skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, I've noticed this as well. Growing up as a kid I was always interested in how things worked. Luckily my dad was an engineer and was more than happy to answer all my questions. In university I was also surrounded by people who were fascinated by how things worked. Because of that I'm still very surprised when I meet people who show no such interest. That said, I now know quite a few people who fall in that category. They're all very smart people, with good educations, but they're just okay with the fact that things exist.

The dangerous thing about this attitude though is that these people often underestimate what it takes for something to be created. You see this when politicians are eager to cut on education or when someone looks for a programmer to 'quickly implement their briliant new app'. Note that these people aren't necessarily dumb, but they've just never thought about what it takes for things to be built or designed.
Let's say you lived in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn and rented a 1600 a month 1BR apartment of decent size (entirely realistic). You have a Trader Joes that's a 10 minute walk. You have a Michelin star restaurant that's a 10 minute walk. I could go on and on, but basically, you have dozens and dozens of nice, reasonably priced bars, coffee shops, butcher shops, produce stores, movie theaters (well those aren't so reasonably priced) and restaurants that are a 10 minute walk. And you have a 35 minute commute to midtown... 20 minutes to SOHO. That's not bad at all.

However if you measure quality of life by the cleanliness of the subway or having to wait 15 minutes because you just missed the last F train or it annoys you that a lot of people commute during rush hour, then yeah, NYC probably isn't for you.

Your knock on consumption culture is overstated. I guess if you want to get a meal or have a drink in the same places that finance and law douches do, you are going to run into that, but that's your fault for not taking a look around and realizing there is so much more to be had in this city.

[edited: underestimated the commute time to SOHO]
I gave Adobe a significant chunk of my money, a while back, to be "legitimate" and to keep up with "the industry" at that time.

I'm seriously regretting that decision. Legally, it was "the right" thing to do.

But personally, I feel I paid the people that are screwing me -- as one person recently commented about the content industry, he was ceasing to pay those people so that they could use the money to force their evermore draconian policies (of self-interest) on him and society.

Furthermore, due to Adobe's clear mistakes, I needed support from Adobe Support. And despite all the money they had received from me, the experience was absolutely horrible. Eventually, I was the one explaining (repeatedly) to their support technicians what they needed to do. It finally came down to luck of the draw and reaching an associate who was actually willing to demonstrate a little initiative.

All this boils down to personal anecdote, but for me that is: Adobe goes to extremes to seem/be undeserving of the license fees they demand.
That's like shouting "Punk's not dead!" as you preen your greying mohawk.
> Distinction without difference.

I would say there is a real difference, here. The point is, SOPA did not recognize this difference, and its promoters should be held to an even higher standard than that which they promote.
Honest question: why are you only considering large tech companies? There are many, many startups here as well.
you can use it on the server with nodejs - it's like a c extension, but I guess it's supposed to be easier than writing a c extension
Inspiration from Music, Film, Art & Media
Do people burn books online? Is there a correlative action to tossing vilified literature in the fire? The attitude characterized by McCarthy's response to Slaughterhouse-Five retreats from reality to the ideal. As media channels have diversified and the input streams exponentially increased, can I burn something by choosing not to consume it? Obviously we cannot take in everything, but I think the filter bubble, both imposed and self-manufactured, creates a sort of insularity and a disconnection from the broader human experience. If I only read what I like or relate to, it makes me less real.
I don't care about reputation, just that askers get a much larger portion of my knowledge when they demonstrate that they engage in their community rather than just take, take, take.
The fact that the insurance companies acted so swiftly and decisively shows how vulnerable they are. It's pretty obvious that insurance is an industry whose margins are bolstered by consumer ignorance.

