skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, HN has changed over the past 6 months or so. Highly technical stuff doesn't rise up to front page as it used to. My suggestion is to monitor user submission feeds of people you like or share similar interests with. That way you will have a more customized experience and won't be disappointed by some of the front page stories.

But this is a superb presentation about how security in an OS works. I enjoyed it a lot.
I had the same "revelation" (strong word, a bit to strong). They could be right.

Certainly a good point (they earned a sticky reader here :))
great ideas help, but great execution helps the most.
I honestly think a lot of their 3px, 4px, or 5px decisions are actually an exercise of finding local maxima for their current design.

If they're looking for interfaces that are truly better, they would do far more testing on innovative/educated directions and iterate each of those to see how good they can get. Instead you just make one version as business-helpful as possible, which may be much weaker than your true potential.

I like the idea of data, but there's only so much progress you can make with the same designs in the same mold, tested pixel by pixel.
You are bringing too much of your real-world common sense into this topic. Video games can do as they damn well please. I've played games where the profile of a jump is straight-line up, straight-line down, with no acceleration concept relevant at all, which also eliminates "terminal velocity" as a concern... it's just velocity, period.

Unfortunately, the same is true of the authors of this paper, who assume with no evidence, or perhaps rather against the evidence, that standard Newtonian formulas hold and therefore they can compute "accelerations" and such. Newtonian formulas do not hold in the Mario-verse, or in platformers in general.

(In some cases the real formulas may be modeled on Newtonian formulas, but the full set almost never holds, "equal-and-opposite force" in particular. Please note that citing a single counter-example is insufficient to disprove "almost never"; I can do that too, but it doesn't change the fact that most games use physics only loosely related to reality.)
I don't agree that it lacks substance, the conclusion, and also the conclusion that I have made according to rails is that it's "good enough" for almost any web project. It's safe to have it as a default choice. There's a good community, fantastic libraries, constant innovation, and people are really happy developing with it.

The notion that there's nothing wrong in choosing rails -- is now acceptable mainstream. Even the hard ass Java developers at my work can acknowedge that yes, it speeds up development to use a field tested full-stack framework instead of rolling your own framework for every project. (Only recently did we come to a truce, and now I can refrain for a while to try to push even wackier frameworks on them like some Clojure based ones, because Rails is good enough for me )
I recommend using the "screaming meanie", this 120db alarm will wake both you and your neighbors in the morning, http://www.amazon.com/Screaming-Meanie-220/dp/B000RZLWR8
Exercise at least 1 hour per day, 4-5 days per week. You may begrudge the time in the gym, but I've found that an hour of exercise can replace an hour of sleep -- so you're not really out any time, you're just in pain for that hour ;).
"And here's where working on something that matters to you more than money is critical. When you're committed to something larger than yourself, every minute counts."

"our business plan: that we could get people to pay real money for virtual clothes"

Virtual clothes??? THAT really matters? THAT is larger than yourself?
Most people don't bother about video comments since most of them are by people who are promoting themselves and they're also very low on info density. You can read a paragraph in few seconds and it takes you minutes to get the same thing from a video comment. Video is perfect for teaching but I don't think it's great for quick bursts of communication.

I think video comments are going to be irrelevant in the long run. It's interesting to make a parallel with video phone. Video phone never took off because people didn't want to be bothered with checking how they look before they answer a phone. Fixing hair, shaving, etc... why bother with that?
I'm sorry, maybe I didn't make my question clear. I'm not really concerned with a "best" programming language. Perhaps just a place to start and where to go from there. I am familiar with HTML / CSS.
My job is pretty depressing and very boring. They also have a hiring freeze in place. My job is very secure because I do things for the company that requires a skill that isn't easy to find.

Unfortunately however I have no college degree. I got lucky landing this job straight out of high school and even though I'm pushing 5 years of experience from this job I really doubt I could easily find another one outside of retail/fast food even if the market wasn't the way it was.

/sigh
I quit my job with a baby on the way, 20 months ago. In that time, the economy has tanked, so even if I wanted to go back to work, I wouldn't be able to find one anywhere near my old salary.

Am I sorry? No. I'm still very, very happy I had the guts to take the plunge and do it. The fear of not having a steady paycheck is much worse than the reality. Now that I know that, even if I do get another job, it won't have the same psychological hold over me.

However...

I had worked a lot longer than you have, before I made that plunge. While I wish I had done it earlier, I think that 2.5 years is too early. At 2.5 years into your career, you're still an apprentice. You have a lot that corporate life can still teach you.

Here's what I did.

Every time I felt like you feel, I found another job. I found it before I quit my first job, the safe way. After about 2.5 years, almost like clockwork, I'd feel restless, and cranky with my current status, and go find another job. I learned a lot that way and made a lot of friends.

