skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hi. I work for a company that does a huge amount of prototypes for all types of companies and industries. I would recommend using Google's sketchup over all the other options. It's free and gives you much better results than other software packages, even the ones you pay for. Doing something in rhino looks nice on the computer but is a huge pain when you go to actually create it because it doesn't have basic mechanical structure to it.

Check out www.protocafe.com They do a great job with everything i send them. Cheap and professional.
The key point of the article:

"What's much more likely is that the Web, through its links, and Google, through its search algorithms, have inadvertently set into motion a very strong feedback loop that amplifies popularity and, in the end, leads us all, lemminglike, down the same well-trod path - the path of least resistance."

I couldn't agree more. I hope that a good number of HN readers are working on the next disruptive force rather than continuing to prop up the status quo.
Google has failed to execute well on GAE. What's the point of automatic scalability if you have usage caps? Why has it taken so long to get a payment plan? The platform isn't the right choice for anyone yet, and it's taking too long to get there.
I missed this on the first read:

:"What you're moving is information, not the actual atoms," says Chris Monroe, from the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland in College Park and an author of the paper. But as two particles of the same type differ only in their quantum states, the transfer of quantum information is equivalent to moving the first particle to the location of the second.:
In addition to that, some (many?) entrepreneurs build something users want and see their apps grow. But, then, they see their friends doing something else that's growing even faster. And, being optimists, decide that they can run two projects at the same time. So they launch a pet project so as not to miss out on that other opportunity. I've done it, and I know a lot of excellent entrepreneurs do it.

The thing is, it's sometimes the right thing to do. My last pet project grew much faster than my main project, and it ended up being my main project. And I'm happy it happened that way. But there is no way to know in advance how it's going to go.
Any idea why the government officials stop them from building anything?
"If it flies, floats, or <fornicates>, it's cheaper to rent."
Re: Lipstick.com... Business model must have worked as that was a CondeNet site.
the main reason I'm still here is because of the "review my stuff" posts.
I agree with you completely. "Rock Star" programmers, or programmers who at least have that "Rock Star" mentality, are clever enough to realize that doing a shitty job on a project they openly dislike means in the future they won't have to work on projects they dislike.

Due to their "Rock Star" mentality they can rationalize this poor work ethic because they truly believe they are benefiting everyone: "it's far better for me to kick ass with the XYZ project then to do this crappy ABC project"

Trust me, I've been in that position (rock star). There's something more to "rock star" than just passion... they are aware of their rock star status.

IMO, rock star programmers are good if you can handle them. You need to make them believe that what they are working on is of the utmost importance that they specifically were assigned it precisely because of it's importance and because of their capability. That's the best motivation for a rock star.

Otherwise I agree with TomOfTTB: some rock stars, but more drones.
10pm and 4am.
Agreed. It's not a lack of evangelism, it's arbitrary usage caps and result limits that make GAE a pain to use effectively.

Although I suppose you could say this means it also suffers from anti-evangelism, because after using it for a project I warned everyone else that was interested, "It's not ready, don't bother."
I respectfully disagree. He died protecting someone he loved, taking out an evil guy in the process. Thats as good a death as I could ask for.
Quantum information teleported between distant atoms
You're funny :)
I've seen that increasingly they have been streaming by
Most preferably, 8pm - 2am or so, but I rarely actually get to spend those hours programming.
Y Combinator plants permanent roots in Bay Area
Trivial parsing with stacks
Just because a programmer codes something for fun on his own time doesn't mean he's going to have fun coding your app too.
Perhaps some kind of incentive should be introduced?

One way could be to reward "early promoters", eg. give karma to the first users that up-vote a story, which later makes it to the front page or reaches a certain number of votes.
Google Throttles Back on Data Center Spending
Would you bear with me for just a second, please?