I'm glad you guys are spending the time trying to fix this, and it is very impressive how you bounced back so soon.
And here is what you find for apartments in small/medium town Wisconsin:
http://milwaukee.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=cedarburg&#...
Sigh... this is an issue with your VM and not Windows.
Did he think that software was somewhat generated automatically by some machine? Or was it just that he had no idea how to write a program in the same way that I have no idea how to build a particle accelerator but appreciate that someone must.
not that relevant regarding that existing solutions are crap and we desperately need something that just works with all the things.
This is amazing. I'm really happy for you guys.
I could forsee such a scheme working, if only the flat panel collectors could be replaced on an annual basis. A period of system dormancy may be required prior to panel redeployment...
Would have bought it if there was a Kindle version...heck even a PDF version...
Pretty much. My understanding is that it's specifically targeted at monetizing businesses that use tools like Unity or Unreal's UDK to build 3D flash games.
I didn't post any title, accurate, descriptive or otherwise.

I'm not the OP, I was just commenting is all.
I think you're on to something here, but I would pivot just slightly. Let me explain.

The problem with email today is that it has many uses which we try to manage through a single client that has gone mostly unchanged for 20 years. You've brilliantly picked up on this. Having a separate app for managing notifications seems obvious now that I've seen your product, don't know why I never thought of it before this.

However being able to delete notifications is absolutely essential. Diving into a separate tool (not built for notifications) would be unfortunate.
Get the most byte for your buck: Who has the best 3G/4G plan?
Adidas AdiZero Ghost
i'm seeing this page from their site:
http://documentation.fabric-engine.com/latest/FabricEngine-K...

the KL language looks statically typed at a glance. So what's the advantage exactly?
No it is not standard
well, you can find a job in a bio related research lab as a programmer but you would earn (at least) 2/3 times more in a company.
Hmm, well, re the last thing he wants, carrying it around; if there were a Kindle version of this it would be in the Kindle app on my phone which is with me almost constantly. A physical book, I don't think I'd bother carrying anywhere, which would probably prevent me from doing anything else to it or with it except one quick read and giving it away or having it rot on the shelf.
Since these are just a small handful of larger companies, doesn't that mean that they are screwing over their best, most loyal customers?
Not much to say. Just really like your "grand game of chess" anology. Too many people overlook what they're giving up to get something. Especially time, or tranquility.
I'm glad you put up the notice about California rates only. I'm in NYC and saw that I was paying nearly double what I should be paying within the same insurer.

My question... Is it possible to vary that much between the different states?
Rather, it means things are worse on this board than they could be. And that is enough reason to advocate for more civility here.
See also Derek Sivers' "A real person, a lot like you": http://sivers.org/real .
I got laid off
Demo Days really do have this feel.

I was pitching a VC partner before the presentations, and he noticed three people walking towards us: "check that out!"

Me: "Oh, yeah, Ron Conway! He spoke at one of our dinners, and we've talked with him personally a couple times, he's a good guy."

"No. To his left."

Mr. Conway was flanked by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. And no, it's not movie magic, they really do look that good in person.
It's more than that though. One problem a lot of people have with regard to software is that they think it is trivial work. As though it requires merely "doing it right", as though it's a matter of just assembling widgets into something else in a straightforward manner. An analogy would be, say, a fast food cashier. All it takes is punching the buttons for the desired options, right? Creating software is the same sort of thing just with slightly more complicated options, right? They don't appreciate that it's a complicated creative endeavor that requires inventiveness and trade-offs and architecting and artistry.

I think this might be one reason why Apple's products are perceived differently, because the aesthetics are more apparent and that clues people into some aspect of the complexity behind the software.
Yeah. I think the answer there is: fuck those companies. The sooner we start new ones that get this right, the fewer their days are numbered.

But you may have missed my point by a couple degrees. It wasn't that companies should look at initiative and aptitude directly. It's that those are the things that drive you to acquire the skills that make you good. Then you can prove that you're good.

