skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I feel like any random page of Infinite Jest is touching autobiographical commentary.

'Many times the same. Winning two and three upset matches, feeling suddenly so loved, so many talking to you as if there is love. But always the same, then. For then you awaken to the fact that you are loved for winning only. The two and three wins created you, for people. It is not that the wins made them recognize something that existed unrecognized before these upset wins. The from-noplace winning created you. You must keep winning to keep the existence of love and endorsements and the shiny magazines wanting your profile.'

Best 1079-page book ever.
Best Business Advice You've Ever Received?
"You must take the challenge whether you succeed or not - the most important thing is at least you tried"
German government shifts 11,000 desktops to open source
Princeton report rips N.J. e-voting machines as easily hackable
I suspect it isn't actually burnout, but a shift in culture. Namely, the attitude towards work and what it means in one's life. The culture change is quite unthinkably fast though. First you have freeter, then neet, then hodo-hodo-zoku. Continuing this trend, expect a new term in another few years.
Absolutely, there is a great article on the Ponoko blog (www.blog.ponoko.com) about a new printer by Desktop Factory being about the same price as the first Apple laser printer in 1985 (~$5K). Forget "Web 3.0" "Web 3.D" is way more exciting.
Video Is Dominating Internet Traffic, Pushing Broadband Prices Up
Google Apps :-)

I use GMail on my own domain.
There are some experiences you just can't digitize accurately. Building with Legos is one of them, dammit!
I've seen enough. I want one!
Can you talk more about what your company is planning to do with 3D? There was talk on here about starting a 3D printer startup, but it never went anywhere (yet)...
Which is probably why this post got to the front page :-)
Probably have to show them Ferris Bueller's Day Off before they get the point.
Berkeley DB is very much the same idea as couchdb, a persistent hash. What's interesting about couchdb is the REST API that makes use of JSON and the use of Erlang/OTP. Erlang was built by and for telecom apps. It's robustness and scalability are phenomenal.

Couchdb also includes a map/reduce framework based on javascript. It's really worth a close look. The one thing I don't quite get is why they haven't used Mnesia instead of rolling their own storage model. Perhaps because it wasn't designed for very large datasets.
And it was just down: http://i37.tinypic.com/21drlsg.jpg
What would you build with a 3D printer?
3D printers are starting to get a lot of attention, I was wondering about uses - what would you use a 3D printer for?
How do they work? I can't picture how the art one is made.
Where is your user name registered?
What's wrong with using Swing?

I had some experience with using Swing and Clojure, and was able to easily wire up GUIs laid out in NetBeans to Clojure code.

This included subclassing elements such as table view headers to customize appearance, cross-platform on OS X and XP.

Note also that Clojure can be hinted to eliminate type reflection, bringing performance to a par with Java.
Highest funded US Startups from 2006 to 2008
Paul Polak: 15 Rules for Business Success in Any Market
I would use a 3D printer to make another 3D printer.
I left the tank off, and the wife wouldn't let me wear flippers while carrying the baby. But I went with the long hose, thigh pocket, harness and wing.

You'll notice I left the steel backplate at home for this one. Too lazy to lug a heavy rig down the street even without a steelie 130 on it.
StackOverflow Podcast #27 - Interview with Alex Ohanian and Steve Huffman
IMVU: Learning What Customers Want
agreed. why would i get an _old_ mbp? Most of the time I'm hooked up to my 24-inch dell anyways
Samsung J700 Black Unlocked
With the introduction of this amazing cell phone, Samsung has proved that it is the best when it comes to combining style and technology. Samsung J700 Black comes with its reflective surface and slide-up slim style. The phone is certainly going to rock. This mobile phone claims to provide the perfect package to its clients.
This is kind of not surprising, I'm even seeing it here in the US in some very odd circumstances. One of my life long friends just took a job doing less work than his previous job, but pays more (higher profile company).

