skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Cool article. Couple of queries :-)

It mentions that static content is served from nginx, but then mentions S3 later on as well. Why not just Amazon for all the static content?

Mentions nginx being more stable than Apache - you mean no-crash stable, or more consistent under load?
Where is the innovation in software?
I agree. Add in that his old job was not that enjoyable anyway.
Tom Monaghan: From DomiNick's pizza shop in Ypsilanti to Domino's Pizza world-wide
> Doh, yes Selenium Grid uses Selenium. And the argument about no major JS using Selenium is not an argument to not use it.

Sure it is. If a developer will never switch to Selenium then Selenium Grid (in its current state) is useless. TestSwarm is completely test suite agnostic - which is huge. I don't know of a single Open Source JavaScript projects which uses Selenium.

> Unless you right the appropriate daemon for those devices and integrate it into the existing Selenium Grid set up. Surely that's easier than starting afresh?

It absolutely is. There are no daemons in TestSwarm. It's a single URL that you can open in any browser. No 3rd party software is required to be installed.

> Huh? That's just bizarre. If you've got some new browser then reach Selenium how to start it. It's not that hard.

So the only solution for an unknown browser is to wait for the Selenium team to add it? That's unacceptable. New browsers must be added instantly and on-demand (which TestSwarm handles).

> This is solved by virtualization.

No it's not, not at all. A virtualized environment requires a few things: A machine on which to run it and enough resources to run as many virtualizations as required. As an Open Source project we don't have that sort of money.

Second, virtualization is insufficient for testing. Within the Mozilla project we've discussed problems with virtualization and how they are not always precise. Nothing is better than running the tests directly on an actual user's machine.

Third, virtualization does not solve the problem of manual testing. We want to get tests in front of users wherever possible - throwing them to some dumb server does nothing to help us.
Trashing may be too strong a word, granted. But it's making public unflattering internal details about a company that employed him. I would be personally irritated if I was this guy's manager.

Coming across material like that when researching someone for a job would probably be a no-hire flag for me - and many others. I'm sure he's a great designer, but does a post like that expand or limit the number of future gigs he might get? You could say "he wouldn't want to work at places like that anyway", but I'd rather have that decision left to me rather than a lack of response when I'm looking for work.

Offering this in the spirit of advice. I've been hiring people in the valley for 10+ years. I used dejanews to screen applicants prior to google... today yes we will read your tweets, find your blog, and skim it all to get a sense of who you are. Be thoughtful about what you post.
If you’re able, you should do what comes naturally

Not sure I agree with this - For me, sleeping is just a habit. I get into the habit of staying up late, or the habit of getting up early.

This makes it sound trivial - but it's not - habits take work to form and work to change.

Naturally everyone is different. I'm sure there is research that disagrees with me :-) But that's my experience anyway.
I think this guy's commute was about 20 minutes. For high density environments like cities, everyone spreading out their folding solar panels on their parked scooters would be problematic. (I need to post my Florence Italy pics. A line of parked scooters as far as the eye can see -- literally.) So solar panels on the roof of the workplace also look good.
As much as I appreciate the momentum behind Rails, I cannot stop reminding me that if I go with the herd and do whatever most people are doing I will have to find my competitive advantages in places other than technology.

And I think that would be a huge loss for me.
Do it consistently. I just started rising at 9:30 (this is early for me) every day a few weeks ago, and I now wake up naturally without the alarm, and usually by 9. It only took about four or five days with the alarm and going to bed at a reasonably consistent time (between 1AM and 2AM) every day before I was comfortable waking at this time. I even "slept in" this morning after waking naturally at about 7:30...I rolled over and went back to sleep and got up again at 9:15 feeling pretty well rested. I often take a 20 minute nap between 4 and 6 in the afternoon.

