skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Citation needed for "reducing e touching of things that other people touch helps avoid catching a contagious ailment"? Down vote.

Depends on the ailment, Einstein. If its virus doesn't survive outside the body (which a lot of them do not), then "reducing the touching of things" does nothing.

And if the chances of catching it from a faucet are minuscule compared to someone having it breathing in the same room as you, then again, "reducing the touching of things" (especially when you already washed your hands) will gain you very little.

Ever heard of profiling and diminishing returns?
I'm saying that people who want to run Linux as their primary desktop are not a market of interest to hardware manufacturer's.

Indeed, I am going so far as to suggest that it may be a market in which hardware manufacturer's are explicitly disinterested due to the potential support costs.

Furthermore, the wide spread expectation that a Linux machine should be less expensive than one with Windows due to the elimination of license fees might make the market even more unattractive to manufacturers.

Supporting Linux is expensive to the point that Red Hat has made a business out of it.
The latter, yes.

All major construction like elevator shafts is always inspected [1]. Since they are working on-site, the quality, speed, and scope of their (subcontractor) work is apparent and visible on a real-time basis. You have to know what you're doing - if you do not - worst case, you get someone injured/killed, best case, they fire you. Like the cliche goes - a contractor with shiny new tools isn't a contractor you hire. As for licensing, there are ways around licensing & bonding...

The point is they weren't just bluffing - they had supreme confidence they could do it. And did it. As someone who is scared to install a new faucet, who does that?

[1] They did the shaft in Chicago: http://www.sfm.illinois.gov/commercial/elevators/faq.aspx
Should we move to San Franisco?
Great article Rob! We're trying to help games on the web progress towards a few of those points you mentioned with Clay.io [1].

Using URLs to link to in-game content is an interesting idea, something I'll play around with in the next few days and see about getting that as another feature of our API.

Persistent data on all devices is fantastic - of course, we need more HTML5 games that work well on each device. The two main issues I've seen developers run into with getting their games on mobile are 1) the performance in mobile web browsers (the latest Safari is pretty good, but most games still have a tough time) and 2) handling user input - developers are able to take full advantage of a keyboard on desktops and limiting to touch is a big change (though it seems a lot of devs forget about the accelerometer). If the developer has tackled those issues, we're here with the data storage feature of our API to allow for easy implementation of that idea. [2]

As for interacting with the DOM, it's funny you mention that, just yesterday we updated our homepage to have a mini-game in it (calling it a game is a bit of a stretch though) that interacts with the DOM [1].

[1] http://clay.io/home
[2] http://clay.io/docs/data
I agree that "revolutionary" is a little strong given that its just a rumor. However, the first iPhone is frequently described as revolutionary despite being far from the first smartphone/touchscreen smartphone. Given the sad state of the current smart watch market, apple's smart watch could be considered revolutionary. (when it exists and provided its a huge improvement).
What would be the pros and cons of a-sharp vs c-sharp?
From the outside, Europe may seem more united than it is. I think that the difference between two randomly selected European states is the same as the difference between a random European state and the US.

Also I disagree, that there is a need for a stronger union. Free trade union yes, but other than that, every state should be sovereign.
Blogspam FUD mongering.
Recruiting is a lot like advertising- there's no proven formula, and results are delayed and difficult to separate signal from noise. Some people use these tools to significant advantage, and others just throw their money away without realizing their folly.

Your recruiting for maximum profitability involves both recruiting good talent but also standing above the crowd of mediocrity. You have to not only bring on A players, but interface expertly with the (mostly) C players hiring you.

The most successful recruiters are the ones who are able to hire for the A players while placing C players in stable jobs. Unfortunately, there tends to be no biscuit for helping a business avoid a bad hire, even if that ends up being quite valuable in the end.

What you may be perceiving as total ineptitude on the part of the competition may be a well-disguised (and perhaps unintentionally so) song and dance to appeal toward companies that are satisfied with low-grade talent.

In today's market, in the end, sadly, those who can, do, and those who can't, recruit. Recruiting just doesn't pay like doing tends to. Do you think you can change that?
Question to motorheads:

Would you use a shop manual exclusively on an (your) ipad?

Or would you prefer to have a paper copy, so that you don't get your ipad greasy and scratched while you're working on a car?

Question to everyone: when are we going to have devices that are cheap and rugged enough that my first question doesn't matter?

Edit: If that ever happens, they won't be sold by Apple, the company that made unboxing a fetish.
Well, we are going deep down the rabbit hole now :). Please excuse me if I say lots of stupid things.

