skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem I see with YC is that they want to take 7% of your company AND only let in people who are doing things their way already.

I am extremely interested in listening to their way. That doesn't mean I'm already doing it.

They should let every single applicant in who is willing to listen to them and show them an existing, working product in a big market.
Thanks for pointing this out.
Here is a similar awesome by Andrew Ng
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmNOAtZIgIk
who teaches the original Coursea Machine Learning class.
ok. There are some braindead things that Firebird does too particularly regarding Null handling. However they are consistent and predictable. You don't have the variability in rules and corner cases that you do in MySQL.

One of the things I really liked about Firebird the last time I played with it is that it could be run over a socket or embedded as a library. The PostgreSQL community will not provide a library engine because of the fear that application bugs may cause corrupted data structures in the library. Again this is wholely consistent with PostgreSQL not really caring about the single app space that much.

What this means is that if you want to distribute an application, you can actually directly link your application to the database management component directly and this simplifies the management of your app. If you need to later move the app up to a dedicated server you can do that. Firebird makes this really easy and it does so without creating the flexibility on input (and hence the fact that so many variations must be handled on output) that MySQL does.
What makes you think non-tech startups don't iterate? If anything, I think they're much better at it. With software, we have to work really hard to see people use our products and talk with them. But for most businesses it's pretty easy, and it's that feedback that really drives innovation.

This seems like an easy one to iterate on. You put one box in one airport. You catch every customer as they're coming out (which should be easy as departure will be indicated on booking, and you'll want to go by to clean it anyhow). You ask them what they think.

If initial impressions are somehow terrible, then you solve the problems and set your next one up with different branding in a different airport. Then keep iterating.
From https://www.beeminder.com/runkeeper

[?] What happens to the money when you derail? Beeminder gets it. We hope you'll view it as a fair fee for the service, that happens to be waived if you never go off track. If you'd rather the money go to charity we highly recommend RunOrElse.

From http://runorelse.com/index.php/public/faq?id=6&q=Where+d...

If you feel more motivated knowing that a greater percentage of your money would go to charity you might try Stickk.com, if you would be more motivated with none of your money going to charity at all you should check out Beeminder.com
CMU's Intro CS curriculum
Really awesome.

However, I wonder if this would be a problem when working with Apple:

Apps that use location-based APIs for automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other devices will be rejected

Apps that use location-based APIs for dispatch, fleet management, or emergency services will be rejected

(See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9199241/has-apple-provide...)

Just trying to think of the worst-case scenario, but it wouldn't be hard to attach a (remote-controlled?) weapon to this device.
The problem you are talking about is so much more complex than just "use tgz", though... like, a Chrome extension includes a metadata file... are you intending that the tgz is also constructed to make certain that that metadata file must be near the beginning of the archive? Again, one of the main reasons that zip files are used is because they are better supported by simple GUI tools, as they are intended to be constructed by reasonably "end" developers.

As for having an implementation caching locations as the file is being downloaded, if you are going to that much trouble to layer browser intelligence over the file format, you may as well just download the index first; we do this quite often in iPhone-jailbreak-land, as Apple uses zip files for firmware updates: we download the index, and use that to download just the parts we need (all using Range headers).

https://github.com/rpetrich/partialzip
And why that would be better to use a strange moving machine rather than usual video conferencing that only requires a monitor/projector and simple camera.
Tell us more? I'm sure I'm not the only considering NZ as a candidate for future residence. Getting inside info is invaluable.
On the latter point, I find it useful to disconnect to read and take notes sometimes. I find that if the internet is available, any resistance/difficulty in thought results in an instinctive impulse towards alt+tab (or the mobile equivalent). Whereas if I'm sitting out in the park with a book and notepad and I run into a stumbling block, I just stare into the distance, or maybe walk around a bit, until something comes to me.
The kudos widget bothers me, but Svbtle has a nice, clean design and I don't think there's anything wrong with copying it.
Rugby's played all over the place.
Bad idea. It's bad for collaboration and it looks comic (especially when you need to use words like "HTTP", "POST" near with local language words). We in Russia have already good example of software written in "local language" - "1S".
For developers in Russia it's reference of code smell.
Crunching the numbers on a Techcrunching
How does this handle reserved keywords? An acceptable variable name in English might be a reserved word in Finnish.
No. It's not "pretty clear". I read the article and I had no idea.

But then, if you'd have RTFA then perhaps you would have known that too?
I don't have a blog, but I write a lot. That's why I could relate to many points raised by this author. However, something was missing.

In my opinion, if you don't write to better understand how you think, you're dead wood. No one can better relate with your brain than yourself, and writing helps that relation grow.

Also, that helps improve your coding skills too. As you better understand how your thinking process works, so your understanding of how to solve coding related problems.

