skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I want to work with craftsmen"

And craftsmen are picky about their tools.

Git has a terrible, terrible, command line UI. It's entirely possible to do distributed source control with an easy command line interface: Mercurial. I've never had trouble teaching people how to use it, and I've almost never had to sit around scratching my head, wondering what arbitrary set of command line arguments I need to pass to it.

Maybe git is the most powerful chainsaw ever devised, but the fact that so many of its users are either covered in bandages or fastidiously studying man pages and googling proper usage so they don't end up covered in bandages is not a good sign.
when i was seeking i cold emailed maybe a dozen startups at various stages over a couple months, almost all of them responded. My typical cover letter is about 3 sentences mentioning functional programming, link to a simple github sample, and link to a recent technical blog post.

that said, intuitively you will get better offers when you are being recruited, which means establishing a history of interacting with them, participating in meetups, anything you can do to reduce their perception of hiring risk.

obviously, once you decide where you want to work, you obsess over nailing every piece of communication because your offer directly reflects their perception of you, but this is self-evident.
https://www.hackerleague.org/
The Shortcut We Took to Build Yipit in Three Days
Love the stylus. I remember being able to enter text onto my iPaq about 10 years ago much faster than I can on my phone or tablet today. This brings tablets a step closer to being devices of creation as much as consumption. Call me a nerd, but I want to write code on this.
If he just started iOS programming today, what are the major missteps he'd tell his novice self to avoid? (I've read he's not that keen on nibs, etc.)
Well, somebody has to do something, right? He's just trying something.
Please read stripe's TOS - your application is REQUIRED to be PCI compliant.
Interactive map of Kaggle submissions
Can those pens work on other tablets as well, as long as the software/driver there supports it? Because I really wish Samsung started selling them off as accessories, at the very least for their other Galaxy/Nexus devices. The thing is I might want to use a pen like that, but with a Nexus tablet for example.
Does anyone know how this objectively stacks up to Ssiri? I'm stuck on an older version of Android right now and I've seen some of Siri's shortcomings first-hand. So I've got to wonder... Someone should do a side-by-side.
IPad accounts for 85% of tablet web usage
But then the wiki is the central source that can be shut down? And how do you prevent people changing the wiki to say that their junk file is legit?
Did any of those new companies reach out to you for their corporate coffee service?
TSA gets more money than NASA!

(and TSA is just a tiny part of "homeland security (theater)" )
Bill-pay features are a pretty good innovation, I'd say.
YouTube App is not going to be iOS6
I don't think this has anything to do with Apple killing Google Maps. In that case, Apple could build an alternative relatively easily (acquisition and so on). In this case, noone has an alternative to YouTube. If this is Apple sticking it to Google again, I'll be very surprised.

Edit: Apple has issued a statement (http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/6/3223775/apple-youtube-ios6)

"Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store."
A new generation of link up-voting and down-voting for geeks
Mars Orbiter Snaps Spectacular Pic of Curiosity's Descent
I don't understand American drug laws. Who benefits from this? It seems completely dystopian and a waste of people's lives.
We're only getting half of the story here, and it seems pretty clear that the issue here was James's choice of legal counsel over anything else.
I question this story actually.

Checking the newspapers from that era I find several stories that were all based on the same AP wire story. Here is one (or search news.google.com for others)

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=2UlWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=G...

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/04/us/fake-check-story-ending...

A few things about this.

1) From what can find there is no attempt to verify anything with any bank. I understand that banks aren't going to want to trot out that this happened. But at the very least good reporting (this was also in the NY Times) would require verifying that it actually happened, even with a "no comment" from the bank or the attorney.

2) The type of career he decided to pursue. He wrote a book about "Make College Easier, Beat the System and Get a very cool job".

3) The fake check has a micr on the bottom for the amount. But you don't get cancelled checks with micr, the person who wrote the check does. The photo byline clearly says "Patrick Combs's fake cheque, which arrived as junk mail"

4) The micr says "95,093.55" and the check is for 95,093.35.

