skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The best single source I've come across that helps with writing, is "On Writing Well":

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonficti...

It has plenty of examples and advice on various types of writing.

Beyond that, my advice is to simply read good texts. One starting point would be:

http://www.amazon.com/American-Essays-Charles-B-Shaw/dp/B000...

Or, for something newer:

http://brevity.org/misc/bestswi.html

While doing a quick search, I also came across this:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/05/20/need-examples-...

Which seems to be a great starting point.
The big names are trying to do the same: Hertz On Demand, Avis on Location, etc. But they probably generate lots of revenue from the extra fees and hidden costs, so they have less of an incentive to switch to more friendly setups.

It's a warming thought that companies are always looking to improve customer experience, but more often than not, they will not do something because it doesn't improve the bottom line, not the opposite. And "hurting the bottom line" depends on the business model, that's where the market can be disrupted.
These are curious statements:

* CoffeeScript is a simplied version of JavaScript that infuriates technologists with its technical compromises

What compromises and how is it simplified? If anything it's more complex than JavaScript.

* while Assembly is as close to the bare metal as most developers today are likely to get.

The only thing closer would be machine code. Not sure I want to develop in that :)

(btw, hijacking the clipboard is kind of annoying :-/)
The "analysis" is just as broken as when it was last posted here 2 months ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4512702
I have a question ... why can't a Hacker News button be done entirely in Javascript? If only HN would incorporate CORS file. Even if it doesn't, there could be a way to approximate it by checking if you are logged into HN, and if you are, doing a cross-domain POST via a form.

"But how do you know if you're logged into HN?" Ah, that's the hack.

for example: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/02/an-interesting-way-to-dete...

more in depth: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5233560/possible-to-find-...

The question -- for all the hackers here -- is, what resource can we request via Javascript on HN that will return a different status code (200 or another one) depending on login state?

For example, maybe posting a blank password to "change password" form will return a non-success status code when you aren't logged in, and be an innocuous post (since it results in an error).

Of course, the trouble with these techniques is that the site can disable them at any time.
So we need exoflops of computing power to simulate the brain but only 16 bits of bandwidth to make it an AI.. Go figure!
I agree with most of this but perhaps not the conclusion.

The key point being that there is a skill 'valuation' gap which is being forced on the manufacturers by competition in distant countries. So piecework manufacturer in Minnesota has to compete with piecework manufacturer in Shenzen, and the former pays employees more and uses more automation and the latter has traditionally been able to throw many more humans at the task. Between the slowly rising demands in these countries, and the challenge of working with your factory that far away, we're just about to the point where its going to flip. I would have called it for this year but the great recession seemed to push everything back 2 - 3 years. So perhaps in 2015. Small manufacturers will either go out of business or require a higher price per good delivered, which supports effectively doubling the wage paid to their line workers. And those line workers will be essentially programmers programming tools, not doing the actual tooling.

The switch will be enabled by "high resolution" workstation automation. Today the last unassailable benefit of the 'tool and die' shop is that you've got a machinist and a machine tool which can be dynamically scheduled for any kind of widget. They are 'soft tooling' in that all of the gear that makes stuff doesn't need a dedicated fabrication line. The benefit is realized because setting up 'hard tooling' has a huge upfront cost and while the dedicated line is much more efficient, it also takes space away from other lines.

The calculus goes something like this : 0 - 1,000 widgets a 'precision' shop can make them; 1000+ to 50000 widgets a 'sweat shop' (primarily labor driven shop) can make them, and for 5000+ widgets you start to get the benefits of hard tooling amortized over your widgets.

As we get to the point where we have machines that have 'high level' sorts of capabilities (some early machines have been demonstrated by the Japanese and others) where your machine can take a dumped out pile of parts and assemble the widget, or 'partial hard tooling' where a machine creates intermediate tools to maximize efficiency "automatically" then it flips back to the place where a well equipped precision shop can make 10,000 widgets a month or arbitrary design and amortize over all 10,000 which switches the economics question back to transportation and re-spins (interaction with the original designers).

