skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I understand. But again the situation is just what he created for himself (and what my Dad created for himself). Everything - the wife, the kids, the car, the house (if applicable) - those were his decisions and my Dad's decisions.

People need to be accountable for their actions and realize that your current state is no one's fault (or achievement) but your own.
AT&T Controls the Future of Privacy — Seriously
Did I? Sorry, what was the point?
You presume that your requirements are complete and known. Often the reason that something like the font issue Jeff talks about happens is that there is no spec. Is it a bug or a feature if the spec doesn't mention the question? In theory, "bugs are when behavior doesn't match spec" is an easy rule to apply, but in practice it's often not obvious what the spec is.
Is this You?
sorry for not making it clear - the bitmaps all ready had text inside of them so we were basically looking for OCR.
I was hoping for some affiliate marketing tips...
Inspiring a New Generation of Engineers
That the medium is shaping the message, and instead of realizing that and taking corrective action people are just accepting the new message as ordained and running with it.
If he ran GM they wouldn't need a bailout in the first place.
I loved Byte and Creative Computing; they were the hallmark of my early computing days. (This also gives away my age. Sorry.)

Missing from that era might be: People's Computing Company magazine and Dr. Dobb's Journal (yes, it was around in the '70s).
iPhone 2.2 - What We Know So Far
Shaq is on Twitter?
Although it wasn't a computer magazine, I do see your point. I often wish RU Sirius would start a new post-cyberpunk publication of some kind. Mondo 3000? Mondo 2100?
Not exactly a computer magazine, but I was so in love with Omni that I have actually stockpiled two or three years' worth of issues from the late '70s (via ebay). God I wish Omni could return; the world could use it.
This post focuses almost exclusively on speed of the resulting program. That's a mistake. Using hash tables is a good thing because they are usually simpler than an ad hoc multi-level structure made just of pointers and arrays.
If everyone pays for the things that are not their own fault, then the playing field is leveled. Then the things that are their own fault come into play, and those parties who were hit by the common problems AND their own problems will suffer more than those who didn't have their own problems (or had smaller self inflicted problems). Seems this is the way it should be.
What amazes me about the CEOs of the automakers is how tone-deaf they are to the PR debacle they're creating.
> if my work sells, it sells

Certainly, it just doesn't necessarily make it a professional work.

In my opinion this particular logo is missing a mark on many levels. I may be off, and you probably don't care about stranger's opinion to begin with. So that's why I brought up the Logopond, which is by far the most responsive professional logo design community.
Pretty cool, I think simplifying the layout a bit would be good. Make it easy to access names by location, time, etc. Also, it would be cool to suggest other names based on preferences à la Amazon.com.
Hell yeah! We have the code sitting there, let's compile and see what it does :)
The author misses that the different parties have different goals. TapTapTap wants to maximize app revenue. To do that, you do want to sort by revenue. (Actually, probably something like revenue per last n impressions, so that apps that have a traffic spike won't stay up there when the spike is over.)

But Apple makes most their money off the sale of iPhones. So they want people to be happy when they use the app store, even if it doesn't make them as much money directly. When someone downloads and enjoys a free app, that's meaningless to TapTapTap, but it's great for Apple. You can't exactly measure user enjoyment, but it's not unreasonable to suppose that "number of downloads" is a better proxy for user happiness than "net revenue".
My first thought while playing with it during class was that it'd make a great replacement for Basecamp's crappy Writeboard feature.

I was also thinking that instead of unnamed, you could build a list of celebrity names that are used until the user changes it (which should be pretty quick if you wind up with something like Danny Glover or Hans Blix). If not, at least you'd have a way to distinguish between people.
I Nominate RescueTime for Best Enterprise Startup
That's the crux of it. The Big Three are selling cars at a loss, and you can never make up selling at a loss in volume.

There is no plan in place to create vehicles profitably so a bailout will only prolong death.
Boston College Stops Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts, Switches to Forwarding Service
American hardships are nothing compared to third world countries' hardships.