5) I haven't checked the routing number but there is no mention of the bank that the check was drawn on.
Can't you flash stock on it? You should easily be able to.
"What Was I Thinking?" - Robin Van Persie ~ Mister Spruce
> Just say "Excuse me. I do not consent to any search. I'm sorry, officer. I do not consent to any search."

This is a very optimistic take on the police. A likely outcome would be for the police to hold you on the spot while they bring in a K9 unit. From there, the police interpret the dog's actions to indicate drugs will be found in the car, and from there it's probable cause and you're getting searched anyway. Only instead of a brief search you get the car gutted and worked over with a fine-toothed comb.
When drug laws add to the permanent underclass they were intended to create, it's business as usual.

When they catch one of the 1%, suddenly it's news.

Maybe now people will take a hard look at overturning some of these laws, but it's a shame that the USA is government of, by, and for the rich; and bad laws are only unfair when they unfairly snag the rich.
it's really challenging to give any advice that i would follow without having walked the path to have came to that conclusion. thusly, it'd be things where time = output. such as taking up pilates, playing more golf, waking up earlier.

my favourite high level advice is: the best time to plant a tree was 5 years ago, the second best time is today.
BASIC native IDE for Nintendo DS
> After losing his job the state and federal governments lost thousands that he was paying them in income tax revenue in the short term, and in the long term his reduced earning potential over his lifetime will cost tens or hundreds of thousands.

Someone else probably got his job, and paid the same taxes.
Huffshell: You probably type too much.
I did not mean that. I was referring to the following from the article:

"Imagine if Apple removes Terminal itself in the next version of OS X, or decides iMessage is the future and gets rid of Mail.app?"
Political Prostitution: Are Your Politicians For Sale?
Has a price been released yet?
I'm surprised he didn't commit suicide.

Whoa, what?
YouTube mobile site works better. Many videos won't play in the app (publisher hasn't authorized this video for mobile viewing) that will play in the mobile site. And pretty much all videos play if you select the "Desktop" link at the foot of the mobile site.

So, as commenters on that article said, use Parental Restrictions to forbid YouTube app and enjoy it in Safari directly.
Delivery is always up in the air isn't it?

One argument for app.net appeared to be "controlling my own data" so I thought I would point people toward what Twitter has said about giving users the ability to download all of their tweets soon.

I hope they deliver but I'm not too worried about it if they don't. I currently archive my tweets using IFTTT: Delicious.com for the ones with links (http://ifttt.com/recipes/332), Dropbox for the whole stream (http://ifttt.com/recipes/37991).
Don’t Read Business Books | Strong Opinions
So you have had good luck with hg-git, then? Does it play well with github?

I've read mixed reviews... I'm OK with git but am deeply displeased with how difficult the learning curve is for a casual user. I'd much rather that Mercurial won.
Very few startups are going to release revenue numbers, for a variety of reasons.
The goal was to visually represent what Yahoo could look like with no traditional ads, hence the "redesign." Not sure I have the UX skillz to fully redesign Yahoo...the goal here was to make a case for native ads over banner ads, and how rolling out a native ad platform ala Facebook, Twitter, YouTube could fundamentally shift the Yahoo perception and internal culture of innovation.
Thanks for asking. So it turns out that two of them weren't null results, they were results against the change significant at 90% confidence. (Important difference for A/B testing practitioners, of only mild interest in context of the post.) I updated the post with the correction.

If you really like stats, well, here you go: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/results Rollover any conversion rate for raw stats.

"Offer Credit Cards As Sole Checkout Option" tested Stripe vs. the three checkout methods.

"Purchasing Page To Send People To"'s "Classic" is http://www.bingocardcreator.com/purchasing.htm, "Cc Checkout" was the hacky Boostrap CC form. (Not currently available online.)