I worked full time at a law firm before getting my company off the ground and it was pure hell. I dreaded going in because while I got to enjoy smoke breaks, the entire time my work cell was going off, emails coming in, people needing more and more.

The work world is getting grueling. Whoever said this fast paced culture was right, but Japan isn't the only culture experiencing work-related jetlag. We're in an accelerated culture as well and we're working people into the ground, but paying them more to do it. I don't miss the 9-5 one bit.
I think it's because they're politically pressured to; there are cultural groups trying to keep the Welsh language from dying out. (I don't know Welsh or live in the UK, though, so I'm going to defer to anybody who knows better.)
I used to play around with 3D modeling software years ago. I would likely get back to that and just make random... anything. I suspect my house would soon be cluttered with dozens of random "sculptures" of my own making.

One of the cool ideas EA had with Spore was to offer 3D replication of creatures made with the creature creator. I'm not sure if they went through with this or not.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pyrogenic/147435979/

I could also make random (video-game related?) knick knacks and sell them on Etsy or Ebay. I had an idea for something like this a few months ago, that I wanted to make for myself, but I couldn't find any good places to do it locally.

In short, once the price drops to around $1000, I'll likely be first in line to get a 3D printer.
they all work by building in layers, hardening some material and then using something else for a support structure (some use the unhardened building material, some use a weaker (or soluble) building material, some use the same material, in a thin lattice formation).

Its been several years, but I used to work at a prototyping company. They have a decent overview of the machines they use, which cover all of the major technologies: http://www.rpc.msoe.edu/machines.php
"What's wrong with using Swing?"

I make an argument for Swing as the best Ruby GUI option here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-monkeybars/index...

I imagine something akin to Monkeybars could be developed for Clojure whereby developers can exploit the fluidity of the language while getting the benefit of Swing development tools.
Should Arrows be Placed Before Link Text or After?
I'd set up a web site that let you put famous people in funny situations. You could have the whole rate/share/clan social stuff if you like. Then you could print out your figurines to keep in your office as fun collectibles. Sort of a cross between a comic book, Digg, Newspaper cartoons (political or not), Home Shopping Network, and Martha Stewart.

It would be extremely easy-to-use, but freelance artists could write their own "modules" -- such as new famous people or scene extras -- and get royalties each time they were used.
This slacker thing could backfire and people in line jobs could get paid less. That'll make'em work harder!

But seriously:

In software engineering, my colleagues don't want to be managers. When I worked in IT, they did want management. I think this difference is a function of the work satisfaction, pay differential. If you make six figures already (most of my software engineer friends do or are close to that figure), there just isn't enough motivation in a few more grand to become a manager.

When will corporations understand that they have made work all about money and therefore have to pay. There is no loyalty, no sense of sticking it out during rough times. So all we can afford to value is the cash.

That's not our fault. And I'm not a slacker because of the changing value system I had nothing to do with.
Out of those 161, I've only heard of 32. Out of those 32, I only use 3 more than once
Holy shit! Fuck webapps. This is the next huge thing without doubt. Once it becomes more affordable, it is going to change the world completely for sure.

So this is how patents will die, huh? (patents don't stop you from making something for your personal use)
I see this coming to the West very soon. When the socially engineered 'everyone is a winner' generation AKA Generation-Y realises real life bears no relation to the one they are taught in school and increasingly college/university, we may be in for a shock. We may find we have a generation of young professionals who run a mile when presented with the prospect of management.
RP (rapid prototyping, as it used to be called), is also used to make molds for invisalign braces, prototyping in all kinds of industrial applications, and now to make 3D printers (http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome).

When I was in college I worked in a RP lab, and the major concern at the time was build materials. You could build parts out of metal on one of the machines (which could also build parts out of plastic), but you could not build parts out of both materials at the same time.

zCorp parts are extremely fragile, but can be cured hard (but are still more fragile than the other machines), and, at least at the time, it was one of the least accurate machines (but also was much cheaper and used much cheaper materials). The highest quality machines used lasers to either cure resin or melt a powdered form of the material. Both machines and materials were expensive.

