skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Summary: Joel Spolsky discovers that people matter more than processes.

I use fogbugz for my start-up's bug-tracking, and that's something I've "felt" through the application - Joel Spolsky (and, by extension, Fogbugz) believes in what I'd call the "analytical" approach to software development. I know that works for certain kinds of projects - I come from a big consulting background, and I've seen large projects being successfully delivered with those methodologies.

However, I think a not-so-new approach that also works, albeit with smaller teams, is the "just have a handful of super-productive guys with a loose mandate and good motivation" approach. This can be called "agile", but it's not quite that. Agile is not a lack of process - on the contrary, Agile can in fact be more process-heavy than traditional methodologies! This "put great people first" approach is what I'm using on my current start-up, and I believe it works great. You don't know where you're gonna end up or when, but you know that it'll be a great place and that it would have been impossible to plan your way there.

I wonder if larger corporations will ever adopt this model of development (which, imho, is far more effective, though so much less controlled).
Anyone have luck getting the vim plugin (IdeaVIM) installed?
We used Strang for Linear Algebra. It was the only math class in college I did badly in. I tried multiple times to understand linear algebra and every time I ended up at the picture in the first few pages of the book. Each page built upon the previous page and there were no pictures to anchor on.

A year later I took an OpenGL class then a grad class in Computational Geometry. Once I had pictures and application I was fine. Morphing space and w/ matrix transformations and drawing in it in OpenGL was all I needed to snap the semester of symbol manipulation into focus. Strang to me was like man pages. Great for reference, terrible for learning.
I was serious, excluding the Unibomber reference. Isolating yourself and living off the land is the closest you're going to get.

You won't be consuming any of our tax-funded services, and you won't be contributing to our economy or paying taxes (assuming no property tax?)

Beyond that, the people inside these borders have decided this is how we want things to work, and (as I mentioned) if you don't like it you're free to give up your citizenship and move somewhere else.
(I have to give you a really bad notice: Obama is not Christ. So please don't expect too much from politics.)
They'll throw you in jail, only if you're a citizen (you have certain rights and responsibilities with that citizenship).

If you're not a citizen they'll deport you and you can be on your merry way finding another country that will let you do what you want.

You could always give up your citizenship...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/17/news/expat.php
To me, the primary value of my individual vote is its role in keeping the democratic process running. If I wouldn't vote, I would contribute to undermining the system I support. Contrastingly, the less other people vote, the more important my own vote becomes; if I were a democracy's last voter, I would make all the difference. What's not to like?
I am working with firefox with its add-on: "ie tab" to check the differences in ie...
What a waste of NAB's resources. Innovate your business not hold onto a dinosaur.

Arguments heard in story, "Falling light due to no communication," uh use Internet communication like Skype, instead.
That first paragraph was interesting. I am pompous and lazy, but that's irrelevant. Your friend made a smart decision, but that is also irrelevant.

I'll tell you a little story though. When I was in Basic, there was a time when all the trainees were gathered in the church, roughly 2,000 of us (nothing religious, just used because it was big enough to accommodate everyone). We were asked why we enlisted. Only a handful raised their hand who thought it was their "patriotic duty." After college, I will probably go into the Special Forces. Not for any patriotic fluff, but for the challenge, adventure, and to save people. So you shouldn't feel such a burden unless you live in a swing state. Voting for a third party is a symbolic gesture, but so is not voting at all. FWIW, I'm voting for Nader tomorrow morning.

The rest of your comment is ridiculous and should be read aloud before submitting

and proof that politics should be banned from news.yc.
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Biased sampling.
Just emailed you. I am interested in starting and helping organize the group's events.
You know, you are entering a market with your box that is very crowded with similar products. My thesis document is something, that if combined with your product, would change your product from something nice to something that will blow minds. Intruiged? Watch my twitter account and wait for when I post the pictures (it's hardware).
You may have seen an example of this happening recently when Bloomberg killed off Steve Jobs:

http://gawker.com/5042795/bloomberg-runs-steve-jobs-obituary
http://crossbrowsertesting.com/

Offers a set of virtual machines for browser testing, or anything actually.

I used the service once to get around a XP-only Java application installation -- installed the application into a machine via the service and then copied the JAR-files to my own machine. Worked like a charm.
Windows doesn't support multiple versions of IE on the same machine without some hackery. But, if you're a Windows user and poor, Microsoft provides free virtual machines to test IE 6, 7, and 8. The images might work on other VMs too.

Virtual PC (free): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=04D...

Disk images with IE 6, 7, 8 (free): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21E...

