skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"This points to a very deep fact about the nature of the universe, namely, that our minds, which invent mathematics, conform to the reality of the cosmos. We are somehow tuned in to its truths. Since pure thought can penetrate the universe's mysteries, this seems to be telling us that something about human consciousness is harmonious with the mind of God"

Why is it surprising that our minds "conform to the reality of the cosmos"? They are, after all, part of the cosmos. Yes, our minds are harmonious with nature (call it God, if you must) because our minds are nature.
What an utterly pointless article.
I have an intense compulsion to write. I'm good at it. I can pound out 2000 words of coherent English prose in half an hour.

I wish I could do that. I always found writing for my English classes was incredibly difficult, especially as the length requirements grew.
Maybe it should have been "Linux for the masses killer." I don't think there is anyone who thinks it will be kicked from the server realm any time soon.
If you were a recent graduate looking for work at that time, you might view those figures a little differently. We're also on the downward (rather than recovering) side of that particular data slope, with worse to come.

Looking at the tech-sector alone, those in most (all?) industrialized nations have slid from a world of "Yay! We can live on page views and happy thoughts!" to "How can I scrape together enough to either eat or pay rent?" in just a few months.

That many economies have suddenly seized up in a halt is not a typical thing. As historical data goes, the current situation is remarkably bad.
What about the other 473 issues?

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list

Shouldn't we vote for them too?

Not that distributed transactions wouldn't be yummy but having worked on App Engine myself (as recently as yesterday in fact), I can say very confidently that they have much bigger fish to fry at the moment than distributed transactions. If people don't take my word on this, and why should they, please read Aral Balkan, who is one of the early victims/adopters:

"Why Google App Engine is broken and what Google must do to fix it."

http://aralbalkan.com/1504
http://www.google.com/search?q=registrar+site%3Aycombinator....

Based on that, I chose to use NameCheap. I've been happy with it so far.
I love a good shmup.

Indeed, and the ones with good bullet patterns aren't just fun to play, they're even just fun to look at!

Examples:

http://mirror05.x264.nl/Dark/Flash/extra.html

http://mirror05.x264.nl/Dark/Flash/saextra.html

(Disclaimer: Not my replays. I'm not that good.)
"...they'll face problems as silly as people thinking that their printer didn't need to be plugged in (to the wall) to print things or that you can un-send email..."

They're wrong, but there's no law of nature that says they must be wrong, and in fact I would contend that they are perfectly reasonable assumptions, not "silly." There's nothing that should be obvious about either of those examples.
I didn't like GoDaddy... switched to 1and1.com. Get a lot less spam now :)
Why code as opposed to novels? And what are you looking for? Some suggestions on how to get into coding, or ways to improve your coding?
Wow. I'm usually pretty keen on the current "urban myths" and was completely unaware of this one. Thanks for the information.
It makes some sense that serious trolls are mentally ill.
With the new Java plugin (6u10), applets can request their own memory limits way beyond that.
240,000 members? Geez...
I can understand that, but I read the novel in childhood. To me, the 70's film's scariness seemed superficial and insincere compared with the 00's version. (Which is not what you'd expect, given that I was still a kid when I saw the first film version.) Maybe it's just Depp's portrayal pushing the "creepy" meter to 11 is what did it for me. (Wilder's seemed resigned to each child's fate, while Depp's possessed morbid fascination with each "accident.")
US questions net overhaul plans
"Developers need fast machines to be productive"

Possibly. But one of the advantages of giving developers comparatively slow machines is that it gives them a personal incentive to produce fast software.

Of course that's painful when bloaty IDEs come into play, but for web software I'd have to suggest using an under-specced deployment test platform to get some of this benefit.
The far better explanation for American toilets is that as a culture, we are beyond "price-conscious", we are "price-obsessed". We want every feature under the sun in Product X, and when deciding whether to buy A's product or B's product, we very frequently do just a straight feature bullet point comparison without giving a thought to whether any given implementation of the feature is actually a quality implementation, then buy the cheapest one with our features. As long as it's just good enough to avoid being brought back to the store, we keep it, and live with the hassles forever.

