skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm almost 29 and I've written a lot of code over my life-time. Having spit out copious amounts of code for over 10 years now, I don't think productivity in a larger sense declines with age. Physically or in terms of life priorities, writing code all-night long is not so much fun anymore, but any reduction in energy is made up by a higher efficiency due to experience. At least, that's the way things have been so far!

I definitely have productivity swings (and I make myself feel better by saying they're akin to moood-swings and out of my control!) Productivity is highest for me when I'm in a highly structured environment. I've churned out insane amounts of code when

a) I knew exactly what needed to be done and
b) Had a sharp timeline to complete it

#a happens externally sometimes, when requirements are crystal-clear. For example, when you build stuff on http://community.topcoder.com/tc Otherwise, my approach is to spend as much time as needed in order to clarify requirements. I simply do not bother to code unless I'm sure about the end-goal.

#b can be seen in hackathons, or when a team / startup has committed to a demo-day (it can also be artificially imposed by managers)

When both #a and #b are externally satisfied, I can code all day long without problems. Things like headphones (to prevent interruptions) are useful but not necessary unless the environment is extremely distracting.

When #b is satisfied but not #a, I try to reduce the uncertainty around requirements - otherwise jumping in to code and then having to throw it away can be killing. At some point, the RoI in trying to achieve more certainty will get negative, at which point I start coding with whatever I have.

When you have #a but not #b, it is very easy to procrastinate. Of late I'm inspired by www.structuredprocrastination.com (brilliant, short read) to still maintain productivity.

Finally, having neither #a nor #b is the worst. Being in startup mode for the last few years I've seen how difficult that is. I'm making my own version of productivity pr0n, inspired from Marc Andreessen's blog post http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html The most effective thing for me is to plan a day ahead and then actually log what happened in the day. Just the act of measurement goes a long way in lifting mood and productivity.
What do you want to achieve? "Beautiful" is very different for different people :-)

I'm using my own color scheme (example, https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/3314/ottalex.5/0_23992_5fbf7...). If you want, you can grab my configs from https://github.com/alexott/emacs-configs/ (mac os x-specific parts in rc/emacs-rc-local-flash.el)
New home hair removal laser set to become the latest must have gadget
I've been using tumblr as my blog platform for nearly 4 years because it allows easy mobile posting and via emails which makes my posting easy. Yahoo buying tumblr will ruin tumblr for sure like yahoo has done go the past with Flickr and Delicious. Yahoo need to innovate and make things happen rather than buying everything just because they have money. Just imagine what would have happened to Facebook if Yahoo bought it back then. Yahoo is like the uncool kid who used to buy the lunch of cool kids so he can sit with them
Isn't it only a problem if they actually use it to identify you.

If they just use it the same way that google uses gmail I fail to see the problem.
How to bruteforce Truecrypt passwords for dummies with OTFBrutus
What do you mean? It shows the output in the bottom text area.

Edit: you mean, show a rendering of the output in the page?
Did you try Emacs in the terminal? If Vim looks good in your terminal, then Emacs should be about the same.
If you provide means for private communication, it's not preferred that it's private - it's a requirement.

Gentlemen don't read each others mail.
Indeed.

Add this to the 1,000,000 other reasons why you should never use GET requests for authentication/verification.
Whoa! I think I may be having a weaker version of the same type of synesthesia that you have described. I tend to "imagine" colours when I think of certain letters, numbers, days or months. I don't feel this way for each one of them though.. for eg. 2 = red, 4 = green, 5 = pink, 6 = blue, 7 = purple whereas nothing for 0, 1, 3, 8 and 9 (may be black?). Similarly, E = yellow, F = pink, saturday = green, march = yellow etc. Also, I don't "see" colours while reading text, just when I happen to think more about a letter, number or word.

All this while I was thinking this is common and normal in all people like photographic memory or something. Learnt something new today :-)
That's right: I meant a rendering.

