skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What about additional phone based tutoring, eg "struggling? phone XXXX-XXX-XXX to speak to a tutor now".

Either a premium rate phone line or possible a prepaid call in 10 minute units.
awesome. seems to work in chrome just fine. I can't see how this is useful for scraping though, is there scraping software that can take css selectors as criteria?

I've previously just used mechanize/hpricot and copied the xpath from firebug to get the areas i want to scrape.
It's the former. Tours are where artists make music.

That's not necessarily a good thing. It emphasizes musicians who are energetic over musicians who favor craftsmanship. If that's where money came from, we'd never have had latter Beatles, or nearly any classical music.

Hopefully a model is found which lets people make money from sales. Otherwise, music's going to keep plummeting down.
By the time I've written a string library, a date library, a cgi library, sqlite bindings, a templating library, and a graphics library, I could have written my application in Blub.

A lot of these sorts of libraries contain an essential amount of cruft, either because they deal with crufty human things, or because they implement crufty standards.
Ask HN: Advice on working at a large company or startup?
I have a job offer from two places: one's a large company (like Google/Microsoft/Amazon) and the other's a startup (about 20 people). The work is pretty similar at both (research-oriented), though there would be a little more engineering at the startup, and the pay is about the same (depending on what you think of stock options at a startup), so the decision is really boiling down to whether I want to work at a corporation or a startup.

I see a couple pros and cons of both (listed below), so I'm curious what other people think.

Pros of corporation:
- More of a '9-5' job, so I have a lot of time to explore thing on my own. (I have projects with friends to play with and a bunch of random stuff I want to learn, like physics and playing the violin.)
- I'd have more people I'd be working with. (Here, I'd be a member of a research-ish team, whereas at the startup, I'd kinda be a one-man research team. So while I'd interact with a lot of people, it would be more to get engineering ideas or general directions to explore, and I wouldn't really have anyone to bounce research/theory ideas off of.)

Cons of corporation:
- The work itself would be the same as the startup, but the environment itself would probably be less fun.
- Fewer people my age.

Pros of startup:
- More fun environment.
- I'd have a more important role (leading a team, rather than being a member of a team).

Cons of startup:
- Probably less time to explore my own things. (Actually, what do Hacker News people think? Do people working at startups usually have a good split between working on their own projects and doing stuff for the startup?)
- Like I mentioned above, I'm very interested in math and theory, and wouldn't have as much interaction with these kind of folks at the startup, as compared with the large company.

Any thoughts?
Creole and pidgin languages are special cases though. They are simple because they are relatively new constructions, rather than because they are unwritten.
This is what happened with me. Has been working fine since. 'Start working together regardless, just be able to work together'!
Fair enough.

Today I came across Dieter Rams's shelf design and it had a similar effect on me. If you're interested: http://www.vitsoe.com/en/gb/about/606/how-it-works
Whats with the link on the logo, its href is {#http_root#}
10 years would be what? 1998-1999?
I'm obviously talking about 1993-1994
Apple APIs are a huge pain in the ass to work with in the commercial world though since they're so volatile. With every 10.x release they seem to wipe out some huge subsystem and send everyone off to rewrite their code. As someone who used to maintain a set of cross-platform APIs built on top of Carbon, I learned to have quite a bit of respect for the cruft that sticks around in MFC.
Cold fusion shows that the scientific process can quickly correct for errors before they become widely accepted. Even if those theories are ones that would lead to major increases in scientific funding. Maybe in your conspiracy-theory, wacky-science world 'room temperature fusion' was actually a widely accepted theory but in the actual scientific world it was nothing more than a theory proposed by a few people that was rapidly disproven. If that is the best comparable case you can find then you might as well give up.

The fact that politics exists doesn't provide particular evidence that any widely held scientific view is incorrect. Your arguments could just as easily apply to evolution, quantum mechanics or ozone depletion

> When I hear "scientists" arguing that folks should be put in jail for disagreeing with them

What? Where?

> When I hear "scientists" say that they're not going to release data to folks "who want to prove them wrong"

Um what?

> When I hear satan telling me to...

OK I made that one up. Seriously though this is getting a bit far off the deep end.
Parenthood is inspirational!

First 10-12 months you can expect little mobility (though sometimes crawling earlier). Next 12 months they're usual able to be interested by mundane things quite easily, eating an apple could take an hour, that sort of thing; but they learn to walk and so can get away ... 2years+ they can get into just about anything and reach most shelves and aren't easily self occupying (though still having naps so you've some time do stuff). 3+ can sit and do things by themselves without being too much of a danger - though my lads 3.5 and was left for 10 mins while his Mum went to the loo and managed to empty every single toy/game he had into a pile on the floor that took the 3 of us about 45mins to sort out.

