skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great review. I was not aware of Bookshop, thanks for sharing your deep-dive into using it and other tools.

I began writing ebooks over the summer. To date, I have written four educational/reference titles around a theme -- "In 30 Minutes". The idea is to let newbies quickly understand a mildly complex topic. The most recent title is The $10 Small Business Website In 30 Minutes (1).

Not only do these books contain lots of screenshots and detailed TOCs, I also publish them in multiple formats -- .mobi, ePub, PDF, and PDF for paperback.

Unfortunately, I discovered that the most popular writing tools -- Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Apple Pages, are not up to the task of creating ebook files across all of the platforms. Even if they can export to a certain format, there are limitations that force additional production and conversion steps. I also encountered the problem of forked masters, when I had to use different tools for exporting/converting to special formats.

Currently, I am using Google Docs for composition and collaboration with my copy editor. I then copy and paste the text into Scrivener (2), which is the most powerful writing and publishing tool I have ever used. It exports to .mobi, ePub, PDF, and print book PDF. Like TFA, I use Kindle Previewer to test the .mobi files. The ePub files need some mild HTML cleanup, which I do in Sigil (3).

1. http://10dollarsmallbusinesswebsite.com/

2: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

3: http://code.google.com/p/sigil/
HNpod: Why programmers work at night, Twitter API Limits, & More
The one luring problem with these distributed social network sites are the transparency with the target audience and its creators, most of your most potential audience is not going to care much of how the backend is constructed, rather your users will focus on the design of the app and what they can see, the field of distributed networks is an interesting one and wrangling with apis and libraries is where I feel web programming will be heading for a long time, good luck in your distributed/startup endeavors!
My concern is portability because that is the largest benefits of C at-least. C++ portability is less true however it is more portable than most languages.
> What if we added a rolled-up rope ladder inside each gondola?

Many would find that terrifying, so would still be trapped.
Beware these "open source" lock-in schemes
Ask HN: What is the highest trafficked website run by an individual?
I run Twicsy (twitter picture search) in my spare time by myself and receive over 5.5 million monthly unique visitors (current trailing month according to Google Analytics).

I am curious about what other large sites there are out there run by a single person? Is 4chan the biggest site run by one person?
Einstein’s brain was unusual in several respects, rarely seen photos show
Straight out of SICP :)
Since NYC has about the highest level of personal intrusion, I'd say all of the ones that have a lower crime rate.
Forget Facebook. Meet 12 investors on the hunt for the next Microsoft
The ARD and ZDF channels are not government funded in germany. It's a fee that gets collected by a dedicated agency, but not a tax. The System has its own set of issues, but in general I think the system is a good idea.
Apple did amazing things, it's somewhat unfair to give all the credit to Steve Jobs. NeXT didn't exactly do very well. There was something magical about the combination of people, from designers, to technologists to the supply chain optimization that made all the fancy ideas reality. It wasn't just Jobs, he steered the ship, he was its figurehead, but he, and his team did amazing things.
I take it you know about /var/log/mcelog ?
> See Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553383876/

For what it's worth, there's what looks to be a strong rebuttal of most of the things this book says here:

http://fdiv.net/2012/01/20/pseudo-science-and-pseudo-feminis...

(I'd tend to think that your point stands anyway as being obviously true, but after reading the rebuttal again along with the link to this article I'm not sure anymore.)
As soon as I see the words "cross-platform" on an IDE, I'm no longer interested. Looks really nice though, they did a good job with branding.
Agreed: we have to focus on two levels - users and devs:

This post has a more dev focus but we know that the look and feel and functionality for users is really important. To see what we are working on check out our prototypes that are now being incorporated: https://demo.buddycloud.org/prototypes/ and Felix's paperfold effect: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/paperfold-c...
It's police busywork in light of the reduced crime rates so that no police are laid off.
I'm not disagreeing, but I'll add that having "vision" itself is a form of execution.