Edit: actually, never mind. The UI is fine for its intended use.
Considering there was an article just a few days ago in NYTimes [1] claiming that "Skype is so secure because of its decentralization" that law enforcement tries to pass laws against it, I'd say a lot of people aren't aware that Microsoft does have access to all the information at this point thanks to their "super-nodes", but even NYTimes writers aren't aware of it (or maybe it was just a cloaked advertorial for Skype).

I'll also continue to say how extremely disappointed I am that none of the major IM players (not Google, not Apple, not Microsoft, not Yahoo, not Facebook) wants to implement OTR encryption in their chat apps. Google even removed their fake "OTR" from the new Hangouts app, which I believe only hid your logs from yourself, not from Google themselves.

[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/business/concerns-arise-on...
As I've moved to more polyglot programming (Java, Javascript, Node, Ruby) I've made a concerted effort to get back to Emacs after starting out there 10 years ago.

Using the same environment for all of my coding together with the tightly has been a massive increase in productivity for me. I've literally never been producing more on my side projects mainly due to this choice.

The reduced friction of using the same IDE on all of my different devices means that I can hit flow much faster, with the same shortcut keys, the same workflows, the same tools etc at my disposal regardless of what I'm building.

I prefer Emacs to VI mainly due to the tight shell integration. I'll always have a shell open where I'll be testing my code and running curl etc, keeping the feedback loop much tighter than it ever was in any IDE.

Picking up Emacs or VI is definetly worth the initial pain if you program in multiple languages.
Annoucing "The Art Of The Con" And Retiring From Tech Conferences
I'm using PhoneGap and I'll use it again.

Yes, a PhoneGap app may never run as smoothly as a native app but I'm not ready to sacrifice the advantages that PhoneGap approach brings:

- Using HTML/JS/CSS for all platforms
- I can strip all PhoneGap related calls from my app and have a mobile web app (which can run as a full screen web app)

And there're various tips and tricks to help you achieve almost native experience with PG (http://coenraets.org/blog/2013/05/top-10-performance-techniq...).

Imagine doing this in:
- ObjectiveC for iOS
- Java for Andriod
- C# for WP
- HTML/JS/CSS for having a mobile web app

Sacrificing some performance suddenly starts making sense.
I use Emacs for org mode and other things that I want to run in a terminal that I can stuff into Emacs, such as an IRC client. I use Vim for code editing. Sure, you can use Evil, but I feel like Vim is more than keybindings. I love Vim for the whole package, the Vim way of doing things and you can't get that using just Vim keybindings.

I use Tmux for managing multiple sessions, so I generally have a lot of Vim sessions going at one time. Emacs is just another session for me, so it's a regular part of my workflow to switch back and forth.
A detailed look at GHC's STM implementation from a non-GHC hacker
I have a credit card that had the contactless payment feature. It is more convenient, but the lack of 2 FA (have card, know PIN) made it really weird to use. Eventually I turned off the contactless feature (via the internet banking branch).
One thing I can't understand from this image

Apparently it was done with some sort of oscillograph.

So how come the peaks hide the drawings behind it?

Ok, thinking about this, if the drawing is done all at the same time, (like a signal FFT from the 60's) then the lower drawing device hits the upper drawing device (if the signal is bigger) hence making both trace the same thing.
We looked into Reddit a while back for advertising. The two main problems we encountered were that much of reddit is the wrong sort of traffic - people that don't convert, people that expect something for nothing and get upset (and vocal) when it doesn't happen and so on.

In order to run a successful campaign on reddit it seems you need to engage with the community in the subreddits you're targeting, but engaging with that community can be done without advertising, so the benefit of advertising is somewhat diminished.
Crockpot Mushroom Wine Chicken and Wild Rice Recipe
Double the Price of your Next Web Design Project
When your offer looks like all of the others, price is the only thing that matters.
I don't think it's nitpicky at all - it would be different if Skype, Microsoft or anyone else had actually made a promise that messages that pass through their service are unreadable to them.