Somewhere between 4-5 they usually start school .. I'm hoping I might get some sleep then.
For posterity, here is a good discussion about the existence (or lack thereof) in Python: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/t....
Developing Apps on Palm webOS Webcast
I bought it. It's okay. Most of this is on their (very awesome) website, I think.

Its a bit too heavily spaced in general.
the code is PITCHINGROCKS
I've seen quite a few tweets that would make interesting shirts...
>"While California technically can’t file for bankruptcy"

That's too bad. New management might be a nice change.
If you are going to do that, you should know about dribble files:

http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/cgi-bin/info2www?(elisp)Recording+I...
"I suggested to him that they really needed to find a way to get people to login to the site regularly. With most social networking sites, you sign up, add your few dozen friends, and maybe for one or two weeks get a kick out of messaging them as they join your friend list. But after that, there's little or no reason to keep returning to the site -- as a result your profile just stagnates. Well, wouldn't you know it -- a few months later Facebook came out with the News Feed feature which shows you what all of your friends are up on on an up-to-the-minute basis. Pure genius! Had I only thought to patent the idea..."

Although Matt is obviously joking, the question is why did he even write this, if not to try to take some credit for the news feed? I've thought of at least half a dozen ideas identical to what YC had later funded, and the reality is that between the time I thought of it and the appearance of the same thing a few months later, the actual development of that began months earlier, and likely multiple groups formed and applied with a similar idea, and I did not develop or apply for funding for the idea. However, in his case, it doesn't sound like he even had a similar idea, but is just confusing giving somebody goodwill advice with having a piece of the credit in the creation of any features that are released in the next three months.
It also means that your crontab just went in source control, which is a detail a lot of people (i.e. me) forget.
I used http://www.contextfreeart.org/ tool to design background pattern for one site. I'm a programmer and I always doubt when I have to design. Using generative art made me feel more reasonable about it.
I remember playing Quakeworld. Before I quit, I wrote a strategy guide that elaborated on a "theory of qw". It was analogous to a well-known theory of poker. Quakeworld, with its unusual physics and excellently/accidentally-picked weapon attributes, convinced me that I could actually get smarter by competing in video games.
Under no circumstances is the average consumer going to believe that "box.net" is a safer bet than HP, even if that is in fact the case.
You will hit beaureaucracy at big companies, that's for sure. To get done simple things you have to get tons of signatures. A, don't forget those pesky meetings...

At a startups probably you will work more...but ask for options too, not just salary.

In the end it depends on your personality...boring or fun?
Yes, this article is written, it seems, with a bit of a vengeance. I'm not sure where "Go ahead, California, make my day." comes from...

There are some relevant points, but they're all contentious. California is in some dire straights, it's unfortunate. We'll get things sorted one way or another though, certainly.

"There is no housing boom (or bubble) about to inflate, as it did in 2004" - I don't know much about Mr. Malanga's finances, but I would presume he's a multi-millionaire, if his ability to see booms and bubbles is at all accurate.

He's a member of the Manhattan Institute, a heavily market-oriented "conservative" think-tank, and I can't help but wonder if a bit of ingrained bias played a part in this article.
In the end it comes down to gut feel, unless you think you like both jobs the same.

In my experience working at a large engineering company, having smart people around doesn't really help you learn much more after the first six months or so. After that, you kind of just fill a role for them and it is hard to break out of that role. You will always be "the whatever" guy or gal.

Large companies offer a lot that small companies don't, but I think (hope) that working at a small company provides more job motivation. I suspect that job motivation is the key to job satisfaction.
Perhaps you could elaborate on that a bit more, and offer a bit more insight than a snarky one liner.

Why would new management be nice? What change would it bring?
Must be a templating system glitch.
With someone like Zed, I'd of thought that he'd know about CDBaby.
If you're talking about more than trivial applications(examples: computational geometry, statistics, parsing and saving common formats) libraries become important as a means of offloading effort. They can be abused, for sure, and by being overly general purpose they can often cause no end of trouble, but using a few good libraries appropriate to the domain may result in 1000x less time to get productive results, even if the language sucks. So you've just gotta have libraries. The problem a lot of new languages face is that they aren't different enough to necessitate building out a new set of libraries. Bindings to C are an ugly 80% solution, good enough for most cases, and they have the nasty result of making C even more all-consuming as the source of all library code.

