skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> In case you haven't noticed sf is bounded by the Pacific Ocean. It can't just grow and it already has a very high housing density. The only area that can absorb new housing is china basin (3rd st) and that is being developed. The rest is already full.

No, it doesn't. I live in the Haight (which is a key cultural mecca of the city). While, there certainly are gorgeous Victorian era houses (The Painted Ladies), most of the buildings are look like cute, unstable, four - five floor buildings which were probably built in the fifties or the sixties (Or certainly look like it). IMO, this place could do with a few shiny high rises. I am convinced that it should be possible to design a place that doesn't offend the aesthetic sensibilities of a neighborhood whilst helping organic growth.

> Do we really want or feel that more people in sf is a good thing? Why not live down the peninsula or the east bay where there's an unlimited amount of space.

This is not going to solve the problem. I used to ponder about why Austin which has roughly the same size and population as SF is not as packed or doesn't have as shitty a public transport system. I think there is a reason for that: It is because San Francisco acts like a cultural magnet for the rest of the bay, which means that irrespective of who actually lives/works here in the city, the presence of unlimited amount of space or job opportunities in the rest of the bay is not going to depress demand. I know people living in South/East bay, who keep looking for places. All these requests are driving up our rents and that hasn't been affected by the space constraints outside the city.
Norway might not support, but Finland is majority owner of Fortum (51%), which the news article states as a partner. So governments aren't completely out of the picture.
Fortum actually has slightly more nuclear power production in Sweden than in Finland. But your sentiment rings true, indeed only Finland is pro-nuclear in this common energy market (NASDAQ OMX Commodities Europe, previously Nord Pool).
Games Industry Transitions In 2013: Will Consoles And Windows Rise Again?
No, the problem with x-rays is not the lens shape, but rather finding a material that will refract (i.e. bend) x-rays. X-rays tend to just go right though, or be blocked. It's hard to find something where the x-rays slow down, but keep going.

Also, the higher the frequency the harder it is to make a meta-material that works for it. (Since the feature sizes need to be about the same size as a wavelength.) We're barely there for visible light, x-rays are completely out of reach.
dirty tricks. One cannot become a designer without a _lot_ of effort, but one can learn some tricks.

E.g. making them up

* "don't try to do a complex logo/header design just use one big custom font with distinct personality"

* "use stuff from subtlepatterns for the page background"

* "use a pattern repository such as YUI's for standard interactions instead of reinventing basic UX"

etc
Devops Weekly newsletter hits 100 issues
Android Performance Case Study
Not sure that 300k a year would be considered "making it big" (not in the Bay Area at least.)
> Why a sit-stand treadmill desk? It’s the perfect way to work.

Emphasis mine.
> But Tokyo's average building height is lower than San Francisco's already. Tokyo did not grow "up."

This is very interesting. I did not actually know this. However, the city will never go for this. They make a ton of money through parking fees, citations etc to turn this city into a car free zone. Also, although SF has a large number of exceptions, most Americans have a love affair with cars.
Nice analysis. This statement jumped out at me:

> This week I worked 15 hour days and was disappointed when I got too tired and had to sleep.

Examples of this are everywhere. First date with an exciting girl. New video game. Reunions with old friends. I challenge the author's conclusion that this is a sign that he's made the right career move -- more likely, it's a sign that he's gotten out of his rut.

That's not a bad thing, by the way. But remember, switching jobs is almost always exciting for us hackery types. More generally, a novel environment will usually produce excess excitement.
Really it never was a social media company. It's a coupon business, which is a perfectly respectable business – but not one worth $13bn.

This is so great to read. Lovely to see all of that social media magical thinking cut down to size.
Once you factor hardware depreciation in (who would toss a laptop after 2 years when you could sell it for 60% residual and put the money towards a new one?) there's inevitably going to come a point where the Mac has a lower TCO.

Lower upfront costs do not necessarily translate into savings further down the line, especially when your choice of hardware ties you into a $20/month ongoing expense.
Sorry but this is just crazy talk.

Neither a Nexus 10 or iPad has an IDE which is mission critical for getting anything done e.g. refactor, debugging. Then you have the issue of having to be online to get anything done which with a laptop isn't a requirement. And after all that you still are without the ability to properly take advantage of source control e.g. git local branches.

I personally run my entire stack of Nginx, Java, Redis, ElasticSearch and Cassandra all on my laptop and it works just fine with our without an internet connection.

My suggestion is that if you can't afford a new machine then go on eBay buy a second hand one and put a $99 Samsung 830 SSD in it.
Rust is changing because it's still under development. D had that period too.
The Perot Museum is Bursting With Science, Some of It Unsettling
Then after 2 years, sell the $1,800 MacBook Air for ~$1,000, the iPad (now presumably 2-3 generations out of date) for ~$300, and the Mac becomes better value.