When I see robots that can pick up a cell phone, toss it and then catch it again at an arbitrary angle, you realize you can do material transfer by having workstations literally toss partial assemblies from one station to the next. That kind of flexibility is going to make for a very different kind of factory, and of course factory worker.
I did some benchmarking to find the CPU overhead of data transfer. Here is the draft of what I found.

https://gist.github.com/4144871

I was able to saturate a 100 Mbps LAN link with netcat. IIRC CPU was at 70%.
Looks spammy and I have no idea why I would enter my information.
250pages/min automated scanner
> Or you could host themed nights where a few academics give talks about why Subject X is interesting, and then you tell the audience they can buy/order books on Subject X from you at the end (and please do, it's how you pay for the free talk).

Only issue is why they would come to a book store to do this rather than do this sort of thing at MIT or Stanford. Maybe, integrate a coffee/snacks/cosy reading room along with book store?
"incredible: impossible or very difficult to believe"

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/...

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4516651
A hidden gem: Google Chrome accounts
That is starting to look more like J or K than Perl. Is the Perl 6 team still considering syntax changes? If so, any thought on making map/grep/join operators?
Read all the time; write all the time.

As far as 'process', play with different stuff and find what works for you. I find it does help to outline a bit -- but only in the most informal way. I edit better on paper. Hunter Thompson actually typed The Great Gatsby to get a feel for Fitzgerald's rhythms. Fuck around until something fits.

Edit your copy ruthlessly. I will routinely change 90% of my copy between first and final drafts.

Keep your audience in mind: who you're writing for should affect every word.

Write as tight as possible.
Same with Scala vs. Java. I have a few Scala projects on Github and they tend to be counted as Java even if there's one file of Java code in there versus dozens of Scala files.
Note that this article is from 2006. Hence his using of C# 2.0 instead of a later version which includes Linq.
génial ! i was searching for something like that , i'll try to make a django app out of it asap . cheers.
Or such languages have only few tutorial/samples in wild web because of superior quality of official documentation. Or, in circular logic, because of existence of good community on stackoverflow.
PCs need to be open, cell phones less so. PCs have ever been so, cell phones have not. That's not actually hypocritical however dischordant it may sound to some.
Use requestAnimationFrame for rendering loops, not for your game logic
The ongoing obsession with direct to github store links is irritating. Why not post a link to a designed start of reading point like: http://www.rafekettler.com/magicmethods.html ? Or to https://github.com/RafeKettler/magicmethods/raw/master/magic... so we can share the pleasure of the Scribd cabal screwing up the link and "annoyance wall" the content.
OK what about Google Apps Script, Forms etc? You're stuffed there. That's where the rocket science starts to kick in. It's not as simple as it looks. Oh and as part of the cost cutting, can you afford to splash out for Office company-wide suddenly out of the blue?

If you have thousands of seats, you should have the budget lying around to do it properly and a team of people to handle it. The TCO if you include risk is an order of magnitude lower if you manage it yourself. I've done the figures enough times for enough companies to know this.

Most companies operate "on the line". An event like this would take them offline permanently.
It puzzles me that there is no dedicated chapter on testing.
Java's popularity is the very cause of all the bellyaching about Java. Most criticisms arise while looking at other people's code, and there's an awful lot of Java code to look at. Most of the criticism seems to be about Java culture (excessive abstraction) and Java coding standards, and less about the language itself. I hate most Java code too, but have chosen Java for projects.

Most notable to me is how many of the trendy languages on HN are less popular than assembly. Is that because assembly is somehow over represented, perhaps some library is checked in by lots of people? Or is this chart just extremely long-tailed?
Why lean startups suck ass
There are a number of tools available, but as with programming, it's primarily a question of being able to recognize great writing. Once you can recognize great writing, you can more or less just iterate: 1) Write 2) Is it great? (yes) Done (no) Go to 1.

