skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That dark and exaggerated sense of humour is common at least amongst Brits, Irish, Aussies & Kiwis.

However I wouldn't say it isn't in the US. Most Boston & some New York stand-up comedians I have seen seem to have a similar personality. Maybe this is self selecting, but the US comedians I have seen from these areas tend to have that same personality.

I really don't think this is a big deal..
Yes, indeed. But I suppose this also needs cooling. Lots of it.
I don't think you've actually disagreed with the original point in any way. :)

As you point out, Steam and Xbox Live have exactly the same disturbing retroactive revocation property that Apple does; that doesn't make it any less of a horror story, just more disturbing that people put up with it. (I suspect people mostly just don't think about it, because it probably won't come up for them.)
Words with Reps: Map of Vocab on the House Floor
Wish Lua was added to the list.

Edit: Found Lua compared on the same site here: http://hyperpolyglot.org/embeddable
Dittos on the fittit faq: http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/Fitness

Another good basic primer: http://www.liamrosen.com/fitness

If you're looking for a good solid strength program, buy Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength and do the program.

A slightly more varied, and less hardcore program is in Schuler & Cosgrove's The New Rules of Lifting. I find the texts complementary. SS has the better (IMO) beginner's program, TNROL has more complete information on overall fitness and diet.

SS is also going to benefit more from access to a proper gym with power cages, chin bars, and bumper plates (ideally). TNROL can be done largely at home with fairly a bit of equipment.

Once you pick a program and start doing it, re-read the FAQs and basics, then post any specific questions you've got to a decent forum (/r/fitness is pretty good).
Security and IT Pros, I need your help
But so do Android Market purchases, and any other managed DRM system. You put up with it just like everyone else. Where I disagree is my level of concern. I have plenty of games on Steam and plenty of purchases on the iOS and Mac app stores. It doesn't bother me because it's status quo. I got over it quite some time ago.
Several things:

One, I wasn't referring specifically to myself.

Two, I wasn't referring to someone who never learns new things. What company do you work for? We may have spoken before on this subject...

Three, not everyone is in Silicon Valley.
sed begat awk.

awk begat perl.

perl begat python and ruby.

python will get you a job at google.

ruby will get you a job at twitter.

php will get you a job at facebook.
No, I don't. :) And the ease with which this can become "status quo" makes it that much more of a horror story.
Australia was successful before the mining boom started. The policy reforms of the 80s and 90s are the basis of our long-term success.
1. I'm a little confused why you would object to JavaScript as a first language. You're using it to teach very basic concepts like variables and conditionals. Who cares about polymorphism at that stage?

2. Creating a Web App to follow programming concepts is something John Resig knows how to do. Check out his Advanced JavaScript page for examples:

http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/

3. No installation needed. No one has to have permissions to install or modify software or the OS. That's a huge hurdle. If you're at a public library or borrowing your brother's computer, you don't have to worry about permissions, settings, downloads, etc. You're already setup to start with just learning.

Obviously, to become a better programmer you have to learn some more languages, but JavaScript is not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, there is a higher demand for JavaScript programmers than ever. Why not learn it?
Great quote! Most of my experience centers around developing small web/mobile apps where building ten new apps a year is pretty commonplace.

I'll add games to enterprise software as the two places where you'll have the most longevity for your code.
A word about BMWs:

Many people think BMW drivers are jerks because they are rich. The reality is that BMW drivers are jerks because of the precision and power the vehicle communicates to the driver -- which lets you be more confident about making decisive and sudden movements in it.

Maybe the status has some effect as well, but a lot less than the fact that the BMW just drives better than a Honda Accord and over time you can become very aggressive because of it.

Ask any long time BMW (or precise sports car) driver and they'll likely confirm this.
I really appreciate Raganwald's willingness to put these essays together into a convenient format and give them away. I enjoyed and probably learned a lot from them.

However, the publisher has not done its job here. I'm reading the Mobi version on Kindle for iPhone, and the constant formatting errors make it difficult to follow the text. This includes missing punctuation, missing indentation on blockquotes that make it impossible to see where the quote ends, random font changes in and out of a monospace font, random spacing around headers, and the lack of a table of contents.

If you want to call a collection of blog posts a "book" and ask for money for it, you need to at least proofread your output files and make sure basic standards of copy-editing hold. As it stands I will avoid buying from Leanpub in the future.
Maybe you should just stop looking elsewhere for hope period.
Somehow I find that teaching QBasic for a person who has zero programming language might be better than any other programming languages with Python as the other candidate.
Paymate joins Paypal in irritating indie game developers
This is pretty awesome! Very smooth experience.

