skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You sound pissed that these FOSS projects are kicking the ass of products that you consider to be superior.

The fact that many of these projects were started by college students, grew out of commercial enterprises, or have a business model that allows people to get paid for working on them doesn't validate your claim that open source devalues your work. If anything, the opposite is true.

Here's a challenge to you: install any of your closed-source proprietary products that you're in love with and see how long it takes you to fix an open bug in one of them.
No API yet. I haven't even publicized the app much other than linking to it in a few discussions like this. I guess it's still a work in progress and will be for quite some time, mainly because I'm still figuring out little tweaks that make it work better for me as a user.

If you really want an API or even a secure RSS feed, let me know and I'll see if I can set something up.
Perl and, surpringly, Korn shell are still widely used through the financial IT industry.
Latest print media victim: Blender
Caution: Personal bias stemming as a Chinese-born U.S citizen.

One reason for American dominance after WWII was that so much of Europe's manufacturing capability was destroyed by war. America has (about) the same manufacturing base as 2 years ago.

Currently, lots of U.S manufacturing, save for defense-related projects have been outsourced elsewhere (i.e., GM/Ford cars are only 50%, 60% made in the U.S; GM cars sold in China, are often assembled and with many parts made in a GM-Shanghai joint-venture factories; Pratt & Whitney and GE Aircraft engines out-source their engine compressors to low-cost developing countries such as Poland, etc.). Perhaps what's even more alarming, is how many industrial and high-tech companies have out-sourced their R&D to China: Intel, AMD, United Technologies, GM, MSFT all have R&D centers in Shanghai or Beijing. So Chinese manufacturing, on both low-end and high-end, I would argue is booming.

Another is the strength of American industry was fed by migration of farmers' sons and daughters into the cities .... they had a lot of practical skills

See cities like Shenzhen and Wuxi. Actually, the bulk of Chinese growth is attributed to a major migration of farmers' sons and daughters from in-land China to the coastal cities' huge factory complex. This makes for China's low-end exports. As for having practical skills, China pumps a great deal of math/science/engineering graduates, more per capita than U.S - a good percentage of whom would then later pursue post-doc or graduate work in the U.S/Europe. So I would argue, that Chinese human capital is also booming.

Finally there is the question of relative amount of freedom.

In absolute terms, yes, U.S enjoys more political, social and economic freedom. But I would argue, that Westerner's tend to overestimate the "freedom" disparity between themselves and other "authoritative regimes." In another words, U.S, IMHO is not a pure meritocracy either (corporate personnel is often determined via social connections or pedigree; political candidates are often chosen by back-room deals). Yes, there is tremendous room for China to improve on its human rights and political autonomy; but the whole Western democratic ideal/Plato's Republic is just another manifestation of the European "holier than thou" attitude, left over the colonial times.
SSD versus Enterprise SAS and SATA disks
Monetization - What it takes to make $1M in revenue?
Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre
David Pogue's secret weapon: Patience
The moods/quirks aren't hooked into the tasks yet. The only one that's sort of active is the "stress" one that alerts you, depending on your stress-handling-ability, when you have too many "not fun" tasks with respect to "fun" tasks. My goal is to make the rest of the quirks gel with your personality and tasks and make simple but unobtrusive suggestions/recommendations. Like if you are a major procrastinator, the more you push down a task, the darker it's color gets.
I don't understand how somebody could actually hand in a PhD dissertation from one of these places. Are there really schools where nobody would be suspicious that the student hadn't been working on this particular dissertation before they handed in the final version?
When I imagine a country run by engineers it's still a democracy.

Having been born and raised behind the iron curtain, I can tell you there's A LOT to being in power in an authoritarian system that has nothing to do with engineering.
I like the idea as far as checking for visual inconsistencies goes, but after trying out the free account I think it's just too slow to use on a day-to-day basis. Rendering takes too long, and switching between the different browser views even takes around 5 seconds. And as someone else pointed out, it isn't useful for any real testing of Javascript etc.
May work for some kind of projects, but may be a serious issue if you want to contain the number of features in your project

So branch. Nobody is forcing you to add the requested features to your main product... this will also encourage people to write good late-bound software - where extensions are trivial and play well together.
BlackBerry apps: Are they worth the download?
There are people who simply don't get the smartphone concept. Some of those people, oddly enough, seem to be smartphone application developers.
"Mercenary programmers" is what we all are when we get paid for it, no?

In the long run, Jeff's idea could mean more people making a living by hacking open source. I would guess that it is a good thing on net.

Isn't this what companies like IBM, Sun, and the Mozilla Foundation already do?
I think you could even allow the product's company to participate in the challenge. If PJ or the company can fix it faster, PJ wins.

