skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Payback's a bitch.

[Disclaimer: These are my personal views and do not represent those of my employer, foursquare.]

Really though, the new Google Maps pricing scheme is just totally bonkers. They're trying to charge a higher CPM than typical AdSense rates. It's just nonsense.
Does this resonate for you? How much does appreciation play a role in motivating you to develop open source projects?
LookTel releases recognition iPhone app that helps the blind to see
That seems fine to me. I'd like to see all content under a CC-BY-SA license. If that were the law, I'd be happy with it.
One neat thing about working with Mathematica in Eclipse is that successive clicking expands your selection 'outwards' up the syntax tree. It's an quite astoundingly useful feature for refactoring.

I'm sure some LISP editors have this too, but in a m-expression language like Mathematica it seems like magic.
"I am, as I have said before, a political conservative, a law and order kind of guy and I get misty when the national anthem is played at a football game and jets fly over in salute. If anything, I am pre-disposed to support the United States government."

This doesn't sit quite right with me. I could be wrong but I don't imagine a conservative would fancy themselves a "supporter of the United States government." That sounds more like, right or wrong, what a liberal thinks of a conservative (and what a conservative thinks of a liberal, for that matter).

Supporter of "the troops" or "the nation" sure, but "the government" seems a bit off.
yeah, it's almost a game-changer. i'm surprised not too many people here talk about them.
Quite a few apps do this already. Hasn't the Android browser been doing this for yonks now?
I've learned a lot from ballet. I appreciate the coordination and the discipline. Making something simple is very difficult.

- Jack Dorsey
Atari antes up $100,000 in Pong developer challenge
I kind of noticed this as an unwritten rule, instead of a joke. Every other release of windows seems to have its fair share of weirdness which is corrected with the release immediately superseding it.

My path, which I'm sure matches a great deal of others is:

3.1 = buy
95 = skip
98 = buy
ME = skip
XP = buy
Vista = skip
7 = buy

Extrapoloating, 8 will be a "skip". I hope this will be the exception.. I kind of like what I've seen with 8 so far.
Remember this is written from a technical person's point of view. If you are selling to technical customers by all means give them a try now button and get out of their way. But if you are selling to project managers, marketers, or upper management, you should take his Don'ts list with a grain of salt.

- Edit for typos
Yes, .com.us. Sorry, we use .co.[ccTLD] here.
Devising a Training Budget for Employees
It is this type of attitude that stops other people from doing what they have done.

Sometimes bad code is fine when you are prototyping something or getting something to just work. Sometimes people have knowledge gaps. Put your code up or shut up.
Nice job guys. I'll pass this around to some of my clients who are wire framing mobile apps for development with JQM. This could provide a more useful output.

Questions:
How to add multiple pages?
iPad sized workspace?
Disclaimer: I work for foursquare.

In some ways it's better, in some ways it's worse. In the long-term though, we feel that this is the right move. OpenStreetMap and MapBox will be improving continuously, and with open data we can drive those improvements in ways that we couldn't with Google data.

I've been following OpenStreetMap since it launched, and its really a testament to how far its come in the last 7 years that it's good enough to be used in major consumer websites. In many ways, this is an effort that dwarfs Wikipedia in size, complexity, and ambition.

We're excited to be making use of open data, and will be even more excited to start contributing back in the near future.
I'll try! I'm a big fan of open source, and I actually have a long list of components I want to open-source at some point, like for example Scribd's PDF to html5 conversion software.
Android Design V2: Now with stencils
Here's a list of database/sql drivers: http://code.google.com/p/go-wiki/wiki/SQLDrivers
The Only Productivity Tip You Need to Know to Get Things Done
I... I just don't get it. So you can send 30 "full quality" photos at once? Is there anyone who's really thinking, "you know what I need right now? The ability to send my friends higher resolution photos in parallel!"

I can already MMS high res photos to groups at a time. I can already upload high res photos to Facebook, email them out at very high res, and transfer them to my computer at original quality. The bandwidth limits in their plan levels are silly considering they're all way over my 3G bandwidth cap and I can already send original quality photos over wifi.

I hope that this is just a first iteration and we'll be seeing further products and services from these guys soon.
How to use multiple domains on a single Google Apps account
Getting ready for the end of growth on Earth
Art, science and invention are closely related. As Albert Einstein said, "After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well", but you could probably throw inventors in there too. Samuel Morse was a painter before he invented the telegraph. So was Robert Fulton, before he created the first viable steamship.

Creativity is something that should be valued, regardless of whether it's expressed in code or in movement.
Boxer looked like this, though less on the ugly side, to my taste. Unfortunately it's so dead now I couldn't even find screenshots off the first couple of search results.

