skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you are doing ebook only (no pdf) and it has limited formatting it should be pretty simple to get it to work on most devices.

Though I've yet to actually publish physical books (only have proofs), I'm not willing to commit to using HTML as the base format. (Sounds like princexml might help though if you decide you want to go the physical route later).
this is awesome! it might also just tip the scales from dropbox over to drive. I cant believe something so obviously powerful took so long! I do hope that it will allow me to share files with non-gmail users as well!
Udacity's courses have all eliminated the schedule and are now always-open, self-paced.

I didn't know that. Thanks. I'll mention it to them.

If you want your friends to actually become programmers I'd recommend that you push both an Intro course as well as codeacademy for language practice.

That's great advice. I can't teach my friends because I'm not really a programmer -- I was a business major turned cloud engineer who's still teaching himself.

Codeacademy by itself isn't going to get you anywhere.

I gained a great amount from finishing about 1/4 of code year. I feel like I grasp the fundamentals of programming and could soon become an intern at a startup. I wish my friends could learn as easily as I do...
> I'm very happy with it, but of course, I've never tried to get the data back yet.

Not to be that guy, but... if you don't have a tested restoration plan for a backup, you don't have a backup!

Nothing's worse than losing all your data with no backup... except for losing all your data and going to restore from your backup, only to find that all your data there is gone as well!
I'm in my 40s now, and the number of times I've been brought into a startup suffering under the plague of 20-something founder's grandiose ideas of how things should be done vs. the nearly 20 years of real world experience that says otherwise would surprise you.

Youth might fuel the launch of your product, but experience will help it keep flying.
Agreed - a natural shift (somewhat mirroring what App.net is doing vis-a-vis Twitter). Curious to see how it turns out.

Separately it looks like this argument carries more water when talking about digital-only/communication products? Because when considering apps/services such as Uber, HotelTonight and Cherry (I hate picking exceptions) that provide an offline product or service, mobile first seems to have worked just fine. Perhaps the true underlying argument is that mobile first works best when the LTV of your customer is massive.
Firstly, Apple certainly could have provided public transit directions. Plenty of third party apps already did this (or at least claimed to), so there's no real excuse there.

Another issue is the goofy cosmetic problems with the 3D maps. Of course, you could argue that it's still "a data problem," but it's not the type of data problem that magically gets better as more users use the app.

Lastly, there are usability issues that have nothing to do with data. As another user noted, I can only view navigation either fully zoomed in (with slightly variable tilt that doesn't even work well) or fully zoomed out. The overview shows a list of all the turns, but doesn't let me click on each one to zoom in on it (like every other directions app I've seen). It doesn't show speed or any other useful statistics except for estimated duration and distance.

The old GPS app I used on my iPhone 4, which I believe was Navigon, was a far superior product even ignoring the lackluster data of Apple Maps.
In 29 days they've managed to get two people to pledge $1 apiece.
It's about time!

I use Google's cloud-based services for as much as I can, but it's still not seamless and is annoying when I have to open a new window to access a service run by the same company providing the one in the page I'm on.

Next step: Please allow me to easily save PDF's and other documents directly to Drive from a URL. I shouldn't have to download a file to my device and then upload it to drive.
In the US and the UK, income is income however earned in whatever currency or form transacted (i.e., whether cash, sex, goats, or blessings).

The IRS does not accept payment in goats. They could secure a court order requiring you to sell the goat, or allowing them to sell the goat to satisfy your tax liability (with the excess returned to you).
Looks very slick, but it's really uninteresting seeing where the Rolling Stones toured like that. It doesn't really add anything of any value to me.
>No one’s going to give you a bonus for remembering the difference between inheritance and polymorphism: let’s face it, you’d take the 5 seconds to Google the
definitions and move on.

The point of those questions isn't to test whether you know the definitions of polymorphism and inheritance. The point is to test whether you understand the concepts. Anyone can regurgitate the textbook definition, but can anyone explain why polymorphism should sometimes be avoided? Not if they haven't invested some time in understanding both the theory and applications of OO principles.
I'm not sure how scientific we really need to get about this. Go to San Francisco, go to Palo Alto, go to Mountain View and hang out with startup people. You will see this multiple times a day, and it will pervade your entire impression of the industry.

This phenomenon is not a secret, nor is it obscure.
Yes, but that 55-year-old engineer will code it far better, what with his 20 years of experience and all...
I know the value of experience because I know what my code looked like 5 and 10 years ago. I also know how incredibly poor my judgment was back then compared to now.

I can only imagine what 20 years will do for me. That's why I actively seek out more experience in candidates because I believe it'll make them more competent and sharp at what they do.