While it's technically possible it's not the norm and it's hard to come up with examples of services that actually do make this promise - tarsnap is one that comes to mind.
Jquery and Responsive Design
Got a preview rendering to work. Check it out again. Thanks for the suggestion!
VUO an open alternative to quartz composer
Google App Engine finally supports PHP
Two days ago, Google announced it would finally support the most popular computing language on the planet, PHP, in its platform-as-a-service offering, Google App Engine.
Awesome, that's some quick turnaround!
If they do this, the GPU will be bundled as part of the LCD. It's the Apple Way. (I'll be disappointed too.)
Tumblr is, globally, in the top 50 websites by traffic, and in certain major cities it's in the top 20. Yeah, it's mostly full of cats, angst and porn, but the user base is both large and dedicated.
Do you experience this while reading foreing languages, once you know the meaning of the words?
For me, you absolutely must have location targeting. Combined with a subreddit suggestion tool, and the ability to actually choose my own budget/pay per click or per impression, I'd be able to take reddit ads seriously. Right now, I'd only do reddit ads to promote content, or for laughs.
Ask HN: What's 'Due Diligence' when vetting co-founders?
Hi,

I need a co-founder with a certain skillset to help my startup be successful when it launches, and have registered with 'Pro' accounts on 2 websites that claim they can help me find a co-founder. I've also placed an ad on another that claims it can help me find a technical co-founder. Then I put an ad with links to each of these campaigns on my company website (superspeedyservers.com).

Of 8 people I initiated contact with on the sites which I have a 'Pro' membership, none so far have seemed interested enough to get back to me, which is discouraging, 1 person has reached out to me, but hasn't followed up with a new reply after I got back to them, and on the other site with the ad, I got 1 reply from someone who's interested.

Part of me is inclined to start working with the first person who appears to be qualified and interested, out of fear that there won't be any more 'applicants' for lack of a better word for them. But I know the act of finding a good co-founder is akin to marriage, and I don't want to partner up with the wrong person.

So I'm wondering how this vetting process should go, considering that I have 6 months of 'Pro' account remaining on these sites, and don't know how many 'applicants' I may or may not see.

I don't want to squander the opportunities I do get, but I don't want to jump the gun & take the first 'applicant' for the sake of taking the first 'applicant'.

What are HN readers' thoughts on this?

Thanks.
I was thinking this the entire time I was reading the article, and was disappointed not to see it mentioned. Persona was invented precisely to solve this problem.

Hopefully it will gain traction...
Oh, that quote from the security policy finally explains why this is so big news. MSN still doesn't use SSL and that's not big news in anyway. But MSN never promised to use end-to-end encryption...
Yahoo reportedly moving forward with Tumblr acquisition
I'm thinking of building a WebRTC-based service to do just that, can you point me to an existing service that does similar things, so I don't waste my time? Thanks!
Because transliteration. Fuck Cyrillic and Bulgarians' idea of how to move to and from Latin.

Edit: Okay, I take it back. The Bulgarian official transliteration does it right.
I have reason to believe that the government cannot access all my mails. But if it could, I’d be even happier, as it would either prove a fault in GPG (unlikely) or a working quantum computer implementing e.g. Shor’s algorithm. And who wouldn’t want to hear of the latter?
My current vim looks like this, I rather like it dark etc

http://appventure.me/vim.png
Thank you for doing this. I will use!
Creating a Google Maps shortcode for WordPress
This week we’ll be extending WordPress by adding a custom shortcode. This shortcode will allow us to add a Google Map to a post using a simple piece of text in a post or page. Shortcodes are a quick and easy way to add functionality to a post in WordPress.
It's not a bug, except if you consider Cyrillic a bug. :)
What does it have then?
That's the most annoying thing about Microsoft's campaigns. Sure they may be slightly better in some areas than Google, but overall they are just as bad, or worse than Google when it comes to privacy.

Maybe I'd get it if those campaigns came from Mozilla or DuckDuckGo (even though they are still done in poor taste, and resemble too much negative political campaigns), but Microsoft? I just can't take them seriously in regards to that. Microsoft is throwing stones from a glass house, and they should stop.
I can see the usefulness of being able to hold your mock-up in your hand, but doesn't the WhitePad rotate when you try to draw on it? Would be nice to have a very thin non-slip pad on the back of it. It also would be very nice to be able to draw, but that has nothing to do with your product.
Didn't your mother tell you to never put metal in a microwave?