You've taken a $800 depreciation hit on the Mac, and although the depreciation on the iPad was only ~$400, you've also spent $480 on your VPS...
Introducing Openfund II
Yeh no. I am actually deploying onto OSX Server and have had to install countless Python modules for Munin alone. It is just the same as on Linux especially with pip.
One thing which worked very well for me is focusing only on one thing per email. Startups always have this conflict of trying not to spam their users too much but still making sure they know everything. The outcome is that every time they do send emails they try to include e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in it. I struggled with it a lot as well, at one point we decided to dedicate each email to one new small feature, asking for a certain feedback, etc. Even when we released a new version we focused only on one thing. I think users find it much easier to read and digest. It also increases the chances your users will understand what you want them to do :)
1. Really?
2. Malnutrition, Really?
3. Time for "Show HN: Hacker bloody News!"
10x.org.il is a new course up about to start in Israel. English info: http://www.10x.org.il/syllabus/
I also have a SteelSeries 7G keyboard, which is what I used when just using one 30" monitor. But I haven't figured out how to incorporate it with the dual 30" monitor setup. And dual 30" monitor + laptop keyboard > SteelSeries + single 30" monitor. Maybe I'll get a laptop stand and try incorporating all three plus the external keyboard...
Hi, I built a running "desk" for situations when I consume podcasts/youtube. It is not for working but good for running/walking while watching.

Kettler treadmill + Griffin stand + MacBook:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/559047/mbp-running.jpg
Inspirarional. Good job on planning and make it happen for yourself!
Everybody deserves a decent workstation.
captaindash website is beautiful, however, I found it is really not userfriendly for the kind of people they target ( Businesses )
I suppose I would consider NME[0] pretty much to be a domain-specific language where the domain is ActionScript. And that domain covers a pretty hefty majority of application use cases.

And you can use NME to create compelling (performant) applications on those platforms you have listed and more. Recent builds have included support for qnx/bb10 and I think they are working diligently towards win8.

Since the underlying enabling technology is haxe[1] you can use macros[2] to create more abstract DSLs specific to your use. Someone created a shader language for incorporating vertex and fragment shading into your code for example[3].

[0]: http://www.haxenme.org/documentation/about/
[1]: http://haxe.org/doc/features
[2]: http://haxe.org/manual/macros
[3]: http://haxe.org/manual/hxsl
No doubt. Brooklyn to NYC takes 10 minutes.

Sunset to downtown is 45. Madness.
Actually you get used to it pretty quick. I regularly use it in bed for coding, surfing websites etc. I think it just looks intimidating.

The best bit though is that it doubles as a breakfast tray for those Sunday morning bacon, eggs and coffee.
Typography, colour and techniques for visual priority (i.e. how to guide a user's attention to different sections within a page) are all things I struggle with.

I point people towards Robin Williams' "The non-designers design book" for all of these. It's not about the web - it's about some graphic design basics like contrast, balance, etc. - but they apply.

I also wish a photoshop or illustrator "cook book for coders" existed which contained just enough recipes to learn the essential techniques needed to quickly mockup and experiment with how a page might look.

If you want to do quick mock ups and experiments then Photoshop is not the tool you want. What you want is pen, paper and post it notes. Learn to do paper prototyping. Todd Zaki-Warfel's book "Prototyping" has a good section on it (http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/prototyping/) and Paper Prototyping by Carolyn Snyder is the definitive book on the topic (http://www.paperprototyping.com/).
I fully agree! I like snowboarding or going down to the ocean for that. But doing a startup requires massive hours at a computer, and the problem is that hours of sitting is fundamentally bad. Besides being bad for your health (see http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/06/treadmill-desks-i... and follow your nose) I find it's also easy to fall into a rut and end up on HN too much. Like now :) Goodnight!
The author couldn't be more right about picking an asynchronous driver. It makes me wonder how long it will take for the official MongoDB drivers to adopt this approach too. I've been using ReactiveMongo for Scala for the past two months and would recommend it without hesitation.
The article is an Apples to Oranges comparison...

CloudFront is a content delivery network, CloudFlare is part content delivery network, part front-end optimisation service.

What CloudFlare do it optimise the content so that it loads faster e.g. by minifying JS/CSS, merging files etc. i.e. many of Steve Souders rules.

There are other services around which do much the same thing Google's PageSpeedService, Strangeloop Networks, Torbit etc.

You could perhaps achieve much the same thing using mod_pagespeed, or Aptimize etc. on your webserver and a CDN in front.

If you chose a CDN that allows you to push your dynamic pages through it e.g. Fastly, then even the HTML delivery can be speeded up in many cases (even if the CDN doesn't cache the HTML, which perhaps it could for many sites)

Real challenge that the article doesn't cover is where do CloudFront, and CloudFlare have slow performance e.g. due to peering arrangements etc. That's where multi-CDN providers (ala TurboBytes) can help
> isn't it possible to take likability too far? Isn't it the case that getting things done inevitably means stepping on some toes?

