skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The written word is immortal, but websites are not. Eventually your domain name and hosting will expire, your server will die. Presumably someone is keeping Aaron's site alive, but by default, things you write on your own website will go away when you're gone.

Maybe someone should do a kickstarter for large buildings where printed websites can be stored for posterity.
It seems like multiplication is just an extension of addition. How many times do you want to add numbers together? The result is multiplication. Similarly, addition can be used to represent multiplication. You want to multiply, which can be represented as adding things a certain number of times.

If you're interested in this train of thought here's a resource you might want to chase up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperoperation

As for the "bizarre" interplay between addition and multiplication, you might want to contemplate The Other FLT [1]. TOFLT can be understood with just high-school math but is a big gateway drug into big-ass number theory. In more ways than one!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermats_little_theorem
but have you seen his website? uses frames, comic-sans and talks about COBOL. Obviously, NOT COOL. /s
That syntax is a bit unusual, but it has the clear advantage of being far less verbose. Consider this:

* The functional API is mostly for short code snippets and experiments in the shell. For real programs, the standard class syntax is preferred and recommended.
* namedtuple already uses the same functional API allowing space-separated members, and it's a popular tool in the stdlib. Yes, the first time you run into it it feels a bit odd, but then you get used to it and it's not a big deal.
The question I think is fundamental but that I didn't see asked nor replied is this: if we had a data store that had full performance, full scalability, etc., would we design it as a relational database or not? Said otherwise: the debate about NoSQL, is it an optimisation issue or a design issue? (Keep in mind pg's article about what would be a language in hundred years)
Bookmark manager, speed, GUI configurability. It's pretty much the difference between a yacht and a tricycle.

I won't even let Chrome on my sytem directly (i.e. outside of a VM), because I'm tired of it downloading updates with some super needy background service, keeping 100s of megabytes around for no good reason, and no way to turn it off. At least Mozilla products ask. For that reason alone Opera and Firefox play in an entirely different league than Chrome or Safari. Fuck features, let me see your heart... Firefox I use and love, it's just not my main browser because only Opera has bookmark management worth calling that.
The Design Bankruptcy Of iPad Mini Clones
How Entrepreneurs Qualify for Funding from Banks
Related (?) http://xkcd.com/250/
A School Dropout Makes CRM Affordable to SMBs Through Bizsol
Well, if we didn't burn hydrocarbons... we'd need to buy Elon's electric cars! How convenient!
Because most client can't tell a wordpress installation with a theme from ThemeForest from a ground up build up. Most actually need the former, but sound like needing the latter.
This.

Its hard to remember life before kids, but one thing I know for sure: I wasted a huge amount of time.

I work far more effectively at 39 than I did in my 20's. And my ability to focus took a massive boost after becoming a father.
1) A pretty great experience even before you start customizing. I only add a git status section to my status line and set some environment variables in my config.fish file.

2) An effort to clean up and orthogonalize shell syntax. The potential portability means I usually still make bash scripts when I'm sharing for others, but for my own stuff it's great.

3) Suggested completions. I start typing a command and if it's one I've used before in that directory it appears in faint gray letters on my command line and I just have to press ctrl-f to bring it up that way.

4) Probably a consequence of (1), but it feels very fast to me compared to when I used zsh. The author also talks about using threads and minimizing disk access to speed it up, but I don't really know how it compares to zsh on that level.
Because web development is easy. Why would I pay so much when you sit on the computer for a few hours pressing buttons. It requires nowhere near as much skill as say.. A builder. /s
I do agree that open standards are necessary to make the modern web work, but those aren't advances in technology per se, they're advances in organization. There's no technology in HTML/JS/WebGL that didn't exist in SGML/Obj-C/OpenGL. There are no breakthrough new concepts that "old programmers" have to wrap their minds around. Rather, it's just the organizational process of agreeing on the color of the bike shed (in this case puke green). Don't get me wrong, organization is important, but standardization isn't technological change.
If it hadn't been hyped, it would have killed loads of people. Preventing pandemics is expensive.
You mean 21st century startups that actually make real things? I wish we had more of those.
Agree to that. I'm not a programmer, I can't design and write big applications, but I can do some hacking on existing code, I can write my own small scripts etc.

I understand that I don't have full expertise and I always listen to our devs, however it really helps me when I understand what they are talking about and I listen to them.

Also since I can quickly make some stuff from code I can google on the web, I'm much more productive than the average Joe when I got some repetitive task: make some excel function to deal with ugly data parsing, automate some data entry with auto-it or python+selenium, make some basic sql queries when I need a quick report...

On the other hand half of the people I work with can't write a simple vlookup formula or getting confused when it doesn't match a text to number, despite having excel in their CV.