Have you seen d3.js? It has a similar force layout component, I'm curious as to your motivation for writing your own (although it looks and works very nice!)
while I look forward to a retina display iPad, I think people are reading too much into the touch portion. The event description itself does not say anything about the iPad, so the touch hint probably refers to the fact that the event is about one of their touch devices, which we presume is the next iPad.
How to delete your Google Browsing History before new policy
Dell has one of the search mechanisms I just mentioned: on their laptop or monitor pages, you can click a few links to filter the set of products based on features you want. For monitors, they include resolution in those features; unfortunately, for laptops they don't.
He is wrong about date/time setting. Most computers have automatic time sync, and consistent time stamps are important for many business purposes. Giving end users the ability to manipulate time can cause significant issues.

On a laptop? A seriously doubt it. Make the bloody distro learn to differentiate between a server and a personal installation, and change the settings accordingly.
Seattle office space for startups - opening soon
There's a new startup-only sublet space that's opening in March in downtown Seattle. It's an entire floor in the Exchange building (classic office tower) on 2nd and Marion.

It seems pretty great, so we've decided to move our startup Shopobot there. Thought I share the info with anyone else in Seattle looking for a good spot to work.

Nice location, good vibe, and pretty affordable. I put some pics and more info on our blog.
See also http://seethroughstudios.com/2012/02/28/and-now-paymate-have... for the dev's version of events.
Congrats. I would love to see a piece about why consultancies don't run client projects in a way similar to what's been working for you at Kicksend.

They sound like great approaches to take to any project, so why don't consultancies do this for their clients?
Fair enough, I just assumed from the Android comment. IMO you're making your own life harder for dubious benefit, but whatever floats your boat.

It's true that if you use no digital services and buy almost no mobile apps, you can avoid this. That kind of blows, though.
I've had the opposite experience. I also sell intangibles like software, and win virtually all disputes. The PayPal Buyer Protection Policy does not cover services and virtual goods. Simply escalating to a claim and writing "NON-TANGIBLE, SERVICES" in the tracking number box gets it closed in my favor 90% of the time when someone is lying to get the service or software for free.

http://i.imgur.com/GEY70.png

http://i.imgur.com/IQlA9.png

http://i.imgur.com/vHAsP.png

...etc. More transparency and human interaction would be nice, but I don't think PayPal could do much better from a policy standpoint. They provide a platform to self-mediate disputes, and they provide a system to resolve some easy disputes over physical goods under policies that protect both sides. But beyond that, what could they do? There's no simple way for them to decide whether you scammed that buyer or they scammed you. If they don't give you the money, they take themselves out of the equation and it's up to you to resolve the dispute in small claims court, where it belongs -- in front of a judge, not a 3rd party's customer service team.
Earlier discussion:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3175629
Unfortunately, I'm not getting a clear idea of what defines 'big data'.

When Facebook started, they wouldn't have been considered a 'big data' company, would they? Or same with Twitter, so how are they defining the start-ups that suit these funds?
I believe the Java is simply for the Fonts which falls back to Flash if you say no.

User Agent provides quite a lot of identifying information; OS/OS version, browser version. Panopticlick breaks this down for you, one in every 186,062 data points they have has my User Agent. This provides 17.5 bits of identifying entropy (log2 of 186062).

They mention they have a total database size of 2,046,684, which requires 20.96 bits of identifying information. So to answer your question about how much identifying information you can get from Javascript, a lot.

You can then also get Flash Version, Time Zones, Browser Plugins, IP Address, Screen Info.
Serious MVC frameworks are not the backbone of Wordpress, phpBB or dozens of other hairy monsters that make up the majority of CPU time spent on PHP execution.

I mean Wordpress flat out resisted PHP 5.0 for years. Years. Everything had to be done in PHP4.
If you're looking for warmer weather + sunshine, then the Pacific Northwest isn't really going to do it for you as long as you're east of the Cascades (Seattle, PDX, etc). I just moved to SF from Portland, OR myself and the difference in climate is huge. Have you considered Austin, TX? It's pretty much the cultural hub of the south and there are a lot of cool things going on there with both startups and established companies. I lived in Houston for a couple years and the cost of living in TX is really low. It definitely gets hot as heck in the summer, but Austin isn't as humid as Houston so it's manageable. Plus, sunshine is in no short supply!

Best of luck with the move, wherever you end up!
I actually think that this is an interesting way to get people into programming. I don't think Javascript is sufficient for many applications, but it does serve a great purpose.

A lot of youth in the United States today aren't flocking to programming. We need more. And yet it's strange because programming as an industry is what afford young people the most opportunities. When was the last time you saw a major non programming company have core contributors < 30 years old? < 25 years old?