Somebody with battle-scars is something a startup could really use. Most of my pre-startup experience is as a contractor/consultant.
I'd be interested to hear what cleanup the ePub files need after the scrivener export. Is it just tweaking styles or does the ebook not render correctly on some devices. Am also curious about how the scrivener mobi export compares to kindlegen. Does it do KF8?

[EDIT] - From looking at the scrivener site, they require kindlegen for mobi generation.
There are companies that are the opposite in the Bay Area. Almost everyone where I work is over 30, with a median age around 40. These companies tend to be in the suburban south bay and the peninsula although vs SF & Berkeley.
CJDNS: Danger on the Darknet
He probably doesn't have an opinion on this. Then if you accuse him of being ageist he will just push the problem to his applicant pool like he did with women. That's perfectly fine, I just don't think this is a very interesting issue to discuss with him.
I thought the point of the article was that regardless of the cost of the item, you should try and get the best object you could possibly get.

I find it amusing that the article actually attacked the cost of the object not the utility. There seemed to be some sort of fear of the money lost if that object failed them. Moxie seems to think that if he spent 50 dollars on a single set of utensils he would be seemingly enslaved by them.

The original post was not about being enslaved by your possessions it was about not having to worry about them fulfilling their function. I could buy a cheap set of stainless steel utensils and watch them tarnish as well as leaving a metallic taste in my mouth (hypothetical utensils). Sure they may have saved me money, but was it worth it?

I can buy the worst car, be late to my meeting and lose my job. I can buy the worst computer and not only be frustrated by my computing experience but also question how long it will be until I need to replace it.

You never ever want to buy the worst, you /may/ not always want to buy the best
Most states' (and federal) law protects older, not younger, workers... in many jurisdictions that means being over 40.
Uhh, but it's so shiny!1 Why u not like it??
http://img.nux.ro/n9H-fsckblogspot.png

It doesn't matter. I know already what it's about: more ways to get locked-in the "google-verse".
Nokia’s Sergey Rudenko states Windows Phone 7.8 will arrive in December
I suspect the most successful companies have user bases with a very significant portion of users in their 30s and 40s. If not an actual majority.

EDIT: Some stats here - http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/22/social-media-demographics-...

Worth noting that on that chart, HN has the second lowest avg age.
Agreed. Schools don't really know how to teach programming. The focus should be on doing projects, not sitting in lectures. People should just get together in groups and work on coding, with someone to ask questions to if they're stuck. I doubt schools will change, but there are alternatives, like coding bootcamps.
Late night clubbing and extreme sports?
This isn't always possible — for small apps, sure. But for apps with millions of users (many of which have tiny / no support team), the nth user report isn't helpful and ends up taking time away from fixing the issue.
First and foremost, I'd like to point out that the "The Best" article seemed to be roundly attacked here on HN, with critics and defenders alike chiming in; that might be a better indicator of why it stayed on the front page for so long.

Second, I'd like to point out that this article seems to be completely missing some of the points made, namely, when you invest in good tools you can rely on, you stop thinking about them because they just work, and you are therefore liberated to worry about more important things. Sure, you shouldn't let the things you own end up owning you, but if you have ever had something you rely on fail (and if you are working in technology, you have), you can appreciate doing research to make sure it doesn't happen again. Is this a waste of time? No. Is it stupid? No. Can it be taken too far? Yes. But it can also be taken too far in the other direction. The unexamined life isn't worth living.

BTW, partisans of the worst wouldn't get metal cutlery, they'd buy plastic and throw it out when they were done, thereby creating waste and showing how actually thinking about what you buy and whether it will last or not is a good idea.
Yep, I'm not saying SSRI's are more effective, but theres a good possibility that someone with PTSD is already on it and self-medication could be dangerous.

> The most commonly prescribed class of medications for PTSD (and the one approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) are the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants.

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/an-overview-of-treatment-of...
I'm certainly willing to believe that groups can be biased towards a drug that they're affiliated with, I just doubt that the effect is smaller if it's being developed by their university as opposed to their corporation. But I should note, you can also explain that data in terms of corporations being biased towards paying studies on those drugs most likely to succeed. That is, it could be that on those drugs that are most good corporations paid for a larger share of the studies than for those drugs that are least good. Now, I expect that if you did on study on, for a given drug, corporate funded studies would still be disproportionately likely to find the drug good - but to a less extend than the paper you cite since humans are biased creatures after all.
This. Both articles seemed extreme to me, and then again, only the extreme will really make it to the front page. If you rewrote this comment in a blog post and titled it "The Middle-Point", it wouldn't make front page, because it's just plain obvious.

