skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think your first point is valid. When Twitter was created, many people didn't understand what purpose it served compared to, say, a blog post or Facebook status update.

However, when you're operating in untested waters like this, you need to create some sort of platform that allows people to play around with what you have. The moment I saw it, I thought, "oh, wouldn't it be cool if I could see a map that showed a coloration of people's moods in a geographical context?"
You can do images -- although we're making this process easier soon. To do it: Copy and paste the URL of the image into a new note. Details below.

http://blog.corkboard.me/2011/02/28/adding-images-to-your-co...
I agree with all the subsequent discussion, but I would add that I disagree that,

"this kind of comment about the appearance of a website should be done by asking directly and nicely to the author"

Given the site has been posted to a public forum, it's useful, both for the author and for other designers, to get a feel of how the community (read into that what you will) feels about a design, rather than simply one individual's private perception.

I also agree, however, that I personally don't see it as a major issue (I've included this statement to validate my original point - how meta...)
The Art of Negative Space by Tang Yau Hoong
Geez, a six egg omelet seems like it would be a ton of food to get through.
Well, it's a nice idea but I think this is high risk. In the very distant past when I was young and naive there were occasions on which I didn't get paid for commercial work, so I can sympathize with that. However, naming and shaming rogue customers could just be a recipe for libel lawsuits.
Now that's an interesting, testable theory. That being said, by that definition I seem to switch between both modes of operation. I typically enjoy music initially when I start working on something... but after a while when I'm really into it I have to switch the music off otherwise I can't maintain focus. Maybe I'm just a very confused person :)
Twitter has real conversations, a metric ton of clients, and is fast. Not sure what you're talking about here.

As for emacs, install http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TwitteringMode and
M-x twit
here's the plain text article for anyone having that issue (links stripped): http://pastebin.com/a8VkZkm7
New software makes building a custom Android Rom quick and easy
I've also admired the Green Berets, though their work seems to rely less on the tight cohesion of the SEALs
Franzen on e-books, the end of books and more
* Gmail (http://gmail.com)

* GitHub (http://github.com)

* Tomatoes, pomodoro technique productivity tool (http://tomatoes.heroku.com)

* Reddit, procrastination (http://reddit.com)
TrialPay Raises $40 Million
The businesses and other establishments around you that make you 'independent from roads'? Yeah, those are likely completely dependent on roads. So you aren't, really.
Exactly. Look at the budgets of these kind of govt. agencies. They have shown that privacy or moral concerns against spying or even torture don't hold them back. I would sort of be disappointed if they didn't have this implemented because that means they were also stupid enough to be duped by some contractor who promised they'll do this but have sucked up all the money and hasn't delivered yet.
Follow The guidelines if you want to get tickets easily
This is one of those posts that drives me a little crazy :P

We recently started a web monitoring company (in beta) http://www.verelo.com to tackle situations just like this. Pingdom monitors every 60 seconds, its just not enough if you want to make claims like "we were only down for 6 minutes". If you want to make claims at a single digit minute level you need to check more regularly, and your checks need to be robust. We offer monitors that check as regularly as every 5 seconds.

We're going to monitor those same 6 sites for the next 30 days using our service at Verelo and provide comparative results when the next 37signals blog post comes out.
Do we really need ligatures? As I understand, they originated in the days when it was difficult to mechanically put an "f"-block and an "i"-block close together. Do we have to emulate this in environments where we don't have these constraints?
I think that this comment nails it.

In the end, it doesn't matter whether it was a tip-off or it was picked up by some Government threat-monitoring software. The greater end result is the same: a chilling effect on speech. If you aren't careful about how you consider this event, your response is "I'd better be careful what I say."

Edit: I highly recommend Bruce Schneier's "Liars and Outliers", it is a masterful work about the social costs of security.
Thank you this is one of my biggest pet peeves as a developers business people thing it is so easy.
The most reliable measure of true uptime would be transaction monitoring, e. g. simulating a login into all of these web apps. It also catches those issues were the server itself is up but the site does not work for some other reasons (database issue, javascript issue,...).

