skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While I'm on the side of TheOatMeal on this one, I wouldn't be so quick to defend someone signing up as @Charles_Carreon on Twitter. That person impersonated the lawyer during a very sensitive time and negatively changed public view, even if later Twitter suspended the account. It's not parody, it's impersonation.

I can't create a fake account 'pg[invisible-unicode-character]' here and start posting things like "I wish dhouston would just sell Dropbox to Apple already." That's not acceptable, regardless of whether the person being impersonated is loved or hated by all.
THAT IS HOW YOU DO IT LIKE A BOSS!
Sorry, should have been a bit more clear. Some of the spaghetti being thrown against the wall (companies taking crowdsourced money) will stick (be successful), but the people who threw it (people putting in crowdsourced money) won't necessarily benefit the most, and there could also be damage from the spaghetti on the floor (failed companies). I'll work on my analogies.
This could be a really awesome pair programming tool if you could have real time collaboration ala Google Docs.
Ask HN: Learning a new language - Is it appropriate at your current job?
I work at a branding company doing web development and use PHP for all development because it's what I know and what I'm fastest with.

If I want to learn a new language to use at my job, is it appropriate to start a new client project with the new language or is it something I should learn on my free time until I become familiar with it?

The reason I ask is because I'd be using (or wasting) client/company time to learn something I can already do in another language.
If it's a CV, it's not important at all. Write a book.

If it's an American style resume, then it's pretty important but not superlatively important. Your resume can be 2 pages (maybe 3 if you're awesome), but assume that the second page will never get looked at (and make sure your good stuff is on the first).

Edit: Also, it helps to have multiple resumes. My project management experience is ~2 lines on my programmer resume, but on my project management resume it's most of the page (obviously).
> I'm still baffled about how Microsoft is still trying to out-Apple Apple when they've repeatedly proven it's a disastrous strategy (see: Zune).

I don't see how they're trying to out-Apple Apple in this case. They're releasing a mobile operating system for third party vendors to create hardware for. Remove "mobile" and this is the exact same thing they've been doing all along.

> Microsoft are kings of productivity software and the corporate desktop. They own business communications. They own corporate email. So when it comes to revitalizing their phone product, they focus on the twittering tweens?

Are you forgetting that they're also still king of the consumer desktop? I highly doubt that their 85% market share[1][2] is business alone. Apple isn't selling more computers than all manufacturers combined[3].

[1] http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-shar...
[2] http://www.statowl.com/operating_system_market_share.php
[3] http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/01/hp-reclaims-top-spot-in-p...
Huge props to Keenan (https://twitter.com/#!/keenancummings) for putting this together and curating such an excellent collection of art.

He's a great guy, one of the most talented designers I know, and deserves every bit of success that I'm sure Wander and this blog will have.
Pretty sad considering it's going to stay a secret :-D
My favorite part is that they all come in iPhone or iPad wallpaper forms. No. 34 is my favorite card, and instantly became my iPad lock screen.
I grew up in Venice and my parents still live in the area. This is completely ridiculous, and I'm pretty sure the NY Times doesn't have the faintest idea what they're talking about.
There are a few billion people living in presently up-and-coming developing countries that will jump straight to the ubiquitous smartphone era instead of first going through the ubiquitous "personal computer" phase.
The point about a static type system not catching all errors is well taken[1], but if a programmer has mixed up factorial and Fibonacci I would expect that their tests would reflect this as well as their code. This is more the sort of thing you should rely on code reviews to spot.

[1] Isn't the old joke in Haskell "If your program compiles it probably does something someone would find useful, but not necessarily the useful thing you want"
Email on Mobile Devices
I forget whose quote this is - The computer is a wonderful machine, it does what I tell it to do, not what I want it to do.

Your point taken, but that is a problem in programming language X, which has Y type system, for all permissible values of X and Y.
That's not a tragedy for Google, that's their game plan. They want their apps and services on every "faceless beige box" in the world. The market for cheap generic consumer electronics is not going away.
Apparently most of what he was doing was just linking to CC's press interviews. According to TFA, at least.
> I don't think twittering teens is their target market.

It definitely was with the Kin.

It might as well have been with WP7.

It's good to see this has changed somewhat with WP8.
Those who find this interesting would probably also enjoy this archive: http://cufp.org/videos?page=1&destination=videos

Has a lot of "I work at a srsface company and use functional langauge X" type material.

Hrm. Type material.

Hrrrrm.
Search for "anti-fatigue mat". I bought one for $20 off Amazon which seems to do the job well enough.
The 8 Principles of Great User Interface Design
Yes, another (really good) article about UI design best practices. Apparently, the message still hasn't gotten through to everyone.
You can completely do away with the IDE if you want and Vagrant integration is in our todo list for sure.

