skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've had the misfortune of personally knowing at least 3 people who have killed themselves while mixing medication with alcohol. One of them was on antidepressants, but the other two weren't being treated for any sort of mental condition.

There seems to be an awful lot of people out there who think the warning labels on medication are to be taken about as seriously as the tags on a mattress. I promise you, the warnings are there for a reason. You can be an otherwise perfectly happy person and end up shooting yourself in the face if you have a bad reaction. If you are taking any sort of medication that prohibits alcohol, please follow the directions. Your friends and family members don't want to read your obituary.
What’s the fastest/easiest way this company can cut its IT budget?
Our scenario: A small financial services business with 20 Windows XP desktop computers, 5 employees with their own Android tablets, 2 servers for printing and Outlook, including the CMS built into Outlook 2010. Besides that, their two most-used programs are MS Office (they have a copy on each desktop), plus Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop, which are used almost entirely by their two in-house Web developer people, who also serve as their IT department.
WordPress is actually a good example. There's the self-hosted software distributed at WordPress.org, which works in the Web 2000 fashion (here's some software, figure the rest out yourself). And there's the hosted service at WordPress.com, which works in the walled-garden fashion (though with liberal allowances for things like getting at your data, which is nice).

Lots of people run their own WordPress installations, but very, very few of them manage to do it well -- properly locking the software down, keeping the core and plugins up to date with security patches, putting the admin area behind SSL, etc. Which is why there's so many hacked WordPress sites out there.
Oh I am very much aware of this fact.

But another fact is that if you give someone something for free for a while and then you start to charge for it (or add ads to it) they are going to be upset, regardless of whether they "should" be upset. No one is happy about the experience of having value subtracted.
The last version of our homepage never had an Octocat on it :).
I respect Thoughtbot and their contributions to the Ruby community, but the section on smells glosses over way too much.

Here is the link to the sample:
https://learn.thoughtbot.com/ruby-science-sample.pdf

And here are some counterpoints:

Long methods are not as easily testable, but overly short methods can make code much harder to read and follow and actually increase complexity, because now there are many more entry points, leading to excessive nil checking, etc. for those practicing paranoid TDD.

Even the developers of Rails are not sold on the promise of the null object pattern, and as it states as almost an afterthought that "it can lead to confusion" (paraphrased). If you are a developer, especially one that is a refugee from a more "type-safe" language, you are more likely to assume that:

an_object.a_method

Will fail if an_object is nil/null. By making an_object a null object, then you can end up with is_a?(NullSomething) when other programmers are using your API, defeating the whole purpose of trying to avoid additional try's and other checks in the code. It can be a bad code smell to use null object pattern in many situations.

Case statements can be a bad code smell, just as is_a?(...), but not in every situation. Often they can be a clear and concise way to get the job done. In Java the switch statement was ridiculed, only to produce a whole generation of Java developers that either had chained if's or would create 3x the code just to introduce a pattern for simple logic!

So, if the rest of this book is like this, please take it with a grain of salt. It is a reference for another way of thinking about things, but if you are going to do that, read "Design Patterns" by the GoF and "Refactoring" by Martin Fowler also. And then forget all of that and try to write DRY Ruby code in as few lines as possible without tests to get a feel for that. Then give both up and seek a middle ground. In this way, you will be like Bhudda. Neither conservative "tests, patterns, and refactoring is the only way or you are shunned" nor liberal "it doesn't matter how you write it, just write what you like" are the ways to enlightenment; it is the way between them.
About Magic Mouse: I haven't had connectivity problems, but after a week of use, my forearm was in pain and my fingers were numb. An absolutely horrendous product.

I'll say one thing for Microsoft, they know how to make a good mouse.
I'm not sure upgrading was possible. The old maps app was actually made entirely by Apple while this new one is made entirely by Google. I can't imagine Apple would give a third-party a system level app. Just look at YouTube.

The same reasons why Apple wouldn't package Google Maps with iOS are the same reasons Google wouldn't package iTunes with Android. You don't want to concede ground to your competition. Now if they want to fight for it that is a entirely different story.
I mentioned it before, but we didn't have an Octocat on the homepage before this.
Pick Your Battles
At the risk of sounding lukewarm on the issue, I think that user-centered approaches to product development are appropriate for some cases, and creator-centric approaches are appropriate for others.

Apple probably worked on the iPhone a couple of years before releasing it. If they had done user testing they might have compromised their lead on the development of touch devices.

In response, Nokia used to be open about design & development, using a blog to communicate with their users and gauging their response to certain features. We all know where that ended up.

I agree most ideas should be validated before attempting them, but when you have deep knowledge about the industry you're in, you can pinpoint specific pain points without doing market validation.