Yes the chip will fry.
I don't know if this is what you're thinking of when you say beautiful, but I'm pretty happy with my current setup: http://i.imgur.com/m6cIbd0.png

It's basically a slightly tweaked version of color-theme-zenburn with rainbow-delimiters mode, (setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t), and modeline tweaks from http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2011/08/customizing-mode-line.h...
Great link thank you for sharing.
The new super capacitors are coming
I wonder if they would have bothered you if you had named the post: "Creating Google Ears in Java"
I call Bullshit.
Everything?

Sharepoint, DropBox, Owncloud, LogMeIn, Flickr, Google Docs, et al.

Private/one-time-use URLs have been a "thing" since practically forever and they're all over the place.
Clearly you will want to validate their skill set - this may mean acting like an employer about to recruit a new employee before offering to partner.

You might also need to check that their history will not be a problem when you come to raise finance. Are they an undischarged bankrupt for instance (in the UK - are they disqualified from acting as a company director).

Then it is all down to - can you work with this person? Plus, is this person likely to represent the business well in their selected role?
Understanding Python's Execution Model
Add:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Hacker News" href="https://news.ycombinator.com/rss ">

(warning: one space after url)

To the main page for RSS autodetecting by browser plugins/etc.

Thanks.
Is this the same problem that affects first-gen Xboxes?

http://www.jaguarsector.com/index.php?showtopic=33652&hl...
Framework speed results, now with windows
Are there any nice, good quality RF-blocking wallets? I've only found poor quality fake-leather / synthetic fabric wallets when I've looked.
> Apple could still better itself - Retina for Air, higher reliable/capacity SSDs, Longer battery life, etc.

The first thing it needs to do is put more RAM in the thing, even more so because it can't be upgraded over time. There really needs to be a 16GB BTO (and if there can be a 32GB one even better, even if it costs an arm and a leg, 16GB is not enough to be comfortable when you need to juggle half a dozen VMs)
The image dates from 1971. I am going to guess it was simply drawn on a plotter, using a hidden-line removal algorithm. The same could have been done on a vector monitor, but it seems the image has the wrong dimensions for that.

To give you an idea of what was possible in 1971, the arcade machine Computer Space was released that year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space
I think it's partially a cultural thing and partially, the fact that one is an editor and the other one a bit closer to a lifestyle choice. Even if you just google them and read the snippets - vim will tell you that it's a vi clone and looking for vi will say "vi is a screen-oriented text editor originally created for the Unix operating system."

Emacs will tell you it's an "extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor." That's quite a mouthful, especially if all you had in mind was to edit some text. And I say this with all the nostalgic affection of a long-time emacs user.
I wanted a default tool I could find and use on any machine I connected to. vim is always there, even on servers.

I wanted something I could use over SSH, even on really bad connections such as mobile. vim works great over poor connections.

I barely use plugins, and seldom configure syntax highlighting.

On the desktop I may use vim, but tend to use Sublime Text for everything. Go, Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript (node and browser)... Sublime Text serves me really well and works the way I want to work. Before Sublime Text I was 100% vim, after Sublime Text I'm 80/20 ST/vim.

But for whenever there isn't ST, vim is always there.
Yes - I ran a trial a while back to see just how difficult it would be to get a common HTML/CSS/JavaScript set to work across iOS and Android browser variants for a non trivial graphical app. [It was quite difficult - much simpler to write 2 variants - but that was why I ran the trial]. Using PhoneGap the trial app is doing well as a free download in the Google Play Store and the Apple AppStore.
I doubt Retina and longer battery life go together so well. The first Retina MBP was really taxing its GPU to achive the resolution. This is most likely better but still - double the resolution, 4x the data rate, more shaders and other GPU units required...
Oh, sorry, I misread "private" for "secure".