It has been a VERY rare case where a bug has been fixed for me in an enterprise package. Work-arounds are the norm (and are painful).
There are some open source projects that offer or offered "bounties" for fixing bugs or improvements.
The way I see it, if the cities are sprawling (like LA), then cars will rule. If they are compact (like NY), then public transit will at least have a chance.

It's not a matter of if they can build the metro fast enough. If you have a sprawling suburbia, you can't effectively cover enough area to make public transit competitive. (I think this applies to all public transit, not just subways.)
I am envious of someone talking so highly of a company they are leaving. I can't say I ever have. Good luck on your new adventure!
So, out of curiosity, what on what platform do you run your web-site-building software? From your comments, I would guess IIS, ASP.NET and SQL Server.
* I've never heard of the village pass restriction.

* You can have more than one kid - you have to pay a fine though. Also, the restriction doesn't apply to ethnic minorities or farmers.

* You cannot organize dissenting political views. You can express yourself creatively, artistically, etc all you want. Check out Beijing's 798 district: http://www.798space.com (one of my favorite places).

* It's not an "ongoing massacre". It may be oppression, racism, discrimination, segregation, confining a people to internment or a reservation - but to describe it as an active massacre is inaccurate.
There were also "humanitarian" justifications with the Native American situation.
>"What's being suggested here? Don't pay but then do pay?"

Pay but give the source back to the community.

I think it's brilliant.
Mrs. Fuchs http://amyhoy.com/about
Sweet. I didn't know Wufoo guys are from Tampa. "Bay Area" reminds me of my trip to Silicon Valley in 2007 when everyone asked me if I was from the "bay area" and I kept saying "yes, but the other one, with hurricanes."
> If woods was as cheap easy to copy and share as software, carpenters would be building giant Trojan horses in their spare time, to show of their skills and simply for the fun of it.

I really like this analogy. Or whatever it is.
Ah, and another screen that firms use for potential employees turns to mush.

It's a really interesting situation to think about. If these foreigners (from places with much less opportunity) are able to produce work of this caliber (while the students paying for them are either unable or unwilling), it makes one wonder whether those foreigners should be in the students' places. For a long time, one's success was more a function of where one was lucky enough to be located rather than one's ability. Manufacturing workers in America would be paid better than skilled labor in less fortunate areas. However, that seems to be breaking down as advances in communication and transportation tear down the old barriers.

I can't imagine this situation staying indefinitely - those writing the essays must know that they are getting a pittance in return for the gains they're helping the students achieve. How long will people accept being outsourced to while others realise the gains of their hard work? That sounded a lot more "the people will rise up" than I meant. Like, it's one thing to be offered less than the value of your production - corporations won't take the risk of us not producing value without that and we, in exchange, get guaranteed revenue. It's a fine situation and I'm personally happy to have the stability. However, in this case the students getting their degrees are potentially gaining a few million in lifetime earnings and these essay writers are getting a paltry $2-3 per page. Sooner or later, more of the people with these skills will want to compete with those students - given the chance.
Sure. I'm just asking for some factual clarification here. Is the point of the Chinese mission to rule Tibetans, or to kill them all? Neither is a nice thing to do, but there is a difference in degree of how mean they are.
Isn't what he is proposing essentially a service to find a consultant to customize the solution? Seems reasonable to me.
how many folks here have beards, or aspire to have beards? i have one.
MyHDL - From Python to Silicon
Akamai Data: Internet, Broadband Still Going & Growing
Agreed, but I meant the volume of the song itself... If you're listening to a rock song it's probably going to be louder then jazz.
Top Gear had a very un-inspiring review as well. It lasted 55 miles going around the track, and then required 16 hours to recharge. I suppose Tesla is counting on most of us -not- driving like Clarkson.

[Tesla's response to the review: http://jalopnik.com/5112828/tesla-issues-response-to-top-gea...]
Why Selective Colleges - and Outstanding Students - Should Become Less Selective
Last time I ran the numbers the US highway system costs around 3$/gallon of gas used on the highway system. So, double your gas costs, then add all the other costs and you can approximate the "net" cost of your commute.
Tips For Ruby On Rails Developers
I get worthwhile notice of new albums by my favorite bands once in a while. Marketing isn't necessarily about self-promotion, it's also about making the connection between what you have and what somebody else already wanted. In good (Soviet) marketing, product searches for you.
"So we are collectively engaged in a college admission 'arms race' that is almost a complete social waste, for once a set of 'good enough students' or 'good enough schools' has been identified, it probably doesn't matter very much which one you choose; or if it does matter, there is no way to know in advance what the right choice is."