What if - and believe me this is a hypothetical - but what if you were offered some kind of a stock option equity sharing program. Would that do anything for you?
Like someone mentioned below, resin works as well. its a great way to do additive design, adding material over time to get the thickness or curvature over time.
With random pivot selection, quicksort is expected O(n log n) time for all inputs. (The expectation is over the set of random numbers used to pick the random pivots, and doesn't involve the input at all). Algorithms like this are called "las-vegas".
You might try a sculpting class at your local community college. It'll get you some basic skills, resources to use, and be inexpensive. Talk to the teacher at some point in class about what you'd like to do. If more of your ideas run this way you'll have a good start.

My prototypes usually start out on engineering paper, get a few quick 3D CAD drawings, then get made up in polymer clay as a form for a mold for shell casting. The 3D step is new, and hasn't eliminated the clay stage, where I still catch problems and see new opportunities that the computer doesn't bring out for me.

So I'll make a solid item out of polymer clay, then press that into more clay to make a negative mold. Then I make a shell casting by putting mold release on the negative form, pouring in some liquid acrylic, and wobbling the mold in my hand to let the acrylic build up a shell over the whole surface. There are other ways I use, too, but this is a favorite quick and dirty method.

There are books on plastic casting that teach the basics, but there's nothing like hands on in a class with an instructor, even if all you're doing in the class is learning the basic sculpting skills and tools.
I don't ever promote because in the last month or so, when I am logged in to HN, each page load takes about 20-35 seconds.

That kind of performance keeps me logged out. Can someone shed some light on why it is so slow?
Same here. Between 11pm - 4am. I'm not sure why, but I just feel much less distracted at night. Maybe it's the feeling that it's calm everywhere or maybe because daytime at office, with low cubicles, is full of noise and movement. Even with my noise-canceling headphones, I can never escape the feeling of movement and noise around me.

Sometimes, I sneak into an empty conference room when I've to really focus during the day.
Instead of following the blog, you might want to check out the appengine group:
http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine

I'm actually quite impressed with their work. The platform (despite its limitations) is extremely easy to work on and they seem to be implementing features & fixing bugs at a good pace.

They also hold a bi-monthly IRC chat with developers.
AMD reports $1.4 billion loss as it follows Intel down
I have doubts that he's making $200 an hour w/ that app, especially with AdMob. We dropped admob b/c of the terrible returns, check their forums.
Haha, too bad outsourcing would be bad conventions.
Also the Palm Pre App Catalog is 100% smaller than IPhone's.
Or you could check all the new postings with RSS.

http://news.ycombinator.com/rss
Intel Layoffs - 6000 Jobs To Be Cut
I get to work around 10:00am, but actually start coding at around 5pm and code for about 2 hours and accomplish more than I did from 10-5. I feel like all these people around me are just trying to cause some kinda intelligence vacuum.
Could someone with edit permissions fix the link removing the # at the end (and delete this comment)? Thanks
Pirating the 2009 Oscars
Really? I've always felt as if my dad being a software engineer really helped me foster a love for compsci. I mean, if he never said "hey son come here and check this out -- you can transfer stuff to the internet with this black box (cmd) and make cool pages your friends can see (websites in bare html)" -- I doubt I would have been as into the web as I am today if my dad didn't at least try to show me the stuff.
Twitterers fall for Steve Jobs hoax
Really... what did you think you were going to accomplish by choosing that user name?
Google Releases AJAX API Playground
However, straw burns- and mildews, rather easily. I'm sure they have ways to minimize the negative consequences of this, but I think the dirt houses may be easier?