Bad programmers can't recognize good or bad code, so they stop once it works. Same for bad writers.
Plenty of room for more alternate/augmented reality worlds. See Gibson's Zero History for more examples (though not actually live and available, as in this case).
How the government can turbocharge private-sector innovation
I thought it was interesting that Saudi Arabia was opposed to granting certain gTLDs on the grounds that they would likely be used to host content which their culture considers offensive. To me, it seems like if that government could censor all* homosexuality and "substances detrimental to public order and morals" by blocking .gay and .wine, then that would be in its interest.
Hack pokemon yellow, change it into a MIDI player
Hah, so naive. You're assuming the TV&Games owners and managers want people to be able to read. Which would just create competition for their products.
Intel ATOM Chips Will Be 32-bit Only Until At Least 2015
Edited, thanks for the note -
That's just what the article says ... You tech "genius" are so pedantic ...
Thread: Bullet points on Ev's new startup
Output Spectrum Data From MP3 to TXT Using BASS Library
Show HN: JobBoard.io - SaaS platform for niche job boards
i go with the "less or more" - it might not have more information per se, but more people will read more of it

can you express the same idea using less words for the sentence in question?

can you eliminate or combine sentences/paragraphs to still get the essential point across ?

sacrifice some extra information for the sake of clearer focus

having said that, i like to add non-essential information which is humourous - to keep the reader entertained and engaged
Curious about how many of you have built a successful company ... Probably no more than 1 % ... Cheers, "startup specialists" ... ;)
This article could basically be retitled "Clueless VC belatedly realises all these companies without business models will probably not make any money after all".

I mean seriously. This is what's wrong with capitalism, where undeserved windfall gains are the norm. Companies we invest in have to show they are able to make money! Wow, how revolutionary.
I wonder if Android development is also a big factor in Java's popularity.
Version 1.4 of Python language support for KDevelop released
"Linux on ARM" has already been won by Android. That's why many ARM SoCs comes with closed Android drivers.
the numbers for both axes are their respective rankings, not actual tag counts. their positioning, therefore, isn't directly proportional to the actual tag volume, but how they rank relative to one another. if we had actual numbers on the github side rather than just the rankings, we'd account for this by introducing a logarithmic scale, but we're constrained by what the data we have access to.
Native ad units (retargeted ad bar) =/= atomic ad unit (promoted in-feed posts).
The more mathematically-inclined HNers might be interested in Brian Conrad and Terrence Tao's comments at the bottom of this previous HN article:

http://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/mochizuki-on-a...

Edit: Minhyong Kim's initial thoughts seem very interesting as well!

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/106560/what-is-the-underly...

And for the less mathematically-inclined:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4477241
On the perpetually debated issue of technologizing old-media all I can say is this: the big players, the Googles, Facebooks, etc., simply need to stop playing the waiting game and fully commit to producing their own content. To do this they have to be savvy enough to hire the right visionary and give them enough leeway to scout talent, produce content, buy programming, invest in a studio, and whatnot to make the inevitable future happen.

The question I can't answer is if there is any advantage to being a first-mover? And that's perhaps why no large technology player is taking that first step.
I agree with this post to some extent however, I still believe that there is a lot of space on the "web" especially in the likes of ecommerce, education, small/medium enterprises, advertising & of course International which has opportunities in all of those sectors as well as others.

However, looking at USV's latest investments[1], posts as well as Fred's posts especially this one, it is appears they prefer enterprise startups[2] BUT they are still interested in consumer startups as long as they have a transactional or high intent ad business model.