That's why I donate my money to the real poor (the people who don't know if they're going to be alive on a day to day basis) not the American poor.

Yeah lots of people have tough lives here, but they're still in the top 5% of the world's population.
Yeah, change the name; though maybe the new one is too long.
I like the way this was prefixed.
"Coding Horror:" ...works for me.
Gmail's New Default Theme is a Step Backwards for Usability
For a little economic theory:

Usually economists break goods into two categories: normal and inferior. Inferior goods are things like public transit. As people have more money, they want less of it (because they'd rather use their car than wait for the bus). Normal goods are things that people want more of as their income increases. TV channels is a good example; as you have more money, you get premium packages and the like.

Cars are somewhat normal. People do want more of them as their income goes up (or vehicle prices go down), but it isn't as elastic to income as many other normal goods (as income rises (or costs fall) by x%, people only want to increase their consumption by y% where y < x).

So, what does that mean for auto makers and the UAW? Well, for a long time a certain amount of mechanization and automation was in labor's interest. If you (as a laborer) are more productive per unit of time, your labor is more valuable even if part of that productiveness is due to automation. However, one could argue that cars are reaching a saturation point (more likely that the second derivative of automobile growth is negative -- yay calc!).

So, if you reduce costs to build a vehicle through automation meaning you require less labor per vehicle and vehicles become cheaper, that's fine for labor as long as the demand for vehicles goes up proportional to the decrease in labor required per vehicle. That doesn't seem likely.

So, automation threatens jobs in this case. If Ford produces vehicles cheaper, people don't demand proportionally more vehicles. Also, capital goods cost money and so at best labor can lay claim to n% of any increase in profits due to automation where 0 < n < 100.

If the automotive industry were rapidly expanding at ever increasing rates, labor would (should) be pro-automation since it means the value of their output is increasing and the demand is there for more vehicles than they can build. Right now, the UAW is trying to hold onto what was.

As automation becomes a force in our world, the labor required to produce 1 unit of anything decreases. Therefore, to ensure your own job security, you must either a) find someone that will institutionalize your job like the UAW got the bog three to agree to -or- b) work in an industry where demand for the output is outpacing (or equaling) the reduction in labor required due to automation.

For example, if demand for computers rises 10% per annum and each year 10% less labor is required to create a single computer, the computer industry requires a stable labor pool at M people. However, if demand for computers is stable and each year 10% less labor is required to create a single computer, you can see how that would be a problem for computer workers. I think the equation would be P(t) = M * .9^t; where the output is the labor required at year t.
You know what disgusts me? Your complete blindness to how good your father had it. As a not-so-recent immigrant to the US, I've found it laughably easy to have a good life here. I am not talking about myself since I came at 25 and spoke enough English to get by. I am talking older relatives and their friends, people well into their 50's who did not speak a word of English. There is an absolute wealth of opportunities - classes at community colleges that you can take for near free, paying jobs where you have plenty of time for studying while taking care of the elderly for example, charitable organizations that assist you in everything from relocation to getting jobs, government programs that give you bridge money to get you on your feet, and so on.

If you think your father had a rough life, you are truly a spoiled brat. My father almost starved to death as a teenager during World War II, almost died from tuberculosis as a young man, shared a small one-bedroom apartment with 5 people as an adult, and was forced to abandon even that little due to ethnic conflict. Your father on the other hand, had it so easy that he could afford to put his kids through college and still retire after just 25 years of work. Oh, excuse me, I forgot. Your dad had to endure a 2-3 hour commute because it would be so traumatizing for his kids to switch schools once.

Your father and his buddies are who needs to get off the high horse, my friend. They've worked in a little bubble with their cushy guaranteed pay and benefits for too long. It's about time they ventured out on their own into the big bad world that the rest of us happily inhabit.
If I could, I'd like to suggest using Mercurial instead. It is vastly better supported on Windows, has a simpler workflow, and allows HTTP-based authentication--no SSH keys required. Plus, if you really need git-like flexibility--rebasing and whatnot--it's there in the form of Mercurial patch queues.
Etherpad Offers Real Time Text, Document Collaboration Tools
Well, you see, the status code is just a part of the whole HTTP Conversation spec.