haXe and Factor are both good examples of languages that have a basis with which to grow their libraries. haXe is getting uptake from a variety of angles but the emphasis is clear the everyone involved wants to minimize the costs of multiple-language incompatibilities, and that is resulting in powerful libraries across multiple domains. I don't know the details of Factor's growth, but I suspect that it is doing so on its strengths as a "next-gen" concatenation language in a field with little comparable competitors. Both languages have C bindings available, but haXe in particular has strong reasons to create native libraries.
Agreed! Selling downloads is a very short-term business model. iTunes and Amazon know it won't last forever and are just making what money they can while waiting for streaming everywhere to become commonplace. I'd say we're about three years away in terms of mobile phone technology before streaming becomes the dominant business model. Early adopters right now are using Spotify, Pandora, Slacker Radio, etc. and not looking back. When all music is streaming artists will be paid royalties funded by either subscription or advertising. At that point downloading an mp3, paid or otherwise, will seem like a chore.
I think that's why they are basically risk free. When something that major goes down, chances are your greenbacks won't be worth a damn.
This is the kind of stuff that blows my mind. Between all of the people who will ever use it, you've probably saved a lifetime's worth of fiddling with CSS selectors. Kudos to you, sir!
Colorado Backyard Yields Cache of Stone Age Tools
Something that the author brushes over is that the other two services that closed their doors -- Xdrive and Briefcase -- are over ten years old.

When HP closes a service after a year, maybe they really just don't get it.

When AOL and Yahoo close 10-year-old services... Well, it's not necessarily a good sign for box.net that the big players in their niche have decided it's non-viable after a decade-long trial period.
This looks sexy.
This article smacks of hard-right bias.
Unlocked Nokia 2760 US Version 
The modern Nokia 2760 is an elegant natural looking mobile phone which comes complete with user friendly features to keep the user entertained at all times. The phone comes in a variety of colours which enhance the natural look of the handset & provide the handset with a modern feel.
It should be possible to make a fiberglass modification kit for one or two gas-efficient models, and sell the kit and installation service.
Living in California is really wonderful for the most part - but the state income tax is a killer. I'd love to move back to Cali, but it would involve a higher cost of living (not a big deal) and about a 10% pay cut (due to state income tax, and a big deal). I work remotely, so when deciding where to live next I have to think through:

"Ok, I'd looove to live in the Bay Area, but if I lived in Seattle where there's no income tax, I could have an extra X bucks per month."

Where X is 9.3% of your salary:

60K => $465/mo

80K => $620/mo

100K => $775/mo

120K => $930/mo

So the question becomes, is it worth the X bucks a month to live in Cali? Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. I use Seattle as an arbitrary example of course - but it could be any of the no income tax states. Of course, many folks don't have the option at all - but more and more people will be able to choose in the future.

I don't know much about how state governments work - but it's interesting to see how some states can have no income tax and still be better off financially than high income tax states like Cali. Sometimes I hear the argument that it's because the no income tax states have much higher sales taxes. However, the sales tax in Cali vs Washington or Texas seems about the same (around 8%). Perhaps there's a big difference in property taxes - I'm not a homeowner so I don't know or really care about that. A lot of it does seem to come down to how well the state is run when you look at it as a business instead of a 'state'.

As an aside, if you live in a no income tax state and want to avoid sales taxes where possible - Amazon Prime is your friend ;)
> I think the advice to not have a credit card is pretty terrible, actually. There are so many benefits, and as long as you have a little self-control, pretty much no downside.

I disagree. This is great advice for the majority of people. Not everyone, but the majority.

Do credit cards offer benefits? Yes--convenience, expense tracking, protection against theft, etc.

Are these benefits free? No. People spend a lot more using credit cards than cash. Maybe not you, but most Americans. I don't care enough about this to look up the stats, but I do have a PHD psychologist friend on the payroll of one of the major credit companies and his job is to contrive ways to make people spend more on their cards.

Think about it like this: your cash is dumb--it justs sits there in your pocket. Your credit card is smart, however. A whole cadre of smart people--who are incentived to get you to spend more and pay late--are tracking how you spend money and are cooking up ways to get you to spend more and pay fees.

I know the empirical numbers would help my case more, maybe I'll dig them up and write a blog post about it.
The Human Brain - Stress
The Pirate Bay Manifesto
Well I stand corrected on the figures then, but I certainly won't be using one. My fingers can't take the agony of typing on a keyboard designed for mice.
Apple has a readable, brief Terms of Service
Whoa I remember you from one of the Philly on Rails meetings.

Small world. See you at the next pub night?
Hpricot can take CSS selectors.
> California planners don't seem to like multi-use zones, so strip malls and sprawling apartment complexes pop up all over. I want to live in an apartment in a livable, diverse community on the same street as stores and restaurants, but this is extremely rare outside of places like San Francisco.

Actually, it's Californians who generally dislike "diverse" communities.

That said, they're not that rare. They exist in all of the bigger cities, SF, Oakland, Berkeley, Sacramento, plus places in the LA basin. (I don't know about the inland empire.) Heck, it's even possible to find them in almost every "college town". Almost every small town is "diverse".

In short, your real complaint is with places like Santa Rosa. Move.

> my biggest problems with California are prop 13

Prop 13 is the only reason that CA cities and counties aren't having to choose between a 20% drop in revenues or a 25% increase in property tax rates this year.