Or do you know that all your downtime was "total downtime", i. e. server not reachable at all?
We need everyone to stand united across all borders against this kind of BS legislation. If Canada somehow lets this pass it creates a dangerous precedent for future US developments.

This affects us all.
This is pretty interesting sentence: "Series 40 even supports tethering". Before this wave of smartphones for everybody started by iPhone, ability to use cell phone as an modem was so standard that nobody even cared to make up fancy marketing names ("tethering", seriously?) for that.
Also brakes although present, won't be used as much due to car's motor regenerative breaking, so they will need a lot less maintenance.
Germany Upholds Galaxy Tab 10.1 Tablet Ban
> and we're talking math and science that most learn in 4th grade

Precisely what I was thinking. Basic programming will be just something for 4th grade that almost everyone will have forgotten when 20.
- http://www.diigo.com - I was never able to use any online bookmarking service for the last 10-15 years. Diigo got online bookmarking right. I would frantically pay someone to re-build diigo for me if it ever went away. I can't process, organize or navigate the internet without it.

The best feature is it's highlighting. We don't save bookmarks in our minds, but specific sentences or paragraphs. Diigo lets us highlight those and saves them right into my Diigo account/stream. I can then simply search diigo not only by keyword or bookmark, but the phrases that stuck out to me in the first place to make me want to bookmark it.

The second best feature is being able to publish the links to multiple groups so effortlessly.

- http://www.fogbugz.com (hosted) - keeps my consulting and product dev flow going.

- http://www.freshbooks.com - Trivializes the slippery slope of managing billable hours not only for you but for sub-contractors.

- http://www.bitbucket.org - Free, unlimited private repositories. Beneficial to someone like me who has a lot of small projects. I hope Github gets this soon.
CSM is actually well established as a legitimate news source and journal; it's name has little to do with it's intentions.

The name simply derives from the wishes of one of the founders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Christian_Science_Monitor
I tested out on Chrome and then on my iPhone. Apparently can see my corkboard, so long as I have link. Would be great if I could just log in and see it vs, "bookmarking" it.
Most terrorists I know keep a .plan
Yes, I particularly enjoyed applying security fixes from the so-called stable branch and suddenly having all my validation messages corrupted, or form parameters randomly truncated.[1]

[1] http://david.rothlis.net/rails/experience_report/#stable_bra...
"The after_commit and after_rollback callbacks are guaranteed to be called for all models created, updated, or destroyed within a transaction block. If any exceptions are raised within one of these callbacks, they will be ignored so that they don’t interfere with the other callbacks. As such, if your callback code could raise an exception, you’ll need to rescue it and handle it appropriately within the callback."

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_validations_call...
I've never been more surprised by downvotes on HN. This is a quote from a beloved movie that expresses (in a lighthearted way) the exact point made in the OP. I'm very disappointed by the result.
Data Driven Hiring: How RJMetrics Hired an Assistant
You want viral? Ask yourself: Would this appeal to a 13-15 year old? In the web, these are your mavens for viral.
Heh. Correct. It does not equate to the mastery of being knowledgable in scientific facts. (Though it helps sometimes when dealing with irrational people.)

But I humbly think the most important aspect of being scientifically literate is that you solve problems using reason, factual data, and systematic methodologies.
Well, I stuck with it, and got 46/50. Thanks, that was fun.
Also small size, durability, light weight, and cool-running.

Additionally, they are replaceable- my dumbphone (which I left smartphones for) was $20 without a contract. If I get pushed into a pool or drop it off a cliff, I won't be especially put out.
I would agree that the client's will get thinner (dumb terminals like chrome books), however I still think your own portable dumb terminal will be far more popular than a community / shared dumb terminal.

