skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, healthy loving relationships are characterized by contempt and trickery.
I think ICQ is still the instant messenger in Germany, judging from personal experience.

Wikipedia has statistics on different services’ user bases:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging#User_base
Oops, totally misread it. Reading skills -15 for the day.
One of the best GUI toolkit ever. Now available for free almost without any restrictions.

I hope it will encourage developers to create multi-platform applications. Don't forget that desktop programs are in many cases much more useful then their web based competitors.
I'm not sure if it really was an "idea" in true sense of the word. Real contribution of Noah was to make Joel aware of his inability to spot a small but profitable segment (no disrespect intended). If you happen to be a part of company that's on the verge of becoming a "real" company then you're bound to spot such segments ignored by high-ups given you're aware of industry trends and keeping your ear, eyes and brain open. I guess people at FogCreek must have applauded Joel for his contribution in that he listened (thought, reflected and then executed) to what an intern had to say in the first place.
They're also drop-outs: not people who never went in the first place. Most dropped (and the typical success stories talk about dropping out of graduate school) out because they had something else to run to, not something to run from.
What about just creating a "Search CL" type site with a killer search. Become the new way to get into it, rather than their own home page.
Let me try and make sense of this: freedom and opportunity to succeed is good, but entails possibility of failure, which is bad.

You're saying you don't want the freedom and opportunity to do either when in your late 40s and beyond? Or are you saying that you want to have the opportunity to succeed, but not to fail, when you're in your late 40s? Didn't you just say that's not possible? I'm confused...
Plenty of fish runs on very beefy servers (http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture)
Is it that Craigslist is rotting, or is it that people's expectations of search have moved forwards? How much would it cost to license search from Google? Would Google provide it for free? Are enough people scared of Google now that it would be a PR lose?
In the Bay area, a couple of those things you list are dominated by Craigslist... apartments, cars.

If CraigsList had an API, it would be a game-changer. Then it would dominate a lot more niches.
I like xmonad, but it's still just a 500 line ultra-minimalist window manager.

Students in introductory programming classes write programs longer than that.

Get back to me when you've implemented KDE, Aqua, or Aero in Haskell.
Google Search Appliance? http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa
We have a couple of those where I work - they seem ok. Way better than the search function that came with our stupidly expensive "Enterprise Portal".
My studies were not a financial investment like that - most students at 18 are not that financially motivated, and just looking to extend the good times and learn something new.
This really varies from place to place. Many CS degrees are engineering degrees - that's how it works at Berkeley, for example.
If it's any comfort, a couple of days ago one of my comments took a karma hit but rebounded back into positive territory. It wasn't political, though, so maybe that's the distinction.
Is the developer mainstream any better than it used to be?
If you don't think CS is a difficult degree, you are talking about something quite different than what I went through.
The Perceptron ( http://theperceptron.com )

Search driven music recommendations. In my opinion, very high quality results. The Perceptron strives to make music recommendations based on the actual music rather than popularity/genre/etc.
This is one of the reasons I love game theory. So, if no one gets vaccinated, lots of people die preventable deaths. If everyone is vaccinated except me (or my child in this case), no one will die because there are no carriers. So, in the face of the vast majority being vaccinated and wild claims about autism (I agree with the author), parents decide "well, my child has no chance of getting one of these diseases if all their classmates are vaccinated and I've been reading trumped up news reports that make me scared so i'll just not have my kid vaccinated!"

The problem becomes that there's a tipping point. If 5% aren't vaccinated, that's a lot of potential carriers. Then it becomes a fight of "i don't want my child vaccinated, but i want your child vaccinated to protect my child." It's not hard to imagine parents of immunized children then saying, "well, screw you trying to get us immunized while not taking the risk for your kid!"

Ah, the rights of the individual and the rights of the society! It's really fun to think about.
Don't know much about this competition, but from a quick review it looks like a great opportunity for the right early stage startups/hackers. Only about 90 total entries with a week until the deadline, so seems like decent odds.
Oodle tried it, and CL stopped them.
I grew up with the family tradition of wrapping gifts in the comics sections. The kids would actually unwrap the gifts and then read any comics that were still legible too, haha.
The biggest single contributor to this occurred after WW2, when the majority of white* veterans were able to attend college under the GI bill. The amount of college-educated people in the middle classes spiked, employers' expectations raised, and it set up a loop that tightened the association between going to college and finding employment (in certain fields).

I'm glossing over a lot of history here (the GI bill had several tremendous effects on postwar America; suburbanization is another huge one), but this was one of the main times when what it meant to go to college shifted.