In nearly all cases, significant post processing of parts was required to have anything usable when you were done. These are not like printers, where when you're document is done, you hand out copies. When you're part is done you sand. When sanding is done, you cure and/or seal.
Building a Princess Saving App: How to Build Learning and Fun into Your Applications [pdf]
> They say these workers, mostly in their 20s and early 30s, are sapping Japan's international competitiveness at a time when the aging country must raise its productivity to keep the economy growing.

How dare these young workers question their enslavement to the much larger retiring generations. Don't they realize they have to work hard to keep my checks coming in the mail?
I love StackOverflow, but for the love of god Joel and Jeff need to learn to not talk over each other.
I don't really see this as a bad thing. I know personally I would hate to work for a company that expected me to put them first in my life. It finally looks like work life in Japan is headed off in a saner direction.
What would you use a computer for, if you could have one of your very own? Hard to tell, but to say the possibilities are endless is an understatement.
Why modular Windows will suck for Microsoft and suck for you
I bet that the companies on this list that actually make good-old-fashioned material things, like Nanosolar, pay off triple the average return of the Net startups.
> So this is how patents will die, huh? (patents don't stop you from making something for your personal use)...

I think you nailed a key insight here: physical objects will be able to be created with the ease of the way software can be created right now.
Exactly. I wouldn't call them "Slackers." Who the hell wants to work past 10 PM??? That is enslavement. I would call them smart.
> unthinkably fast pace of Japanese work culture

Not sure where you're getting that idea. It's slow as molasses; hours of pointless meetings and such. They just work ridiculous hours.

It has been noted that rice agriculture is extremely labor intensive compared to the much more capital intensive european farming modes, and that perhaps this is reflected in the different modern businesses approaches of east and west.
Youth is wasted on the young...
Good times ahead for Blender modelers ( http://www.blender.org ).
I run the most popular Ruby and Rails blog, and readership drops a solid 10-15% every weekend in FeedBurner numbers. I think there are a lot of what I'd call "institutional" programmers and techies who only talk shop during the week (mostly because they're in the office).
Intriguingly, I had no opinion on this before going to that page, but after looking at their examples, something about the "arrow after" examples make me want to click on them more. It's only an anecdotal data point, but others comment similarly.
Sorry I'm not Patrick, but we're trying to keep up to date with iPhone developer news (as well as tutorials) at http://www.mobileorchard.com/ - we're trying to become a bit of a "go to" for iPhone development news and the like - high level stuff mostly.
Very clever little tool. I can't see myself using it too often, but it's shown me lots of semi-popular sites where I can still pick up my username.. so I might just have to do that next!
a wealth of opportunity tempered with some non-trivial danger: we're one step closer to Digital Rights Management that works end to end. does your brain Play4Sure? until i ingested the latest wetware service pack, i could only sense FairPlay compatible media.
Interesting, but I see this as being a very client-specific implementation. I don't think browsers will implement it. It'd make more sense to have a good, cross-browser socket API instead (though one protected in the same way as AJAX is).
Also I think pretty soon some extremely light gel like alloy that becomes super-strong on exposure to air will be made and we'll be making much more than prototypes at home.
> When senior management sees you as just a cost to be minimized

And they'll have the same attitude toward your dev. environment. Noisy, crowded environment, out-of-date tools, machines / upgrades hard to come by, or take forever ... I'm at my 2nd such because of other constraints.
That is the worst movie trailer I have ever seen. Everyone in this forum is stupider from having seen it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
"There won't be any job cuts in Indian IT" : Narayana Murthy(Infosys)
tocomment, there are a few different technologies that are grouped under the "3D Printing" banner:

"Selective Laser Sintering" is the technology used in the "Art" example. With this a process a thin layer of powdered plastic, metal, or cermaic is laid out on a platform, then a laser then hardens a portion of it. another layer is spread out and the process is repeated thousands of times. In the end you shake of the extra dust and your part emerges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering

"Stereo Lithography" is another process, from Wikipedia: Stereolithography is an additive fabrication process utilizing a vat of liquid UV-curable photopolymer "resin" and a UV laser to build parts a layer at a time. On each layer, the laser beam traces a part cross-section pattern on the surface of the liquid resin. Exposure to the UV laser light cures, or, solidifies the pattern traced on the resin and adheres it to the layer below.

