skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
they have too many employees, my guess its an inferiority complex....big site? means you need to have big company to back it up...meanwhile 1 person sites like plentyoffish are raking it in w/o huge costs
you never heard of craigslist?
Mapleoin's vim tips #1
Help Child Soldiers Fight
This is absolute nonsense.

Alexa doesn't place POF anywhere near the top 100 US websites (they have it at 466, actually). Now, I'm not claiming that Alexa is the gold-standard for accuracy, but if you're truly a top-20 site, you're going to be so immense that nobody would confuse you for a top-500 site. It's like confusing an aircraft carrier for a tugboat.

For whatever it's worth, here's the Alexa 10-20:

10. AOL
11. Amazon.com
12. craiglist.org
13. Blogger.com
14. Go.com
15. CNN.com
16. ESPN.com
17. Photobucket
18. Microsoft.com
19. Comcast.net
20. Flickr.com

Tell me again how plentyoffish is larger than Flickr, Microsoft and CNN -- I have a bridge to sell you. It's nice.
It's not "fair use" to reproduce someone else's copyrighted content in its entirety, link or no link. You also can't take an entire U2 album and post it, along with a link to the iTunes store.
AOL mail #14? Sweet mercy.
Saying you can do X when all it takes is a few days to get up to speed is not the same as a direct lie. A lie would be I can do X because I have been doing X for 10 years aka faking credentials. The are several times where I helped someone fix their code where I had no idea what language they where using. I never said I knew the language just "I think I can help" and more often than not I did.
I disagree completely.

One of the best skills to learn is to see through fluff and understand what is going on. I'd actually say that the best first language to learn would be assembly language. It's insanely simple, but there's a lot of fluff, so you have to learn how to 'read' code in terms of overall structure/flow instead of focusing on each individual instruction.

I'm still not convinced learning in classes is going to produce anything but mediocre programmers though.
Construction deck hot tub
"I think that would just result in a lot of students dropping out."

Good. Perhaps there would be less mediocre/bad developers around.
Easter Eggs, illegal in most countries. Now you know.
Where's it going? The 80 person staff is a good place to start.

http://digg.com/about/

There's no reason the site couldn't be run by five people.
Why do they 'need' it? If voice recognition were completely perfect, they would not need it.
As much as I agree with the message that forcing children to act as soldiers is atrocious, I strongly disagree with their proposition that anyone who is not acting to prevent it is actually propping up the injustice.
Format support is limited to PDF and TXT files, but the
device ships with Foxit's PC-based PDF Creator software,
which is said to convert any printable document with formats
including TXT, PPT, DOC, XLS, and HTML to PDF document format.

Not really useful. It doesn't support Kindle books and I buy all my books at Amazon.

Also found this:

http://thekindle.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/free-books-for-the...
I don't think syntax is the problem the problem is getting people to understand that programming is about changing what's going on in memory. In math when you solve (X + 7) = 15 the value of X does not change but when you say X = 7 the value of X changes.

IMO, the only thing which would help most into students "get coding" is using an inline debugger to step though their code and understand what's happening. Because people don't get the idea that software is a dynamic thing once you run it.
To be widely used, it should be integrated into editors and IDEs. My experience is that programmers in general are so lazy, that most of them won't bother with refactoring tools unless it's right there for them as a keypress or a menu item.
That's right. The correct technique for pulling an all-nighter is to realize that you're making a terrible mistake and not to do it anymore. Your brain really doesn't work very well without sleep. You may learn to pretend that it does, but that's not helpful.

Having said that, back when I didn't understand this I did figure out that it was a waste of time to stay up literally all night. At 3am or 4am you should go to sleep for two or three hours.
I'd like to say that Django is actually the most promising Web framework that i know.

But in #10, i think that "Can deploy on _SOME_ shared hosting" would be more accurate (For example you can install it on Dreamhost shared hosting, but it's more of a hack). And installing MySQL-Python library can be a bit tricky if you are new to compiling your own stuff.
Forth, Factor, and Io are languages that come to mind that have "no syntax". Ruby is certainly at the "more syntax" end of the spectrum.

puts(("foo #{bar} %s %s" % [bat, baz]) * 2.+(0b0010))

There are a huge number of syntax rules in that line.
Learning to see through the fluff is not a beginner skill. I'll just stop here and say I think you'd make a poor teacher because you show little if any empathy or awareness of what it means to not know something or how important it is for a beginner to have small successes and working programs right from the start.
Why You Should Drop Twitter Tool Qwitter Like A Bad Habit
Now on Slashdot:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F20%2...
Not to mention free as in beer.
Would it matter if humans were also creative of resources, rather than simply consumptive of resources?
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR0...

