skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From this page, there is a link to Mozilla store, where they sell Firefox branded t-shirts, that are designed by user community. Pretty much all of them are fantastic (if I had the $$, I will buy one of each!), but I encourage everyone in HN to buy one and show your geek-pride. If you are carrying an ad on the t-shirt you wear, why not show little support for the free products that have changed your life?
Is it?

I would say it's generally a good benefit to have, but I'd say the vast majority of personal email users don't use a lot of mail. Certainly not on the scale of Google engineers.

I'd call it a good selling point and competitive differentiator, but it wasn't some magical thing discovered because they were using it themselves. He said they never even considered other designs.
Supply for them exceeds demand. That would depress the price of flawless diamonds.

Here's an anecdote for you: in Nagoya, you can pay $700 a month for a one-room apartment. Not an awesomely located fully-furnished palatial one room apartment, just your generic twenty-something sleeping quarters which is about the size of many Americans' closet.

In my town, I pay $450 a month for a three-room apartment. It was so clean when I moved in that I suspected they had put artificial sparkle on the walls.

The whole of the reason it is cheap and Nagoya is not is that my town, sort of like Detroit, has some systemic economic issues which discourage young people from living there. Accordingly, after graduation they move to Nagoya to work, pushing the price of real estate there even higher and making landlords in my town even more desperate to offload inventory.
Web Search: BSPlayer-Search.com
That's actually the problem that this system addresses. Each change script has from and to versions, so it's dead simple to move from one schema version to another. So when you go to roll out to production, your build will notice that it needs to go from version 104 to 116, and will run the script 104-105, 105-106, etc. until the version number is where it belongs.

Basically, you can know with certainty that you can move from any numbered version to another by simply running the intervening scripts.
What American shouldn't want to import more taxpayers? The income threshold over which a family is a net contributor to the government probably isn't much about $60K. So, importing just about anyone with a skill would lead to a lower tax burden for all. And, it would improve the lives of the lowest paid Americans by creating more demand for basic services (house cleaning, lawn mowing, etc.)

I understand the labor unions' reluctance to allow unskilled immigration, but they ought to press toward allowing more skilled people as it would increase the demand for their members' services. Interestingly, I think most unions are now in favor of legalizing illegal immigrants -- kicking out 10M people seems undoable, so they're best served by eliminating the illegal, un-unionizable underclass.
Crockford presenting "Javascript: The Good Parts" at Google
He's a pretty good speaker. Engaging!

"Given the process by which [Javascript became the world's most important programming language], we deserve a language that is far, far worse."
Google? For whatever reason as soon as I got the first call I didn't want to answer on the iPhone my first instinct was to press the power button. I think I've used this trick on other phones before the iPhone came out, but I'm not entirely sure. It just felt like the natural thing to do.
Warren Buffett Explains How The Bailout Is Crushing Healthy Companies
"they display AdSense ads for people charging for similar things. i.e. you."

So funny. I thought you could block certain sites from getting impressions on yours, though. Maybe most people don't know about that.
I understand that part, that's what I meant about it working in a linear fashion. What happens when two developers both start with schema 104 and develop in parallel? Which one of them becomes schema 105?
This is the second time Cringely has written about this, the last time being last August: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080822_0053...
Dream the impossible - documentary series by Honda [Flash]
Design Goals: "When in doubt, use brute force"
I bet the number of Sun Java certifications will decline in the future, but it's probably more a case of less interest in J2EE and the Sun way of doing stuff. So, with my indicator, we're all doomed.

Using Dow's transportation notion, we might look at the number of new truck driver certifications as a leading indicator of the market. However, looking at the certification rate for Freightliner vehicles (a non-existent certification, but fun to think about) is more likely a measurement of the relative importance of that brand of truck than anything macroeconomic. And, rather than looking at certifications, why not look at number of truck miles driven, number of truck tires purchased, etc. Shouldn't Cringly be looking at Cisco's sales data for routers instead?