"Offer Credit Cards As Checkout Option" was GC/PP/Stripe vs. GC/PP.
Does your bank offer an online bill-pay system? Mine does for free, and if they can't deliver the money electronically they cut and mail a check for you.
For a short while they were used in implantable pacemakers as 'lifetime' power sources[1]

The main issue is that they're really rather inefficient. The efficiency of the thermocouple at converting thermal->electrical is only about 5-10%, and combined with the cost of shielding, expense of the radioisotope to begin with, and security/safety considerations, they're really only suitable for niche aerospace/defense applications.

Edit: I was curious if anyone had considered a stirling or other heat-engine driven by decay heat, and found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_Radioisotope_Generato... which looks like it can hit 20+% efficiencies. The downside is that unlike thermo-electric/Seebeck effect converters, they have moving parts that could be a threat to reliability, which is the major issue when you're a planet away from the nearest repair tech.

[1] https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/Miscellaneous/pacemaker....
There are plenty of side by side videos out there. One I found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw-RzN4xYyE&feature=playe...!

I think it's highly debatable depending on what you're actually searching for, but indisputable that Google Now is quicker because it does the voice recognition locally on the device rather than having to upload it to a remote server.
Google Doodle: Hurdle Race  Olympics
The 1%? He was a graduate student and broker. I doubt he was even making a significant amount of money.
It's so simple and elegant I'm surprised we haven't added it before. Oh well.
According to Wikipedia, 125 watts when it was launched, down to about 100 watts in 14 years.

The JPL guys claim that the RTG is really just a trickle charger for the batteries that actually handle the load -- which likely has transients that the thermocouple in the RTG couldn't handle.

I don't know the lifetime of the lithium-ion battery pack but I'm guessing it'll degrade way before the RTG power decreases below the point where it can effectively charge the battery.
Rover mass is same on Earth or Mars. So acceleration costs the same. Low gravity also means less friction with the ground, making it somewhat harder to move on Mars.

Climbing hills would be easier on Mars.
Is Pup only designed to use it on my dev. machine to run it in my development environment, or can i use it on my production system? :)
Free Wordpress Coming Soon and Landing Page Plugin
It probably doesn't impose any overhead specifically on users, but it's additional codebase that needs to be maintained and whilst that's a 'well that sucks for the devs' issue it becomes a user issue as they're not focusing on their core competencies, which in this case is making the email client as good as possible. I'll take a better email app over additional, underused features.
Google may very well want more control over its YouTube app, including the ability to update it at will (normal AppStore processing aside), and Apple may be pleased to relinquish responsibility.

The YouTube app seemed necessary to jumpstarting iOS interest in users way back when ... which is way back when now, and the need for bundling is past.

Not war. Maturity.
Many people here in the far north have extensive solar setups and live completely off-grid. Unfortunately in winter, we only get ~4 hours of sunlight, and it's a pain to sweep snow off the panels every day at ~ -30C to -40C

We don't get much wind, and rivers are only liquid for ~4-5 months, so wind and hydro are not popular.

I've been investigating commercial thermoelectric couplings as a source in the winter. Everyone has a BIG wood stove burning 24x7 for ~6 months. My best research shows it shouldn't be hard to see +400C on the top surface of the stove. My plan is to have a radiator outside, run anti-freeze in the system and get an approx 400 deg C temperature drop.

Now, my interest is peaked in this approach from NASA.
I wonder how long it will be until I can buy or build such a thing?
Thanks Jaxon, This looks like a great place to start.
The University Startup: 3 Tips to Success
Yardsale (YC S11) On Not Launching, Then Hitting 100k Installs In 2 Weeks
They could do cost per action, for example pay if a lead ends up buying or filling a form.
MRO snaps awesome pic of Curiousity's parachute phase
I don't care about the YouTube app as long as embedded flash youtube videos are still redirected to the embedded plugin.

In Mountain Lion, there is now a share button that goes to Vimeo but there is no YouTube option. This equals the playing field a little for other video companies.
Mars Science Laboratory Telecommunications System Design
Twilio evangelist here..