* Though veterans of any race theoretically had tuition paid at any college, they were still mostly segregated.
"If CraigsList had an API, it would be a game-changer."

Agreed. As a long time CL user, I have thought the exact same thing. Short of API functionality and extensibility, I know of numerous scraper/mashup applications that utilize CL data. Unfortunately, this does fall far short of API extensibility and likely leads to liability in concerns to "stealing" CL's data - I would be apprehensive about investing 'too much' on any project that relies on scraping as chances are that the project will be killed by CL before reaching the critical user mass of "success".
Hasn't changed since I last looked at it. Still a big clusterfuck of esoteric math libraries, wrappers for useful things written in other (practical) languages, and a handful of half finished clones of libraries and applications first written 10 or 20 years ago in C.
If you increase company revenue by 10%, you get a 10% raise. </quote>

You've missed the point.

There are direct and indirect contributions to revenue. Only because his contribution was direct it doesn't mean one should reward him more than another programmer that made not so easy to spot contribution.

If one can't measure indirect contributions in dollars then one should not reward direct contributions in dollars too.

Additionally see intrinsic vs. external motivation in the article.
From Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_under_United_... ):

... the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Ashoka are a well run organisation, and many of the entries are inspired and help restore the faith. My experience of mentoring such groups in the past is that a) they put together a great entry b) they win something then c) they all get jobs in the city and the team disperses on graduation. Well, with less of those jobs I hope a positive of this crisis could be that the teams stick together and execute.
Craigs is simple enough that most of its users can feel like they understand everything about it. Despite its being huge in users and content, this makes it feel small.

If a user feels like they understands a site, they don't mind spending time on it finding things. It is the opaque, confusing sites that have people run away after a few searches. The challenge for any competitor is finding a way to expand functionality while allowing the user to still feel like they understand exactly how everything works.
re-read my comment. I recognize that we are not completely rational. Rationality and logic, though, are still very powerful tools, even when wielded by emotional beings such as ourselves. Some of us are more comfortable with logic and rational models than we are with emotions.

What I am speaking of has much to do with cultural values. Just like a Scientist is not going to feel valued by a community that believes science can teach us nothing, I didn't feel valued when I was around people who valued emotions over logic.
Joel, why didn't you beat Google's offer? Seems like it's worth it based on your article.
their gawd-ugly homepage.
Trolltech provides a trial license for the very purpose you are describing. When evaluating Qt for a commercial project you can get a trial license and see if Qt would work for you.
Users, not labels, silence YouTube music videos
At the risk of being down-modded...

Nope! Reread that. Now he's an associate proDUCT manager.

8-)
If I'm understanding the article, the point is that Noah said, essentially, "here's one way you can convert all those eyeballs into cash", and then actually went and did it. That's pretty significant.
That would violate their terms of use, and they would shut you down.
Mutts makes good use of color and space, but the local paper seems to determined to fuck that up, too.
Strangely, the site "feels" dead, even though it is actually quite active. I think it's because they don't show the scores of each submission on the frontpage, in addition to not allowing you to upvote/downvote them without clicking through.
Adobe solved this years ago (RTMP); the browser developers are just lazy.
Yup. Short of an official supported API, we are pretty much tied on utilizing CL's data. While screen scraping CL is easy and can yield fully utilizable data for an outside application, the application will be doomed to failure (financially, at least) because it will always be arguable in court that your application is worthless and that it is their proprietary data that ultimately holds the value of your application.
The serendipity of browsing for one thing and reading something else.
>"...and I've been reading trumped up news reports that make me scared so i'll just not have my kid vaccinated!"

That's a fairly biased representation of those parents' viewpoint, isn't it?
C++ 0x is providing lambdas and closures. Closures didn't make it into Java, where it may have been relevant.
I agree he allocated resources by buying/selling assets, but nowhere in the purchase/sale of those assets is value created. Prices move, but value isn't created, the underlying assets don't generate anymore than they would have had he not purchased or sold them. GOOG trading at 700 vs 200 doesn't create value, GOOG will still earn the same amount in the future whether it trades at 200 or 700. Please take some time to think about this.
No, you're right - I'm no web expert, and I didn't notice the option in deep-zoom composer to change format. The Seadragon dev told me to try png for this type of image and it cut the data down from 93mb to 25mb - much faster now. (http://lovepixelzoom.appspot.com)
Apple: Jobs to Take Medical Leave of Absence
Isn't there a way to settle this discussion scientifically?
Hopefully Jeremy Zawodny will drop in here and give an answer, since he left Yahoo and is working on mysql stuff for Craigslist now (including search, I believe).