I know nothing about their numbers today!
JQuery Inline Confirmation
Your comment brought up a good point, so I ran some more tests with ints.

http://bouncybouncy.net/ramblings/posts/json_vs_thrift_and_p...

Protocol buffers won hands down as far as space used...

The speed issues are still there, but I'm sure that over time things will improve. If the C extension for simplejson can speed up serialization by an order of magnitude, I have no doubt that similar improvements can be made to protocol buffers and thrift.
This question comes up so frequently on another forum I made a blog post about it years ago. To the best of my knowledge it still works.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/08/15/banking-for-the-uisv/
It definitely takes some clear thinking and maturity to decide to throw away a significant chunk if it turns out to be inappropriate, I've learned this the hard way (waited too long to do it).
All you have to do is ask them to raise your quota.

Why are you omitting this fact?

http://code.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=A...
The big buyers for netbooks are people in Asia.

I had a 1st generation Asus EEE, it was fun. However it had some limitations and when I got a new Macbook Pro I stopped using it and sold it on ebay.

However, I'm now on vacation and really wish I had a netbook instead of my MBP. If you travel light the size makes a difference and the netbooks really are much smaller.

Now that they are sold at stores like Best Buy (when I got mine, only one specialty store in the Bay Area carried them) I would guess that almost anyone would buy one.
I have done extensive front-end coding on a variety of projects and have come to a single conclusion: professional programmers don't get CSS. CSS is not "rational" like a regular programming language. Often the way CSS properties interact with each otehr has to be learned through trial and error. For example, if you set a object to display as a block and float it to the left it is not actually a block element any more, it is an inline-block. Doesn't matter if firebug tells you it is a block level element. This causes lots of pain and misery when it comes to understanding CSS.

However, once you do understand CSS browser discrepancies really become a minor annoyance at most. You code pixel perfection in one browser, and ensure all the other browsers don't go too far off course. The only exception is IE6, and for that you can use something like http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/ to "upgrade" it.

There is really only one feature I wish Microsoft would add. The CSS property Opacity should apply to form fields as well.
I think it was casual knowledge in the Army that the CIA was torturing people.
Fluid Grids
Ah. Since the scripts are under source control, it's simply a matter of resolving conflicts when you check in.

But then, since you'll generally have a continuous build is running on 5 minute intervals, it's pretty rare to have two independent schema changes in the same script.
The Elements of Social Architecture
The first one, "Failure: the secret to success" is pretty good. I don't think I've ever been this motivated by a commercial.
DimDim Poetically Undarkened
Presumably, most of the effect is due to socioeconomic correlation and I'm sure Virgil understands that.

It's interesting how big the correlation is. I might have expected only a few percent WRT music.

I want to see the correlation between Ayn Rand books and number of friends.
Microsoft Leaked Memo Suggests Live Search Rebranding as Kumo.com
On top of that, you don't even an ocean to measure the Earth's circumference. Eratosthenes of Cyrene (born in the 3rd century BC) calculated the circumference of the earth fairly accurately using the angle of elevation of the Sun measured from two different cities. Note that implies that a round earth was common knowledge to the Greeks even at this date.
Media Temple Official Response to Open Letter over Outage
In terms of impact, it's much better to build a product for people who spend several hours/day using email instead of those who login once every few weeks to delete their spam. For the latter case, just about anything is good enough (even Hotmail).
Just try Linux. You've got a Mac; run it in Boot Camp. Or buy VMWare or Parallels and run it right next to the Mac OS. There is no need to theorize about this.

If your idea of software is emacs, the command line, the browser, and a bunch of servers and compilers Linux will be just fine for you. Perhaps even better than the Mac. I am very, very close to this camp, so I was almost happy with Linux.

But if you do anything with graphics, audio, or video I predict that your free-software devotion will be sorely tested. In theory there are free alternatives to Photoshop, Illustrator, Cubase or Logic or Sonar or Performer, Final Cut, iMovie, Snapz Pro or IShowU or ScreenFlow, Lightroom or Aperture, the iWork apps, and the venerable iTunes. But based on my limited sampling of iTunes and Logic alternatives three years ago, you're better off just sticking with the Mac. Life is too short to spend fighting your tools instead of using them.