I just install all the other browsers (FF and Safari mainly) and do those manually.
My main computer has FF3 and Opera 9. I have a rusty Powerbook G4 with Safari 3, FF2, FF3.

and in VMWare:

XP SP3 with IE6

XP SP3 with IE7

XP SP3 with IE8, Chrome, Safari 3, FF2

The workflow is, Ctrl Shift R, and click around.
I would more loudly broadcast the fact that it is based on drupal. If a user has a lot of success they would want to know that there is a large group from which they could hire developers for customisation. Drupal offers that.

The idea of editions seems like a quaint throwback to the world of print media. Does it make sense for online?
A democracy?
As far as i know, there is no official way to grab it, but basically all you have to do is scan the output till the first heading (i forget if it outputs in the A.P.I. as h1 or ==) appears and that will generally be your summary.
Besides the information on this article there's also a lot more information on how to reduce your bill and serve your site way faster on this one >
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=352695
Strictly speaking, not true. If the lectures were all standardized at, say, 50 minutes each, then a professor that could be sped up more would take less time to get through each lecture than one who could not be sped up much at all. It's kind of like how you can read a page with lots of blank space much faster.
Of course, it all gets muddled in the question of how much info per lecture\minute is actually best for learning, but if your goal is to get through them quickly then a speedable professor is best.
I don't live in the US. In any case, which presidential candidate plans to stop federal corporal punishment?

I suggest that you LEAVE. Many people find living outside the United States quite pleasant, and you can rest assured that in most of the other democratic nations of the world, your tax dollars are not being spent to bomb "collateral damage".

That's not viable if you're an American citizen. As an American citizen your worldwide income is subject to US taxes, other than where overridden by treaty.
For Windows XP there is also a nice installer for having multiple Explorer versions on the same machine (3,4,5,6 in addition to normally installed 7):

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
Rainfall autism theory suggested
Great alli review
I never knew about all the gross effects of alli til i read this review.
Yeah, basically you should take most of these polls with a grain of salt. Other highly biased polls:

http://www.7-election.com/

First of all, apparently 7-11 doesn't have locations in most of the "red states", which already shows bias. And there's a huge difference between voting for a candidate and buying a cup with their face on it to advertise your choice to the world. Nice marketing gimmick though.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/in-landslide-john-mccain...

Apparently McCain supporters are behind the times with their AOL accounts. I haven't come across anyone who uses AOL in years.

Even the "real" polls have all sorts biases, like the "cellphone effect":

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/cellphone-effect-cont...

Again, McCain supporters tend to still use landlines over cellphones.
I wonder what the headlines will be tommorow. If I were an editor, I'd go for one of these tabloid headlines in 24pt font, depending on who wins:

Bradley Baloney!

Obama in Power!

McCain upsets Again!

Blowout!

Guess who's coming to the White House?
Bob Barr supported the Patriot Act. A libertarian supporting the patriot act is like a chicken supporting KFC.

oh, but he "regrets" voting for it. Idiot.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28960.html
You seem confused. The purpose of government is to have a stable group of muggers who behave themselves, not to make you guilt-free.

/You/ can never legitimize or de-legitimize the state, only its citizens in aggregate can. Which is why voting is so handy, you get to de-legitimize a state without all that nasty killing.

I don't understand grand visions of a world built entirely of nice people. Someone will always figure out that they can be top dog by being 10% more asshole than everyone else, and then you're back to the start- building a society around coercion and limiting assholes and useful shortcuts to revolution.

Public schools may not be the best, but you may have missed some important life lessons by skipping out.
Typo: "If you find a theme you like, you don't even a web designer."

Missing a "need" after "don't even"?
People who don't study economics are under the assumption that economists haven't addressed criticisms that have been around for hundreds of years.
I don't see.

It doesn't matter a jot when something "just opted out of concrete reality entirely", but it's also not especially interesting. Talking about pink elephants and how they can double in size may be internally consistent in a story, but it's not something that's "true but really difficult to believe in" anymore than "dividing by zero equals infinity" is difficult to believe in.

If the fun is at the next level, perhaps that's where I ought to go...
Technohipsters favor Obama!
It's even worse than that.

Most polls "weigh" the respondents based on, well, judgment. So a poll might be weighed 60-40 dems to pubs. Or 65-35. It varies.

And then the polls each have their "likely voter model", which means all the questions they ask to figure out if you're going to vote or not. Many of these are untested.

I think Obama's going to win by 3-4 percent nationwide, but quite frankly the polls could be way out of whack in a lot of spots. He could pull out a ten-point lead, or it could get really close in spots.

Polling for future behavior is a very inexact science. Heck -- even exit polling isn't that great.
Do you by any chance play the lottery?
Hi Joel, Don't want to sound like a stalker or sound too fulsome so don't get the wrong idea but I follow you in twitter and read your posts on the erlang list and find you inspirational.