Sometimes I think we give the impression that having "vision" is like some innate quality a person has, and not the result of intense effort over a long period of time, which is what it actually is.
The trouble with smart kids
CloudSwipe - A whole new way to do WordPress e-commerce
How can this …

“1) women negotiate less 2) women take more time off for children, thus advance more slowly”

… not be due to inherent gender discrimination (mostly strict gender roles)? Those things explain gender discrimination, they certainly do not explain it away.
We do have thumbs up/down. ("Helpful"/"Unhelpful/"Spam")

If nothing else, it feels good to give a thumb down to asinine reviews.
Wow, that product page is completely lacking any meaningful technical information about your product. :-D

How do you stack up against the most common open source NoSQL systems? Redis, Cassandra, Mongo, Couchbase? Is your db eventually consistent, or partitioned, or replicated, or what?
Hacker project: Modular open-source 3D printer
OCZ Launches Vector, First Indilinx Barefoot 3-Based SSD
Because it's super widely deployed and has a very mature development process, I would expect the Linux kernel to be among the most robust software in the world.

I am interested to hear what you think is more robust than Linux, setting aside seL4. Do you think QNX Neutrino is more robust? If so, why? And what else?

I would expect vxWorks and other RTOSs to generally be less robust than Linux, despite typically going through various certifications.
Einstein’s brain was unusual in several respects
If the cars are detachable, could there be a provision for wheelchair riders to get in their own car which could be attached to the cable?
Surely there's a form of personal insurance that would get you a new phone in less time than it would take for the police to retrieve yours (if they ever do).
Nice article.

This makes me wonder if Visual Studio's F# mode could help detect common errors, e.g. highlight recursive calls not made in tail position.

On the other hand, this could get annoying as such calls are often not a real problem in practice.
Show HN: Language-agnostic project template CLI for OSX
It's a pretty safe bet that most people reading this know a couple living under terms a lot like these. Right now. Today.

The fact that we're often not aware of it doesn't change the reality.

When it comes to other people's relationships, the one thing you can be absolutely sure of is that you don't really understand them.
* I do feel like this is a valid question*

What is your actual question?
This makes no sense... "Downloaded recipe app, I don't like to cook, one star!"
Ask HN: Hardware/Software Community Service Ideas/Projects?
Does anyone have any ideas/projects (hardware/software) that one can do as community service?
Jekyll Asset Pipeline: A Powerful CSS/JS Asset Packager for Jekyll
"some say that she is really old to take chemotherapy and then some say that traditional medicine is bullshit"

Regardless of the conclusion (seeing as I'm not a medical professional, and even if I was, remote diagnosis is dangerous in itself) it's not impossible for them to both be correct.
That entire comment read like an internal monologue that I frequently have with myself. :-(. I couldn't have worded it any better or differently. And, no I don't think you sidestepped anything or claimed that A is inferior to B or some such thing either.

But in the real world, for promotions and favors and work autonomy and VC funding, pass rates are << 50% and if you don't have it in you to negotiate for a better outcome, you're screwed.

I already had a bad day and shouldn't have read that line in the end. I am going to go and crawl into a foetal position until daybreak! :-(
On the contrary, if it doesn't matter, why associate them?
I don't know about that. What I've learned is that compilers and interpreters are often ridden with defects, and you have to negotiate hard with suppliers to get them fixed.
Apple Reportedly Fires The Manager Directly In Charge Of The iOS 6 Maps Team
Thanks for the links - I had heard of Scrivener but didn't try using it. The approach I took with Bookshop is more geared towards programmers and web developers who are comfortable with HTML/CSS coding.