And now I'm hooked on 1Password, so I just can't leave the Mac. ;)
List of High Profile Spam Lawsuits with Tips
Simplified Etherpad clone
You think music is a weaker socioeconomic correlate than books? I think it's trickier to name a stronger one. Music is entirely subjective and subject to peer pressure.
I think it's a travesty that he was beaten down so bad by the negativity that he had to leave in the first place. This wasn't a vacation, it was a retreat - for the wrong reasons.
This article seems like an excuse to criticize IE. "Instapaper is severely degraded in this browser" is fine. "... because IE does not support basic web standards" comes off as catty.

I understand the frustration that IE isn't fully compatible, but as engineers it's not our job to change the world to suit our own needs; we shouldn't be converting users to a different architecture or web browser.

IMO, 10% is a lot of users - perhaps, silently degrading the experience is better than potentially offending people that have to use IE for whatever reason. When I have to use IE, the last thing I want is an application or webpage rubbing it in my face.
> Supply for them exceeds demand.

No argument, but my statement was shorthand for "supply exceeds demand for good reason", since "supply exceeds demand" is usually the same as "prices are low".

Now, it could be that there's just too few people in Detroit for the property, but from other stories, it would appear that these low cost houses may come without wiring or piping, that having been stolen to sell as scrap or the like, and other forms of vandalism seem likely, too. I'm not saying that there aren't some that are worth it; I'm considering buying a house or two at these prices, myself. :)
Denial of Service, The Pirate Bay Is Offline
Please read my comment again and tell me where I generalized to all Chinese. The article's author claimed that the guys were very "bright", and I was expecting him to write on their entrepreneurial spirit... and, lo and behold, all they wanted was a safe status job that pays well. So predictable. So boring. I said nothing on the other 1+ billion Chinese. I did not comment on the entrepreneuralism (or lack thereof) in China...

PS: Though you guessed right that I am a white male, I must say that I am not American.
Bingo:

Mike,

I was responding to your email from only a few hours ago when I saw your article. It’s important to clarify a couple of things. We haven’t ceased development efforts on the Mozilla platform. Our upcoming release of Flock 2.1 is built on the Mozilla platform. Having said that, the browser space is heating up, and we’ve seen a variety of exciting technologies emerge over the last several months that are appealing.

We always have and will continue to make architectural decisions that balance what’s best for our users and what’s best for Flock as a business. This has resulted in a healthy, growing user base and business for Flock, and we expect this to continue in 2009. In fact, with over seven million downloads almost entirely from word of mouth, Flock enjoys a highly satisfied user base with consistently over 92% customer satisfaction, very strong net promoter scores, and an average of four hours of usage per day.

With a continuing focus on user-centered browser innovation, our team is in active research and development on a range of exciting new enhancements to Flock. It is still far too early to comment on anything specific, but we are very excited about this design phase…

The response isn't exactly straightforward, but sketchy job on the part of TechCrunch. I think the story has some value, but it certainly isn't 100% truthful.
Industrial Haskell Group Announces Collaborative Development Scheme
Wouldn't PCI-e require a x86 processor or, at least, x86 emulation for initialization routines?

I have a couple PPC Macs and many PCI boards (mostly video) are Mac or PC-specific.
Flock is built on Mozilla using XUL. As far as I can tell (and I really haven't done my homework on this) Google Chrome doesn't have this kind of extensible architecture.

Having raised 30 million (most of which I assume is still in the bank or they're really doing something wrong) they should have plenty of time to explore new options. If the Google Chrome angle is real, then they'll have to re-implement all the work they've done on Flock so far ... from scratch.

