skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
people developing end user products should be given a machine that matches the average machine the application will be used on. fast and powerful machines reserved for fast feedback of large testing.

developing an interface on an 8GB machine then hoping it will run nice and fast on X users 1GB laptop is just silly.

that aside, I develop entirely on my laptop, I run linux, virtualbox with windows xp, photoshop + excel, emacs, firefox and a shell and it never breaks a sweat
Really? What's the entry price for the Mac Pro?
$2799, same as 17" MBP.
The Git Bell: post-commit → ruby → arduino → bell
Good Vector-based Web Designs
The 280 Norths (the same people who made iReddit) are making one. I suggested they charge $5 because they won't sell as many. Arguably it's worth it, because having fewer users is part of what makes HN good.
Matt Mullenweg's 12 Rules to Move from 1 User to 100k
This is a really interesting idea. Seems to me to be worth it, having worked with that population (albeit with juvenile offenders for a few months) I can say that all these people need is someone to give them a blueprint to change their lives and the majority will do just that. But it's not easy and they need structure and a way to transfer those skills. I think it's a brilliant idea.
The combined area of two 24" monitors is equal to the area of one 33.94" monitor of the same aspect ratio.

((24^2)*2)^-2 = 33.941125496954281171240529381033

A combined area equal to the area of a single 48" monitor would imply that your two monitors each have a diagonal measurement of 33.94". Since modern widescreen laptop displays tend to have 16:10 aspect ratios, one might reasonably guess that you meant to imply that you have two desktop monitors and that they are 16:9 37" flatscreen televisions (which would have a combined area roughly equal to that of one 16:10 48" monitor or, more likely, flatscreen-television).
Most people don't go to a good college and most people don't take it seriously. More than half of college students drop out without attaining a degree.

The excess demand created by these non-serious people going to college has a lot to do with cost inflation.
another reason for Hackers to join twitter

Or to follow HN new submissions :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=421255
That is hard to stomach. If you're writing, for example, a game and said game has custom interface graphics, you certainly want to version those graphics along with you code. If you don't, it will be difficult to roll back to a working (and visually correct) past build.

If git is slow when I use it manage lots of binary content, that sounds to me like a problem with git rather than a problem with my workflow.

And, FWIW, git isn't too bad for managing all my data since I've broken my work into many repositories.
Making a "lite" version is the same thing as making a demo, which has been around for decades. I don't think this is a cat that just got out of the bag, or anything.
The funny thing is that the pirate bay strictly speaking does not spread illegal content, the torrents are pointers to possibly illegal content, but unless you download a file and verify its contents there is no way of being sure that it even contains whatever it is labelled with. And the download will not take place from any servers owned by or associated with the pirate bay.
You've convinced me. I say we renew a push for the decimal time unit as well. Apparently we're just waiting our time with degrees and such. The cleaned up, decimalised version (gon?) is available.
I think the largest factor in targeting the pirate bay is that they are not pretending to be anything but a source of pointers to possibly illegal information, google, youtube and so on can spend millions on their defense and have a clearly legal use as well. The pirate bay has a much harder time making that case and is a softer target.
Why would you want to get investment w/o a working prototype? It only costs 2-3K to have a freelancer to code it up for you.

Without a working prototype you are just pitching an idea, which means that it'll be next to impossible to find an investor, and if you do find one, you'll have to give away the farm for a tiny amount of money.
I use my MacBook Pro for design in Photoshop and development in TextMate + terminals + webkit. It's nice to be plugged into a screen, of course, but I can operate just fine with six spaces at 1440x900. I've become quite efficient with it, actually.

The cost and size and power consumption of a desktop just doesn't make sense anymore unless you're doing serious data processing, video editing, or something like that. I like to work at coffee shops and outside often, too, and you definitely cannot do that with a desktop.