What do they use for roofing on the Eco-Domes?
The more I think about alternative solutions, the more the present, conservative (less vulnerable to being gamed) approach. The occasional reminder (like this one) is helpful: I know I get used to just scanning the front page.
As a compromise: what about a "new" that was set apart (in color, location, etc.) a little to act as a reminder?
(psst: Paul, I think he's referring to Office Space.)
Awesome job guys! I LOVE the idea and submitted an idea of my own. Anyone in HN want to implement this? =P

http://revolutiontakesflight.com/items/Exercise_bicycles_und...
Reward them with extra downvotes :)
Efficiency- Sign of the times
Use blue foam and get some razor blades and sandpaper. That should do it for the first few iterations.
I didn't even know it was there. I'll keep it in mind now. In fact, I don't understand half of the features of hn, and I've been using it for more than a month. There really should be a user guide or FAQ or something.
A video of the demo would be nice to look at.
Rules of the Game
That would make karma even more of a "guess who the average person would think the average person would think would win a beauty contest" game.
....yeah, that's where both quotes are from....
So is Paul ;)
DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 71 - Jason Threw One Up
Not that this site needs to be like Reddit, but it pseudo randomly shows one of the new submissions as a separate first item on the front page. Something like this might be roughly equivalent to putting the newest 5 at the bottom of the front page though given that this site has a much smaller user base.
I code when I can, between meetings.

Offsite, it's when I can.
The account was registered 211 days ago. Was this the opportunity they were waiting for?
I also clicked on a logo, expecting it to change the picture beneath it. Completely agree, audience already knows about these sites, and besides, the UI suggests it's going to switch the picture.
That was a good one. Although watching him rave about fungi, I couldn't shake the feeling that if it came down to survival of nature with Fungi at the top, or humanity without fungi, he'd pick fungi every time....is it just me? He's definitely passionate! =)
That is a killer national slogan, I'd go there just for the country with enough of a sense of humour to use it.
By the description in the article, sounds a lot like that japanese mobile app from Techcrunch50.. Sekai Camera, from TonchiDot.

Anyone remembers their Q&A? "Join us".

edit: swapspace's link made me think it has little to do with Sekai... One is targetting business and the other, end consumers.
No such thing as Angels
Yeah, but then there'd need to be a karma penalty for up-voting stories that don't (or you could karma pharm by up-voting everything).
Getting crunched
I was searching for the same thing. This came up:
http://www.mobvis.org/demos.htm
What's next after Web 2.0?
Besides, the obvious pg-prefixed name to create for trolling would be pg-13.
and here are the demo videos: http://www.mobvis.org/downloads.htm
Ha! I'll report back in 3 weeks when I finally hear from them.
well its too early a call, but one thing is it is not unsuccessful...

you are all aware with the limitations (eg comet support and cron jobs being the biggest), but it is still not bad for quick prototyping and even releasing sites with medium levels of complexity (ive written a simple chess site - wizchess.appspot.com - does the basic game play and all but lots lots lots of polish required)...

but it certainly goes with google's philosopy of "fail often, fail early" (or the other way around).. essentially they are developing the api in tangent with developers who require new features though it has been slow late i think...
Digg's math isn't the best either. They're cutting 10% of 75 people, so who was the .5? Either someone time got cut in half or they literally got cut in half.
That shows you every article that makes the front page, it does not show you articles that people have just submitted. An RSS feed for all submissions might be nice, but refreshing the new page every 30 minutes or so is also sufficient. Since they roll down in order you don't lose your place, but the front page articles "jump" into whatever place the algorithm determines, which is why I prefer to read the front page via RSS.
I built an app on it a while back http://gflix.appspot.com to go with the Netflixprize competition.
While the inability to bulk-upload data (without workarounds), and the data size limits are rather annoying, it does work well and looks promising, especially given that it is only a few months old.

I think the primary advantage is being able to harness Google's architecture for zippy data retrieval, but they then handicap it by putting limits on how much data you can dump. They probably will offer a tiered pricing structure to allow massive dataset uploads.
Boot stamping on human face etc.
Perhaps the greatest threat of this increasingly social web is not how it will be sustained; talks of pricing, advertising, business models like everyone speculates, maybe the greatest threat to the social web is the ability to spark a wildfire of misinformation when one (seemingly) credible source flubs a story.

