skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
the downvoters are being parental and telling you to grow up and have a better understanding of the way the world works

Anyone who insists that luck has no role whatsoever in their short or long term success or failure either needs to grow up, or share their secret for how they chose the circumstances of their birth.
so, um, yeah... http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/hstore.html
I've been using the (old) Meebo Messenger for years. I've never had the impression that they cared about its users a lot. There were no updates on the user interface since I began using it, they didn't add features that were highly requested on the feedback forums.

The toolbar thing is just... I don't know what that is. Looks useless to me.

Another thing, are there any good other web based multi messengers? I guess they will shut this down soon then?
Missing all the characters altogether:

http://imgur.com/ByrB9

(Chrome 20.0.1132.21 on Mac OS X 10.7.3)
I looked into the Atlassian tools but they seem too overkill for me, currently the project is still quite small and I just have a couple of clients, and only collaborating with other people occasionally.. But thanks for the tip! Will definitely look into it again when the project has grown bigger.
Buy your own submarine base. Only $17.5 million.
Is there any backup software similar to Arq[0] that uses Rackspace?

[0] Arq: http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/
That seems likely. I doubt there was any employee participation on this exit. Google has a pretty good track record of giving 'RSU's[1] to the key employees in an acquisition which can make it worthwhile.

[1] RSU - Restricted Stock Unit. Unlike a stock 'option' where there is a price per share which is set at the current market price and then is only valuable if the stock goes 'up', an RSU a convertible instrument that has a nominal face value of 1.0 share of Google Stock. However it has attached to it a scaling factor which is generally tied to performance. The scaling factor can go to 0 if performance is poor or as high as 3 if performance is stellar generally. This would be similar to an 'earnout' although its more about how the employee does at the company rather than how the acquired assets perform.
I completely agree with that, and myself don't understand how it wasn't done over the course of four years and the development of a completely different product. I'm sure it's being argued somewhere in here!
Has Marco commented on this at all? Dont see anything searching a bit... Given his former comments stating basically that he didn't think it was worth doing this is surprising.
De-trolling the web: don’t post in anger
Academic Bug-Finding Projects in the Long Run
Wouldn't a keyboard with keys that light up be better and easier?
Because the submitted article mentions back-and-forth about placebo effects, quoting some researchers on the issue, perhaps I should share here some links that are helpful for understanding what placebo effects are all about. Some of these online links cite quite a few useful scholarly publications.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/michael-specte...

"In other words, the best research we have strongly suggests that placebo effects are illusions, not real physiological effects. The possible exception to this are the subjective symptoms of pain and nausea, where the placebo effects are highly variable and may be due to subjective reporting."

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/angells-review...

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-rise-and-fa...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effect...

http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/revisiting-dan...
I'm pretty sure Geckoboard does push now too. That said Leftronic is clearly better, but also more expensive.
Curling the metalink
Apparently this was an issue with using Font Squirrel (!!). Fixing now.
High-quality Image Deblurring with Panchromatic Pixels
E3 2012: Microsoft announces Xbox SmartGlass... could this be cool?
"Unabomber manifesto tied to tech news headlines"
Actually, there's a third option: people that have never used instapaper (because it's never been on any of our platforms). Some people like me have boycotted Apple hardware for years. (Shock, horror)
I think it really does matter, in at least two ways. As a person, and as a citizen.

As a person, I find it useful to consider how I've been lucky in that a) I'm better able to take advantage of the luck I've had, and b) it makes me more careful about downside risk. It also helps keep me from a certain fat-headed overconfidence. As the line goes, "Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple." I think that stunts people's growth.

As a citizen it's especially important for me in figuring out how to vote and what to advocate. I'm a big believer in the veil-of-ignorance approach: [1] In helping design a society, I should do it so that I would think it fair no matter which role I played. You can look at that as a way to subtract luck from the equation.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance
PouchDB uses the exact same replication API as CouchDB, its fairly simple (although not so much to implement)

Conflicts (when the data has been modified on both sides independantly) are simple dealt with by storing both versions of the document, the app author can then choose one, or merge to create a new document to fix the conflict.

http://guide.couchdb.org/draft/conflicts.html - has some more information

It is a hard problem, you have to deal with offline edits + conflicts, minimizing the amount of changes that are transferred, Hopefully this is useful for people dealing with those problems so they dont need to start from scratch
Sounds like a fun time and I'm excited for it! I just wish I wasn't so terrible at the game.
You can build your clock using, guess what, NAND gates, one capacitor and one resistor (not a great clock source, still).

You also need a power source, so you can say the only digital component you need are NAND gates.
Growth through digitisation requires more than faster broadband connections
Keep it simple, but here are some concepts/projects that can also be useful after the internship.