How far apart are Louisiana and California? How far apart are Romania and Bulgaria? Yet, the two USA states share the same language (at least on official level), the same currency and the same "american" culture. Neither of these is true for BG and RO. And we are neighbours, mind that. As an added "benefit", we have separate electronic payment providers (+ most of the American ones). We use Visa and PayPal when we need to pay between countries. Until recently we didn't even have a common banking accounts system. Now we have IBAN and it's a lot better. We also don't have a common postal office. If I send a parcel from one neighbouring town of BG, to a town across Danube, it becomes an international delivery, and 5 years ago used to have to pass through the customs office.

As someone else mentioned, it's much better to sell from Romania (and Bulgaria for that matter) directly to the USA, instead of trying to enter the neighbour market.

And now surprise, we are always considered about the same thing by EU officials. We were accepted to the EU together, we must join the Schengen area together, we must adopt the Euro together... It's crazy :).

So, no, if we cave to compare to CA and LA, nope, they are a lot more similar.
Simplistic and cross-platform make (as in Windows and *nix)
Thanks, but I'm just getting started on learning copywriting. Maybe in a year or two. For now check out CopyHackers: http://copyhackers.com
I agree with everything said here - maybe apart from the points about demographics. We know Varsavsky was referring to Western Europe. In any case, I don't think it's such a bad thing to ignore differences for a moment and do a bit of generalizing.

We end up making preconceptions and assumptions about what will and won't work in other countries. Cultural and linguistic barriers are almost being used as an excuse. This is a massive mistake we are making in Europe. There are plenty of products and/or ideas which all of Europe has had an appetite for.

Naturally, appetite for ideas/services may exist in one country more than the others. That's where you'll find your early adopters but it's not the bigger picture!
It was many a used car before I got this one right.
If you have another email account, please add it to Inky, try to discover your GMail account again, and "Report a Problem" using the menu in the lower left corner. Obviously GMail should discover properly; this is a bug.
Just created my own based upon this information, very easy to do but what actually runs firefoxOS?
Let me check the rules, but I certainly would give you access to the emergency kit, and control over the issue. Your experence and formation is much more related to an onboard sudden problem, than for example a dentist or any other physician who has forgoten basic ER knowledge.
From the piece: "It won’t be revolutionary, per se — many have already entered the smart watch space"

Anyway, I would buy this. I stopped wearing a watch when I got my first cell phone back in the late 90's but recently (last year) started wearing an iPod nano as a watch. I use it for listening to the radio/music during my commute and it's great.

It's also a conversation piece as most people haven't seen anything like it and the idea of a multi-touch interface on a watch blows their minds. The only drawback is a lack of bluetooth connectivity, I yearn for the ability to get data/updates from my phone while it's pocketed or stream music to an external device from my 16gb watch. Also there is no audio output except for the headphone jack which makes timers/alarms pointless unless you always have headphones on.

It's really to bad that nobody has hacked the 6th gen nano as it would be great for home-brew. Something else I want is a "stealth" bootable usb device on my wrist. :o)
American Epic Meriwether Coming To Linux, With Your Help
Who claimed it was revolutionary? In fact, from the article: "It won’t be revolutionary, per se — many have already entered the smart watch space — but Apple has a knack for making niche devices mainstream.", which is an assessment I agree with. The iPhone and iPad also weren't "revolutionary" by your standards; there were plenty of smart phones and tablets on the market before then. But Apple certainly popularized the smart phone and the tablet pc. They could potentially do that again with smart watches.
I have a few questions:

1. Did you have to 'kick back' any money? To those that you interviewed, or companies where you used their screenshots in your examples/critiques? Did you reach out to them and notifying them that they/their company will be in your book for profit?

2. From the sample chapter, you talk a lot about principles and critiques of interface design but are there any area in the book where there are data or user ability studies to explain it further (ie: why they work)? Or is most of it based on experience?

3. Any plans for a sample page on the case study? I think that's where the most value is - the full process of where you take us through your thoughts and reasoning on designing a product.
Come on, this isn't how porn stars work! Now, someone diagram this discussion and put it up on slideshare.
Yes - and, very important when we talk about the EU, any EU citizen can set up a UK LTD company, if s/he wants to.

It is true that there still are many differences in legislation between EU countries, but the EU is gradually standardizing laws in many fields.
I do not believe the iOS SDK has access to these buttons. As other users have pointed out, screenshot detection is a hacky method of checking if touch interaction is temporarily disabled (which only(?) occurs during a screenshot).
I'd go on https://leanpub.com/ and turn it into an ebook.
America is a continent. No matter how much the people from the US call themselves "Americans" You are generalizing when you say "Americans".

Thanks
Pretty loose article with only one central idea of human resource specialization.

It includes factual inaccuracy gems such as

"It wasn't until after WWII that there was a conscious move back to a system of world wide free trade, which resulted in another era of solid economic growth."