I use a MPB, but I'm envious of the MBAs and will no doubt eventually spring for one. I have absolutely no interest in a shared dumb terminal with a different feeling inputs / outputs (keyboard, mice / touch, screen).

Maybe if we're all using touch screens eventually, but I'm not convinced the keyboard will go away anytime soon, and I prefer my own setup. If anything laptops have become a very personal item, sometimes even a fashion statement (not my thing but it's there).
Patrick, I completely agree with you, which is why I have never publicized my difficulties with problem customers.

But something in my reptilian brain really still likes this. Let me tell you why...

You say "Work with better clients." Working with better clients means avoiding the bad ones. Avoiding the bad ones means being able to identify them. Being able to identify them means being warned.

It's almost like seeing an obstacle in the highway and wanting to warn others going in the opposite direction. But how do you do that? I once had the idea of putting a giant tattoo "Avoid me." on my bad clients' foreheads.

The biggest problem with bad clients isn't that they took you, it's that they never go away; they just keep popping up over and over, only to take advantage of others.

One former client of mine is the perfect example. He never paid his bills, he was extremely abusive, he was often very unethical, and would do anything to make an extra buck. He would pop up all over the country with a different name, starting the cycle all over again. I recently noticed he just got out of jail with a brand new name and web site. If only I could find a righteous way to warn others, "Run the other way!"
There are 2 points we also have to consider when specifically talking about the custom development market, one is that advertising development houses are not helping the issue by putting out teaser ads like Get your iPhone app idea built for $5000. It sets pricetags in peoples minds that are unrealistic. When you get down to the fine print, if the app requires communicating to REST service or design work that numbers is out the door even with the advertiser.

The second being many times custom development shops don't weigh customer needs with COTS. For example in our shop we many times have customers that come in looking for a web presence. When we analyze their needs, it is apparent that Wordpress and a template will fit the bill and get them to market the quickest. I am not a huge fan of PHP on a personal level, but if Wordpress fits the bill I would be doing my client a disservice to not steer them down that path. I think for quite a few custom development shops everything looks like a custom development problem. I think if they would take the time to learn some of the cheaper solutions that will work for lower budget clients, then they can offer a product portfolio that matches the budgets of the client.
"Mobile Device Privacy Act" would prevent secret smartphone monitoring
Contrary to popular opinion, Android isn’t beating the iPhone
Chinafood.it te ayuda a crear nuevos platos con sus recetas de Comida china
I've been a programmer for a while and haven't taken a chemistry class in at least 6 or 7 years but neither question should be that difficult.

For the noble gas question, I've long since memorized the periodic table (since it's just a list and lists are easy to remember - especially using the method of loci).

As for CH4, methane is a basic elementary chemistry concept. I'm fairly certain it would qualify as basic scientific information.

Although I do agree there were some rather difficult ones I wasn't sure how I would know without having memorized it.
Love it. Have not signed up, please offer OpenID...
The primary difference between American and Canadian copyright law is that although the new bill implements DMCA-and SOPA-like provisions, the safe harbour clauses for ISPs are somewhat more lenient.

Whereas the DMCA mandates a notice-and-takedown scheme, Canadian legislatures have preferred to adopt a "Canadian" solution of notice-and-notice, which means that ISPs and hosting providers have more immunity by giving notice to their customers.

Unfortunately, this is a double-edged sword. Although service providers have greater immunity, thus less threatening to the structure of the internet, consumers are more likely to be given up by said providers, because there are less incentives for companies to defend such actions (since it requires far less costs and actions on their part to give notice rather than to take down infringing material).
Facebook was always in the game of collecting private data and exploiting it. It's in the nature of their product, you pretty much sign up for that up front.

Google offered services that didn't explicitly require users to register personal data (with some exceptions, like Orkut), and only much later started collating and exploiting all the information they gathered by observing.

The latter is much creepier. It's the difference between someone asking you to fill out a form with very personal information and someone who's spying on you through binoculars.