After a pattern has been traced, the SLA's elevator platform descends by a single layer thickness, typically 0.05 mm to 0.15 mm (0.002" to 0.006"). Then, a resin-filled blade sweeps across the part cross section, re-coating it with fresh material. On this new liquid surface the subsequent layer pattern is traced, adhering to the previous layer. A complete 3-D part is formed by this process. After building, parts are cleaned of excess resin by immersion in a chemical bath and then cured in a UV oven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereolithography

"Fused Deposition Modeling" is a third technology that works like a very fine grain softserve ice cream machine. a print head goes over a surface laying down a thin, ribbon like string of materials eventually building up enough layers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fused_deposition_modeling

"3D Printing" is more like desktop printing in that you have a substrate and "pixel" of materials are deposited until your design emerges as a finished product.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing

Hope this helps.
ph0rque,

My company isn't using 3D printing at launch, rather focusing on some other rapid manufacturing technologies. I'm just a 3D printing enthusiast. Feel free to email me if you want to talk more.
Albert, are you a 3D modeler? If so, would love to talk.
From hacker news to slacker news.
Haha, I'm with you, but I think webapps are actually going to be a critical part of this development, simple, lightweight tools that will allow you to create thing to your taste with little design or manufacturing expertise.
You'd be surprised. You probably use several of these startups without even realizing it. For example, CDNetworks is a large content delivery network. And if you've ever stumbled across those annoying parked domains you've probably availed yourself to OverSee's services.
I'm not sure solar has really taken off big time yet has it? Surely there is a massive investment into research+design before any return is seen?
What's up with you people who design UI programmatically?

This is 2008, jesus christ.

http://code.google.com/android/devel/ui/xml.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Application_Markup_L...
Android Market, Unleashed
Interesting how they're not looking for barbarians, necromancers or thieves, isn't it?
For sure, 3D printing is a neat technology, but people like Neil Gershenfeld at MIT's media lab are doing even more advanced things literally programming atoms to assemble in certain patterns which could then be used to make larger structures. the whole notion of "manufacturing" is going to be very different in 20 years.
A well-timed reminder of something that a lot of people here seem to forget: not all startups are frivolous webapps.

Some of the interesting ones:

Nanosolar: High-efficiency solar cells

Gridpoint: Something to do with power grid management

Plastic logic: Flexible displays

eSolar: Solar thermal power

HelioVolt: More solar cells!

SulfurCell: More solar cells!

GodTube: Christian Videos. Seriously, this one sounds like a joke, but it exists and somebody gave it $30 million.

Fisker: Electric cars.

Admittedly a rather high percentage are still web-based software of some kind. And an awfully large percentage of those remaining are related to energy.

Another interesting (if worrying) trend: I couldn't find any biotech on the list at all (there might be a few, I didn't look at everything but I checked the names for bio-sounding things).
Well I suppose most sports car designs do fall into unique looks, so I understand how they'd be able to patent the exterior design, but the machine inside would likely never hold up in court.

If the guy had built an old sedan he wouldn't have a worry in the world about the exterior design as the amount of chassis sharing between companies they're all inherently the same. I do believe you're right though, the patents on the 'ornamental design' seem valid, but as you stated virtually any vehicle design patent seems invalid if it was made before 1994.