Buy what fits at the right point in the spectrum for you, and move on with your life.
The statement "I’ve had access to the Internet longer than others" sure reads funny coming from someone born in 1988
Not unexpected - as the technical cost for implementations of most ideas approaches the market minimum, it's only logical that the sell, the approach, and the design are the key factors in determining success.
The article completely lost me at,

> "These should be the heart of the course, and is what matters in “the real world”, anyway. No one’s going to give you a bonus for remembering the difference between inheritance and polymorphism: let’s face it, you’d take the 5 seconds to Google the definitions and move on."

Not that OOP is the be-all end all, but within that realm, if you have to google that, you never understood the concepts in the first place.

It sounds to me as if the problem is more with the writer's alma mater, and not "computer science curriculum" as a whole.

In fact, I feel a give-away is,

> "IF YOU MUST MAKE STUDENTS TAKE EXAMS, STOP ASKING LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC SYNTATICAL QUESTIONS"

I recall very little of this. There were probably a few courses with some of it, but probably where it was relevant, i.e. testing that you actually grasped pointers in a low level focused course that covered C, etc.

An aside, this is kind of what saddens me about the current, twitter/blog centric world. I'm sure the writer has some valid frustrations, but rather than directing those to a general "How to improve CS courses" article that misses the mark due to CS programs varying so much, why not have some discussion with the department heads? There has been too much of a shift to be publicly vocal with complaints globally, rather than to try and privately sort them out with actual stakeholders.
Richard was in charge of the entire Maps project (client and server). His decisions were mostly pressure from Forstall, but that's how things were always done under that organization. Apple's magic always seems to fall out of the chaos from it all, and client side, the app is worlds better than anything else out there. Proof that formula still works well client-side.

It's the data everyone is upset about and it can't be fixed under the same chaotic management style that Richard and Forstall were in charge of.

Sad really, Richard was a good guy that simply took the fallout that executives are using to brighten Apple's image. Plus I assume it was a mutual departure as Richard was also in charge of several other iOS groups that he would have lost during the recent reshuffle.
"Once you reach a certain age, if you haven't "made it," you aren't one of the smarter and much more capable people."

Do try not to believe in myths. Especially in 2012: people are young way longer than before and 'smarter and more capable' is quite relative.
Read in a french accent, it becomes, "SEOs are gross hackers", which is certainly what comes to mind when you have to muddle through a page of w3schools or some other SEO pumped spam-sites results on your way to some actual content.

Some have said that SEOs were not hackers because they could not code, I would argue they are not hackers because their work is all about decreasing the signal/noise ratio for the sake of profit. Hackers should know better.

For hackers the web is a way to free information, not a gimmick to make a quick buck by polluting other people's information streams.
I don't know what industry you work in, but 5 years in software is a lifetime.
There's a similar project made by students at ZHAW (a swiss university of applied science) but only covering planes on swiss radars.
Check it out here: http://radar.zhaw.ch/radar.html
It's not clear from your comment if it was an interview situation, or if it was casual conversation. If the latter, you should call them out.

I'm a fellow 43-year-old. I invest in early-stage startups, and that includes YC companies. I wouldn't invest in a company with that attitude for a very simple reason: they are handicapping themselves. I know what I'm capable of doing right now compared to when I was 25. Maybe I would be a great complement to my 25-year-old self.

The attitude reminds me of this:

"Bill Gates recalls once being invited to speak in Saudi Arabia and finding himself facing a segregated audience. Four-fifths of the listeners were men, on the left. The remaining one-fifth were women, all covered in black cloaks and veils, on the right. A partition separated the two groups. Toward the end, in the question-and-answer session, a member of the audience noted that Saudi Arabia aimed to be one of the Top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010 and asked if that was realistic. “Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country,” Gates said, “you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.” The small group on the right erupted in wild cheering."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?pa...
The thing is, Randy did get hired once he shaved his head and started dressing down.

This isn't ageism, it's a filter against older people who are unable to adapt themselves to the changing environment. It's like classic cars: no-one is going to buy a neglected rust bucket that hasn't been serviced since the 1960s. Yet if the car is loved and cared for it can be worth millions (http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/ferrari-250-GTO-sells-for...).

Startups.. the web.. the valley.. they all thrive on new ideas. On people who keep their mind open to new ideas. Older people who are both relevant and still have "that".. are rare. Very rare. But if you can find one, they're priceless.
I hope there is a way to get some official statement from Amazon, Linode, and other very used VM providers about the kind of memory used in their servers. This would help users understanding the real risks.
> Somebody with battle-scars is something a startup could really use. Most of my pre-startup experience is as a contractor/consultant.

Lots of young engineers don't know how to interview. (In addition to being interviewed by young ones lately, I also realize how I've fucked it up back then.) Lots of them don't know how to listen. The vast majority don't know how much they don't know.
I've worked with developers in their fifties- they're scary good.
Oh, I am not disagreeing at all that this is a fact.

