skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting bit in the comments:

«I remember being at a demo of Adobe Digital rebook reader when it was first released many years ago. The rep went through the license agreement with some care and pointed out that under the rules, it was forbidden for anyone to read over your shoulder. That’s just how silly some of these guys are.»
Another hot one growing is flat design which has little gradients and beveled effects. I made a Dribbble bucket here to see examples: http://dribbble.com/bcackerman/buckets/82543-Flat
I don't see what DOM has to do with URL parsing.
What's the Python example?
Tweet Like Nobody Listens: Why I Unfollowed You
Why mentoring is useless
I don't use a notebook anymore. Now I start with a small document containing what need the project is supposed to solve, some design notes, and I use omniGraffle to sketch out diagrams. One tip: I save copies of all of my "idea diagrams" in a folder and I often start by grabbing an old file and copying parts of it. I find that using a diagramming tool is almost as fast as sketching with pencil and paper.

I also rely on Evernote (happy paying customer) for storing resources, random thoughts, photos taken with my cellphone of receipts, etc. I don't use Evernote for project materials however, just general resources and a history of what I have found interesting and useful.
Chandrayaan was a "crash landing" of an impactor (there were four others of those, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing#20th.E2.80.9321st...). I think they claim they want to be the third nation to a land a small operating space craft on the moon, or something like that.

I don't think that goal by itself is all that special, because in light of the fact that in the meantime many different nations have sent stuff to lunar orbit or to other planets, it doesn't seem like it would be particularly hard for any of them to land a small probe on the moon, it's just that they have prioritized different things.

What would be impressive about SpaceIL would be that they would apparently be pulling it off with very little resources. But then again, there are many teams other than to SpaceIL in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, and at this point they may all have an equal right to claim to try to be the "third on the moon"...
Here's an article on the economics of a taxi in NYC:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-12/new-york-taxi-co...

According to the article, at the end of a 12-hour shift, a driver goes home with $160 after paying $120-$130 to rent the cab & medallion and $8 for credit card processing. There's also gasoline costs, which the article doesn't give a number for, but as a guess, a driver might go through half a tank on a shift for $40, and that's in an inefficient large car with a V8.

So over half of the cost of an NYC taxi is the driver's labor, and a nontrivial portion of the taxi rental goes to pay for the taxi medallion, which has gone up in cost to a million dollars in recent years:
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/06/taxi...

Many other cities have the same problem, like my hometown Milwaukee:
http://wisconsinreporter.com/milwaukee-taxicab-battle-test-o...

The economics of taxi service in the US are largely driven by labor costs as well as regulations that have been perverted to funnel money to a rent-seeking set of license/medallion owners, not the running cost of the motor vehicle.
Honestly, I think Surface is already a success. I've seen and heard dozens of people talking about their experience with it, that they are getting it, etc.. I guess a lot of people were holding out for more PC like tablets with USB ports and Office to make the switch and MS did a good job marketing.

Just because something is a success, though, doesn't mean it is better than Apple or Android for everyone or that it will take over the market. It just means it is profitable and has a spot in the marketplace where it can be improved multiple revisions. It took Xbox a couple revisions before it was really a major player, which happened mostly due to Xbox Live providing the modern internet gaming experience everyone else had to copy.

You don't have to blow everyone out of the water to have a successful product or company, and in MS's case, they just have countless companies they run their business on their software who will be their best clients. If if MS was a failure with consumers and they only sold to businesses already in their thrall, that's still a good business with room for products.
- ErgoDox: split, non-staggered, programmable, mechanical, all-around awesome. http://ergodox.org/

It should roll around before the end of the year, group buy happens at http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=22780.0

As for layout, I suggest Colemak with a custom alt layer such as http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?pid=5001#p5001
I don't think people are mad because Ubuntu wants to make money. (Witness the relatively well-received "donate" link on the Ubuntu download page.)