See also: http://crazedlist.org/
Apple Says Jobs to Take Leave of Absence, Citing Health Reasons
Hurrah! The submitted article links to an official YouTube statement on the issue (from YouTube's blog).

"Previously, when a music label or other rights owner issued a copyright claim to block audio, the video was automatically taken down. Uploaders had two choices: dispute the claim or use our AudioSwap tool to replace the track with one from our library of pre-cleared music. Now we've added an additional choice. Instead of automatically removing the video from YouTube, users can choose to leave the video muted and live on the site, and many of them are taking that option."
Unlike some other features* , pattern matching isn't all that scary, though. "Oh, it's like a switch statement... but it can break things up and check inside... that's pretty cool." You can understand it in terms of other fairly commonplace constructs, and it's relatively clear how useful it is.

It could be presented a bit differently, but the underlying idea seems approachable.

* I'm thinking of monads, in particular; whether they actually are or whether it's just due to the way they've been presented is another question.
Nortel files for bankruptcy
"... Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent the following email to all Apple employees ..."

Don't see anything on the Apple pr site yet ~ http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/ So it's unconfirmed.
John August's blog is part of my regular reading. He is a great screen writer. If you are at all interested in screen writing or the business of Hollywood in general then I would highly recommend his blog.
Steve Jobs to Take Health-related Leave of Absence
Craigslist is like a social network site - its users and brand name are its sole asset. The actual design of the site isn't ideal, but it's enough to keep the masses happy, and that's what matters. A single competent competitor could take it down (like facebook did to myspace), but it would require a compelling reason to use it, not just better design.

My main complaint about CL is the lack of user profiles. On ebay, I can (sort of) use the user profile and ratings to gauge risk. This is especially important on something like CL, where you actually meet face-to-face with a person, not just get a product shipped to your address. I have had some sketchy experiences on CL...
Steve Jobs steps down until June for health reasons
Though thinking about functions/libraries in terms of their type signatures is, in itself, a pretty new concept to a lot of people.
In Russia too, ICQ is the dominant IM protocol. Many geeks use jabber though (together with ICQ).

And Livejournal is the dominant blog platform. I guess the network effect (resulting from being first to market?) has something to do with it.

And, BTW - 282192658. And I used to remember my first cell phone number too for a long time. That's probably because it was so cool to be able to chat / call for the first time.
Your Home Library Organizer
I doubt the WSJ would publish a letter like this if it were unconfirmed.
I'd be surprised if its untrue...
Apple’s Steve Jobs: “I Have Decided to Take a Medical Leave of Absence”
Just terrible news and so unfortunate that it has to play out this way. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to have to deal with a (seemingly) serious medical issue and have to justify every related move to the public.
A case expression is more common:

sum ys = sum' ys 0
where sum' list total =
case list of
[] -> total
x:xs -> sum' xs (total + x)
Ask HN: Hire a Facebook Developer
How do i find a Facebook developer who can turn a vision into a reality. Is it best to pay p/h or fixed project.

Contact jedarogroup(at)gmail.com
This got me thinking. I am otherwise normally in favor of health care for everybody, but that would also mean health care for those who chose not to get vaccinated because of their own or their parents' beliefs. That would mean that when they get sick it's the public that has the further burden of supporting them.
You make a good point. Everyone contributes to the bottom line. However, in this case we are dealing someone who goes above and beyond their role to create value for the company. The intern wasn't brought on to create a new business model, but he did it anyways. There would have been no penalty had he never even mentioned the idea. That's why it deserves special compensation. Both to reward the person, and to ensure that other employees will speak up when even when they have no obligation to do so.
It's on Reuters now, too.

Clever of them to wait until after the closing bell, but man oh man, that stock is going to plummet tomorrow, I imagine.

Hope he's all right...
I made that my sound in Trillian too. Except, I had to edit it in audio editor Cooledit to compress it, etc.
Research and less bandwagon reporting.
Post on http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com.
Totally! I mean, whether that's the reason why or because they have some secret knowledge, the game scenario is the same (and I'm way more interested in that). If you're in that camp, I meant no offense and I'm sorry if I offended you. Mostly, I like to make fictional people sound funny whether I agree with them or not because it makes the harsh reality that can be life more fun.

No one would claim that vaccination = autism. It's more like 0.001 * vaccination = autism if you're in that camp (1 in 1,000 times vaccination causes autism for those that might not understand my quasi-programmer speak).

For a lot of things in life, belief and reality are the same thing. Whether or not vaccinations cause autism, the belief that some have that it does cause autism alters behavior. Whether or not the economy is going to crash, if everyone believes it will and stops spending so they have money when it does crash will cause it to happen (since if everyone stops spending money, very soon businesses will have no money coming in). There is reality, but from a game theory perspective it often doesn't matter since people's behavior will be altered by perception of reality probably as much as by reality.