My opinion on this is:-

1. Forget the subs. Let people play for fun for free and if they want to bet take a cut of the ante or pot or something (IE you only make money when people spend money and even then only make a little). Make it very, very easy to bet (Paypal, google checkout easy). But let people play for Kudos too.

2. Also let people play on Facebook. Do Facebook Connect (or other social networks) so peeps joining your site can bring all their friends (their whole social graph). Make it so people can play away from your site basically (iPhone etc)

3. Bring in non-players IE have tutorials, novice tables, private game rooms stuff like that. There is a huge untapped market of women who love to gamble (witness the power of Bingo in the UK) if it is fun and social.

Personally I'd back you whatever as your drive and commitment are evident. Whether you follow my advice or not I expect you to succeed with this or another idea and if I had a few 10s of thousands of pounds I'd be in like Flynn. Sorry if that embarrasses you.
The more stuff one composts or puts in a food bin (provided by the council in some places, such as Richmond), the less smelly stuff one has to endure in the bin proper.
Thank you for that.

looks sheepish

Fixed.
Do you read?
I enjoy reading. I have actually devised a time table to organise all of my activities and reading takes most of the time (although not easy to stick to it).

I was wondering though if you read and by read I mean books. If so what are you currently reading and why? What is your most favourite book and why? How many books would you estimate you read a month and finally do you think all this reading is worth it, would it not be better if you spent your time doing something else and why?

Now I know that's a lot of question, I am not doing a study or anything, I am just curious to know what you guys (I assume slightly more intellectually curious that most) think about engaging in reading.
Good point, but your parents will never say to you "we need to drop certain functionality to improve the core framework in order to secure a stable release" or "private static long MAGIC_NUMBER = 1024*1024; ?!?! you crazy man!! what the hell does this do?"

I personally find it easier to work on a project when I have somebody to look things over with. It's very easy to get side tracked when you work on things by yourself, well thats what I find for myself any way.
Jordan Mechner: How Prince of Persia started
Could there something else at work in the siwss experiment, too? If the cost is higher to vote (walking through the rain etc.), maybe the perceived chance is greater that your vote has a greater weight, because fewer people will show up to vote. If you make it through a tornado, you might even wind up being the only person at the voting booth.

Perhaps with the cheap mail-in ballots people feel too assured that everybody else will vote, anyway, so their own vote is less important.
Wish I could vote, I've suffered though the campaigns just as much as any American, and lets face it — what ever the US does, the rest of the world follows.

But if I could...it'd be for Obama.
I am not too concerned if singular special events end up on HN. There are not enough events of that scope to pose a threat (I presume).
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Russell,

I can't take a cut of the pot or ante as that will convert me into a gambling site, of the type that are illegal in the US.

I'm all for letting people play for free but I would like to make at least enough money to support the site and cover development cost.

I have an idea for a Mac/Win/iPhone client built with Unity [1] but I need to launch something first and let people kick the tires. This is where the Flash client comes in.

What about letting people replenish their balances, for a fee, e.g. pay $5, get $1000 in play money?

[1] http://unity3d.com
I think the bradley effect would happen again and McCain might get a surprise win.

It is indeed astonishing that no over is McCain a favorite to bet on.
A History of Matching Tile Games
When 2-3 bright engineers are working on something they very precisely (usually) know what they are doing. If one of them says "It's going to take six to eight weeks" then all the planning would've already happened in the programmer's brain. Even if it takes twice as much (10-12 weeks or about 3 months) it's not much because the baseline itself is pretty small. With this mental planning, spending time on bug tracking and filling a spreadsheet is a waste of his productive time. They will find tools like Twitter far more useful than FogBugz. In this case Twitter acts as more of communication tool than a project management tool.

In such small teams 'What are you working on' is more important than filling fields like 'bug type' and 'browser' or 'steps to reproduce'.

As we discover new ways to communicate traditional tools like bug tracking may become obsolete.
To paraphrase Dijkstra: Democracy is a much about voting as astronomy is about telescopes.
Actually you're not. The US won't let you go stateless and even makes it complicated to renounce your US citizenship after you've gotten a second one. Usually it takes many years to be eligible for citizenship elsewhere.

Not that I think it's terribly relevant...
I've heard Selenium is really good. It has a remote testing mode so that you can set up a bunch of different OS and browser combinations and run tests automatically.

http://selenium-rc.openqa.org/
> broadcast the fact that it is based on drupal.

I'm trying to keep a middle path with regards to this. For some people, it's advantageous to know it's based on Drupal. For other people (which I hope will be majority of the target market), they'll just go "Huh? What's that and why do I care?", so I'm trying not to scare the former away with too much jargon.

For the latter, they'll find out the fact soon enough. It is clearly stated elsewhere on the site and in ProsePoint itself.

