skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I never understood what the T was for, besides being visual noise. why not just use spaces?

2012-05-04 12:20:34.000343 +01:00

Or, if spaces are not allowed for an unknown reason then:

2012.05.04-12:20:34.000343+01:00

Much better, still I prefer the simplicity of this:

20120504.122034

In UTC, almost as compact as an epoch, but human readable. Add as many digits as nano precision is needed.
The Problem With Music by Steve Albini producer of Nirvana's "In Utero"
Ok, I'm obviously over-simplifying the situation, but I have hard time believing that stock price doesn't matter. If nothing else, then downward trend would generate lots of negative press and customers might turn away from the company's products/services. Imagine if Google's stock price would decline significantly in the period of next year or two - wouldn't that spell doom and gloom in people's eyes?

Disclaimer: I have never invested in any company, never bought any stock, so you may call me naive.
Reasons I might be browsing without javascript:

1. I am a paranoid geek. (But in this age in which JS is powerful enough to implement a SIP stack or a virtual 486 processor, is it truly paranoid to want control over potentially hostile code running in ones browser?)

2. I'm blind or severely visually disabled and need a screen text-to-speech reader. Funnily enough, JS-mediated sites truly suck for the visually disabled. Do you want your site to be in breach of disabilities discrimination laws?

3. I don't like ads.

4. I run a low power machine (a multi-years-old laptop) and find multimegabyte javascript apps bog it down and cause it to blow hot air across my knees.

5. "It's new, therefore it's good" is specious (and frequently false) logic.

TL:DR; HN is over-populated by people who confuse complexity with quality.
So basically Zuck may go down in history, not as an internet revolutionary, but as the guy who manufactured to greatest IPO to date.
Be aware that some people in the UK want stones and pounds, with feet and inches. But others (me) would like kg and cm. So please make it an option that I can chose, even if you try to guess what I want from my IP.
Python Performance Profiling using cProfile, lineprof, statprof
Nonetheless Gruber comes out as a jerk... If it was indeed his decision, he should have handled it a little better with Benjamin (telling him sooner, organizing a last show, not reusing the TTS name on mule...), and even if one can argue that he doesn't owe the listener anything, an explanation in the introduction of the new show would have made a good segue...
Multiple mistakes... how can it charge it you with 160 for two clicks; on Facebook you choose how much you want to expend for click; so this makes no sense.

The demographics between 13 and 60? Never, just never select to show ads for people below 20; they are always click-happy and with empty pockets (a.k.a. no conversions)
Yes. Shows what a bubble he lives in. That statement really bothered me (was just discussing that last night with my wife when I replayed the story) and I think it obviously showed Thiel's lack of preparedness for the interview. Imagine going on 60 Minutes and not being prepared. It shows the halo he has around him from talking to people who rarely challenge him. Reminds me of shit I can get away with at a family gathering that would never fly on HN!

Anyway the job (and prestige) of a doctor is vastly different than the "average" plumber or tradesman and comes with a whole host of psychic benefits. And the skills (mechanical and being grimy all day) are much different for plumber than Physician.
"Punch above your weight" w/ a great domain...Wish.co.uk made $1MM+ in
This is just a summary of an already short article at http://advanced-television.com/index.php/2012/05/20/mpaas-do... but since that seems to be down, here's the text:

Dodd: ‘More subtle’ anti-piracy approach needed
By Colin Mann

Chris Dodd, the Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association (MPAA), has reiterated his line that parties in both the creative and technology communities must work together to move forward on legislation preventing theft of intellectual property.

Speaking to trade magazine Variety at the Cannes Film Festival, Dodd alluded to efforts to pass anti-piracy measures Protect I.P. Act (PIPA) in the US Senate and its counterpart in the House, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Although the measures had broad bipartisan backing last year, Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter campaigned effectively against the legislation, mobilising users on grounds that the new rules would impede the free flow of information on the Internet.

“We’re in a transformative period with an explosion of technology that’s going to need content,” he said, suggesting that Google chose wisely by making Hollywood the enemy. “We’re going to have to be more subtle and consumer-oriented,” he admitted. “We’re on the wrong track if we describe this as thievery.”
Anyone else feel like this is full of nothing but hot air? Is this what most investor pitch decks / plans have in them?

They've clearly spent an awful lot of time and energy on it but they don't seem to have any real evidence that anyone actually wants it.
The source article- http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/18/creating-the-w...
I just want to say THANK YOU. I made some poor business decisions in 2006-2007 that led to me going $45,000 in credit card debt.

That in turn made me take a job that wasn't a good fit, where I struggled for 3 years, paying $1000 per month ($36,000 total!) and my debt didn't go down one penny, because it was all interest.

