skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> - It is _very_ congested. There is too much text to be able to focus. More whitespace and less text will help.

Agreed - there is just too much information generally. I actually find the icons more distracting than the text.

The information on the left appears to be repeated in the subtitle for each entry. e.g. Points and visits. I'd get rid of all the icons and just have the simple data on the left.

You could also ditch some (many) of the icons. The clock next to the "two weeks ago" is redundant. Either make it a descriptive icon (e.g. indicating length of time) or text - having both feels like overkill... This is probably harsh, but right now the site feels like I'm looking at Wingdings in FontBook.

Think having top tags and top 10 side by side takes up too much horizontal realestate. I'd simply have the top 10 on top and the top tags below.

Probably a debatable point - But, I'd not bother with Google Ads on the front page - if you're going to have them, put them on the category pages.

The content of front page is going to have highly variable and as such the ads are probably going to be poorly targeted... At least with the category pages you'll have ads that are relevant and more likely to get clicks. It also declutters the front page, which is probably important as a first impression.
RESTful CSS
I found StoxEv to be quite powerful but also quite complex. It took me a while to figure out how to use it. But once I grokked it, it's a powerful program that can facilitate very detailed analysis of a hand.

Having said that, I don't actually use it that much - for most situations I find PokerStove is good enough.
Hello:
Thanks for your comments.

I'll work on the congested look of it.
To differentiate ioncurr3nt from the cream of the crop, there's dynamic top tags listed on every single page, and they reflect the categories, tags, etc Maybe I'll emphasize the tags, almost like a six degree of separation- style game, to see where the tags will lead the user...
Another thing is located in the author page. It lists the last 10 upvoted, downvoted, submitted, and FAVORITE articles. I'll emphazise that as well.
I don't see the point of the freerice game. Why don't they just donate the money directly? I suppose the rice is paid for with advertising, but all the ads seem to be from wellfare organizations, so they are paid with donations that otherwise could go into rice directly. The only time this would REALLY yield some rice would be if somebody playing the game would end up donating money to one of the sponsors.

Anyway, that is a bit off-topic. Yesterday I had a discussion with friends who were all very depressed about their prospects on the job market. Basically they saw it as a given that everybody would either be jobless or be forced to work 60 h weeks and take shit from their bosses. So apart from the entertainment (which I personally value, too), I think it is a worthy achievement to show that there can be an escape from living as a drone. (Too bad none of my friends were programmers or engineers, but that is another problem).

As for trading drink icons on facebook, I don't know. But maybe it would serve the networking and socialising of human beings, which in turn might yield other positive effects. Maybe Unicef could win some sponsors for rice by giving out free drinks to people on Facebook, for example.
Extreme makeover on videos - kickass technology from stanford
I didn't buy any, but from my point of view, Mathematica is priced just a bit lower than Matlab.

Matlab quotes me $1900 for a single common license:
http://www.mathworks.com/store/loginSubmitGuest.do
while Mathematica is $1750:
http://store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathematica/

How much does site license for Matlab cost you?
I find it quite sad how many supposedly CS colleges fail to educate "the next generation" on these classics.

The situation is really funny here in Croatia, where there is basically only one "CS college" which does little to teach kids anything about actually great programming stuff.

It seems we are all breeding a generation of C#/Java/blub tool-users whose top limit is using form generators :-(
This is an amazing new way for advertisements.. If feasible legally - like not disrupting the copyrights on current video.

I particularly liked the portion where the ads on the stadium keep changing. Bill boards, static advertisements would take a whole new dimension. For folks watching the same game on TV - the TV channels can cut a deal to rotate ads over there.

I think one of the big display ad guys would acquire them.
Bob Martin's "Clean Code" Reviewed
Having a bit of it is effective. I came to Rails from the Tcl world, and while there is some good technology in Tcl, including i18n, good thread integration, a wonderful C API, and a nice event loop, the language itself has been marketed horribly.
Google for CString and see the fun
Just google for CString which is an MFC class for strings. It shows some NSFW content.
Well I guess even in the future we will still be allowed to play air guitar, as long as we don't whistle along with the tune.
How Flash Can Join The Open Web
Picking up one of these and hacking on it might be a good place to learn some coding skills.
I'd suggest you need to think out your colours a little more.

The orange and black is nice: but feels a bit bland.

You probably also need to break up the content on pages a little more with some coloured backgrounds :)

Personally for me the font is not that easy to read either: but I realise that is subjective :)
can you recommend any courses?
Murdoch to media: You dug yourself a huge hole
What a waste of words in that article. I've rarely encountered fries that taste worse than McDonald's Fries.
On the front page the first thing my eyes noticed was the word 'windows'. I thought, 'ah that explains a lot'.
Cloud Computing: Is your cloud sticky? It should be.
i do keep ALL printed transactions, from grocery to ATM (where banks do photograph the user)

just in case
Where is a distributed team pain?
What is data more than a plurality of anecdotes?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=239392
BD+ was broken last week, as I understand. The VM that implements both BD+ content and BD+ encryption schemes can be emulated.