The approach encouraged by Lean et al is a bit naive. Out of politeness, people will often say that your product is great. Others won't make any mental effort into trying your product, and will click aimlessly just to try to please you.

I don't advocate big methodological approaches but just sitting down for coffee and demo-ing your product to poorly chosen people does more harm than it helps.
Experiment with different pen widths.

Learn a good pen grip - you may be using an incorrect grip.

Before you start to write practice a few lines of zigs and zags and lines and loops.

This website has some examples and ideas for improving or fixing handwriting.

(http://briem.net/)
My Anti-virus software flagged this link as a malicious URL.
> Technology that simplifies looking up case-law, and that combs through discovery, has greatly reduced the number of lawyers needed.

[Citation needed]

It's not really the case that demand for lawyers is lower (recession aside). It's that the growth in demand for lawyers is lower than it has been. Remember, we're dealing with derivatives here: the number of new jobs available for new graduates is the derivative of overall legal demand.

I don't think technology has had much to do with it, except within certain segments (mainly document review). As technology has evolved, expectations have risen. Yes, you can get on Lexis and quickly look up the case law on an issue, instead of heading over to the library and poring through books, but countering that is the fact that now you're expected to be on top of the absolute latest precedent. It's not enough to give the definition of some element out of a legal encyclopedia. Gotta make sure you review all the cases that touch on the topic to make sure nothing adds a wrinkle that your opponent might bring up.

Similarly with document review. Yes, predictive coding will blow through thousands of documents a second, but back in the day you could just interview some people to get the story of what happened. Now you're expected to review every e-mail everyone sent within the relevant time period. Even with technology, someone has to piece those e-mails together into a coherent narrative.

What really happened is that during the 1970's and 1980's, the corporatization and financialization of America caused demand for legal services to explode relative to GDP. We seem to have hit a plateau in that process in the late 1990's and 2000's, which has caused the growth in demand to stagnate, and indeed dip in the recent recession.
My favorite backwards command is the 'sl' command. If you have a Debian/Ubuntu command line handy, sudo apt-get install sl
My first reaction was that it looks like the old BitBucket page. A lot.
I find it extremely unlikely that someone can conceive of and take the time patent something so novel that someone, somewhere, hasn't already tried it at least once.

In those rare cases, it should be a requirement to produce a detailed description of the method by which the desired result is achieved, and that the patent would cover that specific method.

"Attaching a computer to a database" is not a method. A very specific driver format employing particular protocols is.
and Apple tried to get Google to work with them on that but (regardless of whose fault it was) negotiations failed

But that's then letting Apple off the hook. Obviously we don't know the details of the negotiation but the facts are that Apple left a deal on the table, and gave their users a significantly sub-par experience as a result. That blow has been considerably softened by Google releasing their own app, but treating "negotiations failed" as some sort of "it's no-one's fault" result is letting everyone involved get away with a negative result.
I just had contact with the author, he seems to be willing to acknowledge the issue, but unwilling to implement a fix. So that's a shame, made me waste some money.
Hidden Bias: Why You Should Pitch After Lunch
I think it's different now than before because almost everyone is comfortable with the idea of communicating over the Internet. I used to IRC and MUD and the types of people that engaged in those activities were, for lack of a better term, more nerdy, like me. Back in the 1990s, people still weren't used to sitting in front of their computers all day long, because there largely wasn't anything to do with a non-networked computer. You could play games, or you could be writing an essay or a report, but there wasn't much else that could keep you engaged for hours upon hours, unlike today.

People used to spend more of their time talking on the phone or watching TV, or socializing. But having computers online all the time has turned it truly into a "social web".
Right. It wasn't possible for one single reason: Apple wouldn't allow it. So, yes, I think it's right to blame Apple.
That's all part of bringing the rest humanity up to speed. At least now we don't have to do it face to face with people we'd rather not see (or rather, smell). Every time you see something stupid on the web, you should realize that is a place where education and other social institutions failed.
This is a very good point. At one point in time I went to a therapist to discuss my family member's alcoholism in an attempt to get them help. The therapist gave me some good advice for my family member but also recommended that I seek therapy of my own. I did so for over half a year and it helped me work through issues relating to my relationship with my family member but also some anxiety issues of my own. If you are uncomfortable with the group setting of al-anon (as I was), you should really look into one-on-one counseling.
How so? You can use the phone just fine without an Apple account - you just won't be able to download any apps. Bookmarks in Maps works without having to sign into anything.
US Rejects UN Telecom Treaty To Control The Internet
You won't regret it. Just give yourself a week or so to get used to it - it seems frustrating at first when you make syntax errors, but it is a life saver in the long run
Time could've changed the way they hold a poll, but didn't. This is an advertisement stunt, nothing more.
They are different.

https://www.uber.com/cities/san-francisco#cities

In San Francisco (I assume it will be the same in NYC), Uber charges the regular taxi rates + $1 booking fee + 20% gratuity fee.
It seems like Kim Jong Un is last of Hitler and Stalin alike. Is there any other dictators like that?
The label omission caught my eye as well, as that's a weak point of currently available iOS apps (official Gmail app being the best).