I think Timothee hits most of the points very well. Nice job but I'd like to add a few things:

- To add to the "don't try to do too much" point, I'd say the vast majority of judges would like to see a few things done really well as opposed to a flock of things sort-of-done. When I mentor a group, I tell them to close their presentation with "Going forward, we'd like to also do A, B, and C. Any questions?"

- Avoid video if at all possible. Videos take 5-10s to switch into and another 5-10s to get out of. And that's assuming you have the audio set up properly. I saw a group recently spend ~10s switching, started playing the 30s video, had to stop it to adjust the audio, restarted it, and then ~10s to switch. It threw off the pace and ate a minute of their 5 minute presentation.

- Practice out loud as many times as possible. The demo will be smoother and just feel easier.

My 0.02..
Apple Kicks YouTube Off the iPhone
I agree with your sentiment overall but when it comes to app.net I'm conflicted because at least half of the people I follow on Twitter are social/civic connections vs technical. As a result I can't transition to a service where I am the customer because unless at least some of those follow me the service becomes entirely different from what I am switching from. The "functionlity" of Twitter isn't the entirety of the service.

I'd join app.net if when I joined I got a few free invites to pass along to friends/family/whatever that don't really get (or care about) the "you are the product not the user" problem with Twitter/FB, or at least not in a way that they value the price to join. Something to help evangelize with. If app.net is going to be just techies that get it and will pay the premium I think it will languish a lot like google+ seems to languish among the techie crowd.
I'd be more weirded if they stuck with it.
I got my first iOS device only 2 months ago and didn't really get why there was a YouTube app. Seemed like a generic corporate tie up.
Discussion over here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4345841
Early stage startups are really not worth it from a risk/rewards perspective.
What's wrong with the economies of scale of larger nuclear plants? I'm asking curiously, I don't understand the fascination with home energy sources.

Radioactive decay is a small energy source compared to fission. Look at the binding energies [1]: the energy accessible by fissioning heavy elements is about 200 MeV -- 1 MeV per nucleon. Radioactive decays are two orders of magnitude less, or smaller.

Pu-238 is one of the nicest ones because it is "clean" -- emitting only alpha radiation, which is easy to shield. You can transmute on the order of 1 atom of it per 100 fission events [2]. A fission event is 200 MeV; a Pu-238 decay is 5.6 MeV. So at steady state, you can support less than 1/3,000th as much Pu-238 power as you can fission power. If you have a Pu-238 source, you also have a vastly larger nuclear fission power source, so why not just use that?

More broadly, it's not a likely idea on physics, even if you accept all radioisotopes (difficult-to-shield gamma emitters) and not just "nice" ones. The high-Z radioactive decay chains end quickly at the element lead [3], so only release a fraction of the energy that is accessible by fission. (Look back to the binding energy curve [1]). And many of these decays are unusably, geologically slow. The naturally-occurring radioisotopes have half lives of >10^8 years (otherwise they wouldn't exist anymore -- they were created in ancient history in supernovae). And trying to transmute them doesn't improve much -- i.e. in a fission reactor, the most common [4] high-Z product is Pu-239 (half life >10^4 years), whose next decay is to U-235 (half life >10^8 years). Others are similar. So I don't see any way forwards.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binding_energy_curve_-_com...

[2] Through the several processes which create Np-237 from uranium -- a relatively rare process [4]. Np-237 can be isolated and transmuted to Pu-238 separately through neutron irradiation

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radioactive_decay_chains_d...

[4] Small table here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_actinide
This is natural selection at work. Let's look at all of the subject's bad decisions that led him into this situation:

* Guy accepts illegal narcotics

* Guy decides to carry those illegal narcotics around in his vehicle, the least-defensible place possible

* Guy gives a ride to somebody with drug paraphernalia

* Guy then drives fast enough to attract police attention

At this point, he's riding pretty dirty. How many of you would put yourself in this precarious situation? Hopefully that number is zero. He follows it up with:

* Allowing the search

* Pleading no-contest

* Violating his parole

An educated guy agrees to a search WHILE CARRYING? And a successful Merrill broker couldn't afford an attorney for this relatively minor charge? And decides that no-contest is the best option here?