Would anyone here use a WebRTC-based service that also encrypted the file in transit, thus making it pretty hard for anyone other than the recipients to see it?
If they end up buying them, I'd gladly contribute some money or computation power towards archiving the site. I have way too many bookmarks, likes, and other things tied to the service.
Explicit numeric types. Integers in particular.
Why do you want Gotos? There is a small set of problems that is best solved by Gotos and even those can be solved with a less error prone method.
We'll see about idle time, but active time won't be much better. The 17W IVB chips will be replaced with 15W Haswell chips. Performance will only feel better for "retina" laptops, because of a stronger GPU. The Haswell GPU will barely be "adequate" for retina displays though. So don't expect to be "wowed" or anything. IVB GPU wasn't adequate at all for retina displays. Haswell is really the first generation that can begin to handle retina displays with a "PC OS".

If you don't use retina, you won't feel much of a difference, except in games (if you were playing games on an Intel integrated GPU before). Haswell has been generally overhyped. The improvements are relatively minor compared to IVB. CPU wise I think it's only 5-10% faster.
Well NASA has history with making $300 million mistakes with units of mesure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_f...

The primary cause of this discrepancy was engineering error.
Specifically, the flight system software on the Mars Climate
Orbiter was written to take thrust instructions using the
metric unit newtons (N), while the software on the ground that
generated those instructions used the Imperial measure
pound-force (lbf). This error has since been known as the
"metric mixup" and has been carefully avoided in all missions
since by NASA.
Great "learn the terms" section. So many tutorials come with a huge
up-front wall of text explaining every possible term you could ever come
across, when all you want is to get to the useful stuff!

The approach I took in my own guide to learning Emacs[1] was to mention
those terms (like "C-x", "buffer", "frame", etc.) as if the reader
already knew them, but hyperlinked to a glossary.

The most important part of Sacha's diagram is the bottom left corner:
"Learn how to learn more". Every Emacs expert will tell you about
"C-h k" and "C-h f" etc, but few novices actually understand how much
you should be using those self-documenting features. My guide focuses
on this, for those with the patience to work through it. :-)

[1] http://david.rothlis.net/emacs/howtolearn.html
My GVim: http://i.imgur.com/5nH37zy.png

My Emacs: http://i.imgur.com/SNTZL6i.png

At first, Emacs font rendering felt weird to me, but some tweaking made it look slick. I use the ir-black theme with the Monaco for powerline font. Here's my config: https://github.com/mgill25/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs
> vim is always there, even on servers.

This argument made sense 20 years ago, when it was quite possible that you'd fine yourself on some weird IRIX machine that had nothing much installed, but you could be sure vi was there.

These days, apt-get install emacs or the redhat equivalent is not really a problem.

> I wanted something I could use over SSH,

Emacs has a remote connection mode, so that you fetch the file, edit it locally, and then save it to the remote machine.
NaCL still outperforms asm.js
Couldnt you get a US or UK resident to pay for you? You could reimburse the person with bitcoin.
Too convenient, certainly! Payments even occur when the customer doesn't want them to.
What is your current config?

Looks like you want global-linum-mode to get line numbering.
then to remove tool, menu and scroll bars do
(tool-bar-mode -1)
(menu-bar-mode -1)
(scroll-bar-mode -1)
The iOS app, which is one of said attempts, is outright awful, so I haven't seen much of a track record to assuage my reservations about her ability to improve the offerings. Upcoming.org was also shut down in a really stupid way, regardless of whether you like the service it self.

Very reminiscent of Google's way of going about things, actually. :)
Actually you're both wrong. The image is from the late 60s and isn't one single plotted graph but actually multiple different measurements that have then been stacked to make comparison easier.

This article does actually explain this, but I can forgive you for not getting that far as it's the very last item on his blog and appears only to have been mentioned as an after thought.
I think a lot of people would be interested in supporting a Kickstarter of some sort, though.
http://www.kashflow.com/ is another great one, especially if you happen to be in the UK.

I'd also second the vote for Xero. Haven't actually used it yet, but always looked impressive from the sidelines at least.
> I have to say that emacs looks awful

I thought pretty much the same, until I recompiled it using Athena widgets, which brought it back to its intended glory.