skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the best way to explain our differences is that we have varying preferences for specificity - I like "blogger" because it means "author of a blog post" the same way that I like "commenter" as "author of a comment".

And yes, just because you like the more generalized description of "author" doesn't change that they'll all 3rd person labels, which I'm not sure is pejorative either.
The Flex ~300k SWF baseline includes the Flex framework too. If you use the shared framework available in Flex 3 you can cut that out of the download size!

http://onflash.org/ted/2008/01/flex-3-framework-caching.php
I don't really ink that much, but I found that I use pen as a main pointing device even in a laptop mode, for example, when I browse the web or working with files. And I'm very comfortable with that. The screen can sustain pen's pressure, even when I point elements on the top.

However when I use keyboard I tend to combine pointing stick and track pad to move the mouse. It works very natural both ways and I really enjoy interacting with a computer in this manner.

I prefer not to write anything unless my handwriting is recognized. I like OneNote but I use it mostly for drawing schemes, diagrams, etc. while keeping audio recording on. It's not ideal but still has some valid use cases. So far I used it three times and each next time I end up having better notes.

As for battery I actually considered that, too. My other laptop is a pretty old 15" Dell which after 4 years can stay alive for about an hour and a half only. The power adapter was a huge brick, too. This time I picked up the best battery life money can buy and I don't bother with that anymore.

As I said I'm very satisfied with it and I'm going to use it for quite a while.

Most often Macs are a better choice, but Microsoft invested to much into tablets to give up its domination in this area. This time I've chosen a tablet, but may be next time I'll end up with a Mac just like you.

I hope you read that. You posted your answer 18 days ago, sorry for not replying earlier.
I'm guessing a zombie'd process won't respond either. Which is good if you are checking for validity of a process and not just the mere presence of a pid in the process list.
I sort of find this idea quite weird. In this case it is interesting to note they already have a product, all they are doing is pre-selling a pro version. But when you try to apply this strategy to a new product being created, your focus often gets diluted. And if you are asking what customers want, you risk to get overwhelmed by their requests. So, it is better to sell after you have a actual (no matter how minimal) product. Frankly, I don't see a point in pre-selling, do you?
The idea is crap, and there's very little future in it, but the lessons learned from it seem valid to a wide number of startups: find an influential champion to spread the word, make it easy to discover and use (a first time can measure their e-penis in a couple of seconds), and make it easy to share.
At UIC they have two kinds of computers. Computers that run according to ACCC specifications and computers that are owned by the department of computer science. Guess which ones are easier to deal with...
This is mostly for corporate, assembly-line production type shops. For hacker-shops and startups: use what you know best first, then look around for something that does the job best and learn it on the side.

For me, I hack in a language that absorbs all other languages and development methodologies and fashions them in its own image. (Lisp hackers have the smug look on their face, like that playboy bachelor you see in the morning who is just itching to tell you about his "last night" story ;-)
As a designer, I couldn't agree more, it's absolutely essential to get your thoughts down visually as quickly as possible (when you've got an idea for a UI and need to capture it) or even more importantly, to work out your ideas in the first place.

Also, paper is a very shareable medium. Both in terms of being able to pass around, whether in the office or by scanning in, and also because it's so amenable to collaboration, which is really important for me and getting participation from a wide range of people. No one's going to be intimidated by some sketches on a piece of paper, so it's great for creating conversations with programmers, marketers, etc.

If anyone's interested in a longer explanation, I gave a presentation on prototyping at Adobe last month and a good chunk of it was about how much I love paper:

http://tr.im/gMJ9 (slideshow + audio)
Your perception is wrong - there are not two Twitters, but a million Twitters. It's been that way for a couple years almost, altho it is now achieving critical mass.

Since "friend" relationships are only one way, everybody builds the Twitted they want to see. That's part of its appeal and why it's so interesting to an experience designed like me :)
What are you looking to achieve in SV that you can't here in NYC?

(Not to generally say which is a better city for startups, but just curious to your reasoning).
He simplifies web-development.

Can you say the same thing in regards to the developers that work for the following companies?

SUN (Java), Microsoft (ASP/ASP.NET), Macromedia (ColdFusion).

(and don't forget developers who use PHP, Perl and Python).

Yes, he's sloppy/have no knowledge in certain areas... and I assume that's where people like you, ankhmoop, come into play and contribute. Just like Lars Bak with his soldiers.
> Also, if you are a cs major you can probably figure out how to 'startx gnome'

Don't imagine yourself at a computer, think about the marginal user. That is, the kid who could be a good CS student but doesn't do it because the first class' experience is extremely frustrating not due to programming, but due to stupid computer admin shit.