Our whole evolution up to this point shows that human groups spontaneously evolve patterns of behavior, as well as patterns of training people for that behavior, which tend on balance to lead people to create rather than destroy. Humans are, on net balance, builders rather than destroyers. The evidence is clear: the civilization which our ancestors have bequeathed to us contains more created works than the civilization they were bequeathed.

In short, humankind has evolved into creators and problem-solvers. Our constructive behavior has counted for more than our using-up and destructive behavior, as seen in our increasing length of life and richness of consumption.

This view of the average human as builder conflicts with the view of the average human as destroyer which underlies the thought of many doomsdayers. From the latter view derive such statements as "The U.S. has 5 percent of the population, and uses 40 percent of resources," without reference to the creation of resources by the same U.S. population. (Also involved here is a view of resources as physical quantities waiting for the plucking, rather than as the services that humankind derives from some combination of knowledge with physical conditions.) If one notices only the using-up and destructive activities of humankind, without understanding that constructive patterns of behavior must have been the dominant part of our individual-cum-social nature in order for us to have survived to this point, then it is not surprising that one would arrive at the conclusion that resources will grow scarcer in the future.
Is there global issue that can't be solved by a witty youtube video produced by insulated white Americans? You hear that, Africa! Your children should be in enrolled at your local suburban high school! Knives are wrong! Shame on you!
Most of this is good advice, though seemingly common sense.

"Set the alarm, eat breakfast, exercise, shower, get dressed; whatever your normal routine is before commuting to the office. Try to do the same thing when working from home."

This is the exact routine I started to use and it has really helped to get moving in the morning.
I like the idea behind HARO, it's just a pain for me to go through the listings they send out 3 times a day.
<pedant mode>
java.lang.System is class, not a namespace (although classes in Java are overloaded to function as namespaces as well as modules and data type definitions). println() is not a static method, but an instance method of the java.io.PrintStream class. out is a static variable in the System class of type PrintStream which refers to an instance of that class, on which we invoke the method println().
</pedant mode>

...which is a lot to demand of a beginner to understand in his very first program.

I'm self-taught myself, and for me, having a humanities background, C/assembly and Scheme was a perfect combination for understanding both how computers actually work and what computation is all about (to the extent that I understand either!).

I think Java is a nice language in many ways, but I think its dominant position as a teaching language is due to market demand more than any inherent suitability for that role.
Watch concerts and live music free
Well I don't believe that you need to posit a fundamental consciousness-property to explain collapse. There are clearer explanations that rely only on what physicists (mostly) already accept, which David Albert explains well: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Experience-David-Alb...
But maybe you do need to posit that to explain things like thoughts and feelings.
I'm more inclined to agree with Krugman than mises.org or reason.com, but I don't want to see any of them here.
I called R.A.I.S.E. the Intelligent Search Engine I made for the company's web site:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040416123830/www.reteambiente.i... ("CERCA nel sito")

I was fired.
Yeah I hear ya. If you use Gmail you can create a filter so it doesn't hit your inbox and just check it weekly
Reading the comments, I'm confused by the apparent hate. When I saw the article, I thought, "Hey, isn't this a mostly-solo operation? That's impressive."

Am I missing something? Is it just that people think the site is low class?
Ok, after some playing I think I got this.

First of all, I don't think it works in Google Chrome (Windows XP) .. every station I tried just errored saying it couldn't load the stream. Same stations worked in Firefox.

The interface is neat, but when I typed my artist in I got a list of random radio stations. It would be nice to show us a tiny bit more info on the station before I load it

It seems more obscure artists are totally broken. Try typing "Godspeed you! Black emperor" I love the band, but I know they most likely won't show up on online radio due to the length of songs and the results seem to show that .. got a bunch of weird results that did not even match the artist at all (Soul? No.)

Either way ... Very interesting I have to say, will definitely give it a few more tries.

Edit: Also needs some volume normalization. Getting my brain blasted despite being on Volume-2 on some stations and then a nice quiet sound on others is no fun.
A lot of it is about motivation.

I took AP Comp. Science. A in freshman year of high school. I got a 5 on the exam. An A in the class. I'd be so excited each day as I went to class. This was the peak of my new found love with programming.

Then in senior year I took AP Comp. Science AB. I did just-okay in the class. And bombed the AP exam.

More telling was how little I cared about the poor grades.
It's been interesting to watch the decline of the App Store from a license to print money to a source of frustration for developers. The App Store is operating like a microcosm of the overall market for PC software, but at an accelerated rate. With no manufacturing cost acting as a check, there's always a temptation to give away software if doing so bolsters another, more lucrative line of business - particularly if everyone else is also racing to the bottom.
Gnip: Numbers + Architecture
I agree I would make a bad teacher for a general class. I think programming skill is largely natural talent and isn't something that can be taught.
I'd also say that the biggest skill anyone can have is the ability to self learn. Being taught the fundamentals of programming in a class doesn't bode well for future hacker ability IMHO.