They're mad at the Amazon search results because
1) Ads are now intruding in what's been an ad-free space since pretty much the dawn of the OS.
2) Assumed-private input into your OS is now being sent to a 3rd party, and you have to opt-out instead of opt-in.

Definitely a bad move by Shuttleworth; it was a fundamental paradigm shift in what people expect from an OS, crammed in half-baked, without the fanfare or discussion that was due.

That is Shuttleworth's big mistake: consistently releasing alpha-quality software in an environment where eventually upgrading is mandatory. (Because with all milestone-based distros, if you need an update to a single program, the entire system must be updated along with it.)

He's burned a lot of community karma by doing this. Witness Pulseaudio, or Unity, or now this. Day-to-day users don't want to be beta testers, they want a stable (i.e. bug-free and polished) experience, and Ubuntu doesn't deliver that.

Shuttleworth, Ubuntu, and its users would be better served by focusing on polish and regression- and bug-fixes instead of trying to turn the industry upside-down every six months. Spend time fixing bugs so I can recommend Linux to mere mortals, set up a testing lab with a wide array of real-life hardware to track and prevent regressions, and don't release something unless you'd be happy releasing it in a world where you can never update it again.

Alternatively, figure out a way to change Linux from milestone-based releases to what Windows has accomplished: A platform where the core is tested and stable, and the user can install whatever version of whatever program they like. DLL hell is a thing of the past, storage space is practically free, and Linux should be able to update, say, GIMP, without requiring an update to my graphics drivers at the same time. That way we can enjoy a stable system and opt-out of Shuttleworth's half-baked experiments.

But that's a pretty tall order.
1. Agreed that its hard to imagine Top Gear writing that way. For example, for Mercedes they write: "Packed with every conceivable gadget, the S-class is traditionally a place where new technology is debuted – and because this is Merc’s flagship it usually works faultlessly." Car and Driver writes: "Mercedes also claims its new sedan is its safest yet. S-classes equipped with optional Distronic Plus cruise control go beyond the standard car's safety features with a short-range radar system that "looks" at an area closer to the front of the vehicle than the long-range radar used by the cruise control."

2. Regarding stress and strain while driving - here is a research paper that might convince you: http://www.ectri.org/YRS07/Papiers/Session-9/Schiessl.pdf

3. Experience with diverse embedded software systems, from medical electronics to military jets, has demonstrated that software can be indeed engineered, and verified, to be more safe than simple mechanical and purely human controlled systems.

4. In fact current automatic transmissions are now more fuel efficient than manual transmissions: http://green.autoblog.com/2010/08/18/greenlings-why-do-autom...
... That's just... cool. There is no other word for it. That's just really cool.
Because Manhattan in no way depends on transportation of goods.
Ahh, the good old simulation argument:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
The paper (linked above) is a 'must-read', IMHO, and moderately-easily understandable.
What is this "tagxt"?
For most skillsets, the answer is: pick the career that makes the most money, figure out what the best charity is, and give most of your money to that charity. Trying to be philanthropic directly is usually less effective than making money and then paying others to do good on your behalf. On the other hand, maybe you can do more good directly, by working for a charity.

In either case, you need serious research and numbers to figure out what the right path is. 80,000 hours (http://80000hours.org; I am not affiliated) is a charity that's set themselves up to research and give career guidance for people who want to maximize their positive impact. They will probably give a better answer than StackOverflow.
I also expect the classic "I have moved on to Instagram" comment here. While it's funny to hear and definitely cracks me up a bit, it's gotten a deeper meaning for sure. It often means Twitter has clogged up with people you don't care about and so you move on to something new, where you can establish a fresh circle. Or am I seeing this totally wrong?