How exactly to prove you're good, or for companies to tell who's good, is a billion (trillion?) dollar question that's in flux right now. But clearly it has more to do with showing work and less with weak proxies like years of experience (which may be years of doing things badly) or resumes (a skill uncorrelated if not inversely correlated with good programming). Since startups are starved for good hackers, somebody's going to figure this out, gain a huge edge, and pave the way for the rest.

In the meantime, training/retraining programs are not going to increase the talent pool much. Something fresh like Hacker School might, though.

Edit: in my opinion the eventual answer is going to be found by reasoning backward from Christopher Alexander's great question, "What feels more alive?" But obviously that isn't much help to someone in the situation you describe right now. So how did it work out? Do you like accounting or would you rather be programming?
First time "try it out" impression: awesome.

I'd be surprised if the insurers don't buy it or copy it within a year or two.

I'm sure the Leaky team is aware of the problems to still sort out, and other commenters have pointed them out. But go for it!

Oh... it's not clear to me how you're going to make money. Care to explain?
How do the insurance companies that offer price comparisons do it?
I wrote a tool along those lines: http://github.com/mwylde/slinky.

It runs a static file server that transparently compiles resources as they are requested (so you request main.js and it finds main.coffee, compiles it, and sends it back).

Then when you're ready to deploy, it's one command to compile/concatenate/minify your css and javascript.

Right now it only supports Coffescript, SASS and HAML, but adding additional compilers is really simple.
Yes, this is correct - it's targeted at people who are comfortable using dynamic languages like JS/Python
Good question.

I think there's no similar action analogous to burning books online, so people inclined to do so are left to other kinds of action, like writing angry comments and blog posts.
I don't find Expose or Mission Control nearly as useful as the Windows Taskbar.

Unlike OS X where a really good Taskbar implementation cannot exist, I can add something just like Expose to Windows. It's called Switcher and it does pretty much everything Expose does.

The Taskbar is still better though because it's always there and at a glance I can see what's running.
How about externc, hinting at C++'s extern "C" for C++ code that will be visible (unmangled) to C code?
> Do people burn books online?

SOPA/PIPA comes to mind.
The short answer is yes.

Because insurance is regulated on a state-by-state level, each insurer will submit different models to different states. For example, in California doesn't include credit score and New York does - this alone could change your rates by 60%.

However, while the final prices may not be the same, the magnitude changes that happen to your prices as you make different selections (ie changing your vehicle or get a speeding ticket) will be largely similar across states.
Ask HN: What's the hardest part of doing biz dev to generate direct sales?
Would love to hear thoughts from HNers who hack AND sell.

For those who had to jump in on the sales/biz dev efforts at your startup, what are the biggest challenges you face?

Is it lead generation? Is it identifying the decision maker and figuring out how to get in front of them? Is it closing deals?
Were you made aware of any legislation or caselaw that would illustrate that scraping was illegal or otherwise actually actionable?
Logo is fixed.
>>Dr McNay compared neuron growth in mice fed either normal food (containing 20% fat) or a high-fat diet (60% fat).

It bothers me that they don't state whether or not the calories were the same. While I suspect the high fat diet was higher in calories, it bothers me that people vilify fat like this.
Thanks Kurt, we're just really glad that we'll get to see it through this time!
I can imagine the SAAS site for this now: "BurnABook.com".

1. Enter a Book Title

2. Pull text of first chapter from Amazon

3. Animate flames around the words burning.

4. Provide FB and Twitter links to share your burned book.
>There are liars the world over. I don't think that is necessarily a trait that is just for men. I've know quite a few guys in high school that had unprotected sex because their girlfriend was on the pill end up with a baby because that is the way she thought she could keep him forever.

A friend's x-girlfriend got pregnant because she poked a hole in the condom without him knowing. If you are male and don't want to have kids, make sure you use your own condoms. Woman has many more options to avoid pregnancy, man has one shot with the condom (AFAIK vasectomy can be permanent).

I think this type of birth control has the potential of lowering paternity fraud since man will know the child is not his. It also reduces unwanted pregnancy when woman poke hole in condom or other condom issues.