The fact is that as soon as he accepted the drugs at the concert, he accepted the penalty of being shunned by companies. As long as companies have the prerogative to not hire drug users, being involved with drugs in any way is going to have a negative impact. The fact that he then handled every other decision in the process incorrectly does not help him either.
I've actually previously bookmarked their site status as being an example of a good transparent "status" page.

Here are a few others that I like. (Incidentally, AWS page isn't on the list. I'm a massive advocate of AWS, but they flat out lie for most of their incidents. http://status.aws.amazon.com/ )

------------- Good Examples ---------------

CloudFlare - https://www.cloudflare.com/system-status

Desk/Assistly - http://www.desk.com/trust

ZenDesk - http://www.zendesk.com/support/system-status

37Signals - http://status.37signals.com/

Heroku - https://status.heroku.com/ (In case you skipped the article)

-

If you want a public status page, a company called Nimsoft, (I have no affiliation with them), provide status pages as a service.

They produce pages like this one : http://status.automattic.com/

-------------------------------------------------

Also, if anyone is interested in how Heroku did the cool connect lines between events on the timeline, and then the actual description, there is a working proof of concept here.

http://jsfiddle.net/Xe3uL/33/
How do you level up in Ruby on Rails?
http://www.quora.com/Ruby-on-Rails/What-series-of-apps-do-you-recommend-RoR-students-build-to-level-up-in-building-web-mobile-apps/suggestions

Learning RoR is challenging, complex, and painful for many. Most advice I got from people could be summarized as:

"Everyone goes through this pain. Just keep hitting your head at the keyboard for a few 1000s hours and one day it'll click"

I see many people having the willingness to learn and willingness to put in the hard work.

What's frustrating is the lack of standards and metrics of "leveling up"

Learning a new language is equally challenging. But, Tim Ferriss is able to 'hack' it to be functionally fluent in a short amount of time (http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/07/how-to-learn-but-not-master-any-language-in-1-hour-plus-a-favor/ )

I wonder if there is similar hacks for app development given the basic components of any app.

Ideally I should be able to build on my previous mastery in a quantifiable way. The analogies I've found is Karate katas (Standardized movements to preserve and transmit proven techniques. "By practicing in a repetitive manner the learner develops the ability to execute those techniques and movements in a natural, reflex-like manner.")

Example I found seem to be too academic and computer science focused: http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/code_kata_backg.html#more

Question...What's the sequence of RoR katas you'd recommend to someone whose goal is rapid app development?
Apple Is Removing YouTube from iOS 6
Refer to what I said about the thrusters contaminating the soil. There are better ways of looking underground if that's your intent.
Given the response this is generating, I have to disagree.
If your needs are trivial, then it's probably adequate. Not everyone's needs are, though. I'm trying to evaluate it in the context of needing an enterprise-grade dashboard solution, with tens of thousands of metrics across thousands of hosts, and robust filtering/aggregation capability.

To my knowledge nobody has really solved this problem yet in a satisfactory way, outside some closed-source solutions at big internet companies.
God is just. Highs and lows balance.
Those who judged him are in Hell.

God says...
C:\Text\BIBLE.TXT

ies.

25:11 For thy name's sake, O LORD, pardon mine iniquity; for it is
great.

25:12 What man is he that feareth the LORD? him shall he teach in the
way that he shall choose.

25:13 His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the
earth.

25:14 The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will
shew them his covenant.

25:15 Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet
out of the net.

25:16 Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am des

----

Man is very irrational. Money? You need food, clothing and entertainment. A bad wife can be Hell. God has no problem rendering justice. Stupid kids?