Would love to hear some comments, it would help a lot of startups out there with retaining users I'd say, where the simple friend everyone was goal #1 and that exact marketing strategy eventually leads to losing the early adopters quickly.
Bug scanner
This looks amazing! This has inspired me to learn more about 3d interfaces in javascript! Thank you!
The site seems to be down, does anyone have a mirror?
Hmm, looks complex compared to this one that I've been using called JSMN:

http://zserge.bitbucket.org/jsmn.html
Shouldn't the general public have high school reading levels?
jsmn is more of a lexer and it doesn't support unicode.
three.js is an impressive library but sadly, they still haven't fixed their busy wait architecture: if you do nothing and just stare at the page, it will still peg your CPU.
Flying cars are uncommon not because they are dangerous, but because it requires a huge amount of energy to defeat gravity in addition to propelling the vehicle forward.

Cities are more populous and wealthy than ever before because there is no substitute for human proximity in a service economy, and more humans in close proximity makes for more productive services.
This looks really cool from a geeky standpoint but how are these useful in a UX way?
I noticed that dragging around causes the graph to change. I know I should just look at the source, but can someone tell me what inputs the dragging changes for the computation? Also, bonus points for some cool drags I can do that you notice.
For some types of certificate errors, sure. But we're talking about expiration here. You can still check that the certificate was validly issued and (theoretically) that it hasn't been revoked. The certificate is only a year and a half old, compared to the verisign certificate with a 10 year life span that signed it.
I question whether these keyboard layouts are ideal for programmers. On Qwerty, Colemak, Dvorak, and Workman, the symbol keys are pushed to the periphery of the keyboard. To improve practical typing efficiency, I created and use http://typing.io, which allows you to type real code instead of prose.
The emulation isn't perfect--I know there are still some 6502 bugs lurking around. I did this in about a week last year and have only spent a few sporadic days here and there improving it.

One of the things on my todo list is to use websockets or something to ship the emulation log back to the server and compare against an independent (and presumably better tested) 6502 emulator. From there I can detect inconsistencies and fix the JS implementation. As I side effect I can build up a set of (hopefully) comprehensive test vectors that anyone writing a 6502 emulator can use to validate their implementation.
My Xbox 360, which replaced my $70 cable subscription with Netflix, Hulu and a bunch of other apps, is still very much alive.
What? I love my Xbox.
I spent 6 hours last night using my PS3 - but game consoles are "dead."
3. Why does everyone sigh when they find a "software" on off switch compared to a hardware one? Because the software one invariably doesn't work, or doesn't work immediately.

4. I'm sure it's possible to make an automatic transmission better for fuel consumption, that's an easy problem. But make an automatic transmission that knows what you as a driver want (I'm betting that's rarely "fuel efficiency") - that's the holy grail, which certainly hasn't been achieved yet.
Looks nice, but arranging the elements as a sphere, spiral, etc. completely defeats the purpose of the periodic table. Also, your atomic numbers are off by one.
They'd look damn good in a movie. :)
The most dramatic counterargument is with distribution of goods, which mostly occurs with cargo ships, trucks, and trains--simply because those are way cheaper & more efficient than flying. The simple physics argument is that it requires extra work to keep something flying, which is better avoided. So roads and rails will need to be kept anyway, and it's highly unlikely that people wouldn't use them.

On the other hand, I do have to say I'm a big fan of airships, but I'm not holding my breath for their return. I even doubt people would accept that travelling has to be so much slower in an airship, now that he jet age has arrived.
box-shadow and the transitions make it extremely slow on FF: https://twitter.com/mrdoob/statuses/262526881813917696

This other css3d demo runs perfectly smooth on FF17/Win7: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7508542/sandbox/threejs/css3d/css3d...
As far as I can tell, my home town of Edinburgh only has license fees that have to be paid by black cab and private hire companies - about £2000 or so (additional fees to license drivers as well). I can't see any mention of any artificial restrictions on the number of taxis operating.
Yes, but that's civil litigation between 2 people or a person and a corporation.

No one in the U.S. goes to jail for serving hot coffee.
"These test suites are often 5-10 times larger than the actual submitted code, and it is difficult to imagine anybody outside of this type of environment spending so much extra time designing (and testing!) test suites with 100% coverage."

