skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think cycling in London is not as dangerous or scary as people generally like to believe by default. You can avoid most of the traffic by following cycling routes. Transport for London publishes quite good cycling maps -http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/8966.aspx

I was lazy about cycling for a long time for the same reasons you mention. But now I find that cycling is actually a great way to beat the cold.

And the rain? Well, you just get used to it...

Slowly wheeling around small lanes is also good thinking time, especially at the end of the day.
if you haven't already, i'd first make a budget (of time, money, or whatever other resource you're consuming) and see what it might take to reach a win scenario you'd be happy with (ie $3k/mo passive income). laying it out in rows and columns with required user #s and growth is surprisingly helpful.

i haven't seen the site and have no idea of the specifics, but based on what i'm imagining, i would jump ship. the chicken-egg issue is hard for anything social (especially when bootstrapped w/ no marketing $), and gaming is a saturated space, so it'll be hard to get the user base to critical mass.

that said, if you're still excited about what you're building, that carries a lot of weight.
on the flipside, you also have access to a company with many multiples the distribution than your average mom and pop, so while they may not care about $0.25, you're also not going to be selling a lot to them. closing a wal-mart purchase, though, means you are going to be selling a lot of whatever it is that you make.
16/20, non-native English Speaker

I look forward to their "math test" next week.
True.

Here's his examples rewritten in Python (Python is not Ruby despite that both are nice languages):

with atomicio_handler(afile) as handle:
handle.write("foo")
if blah:
raise Exception, "baz"
handle.write("bar")

with atomicio_handler(afile) as fh1:
with atomicio_handler(anotherfile) as fh2:
...
Fine, if you have the choice.
How Do I Get Backlinks to My Website?
I know this is one of the biggest questions on your mind…because so many of you keep emailing it to me. :) Because you guys read blogs like this one and Grizz’s, you know the key to creating low-maintenance income online is getting the right number and quality of links to your sites. You also have a general idea of where you can get some links. But emails I’m getting lately tell me there are a couple of key things you don’t know, such as
Googling his HN username turned up this site:

http://www.noobindex.com/

Clean design and layout and I dare say it looks a little inspired from the HN design.

However the site really doesn't tell me what it does, issit like twitter?
Is Going for the Low-Hanging Fruit Good Enough?
How Government Prolonged the Depression
Ofshoring not just work, but workers. I can see why a lot of people would be sensitive about the idea, particularly given the current economic problems.

But I think if I were in that situation (financial freefall), a complete reboot of my life could be appealing. Each country / city / company is reacting to the upheaval differently, and IBM is offering a way to get in on that.

Here in Australia for example, the vibe I get is that everyone needs to tighten their belts a bit (or a lot) for a few years, but that's no reason we can't still enjoy life. A big contrast with how those people are feeling now.
14/20 - I'm terrible at remembering what metaphor/similie/etc are.
links does't support CSS, therefore "in all browsers" is a condition that can never be met.
Hilarious:

"Even if you're resolute in believing you won't feel one whit better from exercising, you'll certainly concede that you'll feel a whole lot worse after collapsing to the floor with a coronary. I've no direct experience with this particular unpleasantness from life's menu of surprises, but folks I've talked to who have are unanimous that it's best avoided. Those who dropped dead right away were unavailable for comment."
I was living up in Stoke Newington when I was in London (N16 7AJ repreSENT!), and that's under 10 minutes to the Lea River and Regent's Canal, both of which are fantastic cycling routes. The Grand Union is also delightful, especially with Little Venice right after Paddington basin.

I'll admit, though, that my commute was pretty easy, just straight on the A10 through Shoreditch/Dalston. If you see yourself using a bike to shuttle to mass transit, get a folding bike, they're awfully convenient; if you see yourself using a bike as a main means of transit, stay with a full-size city bike.
I am from Bergamo, it is 200km far from Padova :-)
Link By Link - In a Google Library, Millions of Books, but No Card Catalog
Blogoxy – Blogs, CRM, Galaxy Apps, News, Social Networking, Web-Design
The one question that's not really answered there is, what if you can't afford not to work for said asshole? In these recession times, sometimes you may really not have a choice. "I just really need the money" is a valid statement in some circumstances.

The other things he mentions (like the bullet-proof contract, money in advance, and established deliverables) are a good way to protect yourself if you MUST work for an asshole.
I know where it is - I've been there a few times, both for work and to watch the finale of the Giro di Lombardia:-) It'd be fun to have a HN-Italy meetup sometime, but I'm not sure there are enough people within a reasonable distance.
I suppose they're Latin-origin words
"i always believe people should not get into businesses which they don't understand"

I don't think internet businesses are all about writing code... There isn't any strong correlation between web development skills and ability to build a successful web business...