What's left?
have you read the article? it gives an example of a murderer who tried to fool metrocard ... but failed

the metrocard itself cannot be used to identify a person's whereabout; however, it can be used to constrain the movement

the key word in that article is "physically" ... the metrocard data is used to determine how physically plausible an action is

for example, one uses metrocard at 9amET in new york, then someone get killed in LA at 10amET, s/he can't be physically possible candidate even if ALL govt witness say so

of course, orthogonal info help too, a phone call at 930amET or even 705amET ATM withdrawal (with pic)
It's not a matter of "dabbling" or "sanity", it's a matter of making a niche product that takes a lot of very qualified people years of work. The market for individual consumers that would buy Mathematica is tiny. You might as well wonder why SAP don't "dabble" with a "sane" price point for R/3 for home users to balance their chequebooks.
As the article says, "taste" (mostly smell, really) is highly subjective and influenced by experience and the tastes of people around you, especially as a child. Many people seem to be trained such that they perceive McDonald's as tasting good. Personally, I agree with you on its taste though.
Card? Why not an implant!?
The Test Passes, Colleges Fail
Pogue-o-matic Product Finder
Very good post. I have a lot to learn about advertising. While it's nice when your product sells itself, there's clearly a lot of value in a great advertising campaign. I could have done much better following through after I launched.

I liked the name, but the problem was the three words: all+in+expert. There was a time after it launched where the site came up as #1, but now its faded into oblivion. I thought it succinctly captured what the software was about, but as you said, maybe it wasn't catchy enough.

I'm launching a new site in a few weeks which I'm going to do a few things differently with. The digitalpoint idea isn't bad.

No need for a donation, your advice is far more valuable than $20 will ever be.
Holy fucking crap, are you kidding me? Joel, you really want me to choose between your writing and Gladwell's?
Core i7 Systems Being Sold | TechJaws
Formatted for an iPhone or just a throw back to when 640x480 was the common res? Either way, widen your content table!
Really? The only place I can find the word 'windows' on the page is in tiny little writing in the categories box.

Running with your point for a moment I'm assuming your suggestion is that these projects are unmaintained because they're built for windows and no-one wants to work on windows. Clicking on the windows and linux links in the categories box shows us that there are 40 unmaintained projects in the linux category and just 11 in the windows category. This doesn't support your hypothesis.
There are two sides to every story, and all I got by reading this story is that the guy learned absolutely nothing in all that time he was there -- not how to respect others' viewpoints, not how to deal with insecure bosses, not how to make decisions regarding money vs. job enjoyment, not how to make allies of people who have different cultural/religious views than your own.

He probably has the ability to be a good worker -- there's too little to go on here. But I'm seeing a lack of seeing both sides that is crippling for a career. It just doesn't appeal to me. In fact, if anything it's sad to see a waste of time and energy.

Sorry. I don't see any catharsis. All I see is a lack of evolution in attitudes. There are a lot more bosses and jobs like this one. At the end of all of that, I'd really hope he made some decisions/grew so not to end up there again.

By calling it out in a harsh light, I _am_ trying to give him a break.
Dude, relax. Your paper receipts are not needed, your bank has a digital record.
This is probably one of the best ideas I've seen as of late. There is tons of great software out there already started, which could potentially save many people lots of work.

Of course, one has to wonder why the software was abandoned in the first place, but they've got "reasons" too. Now you can see if it was abandoned because of "lack of time", or simply "technology problems" assuming the page has the info.
Good point, but I think the reason why FB and YT are failing to make decent profits is because they choose to. Each are trying to monetize a model in a 'certain' way and not considering drastic measures that would make each very profitable. Imagine if YT started charging for accounts. Sure their numbers would drop dramatically but the remaining, paying accounts would mean huge revenue numbers for YT and would cut their server costs by a huge %.
I remember when I chose Drupal. I downloaded the code of five open source CMSs and finally decided to use Drupal, mostly because the code was the shortest and most legible. It has grown quite a bit since then, but I would still recommend it.
Michael Chricton was on Charlies Rose a few years back, and his biggest worry for humanity was something along the lines of self-replicating nano-bots. Without going into specifics, he said in 20-30 years we'd be at the point where we would need to decide as humans whether this tech was indeed safe enough to use.

He also stated that now, for the first time in his life he talked to scientists who were deciding not to pursue a line of science due to the potential risk to humanity.