I love your "in 30 minutes" idea! Easier to read, and I'm guessing easier to write for you. My eBook definitely will take more than 30 minutes to read :)
Our Industry Needs More...
You group people who don't want to pay and post negative reviews, which is abusive, with those who legitimately rate an app based on its current state. The paying customer is not your beta tester or QA-departnent. If they help you fix bugs: good for you. But you have to take responsibility for the product you release.
Here is my $0.02. While this may be a great idea, coupled with the current state of software industry this is absolutely terrible! Let me elaborate. What does it take to get a job as a programmer? Next to nothing. After graduating with my computer science degree I've spent a few years working with the most incompetent people who were cooks, business graduates, poured concrete 2 months prior (you name it) and then decided to become programmers because they coded a formula in a spreadsheet.

I've spent some of the most agonizing hours unclusterfucking big bowls of pasta code with meatballs and all kinds of other shit all sprinkled with cheddar cheese. Then I had to hold their hands so that they wouldn't make such a stupid mistake again, and again and again. Then i left and you know what? These people still work there. This is exactly what this kind of thing encourages. It encourages coders, not software engineers/developers and it ends up hurting the industry more than helping it. Yes, you'll have some high school kids who'll like coding. They'll graduate from school and will be sucked into their first programming job right out of HIGH SCHOOL writing shitty code, making way more than their friends and making someone's life miserable. Then a small fraction of those kids will get better (some much better) and maybe get formal education, while the majority will remain damn coders. The industry allows this and it only gets worse. Look, we're not professionals by any formal definition of an engineering profession, but at least we can try to get there some freaking day. But it's incredibly hard to do when you have so much "noise" entering the work-force. Don't get me wrong, i think programming IS essential and I DO believe it should be taught, but i just don't see how this benefits anyone at this point in time.
Oolib.js
It is FOSS (GPLv3). The license information was a wee bit hard to find (Wayyy down on the about page http://ninja-ide.org/about/) and I first thought it was some frankenstein freemuim product where you had to apply for a free license if you were an OSS devel (like PyCharm) etc. etc.

I gave it a whirl:

1. Snappy, which is nice, since PyCharm can be sluggish on my Mac
2. No VCS integration
3. By default very strict code checking is turned on, which turns my (functional) code into a sea of underlines, which is not so pretty

It looks to be an interesting start, but it will need VCS integration before it looks suitable as a PyCharm replacement.

I didn't look in detail at code completion/code assist, which PyCharm does very well.
Dark matter is still a hypothesis.
The only ones I've been able to find are around $100~$300.
UK Movie Pirates Spend (Way) More at The Box Office
My > feelings < is that....

Uncanny. That's exactly the same kind of gnawing feeling that I have many a time as well. And that sometimes makes me bite my tongue and leave an offer/negotiation the way it is. Oh well!
Nuclear reactor heat pipe Stirling engine could power future space flights
Real life concurrency in Go
It would be great to see some screen shots.
SEOs are Growth Hackers
Except it's not "a little temporary safety" or "essential liberties".

First, crime has come down by huge amounts in NYC. Some crimes, like murder are 1/4th or 1/5th of the peaks in the 1980's. For decades now, we've seen a huge increase in safety in NYC.

Second, I question whether most of the police actions are giving up essential liberties. I can see how some might think so, but I can see how many would not.
How to Succeed in Ed-Tech
The problem extends way beyond the college level. I once saw a very small school (graduating fewer than 20 students from sixth grade) add a non-teaching position every year for five years.
That will definitely stop reviews from people with funny non-latin letters in their names who are still reluctant to join g+. I know they say the problem is not there anymore, but my gmail account is far more important than an app review. I can wait.
Those guys really know how to hold a grudge...
The problem is when they don't use this to track drug networks and murder crimes and instead use it to lock up peaceful Occupy Wall Street protesters, or other political dissidents.
I just read this before hitting HN, but isn't the title supposed to be "SEOs ARE Growth Hackers"? Some would argue that "SEOs are the original growth hackers", but that's just a very short sighted view as their domain of expertise is siloed in the domain of all things search engine related. I can see the overlap, as some more technically inclined SEOs have already made the jump, but there needs to be proficiency in understanding many different platforms (not just Google) and of course the ability to actually code to smartly exploit and scale marketing efforts. SEO is just one piece of the puzzle.
You need to learn your cultural references young man. Go watch Fight Club and report back with your results.
Sorry for being pessimistic, but any speculation on the vulnerabilities this connection opens?
> you'd have to offer something significant to convince people to move there and pay their (and families') relocation.

