skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Standing greatly increases your risk of carotid atherosclerosis and varicose veins.

Best is to sit, but NOT for long uninterrupted periods. There was a good article about this a while ago from Cornell University ergonomics researchers: http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html

Here was their bottom line recommendation:

Sit to do computer work. Sit using a height-adjustable,
downward titling keyboard tray for the best work posture,
then every 20 minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE. The
absolute time isn’t critical but about every 20-30 minutes
take a posture break and move for a couple of minutes.
Simply standing is insufficient. Movement is important to
get blood circulation through the muscles. Research shows
that you don’t need to do vigorous exercise (e.g. jumping
jacks) to get the benefits, just walking around is sufficient.
So build in a pattern of creating greater movement variety in
the workplace (e.g. walk to a printer, water fountain, stand
for a meeting, take the stairs, walk around the floor, park
a bit further away from the building each day).
1) 'make ansi'

2) Very fast for a such a small implementation.

3) C - Lua API makes sense.

4) Any algol-like language is easily picked by a programmer. So Lisp or Tcl could not be idea, but Lua is fine syntax wise.

What I don't like about Lua (but was not enough to stop me from using it for Redis):

1) 1-based indexes.

2) ~=, why not != that everybody knows?

3) A unique "float" type for all the numbers is not ideal.

4) A unique "table" type for maps and arrays is not ideal.

5) You want to be small, but C bit operations as native operators inside the core are a good idea.
I figure technological advancement is probably an S-curve, and by the time you have a galactic empire, things have leveled off quite a bit. There's probably not much change over a couple decades. (And in Star Wars, things actually seem to be decaying a bit.)

Also you seem to be assuming that the Death Star is big just for the sake of being big. More likely, most of the mass is the actual planet-destroying weapon, as well as the engines for moving it around.
Unless it ships with Visual Studio, I doubt I'll ever see it.
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I'd forgotten about the existence of Zune until this article!
Sounds at first like an admirable concept, but unfortunately would be incredibly problematic.

What about the case where you're virtual-hosting many sites on one IP address? Since the SSL handshake occurs prior to any HTTP data being sent, and the browser will reject a server-certificate whose hostname does not match, you're normally restricted to one HTTPS domain per IP address.

I gather there are TLS extensions to suppport SSL vhosts, but I don't know how widespread they are. There are also methods of including more than one hostname per certificate, but I'm assuming that when you purchase a SSL cert from a registrar, you're going to be restricted to one host.
I always get the feeling that they are really trying to prove to themselves, through proving it to others, that they didn't need to get acquired and that ruby webapps are way more interesting than working on self-driving cars or new crazy startups to change the world. Let's face it, their products look like they are very high quality (although I haven't used them) but none of them are going to change the world in a meaningful or lasting sense.
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It depends on what team you're on. Most (all?) of the older buildings in Redmond are private offices (and sometimes people are doubled up depending on space). I've seen cubicles in some of the newer buildings where Xbox/Zune people work.
Creativity and success are two different things. Without a team Woz would not have been as successful as he is today but he would still have been an insanely creative mid-level manager at HP.
You can still use Redis with C#, the only caveat I've found seems to be the current drivers don't support authentication but that's not a huge issue if it's not publicly accessible.

https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Redis

Edit: for the first time in my life I may be less than correct.
I tend to disagree: from what I have seen having a lot of "pluses" is more a distraction from actual thinking that a plus in terms of productivity. Same goes with a lot of things in life, the amount you invest (in time/ money) for the extra luxury generally outweighs the benefits of a simple and effective solution.

Also I can't really see the correlation between building a good product and a desk or its organization. What build a good product is a good team, a good organization, good and proven tools.
It reminds of a story with a friend, this guy was quite rich and was trying to learn guitar, so when he started he bought a $3000+ guitar (Martin D20 or something approaching), but given his skills a 1000 or even $500 dollars guitar could have suited his needs for the next 5 years. He didn't play better than somebody else with better tools, maybe worse because of the complexity of repairing the guitar. What drives the product is the skill of the programmer, the tools are secondary.

But I might be wrong!
I've heard that the original set of MSFT buildings in Redmond (were they there in 1984? I don't know) were designed with maximizing the number of window offices in mind. They are shaped like an "X".
Ask HN: Redis vs. memcache? When to use what.
Given that Redis 2.6 is about to be released, I'm trying to figure out when I should use redis vs. when memcache is sufficient. Use cases, examples would be very helpful.
It looks like a PHP extension to embed JavaScript using the V8 engine. The docs are pretty limited. The return value of executing a blob of JS is described thusly: "Returns the last variable instantiated in the Javascript code converted to matching PHP variable type." I supposed the mapping is obvious, to someone :). I'd personally want to know if JS objects come back as stdClass objects or assoc arrays.