The argument is that the unnecessary complexity and intentional backwardness of the computer labs is pushing away marginal CS students, not that it's a system that's impossible for anyone to figure out.
I have to disagree with you here. I've found the vast majority of what I was taught followed a progression from the basics, up towards more advanced stuff, and included the "revelations" in between. There wasn't much stuff pulled out of thin air.

If something did seem to be pulled out of thin air, I asked critical questions, did my own research, or just made a mental note that it's note quite as much a fact as it's made out to be. I can't think of any examples off-hand, but probably it was with stuff in sociology, where (I feel) there are so many variables it's nearly impossible to attribute an outcome to a specific type of behavior.

I think it's up to each person to think critically, and I think each person has the power to control whether or not they "switch off" their brain. It just so happens most people choose not to.
You're overlooking the fact that he started at a CC and finished at a state school.

The debt doesn't exist if there is no debt.

If, for example, the CC got the first 2 years of core credits out of the way cheap & the state school had good incentives for locals, & the parents had a small college fund.

Not everyone does things the same, you know.
Your body is an intricate piece of technology that you hack on every day, intentionally or not.
How does forensic handwriting identification work?
I am continually saddened by all the people who knew their jobs were superfluous, who knew all they did was push paper & supply a warm body, who are surprised when they are laid off. And surprised at the businesses for overstaffing (while still probably providing a low standard of service.)

Sure, lots of laid off folks truly did generate value. Not all are like the people I described. But there are lots of them, on both sides (employer & employee).
You don't need to be a genius to produce value.

In my early 20s, I wrote a piece of widely popular software that's still in very active use today. I didn't solve the problem well, and I wouldn't call the implementation genius by any stretch of the imagination, but I made something useful and quite a few people use it every day -- probably more than use Rails, but I must admit I'm guessing.

For all the value I've produced, I'm still embarrassed by the software, and all the more so when I see other developers emulating my design and approaches that I've since learned to be sub-optimal. The work wasn't genius, but yes, it simplified something important.

The lesson I take away is this: value doesn't require genius, and it's foolish to conflate the two. I try to appreciate the value produced by others without making assumptions regarding their genius.
The Beautiful, Scary Robots of Shigeo Hirose
Here's a summary of the "experiment":

* hook 24 college students to brain-scanner-majigs.
* given them an economic problem.. the better they do, the more they get rewarded
* have some of them do it on their own.
* have some of them receive advice from someone who is said to be an expert of economics.

The results? Guess what! Different parts of your brain are active when you do something yourself, and when you receive advice. Oh, and also, people tend to follow advice from experts. Here's the amazing scientific breakthrough the research suggests: maybe we can one day make brain-scanners that tell you when you're receiving expert advice or making the decision yourself. Wow! I'd pay $0 for such a thing, because I don't need one: I know when I'm choosing to take a short-cut by following expert advice, and when I'm deciding myself.

Following expert advise isn't a bad thing. Think for yourselves what it means to follow expert advice -- to me it's what allows the human race to advance at such a rapid pace. You ask someone with experience, so that you don't have to experience/learn it all yourself. It's the same concept as paying a business to do something that would be inefficient for your own business to do, or figure out how to do. If someone suggests using a company that in the past has had good results, and you use them, and they fail... would you say that your brain was shut off during the decision to use them? No... they just let you down. Plain and simple. But what if someone took brain scans while you made the decision process?? Well, in that case, you could write an article about it in Wired, it seems.

This is sensationalized science... and in this case is especially ironic, since people seem to be taking the article headline at face value.
I'm not sure if you understand what the fraud ratio is. Especially in the beginning, you should expect 99 out of 100 users to be fraudulent.

Basically, in order to make this idea successful, you have to solve the fraud problem a lot better than Google does... which seems unlikely.
This should be read in the light of the National Academy of Sciences' report on forensic science which condemned it as unscientific.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-crime-science19-2009...

"With the notable exception of DNA evidence, the report says that many forensic methods have never been shown to consistently and reliably connect crime scene evidence to specific people or sources.

"The simple reality is that the interpretation of forensic evidence is not always based on scientific studies to determine its validity," the report says"

From my own experience, I can tell you that all American hand-writing looks the same. Elsewhere we were taught to write neat cursive penmanship, while Americans prefer big, clear handwriting.
That maybe true (Capistrano which you reference was pulled out of 37 signals) but I think my general criticism still stands (+ standardization in and of itself has benefits in that it helps people help each other).