Now that I think about it, you actually are the only developer I know who works on a desktop.
Might I ask how you accumulated that much money so young?
it only works on the real reddit. the private install idea is interesting though...
And yet, those who followed the advice in this pamphlet did much better than those who didn't. Because it wasn't Coppersmith who got rich off the telephone, it was Alexander Graham Bell and his investors, some 10 years later.

It's like the dot-com boom. The people who said it was all a bubble may have been wrong in the long term, but they preserved their capital to invest another day. At least some of them bought back in after prices collapsed in 2002 (I know I did). Many of the folks who've made real fortunes on the Internet didn't do so in the first dot com boom, they did it in the second, after the initial irrational exuberance had worn off.

Beware the inventor, because the popularizer usually steals his idea and makes all the money.
This is exactly the issue. Making it easier to solve some problems that are very rare in the day to day lives of most of the world is not a good reason to force people to switch measurement systems.
Do they believe that only Earth-like planets can support life? Or is it that Earth-like planets are one type of planet that supports life, with many other possibilities? I would think the first assertion to be short-sighted.
Don't agree with everything in the article, but I found it a thought provoking read.
I doubt any have intelligent life though...

http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2007/04/aliens-dont-exist....

Apologies for Richard Kulisz's more asinine qualities, but I've never seen a convincing refutation of the argument he presents there.
Warning: Thomas L. Friedman.
Money can buy happiness, but I think a few hundred K is not enough. The money needs to give you a complete freedom, so to me at least that means being able to at least retire right away w/o having to work an extra hour of my life
To me, knowledge is a collection of experiences (and the brain seems to code knowledge using the same resources it uses to process experience). It need not be direct experiences, but learning about bears is still an experience even if you never have the experience of meeting one. In this vein, "finding a way" means seeking the appropriate experiences.
"Support The Pirate Bay, change your Twitter profile picture"

http://www.johnsjolander.com/2009/02/support-pirate-bay-by-c...

There have been so many "mistakes" (aka abuse of power) made during this whole process that I'm ashamed to be a Swede. This sort of thing really shows that equality before the law is a pretty relative concept. Like they said in the Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others.
My Retail Job, Crazy as It Is, Keeps Me Sane
I use a MacBook Pro with 2 GB, and I'm very happy with it. Would it be nice to have 4 GB? Yes.
Would I work faster with 4 GB? No (I would work much faster if I just spent less time reading Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, Wikipedia, etc.)
What Is Happening These Days In iyazam.com?
What have we been up to lately? We feel that it's important every so often to stop from the regular day to day articles and give a little update on whats going on with iyazam.com these days.
Having had sustained periods of 112 hour weeks I agree that the physical, mental and emotional toll is incredible. Having said that, I do belive that some people can work longer hours than others, particularly when they enjoy their jobs and are passionate about what they're doing.

I try to keep myself down to 50-60 hours a week. I'm not quite sure what I'd do if I limited myself to 35!
1600x900 [...] only 13.3"

That works out to a horizontal PPI of 138.03. http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html If subpixel rendering is being used (e.g. ClearType on Windows), then the horizontal PPI [EDIT: when displaying text] is 3x that, or 414.09. Don't you think some of those subpixels might be wasted on such a small screen? What is your typical viewing distance?
I think that the system has become broken enough that we can now say that the patent system in general has become a tax on innovation.

In its current implementation, it almost always favors the current (and largest) monopoly player, or the legal entity/corporation that doesn't actually make anything but lawsuits.

A strange tragedy of the commons has developed where it makes good sense for any one startup to pay the extortion fee but its exactly the wrong thing to do for the good of the community because it simply funds and encourages more of the same.
Are you still running Panther on that machine? If so, try running Leopard on 512mb ram.
I stopped reading when I read this:

Every business software developer should have his own copy of SQL Server Developer Edition.

edit: Oh god, I didn't notice this nugget:

Note to the morons who argue "this is why developers are writing big, bloated software that suck up resources"
.. Dear moron, this post is from the perspective of an actual developer’s workstation, not a mere bit-twiddling programmer

I wonder how this guy manages to hold down a job with such a hostile attitude.