It could definitely be handy for a lot of reasons. Seems like it might be handy for embedding a bit of JavaScript testing in your PHP test suite.
Yes, this is how the world works. Some people push ideas forward. Others jump on for the ride. I fail to see a problem with this though. It's the job of those pushing the ideas forward to communicate effectively about what they are doing so that we can determine which followers are doing the right thing.
Another #FuckFBIFriday , Anonymous hack FBI partner Infragard
Show HN: I created a Backend as a Service platform for .Net
IMO one of the best attempts at a Javascript framework to date, look forward to giving it a go if it survives infancy.
See, my problem is that I realized that productivity is not bounded by the language itself but also bounded by the tools and ecosystems around it.

Once I finished writing the code, I still have to debug, refactor, produce some sort of code documentation, do a build and deployment, handle dependencies, package it up, and probably signed the code (optional..), potentially produce a nicely formatted changelog.

Writing _just_ the code is half of the battle unless writing sample code is all you do.
I have yet to meet a Libre/OpenOffice geek, but I know plenty of people who use one or the other... I even use it from time to time, but increasingly less. I joined the group of cool nerds who use LaTeX and git repos!
"It's so funny how phones made 10 years ago were more real-time than those today."

Oh come on that's just not true. Phones 10 years ago barely had color displays and 0 apps other than contacts,phone and maybe music and I don't even think java games were there yet.

As far as I know, getting contacts synced between your phone and computer meant buying some huge palm or blackberry and hooking it up to your computer with a special cable. No Real time over the web syncing of contacts between your email client and phone like you have today.
I'm sorry, but "hypermedia" is a terrible term. You might call a webpage a kind of hypermedia, but web API's accessed via HTTP? That makes no sense at all. Hypermedia is a huge umbrella term which describes content, not a means for sending and retrieving data!
"This website is intended to be a Parody"
Streaming service and the software. I absolutely love the zune software. It is so much better than iTunes it's a bit ridiculous.
What makes GDocs so great is simplicity. What makes it a problem is latency and the need for a connection.

I wish LibreOffice had the slick minimal look and feel of GDocs. (and more akin to Apple's Pages). This would make it a competitor for average consumers who are generally not interested in MSFT's glut.
I completely agree, for me they are the ultimate embodiment of the hipster/brogrammer/ninja/guru culture that has become something of a running joke in the industry (at least in my little corner of it).
>"And you can't say it's because they're a large company with many products because Apple manages to do a good job."

I have a theory about Microsoft's web presence and the diversity of presentation styles and plethora of discontinuous information channels associated with it.

My impression is that it is as if Microsoft management is trying to herd cats. And perhaps it is.

Unlike Apple, Microsoft made a lot of it's employees rich (probably more than any other company, ever). When your critical talent has fuck you money, a top down "implement the leader's vision" management style is probably less appropriate model than something drawing some features from academia's "share what you have learned from pursuing your interests" model.

Google has been somewhere between the two - people have had time to pursue their interests but sharing work product has had more management control (though far less management control than Apple).

What I suspect Microsoft is trying to do internally, is to rely on its new design aesthetic to be preferred on its merits rather than implemented by fiat. Not so much because there is a high percentage of employees with fuck you money any longer, but because doing so is consistent with the corporate culture developed at a time when their were.

At least that's my theory.
It remains to be seen if consciousness is even useful if your goal is to maximize intelligence. I could go on in more depth but only if someone cares to hear my thoughts on the topic. But I will leave this:

What do Expertise, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) and the advise to go for a walk or sleep on a problem have (or downplay) in common?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of_...
I love this debate.
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Well, apparently they built the whole thing with restaurants in mind:

http://livebookings.net/
Ask HN: QR code loyalty programs prone to abuse?
If you've been around the bay area, I'm sure you've seen the litany of QR code based loyalty programs where after you purchase something, you download an app and scan a QR code that the employee pulls out from underneath the counter. Once the scan is completed, it virtually "stamps" your card so that you can get something for free when you accrue enough stamps.

My question is doesn't this make it completely prone to abuse if I simply took a photo of the QR-code instead of scanning it? Even if the employee watched me open the app, I can simply use a screen capture shortcut on the iPhone to accomplish capturing this QR code that I can scan anytime I want in the future.

I haven't tried it yet and you may say it's not worth much but given how many businesses are moving to this, it would seem some folks would abuse it for free drinks and food daily.

Wouldn't a better solution be to have a unique QR code tied to YOUR app and then have their scanner read your screen vs. the other way around?
What's the deal with these "covenants not to sue", lately, and how are they different from actual licenses?

