skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Joey Hess used[0] Kickstarter to fund work on a nice frontend[1] for git-annex. In general, I don’t see anything wrong with that: This feature would not have been implemented otherwise (or at least not as quickly) and by providing funds, the users were able to prioritise/introduce new ideas.

Maybe this is comparable to other situations where some developers are paid by their employers to work on software, whereas others contribute in their spare time. Surely it would be nicer if everybody had infinite resources and time, but given the constraints of the real world, I don’t see why a) developers should not request funding via Kickstarter, Flattr or you-name-it and b) users should not offer funding/employment in return for features they need.

If developers need certain large features themselves, they will still implement them, just as they did before, and if they don’t need them, they will have a hard time implementing them – apart from possibly ideological reasons (cf. FreedomBox[2], which is mostly about scratching someone else’s itches).

[0] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan...

[1] http://git-annex.branchable.com/design/assistant/

[2] https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/
It's remarkable how little economics has to say about Google, their motivations, and outcomes. There's nothing wrong with trying to fit new information into existing models, but think of it this way: if you were a fly on the wall for Goog's decision on Reader, would it bear any similarity to this model?
eh, to be expected. Death and Taxes.
I live in America and you're completely incorrect.
I think they are in the "handle retina by giving everyone ginormous images" camp.
You need that "network". And by "network", I mean people. Find someone you respect, at least professionally. Someone that impresses you. Someone that you'd be happy to pattern your professional self after. Solicit their advice. Listen to what they say. Earn their respect in return for the time they offer you. Good things will eventually happen. (Translation: they'll help you find jobs.)

If you feel that you've tried this and you can't find anyone, I see two options:
1. Establish these relationships online. HN is a good start. There's also no shortage of good software developers writing blogs. Interact with a few that you really respect. Comment on their posts. Connect with them on LI and Twitter. Email them. Taking it to a personal level where they'll feel the desire to go out of their way to help you could be difficult, but it's possible.
2. Move. If your present community truly is devoid of people you respect who would be willing to mentor you in some way, you need to switch it up and expand your circle of potential colleagues.
Does anyone use Magento in production?
Our company is thinking about Magento for a new ecommerce site. We use a proprietary solution right now and plan to use something less expensive and more developer/customer service friendly for this new site.

Typically, the big guys run Websphere or ATG (well out of our budget) but can we achieve similar with Magento? Would it be the right choice? I've read there are things to overcome in regards to performance?

The largest company in our sector, Harbor Freight, appear to be running Magento at scale ok.
This bug fixed, and after tested, IE 8 is known not working.
So am I understanding correctly: the attributes assigned to UI elements can have hints for accessibility sake, and the testing tools are filling those attributes with tags to automate to act/assert an element? Info that's valuable to the testing framework, but garbage for accessibility?

Sounds like the testing frameworks have an obligation to provide a tool that can "clean" code for the final working version. Is there a way to do this in XCode without #ifdef'ing? (such as a pre-compilation plugin?)
He was disruptive :)
Wait.. wasn't this what the FCC was supposed to investigate? Google abusing its dominant position in one area to leverage its other products and shielding it from competition. I was aware of requiring a Google+ profile if you wanted your picture to appear next to search result, thus increasing the chances of clicks (like Ebay) but Author Rank seem like a terrible idea! Please don't mess with your core products.
And yet, having a 35 hour work week for 30 years is a huge achievement in itself. That's a billion hours not worked.

International economics is too complex to pin France's woes on one single factor, especially when they have a lower debt to GDP than the US which is famous for it's long working hours.

There is a lot wrong in the French economy. There is a lot uniquely wrong with every economy. I'd argue that as the huge populations of BRIC countries use modern productivity tools like automation to increase per capita GDP, it would be bizarre for France to hope to stay in the G8. And that's a win for everyone.
Show HN: Startup data 2000-2012 from CrunchBase
Like all things, there's a balance, and like all good balances it should be flexible.

"No" is not acceptable, at least not to me. I have no disabilites, but I think that there should be accommodation for disabilities in society. Perhaps below a certain business income or traffic the requirements are reduced or go away, and that's where we're not very good at balance.

As commerce, government and social interaction move online, it becomes imperative (yes) that we make accommodations for disabilities. The more we are, the better we are, so it's good for "the rest of us" as much as for "them."