If a person can conceptualize a service that he can take to market and spend some money from his pocket to get it developed... I'd say his chances of success would be higher than average web developer who develops something that might not have a market
For no fee at all I will make you stop procrastinating during the hours you desire, what's your ip ;) ?
Quiz: How's your maths? I got 10/10
You seem very "Ostentatious."
Following up from the English quiz,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463745

here's an older quiz. It's mostly arithmetic, with some "general knowedge" sort of stuff.

There's apparently another "maths" quiz coming next week.

Please don't post spoilers.
20/20, native speaker.
If you're on Firefox, you might find that Leechblock ( http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock.html ) gives you more control over what and when you can visit sites. It can lock you out of disabling, changing the settings or removing it too.
Healthy body = healthy mind.

For those who aren't sure of how to spend their gym time most efficiently, and get bored of doing the same old bike/treadmill routine, should check out CrossFit.

A workout is posted every day which is designed to deliver "a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive". You can scale the workout to your own abilities and feel encouraged by the knowledge of thousands of others putting themselves through the same pain around the world.

CrossFit would be good enough on its own - having world experts design your training program takes the guesswork out of what to do - but it's the community that makes it special. You've got world class athletes and beginners having interesting and informed discussions on fitness and nutrition.

Take five minutes and see what you think. I've been a convert for two years and it beats all my previous training experience for getting fit and feeling healthy.

http://crossfit.com/

http://www.board.crossfit.com/
Wow, great discussion here. My day would be poorer if I couldn't find out the scores that everyone got on a basic spelling/grammar test.

<extreme sarcasm>

In the spirit of informing the original poster so he can avoid posting this in the future, I'm going to announce that I flagged this, even though it's against the guidelines, because otherwise how would the OP know that this submission isn't particularly interesting?
Also 20/20. I'm relieved, as bad spelling and grammar is one of my pet peeves - so thankfully I'm not a hypocrite.
HN salesmanship hero? Do you want a bit more exaggeration in your hyperbole sandwich?
Same. One time was enough for me! :-)
Convert shortcomings into advantages without lying
It's perhaps only tolerable in situations where a site has to deal with phishing on a large scale basis, perhaps on a forum targeted towards a younger audience. And even then, only if it is only a banner which says "WARNING: Don't give out your password to sites you clicked on from us!" as well as a swift way to see the page in full.
Usually I'll finish an App, continue testing with FF, then cross my fingers and load in IE. Then I fix the carnage over several hours/days and test then revert back to Firefox to make sure nothing has broken. All the other browsers usually just take a couple hours of tweaks to cater to.

I wish Microsoft would force an IE7 update.
Well, I took my beginner's course in Chinese in 2000..

I gave up on it around 2002, and have since moved on to learning Japanese up to daily conversation level, and now I'm considering taking a look
at Korean.

> methods of teaching languages fail spectacularly with Chinese because they end up focusing on the written text which has only a weak phonetic link to the spoken language.

From my experience, I'd say that this is a good point. Our teacher made us (try to) draw those Chinese characters quite a bit, and it didn't really help me at all. There was no way I was going to remember those scary things that soon.

My Chinese studies were spread out over two years and two courses, and I only remember a few simple sentences. Only one of them happens to be relevant now: "Wo you yi ge gongzi" (+tones) - I own a company. :P

A sole proprietorship, to be exact, but technically a company anyway!
Well, if you can't afford not to, you can't afford not to. Period.

The author is simply stating that of all of the variables you control in choosing clientele, making sure they aren't assholes should be near the top of the list. It's a better choice to take a lower-paying gig with a reasonable person than twice your rate with an impossible client.
True. Although are you aware you can select the text of the URL and, in Firefox 3, drag it up to the tab bar and either drop it on an existing tab, e.g. the current one, or drop it slightly to the right of the right-most tab to create a new one. If doing the latter, you should see a downward pointing arrow when you're over the drop zone.
How is it that you just completely made my day, and then absolutely destroyed it all in about 3 seconds? Oh yeah, Keano Reaves.
Teamwork 4 released
Google Earth 5.0 released
> China missed one chance, historically, to transition to a more user-friendly writing system along the lines of Japanese kana syllabaries more than 2,000 years ago.

Japan missed the chance too. You need to know those Chinese characters ("kanji" in Japanese) to be able to read, which is a shame since I never had the energy to learn them.

> If there were just one or two regularly used alphabets (a situation comparable to Japanese)

To be clear, I assume you mean the two syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, which are used to support/supplement the Chinese characters in writing.

Sadly they did not give up the Chinese characters long ago.