Try the (extensive!) programming challenges at http://uva.onlinejudge.org/

In almost all of the challenges the example input data is sized such that even the most naive algorithm will run within a second or so. When submitted the code is judged against much larger/more-complex sets of input that will catch out inappropriate algorithm choice, unhandled edge cases, etc.
This is fantastic looking. Very well done.

Minor nitpick; your spiral is a helix, not a spiral.
I keep a moleskine notebook with me all the time where i sketch and write my ideas on the spot. I use mindjet's mindmapping software to elaborate on those ideas and store the files in a brainstorming folder on my portable harddrive and laptop. A copy of that folder is also in Google Drive to have access to the files and documents whenever i need them. I frequently use evernote and flava and sync them both, especially when i take snapshots with my mobile.
Yep. I routinely watch a torrented/PVR'd race with the iPad App running the 'live' timing and scoring. It really does make a huge difference.
Why is Sandy predicted to curve back inland?
I'm watching the track of Hurricane Sandy (http://www.weather.com/weather/hurricanecentral/tracker) and from a simple minded extrapolation I would have drawn a track continuing due North or North-East. Why is the projected track curving back inland?
I really think the concerns about bad code are overblown. I had a friend in college who, for a CS class's final project, wrote an entire game in Java within a single, enormous function body. I still don't know how he even managed to do it, but it basically worked and he passed the class. He sort of understood how functions worked, but he found them confusing, so he didn't use them.

This wasn't at some community college or anything. This was at Georgia Tech.

That's an extreme case, and I certainly am not saying that just because it happened in a respected engineering school, that makes it acceptable. But my point is that in entry level courses (like the ones where you'd be implementing a clip function), even professors grade on getting the job done. Code quality just doesn't enter the picture at that level.

The thing is, trying to teach good code directly is pointless. Your less bright students will accept the dogma and never actually understand how to apply it usefully. Your brightest students will see it as a bunch of useless bullshit that's holding them back.

If you want to teach good code, here's how you do it: Make a student write and maintain a large project. Make them keep it running for two years, while you make them add more and more features. Keep checking it against an automated test suite which they do not have access to, and grade them on its correctness. Give them the resources to learn about best practices, but never tell them they have to use them.

Then, at the end of two years, let them rewrite it from scratch. Then you will see a student who has learned the value of good coding practices.
Dawadi Journal: Find Most Retweeted or Popular Tweets
Thanks! I appreciate the comment.

Something I'd like to do is write up an article on what it takes to emulate an Apple 2. Getting the disk to work was surprisingly complicated--the Apple does all the low level track formatting in software which means the emulator has to take the logical disk image and generate a bitstream that the emulated software expects so it can turn it back into logical bytes in memory. That required getting a lot of details right about the bit format, rotation speed of the disk, etc.
PC gaming has grown massively for the past 5 years. Brick and Mortar PC retail is dead, digital distribution is king.
This is a repost (the Retina bit is new), but for those who haven't seen it before, you can share particular initial seeds by clicking on the "Permalink" button.

An example Retina seed: http://jashkenas.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/deJong/deJong.html#52...

Annotated source here: http://jashkenas.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/deJong/docs/deJong.ht...

One interesting question will be if anyone finds a single seed that works well for both regular and Retina versions.
If you're under 34 years of age, a motor vehicle is the thing most likely to kill you. Pedestrians are close to 50% of the motor vehicle deaths in NYC. All too many collisions are caused by dangerous driving such as speeding or violation of pedestrian right-of-way in a crosswalk.