The rails community from the beginning has had a more holitstic view of the problem it is solving.

The third tab on the rails site is about deployment. There are three performance monitoring companies and 6 different rails specific hosts.

Other examples: db schema evolution (migrations) and rake tasks. There is also a litany of useful maintance tools you can find on github.

This is not just in reference to code either, its everything else too, including documentation.

I like django, I prefer django, but in this one critical area, the last mile, rails does better. And its frustrating because its not a hard problem.
That seems absurdly easy to game... but even if it worked, wouldn't Google or PayPal be doing it?
People use Facebook to waste time and chat with friends. Is it really surprising that all those social tax preparation or contact management apps haven't caught on?
The worst part about time on Windows is that the system clock is always set to localtime.

With that as the default, nearly all Windows software is completely timezone-ignorant, which is especially shitty for web software. The most support I ever see is a user preference for "Server time +/-N:00", which forces foreigners to manually fiddle with it twice a year.

Just one of the many bullshit misfeatures that Microsoft should have fixed with NT but chickened out on.
Perfect idea.

I just read news in my local newspaper that they were going to hire 360 guys while they were laying of 200 (mostly from far-flung regions).

As per what I read on HN, the interview process is very long (around 8 months I read). So instead of spending another 8 months hiring those 360 guys, they should instead transfer those 200 to some kinda special service review team directly interacting with customers and doing those weird tests they often do for color shades (just pick random people and ask whats kinda painful to use their service).

P.S: It would be a lot better if they also had a 'human' review team to review banned accounts. This would eliminate the errors made by the algorithms. Since the industry standard for fraud is just around 1.5% the review team should be able to handle it easily.
What would you say the limit on how irresponsible you can be is now that you are part of YC?
I borrowed a "handwriting analysis for dummies" book from a friend, on a whim after skimming through it. It was just after reading a couple of Feynmann books, which is why I can so eloquently classify handwriting analysis as a "cargo cult science."

It's a lot about "energy" and "flow" and other subjective nonsense. It's along the lines of reading body language... which I would call more of a skill, or talent, rather than a science.
You can get Computer Modern in OTF here: http://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/~panov/cm-unicode/download.html
And what would you suggest that backup plan should be? Keep in mind that the false positive rate is probably about 1 out of 100, and fraudsters are going to get really big payouts if they figure out a way around your backup plan.
is wxwidgets a good framework? Has it been embraced by many startups?
Good to know. By the way, does adk stand for _that_ adk? I was actually in Tsukiji for a meeting there.
I haven't had any professor in an upper level (300 or 400) class expect anyone to take in what they say as absolute truth. They usually welcome students questions as an opportunity for discussion. The only times they don't seem to is when trying to cover something new and someone doesn't want to move on.

In lower level courses, where straight up lectures are more common, professors are more inclined to simply teach the facts instead of trying to create a(n unmanageable) discussion between 50+ people. Which is understandable. And they (usually, at the beginning of the semester, at least) stress that they have office hours or are available at other times if someone wants to continue talking about a topic for whatever reason.

But these are my experiences, maybe I've just been lucky?
Sometimes an example can go a long way. I grew up in another state than the one my maternal grandparents lived in, but I did travel to join their sixtieth wedding anniversary celebration with most of my thirty-four cousins. That's surely helped me and my wife (whose parents have also been married six decades now) stay together for more than twenty-five years. She and I grew up in different countries, speaking different native languages and eating different foods, and have changed radically from our former selves over the years, but we are still each other's best friends.
That roller walker at the end was seriously cool. That actually seems like it might be pretty practical for some sort of robot in the future.
Programmers aren't born good. When I started working on OSS projects I wasn't. I had a knack for it, but I wasn't an impressive coder. But after getting involved in open source and working with people better than me, surprise, I got pretty good.

"What you'll wish you'd known" has hit the front page again, and is my favorite of Paul's essays because of the bits about how it's a lot of work to become good.

Now, I don't know Lars, the guy that wrote this engine, but I am old friends with Harri, the guy who wrote the one he was replacing (KJS, original KHTML / WebKit JS engine) and he's smart, but not intimidatingly smart.

Open source developers tend to be some of the best hackers; I know since I've worked with them and I've worked many years full time as a commercial software developer. But the open source hackers don't join the projects as great hackers; they start as mediocre hackers that want to do something cool, and with enough cojones to take getting flamed when they screw up in stride and learn from it. Give that process a couple years, and poof, way above average programming ability.
Minimum Inventory, Maximum Diversity
Thanks for beating me to make the same point. There is an astonishing lack of careful validation studies of many kinds of "scientific" evidence often referred to in criminal trials. Basically, the "expert" gets on the witness stand, says what the prosecutor wants said, and it's a rare defense attorney who has the resources to offer rebuttal evidence on the same issue.