When a person knows how computer magic works is only a benefit in my opinion and would be a strong bonus point for a job candidate.
In a couple of cases, it went well – there are people who genuinely appreciate being educated about what they as a businessperson need to know about approaching software dev. Sadly, it's a definitely not a high success rate: if you don't get an impression that the conversation is going well, there's probably a good reason for that.
Damn it, I though it's buried forever.
Actually, in the book I go much earlier. Upton Sinclair wrote a book of media criticism in 1912 that was the genesis for my theories. Yellow journalism predates Bernays by more than a few decades.
The IT crowd, for me, is one of those happy accidents in television where the writers, producers, and actors all manage to capture the humor of a subculture without patronizing it. When I saw the first episode, I knew that these folks had done something special and I'm quite tickled that they are bringing it back for even a single episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ
Personally, I think that any computer education (well any education generally) is worthwhile, but universal concepts with practical application are the most important.

There are certain concepts that all advanced users of computers know, but about which there is a damaging lack of understanding amongst beginners.

As an example, a basic understanding of HTTP (not necessarily calling it that) would save people lots of money on their phone bill. I know plenty of people who see "1GB download limit" on their mobile contract and think that's fine "because they never download on their phone". When you explain that downloading includes refreshing their Facebook app, checking football scores, etc, they don't understand. Nor do they understand why they always go over the download limit.

So knowing what it means when you say 'download' is a universal benefit. If you're using a computer of some description in the 21st century, downloading something will be unavoidable.

Conversely, you can get by on a computer without ever using Excel or any kind of spreadsheet application. So while it would be tremendously useful to a very large number of people, it's not a fundamental in the same way as knowing the difference between a file and an application.
I do love the tagline "_Finally, a command line shell for the 90s_".

I was happy enough sticking to bash as it's the default shell everywhere, but since someone switched me to Zsh (using oh-my-zsh) I probably rely on the features too much to ever go back. I also hear https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto is a nicer, cleaner fork of oh-my-zsh but I haven't so found the overwhelming desire to go through the switching pains.
What do you mean, I "don't have the x key"?!
The incentive problem goes lower and more granular than that. How are most bloggers paid (or at least judged on performance)? Pageviews.

What metric has about the lowest correlation to quality, accuracy or significance? Pageviews.
Been waiting for this for a while now
Hidden text trick using CSS
I use fish. It's pretty fun to use. It has some pain points (most notably missing things like subshells and inline variable exporting) but it's in beta, so we'll see where it goes. I love the completions though, and it's definitely worth checking out for those alone.
Eric, I deal with my programming handicap in several ways.

The easiest thing to do is to ask new candidates to walk me through how they would model a specific business problem we've worked on before. Since I like to listen in on developer talk, I am usually aware of technical challenges that different approaches entail and listen to whether the candidate spots them or offers a way to deal with them when prompted.

I am also very curious to see how the candidate approaches the problem itself. In my experience, average developers feel they are done with the task when they explain how the program will work, while great developers are done when they explain how the program will work even when something it depends on doesn't work (e.g. how to you handle errors and outliers).

Obviously, I ask my developer colleagues to evaluate candidate's sample code.

Talking about testing is pretty fun too, just asking candidates what were the most nerve-wrecking debugging stories they had, reveals how much experience they have in this area. Then I would drill the candidate about testing routines and heuristics he employs; rule of the thumb is that the more specific candidate is, the more he knows about testing. Listening to heuristics also gives you an impression of how creative/crazy people are.

Finally, walking through a specific project the candidate has worked on in the (recent) past helps to understand what workflows & routines he follows in his daily routines. Here though you have to remember to ask clarifying questions along the way.
The History of Typography (an animated short)
History. There was a time when web sites where not dynamic and build with WYSIWYG editors, this "type" of creating still exists and gets lumped in with everything else due to sheer ignorance.
One of my favorite skits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=UC4vz6I...
> My question is: how are they made? Keynote, Powerpoint, HTML...? Are they made with the help of a graphic designer? They look completely outside of the reach of the average technical developer. Or do they use a pre-made theme?

author of the talk/slide-deck here. I make all my slide decks with Keynote, primarily because it has the best font rendering and presenter display out of the options available on OS X. They do not use a pre-made theme but I'm always looking for inspiration from other presentations and websites.

Might be out of reach for the average technical developer but that's just because the average developer does not do slides. That stuff can be practiced. My slides got considerably better (I think at least) the more presentations I did.
One thing I don't see mentioned nearly enough is, if you're using extended globs, it's possible to tab-complete virtually all of it, which doubles as a handy reference.