Walmart are the masters of this, and it is why they have succeeded so handily. It is also why I hate to shop there; none of that rhetoric about killing businesses or anything, it's because it's cheap in the bad way, and I do care. Some. But certainly not as much as the average Japanese person.

Japanese toilets almost certainly can not succeed here, even if there was a huge demand. Why? Because an American company would produce a cheap knockoff that has the same "features", none of the quality, and half the price of the Japanese toilet, while twice the price of the current white standard. This is the toilet people would buy, decide wasn't worth the extra money because of a combination of low quality and a general "missing the point" (it's hard to explain this one, but consider one of those $30 handheld organizer things you can buy... they have all the bullet point features you want in such a product, but somehow they just royally miss the point of them all and the result is useless), and write off the entire market.

While this might sound like an anti-American polemic in favor of the wise Japanese... the reality is far more nuanced. Deciding what the proper cost/benefits ratio is a matter of personal choice, among other things. You really can't say we're wrong or right about our choices. While I am impressed at some Japanese things, my parents once hosted a Japanese exchange student touring the US, and they were equally impressed with the outcome of some of our choices, so... it's hard to say who's "right" or "wrong".

Personally, while I'm intrigued by the Japanese toilets and might install one if you just handed it to me for free, I can't imagine ever actually buying one; I'd look at it, imagine the opportunity costs of the cash vs. what little happiness it could actually bring me, and pass. That's not right or wrong... it's just a decision.
Agreed. Domain management is becoming a larger part of my day to day work and GoDaddy is becoming frustrating. It's hard to get anything done without looking for specific instructions and having multiple windows open - but I still get things done. Just hoping there is an easier or better solution.
I have the same problem. The score is nice to see the first time, because its helpful to read the good comments first. But if you've been following threads, its hard to see where people have added to the conversation, especially if the conversations are really long.
Subversion Hooks Best Practices - Part 1
The point that Linux enthusiasts become Linux realists is when they realize they are afraid to put their laptop to sleep by closing the lid.
try writing a novel. i know people working on books that push very hard to get 2000 words a day.
I wrote this article to discuss how I use hooks for the development of the PHP framework Artisan System. Part 1 is about the pre-commit hook, and part 2 will be about the post-commit hook.
Car Finance under threat in Australia but there is still good car finance available
My choice finance is a mortgage broker company, it offers competitive rates for car finance and home finance.
I'll save everybody the trouble of reading this article with a summary:

The key to stopping procrastination is not to procrastinate.
It's real money but whether it's going to be stable is yet to be seen. That's why the curiosity.
Distributed transactions are rather fundamental. For example, if an interaction between two users affects data associated with both, then you need distributed transactions to ensure both updates.
My company, Happy Camper Studios, has just released JotBot: http://www.getjotbot.com

It a cross-platform desktop-based time-tracking application.

We used JRuby + Swing plus Monkeybars. It needs a license key to run; we have a Web service handling that to generate 30-day trial keys or fully-registered non-expiring keys. That's handled by Ramaze on Glassfish.

Sales are done through Shopify and Google Checkout.
Is anything stable? I haven't seen a good reason why online advertising would be hit harder than say subscription based saas.

Fair enough to only consider one though :)
I was part of a somewhat well-known troll group for 2+ years, and trolled independently for 7. Your observation is correct, but for most of us, trolling was by far the most insane thing about us. Some serious time goes into the sport, and people've lost relationships and jobs over the time put into the game, and there are often reputation consequences for those who are caught. It's like World of Warcraft. Most of these people are fine "sane" people, capable of functioning at high levels and having normal relationships, except for the fact of being addicted to a compelling alternate reality. The difference is that WoW is a Skinner Box designed to be addictive whereas hypergraphic trolling is entirely emergent from transgressive behavior, but just as engrossing.