> The idea of editions seems like a quaint throwback to the world of
> print media. Does it make sense for online?

If you're doing blogs, then editions are unnecessary. However, I believe there are potential users out there who think they want editions-type functionality, whether because they migrated from print media, or they're publishing a monthly magazine, or for whatever reason (maybe the pointy haired boss said so :). If you look at some existing newspaper websites, their story listings are more than just a chronological ordering.

So, this is just a case of doing what (I perceive that) the users want.

Editions also provides two features over blogs: Convenient ahead-of-time scheduling of stories, and complex layouts. I can't quite imagine being able to do easily with a blog without some sort of customised functionality.

Furthermore, with ProsePoint, you can use both editions scheduling and blogs (but for different channels), so I leave it up to the user to choose.
The Politics of Load Balancing
+1.

I run Ubuntu and have 2 VMWare virtual servers running XP with various browsers.
I think you've got it spot on — ads for free members; and no ads, the option to customize things, use extra features, and some extra virtual cash every month for the "Pro" members.

Plus you could sell exta virtual currency, with Pro members getting a discount.

Whats your URL? :)
There have been some things that get pretty close. Kibbutzs in Israel simulate much of the "live peacefully with neighbors" but they tend towards collectivism.

The problem with going whole-hog anarchism is that on any significant scale (even a couple hundred people) peer-to-peer trust breaks down and anything that steps in to make processes more streamlined and reliable or introduces organizational structure becomes functionally equivalent to a government. We rely to such a huge extent on specialization of labor and trust of abstractions that such freedom doesn't scale if one expects modern amenities.
with wooly mammoth clones we can use surrogate elephant mothers. what surrogate could be used for dinosaurs?
we lack the technology for artificial gestation.
I don't like the idea.
There is god awfully too much competition. Nearly every single for-money poker site is actually masked/marketed as a play for free site. There is already poker apps on the major SNS like facebook (and probably myspace).

You are outmarketed, outreached, and out muscled in almost every conceivable way.

Also, as much as people DON'T admit it - people play poker to win money. If you think your niche is those "friendly college games" well why in gods name would your "college friends" play poker online when they can kick back some beers, invite friends over and have a REAL game?

Lastly, if your angle is "social networking around poker" well thats called "every other poker site out there". I can not see anyone who is legitimately interested in poker, signing up for a social networking site about poker, that does not let you play poker "seriously" (read for money).
I just can not see any possible legitimate angle to go forward with this.

Please someone show me the light.
System Prefs -> Displays -> Uncheck "Automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes", and I believe that will do it for you.
For better or worse, US have a lot of coercive power around the world, and your choice of president can make a big difference for a lot of people who have no say in the election.

So as a non-american I tell you that it is your goddam duty to get informed and vote.

You may not like to vote, but you have to. It's like watching a car crash about to happen and you have the ability to prevent it - sure it infringes on your personal freedom to mind you own business, but it's your duty to do something anyway.
>I can't take a cut of the pot or ante as that will convert me into a gambling site, of the type that are illegal in the US.

Ah. I wasn't aware of the legal implications in the US.

>What about letting people replenish their balances, for a fee, e.g. pay $5, get $1000 in play money?

That sounds good and quite normal too. Probably both ideas together will net you most returns: Pay a monthly sub and get free transfer in of funds but if you just want to play now and again then pay to transfer in playing money. And still have play for free if no money involved? Or is there no point to that do you think? Maybe an initial freebie?
There's no light. When life throws you lemons you gotta make lemonade, right? I have no other product at the moment and, questions of why I developed it in the first place notwithstanding, I gotta do with what I have.

I'm not going to mask as a play for free site, I'm gonna be one. It's clear that I have to be the best play for free site out there but it's not clear what I have to be best at.

I'll put the site up, try to make the experience as good as possible and experiment relentlessly. I have no other options.
An economist's point of view is not indifference to human suffering. If you value the old lady's happiness, then you would be willing to trade other things (e.g. several seconds of your life) for it.
People can already play unlimited hands for free at any major for-money poker site. I can't conceive how anyone would possibly pay $5.00 to play for free, especially when you can enter "sit and go" tournaments on for-money sites for the same price, all with a chance to win back real money. They also have 1 and 2 cent poker rooms so again .... simply can not see how this can be taken seriously.
The likelihood numbers cannot be tested empirically. The experiment only gets run once. In other words, there is no error term for the likelihood numbers.

I'll be looking at Electoral Votes and the popular margin.
There the difference between pollster and 538 is the most interesting to me. The former is a simple average of all polls while the latter uses weighted averages. Individual pollsters might get closer but within their margins of error.
Conversely, there's the cellphone effect:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/cellphone-effect-cont...