I'm a lifetime overachiever in the field of sleep. If I can convert to a 7-8 hour sleep schedule, anybody can. And I've found that consistency is about the only way I can do it without feeling like crap during the day...so no more all-nighters, no matter how awesome whatever I'm working on is.
Daniel Bobrow CLOS video from 87
I think his biggest service to the community is taking great ideas from lesser well-known sources and publicizing them. I've found so many classic essays and posts because he wrote about them. He pointed me to where I can dig deeper.

Also his high page rank makes his articles extremely easy to find.
Chrome only browser left standing after day one of Pwn2Own
What if I have a problem going to bed earlier? Sometimes, I can stay awake in the bed for at least an hour, if not even a couple of hours. It's like when you suffer from insomnia.

By the way, have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome
Exercise, get to bed earlier, and move someplace where it's not 20 degrees in the morning.
> So the only solution for an unknown browser is to wait

> for the Selenium team to add it? That's unacceptable. New

> browsers must be added instantly and on-demand

No, the solution, as with any FLOSS project, would be for you (or someone else) to add the browser to Selenium and not wait for the Selenium team to do it.

I don't understand the requirement for adding new browsers 'instantly and on-demand'.

> Second, virtualization is insufficient for testing. Within

> the Mozilla project we've discussed problems with

> virtualization and how they are not always precise. Nothing

> is better than running the tests directly on an actual

> user's machine.

I'd be curious to hear those arguments and to have examples of when virtualization is not sufficient and you need to go to the actual user's machine.
Hmm, the title is a bit misleading because I thought it applied to managers in general. The best managers I've known are ones who care about their team (developers in my case) and that output in regards to the business. As part of that, they also care about product quality and customer satisfaction. Of course, these people whom I hold in high regards also never had MBA's. I recently told my friend who is going for one: "Don't become an asshole". An unhealthy focus on profiteering seems to lead there.
Google smothers designers
Nice, along with web based user interface, we can try desktop kind of interface as well, both in lisp.
Subversion 1.6 Released
Art vs. Design, Passion vs. Cash
Just some thoughts about spending time where your passions are.
You might find this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome
True -- but design isn't a science... Or it's only part-science anyway...

You might as well say you can take code and with minor increments make it perfect over time.... Sounds logical, but we all know it doesn't work like that.

Sure, tuning will take you a long, long way -- but occasionally you need to break the rules to leap forward.
Related:

High status human males have offspring that are disproportionately male.

Low status human males have offspring that are disproportionately female.
Is there real evidence for this?
I had this problem for nearly my entire life, and I finally solved it about 3 years ago. For me, I had to fix every problem that was affecting my sleep at the same time. If any one of those problems crops up again, then I won't be able to sleep properly until I resolve it. Anyway, for me, it involved the following changes in my life:

1) No caffeine after 5-6 PM, and generally less than 100mg of caffeine per day.

2) Exercising for at least 30 minutes/day, 3-4 times/week (but not right before sleeping). Although in my case, it's closer to 5 hours total/week.

3) Avoiding too much artificial sugar in a given day. I limit it to one "thing" (pastry/small piece of pie/etc) per day. After that, just eat fruit.

4) Keeping the area in which I sleep completely free of things that would distract me from sleeping. That is, I absolutely never use my laptop, watch TV or do anything similar while laying in bed. At least for me, this has turned out to be really important (and something my doctor recommended).

Also, some things that might help:

* Create a routine; start each morning with something you enjoy (coffee or watching tv or catching up on your news).. You'll find it gives you an incentive to wake up, rather than if you knew you were just immediately getting ready and leaving

* If you feel less tired than normal on a particular day, you can drink chamomile tea, or warm milk, both of which seem to mildly increase sleepiness.

* If you're overweight or in bad physical shape, then you will sleep much better after getting in shape. So if this is the case, you should work to make it a priority.
To expand on PGs comment a little bit. I used to have serious problems with onset insomnia, almost to the point of making me sick. While trying to find a solution, I found that having a few quiet, "boring" hours before I go to bed helps me a lot to fall a sleep earlier and quicker.