I finally burned out and quit at the end of 2010, letting my payments lapse because I had no other choice. I've settled one $18,000 debt for $4000 but still owe about $27,000 that has been charged off by the companies. I also owe $9000 in student loans, which let me do a forbearance in 2011, and which I have been paying on time since.

Credit/debt is a RACKET, please don't let it cost you your sanity. You only live once. And when you really start to understand how the system works, you lose all illusions that it's fair or even "debt" at all, because of how institutions can basically print money at no interest and borrow unlimited amounts, but you can't even get a low interest loan to say, keep your business afloat.
Ask HN: Higher salary but no equity before launch
Would really appreciate your input on startup salary: I'm discussing a potential product role ( I will be the sole product guy) with a startup and the catch is that there won't be any equity discussion on the table till the product gets launched i.e. I won't be getting any equity till the the product is launched. But I will be getting a decent, above market salary. Does this sound fishy? Am I likely to get fucked over later on?
How To Hank's Favorite Band Blew Their Big Break
Dan has always come across as one of the classiest guys on the Internet.

I am genuinely sad to see this happen to him.
Crashes on iOS 5.1 after I successfully log in to github.
Happy 7th Birthday YouTube
You might want to read this bit from that section:
"The b element should be used as a last resort when no other element is more appropriate. In particular, headings should use the h1 to h6 elements, stress emphasis should use the em element, importance should be denoted with the strong element, and text marked or highlighted should use the mark element."

From the looks of it - while just about legal, it's the worst option going. <em> etc are far more preferable and 'right'
Said shortly: if you want to build a great product, you have to really understand at each level what makes a great product.
There's the flip side too. The OP mentions that they largely reject Deaf culture instead identifying as deaf.

Some Deaf people enjoy their lifestyle and the community and culture that surrounds them so much that they would choose for their children to be deaf so that they too can be a fully accepted (!) part of that same culture. TBH I've a lot of sympathy with that position.

In short, be cautious. A sign user living amongst a deaf community might well feel offended at your pity and assumption that theirs is a lower quality of life (for some measure of quality).

I think the OPs chosen field must be particularly hard - speakers have difficulty with communicating code/markup too, it requires a mix of communication media to effectively and unambiguously communicate code IMO. Transliterating code in to English can be tricky, I bet it's hard in sign too.

I'm interested whether the OP uses ASL at all (or some other sign language) or only uses Cued Speech. Also whether they've attempted to educate their colleagues in Cued Speech and if that has helped at all?
Yeah but that is to check the file integrity, that's something entirely different. Anyone can calculate a CRC checksum for any garbage files they want, upload it and label it as a CORE release. There is no way to verify that the release is genuine. And if you temper with an authentic release, for example introduce some malware, you can simply recalculate the checksum itself. This would be impossible if the release would be cryptographically signed because you would need COREs private key to generate a valid signature.
This shows again that Dan is one of the coolest podcasters ever!
Thank you Dan and Gruber for the countless hours in my ears :)
Apple Moves for U.S. Galaxy Tab 10.1 Ban
Nonsense, it's very readible. You could tell someone who can't code to say "period" for "P", "hour" for "H", "time" for "T" etc. and they'd be able to read out the period exactly, accurately all the time. They would also know how write their own forms of this. Humans can also look at it and know, intuitavely, without a calculator how long it is.

Trying to get them to multiple seconds (incl all the fun with leap seconds!) would be hard.
wonder what they thought about 'gorilla arm'.also the demo did not show a way to type information. but looks really cool :))
Nope. They don't include leap seconds.

The technical definition is "Number of days since 1st Jan 1970 in GMT" × 86400 + "Number of seconds since midnight GMT"

Unix time clocks does funny things when there's a leap second which is about 1½ years. Some pause for a second, some go forward then backward etc.
If you're an interface designer (I am), you should pre-order this thing. This will be a standard form of interaction in a couple of years and you should jump on it early and start figuring out the kinks. Too cool.
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It's true in the short term that social and mobile trend chasing will be detrimental to investment in other areas of tech, but markets and VC returns will correct this over the longer term.

Trend chasing and herding makes it harder to invest in the winners in a space at a reasonable valuation.

If VCs invest in 100 social/mobile start ups at $100 million valuation and only 10 reach $1 billion, then the VCs on aggregate are break even. Also, a VC has a 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 shot of getting that big hit because there are so many 'me toos' in the same space.

If a VC invests in the next spaceship, smartwatch (Pebble), or X less competitive field, there might be only 2 companies competing for that pie. So you have a 50% chance of picking the winner.