Hell, I can't make this crap up. Here's from another post:

People who swear by Linux for the most part only hate Windows for the sake of hating Microsoft; it has little to nothing to do with the overall quality of the Windows product. They just feel that they have the moral prerogative to spread hate of Microsoft throughout the world.
As I discovered as a child, English speakers tend to hear "dl" as "gl" even absent any semantic-level clues; words like "dleebs" and "dlabs" get interpreted as "gleebs" and "glabs". Even the single level above the raw phonemes, containing the phonology of English, is enough.

...and really that's unavoidable. Absent aspiration, the difference between the /k/ of "sick" and the /t/ of "sit" is not contained in the /k/ or /t/ itself (almost no sound is being emitted during that time) but rather in the offglide of the vowel.
I think the original author is overestimating the cost of swapping. If you have a decent amount of memory (2GB+) and a fast hard drive (7200RPM+) you will usually get decent performance even when you have lots of memory-intensive tasks open.

Personally, I run Vista + 3-4 virtual machines + Outlook + Carbide.c++ and/or IntelliJ IDEA and/or NetBeans + a bunch of web browsers + multiple databases with 3GB of RAM with no problem.

I use a 14.1" screen on my laptop. Sometimes I wish I was using a bigger screen, but the majority of the time screen real estate isn't a big problem. In order to really make use of a giant screen I would need some new plugins for my IDEs that let me control my web browsers while keeping the focus in the editor. Otherwise, the smaller screen actually makes it easier for me to focus on the what I am looking at--everything is always in the center of the screen.

The main issue I have with my current system is with the CPU speed. Since I started doing C++ programming I have really noticed the slowness of my 3-year-old CPU and memory. I would love for my builds to complete instantly instead of taking 3-5 seconds each.
no, cannabis doesn't do any of that... It adds ANOTHER layer on your brain (the drug) - which is the exact opposite of what this experiment seems to achieve...
"A bird in the hand
is worth two in the
the bush"

I could find the double 'the' at first sight - am I a savant or what?
I have two problems with this case:

1) Thepiratebay's blog is also covered, thus making it impossible for them to state their case to the people. Effectively their voice is censored by the ban.

2) Thepiratebay isn't illegal in Sweden. Banning something that isn't illegal borders on totallitarian.
Really? You and your friends have spent years studying Craigslist spam and have not understood why people are posting them?
Social Network Analysis: Can Quantity Compensate for Quality?
Of course Chrome looks native. On Windows Vista, it emulates the design aspects of Vista. It has its own feel, but by-and-large it's modeled around the design theory of Windows. I'm hoping their Mac program will be very much Mac-focused.
Man learns to tell 'pigs' from cops
You're right, of course. But there are a lot of people who use this kind of software that don't actually need to, and who would probably be better off using other options.

Also, I don't think that licensing costs hurt my point; by using free software, they could save on that money as well.
A smug, self-righteous windows developer he is indeed. Check out this other post of his: http://www.jondavis.net/techblog/post/2009/02/01/15-Reasons-...
Google is in court because they're big and have money. They also make a good effort at removing illegal content. TPB doesn't, AFAIK. Seriously, it's nice to get free stuff but then why have any laws? May as well just take what you want from whoever has it.
Glad to see Acko.net get a call-out: that's been a favorite design of mine for a while.
It's the same prisoner's-dilemma situation referenced by Thomas Jefferson: "Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute."
That's a good solution.

Another solution is to offer a few different top paid lists for each of the common selling price ranges. So have one at 0-4.99, another at 5-10, etc.... That way some of the more expensive ones are treated quasi fairly.

Also the ratings should be weighted towards the people that actually purchased the app.
Imagine a world where patents only last 3 years and all closed source code and research had to be made public in that time too.

We'd all have to innovate faster and more consistently to stay ahead of our competition.