I'm wondering if vehicle manufacturers allow these patents to die off after 14 years to allow people to rebuild classics. I mean what would the public reaction be like if Ford sued someone for patent infringement because they fixed up a classic Mustang and couldn't get all the Ford manufactured parts.
Not a very authoritative usability article in my book. It's just the intuition of some random guy as far as I know. The arguments are scarce and there are no usability studies to back it up.

Jakob Nielsen has spoiled me.
Could I make copies of my housekey instead of going to the hardware store? Could reprep do this? That's the only one I could afford.
There was a lot of 3D printers demoed at Siggraph this year. Their technology is impressive but still not quite there in terms of quality (resolution and color). Most of the models produced, even with higher-end 100K$+ printers, still felt grainy as if the "3D DPI" is not high enough to create a layered object with smooth enough surfaces. Also, all the models that I've seen containing colors were hand-painted as the affordable printers don't have this feature yet. I think that technology is improving, but still aimed mostly at the engineering prototypes market for now.
Apart from the obvious disillusionment and realisation that a corporate career is often equivalent to a corporate shafting, maybe another factor is that you need less money nowadays to enjoy your leisure time. For example, one reason I was excited to work in computing was access to expensive equipment and systems which I couldn't afford to buy myself. Now, I have half a dozen computers in my house and can pick up another system unit for <$100 on eBay.

The availability of cheap hardware and broadband access means you can do anything from collaborating on software, to "meeting" people online, to playing WoW and other games. For tech-savvy people, their sense of identity and self-worth is probably more bound up in those things than who they supposedly are at work.
Maybe a model of my house, or a bust of my face.
How is Slide so low on the list? Their public $50M was a SECOND round of funding.
Gifts for people, maybe make a figurine of someone for their birthday.
I find it odd that that the more people there are in the world, and the more technology there is, the harder we all have to work. It seems counter-intuitive.
In Lisp, code is data and data is code ;P so he's designing it in a markup language that happens to be Clojure :D
When in doubt, use the real-world for a guideline. In this case, road signs provide a perfect metaphor. In the case of street signs, arrows pointing to the right are always positioned after the text and arrows pointing to the left are positioned before the text. In the case of links, these little chevrons or triangles almost always point to the right so it's natural to position them after the link text.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/faq.php#mirrorcharts
jrbedard,

You are absolutely correct about the state of the art. I use a fairly nice Invision 3D printer and its quality is nice, but pieces straight out of the chamber have a distinct "wood grain" look. The machines are also somewhat unreliable.

However with some sandpaper and elbow grease you can finishe the parts quite nicely. I've sanded pieces from the Invision to the point where they are optically clear and nearly indistinguishable from injection molded parts.

The most successful applications of 3D printing beyong engineering models are niches. Figureprints.com can print out World of Warcraft characters for ~$150 because of the emotional bond people have to their characters.

Paragon Lake brilliantly figured out a way to make 3D printing a mainstream part of the jewelry manufacturing process.
I went through most of them and I found Plastic Logic the most interesting. They have a very thin "epaper" coming out next year that looks like it has potential to be a great disruptive product.

CNN seems to like it too, http://www.plasticlogic.com/
I almost threw up after 20 minutes of talking about the reddit alien.
Haha, not sure if you are familiar with the RepRap project, but they are doing exactly that.
http://blog.reprap.org/
http://builders.reprap.org/
yeah, at Siggraph the most popular company around 3D printing was http://www.shapeways.com/ with their social network around printable 3D creations and their easy-to-use 3D modeling software to design and customize artsy products.
CNC Milling would be the better choice for copying keys, those machines are actually starting to become MUCH more affordable. The Craftsman Compucarve only lets you mill wood at this point, but it is in the low single digit thousands price wise.
Maybe it should do everything in parallel?
Four Ways To Save The Economy
The RepRap machine uses polymer extrusion to draw your model, which wouldn't yet work for keys. If it's a good lock, you'd get a couple of uses out of it, but the pins would destroy your key and the torsion would bend it.