When you think the time is near for you to take the plunge, do what I did. Say to yourself, "this job that I'm starting today will be my last job. I will not allow myself to quit it to find another job. No matter how much I hate it, I will not trade it for a new job. I will only quit when I'm ready not to have a job at all."

That vow kept me in my last job for an extra year or longer. Time I would ordinarily have just hopped to a new job. Finally, I decided my time was now, and I gave my notice, without even having any concrete plans on what kind of business I was going to build. I just knew that I needed to be free.

To summarize, my advice is to job hop for a few years when you get unhappy, just like non-entrepreneurs to. There's a lot to learn that 2.5 years won't teach you.
http://www.xhtml2pdf.com/

Perhaps this python library?
I wonder why we often have this debate.

Probably most people who read this site can write reasonable code. So what is the problem?

I think it might help to be more specific about which aspects of the execution are difficult.
That's exactly what the author is not saying. The other frameworks were better for them, he says. They didn't like Rails.

But Rails has the most industry and community support. And since nobody plans to write all the code themselves, that matters more than almost anything else.
Thanks! Read the intro and reviews on amazon. Looks decent, I'll continue reading.
> execution does matter but that's often beside the point because in many cases the execution is pretty simple anyway.

This doesn't square with my experience of the world.

Execution is hard, hard, hard.

If it were trivial, everyone would be a huge success.
Fair point. But I'm sure you'll concede that the more abstract goal of "supporting motivated students" cannot be supported so straight-forwardly. Should I be donating to an inner city Charter school? Or to a public school run by the school district? The whole public education reform discussion is very complex, and even knowing several teachers (working in public and private institutions) I am having difficulty making up my mind.

My first hand experience in college gives me direct and clear insight into the benefits of that particular institution. So yes, it is not by coincidence that I'm donating to that institution in particular. Still, I would claim that this is also a good faith effort to "support motivated students" applied concretely.
I think most people reading Hacker News generally find the programming easy. For me, the hard part is graphics and sound.
Announcing MrTaggy.com: a Tag-based Exploration and Search System
Creating... Graphics... Sound... that's all execution.
Doug Lenat liked Wolfram Alpha. It competes with google, not with the semWeb
http://www.teesandtats.com/TRIPLE_S__SKULL_SAMURAI_SNAKE-det...

You would not believe the tail I pull down in "Skull Samurai Snake" shirt. Hell ya.
i think its a mental issue. in order to go full-tilt on executing an idea, you have to at least be able to sell yourself on the idea that its going to be successful (relatively) if you execute. i find that difficult to do, myself. it tends to require a "good" idea.
I've seen Duck Duck Go when you posted before and didn't think much of the idea (hey, I can use Wikipedia!)

Just had a look again and I now think it's pretty awesome. Just for a really speedy "what the hell is this?" type of query it looks absolutely amazing. I love the AJAX extra search links, makes it all feel really snappy.

Works great on the iPhone as well, I've added an icon to my home screen. You might want to consider making an app for the app store (you could pretty much just make an app that loads the site as it is).

Have you considered adding an API? I currently have my Emacs set up to do a dictionary lookup (using the dictd protocol) on a word when I hit C-cl. I'd love to add Duck Duck Go results to the buffer this displays!
Yeah I would totally quit and start your own company! Think of it this way since a lot of superfluous startups are dying, you'll have less competition.
Plus, life is too short working for douchebags.
The tuition is purchased, the degree is earned, membership in a social group of Alumni requires participating in its support.

I see that I was remarkably unclear, even for me. What I mean is that if you go get your degree from Harvard, you are always entitled to it, without paying another cent. But if you are the type to fraternize with the administration, attend games and other events, and describe yourself as a "Harvard (Wo)Man" in the present tense, you probably ought to support it just as you would support any other type of club that has ongoing expenses.
i know. again, it depends on your situation. are you familiar with C or a C-based language? or are you totally new to programming? you might find it easiest/quickest to work on PHP. if not, or if you want to learn a currently popular language, you might want to consider ruby or python.
Without having read his other posts it wouldn't be quite as obvious, but the author of the second link (at least in his blog persona of 'Mencius Moldbug') is legitimately insane.

His writings are crafted to shock the hell out of any socialized person, no matter their world-view. He actively despises representative democracy, functional bureaucracies, and anyone advocating policy (the state department, the NYT, NGOs, etc.). You could denounce him as a fascist libertarian, but neither of those groups would have any idea what to do with him either.

Unfortunately you'll have to read several hundred thousand words of blog-essays to even begin to understand him (and you thought Yegge was a bloviator!).
Advising Students for Success
I almost choked on my lunch when I read "charging customers" ha awesome.
Hmm,

Interesting. The arguments seem to mainly come down to cost of living.