We would probably have cured cancer, have infinitely more efficient fuel sources and be able to feed the world.
I've had less serious breakage under Debian Unstable than I've had under stable released of Ubuntu, surprisingly enough.

I know, anecdote != data, but that's my experience with it.
True, but a more educated guess than "billions".
Some textual notes: http://raincitystudios.com/blogs-and-pods/matt-mullenweg-sca...
I have a 24" monitor at home, and it's nice, but I don't have any trouble working from my 9" netbook screen either. I use Xmonad, so I can basically manage windows in my mind instead of by moving them around on screen. I only need to see what I am interacting with -- if I need something else, it is just a keystroke away.

A bigger monitor just means I can be easily distracted by IRC, since I can see my code and IRC window at the same time. That is not necessarily good for productivity :)
thepiratebay isn't illegal in Sweden.

There's a reason power is divided into a legislative, judicial and executive branch in a democracy.

This is very clearly a case of the judicial branch being bent by the recording industry. Since TBP isn't illegal there should be no case. If the legislative branch sees a problem and changes the law it's a very different scenario.
http://www.concernedconnections.org/manuscript/chap066.html says:

In his book, Telephone, The First Hundred Years, John Brooks describes a rumor that circulated in New York City a decade before the 1877 invention by Alexander Graham Bell. As the story goes, a man named Joshua Coppersmith, was convicted of fraud "for exhibiting a device which he said was capable of transmitting a human voice over metal wires." Most people at that time thought the idea to be outlandish, and Coppersmith a charlatan. Mr. Brooks states, however, "...the significant thing is that there is no official record or evidence of any kind that Coppersmith ever existed".67

The interesting thing is that (according to this random web page, according to the book) the rumor really did predate Bell's and Elisha Gray's inventions by some years.
> Every programmer is different.

Yes, some think that their blub is perfection. It makes me a little sad, actually.

> I HATE that these fucking arguments happen every fucking day and that there's really no need, and that it's wasting all our time.

You don't actually have to reply to every reply you get, you know. If you think you stated your views in the first thread, there is no need to rehash them. I ignore replies all the time, for this reason. (Or simply because I have something else to do. It's a social news site. Who cares?)
I think it depends on the industry. If patents only lasted 3 years, high tech may move faster because a 3 year advantage is enough incentive to innovate in an industry that moves fast anyway. I'm not so sure about pharmaceuticals though. 3 years isn't even enough to complete clinical trials, so the companies would effectively have no incentive to innovate at all.
Can Twitter become a real time search engine of what people are thinking?
It's the combination of being recruited right out of high school to a startup (which I contractually can't name but which was out of business after the first bubble), growing up poor (so when I did get a little money I didn't know what to do with it other than to store it away) and finally Bob Brinker who I follow religiously (http://www.bobbrinker.com/portfolio.asp)

But really the second is the most important. People have no idea how much money actually passes through their hands in an average year (or how much money it can get them if they invest it wisely). Yes I made $93,000 a year for a little over a year at 18 which was a huge break but I've added significantly to that simply by only buying things I really wanted to have and stuffing the rest away.
It's currently running X.5, whatever cat that is associated with. I did have to disable the background indexing stuff (searchlight?) due to my blazing fast 4200 RPM drive, but it ran pretty well with 512MB. Spaces even worked. Things were better with 2GB, but it was completely usable for what I needed, which was email, a light browser, and terminals galore.
Bad example. It's very easy to install (and write) software on Windows Mobile phones. Up until a few years ago (with the advent of OpenMoko and Android), Windows Mobile was the most open mobile phone platform.
You crave the experience of programming and specifically in a way in which you have freedom of choice in that experience. The money you have accumulated has essentially "bought" you that experience. I don't think this runs counter to the study's conclusions, just that the study was limited in the range of experiences studied.
Disadvantages of CSS Frameworks: A Sass-y Response
I like his estimate that each sun like star has on "AVERAGE" one Earth like planet. Nothing like stating the obvious. (Everyone knows that we have one planet like earth for our sun like star :))
> By quadrupling the performance of your employee's system

But you don't necessarily quadruple the performance by quadrupling memory.