[1] Pollenware, DuoLingo, DuckDuckGo, Dwolla, Funding Circle etc

[2] http://www.usv.com/2012/08/networks-and-the-enterprise.php
I see how those examples fit the model of a community of engaged users that disrupts an existing business model built on a larger but much more passive community of users. What I have trouble seeing is the contrasting model where a startup is trying to build a user community that isn't highly engaged, or isn't trying to disrupt a big market. Would you mind giving an example or two of someone you rejected along those lines, or does your strategic guide cut differently than I'm expecting?
Lua has probably the best "Koans" type problem set I've seen, but they call them "missions": https://github.com/kikito/lua_missions . What really sets the Lua missions apart is that it tells an actually story, of sorts, and there is a genuine moment of enlightenment toward the end.

For Clojure there's the entire functional-koans Github account full of good stuff: https://github.com/functional-koans . Also, don't miss 4Clojure: http://www.4clojure.com/
You're right, there's some programming you can't do inside of a browser, I was just forgetting all this low level stuff which happens behind the browser :-)
Holy crap dude, I seriously owe you a drink for this one. You basically gave me the best answer I could've hoped for.

Since you were in my shoes and I'm a lot like you, I can totally relate to what you've said. I find managing work extremely stressful at the moment, which is why I'm looking to work on my own products in the future rather than go full-time. You're also spot-on about the personal relationships part, lately it's been really hard to keep friends close and go out like I used to. For me, having a girlfriend is out of the question for now since my life is such a mess, I can totally see your point. Just like you, I'm not the most social person in the world so I'm afraid that if I start working full-time I would actually start to feel really lonely, which is one of the main reasons I am considering college at the moment, I think the social life is one of the main aspects for which it's really worth it.

Thanks for the money advice as I am seriously considering moving out, so what you've said made me think this through a bit more. I've always saved 90% of what I made, so the safety net you're talking about makes a lot of sense to me as well. Also, telling one of my friends how much I make is one of the biggest mistakes I could've made ( just like you said ) but since some of them were always bugging me I finally gave in. I won't ever do that again.

I'm aware I would actually learn a load of awesome stuff in a short time, but in my case I'm afraid the emotional stress would be just too much. In the end I guess I'm just going to go ahead with my plan of pursuing an almost-meaningless degree in order to make the most out of the college experience, and do some more freelance / work on projects I'm passionate about on the side.
I'd suggest it's just as likely that Stack Overflow has a slight bias in favour of .NET. It's written in .NET, its creators blogs talk about .NET, and a lot of the higher profile members of the .NET community regularly answer questions on there.
Another article with slightly more background on the ABC problem itself (and possibly slightly less sensationalist). http://www.nature.com/news/proof-claimed-for-deep-connection...

And the MathOverflow discussion referenced: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/106560/what-is-the-underly...
I share the view that Javascript can be a very universal learning environment (even if in itself that may not be the greatest langage to learn)
How Ayn Rand ruined my childhood
Hamburgers & Basements: Why Not to Use Left Nav Flyouts
>Unsigned binaries are really not an issue. People who know what they are doing can completely turn the check off, or you can leave it on simply 'command-click and choose open' once to add the app to the whitelist. I do this all the time.

Superficially, that makes it seem like not an issue. But it's sort of like when Sony added the "no class action" waiver to their TOS. Yes, you could opt out, but it still removes virtually any possibility of a class action suit since very few people did opt out. Similarly, it is possible to run apps that aren't signed, but most users won't, and that means that it isn't viable, from a developer's perspective, to produce unsigned apps.

Now, it's true that you don't have to go through the App Store review process just to sign an app, but that doesn't mean that Apple can't revoke your key on a whim (or in error).

The cost is also an issue. $99/year is a steep commitment for what used to be a pretty big segment of the Mac developer ecosystem. The common counterargument to this is "Really, you're going to complain about $99 when while working on a $2500 laptop?" But this is nonsense. If you're unemployed, in school, or working a low paying job while developing on the side, your computer likely isn't a $2500 laptop. It's probably a low end Mac and/or a hand-me-down, and you will keep riding that machine until it breathes its last gasp. $99/year is about the cost of your whole computer.