The Bay Area rates pretty expensive in many books. BUT the Bay does have a lot of single people renting rooms. Moreover, the culture of shared housing means that here, in "the metropolis", we don't necessarily live only in our houses but in cafes, in public spaces, etc.

In many small areas that rate as having the lowest cost of living, the only rentals easily available are one bed room apartments by yourself. There is no culture of shared housing - see Nickled And Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich for how hard it can be to find housing in areas with supposedly low costs of living. Moreover, in areas without a shared housing culture, you will feel pretty lost without a big house.

That said, college towns often do have the same shared housing culture as the metropolis so this woman's choice of Madison might be quite good for her - but it is possibly good but somewhat unique choice rather than being "anywhere but the bay area".
Google search may be clean, spartan, and utilitarian, but I just don't see those adjectives applying to Gmail. OK, I'm not sure, maybe Gmail is utilitarian, but it sure doesn't seem either clean or spartan to me.
I'm sorry, but does that page say anything ? All I saw was solid black with some dark gray smudges ...

It's about design, you say ? Curious ...
Scribd.com - New Media Life Cycle Analysis
With their formal publisher announcements this week, Scribd.com is officially entering the monetization phase of the life cycle.
I think there is one clear field that Rails own: attracting the most of douchebags to its community.

True story:
In a bar (John Collins)i n SF, few weeks ago, end up striking a conversation with somebody in a bathroom line.

Him: what do you do for work?

Me: I am an engineer. Software engineer.

Him: A Java guy!?! (with a lot of smugginess).

.... right now i am wondering if i have java printed on my front of something. wtf.

Me: umm... no. Java is only one of the languages I know. (I use it most in mobile dev). I also work on python and lua on the server side, and come C too. And you? (i was still surprised by his condescending tone).

Him: I am rails dev! Ruby on Rails (with even more smugginess, borderlining on arrogance).

.... few questions later, i realized this guy was a crock. Didn't know much about closures/blocks, how many databases can you use on rails at a time... etc.

imagine working with people like that. They setup rails, get a simple app going, and they feel they are in top of the world and better then you. If you know java, you are automatically assumed to be be an idiot, and if you don't use rails you must be a boring person.

I think the Rails Community is full of people that suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. A lot of newbies, who migrated from php, or would have started with php few years ago, have migrated to Ror.

My point is that Rails is just another framework in top of an scripting language which I don't prefer that much. While really nice for basic CRUD apps, as soon as you try to do anything advanced, it shows it's limitations right away. I tried to use Rails, but I have never been attracted to Ruby as primary language.

Then I started using django, but I dropped it soon after my dislike with the way meshes forms and models, and the sheer size of the framework.

I think the lesson I got out of it, is that more than often you just don't need a full blown framework. If you are doing anything highly specialized, a framework will get into your way. If you are doing anything very simple, a full blown framework is just an overkill.

Frameworks like Rails or Django are a perfect fit for most medium complexity type of CRUD apps. If you are doing anything else, better start looking somewhere else, and don't just buy the hype.
Not exactly.

First, people have an innate "feel" for exactly how much these experiences are worth, and thus should charge. They don't charge more than this. This makes sense of course from a capitalistic point of view.

Second remember that is the very same people who went there who are sending the donations - it's not the random public.

The people who went there are uniquely qualified to judge if it's worth the money - and they are the ones who decide to donate and allow others the experience.

It's is basically a finely tuned system that makes the fee exactly what it should be - they can not just raise it and be worth more.

Many people would consider those schools a waste of money - but they are not the ones who go there. The people who go there are exactly those who consider them a good value, and it's those same people who feel that others should be given the opportunity to have that experience. And since the amount is high, and they know not everyone can afford it, they donate.
Google's "designer drain"
It's not about doing stuff in platform A that can't be done in platform B. It's about delivering things faster than your competition, something that can't be done if you use the very same tools they use. You can, of course, be wrong and go with the wrong tool, but remember - it's a bet on a technology differential.

The Twitter problems stem not from the web framework they used but in flaws in the design of the data structures under it. When doing something like Twitter, one should never even consider using relational databases for more than a prototype.
If you've got a great designer, you need to let him try what he believes in for an extended period of time. The problem with A/B testing is that they tend to have a short horizon. Facebook's famous newsfeed change pissed off/confused a bunch of people-- but in the long term it was a good thing for Facebook. I wonder if they'd done a 1-2 day A/B test how it would've performed?

And, clearly-- on tiny things like shades of blue and pixel widths, just launch something. With infinite resources it'd be great to test all permutations-- but surely they have more inspiring things to try/test that might move the needle.
There is some discussion in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10...) from 2005.