For example:

setopt extglob
cd *(<tab>
~~ massive spam of possible glob qualifiers ~~

and it works for variable expansion modifiers as well:

print ${(<tab>
~~ completion candidates for parameter flags ~~
print ${<tab>
~~ complete any currently set variable in the current env~~

Another thing I like is the array types for things like $PATH that are historically colon-separated, typically
lower-case versions of the var name for the interesting 'magic' ones.

vared path

vs

vared PATH

to see the difference.

print -l $path # much easier to read
From the WINE website:
"Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator") is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD. Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows applications into your desktop." [1]

[1]http://www.winehq.org/about/
Because those stupid 1&1 adverts where you get a custom site for like £10
I think the point the OP is making is not that you should learn programming so that you can tell programmers what to do, but that you cannot even be in the meeting if you don't understand how a program works.

So in terms of your analogy, if building the bird feeder was necessary for you to understand the difference between a nail and a plank so that you could at least have a conversation with the builders, then it was a very good idea.
Best geek TV show ever made!
A reverse-engineered implementation of the Win32 API?
That's not that hard to sell if product is well adjusted to customer needs, that is in the list. It would be more productive to hire "marketing people" for the selling job specifically.
Regarding #3, you can also just press right arrow.
I'll never forget the first time I saw this show. It was 3am, had insomnia for some reason and saw the episode "Gay! A Gay Musical"[1]. I laughed so hard I cried and woke up my wife, it was fantastic! Just utterly brilliant! "I'm disabled..." has become sort of an inside joke with my brother because of this episode.

I'm glad they're bringing it back for one last run, it certainly deserves it.

[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TQJILoFd5o
Distributed Personal Wiki
I'm trying to build a kind of IRC-clone using socket.io. I know that I'll have to reduce the commands to be implemented, but there's still a lot of work to be done. I do not have a specific problem, but sometimes I just don't know how to start. For instance I'm going to implement an in-browser multi-room feature, but currently it's only possible to be in one room using a specific username. I would be really happy about new features or/and ideas. Feel free to contribute. https://github.com/blubbi2/Thor
Because of lack of knowledge about software development and how complex it is.

They usually associate complex work with physical products (laptops, phones, cars .. )
Advertising is usually impression-based, so there's a powerful incentive to drip feed meaningless but easy to share and consume tidbits. Investing some of the wealth it produces into less profitable but more culturally valuable content requires a conscious decision most producers don't make.

I think of Cracked when I think of a site that breaks the trend. It's usually informative and entertaining at the same time.
Any non-immigrant founders here?
And since then I keep going back to zsh. :)
The exact opposite of the Big Bang Theory.
OneNote + SkyDrive
I saw quite a few Ask HNs and submissions a year back and wanted to see if any non-immigrant founder has had luck since then.

1. Are there any YC attendees on H1Bs etc? If so, could you share your stories please? Is it even possible to attend YC for 3 months if you are on H1B?

2. Are there any founders considering the Canada start up visa program?
<irony> because web developers are not real programmers/developers </irony>

No but most of the time, clients compare it to the css theme a 15year old did for their wordpress install.
If you use java stack like JSP or RingoJS, I would just use H2.

http://www.h2database.com/html/main.html

It bets MySQL and Postgresql in performance.
"Gay! A Gay Musical" is by far my favorite episode. Really solidified the quality of the show for me.
Is it bad that I can still recite that number from heart?

Rhetorical question, of course it isn't!
Aren't we all shocked by the prices of things occasionally. Don't we sometimes think a thing should be cheaper than it is, especially when it's a new thing to us.
A perfectly valid alternative, sure. I happen to like emacs and self-hosting.
I think the main performance problem with NT is its scheduler. Compared to unix-type schedulers, it doesn't give very good interactive performance when there are cpu-bound processes. There have been a lot of hacks over the years (like throwing cpu-starved processes a bone when they haven't had any action in 4 seconds), but unix/linux just has a better designed scheduler that gives better performance in most situations.
Clients are ignorant - can't really fault them for it since it's not their domain.

I've found it's best to let the ones who balk at the true cost walk away. They will go find some cheap service to build what they want ("oh, can you make it like facebook?"). They will spend 3x as much as you quoted by the end of it, but they will learn to pay attention when a developer tells them how much it will cost.

The second project they ask you to work on to fix the disaster of the first will be a lot nicer.