The key is in why you're liked. If you're liked because you're tough but fair, that's a good reason to be liked. (Open to debate, but it's an example.) If you're liked because you're constantly bribing your way into everyone's good graces, that's not.

Really, the trick is to not care about whether or not you're liked, as that boss thought. Where he got it wrong is what you do instead. Competence involves people management, and people management involves both massaging and bruising egos. You need to be competent, to "get results", and if you do that by breaking as few eggs as possible to get there, people will back your play, will recognize the inevitable necessity of those eggs and not make a huge deal out of it. Competence can't come at the cost of competence: that's literally self-defeating.
That's awesome! I did something similar to that years ago with an old elliptical trainer: I clamped a dell laptop to it. But my problem I found is that I'd still spend all the other time sitting when doing real work.

You can actually get into a really good coding zone when walking, once you get used to it...
For Android at least, there is a development suite called Terminal IDE (can be installed from play, no root required), that among other tools, it provides you with vim, git and ssh.

So you can do all your development on your tablet even when offline and upload your work to your server with git when you get back online.
Yup, and none of that is any fun. As a developer, what would you prefer: writing against their giant XSD schemas or just making a POST request to a URL with invoice information? I'll take REST any day of the week.
Athletable now has an api
There are a couple of things that really really bug me about this city:

1) The horrible state of the public transport system. Irrespective of the recent rains we have been having, the Muni system appears completely broken down. There are buses on the same route which appear at bizarre periodicities (A couple of buses every 5 minutes and then one bus after 50 minutes). The metro line (especially the N line) has way too many repairs going on. Also, there is a ridiculously large amount of cars on the road and way too few bike lanes. This is something the city should fix by a combination of exorbitant tolls, making parking expensive and taxes.

2) The homeless people situation. While I am sorry for their situation, the city's response to homeless people appears to be either switching from completely ignoring the problem to sending out a few town cars every couple hours in the nights so that they can chase homeless people from one block of a street to the other.
Tell Everyone You Know About Your Idea
Or, I just thought of a simpler, and better known aphorism:

Make them look good.

As a boss, you make your team look good. As a business, you make your customer look good. As a team member, you make your leader look good. And so on. Accept credit when it's offered, precisely because giving that credit makes them look good, and share that credit because public praise is good.
Get away from your desk every once in a while instead of exercising behind your desk. It clears your head and makes you focus better afterwards.
The Spikey Chip (neuromorphic)
It was that way for me. Back in 2001 I got a iMac G3 500 while I was in collage. I used a p2p program called http://www.carracho.com/ to get Photoshop and Dreamweaver. The next summer I got a job at the university doing web design. The university bought me legit copies of the software since I preferred to work on My iBook and not the POS they had on my desk.
Why "instead" and not "as well"?
Hehehe, how about NO?
NaCL on Android, P\Invoke on C#, and JNI on Java exist for a reason.

Sometimes the VM gets in the way, sometimes the library, or bit of hardware you need to use, only has a C or C++ interface library.

Learning C++ is still important, because, developers who don't understand how C++ works have little chance of knowing how to find an entry in a COM export table.

C++ isn't coming back, it never really went away.
India is an Asian country which was once colonized and liberated with more than enough problems which ever existed on the subcontinent. Among all other countries she tackled almost all those problems, not just for herself but for the entire place in just 60 years. Catching up with Industrial/Technological/Economic/Social development just like the rest of the world.

Give her a little more time, just might leave you in awe!
I'd like to learn more about two things:

1. Designing and prototyping in the browser -- how to do it as quickly as possible and get rid of the distraction of details (I always find details difficult to ignore when trying to do quick mockups in the browser, hence why I resort to pen and paper)

2. Case studies of user research activities that have led to particular design decisions -- what are the first steps I should take in order to create an interface that is specifically targeted towards a certain user group or demographic
So, are you hiring? :-)

(Full disclosure: I've been kicking around a very similar idea myself, but never got past setting up a landing page: http://www.mediaindie.com/)
My so-called larp
Monitor cable note: You don't have to use the expensive dual-link DVI adapters if you have a monitor that supports the standard sized DisplayPort.
You can get a simple Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort adapter (and DisplayPort cable) and it supports the full 2560x1600 resolution of monitors like the 30" Dell.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003TSDG06/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=dr...

(note: summary description says max of 1920x1200, but detailed description says up to 2560x1600. I'm using it on a 30" Dell, so it works :)
While this might be working for the author, I couldn't take this approach, since there is just too much compromises I'd have to take.