The economics are also more compelling for less crowded fields because customer acquisition costs, talent hiring costs and other costs are cheaper. They're not being driven up by the other 100 'social networking / Instagram' start ups competing for the same resources. Your market share of revenue is also higher because you are sharing it with 1 or 2 other players, instead of 100.

That makes the margins better for the the less crowded areas of technology.

If you started a social or mobile company in 2005-2008, your customer acquisition cost was close to zero and engineers were cheap so that made each VC dollar go very far. You also didn't have to compete against 10 other companies for mind share in your space.

That's not the case on social or mobile anymore.

Some smart VC firm will invest in a hardware, biotech or (insert non social / mobile) start up and make a ton of money. Then all the money will chase that area and the cycle will repeat. The VCs which invested in the 'me toos' will lose money and lose assets.
> also the demo did not show a way to type information

I don't think people in the gesture interface market are looking for ways to replace the essential function of the keyboard. For all intents and purposes, it's probably the best way to input textual data into a machine.
White house petition to Legalize pot
WillyF, the last comment was a big aggressive to you to bring home the point, but I believe the main point was that even with generous predictions on their future business plan (which as far we all know doesn't exist) that facebook is overvaluated by, well, a lot.
I'm sure the same thing was said before they started the web services business, too, but they sure managed to find some room for growth there.
Which python game book? This one...

http://inventwithpython.com/

or some of the others. I'm thinking of doing the same with my son this summer.
Yes.

Technically UTC = GMT and always has and for this "epoch time" conversation is completely identical.

However there's a people problem. Some people think "GMT = the time in London now" which it isn't, since the UK switches to BST for daylights saving. Saying "UTC" avoids the "time in London" interpretation problem.
Like everyone is saying, Dan comes across really well in this. I don't expect JG will ever give us his take.

RE: never listening to any 5by5 podcasts–I listened to The Talk Show a few times. Maybe it's because I'm used to the dogma of professional broadcasting, but I don't think you've missed out unless you like hearing a couple of guys pause a hell of a lot during an awkward conversation. Almost every episode I heard started with an entirely charmless "Uh, hello?" "Uh is this on?" scenario.

I guess part of the appeal was that it was folksy and just a conversation.
Funny, I know many people who are pimping their FB pages like crazy, and clamoring for likes. I ask them why?

They tell me: "because Google is getting smarter and looking at social signals for rankings. I don't give a damn about those FB fans.. it's all vanity metrics. I want the damn rankings!"
theoretically yes, but in reality it isn't that simple. Through Facebook insights I can see that for a post we made last week (to the page with 100k likes that I mentioned above) was shown in the timelines of 20,000 people and was "engaged" by just under 400 (this means they either "liked", clicked the link or shared or commented on it). So while it isn't "nothing" it's substantially less than you would expected.
You say "visual noise", I say "readability".
I guess I see it as his estate being the one that is responsible financially at this point. Life insurance policy, home, car, investments, etc.

Her making $10/hr off it really just doesn't seem to factor in in my mind. Wrecking the car wasn't an expected use of that rental.
>can the poster not lip-read? //

They mention consonantly difficulties - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cued_speech and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manually_Coded_Language seem quite good; from Cued Speech (ibid):

"It is a phonemic-based system which makes traditionally spoken languages accessible by using a small number of handshapes (representing consonants) in different locations near the mouth (representing vowels), as a supplement to lipreading."

Note also that being a proponent of cued speech apparently sets the author against a large part of the Deaf community who it seems take that as an affront to their culture and language.
I was prepared to hate the new talk show and Mule Radio Syndicate, but to my surprise, John Gruber sound a lot more energetic than pretty much the last year, now if he can get a co-host to rein him in from time to time and at the same time contribute his/her own thoughts... I think Massimo and Julia from "Rationally Speaking" are a perfect couple. Leo LePorte and Dan Benjamin are total nice guys but seldom say anything insightful, they generally just make light jokes and move the topic along.

I skipped "Let's make mistakes" for nearly half a year before yesterday, they've gotten better I'll have to say.

All in all John Gruber probably was being an ass, now he can be as much of an ass as he want. He can't beat Mike Monteiro on that front.

I enjoy asses.
I think what Dan does really well is give his co-hosts room to do their thing. He's not got a huge ego, he knows for the most part it's not about him, but he's a great solid foil for others, providing structure.

I think you can only get away with being opinionated and outspoken if you have someone like Dan next to you as a balance and a tether.
Logitech's Ultrathin Keyboard Cover For iPad
I added a standard Fexl routine that prints either leaf or tree values.
I think a big part of the appeal of podcasts is that they don't seem like overproduced, substance-less radio. Gruber has some genuinely good insights, particularly about Apple. I also appreciate that this wasn't some overproduced show with sound effects everywhere.
I suppose, like everything in life, there is no "one size fits all" solution to advertising. Just because FB works for someone, it doesn't mean it'll work for everyone else (same for Google, Twitter etc) and vice versa.