JS as a language, TextPad as an editor, and a Browser as a runtime environment is a far less intimidating barrier for students. People can see the results in a medium that's familiar to them (a browser). It's also free and readily available. No installs, no environment paths. nothing to discourage them. In conjuction with HTML, they can see how JS/programming changes what they're viewing. It will help bridge a lot of people's thoughts into "oh, wow, I can actually do this and it has a tangible effect". When growing up I was wondering how the hell a printout to a console would have any benefit to me. Yet, that's how I was taught (in C, C++)

It's also been difficult recently to find frontend engineers. Colleges don't train for this - it's all algorithms and abstract concepts that are great for backend developers. That's why there are so many more backend engineers out there than front end engineers. The FE side is under represented.

There are some arguments that this is a terrible first language because it's not as rigid as the others. But honestly if you can't learn a language and then apply the concepts and learn new ones to pick up new languages, you probably shouldn't be tackling those tougher languages in the first place.

With HTML5 apps coming down the pipeline, people WILL need to know JS and we as a technical industry will need to accept that they too are part of the product/output of science/tech/web/mobile. Some people won't be diving in more beyond that, but if they do, they at least have a foundation to build off of as they get into more robust languages.

JS gets people in the door, and it's not going to preclude others from picking up other first languages. It's a solid step for bringing more people into the fold. It's not going to be the best for theory, but there are places and time for that.
I think it's best not to try an emulate native iOS and Android apps because the experience will almost inevitably be subpar and lead to what I call the "mobile web app uncanny valley".

Mobile web apps that are advanced websites used through the browser are perceived as useful when they are. However when they try to emulate the look, feel and behavior of a native app, the app falls victim to an uncanny valley where the app feels like a poorly made native app and those feels of negativity overwhelm the experience of utility in many cases.

It is incredibly difficult to pull off a solid mobile app. The only two that I've used that really feel right are Twitter and Facebook. All the others have been subpar.

jQM should try to be a great mobile web app framework and less like a native app emulation framework. Embrace what it means to be a web app instead of trying to disguise it.
Don't get started on Windows. Just don't.

You know that UAC prompt you get when running setup.exe for an IM client? Ever wondered why there's an UAC prompt in the first place? Because Windows assumes that setup.exe needs admin privileges (unless .exe explicitly states that it doesn't). This piece of engineering doesn't even have a concept of ~/bin. In fact, there is/was an official W7 guideline that said that all programs must go into %ProgramFiles%, which is a system directory. Now, what sort of a imbecile decided that it's a good idea to let an underprivileged account install into a system directory - UAC or not - is beyond me. So, please, don't mix Windows in. While Linux distros have their dark moments, Windows is just one big service pack now.
I'm glad to see this released because it is great technology that showcases Go's strengths. Here's why they chose Go, in their own words:

"Go is miles ahead of C++ and Java in terms of expressibility and close in terms of performance. It is also relatively simple and has a straightforward interaction with Linux system calls."

It has always frustrating to say "We use Go at Google, I just can't say how." So I'm happy that now I can say that YouTube use Go in their core infrastructure, serving more than a billion requests per day with this service alone.
No, the server application should have it's own timezone setting, like almost any serious server has, and/or use UTC time.

And a distro must not assume you're using it for server applications, when you install a personal installation on your laptop.
Then I would say look into Plano, Texas. A lot of my co-workers work there and they are pretty happy about it, a lot of them are from San Francisco and Southern California. And its is pretty warm there. Its apparently becoming a hot-bed for start-ups (At least that is what I have been told)
I use a lot of Apple gear now. I bet against them during that time too. Apple wasn't doing well and Jobs wasn't exactly coming from a company that was a massive success.

It wasn't until the early 2000s when I realised that myself, analysts, non-Apple fans in general were constantly wrong.

What is most interesting, is that people still bet against Apple and bring out the same wrong arguments year after year.
Actually, the above comment immediately tells me: "oh, another American, why can't the guys take a bloody joke, we're not all 9 year olds". It rarely is a French guy or a British complaining on such matters.
Yup, I wish they had been able to journal/tweet/blog their experience. This is groundbreaking work in India. I have heard of people "experimenting" with being homeless or poor in the USA but it's much more daunting in a third world country.
>>The average new Perl programmer is not going to go looking for a library that does object-oriented behavior until it's too late.

Sigh, please don't start language wars by stuff like assuming new programmers sits alone in an ivory tower and don't talk to people, read blogs or browse a new book. (Modern Perl discuss Moose before the old standard, for instance.)

Edit: I'm just not going to touch where you assume all Perl teams that write large code bases are too stupid to agree on best practices. (I'll ask this back instead: Why are there so many language wars-lovers in some open source communities...?)
Still worse, if you're an indie iOS developer they can yank your entire living out from under you without explanation. This happened to me this year, I suspect because I made some app store purchases while traveling abroad. They disabled my ID and refused to even tell me why and only reinstated it after a long and arduous exchange with support.