CMS
forum/BB
Survey
Newsletter
Web Analytics
A/B Testing System
Web form builder - look at wufoo.com
landing page tool
Hostgator Coupon Code
Godaddy Coupon Codes June 2012
5 disappointing Wii U facts revealed by Nintendo’s E3 announcement
Simple, selfish, and unscientific shootout
Issues with squished windows fonts have been fixed and pushed. Looks like it might have been an issue using Font Squirrel.
It's really hard to avoid the perception that you haven't read the article, or the book, or done the little bit of research you're referring to, since Michael Lewis never worked at Goldman; not only did he never work at Goldman, but the whole last part of Liar's Poker is about the famous and epic collapse of the firm he did work for, and about him leaving finance after the collapse occurred.
Depends on how in love you are with the idea. If you feel like you could own it, and really do something special with it, then do it.

However, if it's really about money - save your energy.
It's like rods and cones in our eyes. So very cool!
I believe the article is referring to 99% of small business ventures being outside tech and not referring to the income disparity of the recent referred to in the occupy movements.
It'll finally a be a three horse race on the desktop.
This makes me sad for the future of their chat client. The toolbar may suck, but their IOS client rocks. It synchronizes with their web chat interface, so that you may switch between conversations on mobile/desktop.
One thing no outlet has reported is that everyone except business development and select engineers were laid off as a result of the deal.

This all comes from someone who left Meebo recently and is still close with people that work there.

Not sure exactly how many, but it sounds like it was a good number.

Note: I said it was the majority, that's what my friend made it sound like, but I'm not sure.. will update once I find out
After reading through several comments it's clear that Marco took way to long to release this, and users have found alternatives. I use Evernote. Many people prefer Pocket apparently.

The real shame is that a week from now Marco (a well known Android basher) is going have a blog post up with poor download stats. Deflect the blame, and proceed to explain how he was right all along... that it was not worth the money to have the app created, that Android users don't want to pay for quality apps, it's fragmented, blah blah blah.
Great talk. Zed has a way of telling people to open their eyes and think for themselves that is admirable, even when you don't agree with him.
I honestly did not see that coming. I was a regular user of meebo way back in 2006-2008 but I don't have a solid recollection as to why I left (now using imo.im).

I can only assume that the acquisition has something to do with Google Plus. Well, whatever it is for, I wish them good luck.
Drones cannot do long term monitoring.
Microsoft uses a bad algorithm. The clever algorithm to prevent dying on the first click: Generate one extra mine during the random generation phase. After the first click, remove any mine the player clicks on, or, if they click on none, remove one randomly.
The Drunkard's Walk was the better of the two in my view. I'd start there and follow up with Taleb's book if you want to read more.

However, if you're really into Wall Street trading, flip the order.
Expanding the genetic alphabet may be easier than previously thought
Sheeple mentality for the most part. I will be downvoted into oblivion for saying it, but it's true.
Zeewe the TV revolution
>"Sweat equity, most likely, for which they were rewarded with an ownership stake"

Sweat equity doesn't occur in a vacuum; something is created from that effort. If they wrote code and that code earns money, they are entitled to a portion of those earnings. That's inarguable.

It is my understanding that the original "idea" (I have trouble calling it a company) didn't take hold. If nothing is created and the company never amounts to anything...what are you getting an "ownership stake" in?

Had Zuckerberg and a friend opened a candy store on the Harvard campus in 2002, and it had failed, that friend is not entitled to anything Zuck does with Facebook because he put in labour on the candy store. Now, if Zuck was operating Facebook under the same legal entity as the candy store in which his partner had equity, said partner might have a claim, though it would be hard to establish if the partner produced no work for the new idea. That said, if this is analogous to the situation in the article, what on earth are these guys doing getting bogged down with convoluted equity agreements when they should be working on the product?

I'll repeat: if the other co-founders provided something tangible --be it an idea, code, money, whatever-- to the new project, they deserve "their share". If they can't point to something tangible, they deserve nothing.
I'd like to note that "groping" is not mentioned in the article. No other touching either. Just that some creep started to make "inappropriate sexual advances" towards the writer.

So it seems to be one time unpleasant conversation. I'd hardly call that harassment.

If one time unpleasant conversation with persistent person is harassment, then I was once police-harassed. This officer wanted me to go to police academy. I said no but he didn't stop. He was quite drunk. And last weekend I was oil-change-harassed, my dad kept insisting that I'd do an oil change to my car this summer. He was drunk too.

