skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On the one hand, many of the smartest people need significant amounts of time alone to think through their work. On the other, so many decisions an individual in a team makes are constrained by the requirements of the rest of the team. To find these out, you need to coordinate with the team, and that's much easier when everyone is physically together.

In our startup, we deal with this tradeoff with two spatial configurations. We spend part of our time together in an open space where interruptions are common and expected. We spend the rest of our time miles apart, occasionally coordinating over email and IM whenever needed.

Perhaps one way to achieve this in larger teams is to block off large chunks of the week during which it is understood no one interrupts anyone else. Weekends already play this role for many people I know. They often work for a good chunk of the weekend, but are not expected to take calls or return emails. It's when they do some of their deepest thinking and best writing.
That's gorgeous! I found more info here if anyone's interested (I can't read Chinese): http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-06/edushis-3-d-pi...
I may be way out here but, it's been mentioned that the data facebook holds that is publicly available could be used and mined to target certain groups of people...

Am I way out here in mentioning historical organisations that also stored masses of data on a population like the stasi (maybe extreme)?

I just find it extremely uncomfortable that people are so blasé about what they share on facebook. What worries me more is that I dont think people are ignorant of the privacy settings. Amongst my friends that do use it, they know, they just dont really care, purely because as some people have said it takes maintenance, makes it more difficult to connect with people or makes it impossible to be connected with...

I just find this whole culture of sharing intimate details with a) facebook and b) with each other, that we never really shared previously to be disturbing and the organisations that encourage this to be sinister.
I don't know if emerging markets are the right place for an inherently deflating currency.

I think you mean a stable or predictable currency. What you need is more volume in the bitcoin economy to stabilize the price. Of course, when the economy grow at extreme rate, the expense of that is a predictable currency. But with bitcoin, you can be certain 99% that it will never exceed 21 millions.

let alone one that generally needs to take on debt to jump classes within a generation.

But you don't need debt if you can merely save and jump classes within a generation. If you have saving, you can benefit from extreme growth in the bitcoin economy.
The number is from StatCounter: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-2011...
Excellent points, but it never hurts to clean up a little bit. Remember, people make their first impression of you within the first 30 seconds of meeting you, in the case of a pitch, that first 30 seconds may be before you even say anything (setting up the presentation)... What do they have to go on? Your body language and your appearance... If they write you off as just another hacker that doesn't understand the business aspect of a start-up, you're not doing any favors. Maybe the answer is to have a balance of founders (as I think most people recommend anyways). Have the technical guys clean up a bit but still have their personalities shine, and the non-technical look sharp. That way you can represent a balanced team; the dreamers and the realists together.
Taze is (presumably) talking about the inherent inefficiency of all those functions having prototypes.

(You know, the thing that was mentioned in the linked article?)
I've done it all day. It's really great when you want to, and really shitty when you don't want to. I'd say it's all about whether your devs want to naturally pair, and you shouldn't force them to work any which way.

My biggest problem with Agile is that it touts itself as THE way you should work. When you're constantly working with all different kinds of minds, it's hard to say conclusively that ONE SYSTEM will work for EVERYONE.

I will say that as a pseudo-introvert (can function in large groups but prefers small, intimate conversations most of the time), I do enjoy pair programming because I learn so much. It's best to pair an unexperienced but knowledgable dev up with a veteran to either the current project or the current problem. The combination of naive creativity with tried-and-true procedure is the best of both worlds, and truly impossible with a single person, in my opinion.
This post is about branding, only.
Oh god the world is SimCity Classic...
Good managers realize that it's their job to make those people reporting to them happy.

Bad managers believe that it's their job to make the people they report to happy.

There are many more bad managers than good ones.
That dosen't really say much about the language itself though, which I think was what was being called 'beautiful' (as opposed the ecosystem).

Besides, couldn't the same argument be made about C? Sure I know a lot of people 'like' C, but I don't think I've ever heard of it being referred to as 'beautiful'...
Groupon has billions of dollars of value still left but yeah, market cap at this price is still way too high. Deal fatigue takes time to hit for majority of users and the barriers to entry (currently - having the immediate ability to reach out to hundreds of thousands of local users) are too low (I can't do it but google and others can).

However, I find huge SaaS value in their latest move of introducing the bookability concept. I think under the right platform and execution, it should result in a more winner-takes-all business model with sustainable/repeatable revenue streams.