In the end, it's likely an "eat your spinach" issue as said in the article: you bring more people and benefit in by your accommodation than the accommodations cost. Where that falls down is the micro-operations, and that's where I think we need some balance. Big ops can afford all this and more, but you won't get more big ops unless you let the small ops grow through that stage.
In the case of Reader, I believe a number of other services will likely fill the void, one or more which will be able to do it profitably. If Reader was made a public service, we would have lost the potential competitors, and we also would have lost the information on how it would be done profitably and exactly how profitable. I think it would have been nice if Krugman also at least mentioned the potential value of that.
I've demo'd Hubspot. It works as described and rolls up a lot of marketing tools e.g email marketing, analytics, crm etc into one solution.

That said, the alternative, piecing together individual applications e.g mailchimp for email marketing, ga/mixpanel for analytics etc might be more effective.

It depends I guess on your resources, both developer and marketing.
Simple but Challenging: The Universe According to Planck
What type of developer do you need? What skills do they need that you want?

If you want a .net programmer, find a .net/windows job board or visit the forums on msdn. Same applies to other languages, fields.
I have 3 generations of flip phones, from a old nokia to a Sony Ericsson w580i.

They all eject their battery upon impact. Considering it wouldn't be difficult at all for the battery cover be more tight, or have something that clips on, it's probably accurate to describe it as an engineering decision.
CharFunk - a Unicode character utility for JavaScript
I'm hiring at the moment for CircleCI, and if you don't have a reason to work with us, that's a real red flag. That says you have no particular interest in the job, which means you either don't care about what we're building or what our customers need, or you might jump ship if a job comes up that you really do want.

That said, you applied for a job here, so there must be some reason you want it. Maybe "I ended up in a really bad job and I want people who care about their craft", "I love Clojure and you guys write everything in clojure", or "I love your flat organizational structure", or "I like making developer tools". But "i need a job" is a terrible answer, and won't even get you past the phone screen.
AirBNB, Teespring, Uber, Kickstarter, Dropbox, Twitter, App.net ....
I didn't bother checking all out, but from an initial test with pngslim, there is quite a lot of bytesize reduction possible without even touching the dimensions. And then there is indexed color vs 24bp...! This being "flat design" and whatnot, 256 should work for most if not all, and for some you probably could even go lower.

"But then it's not pristine" -- sure, but also is a lot less pretentious and more enjoyable to visit. It's just simplicistic design... I mean, nothing against painting a blue square one a red canvas and calling it "Mothership 20B" or something, but that's not a Van Gogh. You can hang it in an art gallery if that is what makes you happy.

(I actually find many of them quite pretty, I'm just being mean because some folks could really use a dose of reality - form following functionality is not a new concept, neither is minimalism, and "flat design" is not something I will ever say with a straight face, I utterly refuse to pretend there is now suddenly such a thing. As the saying goes, some day we will look back on this, laugh nervously, and change the subject.)
I don't understand all the negativity and dismissal in these comments. The only thing I am not a big fan of is the transition when you hover over an example.

Apart from that, I think that for the most part the designs showcased are quite beautiful.

But these designs are well done regardless of the fact that they are 'flat'. Proportions/positioning, typography, color are all great.
Thank you for you contribution to the betterment of humanity, internet police guy!
The Purple Crayon
Cherry-picking the article:

> .... and to use plain language and a strong design to aid people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities....

How is this measured? This is the most disconcerting part of the article to me.

Taking it to an extreme, is Amazon liable when someone with cognitive impairments accidentally buys $10,000 of stuff with one-click shopping for failure to understand the concept?

Is ebay liable for inadequately explaining the concept of a bid at the level of someone with a 70 IQ?
i second eof's reply, especially the high risk issue, I "bought" 14 coins at 34.50, emailed support as soon as it flagged and you basically responded with "whoops, I'm Sorry".... Meanwhile I had left the funds in escrow for a week waiting for the order to clear when I could have bought them through another source at a slightly higher rate and still profited in a large way. Then I emailed support again when I found that another customer had posted they had actually had the order forced through by support due to the issue being on Coinbase's end. That was two weeks ago and I still have not received a response as to why the order was covered for another customer but not for me.
I don't really want to download another client. I want it to be in the browser.
Seeking software engineer for Construction Software for Brasil
Looking for .NET developer for developing a SaaS for Brasil. Please email psilva@consbr.com with resume. Thanks.
You could always glue/tape two iPhones together...
About time, on many fronts. Sales tax is the most economically beneficial tax (from a long-term viewpoint), encouraging savings, reducing consumption, and is taxpayer controllable. And it captures gray/black market transactions as well. No reason any electronic retail transactions should escape. Modern tech removes any "burden" claims.
As far as I can tell, no, there is nothing especially notable about this release.
Hi balazs,

> demo.terascore.com is up and has not been down

Last time I went some assets were not loading -- it could have been a problem on my side. Now it works great.

more feedback:

The contenteditable work is very nice. I see what you mean by "enabling _all_ educators": WYSIWYG definitely makes a difference here.