I'm not so sure I agree with the author's premise that there are few meaningful distinctions among top colleges (the issue each applicant has to look at). Nor am I sure that at any particular college, while the college admission office is building a class, there are not meaningful distinctions among applicants (as elements of the overall entering class that the admission office attempts to assemble). What do you think?
I spend probably close to 12 hours a day in front of computer. My mom, about zero. Where's the link to the study? Where's the standard deviation?
My Love, Hate, Love Again, Affair with Paul Graham
Hilarious directions on getting rid of IE 6 (it's in the footer of the page)
My grandmother (who's Chinese) used to always say "Communism! What Communism! Just take a look outside, you can clearly tell who's rich and who's not!"

China may be Communist by name, but it's capitalist by heart.
To paraphrase Churchill: Democracy is a horrible system, but it's the best we've got.

Democracy opens the way to power hungry people, it's also very sensitive to information manipulation.

I always thought it must be possible to create a government ruled by engineers. The main problem is ofcourse, how do you select the engineers?
I think, create an academic and psychological test, open to everybody, then select two groups randomly.
One group will propose changes with arguments. The other group will decide if they will be accepted.

Do this for a regular time interval, say 4 years.
Now that I think about it, perhaps the problem is that I jumped to the conclusion that the word "writing" is too specific. In what way is writing software not writing?
Most game replay systems work this way - they store the chain of user inputs, and then just resimulate it in order, with the same random seed. Thats the main reason they don't give you the option to rewind the replays and you have to start over.

This game just has multiple simulators running through the chain of commands at the same time, a "movable" simulator (the player's view) and the ability to modify the chain of commands. Once you can distill the idea of "moving backwards through time" into a command, it can be added to the chain of commands and be deterministically simulated like everything else.
IMO, the secret to effective public transport is having an independent system so you can avoid traffic jams. The reason Bus systems fail is they don't save people time. However, taking the subway tends to be faster than driving when you include parking time etc.
Have you seen www.betterplace.com? Their basic idea is to have a standard set of batteries which can be topped up at charging stations at home, work, and elsewhere. For longer trips, there are automated battery switching stations. From the how it works section:

"For trips longer than 100 miles (161 km), battery switching stations will be available roadside. Stations are completely automated, and the driver’s subscription takes care of everything. The driver pulls in, and the depleted battery is quickly replaced with a fresh one, without anyone having to leave the vehicle. The process takes less time than it does to fill a tank of liquid fuel. "
Polling your users is probably a very smart thing to do, as long as it's worded right and not obtrusive. The best monetization features have some sort of utility built in for the user. ie- Google paid search ads show you items that are relevant to what you're searching for, a freemium account on dropbox gives you more storage space,etc.
DNS seems to be acting up at the moment. For some reason news.ycombinator.com is resolving to Reddit.
It strikes me that the key strategy in this game would be creating actions that are easily reversible. I wonder if resources travel in time with you too, because then the obvious strategy would be to create units as far back in time as possible so you can rush the enemy.

I mean if you have a battle of 30 units vs 30 units and you win with like 2 units left, then you travel back in time and produce 10 more so the original battle was 40 vs 30. However, I'm sure the time traveling of units would be helpful if not risky. I mean what happens if you tele-clone a unit 5 times and the original gets killed? Well if you did that with your entire army of 30 unites, when that time wave hits the battle could switch to 6 vs 30.

I can't wait for a chance to play this, the possibilities are astounding. It's so incredibly rare to get to play with a game this original.
Wouldn't it be great if people had to provide a reason along with their downvote? Maybe via a little text box that slides out, jQuery style. It would help alleviate the "why am I getting downvoted?" syndrome we all occasionally suffer from.
I appreciate your sentiment and, in general, I think you have a point about short comments such as mine. But, in this instance, I think it is reasonable to be dismissive of this story in this context.

I honestly don't understand the value of this story, why it is on HN, why anyone has upmodded it and why it hasn't been killed. There are plenty of off-topic human interest stories which I find compelling (one example is the great one describing a writer's experience interviewing Mr. Rogers) and wouldn't mind seeing here occasionally even if they don't strictly meet the submission criteria.

My expectation upon seeing an off-topic story here (and with so many points!) is that it is of such compellingly high quality that reading it is probably justified. I'm sure we can conjure up some allegorical way in which this story is relevant to both me and many others here, but there is plenty of real literature which does that much more effectively.
The Moby Scheme Compiler for Smartphones [ILC2009 Talk]
* Read about it. I will post some sources here ASAP.

* Is that any less perverse?

* The right to organize with other dissenters is critical in the fight for freedom.

- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03...

- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03...

- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03...

- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03...

- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03...

Those are from the past month in the Post alone.

* Do you mean to say that scores of Tibetan protesters were not beaten and/or shot dead in the months leading up to the Olympics? Because that's news to me.
I once asked a musically knowledgeable friend what he thought the modern equivalent to classical music would be. His reply was movie soundtracks: "After all, Operas were just the movies of the day back then..."