This has nothing to do with historical fact. The pre-Bretton Woods and Bretton Woods system were strongly characterized by very high capital controls and very high progressive taxation systems, only abolished in early 70s due to various shocks. Interestingly enough, it is likely there has never been a more global economically productive or financially stable period in human history and it is often known as the "Golden Age of Capitalism".
I personally use chruby.
Reverse "Europeans" with "Americans" and this post is equally good advice for Europeans who say "Oh Americans are...".

Stereotypes aren't just an American thing. They exist worldwide.
I went on vacation recently where I'd be spending much of my time at the pool and beach. I'm pretty anal about knowing what the time is, so I got myself an $11 Casio watch at Walmart.

I haven't taken it off since. I use it for everything from taking a shower to giving my son a few minutes to finish playing with whatever he is playing with[1]. On the other hand, pulling your phone from your pocket, reaching for it from the desk/counter, and especially "where the hell is my phone" is far too taxing when all you want to do is tell time.

[1] Before the watch, I'd give him the "Alright, it's time for bed — how about you play for 5 more minutes," and just lose track of time which lead to inconsistency, which usually leads to frustration in children. Giving him 5 minutes and then saying "ok time's up" in 1 minute has to be frustrating. Conversely, giving him 5 minutes and letting him keep playing for 15 minutes results in future "I know you're bluffing," attitude.

Granted, sometimes a simple "once you're done playing with x, then it's time for bed," suffices. No need to go all-out Pavlov.
Tell HN: Hacker House open spot in Silicon Valley
Just a reminder that there is an open spot in a hacker house in Palo Alto available Jan 1st. Roomates are like minded hackers that get stuff done. It's a very reasonable price for Silicon Valley (just under $1000/mo with utilities). This is a great option for those moving out here for the first time, or for those relocating closer to work. If you're interested, check my profile and send me an email to get more details!
If Apple is smart, they will build only the watch face and allow people to install it in any number of 3rd party wristbands ala the iPod Nano. In fact, I would wager that their entrance into this market is a direct response to the popularity of using the 6th Generation iPod Nano as a watch.
My favorite way to determine whether my skills are up to date (and what to add in the coming year) is to look at the "Who's Hiring" and "Seeking Freelancer" threads, and tally up what people are asking for.

It is a diverse field, though, so you have to filter it by what you're interested in or good at.
"Programming isn't reverting to guilds because there's no way to restrict people from learning about programming"

Sure there is: nondisclosure agreements, secret APIs, expensive proprietary tools, etc. You already see this to some degree with video game development. App stores are going to make this worse, as people are going to have to pay more in order to develop software and will not be able to just run development tools on any old system.

"a greater spectrum of people will do programming type things"

Those people will also be more restricted in terms of what they can do. People will know how to write macros for a specific product; they will not be able to write programs in general. I suspect that the number of people who can write general-purpose software is going to decrease as platforms become less open.

"Finally, no mention is made of things like superior parallel processing, something that is integral to continuing to do fancier things with advancing technology."

First of all, we do not even know if we can benefit from parallel approaches to certain very important problem classes (see: NC v. P). Second, we have heard the "parallel processing will save us" argument in the past, but we were not saved. From where I sit, algorithmic improvements will be more important than parallel programming over the next decade: better approximations, better heuristics, and faster operations are going to win over more cores.
Segatashya of Kibeho
How to find product idea?
1. No, I didn't. Everyone was very gracious and there was never an expectation for money. For some people like patio11 and Jason Fried my book sales would not represent a meaningful amount of money. It's better to not even bring it up. Many of the people I interviewed have become friends and I try to help them in any way possible.

For companies I didn't contact them in most cases. The few I did talk to were thrilled their designs were being used as an example in a book.

2. This book is light on data and studies. That's a short coming. These are all techniques that I know work well, but I don't always have a study to back it up.

3. I'm not sure what you mean about a sample page for the case study. To better market it? That case study has a lot of great content and I'll be working with the company further to write a lot more articles and tutorials around what we all learned in that process.
I think most Americans would break the European continent into "Europe" (aka continental W. Europe), the UK, East Europe, and Russia.

Even if rounded up, there is a clear distinction between Europe (W. Europe + UK) and East Europe (E Europe + Russia) which probably has something to do with Cold War borders and allies.
Nicely executed tour and feature set. I like! A couple suggestions:

1. Some Gmail shortcut issues:

- 'o' and <enter> should open a message if I'm scrolling the message list. They should expand or collapses a conversation if I'm in message view.

- 'y' should not delete. It's a context-sensitive "remove from current view" in Gmail, which in message list mode means archive. In any context, it never means delete.

- 'p' and 'n' should go to previous and next conversation when in message view.

- Several others: http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...