The tooltips that pupup all over the place are annoying. OK, for reproducing MSWord-like editing in the browser but don't reproduce the paper clip!

The recourse to tooltips sounds to me like you are having trouble phrasing the key value proposition. You should think of your MVP and just //show it// without too much explaining. The "what you do" steps should be obvious from the visual hierarch of the website.

I would suggest the following changes.
At Top Level s/Tests/My tests/ and s/Students/My students/
as for Educators, it doesn't seem like it belongs at the top level.
Your users mostly be coming to create exams and check their students' grades.

On the exam admin view, say
https://demo.terascore.com/assessment/cc54852a50a54a499e8333... ,
there should be more visual demaraction for each question. The exam is a list of questions. Make that visible in the hierarchy. One approach would be to have a list of the questions on the left (like a table of contents) and move
all the question authoring stuff out of there. Maybe you could have the authoring toolbar that appears on the right of the question currently being edited. Such a "right margin panel" could also contain all the questions metadata instead of that cramped row Type|*|POINTS|TAGS.

Ok now I should probably go and get some work done but I just wanted to say that you have built an excellent tool and I like where you are going with this, EXCEPT the part where you assign the student's grade based on the z-score. That is BS and you know it. What information does my ranking relative to the other students in my class convey?

I encourage you to focus more on the "Reporting: Immediate self-assessment, Students can access their own score reports" aspect of this and then come up with a effort based metric for the "Grades in Score Report ADJUST GRADING" part. Forget µ and σ, instead you could report "cpu usage" during the last (week, month, year). I wrote some more about this not too long ago http://minireference.com/blog/exams-suck/
Ask HN: Sample / open source python-django websites
Hi All,
I am new to web development and have been learning python and django at codecademy.com and djangoproject.com.
I would appreciate if some of you talented and experienced folks could provide pointers to few websites developed in python-django which are open-source or have sample code available. (I tried using hnsearch to see if this is already answered)
The way I see it, this is a net positive development rather than a negative. Will it have some effect on the margins where developers who would rather be paid might not contribute to open source projects anymore? Probably. But the idea of FOSS is that the works are free as in freedom, not free as in beer.

If people are willing to pay to ensure that an open source project continues to thrive, that makes the ecosystem more viable in the long term, not less. This Kickstarter only demonstrates the pent up demand for this sort of thing. Not everyone can contribute time or knowledge, so they might instead contribute money.

Besides, many of the most popular open source projects are already implicitly backed by paid developers (Linux, WebKit, etc.). Nobody seems to have a problem with that.
Not sure how its abusing their time? In any company I work for, I want to ensure that people who join my time are going to be good for my team and the company. You're going to be working with an individual for years hopefully, and the cost of getting rid of bad hires is really high: shouldn't you spend a few hours to make sure they're the right person?
Personally, I'd not like either answer.

You have to watch out for people just using you to get a better deal at their current job. That's why I put expiry clauses in all offers.
Or pay them to do something useful, but not profitable in the market. For example, childcare. Or taking care of old people. These are totally useful jobs, but babies and retirees don't have money.

The adults supporting them no longer have triple the income to afford to pay for the lives of their children and their parents.
Show HN: itconnects.us - realtime anonymous cursor network
One in a series of small net art pieces about anonymity and social spaces I am working on.

Node, sockets.io, processing.js
But I wonder - if they spent it, would it still have the same value?

Imagine one year, everyone spent all their income on stuff - earned and unearned. How much would an ipad cost?
There is a limited capacity to raise ipad production - building new factories takes time. So the cost of an ipad would increase.

Right now, all that wealth is locked up in various markets, increasing the value of property and various past what is rational. If it suddenly came out to play, surely we'd see things people need to live increase more than the poorest can afford.

Is wealth that is never going to be spent really wealth?
They can continue to bloat. Eventually, they will cause so much debt that the wealthy will have no choice but to pay for it.
To be fair, plenty of people like it. I hate it. It's a personal preference. In terms of anything that's really quantifiable, I'll say that I believe "open plan" leads to a constant stream of distractions and interruptions which kills your ability to get into - and stay in - that "flow" state of maximum productivity.