The other surprising thing about trolls is that they tend to come from very high-achieving and wealthy families. My father's an a high-ranking civil servant, my parents make $150k/year, and I was the "poor" in my troll group.

I always trolled ethically, though. No racism, no attacks on real-life non-participants except public figures who really deserved it, and no more misogyny than would be appropriate to the 18-year-old self that was the basis for one of my favorite troll personalities (ironically, named after a synonym for "thoughtful"; ok, I'm outed).
I've got around 3 months of experience of Japanese toilets, and I have to agree.

The warm seat and the spray take some getting used to, but after a while, you like them both.

And as sokoloff said, the spray really helps with cleaning your behind.
Interesting work. Looks like your value prop vs. SL is that your world is more straightforward and simpler (in a good way). I.e. most people going to SL really just want to chat and goof around and don't need the complexity.
Conspiracy Theory:The real story behind PlentyofFish
Agreed - this is just made up nonsense.
Ouch.

The site is not only down, it's showing source code that includes the database username and password.

EDIT: up now
"Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society."
I'm good at it. I can pound out 2000 words of coherent English prose in half an hour.

Damn, that's a problem I've always wished I had. I write too, but not much. I find that writing and coding to be very different activities, at least for me, so I'm not sure you could channel that energy into coding. From the sound of it, your writing compulsion sounds like it is more a matter of putting down your thoughts rather than creating something, that is, its not very cerebral. Coding, requires a filter between you and the keyboard, so this sounds like it would be a major stopper.

It does sound like you could make a nice political columnist/author: something like Limbaugh or Franken.
Have you driven a "Japanese" vehicle? On my parents Honda minivan, the controls are absolutely horrible. The User Interface is a disgrace. They didn't read their Design of Everyday Things (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Norman).

It is a cluttered, clunky mess.

As far as toilets go. I just installed an Eljer (http://www.eljer.com/) this summer. While it doesn't heat your butt, it does NOT clog. It was a consumer's report pick and for good reason. It's simple, it's quiet and it works every time. And the UI is impeccable.

So before we go off half-cocked about the Japanese superiority of products, let's examine the facts. Complicated doesn't mean better.
Etsy http://www.etsy.com
I use Godaddy. There are usually lots of coupons for domain registration on retailmenot.com which makes them the cheapest option I'm aware of.

I'm not 100% happy with them either - they are definitely clunky as all hell. Lately I've just been setting my default nameservers to Slicehost and using their domain management tools for setting up zones and records, which at least lets me avoid some of the annoyances of Godaddy.
"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success."
Giving developers sub-par machines for "incentive" purposes is... well, crazy. Intentionally slowing down your write-compile-test cycle makes no sense.

For web software, you indeed want your test environment to be no faster than production, so it can be slower (within reason), especially if you have a hard time simulating in test loads you expect to see in production.
On the "buying experience":
I went to Lowes, loaded it on a cart and paid at the automated checkout.
I know coders who push very hard to turn 2000 words into 200.
A Dream Home for the True Blue Apple Fan
Thank you...I'm trying to learn HaXe along with Python. But Python's syntax is so much easier on the eyes. I just want to rapidly produce a game enough to whet my appetite. And I think Pyglet or PyGame is the way to go.
How do you find them? What do you do? Look up datacenter locations online and then go hang out there to see if you can hang out with a techie? Or are you talking about contacts you make through your job?
Don't just try to turn your hypergraphia into hypercodeia ;-) A lot of people find that by writing about things they learn about them. For example, if you write a tutorial about a certain algorithm, a certain programming language, or whatever, you're forced to learn the topic well.

Perhaps you could write content about things you want to learn with how you went about it, what you did, what you learned, and relay all that to other people.