2. There's a slight disconnect between what I can do with keyboard shortcuts and mouse. The one that bothers me most is I can click in the right (message) or left (message list) panels, and the shortcuts will now be focused on that context (e.g. if focused on left, j/k scrolls the message list, but if focused on the right, j/k scrolls the message). However, there doesn't appear to be a way to switch focus between left and right using the keyboard; instead, it appears you must switch to full window message view to get the message view keyboard shortcuts to work, and switch back to side-by-side view to get the message list shortcuts to work.

Two ways to solve this:

- Have a setting for whether opening messages goes full window or stays side-by-side. This way, when I press <enter> or <right>/<left> (or 'o' with Gmail shortcuts), the message list will stay to the left but the focus will switch to the right. This is what appears to happen when I click my mouse in the message area while still in side-by-side view.

- Or, have a new keyboard shortcut to switch focus between message list and message focus. This way users can also process email in the side-by-side view (scroll message list, open message but stay in side-by-side mode, scroll message itself, jump back to message list, etc.). They can also continue to use the current method of opening messages to a full window.

3. Might be tough to make cross-platform, but have a setting to register a global hot-key to bring Inky to the foreground (and minimize if active). This is one feature that makes it soooo easy to make a desktop program that I need to go in-and-out of often a regular go-to product (notes program, music player, desktop switching, etc).
this is great, actual useful content with great illustrations. It's refreshing to see something with some practical use.

Growing up I remember being obsessed with this: DK The Way Things Work. it was an amazing mac CD ROM with illustrations of everyday things broken down, with moving parts and all...

Probably one of the reason i became an engineer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Things_Work

http://www.amazon.com/Things-Work-CD-ROM-Version-1-0-mac/dp/...

Horrible Youtube video ( best i could find... ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4MIVU5i_xE

Cannot recommend it enough for kids. They don't make em like they used to :D
I think that helping people definitely can give you preferential treatment and respect, but whether it does depends heavily on _how_ you help them.

The physical act of helping earns you a reputation as a 'nice' person; however, I've found in my limited time that when people start trying to use me (getting a sense for this is a very useful thing to have, and something I had to learn the hard way after being used), I either need to (a) draw the line and say no, or more commonly, (b) help them in such a way that I force them to think or do something along with me. In my experience, plan (a) happens strictly only after you've done plan (b) before.

By just doing everything for others and magically making things happen, you allow people to trample on you; but by teaching them exactly what you're doing, you (1) demonstrate that you really know what you're doing, (2) practice your understanding of the thing it is you are doing, and (3) place on them the expectation that they won't come back for trivial help. I only resort to plan (a) if, after doing plan (b) a few times, they still attempt to use you. Teach a man to fish...
Where's the good literature on advanced backbone development?
Can someone explain why this Node.js code fails?
American hackers who have made the big move to Australia...what is your story?
I've been thinking about moving to Australia for many personal reasons but haven't given much thought about how my career/job will change simply because I don't know anything about the tech scene in Australia. I am mid level soft. engineer from the east coast.
Using "America" to refer to the USA is muuuuuch less controversional and much less inaccurate than using "Europe" for all the countries in Europe, or "Africa" for all the countries in Africa.

For example, various US organisations have "America" or "American" in their names, and openly only deal with the USA (e.g. RIAA, MPAA, etc.). Organisations in EU that have "European" in their name are not focussed on just that country. People from the USA use the term "American" to refer to people from the USA, not all of the USA.

"America" nearly always means the USA.
Ask HN: Banned from AdSense, Now What?
Hi, I'm a student and myself and others have recently been banned from AdSense. We were making over $10 a week when we was banned. We still do not know the reason as to why we were banned, although we suspect it is due to most page views originating from the same location (i.e., the school that we attend).

After being banned, we tried out a few other ad platforms (Lijit and Adbrite). Whether it is because of the lack of relevant ads or high quality ads (we have had trouble getting these because we do not receive many page views - peak for December was 318), we have made less than $1 in the passed two months. HN, do you have any suggestions as to how we can get better (currently we are getting ads that say "Power Companies HATE this") and more relevant ads?
I'm asking about the Fourth Amendment issues because I think they're irrelevant, but most people who discuss this issue seem to think they're paramount.

Really, this is a separation-of-powers fight: How much permission from Congress (and oversight by Congress) does the President need to authorize varying degrees of spying? The President has no obligation to obey laws that impinge on his Constitutional authority. Or to put it more gently, he's generally free to interpret those laws as broadly or narrowly as necessary to avoid that impingement.

So I can't get too worked up about the "systematic overcollection" argument. Unless you make it "systematic, deliberate overcollection of purely domestic communications". I am disturbed that the EFF seems to think it's advantageous to blur the distinction (using terms like "probable cause" and "warrants") and make it seem as if these programs are prima facie targeted at domestic communication and unconstitutional.