Anyway, in the end there's always someone interested in learning from other's experiences, as long they are a bit enlightening or entertaining.

Anyway, I should start blogging just to write more. :)
Note that this is a joke paper written for the Journal of Irreproducible Results: http://www.jir.com/
Well, there are a lot of completely failing managers out there, so that's plausible.

When I started managing people I read and thought a lot about what management was about, and who my good and bad managers were. I came to the same conclusion as Ben Horowitz did here: my main job was to make sure that my people were happy and had what they needed to get their jobs done. And that it was impossible to do that that without directly talking with them, one on one, on a regular basis.

Of course, that had absolutely no relation to the skills that got me to the point of managing people, so it's no surprise to me that many managers never figure that out.
JavaScript? Are you sure?

"extends": "erweitert",
"abstract": "abstrakt",
"volatile": "volatil",
"interface": "schnittstelle",
"protected": "geschützt",
"transient": "transient",
"implements": "implementiert",
"synchronized": "synchronisiert",
> I'd probably use a preprocessor to transform some clean syntax into the normal Java code.

If I were in your place, I'd just learn enough Java to be proficient. Java is a very powerful language and certainly better suited for mundane tasks than your preprocessor.
Ah cool, I want to work there for a while and will apply for a work visa. Maybe I'll stay there. If I won't get a work visa then I'll go to another country :)
Google App Engine refuses to stop charging me. wat?
tl;dr: had app engine acct, not using it anymore, goog won't let me cancel.
مشاهدة فيلم بابا 
مشاهدة فيلم بابا

مشاهدة, فيلم, بابا, اون, لاين, كامل

http://tube.sbayaa.com/1455
No. The job of a manager is to take care of their people. If you aren't talking with your people, you can't possibly be taking care of them.
I'm a huge fan of Flight of the Conchords...having spent time living in both NZ and Australia made the show a lot funnier. I didn't realise how much I liked NZ until I left. I'm in Oz now, originally from Los Angeles. I feel much safer now that I've left, disagree with @diiq, I personally experienced more racism in both America and Australia. Never plan on going back to America except to visit family, wish I left much earlier than I did. Main reason for leaving though is because I am afraid of what the US government has become and will turn into in 5-10 years, politics in America is so incredibly backwards, and the people don't seem to care or notice what is happening.
Could you please email me? I was unable to find contact info on your web site. Thanks! :)
How to volunteer your technical skills?
I'd like to volunteer my tech skills (web / mobile development) to charities and other non-profit, non-religious, non-political organizations.

How do I go about looking for such gigs?
Dear Apple: Please set iMessage free
Julian Assange is expected to address the world's media at 11:00pm (AEST)
You can correct somebody respectfully. I think Ben could have had exactly the same outcome without coming across as a jerk.

I'm not judging Ben either way here; sometimes a situation requires being a jerk. But the more managing I do, the more I believe that if a manager has to be a jerk it's because they've messed something up elsewhere.
The 'film camera' metaphor is how I have always imagined it works as well. It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. It's critical that you are able to retain knowledge in your 'formative' years. But after a certain point it less important to record new information. I have always wondered if the amount of info we store drops off proportionally or exponentially.

Consequently, when someone has a bunch of adrenaline dumped into their body, they often say that time 'slowed down.' I believe this is further evidence that our brain boosts the bit rate on our memories at critical moments.
Very nice list! I would add to that a few things I've run across in my own experience:

* customizing the templates is a real pain often requiring a lot of copy-pasta to change just a small thing, particularly the index -- more granular control would be nice (through the use of includes and snippets perhaps): https://github.com/django/django/blob/master/django/contrib/...

* support for custom "admin panels" or the like to display on a dashboard, user-defined widgets that perform actions that go beyond a CRUD style form -- I authored the flask-peewee project that comes with an admin and have used panels for things like provisioning API keys, showing login/signup stats, etc.

* built-in support for exporting records in various formats (also exists in flask-peewee)

* more powerful filtering interface, e.g. http://i.imgur.com/FTMEe.jpg

* built-in support for typeahead on foreign keys, e.g. http://i.imgur.com/TQwAX.png
Advice, mentorship and other intangible network effects that may only come about by being a part of YC.
Actlly, wee sy tmato, wthout th xtra vwls.
Creative Process: The Making of Top Gun
A trend I've been seeing on HN recently is a sixth reason:

6. Promotion

This is especially from technology firms which wants to get their brand out to their target group and also show off their knowledge in hip new technologies.