Also, Google betrayed people's trust with their whole "don't be evil" thing. Most people never trusted Facebook very much to begin with. Many of us trusted Google. Betrayal pisses people off more than just being screwed.
Tesla cars are built with exactly that in mind. The battery packs can be swapped out in minutes.
I know :) I was just enjoying being snarky
Someone should post a quiz to test if people are morally literate. I bet we'd see lower scores there, especially from anyone working in the financial sector.
Another solution could be to lock the keys of $config after its been configured:

use Hash::Util 'lock_keys';

our $config;
$config->{file_paht} = "/opt/app/data_file";
lock_keys( %$config );

Now any attempt to use an undefined key will throw an error. So on the open() it would now throw error: Attempt to access disallowed key 'file_path' in a restricted hash at...
HTML describes a document semantically and using tags like <b> and <strong> is bad practice. Styling, like what results from using <b> and <strong>, should be done via css.
Two not mentioned here that I use daily:
- DevIsland (for cheap sandbox hosting) http://www.devisland.net/
- Freedcamp (for all project management, like basecamp, but free and excellent) http://freedcamp.com/
It's incredible, every little thing posted on 37signals gets upvoted on Hacker News, even if it is devoid of information! Why is that?

Well as usual I feel like the guy who rants all over the place, hehe.
True, but I think IRC will be around in another 10-20 years, twitter, not so sure. I can setup my own IRC server in an hour, can that be done with twitter? As you might have guessed I use IRC and have 'tweeted' about 10 times in my life not really getting this twitter thing, mostly because the simpler, older alternatives are just that much better. Of course, IMNSHO.
I don't know what will come out of this, but I do think that experimenting with different ways of viewing the web, and seeing what does and doesn't work is vital for making things easier to use.

If we don't push the boundaries far enough to fail then we never find the unlikely things that work.
I got the same.

I'm surprised how many HNers are dismissing this as "memorizing" and regurgitating facts when a huge portion of them can be figured out through basic scientific knowledge.

For example: "Protium, which consists of a single proton and no neutrons, is the most common isotope of what element?"

I've never heard of Protium, but there is only a single element I could think of that would fit its description.
I particularly liked this quote from the article: "My training is never complete."

It's a good reminder that a degree or certification is a marker of progress but not an end in itself.
on the iwasntpaid.com site:

I was eager that the service would let me search for the client names and get reviews on them quickly. And providing a very basic template for each story for the author to enter metadata around the story. I think that would be a much better experience for readers and contributors.
I think they meant "cheaper without a subsidized phone bundled" not "cheaper without a contract" it's just that the two are almost synonymous in the US.
I'm hoping to see a revival in personal home pages, where you can share your thoughts in a place that you own and control.

To an extent, I think Tumblr fills that role. I post photo albums (which it handles well) and long text posts (which it doesn't) to my Tumblr, and people can 'like' them, comment and so on. The concept of 'reblogging' doesn't fit in with that though.
If you want to perform (for lack of a better word) a mitzvah for the community, rather than picking out a single abusive customer, use your experience and teach people how to pattern match.

Memo to young Rails developers: "I have an idea for a website. If you build v1.0 I'll pay you a whole thousand dollars and you might get equity if it works very well." has never had a happy ending. (Slight overstatement there, but it won't weigh on my conscience.)
I would love to see the statistical change on that. They did a lot of damage to vets around here (miss diagnosing, etc). The hospitals they own are not great and need some serious changes. Never mind the fun policy of just moving problem staff.
Microsoft and Adobe named in takedown of ex.ua, Ukraine’s version of Megaupload
How many people would love a blog post about how we did this, code and all?
Mobile Morning Coffee: Obama votes for Square + Shopkick's $110M for partners
One of the best things about dumbphone data usage is that it is a lot easier to control.

On Android an inconsiderate app can decide that it really needs to update 250MB of resources. There goes your data plan for that month...