That's why I'm saying that a push by YC combined with Google Fiber could be that initiative. Like I said, there is already interest in the startup community in KC because of Google Fiber. For example, someone started a "startup house" in the first fiberhood to get hooked up, and is now renting it out to startup founders. He's got a lot of reservations already.

As for moving their families, I don't think that's a big concern. There are a ton of young, single potential founders who would have no problem moving halfway across the country.

> Bay Area inbreeding partially works because (a) young companies don't have to spend as much on relocation

These costs can be much lower in the Midwest. Finding an apartment is not the multi-month ordeal it can be in SF, for example.

> (b) availability of public transportation makes living and working in different cities plausible.

There's no need for public transportation in KC. Gas is cheap, taxes are low, and parking space is plentiful. Just get a car. In fact, I'd prefer not to take public transportation if the train stations need to be cleaned by Hazmat crews[0], as they do in SF, with BART.

0: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down...
I would like to propose that DRM is not intended to be uncrackable. It's easy to convince yourself that DRM is flawed, because fundamentally it is a flawed tool. Companies know this, they're not stupid. However, DRM is actually not a technical tool to prevent piracy. Rather, DRM is a legal tool to provide stronger legal arguments that theft has occurred.

I'm not saying this is right, necessarily, but I think companies know full well that their DRM scheme will be broken, so it's not really worth investing in an "uncrackable" and costly solution. Instead, the role that DRM play is purely legal -- when the company does decide to go after someone for piracy, the DRM scheme, no matter how simple, provides them with the ability to say that the accused person "broke a lock," rather than simply walking in through an unlocked door. "Entering" vs. "breaking and entering." It's nothing but legal leverage, and effective at that role even if it's not a very strong lock.

Of course, to have this argument hold, a company would never be able to admit that they purposefully implemented weak security -- this would be akin to admitting that their door was unlocked afterall, and would weaken their legal argument. Therefore, there remains a niche in the market for solutions that look secure even if they fundamentally aren't. It's all about lip service.
I wouldn't go tooting Steams horn too loud. Their system is not nearly as wonderful as many consumers assume it is. Steam does not place ANY limitations on what DRM a publisher can use. They can use StarForce, they can come up with their own magic elixir, they can require you to send naked photos of yourself to the publisher for 'safekeeping' and Valve will permit it. Steam has 1 guiding principle: The Publisher is ALWAYS right. The publisher must be able to do anything they wish, without any restrictions whatsoever.

Contrast this to a system like Apple's iTunes which set up a market with strict rules the publishers had to follow to join. They HAD to sell songs individually. They HAD to sell them for 99 cents a track. They HAD to permit the user to burn them to CD. Etc, etc, etc. Steam does not have even one single "have to" when it comes to games publishers. It is a publishers wonderland.

If you have lightweight DRM on Steam games, you have the games publishers to thank for that, not Valve. Valve would not protect you from even the most extreme forms of DRM if a publisher wished to do it. Valve even goes so far as to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (possibly millions but I doubt it) to have their developers create features which enable publishers to make it look like they're embracing digital distro when they're not. Case in point: the ability to download a game when its done... and then sit there and wait with it encrypted and complete on your hard drive, paid for... until physical retailers can get the game on their shelves. And users think this is a feature! It is a crippling of digital distro, which operates at light speed as opposed to the slow-as-molasses speed of physical distribution. Valve didn't have to do this. They could have said 'when you upload it to our servers, the customers who preordered it get the content available immediately', but they didn't, they followed the Golden Rule of Steam - The Publisher is ALWAYS right.
Politics app. Sex app. Porn app. App about guns. Violent game app. Match.com or OKCupid app.