But on the other hand, I'm still unconvinced of the ROI for most vendors and their NEED for recurring Groupon offers. I believe, in the end, the entire system (whether local restaurants or spas or whatever) is worse off as dollars leave the system and go to the hands of consumers and Groupon. Nevertheless, the concept of Groupon can't be undone; it's just a matter of how much smaller piece of the pie Groupon will get and whether that pie size will shrink in the near future.
How duck hunt hit detection worked
This is not just about syntax. Unless using bind somehow grants the mentioned property that

>"Fat arrow functions do not have prototype properties, which makes them cheaper to make. They are immutable."
Come to think of it, another way to address #1 would be a smarter auto-throttle. The ideal setup would be for it to use the entire bandwidth but yield instantly to any other traffic.

Alternatively, a "day / night" setting, which is what I did manually during the initial backup: Throttle it during the day and put it on full speed at night. It's a bit of a pain to do manually and I'd regularly forget.
If you know you hate it, I highly recommend finding a new job sooner than later. I did it last summer and it's just not good for humans (or at least "us") to work like that. Then again, people supposedly actually go for those hacker apartment setups, where someone pays for 5 dudes to live together. Shudder, but there's no accounting for taste. Like you say, it's probably best brought up in the interview.
RFID to Solve Ultimate Supply Chain Management Problem: The Hajj
It looks like Eich's original pitch was for both => (lexical this) and -> (dynamic this), but the latter was cut for political reasons.

Out-of-band info from here:

https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/186156717506166784

https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/186160406300082176

https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/186162306521120770

https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/186162532367601666
how's this for an idea, inspired by this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxX_bVluflo it would be an investigation into a world that got turned into dots, or something. That way you could have lots of dotsies font all around, and a bunch of text slowly turning into dotsies for practice. You might also consider color coding the letters so that you have an additional channel of hints that you can toggle on and off. To make the reader have a more gradual slope.
wouldn't they think that Paul = Paul Graham
Because there was one Indian in the story and I forgot his restaurant's name. Was it unclear who I was talking about?
I'm not convinced this is socially damaging behavior. It's not at all clear to me the quality of cultural output would be higher if piracy disappeared overnight.
Mobile app to download food images and turn them into actual food
It's a visualization of the data produced by the ECCO2 project (http://ecco2.org/), which feeds all available measurements of temperature, current, etc. into an MITgcm fluid-circulation simulation model (http://mitgcm.org/), which then estimates the most likely circulation.
I just discovered you're also from France. Hello from Toulouse!
The typo in the leadin stood out immediately, but, they spelled distributed correctly later on.
Bitcoin is on the scale of global commerce simply a thought experiment (or, less charitably, a Ponzi scheme).

All successful things start small.

Never mind the fact that virtually all Bitcoin development is done either as a hobbyist project or by fly-by-night operations that end up getting fully compromised. No, somehow engineering problems that banks can't solve with tens of millions of dollars of dedicated IT security investment are going to be solved by Bitcoin startups for half-pennies on the dollar.

I don't claim that bitcoin startup solve problems that banks can't solve, just that I am asking you to compare bitcoin banks with banks, not bitcoin to banks.
The article seems to imply that what you wear is part of your identity (don't wear a suit, be yourself). How about decoupling your clothes from your identity? There is nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to "dress to impress". People who think that seem to me to want to make a point of how they are so not into fashion - which ironically is a form of fashion itself (see punkers).

Be yourself. Dress up if you want to and it seems to fit the occasion. Don't feel pressured into wearing something that you don't feel comfortable in. Don't confuse inner qualities with superficial looks - but don't ignore the fact that first impressions matter.

Of course it could be a good anti-signal to show that you don't care about how you present yourself, but that doesn't mean you should go to investors in a bathrobe because someone told you to.
There are some reasonably priced solutions out there. Backblaze, the company I work for, is $5/month or $50/year for unlimited data backup. Since redundancy is key in backup, both onsite and offsite backups would make up a good backup strategy.
If you're patting yourself on the back for already having backups, do as the site says and practice restoring! It is a common mistake to set up backups but never test that they actually can be restored.
Why the JVM hate?
Thanks for that. I like both frameworks - in fact, I may use Flask for my next project.
Sounds a lot like Air Drop on Lion or you can use sites like www.ge.tt

Good luck!
Why in the comments here are most assuming that

a) his story, one sided, is correct

b) he was fired because they were running out of money
(even his "quote" of what was told to him doesn't say that)

c) his advice was really helpful.

And with respect to this:

"Next, I found a letter that was being sent out to customers, it was a huge pile of text that needed paragraph structure. I figured if I got it, I wouldn’t have read it, there were to many words and to much ‘blah’. There wasn’t a clear or simple explanation of what the users needed to do and there were no action words. So I worked on it, cleaning it up, cut the text in half and made it more clear. I submitted it through the appropriate channels as defined earlier."