I regret switching to a standard data plan as it was 'unlimited'. With the good old trusty dumbphone, a Nokia N95, I was able to connect by BT and then tunnel with SSH to VNC and RDP to my hearts content by laptop or Nokia tablet. An odd quirk was that the SSH data usage never even showed up on my plan.
If it can run opera mini and ssh it ain't a dumbphone.
I have a really tough time editing on android device so I added this rather than editing. It is worth pointing out that I used "i" for illustrative purposes. I read HN for the technical knowledge and comment on business posts (my area of relative strength).
Can't recognize faces?  Cause: brain damage caused by poor vision.
Why Has Andreessen Horowitz Raised $2.7B in 3 Years?
Livelystocks needs a smart search for stock symbols. Just messing around I had to lok up a lot of symbols on google.

I guess you could argue that if you have invested in a stock (emotionally and financially) enough to want to see real time info that you should know the symbol but hey I want to check out the app w/o having to google a lot of stuff :D
Find and Leave Secret Notes for Friends
A few weeks ago some bloggers posted photos of the phone they had in 2007, when the iPhone was introduced. The message seemed to be something like "look at the kind of shit we used before Apple reinvented the mobile".

I have no idea what model it is, but I've paid 9 € for my current Nokia in 2005 as part of a contract prolongation. Its original battery lasts one week and a half and I can't count how many times it fell to the ground. It works just as well as it did 7 years ago.

I don't know if "The dumbphone strikes back". Hell, I didn't even noticed it was ever defeated.
I'm sure I belong to a minority here, but I do not want smart phone features. All I want is 1) voice, 2) text, 3) email (text only), 4) Long battery life, 5) reliability.

I don't want web on my phone. I don't want a camera on my phone. I don't want an MP3 player on my phone. I don't want a GPS or a tip calculator or a thousand other pointless (to me) apps on my phone. I don't even want to play angry birds on my phone. * gasp *

I had an iPhone. I got rid of it. I now own a Nokia, and other than coming with a useless camera, it fits my requirements perfectly and it's way cheaper and the battery lasts forever.
The BBB is a shakedown and won't do anything about the situation, especially if the company in question is a member.
Which Google Analytics app?
"Free, unlimited private repositories."

Best of luck to BitBucket but why on earth would Github do this? They're a business
I love....

- dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/

- gmail: https://mail.google.com

- KISSMetrics: https://www.kissmetrics.com

- Google Analytics (real-time tab): https://www.google.com/analytics

- Github: https://github.com/

- HALL.com: https://hall.com/
Not sure why someone down-voted you, but as someone who has been hired to build lots of iOS apps, it sounds like what you're saying is NOT that it should be cheaper to build iOS apps than it is, but that being able to explain how the developer is delivering commensurate value will let a "business person" justify that high price.
Depends on how you define conversations. As far as I am concerned Twitter's 140 char limit and fragmented exchanges don't allow for "real" conversations. As for clients, their function and choice totally depends on decisions taken by Twitter because Twitter is centralized.

That said, IRC will never be as popular as Twitter and probably doesn't make for a good business model. But it's all that kruhft said it is.
Right, that's the point I was making - if you had to pay for those services to an external party, the cost goes up, quickly.

I did the server side work, my co-founder did the artwork, both at a > 0 opportunity cost I'm sure.

We designed the app ourselves, again, at some non-zero opportunity cost.
How Lanyrd uses HTML5 offline storage for its Mobile Web app
This is important. It seems to be a widely-held belief here in Canada that electric cars are rubbish in the winter. There might be a PR battle that needs winning.
Exactly. My fault for not being clear myself.
Sorry, but I think you're being a little overly dramatic. I'm relatively new to iOS development (just over a year of doing it full-time) and I've built quite a few apps for clients for <$10k and for somewhere between $10k and $20k. There is a LONG list of apps that can be delivered in 100-150 hours. At $95-125 / hr, that puts you solidly in the $10k - $20k range.