I wish there was a site, that had a list of online advertising success stories, and what strategies worked in each case. So if I am a 150 year old packaging business, I can simply look up businesses similar to mine, and see what kind of advertising worked for them. Of course, there is still no guarantee that it will work for me, but chances are a bit higher than blindly going to FB.
There is a difference between "+01:00" and "Europe/Lisbon". One is always 1 hour away from UTC, the other isn't and includes summer time.
Android App Traffic by Carrier and Phone
I like all the people on the 5by5 podcasts but this is exactly why I don't listen to them.

I wish instead of doing 1 hour 15, they'd do 15 minutes planning, 15 minutes editing and a 45 minute show. There's plenty of good material there, I just feel it gets drowned out.
Point 3 is the most dangerous. The language you chose is telling, "crime". Schumer seems to want to use Saverin's motivation to determine that giving up citizenship to avoid paying taxes is a crime. Besides it being unconstitutional to legislate against a specific person, what kind of message is Schumer sending? Once you venture into the maw that is the United States tax code, you can't leave without heavy personal losses? That sends the message that your business is not welcome here at best, and is draconian at worse, setting a dangerous precedent for even more oppressive legislation later. But in an era of occupy, Schumer can use all the class warfare arguments he wants to get his proposed legislation passed easily. People will foam at the mouth in anger against this millionaire not paying his fair share, and they'll be completely oblivious of government infringing on civil rights until it's their own civil rights that are taken away, and by then it will be too late to do anything about it.
How are hackathons a new practice? We've been doing them since the 1960s if not longer.
I think making use of the social media for your business is not so much about placing advertisements in these media. I think it is more about being available for engagement with your clients in these media. Being there in whatever their preferred media of communication happens to be - twitter, facebook, email, phone, a chat on the website.

I love getting my verizon support on twitter rather than on phone.
You can try, but it's tough

Seeing Google try different shades of blue automatically, just goes to show that they don't know what they are doing

"To build a great UX, one has to step back and think about what’s most important, try to come up with the most simple and shortest path to get there, build, analyze what works and why(not), measure, test, rinse, and repeat."

This is very important. But get this: measuring and refining won't fix big errors.

So work with a designer and don't BS him trying to do "live genetic programming" your site with your A/B tool.
It's not unethical. It's not like they're paying reviewers to put positive reviews for their app. I know a lot of people who are doing that... $50 for 100 positive reviews, 5 stars.. Now THAT's unethical.
CE stamp is self certifying. Any manufacturer can self declare they are in compliance and affix the label, it doesn't mean any third party testing was done at all. UL on the other hand requires third party testing but isn't a mandated government label, it is just a quasi requirement as virtually all fire inspectors in the US accept it as a safety standard.
Examples? Data? That might stem the flow of rubbish fifteen-sentence posts coming out of 37signals these days. Long on philosophizing and short on substance. Like the one the other day that basically shat all over capitalism at a very basic level (a worthy enterprise, perhaps) without offering up any actual arguments or alternatives (booo).

How about this: you only get one chance to be a beginner, so make sure you spend it learning quality shit so that you can make awesome contributions once you're a veteran. Oh but that's much less adversarial.
Nasdaq confronts liability for Facebook losses
Perhaps it would be fairer and more accurate to say that startups that require relatively smaller amount of capital (i.e., software based startups that can use Amazon EC2) are killing startups that are much more hardware intensive and thus require more capital, and typically a longer time horizon before success or failure can be declared?

Of course, that's not as sexy a headline...
You mean 1B in profit? FB makes 4b/yr in revenue and growing. It's just not growing fast enough to justify the market cap.
More demos:
http://cnettv.cnet.com/control-your-desktop-wave-your-hand/9...

Funding announcement:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/leap-motion-announces-1275-...
But until then, you’re in a magical position to make great strides. To propose radical solutions, deliberately ignorant ideas that just might be brilliant.

A more general opportunity is the opportunity to document misconceptions. I'm in the process of learning Clojure, and it's the little misconceptions that hang you up. But just a little change in perspective in how you see things can totally unstuck you.

Documenting those little changes in perspective, those little ah-ha moments, could really help future travelers.

I've been recording them as much as possible, noting the "the one thing/sentence that I could have told my future self that would have helped me understand it" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3998679). Being able to view a collection of everyone's would be enlightening.
US press ignores French startup successes, and here's proof.
I guess you don't know a lot of CS grad students at Berkeley or Stanford then. When I lived in the Bay Area, I did (2000-2006); they were.