This birth control for man is great news and I hope to see more male birth control options in the future.
I'm not sure that's true. I believe the founder of OKCupid is speaking at an internet retailer conference this summer on content for SEO. The lovely linkbait data OKCupid releases certainly is marketing, and certainly cost money to produce.

If you mean that you don't spend money on advertising, I can certainly believe that.
This isn't JavaScript being as fast as C++, it's writing critical sections in a low-level language being as good as writing the whole app in a low-level language.
Instapaper vs. Readability
we dynamically compile on target (using LLVM), and the developer doesn't have to manage things like pointers.
"All requests are status 200, boss. We're doing great!"
We've had these foods for no more than the past 10,000 years when agriculture was invented, yet Homo Sapiens have existed for the past 200,000 years

10,000 years is about 400-500 generations, which sounds like quite many to my genetically untrained eyes. Since the human population boom has occurred during those 10k years and more or less wholly thanks to agriculture, pretty much everyone alive now is a descendant of people who did much better on that diet than they had been doing on previous foods.

Maybe someone who knows genetics could share an opinion on this: aren't 400-500 generations enough to filter out genes incompatible with agricultural food from the gene pool?
I can't agree with this enough. I use both daily and my feelings match yours 100%.

I find crashes far more disruptive on OS X - argh...the dreaded spinning beach ball. Windows app crashes (when they happen) rarely cause me any harm beyond restarting that single app and telling Windows I don't want to send a bug report to MS.

I'm always blown away when picking up the iPad just how seamlessly I can fly between different apps, tabs, airplay, etc.
I think if there was a good, free version of an Ada compiler that had a permissive open-source license, then people would be using it.
Now that I remember it... I found it odd that it was asking me my profession. I entered Engineer and it dropped substantially.

Anyways congrats! It's really interesting stuff. I have very similar issues to Leaky on my personal finance/banking startup. Really like the way you incorporated the ratings at the end.
for reference, we posted our beta benchmark stuff here and people had a good look at us: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3227905
Can't say I agree with this; Unicode may be ubiquitous for a number of spheres, but there are plenty of legacy systems that have trouble with things like "educated" apostrophes and ligatures like ﬁ or æ. Your "can’t" after getting washed through a few different systems may end up coming out as my "can&2019t" or similar garbage. Non-US users run into this far more frequently.

A better workaround would be for apple to use a little bit of on-the-spot processing and display the educated version but send the dumbed-down version, much like it would substitute a ligature in rastered text.

I can&2019t think of a less strict grammatical environment than text messaging.
"Step 1: Find out everything the person you're talking to knows."
... or you could adopt a personal policy of just not running such programs. That's the top-level poster's point -- the boundary between statically-analyzable and not is extremely complex, and not coincident with Turing-completeness.
Dr. Sherwood Rowland – Tribute to a Nobel Laureate
Shake.js - A Custom 'Shake' Event JavaScript Plugin For Mobile Web Browsers
Awesome story. Expect to see state and federal legislators get lobbied to make non-humans reading these published documents illegal (big sad face, the insurance guys have no imagination) but you are doing your customers a great service, and that is what its all about.

What ever you do, don't say "Well if someone offered to buy us for $2B we'd just sell and shut down the site."
AGPL is a bit bothersome. I'd rather be able to release my code under a non-viral license.
pg: SOPA could have had a compromise
> In (Western) academia was a massive dislike of Ada because of its DoD roots and NATO applications, so they didn't use it for teaching.

DARPA funds lots of computer science research, so I doubt academic dislike of DOD is a big factor.
Anyone can be a solo founder, but I'm hoping the article answers some of the qualities and tips you'd need in order to be successful, or at least put yourself on the path to success. So, if you can't find a cofounder, what things to remember and to get yourself motivated by in order to continue endlessly without another person working on the company with you.
My exact thought. Man I feel old. I installed Windows 3.1 from floppy disks...
Netflix buys dvd.com
1. Might be an advantage on a mobile device but a mouse is vastly superior for anyone wanting precision and/or performance. Too bad we can't combine gestures and a real mouse well (have been tried but in my opinion all attempts have failed).