Realistically, here's your evidence. People read a blog, and it spreads like a wildfire. The social web has in essence, taught us how to forget the most ancient, yet still relevant quote about information:

"It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought, without fully accepting it".

Checking your "sources" doesn't mean finding another website that simply says the same thing.
> People went to Google to find specific information about the President-Elect and the ceremony. People go to Twitter and Facebook to share the experience with one another. That means, Twitter and Facebook are delighting users more than Google

Did I really just read that?
That's a "Keynesian beauty contest" for anyone who's interested.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest )
frankly guys i dont see why this has to be argued... people want stuff, you give it...

i mean we are all in hackernews, what do you think PG's mantra is?

yes i understand it is belittling to think that "talents" of all you smart and genius programmers is going to write some iJunk app, but i say ponder about the futility of that sipping your martinis on a beach!!
This seems expensive. $50/yr + one time $25 + $70 daily? The hourly rate is cool I guess ($10) but really, standard car rental places are pretty cheap.
This could be solved by using the one-box method that Reddit uses - make the top of the home page a new story without regards to popularity. I like that feature a lot.

Let's be real - people are going to do what's in their best interest - not what is good for the community. So, let's not count on people to vote and go to the New page. I think it's better to count on software engineering here, instead of social engineering.
Gorgeous site.
It's also probably not true. It may happen, but there's no evidence it was intended that way. Layoffs are often done slowly in tranches.
Open letter to Obama re: software patent reform
Why Microsoft Is A Dying Giant.
Based on her profile it seems to just be her initials. Maybe she saw that pg was taken and appended an underscore?
Selling SaaS
Thanks! That is awesome
Agreed, I think 200$/hr is probably an exaggeration. Although as a developer I would love to hear otherwise.

I found this post from a couple years ago about admob:
http://venturebeat.com/2007/08/07/admob-ups-ante-in-mobile-a...

The comments thread is interesting. Apparently admob is mostly a CPC company not CPM. I can only imagine how low the clickthrough rate for golf resorts in hawaii on a sound bomb app are.
I think Xichekolas had in mind adversarial techniques such as the one described in http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/mdmspe.pdf. That paper assumes O(1) pivot selection.
No gods. Click the 'New' link at the top of the screen.
How hard would you say CAD is to pick up for someone with no experience?
Ask HN: Please review our Startup - ThreeFeeds
This came out of StartupCamp sydney II on the weekend of 17th Jan. We are obviously looking to take it a lot further and would really appreciate feedback on what we could do and what we should cut out of it.

www.threefeeds.com

What is it?
Its a topic aggregator. Lets you keep track of items on Twitter, Blogs and other sources as you add them in an easy way.

You can contact us either from my HN profile, or send email to feedback@threefeeds.com

Cant wait to hear all the good, bad and ugly from y'all..

thanks again.
Rather surprisingly, my most productive time is the 2.5 hours commuting on caltrain everyday. No internet access, nobody around from work or home = no distractions. It's been 4 months at this job, so it's unlikely to just be a honeymoon period (knock on wood)

I feel cheated on the days I accidentally get on an express.

This would be impossible if I was still hacking in C/C++ like a year ago. Then, it would take me 2 hours just to get in the zone. Hacking sessions less than 4 hours were simply useless. Now my unit tests make the zone super-easy to find. It's been the biggest epiphany of 2008.
<FRAMESET rows="66%, 34%">
<FRAME src="http://news.ycombinator.com/">
<FRAME src="http://news.ycombinator.com/newest">
</FRAMESET>

No? Not quite what you were looking for?
Except that we're not.

For many of us, the advent and wide deployment of birth control allows us to choose if and when we decide to procreate. Part of the downside of this is that we're often waiting until we're older before we decide to have kids.

It'd be inappropriate for me to comment on JL's age, but from experiences personal and nearby, getting pregnant has the potential to be stressful, depressing, and exciting. And at times it just doesn't happen.