If someone has a natural talent for it, it can be nurtured, but trying to teach just anyone how to program is the reason we have so many mediocre programmers in the industry. Some people should give up on programming.

Imagine anyone could go to art college, get a job as an artist, and be employed at big industries "blending in" and never really rated on their art work. This is the issue with programming. At the moment, there's this strange belief that anyone can be a great programmer - that it's just typing. Mediocre and bad programmers who may have a piece of paper saying they completed courses, are allowed jobs in industry.
Actually, tiredness can attenuate some AD(H)D symptoms. I sometimes used to procrastinate until the last minute, then put in an incredibly productive night/morning to wrap up a project. And I cranked out some pretty good stuff.

But, I was young, then, and those projects were relatively limited in scope. I didn't know at the time that ADD existed; this was just the way I'd found to get such things done. (And I hated all the fear and dread it put me through.)

So, it may not be an optimal approach, but in some circumstances, the all-nighter can perhaps be enabling.
PoF was essentially the firstest with the mostest. One of the first free dating sites started by an obsessive, incessantly self-promoting founder. It was started at a time that was just right to take advantage of the huge online dating boom that occurred ~late 03-04 and became a media darling because of its 'story'.

The PoF 'Story': A one man operation started in his apartment, with the aim of providing a free alternative to the complicated, expensive pay sites. And then out of nowhere, overnight people started showing up in droves! Millions of them.

... or at least thats the story. Everyone loves the Cinderella, wild success against all odds kind of stories.

PoF (and most all online dating sites) are a testament to what people are willing to endure in their quest to find 'love'. Dating sites have been taking advantage of lonely people for far too long.

I started FlowMingle ( http://flowmingle.com ) because I felt that it was time for a major shift in how things are done. Things are going to change.
This is a good analysis of one specific example of the more general point that religious pluralism in a country tends to result in more active participation in religion. American evangelical Christians are sometimes puzzled by why European Christians seem to have so little involvement with their faith, but that's readily understandable in the context of state-supported churches (that is, churches that people subsidize with their taxes) that often have huge nominal market share in each country. American churches have to work harder to keep support, and they do more to appeal to and motivate their members.
Warner Music Group videos disappearing from YouTube. Both sides take credit
Cool! It's not too late for someone who has fire in the belly to do research.
That argument doesn't scale. Devote literally 100% of your waking hours to helping child soldiers, and you're still an asshole because you don't care about your carbon footprint... to pick one example out of the thousands of things worth caring about.
Because it provides a straight-forward way to let you find local people interested in dating. It's ugly (at least it was when I was using it two years back -- before I happily found my s.o. through the site) but it's fast, simple and works.

For those of you using dating sites who only find people interested in e-mailing, here's an unsolicited tip: Ask the person you're interested in out for drinks right after receiving a response to your initial 'Hi'.

Just cut through the crap and get to the point. You'll easily weed out the flirts and chatters and meet many more people in the process. That's why you're on the site in the first place, right?
some of these are legitimate complaints. but i'm having trouble working up any outrage, because i like the stdio interface. personally, i paper over the defects by not using stdio directly. i write wrappers around it, then write tests, neither of which has to be revisited very often.

i guess the most pressing issue is shaky support for anything but ascii. that's dealt with in the short term via utf8, and in the long term by expanding the size of 'char' to 32 bits, i hope.
The point of it all is that POF is the number one dating site in the U.S and last time I checked he was making over $10 million a year ...obviously he is doing something right .
The reason why a lot of people fail is because they don't want to acknowledge a formular that works and instead spend "plenty of time" trying to discredit any news that looks too good .

Thats a formular thats working - He has few servers 1 or 2 employees and he makes millions ... just learn from what he is doing and hope that you can be as successful . Dont spend time saying that the number one dating site sucks because that sounds silly because it is number 1 for a reason and that reason is not luck .

You have to change the way you think by studying the way other successful people think . If they way you think is not bringing you success then maybe you should consider thinking like people that are successful think .

Goooooooooood Luuuuuuuuuuuck
Could you produce just as well with one machine and a smaller monitor?

Actually, no. Studies have shown that bigger monitors make just about everyone more productive -- one estimates 2.5 hours per day in savings:

http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/03/10/bigger-computer-moni...

The study did find that extremely large monitors are less effective (this might be an ergonomic artifact. They didn't differentiate between one doubleplusbig monitor and two singleplusbig), so you'd be on firmer groud if you'd said:

"Could I produce more with ... a bigger monitor than what I've got now? Maybe yes, maybe no, but I'd definitely be more jazzed or enthusiastic about getting started."
I believe you can still set your language preferences in Google to "bork bork bork". An homage?
I was thinking about this very thing earlier today. Everyone is talking about business models and funding when it came to Twitter, Facebook and more recently Digg. What's wrong with staring up a big web service just because you want to do it?