There is no safe way to navigate that without stepping on toes unless you help the person who is working on this without regard to getting any credit yourself.
@fakegrimlock is as genuine as can be. His advice is golden and right on. Just accept him and his persona as they are.
Ah, sorry, I guess I read too fast. :)
Those who use adblock will notice (on April the 1st)
TL;DR: As tablet prices fall, Amazon won't be able to subsidize the tablet price in expectation of digital purchases by the increasingly frugal tablet purchaser.

Interesting assertion, but I'd bet on Amazon knowing their numbers better than Mike Elgan (who? the author of the article).
Really? I'd really like to see some references to that.

These kinds of changes have been floating around for javascript since long before coffeescript.
Not April 1st yet.
Ok, can we skip the AFJ here on HN?
I guess April 1st is starting a little early this year!
Yeah, I know it exists. And before it existed you could hack up the 32-bit Flash to work in 64-bit browsers.

The point is, it being a PITA to use Flash on Linux never stopped many developers from creating pages that required it, so it's unlikely to stop them from creating Flash pages now.
I'm calling "shannigan!" No u.s. receivables factoring business has gross margins that they've got. What is Groupon - short-term loan sharks?

Their reversal of NWC as they slow down their quarter-over-quarter growth and overall impact to cash flows is what every smart hedge fund analyst was pointing out for the past 2 quarters that underwriters like GS, BAML, MS and others were neglecting to put in their 100 page initiation coverage reports... BUT for most hedge fund PM's they could not figure out a way to short the stock because the company only floated like 5% of shares so the last time I checked, cost of borrowing to short the stock was ~45% per year.

I mean for starters, Mason and mgmt. already dumped a ton of their shares. Why would they dump so much of their shares ahead of the IPO? He knew that IPOs usually have 6-9month lockup period where management can't sell their shares and it was a race against time for people to figure out their core business model.
My sentiments exactly..
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3540800
My son made the best tropical quick bread I ever had http:... on Twitpic
Was: From my understanding of binding, this proposal means that the fat arrow can't be used to define 'methods' on a prototype.

Edit: as per parent article, use (this, x) => { this.property = x; } instead of ->
His efforts were all good until I noticed poor grammar in that paragraph.
Natural Language Generation for Spam
It's nice that somebody like Crockford writes an article like this, telling us how to actually use the new syntax. The original ES Wiki article is probably great for browser vendors but i didn't quite get it the first time i read it.
Under Linux, rdiff-backup is a must. I use it to maintains incremental backups since... ages. Under Mac OS, Time Machine does about the same (with a gui). rdiff-backup works on windows too, but Cobian Backup is good enough and free if you want a GUI.
"Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?"

A time machine.
Did you covert the btc's to another currency already or will you hold onto them for a while?
NYTimes - A World of Voice Recognition
Offices linked with a common meeting area for group work. Per team.

I'd love that.
The only slightly redeemable aspect of spam is that the first bot to write poetry may well be an evolutionary descendant of the spam-anti spam war.
It's designed to be a "meeting point" between Java, Erlang, and Haskell.

Plus, a DSL building language. I actually think that the features Scala introduced to enable DSLs were the harbingers of the Scala insanity. Why did the designers of a high-performance statically-typed language think that it would be a good idea to support DSLs?
Use it on the CLR then.

http://www.scala-lang.org/node/10299
Hot stuff, cold crap – shopping for your nerd gear in 2012
Spooning with Bitbucket
Ask HN: Do you use beta tools/libraries for projects?
I mean Django beta, newly announced Go, experimental Python 3 modules etc.
It's an interesting move but not sure how well it will work. The heft of Android adoption was due to marketing and promotion from device manufacturers and carriers blocked out of the new wave Apple/ATT smart phones. That marketing heft is likely move to Win8, leaving Play in a very weak position.
Ask HN: What do you think of authentication tied to your passport?
I've seen a lot of online games in China and Korea that require users to sign up with their passport number in order to play. This seems like a great way for the government to make sure kids don't play too much.

What do you think of signing up with a passport number to online games and social networks in North America?

On one hand, it seems like a further privacy breach. At the same time, it's a good way to track down anyone with bad intentions. Thoughts?

(I have neither a Chinese nor Korean passport, so if anyone has experience with this it would be great if you can add in any detail I missed.)
I wonder how many cities they made landmarks for?

It looks like landmarks are a feature of big cities only - no love for the Basketball Hall of Fame or Springfield Armory.
Can anyone identify this strange object?

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=queens,+ny&hl=en&ll=39...
DSL support is tricky business. Consider Greenspun's Tenth Law. I think it's generally assumed in modern languages that it's better to allow this sort of thing than not do so and risk that people roll their own.