Congratulations are in order because they've decided to take a chunk of their lives and time to take responsibility for another human being. And because the deep-seated happiness that comes from it is a gift worth congratulations.

ps. congrats!
Facebook is now twice the size of myspace
actually thats not true... we are congratulating the birth, not the conception!!
I suspect this is the beginning of many things we will learn now that the Bush administration is out of office.
Yes. And if your adversarial algorithm is good enough, it should work even in that case. (Of course any input is the worst case if all inputs have the same expected time.)
If I may suggest: http://www.cafepress.com/clevercuties.36038469
Ask HN: Review my website - HotNameList.com
Does it seem like all the good COM domain names are taken?

There are still good COM domains for websites, blogs, or investment... HotNameList shows 100 good, AVAILABLE COM domain names every day. No auctions or parking. Search lets you look for key words or topics...
I read the paper. Seems like they can not beat a median pivot (that takes O(k) to find at each step, but keeps the quicksort runtime of O(n log n).)

Still, a cool progam.
Anatomy of an SLA
If this could be done quickly, it beats the pants off GPS.

Take a look at this video to see it in action: http://www.mobvis.org/graphics/HyperlinkingRealityTheMovie.m...
Ask HN: Best Places to Raise Kids?
Not your usual HN topic, but given http://ycombinator.com/ycca.html I thought it would be apropos for the moment to get the HN take, outside of just comparing Cambridge and Palo Alto.

Meta: what factors do you take into account? Safety, schools, cost of living, nearness to family, etc?
Collaboration: What does it mean to collaborate on a document?
Open source or not, if we can just get open standards and formats in place I will be very happy.
USA-ism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Association_of_A...
In related news, Facebook has now twice the debt as Myspace.

Those pageview numbers are astronomical, but I bet so are its bandwidth bills.

I shall now go check out my wall posts and not click on any ads.
You haven't clearly described what the service is and what problem I'm having that it fixes. (And why my present tools aren't good enough.)
Submissions can't get downmodded...
I'll make a plug for these guys:

http://www.inveneo.org/

I met the founder last year at an event in SF. They've created an impressive solar-powered computer for the developing world. They seem to embody the best of both high-tech entrepreneurship and nonprofit altruism. They would appreciate your donations.
A little ugly, but a good 80% solution =P

Reminds me of this article -

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Complicator_0x27_s_Glove...

;)

Gloves!
Well, when you put it like that... :)

Actually, in a sense it never did occur to me that it would be something I would consider. In some way it just seems a bit foreign, and since I myself ever so rarely click on an ad, I have a hard time understanding how a small percentage of people who do click on them can add up to a reasonable amount of income.

I know this is a bit odd, since I'm sure that's a majority of the interest here. But in all reality, I don't have a clue how the ad system _really_ works.

But thanks for the specific names.. that's a start towards looking into it. (I'm aware of the google adsense and such, I'm not that bad off)
It isn't that hard although the pro packages can be very intimidating. It's more a matter of time commitment than conceptual difficulty. Sketchup is pretty easy, I'd start there.
Not the same path for all. But there may be rigid clusters of people with the same opinion.
Github's punch card graph gave me insight on my hours.

http://github.com/quad/moxie/graphs/punch_card for example.
Interesting thread. My best hours are late at night, when the world is quiet, and there are no distractions.

But... Recently I discovered that this also works if I rise early, _very_ early. This month, I've been waking up at 3am and accomplishing a LOT, until about 10am, when the outside world comes alive. It's nice because my mind is sharp -- I get to wake up and do something I love. I'm not racing against the urge to fall asleep, like when I code at the end of my day.

The downside is that I go to bed at 6pm every night... But apart from that, I really like this sleep cycle.
Facebook has fewer songs, and it's not used primarily for music. I'd also guess MySpace has more video bandwidth, since it's accessed publicly unlike Facebook. They've also got more targeted ads - I've clicked some willingly - and I'd bet their code is sleeker than MySpace and less image-reliant.