This frustrates some Japanese people too, but most of all us foreigners, of course. They say that once you know kanji/hanzi, you'll appreciate their efficiency in conveying words and meanings though, but I wouldn't know anything about that.
OTOH, links supports tables pretty well.

Regardless, a solution that works in IE6,7,8 Fx2,3 Op/Saf/Chr would be sufficient these days I think.
Don't just downmod me :/ Paste an example of css layout, that behaves like a table...
Mudah.my - simple malaysia marketplace
But once you're there, how do you get back? Sure you might be well paid in that market but if you're not earning Western money then you're starting again from scratch when you return. And if you've been doing legacy work, with an obsolete skillset too.

I can see how this would be good for IBM, I can't see how it would be good for an individual worker.
If this test has anything remotely to do with 'smartness', then I don't want to be smart...
History of the Internet (video)
Are there any examples in the css Zen Garden which have the really boring layout described in the article? Three columns which have the same height regardless of the height of the content in each column?

If so, I'd love to see how they did it. The best way I know is to fake it using well designed background images. Quite painful to do.
"everything else is by negotiation" could either mean: we functionally share our finances - but for tax/legal/convenience reasons we choose to keep seperate accounts...

My experience is the opposite - generally the major part of finances are shared and there are small accounts on the side.. (things like cars etc are usually "owned" by a single person - but that's more of a convenience)
Most angels are such a bunch of pompous amateurs. If I was put in a position where I was broke and had to raise a small amount of money to start my bold new venture, I would get a minimum wage job and burn through my nights and weekends. The agony of the minimum wage job would give me real impetus to make the business work, and it would be far less ridiculous than constantly explaining business decisions to some guy who sold a company for $10m (or worse, inherited money) and now considers himself a "player."

Don't get me wrong, there are some wonderful angels out there -- for example, accomplished university professors (a secretly wonderful reason to go to college, even if you are career-obsessed and don't care for a liberal arts education or hooking up with confused 19 year olds), or successful veterans of the field in which you are operating (such as Aydin Senkut, referenced in that article, or our good friend pg) -- but on the whole, the "angel investor" industry is a total waste of time, and a total distraction.

Also, from what I hear from VC friends, some angels can make your Series A a real pain; they don't pay to play, and they get antsy about dilution. I'm sure pg would have more insight on this matter than I.
You need to believe in your own product, otherwise trying to sell it will just make you feel guilty. So post a link i'd like to help review it.
While I agree that focusing solely on being good to your users is a better plan that focusing solely on being good to your company, surely the best approach to be a successful business involves a bit of both.

Certainly, it's better to lean towards being good for the users, but doing things that will make the company succeed as a business concern is also worth spending energy on.
Real mature.
As the book states one cannot provide such a solution for all of them. I get your (and other people in the favour of the table argument) POV, but I simply do not agree.

I suggest people to read http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingprogressivee... and the other (most recent) ALA articles on the same subject from Aaron Gustafson.
Cool. I posted something the other day of direct relevance to programmers and it got no discussion, no upmodding, and sank without a trace. Today I post a fun quiz that touches on mispellings and grammar. It gets upmodded lots, gets loads of comments, and flagged. I agree it's nothing to do with being smart - that's typical media misuse of the term - but that's not the point.

Time and time again I see people mispelling, or misusing, words like lose/loose, or their/there/they're, and I'm constantly frustrated that hackers don't get it right. Some of them have good reasons for finding it difficult. Dyslexia is a real condition, evidenced by various brain scans and the like, and it can be difficult.

But there's no reason not to try.

And in case you think it doesn't matter, I invite you to read this post:

http://neil.fraser.name/news/2005/08/20/

Spelling, grammar, and other aspects of communication really, really matter. The examples given here are about communicating with other hackers, but the lessons translate to dealing with customers, investors, the press, and others.

In summary, I respect that you found it uninteresting, but I think good spelling and grammar is important and relevant, even for hackers. This was one way to raise its profile.
Until corporations upgrade from IE to something else en masse (unlikely in the near future), IE's share will remain disproportionate. I think the vast majority of people still using IE 6 are doing so because they have no choice in the matter.
20/20. There were two questions where I think their preferred answer is questionable at best (though clearly better than the other options offered). There's a word they defined wrongly, and a sentence from which they claim something's missing that's perfectly OK as it stands.
In these recession times, or in any other times, it can be difficult to tell the difference between really not having a choice, and seeming to not have a choice because of the internalization of the same platitudes one hears repeated incessantly. Needing the money is a valid concern, but as I am reminded of almost constantly by those around me, don't confuse a legitimate need for the money with the social pressure of remaining at one's current lifestyle masquerading as a need. Image and social class are not the only thing worth being concerned about, especially if worrying about them doesn't get you closer to being happy.