You also have the request, response, message headers, message body, request methods, etc.

The W3C CSWG (Conversation Specification Working Group) is currently in the process of selecting members for a committee to write the first draft of the RFC.
An employee's share of SS tax is 6.4%, not 15.3%. (The full amount is twice that, or 12.4%, so I'm not sure where 15.3% comes from.) Add Medicare tax (1.45%, not 5%, and the employer pays a matching amount). You get 6.4% + 1.45% = 7.85%, not 20%. That's ~$1250. Add a 15% tax rate for a $2,000 federal tax, not 20%. We both arrive at $3,200 but I think my numbers are more accurate. Where you working backwards from a known number?
This is only on the front end. If the backend filters html tags then XSS won't be a problem.
Social Media ABC's - Y is for YouTube
So no climate anywhere on earth is similar to 10,000 years ago?
Here's a simple solution:

Think of adjectives that describe your company and what it represents.

Plug those into a translation program. See what the same word is in Chinese, Arabic, Swedish, etc.

Pick a word from whatever language sounds best to you.

Now you have a one-word name that may have been taken in the English language, but sounds unique and is descriptive (in a sense.) When people ask what it means, you don't need to give an exhaustive explanation of how you arrived at that name. You simple say it means "XXXX" in YYYY language.
"Millenials" have mixed attitudes toward online banking
Cyber Bully Mom on Trial | TechJaws
MIT's Introduction to Algorithms, Part 9: Amortized Analysis and Self-Organizing Lists
Well, the reason employer-sponsored health care took off was that WWII wage controls were still around for years of the post-war economy. Growing employers, auto manufacturers in particular, could not offer higher wages to attract workers. So they offered employer-sponsored health programs and attractive pensions. In the 1970s, when Nixon brought back wage controls, they improved their low-deductible health care plans to no-deductible plans.

Here's the scenario. From its boom era, Detroit ended up saddled with lots of pensions, expensive health care, and a special interest which fights cutbacks fiercely. It was basically building up an deficit that, when combined with horrible mismanagement, sent it into tremendous debt and would hobble it when it hit bad economic times and lost access to the capital markets.

Does that scenario look familiar? That's about what's happening to the United States. Hey wait, did a presidential hopeful write this op-ed? Hmm.
Clusters makes it a bit too tech for regular people and a nice interface will be a plus; you don't want this site to be just for hackers.
MyHeritage And Family Tree DNA Partner To Help People Trace Family History Using DNA
MyHeritage, one of the world's most popular family Web sites, today announced a partnership with FamilyTreeDNA, the company that pioneered DNA testing for genealogic research. In addition to MyHeritage's innovative Smart Matching and Research technologies, members can now also use information contained in their DNA to find present-day relatives who share a common ancestor from many hundreds of years ago. FamilyTreeDNA users can take advantage of MyHeritage's site to not only further research family history, but also stay connected with current family members around the world.
My two cents: I'd change the design: I'd make the front page more like Google. (Search box in the middle)

And your site is full of features - like "Browse baby names..." and "We have amazing maps..." those thing are features - what you need to do is list the benefits. You should tell the users what value they get. Example: Our coats have double lining = feature: Our coats keep you warmer = value.

And from a users experience point of view: The site isn't very instructive and its hard to navigate.

For me I want to use the site to find the least "popular" name - I guess a user can figure it out by your maps and boxes - But wouldn't it be great to just type in a name and get a page back with a "name popularity" map? Or if I need suggestion for names maybe you could do that too via popularity - by entering a state?

Like I said just my two cents.
Take it further: he is probably not running GM because you cant make it profitable.
Move along, nothing to see here... Seriously... This is just some random blog entry about how Ruby isn't fun anymore because it's no longer a cool-kids-only thing. "Now it's just what we do for a living." Blah, blah, blah... Spare me the whining.