P.S. Here's what Mitch (creator of Vagrant) has to say about action.io: https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/215491864080547840
It looks nice, btw I thought it was something from http://iphone.appstorm.net/, the icon/favicon is almost the same.
It would in mine.
AAA Logo
Yes. Didn't we see a story here recently about having two or three former co-founders on a cap table was blocking a VC round?

It will be interesting to see if anyone can figure out a structure for crowdsourced equity that protects everyone's interests adequately.
This is how Heroku got started and they quickly figured out that the editor in the browser was an issue. No one liked it.
They didn't have to! -- what they just did was screw themselves in the branding (and that's it).

They've created a new update, Windows Phone 7.8 that will rollout to current Nokia devices and other Windows Phone 7.5 devices.

It will include many of the new UX features, such as the new home page, etc.

But as WP8 is changed so much on a fundamental level, it makes no sense to port that to legacy hardware. They're reenvisioning the OS -- so the current Nokia phones won't support higher resolutions and multicore processors. That's ok! They don't have the hardware!

This is exactly what Apple does -- limited updates for legacy devices.

Only Microsoft was stupid enough to call it Windows 7.8 instead of Windows 8 (for legacy devices).

It's all in the branding and since they're bringing up the major features that legacy devices support, they should have just called it Windows 8. Consumers don't care about the distinction, if it looks like WP8, it's WP8.
See http://www.lowendbox.com/ for < $10/m.
Windows Phone 8 brings fragmentation to Microsoft's mobile platform
I get this line of thinking, I really do. It's just not what our system was built for. The fundamental idea behind capitalism is that competition is good and cooperation is bad between businesses. We can agree or disagree with that idea, but you can't ignore it.
Awesome business strategy: compete with cheap unlicensed Android phones.
This is a good question, and if you look a few posts up I started this comment tree by addressing it:

> if we compare the massive number of newly written OpenGL ES applications to all the old OpenGL 1.x fixed pipeline apps, the latter seem insignificant.

It was a design judgment they made and I think it was the right one.

> by reimplementing the old API calls in 3 days

JWZ did not produce a complete production-quality set of OpenGL 1.x compatibility APIs in 3 days. I'm going to guess without looking at his code that he didn't even write regression tests for the calls that he did implement.

What JWZ did was 3 days of possibly great coding, but that's only a tiny part of what needs to be done to ship new APIs in something like OpenGL.
Looks like they also need to work on scaling their blog.

Google cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.cra...
I wonder if someone isn't going to crack it after a few days and it will be the end of the story?
It's awesome. I'm not Jewish (a Christian-raised atheist) and I spent a month there in Dec. 08. You have to realize that Judaism is both a culture and a religion. Most Israelis are not religious. They celebrate Jewish holidays but you won't see them in a synagogue.

Israelis are a super laid back people that say what's on their minds. Tact isn't really part of the culture. They go to five star restaurants and weddings in T-Shirts and jeans. Family is very important and if one adopts you you'll be stuffed full of amazing food and then sit around the table drinking coffee and mint tea and talking. It's a lot of fun.
> Give Microsoft credit here: the Surface is something different. If the tablet itself doesn’t convince you, then the innovative Touch Cover surely does

Ahh, What about the Surface is "something different", other than the Touch Cover?
A good side project is anything you think it is. The most important aspect is that it must keep you engaged, whereas a project at work has to be profitable as its primary aspect.

The "gratification profile" should be what works best for you and your personality and what you need to accomplish. If your side project is building a boat to cross Lake Superior, then it's fine if it takes years to complete. If it's automating your garage door to open when your car arrives, it might be done in a weekend.

The point of the project is that it should be about you. What you want to do, on your terms, at your pace. Otherwise, you might as well just get a second job.
Wow, I'm very impressed. There is definitely a killer app for this, and that is Windows rails development. While it's better than it used to be, it's still far from ideal, and time consuming to set up. Love the idea of being able to use a consistent environment across multiple platforms. Great job; looking forward to playing with this!
Will keep this in mind the next time around!

Thanks again.
Serious question from Python-land, that I think may illuminate the difference in mindset.

Why are Rails people so obsessed with accelerating the trivial?

I mean, the other end of the spectrum is to be focused purely on the obscure and utterly advanced, like category theorists trying to harness Haskell.

I've always felt the strength of the Python community is that it was able to let the idioms and cleanliness of Python stand for themselves while they advance of the state of the art for the work-a-day programmer. (The middle of the proverbial road)

Meanwhile, we've got Rails (and I mean this separately of Ruby. The non-Rails Ruby community is much more like the rest of us) at one end of the spectrum, and Haskell/Clean/etc. at the other.