My guess is that such covenants would not be binding on third parties who buy the underlying copyright/patent rights, but I don't really know.
What about Javascript? Did you consider using V8 instead of Lua?
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/me hurriedly turns noprocrast back on
I guess this is the paper:
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...
I don't think I've ever seen a store that accepts refunds on software the moment you open the shrinkwrap, so I'm not really sure how Steam is that much different.
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I doubt it, it's just a redesign by people who aren't very good. Metro, otoh, looks good.

Even the blue they've chosen conflicts with the gray.

It just looks shit.
Ben Tao (the person quoted in the article saying that) responded to your post, but you might not have noticed because his account (newchimedes) was hell-banned from Hacker News a few months ago. To see his posts you will need to turn on "show dead" under the settings for your account. He has another comment lower on this article as well.

(I bring this up only because I have made it a habit/goal to collect the names of users that have been hell-banned, as I consider the mechanism of hell-banning to be broken and the effects on the community to be negative, not because I am defending or backing either of your points: I haven't actually read your comments in detail, or the article.)
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What is the use-case for server side scripting? Does a running script block readers and writers?
If it didn't blow then not so many people would be scraping the site... :S
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Six months of Emacs - A summary of the experience
100 Awesome Open Source Tools for Writers, Journalists, and Bloggers
Has anyone made a comprehensive comparison of the top web frameworks and how mature the libraries/plug-ins/services around them are?

Frankly, Rails and Node.js seem to have much more in common than apart. Both are based around relatively inconsistent languages (though conforming to some BDD or Good Parts style can help), both have deeply flawed runtimes in terms of performance and especially parallelism, and they seem to have extremely high overlap in the people who program in both frameworks.

What I care about is libraries, plug-ins, and services. Specifically, if I have some new web task, what I care about is that there is some library/plug-in/service that exists to perform that task (e.g., user auth, Facebook API, exception logging, Heroku, resque, state machines), that the library/plug-in/service is mature enough that I can pretend it works, and that it has enough of a community around it that it won't break in the future.

Is there some comprehensive list of use cases, plug-ins/libraries/services, and relative maturity of those plug-ins/libraries/services across web frameworks? For example, the maturity of the various ORMs across frameworks, or the various testing tools, or the various Facebook libraries. It would be great to see it change over time, and to know when to jump ship to the next flawed language/runtime that has good plug-ins/libraries/services.
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What to sign with your startup's advisor/mentor
If at first you don't succeed, rebrand, rebrand again.
The role of cognitive skills in GDP growth
Why can't you put everything on the web? Right now it is not powerful enough for 3D rendering but that is mostly a limitation of Javascript and people using old browsers.

Other than than I don't see any program which is used by ordinary people today that you couldn't put on the net. Most of them properly already should have been.
What if your next TV is a tablet?
Whaaa? Authentication is one simple command, sent upon connecting. Why on earth wouldn't they "support" that? It's not even a five minute task...
Could not agree more. But this mentality is pretty popular here. It's fun to compare them to a Richard Stallman, which I feel much closer too.
> offices are all about the lowest common denominator.

This is so true. Office IT is driven around 96% case of their users... the bottom 96% I believe. Power users are not the segment office IT cares about (or likes caring about IME). I wrote to the hg mailing list recently about a particular feature set, and I want to snip a certain statement I made, which is generalizable out to other tools besides hg.

"""
Do note that any time someone has to consciously do something, e.g., hg push
-B, pull -B, a large segment of users will not do that, even though (1)
man pages say to, (2) their boss says to, (3), the program itself suggests
it - in red letters, (4) training materials say to. This means that
hg bookmarks will not work as a workflow for these users out of the box,
because errors will constantly come up.
"""
Hixie: HTML5 DRM, unethical... does not provide robust content protection...
I tried implementing the CommonJS spec (eg require) using this extension in order to integrate javascript libraries such as coffeescript and uglify directly into my PHP web stack.

For simple examples it worked fine, but trying it on real projects such as coffeescript it kept seg faulting.

It's definitely got potential though..
For starters the software doesn't crush your machine as iTunes does to Windows.

Second of all, the physical player doesn't magically get a 'corrupted OS' or 'unhappy folder face' problem once a year - requiring trips to the Genius Bar.

The software does everything iTunes does like recommendations, folder tracking, etc - except you could get 'all you can eat' music for $10 / month.

In general the Zune HD device is just sick. Metro UI, intuitive touchscreen, and most importantly, completely unbreakable.
I think that's part of the statement. It's riffing on the "show your setup" post, but instead of focusing on the gear (something 37S have eschewed for a long time) they're focusing on the environment, and, by extension, the people. All the signaling is about peacefulness and happiness: look at my dog, look at my kids, look at my lovely pitcher of water.