More memory -> slower hybernation

64 bit -> fatter pointers, leading to larger memory consumption
Not meant as an insult but I can't help but think you'll never be happy. The person who scoffs at a few hundred k is usually the person who ends up scoffing at a few million when they get that and so on.

Happiness is accepting the good luck you get and not letting yourself become fixated on the great luck you didn't.
The role of mundane activities is interesting: A cup of tea, reading the newspaper, taking a walk, smoking a cigar, etc.

People who have trouble sleeping are, among other things, supposed to establish a routine. Repeating mundane activities (brush teeth, lock doors, turn down thermostat, etc) in the same way every night seems to prime the brain for sleep.

I suspect it doesn't matter what you do before you settle in to work, simply that you establish some "it's time to work now" cues and then take advantage of them.
As I said, that's the RSIZE column from activity monitor. Safari is now 532 rsize, 562 rprvt, and 69 rshrd. It's a lot less if you restart it more often and have less windows open.

itunes is not a memory hog by comparison. it's using 62/30/32 in the same order.
Extending your thought...wouldn't the market then only be that active at those very narrow seasons?
If subpixel rendering is being used (e.g. ClearType on Windows), then the horizontal PPI is 3x that, or 414.09. Don't you think some of those subpixels might be wasted on such a small screen?

The text on my laptop very crisp and clean looking; I don't think I have any sort of subpixel stuff enabled though; I'm running Linux, and have no idea if X even supports that sort of thing.

The typical resolution for a small laptop is 1440 pixels wide, which requires some really small fonts or terminals <80 columns to fit three across on a screen. With 1600 pixels, it's really easy to fit 3 terminals with reasonable fonts. I don't know anything technical about it, but I know it looks nice and is easy to read.

What is your typical viewing distance?

Well, it's a laptop, so the distance from my eyes to my lap, or closer on an airplane. I'd say I'm rarely using the laptop when it's more than about 3' away from me.
I don't get it: They're all rasterized when they make it into a layout. In what way does the process matter? Why isn't this just "Good Web Designs?"
It's a hair splitter but I don't think that's what they meant. They're specifically saying "purchasing experiences" which is where I think the distinction is.

I mean, it's hard to argue because in a lot of ways the question comes down to 'what constitutes buying an experience". If I buy a gadget I am buying an experience in using that gadget. So in that way purchasing items is also purchasing experiences which invalidates the article all together.
There's a little bit of truth to that last statement though ;-)
Google Maps Now #1 Over Mapquest
What if there were a company that insured start-ups against patent trolls? The insurance would be set up in a way that gave the companies a large incentive to pursue the lawsuit fully, and to sue for expenses. For example, the insurance could cover legal costs of the defence suit and expenses lost, and also give a financial incentive to sue the troll for legal expenses (perhaps by matching some percent of any legal fees recovered from the troll).

The idea would be that a company with this insurance would not be a target for trolls, as long as the company made it known they had the insurance policy, because the trolls would realize that the company stands to gain by fighting the troll in court.
It would be interesting if they covered international cities - Bangkok, Amsterdam, Berlin come to mind.
The difference is that a failed startup isn't seen as something bad. It can even look good on a resume. Whereas a failed career in science becomes an albatross around your neck making it very difficult to reenter the scientific career path.
Stop Looking for a WoW Killer
Five tips for better online surveys
It doesn't follow the Windows design paradigm. One of the examples in the article is the dialog boxes that cannot have their buttons pressed by using the "spacebar" key.

They use their own UI controls & elements that behave similar but not identical to their win32 counterparts... in the way any non-native UI toolkit would.
I've read most of these. When I first found them a couple years ago, I forgot how, it was such a relief to read articles written by a hacker. Kind of like finding a band that you really, really like.

I'll give them a second look, now that my vision has become a product.