Pretend you're a school teacher with a few malicious students that have access to Google. This exposes to them what you have privately on your phone, so you're no longer going to rate apps in the ecosystem.
Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy
Nice, it would be good to have some screenshots and stuff though, I'll definitely check it out.
Triple-DES is actually reasonably secure, but it's not well-suited for software implementations.
And let me add that there were probably too many deans 40 years ago.
there is an approach to hard real time software where antirez's idea for a memory checker is done.
Kdev-python 1.4 stable released (impressive static analysis in a Python IDE)
Surprised this hasn't got more attention...
> One of my pet thought projects is actually to imagine what an immutable smalltalk look like.

Honestly, Haskell as it stands comes pretty close.

I assume you're talking about pure immutability (for which Haskell is famous), and Smalltalk's message-passing is really just a way of currying functions (with a slightly different syntax).

You could probably stitch something simple together with Haskell + Parsec fairly easily.
What would really help is a small demo video just to get a whiff of what the IDE feels like. The description and screenshots are somehow not enough for me to download and install an entire IDE and take a test drive. If there is a demo video somewhere, my apologies - I was not able to find it.
Wii Can't Go On, Wii'll Go On
This doesn't seem like a "PHP coding quality" issue to me -- more like a trust issue, because the site admin opened the security hole by installing a WP plugin.

That could happen in any language / framework / situation. It's rogue code that got trusted.
At some point it becomes silly to keep adding 'phases of matter'. And if you want to be exhaustive, don't forget the other oddball types: the high-density states like neutronium, the high-energy states like quark-gluon plasma, etc.
In software, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate-- at all.
I've seen that. But I've also seen some very very hard negotiators in software as well. So, I don't agree with your generalisation. It's something else, but it is late and I am already depressed after reading some of the excellent comments. I am going to get some sleep and do the soul-searching bit on this with a fresh mind tomorrow.

This topic has been food for thought!
Luxemburg, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich, and so on. And within the US there are plenty as well:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/26/safest-cities-ten-lifestyle...

and

http://www.mercer.com/press-releases/quality-of-living-repor...

New York doesn't even enter the top 50 when it comes to safety in the second table there.

And in Canada Toronto, Vancouver.
I had some free time over Thanksgiving break, so I decided to build an asset pipeline for Jekyll. There are a bunch of improvements that I have in mind, but I wanted to get this out there for others to see. In its current form, this plugin covers my basic needs. The real question is: Will anyone else find this useful? I know that I will use it, but I'm not sure if it is worth my time to smooth out the rough edges. Thanks in advance for any feedback!
Because it doesn't change anything and the comment alone reads very bitter and snarky.
Markus Frind, Plenty of Fish: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rol...
This is a very strange reason not to like a product. Care to elaborate why?
Chinese Aircraft Carrier Style
It's a weird bug!
I need to see what to do about it, unarchiver works, as does winrar and winzip and 7zip and other programs.
This is nice, but one quick question, why's the windows installer in spanish?
Agreed it would be.

So, let's pursue this: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2012-11/msg00079...
Wow.. how did this not make it to HN before? Already version 2.1.1 and never heard of it?
Backbone and Kendo UI: A Beautiful Combination
The idea for a new product/company comes from a long process of experiencing situations that give you the background to create that new concept/product. Only after that process you are ready to see those "key igniting observations" that allow you to come up with something new.
Writing a quality review should be all that is needed to add weight to your opinion. Why does it matter if I know it came from Tom Jones in Skokie, IL?
It is Netflix style rating.

Don't blame then user because the vendor to lazy to implement an effective recommendation algorithm instead of flat averaging of ratings.
They wish him a merry Christmas :)
Something something second system syndrome, just use vim/emacs/sublime. 'etc.
It's a stretch to say Tokyo is any less a police state than NYC given Japanese weapon laws and mass CCTV survellience.
How are you managing to convert MS Office docs if you don't mind?