It's effective in my opinion for a few reasons. One, it's personal/voyeuristic, which will make at least some people interested and also, if you have a positive response, connected to the fact that there are real people working on the big product they're about to launch. Making a company feel human and intimate is an important branding goal these days, and something they talk about a lot.

Second, as someone else mentioned, it emphasizes their "work-from-home" message. When I look at those desks, I see comfort. Every day is like staying home from work. Gee, it sure must be nice to work like that!

There's even a subtle power/wealth signal, I would argue, in DHH's setup and the fresh flowers on all the office desks.
Aside from async, I don't see a single drop of progress moving from Rails to Node.JS.
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You can export MERGE_AUTOEDIT=no from your shell's profile scripts to opt out of this behavior, or alias --no-edit into your runs of merge. (I believe you can even use git config to say, globally or per-project, to mix-in an argument to any normal command, but I'm not 100% certain of that.)
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For me, it's the seamless integration of both playing and retrieving music. If I'm listening to the Black Keys, I can press their Artist name, load up a list of all their albums, then choose which one I want to stream or immediately download to my device (with a $9.99/month fee, like Spotify etc.)

Last time I used an iPhone they had a complete separation between the music player and the iTunes Store. Never understood why.
In order to write the kind of programs you write to script Redis, Lua or Javascript are substantially equivalent, but V8 is a huge implementation, less portable, and so forth. This is why I avoided it.
Public companies livelihood and Facebook
Obviously Zynga comes to mind as the largest company that lives of facebook(or adds life to FB with their profit contributions being what they are).

Perhaps "living off" is the wrong term, maybe compliments is a more apt term... anyhow, I digress.

Are there any other public companies that are fueled by and fueling facebook?
Ask HN: Review my startup joinbox.com (closed beta invites)
I'd love some feedback; we're a startup from Switzerland trying to help stay connected with a sleek unified inbox (social networks, email, rss)

http://beta.joinbox.com/?code=36x7x6pp
Hyper anything sounds terribly retro to me, circa 1992.

But I agree: it is an uninformative term for anything which merely establishes a connection and sends/receives data as opposed to specifically delivering content.

REST is just fine as it is. It is a well-understood term for what it does. Why reinvent the wheel and stick a new label on it every five minutes?
I have to say: this is incredibly intresting! I woulbe be curious how one can pass-in variables.

I'm afraid you can not get much out of the great features of JS. Event drivenness..

Anyway, this blows my mind!
That may sort-of answer my question, but it presents another obvious one: Why haven't SUSE's optimizations been merged into mainline LibreOffice?
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Well that just makes me go WTF.

I genuinely can't think of a way this will be used which will be positive for PHP.
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TV is broken
I really don't think that Microsoft killed Zune, in the way that they killed Kin. They just integrated it into Windows Phone. In many ways they're just going with the flow on that- far fewer people buy dedicated music playing devices now that their smartphones do it.
I am continually amazed by Redis. I am involved in a project where parallel processing and work distribution is achieved via 0mq and Redis acts as a sort of "shared memory". The performance is outstanding, and it is a fun architecture to work in.
I'd counter argue that the common negative health effects of sitting down far outweigh the common health effects of varicose veins (from that wiki):

"Most varicose veins are relatively benign, but severe varicosities can lead to major complications, due to the poor circulation through the affected limb."

I think the positive evidence for standing versus sitting is overwhelming to put it lightly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39523298/ns/health-mens_health/t...

"This isn't actually a new discovery. In a British study published in 1953, scientists examined two groups of workers: bus drivers and trolley conductors. At first glance, the two occupations appeared to be pretty similar. But while the bus drivers were more likely to sit down for their entire day, the trolley conductors were running up and down the stairs and aisles of the double-decker trolleys. As it turned out, the bus drivers were nearly twice as likely to die of heart disease as the conductors were."
do. not. want.
If you think this is anything but the worst idea ever - trust me; you're doing it wrong.
Self-organized criticality and the Great Man theory of history.
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Good to see Microsoft making some changes as regard to these services. They were confusingly named to begin with and the integration of them all into Windows seamlessly is what is going to hold them afloat while they figure out what they are doing on the mobile space.
Is there no room in your worldview for values that aren't
imposed by force?
Very cool. Two things come to mind:

1) Unity3d game developers are primarily building their games in C# for web/downloadable/mobile and may be worth looking into: http://forum.unity3d.com/

2) Check out PlayerIO, although they're a multiplayer backend there is significant crossover - your logic lives on their servers in C#: http://playerio.com/