Kudos to Twitpic
Amazon CTO named as CTO of the Year for Cloud Computing and AWS
Ask HN: Saving time in sysadmin
Lately I've found myself too much involved in sysadmin, editing configuration files, monitoring certain things and writing scripts by hand.

My stack is Ubuntu 8.04, MySQL, Apache and Django.

I have used webmin. I was wondering if there are any other good tools out there which can save my time. I have used webmin which I've found really helpful but any other stuff? What do you use for sys admin related stuff?
Q&A with Amazon CTO Werner Vogels (part 2 of IW CTO of the Year)
Try and automate the repetitive bits. Python is a great language for that kind of thing.
In Python you can always do:

import sys
sys.stdout.write("Hello world!\n")

if you really need this level of detail as a teacher.
As a designer (primarily) with some basic PHP and Ruby on Rails knowledge, Django has been surprisingly easy for me to "figure out." The generic views are very useful and the only thing that seemed particularly foreign to me were the regular expression URLs, but there are plenty of references for figuring those out :)

Plus, Python syntax is so...pretty.
You shouldn't be compiling your own packages. Then you have to pay close attention to bug fixes, new versions, etc.

Instead, sudo apt-get install python-mysqldb

See: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/11/installing-mysql...

[edit: I know you are talking about shared hosting plans, which are a different beast, but the general rule that you shouldn't compile your own stuff is still valid.]
It could very well be the single biggest one. In europe they'd probably need deals for each and every country. (Which require money and time.) The same would go for the rest of the world.

(Also, the farther away from American culture the less precise their classification base would get with regards to the local culture's. Think of Chinese music - which sounds atonal to a lot of westeners.)
It's not really insightful to critique an issue ad for not itself solving the issue it's raising awareness for. You could apply the same superficial analysis to any awareness ad.
Just because you're frustrated at the sheer number of things that need to be dealt with doesn't mean that those concerns aren't valid.
Now we heard it on the Internets.
Is it too late at that point?
You liked the Adam Savage Video? Check it this one of Peter Diamandis
I .. err .. know of a product that has a clickable Pi symbol in the About box. When clicked with Ctrl and Shift held down and if your account nickname is Sandra Bullock it tells you how many other people figured this out :-)

http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/9836/egg1by2.png

http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/7530/egg2zu2.png

http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/8361/egg3mv6.png

This is an internal beta, this stuff will be taken out from the the production release.
I think programming skill is largely natural talent and isn't something that can be taught.

I disagree, sort of; thinking logically is the natural talent, being good at programming is a mere side effect. People who are inherently bad at associating cause and effect, just aren't going to be good at anything that requires logic and rational thinking.

but trying to teach just anyone how to program is the reason we have so many mediocre programmers in the industry.

No it isn't, people who have no natural talent for programming don't just do it for no reason, they do it because the pay is attractive and this is one of the few fields where one can get a pretty high paying job without any degree at all.

The dot com boom and the absurdly high salaries that were thrown out to anyone that could slap together some HTML is the reason we're currently stuck with so many mediocre programmers. As long as someone can fake it, and land a nice paying job, hordes of mediocre fakers will continue calling themselves programmers.

It's not even that these people can't be taught to program well, they simply have no interest in programming well. They learn just enough to get by, collect a paycheck, and go home. The thing missing isn't ability, it's interest. This isn't something limited to our field either, it happens in any field where $$ is not linked to actual performance or proof of skill; managers are another good example.
Why aren't people going to chase you out of the market with pitchforks and torches? This is a severe privacy violation.
These are the type of projects that are picked up and dropped repeatedly. And as such, they are years in the undertaking.

I'd go so far as to say an ADD-type personality (the kind who is always in the midst of a million projects, but completing none) is the most likely candidate for pursuing these type of projects. It might not even be something you realize until years in-
Check out puppet: http://reductivelabs.com/projects/puppet/

I sort of want to build a startup around making a distro that maintains itself.
Counter argument: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/12/madoff_as_metap....
Very cool. Always impressive to see other 'lone founders' making good stuff.
I think someday that hack will be closed in the browser as a privacy violation, so I would be hesitant to build a business based on it.
Misleading title. The article actually compares digg to sites with a similar model and points out how much more profitable they are. Titles matter...

Also, digg's design is poor. It has too much space spent on borders. With a cleaner interface, it would have more add space to monetize.
I had a lot of 'business management' lessons when I studied economics. Most of them were so full of emptiness that I came to think that most of a business degree is part of faking it, a kind of symbolic ritual. (There were however a minority of useful things like accounting, controlling, tax laws).

If I remember well, I also read in a book about german economic history that business schools were created mainly to allow business people to boast degrees just like medical doctors and engineers.