skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
[The Prius] has a distinct look, I suppose Prius buyers like to be recognized as someone who cares about the environment.

http://www.cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy

http://www.cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/DUST%20PDF%... [PDF]

a strong reason for selecting a hybrid is the distinctive "styling" or styling ques it projects or has. Insight buyers and Prius owners list this as a highly critical reason for making the particular selection. This also a likely reason the Ford Escape and Honda hybrids seem to be languishing. It simply can't be identified easily as a hybrid and for the premium paid it lacks instant recognition.

If that sounds somewhat cynical, consider the following graph. Among the choices given to hybrid owners was "Makes a statement about me." Fully a third of owners give this as their first or second reason for making a hybrid acquisition. And without the styling cues, the statement is less than clear at first glance.
Weird, I've just in the last few days been playing with SMS to web stuff. I was just today wondering about making a more general system but since in the UK it costs to send messages (i understand the cost is on the receiver in the US) I couldn't think how to make it work.

The exception would seem to be for things that have the potential to make a return, if you're in the UK my amazon price checker will send you an amazon.co.uk price when you text PRICE and the product name to 07786200690.
Reflections on 2008 - The Year of Cloud Computing
Microsoft Patch Tuesday: MS09-001
Well you know, you're only supposed to listen to headphones for an hour a day; it's not worth damaging your hearing for a job.
The humility in your attitude is the mark of a good programmer, not a bad one. If you really are learning and working hard at it, you'll do fine, and I'd rather have you on my team than a lot of the (apparently) super-smart guys you're feeling inferior to.

A nice thing about the programming world is that it's a sort of natural democracy. No one really knows how good they are.
The study says that these traders are paid more, not that they are more succesful in their trades. Might be that high testosterone makes you a better negotiator or more aggresive in pursuing wealth etc.
Absolutely, and that is great for students. It could be that universities will become more relevant in a digital age. In the past, a student sitting in a gigantic lecture hall didn't have too much advantage over one just reading a book (and not paying tuition). If universities move to giving student 1 on 1 (or N on 1) interaction, someone in a university will have a big advantage over someone outside.
instead of emailing passwords to the user, send them a link to a confirmation page where they can enter their own password (twice) to complete the registration process and sign-in.

security might be an issue otherwise when sending passwords around in the clear. do the same thing for password resets when a user forgets their password (or username, for that matter).
The shortcuts are subscriptions to templates (this is what a developer creates). The templates are xml files using txtful mark up language. There is some (pretty dry) documentation describing the building blocks of a template on the txtful-developers google group (please follow the link from the developers page). A good start is the getting started article. Please go ahead and ask any questions you might have. We would be very glad to get that group going.
Yea definitely. I wouldn't think Apple would use PayPal to process the credit card charges. I was just explaining why they might accept it as a form of payment.
Great point. If you send a message with just the letter h you get a list of your shortcuts. If you send h "shortcut name" you get detailed help.
Wow, did the company really not think that far ahead?

How difficult is it, really, to set up a service that can be scaled these days?

This is a good reason to hire the best systems- and programming-level guys you can. They wouldn't have overbuilt the system, but they would have thought far enough ahead to: "What if we need to scale?"
Any site that links to CI Host without it being a rick roll (or, more appropriately, goatse) fails by default.
Regarding 1), I'd recommend "The Unix Programming Environment".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unix_Programming_Environmen...

It's dated, but it is still one of the best expositions that I, in my limited experience, have seen.

I'm not certain about it as an introductory text to someone entirely new to programming. But it concisely and deeply explains a "philosophy" that is essential to good UNIX work and, I think, to programming in general.

Be careful in your resource selection. There is so much out there. A small fraction of those resources are the real gems. They convey the heart of the matter, and often in fewer pages than other resources that "beat around the bushes", becoming muddled or focusing on detail more than concepts.

Accumulating knowledge through reading and study can provide some sense of the lay of the land. When you encounter a topic, you may recognize it as fitting in "roughly over there". But it is practical work that is really going to motivate and solidify your knowledge. Find some things that interest you, and dig in. Rather than costing you time, they will turn concepts into the experience that brings real comprehension.
http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=VizionQuest
I agree that it always pays to do things the Right Way the first time through, but I completely disagree with the second half of the article where he argues that you should make your code as generic as possible from the get-go. In my experience this never saves "countless hours down the development line", it just wastes more time up front when your clever generic solution is never actually needed.
The collaborative-space-plus-private-retreat model has been discussed many times, and I favor it too. But I've never heard the library analogy before. That's very intriguing. Thanks!
Why does everyone keep saying that it is about image? I want to buy a prius because they get 50 mpg (at least), not because I'm in the business of doing whatever pleases you.
That's pretty awesome. You could probably extend this nicely to send you text messages when the status changes.
A loopless FizzBuzz
Whuu? Should we flag every blog that puts ads on their page? Look, it's one thing if there are 5 hosts listed, but this guy obviously put a ton of effort into gather this data.