I use labels a lot, but not only for importance/order of dealing with things – I use them to categorize/filter out of inbox as well. Which then, yes I do apply importance to (I have a few minutes, let me look through these promo emails or all these emails from basecamp).

So basically I use the labels to do "bulk importance labeling", but I wouldn't want to auto-tag all those "holiday sale" emails to "Later", and then just have to deal with them again later.

Your usage description ("Instead of fooling yourself into thinking you’ll tackle this today, simply mark it to reappear tomorrow or next week – when you’ll actually respond.") sounds like it's only talking about person-to-person needs-action types of emails. I think myself and many other people have a wider range of usage for email.

BUT that certainly doesn't mean Gmail's label approach is the only solution. But for people currently using labels a lot in Gmail, strong support for that paradigm is nice.
The official site doesn't work well on mobile browsers. There are sites such as ihackernews.com and icombinator.net that fill that gap.
Last time I bought an iPhone I had to activate it with an Apple account as soon as I turned it on. Maybe that's changed.
Ack you put this up while I was typing – totally agree.
I have given room for that. When the product is a tool, then you can't do much, but accept. The experience is usually similar to the one you have if you ask a blacksmith to make you a pair of scissors.
I wasn't aware that Tumblr had an export function, and it looks like, officially, it doesn't[1]. There is a third-party migration tool to WordPress[2], but that's about all I can find. So unfortunately, not all is roses.

It would be nice if there were a standard format for storing blog posts and their metadata and attachments, so you could move from anything to anything. Perhaps the nascent Tent protocol[3] could do that when it's mature.

1. http://smarterware.org/8026/why-not-tumblr

2. http://tumblr2wordpress.benapps.net/

3. https://tent.io
That's at the heart of what it is to be a patent. It is neither an idea, nor a specific device. Its supposed to be a technique or method or something equally slippery - thus all the lawyers have something to argue about.
11 Unique Space Inflatables
When I needed to get my rails-update-fix I usually checked from my ipad where I haven't logged in to my github account.. then I used the railslink on top. Now it's gone :/ First world probblem :P.

I think the new one is too clean/generic.
I'm a big fan of BitBucket. Not a big fan of how poorly GitHub handles memory and where it stores all of the files, but I pay for BitBucket - I have at least over a dozen repos.
I have no real experience, other than hearing about peoples stock options being diluted to become worth almost nothing.

I would go for a decent monthly salary regardless of stock options, unless I really understood the ways I could be screwed. If it all goes extremely well then I'd try to negotiate a good salary increase or use the momentum to find a good job elsewhere, otherwise (statistically very likely) I have at least some money in the bank when things turn ugly.
Similar project that converts specifically the LuaJIT bytecode to JS

https://github.com/creationix/brozula
> I think the medical profession has more goodwill capital to spend with the public in this regard than the legal profession, and any such move would be a very bad idea.

There's also the fact that our demand for healthcare is enormous, because we all get sick, it's a fact of life that's not gonna change very soon.

But the demand for lawyers is completely cultural. Where I am, the amount of lawyers per capita is one tenth of what it is in the US, there's no innate demand for lawyers, so if they start to price themselves too high, demand will fall as people and communities and businesses figure out ways to accomplish the same things as before, but without lawyers.
I always thought a mouse should be vertical, like a joystick.
My hand hurts at the end of the day, mostly thru turning it to grasp the mouse. That's not a resting position.
Just like building something that relies on a community as it's top feature.
And this is a problem? Hopefully these potential law school candidates have found more productive avenues to devote their professional lives.
This guy claims to have hacked 90000 sites (with screenshots hooray)
Make FreshBooks Your One-Stop Finance Operation Center
It's from the press release, not the paper itself.
Depends on the school. At the University of California, total cost of education (student+state portion) has declined about 25% in real terms over the past few decades, despite an increase in loan availability. Tuition is up pretty much solely due to a decline in the proportion of costs that the state pays, which is made up for by tuition hikes at a rate somewhat less than $1-for-$1.

Some numbers I compiled a while ago: http://www.kmjn.org/misc/uc_funding.txt

The situation might well be different for law schools or other university systems, which I haven't investigated in detail.
I've had the same feeling, but I don't think it's the internet - it's us.