Being a Rails developer, I have to constantly run tests, refresh browser and write code, and to do this as efficiently as possible, I'm using dual monitor setup with the guard gem, which makes two things while I write code: runs tests and refreshes browser (both appear on second monitor). The machine is slightly customized Mac Mini Server (SSD + additional RAM) which also comes around $1000 plus the two monitors.

Laptops are simply not fit for any serious Rails development, not only to the small amount of screen real estate, computing power but also because I can rarely get into the zone outside my home office.
Thanks very much for the Robin Williams tip.

Re: prototyping

I use Balsamiq a lot and am comfortable in it (and I usually play with pen and paper before touching Balsamiq) but sometimes I'd like to produce a mock up that looks a lot closer to reality and I just wish I had enough command of the basics to be able to do this in photoshop or illustrator rather than cobbling together some html and css (which is what I do now).

Edit: to expand on the cook book idea, I'm thinking of recipes along the lines of:

- This is how you can quickly draw a button (and here's how to give it a gradient or a shadow)

- This is how you setup your canvas as a grid

- This is how you do layering (so you can try different headers, footers etc.)

- This is how you embed an image and clip it (and here are some tips on choosing images that are easy to work with and fit in to a design)

- This is how you make a repeating background

- This is how you blend one colour in to another

- This is how you do transparency

- These are some common gotchas to look out for

- These are some good practices you should follow (e.g. do it this way so that if you want to change all the buttons to a different colour you can do so with one click)

- This is a run down of some common layouts and what sort of content they're suited to

- Here are some solid online resources for fonts, background patterns, stock photography, icons, showcases of good design, forums/sites where real designers hang out

Basically, enough information and resources in a single reference book so a non designer can fire up photoshop or illustrator and be able to end up with a PNG file that's somewhere between a wire frame and the finished version you'll get when a real designer has worked their magic on it.
> Malnourished children, as someone pointed out below, is definitely a serious problem. But I think that with better means to disperse information (better internet) people can find their way to places where they can get food, better work opportunities and even meet other people from different parts of the world to share their problems.

Sorry but just because the pipes for delivering information are getting larger, it doesn't mean that bad laws, corruption go away. Voters who still make decisions based on bad logic (Religion, Ethnic and cultural similarities) irrespective of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (It doesn't take many bytes to highlight corruption and those bytes have been floating around the Indian internet for a decade now) will always mean that these systemic issues will never disappear.

Overall, I am not disagreeing with your thesis that better internet is good, I am just not sure that internet is going to fix farmer suicides in states or religious motivated violence or even in feeding malnourished children (which the experience of Africa should tell us is not a mere matter of shuttling food around).
As a single data point, I chose git due to github around late 2010 and consequently moved a couple of my clients (and current employer) over to git/hub.

I personally still prefer bzr's cli.
With due respect to the library, there are certain parts of it which is not supported out of the box in Erlang. On the other hand, building tools like what the library has is not going to take a long time.
Ways To Get People To Do Things They Don’t Want To Do
It's simple, ignore surrounding tasks and duties.
what's the simplest Jinja2 generator out there?

...the use case is for creating and tweaking basic html themes. I currently helped a designer/front-end-guy set-up Hyde but it was horrible and he only needed 20% of what hyde does to get his job done... finally found a forked version with a patched bug that worked on Windows (original pypi and git versions had a weird bug), figured out that the only way to put media files was in the deploy folder because otherwise Hyde still tries to do stuff to them and fails miserably, and for SASS I just taught him to do `sass --watch sass:css` as I was afraid to think what horrors lay in the land of Hyde/SASS integration... and after all this it still does weird shit (on the other hand, my own experience with Hyde on Linux was much smoother... maybe it's just that the devs only test it on *NIX)
Yes - that sort of thing would be useful. To some extent this is the sort of thing bootstrap like frameworks are giving people. A default visual design that, well, doesn't suck ;-)

A few other things that I suggest to folk who don't have design skills in-house:

* Pick a single font face and 3 sizes and use throughout

* Pick a palette of five colours (use kuler or something) and use throughout

* Go mobile-first (not because of the 'mobile' - but because of the constraints - it forces a focus on core features & usability)

The problem is that there's a fine line between giving people some rough rules of thumb to help them - and people then taking this sort of advice and seeing it as "best practice" and applying it inappropriately.
Animal Mothers and Babies
By keeping the military well behaved, it saves a ton of money.
Punjab entrepreneur sets up 10-storey building in Mohali in 48 hours
That's exactly what I did as well. It works a treat, other than the cable and/or connection sometimes being finicky and sending the external monitor into sleep mode. I suspect a higher quality cable wouldn't exhibit this problem.
Just my first impression: can't you use Google Analytics API to see the inbound keywords people are coming from (so users don't have to add another tracker) and use, for example, AdWords API to generate similar keywords?
Plain vs. HTML Email Test Results
Github Game Off 2012 Entries