Did people vote this thing up without reading it just because it's about Ruby or is there something particularly significant and worthwhile about this post?
Well, the author is a YC alumnus who runs a cloud-based RoR hosting service... not saying that this means we HN'ers should upvote on the basis of appeal to authority.
Ruby has a very long way to go before it is the "status quo".
It's possible that some of us are looking through the headlines, and saving them for reading at a later time.

The fact that the story gets voted up is a consequence of this, perhaps.
Very true!

I've customised the Graffiti view + tag colours to produce something I quite like. But I definitely didnt like the new "default" (the older "classic" was a lot cleaner)
I am not computer science trained; I have to admit I had no idea there were so many ways to slice this. Unfortunately the reading is a bit unapproachable if you aren't already versed in the terminology. Does anyone have a more accessible tutorial on string searches? I'd love to take a pass at that and then try this article again.

edit: My default browser doesn't have java, so I was missing the visualizations. They help, but a more basic explanation would still be welcome.
I'd nominate http://co2stats.com/ for best green startup.
I think this is true. Part of the fun of Ruby a few years ago was "sneaking it in" in a particular environment and having people wonder where you found the time to develop all of these new utilities you were using.
see also chain.js: http://github.com/raid-ox/chain.js/wikis
I appreciate the feedback. The body of each item is black, so I figure you're referring to the header text for each item ("by:", "submitted:", etc.) and the links. I've darkened them up a bit.
I was working back from ~20% which I had worked out before but I dropped an import etc so the numbers looked off. Anyway, we could argue about the numbers game, but self employed people pay the same effective rate so it's all BS IMO. You are correct about Medicare but wrong about SS.

For 2008, your employer withholds Social Security at the rate of 7.65% of your first $102,200 of income. For Medicare, the withholding rate is 1.45% of your income, regardless of how much you earn. (http://www.walletpop.com/taxes/article/_a/bbdp/withholding-y...)

7.65 * 2 = 15.3% but it's 15.3% of 100 not (100 + 7.65 + 1.45) = 109.1. Anyway, adding state income tax or it's equivalent's and the numbers start to go up but 20% seems like a reasonable number for federal.

If your income is low enough you do get government services which offset your cost of living, but your effective tax rate on you next dollar of earnings is still fairly high.

PS: I built a little Javascript calculator to work this out I should probably post this somewhere.
Well then, maybe Clojure or Arc can get some of that new relationship energy. They need it more than Ruby does. I'll still be writing Ruby though.
No such thing as a new idea...

I would argue that this is true in one sense only--before anyone had invented the wheel, the wheel still existed. The idea of the wheel had existed the moment matter was created lending the possibility of the wheel to come about. Arguably even before this. However the idea of the wheel was not realized until someone captured that idea. This is the same with any idea, every idea already exists, out there, somewhere.

However, to rearrange the words of the proposed idea, that is to say that "no one has ever had an original", new idea, cannot be true mathematically simply because there are an infinite number of ideas.

The question now becomes two parts

1) Definition of "new ideas", and
2) Whether or not there are any new WORTHY ideas

Response to 1). Interpretation of a new idea greatly limits the concept of having a "new idea". For example, is a walkman the same idea as an iPod? Both are ways to carry music around with you portably and conveniently. Same with a horse and buggy and an automobile. HOWEVER, I would argue that both of these show that an iPod and a car are distinctly new ideas.

Response to 2) This idea greatly underestimates the intellectual power of people. Throughout history there have been worthy, new ideas (air travel, concept of the atom, big bang theory, the internet), how can it possibly be that there are none left?