The common-law rule of handwriting identification is that it doesn't require special expertise, but only familiarity with someone's handwriting. In other words, even though I don't purport to have any specialized training in handwriting identification, I could (if the case required such evidence) be called to testify, "Yeah, that looks like my wife's handwriting; I've seen hundreds of examples of things she has written, and this looks just her usual handwriting." You could do the same for anyone whose handwriting is familiar to you.
Most of what you learn (in school) is stuff you HAVE to take on faith. Are you going to empirically verify the concept of covalent bonding? Are you going to figure out Kreb's cycle from first principles? Will you deduce the results of the Civil War based on it's causes?

If it was limited to subjects where students could study the evidence and come to their own conclusions, school would quickly end up being useless...
But it's cold outside.
California schools' risks rise as vaccinations drop
Journalists are paid to promote and spin, not to get things right.
my book is an amazon kindle... that's a computer with internet access that can read "blogs". what do i do now?
-1 for a PhD? That's nonsense. Even ignoring the fact that Google et al. love to hire CS PhDs, I can guarantee that anyone who has had the persistence to make it through a PhD in an analytical discipline has skills a lot more valuable than the ability to make a resume in LaTeX. Yet another example of short-sighted anti-intellectualism by software nerds.
Yes. You'll build the wrong thing. Something nobody wants.
Any man who can get his bride to go along with spending only $250 on her wedding is a hero in my book. You are a very fortunate man, sir.
Or you would never build the right thing, because all your time is consumed in selling the thing that is never made.
Furlough House Swap: vacationing on the cheap
I got into Google from Iowa State. But then, I was an employee referral because of someone I met interning at Microsoft. I don't think I would have gotten the Microsoft interview coming from Iowa State if I wasn't a girl. Microsoft hired four interns from Iowa State that year, all female.
> I know my parents and grandparents generations have had (and most likely continue to have).

Yeah, well, they'll be dead soon.
Man, I've been in large lectures where there 200 students in a classroom and the professor tolerated completely inane arguments to try and teach just one student the material.

If you're in a class and you don't think what the professor is saying is right, either ask a question or write a note so you can follow up on it later.

Not once in my undergraduate career was I expected to turn off my brain and go on cruise control just because the guy down in front was an expert.

Honesstly, I feel like my whole benefit of my academic career was taken from sitting in a class, not understanding what the fuck was going on and then struggling to understand or contradict what I was being taught.
2003 (Latest) Poll Result on Best College in U.S.
aren't there bears "outside"?
Lessons from GDC: Restrictions Fuel Creativity, And That’s Why Stealth Games Were Invented
I've always believed that robotics is much like architecture or the best of industrial design. It's a meld of art and science. Form and function must flow. Don't try this with a committee.
Chevy Chase spoke at our HS graduation, and as best I can recall, he told us that adults are jerks, it's fun to smoke pot (he said it euphemistically but we all knew what he meant), and not to take things too seriously. I think he was pretty stoned at the time.
Google Answers had incentives and was much better for it.
This is an old trick out of the direct marketing handbook, BTW. Direct marketers would send out mailers for lots of different products, asking people to respond if they were interested.

They then gauged market demand by the response rate.

I think this technique might actually be illegal when done over snail mail nowadays.
The fact that it was turned down speaks volumes.
Whatever happened to Trilogy?
Take the tedium out of building charts in Flash
Designed as Designer
Reminded me a little of a Tachikoma.
The Man-Month is enough! =)

Btw, there is another 33 years old book which is still worth reading - http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Magic-About-Language-Therapy...
Bugtracking doesn't matter if you aren't working for a profit-seeking enterprise or other enterprises that pay people to write software for them. For these situations, telling the users to fix the bug themselves and send in a patch will never ever fly.
You aren't just selling, you are learning.

You are very unlikely to get it right based on a hunch without multiple iterations with real customers. That means that you will end up iterating whether you build it or not. So its best to first iterate without building: you get more iterations and less wasted development that way.

As the interview explores, that doesn't mean building nothing, but it does mean validating an idea first and foremost.

I understand that this can be frustrating for a developer. We tend to think, 'if we build it, they will come' and we don't like sales. But personally I've wasted too much time building elegant software... nobody much wanted, to build new stuff without validating it first.

If you "don't get" this interview, I would suggest a second listen. It contains a critical lesson.