It's easy to spot them, since they often have a "Oh, and i forgot to tell you: 'We're hiring!'" at the end of the articles.
while it's true that appengine by nature insists on optimization towards roflscale a lot earlier in development than what we devs would normally prefer, I think that the pricing model is designed for a different class of app than what most people are building.

most people want that killer app that is offered for free to the millions of users and you figure out how to monetize it later after you get funding and eventually acquired.

appengines pricing model insists on profitability sooner. if you instead built that killer app for millions of users that pay $12/year, the amount you paid to appengine wouldn't nearly sting as bad.

to say the cost is hidden is almost absurd, the cost is staring you in the face every day you log in to the admin console. Every month you get an invoice in your email. I see this as a good thing. A developer that can deliver an application that can meet the scalability needs at a low cost would be a tremendous asset for any company looking to make money.
As long as they don't distribute the code, it's not a problem. Companies can maintain an in-house fork of GPL projects without having to release the source.
The statements in the article are not universal. In fact they are heavily biased towards the US culture. If you ever think of traveling to Asia or Europe, here are some thoughts -

I remember a cartoon showing the difference between waiting lines in the US vs. China: an orderly serial line here, an amorphic mass of dots all aiming for the one entrance there. Europe is somewhere in between. Queues are like little war zones where everyone aims to achieve their goal the first. I remember when I was in a ski club (in Germany) how we were exchanging techniques on how to get on the lift first: take the outer part of the curve. Even better, pair up so that one can slowly move inwards so that your mate who follows you can overtake you and continue in the same manner (this works only with skis, however, which are used as barriers). I remember queuing at a certain nightclub which didn't have a serial queuing line. The best strategy there was to stand sideways which allowed you to better fill the little gaps that sometimes appear as people move in the bulk. In general, as an American traveling to Europe, I would recommend to do as the Romans do and regard queuing as sport. Don't call out to people who are cutting the line, they will usually not do it either if you try - but be smart enough to appear as it was just by accident.

But there are signs of change. The single-queue system has only appeared about 20 years ago and is called the "American queue". Post offices and airports have switched to this system. It's definitely an improvement.

I was amazed when I first stayed in the US how patient people were standing in line, but even more, how many lines there were. I would say you're waiting about twice as much in lines in the US than in Europe. The queuing experience here is just so unpleasant that people try to avoid them overall. A grocery store chain has big signs for the employees to open up a new cash desk should more than 2 customers wait in line. In most cases machines have taken over jobs for which you would usually stand in line, and then they put up enough machines so that you don't have to wait. I have hardly ever waited to get into a movie theater (seats are bought online and are numbered) or to get train tickets (lots of ticket machines). At Schloss Neuschwanstein (the original "Disney Castle") you order a ticket for a certain time and can spend the waiting time in a restaurant or hiking the surrounding mountains. The list could go on. To me it is quite unbelievable that Disney doesn't do it this way in its parks. And it very odd to me to go skiing in the US where they rather hire workers to organize the queues instead of increasing lift capacity.

These days however after having read a lot about meditation I see queues as a great opportunity to switch off thinking. When was the last time you spend a while listening to your breathing? Marvel at the colors of your surroundings? Watch yourselves as your mind desparetely tries to find something to think about? I'm trying to do this now whenever I have to wait. Unless I'm distracted by my smart phone, of course...
"Strong opinions, weakly held" sounds right to me.

I couldn't care less how confidently somebody holds an opinion.

I think the word "strength" here should signify a battle-hardened opinion that has won out over others in a practical or theoretical sense. Strongly-supported...?

That's not to say that that it's wrong to be confident in the opinions you hold, but if you want to have strongly-supported opinions you can't protect them from being tested against other opinions. Let them win on their own merit...
Purely from a writing perspective, I think you set yourself up for this reaction.

This post is about respect for employees, and you spend a bunch of it questioning your behavior. You wonder if you're modeling the right behaviors. You ask explicitly, "Had I yelled at them one time too many?"

Then in the dialog you write yourself up as a condescending jerk who is out to scare somebody. The contrast is sharp, and you don't really justify the narrative shift.

Now as both a worker and a manager, I know that an occasional touch of fear can be a good thing. But I also know that it has to be very occasional, and as a manager I work how to figure out how I let a situation slide to the point where fear was necessary. So I know a scene like this can be justified.

However, you don't really justify it here, especially given that much of your actual audience will identify with the employee characters, not your character.
I run blogs on the websites of two businesses I'm associated with. In both cases the intent is not to start a conversation, but to pull in traffic and visitors from Google. Comments are not enabled. I usually base the blog topics on keyword searches that we want to target, and craft posts around that - discussing the topic and tying the business to that topic.

For static websites, even eCommerce websites, it's a great and effective way to add fresh content and pages to a site, and push up its rankings.

I'm a fast writer - easily able to produce a 600 word post in 20 minutes - and I write prose that is easy to read. The strategy works - on a robot level (Google), and on a human level (customers), but it takes time and persistence. It may take 6 months for a series of posts to cause a category page to rank in the top 3 of Google - in some cases longer.