Really, I think far more people work for assholes than honestly are trapped doing so.

Also, your second thought reminded me of this thread earlier yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=462338. The author's philosophy seems to be to assume the other person is an asshole, until they prove otherwise. This thread advocates what almost seems like the opposite viewpoint; that if one assumes everyone is a dishonest shyster, it is actually worse for business than not assuming so and just dealing with getting burned a few times.
Surviving a Hijack on the High Seas
I agree that spelling and grammar matter. However, the page you linked to is not a good medium to generate that discussion (and in fact, if you look below, you can see there is no discussion of anything to do with grammar, just people posting their test scores and discussing the meaning of onomatopoeia). It would have been much more interesting to post an article that argued the points that you just mentioned.

With respect to articles sinking without a trace, unfortunately this happens to many interesting articles on HN - which is why it's important to not crowd out the interesting articles with silly stuff like this. There are many articles in the "new" queue with a single vote that were more deserving of a front page spot than this. That's why I flagged it and posted about it - as that's the only way I can express that feeling on HN.
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Web Application Security: Where do we go from here?
"I get your (and other people in the favour of the table argument) POV, but I simply do not agree."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against CSS. I use css for styling. Not for layout.

CSS just can't do sane layout unless you're positioning and sizing things in terms of simple pixel values. If you want for example div C to be the same height as div A, then css is a failure. Either you use tables, or you use javascript and resize things on the fly which is pretty ugly+slow.

All it'd take is to be able to do some simple arithmetic in css, and reference other elements... eg

width: ((100% - leftCol.width)/5);
height: max(leftCol.height, rightCol.height);

I guess there's something to be said for IE css expressions... except allowing any js there is a bit overkill for most things and makes for a pretty slow UI.
Depends.
How many of the workers in question may have originally come from (or have family/friends) in India/China..

Still - you'd obviously be taking a substantial pay cut.
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Stanford Machine Learning course
Your goal for exercising (and nutrition) could be to gain some muscles. :)
But did all the 20 stores they replaced bash workers' unions? (Downmod me for asking - like I care).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallmart#Employee_and_labor_rel...
I'd been wondering this myself. But then I thought: if one needs a no-procrast filter during 'working hours' then one is probably spending so much of one's day infront of PC that one should be wary of ODing on HN at any time of day.

Perhaps we should interpret the no-procrast filter outside of 'working hours' as a message to go exercise / drink / eat / sleep / hang?
Oh come on, you're just sour because you scored 8/20 ;)

Old school hacker on this end, new to this site and while I agree with your general sentiment I disagree with killing the subject once it gets past a certain number of active participants, it's a bit like a bully walking in on a game people are playing and tossing it out the window because you don't like it and / or are stronger.
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I liked this:

"The marvelous mechanism that is your body has many signals to let you know when problems arise. If you're exercising and you encounter chest pains, shortness of breath, or other indications that something is awry inside your rib cage, don't ignore them! ... Ignoring these signals from your body is the height of folly. It can lead to all kinds of tedious and exasperating side effects such as sudden death. "
I thing you got that backwards. CSS supports pixel-precise sizing and positioning. However, CSS also supports sizing and positioning based on the properties of the viewport, which adapt better to different screen sizes. Both approaches have advantages and drawbacks.

HTML-tables OTOH does not support pixel-precize positioning, although you can get some of the way if you combine it with transparent gifs, as people used to do before CSS support became widespread.
Nintendo Wins the Graying Gamers
Internet Money in Fiscal Plan - Wise or Waste?
"Short-term returns are so low because of there were fewer ways to exit the investments. With the public markets in turmoil, venture investors have simply been unable to take their portfolio companies public, and acquisitions last year were down 28 percent from 2007.

Poor returns have led some investors to question whether venture capital is still a profitable model."

Emphasis mine. Looks like instead of getting acquired, VC-funded companies will have to just do it the old fashioned way and make some profit. The good news is that cashflow and profits are awesome, and owning a portfolio of companies generating positive returns for investors and growing is not a bad thing. Positive profits combined with growth typically sells well, though it does mess with the time horizon.

I reckon it'll mean less investors looking into IPO/acquisition for a huge score on a small percent of their companies, and more investors looking for solid, rapidly profitable and clearly useful companies.
"don't confuse a legitimate need for the money with the social pressure of remaining at one's current lifestyle masquerading as a need."

That's not only a problem in people that are self-employed, and it is a very big obstacle to people feeling happy. When it comes to 'need' it is surprising how few things you really need.