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Boxer
Right on! This should be titled "How not to sell software that costs under $1000 in 2012" because the do/don'ts obviously are wrong for non-cheap software.
Wish I could answer. I'm just use the jQuery Mobile framework and noticed the demo on their homepage.
Reliable birth control penetrated each district or governmental sub-unit at the same time as the TV stations?
Best idea I've heard all day. Let me know if you end up doing this, I'd love to help out.
Not only did I not mind giving my email address to a reputable companly, I wish they made it easier to sign up for news about similar books, not just updates/news about this one.
Actually, I know of a number of products that are in the [1K, 75K] range.

* Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

* vSphere datacenter edition

* TestComplete from SmartBear

* > 3 perforce licences
Coming from a game development background, i've seen far worse.
Indeed. Just to put into perspective what a huge event this launch was: for a short while (about 10 minutes) the RasberryPi outsold the iPhone 4:1.

Of course, Apple moves 250 iphones per minute all the time but there was absolutely no way that a small outfit like this could have anticipated and/or met this insane surge of demand. I sure hope it validates the concept to everybody that was still doubting and I hope that we'll soon be able to mark the 100K, 1M and up milestones of units sold.
Autocorrect fail
Free Daily Java Programming Lessons
Some sellers may have a bureaucratic sales process, but there are examples the other way around also, with customers having a long and windy buying process which is hardly worth a sale. Last year we sold our on-click download and try-before-buy product to a large US company and we had to fill out X forms and send them by hardcopy to become a "supplier". After 6 months we are still waiting for the payment.
I'm curious: there has been a ton of linking from HN to Tech Crunch since then (less so recently, of course) - did you mean you gave up visiting Tech Crunch as a destination or hardly ever even followed links there?
Make a solar-powered Wall-E that cleans your house. When he gets low on charge, goes and waits in a sunny spot until he recharges.

More character than a roomba.
Productivity Tip: Your Hosts file is Just Barely Annoying Enough
If you've got a few games or games on different sites then it seems this would be an easy thing to do A/B testing on. You could provide (what amounts to a splash screen) a small flash file that loads a second flash file when you click "play" or "help" or whatever. Does this for one set of sites and compare how they do in the SERPs and for retention, etc..

Then make a HN post about it.
There are several parallels I see between the YC experience and college fraternities. A group of people (often men) with a similar interest, with a powerful alumni network.

Unfortunately, I found living in a fraternity house very distracting for my school work. There were always people doing "downtime" activities like gaming, drinking, etc. I certainly participated in these activities more than I would have if I had been on my own. It was great for my social network, bad for my studies.

I imagine a similar thing could happen in a house with too many YC founders... It would be especially detrimental because there's only 3 months to get YC done right, versus 4 years of college.

I imagine Drew Houston would have some good input on this, having been in both a fraternity and YC.
He had a gripe with a specific distro, not that all distros exhibit this problem. And Windows would not solve his overall usage needs and wants.
The scanners we have in the US are using radiation. Some of the scanners used in Europe are using sound waves instead. (I noticed this because I always opt out of the radiation ones.)
I imagine that corporate interests (records, movies) in the US and EU could collude to get a pirate site taken down if it had a .org, it would just be another tree to fall.

So far the US has not publicly tried to drop wikileaks.org, forcing WikiLeaks migrate to a TLD that is clearly outside US reach. Maybe they wouldn't want the bad press.

I'm wondering what is possible if I simply have a relationship with a reseller in the US (e.g. the one with the superbowl ads, or eNom), but my TLD registrar is outside of reach. I assume they could make the reseller drop the contract, or terminate it.
It's not clear cut at all. It’s acknowledged that in business, a quick, fairly good decision usually beats a slow but perfect evaluation of the evidence. In a war situation it's even worse - if the group is under attack, any plan is a better defence than an internal argument.

So there is strong selection for obedience.
While I agree in principle with this list, experience has taught me that if I have to talk to sales person to find out the price software, it's very likely that it's out of my company's budget (seed funded startup). I move on and save myself and the sales person from wasting any time.

If you're product targets early stage companies and doesn't cost 5+ figures monthly, and you sell software this way, then, yes, you're doing something wrong.
True. I guess I'm just surprised by the magnitude of the effect. Thanks for the input.
I am from Australia and currently in Canada on a work visa. It was so easy to get (a 2 year visa) and have been enjoying living outside of Australia. Every time I have looked into working in the US it is so difficult that I don't even bother applying.

The funny thing is we also got a 2 year tourist visa for the US so we can could travel around. It was such a painful process. You have to get there as early as possible or you will wait for hours. My appointment was at 9am but I got my visa at 11am. I arrived there at 7am. Once you go through security you cannot leave otherwise you lose your spot. They don't have toilets there so you're screwed if you have to go. I had to bring a gazillion documents proving I could support myself and it was all so unwelcoming.