On Greenspun: why are large Java programs hard to read? The language itself is simple. The problem is that most Java (or C++) programs devolve into shitty DSLs after about 2000 LoC.
Yup, Paul Buchheit was somehow forced to use Java to write GMail with q gun in his head or something. And somehow Twitter engineers was forced to use Java because management said so...

I don't even want to know how you came into these conclusions. They don't make any sense at all.

Java was 3 years old when Google started off. Did you get the link where one of the founders was asking question about Java back in 98 regarding web development? Did you know that Java has been used for many many years inside Google when these so called hackers were still working there?

Did you know that Twitter actually gets more stable when they migrated to Scala and Java? Did you check the presentation by Twitter engineer as to why they moved away? Those are technical presentations, not management business type of presentation. Are you suggesting that rails hackers were the culprit of all Twitter scalability iscsues?

I am unsure if we live in the same world mate.
The sales equivalent of a hackathon? That sounds incredibly interesting.
Sure, but you didn't completely answer his question: the reason the oceans don't settle down is because the sun continuously drives these temperature gradients.
List of cool places in 8-bit Google maps
The retirement prepayment point, if true, is ridiculous and deserves more scrutiny.

But as someone who rarely if ever uses the postal service, I don't see why they can't raise stamp prices to 60 cents or so. That would cover most of the shortfall.

I don't think the nostalgia for a post office argument really holds water, though. We don't need to keep the post office around for the sake of it. Fortunately, there is a market for the service they provide. The moment that demand starts evaporating (at the market price) we shouldn't have an emotional qualm about amputating inefficiency.
It's an April fools joke:
"Happy April Fools’ Day!"
Backblaze had been the prefect solution for me. The key is that it removes any complexity from the process. You download the software, pay your subscription and then can basically stop worrying about it.

Although I've never done a full restore from it (I have about 1TB up there - for $4/mo) I restore files from it every so often and it's worked flawlessly every time (normally when I'm at work and need a file from my home machine).
So do the unsuccessful things.
To me his friend is simply showing respect. Trying to make a good first impression. That isn't trying to be someone they're not. If he's great the VC's will know five minutes into his pitch.
I'm extremely excited for this, it has been a long time coming and I deeply hope they succeed. They have some really good people attached to this project and it looks like they have the support needed to carry a product from start to finish. They also have good looking product requirements. (The 'no regulatory hurdles' is extremely important)

Unfortunately, looking at their 'example projects' they are all the kind of things academics would write grants on or fund. They all involve either 'outreachy' things, like making DNA art or doing personal data mining on genomes or 'basic science' things like improving read write speeds. The problem is, academia already handles these things well,and real progress in any of these areas would be extremely difficult. What they really need to be funding is people who have an idea of a biotechnology product. Also, it looks like they really need to work to build a community or people would be interested in this sort of thing. The DIY bio community, such that it exists, is scattered and fragmented at best. There is no place like proggit or HN for biotech news and discussion. Most of the people who would be available and interested in submitting a product (post docs and graduating grads in biochemistry, genetics, and biotechnology) will almost certainly not hear about this dues to this scattering.

I think it's a good idea with some good biologists backing it, they just need to get a bit better on the business/social side.
This may be true in the valley, but in the rest of the world setting the initial impression with how you dress goes a long way.
Why are we bending over backwards for Introverts? If you can't work on a team and socialize to the degree that you will be a functional team member, you probably should think about getting some kind of therapy before getting a job as a developer.

Any project that gets bigger than a few thousand lines of code can't be maintained by a lone developer. It also requires some sort of socialization. Every placed I've ever worked required me to talk to other developers because my code would most likely be touching theirs to some degree or I would need to get info on something I would be working on.
the reason you can get away with sneakers and jeans is that we are in a bubble. it won't always be that way.
"Thanks" => "Things"
Ask HN: How to train your brain to recognize opportunities for innovation?
As a technical guy, I'm scared of the idea of being dependent on an idea-guy to come up with real-world problems to solve. I strongly believe that not only should I be able to solve problems through technology (or even simpler means, if you're into the whole lean current), but that I must be able to identify the problems themselves on my own.

The issue is that I have a very consumer-like mind and I feel I'm constantly missing out on opportunities to identify areas of improvement or disruption. As a silly example, I would have never thought of allowing individuals to be able to use credit cards for simple personal transactions (I'm referring to Square), and yet it's such a simple and powerful idea.

How do I train myself to look at the world from the point of view of an innovator? How do I spot opportunities? Any interesting books / internet reads on the subject?

I'm rather good at making things that others tell me to make, but I feel there's nothing as enthralling on working on a problem you yourself "discovered" and believe is really important to solve.
It would be nice to have these labelled as April 1st posts.