What the hell?
[hiring] Conde Nast is looking for a Web Analytics Guru
>So i'll have to give my sources to Microsoft?

No, they never said that. In fact, just now (during the developer part of the presentation) the presenter mentioned that it will "just work".
People juggle multiple jobs and family all the time. It takes planning, but it's perfectly possible to do it for years.

Many families simply have no choice.
Maybe people's expectations of Microsoft are just so low that no one actually thought they'd try to compete.
So it's a tablet with an integrated stand and digitizer and new kind of case and a new operating system and you think there's nothing remotely different about it?
Thank you very much for explaining the technical reasons that make this difficult, and thank you for continuing to seek a solution despite those difficulties. As someone who cares about what permissions sites ask for, I appreciate you fixing the problem, and I appreciate even more that you've concisely explained the solution in a way that other sites can more easily act on.
Saw the initial tweet, but I did not see the discussion. Vagrant integration would be great, as I am traveling frequently and need my offline dev environment.

Thanks for the info!
> Are you forgetting that they're also still king of the consumer desktop?

They're probably still the majority shareholder, but I wouldn't call them kings. And if they are kings, they're leading a dying kingdom. Have you seen the iPad sales numbers recently?
Hacking Foursquare: Taking over the White House...from North Carolina
Hm, not really. The problem is that the USA has a two-party system where each party is in favor of some of the tenets of classic liberalism (civil liberties on one hand, a lightly regulated and taxed economy on the other) but opposed to others, and somehow "liberal" was chosen as a label for the pro-civil-liberties side, ignoring the other aspects of classic liberalism.

In other parts of the world, you have more parties, which makes room for liberal parties that are in favor of both gay marriage and tax breaks for the rich.
Windows 7 was well-reviewed based largely on it's UI (as far as I could tell). Microsoft has kept a lot of that, but the underpinnings are now shared with their tablet (which makes sense) and desktop OS (not sure if that makes sense, but whatever).

Seems like a move that's designed to be more sustainable in the long-term by uniting their efforts. Personally, this move would make me more comfortable buying a Win8 tablet and/or phone.
Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
Well, we can certainly call this a smart cover versus what Apple said. The actual Keyboard is a critical piece when it comes to tablets and here it seems Microsoft is supposedly delivering something which could be very useful.
The Wikipedia entry mentions this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average

But one of the problems with selecting a strategy is assuming that everyone will act perfectly rationally. This is hardly ever the case.
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You just need one line to change public opinion. I myself fell for the following line when I saw it last week:

> "You sir, are a dumbass. I am doing what any sane individual would do."

I saw it linked somewhere, briefly glanced at it, thought "wow, this guy's not fit to be anyone's lawyer", and moved on. I didn't have time or desire to dig into it to find out if it was really him or not. This article has managed to salvage some of that but I doubt everyone who saw the impersonated tweet will learn about the truth.

It's really no different from being labelled "Arrested for XYZ" by the media and then being proven 100% guilt-free. Even if the media redacts the stories or posts new information, the damage is already done in most cases.
They only seem to be recommending it for games, implying you can't run the UI with it https://skitch.com/constantinexvi/enb3e/windows-phone-summit...
I think this is a significant improvement of the Business Model Canvas for startups. I believe that the final visual language will look more like a custom drawn directed graph (more like a data flow diagram) rather than a table with boxes.
> Something that competes with Blackberry?

The BlackBerry is pretty much dead. This is now largely the iPhone's market (being the only modern smartphone platform with completely solid Exchange support), so Microsoft is back to competing with Apple again.

Android has some level of Exchange support, as well. But what that entails depends on the OEM and their modifications (eg. Exchange support on an HTC Android device is completely different than what you get on a Galaxy Nexus, or a Motorola "BLUR" device.
I suspect the lack of upgrade path was planned well before the Lumia 900 actually found a bit of traction with consumers. Wave goodbye to that momentum. That would be a big blow to Nokia. Does that drive their price down even lower until Microsoft buys them out? We'll see.
What is Wander? "click"
Request an Invite or sign in to find out more about Wander.

WTF?
Wow, thanks!

I went on the homepage yesterday, because they have an upcoming conference, I never stumbled across this part of their website.

Thanks again :)
Isn't the (or a) point of a tablet that it doesn't have a keyboard?
WP6 > KIN > WP7 > WP8. I count three killed platforms in three years.
We could give better feedback if you posted the draft of your CV. I'd be surprised if you can't fit everything important into one page. But maybe my assumptions are false, and certainly our advice would sound a lot more compelling if we could point out specific things that to emphasize or remove.

Think about how long Steve Jobs' resume would be. You could fit it on half a page. Is your background really more significant than his?
You mean the 3GS from 2009 that will be supported by their pending iOS 6 release?
They get paid the same as junior programmers where I work. They are deemed as equal value to the company.