This means no tv, no internet, loud music etc. At first, this was extremely frustrating for me, I felt that I needed some kind audio/visual stimuli to keep sane. But after a while, I started to embrace this boredom and focus my awareness inside. Sometimes I meditate, write in my journal, take a slow walk to a beautiful viewpoint or just chill out to an old Bob Dylan album and really try to focus on the music.

These days, I manage to do this about half the time, and it usually makes me calm enough to fall asleep within 30 minutes or so.
Survive In Recession
Layyed off?? Insufficient Salary ?? Don't worry - If you are serious about surviving this recession, we can get you there.
Deadlines work the opposite for me. Procrastinators can do anything other than what they're supposed to be doing...including sleep. At least, I can. The less I want to do something, the more exhausted I feel; and deadlines damage my desire to do something more than just about anything.

On the other hand, if I'm excited about something, and feeling really interested in what will happen that day it definitely helps. So, if I open a bug on a project that I need for my work...and I think about it some the night before, I'll wake up excitedly thinking, "I wonder if my bug has been answered?" Likewise if I email someone about some work I need done; requesting quotes, whatever, for projects that I'm enthusiastic about. Today I woke up thinking about the RFQs I sent out to three designers yesterday (nothing! this is why crowdsourced design is winning...), and a bug I opened about the Drupal Project module.
Thanks! I use S3 to serve images that are loaded after the initial page load (incidentally, using YUI's ImageLoader: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/imageloader/). I use nginx to serve static files, e.g. HTML, as well as images that get loaded on page load, e.g. logo. Why not S3 for the latter? Too slow. Amazon's (relatively) new content network may be faster, though I haven't tried it yet.

Wrt nginx being more stable, both. I've crashed Apache as well as pseudo-crashed it (process still running, but not serving right). nginx hasn't crashed yet. It's also more consistent (and faster) under load. However, in Apache's defense, it does a lot more, e.g. mod_perl vs nginx proxy to FastCGI.
No Scribes is a unique editor of its own. It shares the snippet system with textmate. But it has a rather radical aproach in reducing on the basics.
I'd like to add that Jeff didn't always write this way, most his content was his own in the earlier days.

I'm not uber pissed or anything, I understand that he has a new kid and a new business to tend to and therefore his writing time has surely diminished. The word best used to describe my feelings towards his posts as of late is probably "disappointed". I'd rather see fewer, but higher quality posts.
Or find an early rising spouse. Works for me.
There's no reason to get up early in the morning. This is one of those things like marathon running and vegetarianism. For totally irrational reasons people think they're doing something worthwhile just because doing it sucks.
That's a good point, although he could throttle on an IP address. Or at least logins on an IP address.

You still generally want to eliminate low-hanging fruit.
What do you mean by "Some people do well on a 24-hour clock, some don't."?
Absolutely. e.g. I know there is a lot of research around teenagers having distinct sleep patterns/requirements.

I guess my point was - don't necessarily pigeon-hole yourself as a "night owl" or "morning person".
He got sick of people asking him if he could make the buttons cornflower blue.
> I don't understand the requirement for adding new browsers 'instantly and on-demand'.

Because the major JavaScript libraries' timetables should not be bound by how willing they are to twiddle config files/write new browser loaders in Java. It shouldn't be anymore complicated than hitting a button that says "Add this browser as a new test base."

> I'd be curious to hear those arguments and to have examples of when virtualization is not sufficient and you need to go to the actual user's machine.

Timing, performance analysis, and CPU/memory availability are huge ones. Being resource constrained in a VM is not an acceptable approximation of what a user's desktop actually is. Nor is running a mobile browser in a simulator. Nothing beats running an actual browser on an actual desktop.