Reflecting on some long-lost social circle that called an ancient BB home, I realized it had been a decade since I'd last meaningfully connected with an online community.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Take Dribbbble - folks follow, share, meet, and eventually collaborate with total strangers, following basically the same script I did 10 years ago. One of the qualities of successful online communities is their ability to catalyze connections between individuals through external channels - not just comments on a photo thread, but sharing IM, SMS, meatspace. Older communities like bikeforums.net are living artifacts of the old model. Some newer communities, like Meetup, race you through the first couple stages. Facebook works very hard to keep you inside.

I think my personal investment in communities has simply become focused on more immediate circles. But if I wanted to, there's a whole internet of people chatting about their interests with strangers who become friends (and allies and enemies).

Finally - no thread on ye olden days of message boards is complete without a link to The Flame Warriors - http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/acne.htm.
...but as a counter to that, NYC also has a far more comprehensive public transit system. The market may be smaller.
They even have some kind of JSON API for that:
http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/data/system_status...
Blame them for not giving ground to their competitors?
We do not agree. I am not saying it's a crude measure, I'm saying you're measuring the wrong thing. File size is the wrong thing to measure. It doesn't matter what estimate of file sizes you can come up with, because file size is the wrong thing to measure.

Unless one is loading a moving van or trying to estimate the number of shelves required to store it, one characterizes the contents of a library by the items in the catalog and their subject matter, not by the volume they consume. You don't go in and ask for "a cubic foot of books" any more than you torrent "a megabyte of music".
Quora would also be up that valley. Sort of productive.
North Korea by Google Earth: Camp 16 & Mt. Mantap Nuclear Test Site, Part 2
No, I had not. That looks pretty good, and seems like it could work...
I don't know... an unmanned vehicle sitting still in Manhattan traffic isn't much more impressive than a manned vehicle sitting still in traffic. :P I jest, of course.
>> When you effectively run a hotel in a residential area by being an "avid AirBNB user", you expose your neighbors to more risk than they bargained for, without compensating them.

That's nonsense.
I don't think it's swinging back, but I would like to hear his reasons for claiming it is.
12-12-12 Concert Shows The Importance Of Startups Like New Jersey’s PDP
I guess I just don't see a situation where the only tech barrier (the only thing you would need regular access to a tech for) for a site that's getting thousands of daily page views is finding appropriate hosting.
I've found that Tumblr's tag system works very well for the sort of serendipitous interaction you bring up. By tracking tags, I have met plenty of friends who, of course, share some of my interests. Heck, some of us started up an IRC channel. The web isn't going to stop forming friendships anytime soon.
Facebook is web's McDonalds.
Now I can only hope the trend continues and Vancouver gets it's mess sorted out in short order.

http://blog.uber.com/2012/11/22/helpubervan/
Meh, I disagree with a lot of that. You speak as if the internet ONLY consists of social now. Your points are nostalgic and looking at the past through rose tinted glasses IMO.

Five years ago, most social photos were uploaded to Flickr

You can still do this. People choose not to. I don't want strangers viewing my social pictures, esp if I had kids. These are private moments to be shared with my friends.

Ten years ago, you could allow people to post links on your site

You still can, it's your site. If you decide to monetize your site and display AdWords then that's your call. You don't have to be a sheep and follow what everyone else is doing.

In 2003, if you introduced a single-sign-in service that was run by a company...

Don't use them and create an account. No one is forcing you to use them, but for some of us (me) it's just easier to link several sign-ins together with my Google account. These are generally sites I trust. If I don't trust them then I'll use a disposable email account anyway to register. If the "average man" on the street doesn't know better then that's his/her problem, it's the same basic principle as identity theft and people guard against that. It's time they did the same online.

In the early days of the social web, there was a broad expectation that regular people might own their own identities by having their own websites

Really? A few people maybe, but most non-tech people I know really couldn't give 2 hoots. Wordpress and all the blogging sites have made a lot more people I know open their "own" sites than would have been owning a domain name and all the other hosting and "headache" that goes with it.

Five years ago, if you wanted to show content from one site or app on your own site or app...

Yes, agree it is bad, but that's business. The same thing happens in the real world, just because it is online the principles of business do not disappear and unfortunately not everyone is that tech-savvy and some of those people who pumped millions into a business may not "get" the web like you.

I don't think we have "lost" any of these. People have just decided to move on as the technology has advanced. The internet is a lot more open and a lot more accessible to many more people than it has ever been. As a developer I may care about the above (I don't) but as a regular joe, I don't think I would waste 2 seconds, no matter how long I have been using the web.
My mother's father was alcoholic, my father was alcoholic. These issues had nothing to do with the availability of divorce. I highly doubt it would have assisted my mother or I if my grandmother and my mother were not allowed to divorce.

It is apples and oranges to compare today's society with the societies of past, and not so easy to arrive at solid conclusions regarding the impacts and costs of changes in social values.