Here is some stuff about it on WebMD (http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/important-sleep-h...). This one does not outright link it to death, but many things which help death come knocking.

I thought this was well known, so sorry about the lack of links in the first assertion. Is that why I'm gaining negative marks, or are you shooting the messenger for the news you don't like?
Google Ventures, ready to roll?
Unfortunately I sometimes wake up with no alarm going off, think to myself "hmm, where's the alarm? what time is it?", look at the clock and realize that it's 4 hours later than I intended and the alarm has been turned off. Since I have no recollection of turning off the alarm, it isn't really a matter of discipline :(

Edit: Of course, I'm not suggesting that this is a deal breaker, or that I've 'given up', just that it's not always as simple as "just get up when the alarm goes off." I also have been known to pass the turing test in my sleep. I once convinced my wife that I had the day off when she tried to wake me up... Yea, I was really late that day.
That's a distinction without a (widely accepted) difference. Coroutines exist at the same time as one another (you could say they exist in parallel or concurrently), but they do not execute at the same time within a single process (1). I think most people wouldn't call it either parallel or concurrent, but if concurrency means something else to you, that's fine, but don't correct me by your definition.

For what it's worth, here's the intro to "Concurrency (computer science)" on Wikipedia:

"In computer science, concurrency is a property of systems in which several computations are executing simultaneously, and potentially interacting with each other. The computations may be executing on multiple cores in the same chip, preemptively time-shared threads on the same processor, or executed on physically separated processors. A number of mathematical models have been developed for general concurrent computation including Petri nets, process calculi, the synchronous model and the Actor model."

(1) Okay, so, they could be operating at the same time if two tasklets are in different threads and at least one is inside C code that has released the GIL. But that's the same as any CPython code.
Researchers predict click-through behavior in Web searches
27 billion for 30 million infections? That's a very poor return on investment (if we can calculate such things for life).

AIDS is not curable, just preventable. If on the other hard we worked on malaria and TB we would prevent closer to 1 billion infections!

And malaria and TB are curable, and malaria causes anemia which makes people tired and less productive, and the cure is considerably cheaper than AIDS prevention.

I (cynically) think that the reason people are focused on AIDS is that the donor countries are worried about it, but they are not worried about malaria and TB. People donate for causes that are close to them, so it's not so cynical for an individual, but I think governments should be instructed by utility - but they are not.
Ask HN: Review my (non-profit) startup, 20:20
Ok, maybe it's not technically a startup, but I just finished the first release of an open source application that I've been working on for a while:

http://anioni.com/2020

I wanted to design a minimalistic multimedia format and an editor application that might also cater to the needs of those who either have no access to such tools, or insufficient education to use them. I think that a large number of people in the third world are never going to have access to a PC, but it's more likely they'll eventually have a computer-like phone with low-bandwidth mobile Internet access -- hence this project's focus on efficient compression and a non-textual user interface.

You can read more about that on the web site, so I'll just give a quick technical overview: the app is written in plain C (out of obvious necessity). I've made ports to Mac OS X as well as Maemo (Nokia N800/N810 web tablet OS), so I'm hopeful that it's a fairly portable app. The only external dependency is zlib for compression. The file format is Ogg with some custom stream types, and the amazing Speex codec is used for audio compression. You can find the source on GitHub (link is in the FAQ).

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
Google forced to take down pics from Street View in UK
Here's the continuation:
http://ejohn.org/blog/secrets-of-javascript-libraries-sxsw/
I think one can compare customization against wizards in Studio or scaffolding in Rails.

Sure, it's an easy way to get started with whatever: MFC apps, Rails apps, or text editing. But when you outgrow hello world application, you'd want much more power.

I used Emacs on and off for maybe four years but never customized it. I finally gathered up some attention month or so ago, got through tutorials and now I'm editing everything in Emacs (and this comment too). There is just a lot of accidental complexity in my brain, which can and is successfully automated by Emacs.

If you are a programmer, you should be pissed off and outraged by anything that doesn't allow you to automate itself. After all, automation is what we all do -- to get away from all the boring stuff and concentrate on things that are really fun. Like sex. Or running.

That's why I don't like GUI: remembering key chords is a way of automating tasks through memorization, and clicking on buttons requires much more cognition and interaction with the screen.

And that my friends, is what really grinds my gears.
From those screenshots, it looks like Tetris has a pretty strong case here.
LinkedIn Finally Makes Groups More Useful
But therein lies a big danger. Design, why a given design works better, has _also_ to do with the culture and the taste of the many. The taste here not so much in the PG sense, but more in what people are used to. Similar like how the many think PCs cause a lot of problems because Windows has a lot of instabilities (Please, just trying to make a point. You know what I mean, that's enough.). This taste will change with the time, what will Google have as a response? Or: when will PG write of the death of Google's design?