I have always felt uneasy travelling through the US. It is almost as if they assume everybody is trying to smuggle themselves into the country to stay permanently.

The US government needs to chill.
> But how would you know the one large chunk will be the only one?

You can at a minimum guess from the size. Take for example this cut - roughly cutting 600 from 6-7000 means cutting 10%. Unless Blizzard is seriously inefficient, another such cut of 10+% would start doing major damage to operations. Hence, you know there probably won't be such a cut.
Does anyone believe being selective about what you open source is a bad idea? If so could you share your perspective? (I'm asking as I'm guessing that may be why I got voted down)
Adobe and Autodesk too.

While Apple recently modified their bundles and lowered the prices for Final Cut Pro and Logic, they were both within this range and did more or less what Alex described.
Are doctors incentivized to keep patients sick?
> If you don't have to actually play a game like Dragon Age(by being able to skip combat), it just becomes an interactive movie. ... can't really call it a game then.

You can call it what you like, but the important point is this: will people pay money to play it? Interact with it. Watch it. Whatever. I don’t know the answer, but TFA makes a good case that this is about "making games more accessible and inclusive" i.e. making experiences that more people will pay for.

I think the combat in Skyrim is too easy, but from a social point of view it's interesting for this reason: It's over 100 hours of entertainment for less then the price of 2 movies.
اجمل عشر اهداف في العالم روعه
Does it still use parameter-based flight dynamics of MS Flight Sim, or does it use real, if crude, flight dynamics based on wing shape and plane model geometry, like X-Plane does?
The Inscrutable Lines of Cause and Effect
Back in September, Microsoft demoed a similar Windows 8 thing they called "semantic zoom". Obviously it requires the app to understand when zooming is taking place so that it's possible to do something smarter with it than just magnifying the pixels.
AMD Buys SeaMicro to Target Cloud Server Market
Raspberry Pi Now Has Distributors
I've wondered about the possibilities of closed ecosystems paradoxically making it easier to open source your software and still make a profit.

There's still risk to your bottom line by open-sourcing: a competitor could use your code/ideas to create products that outsell yours. But what you don't have to worry about is piracy: the number of users with jailbroken devices or a dev certificate are a small subset of your user base.

On the positive side, you get the benefit of customer engagement: people helping you bug-fix, creating level editors, community content, etc. Companies can also sometimes find and hire top-tier talent this way.

At any rate, major kudos to Insurgent for doing this. I'm actually a little disappointed that all their games are free; I think at the very least, they should pick their best game and charge 99c, or do split Lite/Full versions.
In high priced product market ($5000+) it's a custom to babysit client and give him a lap dance with a brain massage before opening all the cards.
I think shoppers for $47 products hate it more than corporate buyer/purchasing managers.
Latter ones want to relax in a leather chair and listen to bullshit before assigning budget - it's their job and they used to it.
They certainly are not used to $5000 "buy it now" paypal buttons.
Or maybe because of the new Google Maps pricing? http://code.google.com/apis/maps/faq.html#usage_pricing
I placed an order this morning and just got an email with an expected ship date of May 20th.
Crowdfunding Set to Explode with Passage of Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act
This kind of work is valuable even without getting rid of GCC. Each compiler has a slightly different implementation of warnings; getting the code to compile under two compilers can find issues that you wouldn't find under just one compiler.

It also increases flexibility for developers. Perhaps I prefer to use Clang for its better error messages, or because I find it easier to target at a new platform that I'm working on. If the code already runs under Clang, then that's work I don't have to do. Clang can also be used as an independent parser more easily for GCC, so tools that use it to generate code browsing information or the like benefit from the code already being parseable with Clang.

Compiling under another compiler will also catch more of the cases in which you're depending on non-portable behavior or extensions, which increases the likelihood that you will be able to run it under static analyzers like Coverity, Clang Analyzer, Klee, Splint, or the like.

Basically, beyond wanting to move away from GCC, there is real value in putting work into making sure that everything compiles under another compiler. It's like making sure your web site works on multiple browsers; it can help you catch errors earlier, allow people to use better debugging tools, widen your audience, and help future-proof you.

Now, there are some people who are itching to get away from GCC. For one thing, it is a bigger, older, wartier project, that is harder to work with. People find Clang and LLVM more modular and extensible. For another, there are some companies that are deathly afraid of the GPLv3, and won't touch anything to do with it (Apple in particular, as well as some other embedded device manufacturers I believe). But there are many reasons for wanting to make sure that your software compiles under Clang, and not all of them mean that you want to ditch GCC, just that Clang provides additional value as well.
Yeah I guess you're right. I was going to give a long counterpoint but it's all about how it came off to me, it just didn't seem like the sort of wording that would come from a conservative (and I grew up with conservative parents and listened to plenty of talk radio, I never take liberals at their representation of what a conservative believes). But looking again, I was just nitpicking.
To summarize what many others are saying in this thread, unfortunately, software is currently sold not bought. That's why everyone ends up doing all this nonsense that the author describes.