Don't be so quick to pull the trigger, folks.
Agreed. I like the way it looks. I'm interested in the Honda Insight as a competitor.
Dentist sues over negative Yelp review
and yeah, the giving up of passwords to other services is a little tricky. i'm not opposed to it, but you have to prove yourself to be completely trustworthy and honorable.

i mean, paypal?!

also, the 5 number password consisting entirely of numbers that was given to me when i signed on.... so that's 10*5 = 100,000 passwords to check to break into someone's account? it seems a little low. why not a 20-character password consisting of letters, symbols and numbers?

the first page i go to when logging in for the first time should be a "change password" page, not a suggested link. or just get the password from the user when they register! :-)

otherwise, though, i love the idea. command line SMS for the real world. very cool. no need to remember which phone number to call.
I must admit, I have failed every one of these automated tests that I've ever taken. On the other hand, I've been offered every position I've ever interviewed in person for.

Maybe I just don't have a temperament suited for this sort of retail work?
The cubicle systems are supposed to be a bargain "in the long run" because you can move or reconfigure them, something which literally never happens in the real world

Sounds like a lot of software!
Good suggestion, we were just trying to follow others suggestions of making the sign-up form as short as possible.
The competition in the pizza-delivery business is brutal, these days. They have to adopt every tool to keep pace. In the 1980's, the field was wide open, and Domino's could afford to slack. Now, the field is packed with strong competitors such as Papa John's (founded by former Domino's execs), etc.
This Programmer's Stone has a lot to say about the whole subject, here's an entry point:

http://the-programmers-stone.com/about/implications-for-soft...
We'll beef it up!
PayPal offers a micropayments fee model with $0.05 transaction fee + 5%. It beats their standard model on transaction amounts up through $11.90.
Two spaces are a convention that arose when monospaced fonts were the norm. Now that proportional fonts are the norm, it's just an artifact.

This was my first thought as well, but why? A monospaced space is larger than a proportional space, so if you used two monospaced spaces, maybe now you should use three proportional spaces. Instead the space between sentences has gotten much smaller.
You can use this python script to order Domino's pizza from the command line:

http://ryochan7.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/pizza-py-party-02-r...
The case in question concerns New York state, where Amazon does not (to my knowledge, based on facts in the links above) have a warehouse.

Your case for wholly-owned warehouses is a reasonable one, and in fact, Amazon collects and pays sales taxes in several of those states.

The New York case is materially different in that it concerns marketing affiliates, not warehouse holding companies.
To say second marriages usually only occur in people whose first marriage failed, it seems to illustrate the point that people in fact have a lower chance to divorce in their second marriage.

In a sample of only divorced people, they've obviously learnt something because their 2nd marriage should be destined for 100% chance of failure because they've already illustrated they failed at marriage. Surely someone who has been divorced twice is guaranteed to fail? I mean they obviously picked poorly twice, so why does 26% of third marriages survive? Because obviously they've learnt from their mistakes, they're not choosing cheaters or losers the 3rd time?!

Obviously the numbers are going to be biased to lower percentages because there's more than just divorce's entering the 2nd and 3rd marriages, there's also widow/er's and such who already succeeded once as they made it to the whole 'until death do we part'. However, second marriages should be a lot more complex than first due to the addition of age, careers and children.

Edit: The thing never made clear in divorce statistics is something that seems to avoid common sense. You can only get married a second time if you've been divorced once, so the second marriage category is nearly 100% composed of divorce's as 50% of first marriages survive!

The real statistics are: 24.79% of total marriages fail. Out of 100 people 50 succeed the first time. Out of 50 people ~16.5 succeed the second time. Out of 33.5 people 8.71 people succeed the third time, meaning 24.79 people fail past a third marriage, that's less than 75% of the population; so really the gross marriage rate heads towards 100% success not 100% failure.