If you were to argue that you could have no resource constraints in your VM, that brings it back to the argument of cost and resources.
From the Corrupting Influence of VC's to Modular Innovation of Comments
I like the autonomy of being able to travel where I want, when I want, as long as I am willing to pay the fuel and maintenance costs necessary to get there. I don't trust the benevolence of the central planners to design a system that includes everywhere I want to go, especially since many central planners have shown horrible sense in designing transportation systems.
Not only that, going with the herd would actually mean going with PHP and not Rails. There are dramatically more applications written in PHP and developers working in PHP than with Ruby on Rails.
I wondered the same thing about Delicious, back in my day. I'm pretty sure the idea sounded less interesting than the execution.
At least in the extreme. If you do not sleep at all.
Starting a company in Silicon Valley is Stupid
the author nailed it here, "I noticed that I was actually getting a hell of a lot done in not much time at all."
Consistency is for assembly lines. Sleep when you're tired. Eat when you're hungry. Just as importantly, don't eat or sleep when you're not hungry or tired.
Balsamiq: real.

Seesmic: bullshit.
Amway Party?
My case is the exact opposite: I have a late-rising espouse and two kids (10 and 3). The younger one wakes at 6am and I have to take care of her. :-P
Ask HN: Examples of Apps with Lots of Data
Can any provide examples of web-based applications that return an outrageous amount of data to the user?

I'm basically looking for UI/design inspiration for a database querying tool - results will more than likely be returned in a table-based format (similar to Excel).
Cool - well I'm on Apache now, on a very undersized server - so I guess I'll have to give nginx a shot.

Not sure how you'd extract more speed from your current setup. The natural next step would be doing work in parallel - this something you do/have considered?

If you do try the Amazon CDN, let us know how you go :)
Stochastic Modeling of Cost and Schedule
> Rails is something people either love or hate with a passion

I'm just one data point, but I'm not particularly passionate about any particular framework. I have used Django the most, and it gets the job done. Rails is a useful tool as well. I'm the kind of person who will write something in PHP if I need to. I know that there are advantages and disadvantages, but I usually don't worry too much about sticking to one side.
Ew. Thanks.
> Timing, performance analysis, and CPU/memory availability are huge ones. Being resource constrained in a VM is not an acceptable approximation of what a user's desktop actually is.

Fair enough. Don't you run into the same problem with volunteer machines though? You can't actually control their configuration in TestSwarm so you can't control the resources (e.g. you can't control what else the machine is doing). If you are going to do do any serious analysis of timing or performance then you are going to have to control the machines.
not legally.
You got it all wrong: native English folks should be forbidden to vote on this comment.

Anyway, believe me or not: you English ones are certainly the most ignorant in culture anyways; all of non english folks around the world would agree on this...
I don't disagree that sometimes you need to make radical changes to make true progress. But I think those radical changes need to be put through the same testing that small changes are put through.

I would much rather say "We are sacrificing 1% conversion to take a bold new direction with our design" than to say "We are redesigning beacuse our old site looks old and that's bad."
What makes you think that clean and creative are design attributes in opposition to one another? I've seen a number of comments like yours on this thread, and to be honest I'm quite dubious about this attitude. It smacks of the whole "designers are just here to add visual pizzazz" school of thought, which while true of many bad designers, is not true of good ones like Doug Bowman.

If you have a lot of information to present to a user, then good design is about presenting that information in a comprehensible way, which often involves creating a pretty spartan interface. Doing this is not easy, and requires plenty of creativity.
This sounds cool - but I'd ask - if it's so cheap, why not just make it free?

Would cut the cost of ticketing, speed things up, etc, etc.
enjoyed your post. i think more application rather than process improvement. i will definitely try and think more along those lines.

do you have blog (if so add it to your profile). i would enjoy more of this. thanks again!
...and by following that strategy, you will soon find yourself out of sync with everyone around you, to both your annoyance and theirs. However, if you start getting up at the time you want to be getting up whether or not you feel like it, then sleeping when you're tired will eventually work. Unless you have some medical problem, I guess.
Ask HN: What's the best web programming language?
I want to start developing web pages but i'm not really sure where to start. I like the idea of PHP, but i've been reading it's a spaghetti language and there are better places to start. Can anyone give me advice? Where to start, where to go? Mostly focused on web development
alot of innovation came out of the last downturn. i watched a lot of people leave then. let them go for all i care. i still believe if you want to get anything done, sv is where you need to be. while this won't always be true, you've gotta have heart.
Internet Archive Moves Into A Blackbox
Don't stay in bed if you're not sleeping. That just conditions you not to fall asleep when you're in bed.
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
I've had this problem forever. When I was in high school, I'd stay up all night, go to school at the end of my day, come home and sleep until midnight.