Get a blog, don't do any personal blogging, but just blog about your programming adventures. I love to read such stuff because I get to enjoy the results of other people's experimentation!
The Dumbest Interview Question
Precipitate - Spotlight/Mac Google Desktop integration for Google Docs
No, he's looking for a bridge between his ability to write and his ability to code.

Any of the writers in this community have advice to give to this fellow?
I used to have panic attacks but they stopped after taking zoloft and eventually I grew out of them. I have cyclothymia and I deal with that pretty easily. When I get manic I obsess over thinking of new ideas and new approaches to problems that I have. I use all of my will to stay logical during this time. When I start getting off of that mania I start actually implementing the solution. Also, I think that taking martial arts and my logic class have helped me weed out the idiotic thoughts to and to get more structured thoughts.
Are you serious? I had to reinstall Windows on my laptop the other day, but since I didn't have a Windows CD with me, I installed Ubuntu to use in the meantime until I got back home to reinstall Windows.

Ubuntu worked fine out of the box and detected all the drivers perfectly, and the wireless worked fine. The battery life applet in particular was extremely nice, providing a watt-by-watt breakdown of power usage over time. To put it simply--everything Just Worked. Now, I had a huge number of pet peeves about 8.1 which I discovered soon after I installed it--but despite the various minor but annoying problems I had with it, it worked.

So then I installed Windows when I got home, since that's the platform I develop on.

It didn't have any LAN drivers, so I had to grab a USB thumbdrive to install those.

Nor did it have wireless drivers. Or graphics drivers. Or sound drivers. Oh, and it bluescreened when it tried to install the webcam drivers, so I had to force it not to. It had basically nothing out of the box.

It took me an entire day to get Windows working with a basic development environment, all my drivers, and all the latest updates. By comparison, this took 30 minutes on Ubuntu.

Laptops seem to be Windows' week point with regards to drivers: it seems as if Microsoft has completely ignored them with regards to hardware support. Given this kind of experience, it's no wonder Linux is making inroads in the laptop market!
Eliot Carver of the newspaper 'Tomorrow' said that as I recall. I heartily concur!
The Cellphone That Could Change the World
http://www.freshbooks.com
What's the coolest app that doesn't work on the iPhone?
Have you been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (AS)? Many of these problems sound like symptoms of AS. Many, many programmers have AS (it seems computers were made by and for people with AS (see the book below)). I've worked with several whom I suspected but weren't formally diagnosed. They were miserable because the couldn't understand how to deal with people on a functional level.

The key is to understand the root of the problem. Some of the coworkers would be diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and the like while AS was the painfully obvious condition (though anxiety, etc are very common in those with AS).

Read this book ASAP:
The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome by Tony Attwood
http://www.jkp.com/catalogue/book.php/isbn/9781843104957
A friend of mine who I won't name here is an accomplished sci-fi writer/critic of no little repute whose "day job" is technical writing/documentation, which is how I know him, since we worked for the same company at one point. I wonder if you have ever considered technical writing? If one is really good at/enjoys writing but also knows how to program, this seems like it would be a good fit. A strong technical knowledge combined with strong writing skills makes for a good technical writer I think. The downside is that during layoffs, the documentation department is the first to go it seems like, but the upside is that advanced writers can really make a lot of money, especially if you develop skills in the tools of that field, such as RoboHelp. Just a thought.
Their higher cost basis is their own fault. Especially with asinine programs like this:

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/11/jobs-bank-cost-big-three...

So people will be coaxed in to buying empirically inferior and more expensive cars? Buying American for the sake of buying American is retarded. The engineering debate can't really be proven one way or the other, but the ratings from places like Car & Driver, Consumer Reports, etc can (even if American cars have improved in recent years).
Your developers should have the exact same spec machines as your users.