He was a wise man, may he rest in peace.
Genes? Where we're going there are no genes.
Gamer Gets Sports Star Treatment From Dr Pepper
From the article:
Amazon S3: http://img.twiddla.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/pixel.gif
300ms - 800ms latency, ~0s download time

CloudFront: http://d2livl246cusvi.cloudfront.net/images/pixel.gif
46ms latency, ~0s download time

Looks great to me!
"Your compensation will include meaningful equity ownership."
Soundcloud is an awesome service. They're from Berlin and their (co)founder Alex Ljung is a great guy. We've had some good times in Amsterdam last month.

We've stolen a lot of their UI tricks in our webapp. I love they way communicate with their users. Great inspiration for any startup that likes informal communication with their clients. One example is their beta release version they have ear the bottom of every page. Now on 'KATE' release...
Why it is so tough to get into the iPhone App Store - revealed at last
Very interesting. Seemed to be pretty balanced too, contrary to the popular 'food additives == evil' meme. I was actually surprised at the extent of natural ingredients this industry relies on.

I liked this piece:

"A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found in a Burger King strawberry milk shake, contains the following ingredients:

amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent."
Ask not why it boots in 2 seconds, ask what the heck
other operating systems are doing.

I think I found a new friend. :)
For $2500 it had better come as a brain implant
How warfare shaped human evolution
Why are we posting articles from Rense? It's a known nutjob conspiracy site:

"Fort Stockton, Texas - A Football Field Sized Boomerang Shaped UFO"

http://www.rense.com/general76/footufo.htm

"War On Iran: The Perfect Storm From Hell"

http://www.rense.com/general82/perf.htm

"Need A Cooker? Use Your Cell Phone" (Describes using a cell phone to cook an egg.)

http://www.rense.com/general72/cellcook.htm

"Rense UFO DataPage"

http://www.rense.com/ufo/ufo.htm
Engine Yard is a good company full of bright people. I worry a little for them that their business model is based on how complex it is to deploy Rails applications, and with the emergency of Passenger this problem is starting to go away.
Open Source Law & How To Reduce Startup Legal Costs
Amazon CloudFront
Berlin is a hotbed for music related startups. I know of at least another half-dozen here plus a handful of semi-established companies.
Not just the metrocard, also a photo. Timeline:

Bus to "Payomatic".

Buddy cashes check, photograph taken, Jones visible in background of photo.

Subway to girlfriend.

So everything fits. The truly scary part of the story:

During the interrogation, he said, it occurred to him that he had used his MetroCard on the bus and the subway, and he asked the police to check it. A detective took the card briefly, and then gave it back to him, and there was no further discussion about the card, he said.
Consider the following two propositions.

1. When someone "successful" criticizes Gladwell's thesis, it's suspicious because maybe they just don't want to hear that they weren't really smarter than everyone else.

2. When someone "unsuccessful" criticizes Gladwell's thesis, it's suspicious because maybe they just don't want to hear that their lack of success simply shows that they didn't work hard enough.

#1 is your argument; presumably you find it plausible. It seems to me that #2 is about equal in plausibility to #1; and #1+#2 would say that anyone should be viewed with suspicion, as probably motivated by something other than honest intellectual inquiry, if they criticize Gladwell's book. Which seems ... unhelpful.

It also seems curious that you describe someone as (a) "the number one anecdotal blowhard" and (b) "one of my heroes". Why should the rest of us take any notice of someone who knowingly takes an anecdotal blowhard as a hero?
What’s Up with Tumblr? | Twitterrati
Excuse me, but you don't know anything about me or my opinions on the continent. I mentioned visualizations of two stats, one from the World Bank and One From the CIA with the word "depressing" in front of them. You have made a bunch of assumptions here...
Well, sure, and I wouldn't be reading SF periodicals if I didn't agree. However, in terms of poetry, it's not really cutting edge at all. In fact, most of it is miserable. Exhibit A: Bruce Boston.
If Apple has to stay true to the claims they made in the ads, they must allow ALL plugins. No exceptions. Unless the iphone renders a page the way the the page creator intended it to be rendered, its a watered down version of the page.
Statistics FAIL.

>So, here is the question: do SATs predict graduation rates more accurately than high school grade-point averages?

That's only relevant if colleges plan to ignore GPA in favor of SAT.

The right question: Do (SAT, GPA) pairs predict graduation rates more accurately than GPA alone?
I wouldn't pretend to be able to tell you what eBay does with 13,500 employees. But four? I would bet they retain more than four people purely for the handling of account disputes.

If you want to get eBay down to four people, you might have a startup auction site, but you won't have anything resembling eBay (for better or worse).
> By calling it out in a harsh light, I _am_ trying to give him a break.

You just made my brain reboot. How does that make any sense?
I'm not completely convinced. I'd love to use Mathematica for modeling some of the stuff that we're doing, but no way I'm going to drop $4000 on it (the price where I live). $500 and I'd do it immediately.
Yes.