Dickens wrote _Great Expectations_ originally in serial form. There's no rule stating that short story, column, or even serial writing is not as valid an art form as the novel or epic poem. Gruber seems to get this (and, as you point out, he really is one of the better bloggers in terms of form).
Samsung i600 Verizon cdma
Samsung i600 is the great combination of 2.3 inches display with full QWERTY keyboard. This is a tremendous all-new composition that’s here to realize the necessities of those who are fascinated in music in the format.
As of the time of this comment, typing "google paypal" in to Google search has this link as the #2 result. I'm wondering if that will put anyone off.
Did you knsw?
"My #1 Twitter Tip...": Smart Advice From 36 Twitterers
I just came across this one again...still in there... Makes me wonder if there's a good reason it should be in the OS X dictionary?

If you're curious, I originally learned of this from: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/830094523...
Maybe a dissertation written by an essay mill for a fly by night degree mill operation would get accepted? Who knows.
I went to a local state school because I did not feel a large gap between Comp Sci there vs say MIT. My sister is trying to get into a program at Cal Arts (http://www.calarts.edu/) that accepts 30 people a year because it's by far the best program in the nation. IMO, the caliber of a top tier school has little to do with the quality of any single program. However, if you want to compete in a highly competitive area then aim for the best.

PS: A friend of mine went to MIT and several years latter we ended up working in the same building making the same amount of money.
I never thought to question LA's image as a byword for sprawl until I saw this series on the Freakonomics blog.

"According to the Federal Highway Administration, of the 36 largest metro areas, Los Angeles ranks dead last in terms of freeway lane miles per resident."
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/los-angeles...

"But while the situation is far from ideal, the numbers from the California Air Resources Board make it clear that Los Angeles has come a remarkably long way toward cleaning up the air."
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/los-angeles...

"As of the 2000 census, the Los Angeles region’s urbanized area had the highest population density in the nation. Yes, that was the word “highest,” not a smudge on your monitor."
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/los-angeles...

"But compared with the majority of U.S. cities, Los Angeles is not a transit wasteland. The region is second in the nation in transit patronage, behind only New York. Even on a market share basis (passenger transit miles traveled as a share of all miles traveled), Los Angeles’s ridership rate is relatively high: 11th among the 50 largest urban areas."
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/los-angeles...

The myths appear to arise from a multitude of factors, such as confusing downtown density with overall density, and viewing the city through the eyes of Hollywood. Also, once a city acquires a reputation (such as NYC and crime), it takes forever to lose it.
I have love/hate relationships with many of my favorite things in life. Open Source is at the edge. It is creative and beautiful and also very dangerous and manipulated by greedy people who promote it because it enables them to make more profits off free labor.

Whether that is a labor of love or not is irrelevant. Love does not pay the bills.

If it did, I'd be a bazillionaire too...
Anyone interested in board games should check out http://www.boardgamegeek.com. It's an amazing resource.
I suspect this to be in the genre of the ask-for-something-impossible-on-rentacoder-and-see-what-happens experiments. Don't PhD candidates have to get their proposals accepted by their advisors and then have periodic reviews during the process?
They sound exactly like PayPal. When they closed my account, I had about 100,000 successful payments, my own "personal account manager" and all that jazz. One day they noticed we had an adult section and closed our account without any warning and completely stonewalled any attempt to contact them. $200? Good for you, we lost about £1500.

At least when our Bank objected to our XXX section, they gave us time to do something about it. Of course, PayPal also didn't want quarter of a million in a bond to insure against chargebacks.
Pogue on Netbooks
Presumably the features or bug fixes you would be paying for are those that nobody has yet shown intrinsic motivation to implement, but I do see a potential danger there of those programmers who were already working on the software from some intrinsic motivation deciding maybe its not worth it if others are getting paid to do what they do for free. Not sure this is what you meant though.
By comparing social graphs, researchers can identify users from anonymous data.
Another big drawback would be the load times for the screenshots.

When I make a change in Textmate, I can cmd-tab into VMWare and refresh the browser in a couple seconds. I don't have to wait for the server to respond and download the images.
Did an open source product steal your livelihood or something?
Hydro for Less
We are a Family owned Hydroponic Garden Store. We are dedicated to providing the highest shopping experience possible. By providing a friendly and knowledgeable staff that takes the time to listen.
I think he was trying to say it wasn't more wrong, which carries a different connotation.
DIY pranks for the enterprising geek
April Fool's Day is the one day all year when you are all but guaranteed to put a smile on someone's face ... your own. This year, don't leave things to chance, spring one of these geek pranks on your hapless coworkers.
this is how good people are made into cult-figures; please do not idolize hackers, they don't care if you do.