, and has lockable wheels. Best $50 I've spent.

Might not be able to carry your 26" screen if it is too heavy, but it's a damn good way to see how well you fair with an adjustable standing desk. And it also doubles as an over-the-bed desk ...

Helpful suggestions: Attach a long-cord power strip to your mobile table, so that only one power goes out, and that it doesn't kill your non-magsafe-connector when someone kicks the power cable.

Also, use a large binder clip to attach mouse/keyboard/monitor/network cables to the table if you use a laptop and take it with you often.
Why do you have to click the Start button to shut down?
I really liked the series "Sherlock" with Benedict Cumberbatch(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_%28TV_series%29).

For the older ones I thought the Jeremy Brett ones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes_%281984_TV_seri...) were very good.
The inability to launch an application by typing its name. It was a real show stopper for me. In gnome, press Alt+F2 and you can run a command. In unity, even by calling the menu you can not execute a command, you have to guess the application's registered name, which can be quite different from the executable name.
Industrial cart standing desk: http://stammy.com/post/3608383614/jayparkinsonmd-im-a-huge-f...
Are you looking to sell it on the Amazon Kindle? If so then it will need to be in doc format. https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2RYO17T...

If you are comfortable with MS Word, it is available online: http://office.live.com/

I think the most important thing is that whatever you use it be something you are comfortable with.
I'm actually considering doing a small webapp with a treeview on the left side of the screen (http://www.jstree.com/) and one of the many HTML editors on the right. That way I'll be able to shuffle around chapters easily (each node in the tree would be a chapter, and it's easy to create sub-chapters) and just write stuff in the HTML editor.

At the end you can have a "view all" button that puts all the chapters together and presents them as a HTML page.
Makes me think of an exhibition on Marie Curie I saw in the Nobel museum in Stockholm not long ago. Shoe sellers used to have x-ray machines, so that they could look into the shoe and make sure that the fit was correct. And you could buy radioactive make-up for "bright" (literally) women...
eh..I was hoping this was related to the BBC show Sherlock
re: the Functor/App'tive/Monad hierarchy

http://haskell.1045720.n5.nabble.com/Proposal-Move-the-insta...

re: redoing Num and numeric tower (prolly won't happen)

http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/nt0op/i_wrote_a_mod...

also: quality/popularity of packages, as more and more hit git/github, they could post #s of forks, pulls etc, as a crude proxy for ... something
Nosql Definition
The most recent one with Benedict Cumberbatch (what a name) is great (the second series just started a week ago).
Turn On, Code In, Drop Out: Tech Programmers Don’t Need College Diplomas
Android as we know it will die in the next two years and what it means for you
Soundtracking vs. YouTubing, #SOPA and all.
Creating computer-language translation efforts -- 58 years ago this month
good point, spritemapper seemed more confusing although it gives you a fine tuning it lacks the simplicity.
No need to re-invent OODBMS. The had their chance - and failed.
Net neutrality opponents make little sense
The job I wish I had before I started CarWoo - Marketing Engineer
I get asked a lot if you could have done one thing before starting CarWoo!, what would it have been? My answer is always the same. "I wish I had spent more time learning about customer acquisition."

Right now if you're reading Hacker News, you're likely interested in building a startup at some point in the future. You're probably also a software developer. You're probably not a marketer.

We have an opportunity for a great Ruby on Rails engineer to learn one of the most important pieces of the startup puzzle, customer acquisition. We recently hired a world class VP of Marketing (who happens to be one of the best customer acquisition people I've ever met) and he is looking for his right hand on the development side. This opportunity will give you the skills you need to understand the ins and outs of online customer acquisition. You will work with our VP of Marketing to build the technology that powers our customer acquisition engine.

This is a fantastic opportunity to work for a growing company and to learn the one skill I wish I would have had before I started CarWoo! Customer acquisition is king.

If you're a Ruby on Rails engineer, you want to work for a company that's challenging, fun and growing and you want to learn the magic of customer acquisition, this job is for you.

I can promise this will be one of the most fun, challenging and rewarding jobs of your career. CarWoo! is an awesome place to work. Competitive salary, equity, full benefits and the development setup of your choice come standard.

Apply for the Marketing Engineering job here: http://carwoo.com/jobs
Flingo’s SyncApps let you tweet directly from your TV
NVCA data shows VC and angel divide is growing
Dear WaPo: Innovating too quickly is not the problem
The only major project that comes to mind using Mono on multiple platforms for a biggish open source project is OpenSimulator (http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Build_Instructions). I wonder how they overcome those issues.
This is exactly the kind of tool I think the hiring process needs. I'd met a few HR people a couple years ago to discuss a tool like this. They all said it would be invaluable.

So good luck!
Top German cop uses spyware on daughter, gets hacked in retaliation
This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New Frontier Of Business
My dad used to joke that if he made it to 80 he was going to take up smoking again. Alas, he only made it to 79.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/debuggercanvas for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.