I am personally in 100% agreement that it should be App Store simple but reality proves more complicated than that. It is disappointing but not surprising.
Building friendships and sharing experiences is a great thing, but can't too much on those things bring down productivity?
I've had summer jobs that involve cold-contacting people in the same university that I worked in. The response rate to my initial email (sent from a university email address internally, directly related to the jobs of these people) was rarely above 10%. Calling them inevitably got "oh yeah, I saw that email". That was the point that our actual relationship started.

I was never a huge fan of calling people, but I was forced to learn. It's definitely helped in subsequent business relationships. Email just isn't a way to communicate with the wider public.

It's easy to forget that just because you spent 11 hours on something means that the person reading it will give it anything close to that. They're going to give you about 20 seconds. Long essays explaining everything never work. A short, to the point email with a couple of numbered questions works, and it means that inevitably when you call them the next day they can quickly get up to speed with what you're contacting them about.

There's a tendency in tech-related areas to assume that everyone treats their email the same as you do, but in my experience the less techy a person is, the less they consider email to be important.
I love this idea. My knowledge of lisp is very basic but I wonder if optional declarations could be added to functions: e.g. f(Number) -> (Number,Number) (sort of similar to haskell) and then these could be used in the pretty printing / presentation layer. This would help lisp from missing those implicit clues that are present in other languages without compromising its flexibility.
Now I'm disturbed by the lack of parens. What about situations where I have one pair of parens exactly contained in another, like in a one-argument defmethod?

Edit: Now I see that I didn't notice that this situation happens in the "let maxcol 0" line in that image. I need to compare the colors on the line below to make sure I'm mentally parsing that line correctly.
If it doesn't feel natural, it will be replaced.  Sorry node.js
When a new software development technology starts to get traction, it's often clear in hindsight that the old technology was kind of hard, unnatural, going against the grain somehow.
Consider XML versus JSON - JSON feels far more natural, XML feels harder, more verbose, more complex. Consider ORMs compared to NoSQL - NoSQL feels easier, like a more natural fit, like a natural solution to many common programming challenges, whereas ORMs feel like a difficult, slow kludge, a technology mismatch which just doesn't feel right. Consider Java versus Scala - Java is verbose and requires much code which is not directly getting the job done - other languages that run on the JVM are coming to the forefront which remove the unnatural, pointless bits.

So whenever a new software development technology comes along, if it feels "unnatural" then there is bound to be something that will come along and replace it.

node.js is the king of unnatural programming, forcing programmers to twist their heads into callback spaghetti oriented programming. This is very rough and unnatural but developers endure it because it allows Javascript at the back end and because the performance is very good. But when the next technology comes along that removes the need for that painful callback mindset AND provides high performance and Javascript, people will breathe a sigh of relief and flock to it. "At last, we can program again in a natural style".

node.js just doesn't feel natural, so it's clear that it's yet another stepping stone to a better web server technology. We are not there yet.
Sure. So don't spend all your time socializing :)
Executive brief - Go high end, where the money is. Where results are valued.

Licensing isn't an issue - $3K/year+libraries for development. A runtime player for Mathematica costs $300. You just have to pick your projects carefully - No rails todo apps.

One recent project I worked on was auto segmentation and labelling of MRI images. Auto-segmentation was the easy part. Labelling however took several different approaches before I got something that works reliably.
I play Charadium - if you're interested in this genre I suggest taking a look at it. Plus there's no IAP, which in my mind is a plus.
Google Page Speed can be used online now - https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/.

Also wrt the article, http://www.scirra.com/blog/74/making-a-fast-website, won't naive bottom loading all your JS lead to them being serialised and thus cost you in page load time?

Also if your JS modifies the DOM tree shouldn't it arrive earlier so as to prevent reflows and such?

See eg http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rtt.html#PutSty...
Uh yeah, I was thinking exactly the same thing, isn't that entirely the point of S3 that no matter what you throw at it, it just keeps working?
Custom UUID as primary key
Really, you're totally misreading this.

They got the product right and there was absolutely no way in hell that they could have done better than this at launch day. If they had sold 10 units I'm sure you would have had your criticism ready as well and to extrapolate from selling out in 10 minutes flat to 'fear that the hardware shows the same lack of attention and it doesn't work very well' is simply stupid.

If you want to criticize the RasberryPi folks then I suggest you show us all how you will do better. I'll be cheering you on, even if you sell out on day one.