2. Wheel scrolling is a feature. Yes, horizontal scrolling sucks but vertical scrolling is working as intended and something I really prefer. Yes, I'd like a good horizontal scroll but the use cases where you need it are extremely rare and often stem from bad UI design in the application - not saying that as an excuse but just that it isn't a big issue. Microsoft have tried scrolling wheels that can go horizontal as well but they were mindbogglingly bad (my opinion).

3. I don't see how that is an issue (in practice) for anything that isn't done for Win95. And if it was made for Win95 I'd rather be able to run it than not. Backwards compatibility at its best. Doesn't bother you when you don't need it but can still handle corner cases as well as can be expected.
Yeah, I think Paul regrets saying it because I've been using it as my personal nickname now. :P
I found the mix of different kinds of technologies odd too, but I assumed it's just a draft, not the final spec.
Well I feel it's a compromise, large corporation like Disney will never yield, what I'm trying to avoid is them causing other works that are no longer in print or distributed from disappearing. I want to give a disincentive to keep things under copyright for ever.

"your system would basically keep out of the public domain important works that already benefited the content owners more than enough." While true the exponential rise in cost in my proposition would lead to ensuring that these things will go into the public domain at some point. As it is now, extensions apply to everything including things for which no one cares for anymore.

Let's not ignore that the current system is also biased towards large corporations anyway. The cost of enforcing copyright is prohibitively high for small creators. I also suggest in a previous post to have a open databases showing registration (paid for by the registration fees) that would make it easier to find and contact creators to license their things.
Windows' taskbar today === OS X's dock
Yeah some companies do _really_ big discounts for profession -- engineer being one of the better ones.
Good luck to you, I've been in the same situation.
Great stuff! Your persistence is inspiring.
I totally agree about the window management aspect. I switched from Windows to OS X as my primary development machine a year ago and still find it frustrating when I'm working with many windows.

I've tried using Expose and multi desktop setups but they just add complexity to my flow. Expose looks pretty but I avoid it because it randomly lays out the thumbs in some way that has nothing to do with how I've actually arranged them. Command + tab is application based, so I can't switch between windows easily. Command + tilde does that but it works completely differently by switching windows on keydown and keypress instead of showing an overlay. I'm sure next version of the OS X will introduce a new window management tools and obscure short cuts that just adds complexity to the system. The whole thing feels like random band aid solutions built up over the last 10 years.
not really - Fabric is integrated with dynamic languages, we 're not interpreting JS or Python (we work with both languages). Fabric is basically a high-performance threading engine that you can call from your dynamic language - the key element is that the operator code (KL) enables the high-performance. This KL is only required for the operators, and is not as difficult or complex as C/C++ to use - it's designed purely for this task. A regular Python or JavaScript developer can pick it up.
I agree. I'm no allegiant. In fact, I think we're already starting to see a bit of that unfolding.
> Apple sold a lot of bondi blue iMacs before OS X was ready, they wouldn't have survived to ship OSX if they hadn't.

Hardware that provides an upgrade path to new systems is one thing, but RIM released a major revision to BBOS more than a year after the QNX acquisition. I believe the previous CEOs even stated they have no plans to abandon BBOS. Which means that many bright minds are going to be working on it, instead of putting focus on the QNX system.

Imagine if Apple had continued to work on OS9 into OS10 for the iMac line and had another team working on OSX for PowerMacs. That is essentially what RIM has been doing.
In other words, all the Facebook game developers.
Nerds, we need to have a talk: http://thingist.com/t/item/4372/
It seemed like a moot point. Either way, it was unsustainable in the long-run and we didn't have the bankroll to battle it out in court.