Interestingly 93% of fourth marriages end in divorce, which would show that roughly 23% of people are incapable of marriage. With this 23% removed, then the total success rate for marriage is 100%, that eventually people will end up in a successful marriage even after a failure or two.
What is the scope of Hackers in today's world? White-Hacking especially?
Can any one provide me with an answer please?
Okay great. Well, you go ahead and hack up your project in assembler, making sure to build everything (including the network stack) from scratch. Let's have a race. If only all of our competitors were as misled and arrogant as you. :)
What bloggers can learn from journalists
Completely forgot Mosso. Been using them for years. Didn't even mention AWS!
I'm sorry, but I didn't get it. I mean... WHY Snail Mail to Tweet? Can someone please explain me?
The only website where you can get real reviews from actual users is-
webhostingtalk.com
All other hosting review sites are sponsored by the hosting companies. (and the reviews in those sites are also written by them.)
I'd be happier if this article weren't behind a login wall.
Here is similar article related to design - etc (http://www.boalt.com/blog/2008/10/great-design-is-a-bottom-l...)
This is about as ridiculous as trying out one bad programming language and then writing an article titled "Why I Hate Programming Languages". Clearly the author has a problem with one particularly bad set of frameworks he's dealing with now, and one set of framework-making mentalities. Yes, there are bad frameworks. There are good frameworks too. I don't imagine anyone draws their own buttons on the screen anymore. To continue the discussion in any general format is useless, since there are countless examples of bad frameworks and countless counter-examples of good frameworks. A more compelling discussion would be one on what makes certain frameworks useful rather than trying to place a final value judgement on the idea entirely.
"Students Today Are Completely Full of Shit."
Thanks, but I'll hold out for pigeon-based tweets. Bird meets bird!
CodeIgniter 1.7.0 SQL Fix
/

s l i c

Phrase not found

back button
Add voice capabilities to allow us to call. Then using speech to text, you can process that as well.

On the home page rotate different texts within the cellphone screens.
Here is a clickable link - http://www.txtful.com/
Have they really simplified their site design recently? I remember looking at posterous briefly when it was mentioned on here before and thinking "why would I want to post stuff from email?".

Now I look at the site and think "hey, that looks like a simple way to post stuff online". Maybe it's because they don't require signup anymore (I assume they did before).

I'd be interested to what the home page looked like before but the Way Back Machine comes up blank.
"The ABC group wanted to isolate the user, as completely as possible, from the big, bad world of computers...ABC should be the only tool they ever needed. This desire also caused the ABC group to create a complete integrated editing environment, unique to ABC"

The problem with this design choice, is that it isolates you from the rest of the software ecosystem. This is why PHP became part of the LAMP stack and why Smalltalk became isolated and esoteric. In this sense, Perl, Ruby, and Python all made a beneficial choice to be good citizens in the Unix-like space.
Yes because psychology was built upon self administered tests. The idea that a person is competent enough to even understand the test is in question. Either way you get what you pay for.
I have to find my copy of Snow Crash. That beginning of that novel might foreshadow how cut-throat the pizza delivery business is in the future.
Wall Street Not Impressed With Bartz As Next Yahoo CEO
Clinical depression is not different.

Clinical depression is defined as being depressed for 6 months or more. Most doctors wouldn't prescribe anti-depressants to someone who has been depressed less than that.

If your wife leaving you resulted in a 6-month depression, you should go on anti-depressants. You would be clinically depressed, regardless of the cause.
Or the 80 cheapest hosts that promise everything. Heck, it looks like 20% of them offer "unlimited" bandwidth and storage. These hosts do have their place - they provide an easy and cheap way for many people to get a simple online presence. Calling them the "best" really stretches it, doesn't it?
>But whiteboard gets chosen by non-experts

Presumably, non-experts in the details of your opinion about whiteboards vs. blackboards?
End products are finished. If something requires assembly, it is not an end product.
Advertising is a medium of information, not a substitute for it. I think the moral is that people love free trials and it's essential to test your landing pages.
Good typesetting systems such as (La)TeX ignore the typed spaces; instead, they handle the situation automatically by inserting extra space after periods, regardless of the spacing in the source text.
I had this happen, at the idea stage. Not that I necessarily would have proceeded, anyway, but it caused me further hesitation.

A year+ later, the "competitor" site has not taken off.

There is concept and design. Then there is also execution. If you believe you can exceed in execution, this, in my mind, is a valid reason to proceed. Just keep in mind that your target market is not yours alone, and that this may influence your chances of success. If you are still willing to proceed, I don't see an "ethical" issue here, as long as you're not simply viewing the competitor and ripping everything off.