To be 100% honest a good developer should be able to take on all three roles. PM and BA are skills which should be built in as well along side other basics.
Ask HN: Do any technology companies provide standing desks for their employees?
Why or why not?
A constraint is only possibly a cost - if it forces behavior you wouldn't have chosen otherwise.
Is there some kind of strategy that you have to follow?

Prioritization. Unless you have infinite amounts of energy, something has to be given less importance. Often that means shifting priorities among the different things you are doing.
The IDE is the first step. Our vision is to provide a set of tools so that your runtime is on the cloud (but can be sync'ed offline) and you can use whatever editor that you're most comfortable with.
We are different in that we also provide a full GNU/Linux VM that you have direct SSH access to, so you are not limited to using the web-based IDE.
We haven't turned off nuclear plants (yet). Those which are currently off have either reached EOL (1 or 2 IIRC) or are down for scheduled maintenance or because of unexpected failure of critical components.(pretty much all the rest)

But yes, we actually had some days where we were running without nuclear power. And I don't think it's unwise to turn them off. Few people are actually aware but in 1977 we had a catastrophic failure with a similar characteristic as the Fukushima accident: Block A of the Grundremmingen [1] nuclear plant suffered a power failure followed by a catastrophic loss of main coolant. The block had to be given up since it was not economic to repair and refit it. So while it may be true that a safe reactor can be built, I'm absolutely certain that humans can never safely operate it. We just make too many errors.

[1] Close to Ulm and Augsburg, smack in the middle of Stuttgart and Munich. No more Octoberfest if that blows up.
Until they switch directions again in a couple years, to whichever way the winds shift. I'm not quite sure if anyone's at the wheel.
No one 'built' this system . . . there was no master architect or group of engineers. The 'system' is just how things are RIGHT NOW, doesn't mean they can't change. Nothing says i have to go along with it, I can do my own thing.

I personally think competition is a distraction. Focus on doing what you do best, and make it better because that's what you control. Who gives a shit what the other guy's doing. The only competition that makes sense is the competition against greatness, an ideal. If you compete against someone else you're letting them set the bar (what you value), since all you have to do to succeed is just beat them.

Capitalism just means resources (capital) is privately owned, how we deal with the other folks that also own capital is purely up to us. No rules around that.
Windows Phone 8 OS - Playing Catch-up?
This is also a question of layout, I mean of course I can stuff everything in one page, it's not that much. But I find it a lot more readable in a 2 page style, just more space not text all over the resume, like for instance here [1] I prefer more this style here which takes more space [2]

[1] http://www.endofunctor.org/~rpearl/resume.pdf
[2] http://jblevins.org/projects/cv-template/cv-us.pdf
I'm surprised to see their example visualizations.[1] They look like the defaults in Excel's charts, to me, as opposed to some of the other approaches out there.[2,3] I realize that a lot of their position is unchaining the carefully controlled medical data sources, but the presentation of that data is still a big part.

Edit: formatting.

[1]: http://www.comprehend.com/learn-more/
[2]: http://d3js.org/
[3]: https://mixpanel.com/
I see it as they made an early exit and focused on the half of their system that seemed more promising income-wise. There is still a space for the all-in-one market, and frankly it's wide open. Environment + IDE + Deployment in one place definitely has a niche.
Aside: Yet another useful and thought provoking question and set of answers on SE shut down "because it's not a good fit for the format".
Something that corporations around the world would deploy to every single employee in a heartbeat?

That's not necessarily up to IT anymore, thanks to the iPhone. To achieve your goal, they would have to build something that those employees insist on bringing to work under pain of termination, as they did the iPhone.

Nothing in Microsoft's DNA -- and specifically in Steve Ballmer's DNA -- would permit the creation of such a device.
Creator of Vagrant here. Disclaimer that any of the comments I say following are my own opinion and do not reflect what the action.io team is thinking.

I'm very excited about the possibilities that action.io provides. Additionally, I think integration between the two would be the best of both worlds, providing a CLI based interface and possibly non-web based development through my virtualization providers (VirtualBox for now, many more coming soon), as well as web-based development should you want it using the fantastic tools that action.io is building.

We'll talk and see if we can come to a mutual agreement/vision. :)
This is the first time they've really done anything squarely in the personal computing hardware space. They've had peripheral devices, and the Xbox, but this is quite a bold new step for them. The thing is, they've not done it before. I'd expect them to make at least a few mistakes.
While all of that is true, in my experience, quality people choose to end a relationship rather than allow others to drag them down.

In the end, we all deserve each other. Those are the only relationships that last.
Here's a recent one:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4138086