Got a site doing 800,000 pageviews a day here, and just half your adsense revenue a month.
Yes, they turned down a large offer from Microsoft which at the time was debated on HN as either indicating an ace up their sleeve or sheer stupidity.
If you'd quit a job because of the mail client on your desktop, that's your right. A colleague of mine recently gave notice because she didn't like the coffee in the cafeteria, and that was her right too.

Like it or not, Outlook and Exchange are still the best-in-class solution for enterprise messaging, which is why they're used. If you can't understand why that is, then I hope you've never worked in an enterprise. Perhaps you'd prefer Lotus Notes?

I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any means; I have a Mac and use Gmail every day. But being able to put aside one's biases and pick the right tool for the job is the difference between an IT professional and a zealot.
The T-SQL Madlebrot
I'm in the vast minority on HN anyway, given that I'm in Marketing and work for a company employing over 2,000 people with no sanctioned use of Lisp :-P

But, yeah, I wasn't trying to downplay Facebook, but only agreeing that I'm one of those people who would be a Facebooker in name only if it weren't for Twitter, from which I get much greater utility.
Of course, $139 is far too high for a student.
You could also do $5 for 3 months, no auto-renewal.
Netflix Speaks Out On Sony Movies Disappearing From Xbox 360 Service — It’s Not A Glitch
A lot of very credible food writers disagree with you; for instance, when Jeffrey Steingarten wrote an essay comparing gourmet ketchups to Heinz, he used McDonalds fries as the vehicle for them because of their high quality. I don't love them either, but still.
since we've already established that i was out of line, i just thought i'd revisit this topic of pseudoscience vs science since:http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/18.html

currently (as of Nov 19, 7:40am CST) is the number one ranked post on HN.

I think it reflects both of our sentiments.

Incidentally, I went to UT Austin as well.
Because even nutjobs are right some of the time.
Note to self: don't buy another Sitepoint book ever again, because it will be given away free 2 months later.
Pigmy Tarsier primate re-discovered in Indonesia, once thought extinct
The Coming Wireless Revolution
pg, any chance of negotiating a news.yc member discount?
Economy taking a break, along with investors
Big decisions for the new Yahoo CEO
Baby naming with a twist
Testing book titles using Google AdWords
Because the easy thing to do would be to simply laugh along with his story and miss the larger problems he is skating around. That'd just reinforce the bad attitude. He needs somebody to say look, crappy jobs are part of life, if you want to have a better career instead of keeping a list of gripes learn some interpersonal and professional skills and don't do this again. It's not something to praise. You deserve better.

I guess why I'm harsher than usual on this article is that consulting is basically being somebody's smart friend for money. They pay you, and you're supposed to put their interests above your own for a period of time (within reason, of course). Friends don't keep running lists of grievances against each other -- it's counterproductive and it makes interpersonal progress damn near impossible.

I have a good friend who I went to school with. He is a card-carrying conservative evangelical holy-roller. Even became a minister. He also does network and server administration. His current gig? Working as network admin inside the beltway for one of the most liberal, anti-religious organizations on the planet (You'd instantly recognize the name)

Does he keep a list of how offensive these people are to him? Not at all. His job is to put their interests first and to take care of them as a friend. They like him so much he's been there over ten years and moved up a couple of spots.

You learn to deal with adverse conditions without holding grudges, keeping logs, or keeping it all inside. That's not an easy lesson to learn, but it's critical. I was trying to cut the guy some slack by pointing out that facing your problems and growing from them is the better way long-term. You don't want to get into a pattern where you're the smart genius and all the gigs you've worked were full of barely functional morons. That's Dilbert, not real life.

Sorry about running on so long. It just got under my skin as a professional skills thing. Everybody has war stories, but you tell them knowing that from the other side, you were the moron. I didn't see that.

EDIT: "Giving somebody a break"= doing the harder thing for you to do which results in the easier path for the person involved.
Black holes are the rhythm at the heart of galaxies
Rubinius is an open source project started by Evan Phoenix to build a new VM for Ruby. Engine Yard hired him (and a team) and was paying them for working on this project only. I guess they wanted the Ruby ecosystem to grow faster and build a goodwill for themselves in the community. (Or maybe the main decision maker (Ezra?) is a true blue hacker only who loves good software!)

These layoffs are not as bad a news for a customer. It's just that as a hacker or an open source adopter, it is a bit of a blow. It is like someone taking back half the lottery money you initially won. (Hell, it was still a lottery only.)

There are very few companies (especially startups) who go so far as Engine Yard does/did in actually hiring people and supporting an Open Source Project to this extent. And they still haven't completely pulled the plug off it yet. I sincerely hope Rubinius does become a stable implementation of Ruby, and all the hard work pays off well for the contributors.

Disclaimer: I don't work at Engine Yard, and am thousands of miles away from the place of action.
Amazon’s Online 'Window' of Opportunity