Now, maybe Apple doesn't care about a slew of small, cheap/free apps with low hardware requirements, but their users sure as hell should.
anyone curious what similar apps were available for android, http://www.augmentedev.com/home.php seems quite nice - i'm not entirely convinced by the process, it could use some streamlining.. but it is reasonably easy to upload your own 3d model and use a qr code to view/share and the result is pretty good.

I assume this mojang app uses markers too?
There's also https://github.com/liammclennan/JavaScript-Koans
In my experience, I tend to be of the opinion that lazy, immutable data structures with eager evaluation bring you most of the benefits of lazy evaluation with the control of eager evaluation.

Clojure is an example of that. You can plant printfs there and it just works, but you can also set it to do huge amount of processing on huge amount of data and eventually just consume and crunch small part of it.
New Resources for Web Development Professionals
Ask HN: Do i have to give technical support if i sell source code of my app?
I have a very popular android app on the google play store. An OEM firm wants to buy this app's source code. We agreed on te price and now they have sent me a contract and they want my reviews about it. In the contract they say that i should provide technical support for them and their clients etc. I was wondering if this is the normal case or not. Also how can i find legal advice about this contract?
Hi everyone - this is my first show HN post.

http://www.jobboard.io is a platform for operating niche job boards that I've bootstrapped as a side project over the last 6 months or so.

My reason for doing so was two-fold:

1. I've run several niche job boards for quite a while, some of them bringing in decent revenue. The 3rd party platform I was using was one where I had to give up 50% of the revenues - not a tenable situation once I began to show signs of success. Since I needed to build something that would support multiple job board sites - I figured why not turn it into a SaaS offering as well. One that does not take a rev share, and charges a flat fixed amount.

2. I wanted to teach myself Ruby on Rails. It's ROR/Heroku/Bootstrap based.

I've been writing code professionally since '99, starting out w/ classic ASP and then moving to .NET. Over my career i've moved into higher and higher management positions (now a VP of Tech @ a media co), and thus moved further and further away from actually building things. This has been a great outlet for me - and allowed me to stay more current and up to date on the technical side of things.

Appreciate any and all feedback. It's been quite a learning experience....
there is a chapiter on testing in the official doc which is quite good. And i'm sure you can make a contribution so everybody can enjoy your expertise on the matter.
Practice

You get better at a craft by doing it until you're good enough to know what you're missing. You'll know what kind of tips to look for at that point.
There's a Quora answer
http://www.quora.com/Massachusetts-Institute-of-Technology/W...

Also http://www.sourcemap.com/and the world's most beautiful computer, Danny Hillis's Connection Machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine
Oh - and you can see a sample job board here: http://webopsjobs.com
Most are 1x-5x "bailouts" I would guess...

-- FYI [2x to 5x] are ~wins, not bailouts.

Portfolio returns in the aggregate of 20%+ are fine. A 2x on 1 year investment, for example, is outstanding performance. But overall, HR acquisitions are "operational failures" for the founder and the VC, and nothing to boast about. You're startup has only proved it can out-perform the HR department of a Big-Co. Not hard to do with a pile of cash, really.
> I will admit that I love Python and Coffeescript too, but I don't generally write large projects in either one.

Why not Python? Just wondering.
Fragile intellect or fragile arguments?
12 year olds have iPhones
I agree that Apple should not be the (sole) one signing apps for their OSes.

However, I doubt a dialog "this app was signed by 'Evil Privacy Invaders, inc'. You haven't trusted their software before. Do you want to do that now?" would deter the typical user from clicking 'Yes, always'.

So, the best they could do is allow a fixed set of regulated code signers. I do not see how that would be much of a change from the current situation.
Just another data point: I've walked by on the other side of the street a few times and assumed you were closed/out of business because of the refrigerator repairs sign.
Findings, December 2012