I really enjoy developing for iOS but this was a sobering experience.
I didn't comment on Android, though in the case of Android you can at least bypass the Android market and install arbitrary apps without revocation. (I don't have an Android device, though; still looking for a comparable replacement for my n900, since it won't last forever.) I use quite a few digital services, just not any that control my access to bits I've already purchased. And I use a pile of mobile apps, all FOSS.
No CoffeeScript? =)
Does it matter whether HN traffic is going up or down? As far as I can tell, the point of HN isn't to drive pageviews or sell ads, it's to act as a public discussion board for the extended YC family of people with like-minded interests, and maybe a bit of a feeder system / promotion for the fund. If anything, fewer drive-bys mean higher-quality posts and comments, all the better for the regular participants.

S/N ratio is rarely improved by more traffic, after all.
I take it you spent more time writing your rant than actually navigating the site you're criticizing. Please take a look at the index.
There's a new startup-only sublet space that's opening in March in downtown Seattle. It's an entire floor in the Exchange building (classic office tower) on 2nd and Marion.

It seems pretty great, so we've decided to relocate our startup Shopobot there. Thought I share the info with anyone else in Seattle looking for a good spot to work.

Nice location, good vibe, and pretty affordable. I put some pics and more info on our blog.
No doubt about it. Pumping megawatts into any box will bring up cooling issues. I read a quote from the director of operations or some such at Cray Research back in the mid-1990s: "Basically, I run a refrigerator company."
Ask HN: Feedback Please
I am in desperate need of assistance. I am homeless and was camped legally on the beach in Port Aransas doing freelance work. I had a computer problem and could not solve it locally. We left to resolve it and did not go back, for a long list of reasons. A minister has had me in a hotel the past couple of nights and promised me he would help me find solutions and not abandon me but now we are being cut loose. I am broke and have nothing lined up. My freelance work fell through.

I need an income and a place to live. I have an AA in Humanities and a Certificate in GIS. I am a few classes short of a Bachelor's in Environmental Resource Management. I run a few small websites. I have not figured out how to get traffic or monetize them. It seems pretty clear to me I have something of value to offer but I don't know how to monetize it. I am terrified and I appear to be all out of options. Please help me turn this situation around. I am deeply in debt from getting myself and my sons well. The amount I owe is a drop in the bucket compared to what conventional treatments cost. I cannot seem to get help from anywhere.

Thanks
Oracle offering DTrace for Linux
I haven't seen a comment espousing the differences between languages since my early days on /.

It's refreshing to see such passion, but I feel compelled to offer some advice: languages are just "tools." No one tool is better than another for all situations. JS seems like a reasonable place to start new programmers. Like anything in software, it has its tradeoffs. Some thoughts:

* While the new programmer won't learn about call stacks or different parts of memory (considered essential when I learned to code), the programmer will learn to solve problems using control structures, method calls, recursion, and iteration. These are fundamental skills I see re-used in almost every language. Are there other awesome skills like functional programming I wish they would learn? Sure, but you have to start somewhere, and I support starting at if-else-then logic.

* Writing JavaScript is easy. No command line. No installing software. No compiling. No IDE. Just open your Web Console in Firefox or JavaScript Console in Chrome. Seriously, if you are teaching the masses on the internet, what better way than use the very tool they used to view your website?

* Writing JavaScript is in fashion. From Node.JS to last week's Tower.JS, JQuery, JSON, or the "new" HTML5 rage: JavaScript is popular. What better way to be relevant than teach what the industry is using? I support teaching popular things to introduce people to our industry.

[edited: /. not ./ derp!]
Brilliant! I've been a beta tester for a while, and my first "broadcast" request on Facebook got me several leads! People really DO want to help out, and putting out a general request is such an easy way to get people almost asking YOU if they can care for your pet! Go Spotwag. Can't wait to see where this'll go!
Microsoft IllumiShare Lets You Play Remotely With Physical Objects
don't tell me. tell the linux developers who created the server application.
It's unfortunate that TeleGeography, while on the one hand demonstrating beautifully how closely connected many of us have become, seems at the same time to collaborate with BlueCoat, a company that helps censor the content coming down these tubes on a national scale.

This mash-up paid for by... ?

http://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2...
I don't agree. I've never thought of it before, but to be honest, in my 25 years of life, I've never seen the kind of behavior Linus is famous for on the part of anyone besides Europeans.

Really? Does Lenny Bruce qualify? How about Dennis Leary? (Well, he is of Irish descent, I'll give you that).

Hani Suleiman, of the Bile Blog fame?

http://javablogs.com/views/ViewBlog.action?id=11454

Definitely not a European.

How about The Filty Critic?

http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/

And don't get me started on Hunter S. Thompson and co.

[EDIT] Fk, how could I forget Maddox and the "Best Page in the Universe": http://maddox.xmission.com/