Overall I really hope that what I believe is true, that there are new worthy ideas to be had. For example there has to be some brilliant man or woman somewhere that will come up with a new idea, or a dumb man or woman that will stumble across one, that will undoubtedly arise from a problem or crisis that arises (ie energy crisis...COME ON PEOPLE, PROVE ME RIGHT!!).
The OODA Loop: Playing chess with half the pieces
Ask HN: Storefront software features to make your life easier
I run Greaterscope, LLC, a (currently) one-man company that's developing storefront software with developers in mind. In other words, we're focused on several PITA features that are important to growing online stores ... multi-lingual support, handling complex product attributes and pricing, multiple storefronts, customizability.

It's aimed at developers in an attempt to feed the need for rich yet customizable software. I want to give developers a better starting place when they need to create something custom for clients. Hopefully my efforts will be appreciated.

I don't have a demo yet (aiming for end of year) but I'm impatient so I wanted to solicit for feedback early to make sure I have the full range of needs in mind as I continue to build this thing out.

If you have feature ideas or issues with tools you currently use that should be addressed, please let me know via UserVoice:

http://greaterscope.uservoice.com

Technically: it's written in object-oriented PHP5, MVC (database abstraction, a templating system, ORM), and supports databased sessions.

Look for a demo some time in December. I'll definitely announce it here once it's up. The first version should be ready in the first quarter of 2009.

My company website is http://greaterscope.com
Or conversely, you can just magnetize your screwdriver. I've always done this when taking apart laptops.

With an anti-static bracelet on, of course!
Psystar case reveals questionable Apple policy on email retention
It's an interesting sociological phenomenon: People who sit there, programming, right in front of you, yet all the while insisting that they aren't programmers and that what they're doing is certainly not programming.

I suspect that, in the long term, programming will be like writing. A majority of people are able to do it at some level, but they never think of themselves as "writers". A sizeable number of people are employed as pro writers and label themselves as such, and there are a decent number of superstar writers who are highly paid and at least moderately famous.

Incidentally, I agree with you that this article is yet another entry in that unkillable genre: the sales pitch for a 4GL silver bullet. People have been writing these for at least two or three decades.
I don't know if the versioned filesystem metaphor fits Subversion that well -- clients do not store history after all.
It is usually what Git evangelists praise about their software; you can use Git as a simple versioned file system if you wish (git add/commit/log and you're all set).
nope. they are working on cheetah (like tortoise for SVN), but best I can tell it hasn't gone anywhere:

http://repo.or.cz/w/git-cheetah.git/
"Connect people who are proximate geographically."

Well, that's somewhat encouraging. I just spent all morning in meetings with business owners in Obama's neighborhood in Chicago. The hood has no media of their own and yet the media is and will be camped out there for the next 4-8 years. The neighborhood paper publishes just a pdf once a week and is universally loathed. Opportunity...
I guess it wouldn't be fun anymore if you got your fun from being seen as edgy, feeling like you're subversive, or from your chatting it up with other developers about it.

But if you got your fun from playing around with the language itself, exploring its nooks and crannies, and bring what you learned to other languages, there's no end to what fun you can have.

_why re-discovered adding and removing mixins from digging around the late Guy's archives, and implemented it as mixico
http://hackety.org/2008/10/06/mixingOurWayOutOfInstanceEval....

And hell, this guy implemented fizzbuzz using C++ metaprogramming. http://web.telia.com/~u43518104/articles/fizzbuzz.htm
I thought the post would touch on the drama and politics that have come up in the past year. I'm relatively new to ruby (~2 years) - and this might just be a community thing that every language eco-system cycles through...

But regardless, I think that ruby has a while before it loses steam. It's inherently a fun language
Macworld Review: BlackBerry Storm 9500
Yea, I was trying to show a trend. Plenty of teachers stopped caring a long time ago and there is also a lot of dead weight in the police and military but the less what they do is an "office job" the more effort they seem to put in. There is plenty of dead wood in the forest service, but smoke jumpers as a group put in a lot of hard work.
I'd say the 88% of profits coming from Google is in line with how much Google owns of the search market. It's not a particularly stunning number; if the search market was more distributed, Mozilla's revenue would be more distributed.