So, let's say it's real that vaccines cause autism in 1 out of 1,000 cases. If everyone looks at that and says, "no way my kid's getting vaccinated," we have a huge public health problem. On the other hand, if most submit to the social good, there will be large resentment of those who don't and are relying on the vaccination of others not to become infected.

We're not anywhere near the levels where it becomes a big issue in society, but if more parents go down this road there might be more heat to force them not to (for the public good). I'm not saying that's good or bad. Morality is better left to people better than me. I'm just saying it'd be interesting (I guess in the way a car wreck is interesting) to see how it played out socially.
Steve Jobs Steps Down From Apple, Tim Cook Takes Lead
"... I doubt the WSJ would publish a letter like this if it were unconfirmed. ..."

Email isn't the most reliable medium and the WSJ owner is Rupert Murdoch.
It's there now: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/14advisory.html
Text of Steve Jobs’s Letter to Apple Employees
Yes, it more or less has been settled. I have not heard of a reputable study showing that vaccines cause autism. The problem is that if you try hard enough you can stretch/fake/politicize scientific results to show just about anything. There is at least some causal link between giving the vaccines and autism (there has been a large rise in autism cases that coincide with the usage of certain vaccines).

Since no one can explain why the incidents of autism are increasing so rapidly there's a ton of crackpot theories which desperate parent's latch on to.
I doubt it was the money that really mattered in that decision. Fog Creek sounds like a great place to work but there are jobs at Google that involve working on some very interesting stuff.
People need time off. Can we (as a culture) move on?

/edit: to expand: Mainly saying this because it's not the first time Jobs has stepped down due to health reasons.
They actually had to halt trading; they couldn't hold it til the bell, for some reason.
Suppose there's an economy where everyone is spending 80% of their energy building refrigerators. All day that's what people are doing. Nobody actually needs these refrigerators, so they just keep building them and stacking them up in the corner.

Then one day an intrepid young entrepreneur decides "hey, this whole refrigerator building thing is kind of silly. It's kind of a waste of resources. I think I'll start betting against refrigerator companies." Then he takes a whole bunch of money (that's not currently tied up in building refrigerators of course) and short sells the stocks of companies that make refrigerators. This causes their stock price to go down a bit (or rather, to go up more slowly) which drives money out of refrigerator building and into other things, like making televisions or something.

A year or two pass and suddenly everyone has an epiphany. All these refrigerators everyone has been building and stacking neatly in the corner aren't actually worth $2000 apiece. In fact, since there's so damn many of them, they're only worth like $3.50! the economy crashes! all the refrigerator companies go out of business! all the investors in refrigerator companies lose their shirts! people are committing suicide left and right because their refrigerator stockpiles are suddenly worth nothing!

But our intrepid entrepreneur is doing quite well. You see, all that money he drove into making televisions was safe because the value of televisions was not inflated. TV's were actually worth $1000 apiece, and there was no oversupply of TVs so their price stayed at $1000.

So what was the value of the entrepreneur's work? well, he kept a whole bunch of energy from being expended on building stockpiles of refrigerators. He didn't himself go out and build televisions or anything. No, his labor was more abstract and more intellectual, but still quite valuable.

Resource allocation is everything.
Whether you like Murdoch's politics or not, the WSJ is one of the most respected newsgathering organizations in the world. They didn't blow their credibility on a fake memo.

This story didn't run on the (partisan) WSJ editorial page. It ran on the front page. It's obviously true.
Brilliant! All we need to do now is set up a hosting review website review website review website and we'll be all set!:p
you can see the after hours trading. 6pts already

edit: 7pts * 889M shares, what is a man worth?
I don't think this will change anything big. A leader is important to a company, but a leader needs to be able to create the kind of culture that runs itself when they're away. I'm guessing that Jobs did a good job of instilling the culture that Apple has today in a way that will continue because of how the workers see themselves and the company. It's sad to see him undergoing such medical problems and I wish him a speedy recovery, but I think Apple will do fine without him because he's given them purpose and direction and a definition that lasts beyond him.

I'm sure we all wish you a speedy recovery and many years of health!
Apple CEO Steve Jobs LEAVING - Health Issues Worsen
Opera on the iPhone? Maybe. Someday.
You hear that? That's the sound of a million people ready to dump the stock tomorrow.
"Craigs is simple enough that most of its users can feel like they understand everything about it."

This is actually a very interesting point; I suppose it falls in line with 37Signals' strategy of "doing less".