I remember back in the day working for a company whose websites looked gorgeous on the designer's high-end Mac displays on the LAN... The average customer at the time had a 56.6k modem.
Long URLs Please
It's a figure of speech. When you refer to X as a "Y killer", what you are really saying is "the market has concluded that Y is a better product than X, and the guys who make X really want to change that".

It has nothing to do with actual killing. Consumer products rarely get killed. [1] Most of them never live in the first place. The others go out with a whimper. They get gradually shuffled to the back of the shelf and are eventually thrown away in disgust. [2]

What this article is really claiming is that Linux is now the OS to beat in the netbook market and that Microsoft is showing signs of recognizing this and trying to catch up. Of course, this is just a pundit's opinion at this point, not Microsoft's stated position. If you ever hear a Microsoft rep describe a future Microsoft product as a "Linux killer" it will be a big moment. That's as close as a marketer is likely to come to saying "we know you think our current product sucks".

---

[1] As some have pointed out, the only company that routinely manages to literally kill successful products is Apple... which kills its own products by removing them from the market and replacing them with new models. E.g.: the iPod Mini.

[2] Or eBayed, which is the recycling-conscious penny-pincher's method for throwing something away.
World of Warcraft Players Need Not Apply
I had to buy more shelves.
Last night I went to sleep early, so I approved the comments during my morning break. I moderate comments in order to prevent spam and idiots. For example, the only comment on this post that was rejected was along the lines of "You are gay because you read math". I refuse to publish stuff like that.
To be fair the reader is warned thusly:

"Some of the nicest bits of iPhone programming are included in the public iPhone frameworks but not in the SDK. Apple's unofficial policy on this is clear: You can use these items in your programs, but you do so at your own risk. Your code may break at each firmware release. Striking the balance between risk and reward if up to you."
Write less.
"You can stand out here playing basketball, or you come come inside [to play World of Warcraft] and do something that matters."

- Cartman
time_management, I admire your courage and understand your need to post this subject here on HN. Though your motive is to create a real debate around the subject of mental problem, some of us go through every day, I don’t think HN is the right platform to do this; here is why.

Mental illness in general is a very complex topic, unlike headache, flu or any other disease; it is not something the regular person (the healthy person) understands. Those who have never suffer from any form of mental problem tend to think that it is a philosophical problem; they think that by thinking too hard they can somehow come up with an explanation of a solution.

I also have to agree that Hackers community seems to be one with a high ratio of people with some sort of mental disorder. I have suffered from depression myself and all through my career many of people I met had some sort of mental problem.
I'm not a math guru by any means. I got as far business cal in college. However, I have always been fascinated with math (and intensely wished it would come easier for me.)

That being said, if I wanted to slowly build up a mathematical foundation (maybe half hour a day), would buying a book like this be right place to start? Or should I be looking elsewhere?
"A scan of Twitter reveals a lot more people talking about actually using Match.com than Plentyoffish"

There's the biggest flaw in his theory. If you've scanned the people who have profiles on POF (or any other free dating service), you might draw the conclusion that the people using such services are not part of the tech elite. Yes, Twitter has a large user base but it is not mainstream.

Here's why it gets so many clicks: A lot of the ads on POF are for alternate online dating sites, so there's a 100% match between the people visiting the service and the people who might click on ads. By definition, if you're visiting POF, you're not in a relationship and thus POF isn't satisfying your need to be in a relationship. So what are you going to do? Search for a better dating site. And, coincidentally, POF has already done that work for you by surrounding every inch of unused space with dating site ads. It's both a dating site and a dating site search engine.

It's that simple in my opinion. But I do love a good conspiracy theory!
Not for development they shouldn't.
For testing sure, but are you really going to justify that the development process should take at least twice as long because of poor QA?
No joke - totally missed the point and went off on an unrelated tangent - real broken record stuff.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/17-01/mf_sel...

"Diary of a Self-Help Dropout: Flirting With the 4-Hour Workweek"
Diary of a Self-Help Dropout: Flirting With the 4-Hour Workweek