It's also a strategy that many competitors cannot duplicate, as most are unable to write regular, meaningful blog posts. It's one of those SEO tactics that requires actual, real work, which is why so few do it well.

Wordpress, with a custom theme that fits in seamlessly with the website, is the way to go.
Briefs: A Cocoa Touch Framework for Live Wireframes
ixsillint
Not really.

It's still very hard for the average person.
Easier but yes.
I think this could actually be very interesting, especially for teaching children programming in non-native english speaking countries. Wouldn't it be cool if kahn academy adopted this for compsci stuff so teachers could use it in elementary? Any thoughts about making this require compliant?
I've come to treat Django admin as just that: a raw data browser for admin staff. If there's a need for access control or custom display requirements—or anything else Django admin doesn't offer by default—it's a sign that admin site is probably going to be used too often, and simple UIs built for specific use cases deserve consideration. Otherwise too much time might be spent on endless customizations.

(I do agree though that thumbnail display might be critical for admin, depending on project specifics.)
But all the _people_ are in those "walled gardens," and if you're not trying to create a permanent archive of your words for the ages, it makes more sense to chose the platform that makes it easier to interact with an audience, rather than one that preserves everything you write forever.
Silver Bird Plus: A Lovely Twitter Client For Chrome
Ask HN: Reflective display for programming
Brightness is a selling point these days. But every time I use a display I turn down the brightness (sometimes down to 10). Bright displays are nice for games and watching movies, but (IMHO) not for programming or watching all day.
I wondered if there are reflective displays available (like E Ink) so I looked around. But I can't find any of a decent size (20" and above) or a decent response time.
Does anyone know if there are decent size reflective (LCD) displays available? And why aren't they more popular?
Show HN: CSS Buttons Generator for your pleasure
Invisible Bike Helmet Protects Head, and Fashion Sense
I know... thanks for the feedback!
The rise of the official and unofficial non-browser clients have a hand in it I imagine.

Or those numbers could just be bollocks.
Some of those are reserved words in JavaScript (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Referenc...). I'm not sure why the others are there.
Without sales tax your income tax would "look insane", and you'd complain just as much. It's just another way to bring in taxes in a way that evenly distributes it among people.
No, this is a warning for people that think they can work in a public space and be private. Privacy is a struggle, not a right. If you use a tool and expect it to keep your privacy, you should not be surprised when it doesn't work.

As for the guillotine, if big brother (which isn't me, I might add) goes on the chopping block, there is always another to take his place. The more people fight for privacy and the more people hack and cause damage, the greater big brother becomes to compensate. It was said that the meek will inherit the earth, and it is true.
I think "Agile" can be used as an excuse for consultants to fleece money from companies. Indeed, I'm on record as saying that's mainly what's getting sold these days:

http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how...

But acknowledging that, I'd like to add two things:

First, as a developer, adopting Agile methods (in particular, Extreme Programming) made my life a lot better, and probably kept me from quitting the industry in frustration. And when I started a company, we gradually put together a custom Agile approach we liked a lot.

Second, any useful Agile method works mainly by surfacing hidden problems so that people can fix them. So if you are doing an Agile adoption right, things always appear to get worse before they get better. The test for me is whether people treat the adoption as a process and relentlessly fix problems as they appear.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Entrepreneurs
This gives me nightmares of the time I was hired on contract to update a bunch of Word95 macros to manage the ISO9001 quality handbook for an international company. Thing is, Word95 could (or always did?) localize the BASIC keywords at least for some countries (no idea when/if that stopped - I have thankfully not needed that particular skill again..) and stored the scripts tokenized. Which was usually not a big problem - few people transferred scripts between localized versions.

Except these macros had been transferred from the Danish version of Word to the Norwegian version. A reasonable percentage of the code had been moved over in ways that made Word treat it as text, instead of tokenized BASIC, and consequently the translation wasnæt made. As a result, they had a ton of Danish keywords in the Norwegian codebase.

Yay. Now, it isn't the worst combination - the two languages are very similar. On the other hand this meant that a lot of things seemed plausible to me in Norwegian, yet still broke horribly because they had sometimes chosen different words that were both valid in either language...
the time spent on premature optimization is meant with 'hidden cost'. I think everything concerning money and billing transparency is handled pretty good by the GAE team.
The step before this one also seems to be hard for many small organisations that I've worked with. Before you can delegate - you have to have somebody to delegate to.

I've lost count of the number of folk who slog themselves to the bone long after the time when it would have been sensible to grow the company with a few extra people. For some people having other people in the company, let alone actually letting them make decisions, seems to be a chasm they find it hard to cross.