Ah well, whatever. I never understood their business model anyway.
WiFi networks and malware epidemiology
Like all things, the price of copper is down significantly. It's 25% of what it was when that article was published. Not saying the problem is completely solved by that, but it's got to be mitigated somewhat.
The theater part seems to be overdramatized:
http://www.google.ca/movies?hl=en&near=detroit&dq=de...
Keep in mind you don't "remove the monitor" as the computer is inside it. But you can remove the keyboard/trackpad...
Hi Paul, I am one of your fans from Egypt.

just about anything is good enough (even Hotmail)
Hotmail now allows you to mark message as "read", do you believe it? They did not offer this option for years!

Anyway, I have a question for you.
I am working on my startup, and I really like your approach: "launch fast and iterate"... but I am afraid of users! I am afraid from their judgements on my startup..

Do you have any solution to "get rid" of this fear?

EDIT: Even if I receive -8, I am not going to change a charachter of this!
The SAT has been accused of bias itself (to get the analogy runner:marathon::oarsman:regatta, you need to know what a regatta is -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Bias ) and this is pretty well-known. That's why it's a small part of an entire applicant's college submission.

To correlate against the SAT is an implicit bias.
No, it is just my town's public high school.

Most of what I know is also self taught. Once you get into the more advanced CS classes at my school, it is very independent (I am the only one in each of my classes this year). I can ask the teacher for help on an assignment or have him explain something if I need him too but most of the time I work independently.
A (badly needed) good story for Politics.reddit. A bad story for Hacker News.
Richard East - Co-founder and CEO of Internet Marketing Business
Richard East is Co-founder and CEO of a Business Services company with focus on serving the SME market, providing a relatively wide breadth of Marketing, IT, SaaS, and Business Consulting solutions for this SME business segment.
Ask HN:  Are we in trouble?
Honestly... does anyone have any idea. I have been hearing people like Donny Deutch coming out and saying 'ignore the noise, it's all hype' and I turn on Bill Maher who says 'it's all gonna hit the fan.'

Has anyone seen any economic case studies, predictions, or articles, that can shed some light on what is REALLY going on here.
Move to Evanston or Logan Square.
It seems like most of IE is installed on corporate machines. Now answer me this, what kind of IT Administrator doesn't realize the advantages to installing firefox?
And, likewise, I'm not knocking Mac OS X. I just didn't want misinformation being taken as fact; we're talking to someone who has, apparently, never used Linux on the desktop. It'd be unfair to him to give him a false impression of the stability of Linux, in particular...it is one of the few areas where Linux clearly and demonstrably outshines any other mainstream desktop OS including Mac OS X by a large margin.

I'd never argue that folks can't be productive on OS X, or that Apple doesn't make fine products. They can, and they do. But, let's be fair about our comparisons. Consistency is weak on Linux; we'll all agree. UI beauty is lacking in many applications; we'll agree. Hardware support, particularly newer devices, can be a problem; agreed. But stability is weak? Hells no.
OK, this kinda does it for me..

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=325896
Here is some more recent data (02/03/09):
http://blog.creonfx.com/javascript/mootools-vs-jquery-vs-pro...

Unfortunately that article doesn't test jQuery 1.3, but you can find 1.3 benchmarks here: http://docs.jquery.com/Release:jQuery_1.3#Performance
Is There A Future For Organic And Foam Mattresses?
If you're looking to improve your sleep with platform beds you should also look toward the concept of organic mattresses. An organic mattress is made from 100% natural materials. The natural materials that usually make up an organic mattress include wool, natural latex and occasionally cotton.
Wow. I love the failure one as well. Honda rocks.
If it weren't for the immobility of building capital, Detroit would probably no longer exist. As is, it exists only because of the low level of demand for its buildings makes it the kind of place that the poor and desperate can afford to live, which further lowers the level of demand for its buildings.
This is an excellent question. I think the truth is that no one knows. However the fact that many people are asking this question (not just crazy reddit folk) implies to me something bad could be afoot. Thoughts, HN?
YouTubeda iştirak olan faylları Twitterdə yerləşdir?
For those who are curious, here's the browser makeup of Hacker News traffic to all of my articles that have been on the front page here:

http://dustincurtis.com/screenshots/Browsers_-_Google_Analyt...
"You don't get fired buying IBM"

Keeping / installing IE is the default option for most corporates. Change is difficult. IT Admins struggle for respect in many cases, and know that fighting over IE or FF means wasting ammunition they need on more important projects.
This is a big extrapolation of intent from a single paragraph of a very long, carefully-crafted letter. Absent from this analysis are all the grafs where Buffett explained why the bailout was the correct course of action.
How much of the $800/month = proximity premium?