But I have to admit that this kind of behavior towards women should stop. What is causing it? Let's go after the source, not just try to heal the symptoms.
I'll second that on http://cantenna.com - Jason and the team there have been providing an excellent source of these antenna's for almost a decade. (I can vouch for the integrity of the product because we were one of the biggest consumers of their product in the day on my site http://netstumbler.com)

I assume that the interest in this is back because of Marius Milner the Google employee who built the Netstumbler software http://www.netstumbler.com / http://stumbler.net is the suspected engineer who wrote the Google software that has been in the news about the mapping of access points by Google streets cars.
I would say most sites will do just fine without sharding. You can get very far by just scaling up with a more expensive database server and caching the most common read operations. Some of the largest websites in the world do not need to do more than this.
Hey schedule buddy.

Basically, make a list of everything you're reading and working on. Then prioritize. Then block things off when you're most productive. For me, it's reading in the AM and then coding side-projects at night.

I'd also suggest building some of that project management experience and creating some sort of project plan/burn down chart for yourself. I do this all the time for fitness-related activities, and seeing numbers in excel (x lines of code written, y chapters read) really keeps me motivated.
> Does the Honda Civic compete with a Maybach?

Are you saying that Windows is the Civic while Apple is the Maybach (or vice versa)? This doesn't make a lot of sense, because Apple laptop vs Windows laptop is a comparison of similar products. Civic vs Maybach is a comparison between a low-end consumer product and an extreme luxury item. Exactly 63 Maybachs were sold in the US during all of 2010. So no, I don't think Honda would consider Maybach to be in competition with the Civic, and I assume Maybach is probably not especially concerned with the Civic, either.

> For most users, Windows laptops, Apple laptops, Chromebooks and iPads are in direct competition. All four do Facebook just fine.

Is this supposed be an argument in favor of your claim that Apple laptops and Windows laptops are not in competition? Because it seems like you're arguing with yourself at this point.
Ramit Sethi Exposed: How He Earns Millions Blogging
Article based on interview I did with Ramit Sethi. Reveals his R&D strategy for building a product your market wants to buy, will pay a lot for, and how to sell it to them using their own language.
Meebo laid off most of its staff as part of this deal?
Boo. Did not see that, mea culpa. I figured they were going the NCAA March Madness route, which was basically awesome.
Still exists: https://www.meebo.com/messenger

Full timeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo#Timeline
There is nothing wrong with it per se. It's more of a cultural thing.

Web application development culture tries to be fast, both in terms of developing the initial application as quickly as possible, and rolling changes out to the user as quickly as possible. Having to compile code has traditionally made Java less desirable than Python/Ruby/Perl etc. for the fast cycle of web development.

The Play framework eliminates this problem, but there's cultural momentum built up. After eschewing Java for years due to this, it seems unlikely that Java will quickly recover any warranted popularity amongst web developers.

Java also tends to be more verbose as a language. This can be a good thing in certain settings, but again goes against the desire for fast development.

There is in fact a lot of Java web development going on, but more in situations like developing internal web applications for use within big corporations rather than developing nimble startup code. If you wanted to get a job doing internal web applications for some place like Transamerica or AT&T, Java skills would be good to have.

That said, if you're really into Java/Play, then there might not be a lot of competition to become a leading expert...
The hottest Tweets of the Month
A race to the bottom: How RFP's are broken and what to do about it
RFP's are a quality-coders biggest evil. Here's what to do about it.
Zed A. Shaw - The Web Will Die When OOP Dies
Does it provide actionable data? If not, we're just discussing the dollar amount by which panicky, obsessive parents should be screwed.

IMO a more likely outcome than preventing SIDS is a device malfunction leading to parental heart trouble and general distress.

Perhaps an analogue would be a device that illuminates a green light when there is not a (dreadful disease|nuclear strike|zombie horde) incoming...
There are 3 important inflection points here.

One is Steam on linux period. Even if it were its own little universe, having the support of Valve and the steam platform opens up a lot of opportunities for gaming on linux.

Another is Valve's core games on linux, which would definitely give a big kickstart to linux as a gaming platform.

Perhaps the most important could be when the top tier multi-platform game engines begin including linux as a targeted platform as a matter of routine.
I use Lua (http://www.lua.org) for personal projects.
I wonder if this is an enhancement in Vista Minesweeper? I'm almost certain that it used to be possible to land on a mine with your first click in older versions.
Asus Unveils The World's Largest Tablet
Although Opera deserves every bit of attention in the media... too bad it's because of facebook.

Edit, Opera as browser on desktops.
Roundtable Recap: June 4 – Winners Of First BlueSnap-Elance Finals
My nephew is 8 years old. He had a DS and loved it. BUT, like most 8 year olds, he would lose his games, and eventually his DS.

Instead of buying him a new DS, my brother bought him an iPod Touch. Same price as a DS but the games are free or cheap. Plus, he can't lose the games, even if he loses the iPod.