Just that the numbers they used to support it are a little weak (LA likely has worse age discrimination for example). It would have been better to not state numbers at all and stick to the rest of the details in the story.
>Installing random crap

Are you saying that reputable plugins have never had security issues? If not, then what's your point?
I should have said "hacking" not "hacks". Hacking implies coding (at least to me), and a growth hacker uses programming skills to drive growth. I just don't see many SEOs doing that. I love SEOs, I think most are fantastic people, but when I think Growth Hacker I don't see the SEOs I talk with all the time.
Google likes to hire young so they can brainwash you into being "googly." Same with other companies. Once your brain thinks you need six TPS reports every day, it's not worth fixing you when we can hire younger, unbroken people. VCs love 'em young. Sequoia bluntly states they prefer to fund two guys working from a dorm room.

The flip side of this analysis would be: YC and Sequoia prefer to fund kids because kids are easier to manipulate. Kids don't know how to read a contract or a term sheet. Kids don't know how to protect their own interests in their business when accepting funding. Kids don't know how to play hardball in negotiations.

Kids, in other words, are very easy to use as disposable resources.

(Indeed, with appropriate conditioning you can even convince them to believe that becoming a disposable resource is a sign of their Epic Founderhood.)

Someone who's seen peers get screwed over in previous gigs, or who's been screwed over themselves, is going to have learned a few things about how not to get screwed over the next time. So it's more profitable to deal with people who haven't learned those lessons yet. And once they have learned those lessons, you throw them overboard and replace them with the next batch of dewey-eyed innocents.
"So hacks are not solid marketing?"

How does that follow from "solid marketing doesn't make it a hack"?

"I think SEOs understand how people and the Internet work"

Yet you don't even understand the difference between "every ford is a car" and "every car is a ford" ... huh? What did I just read?
I uninstalled Google Drive myself... I just don't "get it", it doesn't seem to work as well as Dropbox, and it's kind of cool I can see my Google Docs, but organizing them in Drive doesn't appear to organize them in the "Drive" link of my Gmail, etc...
Precisely. I know it's fiction, but Terry Pratchett sums it up nicely in "Men at Arms":

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
I looked at the project. It's interesting. The numbers are probably reasonable.

My only reservation might be that there seems to be very little room for error and the assumption is that they are going to get orders for some 7,000 units as well as $40K in $5,000 contributions (which I think is unlikely). On a project like this one I would like to see around $200K or $300K buffer.

In other words, double their costs. the spreadsheet comes out with a profit of $39.72 if they raise a little over $733K. At $700K you are already over $30K in the negative. I would have gone for $1,000,000.

The good news is that they are not asking for $100K as LifeX did, which would have been ridiculous. I would really love to know what LifeX would have done if they just got the $100K they asked for.

I am considering backing your friend's project. I need to think about it a little. I really do think that they need more "insurance money" for the unknowns that always rear their ugly heads.
The data is pretty old/bad in a lot of cases in the US also.
I completely agree with the thesis of the article but I want to nitpick with the first few lines: I am not sure whether the converse/shaving your head off thing is helping is due to the perception of being more in tune with your coworkers or whether it is because of the person appearing younger.
As have I, but only when I was a contractor. I always looked forward to pairing up with the experienced engineers. I learned the most on those days.
Eventually, some enterprising law firm is going to make a bundle. The legal culture in SV (WSGR and their ilk) are not steeped in class-action suits, several folks are going to get their asses kicked from the legal defense, if nothing else.
There's also been plenty of books showing how big pharma is deeply connected to regulators and health agencies which help them get meds through. More commonly they mislabel existing meds for conditions they don't really help with (or have dangerous side effects) - without significant consequences.

Fortunately, the economic disincentive is getting larger each year:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_...
During the Elian Gonzales affair, I sequenced some AP photos into an animation (giving a video effect to a series of photos of a kidnapping) and posted them on my website for a few friends to see. The link ended up on Drudge. AP called to object, and the traffic load was so high I couldn't log on to the server to remove the GIF. Had to call the ISP, told the receptionist "hi, I'm the reason your servers are melting down", and she cheerfully transferred me to the company president. He got a big chuckle out of it, the file was deleted, traffic subsided, and I learned what it meant to get linked to by Drudge.
I use python with sublime text 2 which is great but not as great as eclipse with the python plugin. I'm learning django right now and even with the code intel , it is hard to discover the api without going to the doc. ST2 is blazing fast ,but sometimes a more heavier ide is better ( and i can launch manage.py shell from eclise which is top notch )
preach on brother marlinspike!
It has bazaar and git plugins (check the Addins menu).