About half of the homeowners and the vast majority of the commercial property owners are going to see a 2% increase in their property taxes this year. Meanwhile, folks who bought recently may see a modest decrease in their property taxes.

As a result, CA's property tax revenues are going to be fairly stable.

Prop 13 is a cap on property tax rates and a limit on the increase in "value for the purposes of taxation" wrt a given owner of a given property. When property changes hands, the value for taxation goes to the sales price, but as long as it doesn't, the rate of increase is capped, which is why many owners (especially commercial) will see a modest property tax increase even though their property lost value in 2008 - the property tax is catching up slowly.

Remember that "cap on property tax rates" that I mentioned above. Almost every CA city and county is at that cap. Do you really want to argue that they would have dropped the rates to keep revenues stable during the years when property values were exploding? (Prop 13 was enacted during a previous boom when they didn't drop rates....)
I live and work in San Francisco, and according to you I should be paying $620 a month in state income tax. According to my payslip I pay ~$420 (awesome) a month, $60 of which is for state disability insurance.
"But also expect Washington to take some heat if it simply bail outs out California, especially now that we have governors like Mark Sanford of South Carolina pointing out that the federal aid to states amounts to a subsidy by citizens of fiscally responsible governments to states where legislators have chucked responsibility out the window."

Federal spending per federal tax dollar paid (2005):

South Carolina: $1.35

California: $0.78

Who is subsidizing whom, Gov. Sanford?

See: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html
How much do you contribute to 401K?
Large Companies:

-- In a labs or research group you get to follow your own interests. I had a lot of fun in my year at HP Labs.

-- Software product development often has smart people and you can have flexibility in what you do. The key is whether you are working with a dozen or two of people or a cast of thousands where you are a pigeon in a hole. The larger the group, the more likely you are a plugin module, stuck in a role, susceptible to offshoring.

-- IT is probably the pits and should be avoided.

If you are looking at a raw startup, you really need to understand the environment. Sure, you get to do lots of things and have a lot of flexibility, but there is a good chance that you will have to work 60 hour weeks. If you aren't prepared for high energy and high commitment, it can take a toll on you and your family. If you are, it can be a hell of a ride. Also take into account of the funding/financial side of the startup or you may find no food on the table. One thing is do NOT go in with the expectation of getting rich, particularly if you are not a founder. Most of the time you won't. Dont take this as a negative, I think startups are more fun than nearly anything else.

Another class to consider is a small fast growing company of 20 to 200 people. It's a lot like a startup, but you can have a life too.
Isn't StubleUpon doing pretty poorly now a days anyway?
I only had a problem that it included so many libraries that aren't included in most web apps. For example, Erlang/RabbitMQ support? Is that really needed?
Yea right.

Cry me a river.
distributed responsibility doesn't work. the entire U.S. is in for a deep shock soon.
The Hacker's Diet:  Losing weight the hacker way
Sure could. That's what stopped from building this in the past. I wanted to be able to go forward and backward and hop around to any frame. Turns out, that's a much bigger problem than just playing it forward. Essentially we'd need a perfectly functioning Undo counterparts to every commend we issue.

Now that it's built, I'm not so worried about the lack of a rewind button. If I get another free morning, maybe I'll look into it.
What's her name? Seems like you should make sure a Google for her name brings up this story.
Meant to add: sorry for web-stalking you... that tidbit was just too enticing to pass up!
Iam not sure what was that you were looking for in the article. (Lawful intercept requirement is a vast subject to explain in few paragraphs).
Couple of points:
1) Lawful intercept requirements have been supported by wireless and wireline switches for years now. So the ability to wiretap your conversation is already available to law enforcement agencies. Having said that, to wiretap any user, law enforcement agency should get a prior approval from the court. So just because a product supports wiretapping doesn’t mean that anyone can listen to your conversation.
So below points mentioned by you doesn’t make sense
"Maybe you don't want a casual eavesdropper to listen in on your conversation and take something the wrong way"

2) Skype has issues with supporting wiretapping because of its architecture. If it’s used for illegal activities then I don’t see any reason why law enforcement can force them to support the same. These are the guys who are working hard to nail these assholes.

3) I don’t see a point in comparing reading offline data like wikipedia and real-time voice communication.
Four years after reading this the first time, I still remind myself of one insight: engineer vs. managers and "fixing problems" vs. "managing problems".

You can find this discussion under the heading "Problems: managing, fixing, and solving" here http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/eatwatch.html

It's pretty brilliant. Even when my (manager) head knows I should be just managing problems, my (engineering) heart really, really wants to just fix them.
That's gold. Gotta love the difference between Reddit and HN. "Meh." vs. "Awesome, even though it broke. Here's a stack trace."
I like my knowledge to be well-balanced. Are there any founders who have gone through YC and not liked it?

My current sample seems to indicate they all liked the experience.

(edited last sentence for clarity).