Of course, the iPod does more than games. My nephew loves that he can video chat with his cool uncle as well as listen to music, and all the other things an iPod does.
I doubt the talent behind meebo is worth $200M. I'd say that it's more a bailout of the investors.
And that pop culture was written by Carl Sagan, who is no stranger to this subject!
The "Which headline will give us the most pageviews by exciting moral outrage in our potential readership?" metric.
My idea of luck is broader.

The position I was born into in the society definitely gave me some advantages in starting businesses. I would happily call that luck; it's not like I carefully picked my parents.

There are all sorts of odd contingencies that I didn't plan that have helped me in business. The first company I started came about only because I ended up subbing for a friend who wanted to take a quick vacation; by the time he was back his bosses said, "Hey, why don't we start a company?" Pure luck. I could have easily gone a decade longer before starting out on my own.

For me the comparative baseline isn't people who don't do a thing. It's all the people who work just as hard but have differing levels of success. Compared with a Cambodian rice farmer, I'm pretty lucky. Compared with somebody from my social class who was fucked up by abusive parents, I'm lucky.

Heck, I'm lucky just to be born into this era. 50 years ago I would have ended up a car mechanic. 500 years ago I'd have been an underfed monk. I'm freakishly lucky to be living in the Age of Nerds.
This seems totally wrong to me. Of course the probability of surrounding squares being all safe is higher in the corner simply because there are fewer surrounding squares!

To make it more fair, calculate the probability that 3+ adjacent squares would be safe, since that's how many you get in the corner. Then the math shows that center is better because there are more neighboring squares that could be potentially blank.

More useful would be the probability of having a cascade continue on past adjacent squares to squares adjacent to those, with the "winner" being whichever location is most likely to make the largest exposed bubble.

My strategy is generally click a few places in the center quickly. If I die, I don't have much invested and just start over. If I find a large bubble, then I can play.
NFC is not a revolution.

Revolutions are events that change the way a lot of people do things in a short amount of time, and very few deployments of NFC have actually done that as they usually end up as gimmicks replacing QR codes or other such poor UX ways that consumers interact with products or services because there is a mad arms race to monopolise the only significant use cases of NFC worth caring about (payment/public transportation ticketing and customer loyalty systems) meanwhile the scraps that can't be monopolised like "smart" posters and other forms of interaction that do little more than signal a user to open a URL with their device provide little incentive for the overheads and poor device support. Whilst some may think it's amazing that "bonking" (in El Reg parlance) your device against a sticker can check you into foursquare, millions in Japan are using a contactless coupon system that ties into devices to buy their meals and from the same device pay for the meal through a separate payment system and require no interaction from the user apart from placing their handset on the reader.

East Asia succeeded in its deployment of NFC like systems because the monopolisation of payments systems were worked out with carriers long before major deployment, because (at least in the Japanese market) carriers have the tightest stronghold on the hardware specifications in the devices sold for their networks and because transportation services, carriers and the companies creating the technology are all stake holders. (Felica Networks).

There's currently lot's of "potential" being seen in western trials of NFC technology, but still a very big chicken and egg problem: not enough devices support it, not enough carriers and transportation authorities seem to care about it, and consumers see little benefit.
It's one of those "I'm living in the future" things. You're sitting there, browsing your iPad while your wife is across the room reading or whatever. "Hey honey, check this out" and with the press of a button the youtube video you want to share is on the TV, where she can see it.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/michigan-danger-on-our-roads/...
Free Responsive HTML/CSS3 CV Template
Titanium uses it's own methods and translates that code into Obj-C (you can actually see the * incredibly insane* trans-source when you build the app) -- RubyMotion is a direct interface with Cocoa and Obj-C. If you know Obj-C you can immediately start experimenting with RubyMotion --comfortably-- and if you know Ruby and can "read" Obj-C you can immediately pick up the iOS cookbook and get started, like the authors did. Think of it as a dialect, similar to CoffeeScript, where all the same rules apply, but things are just... better. Having zero Obj-C experience and, I admit, no desire to go into the realms of byte-sized memory management, I avoided it for a long time, but after just a few weeks with RM I feel like I have a very strong grasp on both Ruby and Obj-C, and can read and write both interchangeably, including interfacing with Storyboards and Interface Builder. Two languages for the price of one, IMO, and that was well worth the $150 dollars I paid, aside from any products that I may release with the toolchain.

But yeah, in short: there's no comparison between Titanium and RM.
This is fantastic news! All the games I want to play are available on Linux, but, due the lack of the convenience that Steam offers has been off-putting. I can finally enjoy most of my favorite games right in my favorite environment...
While this is all nice and fluffy, the company can switch its privacy policy whenever it wants and it's not going to tell you about it if it moves in a negative direction. They only tell you about it when it's a good PR move, like here. This applies to any site; I'm not trying to pick on this company in particular. I'm just pointing out that this is meaningless PR brownie points, so let's not get carried away.
Is Meebo or La Boulange a better 100$ million buy?