To the extent that I've solved it, I solved it after I had kids, and sleeping until 1PM became untenable for the family.

The answer for me? Wait for it: waking up early every morning.

I've learned that there is absolutely no way to predict when I'm going to fall asleep at night (even if I eliminate caffeine, use-bed-only-for-sleep, avoid stimulating reading before bed, etc); the only habit I've deliberately changed is that I never code after 10PM (a surefire way to look up and have it be 4AM).

Nope, what works for me is, whether I got to bed at 12:30A or 4:45A, I'm out of bed with the kids at 7A. If I have a bad night, I'll fall asleep the next night before 12A. Won't have any choice.

A day, a couple days, a week in sleep dep, not worth the life stress of starting the day in the afternoon.
Clean and creative aren't mutually exclusive though. It's perhaps too obvious an example, but Apple's design is on the whole pretty clean - and to my eyes at least looks like a lot more care was given to it.

One of my main problem's with Google's design isn't how plain it is, it's just that it looks half finished at times - it doesn't need more, but it doesn't look like it was well thought out.
Can I slaughter and eat it?
No, it scares investors, as well it should.
It is dead:

http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch....

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/whats-w...
I agree with this - particularly laptop use.

The exception I have is reading. Doesn't seem to make any difference. In fact, I usually drift off better if I read.
If you aren't already familiar with the various web-based DB to tools, that wouldn't be a bad place to start.

The basic admin interfaces from Rails or Django are probably simpler than what you are looking for, but you might get some ideas. You've probably used it before, but exploring phpMyAdmin might be helpful to get ideas for features and improvements.
Is there a Rails equivalent to "The Admin"?
"> Rails is something people either love or hate with a passion

I'm just one data point, but I'm not particularly passionate about any particular framework."

I am not a passionate hater of Rails, but I have a mild distaste for it and prefer to use Django unless there is a compelling reason to go with Rails.

In the early days deploying Rails was a complicated process (I hear things are better now) and that certainly contributed to my turning away from it, but the deeper influence on me were the people who were evangelizing it to me.

I was working at ThoughtWorks at the time and I noticed that the people who were all ga ga about Rails (and later JRuby) were people who didn't have much technical "street smarts" and spent their careers riding the latest bandwagon and overselling its benefits.

The people I really admired were much more cautious and skeptical and rigorously logical and measurement centric.

I am not sure I am expressing this well, but the local rails community turned me off it. The Django folks seemed much less fanboi - ish and more focussed on quietly getting stuff done.

On the one hand it doesn't make sense to abandon a piece of technology because it has an immature cultish community (or at least it felt like that to me. The ruby community always seemed better to me than the rails community), but on the other hand, other things being equal, life is too short to spend with people you think aren't thinking straight.

These days I just use Django and am happy with my choice. Of course this is all very subjective and doesn't reflect on Rails technically. I am just reacting to "hate with a passion". I don't hate rails, but I would rather not work with it if possible.
Yeah, I was thinking of some of those but couldn't come up with a comprehensive list... DabbleDB, Zoho DB & Reports, others?
Interesting. Do you have any link to the article? Thanks.
Are any of those mockups public? I love seeing good design ideas.
You can quit, or you can tell your bosses that you are overqualified for the job and ask for a raise and promotion. Then you can quit. The latter can be seen as an experiment and a life lesson. If you are quitting anyway, you have nothing to lose there.