Or does $800/month only buy a room in Palo Alto?
Ah well, whatever. I never understood their business model anyway.

Really? Mozilla makes millions a year just from Google Search referrals. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati...
$800/month for only a room in Palo Alto is actually a pretty good deal, depending on where the house is. :(
Yelp Draws Grumbles From Merchants and Users
Mirrors

Music:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_j0_WBUT8_cw/R89cubH01_I/AAAAAAAAAD...

Books:http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_j0_WBUT8_cw/R89cgrH01-I/AAAAAAAAAD...
Do you resent spending too much time on school/university?
It might seem like a waste of time that could have been better spent on startups.
This is indeed true. There's nothing to fear in China, unless you're a total idiot. You're probably safer here than in the US.
It's not the best written work of fiction, by the way. I'm around page 900 or so, and most of it seems to be thinly disguised rants by the author, interspersed with laughable descriptions of sex, and a really nasty strain of Social Darwinism. If this had been written by a German in 1934 it would probably be recognized as thinly disguised National Socialist Party propaganda.
A Sneak Peek Look at Microsoft's New Kumo
No one knows, and unless you have mountains of cash to invest, there's no reward for being right either way. The only thing you can do is think through the absolute worst that can happen (to 1% or whatever your level of paranoia) and plan to deal with that. ie, your income is X, can you live on 0.5X? Better to find out now and not when your personal trapdoor opens. But take it calmly, like a game. If you spend all of your energy in Holy Shit Mode you stop moving forward.

Some friends of mine today got two messages from their employers: their pay was cut 18% and their insurance premiums went up 23%. It's going to hurt but the worst thing they can do is let the fear sap their energy.

I personally think it's going to be bad for 12-18 months then a slow recovery. The financial assumptions for many businesses and people will fall away. If you are in some business that depends on consumer discretionary funds, I would look for alternatives (not jump like a spooked cat, look for for alternatives ahead of time).

If it's any consolation my Brasilian, Venezuelan and Argentinian friends think we're all a bunch of pussies for worrying so much and not preparing rationally.
Your comment is ridiculous, irrelevant (true or not, none of those things apply to the "skilled immigrants" in question), and intellectually dishonest. Save it for reddit, please.
When I visited Hearst Castle, the tour guide characterized California as a place where over the history of the US, people kept moving west to escape convention, bureaucracy, community standards, and so it became the final destination of weirdos and lunatics. Seems about right.
In China without some Chinese the basics such as transportation, food and shelter are a real pain. If you're going to spend any great amount of time in China you must learn Chinese, especially if you live outside of Shanghai and Beijing.
Flickr Adds Video and HD to Free Accounts
There are two in Detroit. Warren, MI, where the next closest theater is, is half an hour away.
I had the same problem in Safari, but watching in Firefox works fine. I think Safari has issues handling plugins generally.

I also tested it briefly on Safari 4 and it seems to be better.
Why resent having the opportunity to work hard? That's always good for personal development.

I can concede the point that for many learners, there will be more personal satisfaction--because of more learning--from starting a new business than from attending school. I'm quite a skeptic about schooling as an enterprise,

http://learninfreedom.org/

but sometimes when you're in school, you just have to make the most of it, and sustain your motivation by thinking about what lies ahead after school. In fact, now that I've just typed that sentence, I remember that that is pg's advice in his essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known,"

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

which I urge a lot of young people to read. School is your day job for a while, perhaps. Do it well, but don't let it define you.
Life in China as an Entrepreneur: One Scoop of Ice Cream
Asbestos
Asbestos and how to identify it.