It also sucks if you need to make the occasional personal phone call, or if you feel the need to pick your nose, etc., etc.
The New 4P's of Marketing
How does sales tax capture black market transactions? Does your local pot dealer have a Retail Merchant's Certificate?
It's also incredibly regressive, targeting poor people with a higher percentage of their net income than rich people.
Dropbox probably doesn't fall into it nor twitter nor kick starter. AirBnB, Über, etc, should fall under the ADA because their meat space counterparts do.
I'm loving that any mozilla.org post reaches the frontpage easily. Nightly is the best browser I've used.
I feel like this was a con, and yet I also feel strong social pressure to not share this opinion with my friends and co-workers.

1) Did the 9 year old write any of that appeal? I don't think so. Sure, her mom may have written it with her prompting - but the entire appeal feels too well-constructed to pull at heartstrings. There's something... gimmicky about it, something that makes me feel like the appeal isn't genuine.

2) Was this kickstarter really about making a game? No, she's going to a camp to learn about making games - which is cool in theory, if there actually is a little girl and she actually is going to that camp. But it does also mean that the whole premise of the kickstarter's title is misleading at best.

3) The sudden stretch goal bonuses (where'd all this merch come from?) seemed highly questionable as well, and counter to the goal - if she just needs money to go to some camp, why even HAVE stretch goals? This feels like someone who played the system, creating a false situation to gain profit from people. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that there isn't actually a kid at all - that it's not even a parent who got greedy, but someone who just flat-out lied to get a good chunk of change.

A lot of people I know seem to believe it unquestioningly, which makes me wonder whether I'm being paranoid. But my gut tells me that if I heard a story like this while walking down the street, I wouldn't give them a dollar (and I frequently give people on the street asking for money a dollar). Especially if they started pulling out merch in exchange for additional donations.

I also love that this article vilifies people who appropriately point out the skeptical parts of this whole situation. I love a feel-good story as much as anyone else when it's real... but this situation throws up more red flags than a well-bribed soccer referee.
I'm the founder of Tutorialize and honestly I love that these tools keep popping up! We're all trying to accomplish the same task, and for good reason. If your UI is so simple that it doesn't require some kind of guidance system, then your site probably doesn't do much. There is a reason why everything that's even a little bit complex comes with a manual. Anyways, keep'm coming!
One in a series of small net art pieces about anonymity and social spaces I am working on.

Node, socket.io, processing.js
That depends ... BBC get the job pretty well as a publicly financed utility. So a search that is focused on quality and not ads supported by levy on broadband with transparency in ranking and inclusion, with prohibition of censorship ... may not be such a bad thing after all. Search is important.

Although I would just create an IP law that forces the corporation to put the source code and assets in public domain on the abandonment of a service when it gathers above some usage and traction. Someone will pick it up if the interest is enough.

P.S. I am ready for the downvoting that will ensure.
That's one reason, in practice, for the popularity I think. When a state proposes raising income tax on the one hand, or sales tax on the other hand, raising sales tax is often easier to accomplish, because the lobbies against it are weaker. (There might also be a psychological aspect in that it's more of a nickel-and-diming: people may not realize what it adds up to in terms of a yearly total, while they do see that for income taxes.)
GoIRC - Event-based stateful IRC client framework for Go
This will be similar to the Chrome Notifications in the lower right hand corner? I could not find a screenshot of what these might look like.
I also had problems. I couldn't create a new account with my IP address, even though I just moved in to my new apartment. I had to use Tor. Weird.
I don't think you can call it "planned digital obsolescence" since "planned obsolescence" implies that the provider had a specific life span in mind when launching the product.

Google Reader is being shutdown but I doubt that when they launched they said to themselves "We will run this service until 2013 and then shut it down". Without that plan I don't think it can be planned obsolescence.
This would only penalize the poor, as the rich could afford back yards full of solar panels and wind turbines, and drive Tesla cars... And since the rich are such a small percent, this would have virtually no impact on the environment.

I love the idea, but I do not believe this is a better solution to sales and employment tax.
I've got a serious Poe's law problem with this post.
Demographics shed light on the programmer personality
Often it's just pure chance, one drop looks like a killer and you get nothing but scuff marks, other times it looks like a minor drop and your phone shatters.

Here's an Android Authority video of the iPhone 5 and SGIII getting dropped from several distances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M5q5TRuAsY

Is it a definitive test proving an iPhone is indestructible ? HECK NO ... but it does show that a densely designed phone can survive a variety of falls.
But what if the person isn't a college student yet? Same difference, right? So what if someone in high school who wants to go to college made a similar appeal for funding of tuition? I think we're talking about two sides of the same coin.

Now, if there were another site that was strictly oriented to donations or even micro-loans toward such purposes, this kind of appeal would feel right there. But as it stands, I tend to stand on the side of "this wasn't a valid kickstarter."