Whatever you do, do NOT underbid, ever. I made that mistake a couple times and it turned into nearly a year of bitter burnout. Hard to like what you do when you are getting paid about 20% of what you should be due to invoice battles.
Nice, how can I get this?
The Windows NT _Kernel_ is used in Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, etc. (Versus the DOS kernel used in DOS, 95, 98, and Me)
Who knows what was going through his mind when he decided enough was enough. I think your comment lacks compassion, and that is a shame because one might argue that lack of compassion is getting to the root of the reasons behind his suicide.
Because they have no experience working with developers, nor respect for the skill. But when they find out you make more money than they do, they start to wonder if they maybe got into the wrong business.
The author of this post assumes that the Mini clones will innovate over Apple's current designs. However, the iPad Mini clones are just that: clones of the iPad Mini. They are trying to look as close to the Apple's design as possible, and not improve in any way.
Get An Interactive Mother's Day Card for Your Mom
There are always good reasons for doing everything. But this is how you end up with a "death by a thousand cuts" scenario. Sometimes, if you want to be great, you have to be bold. Windows NT was bold back in 1995 when I first played with 3.51. It was the best OS out there by far.

Now, once you set up a system where people play it safe more than they innovate, you'll get a situation where all of the best programmers will want to leave because it's boring, and you're left with mediocre programmers who aren't good enough to be bold and innovative. This is exactly what the OP describes.
So how can we get across that it is that much more complex than many people think? I considered explaining that it is like asking an interior designer to design your kitchen, or any other room in your house so that it is completely unique to you and that you're not buying Ikea flat pack furniture and putting it sporadically around your house.
Not only that, but an architect, construction crew, building inspector, and janitor.
Clueless people are like kids - they will respect you more if they understand you. You will end up explaining them why it is not a good idea to make a bird feeder with a plywood and glue, like they want you to do.
Given the topic of the article I understand my question could be seen as OT but I'd like to dig more into the following:

> The NT kernel is still much better than Linux in some ways --- you guys be trippin' with your overcommit-by-default MM nonsense

What's wrong with the overcommit-by-default behaviour? Or how/why the NT kernel is supposed to do better?
Can you tell me where you go?
It goes the other way around too. Most reporters and bloggers get their basic facts from Wikipedia. So it's a feedback loop. Wikipedia frames reporting which can then be used to "support" or cite that very same framing.

Almost every public figure has seen some inaccuracy from their Wikipedia page come up in a news story or an interview at one time or another.
It's because most people don't have a point of reference for web development costs, and their experience with web products is with applications that have been around for a couple years with millions (or tens or hundreds of millions) of dollars of development time put into them. Facebook, Twitter, Square, Basecamp, etc.

When someone walks into a $5 million dollar home they instantly know it's an expensive home not because they're aware of the materials and craft that went into building the house. It's because they have a point of reference, their home, for what something costs and they're able to extrapolate an approximate cost for something far more expensive.

People don't have this point of reference for web development because most people haven't ever hired someone to build a web app for them before, and most people have never tried to build a web app on their own.

A tip: Ask people for a few sites that they like and that they use. Take a look at them and approximate how much time it would take you and your team to get that application built from scratch.

Then say - okay to build an approximate version of X, you'd probably be looking at a team of 3-4 people (or 6-8, etc.) working full time for X months.

So that site likely would cost around X dollars for you to build.

The point isn't to get them to understand our craft and the effort involved.

This exercise helps give them a point of reference for how much the things they use every day cost, and from there they can start being realistic about what they can get within their budget.
Sniffing tool for capturing WiFi location data disclosed by iOS devices
Because nothing happened people thing it was over hyped. But in fact it's because people reacted that nothing happened.

The following articles I wrote explains a lot more of the details of what influenza is and why people wrongly think it was over hyped http://www.followsteph.com/2009/10/29/its-only-the-flu/
So basically a Renaissance Man is what we used to call Web Developer back in the day?
It's only the flu
That's great news! I appreciate it and I'll keep an eye out for those books.
I dont work at Google either but if your sister needs web design, C++ books, my e-mail is in my profile.
Kind of the same thing as BBT.

A lot of people just don't find BBT funny, which is a reasonable opinion to have, but they both manage to poke fun at their respective sub-cultures.

The IT crowd subculture is generic "IT support." The subculture of BBT is the pseudo-intellectual crowd who took biology 101 and are now experts in everything "science."

As I said, I would never begrudge anyone who doesn't find BBT funny (it rarely is!) but let's not pretend that IT crowd is somehow magically different, it is just better written.
A KickStarter campaign for another season or two would've been even better!
Renaissance software creator, perhaps.

A true renaissance man (or woman) is someone proficient in much more diverse fields.
Try to write Chef recipe to manage several distributed systems on the same cluster (i.e. Hadoop, HBase, Cassandra, Kaffka, etc.)
Using just CM tools are not enough and you will need also deployment management, resource management, monitoring, etc.

Another takeout from this, that virtualization is not Web-scale, it's more appropriate to IT and public cloud workloads, large companies like Google prefer bar-metal.