If you are concerned about perception, you might (I'm not sure about this, both from a marketing perspective and from a legal perspective) simply explain where your product comes from and why you are doing it. People will believe you or they won't, but being straight-forward and proactive in this might pre-emptively blunt some criticism.

I wouldn't mention or would be cautious in describing your competitor's decline to cooperate; it might sound negative and/or reactionary on your part. Focus on what is motivating you and what you hope to achieve.
Which basically amounts to "Don't write a twitter client" right now.
Agreed. I'm a TA for a CS course here and we have open office hours where the students can come and do their homework and ask questions as they come up, which I can then answer on the board (I'm not going to say if it's black or white so as not to alienate those who apparently feel strongly about this issue), benefitting not only the student with the question but also whoever else is there. I've had students help each other in my office hours too. That's not something you're going to get with SEE.
John Soong, 18, says that after he had failed to get jobs at several chains that use the test, he began to poke around for an answer key, driven by "altruistic, and maybe vengeful," motives.

Awesome.
Is there a follow up to this story? It seems like there would be some response.
I love reading posts like this. Something about hearing the non-PC version of ideas make me smile inside. Same was with the Kindergarchy article (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/00...). Same with people who argue that those that are successful aren't just successful because they're solely "lucky", but actually put in the hard work. Ditto for Elizer's post on Overcoming Bias that claimed that the successful actually are more talented, gifted and intelligent than "average" people. Even if its distorted more towards pessimism than the usual "feel-good" posts on success, I would still believe it more.

I just don't understand why there is almost no pessimism in main-stream media. I guess it doesn't scale.
Long term (i.e. a year from now) these features will be provided for free by all cloud providers.

Also, this is the same thing that everyone else is working on. Aren't we up to 10 cloud management consoles now?

You're going to have to do better than this.
word. the whole getting users to register is a big problem with lots of paths. you know, you probably don't need email addresses, though. you just need people's phone numbers, right? the whole thing could be sms based, right? nothing wrong with registering online, but one could also make a register with txtful shortcut!
That's because it's an affiliate page, and a brilliant one at that. Where is the column for referral payout?
It's funnier with the Xzibit reference.
I gotcha.

"When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else

music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery

...Pizza delivery is a major industry. A managed industry. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. Came in its doors unable to write an English sentence, from Abkhazia, Rwanda, Guanajuato, South Jersey, and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand."
hence the controversy
Steve Jobs guided the design of the Pixar building. Here's a quote from Brad Bird (director of The Incredibles, Ratatouille):

"Then there's our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center--which initially drove us crazy--so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company."

Edit: here's the source article, although you'd have to register to read the whole thing: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/innovation_lessons_from_pix...
At least this one looks better than the last-gen Prius. Probably still has the same handling and acceleration characteristics of a dead llama, though.

Rather than this hybrid nonsense, I would love to see some of the fun little city cars (like the Aygo) arrive over here in the US. Better mileage, yet still peppy and fun to drive.
Crappy that they didn't respond to your ticket, but it shows the resilience of the open source model. You have the tools needed to fix and improve things yourself and then give it back to help others. No reliance on a vendor's timetable.
I'm more interested in the IM side of things (working with XMPP a lot). I use a lot of XMPP tools daily and I like the fact that your service aggregates lots of tool in one bot.

But I don't like the idea of going on the web site to "activate" shortcuts. I'd like to have something like I'm writing "amazon", it writes me back the options I can do (pricing, searching, buying). If the option needs a user/pass, it sends me a URL to a simple form where I can enter them (or ask them to me directly... you are TLS encrypted right?).

If I'm using your service, it's because that I want to minimize the time I spend clicking throught a web site.

But you had a great idea! Congrats!
I agree, the statistics seem to show that divorcees should have a huge failure rate, however all evidence seems to indicate that their judgment improves after they've been divorced, as the second marriage rate is surprisingly close to first marriages to say its composed almost entirely of people who failed the first time.
Here in Cambridge, MA, I think there are an awful lot of people who want YOU to know that THEY are driving a hybrid. IMO, the Prius hybrid didn't bury the Civic hybrid because it was better (it is for city, not for highway), but rather because the Civic hyrid looks like a normal Civic, which doesn't allow for an ostentatious display of smugness. http://torontoist.com/2007/08/green_plate_par.php
Have a look at http://jott.com/ for speech to text.