Many measures that would increase pedestrian and cyclist safety are blocked by members of the entitled minority motorist class: speed cameras because many motorists believe themselves unable to drive at a speed safe for other road users, and bike lanes and wider sidewalks because drivers feel the region of the public roadway they have colonized for the storage of private property is a permanent entitlement. Automated vehicles would better obey speed laws and make nearby street parking less necessary.
This is false pedantry. Have you ever seen a spiral staircase?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spiral
If the cars cost $20k and drive themselves, droves of those people will be able to access them for some of their transit needs (because they will be available, cheap!, on a per mile basis).
The best thing about this toy is that, no matter where you click, you get a beautiful result.

The only thing missing is arrowkey controls to bump around a pixel at a time, so you can better explore an interesting region of the space you've found.
This is more about organization theory than politics
"The article is exaggerating heavily about the advancements and they heavily rely on China and Russia."

I remember how ten years ago you could read the same phrase about Chinese program, and now they are on the providing side already!
This all depends on what is meant by "dead."

There are many businesses, like minicomputers and 370-architecture mainframes that continue to be large money-making businesses, but that have no mind-share because there is no upside, and nothing new to be done.

It looks inevitable to me that PCs will stop being a consumer business. The only people who will buy them are people who need them, plus some remnant who are too used to them to change.
This is the bit that records the dragging change in mouse position:

http://jashkenas.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/deJong/docs/deJong.ht...

This is the bit that seeds the sketch at the last recorded mouse position:

http://jashkenas.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/deJong/docs/deJong.ht...
10 PRINT "HELLO"

20 GOTO 10

RUN

7th grade memories come flooding back ...
Canonical have never made their financial structure public so we can't judge what is actually going on with revenues and expenditures. It is certainly the case that they have a large staff (there are six members of the community team alone) and I recall past claims that half of Canonical employees were working on Launchpad!

What is happening is that Ubuntu is going through the normal lifecycle of Linux distributions. They all start out because existing distributions are not paying attention to detail, and have a close focus. Then success broadens scope and spreads people out thinner and thinner. This inevitably means paying less attention to detail and leads the formation of new distributions, and a repeat of the cycle.

A sample of one (myself) is eagerly awaiting a distribution paying attention to detail to replace Ubuntu on my systems.
> How depressing to see what the top 10 top 10 consists of. At least it shows that high schooler's are reading books, or less encouragingly, that the general public has high school reading levels.

What are some examples of fiction books that you would find non-depressing if they were on the list?
I've wondered the same things as Dalton, why isn't there a city in New Mexico or an area that is as densely high tech as the Bay Area? My guess is it is the lack of ready access to capital, the New Mexico tech seems way more "R" than "D" (in the R&D spectrum) and research consumes more money than it produces.
Entrepreneurs - Focus on Building the Brand of YOU
It's not intended to be useful as a periodic table. It's a technology demo.
Space Photography Best of collection
There are a number of alternative period table layouts[1] that highlight different aspects of the relationships between elements. I taught chemistry for a bit, and I coveted this swooping three-dimensional spiral model that gorgeously showed how the electrons were filling out the different orbitals...

Doob is the man, and I was disappointed when I hit the spiral button and it was a demo of putting the things in a spiral, not the half-remembered spiral-esque model in my mind.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_periodic_tables
so.... it's a forum.
API Code Samples via Gists
I'll buy one. I hate wasting time driving.
Show HN: mruby-rake, compile your ruby scripts to mruby executable
A valid point. I've been using Workflowy for a few months (I'm a long-time "outliner aficionado" who has happily jumped into using this tool with both feet due to some HN postings), and when it comes to entering work/professional data, I make small efforts to obfuscate key items. But some cannot be obfuscated w/o invalidating the content itself...

I haven't been sufficiently concerned/motivated to investigate their privacy policy further.

[edit:] https://workflowy.com/privacy/ may raise concerns; I need to review this policy later (and compare it to those of other free services such as Google which I also use).
Scraping Made Easy with jQuery and SelectorGadget
Whats the thing with saying "Only 2 files" what if it is only 1 file, like bottle.py, but the 1 or 2 files contain 10 000 lines of code? Im just saying.